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State, Mexico’s drug cartels do not constitute a challenge to Western liberal values and the capitalist economic model promoted by the United States.
Conclusion
Western imperialism has spent the better part of five hundred years trying to impose Western values on peoples throughout the world. These peoples have never had a meaningful voice in the political, social and economic policies that have been imposed on them. Imperialism, by definition, is undemocratic. While the policies of the US government impact billions of people around the world, only a tiny percentage of the global population have any say in electing that government. And the overwhelming majority of the 121 million Americans who vote give little thought to how their ballot will impact Muslims in the Middle East, indigenous peoples in Latin America, and billions of others throughout Africa and Asia. Their voting decisions are primarily determined by their perceived immediate needs, which provides a veneer of legitimacy not only to US democracy but also to US imperialism.
Consequently, it is highly unlikely that in the foreseeable future a revolution will occur in the imperial heartland. It is much more likely to occur in the outlying regions of the US Empire. In fact, it is already occurring in various forms, from the indigenous movements for autonomy in Latin America to the extremist Islamic fundamentalism of groups such as al-Qaeda and the Islamic State in the Middle East. At the current time, the overwhelming majority of the world’s population that stands opposed to US imperialism are moderates who are non-violently seeking autonomy and a meaningful voice in the major decisions that impact their lives. But if we continue to crush all moderate opposition to US imperialism, we will likely further spread the sort of extremism that has emerged in the Middle East.
For the world’s sake, it is crucial that a revolution occur that brings down the US imperialist system before the violent extremism it fuels leads to global chaos. And if the US Empire is not brought down by those living at its core then it must be overthrown by its ‘subjects’ in the outlying regions who endure taxation—through the exploitation of their cheap labour and natural resources—without representation. After all, they have nothing to lose but their chains.
Garry Leech is an independent journalist and author of numerous books including Capitalism: A Structural Genocide (Zed Books, 2012); Beyond Bogota: Diary of a Drug War Journalist in Colombia (Beacon Press, 2009); and Crude Interventions: The United States Oil and the New World Disorder (Zed Books, 2006). ). He is also a lecturer in the Department of Political Science at Cape Breton University in Canada.Image copyright SPL Image caption Production of grass will have to increase significantly to meet future demand for meat and milk
The world must significantly increase its use of phosphorus-based fertiliser to meet future demands for food.
That's the conclusion of a study that suggests a fourfold rise in the amount of mineral and organic phosphorus needed on grasslands by 2050.
The researchers say that at present, more phosphorus is being lost from soils than is being added by farmers.
But there are concerns that increases in the use of the mineral could damage the environment.
Phosphorus is an irreplaceable element for all life forms - but it is only since the 19th century that humans have been systematically using it to boost agricultural production.
The mineral can be mined as phosphate ore - but animal excrement is also an important source especially in the developing world.
Grass boom
Demand grew so rapidly over the 20th century that there were concerns about overuse and "peak phosphorus".
But research published in 2012, looking at the need for phosphorus on crops, suggested that future demand could be met from existing sources.
This new study though looks at the use of phosphorus on grasslands which cover around a quarter of the Earth's ice-free land areas.
These fields are crucial are in the production of milk and meat. As global incomes rise, demand for these products is set to soar. This in turn will spark a rise in demand grass crops and production is expected to increase by 80% by 2050.
But the study points out that at present, the vast majority of grasslands in the world are losing more phosphorus than they are gaining.
Image copyright NOAA Image caption Phosphorus and other nutrients can create marine dead zones such as this one in the Gulf of Mexico
The losses are mainly caused by farmers collecting manure from grasslands and using it to fertilise croplands. The amount being lost from intensive farming is far greater than from pastoral systems. Between 1970 and 2005, 44% of these losses occurred in Asia.
"This is one main factor," said Prof Martin van Ittersum, a co-author of the study from the University of Wageningen in the Netherlands.
"Of all the manure that is deposited on the grassland, half of it is taken away for croplands or used for fuel or for plastering the walls of the houses in Africa. The fact is that the grasslands are not fertilised, so you have very little inputs to the system."
The researchers say that to meet the projected demand for grassland in 2050, the amounts of phosphorus used will have to grow more than fourfold from 2005 levels.
To cope with both grassland and arable land demands, the overall use of mineral phosphorus fertiliser must double by the middle of the century.
"It is a vast area but that is very significant, yes," said Prof van Ittersum.
"It is our strong assumption, that productivity will decrease and the pressure on our feed crops will increase and that is something that we should avoid," he said.
"There is already a societal concern that we are feeding too much of our cereal crops to livestock and that pressure will only increase if our grasslands decrease in productivity."
Marine impacts
But increasing the amount of phosphorus used on land, especially in mineral form, carries significant environmental concerns.
Excessive use of fertilisers of all types can lead to a leaching of nutrients into the sea where they have created so-called "dead zones".
"A fourfold rise in phosphorus use would have a big impact on the environment, especially on marine life," said Marissa de Boer who is European Project Manager of SusPhos at VU University in Amsterdam.
"The leaching of phosphorus from agricultural lands into rivers and eventually the sea leads to uncontrolled algae growth and dead zones such as the ones found in the Baltic Sea, Lake Erie and the Gulf of Mexico. This is an effect of increased fertilizer use in the past half century.
What would the effect be if we now increase phosphorus use fourfold?"
Prof van Ittersum says these issues can be controlled. The most important thing is awareness.
"We are still talking about modest amounts, I don't think the environmental risks are particularly big," he told BBC News.
"We have to do it carefully, we have to reuse our residues and wastes and make sure as little phosphorus as possible ends up in our sewage systems."
The study has been published in the journal, Nature Communications.
Follow Matt on Twitter @mattmcgrathbbc and on Facebook.Not to be confused with Latin Americans or the inhabitants of Hispanic America
Hispanic Americans and Latino Americans (Spanish: estadounidenses hispanos or americanos hispanos, pronounced [isˈpanos]) are people in the United States who are descendants of people from countries of Latin America and Spain.[6][7][8] The United States has the largest population of Latinos and Hispanics outside of Latin America. More generally, it includes all persons in the United States who self-identify as Hispanic or Latino, whether of full or partial ancestry.[9][10][11][12] For the 2010 United States Census, people counted as "Hispanic" or "Latino" were those who identified as one of the specific Hispanic or Latino categories listed on the census questionnaire ("Mexican", "Puerto Rican" or "Cuban") as well as those who indicated that they were "other Spanish, Hispanic, or Latino." The national origins classified as Hispanic or Latino by the United States Census Bureau are the following: Argentine, Cuban, Colombian, Puerto Rican, Dominican, Mexican, Costa Rican, Guatemalan, Honduran, Nicaraguan, Panamanian, Salvadoran, Bolivian, Spanish American, Chilean, Ecuadorian, Paraguayan, Peruvian, Uruguayan, and Venezuelan. Other U.S. government agencies have slightly different definitions of the term, including Brazilians and other Portuguese-speaking groups. The Census Bureau uses the terms Hispanic and Latino interchangeably.[13]
"Origin" can be viewed as the ancestry, nationality group, lineage, or country of birth of the person or the person's parents or ancestors before their arrival in the United States. People who identify as Spanish, Hispanic or Latino may be of any race.[14][15][16][17] As one of the only two specifically designated categories of ethnicity in the United States (the other being "Not Hispanic or Latino"), Hispanics form a pan-ethnicity incorporating a diversity of inter-related cultural and linguistic heritages. Most Hispanic Americans are of Mexican, Puerto Rican, Cuban, Salvadoran, Dominican, Guatemalan, or Colombian origin. The predominant origin of regional Hispanic populations varies widely in different locations across the country.[15][18][19][20][21]
Hispanic Americans are the second fastest-growing ethnic group by percentage growth in the United States after Asian Americans.[22] Hispanic/Latinos overall are the second-largest ethnic group in the United States, after non-Hispanic whites (a group which, like Hispanics and Latinos, is composed of dozens of sub-groups of differing national origin).
Hispanics have lived within what is now the United States continuously[23][24][25][26] since the founding of St. Augustine by the Spanish in 1565. After Native Americans, Hispanics are the oldest ethnic group to inhabit much of what is today the United States. Many have Native American ancestry.[27][28][29][30] Spain colonized large areas of what is today the American Southwest and West Coast, as well as Florida. Its holdings included present-day California, New Mexico, Nevada, Arizona and Texas, all of which were part of the Republic of Mexico from its independence in 1821 until the end of the Mexican–American War in 1848. Conversely, Hispanic immigrants to the New York-New Jersey metropolitan area derive from a broad spectrum of Latin American states.[31]
A study published in 2015 in the American Journal of Human Genetics, based on 23andMe data from 8,663 self-described Latinos, estimated that Latinos in the United States carried a mean of 65.1% European ancestry, 18.0% Native American ancestry, and 6.2% African ancestry. The study found that self-described Latinos from the Southwest, especially those along the Mexican border, had the highest mean levels of Native American ancestry.[32]
Terminology [ edit ]
The terms "Hispanic" and "Latino" refer to an ethnicity; people of this group may be of any race. Hispanic people may share some commonalities in their language, culture, history, and heritage. According to the Smithsonian Institution, the term "Latino" includes peoples with Portuguese roots, such as Brazilians, as well as those of Spanish-language origin.[33][34] In the United States, many Hispanics and Latinos are of both European and Native American ancestry (mestizo). Others are wholly or predominantly of European ancestry or of Amerindian ancestry. Many Hispanics and Latinos from the Caribbean, as well as other regions of Latin America where African slavery was widespread, may be of sub-Saharan African descent as well.[33][35]
The difference between the terms Hispanic and Latino is confusing to some. The U.S. Census Bureau equates the two terms and defines them as referring to anyone from Spain and the Spanish-speaking countries of the Americas. After the Mexican–American War concluded in 1848, term Hispanic or Spanish American was primarily used to describe the Hispanos of New Mexico within the American Southwest. The 1970 United States Census controversially broadened the definition to "a person of Mexican, Puerto Rican, Cuban, South or Central American, or other Spanish culture or origin, regardless of race". This is now the common formal and colloquial definition of the term within the United States, outside of New Mexico.[36][37] The term Latino has developed a number of definitions. One definition of Latino is "a Latin male in the United States".[38] This is the oldest and the original definition used in the United States, first used in 1946.[38] This definition encompasses Spanish speakers from both Europe and the Americas. Under this definition, immigrants from Spain and immigrants from Latin America are both Latino. This definition is consistent with the 21st-century usage by the U.S. Census Bureau and OMB, as the two agencies use both terms Hispanic and Latino interchangeably.
A later definition of Latino is as a condensed form of the term "Latino-Americano", the Spanish word for Latin-American, or someone who comes from Latin America. Under this definition a Mexican American or Puerto Rican, for example, is both a Hispanic and a Latino. A Brazilian American is also a Latino by this definition, which includes those of Portuguese-speaking origin from Latin America. However, an immigrant from Spain would be classified as European or White by American standards but not Latino by this definition.[39][40][41][43][44]
San Miguel Chapel, built in 1610 in Santa Fe, is the oldest church structure in the United States.
While the U.S. Census Bureau's definition of "Hispanic" is limited to Spanish-speaking Latin America, other government agencies have slightly different definitions of the term. The US Department of Transportation defines "Hispanic" as "persons of Mexican, Puerto Rican, Cuban, Dominican, Central or South American, or other Spanish or Portuguese culture or origin, regardless of race."[45] This definition has been adopted by the Small Business Administration as well as by many federal, state, and municipal agencies. Unlike the Census Bureau's definition, this clearly includes people with origins in Portuguese-speaking countries.
Preference of use between the terms among Hispanics and Latinos in the United States often depends on where users of the respective terms reside. Those in the Eastern United States tend to prefer the term Hispanic, whereas those in the West tend to prefer Latino.[14] Both terms refer to ethnicity, as a person of Latino or Hispanic origin can be of any race.[15][46]
In Spanish, Latina is used for persons of feminine gender; Latino is used for those of masculine gender, or by default. For example, a group of mixed or unknown gender would be referred to as Latinos. In the 21st century, the neologisms Latinx and Latin@[47] were coined as a gender-neutral alternative to this traditional usage.[48] The X functions as a variable, encompassing those who identify as male, female, or non-binary. The @ symbol is seen as containing both the masculine 'o' and feminine 'a', thus serving a similar purpose.[49] Neither has been widely adopted.
History [ edit ]
16th and 17th centuries [ edit ]
Hispanic/Latinos have been settled continuously in the territory of the United States since the late 16th century,[23][24][25][26] earlier than any other colonial group of European origin. Spanish explorers were pioneers in the territory of the present-day United States. The first confirmed European landing in the continental United States was by Juan Ponce de León, who landed in 1513 at a lush shore he christened La Florida.
Within three decades of Ponce de León's landing, the Spanish became the first Europeans to reach the Appalachian Mountains, the Mississippi River, the Grand Canyon and the Great Plains. Spanish ships sailed along the East Coast, penetrating to present-day Bangor, Maine, and up the Pacific Coast as far as Oregon. From 1528 to 1536, Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca and three fellows (including an African named Estevanico), from a Spanish expedition that foundered, journeyed from Florida to the Gulf of California, 267 years before the Lewis and Clark Expedition. They turned back to the interior, reaching their destination of Mexico City.
In 1540, Hernando de Soto undertook an extensive exploration of the present United States. That same year Francisco Vásquez de Coronado led 2,000 Spaniards and Mexican Indians across today's Arizona–Mexico border and traveled as far as central Kansas, close to the exact geographic center of what is now the continental United States. Other Spanish explorers of the US territory include, among others: Lucas Vázquez de Ayllón, Pánfilo de Narváez, Sebastián Vizcaíno, Gaspar de Portolà, Pedro Menéndez de Avilés, Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca, Tristán de Luna y Arellano and Juan de Oñate, and non-Spanish explorers working for the Spanish Crown, such as Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo. In all, Spaniards probed half of today's lower 48 states before the first English colonization effort in 1585 at Roanoke Island off the East Coast.
In 1565, the Spanish created the first permanent European settlement in the continental United States, at St. Augustine, Florida. Santa Fe, New Mexico was founded before Jamestown, Virginia (founded in 1607) and the New England Plymouth Colony (1620, of Mayflower and Pilgrims fame). Spanish missionaries and colonists founded settlements in El Paso, San Antonio, Tucson, Albuquerque, San Diego, Los Angeles and San Francisco, to name a few.
18th and 19th centuries [ edit ]
Historical population Census Pop. %± 1850 116,943 — 1880 393,555 — 1900 503,189 — 1910 797,994 58.6% 1920 1,286,154 61.2% 1930 1,653,987 28.6% 1940 2,021,820 22.2% 1950 3,231,409 59.8% 1960 5,814,784 79.9% 1970 8,920,940 53.4% 1980 14,608,673 63.8% 1990 22,354,059 53.0% 2000 35,305,818 57.9% 2010 50,477,594 43.0% Est. 2017 58,846,134 16.6% Source: Historical Census Statistics[50]
As late as 1783, at the end of the American Revolutionary War (a conflict in which Spain aided and fought alongside the rebels), Spain held claim to roughly half the territory of today's continental United States. From 1819 to 1848, the United States (through treaties, purchase, diplomacy, and the Mexican–American War) increased its area by roughly a third at Spanish and Mexican expense, acquiring its three currently most populous states—California, Texas and Florida.
20th and 21st centuries [ edit ]
During the 20th and 21st centuries, Hispanic and Latino immigration to the United States increased markedly following changes to the immigration law in 1965.
Hispanic and Latino contributions in the historical past and present of the United States are addressed in more detail below (See Notables and their contributions). To recognize the current and historic contributions of Hispanic and Latino Americans, on September 17, 1968, President Lyndon B. Johnson designated a week in mid-September as National Hispanic Heritage Week, with Congress's authorization. In 1988, President Ronald Reagan extended the observance to a month, designated National Hispanic Heritage Month.[51]
Demographics [ edit ]
As of 2017, Hispanics accounted for 18% of the U.S. population, or almost 59 million people.[1] The Hispanic growth rate over the April 1, 2000 to July 1, 2007 period was 28.7%—about four times the rate of the nation's total population growth (at 7.2%).[52] The growth rate from July 1, 2005 to July 1, 2006 alone was 3.4%[53]—about three and a half times the rate of the nation's total population growth (at 1.0%).[52] Based on the 2010 census, Hispanics are now the largest minority group in 191 out of 366 metropolitan areas in the United States.[54] The projected Hispanic population of the United States for July 1, 2050 is 132.8 million people, or 30.2% of the nation's total projected population on that date.[55]
Geographic distribution [ edit ]
The percentage of Hispanic or Latino residents by county
US Metropolitan Statistical Areas with over 1 million Hispanics (2014)[56]
Percent of Hispanic and Latino population by state in 2012
States and territories with the highest proportion of Hispanics (2010)[citation needed]
Of the nation's total Hispanic or Latino population, 49% (21.5 million) live in California or Texas.[57]
Over half of the Hispanic/Latino population is concentrated in the Southwest region, mostly composed of Mexican Americans. California and Texas have some of the largest populations of Mexicans and Central American Latinos in the United States. The Northeast region is dominated by Puerto Ricans and Dominican Americans, having the highest concentrations of both in the country. In the Mid Atlantic region, centered on the DC Metro Area, Salvadoran Americans are the largest of Hispanic groups. Florida is dominated by Cuban Americans and Puerto Ricans. In both the Great Lakes States and the South Atlantic States, Mexicans and Puerto Ricans dominate. Mexicans dominate in the rest of the country, including the Western United States, South Central United States and Great Plains states.
National origin [ edit ]
As of 2017, approximately 62% of the nation's Hispanic population were of Mexican origin (see table). Another 9.5% were of Puerto Rican origin, with about 4% each of Cuban and Salvadoran and 3.5% Dominican origins. The remainder were of other Central American or of South American origin, or of origin directly from Spain. Two thirds of all Hispanic and Latino Americans were born in the United States.[58]
There are few immigrants directly from Spain, since Spaniards have historically emigrated to Latin America rather than English-speaking countries. Because of this, most Hispanics who identify themselves as Spaniard or Spanish also identify with Latin American national origin. In the 2017 Census estimate approximately 1.3 million Americans reported some form of "Spanish" as their ancestry, whether directly from Spain or not.[1]
In northern New Mexico and southern Colorado, there is a large portion of Hispanics who trace their ancestry to Spanish settlers of the late 16th century through the 17th century. People from this background often self-identify as "Hispanos", "Spanish" or "Hispanic". Many of these settlers also intermarried with local Amerindians, creating a Mestizo population.[59] Likewise, southern Louisiana is home to communities of people of Canary Islands descent, known as Isleños, in addition to other people of Spanish ancestry.
Chicanos, Californios, Nuevomexicanos and Tejanos are Americans of Spanish and or Mexican descent. Chicanos live in the Southwest, Nuevomexicanos in New Mexico, and Tejanos in Texas. Nuevomexicanos and Tejanos are distinct cultures with their own cuisines, dialects and musical traditions. The term "Chicano" became popular amongst Mexican Americans in the 1960s during the Chicano nationalism and Chicano Movement, and is today seen as an ethnic and cultural identity by some. Political activist César Chávez and novelist José Antonio Villarreal are famous Chicanos.
Nuyoricans are Americans of Puerto Rican descent from the New York City area. There are close to two million Nuyoricans in the United States. Famous Nuyoricans include US Supreme Court Judge Sonia Sotomayor and singer Jennifer Lopez.
Race [ edit ]
Hispanic or Latino origin is independent of race and is termed "ethnicity" by the United States Census Bureau. According to the 2017 American Community Survey, 65% of Hispanic and Latinos were White. The largest numbers of White Hispanics come from within the Mexican, Puerto Rican, Cuban, Colombian and Spanish communities.[63][64]
Over a quarter of Hispanic/Latino Americans identify as "some other race."[60] These "Some other race" Hispanics are usually assumed to be mestizos or mulattos.[65] A significant percentage of the Hispanic and Latino population self-identifies as Mestizo, particularly the Mexican and Central American community. Mestizo is not a racial category in the U.S. Census, but signifies someone who has both European and American Indian Ancestry. Of all Americans who checked the box "Some Other Race", 97 percent were Hispanic.
Almost one third of the multi-race respondents were Hispanics.[65] Most of the multi-racial population in the Mexican, Salvadoran, and Guatemalan communities are of European and Native American ancestry (Mestizo), while most of the multiracial population in the Puerto Rican, Dominican, and Cuban communities are of European and African ancestry (Mulatto).
The largest numbers of Black Hispanics are from the Spanish Caribbean islands, including the Cuban, Dominican, Panamanians, and Puerto Rican, communities.
The few hundred thousand Asian Hispanics are of various backgrounds, among which include Filipino mestizos with Spanish background, Asians of Latin American background (examples including Chinese Cubans and Japanese Peruvians), and those of recent mixed Asian and Hispanic background. Note that Filipinos are generally not counted as Hispanic, despite the fact that the Spanish colonized the Philippines and many Filipinos have Spanish names.
Hispanic and Latinos are racially diverse, although different "races" are usually the majority of each Hispanic group. For example, of Hispanic Americans deriving from northern Mexico, most are White or biracial having White/Native American Ancestry, while of those deriving from southern Mexican ancestry, the majority are Native American or of Native American and European Ancestry. In Guatemala, Native American and bi-racial people of Native American and European descent make the majority, while in El Salvador, whites and Bi-racial people of Native American/European descent are the majority. In the Dominican Republic the population are largely made up of people with inter-mixed ancestries, in which there are even levels of African and European ancestry, with smaller numbers of Whites and Blacks as well.
In Puerto Rico, people with European ancestry are the majority. There are also populations of predominantly of African descent as well as populations of American Indian descent as well as those with intermixed ancestries. Cubans are mostly of White Latin American ancestry, however there are also populations of Blacks and multi-racials as well.[66][67][67][68] The race and culture of each Hispanic/Latino country and their United States diaspora differs by history and geography. Mexicans represent the bulk of the US Hispanic/Latino population, and most Mexican Americans that migrate to the United States are of Native American and White descent, which causes many non-Hispanics to equate being Hispanic with being of mestizo or Native American ancestry. Official sources report the racial makeup of these Hispanic subgroups as follows, Argentina,[69] Uruguay,[69] Puerto Rico,[69] Cuba,[69] and Chile,[69] having the highest percentage of Hispanics self-identifying as white in their respective countries. As a result of their racial diversity, Hispanics form an ethnicity sharing a language (Spanish/ Portuguese) and cultural heritage, rather than a race. The phenomenon of biracial people who are predominantly of European descent identifying as white is not limited to Hispanics or Spanish speakers but is also common among English speakers as well: researchers found that most White Americans with less than 28 percent African-American ancestry say they are White; above that threshold, people tended to describe themselves as African-American.[70]
Age [ edit ]
As of 2014, one third, or 17.9 million, of the Hispanic population was younger than 18 and a quarter, 14.6 million were Millennials. This makes them more than half of the Hispanic population within the United States.[71]
Education [ edit ]
Hispanic or Latino K-12 education [ edit ]
With the increasing Hispanic population in the United States, Latinos have had a considerable impact on the K-12 system. In 2011-12, Latinos comprised 24% of all enrollments in the United States, including 52% and 51% of enrollment in California and Texas, respectively.[72] Further research shows the Latino population will continue to grow in the United States, implicating that more Latinos will populate U.S schools.
The state of Latino education shows some promise. First, Hispanic students attending pre-K or kindergarten were more likely to attend full-day programs.[72] Second, Latinos in elementary education were the second largest group represented in gifted and talented programs.[72] Third, Hispanics' average NAEP math and reading scores have consistently increased over the last 10 years.[72] Finally, Latinos were more likely than other groups, including whites, to go to college.[72]
However, their academic achievement in early childhood, elementary, and secondary education lag behind other groups.[72] For instance, their average math and reading NAEP scores were lower than every other group, except African Americans, and have the highest dropout rate of any group, 13% despite decreasing from 24%.[72]
To explain these disparities, some scholars have suggested there is a Latino "Education Crisis" due to failed school and social policies.[73] To this end, scholars have further offered several potential reasons including language barriers, poverty, and immigrant/nativity status resulting in Latinos not performing well academically.[74][75]
English language learners [ edit ]
Spanish speakers in the United States by counties in 2000
Currently, Hispanic students make up 80% of English language learners in the United States.[76] In 2008-9, 5.3 million students were classified as English Language Learners (ELLs) in pre-K to 12th grade.[77] This is a result of many students entering the education system at different ages, although the majority of ELLs are not foreign born.[77] In order to provide English instruction for Latino students there have been a multitude of English Language programs. However, the great majority of these programs are English Immersion, which arguably undermines the students’ culture and knowledge of their primary language.[75] As such, there continues to be great debate within schools as to which program can address these language disparities.
Immigration status [ edit ]
Illegal Immigrants have not always had access to compulsory education in the United States. However, due to the landmark Supreme Court case Plyler v. Doe in 1982, immigrants are allowed access to K-12 education. This significantly impacted all immigrant groups, including Latinos. However, their academic achievement is dependent upon several factors including, but not limited to time of arrival and schooling in country of origin.[78] Moreover, Latinos' immigration/nativity status plays a major role regarding their academic achievement. For instance, first- and second- generation Latinos outperform their later generational counterparts.[79] Additionally, their aspirations appear to decrease as well.[80] This has major implications on their postsecondary futures.
Hispanic or Latino higher education [ edit ]
Those with a bachelor's degree or higher ranges from 50% of Venezuelans compared to 18% for Ecuadorians 25 years and older. Amongst the largest Hispanic groups, those with a bachelor's or higher was 25% for Cuban Americans, 16% of Puerto Ricans, 15% of Dominicans, and 11% for Mexican Americans. Over 21% of all second-generation Dominican Americans have college degrees, slightly below the national average (28%) but significantly higher than U.S.-born Mexican Americans (13%) and U.S.-born Puerto Rican Americans (12%).[82]
Hispanic and Latinos make up the second or third largest ethnic group in Ivy League universities, considered to be the most prestigious in the United States. Hispanic and Latino enrollment at Ivy League universities has gradually increased over the years. Today, Hispanics make up between 8% of students at Yale University to 15% at Columbia University.[83] For example, 18% of students in the Harvard University Class of 2018 are Hispanic.[84]
Hispanics have significant enrollment in many other top universities such as University of Texas at El Paso (70% of students), Florida International University (63%), University of Miami (27%), and MIT, UCLA, and UC-Berkeley at 15% each. At Stanford University, Hispanics are the third largest ethnic group behind non-Hispanic Whites and Asians, at 18% of the student population.[85]
Hispanic university enrollments [ edit ]
Hispanics study in universities around the country, but can also attend to Hispanic-serving institution, institutions that are part of a federal program designed to assist colleges or universities in the United States that attempt to assist first generation, majority low income Hispanic students. There are over 250 schools that have been designated as an HSI.
Health [ edit ]
Longevity [ edit ]
Hispanic and Latino Americans are the longest-living Americans, according to official data. Their life expectancy is more than two years longer than for non-Hispanic whites and almost eight years longer than for African Americans.[97]
Healthcare [ edit ]
Of the 24 million Americans who lack health insurance, 40% are Hispanics.[98] Factors such as immigration, acculturation and language affect their chances of getting health insurance. Furthermore, working Hispanics are less likely to receive health insurance from their employer in comparison to non-White Hispanics. Insurance from employers is most common source for workers. According to studies, Hispanics are most likely to have jobs in agriculture, domestic services, retail trade in comparison to Non-Hispanic whites and their administrative, and executive positions. Although insurance companies such as Medicare have enrolled many minority groups in order for them to receive medical care, the gap between Hispanics and non-Hispanic whites is noticeable. In New York City, around 61% Hispanics work with an employers who provides insurance whereas 89% of Non-Hispanic whites work under an employer that provided health insurance. Those who do not receive health insurance is because either they do not qualify, the premiums are too expensive and the primarily because their employers do not offer health insurance.
Limited access to services adds another layer of trauma and misfortune to immigrants living in the United States and more specifically to Mexican women who have the highest uninsured rate (54.6%) as compared to other immigrants (26.2%), blacks (22.5%) and non-Hispanic white (13.9%).[99] As an alternative, Mexican women with limited access to health services seek health coverage through community health centers and are end up being provided with inadequate services. Additionally, the 2010 Affordable Care act was a health legislation passed in order to help Mexican immigrant women gain access to quality health care services when they are without employer sponsored or private health insurance. However, the Affordable Care Act does not help undocumented immigrants and legal immigrants with less than five years residence in the U.S. Mexican women are the largest female immigrant group in the United States and are also the most at risk for developing preventable health conditions.[99] Multiple factors such as limited access to health care, legal status and income increase the risk of developing preventable health conditions because many undocumented immigrants postpone routine visits to the doctor until they become seriously ill.
Mental health [ edit ]
Stigmas [ edit ]
One issue that is not really talked about within the Hispanic community is mental health. There is a big stigma in the Hispanic community that by admitting to having mental health issues, a person is "crazy". People don't reach out to get the help or bother saying anything because they are afraid to be judged by family and friends. People don't seek the help they need and hide what they are truly feeling.[100]
Family separation [ edit ]
During the process of migrating to the United States, there are instances in their journey where families experience separation. Before the migration begins, those who are making the journey to the U.S. have to leave behind their families along with their homeland. Additionally, families who are in the process of crossing borders suffer being caught and separated by border patrol agents. Migrants are also in danger of separation if they do not have sufficient resources such as water for all members to continue crossing. Once migrants have arrived to the new country they fear workplace raids where immigrant parents are detained and deported.
Family separation puts U.S born children, undocumented children and their undocumented parents at risk for depression and family maladaptive syndrome. The effects are often long-term and the impact extends to the community level. Children will experience emotional traumas and long-term changes in behaviors. Additionally, when parents are forcefully removed, children develop feelings of abandonment and they might blame themselves for what has happened to their family. Children that are victims to family separation believe in the possibility of never seeing their parents again. These effects can cause negative parent-child attachment. Reunification may be difficult because of harsh immigration laws and re-entry restrictions which further affect the mental health of children and parents.[101]
Parents who leave behind everything in their home country also experience negative mental health experiences. According to a study published in 2013, 46% of Mexican migrant men who participated in the study reported elevated levels of depressive symptoms.[102] In recent years, the length of stay for migrants has increased, from 3 years to nearly a decade.[102] Migrants who were separated from their families, either married or single, experienced greater depression than married men accompanied by their spouses.[102] Furthermore, the study also revealed that men who are separated from their families are more prone to harsher living conditions such as overcrowded housing and are under a greater deal of pressure to send remittance to support their families. These conditions put additional stress on the migrants and often worsens their depression. Families who migrated together experience better living conditions, receive emotional encouragement and motivation from each other, and share a sense of solidarity. They are also more likely to successfully navigate the employment and health care systems in the new country, and aren’t pressured to send remittances back home.
Discrimination [ edit ]
It is reported that 31% of Latinos reported personal experiences with discrimination whilst 82% believed that discrimination plays a crucial role in whether they will find success living in the U.S.[103] The current legislation on immigration policies also plays crucial role in creating a hostile and discriminatory environment for immigrants. In order to measure discrimination for immigrants, it is taken from their perceived discrimination that they feel is towards them and can vary from: personal experiences, social attitudes and ethnic group barriers. The immigrant experience is associated to lower-self esteem, internalizing symptoms and problem behaviors amongst Mexican youth. It is also known that more time spent living in the U.S. is associated with increased feelings of distress, depression and anxiety.[103] Like many other Hispanic and Latino American groups that migrate to the United States, these groups are often st |
statement from the American Geophysical Union, cosmic rays in the outer heliosphere dramatically dropped while cosmic radiation from outside the solar system was twice as intense as anything that had been recorded since Voyager 1's launch.
"It's outside the normal heliosphere, I would say that," professor emeritus of astronomy at New Mexico State University in Las Cruces said in a statement. "We're in a new region. And everything we're measuring is different and exciting."
Even Webber notes, according to the release, that "scientists are continuing to debate whether Voyager 1 has reached interstellar space or entered a separate, undefined region beyond the solar system."Australia’s infrastructure emergency
One of Australia’s many political ironies is that the national effort to Stop The Boats has disguised an immigration boom.
Immigration has increased five-fold since the Howard government came to office and with a big increase in births over the past ten years, in part also due to Howard government policies, Australia’s total population growth has doubled and is now about three times that of most other developed countries.
The Abbott government’s ambitious paid parental leave project will ensure that the baby boom goes on and the pressure for immigration from India and China – apart from New Zealand the two leading sources of migrants – will only increase as well.
Last year Australia’s population grew 1.8 per cent, or 407,000, compared with 0.7 per cent for the United States, 0.5 per cent for Europe and China, and minus 0.1 per cent for Japan.
The extra 400,000 or so people a year is the reason Australia has not had a recession for 23 years and it’s why GDP growth is now around 2.5 per cent. On a per capita basis, Australia’s economic growth is among the weakest in the world, and per capita consumption growth is zero.
In other words, population growth is the only reason it looks like the economy is growing.
One obvious consequence of Australia’s population boom, apart from disguising a fundamentally weak economy, is rising house prices because not enough houses are being built as a result of restrictive planning laws and high construction costs.
Not enough infrastructure is being built either, to the point where a national emergency is approaching.
There is far too much focus on politically motivated big ticket infrastructure projects that soak up the available funding, and not enough on what you might call business as usual infrastructure.
Infrastructure Australia was set up in 2008 to organise and prioritise infrastructure spending but six years later the CEO, Michael Deegan has written a deeply frustrated submission to a Senate inquiry, declaring: “there is an air of unreality about our infrastructure planning.”
The inquiry, by the way, is into the “Infrastructure Australia Amendment Bill 2013”, which basically seems designed to scrap IA and start again. Deegan says the bill will make IA less independent; the Minister for Infrastructure and Regional Development, Warren Truss says it will make it more independent but it doesn’t look that way.
Says Deegan: “several provisions in the Bill considerably broaden the power of a Minister to give specific directions to Infrastructure Australia in areas that are at the core of the organisation's responsibilities, so independence is not in fact conferred.”
Rarely have we seen a more critical submission on a bill from a public servant, so Michael Deegan has obviously given up on his job and that of his chairman Sir Rod Eddington. Through more than 20 drafts of the bill, IA was not consulted on it at all.
Deegan’s broad complaint is that infrastructure planning in Australia is still not independent of politics.
That used to be true of monetary policy too, but not any more. It has been generally agreed that setting interest rates is too important a task to be left to politicians, so the Reserve Bank is now entirely independent.
With Australia’s population growing the way it is, infrastructure has become as important to the economy as monetary policy – if not more so.
IA should be given the sort of independence that the RBA has.
Setting the agenda for Australia's $150BN agribusiness sector The program for Australia's premier agribusiness conference - The Global Food Forum - is set. Hear from more than 30 industry leaders including PepsiCo's CEO, Danny Celoni, Jayne Hrdlicka, CEO of A2 Milk Company, Barry Irvin, Executive Chairman, Bega Cheese and Costco's Managing Director, Patrick Noone. Sheraton Grand Sydney Hyde Park Book NowThe public battle between Justin Gleeson (L) and George Brandis reached its crescendo last month.
Federal Attorney-General George Brandis has withdrawn the legal direction at the heart of a bitter brawl with the former Solicitor-General, just hours before the Senate was likely to vote it down.
Key points: Federal A-G Brandis withdraws the legal direction at heart of public stoush with former S-G Justin Gleeson
It was due to be debated in the Senate this afternoon
In October Mr Gleeson claimed Mr Brandis had not consulted him on key issues, he resigned less than a fortnight later
The Federal Opposition appeared to have enough support to have the direction disallowed in the Upper House, after the Greens, Nick Xenophon Team and crossbench Senator Derryn Hinch indicated they would vote it down.
It was due to be debated in the Senate this afternoon.
But the Attorney-General said he made the decision to repeal the direction because he wanted to discuss the matter afresh with whoever is next appointed as the nation's second law officer.
"When the former Solicitor-General, Mr Gleeson resigned on the 24th October, it was very clear to me that a new Solicitor-General would need to be appointed," Senator Brandis told the Senate during Question Time.
"I decided then that when the new Solicitor-General was appointed, obviously as a matter of courtesy to who that person may be, I would have a talk to them on how they would wish to be briefed.
"It seemed to me that one of the things we would discuss was the legal services direction, which no doubt the incoming Solicitor-General may have views on."
The public battle reached its crescendo during a fiery Senate committee hearing last month, when Justin Gleeson SC complained the order from Senator Brandis restricted access to his expert legal advice and curtailed his ability to offer the Government and public service frank and fearless legal advice.
He also said the Attorney-General had not consulted him on key issues of national importance, such as anti-terror legislation.
Mr Gleeson resigned from his position less than a fortnight later, arguing his relationship with Senator Brandis was "irretrievably broken".
Senator Brandis had argued he was merely trying to fix a procedural issue by requiring all requests for Mr Gleeson's opinions to come through his office first, and the argument should not have escalated.
"I have said all along I regard this as a matter of administrative housekeeping," Senator Brandis said.
"I think it is the greatest confected storm in a tea cup that I have ever seen. It does not change the law."
Earlier this week, a Labor and Greens dominated Senate committee criticised Senator Brandis for his actions, and demanded the upper house disallow the direction or Senator Brandis immediately withdraw it.
Shadow Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus said the repeal of the direction came after months of "blustering, posturing and lying" by the Attorney-General.
"This is the direction which George Brandis has been defending for months — arguing that he was simply bringing the Solicitor-General's procedures in line with the law, that Mr Gleeson had asked for it, that it caused no trouble at all," Mr Dreyfus said.
"Now, just hours before the direction was set to be disallowed by the Senate, George Brandis has backed down and done it himself.
"It shows us that this direction was only ever about getting rid of Justin Gleeson."
Expressions of interest to become the next Solicitor-General close tomorrow.Everyone's talking about saving America's middle class. But just who exactly falls into this group? That's actually a much more difficult question to answer than it seems. While some experts define the middle class by income, others define it by lifestyle. Still others say it's a state of mind. Here are five different ways that economists, federal agencies and even the White House measure and characterize the middle class.
Income Whether you're considered middle class most commonly depends on your income. But experts differ on how much you have to earn to fall into this camp. One of the narrowest definitions limits it to those who are literally in the middle fifth of the nation's income ladder. A wider characterization includes everyone but the poorest 20% and the wealthiest 20%. Displayed below is the Pew Research Center's definition, which is two-thirds to two times the national median income for your household size. *Annual income for a four-person household; Source: Pew Research Center
Wealth Some Americans may not be bringing in middle-class incomes, but they have a lot of savings or investments. This is particularly true of the elderly living off their nest eggs. So some experts prefer to use wealth as the determining factor. New York University Professor Edward Wolff, for instance, defines middle class as the middle three-fifths of the wealth spectrum. Those below that threshold are in debt and those above are wealthy. *Net worth; Source: Edward Wolff, NYU
Consumption Another way to define middle class is by how much you spend. This more accurately reflects your well-being since income doesn't take into account non-cash government benefits, such as food stamps, or savings and can fluctuate greatly from year-to-year, say proponents of this measure. The consumption measure used by Notre Dame Professor James X. Sullivan includes spending on food, transportation, entertainment, housing and other items. It excludes health care expenses and education, which Sullivan says might be considered investments. He defines the middle class as those in the middle fifth of spending. *Annual spending for a four-person household; Source: James Sullivan, Notre Dame
Aspiration Soon after President Obama took office in 2009, he created a task force aimed at raising the living standards of the middle class. But first the task force had to define middle class. How did it choose to define this group? Through their aspirations... you know, the house with the white picket fence, the occasional family vacation and a few other things. Source: White House Task Force on the Middle ClassThree-month-old Prince Gabriel Carl Walther, son of Prince Carl Philip and Princess Sofia, was officially christened at lunchtime by archbishop emeritus Anders Wejryd.
Princess Madeleine, Princess Sofia and Prince Gabriel. Photo: Anders Wiklund/TT
He wore his great-grandfather Prince Gustaf Adolf’s white christening gown, the same one worn by every newborn royal at their baptism since 1906.
Gabriel with archbishop emeritus Anders Wejryd. Photo: Anders Wiklund/TT
Archbishop Antje Jackelén has baptized all the youngest children in the royal family since Princess Estelle in 2012, but was unavailable this time because she is currently on a business trip to the US.
Princess Madeleine and Crown Princess Victoria's daughter, Princess Estelle. Photo: Anders Wiklund/TT
News agency TT reported that Gabriel screamed so loudly during the ceremony that it was difficult to hear what Wejryd was saying, but he went silent as soon as he was back in his mother’s arms.
Prince Alexander. Photo: Jonas Ekströmer/TT
The new prince has been given the title Duke of Dalarna. His mother Sofia grew up in the Älvdalen area of Dalarna in west-central Sweden, famous for its ancient language Elfdalian. She wore a traditional regional dress for the occasion.
Crown Princess Victoria with Prince Oscar and Princess Estelle. Photo: Jonas Ekströmer/TT
Gabriel is the younger sibling to Prince Alexander, who was born in April 2016.PHOENIX (Reuters) - Arizona, long at odds with President Barack Obama’s administration over immigration reform, is expanding a ban on giving driver’s licenses to illegal immigrants to include all those who have been granted relief from deportation, in a move rights advocates criticized as “vindictive.”
Arizona Governor Jan Brewer speaks after signing an expansion of the state's Medicaid program into law, at the Arizona State Capitol in Phoenix June 17, 2013. REUTERS/Joshua Lott
The state’s Republican governor, Jan Brewer, announced a year ago that Arizona would deny licenses to young illegal immigrants granted a deportation reprieve under a federal program approved as Obama pushed for a broader immigration overhaul.
Brewer argued at the time that deferral of deportation did not give the migrants lawful status or entitle them to public benefits such as driver’s licenses.
The expansion of Arizona’s bar on licenses was announced in a document filed with the U.S. District Court in Phoenix on Tuesday by lawyers for Brewer and two state transportation department officials embroiled in a lawsuit over the issue.
According to the American Civil Liberties Union of Arizona, one of the groups that brought the original lawsuit, the expansion would deny licenses to immigrants who have been allowed by the federal government to remain in the country for humanitarian reasons. They include survivors of domestic violence and victims of human trafficking and sexual exploitation.
“This is a vindictive policy change that is motivated by politics, and Brewer’s desire to get out from under a lawsuit,” Alessandra Soler, executive director of the ACLU of Arizona, said in a statement.
“It only reflects her continuing animus... and her irrational desire to punish even more lawfully present immigrants by denying them the licenses they need to get to work and school, including abused women and their children.”
Brewer, whose office referred comment to the state transportation department, has taken a tough stance on illegal immigration. In 2010, she signed a state law requiring police to question people that they stop and suspect of being in the country illegally about their immigration status.
EQUAL PROTECTION
In the filing announcing the policy change, attorneys for Brewer noted that the state transportation department could not issue licenses to immigrants with “regular” deferred action and deferred enforced departure recipients “because they cannot demonstrate authorized presence under federal law.”
“An individual granted one of these forms of relief therefore does not have authorized presence under federal law,” the Arizona transportation department said in a statement.
One of the additional categories subject to the extended ban covers immigrants without sponsors, among them victims and witnesses to crimes, said a spokesman for the ACLU of Arizona. The other category covers immigrants from strife-torn Liberia given temporary relief allowing them to remain in the country, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services said.
The move came as the sides are engaged in a lawsuit brought by human rights groups on behalf of five Mexican immigrants who challenged the legality of Brewer’s original order denying licenses to anyone who received relief under Obama’s program.
A judge in that case declined to issue an injunction stopping the policy, ruling that the young immigrants would not suffer irreparable harm as the lawsuit proceeds. But the judge also said they were likely to prevail in their argument that the policy violated U.S. constitutional rights to equal protection.
He threw out a separate argument that the Arizona policy was pre-empted by federal law - a decision hailed as a victory by Brewer.
Attorneys for Brewer declined to comment on the relationship between the expansion of the driver’s license ban and the ongoing litigation.
Arizona’s move comes as some states, including neighboring California, are taking steps to allow undocumented immigrants to get driver’s licenses regardless of their status.
Under Obama’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, immigrants who came to the United States as children and meet certain other criteria can apply for a work permit for a renewable period of two years.
An estimated 1.7 million youths may be eligible for the program, of whom about 80,000 live in Arizona. At least 16,733 in the state have received deferred action status, according to the Arizona Republic newspaper.
Those immigrants are considered by the federal government to be lawfully present in the United States during that period.
Officials in at least 45 U.S. states have confirmed that recipients of deportation relief under that program are eligible for licenses or have been issuing licenses to people in the group, according to the National Immigration Law Center.Get the latest news and videos for this game daily, no spam, no fuss.
Paranautical Activity, the roguelike FPS that was removed from Steam after one of its developers publicly threatened to "kill" Gabe Newell, has reappeared on the PC games platform.
A special "Atonement Edition" emerged on Steam after its developer, Code Avarice, sold the IP to publisher Digerati.
Just sold PC rights for Paranautical Activity to @DigeratiDM. What could it mean? — Code Avarice (@CodeAvarice) December 16, 2014
Back in October, an embarrassing flurry of emotional decisions led the Code Avarice developer Mike Maulbeck to claim that Steam "is the most incompetent piece of fucking shit". He made this remark, along with a string of others, moments after his game was published on Steam.
"Fucking Steam is just fucking taking money out of my pocket. Misinforming people that my game is in fucking early access," he complained.
"I am going to kill Gabe Newell. He is going to die," he added.
Shortly afterwards, the game disappeared from Steam, and Maulbeck resigned from his position at Code Avarice and, at the time, suggested he may not return to games again.
Maulbeck said at the time he had sold his half of the company to another employee, and has given up all his rights and ownership of the studio's intellectual properties, meaning he had closed off all routes of income from the studio.
But about a month later he returned to the studio. Code Avarice wrote on its website: "This is probably not hugely surprising to some of you, but Mike couldn't commit to his decision to leave Code Avarice. [Co-founder Travis Pfenning] publicly denounced his departure, and in the weeks following his official stepping down Mike had second thoughts."
This wasn't the final chapter in the saga, however, as it emerged on Valentines Day that the game--called Paranautical Activity--had returned to Steam, with the suffix "Deluxe Atonement Edition".
According to Maulbeck's Twitter feed, he is now looking for a job elsewhere.Earthquake hits Three Gorges Dam county
A magnitude-4.7 earthquake hit Zigui county, where the Three Gorges Dam is located on Sunday morning, the second in three days to strike near the world's largest hydropower project in Central China's Hubei Province.
The epicenter was about 23 kilometers from the dam and the shake could be felt clearly, the Xinhua News Agency reported.
No casualties were reported in neighboring Badong and Xingshan counties as well as the cities of Shiyan, Xiangyang, Jingmen and Jingzhou, which felt the tremor, the Hubei Earthquake Bureau said.
The China Three Gorges Corporation announced on its official website it was closely monitoring the water plant complex. The quake did not affect dam operations, the Three Gorges Dam construction and operation administrative bureau told Xinhua.
Sunday's quake followed a magnitude-4.3 tremor early Thursday morning about 30 kilometers from the dam.
Zigui and nearby counties are not traditionally associated with earthquakes, according to the historic record. Some 18 earthquakes were recorded in 2003 when the Three Gorges project started operation, the 21st Century Business Herald reported.
Neighboring Badong county had one earthquake in 1,000 years before 1985. Between 2003 and 2011, there have been more than 70 earthquakes of magnitude-2 or stronger, the Beijing-based newspaper reported.
A magnitude-5.1 earthquake hit Badong and Zigui counties on December 16, 2013, injuring three people. The epicenter was 66 kilometers from the dam, Xinhua said.
Chinese experts increasingly support the speculation that the project itself causes local earthquakes.
It was perfectly normal for a large reservoir to cause earthquakes, Liu Shukun, a professor at the China Institute of Water Resources and Hydropower Research, told the Global Times.
"The water is 100 meters deep," Liu said. "Its huge weight exerts massive pressure on the land below. It causes the geological structure to transform or break."
Earthquakes were usually around magnitude 4, he said, with stronger ones rarely recorded. He warned authorities to closely monitor the issue.
Earthquakes happen more frequently during the initial stage of storing water, but decrease or even disappear as time goes by, the China Three Gorges Corporation told China Science Daily.
Chinese Academy of Engineering member Chen Houqun said in January that 100 earthquakes were recorded as caused by dams or reservoirs around the world, a "relatively small number" compared to the tens of thousands of dams globally.
The Three Gorges project is a multi-functional water control system consisting of a 2,309-meter-long and 185-meter-high dam, a five-tier ship lock and 26 hydropower turbo-generators.
The project generates electricity, controls floods by storing excess water and helps regulate the river's shipping capacity.England reached a respectable first-day total at Newlands, but a better bowling attack than South Africa's would have punished the impatience of their top five
Joe Root made an attractive fifty but was disappointed not to convert it once again © Getty Images
It was entertaining and it was, at times, brilliant, but if England do not go on to win this series, they may well look back on the first day of the Cape Town Test with regret.
This was a day when England missed an opportunity. Winning first use of a super surface - it has the pace and carry to reward quality batting and bowling and looks as though it will offer turn later - England had the chance to bat South Africa out of the game. Out of the series, even.
They may yet do it. So well did Ben Stokes bat in the last 90 minutes of the day, exploiting a tired attack and some odd captaincy, that England still have the chance to build the imposing total that the conditions demand. At once stage he thrashed five of Chris Morris' first seven deliveries with the second new ball to the boundary. It was that sort of day.
But Stokes' success - and he really does look like a cricketer on the verge of golden times - should not obscure the failings of this England side. If they want to be the best, they have to be more ruthless and, on the first day here, they gave a wounded South Africa several opportunities to claw their way back into the series.
For it seems, like penny farthings and black-and-white TV, that the leave is a thing of the past. At least four of England's batsmen (Alastair Cook, Alex Hales, James Taylor and Joe Root) were out to deliveries that could and should have been left with the failure to convert strong starts again an issue. They have recorded seven half-centuries this series without anyone going on to make a century and Root's even 50 was the fifth time since the Cardiff Ashes Test that he has reached that figure without converting to a hundred.
And, as has been said, it is centuries that win matches. Especially on surfaces like this where a total of 400 is probably just about approaching par.
With a young South African attack - three of the four main bowlers had six Test caps between them going into this match - facing a flat pitch and a hot sun, the situation called for ruthless batting. It called for England to grind their opposition down with five sessions in the field. It called for them to build a match-defining total and apply scoreboard pressure and, perhaps, exploit any spin or swing that may be gained.
But it seems the world has changed. It seems the world has accelerated. And Test cricket reflects that. On a day when more than 80,000 went to a domestic T20 match in Australia, Test cricket apparently feels a need to compete and keep up.
There is almost relentless pressure on batsmen to score quickly these days. Whether it is social media or commentators, it has become common to hear the view that slow batsmen add to the pressure on their team-mates. Players are not immune to these influences.
How else to explain Nick Compton, the poster boy for blockers, attempting to thrash Chris Morris on the up through extra cover a few overs after lunch? He got away with it, but it was a bizarrely poor selection of shot from a man whose role is to build the foundations for his side. His departure, by contrast, pulling to midwicket on the stroke of tea, seemed forgivable: the shot was on; he just executed it poorly.
But how else to explain James Taylor reaching into a drive from his first delivery, well outside off stump, and edging to the keeper? Or Alastair Cook, the master of discipline and denial, being drawn into a drive and slicing a catch to slip? Or Joe Root, who remains incensed at his own failure to converts fifties into hundreds, and was lured into flirting outside off stump by a gap at third man. Each dismissal was impatient; each dismissal was avoidable.
There was no need to rush. There were plenty of poor balls delivered by this inexperienced attack without the need to search for them.
Perhaps Hales can be excused. While he could have left the delivery that dismissed him on length - this may be the quickest pitch England have played on since Perth - it was a fine ball nonetheless.
Besides, there is no conflict between praising Hales and Stokes' bold strokeplay and criticising Compton and Cook for theirs. They have different roles and different skills. It is the variety they offer that gives England such potential. That and the depth of their batting, which here feasted on the bowling later in the day.
Pressure upon the England batsmen to score quickly also comes from closer to home.
The England camp say there were no instructions given to the batsmen to accelerate at lunch or to play particularly aggressively in this match. In contrast, they say the current mantra in the team is to 'play your natural game; the game that saw you selected from county cricket'. So just as Stokes is expected, even encouraged, to bat positively, so Compton is expected to bat cautiously.
That message may have become lost in recent days, though. Any of the players reading Trevor Bayliss's post-match comments in Durban can only have concluded that their coach wants them to push on. They can only have concluded that he values positivity above solidity and felt encouraged, even subconsciously, to play more aggressively.
Bayliss's logic on that issue - which, put simplistically, is that a fine ball can dismiss a batsman at any time, so they should make progress while they can - is questionable. Just as a driver does not accelerate through foggy conditions to get through them, so a batsman with a good defence and patient approach is far less likely to be dismissed by the good ball when it is delivered. Just as Bayliss wouldn't expect his team to begin their climb of Table Mountain with a sprint, so he should expect his top-order to build an innings without the added burden of strike-rate considerations. Five days provides plenty of time for circumspection.
Of course there is a need to put away the bad ball. Of course a strokeless batsmen can put his partners under some pressure. But the history of Test cricket would seem to suggest that more bad balls will be delivered once the bowlers tire and the ball softens. And pressure builds on bowlers, too, when they strap on their boots for another session without a wicket and on captains when they see their attack tire and their options diminish. Certainly the decision not to give the second new ball to Morne Morkel and to give Kagiso Rabada just one slip within five overs of that new ball suggested a slightly scrambled mind for South Africa's captain, Hashim Amla.
England, at present, are an exciting and entertaining team and those are fine qualities. But they are also giving their opposition a chance. The best teams don't do that. They have to dare to be dull, as Gideon Haigh once put it. A better team than South Africa - and there are better teams out there, whatever the rankings say - would have punished them today.
George Dobell is a senior correspondent at ESPNcricinfo
© ESPN Sports Media Ltd.I pesi e le misure
Weights and Measures
When I weigh myself in Italy, even after third helpings of tiramisù, I look at the double digits indicating kilograms and feel magra (thin). Everywhere else, from the supermarket to the gas station, I’m stumped by Italians' ways of weighing.
Italy, like most of world, uses the sistema metrico decimale (decimal metric system), which is much simpler than that used in the paesi anglosassoni (Anglosaxon countries): You just multiply or divide by 10, 100, or 1000 -- which is much quicker than multiplying or dividing by 12 or by three. However, even a simpler system can be disorienting (disorientare, creare confusione) if you’re not familiar with it.
Fruit and vegetables are sold in "chilogrammi" (kilograms) or simply "chili" (pronounced keel-ee). "Mi dia un chilo di mele per favore," you’d say. (Give me a chilo of apples.) A chilo is a little more than two libbre (pounds) and is divided into ten etti (one etto is about three ounces). If you want to buy some prosciutto, you would say, “Vorrei un etto (o due etti) di prosciutto.” (I’d like an etto—or two etti—of prosciutto.)
A chilo is divided into a thousand grams or grammi, una misura piccolissima (a very tiny measure). If you go to a goldsmith’s (dall'orefice) to buy something, the weight dell’oro (of the gold) would be expressed in grammi.
The basic measure di lunghezza (of distance) is il metro (the meter), which is a little more than a yard. A meter is divided by 100 centimeters. A thousand meters make un chilometro (a kilometer), which is used to indicate le distanze (the distances) -- say, between two cities. Un miglio (a mile) is about 1600 meters, more than one and a half a kilometer. Milan and Rome are about 600 chilometri or 380 miglia from each other.
L'altezza delle montagne (the height of mountains) also is expressed in metri. Monte Bianco (Mount Blanc), for instance, is alto 4900 metri e non 4 chilometri e 900 metri (4900 meters high -- not 4 kilometers and 900 meters).
If you want to buy milk or gasoline, the measure to use is il litro (the liter). It takes 3,78 litri to make a gallon. (Attention: Italian uses la virgola--the comma-- in numbers where the United States uses il punto—the period.) With gas, it’s easy to get around this problem in two different ways: You can ask for “il pieno” (a full tank) or you can buy whatever quantity corresponds to the amount of money you want to spend. For instance, you might ask for 20 euro di benzina (20 euro worth of gasoline).
You may be tempted to try, as I have, to translate the unknown measurements into familiar ones. A better option: imparare le misure del luogo (learning the measures of the place). If you do, you will feel a sense of satisfaction that is fuor di misura (beyond measure).
Words and Expressions
Vendere a peso -- to sell by weight
Vendere a peso d’oro -- to sell by the weight of gold or at a high figure
Il peso degli anni -- the weight of the years
Avere due pesi e due misure -- to have two weights and two measures, to be unfair
Peso morto -- dead weight
Dianne Hales is the author of MONA LISA: A Life Discovered and the New York Times best-selling La Bella Lingua: My Love Affair with Italian, the World's Most Enchanting Language.
However many kilometers or miles you travel every day, here is a song to keep you company along the way:After thinking about the recent special elections, and the situation of our country, James Carville asks, What should the White House do? Panic! In urgent overtones Carville says"
(CNN) -- What should the White House do now? One word came to mind: Panic....
The time has come to demand a plan of action that requires a complete change from the direction you are headed.... 1. Fire somebody. No -- fire a lot of people. This may be news to you but this is not going well.... Mr. President, your hinge of fate must turn. Bill Clinton fired many people in 1994 and took a lot of heat for it. Reagan fired most of his campaign staff in 1980. Republicans historically fired their own speaker, Newt Gingrich. 2. Indict people. There are certain people in American finance who haven't been held responsible for utterly ruining the economic fabric of our country. Demand from the attorney general a clear status of the state of investigation concerning these extraordinary injustices imposed upon the American people.
Wolfe Blitzer asked Carville to provide names of those that might be fired, suggested Geinther, but Carvill waived off naming names, saying the overall message of acknowledging things are not working and changing directions is more important than the specific people that go.Researchers have developed a new class of pain relief that acts on an obscure nerve pathway, opening the way to a medication just as concerns have deepened around the US opioid addiction and overdose epidemic.
While any marketable pharmaceutical based on the discovery would still need to go through the long process of clinical testing, the compound appears to work as well as other opioid-alternatives, requiring a smaller dose and remaining effective for a longer period.
The research led by scientists from The University of Texas has identified a group of molecules that bind with a pair of nerve receptors, one of which has been a mystery until recently.
The sigma-one receptor protein (σ1R) has been recognised as a potential target for a variety of therapeutic medications for well over a decade, with various drugs blocking or activating this important receptor on the membranes inside nerve cells.
But a sister receptor called sigma 2 receptor (σ2R) has remained rather enigmatic. Discovered a quarter of a century ago, it was only this year that researchers published details on the gene that coded for the protein, officially identifying the receptor as transmembrane protein 97 (Tmem97).
Both σ1R and σ2R/Tmem97 were considered promising candidates for pathways that could be exploited to treat pain that arises from damaged nerves, a condition referred to as neuropathy.
Around 20 million people in the US alone suffer from the symptoms of nerve pain, which in mild cases is managed by over-the-counter nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) such as ibuprofen or aspirin.
For those suffering chronic pain, choices are a little more limited.
Opioids can do the trick, but come at a cost as doses need to increase with time in order to achieve the same level of relief. Many people are also allergic to this family of pain relief.
A non-opioid drug called gabapentin, sold under the brand name Neurontin, is often used to manage neuropathy. While its mechanisms aren't all that clear, it's thought to be involved in the regulation of the neurotransmitter gamma-Aminobutyric acid, or GABA.
Of the compounds being researched in this latest study, three that activated σ2R/Tmem97 appeared to reduce discomfort in mice that had spinal nerve pain.
"We started out just working on fundamental chemistry in the lab," says researcher James Sahn.
"But now we see the possibility that our discoveries could improve the quality of people's lives. That is very satisfying."
One of the compounds called UKH-1114 alleviated pain at one-sixth of the dose of gabapentin and peaked in its effectiveness at 48 hours, rather than lasting just 4 to 6 hours.
Clinical trials would still be needed to establish its effectiveness, dosages, and any potential side effects in humans, but early signs are promising.
"This opens the door to having a new treatment for neuropathic pain that is not an opioid," says Stephen Martin from The University of Texas.
"And that has huge implications."
The current crisis in the US over the prescription and use of both legal and illicit opioids has recently been declared a federal state of emergency, as lives are lost as a consequence of addiction. Recent CDC estimates put US deaths at over 90 every day.
The high levels of opioid prescription could be considered a contributing factor, though the solution is far more complex than simply depriving people from necessary medication.
Finding suitable replacements to opioids might not eliminate the problem, but would certainly provide a wider range of options.
Earlier this year a compound called RgIA was derived from the venom of cone-shell molluscs, offering yet another possibility in the arsenal of pain-fighting compounds.
With more work to unravel the workings of σ1R and σ2R/Tmem97 receptors, we could see a whole new family of pharmaceuticals bring relief for millions who live with crippling pain and the risk of addiction every year.
This research was published in PNAS.Today, Dreamstate began releasing the artists who will be playing at the second edition of Dreamstate SoCal. Releasing a series of artists each day, we cannot wait to see who is added to the lineup! If you were unaware, it was announced that Dreamstate SoCal 2016 will be expanding to include TWO more stages of pure trance heaven. Keeping it’s #TranceGiving dates of November 25th and 26th, we hope to see you all there as we celebrate another year of this amazing event! Last year was hands down, one of the best events that I attended last year, and Cassey, Maria, and the rest of the team in attendance would agree!
Anxiously waiting for your favorite artist to show up on the lineup? Relax with some livesets from Dreamstate SoCal 2015 (HERE) and Dreamstate SF 2016 (HERE)!
Live on the East Coast and want some of your own Dreamstate action? Well you’re in luck, as the trance destination will be making it’s first stop in New York next month! Click HERE for more details on Dreamstate NY!
Will the expansion provide longer set times for artists, or allow it to be more jam packed with acts that we know and love?
Artists announced so far (in order of announcement):
Dreamstate SoCal 2016 Lineup:
The First of 10 parts! The Second of 10 parts! The Third of 10 parts! The Fourth of 10 parts! The Fifth of 10 parts! The Sixth of 10 Parts The Seventh of 10 Parts! The Eighth of 10 Parts! The Ninth of |
59 votes, one short of the 60 needed to bring nominees or legislation to an up or down vote.
Republican Sen. Jon Kyl of Arizona, who sits on the Judiciary Committee, said he thought a filibuster was unlikely, but he wasn't taking it entirely off the table as an option. Kyl appeared on ABC News' This Week, alongside Democratic Sen. Charles Schumer of New York.
"President Obama himself attempted to filibuster Justice Alito, who now sits on the Supreme Court," Kyl said. "So if the president isn't going to take it off the table, I'm not going to take it off the table. But I think it can easily be avoided by appointing, frankly, the kind of person that Senator Schumer just mentioned, someone who is mainstream enough that with intellect and the application of good law can persuade colleagues to support his position or her position."
We wanted to examine whether Kyl was correct about Obama's position on then-Judge Samuel Alito back in 2006, when Obama was a senator and Alito was President George W. Bush's nominee.
We found that Obama did join a broader Democratic effort to filibuster Alito. Democrats said Alito opposed abortion and was too deferential to executive power.
But in what's become Obama's trademark on-the-one-hand, on-the-other-hand style, he joined the filibuster while at the same time saying he thought it was a bad idea.
Here's what he told George Stephanopoulos on Jan. 29, 2006:
Stephanopoulos: "Two of your colleagues, Senator (Edward) Kennedy and Senator (John) Kerry, want to try to mount a filibuster tomorrow. Will you join them?"
Obama: "Well, I will be supporting the filibuster because I think Judge Alito, in fact, is somebody who is contrary to core American values, not just liberal values, you know. When you look at his decisions in particular during times of war, we need a court that is independent and is going to provide some check on the executive branch, and he has not shown himself willing to do that repeatedly. I will say this, though, I think that the Democrats have to do a much better job in making their case on these issues. These last-minute efforts using procedural maneuvers inside the Beltway, I think, has been the wrong way of going about it, and we need to recognize, because Judge Alito will be confirmed, that if we're going to oppose a nominee that we've got to persuade the American people that, in fact, their values are at stake and frankly I'm not sure that we've successfully done that."
Stephanopoulos: "Well, it sounds to me like you're not really happy about going forward and joining this filibuster. And I've actually seen some reports that inside the Democratic caucus you were arguing against this strategy. Is that true?"
Obama: "Well, you know, I don't talk about what I, you know, what takes place in caucus but what I will say is that there is an over-reliance on the part of Democrats for procedural maneuvers and mechanisms to block the president instead of proactively going out to the American people and talking about the values that we care about. And, you know, there's one way to guarantee that the judges who are appointed to the Supreme Court are judges that reflect our values and that's to win elections."
Later that day, a report from the Associated Press carried the headline, "Sen. Obama Criticizes Filibuster Tactic."
The next day, Democrats failed in their attempt to filibuster on a vote of 72 to 25, with Obama joining 24 other Democrats on the losing end.
Obama may have criticized the filibuster even as he joined it, but at the end of the day, he still joined it. Kyl said, "President Obama himself attempted to filibuster Justice Alito, who now sits on the Supreme Court." We rate Kyl's statement True.This blog uses affiliate links. Basically, I make a small commission when you use these links, at no additional cost to you.
color matching light table activity. As a bonus, the finished product turned into a lovely suncatcher craft for kids. The theme for this month's Light & Reflections series is transportation. We've played with cars on the light table before, which was a lot of fun, but I wanted to think outside of the box a little. So, inspired by traffic lights, I set up this. As a bonus, the finished product turned into a lovely
This post contains affiliate links.
Traffic Light Inspired Light Table Activity & Suncatcher Craft for Kids
Translucent counters in red, yellow, and green
Contact paper - I use clear vinyl book protector from the dollar store. It works great!
Sharpies permanent markers in red, yellow, and green
Tape
Round bowl or container (optional)
On the non-sticky side of the contact paper, I drew three circles (one in red, one in yellow, and one in green) using the permanent markers. Since I am terrible at free-handing circles, I used a large yogurt container to trace the circles. Then I taped the contact paper, sticky side up, onto the light table and set out the translucent counters
The idea is simple: just place the translucent counters into the corresponding circles by matching the colors. The counters will stick to the sticky side of the contact paper
Once the boys felt that they had placed enough counters onto the contact paper, I removed it from the light table and hanged it on our window. And just like that, we ended up with a pretty traffic light suncatcher craft.
Other Ideas You'll Love
Window Race Track from Happily Ever Mom
For this light table activity and craft, we used:An audio version of this story.
There should be a 35 percent increase of Georgia peaches in 2016 compared to last year, according to the Georgia Peach Council.
When Georgia got some especially cold weather late last year, many peach growers got worried. But things improved at the start of 2016.
“You know what was once a concern, once we got in February really though that quickly dissipated,” said Duke Lane, the president of the Georgia Peach Council.
Lane says peach growers have stepped up both their planting and marketing efforts in the last few years, since commercial peach growers and the state of Georgia joined forces in 2013 to help promote more awareness of Georgia peaches.
“We’ve done some pretty aggressive marketing areas in the Midwest and in the Northeast,” said Lane.
Lane projects this year’s crop could be worth up to $70 million.
Despite the peach being the official state fruit, Georgia’s top fruit crop is the blueberry.Indian organiser threatened us, referee abused me during match: Bangladesh football official
Suromitro Basu FOLLOW FEATURED COLUMNIST News 811 // 10 Feb 2016, 16:12 IST SHARE Share Options × Facebook Twitter Flipboard Reddit Google+ Email
South Asian Games has already completed five days of action
A senior Bangladesh football and Asian Football Confederation (AFC) match commissioner has lodged an priority one complaint against a South Asian Games (SAG) official, stating that he was threatened by him, during a match against Maldives.
Bangladesh Football Federation (BFF) Media Affairs Head Ahsan Ahmed was allegedly verbally abused by the referee, and asked to leave the stadium. Ahsan has reported the matter to Bangladesh Chef de Mission, Ashikur Mikuy.
He said, “I was walking towards the end of the Bangladesh goal post area, where the referee stopped me. He started using slangs and told me that he would throw me out of the stadium. Nowhere in the rule book is it written that I cannot do that, during the warm up. I am an Asian Football (AFC) Match commissioner and this is not the way to treat someone.”
He added, “A certain level of professional conduct is needed when you’re hosting an event of this stature. Sadly the referee did not exhibit that and nor did some of the officials/volunteers.”
According to the AFC rules, one official from the team can be present in the area, during warm-up. He also added that a SAG official with the name tag Nicholas also verbally abused a female colleague of us, threatening her of dire consequences.
More to follow...
AdvertisementThe market urbanism axiom — permitting housing supply to increase is key to achieving affordable housing — has been made recently by Rick Jacobus at Shelterforce and Daniel Hertz at City Observatory. However, both argue that even with an increasing supply, low-income people will need aid in order to afford what the authors feel is adequate housing. History shows us, though, that if developers are allowed to serve renters in every price range, they will.
A War on Cheap Housing
Imposing special standards on housing may soothe urban reformers’ consciences, but it makes low-income people worse off.
The movie Brooklyn portrays the type of housing many of our grandparents and great-grandparents lived in when they emigrated to the United States. People of very little means could afford to live in cities with the highest housing demand because they lived in boarding houses, residential hotels, and low-quality apartments, most of which are illegal today. Making housing affordable again requires not only permitting construction of more new units, but also allowing existing housing to be used in ways that are illegal under today’s codes.
Young adults living in group houses with several roommates have found a way around these regulations, but low-income renters were better-served when families and single people could pay for housing that was designed to meet their needs at an affordable price. Alan During explains the confluence of interest groups that successfully eliminated cheap, low-quality housing:
The rules were not accidents. Real-estate owners eager to minimize risk and maximize property values worked to keep housing for poor people away from their investments. Sometimes they worked hand-in-glove with well-meaning reformers who were intent on ensuring decent housing for all. Decent housing, in practice, meant housing that not only provided physical safety and hygiene but also approximated what middle-class families expected.
This coalition of the self-interested and the well-meaning effectively boxed in and shut down rooming houses, and it erected barriers to in-home boarding, too. Over more than a century, it acted through federal, state, and local rules in ways that sounded reasonable at the time: occupancy limits and requirements for private bathrooms, kitchens, and parking spaces. The net effect, however, was to essentially ban affordable private-sector urban housing for those at the bottom of the pay scale. It’s true that the lowest-income Americans may not be able to afford a standard of housing that the median voter finds acceptable, but this is true for goods ranging from food to winter boots. Because food and clothing providers are allowed to sell goods at a broad range of quality levels, consumers are able to pick which level works best for their preferences and budget. Singling out housing as a good that requires special standards and assistance may soothe urban reformers’ consciences, but it makes low-income people worse off by eliminating choices that would otherwise be available to them. Today’s housing reformers are using the same fear mongering about micro-apartments that Jacob Riis used over a century ago, saying that they lead to neighborhood overcrowding and that they are rented by undesirable people. Because a person in the lowest income decile has a higher living standard in every category of goods than a person in the lowest income quintile did 100 years ago, today’s low-quality, market-rate housing would be of a better standard than the tenements that helped fuel the progressive movement. But a visit to the Tenement Museum shows that while tenement housing conditions are unimaginable by today’s standards, it was also home to upwardly mobile people. Many people who were children born in tenements in the 1920s grew up to have middle-class occupations and lifestyles. The Tenements By allowing boarding houses and the subdivision of existing housing, market-rate housing could be much more affordable.
Tenements provided housing that met a qualification that both Hertz and Jacobus stress; it was conveniently located and provided residents with easy access to jobs. Both writers point out that affordable housing is not only a regional issue, but that low-income people need to be able to live within a reasonable commute of the jobs that will allow them to improve their standard of living. Low-quality housing is key to achieving this goal. While a free market would never achieve inclusionary zoning’s intended (but rarely realized) outcome, in which units within a single building are rented at widely variable price points, American urban history shows that when supply is permitted at all price points, low-income and high-income neighborhoods are relatively closer together than they would be in the regulated markets the authors prefer.
Historical trends provide evidence that people born into New York’s worst housing moved onto better jobs and housing over time. The Lower East Side tenements were first home to predominantly German and Irish immigrants, and later Italian and Eastern European Jewish immigrants. The waves of ethnicities that dominated these apartments indicate that the earlier immigrants were able to move out of this lowest rung of housing.
The Tenement Museum provides multiple oral histories of people who were born in their apartment building and went on to live middle-class lives. In The Power Broker, Robert Caro provides an account of one community that had moved out of the Lower East Side to better housing in the Bronx:
The people of East Tremont did not have much. Refugees or the children of refugees from the little shtetles in the Pale of Settlement and from the ghettos of Eastern Europe, the Jews who at the turn of the century had fled the pogroms and the wrath of the Tsars, they had first settled in America on the Lower East Side. The Lower East Side had become a place to which they were tied by family and friends and language and religion and a sense of belonging — but from whose damp and squalid tenements they had ached to escape, if not for their own sake then for the sake of their children, whose every cough brought dread to parents who knew all too well why the streets in which they lived were called “lung blocks.”
This anecdote provides color to the demographic trends of upward mobility in pre-New Deal New York City. The East Tremont community demonstrates the ability of low-income people to improve their families’ plights in less than a generation. Not only had the people of East Tremont saved up to leave the tenements, but according to Moses’ account, all of the families in the community were saving to send their children to college, indicating further economic mobility for the children who were born in New York’s worst housing.
Allowing low-quality housing in today’s world won’t bring back the tenements of old.
Evaluating low-income residents’ lives in the tenements requires not comparing their lifestyles to their middle-income contemporaries’, but rather to their own alternatives. No one’s first choice is to raise their children in an area known as the “lung blocks” because of a high rate of tuberculosis. But the people who inhabited these blocks were fleeing famine, revolution, and violent anti-Semitism. While neither famine nor a tenement is ideal, the people who chose tenements did what they thought was best for themselves and their family given what they knew about housing conditions in America from their countrymen who traveled before them.
The Disaster of Public Housing
Some people have suggested that government housing support is a better option than cheap, privately-provided housing. But government housing has a long, broad, and universal history of decrepit living conditions, poor safety, and negative economic mobility. Indeed, a welfare state large enough to provide housing support to millions of immigrants would have drastically increased voter-opposition to the United States’ relatively open doors. Between 1840 and 1930, the United States accepted over 400,000 immigrants per year. If native-born American’s tax dollars were going to support housing for these immigrants, the reality is that far fewer would have been allowed to enter the country. Instead, they may have had to face circumstances far worse than New York tenements in Europe.
Allowing low-quality housing in today’s world won’t bring back the tenements of old. Since 1871, real per capita income has increased by an order of magnitude, and low-quality housing today will reflect that change. But even if given the choice, a Syrian family might choose to move to a ’20’s-style tenement over their current situation–if such a choice were legal.
Those advocating greater government support for housing seemingly embrace ahistorical accounts of previous and current public involvement in housing. Rather than leading to better housing for the poor, the most common outcome has been the elimination of residences deemed inadequate by politically influential people. In 1934 in an early slum clearance project, one of the dreaded “lung blocks” was demolished to make way for Knickerbocker Village, public housing for middle-income workers. The rental rate was more than twice that of a typical tenement, leaving the displaced tenement residents to search for housing they could afford as reformers razed it.
Charlie Gardner explains this process at the Old Urbanist:
It might not be going too far to say that the traumatic process of urban renewal instigated an involuntary filtering, as residents of the poorest areas were literally displaced — cast out of condemned homes — and forced to seek new housing from among a diminished housing stock. These people probably did move into somewhat higher-quality housing, but at higher cost and possibly in more crowded conditions as well.
Early public housing projects in New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles were constructed for predominantly white, working- or middle-class tenants. Not until the 1960s did some of the earliest public housing become accessible to truly low-income people. At the same time, cities shifted toward building housing designed for its lowest-income residents. The role of government-provided housing in creating generational poverty is well-known. Unlike the children born into tenements, people living in public housing today tend not to improve their economic circumstances throughout their lifetimes or across generations.
Inclusionary zoning avoids the problems of concentrated poverty; however, it will never put a substantial dent in the need for housing that is accessible to the truly low-income. Furthermore, it exacerbates affordability problems for those who don’t win the IZ lottery. Today’s tenant-based Section 8 vouchers are a step in the right direction away from the horrors of slum clearance, government-built housing, and privately-built Section 8 projects. However, the $40 billion that the federal government spends annually on housing still leaves a decades-long waiting list in many cities. Simply allowing private property owners to lease smaller and lower-quality units would let vouchers go further and provide options that are better than homelessness for those who don’t receive vouchers.
Are Micro-Apartments Enough?
Alan During points to new micro-apartment developments as a promising sign that low-end supply is being provided, but these new construction projects are still out of reach for many renters. By allowing boarding houses and the subdivision of existing housing, market-rate housing could be much more affordable. This is the process through which Harlem’s middle-income row houses rapidly became affordable to low-income renters in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
While left-of-center analysts are increasingly advocating for the importance of an increasing housing supply to create the conditions that allow low-income people to afford housing, Hertz advocates for housing vouchers while Jacobus supports more radical policies including rent control and social housing. However, neither of these policies would benefit low-income people as much as providing them with the freedom to choose to allocate their own resources among many important goods, from housing to food to childcare.
Adapted from two articles first published by Market Urbanism.GVU-Geschäftsführer Dr. Matthias Leonardy fordert die Einsetzung einer speziellen Polizeieinheit, die in Deutschland Webseiten auf die Legalität ihrer Inhalte überprüfen soll. Bei illegalem Content sollen gezielt alle Werbekunden vergrault werden.
Kurzmitteilung: Wie die dpa berichtet, schlug der Jurist und Geschäftsführer der Gesellschaft zur Verfolgung von Urheberrechtsverletzungen (GVU) kürzlich vor, neue Wege beim Kampf gegen illegale Streamingportale einzuschlagen. Vertreter der Filmwirtschaft haben die Erschaffung einer neuen Einheit der Polizei angeregt.
Die Mitarbeiter der neuen Polizeieinheit sollen eine Art schwarze Liste von Portalen erstellen, deren Betreiber gewerbsmäßige Urheberrechtsverletzungen begehen. Leonardy verwies dabei auf die Wirksamkeit britischer Internetsperren. Die Betreiber illegaler Webseiten sollen nach Leonardys Ansicht künftig keine Einnahmen mehr aus ihrer Online-Werbung erhalten.
Wie das konkret gehen soll, kann man der dpa-Meldung leider nicht entnehmen. Den Anbietern aus dem Graubereich ihre Werbekunden zu vergraulen, ist im Prinzip keine neue Strategie, sie wird schon seit Jahren von der GVU angewendet. Dabei wird sowohl Druck auf die Vermarkter als auch auf ihre Kunden ausgeübt. Denkbar sind sogar Abmahnungen, weil man mit der Schaltung der eigenen Werbung illegale Angebote im Internet direkt finanziell unterstützt. Aufgrund der gigantischen Zugriffszahlen sind illegale Portale für Werbetreibende stets sehr interessant. Vor allem Hersteller von Online-Games greifen gerne auf diese Werbeplätze zurück. Dazu kommt, dass die Betreiber grauer Webseiten für die Schaltung der Banner etc. geringere Preise als die Eigentümer „weiße Seiten“ verlangen.
Bisher ist es nicht gelungen, diesen Kreislauf effektiv zu durchbrechen. Die einzige signifikante Folge war bisher, dass zahlreiche Anbieter auf weniger seriöse Werbung (Online-Casinos, Erotikportale etc.) ausgewichen sind, um ihre Einnahmen trotz aller Probleme zu generieren.As the Pacers proved last year, making a bold deadline deal and appearing to improve on paper doesn't always work out so well.
Among the teams the Pacers are chasing the playoffs with (Charlotte, Miami, Brooklyn, Detroit, Boston), it appears only Miami made a significant upgrade by adding Goran Dragic while also keeping the important parts of their playing rotation. In fact, on paper, the Heat become a significant player in the East even if they don't have time to rise very far in the standings. Of course, that is also contingent on the health of Chris Bosh and Dwyane Wade.
As for the rest of that group, Detroit made the least'meh' move but which will be better judged down the road a couple of years, but not necessarily this year.
The Pistons upgraded their talent at point guard by swapping out D.J. Augustin for Reggie Jackson, but did they improve for the remainder of this season? Jackson has far more upside and a brighter future for Detroit than Augustin. It also could cost the Pistons about $10 million per year more to keep Jackson past this season.
But for the playoff run and how the Pistons are playing, did Detroit improve this year?
After Jennings got hurt, D.J. Augustin scored over 20 PPG while also ranking among the most efficient high-volume scorers in the NBA. — Synergy Sports Tech (@SynergySST) February 19, 2015
Augustin may not have the upside of Jackson, but will Jackson play much better than Augustin has been playing for Detroit? Seems like getting equal value back for this season would be a bonus for Stan Van and crew.
So while the Pacers hit the ground running after the All-Star break the biggest challenge they face in trying to make the playoffs is on their schedule. After playing whatever crew the Sixers put on the floor in Philly on Friday, the Pacers must run the guantlet of home games against Golden State (Sun.) and Cleveland (Fri.) sandwiched around a road game at Oklahoma City. With 28 games remaining, a 16-12 or 17-11 finish would likely be enough to make the playoffs. Starting 2-2 through the first four would be a good start to the stretch run.The National Basketball Association has teamed up with Everytown for Gun Safety and will lend its name and its athletes for a PR campaign against the Second Amendment.
In a move with little precedent in professional sports, the N.B.A. is putting the weight of its multibillion-dollar brand and the prestige of its star athletes behind a series of television commercials calling for an end to gun violence. The first ads, timed to reach millions of basketball fans during a series of marquee games on Christmas Day, focus on shooting victims and contain no policy recommendations. The words “gun control” are never mentioned.
Yeah, we know. It's never about "gun control" and always about "sensible gun legislation."
If you're watching TV on Christmas Day, be on alert.
Players who appear in the first 30-second ad, which will run five times on Friday, speak in personal terms about the effects of gun violence on their lives. Stephen Curry of the Golden State Warriors describes hearing of a 3-year-old’s shooting: “My daughter Riley’s that age,” he says. Chris Paul of the Los Angeles Clippers recalls the advice he heeded as a child: “My parents used to say, ‘A bullet doesn’t have a name on it.’”
The NBA admitted it held little debate about joining forces with the controversial gun-control group.
“We know far too many people who have been caught up in gun violence in this country,” said Kathleen Behrens, the league’s president of social responsibility and player programs. “And we can do something about it.”
And there will be consequences for their decision. Like Hollywood smart-asses who think they are policy experts on all things, the NBA has fans that don't agree with their anti-gun support and don't care to see the sport needlessly politicized.
While many of its teams are based in cities dominated by Democrats, a number of other teams — and millions of N.B.A. fans — hail from places where Mr. Bloomberg and his approach to guns are viewed with deep suspicion. Mrs. Behrens said the league had not shown the ads to team owners, but added, “We’re not worried about any political implications.”
You should be worried. The left's playbook requires that everything, no matter how trivial, be politicized. However, people aren't interested in having their leisure time perverted by political activism.
The NBA/Everytown partnership was brokered by Spike Lee, who is, of course, a member of the gun-control group's creative council.
“But because of the N.R.A., politicians and the gun manufacturers, we’re dying under that tyranny,” Lee said. Reciting a statistic from Everytown, he added: “Ninety Americans are dying every day because of the N.R.A., gun manufacturers, and politicians willing to run you under the table.”
People are dying because some criminal dirt bag chose to use a firearm to kill someone.
John Feinblatt, president of Everytown, said that people need to understand the damage caused by gun violence.
“This,” Mr. Feinblatt said of the N.B.A. ads, “is clearly about educating the public.”
But what if the public is educated and doesn't agree with your solutions? Perhaps the public doesn't think the Everytown plan will "solve" the gun-violence problem. Everytown's agenda isn't about stopping gun violence, it's about chipping away at the Second Amendment until they can get rid of it. The ads are merely an attempt to "educate" people so they are more amenable to restricting the Second Amendment. That is all.When jerky brand Oberto went looking for two NFL players to star in a new digital series rife with awkward, buddy-buddy comedy, it came back with rivals who seemingly share little in common.
One fella is a defensive ball hawk with a degree from Stanford. The other is, well, Gronk.
Alas, bromance works in mysterious ways, and in the campaign, Seattle Seahawks corner Richard Sherman and New England Patriots tight end Rob Gronkowski are pretty damn funny together.
Their on-screen harmony got us wondering: Is the duo a good match off screen, too? To find out, we had both players submit to ESPN's vaunted "Compatibility Test," an incredibly un-scientific evaluation that we just made up but will surely determine whether their chemistry is merely a product of Madison Avenue magic.
See our findings down at the bottom.
Who'd be more lost in an art gallery: Gronk or Sherm?
Gronk: Me. I don't know anything about art, and I feel like he'd know something.
Sherm: Gronk. He knows nothing about art. Nothing at all. At least I know the basics.
The verdict: Perfect match.
Better dancer: Gronk or Sherm?
Gronk: Me. I'm all about dancing. I've never really seen Sherm pull off his moves.
Sherm: Gronk has the moves, no doubt. There are a few clips out there of me getting after it, but Gronk literally has a party bus where all he does is invite people on to watch him dance. I've got to give him that.
The verdict: Perfect match.
Best QB in the NFL?
Gronk: Tom Brady. He just is. But Russell [Wilson's] a great quarterback, a franchise QB. Gotta give him credit.
Sherm: Touchdown Tom. Wasn't Kobe [Bryant] the best player in the NBA with his five rings? Tom's got four rings. He gets the nod because of that.
The verdict: Perfect match.
Sherman and Gronkowski agree: Tom Brady is the best quarterback in the league. Provided by Oberto
The likelihood of Sherman attending the next Gronk Cruise?
Gronk: No chance. It was a one-time show.
Sherman: If I'm invited, 90th percentile. I'll pack two pairs of speedos and I'm ready to go.
The verdict: Split decision.
The Rams traded the first pick in the NFL draft to your team. Who do you choose?
Gronk: My brother, Glenn! He's in the draft this year, just came out of Kansas State. He'll be there in the later rounds, but he's a good player, so I'd have to take him.
Sherm: I'd probably take one of the big tackles. That kid from Ole Miss (Laremy Tunsil).
The verdict: Split decision.
Most likely to get married first: Gronk or Sherm?
Gronk: I'd say Sherm. I think he's engaged, so he wins by default. I have no clue when I'm getting married. I just go with the flow.
Sherm: I'm engaged, so, me. But even if I wasn't engaged, it would still be me. It seems like marriage is not something that he's in line to do.
The verdict: Perfect match.
Tinder: Good times or trouble?
Gronk: Both. I tried it four years ago in the locker room, just messing around. It was a classic time, but I stopped at the limit where it wouldn't be trouble.
Sherman: Oh my god, I'm engaged now, so it's troubbbble.
The verdict: Split decision
Most likely to lead a yoga retreat: Gronk or Sherm?
Gronk: That's a good one. I'd go with Sherm. I feel like he does yoga, and I never really have before. Yoga is too slow.
Sherm: Gronk. I don't do yoga. Our team offers yoga at the facility every Wednesday, but it's not mandatory. And Gronk probably doesn't do yoga, so he'll say me.
The verdict: Perfect match.
If you had to be stranded on a remote island with Pete Carroll or Bill Belichick, who'd you rather be stuck with?
Gronk: My coach, the winningest coach in the NFL. If we're just chilling on an island, he might as well put me through drills. What else would be going on?
Sherm: Pete! He'd keep the whole experience fun and keep me optimistic. He'd probably convince me that we're going to get rescued the next day for a hundred straight days. Coach Belichick, on the other hand, would probably make me build a ship to get us home, and he'd be the captain, and he probably would get us home, but I don't think I'd have much fun doing it.
The verdict: Split decision.
It's Super Bowl LI. The Seahawks have the ball at the goal line. In the backfield is newly unretired Marshawn Lynch. Last play of the game. Hand off or pass?
Gronk: Trick play -- I would hand it off and let him throw a pass.
Sherm: Trick play -- I'd hand it off, then a flea-flicker to Jimmy Graham.
The verdict: Perfect match.
The final tally
Perfect matches: 6
Split decisions: 4For the past two weeks, most of this blog's content has been focused on the poor execution of the offensive personnel. This jives with most of what everyone else is saying. The other popular narrative is that Chip's magical innovations have worn off and the entire NFL has caught up. While there may some truth to that, I think it's mostly lazy reporting from the usual analysts who would rather go for the headline grab instead of hunkering down and trying to dig deep down to see where the real issues lie. Let me start by saying that I truly believe the biggest issue of the 2015 offense so far has been execution. And it's not just on the questionable starters Barbre and Gardner. As we've shown, the veterans are making tons of mistakes. We've shown numerous examples of where, if the personnel just did their jobs the way they were assigned, the offense would look a lot better. I wish I could say that that's all it is, but I have major reservations about Sam Bradford and we'll have to wait for a bit of a larger sample size to make radical conclusions there. But is it really that simple? Does it really come down to just execution, or does Chip, for the perhaps the first time in his NFL tenure, have to take a long, hard look in the mirror and see if the problem lies within the schemes and gameplans he, Shurmur and others have drawn up thus far in 2015. I do believe that time has come because some of the decisions Chip has made in regards to personnel and scheme just aren't making much sense to me. I thought I'd share a few thoughts heading into the Jets game.
Over the summer I took a pretty deep dive into the philosophy and evolution of the Eagles run game. You can dig back through the archives and give it a read. If you are too lazy to do that, I am going to reflect back on it and pull out some high-level points. Let's start with Part 1 of the series because this is where the conversation really needs to start. Since Chip has joined the Eagles, many have asked the question (including Lesean McCoy), why Chip runs so much out of Shotgun. With the help of guys like Chris Brown (@smartfootball) and Ross Fulton (@RossRFulton) I tried to answer that question. The short explanation is that it comes down to math. Football is 11 on 11. But because the offense will always have someone carrying the ball (who isn't blocking), You have 11 defenders vs. 10 blockers. Now if you have have a QB lined up under center who will turn his back to the defense to hand the ball off, you potentially are left with 9 vs. 11 and thus 2 unblocked defenders. Offenses need to find a way to re-coup those numbers. That's what Shotgun is all about. To put it into the context of Chip Kelly's offense, he has traditionally run from Shotgun so that his QB can keep his eye on the defense at all times and can essentially "block" a defender. This allows the offense to even the numbers a bit and to leave some defenders unaccounted for. This has a huge downstream impact on his offense's success because it, for example, allows his offensive line to gain advantages based on a variety of different defensive fronts. Sometimes, it simply evens out the number where you have 5 blockers blocking 5 guys at the line. Other times, it will allow you to double team on the playside. Other times it will free up an OL to get a free release to block a linebacker at the second level. Here are some of those examples:
So the key point I am making here is that the "read" or at least the illusion of the "read" (because the QB doesn't always read and make a decision) allows you to gain in the numbers game. This is one of the most fundamental reasons why Chip runs out of Shotgun. Furthermore, there's really more to it than that. Because in the past 2 years, we've seen time and time again that we don't just use the "read" to run, we'll use it to pass as well based on a number of packaged plays. Without going into too much detail because that link explains it all, the packaged plays are a way to further tip the scales in the offense's favor by reading a defensive player and putting him in a position where he's always wrong.
So why I am I re-hashing all this stuff again? Because, the zone read has all but disappeared from Chip's offense in the first 2 weeks of the 2015 season. Note, I am referring to "zone read" as any play where the QB reads a defender or creates the illusion of reading post snap to make a decision to run or pass.
So we need to ask why this has disappeared. The simple answer that everyone will give you is that it is because we have an immobile, one-legged Sam Bradford as our QB. Yes, there is some truth to that but it doesn't explain why he continued to run zone read with guys like Nick Foles and Mark Sanchez. Yes those guys don't have a long history of knee injuries and neither cost the Eagles substantial draft picks to acquire nor were they big money guys. Chip will tell you the Eagles don't run zone read nearly as much as people think they do, which I believe is true, but at least he creates the illusion of the read and leaves defenders unblocked. So what happened? First and foremost, it might be this:
Did Terrell Suggs' hit on Bradford in the preseason, and perhaps more importantly the NFL ruling and interpretation on the hit really scare Chip away from leaving that unblocked defender and creating the illusion of the read? Normally, I would say no. It seems to against everything Chip believes. However, maybe Chip the coach wouldn't care, but what about Chip the GM? All of a sudden if you are the guy that is "buying the groceries" and everyone knows it and all of sudden all your dinner guests get food poisoning, well where does the blame go? So perhaps Chip's decision to gamble the team's draft picks and dollars to land that franchise QB is for the first time challenging his coaching methods and thinking. |
, blood clotting, development and also play a role in the immune system. Furthermore, scientific studies also show that an adequate supply of carbohydrates (glucose) has a positive effect on the brain.
Most carbohydrates in our diets come from plants, although milk (comes from different types of mammals) also contains lactose (which is a carbohydrate). In terms of energy, a carbohydrate is about 4 calories per gram.
Carbohydrates can be divided into 4 chemical groupings (with each grouping containing several types of carbohydrates):
1) monosaccharides
These are the simplest type of carbohydrates and cannot be broken down (hydrolyzed) into smaller types of carbohydrates.
glucose – main source of energy for a cell
fructose
galactose
mannose
2) disaccharides
These are composed of two monosaccharide molecules bonded together.
sucrose – also known as table sugar, composed of fructose + glucose
lactose – found in milk, composed of galactose + glucose
maltose – two units of glucose joined through an α-1,4 bond
cellulobiose – two units of glucose joined through a β-1,4 bond
3) oligosaccharides
These are repeating units of monosaccharides joined through glycosidic bonds. Usually contain three to nine units.
fructo-oligosaccharides
galacto-oligosaccharides
inulin oligosaccharides
raffinose
4) polysaccharides
These are made up of chains of many monosaccharides. They can be branched or unbranched (straight chained). These act as storage of energy in plants (starch) and animals (glycogen). In plants, they can also serve a structural function (cellulose, pectin). They also perform a structural function in some insects (chitin).
starch – main way of storing glucose in plants
-amylose (straight-chained)
-amylopectin (branched)
-amylose (straight-chained) -amylopectin (branched) glycogen – very similar structure as amylopectin in starches, but instead found in animals
cellulose
hemicellulose
fiber
-soluble
-insoluble
So what purpose do carbohydrates serve and where do they come from?
All these different carbohydrates come from different sources and have different purposes. Glucose serves as the main source of energy for the body. Living organisms have developed several ways of storing glucose in order to be able to use it later. This is where the polysaccharides come in. In many organisms, glucose molecules are bonded together to form long-chains strung together. In plants this is in the form of starches, while in animals glycogen serves this purpose.
You probably know several types of carbohydrates under a different name. Monosaccharides and disaccharides are known in everyday language as sugars. There are many types of monosaccharides, with the most important being glucose, followed by fructose and galactose.
The main source of glucose are fruits and vegetables. When it is present in the body, it is sometimes referred to as “blood sugar”. It can sometimes be ingested into the human body as individual units, but very often the glucose in the body is a result of different metabolic processes breaking down bigger chains of carbohydrates. Glucose is the main source of energy for living organisms and the easiest to metabolize. It is the basic fuel for the human body and its proper functioning. Glucose can be broken down to form adenosine triphosphate (ATP), which is sometimes called the body’s “currency of energy” and basically is the energy that is used to spark different processes in the cells.
The main source of fructose are fruits. Fructose, however unlike glucose, has to be processed in the liver first before it is able to be processed by the body. Galactose does not occur alone in nature, but can be isolated through the breakdown of other carbohydrates. Galactose is one of the building blocks of lactose, which is found in milk. You probably never thought of milk as being composed of sugar, but in fact it is!
There are also other important carbohydrates. Sucrose, which is commonly known as table sugar, comes mainly from refining or processing sugar cane and sugar beets. When it enters the small intestine, it is split into its two constituent parts, fructose and glucose. Starch is the main energy storage mechanism for plants. It is made up of long chains of glucose strung together. These chains of glucose are very easy for the human body to digest and break down. Cooking and chewing can break down the cellulose walls and then different enzymes go to work in order to release the individual glucose in the chains. Humans can get starch from bread (wheat), corn, rice, cereals, grains, roots, different vegetables and things like beans or peas.
Another type of carbohydrate are fibers. Fibers usually cannot be digested by the human body (or only partially), but do serve an important purpose. They help in the prevention of certain diseases, but also aid in the digestive process. There are two types: soluble and insoluble. Sources of soluble fiber are peas, beans, lentils, oats, and also barley. Sources of insoluble fibers are things like whole grains. Whole grains are grain products that still have all parts of the grain seed – bran, germ, and endosperm.
To illustrate a bit of what happens in the human body once it ingests different carbohydrates, let’s take the example of milk. Milk contains lactose, which is composed of galactose and glucose. Once lactose is in the human digestive system, an enzyme called lactase goes to work on it in order to break it down. However only a percentage of the human population has this enzyme, mostly the ones descended from Europeans (where early on cattle breeding was an important way of sustenance). In other parts of the world, people do not have this enzyme and so cannot process lactose. These people are referred to as lactose intolerant.
In fact, not all carbohydrates can be processed by the human body. The processing of carbohydrates depends on the types of enzymes that are present in the human body. For example some types of animals can process certain types of carbohydrates, which humans can’t. As was illustrated on the example of lactose, even within human populations there are differences on which carbohydrates can be processed and which can’t. All this is a result of evolution.
As mentioned before, glucose is the main source of energy for the human body. Sometimes, the body cannot use all the glucose in it and it also needs to keep some glucose as a reserve for later use. What happens is that it stores this extra glucose as glycogen. Glycogen is the main storage mechanism of glucose for animals, sort of like starch is for plants.
In this phase, it is when a hormone known as insulin comes into play. Insulin is released when glucose levels in the body are too high. It is released from the pancreas and acts on the hepatocyte (a type of cell in the liver) in order to stimulate the action of several types of enzymes. These enzymes then go to work binding all the loose glucose into glycogen chains for storage and later use. These are then stored in the liver. When glucose is needed later on, different types of enzymes (the main one being glucagon) go to work breaking down these glycogen chains and freeing individual glucose. Muscle cells also store glycogen, but this glycogen is not released for use by other parts of the body, but only serves for the internal use of these muscles.
However glycogen storage is limited in the human body. Once this is filled, all the remaining excess glucose can be converted into fatty acids and stored as fat in the body. The storage of glucose as fat has an unlimited capacity. This is why the amount of carbohydrates you eat has a direct impact on your fat levels.
Strategies for fueling yourself up with carbohydrates
In order to discuss what type of strategy you should adopt in terms of taking in carbohydrates, we need to clarify some terminology that is floating around and often used by nutritionists.
Nutritionists usually classify carbohydrates into simple and complex. These two terms don’t have an agreed upon meaning and one nutritionist’s definition can differ from the definition of another one. However the easy way to think of these two terms is to think of simple carbohydrates as being all those that are in mono- or disaccharides and the complex carbs are the ones that are classed as polysaccharides. So anything that an average person on the street calls “sugar” is a simple carbohydrate (they usually taste sweet as well), while most of the other ones are complex.
One often also comes across talk of “good” and “bad” carbs. Bad carbs are usually from all the refined and processed foods (such as white flour and refined sugar) that contain what is called “empty” calories, that is a high amount of calories, but no other things such as vitamins, minerals and other good stuff. Eating too many of them can spike up triglyceride (fat) and cholesterol levels in the body. Good carbs come from foods that also give a lot of other things (such as vitamins) besides just the carbs. Good carbs are also often complex carbs, which take a longer time to be broken down in the body.
There are three basic tools that can help you in determining what types of foods to eat. The most well-known one is called the glycemic index. It is based on a score of 0 to 100. Pure glucose gets a score of 100, so all the foods are measured relative to pure glucose. The glycemic index measures how fast glucose levels rise inside the body after the ingestion of a particular food. High glycemic foods often spike up the glucose levels fast. This means these carbohydrates break down quickly and release their glucose into the bloodstream really fast. Low glycemic foods are the ones with carbohydrates that break down slower and their glucose is released more gradually into the bloodstream.
Foods that contain “bad” carbs are usually foods with a high GI score. For example refined foods made of white flour have high GI scores. Eating too many high GI foods can lead to weight gain, but with a lot of fat gained in the process. The glycemic load is another score that can be useful to look at when choosing what types of food to eat. It measures the amount of food that will raise a person’s blood glucose levels. There is also the insulin index, which measures the insulin response to foods.
The actual strategy towards carbohydrates depends on your goals, whether it is to gain weight, lose weight, support your athletic endeavors…etc. The recommendations for the average person vary from 45% to around 75% of the total calories in your diet being composed of carbohydrates (with the Institute of Medicine recommending 45-65% and the WHO and FAO recommending 55-75%). However the actual amounts should also take into account your goals (lose weight, gain weight) and activity levels (for example long exercise and long-distance running). So if you are trying to gain weight, having a large number of carbohydrates in your diet may help you. Good sources of carbohydrates for someone trying to gain weight are brown rice and sweet potatoes. On the other hand, for someone trying to lose weight, you might try to cut down on the amount of carbohydrates. The strategy once again is different for active people. Carbohydrates are basically the fuel for the body and so for active people who do long and demanding exercise or activities (such as long distance running), they might need to also take in more carbohydrates, before, during and after exercise.
So remember to eat those carbohydrates. They give your body energy!
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PocketExecutive Summary
State investments in center-based school readiness programs for preschoolers (pre-K), whether targeted for poor children or universally implemented, have expanded more rapidly than evaluations of their effects. Given the current interest and continuing expansion of state funded pre-K, it is especially important to be clear about the nature of the available evidence for the effectiveness of such programs. Despite widespread claims about proven benefits from pre-K, there is actually strikingly little credible research about the effectiveness of public pre-K programs scaled for statewide implementation.
Like many states that became interested in scaling up a state funded pre-K program in the early 2000’s, voluntary pre-K (TNVPK) was introduced in Tennessee in 1996 as a way to provide academic enhancement to economically disadvantaged children. It expanded in 2005 to an $85 million-plus statewide investment serving 18,000 Tennessee income-eligible children in 935 classrooms across all 95 counties.
Launched in 2009, the TNVPK Effectiveness Study, a coordinated effort between Vanderbilt’s Peabody Research Institute and the Tennessee Department of Education, is a five-year evaluation study funded by the US Department of Education, Institute for Education Sciences. It includes the first randomized control trial of a scaled up state funded pre-K program and the first well-controlled comparison group study of the effects of program participation as children progress through elementary school..
Policymakers and proponents often cite some of the famous early studies of pre-K programs that have shown long term benefits extending into adulthood for the participating children. But those were studies of especially complex programs that are unlike scaled-up public pre-K in many ways. The Vanderbilt study is the first rigorous controlled longitudinal study to be conducted on a large-scale state-funded pre-K program.
This report presents findings from the full evaluation report, available online, summarizing the longitudinal effects of TNVPK on pre‐kindergarten through third grade achievement and behavioral outcomes for a sample of 1076 children, of which 773 attended TNVPK classrooms and 303 did not. Both groups have been followed since the beginning of the pre‐k year. Children in VPK classrooms made initial strong gains and were perceived by their teachers at kindergarten entry as being better prepared. The achievement of the control children caught up to that of the pre-K children by the end of kindergarten. In second and third grades achievement trends crossed over, with academic achievement for the pre-K children becoming worse than for the control children.
The results from this substudy are reviewed in the context of the difficulties of determining the sustained effectiveness of statewide pre-K programs when those programs have been defined so differently state to state and when the evidentiary base from other current studies is so weak.
Results from the TNVPK evaluation
In 2009, Vanderbilt University’s Peabody Research Institute, in coordination with the Tennessee Department of Education’s Division of Curriculum and Instruction, initiated a rigorous, independent evaluation of the state’s Voluntary Prekindergarten program (TNVPK). TNVPK is a full‐day prekindergarten program for four‐year‐old children expected to enter kindergarten the following school year and whose family income qualified for free or reduced price lunch.i
The TNVPK classrooms participating in the evaluation study were among those where more eligible children were expected to apply for the program than there were seats available. Under such circumstances, only some applicants can be admitted and, of necessity, some must be turned away. The participating programs agreed to make this decision on the basis of chance. The classrooms are spread across the state in both urban and rural districts.
This procedure was used for two cohorts of children, TNVPK applicants for the 2009‐10 and 2010‐11 school years, and resulted in more than 3000 randomly assigned children. Both the children who participated in TNVPK and those who did not are being tracked through the state education database, and information on various aspects of their academic performance and status is being collected each year. State achievement test data will be available for the first time on this larger sample in late fall of 2015.
In addition, parental consent was obtained for a portion of this randomized sample, referred to as the “Intensive Substudy.” A total of 1076 children in this intensive substudy were directly assessed by the research team with a battery of early learning achievement measures and rated by their teachers on important “non-cognitive” skills in each year of the study through the end of 3rd grade. As four year olds, the 303 children in the control group were primarily cared for in their homes; only 25.6% of them participated in a formal preschool program, none in a TNVPK classroom.
Because of differences in consent rates by parents in the treatment and control conditions for participation of their children in the intensive substudy, the results presented here and in our most recent report are analyzed by comparing children who did vs. did not attend a TNVPK classroom for at least 20 days, thereby assigning control group status to children who won the lottery for admission to TNVPK but did not participate in the program or only did so for a few days. The availability of pre-test data for all the intensive substudy children on the same cognitive measures used to assess later outcomes allows us to successfully address the major threat to the interpretation of the results from this particular analytic approach, the possibility that the children in the two groups differed in cognitive skills or socioeconomic status at the beginning of the pre-K year: Small differences were detected on only two variables, about what would have been expected by chance given the number of variables involved. These were controlled for statistically.
At the end of pre‐K, the TNVPK children had significantly higher achievement scores on all six subtests administered (representing literacy, language and mathematics, all from the Woodcock Johnson III battery, a widely used achievement test with strong psychometric properties). The largest effects were on the two literacy outcomes. To allow results from programs to be compared, they are most often presented as “effect sizes,” a measure that quantifies the difference between two groups. The effect size comparing TNVPK children to controls on a composite achievement measure was.32; a moderate and significant effect.
At the beginning of kindergarten, the teachers rated the TNVPK children as being significantly better prepared for kindergarten work, as having significantly better behaviors related to learning in the classroom and as having significantly more positive peer relations than the control children. They did not view the children as having more behavior problems and both groups of children were rated as being highly positive about school.
Our design allows us to investigate the extent to which these initial effects are sustained past the end of the pre-K year. More than 90% of the sample remained in the study across the four years. Detailed information is provided in the full report.ii
Authors Dale C. Farran Antonio and Anita Gotto Chair in Teaching and Learning - Vanderbilt University Interim Director - Peabody Research Institute M Mark W. Lipsey Director of the Peabody Research Institute, Vanderbilt University
Standard score results from pre-K through 3rd grade on a composite measure that averaged the six achievement subtests are presented from baseline forward in the graph below.
As is evident, pre-K and control children started the pre-K year at virtually identical levels. The TNVPK children were substantially ahead of the control group children at the end of the pre-K year (age 5 in the graph). By the end of kindergarten (age 6 in the graph), the control children had caught up to the TNVPK children, and there were no longer significant differences between them on any achievement measures. The same result was obtained at the end of first grade using two composite achievement measures (the second created with the addition of two more WJIII subtests appropriate for the later grades). In second grade, however, the groups began to diverge with the TNVPK children scoring lower than the control children on most of the measures. The differences were significant on both achievement composite measures and on the math subtests. Differences favoring the control persisted through the end of third grade.
In terms of behavioral effects, in the spring the first grade teachers reversed the fall kindergarten teacher ratings. First grade teachers rated the TNVPK children as less well prepared for school, having poorer work skills in the classrooms, and feeling more negative about school. It is notable that these ratings preceded the downward achievement trend we found for VPK children in second and third grades. The second and third grade teachers rated the behaviors and feelings of children in the two groups as the same; there was a small positive finding for peer relations favoring the TNVPK children by third grade teachers, which did not meet traditional levels of statistical significance.
Responding to criticisms of the TNVPK study
These results are not consistent with the widely held expectations for the academic benefits of statewide public pre-K programs. The virtual ink on our recently released report was barely dry before pre-K advocates were vigorously building a firebreak around these results from Tennessee, contending that they are not representative of the effects of state pre-K programs generally and stem entirely from the unusually poor quality of the Tennessee program.
In response to critics, we note first that the kindergarten catch up phenomenon in the TNVPK program was also seen in the Head Start Impact study, although that study did not find negative effects in later gradesiii, and this “fade out” of achievement effects is a well-known pattern.
Second, it is important to remember that the initial positive TNVPK effects at the end of the pre-K year and at kindergarten entry were comparable to those found in studies of other programs reported since the 1980s, as shown in a comprehensive meta-analysis.iv In particular, the effect sizes were well within the range of those reported using a weaker design in a recent analysis of the end of pre-K effects for five state pre-K programs.v and, indeed, on average were larger than the effects found for some of those states. The positive effects on TNVPK participants at the end of the pre-K year and their similarity in size to the reported effects of other programs that have been lauded by pre-K advocates are inconsistent with the claim by those advocates that the TNVPK program was of unusually poor quality.
Third, we can find no evidence that the TNVPK program is different in any significant way from other programs being ramped up quickly in various states. TNVPK was set up to align with the 10 benchmarks provided by the National Institute for Early Education Research (NIEER); it meets 9, all except the one requiring the teacher’s assistant to have a particular credential, the CDA.vi It meets many more of these benchmarks than the programs in states like Florida, Texas and Massachusetts and more than Louisiana and New Mexico.
Moreover, a different component of the overall study obtained classroom ratings on typical measures used to index classroom quality in many other studies of pre-K programs (e.g., Early Childhood Environmental Rating Scale; Early Childhood Language and Literacy Observation) for 160 representative TNVPK classrooms across the state. TNVPK classroom average scores are very similar to those recently reported for the statewide program in New Mexicovii and almost identical to ones from the highly touted metropolitan pre-K program in the Boston Public Schools. viii
While we believe TNVPK has ample room for improvement, there is simply no convincing evidence that it is a program of distinctly lower overall quality than other statewide programs.
Historical support for pre-K effectiveness
These results clearly challenge the widespread belief that statewide pre-K can deliver sustained improvements in the academic achievement of economically disadvantaged children and help close the achievement gap for those children. If we are to understand what state pre-K may realistically be able to accomplish, and how to get the greatest benefit from it, we need to think critically about where those beliefs came from and how applicable they are to contemporary state pre-K programs.
The most influential sources are the highly cited early experimental studies of 50 or more years ago. The Perry Preschool, for instance, consisted of 2½ hours every morning in instruction and a 1½-hour weekly visit with each family in the afternoons – for two years, starting when the children were 3 years old. The Abecedarian program is even harder to replicate. Children entered the program as infants and remained until they went to kindergarten. The program ran 50 weeks a year for 8-10 hours a day. There was a pediatrician and nurse practitioner on site.
Even the Child and Parent Center (CPC) program in Chicago, often cited as a more recent example of long-term benefits, is unlike today’s pre-K.ix Children were enrolled as 4 year olds and remained through kindergarten after which there was follow up through 3rd grade. Parents were provided workshops and were required to volunteer in the classrooms. In addition, the classrooms were supplemented with free health care.
Perry, Abecedarian and CPC all showed long-term benefits for societally valued outcomes such as completing high school on time, earning higher wages and in some instances committing fewer crimes. There are no such long term follow ups available, of course, from the more recently instituted scaled up state programs. For the TNVPK sample we have funding from NICHD to examine some potential mechanisms for these longer-term outcomes, interviewing students, teachers and their parents in the 4th through 7th grades. We simply don’t know at this point if such outcomes will emerge as “sleeper effects.”
It is important to note, though, that early childhood advocates and policy makers use the term “pre-K” as though it has a defined and clear meaning, and they use data from the early programs of 50 or more years ago to support claims of effectiveness for pre-K as if it is all the same. School districts and states may not be aware that many different kinds of programs are covered by the blanket term. All over the country, states are implementing different practices, some of which are quite distinct, all of which are called pre-K, and none of which are similar to the Perry, Abecedarian, or CPC programs.
Further, whatever the nature of the pre-K program, scaling up to statewide implementation involves practical and administrative challenges well beyond any addressed in these earlier programs, or any program implemented locally with administrative leadership within a single district. Tennessee has 135 separate school systems implementing some version of a pre-K program, and other statewide programs must implement across a similar numerical and geographical scope. Given these distinctive challenges, the critical evidence for judging the effectiveness and potential of statewide pre-K programs must come specifically from studies of statewide programs, not simply generalized from those implemented in single sites or school systems.
Current research on statewide pre-K programs
Prior to our TNVPK study, research on statewide implementation has all been with weaker designs that do not meet federal standards for drawing valid inferences about education program effectiveness.x Many of the earliest attempts were simply pre-post comparisons of children going through the program, and such evidence is still cited favorably by many programs. The age-cutoff regression discontinuity design (RDD) was introduced in 2005xi and has been applied widely ever since. RDD is one of the strongest non-experimental designs in general, but the age-cutoff version applied in pre-K studies, which involves comparing children who just made or missed the age eligibility for entry into pre-K and kindergarten, is a degraded version open to various sources of bias, many tending to overestimate effects.xii Nonetheless, as in the Tennessee study, these designs almost universally find nontrivial positive effects on achievement measures at the beginning of the kindergarten year.
Of critical interest, of course, is whether these positive effects are sustained through the early grades. On this matter the available evidence is especially weak. Looking only at evaluations of statewide pre-K programs, virtually all of the available research on sustained effects has used nonequivalent comparison designs that attempt to match retrospectively children who attended pre-K with children who did not attend. The key question for such matched designs, of course, is whether the children are matched adequately on all the variables that affect the outcomes independently from pre‐k participation. In practice, researchers have had difficulty making adequate matches as a result of limitations in the available data. With few exceptions, the variables on which these studies have matched children have included no more than basic demographic characteristics—mainly free and reduced price lunch status, age, gender, and race. Particularly problematic is the absence of pretest data for all children at baseline on the same or similar measures that are used to demonstrate later differences in outcomes that are associated with program participation. Thus the existing matching studies cannot demonstrate the equivalence of the intervention and comparison groups on the one thing that is most likely to bias the results.
In contrast to these matched studies, the Tennessee study created equivalence at baseline of the groups of pre-K participating and nonparticipating children in the intensive substudy that produced the results described here. All the children in both groups were from families who made an effort to get them enrolled in the state pre-K program. Further, the success of the parents in enrolling their children was determined largely by chance in the intensive substudy design. The intensive substudy sample required parental consent and both groups of families consented.
The critical question, however, is whether there were other differences between the TNVPK participants and nonparticipants that might influence their outcomes. We compared the groups on 22 baseline variables. These included all the basic demographic characteristics typically used in matched studies plus such family background features as mothers’ education, parents’ employment, and an index of the home literacy environment. Most important, it included pretest scores on all the achievement measures used as outcome variables, a critical point of comparison unavailable to any of the matching studies. Only two of any of these 22 variables showed statistically significant differences at baseline, again close to what would be expected by chance.
To further ensure that the groups were comparable statistical controls were used for both key baseline variables and some variation in the timing of pretest and posttest measurement. When those statistical controls were applied to the baseline variables, the groups were then virtually identical on every variable. No study is perfect, and this one is no exception, but any notion that the prior matched and RDD studies provide more methodologically credible evidence about pre-K effects than the Tennessee study simply ignores well-established protocols for judging the ability to draw causal conclusions about program impacts from different types of research designs.xiii
In short, despite claims that sustained achievement effects from state pre-K programs have been amply demonstrated, the evidence for that is quite thin and, prior to the Tennessee study, there had been no evidence from a well-controlled study.
Going forward
Developing a stronger and more current evidentiary base on scaling up pre-K is important because the shift to caring for 4 year olds in public schools is a relatively recent one based largely on faith that this is beneficial for the participating children. As these programs come under the administrative control of the public school system and are implemented in far-flung areas of a state, it is necessary to determine what the consequences are and what safeguards might need to be put into place. A clear, well-articulated vision for how the care of 4- and 5-year olds differs from that for older children is needed to protect these classrooms from becoming junior kindergartens. And a specific, perhaps new, definition is needed for “high quality.”
To many states, the term high quality has meant that they try to meet the 10 NIEER benchmarks, but those, as well as other structural characteristics of pre-K classrooms, have not been shown to be related to children’s growthxiv. There is a wide range of recent research evidence about experiences that foster cognitive and social-emotional development of 4-year-olds that could be pulled together into empirically based guidelines for pre-K. Until researchers and program administrators understand the need for this work, it is doubtful it will be done.
Even if a vision is developed, states will still have difficulty conveying and enacting that vision on a day-to-day basis in hundreds of classrooms. Central implementation and administration of the program entirely from a state department of education is not likely to be effective. Implementation standards must be set in policies that are then administered regionally to assure professional development, trained coaches, and fidelity of practice. Pre-k programs are “voluntary;” if states are going to offer them, it is important that structures be established to make them effective.
A clear vision for pre-K also means that states and school systems must have a coherent view for how pre-K aligns with the K-3 system. The TNVPK study was not just about pre-K; it was a pre-K through 3rd grade study. There is some as yet poorly understood interaction between the pre-K experience and the experience the children have in subsequent grades that fails to carry forward the momentum they gained in pre-K. State programs that are not careful to protect the instructional environment for 4-year-olds may find the children burning out in the early grades from too much repetition of the same content and instructional format. Rather than building enthusiasm for learning, confidence in their abilities and a foundational understanding of literacy and math, the programs may only be teaching children how to behave in school, an enthusiasm that fades with repeated exposure.
Conclusion
In sum, it would be shortsighted of pre-K advocates to dismiss the TNVPK study merely as an indictment of the quality of the Tennessee program. Rather the findings from this most methodologically rigorous study to date raise important questions about what is happening all over the country. The benefits of pre-K intervention are being pushed without taking time to define what pre-K really means and, worse, to determine whether what has been implemented has produced the promised outcomes. It is time to take a step back and to figure out what really can and should be scaled up and then how to make that vision happen with consistency and the desired results.
Even if we get the quality right, however, and implement a new vision of scaled up pre-K with consistency, and even if this results in children gaining more from pre-K than they have so far, we still need to question the presumption that pre-K alone will fix the problems poor children encounter in schools. The income-related achievement gap Reardonxv and others have identified does not exist solely because children do not have a pre-K experience or even a “high quality” pre-K experience. There are other important factors at play including increasing income segregation in the public schools and the low quality of schools serving the poor.Bryce Harper had to be restrained Monday after charging the mound against Hunter Strickland. (Thearon W. Henderson/Getty Images)
SAN FRANCISCO — Major League Baseball suspended Bryce Harper four games and fined him an undisclosed amount for his actions in the fight that marred Monday afternoon’s 3-0 win over the Giants. Reliever Hunter Strickland, who hit him with a pitch to set off the brawl, will be suspended for six games.
Both players will appeal the decision, meaning both will remain active Tuesday night.
[Harper will be in the Nationals’ lineup vs. Giants on Tuesday night]
“You never know what Major League Baseball is going to do, or the [MLB] Players Association, or things like that,” Harper said. “It’s always in their hands, so there’s nothing the players can do about what’s fair, what’s not fair … just going to appeal that four games and see what happens.”
The four games given to Harper, assuming they stand on appeal, represent a moderate punishment relative to those doled out for similar fighting incidents. The longest suspension given for fighting is 10 games. Rangers second baseman Rougned Odor received an eight-game suspension after he landed a punch against Blue Jays’ slugger Jose Bautista last season. In other words, MLB did not come down particularly harshly on Harper, though it did not take it easy, either.
Bryce Harper traded punches to the head with San Francisco reliever Hunter Strickland after getting hit by a fastball, setting off a brawl during the Nationals' 3-0 win over the Giants on May 29. (WUSA)
The 24-year-old was in good spirits Tuesday afternoon, noticeably calm, and downplayed the punishment, still consumed by disbelief.
“I was sitting there talking to my parents this morning at breakfast. It’s just crazy that it even happened yesterday. After three years, to do that, I don’t know what was going through his mind or how upset he was the last couple years,” Harper said. “If he did have a problem, he could’ve talked to me in BP about it and say: ‘I didn’t like the way you went about it.’ But that’s not human nature, I guess. I don’t know, it’s just part of the game, I guess. It’s just a crazy situation. I can’t believe it happened.”
[Steinberg: Actually, Bryce Harper started it]
That Strickland got more games than Harper pleased the Nationals, who were outspoken and adamant that Strickland, whose long-held grudge sparked the conflict, should receive a harsher penalty. But when one considers Strickland’s normal workload — at most, he probably would pitch in three or four of those six games — compared with Harper’s, the relative severity flips. The Giants will lose a reliever for about three innings of work. The Nationals will lose their No. 3 hitter and MVP candidate for about 36 innings, should the suspension stand on appeal.
Asked whether or not he thought the suspensions were fair, Nationals Manager Dusty Baker said he did not.
“The whole act wasn’t fair. But it doesn’t matter what I say or what I do. I just don’t think that the judges, whoever the judges were, have ever been in the situation,” Baker said. “Probably only Martin Luther King [Jr.] or Ghandi would have turned the other cheek and not done something reactionary”
The appeal process can take days, meaning Harper likely will be able to play through the duration of this week’s series against the Giants, and perhaps through this weekend’s series against the Athletics, too. For now, he is available, pending another decision from the league, which issued its first ruling on the matter Tuesday.
More Bryce Harper:
Ledecky invites Harper to spend coming suspension by the pool
Even the Giants thought Strickland crossed the line against Harper
Bryce Harper is the latest victim in baseball’s evolving culture wars
This fracas inspired so many memes
Watch Harper charge the moundEye in the Sky Geoscientists typically have to stay on earth to monitor things like volcanic eruptions and earthquakes. However, a better, faster technique may be space-based: using satellites to observe dips and bulges in the Earth’s surface can reveal the pathways of underground magma streams and the position of hidden fault lines, and teach us how earthquakes modify the balance of the planet’s tectonic plates. This technique could make more accurate predictions with more notice, and save lives. The outer layer of the Earth’s crust is made up of tectonic plates floating atop a layer of molten rock, at most 250 kilometers thick. Plates sometimes move suddenly away from or against each other, creating earthquakes, or in some places, causing liquid rock to spill onto the planet’s surface through volcanoes. Numerous threats like these exist around the world, and many aren’t monitored because they haven’t erupted in some time, or because they’re in developing areas of the world. Others simply give off signals too subtle for us to notice here on earth: take Japan’s Mount Ontake, which erupted without warning in 2014 after years of minimal activity and killed 63 people.
Image Credit: skeeze/PixabayA global picture is now possible thanks to interferometric synthetic aperture radar (InSAR). This technique deploys radar devices mounted on satellites, and uses comparative images over time to visualize the average movement of the Earth’s surface. These measurements are extremely precise, to within a few millimeters. |
already has a relationship with STO as a carrier of its programming and an advertising partner, have been aggressively ramping up their presence in so-called regional sports networks nationally.
A Time Warner spokesman in Akron responded by email that the company was "unable to comment" on possible interest in STO.
Henry Ford, Fox Sports Ohio's general manager, who is headed to San Diego to run a new regional sports network there, declined to comment, a spokeswoman responded in an email.
For what it's worth, there is no long-term rights agreement to delay a sale. The Indians-STO deal runs year to year.
According to estimates by SNL Kagan, which tracks the media and communications business, STO had about 3 million subscribers in 2011, with $85 million in operating revenue and $21 million in cash flow. STO generates most of its revenue from monthly fees that cable and satellite providers, like Time Warner and DirecTV, pay the network per subscriber.
Industry analyst Lee Berke, principal of LHB Sports Entertainment & Media Inc. in New York, said a regional sports network's value is typically 12 to 15 times cash flow.
Based on that formula, STO could be worth $250 million to $315 million -- even higher if based on SNL Kagan's 2012 cash-flow projections of $24 million. If STO was sold, it is unknown how much, if any, of the profit would go toward the Indians.
Compared to regional sports networks in larger media markets, those are average numbers. The Yankees' YES Network, for instance, produces annual revenues that exceed $450 million and has been valued at $1.5 billion to $2 billion. Closer to home, Fox Sports Detroit, with an estimated 3.5 million subscribers, $119 million in revenue and $30 million in cash flow, could be worth $360 million to $450 million, according to SNL Kagan.
The timing for teams to capitalize on broadcasting rights deals has never been better.
The cable industry is consolidating. Technology is allowing fans to follow their favorite teams on computers and handheld devices. Media markets may vary by size and economic stability, but the competition for customers is driving business across the board.
"The glue that's holding it all together," said New York media consultant Chris Bevilacqua, "is live sports."
And especially baseball, because the 162-game regular-season schedule provides so much programming.
To prevent the exodus of subscribers to the Internet, cable companies are paying a premium for broadcast rights. Time Warner, Fox, Comcast and DirecTV all own regional sports networks and are chasing more deals, increasingly in partnership with sports franchises.
In Houston, the Astros and NBA's Rockets left a Fox network to own close to 80 percent of a new Comcast-run sports network. And the Padres have reportedly struck a deal with the new Fox Sports San Diego that will double the club's annual rights fees to about $20 million, plus ad revenue.
Within the past two years, the industry has seen "almost a tipping point, some quantum leaps in terms of values being paid for all these various live sports rights," Bevilacqua said. "[Regional sports networks] are getting rights deals two times what they were getting just a few years ago."
To reach this Plain Dealer reporter: blubinger@plaind.com, 216-999-5531The Star Wars Battlefront 2 Arcade mode is a great way to unwind and just have a bit of fun in pre-made scenarios, but there’s an annoying catch.
The mode, much like almost anything in Star Wars Battlefront 2, awards you with Credits as you play. Like we’ve explained in our Battlefront 2 progression system breakdown, Credits are used to buy crates, which in turn get you Star Cards.
Credits can also be used to unlocked heroes, which now cost substantially less thanks to fan outcry. Arcade mode, then, is an easy way to earn a few extra Credits, but there’s a cap to how much you can earn.
Game Informer’s Andrew Reiner discovered after playing for a bit that the game stops awarding Credits altogether. The message he received plainly said that more Credits will be available in 14 hours.
The worst part of the game is this: You are limited on credits earned in Arcade mode. “More credits available in 14 hours” pic.twitter.com/8NOTvby2hl — Andrew Reiner (@Andrew_Reiner) November 13, 2017
While you could say that DICE added this cap to prevent Credits farming, the fact that players have to do this at all should tell you that Credit rewards are not plentiful during regular multiplayer gameplay.
Star Wars Battlefront 2 is out now for Deluxe Edition owners on PC, PS4, and Xbox One. The standard edition goes live on Friday.Adorable footage of three baby raccoons running all over a man in Ohio, USA.The video, filmed Apple Creek in Wooster on June 2, shows the little animals playing with the man, after they approached him on their own accord."I was fly fishing for trout Apple Creek in Wooster Ohio when I heard a chirping sound at my feet," the filmer wrote online."I looked down to see three baby raccoons who had walked up to me and were now trying to climb up my legs, which I let them do.""I was able to walk over to my bag with raccoons attached, and set up my camera to shoot some video."I was soon joined by another fisherman who retrieved a fish from upstream which he fed to the hungry little raccoons."For the next 20 minutes they fed and followed us around close to where they had appeared from and finally left to rejoin their mother who was likely sleeping close by."CORVALLIS, Ore. - Research in the Linus Pauling Institute at Oregon State University suggests that some natural food compounds, which previously have been studied for their ability to prevent cancer, may be able to play a more significant role in treating it - working side-by-side with the conventional drugs that are now used in chemotherapy.
A new study just published in the International Journal of Cancer examined the activity of chlorophyllin and found that, on a dose-by-dose basis, it was 10 times more potent at causing death of colon cancer cells than hydroxyurea, a chemotherapeutic drug commonly used in cancer treatment.
Beyond that, chlorophyllin kills cancer cells by blocking the same phase of cellular division that hydroxyurea does, but by a different mechanism. This suggests that it - and possibly other "cocktails" of natural products - might be developed to have a synergistic effect with conventional cancer drugs, helping them to work better or require less toxic dosages, researchers said.
"We conclude that chlorophyllin has the potential to be effective in the clinical setting, when used alone or in combination with currently available cancer therapeutic agents," the researchers wrote in their study.
The concept of combining conventional or new cancer drugs with natural compounds that have been shown to have anti-cancer properties is very promising, said Rod Dashwood, professor and director of the Cancer Chemoprotection Program in the Linus Pauling Institute.
"Most chemotherapeutic approaches to cancer try to target cancer cells specifically and do something that slows or stops their cell growth process," Dashwood said. "We're now identifying such mechanisms of action for natural compounds, including dietary agents. With further research we may be able to make the two approaches work together to enhance the effectiveness of cancer therapies."
Chlorophyllin is a water-soluble derivative of chlorophyll - the green pigment found in most plants and many food products that makes possible the process of photosynthesis and plant growth from the sun's energy. Chlorophyllin is inexpensive, and animal studies plus human clinical data suggest that it can be ingested at relatively high levels without toxicity.
In the new study, researchers found that pharmacologic doses of chlorophyllin caused colon cancer cells to spend more time than normal in their "synthesis phase" in which DNA is duplicated. Timing is critical to the various phases of cell growth, researchers said, and this disruption started a process that ultimately led to cell death, the study found.
In particular, the presence of high levels of chlorophyllin caused a major reduction in the level of ribonucleotide reductase, an enzyme critical to DNA synthesis, researchers found. This is also the mechanism of action of hydroxyurea, one drug already being used for cancer chemotherapy.
"In cancer research right now there's interest in approaches that can reduce ribonucleotide reductase," Dashwood said. "At the doses used in our experiments, chlorophyllin almost completely stops the activity of this enzyme."
Further research is needed both in laboratory and animal studies, with combinations of chlorophyllin and existing cancer drugs, before it would be appropriate for human trials, Dashwood said. Chlorophyllin, in general, is poorly absorbed from the human gastrointestinal tract, so it's unclear what levels might be needed for therapeutic purposes or how well they would work.
Other dietary agents also might have similar potential. Work just published by LPI researchers in the journals Carcinogenesis and Cancer Prevention Research explored the role of organic selenium compounds in killing human prostate and colon cancer cells. Colorectal and prostate cancers are consistently among the leading causes of cancer mortality in the United States, and will account respectively for 18 percent and 9 percent of all cancer deaths in 2009, according to estimates from the American Cancer Society.
In the recent studies, a form of organic selenium found naturally in garlic and Brazil nuts was converted in cancer cells to metabolites that acted as "HDAC inhibitors" - a promising field of research in which silenced tumor suppressor genes are re-activated, triggering cancer cell death.
"Whether it's HDAC inhibition leading to one manner of cancer cell growth arrest, or loss of ribonucleotide reductase activity leading to another, as seen with chlorophyllin, there's significant promise in the use of natural products for combined cancer therapies," Dashwood said. "These are areas that merit continued research."
These studies were supported by the National Cancer Institute and the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences. Other collaborators included researchers from the New York Medical College and the Penn State College of Medicine. Further information on chlorophylls and selenium compounds can be found on the web at: http://lpi.oregonstate.edu/infocenterKornacki: Why Allen is One of Michigan's All-Time Best
Dec. 26, 2016
By Steve Kornacki
MIAMI -- Kenny Allen has made his mark as one of the most versatile and accomplished kickers and punters the University of Michigan football program has ever had.
Allen did something this season that only 1940 Heisman Trophy winner Tom Harmon has done since the school began keeping detailed statistics in 1938. Allen joined Harmon in leading the Wolverines in punting average and scoring with at least 100 points in the same season.
Harmon had a 36.9-yard punting average with 117 points on 16 touchdowns, one field goal and 18 extra points.
Allen, heading into Friday night's (Dec. 30) Orange Bowl game with Florida State, has a 42.6-yard punting average and has scored 100 points with 16 field goals and 52 extra points.
This is the second consecutive year Allen has reached 100 points, and he's the only Michigan placekicker to do that. The only other Wolverines to do that were offensive stars Harmon (1939-40) and Anthony Thomas (1999-2000).
Allen holds one purely kicking record, and that's percentage of extra-point kicks with a 50-attempt minimum. He's perfect on 98 PATs.
He's made 34 of 42 field goal attempts, and his.8095 accuracy is exceeded only by Bob Bergeron (1981-84,.8285) among those with at least 15 attempts.
Allen's 43.1 career punting average would be the Michigan record, but he's 27 attempts shy of the 75 required to qualify.
Add the fact that Allen is one of college football's best at kickoffs (45 of 77 for touchbacks and a 64.2-yard average), and you have a wonderful weapon who has gone from walk-on to NFL possibilities. He'd like a shot at playing at the highest level.
"I'll do whatever they want," said Allen, "but I see myself more as a punter-kickoff guy."
Allen is 16-for-20 on field goal attempts this season and made a career best 51-yarder in a clutch situation at Iowa. But his four misses came in five consecutive attempts, and Michigan coach Jim Harbaugh opened competition for that job in practices after the Wisconsin game.
Harbaugh gets plenty of credit for developing quarterbacks and tight ends, but he also has a fine eye for technique at all positions. He turned out to be the one who noticed the primary flaw in Allen's place-kicking approach.
"During practices," said Allen, "he'll be standing two feet behind us on field goal and punt. If he sees something, he'll tell us what he thinks, and he's normally right.
"He said I was going too fast. He came up to me and said, 'Your time's too fast on field goals.' So, I said, 'All right, I'll slow it down.'"
He hasn't missed since, and his 12 consecutive field goal makes are four short of the school record.
Allen said another contributing factor to his early-season problems was having the separate leg swing motions for the three different kicks blur together.
"I work with the coaches who have helped me a lot and try to separate everything," Allen said. "It's a lot of mental reps, a lot of film, a lot of stretching, and just getting the punt technique and the field goal technique as separate as possible, and not letting them fall into one another."
Allen kept all three of his kicking roles, but Harbaugh wondered aloud if doing all the kicking might be too much for one player. How does Allen keep his leg fresh enough to do it all?
"Definitely warming up great (is important)," said Allen. "Don't over-kick, and if you're not kicking great, just stop. You don't need to kick your way out of it. Treatment after practice and taking care of your body."
It was never clearer that Allen could handle it all than in the regular season finale at Ohio State, when the No. 3 Wolverines lost a double-overtime thriller, 30-27, to the No. 2 Buckeyes.
Allen averaged 47.4 yards on seven punts and still put five of them inside the 20-yard line. He had a 67-yarder, the longest of his career, that reached the end zone and a 55-yarder downed at the OSU four-yard line.
His four kickoffs each went deep into the end zone or entirely through it, and none was returned.
He had a 28-yard field goal to open the game's scoring and a 37-yarder in the second overtime that could have been the game-winner.
"Obviously, it was the biggest game of the year," said Allen. "It was nice to perform well in that game, but the most important thing was winning, which we didn't do. But, yeah, on a personal note I was happy with the way I performed, and I think it's a testament to the hard work that we put in as a team with the coaches and other specialists I work with."
He noted the contributions of long-snapper Scott Sypniewski and Garrett Moores, whom Allen and his teammates presented the humorous Peter Mortell Holder of the Year award in a creative video they tweeted out that drew national attention. Allen also credited Jay Harbaugh and Chris Partridge, the assistants who handle most special teams practice, along with Jim Harbaugh.
Allen grew up in Fenton, Michigan, playing soccer, basketball and football. He loved the Wolverines and idolized punter Zoltan Mesko, who went on to a successful NFL career. Michigan meant so much to him that he walked on rather than accept a full-ride scholarship from Oregon State.
Now Allen talks regularly with Mesko and Jay Feely, the Michigan placekicker who played 14 years in the NFL, and has become part of the program's kicker inner circle.
"He just believed in himself and kept going," said Wolverines defensive tackle Matt Godin, also from Fenton. "I'm so proud of Kenny."
By getting and making two field goal attempts in the Orange Bowl, Allen would tie 1994 All-America placekicker Remy Hamilton for second place at Michigan with 14 consecutive made attempts. Brendan Gibbons holds the mark with 16 consecutive over the 2012 and 2013 seasons.
The game with the Seminoles will be played at Hard Rock Stadium, home of the Miami Dolphins, owned by Michigan graduate and prime athletic department benefactor Stephen M. Ross.
"I met him a couple of times," said Allen, "and he's a really good guy. He looks out for the U-M teams, and I've heard great things from some of his players in the NFL and the coaching staff here. Hopefully, we'll have a chance to say hi to him."
One of the first things Allen did in Miami, even prior to an official team practice, was go to the practice field to kick on his own. He posted a video that displayed his leg strength and accuracy with a tweet @Kenny_Allen. He drilled the top of a light post beyond the stadium's stands with a punt while wearing shorts and a T-shirt on Christmas Day.
Allen said his parents, brother and sister, and other family members will be at the Orange Bowl.
Allen's brother, Jimmy, who has signed with the National Arena League's Dayton (Ohio) Wolfpack, has the Twitter title "your moms fav kicker" @Jimmy_allen15.
Asked if Jimmy was indeed his mother's favorite kicker, Kenny said with a smile, "That's obviously not true. He has fun with that, I don't."
Their sister, Hannah, chimed in from @HannahJoAllen: "It's an ongoing debate in this household."
One thing's for sure, though. Kenny Allen is Jim Harbaugh's favorite kicker. He gave Allen a scholarship prior to last season, and he's scored 200 points and answered every challenge since.
Bowl Central
Kenny Allen: Michigan's Triple ThreatThe vicious attack of a 13-year-old girl and her mother in Manitoba ultimately led to the imprisonment of a man who repeatedly sexually abused his stepdaughter in Newfoundland.
The tragic details of what happened to his stepdaughter were outlined in a report released by Newfoundland and Labrador's Child and Youth Advocate on Aug 23. Details of the violent attack of another child and her mother are outlined in court documents from Manitoba.
He told her he would marry her and she would have his babies. - Manitoba Court document
The documents shed more light on what happened when the family lived in Newfoundland and later in central Canada.
In 2011, the 12-year-old girl was brought to an Eastern Health facility for an abortion.
The pregnancy was the result of repeated sexual assaults by the girl's stepfather that started just before the child was in Grade 6. According to the Manitoba court, the man told his stepdaughter he would marry her and she would have his babies. He took no precaution to avoid pregnancy.
The family lived in Newfoundland for five months, though the 12-year-old's mother was not with her. The Manitoba court was told the marriage to the girl's stepfather "broke down in 2007, and by 2008 the mother was a full-blown crack/cocaine addict. She was incapable of raising the children."
The 12-year-old was released back into the custody of her abuser after she received an abortion at Eastern Health, and was not screened for abuse, or given counselling.
Jacqueline Lake Kavanagh, the province's child and youth advocate, speaks to reporters following the release of her investigative report. (John Pike/CBC)
The Child Advocate details how the girl and her siblings were failed by health care and social service professionals. And how the family eventually left the province before authorities could investigate allegations against the stepfather.
An Aug. 28, 2015 judgement from Manitoba's Court of Queen's Bench outlines what happened next.
The 12-year-old, her siblings and the stepfather relocated to that province after leaving eastern Canada.
That's where the sexual abuse continued and, within a year, the girl was pregnant again.
The stepfather arranged a second abortion in Winnipeg where, as was the case in Newfoundland, a false claim was made that a teenaged boyfriend was the father. After this second abortion, the man continued to sexually assault his stepdaughter — sometimes five to six times a week, according to court documents.
More victims
The abuse spread to other victims when, in 2012, the man used a pry bar to break into the home of his stepdaughter's 13-year-old friend. He wore gloves and a hoodie at the time of the incident.
The stepfather conceded that he broke into the home intending to sexually assault the 13-year-old. - Manitoba court document
Evidence presented in court said when the girl recognized the man, he threatened to kill her, and ordered her to go to bed. When she screamed, her mother tried to help.
The man then violently attacked the mother and her 13-year-old daughter using the metal pry bar. Both were left badly bleeding with broken bones. He fled but was arrested shortly after the attack.
In court, the stepfather conceded that he broke into the home with the intention of sexually assaulting the 13-year-old friend of his stepdaughter.
Details revealed in court documents show the man was 30 when the abuse began and, while his childhood 'was not envious,' he had no prior criminal record. (John Pike/CBC) Court was told the stepdaughter was "so traumatized and conditioned to the years of abuse that it took a better part of the next year before she could reveal what he had done to her."
The man was convicted of sexual assault causing bodily harm as well as sexual assault against his stepdaughter. He was also convicted of break and enter with the intent to commit an offence and aggravated assault in the case of the 13-year-old friend and her mother.
He was sentenced to 16 years in prison.
Abuser's background
The man, who was 30 when he began abusing his stepdaughter, had no prior criminal record.
His parents separated when he was three as a result of his father's alcohol abuse and domestic violence. Following that, the two reportedly had no contact.
The boy's mother began a new relationship when he was seven and, ultimately, she "chose her new partner over her son." The man was placed in a series of foster homes until age 14 and was living on his own by 16.
Manitoba court documents state the man "experienced difficulty with alcohol," but that he maintained a healthy relationship with his mother and a biological sister. He worked primarily in renovation, demolition and construction as well as in oil industries in Newfoundland, Ontario, Alberta and Manitoba.
According to the court, the man had seemingly normal relationships with girls in his teenaged years and had no mental health issues to speak of.
Yet, the judge who presided over the Manitoba hearing said the man preyed on his stepdaughter's vulnerabilities — including that she had no mother to turn to.
"It is hard to imagine a more harmful sexual assault scenario by a parent to a young girl," the judge stated, in sentencing.Images of the World Trade Center Site Show Thermal Hot Spots on September 16 and 23, 2001.
Results of Airborne Visible/Infrared Imaging Spectrometer (AVIRIS) remote sensing data and interpretations show the distribution and intensity of thermal hot spots in the area in and around the World Trade Center on September 16 and 23, 2001. Data collected on the 16th were processed, interpreted and released to emergency response teams on the 18th of September, 2001. The September 23 data were processed, interpreted and the results released on October 12, 2001. The images of the World Trade Center site show significant thermal hot spots on Sept. 16, 2001. By Sept. 23, 2001, most of the hot spots had cooled or the fires had been put out.
The AVIRIS instrument is a National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) remote sensing instrument that measures upwelling spectral radiance in the visible through short-wavelength infrared. The instrument has 224 spectral channels (bands) with wavelengths from 0.37 to 2.5 microns (micrometers).
In response to requests from the EPA through the USGS, NASA flew AVIRIS on a De Havilland Twin Otter over lower Manhattan at mid-day on September 16 and 23, 2001. For these deployments, the Twin Otter was flown at altitudes of 6,500 and 12,500 feet. The spectral data for the maps shown here were measured at 6,500 feet and have a spatial resolution (pixel spacing) of approximately 6 feet (2 meters).
AVIRIS records the near-infrared signature of heat remotely. The accompanying maps are false color images that show the core affected area around the World Trade Center. Initial analysis of these data revealed a number of thermal hot spots on September 16 in the region where the buildings collapsed 5 days earlier. Analysis of the data indicates temperatures greater than 800oF. Over 3 dozen hot spots appear in the core zone. By September 23, only 4, or possibly 5, hot spots are apparent, with temperatures cooler than those on September 16 (Thermal Figure 1).
Thermal Figure 1. Hot spots show as orange and yellow areas. Dozens of hot spots are seen on September 16, but most had cooled or the fires had been put out by September 23.
The images (larger area shown below) also show vegetated areas as green. Water appears blue, and the smoke from the fires appears as a light blue haze. White and lighter blue areas are rooftops, roads, and concrete as well as dust and debris from the collapsed buildings. Dust, probably more than a millimeter thick, appears in shades of brown around the core WTC area on the 16th.
On the September 16th, 2001 image (Thermal Figure 2), large areas around the World Trade Centers show brownish colors, indicating the debris. On September 20, 2001 there was a significant rain storm that washed away some of the dusty debris. Reduction of the distribution of dust/debris is apparent in the September 23 image (Thermal Figure 3), and can be attributed to the cleanup effort along with the rain.
There are other red/orange spots that show in the images in the area south of the World Trade Center zone. These are hot spots from chimneys or heating exhaust vents and are normal and not other uncontrolled fires.
The AVIRIS data were processed at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena California where the data are calibrated to radiance and corrected for aircraft yaw, pitch, and roll. Acquisition and calibration of AVIRIS data at JPL are under the direction of Robert O. Green. The data were then transmitted to the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), Imaging Spectroscopy Group in Denver, Colorado, under the direction of Dr. Roger N. Clark. Atmospheric and ground calibrations were applied to derive apparent surface reflectance and maps were then made of surface materials. The USGS imaging spectroscopy group includes Dr. Gregg Swayze, Eric Livo, and Todd Hoefen.
Thermal Figure 2. AVIRIS image from September 16, 2001. Hot spots show as orange and yellow areas. Yellow is hotter than red (because of color mixing in the way the 3-color image was produced).
Thermal Figure 3. AVIRIS image from September 23, 2001. Only a couple of hot spots remain in view.
Thermal Figure 4. Index for the locations of some of the hot spots observed on September 16, 2001.
Temperature of the Hot Spots
Remote measurement of the temperature is difficult because the source of the thermal emission can be less than the field of view of the measuring instrument. In that case a thermal sensor has an ambiguous solution: a hotter temperature of a smaller area or lower temperature of a larger area can result in the same total received thermal radiation.
A spectrometer, however, overcomes the ambiguity problem above, because the shape of the thermal spectrum can be used to derive a unique temperature, and the intensity gives the area of the emitting source. If a large enough spectral range is covered, a range of temperatures and the area of each can be derived. In the near infrared spectral range of AVIRIS, reflected solar radiation also contributes to the signal. The solution to the generalized problem involving all these effects is given in Clark (1979).
We derived temperatures using two methods: calibrated radiance, and derived reflectance following Clark's (1979) methods. In derived reflectance, thermal radiation is the Planck response divided by the solar spectrum. This has several effects: 1) the data are corrected for atmospheric absorption and scattering, 2) the reflected solar component can be readily assessed and compensated for, and 3) the ratio of the Black-Body response by the solar spectrum produces a very steep curve that is readily distinguishable from reflected sunlight and reflectance of surface materials.
Simple temperature derivation from derived reflectance is illustrated in Thermal Figure 5a and b. Here the hot spot is assumed to fill the pixel. The thermal response of hot spot A (from Thermal Figure 4) shows the AVIRIS response higher than the 800 kelvin curve. The 800 Kelvin temperature is a lower limit to the temperature. While the upper limit might be the 900 Kelvin curve, we see the slopes do not match. As temperatures increase, the peak in Black Body emission moves to shorter wavelengths and the slope of the curve decreases at positions on the short wavelength side of the peak (the case here).
Hot spot C (Thermal Figure 5b) shows similar effects. For hot spots covering the full area of the pixel, the temperature must be greater than 700 Kelvin. At about 1.3 microns, the model at 800 Kelvin matches the AVIRIS data, but the 800 Kelvin curve has a higher slope. This indicates the hot spot is smaller than the size of the pixel, but hotter than 800 Kelvin.
Solutions that include reflected solar radiation, hot spot temperature and hot spot area are shown in Thermal Figures 6a and b. Hot spot A, which from Thermal Figure 5 has a temperature greater than 800 Kelvin, is found to have a 1000 Kelvin temperature in a spot covering ~15% of a pixel, or 0.56 square meter. Similarly, hot spot C is found to have a 900 kelvin temperature over 20% of a pixel, or 0.8 square meter.
The sensitivity of the solution of area and temperature is illustrated in Thermal Figure 7. An excellent fit is obtained for hot spot C with a 900 Kelvin spot filling 20% of the pixel. At 1000 Kelvin, only 8% is required but the fit is noticeably worse. For temperatures in the 800-1000 Kelvin range, temperature accuracy is estimated to be ± 30 Kelvin and the area ± 5%. For smaller spots, like spot G in Table 1, the temperature accuracy is similar, but the accuracy on such small areas is approximately +5%, -0.5%. For example, decreasing the temperature to 1000 Kelvin (from 1020 Kelvin) on spot G increases the fractional area to about 5%.
Positions, temperatures and equivalent areas for hot spots A-H are given in Table 1 and the geometrically rectified location map is shown in Thermal Figure 8.
Thermal Figure 5a.
Thermal Figure 5b
Thermal Figure 6a
Larger 13 KB image Thermal Figure 6b
Larger 16 KB image Thermal Figure 7.
Table 1 Thermal Hot Spot Data Location Temperature Area Hot Spot N Latitude W Longitude (Kelvin) % FOV sq meter A 40o 42' 47.18" 74o 00' 41.43" 1000 15 0.56 B 40o 42' 47.14" 74o 00' 43.53" 830 2 0.08 C 40o 42' 42.89" 74o 00' 48.88" 900 20 0.8 D 40o 42' 41.99" 74o 00' 46.94" 790 20 0.8 E 40o 42' 40.58" 74o 00' 50.15" 710 10 0.4 F 40o 42' 38.74" 74o 00' 46.70" 700 10 0.4 G 40o 42' 39.94" 74o 00' 45.37" 1020 1 0.04 H 40o 42' 38.60" 74o 00' 43.51" 820 2 0.08
Positions are in degrees-minutes-decimal seconds, datum WGS84.
Position accuracy is estimated to be approximately +/- 6 meters (18 feet).
Thermal Figure 8. Geometrically rectified image of the WTC core region showing hot spot locations.
Additional temperature analysis: ftp://popo.jpl.nasa.gov/pub/outgoing/WTC_AVIRIS_HOT.htm
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Back to document Table of Contents
For further information, contact:
Dr. Roger N. Clark
rclark@usgs.gov
Link to the AVIRIS JPL data facility)
For information about AVIRIS, contact:
Robert O. Green
AVIRIS Experiment Scientist
rog@spectra.jpl.nasa.govThe last straw for Mike Malone, fiery head coach of a rising League Pass darling searching for the effortless offense that made fans swoon, came when Nikola Jokic lollygagged getting back on defense during practice last week.
"I jumped him," Malone says. "I jumped him very vocally." Jokic protested that perhaps Malone should yell at the person who turned the ball over.
"I don't give a s--- about the turnover," Malone shot back. "Get your ass back on defense." Jokic protested again -- "I say what I think, like always," he said with a chuckle -- and Malone yanked him with one last zinger: "If you don't want to play, get out."
It was a small window into a franchise facing pressure again -- pressure on Jokic to serve as centerpiece before he turns 23, and on a team that ranked an embarrassing 29th in points allowed per possession last season to get enough stops for its first playoff berth since 2013. Editor's Picks Lowe: 10 things I like and don't like, including Kyrie-Horford wizardry Zach Lowe highlights Andre Drummond's transformation, Dame Lillard's dishes, Kyle Kuzma's skills and more.
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Last spring, Malone warned Jokic of the coming burden. He needed to get in better shape, and stay even-keeled. "When s--- doesn't go your way, sometimes you become a baby," Malone told him. "You take bad fouls. You take bad shots. Your body language does this and that. You think it's just about you. But what do you think Jamal [Murray] is looking at? What do you think Gary Harris is looking at? All eyes are on you. If you do that stuff, it filters down. At the end of the day, Nikola knows I love him."
The team knows that is a lot to ask of a 22-year-old second-round pick who barely registered as a prospect until his late teens -- a hangdog, deadpan comic and self-described ex-"fat point guard" the Nuggets didn't even speak to before picking him 41st in 2014. This is a man who had to kick a Coca-Cola addiction measured in liters per day, who still wrestles his gigantic older brothers, Nemanja and Strahinja, in the home they share. ("I made Nemanja tap yesterday," he says, refusing to show video proof.)
"It's almost irresponsible of us to think he can carry the weight of our organization already," says Tim Connelly, Denver's president of basketball operations.
That's one reason they signed Paul Millsap to a three-year, $90 million megadeal with a team option in Year 3 -- that and Millsap's ability to cinch up the defense. When the team gathered in a private room at the Boulder Cork for dinner the night before its first practice, Malone delivered his keynote message: "Our offense was great," he told them. "Our defense was s---." He launched a PowerPoint presentation filled with charts and graphs showing the varying ways in which the Nuggets' defense failed -- before anyone had even been served alcohol.
Things are a little better. The Nuggets rank 18th in points allowed per possession after scrapping their old defense for an aggressive scheme in which they swarm ball-handlers near the 3-point arc -- a style Millsap played in Atlanta:
That is a challenge for a plodder like Jokic. Denver sat Jokic back in the paint last season, but it didn't work; opposing point guards saw a runway, revved up, and finished over and around him. Opponents feasted both from deep and at the basket. Malone was determined to at least make them pick up dribbles and swing the ball.
One good sign: only 28.5 percent of opponent shots have come at the rim, the lowest share in the league, per Cleaning The Glass. Whether that matters given the tradeoffs is unclear. Opponents are shooting well in the restricted area -- 63.5 percent overall, almost 68 percent with Jokic on the floor -- and passing around the traps, into more 3-pointers. The expected effective field-goal percentage of Denver's opponents -- based on the location of shots and nearby defenders -- is a tick higher this season, per Second Spectrum data.
Still: the players have bought in after spending the majority of practice time on defense. They are flying around in rotation. There is even a little anxiety |
the SCEJA (Sony Computer Entertainment Japan Asia) 2015 press conference on Sept. 15. The event is a precursor to the Tokyo Game Show, where Sony is set to unveil the titles that were either developed for or ported to its consoles, handhelds and game platforms, which will begin on Sept. 18, 3 p.m. EST.
Ikenie To Yuki no Setsuna, also known by its English name Project Setsuna, is the current project of Tokyo RPG Factory, a Japanese game developer, the company behind popular titles like Tomb Raider, the Final Fantasy franchise, Dragon Quest, Thief, Hitman and Kingdom Hearts.
The game lets the player progress using events and battles, suggesting that it sticks to the basic progression system of most RPGs. The Japanese publication also reports that Ikenie To Yuki no Setsuna is now 60 percent complete and has incorporated the Square Enix Active Time Battle system.
The announced PS4 and PS Vita title is expected to involve a melancholic feel because the entire theme is built around "sadness," which the Japanese word setsunasa connotes. This is also evident in the game's debut trailer that is currently posted on Square Enix Co. Ltd.'s YouTube channel.
The voiceover is not hyped, unlike most game trailers, and denotes some form of depression. Even the game's landing page on Square Enix' website has a sad, eerie background music.
Ikenie To Yuki no Setsuna looks good and refined. Further scrutiny of the in-game trailer suggests that it has taken some hints from the story-driven RPGs that were released during the 90s, namely the Chrono game franchise, Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy.
The game's similarities to the 1990s and early 2000s RPGs are solidified further by the premise of sacrifice in the story.
According to the trailer's voiceover translation posted by Disqus user tabegoro in the comment section of Gematsu, Ikenie To Yuki no Setsuna details the journey of an escorted 18-year old girl, who possesses great magic powers, to the ends of the Earth where she sacrifices herself to appease the monsters that are rampaging on her island.
The sacrificial ritual, known as Setsuna, is supposed to be held once every decade. However, due to the increasing number of victims that have fallen prey to the monsters, the populace decides that another sacrifice in less than ten years after the last one is needed for peace and tranquility to be regained.
Nostalgia will play a big part in the sales the game makes. The same sales will also be a big factor for the future titles to be released under Ikenie To Yuki no Setsuna.
"It's important to create new IPs, but creating big IPs is difficult... Having been looking at the game industry up until now, it's quite common to see [a video game series] take the form of a trilogy. In that sense, we need to have at least three [titles] before knowing whether it will continue growing or not," said Yosuke Matsuda, Square Enix President.
Ikenie To Yuki no Setsuna (Project Setsuna) is due to be released in Japan in January 2016.
ⓒ 2018 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.There are a lot of people who have taken their objections to the point of taking up arms against the systemic threat of American influence they see as derogatory.
Many of us have been struggling in our attempts to regain the original Freedoms that were once the foundation of our great nation.
The problems have been visited on too many countries, and the backers of all this are found everywhere.
Those involved have used all of the heart felt catch phrases in order to engage the populous of the world as a whole. These include, but are not limited to : Patriotism, Loyalty, Honor, and an unfounded superiority. You have to do things, act in a certain way, and be as we tell you to be, or else. Most obvious is the ongoing assault on any person, place or thing that takes issue with their taking of everyone’s Freedoms. Second most obvious are the multiple ‘trade’ deals that are only good for those in power, commercial or governmental. Outing the ‘content’ of these goes well beyond the social idealism, and is now right out in broad daylight. A creeping/creepy form of disguised Socialism that is practiced in an outright Fascist manner…comply or die. Anyone seen the paid for riots in several cities in America? These are the end result of Hillary being put out and the complete loss by the now Socialist Democratic Party, that used to be The People’s Party, and a protector of the little guy.
In looking into all the many facets of this intricately convoluted complex mess, I found a cute little basis truth that does cut through it all.
This ideal goes back to the beginning of civilization as it is known. The problem is so basic, that everyone in any position of power has been forced to adopt it wholeheartedly. There can be no hesitation of acceptance and compliance is required to such a depth, that it becomes a matter of being able to breath, heart to beat, and is so prolific it becomes critical to your very being. This is that eat, sleep, and breath it kind of thing, can’t live without it, totally Addicted. Cell phones, texting, etc. Get the picture?
There are many who have fallen victim of exactly this kind of social mind control. There are then many places where the partial truth of, ‘There’s a battle on for your mind’ rings too true.
No war has ever been truly won. Notice that all ‘debt’, public or private, always falls to people who had nothing to do with whatever war had or has happened? Within this are ALL those countries who are still paying for others debts.
ALL the financial industry has the sweetest deal of not having to be responsible, because their speculative actions are simply transferred to a ‘public responsibility’. This is only one small part of using We The People (think of Ferguson, Missouri) as ‘Revenue Generators’ and scape goats.
That is the mild form of one facet of the Controls used against the basic idea of Freedom. In reality, it is actually, rather tame compared to the balance of this radical social psychology known as a ‘psychological operational’ adjustment to our way of thinking. Feel like there just might be a ‘war on for your mind’?
In order for an idea and/or writings/records to be ‘immune’ from editing, adjustment, and any critical thinking/consideration of them, ‘They have to be put in a form that will not be challenged’. Take a close look at ALL religious records/books and each of them say exactly, ‘Thou Shalt’ or ‘Shall Not’, all of them.
I give you Christian Soldiers and Muslim Jihadists, as all the same, no difference. Many will ask just exactly how I can do that? It all becomes very simple and obvious.
In order for anything to be presented as ‘untouchable’, the ‘Source’ has to be ‘untouchable’. Any other way, and it won’t work. Like butterfly wings, touch them, and it never gets off the ground.
Religion/belief systems rely on the fact that what is taught is untouchable, Because of where ‘it’ comes from. ‘God says, so you have to obey, no matter what you are told, think, or feel about it, Your ‘Mission’ comes from God, and it is critical that you obey.
When looking into the whole of these ideas, don’t bother to only rely on other’s ‘interpretation’, rely on your ability to think. Then compare these truths with what you see, hear, and experience. Use your ‘God given Freedom of will’ and don’t take anyone’s word for any of it. Believe or not, as you so choose.
HOWEVER, there is a serious problem in the wood pile. One that is insidious, nasty, and acts like a song that gets stuck in your mind.
One in history is, ‘Manifest Destiny’, and is the basis of most of the evil that men do to each other. It is based in an assumption of being ‘ordained’ (approved/required by God), and is purely man’s idea. A preparation meeting by The Secretary of Defense held and proposed that, ‘we were on a sanctified mission from God almighty to devastate the heathen population as good christian soldiers’. The ‘search and destroy’ missions left burnt spots where villages and lives once were. In America’s past, our military could not defeat the indigenous people, known as The Indians. So, diseases that these people had no defense against were introduced. Some 50 – 85% died.
With religion being an untouchable, the other heart strings were brought into play. Honor, Patriotism, Loyalty, and being good Christian Soldiers. ALL these are still employed to this day.
What are we fighting for? Who is telling us who and where to fight? Why is war or using arms, the only way?
All the various groups, militias, insurgents, and rebels are ALL going about this in the wrong way. How do I say this? It is not an individual person we are fighting against, rather it is this sanctimonious righteous ordainment of only a select few who are causing most of these problems. Exactly when were these ‘status quo’ rulers given this authority? Blood lines, ownership of everything, and we have more and better guns than you do? Really?
I strongly recommend that all who read this, reconsider that the real fight is with these select few and not with any people or person. You see, there is no ‘face’ to attach tyranny to, as these people hide in the shadows, or behind a belief system.
Each who gets a copy of this, needs to reconsider their position. Where exactly do you stand? More directly, do the people want the perpetual/continual state of war? Considering the ‘refugee crisis’, wouldn’t it be better for these people to be sent to a country that agrees with and holds the same beliefs, and culture?
There is a covert, undercover, war raging right now to restore the Sovereignty of people and nations. This is a war for ‘survival’ of both governments and people.
Join with us that we may bring about a world that looks into the ‘content of a person’s character’, and does not criminalize refugees, freedom, and sovereignty. That utopia so many deserve, can be ours, as it originally was.
Be of good cheer, as ‘we’ seem to be winning.
DrakePosted by Darren Urban on March 14, 2014 – 4:00 pm
A quiet day, finally, around the Cardinals. I know many were hoping for Antonio Cromartie free agent news but there isn’t any. Until he signs somewhere though, I wouldn’t rule out the Cardinals. Again, if he comes, it’ll be on the Cards’ terms. Beyond that, I think the Cards will keep looking at options but the market is going to be a buyer’s market now. That’s right up Steve Keim’s alley.
— The Cardinals have about $11 million in cap space. I don’t know if that yet includes Ted Ginn’s deal. It’s definitely not going to count the new contract for LB Matt Shaughnessy, since Shaughnessy hasn’t actually signed yet, and there might be a couple other lesser deals yet to be counted. That will come soon. Still, it’s plenty of room to work. It doesn’t hurt the space that Jared Veldheer’s cap number in the first season is just $2.5M and Ginn will be a mere $1.75M.
— Overthecap.com, which broke down the Ginn deal, notes that $2 million of Ginn’s $3.25M salary for 2015 is guaranteed if he is on the roster on the third day of the league year next year. In other words, if the Cards decide to release him it will be right around the time free agency begins.
— The Cardinals exercised the option bonus they needed to pay linebacker Daryl Washington this week. Washington’s assault case is still ongoing — his next court date is scheduled for April 23 — but he’s a cornerstone of this defense and isn’t going anywhere. There is still a chance he is suspended depending on the outcome of the court case, but the Cards will deal with it.
— It was a fruitful and smart start to free agency for the Cardinals. Get a left tackle, get a speed receiver/return man, get some interior OL depth, get running back depth. Re-sign a key linebacker like Shaughnessy, and as much as they wanted Karlos Dansby back, let him walk when the money got crazy. I also think, the way Keim operates, that from this point forward is even more important for the Cards. They have an excellent sales pitch right now and two guys in Keim and Bruce Arians who know how to sell it. There will be another Dansby-Abraham-Winston or two this offseason.
— As I pointed out on Twitter last night (@cardschatter, if you want more immediate updates from yours truly), we will have a video on azcardinals.com soon about Fitzgerald’s trip up in an F-16. Until there, here’s a taste of Fitz in the cockpit.
Tags: Antonio Cromartie Posted in BlogIllinois Comptroller Susana Mendoza is urging Gov. Bruce Rauner to step up the pace in dealing with the state’s debt.
Brian Mackey reports on what Illinois is — and isn't — doing about its more than $14 billion in unpaid bills.
She’s urging him to borrow money — authorized by the new budget — in order to begin paying off more than $14 billion dollars in overdue bills.
"You should know that this debt is costing you, the taxpayer, $2 million a day, at up to 12 percent interest in late-payment interest penalties," Mendoza said Monday in a video posted online.
So far, that interest alone exceeds $800 million dollars. That's more than Illinois' new budget spends on the University of Illinois; Chicago State University; and Eastern, Western and Northern Illinois universities — combined.
Asked whether Rauner supports borrowing to pay down the backlog, the administration did not answer directly, instead trying to redirect attention to the comptroller's office.
Rauner spokeswoman Laurel Patrick suggested Mendoza sweep $600 million in unspent money from state funds — a process authorized by this year's budget legislation — and begin paying down the backlog with that.
"The Governor's final decision on bonding requires us to first know how much of the bill backlog can be addressed through means other than bonding," Patrick said in an email. "That is why we ask the Comptroller to begin reducing the backlog of bills immediately."
But Mendoza spokesman Abdon Pallasch says that argument is a red herring, since Mendoza has already begun that process. He also says it won't be nearly enough money to really address the state's debt.
"Even if both sides did everything they could possibly do, it still would not get through the Rauner backlog," Pallasch said in a telephone interview. He also said the depth of the backlog means there's no need for Rauner to figure out how much to borrow: "He should do the max that he can do, and we should do the max that we can do.”
Later in the day, taking questions from reporters, Rauner seemed to indicate he was skeptical of the plan to issue bonds to more quickly pay down the backlog: "More borrowing on top of the spending behavior of the state government is not an optimal answer."
As someone who values being knowledgeable about Illinois, please support this public radio station by clicking on the, "Donate" button at the top of this page. If you're already a supporter, thank you!So I lost my virginity to Lucy... a guest Apr 30th, 2015 593 Never a guest593Never
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rawdownloadcloneembedreportprint text 28.06 KB I want to share my first experience with Lucy, because I think a few interesting things happened, but also as a diary to future me. As of this writing I’m on the morning after, didn't get too much sleep, so I'm still a bit affected by it, but it's maybe 13 hours since we took it. However, the day of posting is a few days later. I warn you, this text is really long, and is not as interesting to read as it was for me to experience :D A little background first. I went over to a life long friend of mine on saturday night to hang out, actually to try some MDMA while sober and just hang out and see how that was, we were there with one other friend. I had a tiny bit of MDMA left over lying around which we split between three of us, just a bit to get into a good mood for maybe an hour, nothing more. The two of us went out and headed to a bar to meet some friends who were worryingly drunk. We were entertained and had a laugh at their drunkenness, and we had few beers ourselves. I asked my friend if I could crash his place, and we headed on our way. Meanwhile he told me that he was to meet up with a friend the next day and listen to his previous experience with LSD and that I could tag along if I wanted to. So we went home, felt a sleep and woke up around 1PM. So we’re having a relaxed morning and go about our business. The weather is dreary, it's raining a bit and it's cold. We meet the friend near the central station and sit outside for about two hours to listen to his experience and advice about LSD. He tells us some interesting thing, mostly good advice and how to avoid bad experiences, but also about some the things he's seen and experienced himself. He has only done it a few times himself, but he tells of some pretty horrible stories involving going to the hospital. I've read about LSD on the internet a little and I have a general idea of what LSD is like and how to get a good trip. I've done mushrooms once before around 2 years ago when I went to Australia. Anyway, so it turns out this friend actually brought some LSD with him to sell. This casual encounter between these two friends turn into a drug deal. Despite some of the horrible stories he's told we agree that this is something we want to experience for ourselves. I don't know what the price of LSD usually is around my place, but we agree two buy two 150ug tabs for the equivalent of $80. Pretty pricey compared to what I've seen on the darknet, but hey, he gave us a good two hour preach and a lot of advice, that's a fair price for fair work. So we buy the LSD and head home. It's still raining and cold, and I'm basically freezing my ass off. We head on the train and ride through the city. We go back to his place. My initial idea was to head home somewhat after that, but then we got home and on our computers and started reading. Being a redditor I immediately hop over to /r/LSD to check out all sorts of good advice and general information about LSD. I also hop over to erowid and read some of the basic information about dosage, effects, etc. My friend starts making a playlist with the music we thought would be nice to our trip, that we would plan a few weeks or months ahead, or so we thoght. The more we read, the more intrigued and curious we get. We had already decided that our first time was to be a mild dosage so that we would either have a good experience or no experience whatsoever. We go for a smoke and get talking. At this point we're contemplaining taking a quarter of a tab each, so, in theory, we would consume a little less than 40ug each. Not much, but the idea was just to get a slight feeling before going on "the real trip" some other day. We head back inside and cut up the tab in a half and two quarters and take one each. I write a note for myself, as the friend who sold us the LSD had advised us to do. The damn marker wont write on my hand (I had seen a picture on here with a guy who did it and I thought it would be a cool idea). So I start writing, and the only thing I can get out of the marker is "Reality check: you're..." before the marker gives out, and I decide to finish my sentence on a piece of paper "... on acid :) have a nice trip, see you tomorrow". On the other side I write notes on the date and time taken and the dosage. We start by playing some guitar and keyboard, and it soon kick in. Very very lightly, but just above the threshold. By now it is 11 in the evening on sunday and we head out. This is a quiet neighbourhood, and the streets are almost completely empty. We go down to a nearby playground and sit on a swing. We walk around for a bit and Lucy starts hitting my friend what seems a tiny bit more than me. We both realise that this dose is probably not going to hit us very hard or at all, however it seemed that my friend was a bit more under the influence than I was. We decide that we should try the rest of the tab and we head home and cut it up. We decided that I should get a bit more so that I could 'catch up' to my friend We put the small tabs on hour tongues and go for a walk. This is maybe around 1 hour and 20 minutes after the first tab. We head down to his garden and sit on a bench under an old chestnut tree. A bench we've apropriately named "the bench of philosophy" many years ago. This is a particular spot that I've had many great experiences on, during childhood, growing up and especially in adolescence, with various mixes between weed, cigarettes, a guitar, beer, sunshine or rain, winter or summer on different occasions. It's located on the corner of the property on a small hill facing towards the street. My friend brought his guitar and he plays a few tunes that I hum along to. People pass us on the street and some give an acknowlegding nod or say something along "sounds great, guys" (I know it probably doesn't, but I don't really care, and people are just up for a little entertainment amid their daily doings). After sitting for a while we decide for a change in setting and head out to the streets, which, by this time have become pretty quiet. I'm still not feeling much but I'm generally feeling good, having a positive feeling about whats to come. I'm calm, yet excited. We head over to a local park which is a fairly large park. The park was renovated only a few years ago and they set up nice lighting of the trees and bushes here and there. We are curious and look at every piece of light installation along the way. I start getting very mild hallucinations, and the colors that are projected by the light hitting the plants start getting more contrast but it still really isn't that much. It's interesting and some of the thing I see with the light on the plants remind me of something similar that happened when I was on shrooms two years back. Inside the park there is a newly renovated skate park where we sit down for a cigarette. We swallow the rest of the tab and head in. We sit quietly and the smoke is just mesmerizing. I feel as if when I smoke a cigarette, I get a bit more calm, and it seems like the effects fade away a bit, little do I know this is only the beginning. After the cigarette, we head over to a neighboring playground, which have weird little playhouses, with small holes to crawl around in. One of the playhouses has holes so small that you really have to squeeze through. It really reminds me of some dreams I've previously had where I'm out in nature on a summers day and find small weird holes or tunnels that I often have to squeeze really hard to get through. And when I finally get though I usually end up a very nice place. A small hidden stream which I can take for a ride or some sort of other really cool place. I was very claustrophobic as a child and sometimes I often take stairs over elevators. It is not very prevalent and this point in my life though. So I decide that it would be cool to try and climb in thought this tiny hole, and I emerge at the other end where I can see my friend, but it is obvious that I wont fit through, so I hop back out and decide to try one of the many rabbit holes this playground has to offer. At this point the park is completely empty. We haven't met a single soul for ages and are not under the impression that there are other people around. We've seen the lights of some cars passing but that's it. Here we decide to head into one of the bigger holes. My friend goes first and this one is like a wooden spiral staircase that just goes round and round and up. My friend is a bit ahead of me and he's probably delightfully singing or something like that. I catch up to him and I'm right behind him, in what seems like the top of the tower. All of a sudden he curses loudly as if he's hit his head on something really hard. I get worried that he might have smashed his head into the ceiling. But then he curses again, I ask if he's okay and he curses once more. At this point I'm starting to get worried, and go up to him and grab him, mind you we're still bent over in this small hole. He yells that someone is here hitting him and rightly enough I see the silhouette of stick swinging towards him and a voice growling something inaudible. My friend falls over and tumbles down and I'm like "what the motherfucking fuck is going on let's get the fuck out of this fuck!" I try to grab him from the ground and pull him out, don't know how well I succeeded, but we finally manage to get out. We start walking away, we're both really shocked and the adrenaline is pumping, more so in my friend than in me, because he was obviously the person who was assaulted. We hurry up and get the fuck out of there, but without running. We realize that the person is not intending to follow us, but was probably just some hobo trying to sleep or something. This experience really got us on our toes and we just needed to get out of the park into the street light and sit for a smoke to calm down. Really shaken by this absurd and unpleasant experience, we discuss what just happened and are both recognizing that this in fact did happen and it's not something we made up. The LSD has really not kicked in that much and I'm GRATEFUL it hasn't. After a while we both calm down. I feel my friends head and feel a few bumps. He's worried he might have gotten a small concussion, but I calm him down and assure him that if he would have had that, he would probably have experienced nausea, maybe fainting etc. (had en experience not so long ago that had me check up on some symptoms) He too calmed a bit more down, still shaken and talking about this we move on. We head on down the road and go down some streets adjacent to the park. This is where I feel it start kicking in. This is maybe 2½ hours from the first small tab and an hour or so from the second. My arms become heavy, then light and then heavy again. My body feels a bit heavy, but I'm still energized and it's not like I feel like sitting down or lying. I start to get a bit hungry (we ate a pretty decent meal just previously to taking the first tab, but still I get hungry) I also become slightly nauseated, and feel a little headache, I haven't had much water this day, but drank plenty before leaving the house, so I don't feel dehydrated and I know I'm safe. It starts kicking in for my friend too and we're both giggling, soon forgotten about the encounter with the man in the playground hut. We head home, because I had left my money there and I wanted something like a candy bar to get my blood sugar back and hopefully rid me of some of the nausea and headache. We enter the nice and warm room, coming from the cold outside we immediately feel good. We drink a nice warm cup of tea to get some heat back into our bodies and we both really feel it kicking in at the same time, this is probably due to the nice warmth of the home and the tea. I feel really relaxed and generally good. I take the teabag and try to drop into the cup from a distance, but in stead I hit an adjacent piece of paper. I do it over and over again until the piece on paper is smeared with tea. I took a [picture](http://imgur.com/LDVDSZm) so you can see. My friends room is a bit messy, and he finds his hippie costume he got from a previous job. I put it on and find myself entering a whole new age that I haven't experienced. We put on some music and start dancing around. Some of the music doesn't say me much, but as soon as he puts on some beegees I just really feel the groove. We decide that while we're coming up it's a good idea to keep our hands busy, so we decide to clean his room while dancing to the music. And by clean I don't mean scrubbing every single corner of it, just moving some of his clothes to the closet, throwing out some trash and relocation some used cups to the kitchen. We're having a good time doing this, and we don't feel as it is something we have to do, it's just a fun way to keep occupied. We are now warm again and decide to go outside and buy said candy bar and some more tobacco. Once again we head down to "the bench of philosophy", this time with a frisbee. We smoke a cigarette and enjoy ourselves in the comfy corner of the property. We sit down and talk for a while, we actually talk during most of the trip. Mostly we talk about how we feel, if we think we're having slight visuals, and generally about what we're experiencing. We hop over his fence onto the street (this is just a quicker way to get out of the garden) and start playing a bit frisbee. It's still cold but there is absolutely no wind and the skies have cleared. No rain, just street lights and stars. We start heading down the road as we throw the frisbee to each other. We're making some pretty decent throws, but catching it is a little harder than normal. I'm making sure I don't run into obstacles on the street. We walk down and finally get near the shop. It's getting pretty late now, it's around 2PM (I'm assuming), but the local kebab shop is still open, so we decide to head in for something to eat. Outside the shop, a man is sitting, eating a late night kebab. He looks a bit at us, and my friend just politely nods at him. I head in and order a falafel with a salty yoghurt drink called ayran. We wait for the food, as the man outside heads in to give his plate to the chef behind the counter as he says something along the line of "what are you looking at?". I get a little nervous, as he looks like a sketchy kind of person. Promptly after this he hums something like "we're looking at the birds". My friend quickly catches this as some sort of song that I don't know about, so I chill out a bit once again. He puts out his hand as to greet me, "ArduinoSmith?" I quicly reply with "Adam?". I thought I could recognise him, a guy from my kindergarden. He disregards my reply "Oh I thought you looked like an ArduinoSmith". He must have misinterpreted my reply, or I must have stated it wrong. I thought this guy was Adam, and he thought I was Adam. He talks a bit to my friend and ask us how our night is going, so I calm down and try to gather my thoughts. I'm really confused right about now, but get that he's not Adam from the kindergarden, he's another person from my kindergarden. As he's about to walk out the door I ask him: "[Name of kindergarden]?". And he replies "yeah!" So we talk a bit, and it's fun to run into him again. He's a big guy and you can see he's seen some trouble and handled it. He seems tough, but we've made a neutral relationship. We were pals back in kindergarden, and I don't fear he would hurt me although he looks like a toughie that could and probably would rough you up pretty good over weird looks. We ask how each other are doing, I tell him he looks to be doing good for himself (he was pretty overweight back then, but now he just seem like he had trained that away). We say our goodbyes and my food is ready. We head outside with the food, and we are laughing at things right now. I still don't see any visuals but at this time I'm pretty influenced by Lucy. We talk briefly about the latest encounter and how it was nice seeing him again etc. He probably knew we were on something. I'm sure he's tried his fair share of drugs. As I stand outside, my friend decides it would be fun if I just walk into the store with the food in my hand to buy some tobacco, and I agree. we head for the store which is right around the corner. Right before I enter I crack down laughing. I quickly gather myself and head in with the food and open drink in my hand. The lady goes behind the counter and I just start laughing hysterically. Haha, she knows, but she's probably seen worse so I disregard it. I tell her the tobacco I want as I keep laughing. I make the payment as my friend tries to strike up a small talk with her. We head back out. I feel a bit awkward about it, but I don't really care what she or anyone else thinks. We go around the corner again and sit down to devour this delicious food. Before too long, the food is gone and we head back towards his home. I'm starting to get a bit tired, but the nausea and headache is slowly disappearing. We sit down again on the bench of philosophy and just really start to feel the trip. By now the time is around 3PM, and we start talking about all sorts of things. I get more and more tired as I lean back and just feel the trip. Mind you, we're sitting under this huge chestnut tree which has very young spring leaves. A street lamp illuminates all the fresh leaves and I start to feel a bit with one under this huge "deku tree". My friend tells me that he saw a picture of this very tree from the 1870's and it's just a small young deku. I start to think a bit about how it must feel to be a tree, just standing in the same place for decades, watching the world change around you, different kids climbing in the tree making cubby houses, growing older and eventually getting kids themselves. I can feel that a tree has a different life circle as us humans and it really is fascinating. I think a bit about what happens to me when I'm gone. I decompose, I recompose to take the form of other things. Soil, plants, air. The borrowed molecules that make up my body will in a timely manner become part of the world around me, the earth, the universe. And I don't feel bad about it as I previously have. It feels right. Some of my worst fears about having a trip on acid have been to think about this too much, the fear of death that resides in some, if not all of us. (Any tips on how to tackle these kinds of thoughts in future trips and just in life are greatly appreciated) At one point I just stare at a point in the scenery with a sort of blank look in my eyes. My vision is focused on being still and and not focused (if it makes any sense), and everything just starts to wobble around. I calmly tell my friend what is going on without losing focus of the visuals I'm seeing. He tries to do as I, and he sees it too. This is pretty wicked and it feels good. Not strong visuals but I'm more than satisfied. It's starting to get a bit cold and I can see in the distance that the sky is becoming slightly lighter. The sun is rising, and I realise I haven't seen sun light at all during this trip so far. The time is approaching 4PM, and I feel pretty smashed and ready to go to bed, but as the light becomes more prevalent I feel like going for another walk. My friend has to go to work the next day at 11PM (he just got a new job in a café making sandwiches last week), so he's not keen on going for a long walk, but he agrees to go anyway, realizing he probably wont be able to fall asleep anyway. So we head on our way, and the scenery is just awesome. The colors of the skies are really mesmerizing and just keep on becoming more so. The bright colors are really making me feel trippy even though the height of the trip is past us. We're finally on the first stages of the come down. I start to feel a new kind of calm and my thoughts feel clean, firm and aware. We head towards the light, and at this point the light from the sky is making the plants look very colorful and intense. I can see each new branch that has emerged after the winter stopped and the birds are lightly singing. We reach a wall. This is where the trains run through, and we decide to head up on the empty trains station. No trains leaving until 45 minutes - nice, we'll have the place to ourselves for a bit. I look up and it hits me. There is a perfect clear view over the horizon, we're raised above the streets and we can the sky is just absolutely gorgeous. I feel in control of my body again but the colors and contrasts is just overwhelming. We stand there and talk for a while. We talk about the trip we took to Australia together and how a psychedelic trip like this in a lot of ways is similar to going on travels. It reminded me of the time I was on mushrooms in Australia where I had talked about the exact same thing. I remember thinking back to the time I had there and some of the people I met. I think about how there are many paths to choose in life, but ultimately you can only take one. That path will be strung up by the many choices the future holds into one string that is the past path you have already |
with a higher percentage of women than any other in Canadian history.
Alberta has become a kind of social laboratory, unique in North America, to test whether a near-majority of women in a government caucus makes a change in style and substance. The verdict is already in — they do, as shown both by Notley’s conciliatory style and the NDP’s advancement of women and minorities.
The more obvious this becomes, the more the language escalates. It slimes its way from women to the LGBTQ community and back again.
There are often death threats more specific than oblique hints of shooting and dead meat. Jansen also omitted some language that Wanner surely wouldn’t have allowed: various synonyms for female organs, for instance.
After reading her list, she made what she called a “simple request” of all MLAs:
“If you are stunned by the words you have heard, if you reject the inherent violence behind them and you know that harassment and abuse, even if it’s verbal, even if it’s online, and even if it’s directed at a political opponent, is poison — let us be strong and clear in our resolve …
“Please oppose it. Don’t ignore it. Don’t look the other way. Don’t excuse it. Our daughters are watching us. They are watching the challenges facing women in politics today.
“Imagine if we let that poison become normalized or if our daughters forgo the political arena altogether.
“That scares me.”
Jansen suggests that men who hate this garbage — by far the majority, we can only hope — go after the trolls and out them for the creeps they are.
At the end, she said she was proud to have joined “a pragmatic centrist government which has a place for moderate women.”
Many Albertans will dispute her description of the NDP. Jansen would be glad to hear the objections, as long as you leave out the gender thing.
The legislature was stone silent as she spoke. When she finished, the place erupted in a huge round of applause, not just from the New Democrats, but from Wildrose and the very PCs Jansen abandoned only last week.
She’s absolutely right. This abuse has become a plague, a whole new level of anti-female, anti-gay bile layered over the usual political hostilities.
The wider society has to fight back. And men must be on the front lines.
Don Braid’s column appears regularly in the Herald
dbraid@postmedia.comNew Delhi: Home Minister Sushilkumar Shinde today asked all Chief Ministers to ensure that no innocent Muslim youth is wrongfully detained in the name of terror.
In a letter to Chief Ministers, Shinde said Central government has been receiving various representations on alleged harassment of innocent Muslim youth by law enforcement agencies.
"Some of the minority youth have started feeling that they are deliberately targeted and deprived their basis rights," he wrote.
The Home Minister emphasised that the government is committed to its core principle of combating terrorism in every form and manifestation.
"Government has to ensure that no innocent person is subjected to undue harassment," he told the Chief Ministers.
Shinde asked the state governments to constitute special courts in consultation with concerned high court for trial of terror-related cases, appoint special public prosecutors for trial of these cases and give priority to terror cases over other pending cases.
The Home Minister said law enforcement agencies should be satisfied with regard to communal and social harmony while ensuring zero tolerance for terrorism.
"Strict and prompt action against erring police officers where there is malafide arrests of any member of minority community, wrongfully arrested, person should not only be released immediately but they should be suitably compensated and rehabilitated to join the mainstream," he said.
In May, the Central government has set up the 39 special courts under the NIA Act to take up terror-related cases.
Minority Affairs Minister K Rahman Khan had also written to Shinde expressing concern over "wrong arrests" of Muslim youths in different parts of the country in terror cases.
Apprising the Home Ministry of the concerns expressed by various Muslim bodies that the "draconian" provisions of the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act can be misused against minorities, Khan had proposed setting up of special courts to ensure speedy trial of all terror cases.
Fully backing the Minority Affairs Minister's suggestion of setting up of special courts, Shinde wrote back to him saying, "You have my assurance that this will happen".
PTI
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Last year Alex Noble had a steady job in a cash office, but he decided to pack it all... in to become a full-time professional zombie.
Bored of crunching numbers, horror fan Alex took great pleasure in handing in his notice, telling his bemused boss he was off to pursue a career with the undead.
“It took quite a bit of explaining – I don’t think my boss really understood,” he said.
“When I told my friends, they thought I was giving up a stable career on a whim. A lot of people will be happy doing their job for 20 years, but opportunity only knocks once.”
The 26-year-old from Cardiff is now employed as a trainer by Slingshot, the company which runs zombie chase game 2.8 Hours Later.
Players are given a scenario and a mission to complete, which sees them stalked across their hometown by hordes of the undead.
“I have always been into zombies,” explained Alex, whose favourite film is Day of the Dead.
“I started off doing quite a bit of extras work. Most of it was unpaid, but then my hobby grew into a job.”
In pictures: How Alex became a zombie:
Alex spent five years volunteering as a zombie extra in films, tv and games, before being offered the position with Slingshot.
“People started noticing me, because I was doing things differently,” he said.
“I had a niche look and I was doing the movements and noises differently.”
He is now responsible for running “zombie school” for the volunteers taking part in the game.
There are 60 volunteers for each night of the event and with the tour spending several nights in each city, that means around 200 zombies at each school.
Zombie training takes place the weekend before the event and involves a presentation about the game, plus a choreography session and a health and safety briefing.
“Health and safety is paramount,” explained the zombie tutor.
“I always try to identify the alpha males because they can get too competitive. If you give them a mask, cover them in blood and ask them to chase someone, they can get carried away.
“The best zombies might not be the fastest, they are the ones that make the character really real.”
When zombies invaded Cardiff:
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The event will take place in Cardiff in March and players will be told that the human race is dying out as the population succumbs to zombie infection.
As part of a resistance group, they will have to break into a quarantined slum, outwit criminal gangs and outrun the zombies to rescue the only uninfected children on earth.
“It is quite physically demanding – I do training in the gym to keep fit,” said Alex.
“Some actors who are used to working in movies find it difficult, because with a film, you shoot your scene and that’s it for the day.
“In this game, you have 600 plus people sprinting around at full pelt for three hours and you can’t break character at all.”
It takes a big team to host a zombie apocalypse.
Each event requires 60 volunteers, 12 actors, 12 stage managers, five make-up artists, 10 members of production crew, security staff, plus bar staff for the zombie disco after-party.
Related: 2.8 House Later returns in 2015
More than 600 players take part each night, with the event attracting about 2,000 participants in each city.
Each night, the volunteers are attacked by the make-up artists – a gory process.
“Firstly, we make the skin pale and add shadow to the eyes to make them look really ill,” said Alex.
“Then we add veins and splatter them with blood in our splatter booth, which is like a field hospital tent where we throw theatre blood over them.”
The tour will start in Cardiff, before heading to Birmingham, Manchester, Glasgow, Liverpool, Leeds, Sheffield and Bristol.
“The event has really grown in popularity. This year, we have doubled the number of cities on the tour,” explained Alex.
“There is a great sense of community on the volunteering side. A lot of our volunteers come back every year.
“It is an experience unlike any other. A lot of our players are looking for something a little bit different to do and being chased by zombies in your home city ticks that box.”
* 2.8 Hours Later will take place in Cardiff in March. For more information, visit www.2.8hourslater.comOne week on from its partnership with Codemasters, it’s been revealed that the Evolution Studios team is planning to jump-start production on its new IP by the end of the month — just don’t expect an official unveiling anytime soon.
That’s according to Paul Rustchynsky, who took to Twitter to answer a handful of questions regarding the transition away from Sony, along with a rough timeline for said new IP.
@Lucanalin700 We’re only going to start work on it at the end of the month, so it’s going to be a while before we announce anything. — Paul Rustchynsky (@Rushy33) April 17, 2016
Details are, of course, thin on the ground for the time being; all we know at this early stage is that Evolution has partnered with Codemasters to produce an “exciting new racing IP.” That’s hardly surprising, given each company’s prestigious history in the genre, though it’ll still be fascinating to see how the collaboration pans out.
Rustchynsky and the remainder of the Evolution team are primed to set the proverbial wheels in motion by the month’s end, and we’ll be keeping track of the studio’s new IP as it progresses in development.
[Source: Twitter]A dam big project: Incredible images of construction work on 1,900ft-long Hoover Bridge
It is one of the planet's newest awe-inspiring superstructures - the Hoover Dam Bridge.
Now the giant construction project which is on schedule to be completed in September can be seen in all its glory in a series of stunning photographs.
Twelve years in planning and five years under construction, the development - known officially as the 'Mike O'Callaghan-Pat Tillman Memorial Bridge' - is finally taking shape.
Spectacular structure: The Hoover Dam Bridge rises from the river banks in the middle stages of the £160million project. This image, which was taken in April this year, shows how the new bridge will replace the old road which crossed the top of the dam
Rising 890 ft above the Colorado River, when finished, its total length will be 1,900 ft, with its longest supported span running to 1080 ft.
Built in the shadow of the iconic Hoover Dam, which powers most of states Nevada and Arizona, the construction is the first concrete-steel composite arch bridge built in the United States.
With costs estimated to run to £160 million, the bridge is designed to take the pressure off the congested US Highway 93, which connects Las Vegas, Nevada, in the west with Arizona and the Grand Canyon in the east.
The bridge is expected to carry 17,000 trucks and cars every day and will allow the roadway that runs on top of the Hoover Dam to close.
Having long been the most accessible river crossing between Nevada and Arizona, the dam is thought to be at risk of a terror strike, with trucks already banned from crossing.
In November, cars will no longer be able to cross the dam which was built in 1936.
Don't look down: Workers use a crane to construct the top of the bridge's arch during the large-scale project. The picture, taken in August, 2009, shows how engineers anchored the structure in the canyon's sides
Let there be light: Night work on the Hoover Bridge continues unabated thanks to huge lighting towers in September last year. The bridge is due to be completed later this year
Designed by T.Y Lin International, the bridge will be four lanes wide and is designed to match the style of the dam shadowing it, which holds back artificial Lake Mead.
Around 3,000 workers have helped construct the bridge using 2,300 feet long steel cables held aloft by a 'high line' crane system.
The distinctive arches are made up of 106 concrete and steel arches, each one 24ft-long.
The bridge has been named after Mike O'Callaghan, a former Nevada Governor and Pat Tillman, the American Football player who left the NFL and joined the army after the 9/11 attacks.
Tillman was killed in a friendly fire incident in Afghanistan in 2004.
Documenting the last 18 months on camera has been Santa Fe resident Jamey Stillings, 38.
Patriotic: The new bridge will provide much needed relief for cars and lorries using U.S. Highway 93. The road provides a scenic link betweej the Grand Canyon, to the east and Las Vegas to the west
'I was driving on a road trip through Nevada across to Arizona when I took in the Hoover Dam as a tourist,' said Jamey, who has been photographing the Bridge since March 2009.
'I came across the construction of the bridge without warning and it captured a piece of my imagination.'
Deciding to stay for a night nearby, Jamey set about forming a project to photograph the bridge as it's put together step-by-step.
'I fell in love with it and wanted to begin a photographic project immediately,' said Jamey.
'I have been a photographer working in environments such as war zones in Nicaragua and in advertising and corporate work, but this was a chance to return to my roots.
'I have made ten trips in total to the bridge. I have spent 26 days and nights at the site with the workers and have taken over 12,000 frames.'
High and mighty: The bridge nears completion, providing a four-lane highway crossing from Arizona to Nevada and on to Las Vegas
The Hoover Dam, seen in the background, was started in 1931 and completed in 1936. It spans the Black Canyon and uses the Colorado River in a giant hydroelectricity projectFrom Engineering Policy Guide
620.2.1 Yellow Centerline Pavement Markings and Warrants (MUTCD Section 3B.01)
Standard. Centerline pavement markings, when used, shall be the pavement markings used to delineate the separation of traffic lanes that have opposite directions of travel on a roadway and shall be yellow.
Option. Centerline pavement markings may be placed at a location that is not the geometric center of the roadway.
Standard. The centerline markings on two-lane, two-way roadways shall be one of the following as shown in Fig. 620.2.2.0.1, Examples of Two-Lane, Two-Way Marking Applications:
A. Two-direction passing zone markings consisting of a normal broken yellow line where crossing the centerline markings for passing with care is permitted for traffic traveling in either direction; B. One-direction no-passing zone markings consisting of a double yellow yellow line, one of which is a normal broken yellow line and the other is a normal solid yellow line where crossing the centerline markings for passing with care is permitted for the traffic traveling adjacent to the broken line, but is prohibited for traffic traveling adjacent to the solid line; or C. Two-direction no-passing zone markings consisting of two normal solid yellow lines where crossing the centerline markings for passing is prohibited for traffic traveling in either direction.
A single solid yellow line shall not be used as a centerline marking on a two-lane roadway.
The centerline markings on undivided two-way roadways with four or more lanes for moving motor vehicle traffic always available shall be the two-direction no-passing zone markings consisting of a solid double yellow line separated by 4 in. as shown in Fig. 620.2.2.0.2, Examples of Four-Lane Undivided, Two-Way Marking Applications.
See Widths and Patterns of Longitudinal Pavement Markings for line patterns.
Option. Centerline marking combinations may be accomplished using a 2 line or 3 line system.
Standard. Those routes that currently are marked using a 3 line system, for centerline markings shall be maintained using the same system until such time as the line is obliterated.
On those routes that are receiving a 2 line system on only part of the route, the break between the 2 line and 3 line systems shall be at an appropriate transition point.
Option. The transition point between a 2 line and 3 line system may be a controlled intersection, railroad crossing, or the leading edge of a bridge deck.
A striping vehicle from the 1930s. The extended front functioned like a long scope, helping the driver stay true so he could place paint accurately.
Guidance. After the centerline is obliterated from the entire route, or a significant portion of the route, it should be replaced using the 2 line systems.
On two-way roadways with three through lanes for moving motor vehicle traffic, two lanes should be designated for traffic in one direction by using one- or two-direction no-passing zone markings as shown in Fig. 620.2.2.0.4, Examples of Three-Lane, Two-Way Marking Applications.
Standard. Centerline markings shall be placed on all paved roads that have traveled ways 18 ft. or wider. Centerline markings shall also be placed on all paved two-way streets or highways that have three or more lanes for moving motor vehicle traffic.
Guidance. Engineering judgment should be used in determining whether to place centerline markings on traveled ways that are narrower than 18 ft. because of the potential for traffic encroaching on the pavement edges, traffic being affected by parked vehicles, and traffic encroaching into the opposing traffic lane. Engineering judgment should also be used to determine if the pavement can support centerline markings.
Standard. Diversion bubbles shall be marked using 2 solid yellow lines to form both sides of the bubble at the beginning of a left turn bay where the bubble separates travel in opposite directions, and each installation of these markings will require individual treatment; therefore, no set dimensions have been established for their placement. Additional markings, such as cross-hatching inside the bubble, if used, shall also be yellow in color (See Fig. 620.2.2.0.3, Marking for Median Islands for Left Turn Bays).
Guidance. The taper length of transition zones should not be less than taper length calculated using the equations L = S x W or L = WS2/60 as defined in Lane Reduction Transition Markings. Installation of these markings should conform to the established general patterns.
620.2.2 No-Passing Zone Pavement Markings and Warrants (MUTCD Section 3B.02)
Standard. No-passing zones shall be marked by either the one direction no-passing zone pavement markings or the two-direction no-passing zone pavement markings described previously and shown in Fig. 620.2.2.0.1, Examples of Two-Lane, Two-Way Marking Applications and Fig. 620.2.2.0.4, Examples of Three-Lane, Two-Way Marking Applications.
When centerline markings are used, no-passing zone markings shall be used on two-way roadways at lane reduction transitions (see Lane Reduction Transition Markings (MUTCD Section 3B.09)) and on approaches to obstructions that must be passed on the right (see Approach Markings for Obstructions (MUTCD Section 3B.10)).
On two-way, two- or three-lane roadways where centerline markings are installed, no-passing zones shall be established at vertical and horizontal curves and other locations where an engineering study indicates that passing must be prohibited because of inadequate sight distances or other special conditions.
On roadways with centerline markings, no-passing zone markings shall be used at horizontal or vertical curves where the passing sight distance is less than the minimum necessary for reasonably safe passing at the 85th-percentile speed or the posted or statutory speed limit, whichever is higher, as shown in Table 620.2.2.1 Minimum Passing Sight Distances. The passing sight distance on a vertical curve is the distance at which an object 3.5 ft. (above the pavement surface can be seen from a point 3.5 ft. above the pavement (see Figure 620.2.2.2.1 Method of Locating and Determining the Limit of No-Passing Zones at Curves). Similarly, the passing sight distance on a horizontal curve is the distance measured along the centerline (or right-hand lane line of a three-lane roadway) between two points 3.5 ft. above the pavement on a line tangent to the embankment or other obstruction that cuts off the view on the inside of the curve (see Figure 620.2.2.2.1 Method of Locating and Determining the Limit of No-Passing Zones at Curves).
Guidance. Where the distance between successive no-passing zones is less than 400 ft., no-passing markings should connect the zones.
No passing zones should also be provided for a distance of 120 ft. in advance of intersections requiring traffic to stop, including intersections controlled by either stop signs or signals.
Standard. Where the no passing zone crosses a speed limit boundary, such as at city limits, the no passing zone shall be logged using the criteria for that section of roadways based on the posted speed limit or 85th percentile speed, whichever is greater only if there is a sufficient length of roadway to warrant this change.
No-passing zone markings shall be used on approaches to highway-rail grade crossings in conformance with MUTCD Section 8B.27. The minimum length of a no-passing zone on a railroad crossing approach shall be 500 feet.
Option. In addition to pavement markings, no-passing zone signs (see DO NOT PASS Sign and PASS WITH CARE Sign) may be used to emphasize the existence and extent of a no-passing zone. The approval of the State Traffic Engineer is required before signs are used to enhance no-passing zones.
Support. Section 11-307 of the “Uniform Vehicle Code (UVC) Revised” contains further information regarding no-passing zones. The “UVC” can be obtained from the [www.ncutlo.org National Committee on Uniform Traffic Laws and Ordinances].
Guidance. The centerline marking on multi-lane, undivided roadways with 4 or more lanes should be marked using 2 solid yellow lines, 4 in. wide and separated by a minimum of 4 inches.
Fig. 620.2.2.0.1, Examples of Two-Lane, Two-Way Marking Applications (MUTCD Fig. 3B-1)
Fig. 620.2.2.0.2, Examples of Four-or-more-Lane, Two-Way Marking Applications (MUTCD Fig. 3B-2)
Fig. 620.2.2.0.3, Marking for Median Islands for Left Turn Bays
Fig. 620.2.2.0.4, Examples of Three-Lane, Two-Way Marking Applications (MUTCD Fig. 3B-3)
Standard. In no case shall a no passing zone be less than 500 ft. long. If the calculated no passing zone is less than 500 ft., an additional length of marking shall be added to the leading end of the zone to lengthen it to the full 500 feet.
On three-lane roadways where the direction of travel in the center lane transitions from one direction to the other, a no-passing buffer zone shall be provided in the center lane as shown in Figure 903.17.24 Typical Signing for Passing Lanes. A lane transition shall be provided at each end of the buffer zone.
The buffer zone shall be a flush median island formed by two sets of double yellow centerline markings that is at least 50 ft. long.
Guidance. For three-lane roadways having a posted or statutory speed limit of 45 mph or greater, the lane transition taper length should be computed by the formula L = WS for speeds in mph. For roadways where the posted or statutory speed limit is less than 45 mph, the formula L = WS2/60 for speeds in mph should be used to compute taper length. Under both formulas, L equals the taper length in feet, W equals the width of the center lane or offset distance in feet, and S equals the 85th-percentile speed or the posted or statutory speed limit, whichever is higher.
Standard. The minimum lane transition taper length shall be 100 ft. in urban areas and 200 ft. in rural areas.
When used to delineate between climbing lanes on long grades, a no passing zone shall be provided on the taper as well as a distance of 1/2 the taper length in advance of and following the taper.
Guidance. The tangent line should not extend beyond the right-of-way line. Consideration should be given to vegetation or any other seasonal variations when determining the locations of no passing zones (see Fig. 620.2.2.2.1, Method of Locating and Determining the Limit of No-Passing Zones at Curves).
When performing a speed study, an attempt should be made to complete a minimum of 1 study per 10-mile section of roadway, each at a typical section of the roadway. This spacing may vary depending on the degree of uniformity, varying geometrics, cross sections and roadside development. Generally, the criteria determined for a route should be consistent throughout its entire length, without fluctuation due to short changes in terrain that could produce lower speeds. Substantial sections of roadway that have been reconstructed, and thereby provide an increased prevailing speed, should be considered independently of the overall route.
Support. The beginning of a no-passing zone at point “a” in Fig. 620.2.2.2.1, Method of Locating and Determining the Limit of No-Passing Zones at Curves is that point where the sight distance first becomes less than that specified in Table 620.2.2.1 Minimum Passing Sight Distances for No-Passing Zone Markings. The end of the no-passing zone at point “b” in Fig. 620.2.2.2.1 Method of Locating and Determining the Limit of No-Passing Zones at Curves is that point at which the sight distance again becomes greater than the minimum specified.
The values of the minimum passing sight distance that are shown in Table 620.2.2.1 are for operational use in marking no-passing zones and are less than the values that are suggested for geometric design by AASHTO's A Policy on Geometric Design of Highways and Streets.
Guidance. The lane delineation between the climbing lanes provided on long grades, and the descending lane, should be accomplished using centerline markings. In these cases, if the conditions are adequate, a passing zone should be provided for traffic traveling in the single, down grade, lane. A no passing zone should be provided for the length of the climbing lanes for traffic traveling up grade. The up grade climbing lanes should be delineated from each other using a white broken line (see Fig. 620.2.9.2 Standard Pavement Markings for Climbing Lanes).
620.2.2.1 Establishing and Recording No Passing Zones
Standard. The establishment of no passing zones shall be accomplished using two vehicles maintaining a predetermined distance. This distance will mark the beginning and end of the no passing zone section where a target, 3.5 ft. above the road surface on the lead vehicle is just out of sight of the driver of the trailing vehicle, who's eye level is 3.5 ft. above the road surface. The use of a highly visible target, such as a flashing amber light, is recommended.
Guidance. The distance between the vehicles should be maintained constant and equal to the minimum passing sight distance value being used. A printed log of the no passing zone should be kept by the district office and copies given to the regional maintenance superintendents so no passing zones can be relocated after maintenance operations.
Option. Once determined, the beginning and end of no passing zones may be marked on the pavement by using an aerosol spray paint or a paint brush.
Table 620.2.2.1 Minimum Passing Sight Distances for No-Passing Zone Markings (MUTCD Table 3B-1) 85th Percentile of Posted or Statutory Speed Limit (mph) Minimum Passing Sight Distance (ft.) 30 500 35 550 40 600 45 700 50 800 55 900 60 1,000 65 1,100 70 1,200
620.2.2.2 Centerline Markings On Bridges
Standard. The centerline markings on bridges, having a clear roadway width of 16 ft. or greater, shall be the same as that marked on the adjoining roadway.
Centerline markings shall not be placed on one lane bridges. When dealing with this type of bridge, the centerline markings shall stop a distance of five 500 ft. from each edge of the bridge deck. Therefore, the length of surface not receiving centerline marking shall be 1,000 ft. plus the length of the bridge deck. These bridges will, however, receive the appropriate one-lane bridge markings (see Edgeline Pavement Markings (MUTCD Section 3B.06)).
Fig. 620.2.2.2.1, Method of Locating and Determining the Limit of No-Passing Zones at Curves (MUTCD Fig. 3B-4)
Fig. 620.2.2.2.2, Example of Application of Three-Lane, Two-Way Marking for Changing Direction of the Center Lane (MUTCD 3B-5)
Fig. 620.2.2.2.3, Example of Reversible Lane Marking Application (MUTCD 3B-6)
Fig. 620.2.2.2.4, Example of Two-Way Left-Turn Lane Marking Application (MUTCD 3B-7)
620.2.3 Other Yellow Longitudinal Pavement Markings (MUTCD Section 3B.03)
Standard. If reversible lanes are used, the lane line pavement markings on each side of reversible lanes shall consist of a normal broken double yellow line to delineate the edge of a lane in which the direction of travel is reversed from time to time, such that each of these markings serve as the centerline markings of the roadway during some period (see Example of Reversible Lane Marking Application)).
Signs (see REVERSIBLE LANE CONTROL Signs)), lane-use control signals (see Chapter 4M of MUTCD), or both shall be used to supplement reversible lane pavement markings.
If a two-way left-turn lane that is never operated as a reversible lane is used, the lane line pavement markings on each side of the two-way left-turn lane shall consist of a normal broken yellow line and a normal solid yellow line to delineate the edges of a lane that can be used by traffic in either direction as part of a left-turn maneuver. These markings shall be placed with the broken line toward the two-way left-turn lane and the solid line toward the adjacent traffic lane as shown in Example of Two-Way, Left-Turn Marking Applications.
White two-way left-turn lane-use arrows shall be used to indicate the proper use of these lanes. The left turn arrows shall be installed in pairs, one arrow per direction.
Option. Additional signs may be installed after major intersections, or in situations that require additional emphasis of the proper use of this lane. Two way left turn lanes may be established by the district if the roadway meets all of the guidelines listed in Two-Way Left-Turn Lanes.
Guidance. The pairs of arrows should be installed a maximum of 500 ft. apart, with the two arrows in the pair being 8 to 16 ft. apart (See Fig. 620.2.2.2.4, Example of Two-Way, Left-Turn Marking Applications) on the route containing this type of lane.
Signs should be used in conjunction with the two-way left turn markings (see TWO-WAY LEFT TURN ONLY/CENTER LANE ONLY Signs).
Standard. If a continuous flush median island formed by pavement markings separating travel in opposite directions is used, two sets of double solid yellow lines shall be used to form the island as shown in Fig. 620.2.2.0.2, Examples of Four-Lane Undivided, Two-Way Marking Applications and Fig. 620.2.2.2.2, Examples of Three-Lane, Two-Way Marking for Changing Direction of the Center Lane. Other markings in the median island area shall also be yellow, except crosswalk markings which shall be white (see Crosswalk Markings).
Option. Markings may be used to form islands as shown in Fig. 620.2.2.0.3 Marking for Median Islands for Left Turn Bays.
620.2.4 White Lane Line Pavement Markings and Warrants (MUTCD Section 3B.04)
Standard. When used, lane line pavement markings delineating the separation of traffic lanes that have the same direction of travel shall be white.
Lane line markings shall be used on all freeways and interstate highways.
Lane line markings shall be used on all roadways that are intended to operate with two or more adjacent traffic lanes in the same direction of travel, except as required for reversible lanes.
Guidance. Lane line markings should also be used at congested locations where the roadway will accommodate more traffic lanes with lane line markings than without the markings.
The lane width delineated by lane line pavement markings should not be less than 10 ft., with 12 ft. as the standard dimension.
Standard. White lane line, intermittent pavement markings on new concrete pavements shall be enhanced by the use of contrast markings.
Support. Examples of lane line markings are shown in the following figures:
Standard. Where crossing the lane line markings with care is permitted, the lane line markings shall consist of a normal broken white line (See EPG 620.1.6 Functions, Widths and Patterns of Longitudinal Pavement Markings (MUTCD Section 3A.06)).
A dotted white line marking shall be used as the lane line to separate a through lane that continues beyond the interchange or intersection from an adjacent lane for any of the following conditions:
A. A deceleration or acceleration lane,
B. A through lane that becomes a mandatory exit or turn lane,
C. An auxiliary lane 2 miles or less in length between an entrance ramp and an exit ramp, or
D. An auxiliary lane 1 mile or less in length between two adjacent intersections.
For exit ramps with a parallel deceleration lane, a normal width dotted white lane line shall be installed from the upstream end of the full-width deceleration lane to the theoretical gore or to the upstream end of a solid white lane line, if used, that extends upstream from the theoretical gore as shown in "A" of Fig. 620.2.5.1 and "C" of Fig. 620.2.5.2.
Option. For exit ramps with a parallel deceleration lane, a normal width dotted white line extension may be installed in the taper area upstream from the full-width deceleration lane as shown in "A" of Fig. 620.2.5.1 and "C" of Fig. 620.2.5.2.
For an exit ramp with a tapered deceleration lane, a normal width dotted white line extension may be installed from the theoretical gore through the taper area such that it meets the edgeline at the upstream end of the taper as shown in "A" of Fig. 620.2.5.1.
Standard. For entrance ramps with a parallel acceleration lane, a normal width dotted white lane line shall be installed from the theoretical gore or from the downstream end of a solid white lane line, if used, that extends downstream from the theoretical gore, to a point at least one-half the distance from the theoretical gore to the downstream end of the acceleration taper, as shown in "A" of Fig. 620.2.5.3.
Option. For entrance ramps with a parallel acceleration lane, a normal width dotted white line extension may be installed from the downstream end of the dotted white lane line to the upstream end of the acceleration taper, as shown in "A" of Fig. 620.2.5.3.
For entrance ramps with a tapered acceleration lane, a normal width dotted white line extension may be installed from the downstream end of the channelizing line adjacent to the through lane to the theoretical gore, as shown in "B" of Fig. 620.2.5.3 and Fig 620.2.5.4.
Standard. A wide dotted white lane line shall be used:
A. As a lane drop marking in advance of lane drops at exit ramps to distinguish a lane drop from a normal exit ramp (see Figs.620.2.5.5, 620.2.5.6 and 620.2.5.7).
B. In advance of freeway route splits with dedicated lanes (see Fig. 620.2.5.8),
C. To separate a through lane that continues beyond an interchange from an adjacent
auxiliary lane between an entrance ramp and an exit ramp (see Fig. 620.2.5.9),
D. As a lane drop marking in advance of lane drops at intersections to distinguish a lane drop from an intersection through lane (see Fig. 620.2.5.10.1) and
E. To separate a through lane that continues beyond an intersection from an adjacent auxiliary lane between two intersections (see Fig. 620.2.5.10.2).
Guidance. Lane drop markings used in advance of lane drops at freeway and expressway exit ramps should begin at least 1/2 mile in advance of the theoretical gore or where signing indicates the exit only condition.
On the approach to a multi-lane exit ramp having an optional exit lane that also carries through traffic, lane line markings should be used as illustrated in Fig. 620.2.5.6. In this case, if the right-most exit lane is an added lane such as a parallel deceleration lane, the lane drop marking should begin at the upstream end of the full-width deceleration lane, as shown in Fig. 620. |
right, all right. Give me two family-sized ones, then." Operator: "That should be plenty for you, your wife and your four kids, and your 2 dogs can finish the crusts, sir. Your total is $49.99." Customer: "Lemme give you my credit card number." Operator: "I'm sorry sir, but I'm afraid you'll have to pay in cash. Your credit card balance is over its limit." Customer: "I'll run over to the ATM and get some cash before your driver gets here." Operator: "That won't work either, sir. Your checking account's overdrawn also." Customer: "Never mind! Just send the pizzas. I'll have the cash ready. How long will it take?" Operator: "We're running a little behind, sir. It'll be about 45 minutes, sir. If you're in a hurry you might want to pick 'em up while you're out getting the cash, but then, carrying pizzas on a motorcycle can be a little awkward." Customer: "Wait! How do you know I ride a scooter?" Operator: "It says here you're in arrears on your car payments, so your car got repo'ed. But your Harley's paid for and you just filled the tank yesterday." Customer: "Well I'll be a @#%/$@&?#!" Operator: "I'd advise watching your language, sir. You've already got a July 3, 2006 conviction for cussing out a cop and another one I see here on September 2 for contempt at your hearing for cussing at a judge. Oh yes, I see here that you just got out from a 90 day stay in the State Correctional Facility. Is this your first pizza since your return to society? Customer: (Speechless) Operator: "Will there be anything else, sir?" Customer: "Yes, I have a coupon for a free 2 liters of Coke." Operator: "I'm sorry sir, but our ad's exclusionary clause prevents us from offering free soda to diabetics. The National Health Plan prohibits this. Thank you for calling Domino's Round Table Pizza!" It should be noted that despite the aforementioned, ongoing threats significant freedoms remain in the US, Western Europe, and the developed nations of the British Commonwealth. Were this not the case, I could neither research nor publish this story; this magazine, if available anywhere, would circulate as hand-typed samizdat. Most people, in most countries and in most ages, have not enjoyed this liberty of publicly criticizing the regime. Such liberty is a blessing, a glorious heritage, a gift of God. Nevertheless, blessings can be lost, temporarily or permanently. The Prodigal Son squandered his inheritance on "loose living" (Luke 15:13); only with repentance was he restored (Luke 15: 21-24). Esau fared worse; he surrendered his birthright for "bread and pottage of lentils" (Gen. 25:31-34), and his loss both of his birthright and his father's blessing was irrevocable (Gen. 27: 35-38). These Biblical precedents illustrate why, and how, we are losing our freedom. In part, the blame rests with a fearful and covetous population. In large measure, over the last 100 years, Americans have traded freedom for security and for government benefits: a "pottage of lentils." This choice, made repeatedly since 1912, has yielded the predictable results: a government far more powerful and intrusive than the British regime that we expelled in the Revolution. To some extent, the people have forged their own fetters. The same has occurred throughout the West. There is another part of the story, as well. Since 1789, utopian anti-Christian ideologies have spread among the intelligentsia and the managerial classes throughout the world. These modern delusions include Jacobinism, socialism, Communism, Fascism, National Socialism, aggressive nationalism, Darwinian beliefs in racial superiority and "the white man's burden," and politicized, violent forms of Islam and Zionism. All of these ideologies are based on lies, and ultimately require use of force to gain and keep power. A world constantly beset by the believers in these delusions is a hostile environment for liberty. The period since 1914 has been an era of global war; two World Wars were immediately followed by the Cold War, and then the present War on Terror. (The believers in the aforementioned utopian ideologies deserve the credit for these wars.) War inevitably increases government power; when peace returns, the liberties that existed prior to the war have never been fully returned to the people. The loss of liberty in the West is a two-fold crime. The elites have taken our liberties by force, fraud, and propaganda, and the people have consented to this seizure. This is an offense against mankind, and is likewise an offense against God, who created us free, in His image. In 1755, Benjamin Franklin set forth the natural consequences: "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."168 It remains to be seen whether ours is the case of the Prodigal Son in which case, we may recover our liberty by repentance and obedience to the God Who is the Author and Source of our freedom. May God, in His mercy, preserve us from the fate of Esau! Lee Penn, a convert out of atheistic Marxism, attended Harvard university, was inducted into Phi Beta Kappa in 1974 and graduated cum laude 1976. He moved to California in 1983 to get an MBA and an MPH from UC Berkeley; earned those degrees in 1986 and has worked since in health care information systems and financial analysis. Lee is one of SCP's premier allies and associate writers.When University of Minnesota athletic director Mark Coyle approached P.J. Fleck earlier in the week to talk about a contract extension, the Gophers’ first-year football coach didn’t hesitate.
“It was definitely easy to sit there and say ‘Yes’ to the University of Minnesota,” Fleck said. “I give our administration a lot of credit.”
The university announced Wednesday that Fleck had agreed to a one-year contract extension that runs through the 2022 season, adding a year to his original, five-year, $18 million deal.
The financial terms of the original deal also were extended, without a raise. A $50,000 salary increase was built into Fleck’s contract, which will now pay him $3.75 million in the extended season of 2022. Including this season, the U has committed to six seasons and $21.75 million with Fleck.
The timing of the extension works out well for Fleck, who will hit the road recruiting Sunday with college football’s early national signing period (Dec. 20-22) quickly approaching. Fleck’s extension covers potential four-year careers of high school recruits in the Class of 2019.
“It always helps to know that people are going to be around for a very long time,” he said.
Minnesota's Head Coach P. J. Fleck on the sideline during the fourth quarter as Minnesota took on the Northwestern Wildcats at Ryan Field, Saturday.
This fall, Fleck’s name has been mentioned in speculation about openings at various schools — just as it was a year ago, after he led Western Michigan to a 13-1 record and a Cotton Bowl berth — but he wouldn’t comment when asked if he had been contacted by other schools.
“I wanted to make it very clear that I wanted to be at the University of Minnesota,” Fleck said. “… I won’t comment on all those things that are rumors, speculation, contact, no contact. I’m at the University of Minnesota. That’s the only school I worry about.”
Fleck, who turns 37 on Nov. 29, also said it was Coyle, not he, who broached the extension subject.
“No, you don’t go and ask for an extension as a coach. You never do that,” he said. “This was something that was brought to me by Mark Coyle, and I was very honored to be able to receive the news.”
Coyle did not take questions Wednesday but issued a statement: “When we hired Coach Fleck, I talked about his authentic energy and passion, and his dedication to building a unique team culture. This year, I have seen our students connect with his energy and embrace that culture. From the commitment and hard work of our current students, to building a nationally ranked recruiting class that will be among the best in program history, I have seen the foundation of what Coach Fleck is building, and I’m looking forward to supporting him for years to come.”
In Fleck’s first year at Minnesota, the Gophers have had an up-and-down season. They are 5-6 overall and 2-6 in the Big Ten entering the regular-season finale against unbeaten and fifth-ranked Wisconsin on Saturday at TCF Bank Stadium. The Gophers need an upset victory to secure a sixth win needed for bowl eligibility.
The Gophers’ positives this season have included the 54-21 thrashing of Nebraska on Nov. 11, along with a 3-0 nonconference record highlighted by a 48-14 victory at Oregon State. Fleck also was the first Gophers coach to win his Minnesota debut since John Gutekunst in 1985, and his 3-0 start was the first for a Gophers coach since Murray Warmath started 4-0 in 1954.
On the flip side are the Gophers’ 2-6 Big Ten record, blowout losses at Michigan (33-10) on Nov. 4 and at Northwestern (39-0) last week. They also lost 31-24 at home to Maryland, which scored the winning touchdown with 1 minute, 10 seconds left, and 31-17 at Purdue after taking a 17-16 lead with 2:26 to play.
“I know there’s going to be people that’ll be really excited,” Fleck said. “I know there’s people who’ll be, ‘Oh no, we’ve gotta have this guy again.’ Change is hard. It has been for everybody. Hopefully, you see how it’s changing. If you don’t, you will see in the future.”Students of female wing of Islami Jamiat-e-Talaba reportedly attacked the Israel stall and smashed everything
ISLAMABAD: A university has suspended three staff after students created a stall to showcase Israeli customs and traditions as part of a mock UN debating contest, officials said Monday.
Students at the International Islamic University, Islamabad (IIUI) set up the stall, which featured Israeli flags and pictures of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, as part of their “model UN” exercise at the weekend.
The display, which also included a banner saying “Welcome to the land of peace and prosperity”, triggered a furious response from right-wing student groups who smashed its contents.
Pakistan and Israel have no diplomatic relations and the Jewish state is widely disliked in the Islamic republic.
The university said the dean of the faculty of management sciences, a student affairs adviser and a female lecturer had all been suspended over the incident.
An IIUI spokesman said the university “strongly condemns” the hosting of the Israel stall and stressed that “a number of resolutions were passed against the Israeli brutalities in Palestine” at the mock UN event.
A female student said the stalls were intended to showcase the religion and culture of various countries alongside a mock UN debate about the situation in Middle East.
“Students were coming to our (Israeli) stall, they were talking to us, discussing the cultural things that were on display,” the student told AFP on condition of anonymity.
“Everything was normal until students of the female wing of IJT came to our stall and accused us of supporting Zionism.”
Islami Jamiat-e-Talaba (IJT) is a conservative student organisation allied to Jamaat-e-Islami.
“They attacked the Israel stall and smashed everything, everybody was running out of the hall, it was so scary,” the student said.
The university administration immediately cancelled the event and formed a three-member committee to investigate the incident.
Read full storyWelcome to the second week of car reveals here at the Forza Garage. This is Vintage Week, and we’re showing off the depth of classic cars that are a part of Forza Motorsport 7’s mammoth 700+ car list. This list includes pre-war racers that will challenge drivers of every skill level, post-war cruisers cars that changed the way the public thought of the automobile, and many more. The range of materials and technology on display here is as varied as the cars’ shapes, sizes, and capabilities. From wooden frame cars to pre-war biasply tires and more, the ForzaTech engine recreates all the intricacies and nuances that make these legendary cars so special.
Take, for example, the 1950 Alfa Romeo 158, or “Alfetta” which was driven by some of the greatest drivers in motorsport history. Or consider the 1967 Volkswagen Karmann Ghia, an early VW sports car designed in Italy (yes, you read that right, Volkswagen is returning to Forza). Then there is the American game changer, the 1953 Chevrolet Corvettel; an automotive revelation that defined and influenced car design for generations.
1953 Chevrolet Corvette
Most legends come from humble beginnings, and the story of the Corvette is no different. In an era where the only true sports cars were built in Europe, Chevy saw an opportunity. The company went about building a dream team to design a car that would appeal to a younger market, give the brand some flash, and keep it ahead of Ford in sales. Harley Earl—GM’s then design chief—let fly with an idea he had been coveting for more than a year after watching European sports cars at Watkins Glen: a low to the ground, two-seat roadster. Driven by practicality, the 1953 Corvette uses mostly off-the-shelf components such as the “Blue Flame” 160hp, 235-cubic inch in-line six-cylinder engine and two-speed Powerglide transmission. The only options available were a heater (which cost $91) and an AM radio ($145). All 300 that sold in 1953 had both options. The 1953 Corvette didn’t even have rollup windows. All the cars were hand-built, and all were Polo White with red interiors. The use of fiberglass was not only a weight-saving innovation but was a necessity due to the Korean War and a limited availability of steel. The 1953 Corvette’s dramatic and bold exterior was just what the public wanted and it forever changed the course of American car history.
1950 Alfa Romeo 158
Alfa Romeo has been building race cars since 1913. In fact, they started racing just after the company was founded. It wasn’t long after they found victory, and they went on to compete in nearly every form of motorsport with great success. The 158, or the Alfetta for “Little Alfa” as it is commonly known, has earned its way to reverence as one of the most successful race cars ever built, winning an astounding 87 percent of the grand prix races it -- and its subsequent model the 159 -- competed in. The 1,479 cc supercharged straight 8-cylinder engine in this model produced around 350 hp aboard its lithe tube-frame chassis. The great Juan-Manual Fangio along with Giuseppe Farina took the 158 to win every race but the Indy 500 during its post-war debut season. Fangio would of course go on to win the World Driver’s Championship five times, making the 158 a storied piece of motorsport legend.
1967 Volkswagen Karmann Ghia
”The Volkswagen Karmann Ghia is the most economical sports car you can buy… it's just not the most powerful.” So says the announcer in the commercial introducing the Volkswagen Karmann Ghia. Although it’s true enough that it was never a powerful sports car, in the looks department the Karmann Ghia has character and style in spades. Automotive historian Jan Norbye called out its stylistic similarities to the Alfa Romeo 2500 S and the Lancia Aurelia. Those styling cues are no doubt Italian, as the Karmann Ghia was designed by Ghia, a prestigious Italian design firm. Karmann coachworks was under orders to design a sports car to build over the VW chassis. After several of their proposals were rejected, Karmann reached out to Ghia, who delivered a prototype that perfectly hit the mark. The car has seen more than 20 years of production and the only cosmetic changes were larger bumpers and head and taillights.
Now here's a look at the cars we're announcing this week.
The Forza Garage - Week 2 1968 Abarth 595 esseesse 1934 Alfa Romeo P3 1950 Alfa Romeo 158 1965 Alfa Romeo Giulia Sprint GTA Stradale 1965 Alfa Romeo Giulia TZ2 1968 Alfa Romeo 33 Stradale 1939 Auto Union Type D 1959 BMW 507 1957 BMW Isetta 300 Export 1953 Chevrolet Corvette 1957 Chevrolet Bel Air 1960 Chevrolet Corvette 1964 Chevrolet Impala Super Sport 409 1966 Chevrolet Nova Super Sport 1967 Chevrolet Chevelle Super Sport 396 1967 Chevrolet Corvette Stingray 427 1969 Chevrolet Camaro Super Sport Coupe 1969 Chevrolet Nova Super Sport 396 1969 Datsun 2000 Roadster 1967 Dodge Coronet WO23 1968 Dodge Dart HEMI Super Stock 1969 Dodge Charger Daytona HEMI 1969 Dodge Charger R/T 1969 Fiat Dino 2.4 Coupe 1952 Fiat 8V Supersonic 1932 Ford De Luxe Five-Window Coupe 1940 Ford De Luxe Coupe 1946 Ford Super Deluxe Station Wagon 1964 Ford Fairlane Thunderbolt 1965 Ford Mustang GT Coupe 1967 Ford Falcon XR GT 1969 Ford Mustang Boss 302 1951 Holden 50-2106 FX Ute 1967 Honda RA300 1959 Jaguar Mk II 3.8 1961 Jaguar E-type S1 1956 Jaguar D-Type 1954 Jaguar XK120 SE 1945 Jeep Willys MB 1968 Lancia Fulvia Coupé Rallye 1.6 HF 1939 Mercedes-Benz W154 1954 Mercedes-Benz 300 SL Coupé 1955 Mercedes-Benz 300 SLR 1967 Mercedes-Benz 280 SL 1949 Mercury Coupe 1965 MINI Cooper S 1969 Nissan Fairlady Z 432 1966 Nissan Silvia 1969 Oldsmobile Hurst/Olds 442 1968 Opel GT 1958 Plymouth Fury 1965 Pontiac GTO 1969 Pontiac Firebird Trans Am 1969 Pontiac GTO Judge 1965 Shelby Cobra 427 S/C 1965 Shelby Cobra Daytona Coupe 1963 Volkswagen Beetle 1963 Volkswagen Type 2 De Luxe 1967 Volkswagen Karmann Ghia 1967 Volvo 123GT
Here's a list of all the cars we've announced so far.NEW DELHI: Public broadcaster Prasar Bharati will auction prime time slots, between 7-11 pm, on its national channel Doordarshan under a new policy that was cleared by the board on Monday. Producers will provide content in return for a share in the advertising revenue under the new policy.The modalities of the new ‘slot sale’ policy were discussed in a meeting of Prasar Bharati Board, which was also attended by Bollywood actor Kajol, who was nominated earlier this year.Sources said in the meeting chaired by Prasar Bharati chairperson A Surya Prakash, it was felt that e-auctions could be held for the 7-11 pm slots for all the seven days of the week barring Saturdays. The new policy is expected to be rolled out by October 1.“We have decided that on Saturdays, Prasar Bharati Board would reserve the 7-8 pm slot for its own content and the 8 to 11 pm slot will be auctioned. For the rest of the days of the week the 7-11 pm band will be auctioned. We hope that the slot sale policy comes into effect from October onwards,” a board member said.Sources also said the programmes approved earlier under the Self-Financed Commission (SFC) scheme, under which Doordarshan acquires programmes and then recovers cost through ad revenue, will also be utilised by the channel.Earlier there were reports that many of the SFC programmes, including one on the life of Deendayal Upadhaya and another on the life of Savitribai Phule, could be scrapped.One of the members, Ashok Tandon, had drawn the attention of the board to this issue, sources said. “The programmes which have been approved will be utilised and a committee will look into these aspects. However, there may be some shifting of the time slots based on the auction process results,” a source said.In the meantime about 154 producers have claimed that they have invested Rs 8-10 lakh each in making serials under the SFC scheme which are being scrapped.Some like Ujwal Jain have also moved court seeking a stay on the new policy. "We have invested Rs 15-20 crore on serials based on guidelines provided by DD. All we ask is that we at least be evaluated before the policy is done away with,’’ a producer said.In a questionable move fueled by something other than good will, those who received their tickets by mail this week were met with surprise and suspicion when the pricing levels and seating charts mysteriously changed AFTER all their money orders were cashed. People that have called me an apologist for the band and/or the promoter will love this article. I just write about things as honestly as I see them and whoever made this decision needs to be reacquainted with the Great Equalizer. I’m a Dead Head first and foremost and try to be a voice for us, not anyone else. The Dead and its affiliates have NEVER given me anything for nothing, I’ve ALWAYS paid my own way.
Prior to being aware of the demand for the Chicago Fare Thee Well Shows, widely published seating charts on The Dead’s site looked like this.
THIS was the chart that all of the people who sent in for Mail Order were sending their money for. THIS is what the deal was when people sent money orders to GDTSTOO.
After the unexpected deluge of requests came in from the mail order, it was announced that the floor was being opened up to all GA as opposed to reserve seating to accommodate more people which seemed like a kind and generous thing to do. The seating charts were then changed to something like this.
Take note, 300 Level seats are still $79.50 or $119.50. The ONLY tickets at the $199.50 price point were the best seats to either side of the stage.
Following some consideration by the organizing parties, and prior to the internet on sale, it was decided that there would be seating behind the stage to accommodate as many people as possible. That seemed like a generous and thoughtful idea as well. At that point the seating chart changed to reflect seating behind the stage.
There’s a few things to take note of as we look at these charts. The 300 level seats, were all priced at either $79.50 or $119.50.
Here’s where the Switcheroo takes place! People receiving Mail Order tickets this week received 300 level tickets that were priced at $199.50. See evidence here:
Not only that, 300 Level seats that were released on TicketMaster this morning were all priced at $199.50. That my friends is a real unethical, unkind, unrighteous maneuver. Whether it’s illegal, I’m not certain as I haven’t read through anything that may state that prices are subject to change without notice. What I do know, is it’s a move that stinks of greed and completely goes against everything that the band and its organization has provided throughout the years. It’s a move that Bill Graham NEVER would have made. This event misses him almost as much as it misses Garcia. Was there not enough money coming in already? This is where Shapiro goes from Genius to Jackass overnight. Is there anyone other than him that could be responsible??? I don’t think so… Loose with the truth, Peter it’s your fire… Baby I hope you don’t get burned…
We’re not a bunch of dumb, stoned kids anymore… It was completely, totally and unequivocally the WRONG thing to do. Given the situation, would fans decline their tickets or ask for a refund if they were told about pricing changes? Probably not if we’re being honest… Was this a poor decision by the leadership? It absolutely was. I don’t think the guys that make the music have anything to do with decisions like this so I absolutely don’t hold them accountable but someone should be held accountable. I probably won’t make any new friends with this post, but it’s the truth…
Dead To The Core,
Dean Sottile (pronounced So Tilly)Many health tests are done with the use of a blood sample. Doctors use them all the time to diagnose an illness or condition but not everyone likes to have them done. If you have a blood test you want done in private such as an HIV test or one to detect an STD, you can go online and order it yourself.
That’s right, no doctor needed. Just read the list of tests available, and there are many, and call to order it. You will receive a form in the mail that you will take to the collection lab of your choice. You can look over the blood test locations to make your choice and then walk in, or make an appointment.
The results of your test will be confidential and sent to your email address. No need for anyone else to know the outcome but if you want those results in your medical records, just share it with your doctor. Your results will be easy to read and if you have any questions, you will have a number to contact a nurse to speak with. Your private blood test is just a phone call away.I just got off the phone with UberMedia CEO and Idealab founder Bill Gross on the heels of Twitter’s suspension of two of UberMedia’s products, UberTwitter and Twidroyd, for violating Twitter’s API rules. The violations in question concern trademark, privacy, and monetization.
Gross tells me, “We just talked to Twitter and discussed the various issues they raise. It took us by surprise because they didn’t raise them before. We started making the changes”
UberTwitter will change its name to UberSocial. The privacy issues are related to handling Tweets longer than 140 characters. And the monetization issue, Gross believes, has to do with Twitter’s belief that UberMedia is using affiliate links, which he says it is not. But he is eager to comply with Twitter’s requests and be back in its good graces. “Whatever it is we will change it,” he says.
Gross says that he spoke to Twitter to better understand what the issues were and he is “comforted by the fact” that an executive there told him that if he gets UberMedia’s products back into compliance, Twitter will reinstate them. So what message is Twitter trying to send by going after such a big member of the Twitter eco-system in such a public way? “I think that what Twitter is saying is we really, really want you to comply with the terms of service.” Uh-huh.Shanghai Disneyland announces Toy Story Land expansion
Shanghai Disneyland will add a seventh theme land for 2018, the park announced today.
Toy Story Land will offer three new attractions and a meet and greet area featuring characters from the long-running Disney Pixar franchise. Disney CEO Bob Iger joined Disney Parks and Resorts Chairman Bob Chapek and Fan Xiping, Chairman of Shanghai Shendi Group for the official launch of construction today.
The park did not reveal which three attractions will be part of the new land. Disney has Toy Story Lands at Hong Kong Disneyland and Walt Disney Studios in Paris, with a third land under construction at Disney's Hollywood Studios in Florida. The Walt Disney World version of the land will be substantially different than the original design of Toy Story Land from the Hong Kong and Paris parks, which include a parachute jump ride, a caterpillar, and shuttle roller coaster. Disney has not yet announced an opening date for the Orlando version.
"We couldn't be more pleased with Shanghai Disneyland’s first four months of operation and couldn’t be more excited about our future in mainland China," Chapek said in a statement released by the park. "We're demonstrating our confidence by breaking ground on a new Toy Story Land that will be both authentically Disney and distinctly Chinese, delighting our guests for years to come."
Update: Had to add this:
This exchange might just win the Internet this evening. @brooksbarnesNYT @TheDisneyBlog pic.twitter.com/WCQ43zWI37 — Theme Park Insider (@ThemePark) November 10, 2016
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This article has been archived and is no longer accepting comments.The Metropolitan Police said it was now dealing with alleged abuse "on an unprecedented scale" as more than 200 victims had now come forward since it launched Operation Yewtree, which followed the broadcast of ITV's Exposure documentary unearthing Savile's paedophilia.
The Met is now following up 400 separate lines of inquiry involving alleged abusers both living and dead.
It has also given the BBC the green light to begin its own independent investigation into the allegations, to run in tandem with the police inquiry.
Met Commander Peter Spindler said: "The public's response to this issue has been astounding. We are dealing with alleged abuse on an unprecedented scale.
"The profile of this operation has empowered a staggering number of victims to come forward to report the sexual exploitation which occurred during their childhood.
"I am pleased that victims feel confident enough to speak out about the abuse they suffered and would like to reassure the public that we take all these cases very seriously and they will be investigated with the utmost sensitivity.
"Anyone with information or concerns should call NSPCC on 0808 800 5000."
A Scotland Yard spokesman said: "Operation Yewtree, the enquiry into alleged child sexual exploitation by the late Jimmy Savile and others, has moved from an assessment to a formal criminal investigation.
"After two weeks of gathering information from both the public and a number of organisations, in excess of 400 lines of enquiry have been assessed and over 200 potential victims have been identified.
"As we have said from the outset, our work was never going to take us into a police investigation into Jimmy Savile. What we have established in the last two weeks is that there are lines of inquiry involving living people that require formal investigation.
"We acknowledge the appointment of Dame Janet Smith to lead the BBC commissioned review into this matter and recognise her need to progress this important work.
"We are now in a position to advise the BBC that they can ask the chair of the BBC Executive Board Dame Fiona Reynolds to begin the review to run parallel to our investigation. We will develop a protocol to ensure any future potential criminal action is not jeopardised."
The news comes as a leaked email from within the BBC cast doubt on the corporation's claims about the reasons for dropping a Newsnight investigation into Savile last year.
The email from a press officer to BBC executives appears to contradict the corporation’s official statements about why the BBC Two programme was cancelled just before Christmas.
It discloses how the investigation was so well advanced that the press office was preparing "lines to take" in response to anticipated hostile media inquiries.
The email, leaked to The Times, refers to journalists on Newsnight "focusing on allegations of abuse".
The press officer, Helen Deller, writes that "we may well need to do a bit of managing around this" and that "we should bear in mind how BBC complaints team respond".
Her email, marked "confidential", was sent on Dec 7 last year at 5.02pm to Peter Rippon, the Newsnight editor and Meirion Jones, an "investigations producer" on the programme.
The BBC has said that rather than the show focusing on Savile’s alleged abuse it in fact focused on allegations against the CPS or police.
The BBC began briefing in January that the report was dropped because it had been investigating "alleged failings within the CPS" but had not found any proof to substantiate the claims, it was reported.
It was claimed that Mr Rippon had said the story had been "weakened from a Newsnight perspective" because they had been unable to establish any "institutional failure" by the police or the CPS.
But "well-placed BBC sources" told The Times that the team had instead focused for several weeks on exposing Savile as a paedophile and had gathered 10 alleged victims and witnesses.
A BBC spokesman said last night: "This ridiculous story in no way casts doubt on what the BBC has previously said on this.
"It is simply an exchange between a junior press officer and the Newsnight producer asking for further information about the Jimmy Savile investigation.
"This email exchange along with other relevant documents will be passed to the Pollard inquiry." Mrs Deller was unavailable for comment.
The BBC Panorama programme will broadcast an investigation on Monday night into Newsnight’s decision to drop the report on Savile.
Meanwhile, it emerged that Savile confessed to a reporter that his reputation would collapse after his death and he would come to be regarded as "crooked".
In a previously unpublished interview given by Savile two months before he died, he admitted he was "not a straight punter".
The Jewish Chronicle obtained a transcript of the interview. Savile told a freelance reporter that he was "not a straight punter".
He said: "When I’m gone, they’ll say: ‘I always thought he was straight but he wasn’t – he was crooked.’ "Tennessee Lawmaker Calls For National Guard To Round Up Syrian Refugees
Enlarge this image toggle caption Chas Sisk/WPLN Chas Sisk/WPLN
While a majority of the nation's governors have asked the Obama administration to stop the resettlement of Syrian refugees in their state, a prominent Tennessee lawmaker has gone a step further: He's suggested the National Guard round up recently arrived refugees and prevent the arrival of additional refugees.
"If I err, it will be on the side of not having another Paris, France," said state Rep. Glen Casada, the chairman of the House Republican Caucus in the state Legislature. "When we let them in, we are letting terrorists in."
"We gather them, we take them back to ICE," said Casada, referring to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, "we say, 'gentlemen, make sure these guys have no tie to terrorist activity.' "
Refugees resettled in the United States go through an 18- to 24-month vetting process before being allowed into the country.
Casada is also open to putting Syrian refugees under surveillance by state law enforcement authorities. "I think we should not limit our response," he said in an interview.
State Democrats responded strongly at a press conference, where Rep. John Ray Clemmons said "this unethical and irresponsible proposal to utilize military personnel to round up men, women and children should serve to truly shock our state's collective conscience."
Casada's view may be extreme, but many Tennessee Republicans want a halt to refugee resettlement.
Earlier this week, Tennesee Gov. Bill Haslam joined 29 other governors, mostly Republican, who called on the Obama administration to stop the placement of as many as 10,000 Syrian refugees. Still, Haslam joined in the condemnation of Casada's proposal.
"If we abandon our values by completely shutting our doors to those who seek the freedom we enjoy or mistreating our neighbors who made it here after enduring unimaginable hardships, the terrorists win," said Haslam.
A Popular Refugee Destination
The State Department has placed large numbers of refugees in Tennessee since the early 1990s. The state receives more refugees, as a share of population, than New York, California or Illinois, and many are from the Middle East. Still, few are from Syria.
Just 42 Syrian refugees have arrived in Tennessee since 2011 out of 6,890 refugees that were resettled in the state over the same period, according to the Refugee Processing Center. The Syrians are fleeing a four-year civil war that has claimed an estimated 200,000 to 300,000 lives and displaced more than 4 million people.
The number of Syrian refugees in Tennessee is expected to grow to a few hundred over the next year, said Holly Johnson, the state refugee coordinator for Catholic Charities.
"The State Department certainly wants to resettle refugees in communities that will welcome them, and Tennessee has always been that sort of place," she said. "Every community where refugees are resettled welcomed them. I would hope that'd continue to be the case."
Casada's remarks echo in a state where public mistrust of Muslims has regularly bubbled up in recent years.
Some Republican lawmakers have attempted to force the state to revise a middle school history unit that teaches about Islam. In July, a man of Jordanian descent killed five service members at military recruiting centers before being killed by police. Residents of a Tennessee town spent years protesting the construction of a mosque, and some of the state's lawmakers have warned of attempts to impose Islamic law in the state.
A Welcome New Home For One Family
Still, one Syrian refugee who recently arrived in the state said he's only encountered hospitality so far.
Enlarge this image toggle caption Chas Sisk/WPLN Chas Sisk/WPLN
Fahed Nakshou, 32, was a barber in the Syrian city of Homs before fighting forced him and his family to flee to Jordan. They spent three years in a border town, just outside the refugee camps. As a refugee, Nakshou said, he is barred from working.
Nakshou said he did not ask to come to the United States and that his family would have been just as happy resettling anywhere far from Syria. International refugee workers forwarded his request for asylum to authorities in the U.S., who placed him in Nashville.
Through a translator, Nakshou explains, that his family didn't choose Nashville and were sent there because they had no family in the U.S.
Nakshou, his wife and their two children, ages 4 and 2, arrived in Nashville in August. He said life is much better in Tennessee. His neighbors along Nolensville Pike, a busy immigrant corridor, include Mexicans, Bhutanese and Burmese — even an American.
He and his wife take English classes four days a week, and the local markets carry items that he hasn't seen since leaving Syria, like long radishes and leeks. Nakshou has talked to a local |
was ever really in contention, despite his excellent club form for Liverpool. Brazil have a lot of strength in his position - his last chance probably disappeared last year when Willian was successfully incorporated into the squad.
Lucas Moura lost out to Bernard during last year's Confederations Cup. Scolari was won over by Bernard's capacity to come off the bench and make an impact on either flank. Lucas Moura is still a bit one dimensional - a right-sided dribbler who needs space to shine.
Having said that, Scolari is placing a lot of trust in Bernard - if Brazil are losing with 20 minutes to go, he is the man Brazil's coach is most likely to turn to, which is a huge responsibility.The SAT predicts success remarkably well given that it takes just a few hours to administer. Photo by Shutterstock
The College Board—the standardized testing behemoth that develops and administers the SAT and other tests—has redesigned its flagship product again. Beginning in spring 2016, the writing section will be optional, the reading section will no longer test “obscure” vocabulary words, and the math section will put more emphasis on solving problems with real-world relevance. Overall, as the College Board explains on its website, “The redesigned SAT will more closely reflect the real work of college and career, where a flexible command of evidence—whether found in text or graphic [sic]—is more important than ever.”
A number of pressures may be behind this redesign. Perhaps it’s competition from the ACT, or fear that unless the SAT is made to seem more relevant, more colleges will go the way of Wake Forest, Brandeis, and Sarah Lawrence and join the “test optional admissions movement,” which already boasts several hundred members. Or maybe it’s the wave of bad press that standardized testing, in general, has received over the past few years.
Critics of standardized testing are grabbing this opportunity to take their best shot at the SAT. They make two main arguments. The first is simply that a person’s SAT score is essentially meaningless—that it says nothing about whether that person will go on to succeed in college. Leon Botstein, president of Bard College and longtime standardized testing critic, wrote in Time that the SAT “needs to be abandoned and replaced,” and added:
The blunt fact is that the SAT has never been a good predictor of academic achievement in college. High school grades adjusted to account for the curriculum and academic programs in the high school from which a student graduates are. The essential mechanism of the SAT, the multiple choice test question, is a bizarre relic of long outdated 20th century social scientific assumptions and strategies.
Calling use of SAT scores for college admissions a “national scandal,” Jennifer Finney Boylan, an English professor at Colby College, argued in the New York Times that:
The only way to measure students’ potential is to look at the complex portrait of their lives: what their schools are like; how they’ve done in their courses; what they’ve chosen to study; what progress they’ve made over time; how they’ve reacted to adversity.
Along the same lines, Elizabeth Kolbert wrote in The New Yorker that “the SAT measures those skills—and really only those skills—necessary for the SATs.”
But this argument is wrong. The SAT does predict success in college—not perfectly, but relatively well, especially given that it takes just a few hours to administer. And, unlike a “complex portrait” of a student’s life, it can be scored in an objective way. (In a recent New York Times op-ed, the University of New Hampshire psychologist John D. Mayer aptly described the SAT’s validity as an “astonishing achievement.”) In a study published in Psychological Science, University of Minnesota researchers Paul Sackett, Nathan Kuncel, and their colleagues investigated the relationship between SAT scores and college grades in a very large sample: nearly 150,000 students from 110 colleges and universities. SAT scores predicted first-year college GPA about as well as high school grades did, and the best prediction was achieved by considering both factors. Botstein, Boylan, and Kolbert are either unaware of this directly relevant, easily accessible, and widely disseminated empirical evidence, or they have decided to ignore it and base their claims on intuition and anecdote—or perhaps on their beliefs about the way the world should be rather than the way it is.
Furthermore, contrary to popular belief, it’s not just first-year college GPA that SAT scores predict. In a four-year study that started with nearly 3,000 college students, a team of Michigan State University researchers led by Neal Schmitt found that test score (SAT or ACT—whichever the student took) correlated strongly with cumulative GPA at the end of the fourth year. If the students were ranked on both their test scores and cumulative GPAs, those who had test scores in the top half (above the 50th percentile, or median) would have had a roughly two-thirds chance of having a cumulative GPA in the top half. By contrast, students with bottom-half SAT scores would be only one-third likely to make it to the top half in GPA.
Test scores also predicted whether the students graduated: A student who scored in the 95th percentile on the SAT or ACT was about 60 percent more likely to graduate than a student who scored in the 50th percentile. Similarly impressive evidence supports the validity of the SAT’s graduate school counterparts: the Graduate Record Examinations, the Law School Admissions Test, and the Graduate Management Admission Test. A 2007 Science article summed up the evidence succinctly: “Standardized admissions tests have positive and useful relationships with subsequent student accomplishments.”
SAT scores even predict success beyond the college years. For more than two decades, Vanderbilt University researchers David Lubinski, Camilla Benbow, and their colleagues have tracked the accomplishments of people who, as part of a youth talent search, scored in the top 1 percent on the SAT by age 13. Remarkably, even within this group of gifted students, higher scorers were not only more likely to earn advanced degrees but also more likely to succeed outside of academia. For example, compared with people who “only” scored in the top 1 percent, those who scored in the top one-tenth of 1 percent—the extremely gifted—were more than twice as likely as adults to have an annual income in the top 5 percent of Americans.
The second popular anti-SAT argument is that, if the test measures anything at all, it’s not cognitive skill but socioeconomic status. In other words, some kids do better than others on the SAT not because they’re smarter, but because their parents are rich. Boylan argued in her Times article that the SAT “favors the rich, who can afford preparatory crash courses” like those offered by Kaplan and the Princeton Review. Leon Botstein claimed in his Time article that “the only persistent statistical result from the SAT is the correlation between high income and high test scores.” And according to a Washington Post Wonkblog infographic (which is really more of a disinfographic) “your SAT score says more about your parents than about you.”
It’s true that economic background correlates with SAT scores. Kids from well-off families tend to do better on the SAT. However, the correlation is far from perfect. In the University of Minnesota study of nearly 150,000 students, the correlation between socioeconomic status, or SES, and SAT was not trivial but not huge. (A perfect correlation has a value of 1; this one was.25.) What this means is that there are plenty of low-income students who get good scores on the SAT; there are even likely to be low-income students among those who achieve a perfect score on the SAT.
Thus, just as it was originally designed to do, the SAT in fact goes a long way toward leveling the playing field, giving students an opportunity to distinguish themselves regardless of their background. Scoring well on the SAT may in fact be the only such opportunity for students who graduate from public high schools that are regarded by college admissions offices as academically weak. In a letter to the editor, a reader of Elizabeth Kolbert’s New Yorker article on the SAT made this point well:
The SAT may be the bane of upper-middle-class parents trying to launch their children on a path to success. But sometimes one person’s obstacle is another person’s springboard. I am the daughter of a single, immigrant father who never attended college, and a good SAT score was one of the achievements that catapulted me into my state’s flagship university and, from there, on to medical school. Flawed though it is, the SAT afforded me, as it has thousands of others, a way to prove that a poor, public-school kid who never had any test prep can do just as well as, if not better than, her better-off peers.
The sort of admissions approach that Botstein advocates—adjusting high school GPA “to account for the curriculum and academic programs in the high school from which a student graduates” and abandoning the SAT—would do the opposite of leveling the playing field. A given high school GPA would be adjusted down for a poor, public-school kid, and adjusted up for a rich, private-school kid.
Furthermore, contrary to what Boylan implies in her Times piece, “preparatory crash courses” don’t change SAT scores much. Research has consistently shown that prep courses have only a small effect on SAT scores—and a much smaller effect than test prep companies claim they do. For example, in one study of a random sample of more than 4,000 students, average improvement in overall score on the “old” SAT, which had a range from 400 to 1600, was no more than about 30 points.
Finally, it is clear that SES is not what accounts for the fact that SAT scores predict success in college. In the University of Minnesota study, the correlation between high school SAT and college GPA was virtually unchanged after the researchers statistically controlled for the influence of SES. If SAT scores were just a proxy for privilege, then putting SES into the mix should have removed, or at least dramatically decreased, the association between the SAT and college performance. But it didn’t. This is more evidence that Boylan overlooks or chooses to ignore.
What this all means is that the SAT measures something—some stable characteristic of high school students other than their parents’ income—that translates into success in college. And what could that characteristic be? General intelligence. The content of the SAT is practically indistinguishable from that of standardized intelligence tests that social scientists use to study individual differences, and that psychologists and psychiatrists use to determine whether a person is intellectually disabled—and even whether a person should be spared execution in states that have the death penalty. Scores on the SAT correlate very highly with scores on IQ tests—so highly that the Harvard education scholar Howard Gardner, known for his theory of multiple intelligences, once called the SAT and other scholastic measures “thinly disguised” intelligence tests.
One could of course argue that IQ is also meaningless—and many have. For example, in his bestseller The Social Animal, David Brooks claimed that “once you get past some pretty obvious correlations (smart people make better mathematicians), there is a very loose relationship between IQ and life outcomes.” And in a recent Huffington Post article, psychologists Tracy Alloway and Ross Alloway wrote that
IQ won’t help you in the things that really matter: It won’t help you find happiness, it won’t help you make better decisions, and it won’t help you manage your kids’ homework and the accounts at the same time. It isn’t even that useful at its raison d’être: predicting success.
But this argument is wrong, too. Indeed, we know as well as anything we know in psychology that IQ predicts many different measures of success. Exhibit A is evidence from research on job performance by the University of Iowa industrial psychologist Frank Schmidt and his late colleague John Hunter. Synthesizing evidence from nearly a century of empirical studies, Schmidt and Hunter established that general mental ability—the psychological trait that IQ scores reflect—is the single best predictor of job training success, and that it accounts for differences in job performance even in workers with more than a decade of experience. It’s more predictive than interests, personality, reference checks, and interview performance. Smart people don’t just make better mathematicians, as Brooks observed—they make better managers, clerks, salespeople, service workers, vehicle operators, and soldiers.
IQ predicts other things that matter, too, like income, employment, health, and even longevity. In a 2001 study published in the British Medical Journal, Scottish researchers Lawrence Whalley and Ian Deary identified more than 2,000 people who had taken part in the Scottish Mental Survey of 1932, a nationwide assessment of IQ. Remarkably, people with high IQs at age 11 were more considerably more likely to survive to old age than were people with lower IQs. For example, a person with an IQ of 100 (the average for the general population) was 21 percent more likely to live to age 76 than a person with an IQ of 85. And the relationship between IQ and longevity remains statistically significant even after taking SES into account. Perhaps IQ reflects the mental resources—the reasoning and problem-solving skills—that people can bring to bear on maintaining their health and making wise decisions throughout life. This explanation is supported by evidence that higher-IQ individuals engage in more positive health behaviors, such as deciding to quit smoking.
IQ is of course not the only factor that contributes to differences in outcomes like academic achievement and job performance (and longevity). Psychologists have known for many decades that certain personality traits also have an impact. One is conscientiousness, which reflects a person’s self-control, discipline, and thoroughness. People who are high in conscientiousness delay gratification to get their work done, finish tasks that they start, and are careful in their work, whereas people who are low in conscientiousness are impulsive, undependable, and careless (compare Lisa and Bart Simpson). The University of Pennsylvania psychologist Angela Duckworth has proposed a closely related characteristic that she calls “grit,” which she defines as a person’s “tendency to sustain interest in and effort toward very long-term goals,” like building a career or family.
Duckworth has argued that such factors may be even more important as predictors of success than IQ. In one study, she and UPenn colleague Martin Seligman found that a measure of self-control collected at the start of eighth grade correlated more than twice as strongly with year-end grades than IQ did. However, the results of meta-analyses, which are more telling than the results of any individual study, indicate that these factors do not have a larger effect than IQ does on measures of academic achievement and job performance. So, while it seems clear that factors like conscientiousness—not to mention social skill, creativity, interest, and motivation—do influence success, they cannot take the place of IQ.
None of this is to say that IQ, whether measured with the SAT or a traditional intelligence test, is an indicator of value or worth. Nobody should be judged, negatively or positively, on the basis of a test score. A test score is a prediction, not a prophecy, and doesn’t say anything specific about what a person will or will not achieve in life. A high IQ doesn’t guarantee success, and a low IQ doesn’t guarantee failure. Furthermore, the fact that IQ is at present a powerful predictor of certain socially relevant outcomes doesn’t mean it always will be. If there were less variability in income—a smaller gap between the rich and the poor—then IQ would have a weaker correlation with income. For the same reason, if everyone received the same quality of health care, there would be a weaker correlation between IQ and health.
But the bottom line is that there are large, measurable differences among people in intellectual ability, and these differences have consequences for people’s lives. Ignoring these facts will only distract us from discovering and implementing wise policies.
Given everything that social scientists have learned about IQ and its broad predictive validity, it is reasonable to make it a factor in decisions such as whom to hire for a particular job or admit to a particular college or university. In fact, disregarding IQ—by admitting students to colleges or hiring people for jobs in which they are very likely to fail—is harmful both to individuals and to society. For example, in occupations where safety is paramount, employers could be incentivized to incorporate measures of cognitive ability into the recruitment process. Above all, the policies of public and private organizations should be based on evidence rather than ideology or wishful thinking.Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.) poses for a photo. (Photo by Rex C. Curry/For The Washington Post)
It would be difficult for the oil industry to find a more dependable friend in Congress than Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee Chairman Mary Landrieu (D-La.). Now Landrieu will learn how dependable a friend the industry is to her.
Landrieu strongly supports the Keystone XL pipeline and fracking. She has upbraided the Obama administration for not moving faster to issue permits for natural gas exports. And she backed Republican-sponsored amendments that would have blocked federal agencies from pricing carbon, curbing greenhouse gases or protecting streams and wetlands.
But in a tight battle for control of the Senate, a Landrieu victory could tip the balance of power away from Republicans, who tend to be more sympathetic to oil and gas industry goals. And many conservatives — and oil industry contributors — fervently want to oust Sen. Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), who opposes the Keystone pipeline and crude oil exports and who has blocked such energy measures from reaching the Senate floor.
If the oil industry is torn now, it could face an even more agonizing choice after election day. Under Louisiana election law, a candidate needs to win 50 percent of the vote and the four-way senate race seems destined for a runoff. If at that point the Louisiana race can alter control of the Senate, then oil and gas companies that have supported Landrieu could still change course and donate money to her runoff foe.
The industry, and its lobbyists, are watching the race closely. “There are a whole lot of parlor games going on about what could happen,” said Marty Durbin, president of America’s Natural Gas Alliance, whose political action committee has donated $5,000 to Landrieu. “Few people are in a position to say here’s exactly what we’re going to do. There are too many intangibles at this point.”
The Louisiana contest also provides a window onto the evolution of interest group politics in a partisan era. The oil and gas industry once could count on many Democrats from Texas and other states, but its allies on the Democratic side of the aisle have dried up. And now standing by Landrieu, one of its last Democratic allies, could backfire.
For now, Landrieu’s track record — and chairmanship — has helped her secure about a two-to-one edge over her main Republican foe Rep. Bill Cassidy (R-La.) in oil and gas industry contributions.
“We’ve got a sitting senator whose been very supportive of the industry throughout her career,” said Durbin, head of America’s Natural Gas Alliance, an industry group that gave Landrieu $5,000. “That’s why we have continued to support her to this point. But it being Louisiana, regardless of how the election turns out we will have a strong supporter of the industry in the Senate.”
Some conservative groups don’t need any time to mull their own strategy. Ending Spending, a political action committee founded by former TD Ameritrade chief executive Joe Ricketts, has already booked $2.5 million of television and radio time to attack Landrieu and support whichever Republican gets into a runoff election, either Cassidy or the tea party candidate, retired Air Force colonel Rob Maness. It plans to spend more on newspaper and online advertising and on-the-ground forces.
“I have a hard time believing that supporting Sen. Landrieu makes much sense,” said Brian Baker, president of Ending Spending. “The most important vote she’ll cast is for Harrry Reid [as majority leader]. If you’re for oil and gas, better energy policy, keeping your doctor, more jobs, lower taxes, less debt, you can’t in good faith vote for Mary Landrieu.”
A lot of money has poured into the Landrieu race, but after the first round of voting a lot more could rain down on Louisiana voters when it matters most — before the December runoff.
“Why put a whole lot of money in now?” said a veteran Republican lobbyist on condition of anonymity to preserve his relationship with clients and lawmakers. “Why not wait and see what happens in the election and then you can address the question?”
So far, oil industry donations in the Louisiana Senate race have been divided. Landrieu, partly thanks to her committee chairmanship, continues to lure donors. Individuals and committees associated with the oil and gas industry donated $791,636 to Landrieu as of Sept. 9, according to figures compiled by the Center for Responsive Politics. Oil and gas contributors had given $373,370 to Cassidy. The level of oil industry donations — both for and against Landrieu — was up sharply from her race six years ago.
Exxon Mobil contributors were the second biggest source of money to Landrieu with $53,900 as of Sept. 9. Marathon and Pioneer were also among the biggest contributors. By contrast, Koch Industries is the third largest contributor to Landrieu’s foe Rep. Bill Cassidy (R-La.) with $36,600.
The industry is also divided over whether it needs to have allies in both parties. Its three main allies among Senate Democrats are Landrieu, the endangered Sen. Mark Begich (D-Ak.), and Sen. Heidi Heitkamp, who might opt to run for the governorship of North Dakota in two years. “Wouldn’t it be good to have at least one Democrat on the inside fighting for us?” said former Louisiana senator John Breaux, a Democrat supporting Landrieu.
Several sources close to the industry said they have been in discussions in which some company officials said that moderate Democrats like Landrieu and Begich haven’t been very useful. Though several permits for LNG export terminals have been approved, neither lawmaker has convinced Reid to bring an energy bill to the Senate floor or to persuade Obama to take an action such as approving the Keystone XL or allowing crude oil exports.
But Durbin said “I’m more of the sense that we’re not going to see much get done regardless of what the election outcome is. That’s why I’d much rather focus on: Do we have enough members of both parties to put together a coalition to move things forward.”
Landrieu’s alignment with oil industry issues has cooled her relationship with some traditional Democratic groups. The League of Conservation Voters is backing Democrats in six tight Senate races — but it is not backing Landrieu.
“We’re focusing on six races where a climate action champion is running for reelection or for an open seat,” said Daniel J. Weiss, senior vice president for campaigns at the League.
Even though Louisiana, with its vast wetlands and proximity to the hurricane-prone Gulf of Mexico, is on the front line of climate change, Landrieu has voted for several measures that would have hamstrung government efforts to deal with climate change.
She voted for an amendment proposed by Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.) that would have enacted funding cuts to federal agencies from curbing greenhouse gas emissions. She voted for a Sen. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) amendment to the fiscal year 2014 budget resolution that would have prevented Congress from enacting legislation that would place a federal tax or fee on carbon emissions. And she voted for a Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) amendment to the Water Resources Development Act, which would prevent the Army Corps of Engineers and Environmental Protection Agency from restoring Clean Water Act protections to streams and wetlands.
But Weiss said that Landrieu has scored much better on LCV’s issues than Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), who would become the chairman of the Energy and Natural Resources committee if the GOP won control of the Senate. Landrieu has voted along LCV lines 51 percent of the time over her entire time in Congress; Murkowski has sided with the LCV just 21 percent of the time during her career, Weiss said.
Landrieu votes in line with LCV included votes in favor of continuing military investments in advanced biofuels, a budget proposal that would have trimmed tax breaks for big oil companies, keeping mercury emission limits on power plants (which Murkowski opposed), and maintaining the National Endowment for the Oceans.
“I would posit that if the Republicans are in control of the Senate and Lisa Murkowski becomes chairman of Senate energy committiee, that would probably be very acceptable to the oil industry,” said Weiss.Meet Zeus!
Zeus (aka Casper) was adopted last year, but his mom feels she is not able to give him the home he deserves. We are helping her find that perfect home for Zeus. He is about 135lbs and very strong and beautiful! Here are some notes from his mom to help us find a perfect fit for this big boy:
He is a very sweet boy and excellent with children. He gets along very well with everyone whom has met him. He loves to snuggle and be right at your side. His favorite thing to do is lay right on the couch next to me. He doesn't need much exercise (we go on two short walks a day longer ones when it's not too hot, he doesn't do well in the heat).
He gets along with some other dogs but not many. We used to go to the dog park but he is unpredictable at which dogs he will get along with and after a few incidences I couldn't take the risk. He can be somewhat difficult to walk because he gets VERY excited when he sees a cat or another dog and wants to say hello., so whoever adopts him needs to be able to control a dog of his strenght and size.
One of his main issues is that he does not like to be left alone.I think an ideal home for Zeus would be someone who works from home or a family where at least someone is home nearly all day. He would love to have lots of people around. He loves small children but because he is so big you really have to watch him because he sometimes doesn't know his own strength or size. A perfect family would probably have another dog for him to be with so that he isn't ever alone (but they would have to make sure they get along first).
Please email right away if you would like to learn more about this dog......and visit our website www.siarescuers.org to learn more about our rescue group.
Adoption fees range from $150-$250 for dogs. THE DOGS SHOWN ON THE SITE ARE IN FOSTERCARE - WE DO NOT HAVE A SHELTER TO VISIT. EMAIL is the best way to reach us.
We are a volunteer run, very small organization - so please be patient when waiting for a response, but feel free to check back in if you haven't heard from us in a day or so - thank you so much for considering a rescued pooch!Since the running of MTV’s Jersey Shore earlier in the decade, New Jersey has been painted across the country as the armpit of America. Of course, the laughable governorship of Chris Christie didn’t help either, and set up the state to elect a man governor who will do more damage than all of his predecessors combined.
The 2017 gubernatorial race in New Jersey flew under the radar until the weeks leading up to the election. The two primary candidates were former DNC finance chairman and 23-year Goldman Sachs veteran Phil Murphy, and NJ’s Lieutenant Governor, Republican Kim Guadagno.
The two candidates offered vastly different platforms, painting starkly contrasting futures for New Jerseyans to decide. Guadagno wanted to roll back New Jersey’s already strict gun control laws while Murphy seeks to bolster them, as well as increase taxes on the purchase of firearms (the NRA gave Murphy an F rating on guns). Guadagno opposed raising the minimum wage, citing the laws of economics as her reason for opposition, while Murphy wants to raise it to $15. Guadagno focused her campaign around lowering New Jersey’s high property taxes. Guadagno was so committed to lowering property taxes that according to the New York Times, she was “promising not to run for re-election if she is unable to lower them.” While Murphy claimed he wanted to ease property taxes, he “also has proposed raising other taxes, including a so-called millionaires tax, closing corporate tax loopholes as well as legalizing and taxing marijuana.”
But if you thought the horrors of a Murphy governorship end there, you would be wrong. A quick pass through Murphy’s issues page on his website Murphy4NJ.com shows no love of liberty, and only a love for government, regulation, and redistribution of wealth. Murphy’s economic agenda involves increasing spending for infrastructure, education, student loan relief, and healthcare. In addition to this, he wants to implement a public bank in New Jersey to bail out small businesses, student loans, and fund infrastructure projects. On his website, he also says he wants to “make millionaires and corporations pay their fair share of taxes, so we can make the investments we need in our schools.”
Murphy wants to build a “fairer economy for every New Jersey family” and wishes to help “all New Jersey residents find secure and meaningful work.” He supports free community college, government sponsored job training, and government funding for clean energy programs. On his website, he attacks Chris Christie for slashing funding to NJ Transit, New Jersey’s public transportation service.
On top of this, the governor-elect wants to help create retirement plans for New Jersey workers. He supports “women’s rights” issues, such as ensuring equal pay, and government funding to Planned Parenthood. A blatant opponent of property rights, Murphy seeks to ensure LGBTQ inclusion, and wants to make access to healthcare non-discriminatory.
While his list of fouls against liberty rage on, some of his more notable positions include wanting to expand democracy in NJ, which libertarian economist Hans-Hermann Hoppe has called a “soft variant of communism.” Murphy also wants to let 17 year olds to vote in primaries if they’ll be 18 come election day. And perhaps most notably, Murphy seeks to make New Jersey a sanctuary state for illegal immigrants, seeking to provide them with drivers licenses, financial aid, earned sick leave, and workplace protections.
New Jersey may have been on the brink of collapse before, but the election of Phil Murphy is what will bring down the state for good."Carragher" redirects here. For the surname, see Carragher (surname)
James Lee Duncan Carragher (; born 28 January 1978) is an English retired footballer who played as a defender for Premier League club Liverpool during a career which spanned 17 years.
A one-club man, he was Liverpool's vice-captain for 10 years, and is the club's second-longest ever serving player, making his 737th appearance for Liverpool in all competitions on 19 May 2013. Carragher also holds the record for the most appearances in European competition for Liverpool with 150.
Carragher grew up as an Everton football fan before deciding to play for Liverpool, starting his footballing career at the Liverpool Academy, making his professional debut in the 1996–97 season, and becoming a first team regular the following season.
Having initially played as a full-back, the arrival of manager Rafael Benítez in 2004 saw Carragher move to become a centre-back, where he found his best form. His honours with Liverpool total two FA Cups, three League Cups, two Community Shields, one Champions League, one UEFA Cup, and two Super Cups.
Internationally, Carragher held the national record for most caps at under-21 level and earned his senior debut in 1999. He represented England at the 2004 European Championship and the 2006 FIFA World Cup, before announcing his retirement from international football in 2007. He did, however, temporarily come out of retirement in order to represent England at the 2010 FIFA World Cup, before retiring again with 38 senior England caps.
Following his retirement in 2013, Carragher joined Sky Sports where he appears as a pundit alongside Graeme Souness, Gary Neville and Jamie Redknapp.[4]
Club career [ edit ]
Beginnings and Cup treble (1988–2004) [ edit ]
Born in Bootle, Merseyside, Carragher attended the FA's school of excellence in Lilleshall in his youth.[5][6] Although a childhood Everton supporter, he joined Merseyside rivals Liverpool in 1988, and regularly turned up at Liverpool's School of Excellence wearing a Graeme Sharp Everton kit.[7]
Carragher's father was also an Everton supporter, and his two middle names (Lee Duncan) are a tribute to Gordon Lee and Duncan McKenzie – manager Lee dropped McKenzie on the day of Carragher's birth.[8] He spent a year at the Everton School of Excellence at the age of 11, but returned to Liverpool due to the club's superior coaching set-up under Steve Heighway.[9] He failed to impress in his first appearances to the Liverpool A and B teams due to his then-small stature, but after being moved from up front to a midfield role he was able to establish himself in the reserve team.[10] He played his first game for the reserves in the 1994–95 season, and was named man of the match against Blackburn Rovers at Haig Avenue.[11] He helped Liverpool to win the 1996 FA Youth Cup with a 4–1 aggregate victory over a West Ham United side that included Rio Ferdinand and Frank Lampard.[12]
Carragher was tried out in defence for the first time during the tournament, and later admitted that Liverpool were not the most technically gifted side in the competition, but instead relied on team spirit and the outstanding talents of Michael Owen.[12]
He made his first team début for the "Reds" under Roy Evans in a League Cup quarter-final against Middlesbrough at the Riverside Stadium on 8 January 1997, coming on as a substitute for Rob Jones 75 minutes into a 2–1 defeat.[13] Three days later he made his Premier League debut as a substitute at Anfield, playing the entire second half of a 0–0 draw with West Ham United.[14] On 18 January, he was scheduled to play as a centre-half against Aston Villa, only to be replaced in the starting line-up by Bjørn Tore Kvarme; however Patrik Berger was taken ill and Carragher was his last minute replacement in central midfield.[14] He played well alongside Jamie Redknapp, and scored his first goal with a header in front of the Kop in a 3–0 win.[15] Despite this auspicious start, it proved to be his last contribution to the 1996–97 campaign.[16]
Carragher broke into the first team in the 1997–98 season as the team struggled to keep pace with Arsenal and Manchester United despite having talented players such as Owen, Redknapp, Robbie Fowler, Steve McManaman and Paul Ince.[17] Throughout his early playing career, he was essentially used as a utility player that spent time as a centre-half, full-back and defensive midfielder in a squad that was often negatively labelled the "Spice Boys".
Carragher learned to shun the spotlight and focus on football instead as new manager Gérard Houllier used him consistently in a new continental side focused on discipline.[18] In his autobiography, Carragher admitted that "I always felt close to Gérard", and was full of praise for the French manager during the early part of his reign.[19] He went on to make 44 appearances in the 1998–99 season, and was named as the club's Player of the Year.[20]
Carragher was restricted to the right-back position after scoring two own goals in a 3–2 home defeat to Manchester United early in the 1999–2000 season.[21] Houllier never again played him at centre-back, as Sami Hyypiä and Stéphane Henchoz formed solid partnership.[22]
The 2000–01 season saw Carragher switch to the left-back position and win his first senior honours, as Liverpool went on to win the FA Cup, League Cup, UEFA Cup, Community Shield and Super Cup in the space of just a few months.
During a January 2002 FA Cup tie against Arsenal, he threw a coin back into the stands that had been tossed at him and received a red card.[23][24] He escaped an FA misconduct charge after publicly apologising, but he did receive a formal police warning about the incident.[25]
From 2002–04, Carragher was hit by two serious injuries, missing the 2002 FIFA World Cup for an operation on his knee, and later receiving a broken leg after a tackle by Blackburn Rovers' Lucas Neill at Ewood Park in September 2003. During this period, his place in the team was also threatened by signings of Steve Finnan and John Arne Riise. Despite this, he was able to win a second League Cup in 2003 with Liverpool, and shortly afterwards was named the club's vice-captain.
Champions League and FA Cup success (2004–2007) [ edit ]
Carragher in action against Benfica
The 2004–05 season proved to be a career-defining one for Carragher. New manager Rafael Benítez moved him to centre-half, where he would manage 56 appearances all season alongside Sami Hyypiä. Carragher developed a reputation as a strong and positionally astute defender and would remain in the centre-half position for the rest of his career.[26]
This season saw Carragher prove central to Liverpool's triumph in the UEFA Champions League, in particular when he made two vital last-ditch intercepts in the Final in extra-time whilst suffering from cramp.[27] Carragher was subsequently awarded the Liverpool Player of the Year Award at the end of the campaign, and went on to captain the team to their UEFA Super Cup victory over CSKA Moscow.[28] Carragher was nominated for football's most prestigious individual accolade, the Ballon d'Or, in 2005.[29]
In May 2006, Carragher played in the FA Cup Final against West Ham United, his tenth final in as many years of club football. Despite scoring an own goal in the 21st minute, Liverpool went on to win the Final 3–1 on penalties after the match finished 3–3 after extra-time, giving Carragher his second FA Cup win. He would appear in the FA Community Shield win two months later.
"I'd plummeted to the deepest put of misery, only to instantly recover to ascend the highest of peaks... no footballer fancies a sneak preview of the most humiliating defeat in sporting history. But having staged a comeback that will echo in eternity, none of us would want it any other way." — Carragher reflects on Liverpool's Champions League win.[30]
On 9 December 2006, Carragher scored his first league goal since January 1999, in a match against Fulham at Anfield. Fellow defender Daniel Agger flicked the ball on from a corner, and Carragher slid the ball under Fulham |
's other qualifying conditions, patients will need advance certification from a Minnesota health care provider.
Minnesota lawmakers passed one of the strictest medical marijuana laws in the country in 2014, limiting the conditions that qualify for the program and banning the use of medical cannabis in plant form.
The law included nine medical conditions that would qualify a person to receive medical cannabis and gave the state health commissioner authority to consider adding other qualifying conditions and delivery methods. Last year, the department added post-traumatic stress disorder to the list of conditions eligible to be treated with medical marijuana.
Here's the complete list:
• Cancer associated with severe/chronic pain, nausea or severe vomiting, or cachexia or severe wasting
• Glaucoma
• HIV/AIDS
• Tourette's syndrome
• Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS)
• Seizures, including those characteristic of epilepsy
• Severe and persistent muscle spasms, including those characteristic of multiple sclerosis
• Inflammatory bowel disease, including Crohn's disease
• Terminal illness, with a probable life expectancy of less than one year
• Intractable pain
• Post-traumatic stress disorder
• Autism spectrum disorders (effective July 1)
• Obstructive sleep apnea (effective July 1)Madison Ruppert, Contributor
Activist Post
With the release of the tape of a 911 call in New Brunswick, New Jersey, originally taped in June 2009, the public can now hear a somewhat hilarious instance of the “See Something, Say Something” campaign actually doing something positive.
Salil Sheth, a building superintendent at an apartment complex near Rutgers University, just happened to stumble upon a secret New York Police Department (NYPD) safe house far from the department’s jurisdiction during an inspection.
This type of activity isn’t all that surprising seeing as an NYPD officer was locked in a psych ward by his superiors after exposing massive corruption and the NYPD has arrested and detained a couple for 23 hours for dancing, called people who film police “professional agitators,” lied about their counter-terrorism record, spied on Muslims across the northeast, falsified drug charges to meet quotas, to just mention a few incidents.
Sheth had notified the tenants of unit 1076 of the upcoming inspection weeks earlier but his notice was still in the door, so he let himself in and quickly realized that there was something incredibly suspicious.
One of Sheth’s colleagues called 911 and Sheth proceeded to describe the situation.
“We’ve been doing the five year state inspection and came across an apartment where there’s some suspicious activity,” said Sheth.
“What’s suspicious?” asked the New Brunswick police dispatcher.
Sheth responded, “Suspicious in the sense that the apartment has about – has no furniture except two beds, has no clothing, has New York City Police Department radios.”
The dispatcher was clearly surprised and asked “Really?”
“There’s computers in there,” said Sheth. “There’s computer hardware, software, you know just laying around. There’s pictures of terrorists.”
At this point it becomes quite obvious that Sheth thinks he has stumbled on a terrorist hideout when in reality he has discovered damning evidence of illegal law enforcement activities.
“There’s pictures of our neighboring building that they have,” continued Sheth, to which the dispatcher asked, “In New Brunswick?” “Yes,” replied Sheth.
“And pictures of our neighboring buildings?” asked the dispatcher.
“Yes, the Matrix building,” Sheth responded, speaking of a local developer. “There’s pictures of terrorists. There’s literature on the Muslim religion.”
The NYPD, having been trained and guided by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), has gone on the offensive since September 11, 2001, spying on Muslims not only in New York but also well outside their jurisdiction.
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Undercover NYPD officers would hang around mosques, listen in on conversations in cafes and even spy on Muslim student groups, apparently using the apartment discovered by Sheth as a safe house.
This was no minor operation, mind you. The NYPD maintained files on sermons, recorded names of political organizers, and created databases tracking where Muslims lived, shopped and even frequent spots where they would watch sports together.
When the New Brunswick police and agents with the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) showed up, they were quite surprised by the discovery since none were informed of the NYPD’s presence.
As the Associated Press points out, “At the NYPD, the bungled operation was an embarrassment. It made the department look amateurish and forced it to ask the FBI to return the department’s materials.”
The attempts at arguing for the legitimacy of the practice of NYPD officers moving far out of their jurisdiction – as far away as New Orleans in one case where they were spying on liberal groups – have been nothing short of pathetic.
Andrew Schaffer, the deputy commissioner for legal matters for the NYPD said in February that the detectives are totally justified in operating outside of New York because they are not in the course of conducting official police duties.
Survival Solar Battery Charger - Free Today! “They’re not acting as police officers in other jurisdictions,” said Schaffer. Yet this is hardly a defensible position when Lieutenant Commander William McGroarty of the NYPD and Assistant Chief Thomas Galati both called for the New Brunswick police to not release the recording since it “would jeopardize investigations and endanger people and buildings.” “Such identification will place the safety of any officers identified, as well as the undercover operatives with whom they work, at risk,” wrote Galati in a letter to New Brunswick. Does this sound like they were not acting as police? Hardly, especially when one considers that according to New Brunswick attorneys, the apartment was actually rented by an undercover NYPD officer using a fake name. Michael Bloomberg, the Mayor of New York City, has been a defender of the NYPD’s supposed right to go anywhere in the country without telling police, so long as they claim they are searching for a terrorist. Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem like individuals in New Jersey care all that much, since New Jersey Attorney General Jeffrey Chiesa stated that he is not aware of any evidence showing that the NYPD’s activities were in violation of the law. That being said, Muslim groups are taking a stand and have filed a lawsuit in an attempt to get the NYPD’s program shut down. Lawyers have requested that a federal judge decide if the spying is in violation of federal rules put in place after the NYPD engaged in similar activities in the 1950s in an attempt to find communists. Hopefully the federal judge will actually pay attention to how serious this issue is and see beyond the emotionally charged post-September 11, 2001 language which is so readily leveraged by those who seek to hold on to these powers. Please support our work and help us start to pay contributors by doing your shopping through our Amazon link or check out some must-have products at our store. This article first appeared at End the Lie. Madison Ruppert is the Editor and Owner-Operator of the alternative news and analysis database End The Lie and has no affiliation with any NGO, political party, economic school, or other organization/cause. He is available for podcast and radio interviews. Madison also now has his own radio show on Orion Talk Radio from 8 pm — 10 pm Pacific, which you can find HERE. If you have questions, comments, or corrections feel free to contact him at [email protected] var linkwithin_site_id = 557381; linkwithin_text=’Related Articles:’Senator Tester’s bill is first-ever in US Senate to make clear that constitutional rights are only for people, not corporations
WASHINGTON, DC. – Senator Jon Tester (D-MT) received praise from democracy advocates today for introducing a companion bill to Massachusetts Congressman Jim McGovern’s “People’s Rights Amendment.”
Senator Tester’s bill mirrors language in the House bill, H.J. Res 21, making it clear that corporations do not have constitutional rights as if they were people. The House bill enjoys bi-partisan support from Republican Rep. Walter Jones (NC-3), along with many other co-sponsors, including Democratic Rep. John Conyers, Jr. (MI-13), the Ranking Member of the House Judiciary Committee.
Another, similar House-Senate pair of bills is also gaining support – H.J.Res. 20, also by Rep. McGovern (MA-2), and a bill re-introduced today by Senator Tom Udall (D-NM), which would restore the authority of Congress and the states to limit campaign spending in elections. A previous introduction of the bill by Sen. Udall had 25 U.S. Senate co-sponsors.
"These two constitutional amendment bills are critical to reclaiming our democracy," said John Bonifaz, executive director of Free Speech For People, referring to the People’s Rights Amendment by Sen. Tester and Rep. McGovern, and the campaign spending amendment by Sen. Udall and Rep. McGovern. "We must reverse Citizens United and ensure that people, not corporations, govern in America and that the nation lives up to its fundamental promise of political equality for all.
“Senator Tester’s sponsorship of the People’s Rights Amendment and Senator Udall’s re-introduction of his amendment bill on campaign spending represent significant political developments for our movement,” Bonifaz continued. “They reflect the growing support across the country for overturning Citizens United and restoring democracy to the people.”
Last week, Free Speech For People issued a major report documenting more than 100 Republican officials across the country in support of a constitutional amendment to reverse Citizens United. The report can be found here: http://j.mp/AcrossTheAisle
###
To download the press release, click here.
Read statements of support from local, state and national leaders.
Read our letter of support endorsing Senator Tester’s amendment bill.
Read our letter of support endorsing Senator Udall’s amendment bill.D’Angelo Russell is having an elite rookie point guard season, particularly for a teenager, but it appears to be going largely unnoticed outside of Lakerland.
In many ways, Russell is a victim of the combination of high expectations and the power of first impressions. Lakers’ fans, desperate for a savior—or, at least, a reason to hope—thrust upon him the expectations of the next franchise star. And those are very real expectations for this organization, the franchise of Kobe and Shaq, Magic, the Logo, and so many others. I was admittedly not immune to those hopes, pouring hundreds of hours into pre-draft reading/watching/debating, flying out to Vegas for summer league from across the country, etc. And I was passionately pro-Russell for the pick.
For several reasons—some easily identifiable and some not—Russell had a rough start, failing to burst out of the game like Kristaps Porzingis and Karl Anthony Towns, and has as a result largely been overlooked. Something about Russell’s summer and November just felt off. Maybe it was conditioning, or Byron, or his attitude, or learning the point guard position, or being 19, or Kobe’s insane start, but Russell was clearly out of sorts. He played tentative, with no aggression or confidence, never attacking the basket, and just generally looked lost. There was a lot of fan panic and as the Lakers spiraled, the league’s attention naturally focused on several of the more immediately successful rookies.
But Russell has gradually and unequivocally turned his season around and has put together a sustained stretch of brilliant play for a 19 year old rookie point guard. Statistically, he has gotten better every month. The eye test has shown a truly radical transformation; he’s just a different player now than he was in July or November. Many have written about this recently from different angles, and I’m sure much of what I say will be duplicative.
In an attempt to add some value to the conversation, I have focused this analysis on comparing Russell’s statistics at different points in the season to those of other first year rookie guards over the last decade or so. The table below lists the statistics for 30 such rookie guards. A few preliminary notes, and then my takeaway conclusions will follow:
I used three different snapshots for Russell: (1) season long, (2) January/February (23 games, so over a quarter of the season; throwing out the one game he left after 7 minutes due to injury), and (3) February (10 games).
I tried to pick the 30 most relevant comparisons from recent years, but surely forgot a player or two. Thirty is admittedly a big group, but I wanted the comparison to be as accurate and thoughtful as possible.
The players are arranged in descending order based on PER.
I added age because I think that’s a critical factor when considering where Russell is at on the developmental curve vs. other players. Obviously, Dwyane Wade at 22 was at a different developmental point as a rookie than Russell is now.
I used per-36 minutes states to make it a true apples to apples comparison.
Note that, other than steals, I did not include defensive statistics, including some of the helpful advanced defensive statistics. That analysis would be illuminating and important, but I decided to focus primarily on the offensive side of the ball in this post. Surely, defense is critical to understanding the overall value of a player, and is Russell’s current greatest weakness.
Player Age PER FG% TS% USG Pts Reb Ast Stl 3s TO FTA D Russell (season) 19 13.7 42.1 51.3 23.2 16.4 4.7 4.5 1.5 2.1 3.1 2.6 D Russell (Jan/Feb) 19 15.5 44.7 55.2 23.8 17.9 3.6 4.8 1.4 2.1 3.3 3.9 D Russell (Feb) 19 18.8 45.9 58.3 22 18.5 3.7 4.9 1.2 2.2 2.2 4.9 C Paul 20 22.1 43 54.6 22.2 16.1 5.1 7.8 2.2 0.6 2.3 6 K Irving 19 21.4 46.9 56.6 28.7 21.8 4.4 6.4 1.2 1.7 3.7 4.5 I Thomas 22 17.6 44.8 57.4 19.8 16.3 3.7 5.8 1.2 1.8 2.3 4 D Wade 22 17.6 46.5 53 25 16.8 4.2 4.7 1.5 0.3 3.3 5.3 C Payne 21 16.5 43.6 52.8 20.5 16.1 4.9 5.9 2.2 2.3 2 1.1 D Lillard 22 16.4 42.9 54.6 24.2 17.8 2.9 6 0.8 2.1 2.8 3.6 S Curry 21 16.3 46.2 56.8 21.8 17.4 4.4 5.9 1.9 2.1 3 2.5 D Rose 20 16 47.5 51.6 22.6 16.3 3.8 6.1 0.8 0.2 2.4 3 J Wall 20 15.8 40.9 49.4 23.8 15.6 4.4 7.9 1.7 0.5 3.6 5.4 M Carter-Williams 22 15.5 40.5 48 25.7 17.4 6.5 6.6 1.9 0.8 3.7 5.5 R Westbrook 20 15.2 39.8 48.9 25.8 16.9 5.4 5.9 1.5 0.5 3.7 5.8 K Walker 21 14.9 36.6 46.4 25.2 16.1 4.7 5.8 1.2 1.4 2.4 4.3 K Lowry
(*2 nd ) 21 14.3 43.2 53.1 18.6 13.6 4.3 5.1 1.6 0.6 2.2 6 J Harden 20 14 40.3 55.1 20.4 15.6 5.1 2.8 1.7 1.9 2.2 5 E Payton 20 13.8 42.5 45.6 18.3 10.6 5 7.7 2.1 0.2 2.9 3.1 R Rondo 20 13.1 41.8 47.2 16.5 9.9 5.7 5.8 2.5 0.1 2.7 3.6 M Conley 20 12.6 42.8 50.2 18.8 13 3.6 5.8 1.1 0.8 2.3 3.2 T Burke 21 12.6 38 47.3 21.8 14.2 3.3 6.3 0.7 1.8 2.1 1.8 D Williams 21 12.4 42.1 50 20.3 13.5 3 5.6 0.9 1.4 2.3 2.1 R Hood 22 12.3 41.4 52.9 19.6 14.7 4 2.8 1 2.1 1.5 2.7 T Parker 19 11.7 41.9 49.7 17.7 11.2 3.1 5.3 1.4 1 2.4 2.5 B Knight 20 11.7 41.5 51.1 21.7 14.3 3.6 4.2 0.8 1.8 2.9 2.3 J Teague 21 11 39.6 45.9 19.1 11.4 3.4 6.1 1.7 0.4 2.5 2.5 M Smart 20 11 36.7 49.1 15.1 10.4 4.4 4.1 2 1.8 1.8 2.5 G Dragic 22 9.8 39.3 48.7 19.7 12.2 5.1 5.5 1.4 1 3.6 3.2 R Jackson 21 9.2 32.1 40.8 18.7 10.1 3.8 5.1 1.8 0.9 2.6 2.1 J Grant 23 9.4 34.9 43.5 18.7 10.9 4 5.5 1.2 0.4 2.4 3.7 E Mudiay 19 8.2 33.6 40.5 25 13.3 3.8 6.9 1.4 0.9 4.1 3.9 D Exum 19 5.7 34.9 45.7 13.8 7.8 2.6 3.9 0.8 1.6 2.3 0.6
The first thing that stands out is comparing Russell to himself – he’s simply getting better as the season goes along. His PER for Oct/Nov/Dec was about 12.9, his PER for Jan/Feb is 15.5, and his PER for Feb is 18.8. 15.5 is better rookie PER than Westbrook and Harden. 18.8 is better than everyone but CP3 and Kyrie. His points/36 min and TS% went from 14.1 pts and 48.8% for November to 18.8 and 58.3 for February. Note that getting steadily better through a rookie season is not automatic. Porzingis, for example, has tailed off a little; he shot out of the gate with a 20.0 PER for November, which fell to 17.8 for February (still solid). Many rookies hit a wall, but Russell is getting substantially better each month.
If you throw out Russell’s first phase of the season, which is probably justified given the perfect storm nightmare of Byron’s antics, Kobe’s insane first month or two, and being 19, his stats show elite production compared to the list.
His PER for Feb is 3 rd overall, and his Jan/Feb PER ranks 10 th.
overall, and his Jan/Feb PER ranks 10. His scoring and three point shooting are elite. For points/36 min: 7 th on the season, and 2 nd for Jan/Feb and Feb. Russell’s 17.9 per 36 for Jan/Feb is better than Curry, Harden, CP3, Rose, Wade, Lillard, and Westbrook. Only Kyrie scored better than Russell has over the last two months. For 3s: tied with Curry for 2 nd for all time periods. He’s making substantially more 3s per 36 than some of the league’s elite shooters did as rookies, like Lillard, Harden, Kyrie, and Thomas. Only Cam Payne is higher, and he’s a spot up shooter playing 11 minutes a game next to Westbrook/Durant.
His shooting efficiency has risen to elite levels. While his TS% is 12 th for the season (a solid 51.3%), his Jan/Feb rank 4 th (55.2%), and his Feb ranks FIRST (58.3%). This allows for him to score at the elite levels noted above while not being a usage hog (9 th on the season and 9 th for Jan/Feb).
I included FTA to highlight his improvement in that area, especially because it was a source of real concern. He began the season with an anemic taste for the paint, but has completely done a 180 over the last two months, showing a real talent for drawing fouls in his own unique ways (either at the rim or with a defender on his hip in the midrange). His Jan/Feb ranks 11 th in FTA, and his Feb ranks 8 th. For example, his 4.9 FTA for Feb compare favorably to eventual foul-drawing magnets like Harden (5.0) and Wade (5.3), and is better than others like Rose (3.0) and Lillard (3.6).
Russell’s assists are on the low side, admittedly, at 25 th on the season and 24 th for Jan/Feb. But that is something that just doesn’t concern me given the context, and I’m trying hard to not just explain away numbers I don’t like… Both in college and this year, he has shown that he possesses special vision. The passing talent is there. But he has clearly been hampered by the brutal combination of Byron’s (non) system, not having any semblance of a pick and roll big (Hibbert might be the worst in the league and Randle just doesn’t have this skill yet), and usually having poor spot up shooters (cough, Kobe). I am not sure he’ll be a Westbrook, Rondo, or Wall in terms of assists per game, but I do think he can create for others in an elite way.
on the season and 24 for Jan/Feb. But that is something that just doesn’t concern me given the context, and I’m trying hard to not just explain away numbers I don’t like… Both in college and this year, he has shown that he possesses special vision. The passing talent is there. But he has clearly been hampered by the brutal combination of Byron’s (non) system, not having any semblance of a pick and roll big (Hibbert might be the worst in the league and Randle just doesn’t have this skill yet), and usually having poor spot up shooters (cough, Kobe). I am not sure he’ll be a Westbrook, Rondo, or Wall in terms of assists per game, but I do think he can create for others in an elite way. When you factor in Russell’s age, his stats become even more impressive. The only other 19 year olds on the list are Kyrie, Parker, Mudiay, and Exum, and he’s been better than all of them but Kyrie (who put together one of the top two rookie PG seasons of the last decade). 15 of the players on the list were 19 or 20 as rookies. If you rank within that group, Russell’s stats really stand out. Comparing his Jan/Feb numbers to those 15 players, Russell ranks 5 th in PER, 2 nd in TS%, 2 nd in Pts, 4 th in USG, and 1 st in 3s. After CP3 and Kyrie at #1 and 2 in PER, the next 5 ranked players were either 21 or 22 as rookies. For example, Wade and Lillard were 22 and Curry was 21. Age matters, and given Russell’s in-season development, just imagine what his production will be in two years – an eternity from now (and, hopefully, from Byron Scott…). I’m confident he’ll be putting up stats that compare with anyone on this list.
By any measure, he’s put together an excellent year. He’s light years better than several other highly touted rookies – Mudiay, Smart, Exum, etc. And he’s been comparable to several eventual all star level players – Deron Williams, Parker, Harden, Lowry, Westbrook, etc. Russell’s Feb stats are on par with just about anyone – 3 rd in PER, 1 st in TS%, 2 nd in Pts, 11 th in Ast, 8 th in Stl, 1 st in 3s, and 5 th in FTA. Put that all together and it’s probably better that everyone but CP3 and Kyrie.
So where does this leave us? What will Russell ultimately become? Well, we have no idea, of course. But the point of this analysis, I believe, is that we can rightfully look forward with hope for a truly special player. He’s shown enough sustained production at such a young age, and in such a toxic environment, to believe that he will be doing amazing things when 25 years old with the right teammates and coach around him.
He can do everything on the offensive end. He can shoot from 3, the midrange, and is increasingly crafty in the paint (despite the lack of explosiveness). On the last point, note that he’s currently ranked 40th among guards in FG% within 5 feet of the rim at 58.9%. That’s a higher percent than more notable guards such as Wall, Harden, DeRozan, Kyrie, and Westbrook. He has a pretty remarkable touch around the basket already, even if he’s only dunked once.
Plus, as discussed before, he is growing in his ability to draw fouls, and is already making 3s at an elite rate. He’s a beautiful pick and roll passer, especially when Black (the only competent rolling big) is on the court, and has shown an ability to make the speed pass to three points shooters like Clarkson, Williams, and Young. He has shown signs that he can one day be the engine of a great offense, and there aren’t many players in the league that rise to that level. I would not be surprised to see him averaging something like 23, 5 and 7, with extreme high volume in 3s (2+ makes per game), and solid efficiency (45/40/80, and a TS% between 55-60, which would be elite).
While this is sunny outlook offensively, a critical part of his overall development will be improving on defense. And while I did not focus on defensive statistics in this post, it is clear that Russell is largely a weak defender now that must substantially improve. That said, his defensive deficiencies, to me, seem largely rooted in habits rather than tools.
He has shown pretty solid on the ball tendencies – better than our other guards (which isn’t saying much, I know) – and has the length to disrupt shots and deflect passes (as shown by his solid steal rate). He also has shown the ability to be a strong defensive rebounder for a point guard. But he has somewhere between awful and horrific team instincts right now, regularly getting back cut, overly digging down to offer unnecessary post help (leaving his man open for endless open threes), ball watching too often, etc. This is an area where strong coaching and a few years of development should make a huge difference.
All of this underscores the need to make sure he maximizes these gifts through the right environment, resources, and coaching. I do not believe Byron is the coach to inspires, preferring he be replaced by someone who can inspire Russell to take this team over, rather than constantly doing drive by media shootings. He needs an elite pick and roll center (Whiteside would be perfect … on paper…); Randle needs to round out his game; need a Brandon Ingram (type) at SF.
Spending the first few years of his career in a toxic environment with outdated schemes would be such a shame. I love all of our young players, but Russell is the one that can really carry us places, and the team needs to set him up to find that greatness.OTTAWA—Fewer Canadians are being turned away at the U.S. land border in recent months despite mounting concerns that Donald Trump’s immigration policies are making it much harder to cross, The Canadian Press has learned. Refusals of Canadians at American land crossings dropped 8.5 per cent between October and the end of February compared with the same five-month period a year earlier, according to U.S. government statistics.
This 2013 file photo shows the U.S. Border Station in Highgate Springs, Vt., seen coming from Canada. Despite recent anecdotal reports of Canadians being denied entry into the United States, new statistics show the number of travellers from Canada being refused at land borders has dropped. ( Glenn Russell / The Burlington Free Press via the Associated Press )
The total number of Canadian travellers denied entry also dropped: 6,875 out of 12,991,027 were refused entry, a refusal rate of 0.05 per cent. Between October 2015 and February 2016, 7,619 out of 13,173,100 Canadian travellers were denied entry to the U.S., a refusal rate of 0.06 per cent. Read the latest on U.S. President Donald Trump
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The figures, confirmed by U.S. Customs and Border Protection, contrast with recent anecdotal reports of Canadians denied entry into the U.S., with many placing the blame on the policies of the Trump administration, including its controversial attempts to ban arrivals from several predominantly Muslim countries. A further breakdown of the border data shows a sharp drop in Canadian refusals at the U.S. border in the first two months of this year as 2,600 Canadian travellers were denied entry, compared with 3,500 for the same two-month period of 2016. But Canadian immigration and civil liberties advocates caution the numbers don’t tell the whole story. Immigration lawyer Lorne Waldman said he is fielding more calls than ever from people planning a trip to the U.S. and wanting to make sure they have the paperwork they need. The decreased rate of refusal could be just that people are now better prepared than they used to be, and so fewer are being turned away as a result, he said. “People in Canada used to take it for granted that they could just go to the border... but that’s no longer the case,” he said.
“The heightened awareness because of all the publicity around immigration has led people to be much more cautious about crossing the border.” The new U.S. data doesn’t disclose the specific reasons for refusals; there are more than 60 reasons someone can be turned away and so it’s not clear whether there’s been a change in why people are being turned back. In the wake of Trump’s first executive order governing immigration, 200 Canadian participants in the Canada-U.S. trusted traveller program NEXUS did have their express-entry cards temporarily revoked, but it was never clear whether they were also denied entry to the U.S. or were allowed in after going through normal security screening measures.
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The fact that the numbers overall of people crossing the border are also down suggests more are also just staying home, Waldman said, a fact born out in recent days as a number of groups announced they were cancelling cross border trips. Among them is Canada’s largest school board which said Thursday it would stop the planning of future field trips to the U.S. indefinitely because of uncertainty about possible border restrictions. The Toronto District School Board, which has 245,000 public school students, said it made the “difficult decision” because it believes students “should not be placed into these situations of potentially being turned away at the border.” For now, the board said it would carry on with 24 U.S. previously planned trips, but says all students will turn back if any students with appropriate documentation are turned away. Earlier this month, Girl Guides of Canada said it would move pre-emptively to avoid uncertainty at the border by cancelling trips to the U.S. The organization said changes in U.S. travel regulations made it uncertain whether all Girl Guides will be able to enter the country, so it decided instead that none would travel. How many people are being turned away isn’t the only concern, said Brenda McPhail, director of the privacy, technology and surveillance project at the Canadian Civil Liberties Association. “The other concern is that there’s been an increase in temporary detentions and increasingly invasive searches, including searches of electronic devices,” she said. “And so the numbers don’t say anything about whether or not the number of searches have increased, (or) whether or not the amount of time that people are being detained at the border before they are being let through has changed.” The new U.S. Homeland Security chief, retired general John Kelly, told The Canadian Press earlier this month that if a traveller is stopped for additional screening, or is turned away, it may be because his name has turned up on a watch list, or there is a problem with his credentials. “There is a reason why,” he said. “It’s not their race, it’s not their religion, it’s not the language they speak.”
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Arsenal will be without the injured Per Mertesacker and Gabriel Paulista for the meeting with Liverpool on Sunday, while Laurent Koscielny is also set to be unavailable after his late return to training after featuring in the Euro 2016 final |
archive.fo/xqlv9] [293] http://www.mywedding.com/vendors/cantor-dan-rous-18360 [https://archive.fo/A1iTj] [294] http://www.nytimes.com/1998/03/22/style/weddings-victoria-winter-jonathan-dienst.html [https://archive.fo/xqlv9] [295] See http://www.legacy.com/obituaries/nytimes/obituary.aspx?pid=167653195 [https://archive.fo/UmTLp] (requesting that donations in Paul’s name be made to the Westchester Jewish Community Services POINT Program). [296] http://www.legacy.com/obituaries/nytimes/obituary.aspx?pid=145795774 [https://archive.fo/Gvzx2] [297] Although Fletcher left the network in 2009, he returned to NBC News as a Special Correspondent in 2011. See http://www.jewishledger.com/2011/10/q-a-martin-fletcher-nbc-correspondent-sees-little-hope-for-peace-in-the-mid-east/ [https://archive.fo/MidJg] (“Today, he serves an NBC News Special Correspondent.”). Fletcher has continued to serve as a special correspondent for MSNBC/NBC News. See, e.g., http://www.msnbc.com/craig-melvin/watch/martin-fletcher--the-ceasefire-is-over-312660547523 [https://archive.fo/iEP5I] [298] http://www.jewishbookcouncil.org/book/jacobs-oath [https://archive.fo/dSJUe] [299] http://www.jewishbookcouncil.org/awards/njba-list [https://archive.fo/pEJ6d] [300] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Fletcher_(TV_reporter) [https://archive.fo/UciWP] [301] http://daytonjewishobserver.org/2013/10/martin-fletcher-returns-to-fiction/ [https://archive.fo/TLrCH] [302] http://www.jewishbookcouncil.org/book/walking-israel-a-personal-search-for-the-soul-of-a-nation [https://archive.fo/4b3JD] [303] http://richard-wolffe.people.msnbc.com/ [https://archive.fo/pdxee]; http://www.nbcnews.com/id/33123380/ns/msnbc-meet_the_faces_of_msnbc/t/richard-wolffe [https://archive.fo/eub2W] [304] Richard Wolffe, Renegade: The Making of a President (New York: Crown, 2009), p. 331. [305] See https://twitter.com/drfernstrom?lang=en [https://archive.fo/ijZ0p](Fernstrom referring to herself as a health expert for NBC News); see also http://www.today.com/stories/madelyn-fernstrom [https://archive.fo/4sFM2] [306] https://www.facebook.com/madelyn.fernstrom [https://archive.fo/DMGmZ] [307] https://www.facebook.com/madelyn.fernstrom/likes?collection_token=100000529353541%3A2409997254%3A96&next_cursor=MDpub3Rfc3RydWN0dXJlZDoxODk2MDkxMDA4ODI%3D [https://archive.fo/vZjtX] [308] https://www.facebook.com/dylan.hirsch.94/likes?collection_token=100014691736315%3A2409997254%3A96&next_cursor=MDpub3Rfc3RydWN0dXJlZDoxNTU4NjkzNzc3NjY0MzQ%3D [https://archive.fo/jaEhh] [309] https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=124751374691253&set=a.124751421357915.1073741826.100014691736315&type=3&theater [https://archive.fo/Ka8eM] [310] https://www.facebook.com/alan.hirsch.94/likes?collection_token=100002084661852%3A2409997254%3A96&next_cursor=MDpub3Rfc3RydWN0dXJlZDoxNjQ0MjI2MzY5Nzg1MTY%3D [https://archive.fo/2CxTO] [311] See https://twitter.com/jbarro [https://archive.fo/4dPcJ] (Referring to himself as “MSNBC contributor”). Barro is a frequent contributor on MSNBC. See, e.g., http://www.msnbc.com/kate-snow/watch/josh-barro-on-leaving-the-republican-party-787727427920 [https://archive.fo/QmuZm] [312] https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2013/06/the-loneliest-republican/309311/ (“[Josh Barro, the son of the prominent orthodox-conservative economist Robert Barro….”). [https://archive.fo/znbJU] [313] www.jinfo.org/index.html [https://archive.fo/sF0NL] [314] http://www.jinfo.org/Economists.html [https://archive.fo/RgGcq] [315] https://twitter.com/jbarro/status/371975295059771393?lang=en [https://archive.fo/l7jFf] [316] https://www.cnbc.com/larry-kudlow/ [https://archive.fo/MYkQD] [317] http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-news-and-politics/14094/darkness-falls [https://archive.fo/OJ9i3] [318] http://www.jewishworldreview.com/cols/kudlow.html [https://archive.fo/o6OTH] [319] http://www.therichest.com/celebnetworth/lists/rich/larry-kudlow-net-worth/ [https://archive.fo/rb8U5] [320] https://www.cnbc.com/jared-bernstein-bio/ [https://archive.fo/6ucxQ] [321] https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/about-aice [https://archive.fo/SCSkt] [322] https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jared-bernstein [https://archive.fo/VKRmy] [323] See https://www.cnbc.com/scott-cohn/ [https://archive.fo/XV5Ft]; https://www.entrepreneur.com/author/scott-cohn [https://archive.fo/Dv4jA] [324] http://obits.dignitymemorial.com/dignity-memorial/obituary.aspx?n=Lillian-Cohn-Sharon&lc=7157&pid=184473326&mid=7326125 [https://archive.fo/RnowX] [325] http://www.dignitymemorialjewish.com/weinstein-and-piser-funeral-home/en-us/index.page [https://archive.fo/FT7pk] [326] https://www.facebook.com/jessica.cohn.5/about?lst=602838297%3A655017359%3A1501829795§ion=all_relationships [https://archive.fo/PrCGA]. Jessica’s Facebook, at the link in the sentence immediately preceding this one, lists Allan Cohn as her brother-in-law. Both Jessica and Allan are friends with Scott Cohn on Facebook. See https://www.facebook.com/scott.cohn.12?fref=pb&hc_location=friends_tab [https://archive.fo/OoXFT] [327] http://obits.dignitymemorial.com/dignity-memorial/obituary.aspx?n=Lillian-Cohn-Sharon&lc=7157&pid=184473326&mid=7326125 [https://archive.fo/RnowX] [328] https://www.facebook.com/allan.cohn [https://archive.fo/qX1aj] [329] https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=1341571085928229&set=a.105001146251902.10231.100002260519839&type=3&theater [https://archive.fo/INYGD] [330] https://www.cnbc.com/steve-liesman/ [https://archive.fo/WhYv4] [331] http://www.nytimes.com/1991/11/10/style/karen-dukess-writer-is-wed.html [https://archive.fo/fmBMU] [332] See Id. See also http://www.nytimes.com/2003/09/02/classified/paid-notice-deaths-liesman-bernice-bunny.html [https://archive.fo/ceCKP] [333] https://www.thepjc.org/sites/default/files/uploaded_files/YAH%20-%202013.pdf [https://archive.fo/64QDy] [334] https://relationshipscience.com/steve-liesman-p52912427 [https://archive.fo/F2BcX] [335] https://www.cnbc.com/josh-lipton/ [https://archive.fo/hKESE] [336] https://twitter.com/CNBCJosh/status/816399582762389504 [https://archive.fo/iNjTl] [337] https://www.cnbc.com/julia-boorstin/ [https://archive.fo/X6kWc] [338] http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/23/fashion/weddings/23VOWS.html [https://archive.fo/M4gGy] [339] Id. [340] http://jewishjournal.com/author/sharon_boorstin [https://archive.fo/ZSVTe]
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INTRODUCTION: This pastebin is organized into eight sections. The first seven sections detail the extent of Jewish influence at Comcast and NBC Universal, particularly within NBC's News Division. The final section catalogs each of the citations used to support the assertions made throughout the text. This pastebin is accessible at https://pastebin.com/cqDiq3P4. An archived version of this pastebin is also accessible via https://archive.fo/DxsGs. Feel free to copy, build upon, or otherwise repost the information in this pastebin on your own website. To see a similar list for the New York Times, visit: https://pastebin.com/syWNwnMP. To see a similar list for CBS News, visit: https://pastebin.com/U7QYbUry. SECTION 1: Comcast/NBC Universal Executives SECTION 2: NBC Universal Chairman & Presidents SECTION 3: NBC Universal Sub-Division Presidents SECTION 4: NBC Universal Vice Presidents SECTION 5: NBC Executive Producers SECTION 6: MSNBC/NBC News Hosts SECTION 7: MSNBC/NBC News Correspondents, Analysts & Contributors SECTION 8: Works Cited ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ **SECTION 1: Comcast/NBC Universal** Brian L. Roberts – Chairman & Chief Executive Officer (CEO), Comcast Corporation Brian Roberts is Chairman and Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Comcast Corporation. [1]. Brian Roberts is Jewish. According to The Forward, a Jewish publication, Roberts is the “son of a Philadelphia Jewish entrepreneur,” Roberts hosted a bar mitzvah for his son, and Roberts has a commitment to religion and Jewish causes that “is extremely personal and low-profile,” such that Roberts Jewish identity “should not be doubted.” [2]. David Cohen - Senior Executive Vice President & Chief Lobbyist, Comcast Corporation David Cohen is Senior Executive Vice President and the Chief Lobbyist for Comcast Corporation. [3]. David Cohen is Jewish. According to The Forward, a Jewish publication, Cohen is Jewish, and he is “a board member of the Philadelphia Jewish federation and a donor to many local and national Jewish causes.” [4]. According to the Philadelphia Inquirer, Barbara Cohen, “the mother of Comcast Corp. executive David L. Cohen… was active as a volunteer for the Jewish Federation and her synagogue.” [5]. Arthur Block – Executive Vice President, General Counsel and Secretary, Comcast Corporation Arthur Block is Executive Vice President, General Counsel and Secretary of Comcast. [6]. Arthur Block is Jewish. Block discussed his Jewish upbringing in an interview with the Columbus Jewish Historical Society, describing how hi'There's guy called Mitt Romney who wants to know if we are ready': Now Mayor Boris Johnson attacks Romney in rallying cry as Olympic festivities kick off in London
London Mayor Boris Johnson is latest British leader to jab at Mitt Romney over remarks as Olympic flame arrives in Hyde Park
Romney criticised whether Britain was fit to stage the summer games in U.S. interview
Prime Minister David Cameron hit back with claim that 'Britain can deliver'
Romney later went back on his remarks after meeting with Cameron, saying he believes the games will be 'highly successful'
Romney says he'll to put bust of Winston Churchill - which was given to President Bush and returned by Obama - back into White House
Awkwardly refers to Labour Leader Ed Miliband as 'Mr Leader' at Houses of Parliament
Romney ran 2002 Winter Olympic Games in Salt Lake City
Mitt Romney suffered yet another humiliation as he was jeered by thousands of Brits tonight after London's mayor publicly mocked the presidential hopeful's gaffe over the UK's ability to host the Olympics.
It capped a disastrous day in London for Romney after he kicked off his first foreign tour - as an entire city has appeared to turn against him.
Speaking in front of 60,000 assembled in Hyde Park at a concert to mark the end of the Olympic Torch relay, Mayor Boris Johnson used Romney's earlier remarks as a rallying cry.
He shouted to the crowd: 'There's guy called Mitt Romney who wants to know if we are ready. Are we ready? Yes we are!'
Scroll down for video
Fiery remarks: Olympic torch bearer Tyler Rix stands with London Mayor Boris Johnson after lighting an Olympic cauldron on stage for the Olympic Torch Relay Finale Concert in Hyde Park
'Are we ready? Yes we are!': Boris Johnson issues his Olympics rallying cry as he speaks in front of 60,000 gathered in Hyde Park, central London, on the eve of the beginning of the 2012 Games
Revellers: About 60,000 people packed into London's Hyde Park for the Olympic Torch Relay Finale Concert
Having a sit-down: Romney talks with Prime Minister David Cameron, just one day after the presidential hopeful expressed doubts about London's ability to host the Olympics
In response, the raucous crowd erupted in thunderous applause.
It was the latest humiliating jab at Mitt Romney since the Republican began off his first foreign tour.
Earlier in the day, he was rebuked by UK Prime Minister David Cameron for questioning whether Britain will be able to stage the Olympic Games effectively.
Diplomatically, the two are off to an incredibly rocky start as Romney began his London trip to meet British leaders, hold fundraisers and attend the opening ceremonies of the Olympics.
If Romney can defeat Obama in November, he and Cameron would have brought strain to their'special relationship' before it even begins.
Special relationship revisited? Romney met with former British Prime Minister Tony Blair today during his visit and tour of London
Romney, who was in charge of the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City, caused an international stir during a Wednesday interview when he questioned London's ability to host the games, saying: 'It's hard to know just how well it will turn out.'
But on Thursday, after a morning of meetings with top British officials - including Prime Minister David Cameron - Romney made a complete about-face on his remarks, saying he believes the Olympics will be'successful.'
That declaration came after Cameron challenged Romney and other critics during an appearance in Olympic Park, when he said: 'You're going to see beyond doubt that Britain can deliver.'
Cameron also took a jab at the presidential hopeful when he told The Daily Telegraph : 'We are holding an Olympic Games in one of the busiest, most active, bustling cities anywhere in the world. Of course it’s easier if you hold an Olympic games in the middle of nowhere.'
You got served: Romney waves from his car as he leaves 10 Downing Street where he met with Prime Minister Cameron
It seems that Romney will say anything to get back into Britain's good graces - including an attempt to put 'Winston Churchill' back in the White House.
The Weekly Standard reported that Romney, speaking during a fundraiser in London, said that if elected president, he would return a bust of Churchill that was given to President George W. Bush in 2001 - and later returned by President Obama - back to the Oval Office.
The uproar against Romney began on Wednesday, when he told NBC's Brian Williams that 'disconcerting' events surrounding Olympics preparations mean 'it's hard to know just how well it will turn out.'
He continued: 'There are a few things that were disconcerting, the stories about the - private security firm not having enough people the supposed strike of the immigration and customs officials, that obviously is not something which is encouraging.
Personal tour: Mitt Romney checks out the Great Pavilion exhibit with British Foreign Secretary William Hague, right, at the British Foreign Ministry
Discussion on Downing: Romney walks out of 10 Downing Street to speak to reporters after his meeting with Prime Minister Cameron
'Because in the games, there are three parts that makes games successful. Number one, of course, are the athletes. That's what overwhelmingly the games are about. Number two are the volunteers.
'And they'll have great volunteers here. But number three are the people of the - of the country. Do they come together and celebrate the Olympic moment? And that's something which we only find out once the games actually begin.'
But Romney began to distance himself from the comments after speaking with Labour Party boss Ed Miliband.
Following their encounter at the Houses of Parliament, Romney said: 'As the sporting events begin, we all forget the organisers and focus on the athletes.'
'ROMNEY IS A WAZZOCK': BRITISH PRESS TURN ON REPUBLICAN
The British media were quick to launch into Mitt Romney in the wake of his less-than-complimentary views on London's Olympics. The Daily Telegraph's Lucy Jones branded him a 'wazzock' (which the Urban Dictionary defines as an idiot or daft person') after the U.S. presidential hopeful questioned Britain's desire to host the Games. She said: 'Who does Mitt Romney think he is? I feel a glimmer of protectiveness and pride... there's one thing Romney could learn while he's in Britain this week: some manners.' Nicholas Watt, from The Guardian, tweeted of his U-turn: 'Mitt Romney rowing back like mad on Olympics: Now says outside No 10 games to be a great success.' Meanwhile, Paul Harris said: 'Good old Mitt. His charm offensive in the UK failed to be charming, but he really pulled off the offensive bit #gop #romney.' James Kirkup, also from The Daily Telegraph, drew attention to Prime Minister David Cameron's response to Romney's comments. 'Mr Romney made his name salvaging the Salt Lake City Winter Games in 2002, an achievement he may think qualifies him to comment on preparations for London 2012,' he said. 'In the context of Mr Romney's glittering resumé, one of Mr Cameron's (faintly defensive) comments bears particular attention: "We are holding an Olympic Games in one of the busiest, most active, bustling cities anywhere in the world. "
'Of course it’s easier if you hold an Olympic games in the middle of nowhere.' 'Some cynics thought that the "middle of nowhere" comment could just be a swipe at Salt Lake City, which is quite near the middle of, er, Utah. Terrible people, cynics.'
But it wasn't until after the sit-down with Cameron at 10 Downing Street, when Romney completed the 180-degree turn, declaring: 'I expect the games to be highly successful.'
The 2012 Olympics has been dogged with concerns ever since private security firm G4S said it would have to provide thousands fewer staff than they originally promised.
The British government has been forced to call in thousands of members of the armed forces - many of whom have just returned from Afghanistan - to plug the gaps.
There has also been problems with Border Agency staff threatening to go on strike during the Games, although such action was called off yesterday.
The following morning, however, he struck a more upbeat tone as he spoke at the Houses of Parliament with Miliband, whom he addressed awkwardly as 'Mr Leader.'
As Romney met with Miliband at Westminister, he was asked by the British media about Olympic security issues and the error over the North Korean team flag, in which the country's women's soccer team refused to take the field after a South Korean flag flashed on a screen next to a North Korean player.
Romney replied: 'It is impossible for absolutely no mistakes to occur. Of course there will be errors from time to time, but those are all overshadowed by the extraordinary demonstrations of courage, character and determination by the athletes.
Prime Minister David Cameron also called the incident an 'honest mistake.'
The former Massachusetts governor said: 'My experience with regards to the Olympics is it is impossible for absolutely no mistakes to occur.
'Of course there will be errors from time to time, but those are all overshadowed by the extraordinary demonstrations of courage, character and determination by the athletes.
'The games are, after all, about the athletes, the volunteers and the people of the community that come together to celebrate those athletes. They are not about the Organising Committee.
'And as soon as the sporting events begin, we all forget the organisers and focus on the athletes.'
In the NBC interview, Romney has been referring to the shortcomings of G4S, a private security company, which provided thousands fewer staff than were expected, leading the armed forces to step in to help, and a threatened strike by immigration officers that was called off at the eleventh hour.
Talking shop: GOP presidential candidate and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney meets with British Labour Leader Ed Miliband during Romney's first foreign visit of his campaign
Romney also toured the Great Pavilion exhibit with Foreign Secretary William Hague before heading to Downing Street for a private meeting with Prime Minister Cameron.
DID HE MISTAKE HIM FOR KIM JONG-IL? ROMNEY CALLS LABOUR CHIEF 'MR LEADER'
In a cringe-worthy moment on just his second day in London, Mitt Romney committed his first transatlantic political faux pas. The gaffe occurred as he met with British opposition leader Ed Miliband as the Houses of Parliament when Romney awkwardly said:
'Like you, Mr Leader, I look forward to our conversation this morning.'
'Mr Leader' is not to be confused with the 'Dear Leader' moniker for North Korea's Kim Jong-Il. While Romney likely had only the best of intentions, 'Mr Miliband' would have been just fine for the Labour Party leader.
Romney is not the first - and certainly won’t be the last - to commit a blunder in the face of British leaders. President Barack Obama was left red-faced last year when he proposed a toast to Queen Elizabeth II at Buckingham Palace. But as Obama spoke, the orchestra began playing ‘God Save the Queen,’ and the president shunned Royal etiquette as he continued speaking over the music.
He also met with Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg and is later scheduled to sit down with Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne.
But it wasn't all about pleasantries.
Romney was the subject of a Twitter rant by veteran NBC News White House correspondent and political director Chuck Todd, who chided the candidate for taking questions from British reporters, but not their American counterparts.
Mr Todd tweeted: 'Can't believe Romney took questions from the British press corps but not from my colleagues traveling overseas with him. Bad form'.
In another post, Mr Todd said: 'Whether you love or hate us in the media; you should want your leaders to at least submit themselves to questions'.
Three hours later, after Romney took queries from U.S. journalists outside 10 Downing Street, Mr Todd tweeted: 'Glad to see Romney took a few questions just now from the traveling press corps.'
In addition, some controversy likely awaits for Romney tonight as he holds a fundraiser that's expected to draw employees of Barclays - the British bank that's wrapped in a global interest rate-fixing scheme.
Romney will also be holding fundraisers using the spirit of the Olympic season to put a spotlight on his time managing the 2002 Salt Lake City games.
Breaking bread with British officials is typically one of the first priorities of any new president, and establishing those relationships beforehand can help smooth the transition.
It's not unusual for American presidential candidates to meet with British leaders during the campaign; Obama did so when he took a trip abroad as the likely Democratic nominee in 2008.
Romney's week-long overseas trip will also take him to Israel and Poland.
Making friends: Romney shakes hands with British Prime Minister David Cameron during their meeting at 10 Downing Street
Photo op: Romney has a conversation with Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg during their meeting
At No. 10: Romney was also photographed outside of 10 Downing Street before a meeting with Prime Minister David Cameron
Video: Mitt Romney backtracks of his criticism of the OlympicsLooking for news you can trust?
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The bank formerly headed by the finance chair of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign—and a front-runner to become Trump’s treasury secretary—is facing allegations that it discriminated against minorities.
Two California nonprofit housing organizations have formally asked the US Department of Housing and Urban Development to investigate allegations of racially discriminatory practices at OneWest Bank, now a subsidiary of CIT Bank and formerly headed by Trump adviser Steven Mnuchin. The complaint alleges that OneWest systematically refused to loan to people of color or to establish branches in minority communities in California.
In 2009, Mnuchin and a group of investors bought IndyMac Bank on the cheap, after it had suffered one of the biggest bank failures in US history. The bank, famous for making loans to people who couldn’t document their income, had collapsed under a mountain of bad debt and left behind a wake of foreclosed homes. After the sale, Mnuchin became chairman and CEO and changed the name to OneWest Bank.
The complaint to HUD is the latest in a string of legal complaints against OneWest, which has faced criticism for its foreclosure proceedings that disproportionately affected minorities. It has been successfully sued for mortgage fraud, and activists have frequently accused the bank of moving too quickly to foreclose. (In one case, it went so far as to lock a Minnesota woman out of her mother’s home during a blizzard.) Because of these abuses, community lending activists tried to block OneWest’s merger with CIT, which was finalized in August 2015. After the merger, Mnuchin joined the CIT board.
The new HUD complaint, which does not name Mnuchin personally, alleges more systematic discrimination against minority communities. It claims that OneWest violated the Fair Housing Act by discriminating against minorities in its mortgage lending and with the selection of sites for its bank branches in California. Research by the California Reinvestment Coalition, one of the groups that filed the complaint, found that OneWest did not have a single branch in a majority-black neighborhood in six areas of Southern California where OneWest did business. Out of the 74 branches in the Southern California study area, OneWest had only one branch located in a majority-Asian area and 11 in Hispanic areas, mostly in Los Angeles.
The bank also doesn’t make many loans to minorities in those areas. According to the bank’s own data submitted to federal regulators, in 2012 and 2013 OneWest didn’t make a single loan to an African American for a home purchase or home improvements in Los Angeles County, where 9 percent of residents are black. OneWest was far likelier to foreclose on an existing loan to a person of color than to lend to one, according to the California Reinvestment Coalition.
Its record for Latino customers was also dismal. Latinos make up 43 percent of the combined Los Angeles statistical area studied by the housing advocates who filed the HUD complaint, yet the percentage of OneWest mortgages going to Latinos there in 2015 was a mere 8.4 percent.
The HUD complaint alleges that OneWest contributed to the decline of minority neighborhoods by neglecting homes it had foreclosed on in those neighborhoods, while actively maintaining and marketing for sale homes in white areas. The Fair Housing Advocates of Northern California looked at bank-owned homes in Contra Costa and Solano counties between April 2014 and May 2016 and discovered that OneWest’s homes in white neighborhoods had prominent “for sale” signs out front, manicured lawns, locked doors, and decent upkeep. By contrast, according to the complaint, the OneWest homes in minority neighborhoods were buried in trash, and most were surrounded by dead grass and weeds and featured boarded-up windows and broken doors or windows, making them look abandoned.
The HUD complaint asserts that all of this adds up to violations of the Fair Housing Act, and it asks the agency to investigate whether CIT is now continuing to violate the act. Chancela Al Mansour, the executive director of the Housing Rights Center, said in a press release, “This complaint raises serious concerns about the extent to which people of color have been cut off from branches, mortgages and other banking services that OneWest should be providing in the communities where it does business.”The stairway from lower Golden Gardens Park to the off-leash area is scheduled to close on August 25 for approximately three months for a park improvement project. During this time, the stairway and upper landing area will be closed.
This project will provide drainage improvements and replace damaged portions of the existing concrete stairway. The project will replace multiple sections of failing stairs with a new 6 ft. wide concrete stairway. New ADA-compliant hand railings and landings will be installed as part of the renovation. Drainage improvements will include replacement of deteriorated storm drain infrastructure and enhancement of the open concrete channel adjacent to the stairway. The improved drainage system will capture and redirect localized surface and subsurface flows to reduce subgrade settling and re-occurrence of current erosion problems. The work will be done in accordance with applicable environmental and regulatory requirements.
Funding for the project is provided by the 2008 voter-approved Parks and Green Spaces Levy.
Construction is anticipated to be complete by December 2016. For more information on this project, please visit http://www.seattle.gov/parks/about-us/current-projects/golden-gardens-drainage-and-stairway-renovation or contact Chris Mueller, Seattle Parks and Recreation, at 206-684-0998 or chris.mueller@seattle.gov.Eric Blair
Recently on the campaign trail Mitt Romney said that he would fight marijuana legalization “tooth and nail”. During a town hall meeting in the “Live Free or Die” state, New Hampshire, Romney used the same tired argument that marijuana leads to a “culture of drugs” in young people.
This argument is increasingly becoming ridiculous, and the voting public knows it; all except the probably inebriated paid staffers clapping in the background.
It’s getting harder to blame drug abuse and justify the drug war on a non-addictive, non-fatal, natural herb that clearly helps relieve countless medical ailments. Incidentally, it’s getting harder to justify military-style raids and throwing people in cages over a flower. Or worse, killing them over a bag of weed.
The continued justification for the war on marijuana, whether from Romney or Obama, is beginning to make our leaders look foolish, especially since 17 states and Washington D.C. have legalized medical marijuana use, 15 states have already decriminalized cannabis, 3 states are voting on full legalization this fall, and many more have legislation moving through state governments.
But at least Romney addressed the issue this time. Back in May, he deflected a serious question about medical marijuana policy by calling it “irrelevant”. He arrogantly asks, “Aren’t there issues that are significant that you would like to talk about?”
Try telling that to the millions of people that marijuana helps every single day.
The hypocrisy is too obvious now for politicians to hide behind these “gateway” myths, and most taxpayers would like to stop wasting resources killing people and locking them up over cannabis. Worse still, these tired arguments continue while about 25% of America’s youth are forced onto dangerous prescription psychoactive drugs.
Not that Obama is any better. He plays like he’s sympathetic to states rights and medical marijuana patients to get votes, but he still sends Federal goon squads to raid state-legalized flower dispensaries.
But the trend is clear: marijuana legalization is going mainstream. State by state the people are speaking up and voting with logic and reasoning. There is no way the Feds can stop this momentum whether Romney or Obama is at the helm.
Marijuana legalization is an idea whose time has come. Anyone who can’t see that is quickly becoming politically irrelevant.
Read other articles by Eric Blair HEREAuburn has landed Presbyterian transfer DeSean Murray.
Murray, a 6-foot-5 forward, visited the Tigers' campus this weekend. He chose Auburn over Middle Tennessee, which he visited in early April.
"I chose Auburn because it felt like the perfect fit: the team, the coaches, it was just all what I was looking for," he said. "And I really trust the coaching staff with my development, so I just know it's going to be the best move and the right move for me."
DeSean Murray, who led the Big South in scoring with 20.2 points per game for Presbyterian last season, is transferring to Auburn. AP Photo/Morry Gash
Murray was a highly productive player at Presbyterian, and will help Auburn in the frontcourt. He averaged 20.2 points and 7.4 rebounds as a sophomore, earning first-team all-Big South honors and leading the league in scoring.
Murray will have two years of eligibility after sitting out the 2016-17 season.
Bruce Pearl is no stranger to the transfer market, bringing in eight Division I and junior college transfers since taking over at Auburn in 2014.
Murray is also the second transfer to choose Auburn in the last week, joining Houston graduate transfer Ronnie Johnson.ANN ARBOR, Mich., April 16 (UPI) -- A U.S. researcher has developed a working vaccine for a strain of E. coli that kills 2 million to 3 million children annually in the developing world.
Mahdi Saeed of Michigan State University's colleges of Veterinary Medicine and Human Medicine said that enterotoxigenic E. Coli is responsible for 60 percent to 70 percent of all E. coli diarrheal disease, also causes health problems for U.S. troops serving overseas and is responsible for what is commonly called traveler's diarrhea.
"This strain of E. coli is an international health challenge that has a huge impact on humanity," Saeed said in a statement. "By creating a vaccine, we can save untold lives. The implications are massive."
Saeed discovered a way to overcome the minuscule molecular size of one of the illness-inducing toxins produced by the E. coli bug. Because the toxin was so small, it did not prompt the body's defense system to develop immunity, allowing the same individual to repeatedly get sick.
After creating the carrier in a laboratory, Saeed and the team tested it on mice and found the biological activity of the toxin was enhanced by more than 40 percent, leading to its recognition by the body's immune system.
The researchers immunized a group of 10 rabbits. The vaccine led to the production of the highest neutralizing antibody ever reported for this type of the toxin, Saeed said.It’s the ebb of the evening rush hour when engineers carrying out planned work on the National Grid’s electricity network report a problem with one of the transformers at a substation. Within minutes most of South London is plunged into darkness, mainline train stations close, and over half the London Underground shuts down.
Not a dystopian warning about the future — it happened ten years ago on the evening of the 28th August 2003. It was the largest blackout in South East England since the Great Storm of 1987, affecting an estimated 500,000 people.
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Engineers were undertaking what was supposed to be routine maintenance on the link between Wimbledon and New Cross at 6:11pm, when a substation out in Kent, at Hurst started bleeping in distress.
As was routine in such situations, the National Grid and EDF Energy started switching operations to isolate the affected transformer.
This switching sequence temporarily left supplies dependent on a single 275,000 Volt underground cable from Wimbledon that feeds New Cross and Hurst substations.
At 6:20pm, as they switched supplies, and unexpectedly some automatic protection equipment on that second line triggered — and cut the electricity off. A total of 724 megawatts of supplies were lost, amounting to around 20% of total London supplies at that time.
Imagine being the person who flicked that switch, oh so routine, very normal, nothing to worry about. Flick… and half of South London is plunged into darkness. Heart in mouth and a sick feeling probably doesn’t even come close to it.
It took until 7:15pm to fully restore power to everyone — with the London Underground getting electricity back at 6:51pm, and the National Rail being fully restored to power at 6:57pm.
Disruption to rail services however continued after power was restored due to timetables being disrupted and the evacuation of trains.
On the Underground, some 290 trains were in the area affected and lost traction power. Operators coasted towards stations or stopped if they were leaving platforms. 62 trains came to a halt between stations.
Around 1,200 passengers were walked along the tracks to be evacuated from eight of the stuck trains. The remaining 54 trains, including 17,000 people, were moved to platforms as power was restored.
The last train to be evacuated was at 8:20pm, two hours after power loss.
The fire brigade had rescued around 100 people stuck in lifts around London. Also, around 250 sets of traffic lights were affected in south-east London, but power supplies were restored to them fairly quickly.
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An investigation into the blackout found that in 2001, the wrong protection relay switch had been installed on the power line that failed. And no one had noticed, which they later attributed to possibly poor documentation not making it totally clear which rating to use for the |
I thought about why we call radishes radishes and I got lost in the frozen food aisle and then I ran into my friend Patrice.” Chaining all those actions together creates the idea that all those ideas are equal in weight and importance. Also it’s a slow read. When a person (who isn’t a cute child) speaks to us this way, we’re bored. And boredom makes readers leave books behind. Challenge yourself any time you want to trail a lot of and+verbs in a single sentence or idea.
Purge these words from your writing and watch your writing sharpen: that | really | just | very | kind of | a little | sort of | Like all those adverbs you’re already burning with fire, these words add qualifiers and description that could be better accomplished with stronger verbs or different sentences. Anyone can describe using clichés and tired expressions, but you’re you, and through your word choices (which are framed in your experiences as a reader and a liver of life), you can ditch the common expression for one unique to you.
I am ever so grateful, lucky, and privileged for the chance to write this guest blog post. I do my best to put material like this on my own blog (http://writernextdoor.com), in between all the life-stuff I talk about. Let me leave you with one last thought.
It is through words that we find ourselves. We use language as a tool of discovery, a tool of experience and as a tool of forging ourselves a path in life. We too often mark our lives by our hardships and failures, and sometimes we are hesitant to call attention to our successes out of fear we will be thought of as arrogant or selfish. But it is neither arrogant nor selfish to take a moment for positivity. It may feel foreign or hokey, I know it does for me, but it is okay to give yourself a gold star when something goes right. Consider this sentence your permission slip. Our ability to share stories and transcend boundaries through creativity elevate us from bipeds wearing pants to true wizards, Istari with adjectives and a burning passion engage other people with story paintings we can draw in their minds.
You may not always feel good enough to do be a writer. You may feel discouraged. You may look at your friends’ successes and wonder if you will ever come close to that. You may look at your life outside and beyond your creative projects and wonder if you have enough time. You may spend nights and days and afternoons angry or scared that precious time is wasting because you’re not writing that paragraph or that chapter or even that word. You may wish for a TARDIS, and mastery over chronology. You may wish for superpowers to write faster, or greater intelligence to conceive of better ideas. You’d not be able to even have those wishes without people creating TARDISes and superpowers so you could be aware of lacking them. The story you’re telling, the thing you’re making, it will be what inspires someone else down the road. You need only keep writing it and then make sure people know it exists.
Let’s all keep doing our best for as long as we can. Let’s believe in each other. Let’s support one another. Let’s tell the best stories we can.
I’M JOHN ADAMUS, I’m the Writer Next Door, and I help people make ideas turn into projects. Whether that’s a novel, novella, script, role-playing game, radio drama, ad copy, teleplay, anthology … I usually say, “If it has words, I can help you make something with them.”It's strange that the Republican candidate goes out of his way to mess with dope smokers. But at least he's consistent -- unlike Obama.
It's an interesting look into the American psyche that even now, four years after the housing bubble brought the national economy to its knees, few things have the power to fascinate like real estate. And there's no better example than Mitt Romney's house in La Jolla, California.
First there was the infamous car elevator. In today's New York Times, Michael Barbaro visits La Jolla and gets the Romney family's neighbors to dish on their gripes about the relatively new arrivals. Many of those complaints are exactly what one might expect. A good number of the adjacent homeowners are liberal, and take issue with the former Massachusetts governor's politics, though there's no reason one can't enjoy a barbecue with an ideological adversary. There's some standard NIMBYism about the Romney family's plans to drastically renovate the property. And others are upset about the presence of Secret Service agents, an inconvenience that the Romneys can't do much about.
One particular gripe sticks out, though.
The Romneys rarely entertain neighbors, but they have tried to weave themselves into the fabric of local life. Mr. Romney and his wife take regular walks around La Jolla, exchanging pleasantries with fellow strollers and occasionally enforcing the law. A young man in town recalled that Mr. Romney confronted him as he smoked marijuana and drank on the beach last summer, demanding that he stop. The issue appears to be a recurring nuisance for the Romneys. Mr. Quint, who lives on the waterfront near Mr. Romney, said that a police officer had asked him, on a weekend when the candidate was in town, to report any pot smoking on the beach. The officer explained to him that "your neighbors have complained," Mr. Quint recalled. "He was pretty clear that it was the Romneys."
Romney is a famously clean liver, largely as a result of his devout Mormonism. Last year, he admitted to People that as a teenager he puffed a cigarette and sipped a beer once, and his regret about the incident -- he described himself as "wayward" for that indiscretion -- was palpable. No one begrudges him that lifestyle. But his zeal to for going out of his way to stop those who indulge themselves certainly does nothing to diminish his reputation as extremely square and distant from today's youth.Introduction
A few months ago I purchased a new Thermaltake P3 chassis. This case has the option to mount the graphics card vertically with PCIe extender. Unfortunately, that cable did not last very long, so I needed a replacement. After doing research my attention was quickly put towards ‘premium’ extenders, which are offered by few manufacturers, including Thermaltake and Lian-Li, whom I asked for a sample. It took many weeks to finally get all cables together, as few cheap cables from China were also ordered to give it a fair comparison.
I must say I have never spent so much time for one review. We are looking at a total of 4 days of nonstop testing. This is roughly 100 hours of testing, analyzing and writing. I will explain why it was necessary later in this review.
The idea behind this test is to tell you whether it’s really worth to pay x10 more for a premium cable. There is no denying that those cables are expensive, but chances are this cable will last for much longer, outlasting your graphics card.
This short review is also a debate about vertically mounted graphics cards. Motherboard manufacturers and PCI-SIG have not provided any alternative to graphics card installation other than the PCI-Express slot on your motherboard. All extenders are to comply with all PCI-Express standards, but there is no official standard for the cable itself.
But first, let me give you a very brief introduction to PCI-Express and types of extenders.
What is a PCIe extender/riser?
PCIe extenders became popular few years ago when the first bitcoin mining crazy has begun. At the time many different extenders were available, but only the popularity of mining has created a new market segment with 1x wide extenders. Those risers have a completely different purpose from the conventional riser. This review focuses on gaming risers, but we will test Bitcoin risers as well, to give you some idea what kind of performance difference are we looking at.
PCIe extender types
The words extender and riser are often used interchangeably. I prefer the word extender as it clearly points that the purpose of our cable is to increase the distance between the PCIe slot and the device itself.
Riser board This is the most common riser used in rack servers, AIO desktops and systems where lack of space is a problem. Unshielded ribbon riser: This is the cheapest x16 riser you can find. Those cables have no EMI shielding, which can be a hit or miss for gamers. Powered unshielded ribbon riser Those extenders are recommended for Bitcoin miners, especially when more graphics cards are in use. In such situation motherboard may not deliver enough the power to each graphics cards, so Molex connector provides that power instead. Shielded ribbon riser This is a mid-range quality riser. It is not for miners, but gamers. These were popular few years ago, they are still bundled with some cases. Thermaltake and LianLi are now offering premium risers as a replacement, but you still need to pay for them. Shielded ribbon riser with separated lanes In this example, we are looking at Thermaltake premium cable. The lane separation has a big advantage over conventional riser, it gives you the flexibility. Those extenders should be the option for DIY gaming rigs on the wall. USB ‘Bitcoin’ riser This is by far the most popular riser type ever made. Recently motherboard manufacturers started offering 12x PCIe x1 motherboards designed specifically for those risers. But wait, how is it even possible? PCIe x1 interface has 36 lanes, but only 14 are used for data transport and 6 of them are ground. This means That USB 3.0 cable with 9 wires is enough for PCIe 1x protocol.
Why do we need premium risers
The first and most important feature is the separation of PCIe lanes. As shown above, those cables are more flexible and give you much more freedom with graphics card installation. Some cables are separated by 5 or 6 lanes, others have power and data lanes separated.
Since premium cables are more likely to be used by gamers, those cables do not have any external power connectors. Additional power is only required for multi-GPU installation (4+) where it’s necessary to provide enough power for each graphics cards directly from the power supply.
Premium risers have higher quality PCIe slots. Before you buy any riser, it’s important to note which direction of the slot you need. Lian-Li cables are 90 degree slots, Thermaltake risers are straight with the slot directly on the other side of the cable.
Image courtesy of LiHeat Industry Co. Ltd.
There are few types of premium PCIe risers. It’s generally better to have power lanes and data lanes separated. The more cables risers have the more flexibility you get during installation, but also a higher risk of damage.
Comparison of Premium PCIe Extenders Cable LiHeat Cable 3M Cable LianLI Cable Thermaltake Cable Picture Lane Shielding
PCI-Express: Difference between GT/s and Gbps
Before we move on, I think it’s a good opportunity to explain the difference between GT/s and Gbps. The GT/s also known as gigatranfers per second is not the same a gigabits per second (Gbps). PCI Express is a serial-based standard with the clock embedded in the data. The data is encoded in 8b/10b format, which means that every 8 bits are encoded into 10 bits. The overhead in encoding is used to align data stream at the receiver by allowing the clock to recover.
When we look at PCIe 2.0 specifications detailed in GT/s, we assume that this raw data transfer represents 80% of the encoded transfer speed of the data. Since PCIe 3.0 the encoding has been modified to 128/130b standard, it means that the overhead is smaller (1.54% vs 20%), thus it’s much more effective data transfer over raw GT/s from previous encoding standard.
PCI Express types, lanes and data rates
We can’t really talk about PCIe riser without knowing what PCIe is. These two charts are a very basic introduction to the topic. All risers in this review except the x1 one and USB riser, are advertised as X16 PCIe 3.0 riser. To some extent it’s true, I have not noticed any of those risers dropping to PCIe 2.0 specs. What this means is that each riser should theoretically offer the same bandwidth. In practice that is not always the case. Sometimes graphics cards change the PCIe specs to narrower standard (as reported by GPU-Z). This means that some lanes may be affected by interference and GPU data transport is reduced to x8. To comply with x16 standard we need all 142 pins connected at both ends.
PCI-Express Widths Standard Total No. Pins No. of Variable Pins Total Variable ×1 2×18 = 36 2×7 = 14 25 mm 7.65 mm ×4 2×32 = 64 2×21 = 42 39 mm 21.65 mm ×8 2×49 = 98 2×38 = 76 56 mm 38.65 mm ×16 2×82 = 164 2×71 = 142 89 mm 71.65 mm
The PCIe 3.0 standard is quite old. There are no PCIe 4.0 graphics cards at this time, but PCI-SIG already announced preliminary PCIe 5.0 specs, which are to be approved by all involved parties. I think it’s still a long time before we start seeing 5.0 devices.
PCI-Express Revisions Transfer rate x1 x4 x8 x16 PCIe 1.0 2.5 GT/s 0.25 GB/s 1 GB/s 2 GB/s 4 GB/s PCIe 2.0 5 GT/s 0.50 GB/s 2 GB/s 4 GB/s 8 GB/s PCIe 3.0 8 GT/s 0.99 GB/s 3.9 GB/s 7.9 GB/s 15.8 GB/s PCIe 4.0 16 GT/s 1.97 GB/s 7.9 GB/s 15.8 GB/s 31.5 GB/s
by WhyCryPop-music purists invariably tell the same story about their favorite music. Whatever the genre—R. & B., classic punk, dance-hall reggae, Celtic lullabies—a purist will say that it was better at its inception, when the sound was an expression of something local and unique, before the terrible money came, and strangers corrupted the music with their embrace.
The purists are not entirely wrong. When a new sound sprouts on pop’s tree, invisible to passersby, it is a wondrous thing. But what happens next is often more interesting: the music begins to find an audience, record companies offer to pay musicians to make their sounds, and someone gives those sounds a name. The music is now a genre, and it grows willy-nilly, borrowing from other genres, which it may eventually resemble, while announcing itself as something you’ve never heard before.
Electronica and crunk passed through this stage not long ago, and grime, a British genre, has now entered it. Grime emerged from the rave culture of the late nineteen-nineties, and will sound to most Americans like hip-hop performed by m.c.s with English accents and really fast raps. Hip-hop, even at its harshest, is dance music. By contrast, grime sounds as if it had been made for a boxing gym, one where the fighters have a lot of punching to do but not much room to move.
In the past three years, grime producers (who make the beats that m.c.s rhyme over) have developed a fierce, antic sound by distilling the polyrhythms of drum and bass or garage—the music of choice at many raves—to a minimal style sometimes consisting of nothing more than a queasy bass line and a single, clipped video-game squawk. Today, the music’s choppy, off-center rhythms are blanketing London. Some tracks are beginning to show the influence of American hip-hop genres like crunk, but the m.c.s’ cadences are unmistakably black and British, indebted to Jamaican dance-hall music and West Indian patois.
Grime exists largely in an informal economy. Some artists make their débuts on homemade DVDs, which feature shaky footage of competitions between m.c.s—a little like spelling bees, but louder. Some of the most popular battles are filmed in a long, narrow basement in Leytonstone, at the home of Jammer, a producer who runs Jahmek the World, a respected independent label. The DVDs, with names like “Lord of the Mics” and “Eskimo Dance,” are sold in barbershops and record stores around London; pirate radio stations like Raw UK and Rinse FM broadcast tracks made days earlier; and, on cable, Channel U plays videos, including crude productions shot with handheld digital video cameras.
The grime artist Americans know best is Dizzee Rascal, a twenty-yearold from Bow, a working-class neighborhood in East London, where many grime artists live. Dizzee and his mentor, Wiley, who created one of the first grime tracks, “Eskimo,” have both released albums in the United States in the past year. And both appear on “Run the Road,” a new compilation that documents the genre’s industry and energy.
“Destruction VIP,” the most hopped-up track on the album, was produced by Jammer. It begins with a sample from what could be the soundtrack to a chase scene from a nineteen-sixties British police caper. Then Wiley leaps in, chattering taunts at his imitators: “I know hungry—he said he don’t know you. I know who’s who, and who’s who don’t know you.” The music Ping-Pongs between half time and a faster tempo, segueing into the next verse, which is performed by Kano, a young m.c. who enunciates calmly over the aggressive beat. The song—essentially a succession of boasts and threats to rivals—is a cab ride over piles of rebar, but Kano never spills his drink.
There isn’t a bad song on “Run the Road,” and several m.c.s—all still in their teens—stand out: Kano; Louise Harman, who goes by the name Lady Sovereign; and Ears, who is only seventeen but is apparently already feeling old. In the opening of a nostalgic song called “Happy Dayz,” he sings, “Do you remember that? Back in the days, when man was just bare happy? No worries, nothing to worry about? Those days were live, I miss them days, man.” When the world turns this fast, middle age comes early.
Kano, who has been releasing songs since he was sixteen, is featured on four of the sixteen tracks on “Run the Road.” Americans who are put off by British accents and grime slang like “nekkle” (great, very cool) and “bare” (lots of, many) will warm to Kano. His delivery on the song “P’s and Q’s,” a comically fastidious call to arms, is so composed that it is almost polite, even when he’s rhyming in double time: “This year’s gotta be mine, I’m the first in line. Wow, you got your first rewind, but the second line sounded like the first line. I ain’t got punch lines, I’ve got kick lines, and they ain’t commercial, but I’ve got hit lines.”
Lady Sovereign is not grime’s only female m.c.; others include Lady Fury, the brilliant No Lay, and an up-and-coming producer called Mizz Beats. But she is the scene’s sole white woman, and she seems destined to be its biggest success. The United States has yet to produce a universally accepted white female rapper, and there’s already a debate over Sovereign’s authenticity, even though she grew up in the same kind of public-housing project—Chalk Hill estate, now demolished—that many grime artists did. Besides, she’s good: pithy, clever, and able to use her honking voice to humorous effect, much like Eminem, to whom she has already been compared. There’s a hyperactive track on “Run the Road” called “Cha Ching (Cheque 1, 2 Remix),” which features as much hooting as rhyming, and nicely showcases her eccentric talent.
When I visited Sovereign in October, she and her producer, a man named Gabriel who goes professionally by Medasyn, were bunkered in a converted textile factory in East London, an appropriately filthy building where Medasyn rents studio space. Sovereign was curled up in an armchair, looking smaller and younger than eighteen. To her displeasure, people often point out that she looks like Sporty Spice, of the Spice Girls. Her hair was held up in a topknot and she wore a tracksuit. She spoke in a quiet, nasal voice, with the hedged courage of a teen-ager determined to take on the world every time she walks out the door.
After a few minutes of polite chat, she summed herself up: “I’m cheeky. I don’t tell stories and moan about.” Last July, she was signed by Island Records, a major label, but she still posts photographs of herself on Internet bulletin boards. (Medasyn told me that after Paris Hilton’s cell phone got hacked Sovereign “was one of the first people to get the numbers. She even phoned Christina Aguilera.”)
The day I stopped by, Sovereign and Medasyn played “Random” for me, a work-in-progress that captured grime’s most irrational, fractal qualities: a pair of palsied bass notes here, a fibrillating shaker noise there, and a wobbly melody line that didn’t sound entirely well. Sovereign began the song by quoting “Tipsy,” an American hip-hop hit, and coursed through a series of seemingly unrelated ideas: “I can’t see straight like I got one eye. Ooh (pop!). Your bottle’s open, oh my. Let’s get it started, move your arms around like fucked-up karate.... J. Lo’s got a body, you can’t see mine ’cause I wear my trousers baggy.”
When the song was over, Sovereign asked me if I thought grime would take off in America. Five months later, the answer is increasingly clear. “Pow,” a song by an m.c. called Lethal B, and grime’s biggest hit to date, has made its way to New York, where it is currently being played on Hot 97 by the influential d.j. Funkmaster Flex. The American m.c.s Stat Quo and Pitbull have already recorded new verses for the track.
This week, Lady Sovereign’s “Random” will be formally released as a single in London. The song was ultimately completed by a pair of producers called Menta, who gave Sovereign’s charming non sequiturs a danceable makeover. This version of “Random” combines grime’s squeaky bullets of noise with hip-hop’s more forgiving swing. Sovereign might see the song’s transformation as an auspicious portent. Grime is becoming familiar, a fine black mist dissolving in the air around us. ♦Henry Gerber Edit
Founding the Society Edit
Inspired by Hirschfeld's work with the Scientific-Humanitarian Committee, Gerber resolved to found a similar organization in the United States. He called his group the Society for Human Rights (the English translation of Bund für Menschenrecht)[9] and took on the role of secretary. Gerber filed an application for a charter as a non-profit organization with the state of Illinois on December 10, 1924. The application outlined the goals and purposes of the Society: [T]o promote and protect the interests of people who by reasons of mental and physical abnormalities are abused and hindered in the legal pursuit of happiness which is guaranteed them by the Declaration of Independence and to combat the public prejudices against them by dissemination of factors according to modern science among intellectuals of mature age. The Society stands only for law and order; it is in harmony with any and all general laws insofar as they protect the rights of others, and does in no manner recommend any acts in violation of present laws nor advocate any manner inimical to the public welfare.[10][note 2] An African American clergyman named John T. Graves signed on as president of the new organization and Gerber, Graves and five others were listed as directors.[4] The state granted the charter on December 24, 1924, making the Society the oldest documented homosexual organization in the nation.[11] Despite deliberately keeping the goals of the Society vague and excluding any mention of homosexuality from its mission statement, Society members were still surprised that no one with the state investigated any further before issuing the charter.[9] The society's newsletter, Friendship and Freedom, was the first gay-interest publication in the United States. However, few Society members were willing to receive mailings of the newsletter, fearing that postal inspectors would deem the publication obscene under the Comstock Act. Indeed, all gay-interest publications were deemed obscene until 1958, when the Supreme Court ruled in One, Inc. v. Olesen that publishing homosexual content did not mean the content was automatically obscene.[12] Two issues of Friendship and Freedom were written and produced, entirely by Gerber. No copies of the newsletter are known to exist.[13] Gerber formulated a three-point strategy for winning what he referred to as "homosexual emancipation": "...engage in a series of lectures pointing out the attitude of society in relation to their own behavior and especially urging against the seduction of adolescents. "Through a publication...we would keep the homophile world in touch with the progress of our efforts.... "Through self-discipline, homophiles would win the confidence and assistance of legal authorities and legislators in understanding the problem: that these authorities should be educated on the futility and folly of long prison terms for those committing homosexual acts."[14][note 3] Gerber set out to expand the Society's membership beyond the original seven but had difficulty interesting anyone other than poorer gays in joining; he was also unable to gain any financial support from the more affluent members of Chicago's gay community. Gerber sought out the support of people in the medical professions and sex education advocates and was frustrated when he was unable to secure it, because of their fear of ruining their reputations through the association with homosexuality. Contemplating this failure in 1962, Gerber stated, The first difficulty was in rounding up enough members and contributors so the work could go forward. The average homosexual, I found, was ignorant concerning himself. Others were fearful. Still others were frantic or depraved. Some were blasé. Many homosexuals told me that their search for forbidden fruit was the real spice of life. With this argument, they rejected our aims. We wondered how we could accomplish anything with such resistance from our own people.[15] Gerber shouldered all of the labor and financial obligations for the Society and for production of Friendship and Freedom,[4] something he was willing to do in service of the cause, believing it possible he would be remembered as the gay Abraham Lincoln for his effort.[16] The Society sought affiliation with the British Society for the Study of Sex Psychology but the British Society declined, afraid of being linked with any organization that was specifically for homosexuals.[17]
Demise Edit
Gerber and Graves decided to limit Society membership to gay men and exclude bisexuals. Unknown to them, the Society's vice-president Al Weininger, a man Gerber described as "an indigent laundry queen", was married with two children.[18] Weininger's wife reported the Society to a social worker in the summer of 1925,[19] calling them "degenerates"[18] and making claims of "strange doings" in front of her children.[13] The police broke in on Gerber in the middle of the night with a reporter from the Chicago Examiner in tow, interrogated him, seized his personal papers and arrested him. The next morning, Gerber arrived in court to learn that Graves, Weininger and Weininger's male companion had also been arrested. The Examiner reported the story under the headline "Strange Sex Cult Exposed".[18] The paper erroneously reported that Weininger and other members of the Society had performed sex acts in front of Weininger's children and that Society literature encouraged men to abandon their wives and children. This latter statement was in direct contradiction to the Society's policy of only admitting men who were exclusively homosexual.[18] Gerber was put through three separate trials,[3] before charges against him were finally dismissed because he was arrested without a warrant.[13] Gerber's defense cost him his life savings,[20] some of which may have been in the form of bribes paid through his lawyer.[21] The police never returned Gerber's personal papers, his typewriter or his remaining copies of Friendship and Freedom despite a court order compelling their return.[20] The only concrete record of the newsletter's existence is a photograph of one issue in a German homophile magazine and a review of the issue in a French homophile publication.[14] Although Gerber avoided prosecution for obscenity under the Comstock Act, he lost his post office job for "conduct unbecoming a postal worker". Weininger paid a $10 fine ($133 in 2013 dollars) for "disorderly conduct". With Gerber feeling he had hit a "solid wall of ignorance, hypocrisy, meanness and corruption"[22] and unable to continue his financial support, the Society dismantled, and Gerber was left embittered that none of the wealthier gays of Chicago had come to his aid for a cause he believed was designed to advance the common good.[20] He left Chicago for New York City, where he re-enlisted in the Army, serving for 17 years before being honorably discharged.[13]
Legacy Edit
^ Despite being naturally masculine and disliking the company of women and effeminate men, (Bullough, p. 32) Gerber would continue to espouse the idea of gay men's effeminacy, writing in 1932, "The homosexual man does not shun women because he wants to flee from the reality of normal sex life, but because he himself is a woman and his normal sex life is directed to the other sex, another man." (Collected in Blasius and Phane, p. 220) ^ Of course, since sodomy was illegal in every state in 1924, any participation in or advocacy of sex with other men would constitute a recommendation of an act in violation of a present law. Illinois was the first state to repeal its law but did not do so until 1962 (Hogan and Hudson, p. 634). ^ With this strategy, Gerber anticipated by some three decades the strategies that would be adopted by such early homophile organizations as the Mattachine Society ONE, Inc. and the Daughters of Bilitis. Each of these organizations organized lectures, published nationally-distributed magazines and sought legal reforms by exploiting the disease model of homosexuality, reasoning that homosexuals should not be punished for something over which they had no control (Bianco, pp. 136–37, 143; Loughery, p. 235–37).The email addresses we sent it to are:Facebook: press@fb.comTheir PR firm is Blue Rubicon and the contact there is ronan.joyce@bluerubicon.com.Why don't you do the same?Simply cut and paste the text and send to the addresses above.Thank you for your support.Dear FacebookI am writing to you regarding the group Loyalists Against Democracy who until recently had a Facebook page at www.facebook.com/loyalistsagainstdemokracy until it was 'unpublished' by Facebook. Subsequently two replacement L.A.D. pages have also been 'unpublished' by Facebook.Some background:L.A.D. is a cross-community, non-political group set up to combat the growing tide of sectarianism in Northern Ireland through the use of satire. L.A.D. use a combination of: original material (songs, artwork and videos) and screenshots to hammer home the point that sectarianism is wrong. The screenshots are taken from various public Facebook pages and show other Facebook users making vile hate filled statements that promote sectarianism and in many cases incite violence. Those responsible for these posts have been responsible for an ongoing and often violent campaign of civil disobedience 'protesting' at the democratic decision to fly the union flag on designated days only, as is the case in the rest of the United Kingdom. They have also been openly hostile and violent in their opposition to the decisions of a legally constituted body known as the Parades Commission who legislate on contentious parades in Northern Ireland.L.A.D. is put together by a small team drawn from across the political and religious spectrum in Northern Ireland and enjoys huge support from both communities. When www.facebook.com/loyalistsagainstdemokracy was closed the page had nearly 9000 followers. The blogpage http://loyalistsagainstdemocracy.blogspot.co.uk has received over a quarter of a million hits since launching in June. The L.A.D. Twitter feed @LADFLEG has 4,606 likers (amongst them many local politicians including the Deputy First Minister and the Leaders of NI21 and the Green Party).L.A.D. has been removed by Facebook purely as a result of an orchestrated campaign by certain right-wing ultra sectarian so-called loyalist groups in Northern Ireland. Their method is simple.They spread a message via their personal and group pages to report posts on L.A.D. as 'harassment' when this is clearly and demonstrably not the case.In certain cases they complain about various hate filled sectarian posts which they themselves have written. as we understand it when Facebook receives the requisite number of reports the pages are automatically 'unpublished'. Those responsible are effectively spamming Facebook's reporting system - which we understand is contrary to facebook's community standards.Attached are many example of the campaign at work and also some examples of the hate filled sectarian bile that is allowed on the facebook system while a satirical page aimed at promoting peace and reconciliation is punished.Recently L.A.D. teamed up with the Northern Ireland Children to Lapland Trust, a local cross-community charity raising funds for terminally ill, long term ill and deserving children http://www.niclt.org/. They have recorded a song and are in the process of shooting a video intended for the Christmas market. L.A.D had hoped to use Facebook to market the song with all funds raised going to the charity. Sadly this marketing option is now closed to L.A.D.I would like to know what Facebook intends to do about this and would respectfully request that www.facebook.com/loyalistsagainstdemokracy is reinstated immediately.The offending screenshots detailing mass reporting can be found here:Please reply as a matter of urgency,kind regards,xxxLiberal Nationalism in a Competitive Market for Governance
Free institutions are next to impossible in a country made up of different nationalities. Among a people without fellow-feeling, especially if they read and speak different languages, the united public opinion, necessary to the working of representative government, cannot exist. The influences which form opinions and decide political acts are different in the different sections of the country. An altogether different set of leaders have the confidence of one part of the country and of another. The same books, newspapers, pamphlets, speeches, do not reach them. One section does not know what opinions, or what instigations, are circulating in another. The same incidents, the same acts, the same system of government, affect them in different ways; and each fears more injury to itself from the other nationalities than from the common arbiter, the state. Their mutual antipathies are generally much stronger than jealousy of the government. That any one of them feels aggrieved by the policy of the common ruler is sufficient to determine another to support that policy. Even if all are aggrieved, none feel that they can rely on the others for fidelity in a joint resistance; the strength of none is sufficient to resist alone, and each may reasonably think that it consults its own advantage most by bidding for the favour of the government against the rest.
While we want to carefully avoid arguing for the necessity of culturally pure states, we need to take the problems caused by diversity in a democracy seriously. The problem with simply insisting that we need nation-states, of course, is that national identities are never well-defined (and many group identities are not geographically-concentrated). Identity groups overlap and we each belong to many groups at many different levels. How can we to make states match salient group identities without creating pointless ethnic segregation at the behest of a few racists? In general, we need to make state boundaries more dependent on individual preferences.
Given sufficiently low barriers to secession, libertarians shouldn’t treat nation-states merely as something of instrumental value in preventing the tyranny of the majority. People get genuine satisfaction from having their state represent their tribe; we should not begrudge people their nationalist sentiments if they can be indulged without causing harm.
Since the power of exit will make individuals pay the cost of intergroup violence and place limits of preference heterogeneity, a decentralized competitive market for governance will produce a more harmonious world – even if everybody chooses to retain their tribal identities.Move Lapis Road RVs to college campuses
Monterey County extended the overnight parking approval 90 days while staff tries to find a more suitable location. Funding will be required for port-a-potties, trash collection, sheriff patrol, etc. More suitable locations than Lapis Road are available on college campuses. There is existing infrastructure, ample parking, security and an opportunity to learn higher paying job skills. College students are adept at providing support for worthy causes and know how to crowdfund their efforts.
— Scott M. Cunningham, Carmel
Cal Am not to blame for past failures
Michael Baer’s Aug. 29 letter made reference to the “failure” of “all previous Cal Am new water supply projects.” Let’s get the history straight. Cal Am has been the lead agency on only one water project, the current desalination plan. Earlier projects that failed were overseen by public agencies, not Cal Am.
The Monterey Peninsula Water Management District was in charge of two viable projects, a desalination plant in Sand City and a new Los Padres dam on the Carmel River. Taxpayer advocates and environmental groups convinced voters that these projects were too expensive, environmentally damaging, and growth inducing so they were killed at the ballot box.
More recently Marina Coast Water District was the lead agency for the Regional Desalination Project. It involved three public agencies (none of which represented Peninsula ratepayers), each designated to operate separate components of a single desalination plant which would sell water to Cal Am. A conflict of interest problem brought the whole thing crashing down.
Cal Am took the reins only after it became clear that the public process was unable to deliver a water |
332 227 514,784 54,333,815 68 130,220 4,114,151 148 315,620 21,715,517 228 517,381 54,848,599 69 132,392 4,244,371 149 318,057 22,031,136 229 519,980 55,365,980 70 134,570 4,376,763 150 320,497 22,349,193 230 522,581 55,885,961 71 136,752 4,511,333 151 322,939 22,669,690 231 525,184 56,408,542 72 138,938 4,648,085 152 325,383 22,992,629 232 527,788 56,933,726 73 141,129 4,787,023 153 327,830 23,318,012 233 530,394 57,461,513 74 143,325 4,928,152 154 330,279 23,645,842 234 533,001 57,991,907 75 145,524 5,071,476 155 332,731 23,976,121 235 535,610 58,524,908 76 147,729 5,217,001 156 335,185 24,308,852 236 538,221 59,060,518 77 149,937 5,364,729 157 337,641 24,644,037 237 540,833 59,598,739 78 152,150 5,514,666 158 340,100 24,981,679 238 543,447 60,139,572 79 154,367 5,666,816 159 342,561 25,321,779 239 546,063 60,683,020 Lvl - Current power level
P - Processed power resource needed for level up ( P = pow(1.15; Lvl) * 1000 )
Σ - Total power resource processed to level With each new level, you have to choose one of the three powers available on this level. The powers options available at any level of a creep development are fixed for each class. Your choice at each level is to choose one of the three suggested options. It can be a new power or levelling up an existing one. Each power has a level between 1 and 5, and the level determines its effectiveness. Have a look at this example: Here you can see the process of levelling up a 7-level creep where it is sequentially assigned powers A, B, A, C, C, A, D. As a result, this power creep will have the following powers: A lvl 3
lvl 3 B lvl 1
lvl 1 C lvl 2
lvl 2 D lvl 1 You can’t upgrade a skill higher than level 5. Also, you can’t upgrade all available powers to level 5 due to a level cap for individual classes.
Classes Each power creep belongs to one of several available classes that you assign on its creation. Once assigned, a class cannot be changed later (unless you destroy a creep and create it from scratch). The class determines the set of powers available to the creep. There will be 3 classes in the game upon launch:
Operator A creep working mainly in the rear, at your base, though it can be used as a saboteur in offensive operations. The list of powers: OPERATE_SPAWN Reduce spawn time by 10/30/50/65/80%. Effect duration 1000 ticks, cooldown 300 ticks. Consumes 100 U/U/UO/UHO2/XUHO2. OPERATE_EXTENSION Extend capacity by 50/100/200/300/400 units. Effect duration 1000 ticks, cooldown 50 ticks. Consumes 5 U/U/UH/UH2O/XUH2O. OPERATE_OBSERVER Extend range by 10/20/30/100/1000 rooms. Effect duration 1000 ticks, cooldown 900 ticks. Consumes 20 L/L/LH/LH2O/XLH2O. OPERATE_TOWER Increase effectiveness by 10/20/30/40/50%. Effect duration 100 ticks, cooldown 10 ticks. Consumes 2 G/G/GH/GH2O/XGH2O. OPERATE_LAB Increase reaction amount by 2/4/6/8/10 units. Effect duration 1000 ticks, cooldown 50 ticks. Consumes 10 K/K/KH/KH2O/XKH2O. OPERATE_TERMINAL Decrease transfer energy cost by 10/20/30/40/50%. Effect duration 1000 ticks, cooldown 500 ticks. Consumes 100 L/L/LO/LHO2/XLHO2. OPERATE_STORAGE Increase capacity by 500K/1000K/1500K/2000K/3000K units. Effect duration 1000 ticks, cooldown is 300 ticks. Consumes 50 Z/Z/ZH/ZH2O/XZH2O. EXTEND_SOURCE Increase source energy amount by 1K/2K/3K/4K/5K units until the next regeneration cycle. Cooldown 100 ticks. EXTEND_MINERAL Increase mineral deposit amount by 20/40/60/80/100 units. Cooldown 100 ticks. DISABLE_SPAWN Increase spawn time by 10/20/30/40/50%. Effect duration 5 ticks, no cooldown. Range 20 squares. DISABLE_EXTENSION Decrease capacity by 10/20/30/40/50%. Effect duration 50 ticks, no cooldown. Range 20 squares. DISABLE_TOWER Reduce effectiveness by 10%/20%/30%/40%/50%. Effect duration 1 tick. Entire room range. CORRUPT_SOURCE Destroy all energy contained in a source until the next regeneration cycle. Cooldown 250/200/150/100/50 ticks. SHIELD Create a temporary rampart structure on the same square with 5K/10K/15K/20K/25K hits. The structure lasts for 50 ticks and then disappears. Cooldown 20 ticks. Consumes 100 energy. Maximum level: 24. Levelling table: 1 OPERATE_EXTENSION OPERATE_TOWER DISABLE_EXTENSION 2 OPERATE_OBSERVER OPERATE_LAB EXTEND_SOURCE 3 OPERATE_SPAWN OPERATE_EXTENSION DISABLE_EXTENSION 4 OPERATE_TERMINAL EXTEND_MINERAL DISABLE_SPAWN 5 OPERATE_STORAGE OPERATE_LAB EXTEND_SOURCE 6 OPERATE_EXTENSION OPERATE_TOWER DISABLE_TOWER 7 SHIELD CORRUPT_SOURCE EXTEND_MINERAL 8 OPERATE_OBSERVER OPERATE_SPAWN OPERATE_STORAGE 9 OPERATE_TERMINAL DISABLE_TOWER DISABLE_SPAWN 10 OPERATE_TOWER OPERATE_LAB CORRUPT_SOURCE 11 OPERATE_SPAWN SHIELD DISABLE_EXTENSION 12 OPERATE_TERMINAL CORRUPT_SOURCE EXTEND_SOURCE 13 OPERATE_OBSERVER EXTEND_MINERAL DISABLE_SPAWN 14 OPERATE_STORAGE DISABLE_TOWER SHIELD 15 OPERATE_SPAWN OPERATE_TOWER OPERATE_EXTENSION 16 OPERATE_OBSERVER CORRUPT_SOURCE OPERATE_LAB 17 OPERATE_TERMINAL SHIELD DISABLE_TOWER 18 EXTEND_SOURCE EXTEND_MINERAL OPERATE_STORAGE 19 OPERATE_SPAWN OPERATE_EXTENSION DISABLE_SPAWN 20 OPERATE_TOWER OPERATE_OBSERVER DISABLE_EXTENSION 21 OPERATE_LAB CORRUPT_SOURCE SHIELD 22 OPERATE_TERMINAL OPERATE_STORAGE EXTEND_SOURCE 23 DISABLE_SPAWN DISABLE_EXTENSION DISABLE_TOWER 24 EXTEND_MINERAL OPERATE_SPAWN OPERATE_TERMINAL
Commander This power creep is not very useful on its own, but it’s a team player. It influences and affects regular creeps, both friendly and hostile. The list of powers: ENCOURAGE Remove all fatigue of the target creep. Cooldown 10/8/6/4/2 ticks. Range 20 squares. EXHAUST Add 2/4/6/8/10 fatigue points to the target creep per each non-MOVE body part. Cooldown 10/8/6/4/2 ticks. Range 20 squares. DEFEND Blocks up to 100/200/400/600/800 damage inflicted to the creep on the next tick. Cooldown 5 ticks. Melee range. SUMMON Instantly relocates your own creep in the same room to the square next to the power creep. Cooldown 10/8/6/4/2 ticks. SIGHT Increase range of all ranged abilites of the target creep by 1 for the next 5 ticks. Cooldown 10/8/6/4/2 ticks. Range 20 squares. RENEW Adds time to live to the target creep. Consumes energy. The formula is the same as in StructureSpawn.renewCreep. Cooldown 5/4/3/2/1 ticks. Range 20 squares. DISABLE Disables all actions of the target creep on the next tick. Cooldown 10/8/6/4/2 ticks. Melee range. BERSERK Increase damage inflicted by a creep by 100%, but also incoming damage by 100% for the next 5 ticks. Cooldown 10/8/6/4/2 ticks. Range 20 squares. Maximum level: 14. Levelling table: 1 ENCOURAGE SIGHT EXHAUST 2 EXHAUST ENCOURAGE DEFEND 3 ENCOURAGE SUMMON SIGHT 4 DEFEND DISABLE SIGHT 5 SUMMON RENEW EXHAUST 6 DISABLE BERSERK DEFEND 7 ENCOURAGE SUMMON RENEW 8 DISABLE SIGHT BERSERK 9 DEFEND DISABLE EXHAUST 10 ENCOURAGE RENEW SUMMON 11 SIGHT BERSERK DEFEND 12 SUMMON DISABLE EXHAUST 13 BERSERK RENEW ENCOURAGE 14 BERSERK DEFEND RENEW
Executor This creep class prefers working alone. Due to its skills, it’s a very effective performer in your economy or as a war machine when defending or attacking. The list of powers: HARVEST_ENERGY Harvest 200/400/600/800/1000 energy units from an energy source. Cooldown 20 ticks. HARVEST_MINERAL Harvest 200/400/600/800/1000 mineral units from a deposit. Cooldown 40 ticks. REMOTE_TRANSFER Remotely transfer resources to any creep or structure in 20 squares range. Cooldown 50/40/30/20/10 ticks. MASS_REPAIR Repair all structures in 10 squares range area for up to 1000/2000/3000/4000/5000 hits in total. Repair effect is distributed between all structures. Consumes up to 10/20/30/40/50 energy. SNIPE Inflict 100/200/300/400/500 damage to the target creep in 10 squares range. Cannot be used with structures. No cooldown. PUNCH Inflict 300/600/900/1200/1500 damage to the target creep in melee range and disable all his actions on the next tick. No cooldown. DEMOLISH Inflict 5K/10K/15K/20K/25K damage to the target structure in melee range. Cannot be used with creeps. Cooldown 10 ticks. REINFORCE Make the creep itself invulnerable for attacks on the next tick. Cooldown 20/18/16/14/12/10 ticks. REFLECT Reflect 50% of damage inflicted to the power creep back to an attacker creep. Effect duration 5 ticks, cooldown 20/18/16/14/12 ticks. KILL Instantly kills any creep in 10 squares range if it's not inside hostile ramparts. Cooldown 900/800/700/600/500 ticks. Maximum level: 17. Levelling table: 1 HARVEST_ENERGY HARVEST_MINERAL REMOTE_TRANSFER 2 HARVEST_ENERGY HARVEST_MINERAL SNIPE 3 REMOTE_TRANSFER PUNCH DEMOLISH 4 MASS_REPAIR HARVEST_ENERGY REMOTE_TRANSFER 5 SNIPE REFLECT REINFORCE 6 HARVEST_MINERAL MASS_REPAIR KILL 7 PUNCH REINFORCE DEMOLISH 8 HARVEST_ENERGY MASS_REPAIR SNIPE 9 REFLECT REINFORCE KILL 10 REMOTE_TRANSFER REFLECT DEMOLISH 11 MASS_REPAIR SNIPE PUNCH 12 HARVEST_MINERAL REFLECT KILL 13 PUNCH DEMOLISH REINFORCE 14 HARVEST_ENERGY REINFORCE KILL 15 REMOTE_TRANSFER MASS_REPAIR HARVEST_MINERAL 16 SNIPE REFLECT KILL 17 DEMOLISH PUNCH SNIPE ConclusionFormer acting attorney general Sally Yates on May 8 testified before senators about her conversations with a White House lawyer that ultimately led to the ousting of former national security adviser Michael Flynn. (Bastien Inzaurralde/The Washington Post)
Former acting attorney general Sally Yates’s testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee’s subcommittee on crime and terrorism certainly left an impression. We still have no answer as to why former national security adviser Michael Flynn stayed on the job for so long after the White House counsel was presented with evidence Flynn had problematic contacts with the Russians, lied about them to the vice president and put himself in a compromising positions with regard to Russia. Who knew what, when? Why did Flynn get fired only after news broke that he had lied? And why was his underlying conduct problematic?
Yates and former director of national intelligence James R. Clapper Jr. raised some other questions not directly related to Flynn.
Clapper testified that as far as he knew there was no evidence of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russian officials. He, however, wasn’t aware of the FBI’s counterintelligence investigation. In previous testimony, FBI Director James B. Comey — and then Yates on Monday — seemed to be unable to rule collusion out. Does the FBI in fact have evidence of collusion? When will the American people find out? Until then, a cloud will hang over the presidency.
Clapper said he was unaware of any improper “unmasking.” If there is no evidence of misconduct (notwithstanding the GOP’s anti-Susan Rice venom), can we count this as one more diversion in the White House’s attempt to sidetrack the investigation and discredit intelligence professionals?
Sen. Ben Sasse (R-Neb.) asked about the use of shell companies through which Russians can reach into the United States to influence our political system and economy. Yates and Clapper both agreed this was a problem and that U.S. efforts were lagging those in Europe to create greater transparency. Bipartisan anti-corruption legislation aimed at denying economic access to those who have fleeced their countrymen has been introduced, but do we also need to address the issue Sasse raised? Were shell companies used to funnel money or undertake other actions favorable to Donald Trump during the campaign?
Several senators hinted at the potential connection between Trump’s finances and Russian officials. When asked about Trump’s finances, Clapper and Yates begged off, citing the ongoing intelligence investigation. However, on the very day they were testifying, news reports recalled an instance in which Eric Trump told a sportswriter that the family’s golf courses “don’t rely on American banks. We have all the funding we need out of Russia. … We’ve got some guys that really, really love golf, and they’re really invested in our programs. We just go there all the time.” At some point isn’t it essential to call President Trump’s sons and/or employees and associates to clarify if the president has been lying by denying any financial link to Russia?
The biggest question, however, may have nothing to do with Yates, the Russians or the Trump campaign. After a performance in which every Republican except Sasse and subcommittee chairman Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) seemed less concerned with Flynn and the Russia connection than with the leak (that resulted in a compromised national security adviser’s firing) or with Yates’s refusal to enforce the travel ban, one has to ask: How we can expect to see a thorough, nonpartisan investigation and definitive answers from Republicans running the hearings?
It should trouble all Americans that they continue to play partisan games in defense of a White House trying its best to distract and disrupt the investigation. They are not fulfilling their constitutional oaths or protecting America when they perform in such cringe-worthy fashion.In the game, as described by Vanity Fair contributor Evgenia Peretz, casting directors placed money in front of the children, asked them what they needed the money for, then took it away to elicit a reaction.
The Vanity Fair cover story, published online this week, described a “game” Jolie’s casting directors played with children from “orphanages, circuses and slum schools” while searching for an actor to play the role of Loung Ung, the author of the memoir on which the is film based.
Angelina Jolie is upset over a recent Vanity Fair profile that depicted an audition scene for her upcoming Cambodian film “First They Killed My Father,” which many people found exploitative.
“Srey Moch was the only child that stared at the money for a very, very long time,” Jolie had told Vanity Fair. “When she was forced to give it back, she became overwhelmed with emotion. All these different things came flooding back.”
The actors who were ultimately cast in Jolie’s film are a mix of trained actors, orphans and disadvantaged children. Srey Moch Sareum, the child playing the film’s leading role, lives in a slum community and attends a non-governmental organization school in Cambodia.
The “pretend game” was reportedly based on Ung’s real-life experience of getting caught stealing by the Khmer Rouge. Ung, a Cambodian-American, survived the Khmer Rouge killings that claimed the lives of her parents, two siblings and nearly 2 million Cambodians in the late 1970s.
A source familiar with the film’s casting process told HuffPost the children who auditioned were aware they were improvising a scene from the film, adding that no real money was involved. Casting directors reiterated to the kids auditioning that it was a “pretend game” in order to ensure the actors did not feel any pressure, the source said.
“I am upset that a pretend exercise in an improvisation, from an actual scene in the film, has been written about as if it was a real scenario,” said Jolie, a United Nations special envoy for refugees. “The suggestion that real money was taken from a child during an audition is false and upsetting. I would be outraged myself if this had happened.”
Jolie, who directed the film, said the audition “game” described in the profile was an improvisation exercise based off a scene in the film. She also said real money was not taken from children during the auditions.
“Every measure was taken to ensure the safety, comfort and well-being of the children on the film starting from the auditions through production to the present,” she told HuffPost in a statement.
Jolie said in a statement Saturday that the audition scene had been taken out of context. According to the actress, there were parents, guardians and non-governmental organization partners, as well as medical doctors, present throughout the entire filmmaking process, including auditions. She emphasized that no one was hurt by participating in the recreation of the film’s scenes.
Rithy Panh, a Cambodian filmmaker and producer on the film, said, ahead of the auditions, crews introduced the children to the camera equipment and explained they had to pretend to steal something that was left unattended and then get caught.
Panh, himself a survivor of the Cambodian genocide, called the criticism over the “game” described in the profile a “misunderstanding.”
“Great care was taken with the children not only during auditions, but throughout the entirety of the film’s making,” he said in a statement to HuffPost.
“Because the memories of the genocide are so raw, and many Cambodians still have difficulty speaking about their experiences, a team of doctors and therapists worked with us on set every day so that anyone from the cast or crew who wanted to talk could do so,” he added.
Jolie’s upcoming Netflix film is based on Ung’s 2000 memoir of the same name. Jolie said in the Vanity Fair profile that there was an “authentic connection to pain for everyone involved” with the film, which will be released later this year. She also explained that a therapist was on set every day to provide support for those impacted by flashbacks and nightmares of the Khmer Rouge’s rule.
Vanity Fair did not respond to HuffPost’s request for comment by the time of this publication.
Read Jolie and Panh’s full statements below:
Angelina Jolie, director:
Every measure was taken to ensure the safety, comfort and well-being of the children on the film starting from the auditions through production to the present. Parents, guardians, partner NGOs whose job it is to care for children, and medical doctors were always on hand everyday, to ensure everyone had all they needed. And above all to make sure that no one was in any way hurt by participating in the recreation of such a painful part of their country’s history. I am upset that a pretend exercise in an improvisation, from an actual scene in the film, has been written about as if it was a real scenario. The suggestion that real money was taken from a child during an audition is false and upsetting. I would be outraged myself if this had happened. The point of this film is to bring attention to the horrors children face in war, and to help fight to protect them.”
Rithy Panh, producer:Don’t bank on a relief rally in the euro area anytime soon.
Markets are underpricing the prospect of Marine Le Pen emerging victorious in the French election as a sea of undecided voters throws into sharp relief pronounced apathy for center-leftist Emmanuel Macron -- the front-runner by a whisker -- and the backlash against the European Union project.
That’s the conclusion drawn by Charles Gave, founder of Hong-Kong based asset-allocation consultancy GaveKal Research, who predicted the triumph of Donald Trump in the U.S. election, and is now betting on a win for the anti-euro National Front candidate.
“Le Pen’s momentum is a slow-moving reaction against the men of Davos -- as we have seen with Brexit and Trump -- but markets don’t want to believe it,” he said by phone before the first round of the French poll on April 23.
Given the prospect of a Le Pen victory, Gave, who has been researching tactical asset allocation for more than 40 years, is advising clients to adopt long positioning in the pound as the U.K. would benefit from haven bids, and shorts on inflation-linked German bonds amid the risk of deflation in the euro area.
Safer Bet
The French economist also recommends bets on the likely outperformance of publicly-listed European multinationals, given their outsize share of income in foreign currencies. In effect, for investors obliged to invest liquidity in euros, Gave says a basket of high-quality stocks is a safer bet than euro-denominated government bonds.
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“The market is talking about the nightmare scenario but it’s not pricing it in” said Mark Tinker, head of AXA Framlington Asia. Tinker’s a GaveKal client, and admirer of Gave’s tail-risk warnings over the past year. “After Sunday, we will have more information to make a considered risk-return wager to trade and hedge, but high-quality European companies and German bonds look like an attractive bet,” Tinker said.
Markets are pining for a scenario that would preserve the status quo: Macron, an independent candidate, defeating Le Pen in the second round on May 7. Thursday saw something of a French relief rally, with strong demand at a government debt auction, while France’s benchmark CAC 40 Index rose 1.5 percent as polls showed Macron pulling marginally ahead of Le Pen.
The euro held steady on Friday and French bonds gained after a police officer was shot in Paris, which may influence the outcome of the first-round vote, according to some analysts. The CAC 40 dropped for the first time in three days, declining 0.5 percent.
The stars, however, appear to be aligning for the National Front candidate, said Gave. The fact two candidates for the runoff are likely to be determined by voters who have yet to make up their minds -- as many as 40 percent -- is a bad omen for the centrist contender, he said.
Momentum Curtailed
At least half of the far-left and half of the center-right won’t vote for Macron in the second round if he is pitted against Le Pen, believing he is“tainted” by his association with Francois Hollande’s government, and would rather abstain, Gave said.
Supporters of Francois Fillon, a center-right candidate whose momentum has been curtailed by graft charges, and a sizable chunk of Macron’s followers would probably rally to Le Pen’s cause if she were to face leftist Jean-Luc Mélenchon in the final round, according to Gave. He sees only Fillon with a chance to defeat Le Pen in the run-off.
If she emerges victorious, the euro would tank as markets would price in the prospect of its dissolution, rather than focus on Le Pen’s legislative hurdles to exit the single-currency bloc. French and Italian bonds will be “unquotable” given vanishing bids, and the European banking system would be beset by seismic turmoil, he said.California lawmakers last week unveiled a dozen legislative proposals aimed at stiffening regulations governing the state’s roughly 7,700 assisted living facilities, residences that offer room and care to tens of thousands of frail or ailing people, most of them seniors.
The wide-ranging array of proposed regulations would mandate annual inspections of the facilities and increase the size of financial penalties that the state can levy for failures in care. The proposals would also step up mandatory training for assisted living employees, require facilities to employ registered nurses in some instances and demand that California post inspection results online for the public to review.
California, which is home to more assisted living facilities than any other state, currently maintains one of the loosest regulatory regimes in the country, with minimal fines (as little as $150 in cases of fatal neglect or abuse) and infrequent inspections (required once every five years). Ranging in scale from a handful of beds to hundreds, assisted living facilities provide housing and day-to-day help to the elderly and disabled, but, unlike nursing homes or physical rehabilitation centers, they do not offer around-the-clock medical care.
The regulatory proposals come as Gov. Jerry Brown seeks $7.5 million to hire dozens of additional inspectors, and state legislators prepare to hold a series of public hearings in February on improving the performance of the assisted living facilities and the officials who oversee them.
At least some of the new initiatives have the support of the California Assisted Living Association, an industry trade group. In a press release, the association said it was backing efforts to increase the frequency of inspections and raise training standards, as well as several other proposals.
The consensus – at least in broad terms – that California’s regulatory system needs an overhaul is “a testament to the level of crisis we’ve reached,” said Tony Chicotel, a staff attorney at California Advocates for Nursing Home Reform, one of the advocacy groups pushing the legislative package. “Everyone seems to agree that it’s really bad and we need to do something.”
Several lawmakers described the bungled closure of a troubled Castro Valley facility late last year – a debacle that left an unpaid cook and janitor caring for 19 seniors, many of them seriously ill – as a catalyst for the new initiatives.
“The owners of the facility basically walked away,” said state senate majority leader Ellen Corbett, a Bay Area Democrat who is sponsoring new legislation. “It was so shocking and outrageous that this could happen.”
The state’s shortcomings have also been spotlighted in reports by ProPublica and PBS “Frontline,” as well as the San Diego Union-Tribune.
San Francisco Sen. Mark Leno, a Democrat, is spearheading a bill that would bring California’s practices in line with those of many other states, giving the Department of Social Services, which oversees assisted living, the power to halt admissions at facilities plagued by serious regulatory violations. If passed, the law “will go after the lifeblood of these facilities and prohibit them from taking any new customers,” Leno said.
Currently, he noted, the department has few options when it comes to altering the behavior of troubled facilities. It can fine them or revoke their licenses to operate, slow-moving processes that can drag on for months or even years. Leno’s bill would allow the state to place an immediate ban on admissions until violations have been corrected.
It would also empower the department to use the same tactic at facilities that have failed to pay their fines. During a recent five-year span, the state meted out approximately $2 million in monetary penalties but actually collected just half of that, in part because some facilities simply continued operating without paying.
Michael Weston, a spokesman for the Department of Social Services, did not respond to requests for comment.
However, the department has quietly acknowledged its limitations. In a 16-page budget proposal obtained by ProPublica, the department said it had not kept up with the evolution of the assisted living business, which in recent years has taken in more and more seniors with complex health problems. The document notes that state rules have been broadened to allow people with “virtually any medical condition” to reside in assisted living facilities, yet the division of the department that monitors those operations “has no staff with medical expertise.”
According to the budget document, the department has also been slow to respond to the growing role of national and regional chains, and the wave of “complex corporate mergers and acquisitions” that have marked the industry in recent years. Currently, state data systems don’t allow inspectors to identify companies that persistently flout the law. The state is seeking to create a “corporate accountability unit” to monitor chain facilities.
In many ways, Leno said, the full reach of the proposed regulations will come down to money.
“Are we funding regulatory agencies to do their job?” he asked. “Taxpayers rightfully expect that someone’s looking after them. And the sad fact is that in many cases we haven’t been.”SAPPORO • Asia is ready, willing and able to host a third straight Winter Olympics if the Japanese city of Sapporo wins the bid for the 2026 Games, Olympic Council of Asia president Sheikh Ahmad Al-Fahad Al-Sabah has said.
Sapporo hosted Asia's first Winter Olympics in 1972 and has also staged the Asian Winter Games three times, including the inaugural edition in 1986 and the ongoing Feb 19-26 event.
City officials said in late 2014 they would be keen on a 2026 bid, though the Japanese Olympic Committee would also need to give its nod.
With South Korea's Pyeongchang staging the Winter Olympics in 2018 and Beijing hosting the event four years later, a third successive Winter Games in Asia would underline the region's growing presence on the international sporting stage.
The Summer Olympics will also be held in Asia in 2020 in Tokyo.
Sheikh Ahmad said the way the ongoing Asiad had been organised clearly demonstrated Sapporo would take the task of hosting another Olympics in its stride.
"I am happy to hear that Sapporo is ready to host the Olympic Winter Games. Sapporo is capable and ready," he said at a news conference on Tuesday, adding that Sapporo had "all the tools, all the facilities and all the experience" needed to stage the multi-sport event.
Beijing and the nearby city of Zhangjiakou beat Kazakhstan's Almaty for the right to host the 2022 Games after the other competitors dropped out, citing costs and other worries, and Sheikh Ahmad added that an Asian bid for 2026 would depend on the level of interest from other countries.
The costs of staging Olympics have become a hot-button issue in recent years and prompted the International Olympic Committee (IOC) to take steps aimed at keeping spending under control.
Reforms known as "Agenda 2020", carried out under IOC president Thomas Bach with the aim of making the Olympics more sustainable, allow hosts to use facilities in other cities or even countries if it makes financial and practical sense.
Hamburg, Rome and Boston have already abandoned bids to host the 2024 Summer Games while Budapest could also pull out. That would leave only Paris and Los Angeles still in the race.
"If there is a lot who bid, we will have to evaluate the situation, but if not then we have a good chance," the Kuwaiti added.
Japan's Nagano hosted Asia's last Winter Olympics in 1998.
REUTERS"Camie's dumb enough to think she's made the prize catch hereabouts." ―Biggs Darklighter [src]
Camie Loneozner was a Human female who was a friend of Luke Skywalker at Anchorhead during the Galactic Civil War between the Rebel Alliance and the Galactic Empire. Her family managed an underground hydroponic garden on Tatooine, and bought most of their water from Owen Lars's farm. She hung out at Tosche Station with Janek "Tank" Sunber, Laze "Fixer" Loneozner, Biggs Darklighter, and Skywalker.
Contents show]
Biography Edit
Camie was involved with Laze Loneozner, whom she eventually married when Luke Skywalker and Biggs Darklighter left Tatooine. Laze Loneozner built an illegal podracer to sell in order to raise enough funds for a lavish wedding party for her.[1]
After the deaths of Owen and Beru Lars, some of the locals believed that their nephew had murdered them. Camie Loneozner, having spent much time with him, didn't believe those rumors at all. After the Battle of Yavin, she told this to historian Voren Na'al in an interview.[2]
When TaggeCo decided to test their Omega Frost technology on Tatooine, they bought up a number of the local moisture farms. The Loneozners took over the operations of the old Darklighter farm and were hired by the Tagges to take care of all of the local properties.[3]
The two Loneozners ran into Luke Skywalker when he returned to Tatooine on a mission for the Rebellion. They feared that Skywalker might cause trouble and ruin their relationship with the Tagges, and so they reported him to the Imperials. However, Fixer Loneozner had second thoughts about turning in his old friend and decided to warn Skywalker about the Imperials, allowing the young Rebel to escape capture.[3]
Behind the scenes Edit
Camie was portrayed by Koo Stark in A New Hope, though her scenes were not used in the final film release. Her deleted scenes appeared in the first issue of the Marvel Star Wars comics adaptation of A New Hope, and she also appeared in Star Wars 17: Crucible and Star Wars 31: Return to Tatooine. The lost scenes from A New Hope can be seen in Star Wars: Behind the Magic.
She was portrayed by Stephanie Steele for the Star Wars Radio Drama on National Public Radio.
Her name has sometimes been misspelled as "Cammie".
An action figure released by Hasbro in 2010 gave Camie the last name "Marstrap", a name that was once given to another of Luke Skywalker's friends, Windy. Windy was later given the last name "Starkiller", which was considered canonical in the continuity of Star Wars Legends.
Appearances Edit
Sources Edit
Notes and references Edit
Camie Loneozner. Wookieepedia has 10 images related toAyo whattup. Welcome back to the powerful rays of light of the one n only Big Ghost aka the illustrious Broccoli Bundles aka the mighty Cocaine Biceps aka Shampoo Bracelets the panty melter aka the one n only Phantom Raviolis the magnificent aka Volcano Hands aka Thor Molecules aka the glorious n powerful Hands of Zeus nahmean. You definitely once again back in the presence of greatness yo. This the one true n livin g-o-d shit n**gas minds be itchin n scratchin for like some baseheads n shit. Word is bond… Yall do the google searches yo. I do this shit forreal b. You search those reviews for ya favorite albums n whatever whatever…but only the most prominent shit… n you gon see my name up there amongst the Rolling Stones n Time Magazines, b. I aint buy no respect I earned mines namsayin. Ask bout me on twitter. Ask bout me on facebook or instagrams. On all social medias. Im known b. But yo we not here for all that. Yall muthafuckas been waitin on this review for this new Earl joint like hypebeast fake ass sneakerheads be waitin on ugly ass colorways of wack ass foamposites. But yall kno…thats neither here nor there namsayin. I gots yall. Imma hold yall down like the earths gravitational forces nahmean. Lets get this on n poppin tho…scan true this legalese right quick like la la la, boom and lets hit track 1.
The views n what have you in this muthafucka is all my owns…so that aint in no way a reflection of nobody other than myself n whatever else b. No other man or woman or child represented heretofore n such hereby is sharin the opinion of the gentleman who be sayin the shit contained within namsayin. This muthafucka do be containin foul language n shit that might offend small children n old people n shit too. It should be noted by all those who is present today here today before God that yall here on ya own accord n if anybody not cool wit that they should leave now or forever hold they peace…
1. “Pre” (f/ SK La’Flare) – Right out the gate its some 80s sci-fi type shit. I mean it aint personally the types of shit I be listenin to on my spare time n whatever…but I aint hatin neither. I get these Odd Future cats n how its they M.O. to be on some jackass n shit settin they dicks on fire n wildin in they videos n makin songs bout some shit that n**gas over 25 cant relate to but it don’t mean em n**gas dont got no talent. This muthafucka Earl can rap yo. Son is nice wit his pen |
of 224mph The aircraft can reach heights of 14,000ft
'Very surprised'
It was initially thought the aircraft had ditched in the North Sea.
A spokesman for the Royal National Lifeboat Institution said three crews were launched before being stood down soon after when it was established the aircraft was onshore.
The 48th Fighter Wing, also known as the Liberty Wing, is assigned to the United States Air Forces in Europe.
In addition to HH-60G Pave Hawks, it is home to squadrons of F-15 Eagle tactical fighter planes and F-15E Strike Eagle dual-role fighters.
Military aviation analyst Roger Smith said he was "very surprised" this type of helicopter was involved in a crash.
"It's a very safe outfit... well equipped to fly in poor weather with a highly-trained crew, used to flying at night," he said.
He said the crew would normally be made up of a pilot, co-pilot, crew chief (flight engineer) and gunner.
"Its main role is combat air rescue when an allied pilot is shot down behind enemy lines," he said.
"This has to be done in the cover of darkness so they have to be able to fly in the dark in bad weather."
Retired USAF colonel Rick Davis added: "I would imagine the H-60 has the best safety record of any helicopter that the United States military has ever owned."
Cley is one mile east of Blakeney and four miles north of Holt, on the main coast road between Wells and Sheringham.
The village has a nature reserve, famous as a bird-watching site.
Aviation expert Chris Yates told BBC's Today programme: "This area of the country has lived with military operations for an awful lot of years, and it's rare for accidents such as this to happen.
"We have to be mindful that these are military flyers and they are the best, of the best, of the best.
"It would be unusual, once we get through this investigation, to find that this was pilot error; it might be more mechanical fault."In this report, we describe outcomes from a preliminary trial in which we evaluated the efficacy of MT compared to the American Lung Association’s Freedom From Smoking (FFS), a manualized, validated, widely-disseminated treatment for smoking cessation ( Addington et al., 1998 ; Association, 2010 ; Lando et al., 1990 ). The primary objective was to assess the efficacy of MT vs. FFS using 1-week point prevalence abstinence and number of cigarettes smoked/day as primary endpoints at treatment completion and a 17-week follow-up. As we have previously found positive relationships between homework completion and substance use outcomes with behavioral treatments, ( Carroll et al., 2005 ), our secondary objective was to assess correlations between the amount of completed home practice in both treatment arms and smoking outcomes. We hypothesized that MT would demonstrate at least similar efficacy as FFS with regards to smoking cessation and would show greater correlations between amount of home practice and these outcomes.
Thus, treatments that target both affective states and craving, such as Mindfulness Training (MT), may be helpful in smoking cessation ( Brewer et al., 2009 ). Mindfulness approaches have been operationalized to include two components: (1) maintaining attention on the individual’s immediate experience and (2) maintaining an attitude of acceptance toward this experience ( Bishop et al., 2004 ). Through these complementary components, MT has been hypothesized to not only bring habituated behaviors into consciousness such that they can be worked with effectively, but also target the associative learning process with an emphasis on affect and craving as critical components of positive and negative reinforcement loops ( Brewer et al., 2010b ). For example, similar to treatments such as ACT that place an emphasis on accepting one’s immediate experience, MT may help individuals learn “sit with” negative affect, cravings, and withdrawal without habitually reacting to these unpleasant states by smoking. Further, and perhaps somewhat unique to this practice, MT emphasizes the ability to perceive the selfless quality of affective/mind states in that it teaches individuals to recognize these as transient feelings and sensations in the mind and body rather than something that is happening to ‘them. ’ In doing so, individuals may learn to (literally) not take affective and withdrawal states personally, which also may help them quit smoking ( Brewer et al., 2010a ; Teasdale et al., 2002 ). Thus, MT may have the relative advantage of teaching a single technique that may lead to the dampening and eventual dismantling of the complex interrelated associative processes of smoking rather than just removing stimuli that might propagate them.
Thus, recently developed smoking cessation treatments have begun to target components of the addictive process by helping patients tolerate negative affect and craving rather than avoiding cues or substituting other activities (e.g., “urge surfing” techniques in cognitive behavioral therapies) ( Carroll, 2005 ; Marlatt and Donovan, 2005 ). Recent work has focused on recognition and tolerance of negative affect states. For example, in an uncontrolled trial, 16 participants who underwent distress tolerance training (six individual + nine group sessions + eight weeks of nicotine patch), one-week point prevalence abstinence was 31% at the end of treatment, but 0% at the 26-week follow-up ( Brown et al., 2008 ). Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), which includes an emphasis on tolerance and “defusion” of aversive states has also has shown preliminary efficacy for smoking cessation ( Gifford et al., 2004 ; Hernandez-Lopez et al., 2009 ). Gifford and colleagues randomized 76 participants to nicotine replacement or ACT (seven individual + seven group sessions), and found 33% and 35%, respectively, achieved 24-hour smoking abstinence in NRT and ACT after treatment, 11% and 23%, after six months, and 15% and 35% one year later ( Gifford et al., 2004 ). Though preliminary, these studies suggest that targeting affective states may aid smoking cessation.
Cigarette smoking along with other tobacco use is the leading cause of preventable death in the world, associated with approximately five million people annually, and accounting for 10% of all deaths ( Jha et al., 2006 ). In the US, smoking costs more than $193 billion in health care and lost productivity per year ( Center for Disease Control, 2007 ). Although over 70% of smokers want to quit, fewer than 5% achieve this goal annually ( Center for Disease Control, 2007 ).
Longitudinal data were analyzed using intent-to-treat mixed effect regression models on the full sample of randomized subjects (minus one individual who was incarcerated after treatment and whose data were not allowed to be analyzed per Veteran’s Administration regulations) to evaluate change over time in cigarette use/week during treatment (1 st phase) and during the follow-up period (2 nd phase) as previously described ( Ball et al., 2007 ; Singer and Willett, 2003 ). Longitudinal analyses are based on the continuous dependent variable “average number of cigarettes smoked per day by week.” ANOVA, χ 2 analysis and Pearson’s correlations were used where appropriate, using SPSS 18. Incomplete data were handled using casewise deletion, using all available data for parameter estimates ( Hedeker et al., 2007 ). All tests of significance are reported as two-tailed, and error is reported as ± standard deviation. Significance is reported as p ≤.025 to take into account correction for multiple comparisons.
Self-reported smoking was assessed at in-person weekly visits by a research assistant who was not involved in treatment delivery via the Timeline Follow Back method (TLFB) ( Sobell and Sobell, 1992 ). Self-reported abstinence was assessed using TLFB and verified by an exhaled carbon monoxide (CO) measurement of ≤ 10 parts per million at each of the twice-weekly treatment and at follow-up visits. Participants who dropped out of treatment were contacted to provide in-person assessments at follow-up time points (see CONSORT diagram) ( Hollis and Campbell, 1999 ). All participants were financially compensated for assessment visits (10 USD per assessment visit during treatment and 20 USD per assessment visit at follow-up). Of 244 CO measurements taken for point prevalence confirmation, eight (3.3%) were unverified due to participants having moved out of the state or being assessed outside of the study timeframe, two (.8%) were confounded by marijuana use that day ( Javors et al., 2005 ; Wu et al., 1988 ), and one (.4%) was unverified due to research assistant error. One CO measurement (.4%) was inconsistent with self-report and was considered to be non-abstinent.
FFS was delivered as previously described ( Lando et al., 1990 ), with the exception that sessions were delivered over four weeks (twice weekly) instead of eight weeks. Briefly, the program covered behavior modification, stress reduction, and relapse prevention, and was divided into three stages: preparation, action, and maintenance. In the preparation stage (sessions 1–3), participants examined smoking patterns through self-monitoring, identified triggers, and developed a personalized quit plan. On quit day (session four), participants affirmed their decision to quit and identified specific coping strategies. During the maintenance stage, participants identified ways to remain smoke-free and maintain a healthy lifestyle (e.g., weight management, exercise, relapse prevention), and continued to discuss the importance of social support and relaxation strategies. Home practice was suggested after each session typically as a combination of formal (e.g., practicing guided relaxation techniques) and informal (e.g., “packtracks”) techniques. Each participant received a practice CD of cessation techniques.
The MT manual was adapted for active smoking cessation from a previous MT manual for drug relapse prevention ( Bowen et al., 2009; Brewer et al., 2009 ). The overarching theme of momentary awareness and acceptance of cravings and affect (e.g., stress, anxiety etc.) was introduced and reinforced in complementary ways throughout the training ( Kabat-Zinn, 1982 ). The first session introduced participants to the concept of how smoking can become a habituated behavior triggered by an environmental, physical, or mental stimulus through associative learning. It also explored how cravings feel in the body and how MT can help individuals become more aware of these processes. Session two examined how thoughts, emotions and body sensations become triggers for craving and smoking, and introduced a technique to ‘mindfully’ work with cravings (Recognize, Accept, Investigate and Note what cravings feel like as they arise, acronym: RAIN). Session three introduced how difficult emotions perpetuate smoking as well as a standard meditation technique called loving-kindness as a way to work with them ( Gunaratana, 2002 ). Loving-kindness is practiced through directed well-wishing, typically by repetition of phrases such as ‘may X be happy. ’ Session four (quit date) taught participants how cravings thwart long-term goals, and reinforced mindfulness techniques as a way to help individuals disengage from habitual responding and realign with their goals. Session five introduced participants to mindfulness practice in everyday life, including “awareness of breath” meditation and mindful walking (“four modes of walking”, during which individuals practice systematically noting objects that they see, and then objects that they hear, then objects that they smell, and then tactile objects such as the pressure of their feet on the ground). Session six explored the automaticity of thought, and how thoughts can lead to habitual behaviors. Session seven reinforced the concept of acceptance and its role in changing habits. It also explored how both mental and physical actions can “plant seeds” for future actions and habits. Session eight summarized the course tools and explored ways of maintaining these in the future. Home practice was suggested after each session as a combination of formal MT meditations (the “body scan” which teaches individuals to systematically pay attention to different parts of their bodies as a way to reduce habitual mind-wandering and strengthen their attentional capacities, loving-kindness, and awareness of breath, which through focused attention on the breath also is intended to help individuals retrain their minds from habitually engaging in self-related pre-occupations -such as thinking about the past or future, or reacting to stressful stimuli- to more present moment awareness), and informal practices (four modes of walking, mindfulness of daily activities, mindfulness of smoking, RAIN). Each participant received a meditation practice CD.
A computer-generated urn randomization program assigned participants to MT or FFS based on age (> vs. ≤ 40 years old), sex, race (white vs. non-white), and cigarettes smoked/day (> vs. ≤ 20). All participants received twice weekly group sessions (eight total) that were manualized and delivered by instructors experienced in MT (a single therapist with >13 years of training in MT) or certified in FFS respectively (2 therapists with masters (+) level of training in drug counseling/health psychology). FFS was chosen as an active ‘standard treatment’ comparison condition for several reasons: 1) It has demonstrated efficacy ( Lando et al., 1990 ), 2) is manualized and standards for training and certification of therapists are established, 3) is widely available, and 4) includes components that are well-matched with MT, but does not include hypothesized mechanism of MT. For example, both MT and FFS had a quit date at the end of week two (session four), were matched for length (1.5h/session) and delivered on the same days of the week (Monday and Thursday). In addition, home practice materials were matched in a number of ways, including the length (~30 minutes total) and number of tracks (five) on respective CDs. Participants were neither encouraged nor discouraged from using nicotine replacement in either group during active treatment or in the post-treatment follow-up phase.
Participants were recruited through flyers and media advertisements offering behavioral treatment for smoking cessation. Those eligible were 18–60 years of age, smoked 10+ cigarettes/day, had fewer than 3 months of abstinence in the past year, and reported interest in quitting smoking. Participants were excluded if they currently used psychoactive medications, had a serious or unstable medical condition in the past six months, or met DSM-IV criteria for other substance dependence in the past year. After complete description of the study to the subjects, written informed consent was obtained. Of the 103 eligible individuals, 88 were randomized (see CONSORT diagram, ).
Within the MT group, more home practice correlated with less cigarette use for both formal (r= −.442, df=26, p=.019, see ) and informal practice (r= −.479, df=26, p=.010) at the end of treatment. Although not statistically significant, this relationship was also seen for point prevalence abstinence (r= −.342, df=26, p=.075). Post-hoc analysis showed strong correlations between sitting meditation and point prevalence abstinence throughout the follow-up period, and the use of the informal practice RAIN with average number of cigarettes at 4 and 6 weeks (see ). No correlations were found between FFS home practices and outcomes (df=29, all p>.315).
Though participants were neither encouraged nor discouraged from using nicotine replacement, three participants (9%) who received MT and four (11%) who received FFS reported some type of nicotine replacement use during treatment (average of 11.3±6.8 and 19.8±4.8 days respectively, F=3.76, df=1,5, p=.110). During follow-up, three participants (9%) who received MT and eight who received FFS (21%) reported nicotine replacement (average of 17.3±27.4 and 35.4±22.1 days respectively, F=1.30, df=1,9, p=.284). No participants receiving MT reported other cessation medication use, while one participant receiving FFS reported using varenicline (24 days) and one reported using bupropion (12 days).
Random effects regression analyses on the full intention to treat sample indicated participants in both groups reduced cigarette use from baseline through the 17-week follow-up (effect for time, F=480.79, df=1,1115, p<.0001). The rate of change during active treatment was significantly greater than the rate of change during post treatment (effect for phase, active versus follow-up, F=579.00, df=1,1115, p<.0001). During active treatment, individuals receiving MT demonstrated a greater reduction in cigarette use than those receiving FFS, and maintained these treatment gains during the follow-up period (treatment group × time, F=7.01, df=1,1115, p=.008). As subject expectancy of receiving treatment can have non-specific effects on smoking, we also analyzed cigarette use using the week before treatment initiation (as compared to baseline) in our regression model. When data from the treatment-exposed sample (n=71) was analyzed using the same model, individuals in the MT group again showed a greater rate of change in smoking compared to those in the FFS group, and maintained these treatment gains during the follow-up period (treatment group × time, F=11.11, df=1,1082, p=.001; estimates from the regression analyses for the treatment-exposed sample are presented in ). Individuals who received MT showed a trend toward greater one-week point prevalence abstinence at the end of treatment (36% vs. 15%, χ 2 =3.45, df=1, p=.063, see ), which was statistically significant at the 17-week follow-up endpoint (31% vs. 6%, χ 2 =6.32, df=1, p=.012).
Baseline and demographic characteristics were comparable between treatment groups (see ). Overall, 45% of participants were members of ethnic minority groups, and 63% were men. On average, participants were 46 years old, smoked 20 cigarettes/day, started smoking regularly at the age of 16, and had 5.2 previous quit attempts. Sixteen (eight in each group) did not complete baseline paperwork and were not exposed to treatment. χ 2 and ANOVA analyses revealed no differences between these individuals and those who started treatment (n=33 in MT, n=38 in FFS). Individuals in MT and FFS who started treatment attended 6.7 ± 1.7 and 6.2 ± 2.2 of eight sessions respectively. The six, 12, and 17-week follow-up completion rates were 27 (82% of treatment-exposed individuals) and 33 (87%), 29 (88%) and 32 (84%), and 29 (88%) and 33 (87%) for MT and FFS respectively. No serious adverse events were reported in either treatment group.
4. Discussion
This, to our knowledge, is the first randomized clinical trial to evaluate the efficacy of Mindfulness Training as a stand-alone treatment for smoking cessation compared to an active, empirically-supported control condition. Despite comparable treatment retention and completion rates, we found that individuals who received MT demonstrated greater reductions in smoking, which were maintained through the 17-week follow-up interview. These findings are encouraging as behavioral treatments have shown little overall improvement in cessation rates over the past 30 years (Mottillo et al., 2009; Shiffman, 1993). For example, our 17-week point prevalence odds ratio of 6.75, is significantly larger than the average odds ratio of 1.76 found in a recent meta-analysis of previous studies of group counseling (Mottillo et al., 2009), though this may be in part a result of the relatively poor performance of FFS. It was also larger than the odds ratio of behavioral therapies as reported in the current clinical practice guidelines, such as those targeting negative affect (OR = 1.2, abstinence rate = 13.6%), social support (OR = 1.5, abstinence rate = 16.2%), practical counseling (OR = 1.5, abstinence rate = 16.2%), aversive smoking (OR = 1.7, abstinence rate = 17.7%) and medication + counseling (OR = 1.7, abstinence rate = 22.1%) (Fiore et al., 2008).
Though the underpinnings of the actions of MT are just beginning to be understood (Brewer et al., 2010b; Grabovac et al., 2011; Lutz et al., 2008), the results from this study suggest that teaching techniques that in theory, target core components of the addictive process (e.g., craving) may be more effective than teaching the avoidance of cues or fostering positive affective states that have been emphasized in previous treatments. This possibility is particularly relevant in light of evidence suggesting that pharmacotherapies may be more efficacious in targeting background rather than cue-induced craving (Ferguson and Shiffman, 2009). It is plausible that combining MT with a medication may improve both the initial efficacy as well as long-term abstinence rates as 1) the combination may target both background and cue-induced craving concurrently and 2) MT may help to sustain medication effects after discontinuation through the “unlearning” of the addictive process. However, future studies are required to determine whether changes in craving, negative affect or other mechanisms mediate the effects of mindfulness training in smoking cessation. Additionally, as very few subjects in this study opted to use medications, no treatment by medication interactions or differences between groups were noted. Further trials combining MT with medications will help to answer whether there are indeed interactions therein and how these affect the addictive process.
We have previously shown positive relationships between homework completion and substance use outcomes (Carroll et al., 2005). Links between the amount of MT home practice and outcomes have also been studied in various populations, though have yielded mixed results, possibly due to methodological shortcomings (Vettese et al., 2009). Using careful matching for the type and amount of home practice between groups, we found no correlations between the amount of formal or informal homework in the FFS group, but strong correlations in the MT group. These findings help to control for the confounding effects of individuals being motivated to quit (i.e., motivated individuals would presumably do more home practice regardless of group), as well as non-specific effects of doing any type of home practice. Interestingly, many of the positive findings between home practice and outcomes in previous studies may be attributed to self-selection bias, familiarity with mindfulness, and/or treatment expectancies (Vettese et al., 2009). However, even when controlling for these factors (e.g., no mention of the type of treatment until after randomization, no previous mindfulness experience [data not shown] etc.), we still found strong correlations between home practice and outcomes. The correlations between sitting meditation and treatment outcomes are noteworthy as they may suggest that practicing to “sit” through difficult mind-states (including negative affect and craving) may train individuals to do the same when faced with an opportunity to smoke. Alternatively, sitting meditation may be a marker for individuals who are more likely to be able to utilize MT for smoking cessation, thus raising the prospect of individualizing treatment by using this at intake or early in treatment to determine if an individual may benefit from MT, or if other cessation strategies should be emphasized. Overall, these results suggest that MT may be a viable option for smoking cessation treatment for the general population, and given its group format and short treatment period, may prove to be cost effective as well.The cryptocurrency study conducted by Cambridge University includes 114 pages and reveals all aspects of the system operation: exchanges, wallets, mining, amount of users and industry workers. The CoinTelegraph website published a succinct summary of this research in September.
About the industry
According to the investigation, at least 1876 people are engaged full-time in the cryptocurrency industry. The majority of them live in the Asia-Pacific Region and North America. Such a small number of workers are caused by the fact that the industry does not require lots of labor power: for instance, 49% of cryptocurrency exchanges have less than 11 employees. Nevertheless, these platforms process operations valued at millions of dollars daily!
About exchanges
The biggest amount of cryptocurrency exchange transactions are in Europe. The Asia-Pacific Region takes the second place.
Source: cointelegraph
The greatest market share (16%) is kept by the Bitfinex exchange. 25% of the market includes small players.
All exchanges mentioned in the study support bitcoin. Ethereum: 43% of participants; Litecoit: 35%; they are followed by Ripple, Ethereum Classic, Monero, Dogecoin, and Dash.
73% of participating exchanges say that they control users’ private keys and actually have an access to customers’ funds.
About wallets
The general number of active wallets is estimated between 5.8mn and 11.5mn (such a discrepancy results from the fact that many providers determine active wallets in a different way). The majority of active wallet owners live in Europe and North America. According to the authors of the research, the number of cryptocurrency wallets does not show the real amount of virtual currency users.
Source: cointelegraph
About mining
58% of large miners are based in China. The USA is in the second place (16%). Year by year, mining revenue reduces despite the growth of digital currencies. Mining generated $786mn in 2014 and $563mn in 20116.
Find out more at ICO event London!Sulli's Instagram updates are making netizens go, "" yet again.
The latest photos show Sulli and Hara having a fun girls' night at home to celebrate Hara's birthday. So far, netizens think, 'Ok, gotta admit. They are pretty..'
????????????? A photo posted by?????? (@jelly_jilli) on Jan 2, 2017 at 11:27am PST
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But then Sulli uploaded several more photos of herself gazing into the camera with a mischevious look, only dressed in a one-piece slip. This is where netizens started becoming more concerned and angry. They commented,and more.
Are Sulli's Instagram posts making you worry?
A photo posted by?????? (@jelly_jilli) on Jan 2, 2017 at 11:53am PST
A photo posted by?????? (@jelly_jilli) on Jan 2, 2017 at 11:54am PST
A photo posted by?????? (@jelly_jilli) on Jan 2, 2017 at 11:55am PST
A photo posted by?????? (@jelly_jilli) on Jan 2, 2017 at 12:01pm PSTUp to 45,000 wild horses face slaughter by the U.S. government Special By By Candace Calloway Whiting May 26, 2012 in Environment Thousands of America's iconic wild horses may be headed to slaughter at the hands of the U.S. government; some herds may face extinction. Oil, mining and cattle interests are driving down the wild horse population and the space left for them to roam. “The BLM continues to decimate the last remaining herds beyond the point of viability. Gelded males, mares filled with PZP, yearlings being rounded up “because the land cannot handle the pressure horses place on it,” yet hours after the last BLM trailer leaves the welfare ranchers unload truckloads of cattle on the same land and remove the fences around the water holes. The killing of American horses has increased by 38% in 2011 to 133,241. That’s 2,562 per week, 366 per day, 46 per hour – trucked to Canada and Mexico and slaughtered in the most inhumane way possible” Finch explained to Digital Journal that "Ages ago, Senator Conrad Burns stuck a small amendment into an appropriations bill that gave the BLM authority to sell protected horses if they were offered for adoption three times without any takers (Called "Three Strike" horses). Under this ruling, the horses are completely removed from the protection of the Wild Horse and Burro Act and placed'sale authority' in the hands of the BLM. It was proposed several years ago that excess horses be "euthanized." The public raised such a stink about that proposal that it was removed. About the same time, the American Veterinarian Medical Association (AVMA) said the According to those terms, the BLM has the authority at this time to sell horses to operators to be euthanized. I think we can all read between the lines on that one." The BLM addresses the points brought up by horse advocates on their “ Those who believe that public lands should not be damaged by industry and those who consider the wild horses to be part of our heritage are disturbed by what they see as the government’s support of corporations instead of the public interest, as exemplified by the Ruby Pipeline project, completed in 2011 but with environmental mitigation measures just completed last week. Two years ago construction was begun on the natural gas pipeline, which now snakes 675 miles through public lands from Wyoming to Oregon. The route traverses pristine wilderness, cuts through old growth forests, and crosses over a thousand water bodies in 11 watersheds. In spite of protests, years of negotiations and court battles, and questionable removal of wild horses, the government permitted the project, and staged a massive horse roundup. The Ruby Pipeline Bureau of Land Management The Ruby Pipeline was given permission to draw 402 million gallons of water that is desperately needed by the horses in that arid region, and in their The BLM conducted a roundup of the wild horses in part of the Calico Mountain Range, removing almost 2,000 in 2009-2010 from the land destined to be utilized by the Pipeline. According to a Calico is known for beautiful horses and the approximately 75-80 horses who were captured today were no exception. Gorgeous family bands were rounded up one after another. As it is with all roundups, it was heart breaking to witness the tragedy beset on these tight-knit families – watching them spend their last minutes together after running for their lives and knowing that they will be forever separated from each other, their homes and freedom. As of Friday, January 6, 2012, the BLM reports that 1,203 horses and 10 burros have been captured since the Calico Complex roundup began on November 19, 2011. The BLM reports that 186 of the horses rounded up have been released to the Complex, releasing more stallions than mares to artificially skew the sex ratio to favor males 60 to 40 and administering the fertility-control drug PZP to all released mares. While the BLM denies any relationship in the timing of removing the horses from the pipeline area, their track record shows improprieties, and the organization was involved in payoffs and other scandals during the period when the Ruby Pipeline was approved. Also during this period the BLM was found to have "exceeded its authority" in The Ruby Pipeline management denies that it has anything to do with the roundups. The removal of wild horses/burros is not addressed in the Ruby Pipeline Final EIS, because it has nothing to do with the removal of wild horses or burros. Gathers such as the Calico Mountains Complex operation are conducted as part of the BLM land use management plans, and are conducted to remove excess animals, achieve Appropriate Management Levels, and achieve a thriving natural ecological balance in an effort to maintain healthy rangelands and ensure through our management practices that we have adequate food and water for the remaining wild horses and burros, wildlife and permitted livestock on the public lands. Keeping their agreement to mitigate the environmental impact on the public lands, Ruby Pipeline hired POD Appendix K, Draft Restoration and Reclamation Plans for Wyoming, Utah, Nevada and Oregon filed with FERC in July 2009, specifies actions to minimize wild horse and burro grazing “within the reclaimed ROW”: Ruby will work with the BLM to minimize wild horse and burro grazing along the “restored” ROW for three years. "Possible management actions would be to provide water sources away from the ROW, include low palatable plant species in the seed mix such as sagebrush, temporary fencing with gaps, and/or reduce wild horse populations following BLM policy in appropriate management areas.” Wild horse advocate and author Meanwhile, the BLM continues to remove horses from the open range and pays ranchers to take care of them, hoping that 30,000 or more homes can be found for those once wild American icons, a tough sell in this economy. According to Habitat for Horses’ Jerry Finch, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) may actually be warehousing as many as 45,000 wild horses. He writes an impassioned and often eloquent blog on the subject of horse abuse, and he is outraged that the government has taken countless healthy horses from the natural environment to benefit cattle ranchers and private industry.“The BLM continues to decimate the last remaining herds beyond the point of viability. Gelded males, mares filled with PZP, yearlings being rounded up “because the land cannot handle the pressure horses place on it,” yet hours after the last BLM trailer leaves the welfare ranchers unload truckloads of cattle on the same land and remove the fences around the water holes. The killing of American horses has increased by 38% in 2011 to 133,241. That’s 2,562 per week, 366 per day, 46 per hour – trucked to Canada and Mexico and slaughtered in the most inhumane way possible”Finch explained to Digital Journal that "Ages ago, Senator Conrad Burns stuck a small amendment into an appropriations bill that gave the BLM authority to sell protected horses if they were offered for adoption three times without any takers (Called "Three Strike" horses). Under this ruling, the horses are completely removed from the protection of the Wild Horse and Burro Act and placed'sale authority' in the hands of the BLM.It was proposed several years ago that excess horses be "euthanized." The public raised such a stink about that proposal that it was removed. About the same time, the American Veterinarian Medical Association (AVMA) said the captive bolt, as used in the slaughterhouses, was "humane euthanization."According to those terms, the BLM has the authority at this time to sell horses to operators to be euthanized.I think we can all read between the lines on that one."The BLM addresses the points brought up by horse advocates on their “ Myths and Facts ” page, but that information does little to reassure concerned citizens that the public lands are being fairly managed, since much of what the BLM states as fact is open to interpretation.Those who believe that public lands should not be damaged by industry and those who consider the wild horses to be part of our heritage are disturbed by what they see as the government’s support of corporations instead of the public interest, as exemplified by the Ruby Pipeline project, completed in 2011 but with environmental mitigation measures just completed last week.Two years ago construction was begun on the natural gas pipeline, which now snakes 675 miles through public lands from Wyoming to Oregon. The route traverses pristine wilderness, cuts through old growth forests, and crosses over a thousand water bodies in 11 watersheds. In spite of protests, years of negotiations and court battles, and questionable removal of wild horses, the government permitted the project, and staged a massive horse roundup.The Ruby Pipeline was given permission to draw 402 million gallons of water that is desperately needed by the horses in that arid region, and in their environmental impact statement (EIS) they admitted that “Impacts on groundwater could be significant because of the volume of water proposed for use and the limited availability of groundwater in the region”.The BLM conducted a roundup of the wild horses in part of the Calico Mountain Range, removing almost 2,000 in 2009-2010 from the land destined to be utilized by the Pipeline. According to a news report at the time, “as of April 15, 2010, a total of 79 of the horses captured from Calico have died — some as a result of injuries suffered during the capture, such as a foal which literally ran its hoofs off. The rest because they could not adjust to eating the rich hay fed to them at a new holding facility in Fallon. In addition, at least 40 mares suffered miscarriages during or after the roundup.” The Calico Roundup was repeated this year, and another 1,000 or so horses were removed:While the BLM denies any relationship in the timing of removing the horses from the pipeline area, their track record shows improprieties, and the organization was involved in payoffs and other scandals during the period when the Ruby Pipeline was approved. Also during this period the BLM was found to have "exceeded its authority" in another wild horse population, and the BLM was blocked by the courts from efforts to completely remove an entire herd from a Colorado range.The Ruby Pipeline management denies that it has anything to do with the roundups.Keeping their agreement to mitigate the environmental impact on the public lands, Ruby Pipeline hired Conservation Seeding and Restoration (CSR) to replant the entire length of the pipeline with native plants, which completed their contract on May 18th. However, according to BLM documents, the government’s only apparent consideration of the wild horses in this restoration was in how to keep them off the restored areas (BLM wild horse and burro resource specialists were consulted in developing this management approach):Wild horse advocate and author RT Fitch explained to Digital Journal that "The BLM has stacked the deck with their advisory board and filled it with only hunting, cattle and as of late slaughter interests. Without admitting it the BLM wants to deem all long term and "three strikes" horses as "sale authority" horses so that they could be sold off for as low as $25.00 each with no further inspection which would mean that some 45,000 held wild horses could be sold directly into the despicable slaughter pipeline. This, I am most certain, is a move the BLM will soon make while they continue to inhumanely pull thousands of native wild horses off from their rightful land."Meanwhile, the BLM continues to remove horses from the open range and pays ranchers to take care of them, hoping that 30,000 or more homes can be found for those once wild American icons, a tough sell in this economy. More about blm, Horses, Mustangs, BP, ruby pipeline More news from blm Horses Mustangs BP ruby pipelineNew Georgia Tech coach Josh Pastner is not much for idle time. As a walk-on at Arizona, he graduated in 2 ½ years without AP credit or summer school, he said. He took 33 credit hours in his fifth semester to complete his degree before going on to earn his master’s by the end of his first semester of his senior year, he said.
“So I’ve always been a driven guy,” he said.
Perhaps not surprisingly, Pastner doesn’t golf, finding the four or five hours |
bogus. If the worlds are full of interesting things on the surface, but those surfaces can be deformed and destroyed by random events, how important actually are those things you can find? Surely there can't be anything too unique if a procedural space rock could come and blow it up.
And finally, it will be a Beyond Good and Evil game
Apart from the anthropomorphic animals, the sci-fi style, and Michel Ancel's brain running the whole thing, I worry this will feel like a brand new game set in the same creative universe. It's a prequel, it's set at a significantly different scale, and it's more adult and dark in its tone—see the frequent cursing in the cinematic trailer. Ancel's reference to taking photos hearkens back to the first game's photojournalism, but that's the only gameplay similarity we've heard about so far.
I don't think I'd ever compare Beyond Good and Evil to Grand Theft Auto, but that's exactly what Ancel has done for the prequel. So it's a different style of game, has a different cast of characters, is set in an age where the events of the first game haven't happened yet, has a different tone, and is focusing its marketing on procedural effects and exploring a massive, online solar system in huge spaceships... How is this a Beyond Good and Evil game, again?
All of this is not to say Ubisoft and Ancel can't do what they are saying they want to with Beyond Good and Evil 2—in fact, I wish them the best of luck because I would love to play the game they've described. But I don't think what's been shown and what's been promised are a very good indication of what's actually going to be delivered come launch—if it makes it there this time at all. We've been hyped up on a game with extremely high hopes for itself, but now Ubisoft actually has to make that game.Image copyright PA Image caption Caroline Criado-Perez (right) says abuse started after her successful banknote campaign
A man and a woman have been charged over tweets sent to the feminist campaigner Caroline Criado-Perez.
Isabella Sorley, 23, from Newcastle and John Nimmon, 25, from South Shields, were charged with improper use of a communications network.
They will appear in court on 7 January, the Crown Prosecution Service said.
Ms Criado-Perez faced abuse after successfully campaigning for a woman to appear on Bank of England banknotes. Author Jane Austen was chosen..
The CPS said that after consultation with the police, it had been asked to "make a charging decision" over five suspects who allegedly sent offensive tweets to Ms Criado-Perez and the MP Stella Creasy.
It said it found there was not enough evidence to prosecute one suspect as the "high threshold for prosecution has not been met".
It added that it was not in the public interest to prosecute the suspect who allegedly sent offensive messages to Ms Creasy, citing the young age and personal circumstances of the suspect.
The fifth suspect faces further police investigations before a decision can be made, the CPS said.
It has written to Ms Criado-Perez to inform her of the charges. But she said on Twitter that the CPS had informed the press "ahead of me".
"About the level of victim-support I've grown to expect," she added.
Twitter backtracks on block
Ms Criado-Perez, from Rutland, who had appeared in the media to campaign for women to feature on banknotes, said the abusive tweets began the day it was announced that author Jane Austen would appear on the newly designed £10 note.
She reported them to the police after receiving "about 50 abusive tweets an hour for about 12 hours" and said she had "stumbled into a nest of men who co-ordinate attacks on women".
She told the BBC she had also tried to contact Twitter's manager of journalism and news, Mark Luckie, but he did not respond.
The form that allows Twitter users to report abuse was not adequate, she went on, adding: "Twitter need to be on the side of the victims."
On Saturday, Twitter reversed the changes it made to how people block other users, less than a day after they were introduced.
The changes - which allowed blocked users to continue to see tweets and interact with accounts that had blocked them - caused an outcry.
"We have decided to revert the change after receiving feedback from many users - we never want to introduce features at the cost of users feeling less safe," Michael Sippey, Twitter's vice-president of product, said in a blogpost.Story highlights Chris Wray is a former top Justice Department official in the Bush era
His confirmation hearing to be the next FBI director is on Wednesday
(CNN) A newly released financial disclosure form from Christopher Wray, President Donald Trump's nominee to head the FBI, shows he received a partnership share from his Atlanta law firm of $9.2 million.
The filing, an Office of Government Ethics 278 form which covers the current and previous calendar year, is typically submitted by executive branch personnel and also lists dozens of investments by Wray in American companies and funds in amounts of up to $1 million each.
Wray, a former top Justice Department official in the Bush era currently in private practice in Atlanta specializing in investigations related to corporations (such as white-collar criminal and regulatory enforcement), also reported additional payments for legal services from large banks and energy companies, as well as entities involved in significant litigation. Among them are Wells Fargo, Chevron and two online sports betting groups, FanDuel and DraftKings, that have paid out millions in regulatory crackdowns and are now undergoing a strongly-challenged merger attempt. No dollar amount was assigned to the payments.
Wray also lists in this section payments from Credit Suisse and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie -- controversial clients that he described in a separate Senate judiciary committee questionnaire submitted last month -- as well as three "confidential clients" whose "names cannot be disclosed because they are subject to non-public investigations."
The filing is signed by an ethics agency official, certifying that Wray is "in compliance with applicable laws and regulations."
Read MoreDark Knight Rises Will Be PG-13 And That's Bad For Movies By Kristy Puchko Random Article Blend The Hunger Games at the top of the box office, there's a lot of talk about what level of violence is acceptable for children to witness. Yes, The Hunger Games does center on kids killing kids, but it still managed a PG-13 rating. This is partially because the violence is put in the context of a criticism and made repulsive instead of exhilarating, but mostly it's because of all the quick cuts and shaky cam, which lessens the kind of gore for which the Motion Picture Association of America typically dings features. (However, if you have kids using the f-word, well, that's
Anyhow, into all this renewed hubbub about movie violence and the relevance of MPAA ratings comes news from The Dark Knight Rises has been rated "PG-13 for intense sequences of violence and action, some sensuality and language." But really, this isn't much of a surprise. Despite the fact that Nolan's Batman films have been considered much darker than earlier incarnations, they've always scored a PG-13, just like all the Batman flicks that came before them. In fact, The Dark Knight was my reliable go-to when Hunger Games fans debated how violent and brutal its movie adaptation could possibly be with a PG-13 rating.
Everyone remembers The Dark Knight as a violent, dark movie, but few recall it was PG-13. I do because I vividly remember the hordes of children—not teens and tweens mind you, but little waddling children—who shared the theater with me when I saw it. During one particularly gruesome scene where a building is memorably blown sky high with Rachel Dawes inside, a teeny, tremulous child's voice rose above the film's eerie aftermath silence with, "Is…is she going to be okay?"
It would have been funny if it weren't so damn annoying.
Anyhow, this probably means The Dark Knight Rises will be just as dark and violent as Nolan's predecessors, which to me means one major flaw: violence with no blood. Now, don't misunderstand me, I'm not thirsting for gore. I just loathe when the MPAA approves movie violence without blood because they somehow think it's more acceptable for children. People want to complain about desensitizing children to violence, but the MPAA—whose mantra is essentially "we speak for the parents"--decides that lessening the consequences of violence in PG-13 movies is a responsible move. I have a lot of issues with the MPAA's criteria, but this is the one that infuriates me the most because I fail to see how showing children deadly violence but hiding its consequences is a good thing. There is actually a moment in opening sequence of The Dark Knight where a man gets a shotgun blast to the back, and just falls down! No explosion of his chest cavity, no blood, he just drops to his knees and out of frame. Plenty more gunshot deaths follow, none of which have blood, all equally ridiculous.
Remember kids, guns don't kill people; they just make them fall down.
Of course, The Dark Knight is not a movie made for kids, but some parents choose to take them anyway. And that—no matter how vexing I personally find it—is their right. But this essentially means these parents are ignoring the MPAA's suggestions as PG-13 is defined as material appropriate for people 13 and up. So, really, why do we need the MPAA at all? All they do is apply a mysterious and unbalanced moral code to the movies we all see on behalf of parents who seem to disregard them anyway. And the effect is often movie's being censored or forced to pull punches to its detriment, like The Dark Knight.
Dark Knight fans, before you start flipping out in the comments section, know that I'm not really blaming Nolan for this. It's not his fault alone; it's also the fault of the studios that still kowtow to the outdated and ludicrous standards of the MPAA. Typically, by making violence less graphic—and thereby less realistic—studios can get more fight scenes into movies without risking an R-rating that would grossly limit their box office abilities.
I've been following MPAA rating controversies for years, and each time another filmmaker or distributor attempts to stand up to the Bully last week. While the MPAA still has this power to cripple movie box offices by wielding prudish yet hypocritical ratings like a deadly weapon, studios and filmmakers are forced to play by their preposterous rules, and it’s the movies that suffer. Unfortunately, despite their best efforts
What this means for The Dark Knight Rises is that it too will suffer from the same inherent lunacy of having lots of nail-biting action that is ultimately undercut by a lack of blood and follow through. Think back to Dark Knight. There's a scene at the 31-minute mark where the The Dark Knight Rises could be just as tripped up and marred. Sure, it will still be an action-packed ride, a hugely popular blockbuster, and fans will cling to it. But with the MPAA still holding the power of the PG-13 label, Nolan—as well as all the other master filmmakers of today—will have to play by the group's insipid rule book, making his movies a little less his own. Withat the top of the box office, there's a lot of talk about what level of violence is acceptable for children to witness. Yes,does center on kids killing kids, but it still managed a PG-13 rating. This is partially because the violence is put in the context of a criticism and made repulsive instead of exhilarating, but mostly it's because of all the quick cuts and shaky cam, which lessens the kind of gore for which the Motion Picture Association of America typically dings features. (However, if you have kids using the f-word, well, that's another story altogether!)Anyhow, into all this renewed hubbub about movie violence and the relevance of MPAA ratings comes news from Collider that Christopher Nolan's sure-to-rule-the summer sequelhas been rated "PG-13 for intense sequences of violence and action, some sensuality and language." But really, this isn't much of a surprise. Despite the fact that Nolan's Batman films have been considered much darker than earlier incarnations, they've always scored a PG-13, just like all the Batman flicks that came before them. In fact,was my reliable go-to whenfans debated how violent and brutal its movie adaptation could possibly be with a PG-13 rating.Everyone remembersas a violent, dark movie, but few recall it was PG-13. I do because I vividly remember the hordes of children—not teens and tweens mind you, but little waddling children—who shared the theater with me when I saw it. During one particularly gruesome scene where a building is memorably blown sky high with Rachel Dawes inside, a teeny, tremulous child's voice rose above the film's eerie aftermath silence with, "Is…is she going to be okay?"It would have been funny if it weren't so damn annoying.Anyhow, this probably meanswill be just as dark and violent as Nolan's predecessors, which to me means one major flaw: violence with no blood. Now, don't misunderstand me, I'm not thirsting for gore. I just loathe when the MPAA approves movie violence without blood because they somehow think it's more acceptable for children. People want to complain about desensitizing children to violence, but the MPAA—whose mantra is essentially "we speak for the parents"--decides that lessening the consequences of violence in PG-13 movies is a responsible move. I have a lot of issues with the MPAA's criteria, but this is the one that infuriates me the most because I fail to see how showing children deadly violence but hiding its consequences is a good thing. There is actually a moment in opening sequence ofwhere a man gets a shotgun blast to the back, and just falls down! No explosion of his chest cavity, no blood, he just drops to his knees and out of frame. Plenty more gunshot deaths follow, none of which have blood, all equally ridiculous.Remember kids, guns don't kill people; they just make them fall down.Of course,is not a movie made for kids, but some parents choose to take them anyway. And that—no matter how vexing I personally find it—is their right. But this essentially means these parents are ignoring the MPAA's suggestions as PG-13 is defined as material appropriate for people 13 and up. So, really, why do we need the MPAA at all? All they do is apply a mysterious and unbalanced moral code to the movies wesee on behalf of parents who seem to disregard them anyway. And the effect is often movie's being censored or forced to pull punches to its detriment, likefans, before you start flipping out in the comments section, know that I'm not really blaming Nolan for this. It's not his fault alone; it's also the fault of the studios that still kowtow to the outdated and ludicrous standards of the MPAA. Typically, by making violence less graphic—and thereby less realistic—studios can get more fight scenes into movies without risking an R-rating that would grossly limit their box office abilities.I've been following MPAA rating controversies for years, and each time another filmmaker or distributor attempts to stand up to the secretive censorship board I hope it will be the beginning of the end for this outdated institution, which is why I was so crestfallen when The Weinstein Company crumbled to the MPAA overlast week. While the MPAA still has this power to cripple movie box offices by wielding prudish yet hypocritical ratings like a deadly weapon, studios and filmmakers are forced to play by their preposterous rules, and it’s the movies that suffer. Unfortunately, despite their best efforts the Weinsteins will never be able to bring the MPAA down on their own; they have to get more studios behind them. Sadly, that's unlikely to happen because as a plethora of sequels and adaptations and remakes and reboots have shown, major studios are not looking to be risky trailblazers as much as they're looking for a reliable and bankable source of income. So why rock the boat?What this means foris that it too will suffer from the same inherent lunacy of having lots of nail-biting action that is ultimately undercut by a lack of blood and follow through. Think back to. There's a scene at the 31-minute mark where the Joker confronts Gambol and tells him a creepy origin story for his scars while threatening to slice open the side of his face to create a similarly sinister sneer. But what we are shown instead is a bizarre cutaway reaction shot, an outlandish musical sting in lieu of a sensible sound effect, then a return to a wide shot as the Joker drops his victim out of frame. It's visually jarring and confusing. Did he slice Gambol's face open? Is the guy dead? What the hell just happened? It's a scene that is a sort of scar on the film, and it feels like Nolan's hands were tied in the edit. With the MPAA in charge, it's likelycould be just as tripped up and marred. Sure, it will still be an action-packed ride, a hugely popular blockbuster, and fans will cling to it. But with the MPAA still holding the power of the PG-13 label, Nolan—as well as all the other master filmmakers of today—will have to play by the group's insipid rule book, making his movies a little less his own. Blended From Around The Web Facebook
Back to topDynamite Entertainment is proud to announce the January 2015 launch of King, an epic comic book event that marks the 100th anniversary of King Features Syndicate, the print syndication company owned by The Hearst Corporation. The celebratory event will bring history's most famous comic strip heroes - Flash Gordon, Mandrake the Magician, Prince Valiant, The Phantom, and Jungle Jim, to comic books with five miniseries that build to a grand crossover in May. Helmed by top-tier talent and raising stars of the comic book industry, each launch issue of the King event features an interlocking cover by acclaimed artist Darwyn Cooke (DC: The New Frontier, Catwoman).The creative teams of the King event include writers Ben Acker and Ben Blacker with artist Lee Ferguson on Flash Gordon; Eisner-Award Winner Roger Langridge with artist Jeremy Treece on Mandrake the Magician; writer (and line editor) Nate Cosby with artist Ron Salas on Prince Valiant; writer Brian Clevinger with artist Brent Schoonover on The Phantom; and writer Paul Tobin with artist Sandy Jarrell on Jungle Jim.
Darwyn Cooke skillfully brings a sense of visual solidarity to the five diverse concepts of King as its Main Cover artist. With his retro-chic design sense, popularized on such titles as DC: The New Frontier, Will Eisner's The Spirit, and Batman: Ego, Cooke is the perfect choice for creating a connecting cover montage for each #1 debut issue.
In addition to the Cooke interlocking covers, each #1 issue in the King line will feature two Variant Editions: one featuring the artwork of Rob Liefeld, and the other from Ron Salas. Liefeld is the sensational artist known for such bestselling titles as X-Force, Deadpool, and Youngblood, while Salas is a rising star in the comic industry, thanks in part to his work on the hot Dream Thief: Escape series. The variety of artistic styles from Cooke, Liefeld, and Salas, with each contributing covers across the whole line, provides fans with more opportunities to enjoy visual cohesion of the shared universe.
While the King event serves as a landmark celebration of King Features Syndicate's century of publication, the event also marks the first feature-length adventure of Lothar - longtime ally of Mandrake the Magician - in his guise as the new Phantom, a role vacated in 2014 upon the conclusion of Jeff Parker and Marc Laming's acclaimed Kings Watch miniseries. Finally taking the spotlight that the character has so long deserved, Lothar inherits the legacy of The Ghost Who Walks as the latest in a line of unrelenting jungle protectors.
Flash Gordon #1, by Ben Acker, Ben Blacker, and Lee Ferguson, sees the archetypical space hero (and antecedent of such characters as Star Wars' Luke Skywalker and Star-Lord of Guardians of the Galaxy) involved in a cosmic heist and once again - alongside Dale Arden and Dr. Zarkov - in the crosshairs of tyrant Ming the Merciless. As always, Flash Gordon proves to be anything but "just a man."
Co-writer Ben Acker says, "We love writing larger-than-life space adventures so much that getting to do actual-for-real Flash Gordon feels like a reward for something. Characters with this kind of history around them - you look at what Davies did with Dr. Who or at the Daniel Craig Bond - you have to be true to what's come before, but the stories and characters have to feel fresh and contemporary. This incarnation of Flash is all about boundless energy and the inability NOT to fight the good fight, while this incarnation of Ming is so pervasively, institutionally evil that a star war between them seems inevitable to me."
Mandrake the Magician #1, by Roger Langridge and Jeremy Treece, puts on an epic show for all comers, with the classic stage magician using his sleight-of-hand and true magic to counter the threat of witch doctors and demons.Roger Langridge says, "With the Mandrake newspaper strip ending last year and going into reruns, I'm glad the old boy has found a home in comic books where his adventures can continue, now in panels considerably larger than a postage stamp. I think Mandrake and I are a good fit: he has a career as a stage entertainer, which is a theme I seem to keep coming back to, and yet when I used to read Mandrake as a kid, I always had a sneaking suspicion that he had far greater powers than mere hypnotism and was constantly holding them back. Maybe they frightened him! I liked that there was this implied other side to him that we only caught glimpses of. It's quite a privilege to be allowed to carry on telling Mandrake's adventures. I'm taking pains not to contradict the history of the strip, while at the same time keeping it fresh and accessible to newer readers; I want this version of Mandrake to be for all his fans, both new and old, taking what went before and building upon it. We're looking forward to exploring some of those held-back powers, and maybe find out why he doesn't like using them - and what happens when he does!" Artist Jeremy Treece says, "Working on a history-lush property such as Mandrake is such an incredible opportunity. You have a character that has spawned many similar characters in the comic book media such as Zatara, Doctor Strange, and others. As an illustrator, the visuals you are able to pull out of just Mandrake alone are something that I assume any artist would love to be a part of. Not to mention the strong supporting characters such as Lothar, Narda, or his nemesis, the Cobra! My hopes are that exploring the world of Mandrake outside of comic strips, radio shows, and serials, we can really welcome a whole new set of eyes on the characters, and I hope that the faithful followers will also enjoy the steps forward into that world as well."
Prince Valiant #1, by Nate Cosby (Cow Boy) and Ron Salas, brings the King Features mainstay from comic strips to the comic book medium. An Arthurian hero who dares any adventure, Prince Valiant's latest will bring him face-to-face with sorcerers, rival knights, and an unexpected shift through time. Nate Cosby says, "Prince Valiant will dare any adventure. Our take on Val is a talented young guy with boundless energy and thirst for life... but he's an outsider, an outcast. He doesn't seem to fit as a knight, so his life is a never-ending quest to find his true purpose." "My love of Prince Valiant stems primarily from the art," says artist Ron Salas. "Hal Foster's work on Prince Valiant is immense - from character work, exciting fights, and battle scenes; to amazing vistas of mountain ranges, forests, and marshlands; to grand imposing castles from Arthur's time. It's his work - and the work of the artists that followed him - that inspires and intimidates me, and forces me to do my best work. I am incredibly honoured to be following in their footsteps in my own way, forging a Prince Valiant of my own."
The Phantom #1, by Brian Clevinger and Brent Schoonover, reintroduces the daring adventurer Lothar in his new guise as The Ghost Who Walks, as he explores the birthright of a heroic lineage - one not his by blood, but by heroic deed.Writer Brian Clevinger says, "I think it's great that Lothar gets to be The Phantom. This guy has no direct connection to the legacy, but he respects it, and he's the best guy around for maintaining it. This outsider's perspective lets him question what it means to be The Phantom and it lets us play around with what its ancient legacy means in the 21st century."Regarding the plot of The Phantom, Clevinger explains, "It's the first time in 200 years that worldwide industry has stopped. Old powers are displaced, new ones are on the rise. Greed and cruelty are everywhere. And Lothar's gonna be up against people who know more about The Phantom than he does. But I think he's smart enough to use that against them. We also get to bring back the Bandar and see how they've been influenced by The Phantom since helping to invent it 500 years ago.""I am very excited to be working on The Phantom. The comic strip was one of my first introductions to cartooning as a kid," says artist Brent Schoonover (Adventures of Superman). "He's always been on my ‘Comic Book Bucket List' of characters to draw in an official capacity. So to not only draw the character, but also get to do something progressive (i.e. Lothar taking the mantle of one of the longest running legacy superheroes in the industry), it's a real honor. I can't wait for people to check out what we have in store for The Phantom."
Jungle Jim #1, by Paul Tobin (Bandette) and Sandy Jarrell (Meteor Men), welcomes readers to meet a warrior who is as much a force of nature as the forest around him. A hunter with enigmatic abilities, the first issue promises an uncanny origin for reader enjoyment… as well as an extraterrestrial turn-of-events and an unnatural menace of the simian variety."When I was born, my parents looked at me and said, ‘There's a boy who's going to write stories about affable rogues in pith helmets,' and with Jungle Jim, I'm finally fulfilling my legacy," says writer Paul Tobin. "Even better, being a part of the treasure trove of the King Features Syndicate puts me solidly in a universe of incredible adventure, and to add to it by tossing Jungle Jim onto the planet Arboria, and pitting him against Ming the Merciless and a few other surprises. Luckily, readers will find that Jungle Jim has a few surprises of his own, and that he lives up to his name more than ever before."Artist Sandy Jarrell says, "I bought my first King comics when I was five, and am thrilled to be drawing one now. I'm having a blast with the King material, first in Flash Gordon #5 and now with Jungle Jim. Paul's story is great fun -- I get to draw the Arborian jungle, animals, animal men, blue women, and Jungle Jim, both in and out of a pith helmet. In and out of clothes altogether, actually. Just you wait." "This is truly an event that took 100 years to tell -- the most expansive King Features cross-over ever, and we're proud to be the publisher who brings it to the fans," says Dynamite CEO/Publisher Nick Barrucci. "This event leads to new adventures for these great heroes!"
Flash Gordon #1, Mandrake the Magician #1, Prince Valiant #1, The Phantom #1, and Jungle Jim #1 will be solicited in the Dynamite section of Diamond Comic Distributors' November Previews catalog, the premiere source of merchandise for the comic book specialty market, and slated for release in January 2015. Comic book fans are encouraged to reserve copies with their local comic book retailers. Each series in the overall King event will also be available for individual customer purchase through digital platforms courtesy of Comixology, Dynamite Digital, iVerse, and Dark Horse Digital.
Check out the rest of the covers below. Are you going to read the event, Viners? Let us know in the comments section!Since his arrival in Denmark to face hacking charges Gottfrid Svartholm has sat in solitary confinement, denied free access to mail and denied access to his books. The situation has outraged Wikileaks' Julian Assange who says Gottfrid is now a political prisoner. Meanwhile Gottfrid's mother Kristina has written to Amnesty hoping that they will take notice of her son's plight.
Following a failed last-ditch appeal to the Supreme Court in Sweden, Gottfrid Svartholm was extradited to Denmark last month.
The Pirate Bay founder stands accused of hacking into the mainframe computers of IT company CSC. In an earlier case in Sweden he was acquitted of similar charges.
Previously in Sweden and within the natural parameters of his detainment, Gottfrid had been granted various freedoms, including socializing with other inmates and the ability to receive mail. He also enjoyed access to books for his studies, an absolute must for someone with such an active mind but no computer or Internet. However, since arriving in Denmark things have been very different.
In a recent letter sent to Amnesty and shared with TorrentFreak, Gottfrid’s mother Kristina explains her son’s plight. She says that Gottfrid is being kept in solitary and treated as if he were a “dangerous, violent and aggressive criminal” even though his only crime – if any – is hacking.
Gottfrid’s lawyer Luise Høi says the terms of his confinement are unacceptable and are being executed without the correct legal process.
“It is the case that Danish authorities are holding my client in solitary confinement without a warrant,” Høi explains, noting that if the authorities wish to exclude Gottfrid from access to anyone except his lawyer and prison staff, they need to apply for a special order.
The theory is that the special terms of Gottfrid’s confinement are in place so that he is unable to interfere with the investigation, but Kristina doesn’t buy that excuse.
“[In Sweden] I visited him every week, unsupervised, sometimes with an additional person. He rang me daily throughout the fall and his letters etc were not checked. For a long time he has had every opportunity in the world to complicate investigations for the Danish police if he had wanted,” Kristina says.
The extradition by Sweden and current situation in Denmark has outraged Wikileaks‘ Julian Assange, a staunch supporter of Gottfrid who he describes as a ‘Wikileaks Consultant’.
“It is time someone says it like it is: Gottfrid Svartholm Warg is a political prisoner and Sweden has fallen off the map of decent nations in its treatment of him. Gottfrid has always been ideologically driven to inform the world; he worked tirelessly to help WikiLeaks expose the slaughter of civilians in Iraq by a US helicopter gunship and was responsible for an important part of our infrastructure,” Assange says.
“There are thousands of alleged cyber criminals, but instead of dealing with these cases, we see vast resources diverted yet again by the Swedish state into smashing Gottfrid. These attempts include the first trial of Gottfrid after US pressure (extensively documented in US embassy cables released by WikiLeaks), his subsequent rendering from Cambodia by the Swedish intelligence service SAPO, his months of incommunicado detention in Sweden, and now his irregular extradition to Denmark – for a charge he was just acquitted of.”
Today, Kristina will travel to see Gottfrid in Denmark, hopefully with more encouraging news to report on her departure.
Meanwhile in Russia, authorities there have ordered local ISPs to initiate a block on RuTor.org, a site whose domain is registered to the Swede. The site stands accused of distributing copyrighted material including the 2013 film ‘Stalingrad’.
Anyone who would like to write to Gottfrid is certainly welcome to try. For any chance of this mail eventually getting through people should ensure that letters contain only text, are not written in any kind of code or suggestion of that, and do not contain any discussion of the case.
Gottfrid Svartholm Warg, 171084
Att: Jens Jørgensen
Politigården
1567 København V
DenmarkNewswise — BIRMINGHAM, Ala. – During Distracted Driving Awareness Month, the University of Alabama at Birmingham has opened the first SUV driving simulator laboratory in the world.
In the development of this lab, UAB partnered with Honda Manufacturing of Alabama, which provided a full-bodied 2016 Honda Pilot built at their factory in Lincoln, Ala., to be retrofitted with state-of-the-art simulator technology funded by the Alabama Department of Transportation. The technology gives UAB researchers the opportunity to conduct important safety studies involving distracted driving practices.
Representatives from Honda, ALDOT and Alabama’s Office of the Attorney General joined the UAB team to announce the new initiative at a grand opening this week.
"Honda Manufacturing of Alabama is honored to partner with UAB in this important project, with the goal of saving lives by increasing awareness of distracted driving," said HMA Vice President Mike Oatridge. “Honda is very pleased we could donate the most advanced Honda Pilot ever built in Alabama, which has a five-star crash safety rating and features Honda most advanced safety features including the full range of 'Honda Sensing' technology."
The goal of this effort is to facilitate solutions and best practices in motor-vehicle-related safety and crash prevention, addressing the major public health problem of highway and traffic-related injuries and death.
“Data tell us that distracted driving is a factor in nearly 50 percent of car crashes, which translates to one million injury-producing crashes each year,” said Despina Stavrinos, Ph.D., an assistant professor in the Department of Psychology in UAB’s College of Arts and Sciences and director of the UAB Translational Research for Injury Prevention Laboratory. “Ten percent of those crashes result in a fatality. Understanding which factors influence an individual’s likelihood to engage in distracted driving is essential to being able to purposefully address this growing problem. With this new simulator, we will be able to gain new information about how drivers participate in distracted behavior, giving us valuable insight that can increase the effectiveness of educational campaigns and improve driving safety.”
The core of Stavrinos’ work is the prevention of injury, particularly unintentional injuries like those that result from distracted driving behaviors. She will lead her TRIP Lab in conducting studies with the new simulator.
The first study, set to begin in a couple of weeks, will focus on teens and adults over 65, two of the most vulnerable populations when it comes to distracted driving.
The simulator is intended to be available to researchers from all appropriate disciplines throughout UAB, other universities in the state, and even throughout the southeast. In addition, non-university research scientists will be afforded access to its use and its associated support services.
“UAB really thrives on investing in resources that are going to allow multidisciplinary research to take place,” said Richard Marchase, Ph.D., vice president for research and economic development at UAB. “With this new technology, which we are very thankful to Honda Manufacturing of Alabama and ALDOT for helping us create, we will be able to do just that and make this facility a destination for collaboration and innovation for researchers across campus and beyond. It will be a resource that I’m sure will be game changing.”
Individuals interested in utilizing these resources or contributing should contact Stavrinos at dstavrin@uab.edu or (205) 934-7861.
About UABKnown for its innovative and interdisciplinary approach to education at both the graduate and undergraduate levels, the University of Alabama at Birmingham is an internationally renowned research university and academic medical center and the state of Alabama’s largest employer, with some 23,000 employees and an economic impact exceeding $5 billion annually on the state. The five pillars of UAB’s mission include education, research, patient care, community service and economic development. UAB: Knowledge that will change your world. Learn more at www.uab.edu.
EDITOR’S NOTE: The University of Alabama at Birmingham is a separate, independent institution from the University of Alabama, which is located in Tuscaloosa. Please use University of Alabama at Birmingham on first reference and UAB on all subsequent references.
FACEBOOK: www.facebook.com/UAB.edu TEXT: www.uab.edu/news TWEETS: www.twitter.com/uabnews VIDEO: www.youtube.com/uabnewsA senior official of state-run Indian Oil Corporation (IOC) was arrested on Thursday for alleged links with terror organisation ISIS, police said. The Special Operation Group (SOG) and ATS of Rajasthan Police arrested Mohd Sirazudin, the marketing manager of IOC in Jaipur.
"Sirazudin, hailing from Gulbarga in Karnataka,... was arrested under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act for his alleged involvement in (activities of) international terrorist organisation ISIS, supplying official inputs and recruiting organisation members in the country," Alok Tripathi, Additional DGP (ATS and SOG), said.
"The accused was also active in flaring up and encouraging Muslim youths for (joining) ISIS activities," Tripathi said.
On a complaint, SOG and ATS teams verified antecedents of the accused, and checked his WhatsApp and Facebook accounts. Objectionable materials were seized from his residence in Jaipur, the ADG said, adding he used to contact youths through social media.
A number of issues of ISIS' online magazine "Dabik", pictures, and video were also recovered from him, he said. Further investigation was on, he said.UK Prime Minister Launches World’s Largest Offshore Wind Farm
July 4th, 2013 by Timothy B. Hurst
“We are making this country incredibly attractive to investment,” Prime Minister Cameron added.
Although the UK is far and above the world leader in offshore wind capacity, with 74% of global market share, London Array is the first major renewable energy project to be inaugurated by Cameron since he took office in 2010.
“Projects like London Array demonstrate the economic opportunity of large-scale renewable |
36 will enhance Intelsat’s premier direct-to-home neighborhood in Africa after reaching its final orbital position.The Best 15 Free Facebook Messenger Bot Builder Platforms Without Coding Knowledge
You’ve seen these cool Facebook Messenger Chatbots and also want one for your Facebook page? But don’t know where to start and coding is none of your strengths?
Then go no further.
I’ve made the ultimate list of chatbot builders (platforms) that help you to make a Messenger bot in just a couple of minutes. If you are new to chatbots, read this intro article first.
Fortunately, there are many people just like me and you who are also interested in building their own chatbots. This growing demand is coming mostly from small business owners and marketers that don’t know how to code. As a consequence more and more companies try to enter this market and get a share of the growing pie. They all try to make it easy for you to just drag and drop your content without having to deal with the backend processes.
As a consequence more and more companies try to enter this market and get a share of the growing pie. They all try to make it easy for you to just drag and drop your content without having to deal with the backend processes.
In this article, I would like to list the best 15 of these bot building platforms. (Last Update: September 2018)
Disclaimer:
I personally tested all these tools, but not actively use all listed here. So please take it into consideration when you choose your bot builder. Also, most of these tools have a freemium model and have some limitations for free users.
Having said that I try to write a bit of info about each builder. What I liked what I didn’t. Please note that there is no ranking here and I’m rather just listing the builders than describing them in detail. More detailed reviews will come soon as well.
Anyways, enough talk, let’s take a look at
My top 15 FREE Messenger Bot Building Platforms
ActiveChat is the upcoming star of 2019. There is a lot to it - you can find out for yourself in this elaborated article.
What definitely stands out about this particular bot builder is its deep integrations with Google’s Natural Language Processor, Dialogflow and shop engines such as Shopify and WooCommerce. But, like a new-born, it still has things to learn and develop.
As the CEO has years of hands-on bot building experience its foundations are on making smarter bots effectively.
The visual builder helps you to oversee the conversation and easily copy/move content.
Positive:
Multiple parameters and site tracking
Easy integration with Dialoglow
Native Shop integration (Shopify, WooCommerce)
Multiple Platforms (Telegram, SMS) - voice is in the pipeline
Negative:
Lack of built in live chat
no Facebook comment acquisition (ETA February, 2019)
Visual Builder design could be better
The free version lets you build 2 chatbots, with a limit of 1000 messages.
Free version available up to 500 users. Apart from that they offer three other plans: STARTER, ARCHITECT and AGENCY. Subscription to the first starts from 19$ a month offering one bot, NLP (DialogFlow) and Facebook or Telegram connection.
There’s a free 14-day trial
2) Gupshup
Gupshup is a bot building platform that allows you to build your chatbot at a central place but publish it to different platforms. One can easily sign up with a Facebook or Github account and create the first bot fairly quickly.In order to deploy the bot for platforms outside of Messenger, such as Google Now or Gmail, you cannot use the code-free bot building methods, unfortunately. Also, some of the functions are not available with the flow builder.
This is how Gupshup lets you craft the conversation.
Positive:
premade bot templates for businesses
opportunity to use interbot for ‘microbot' integration
WhatsApp is supported
Negative:
No keyword function with the Flow builder
No broadcasting functionality
Example: Hi Poncho (was featured on F8 last year).
They are a bit ambiguous about their pricing, seems like small users can use the platform for free.
3) Chatfuel
Chatfuel is one of the biggest Messenger bot building platforms out there. It was mentioned during the F8 as well. It’s not a coincidence, they have an aggressive growth strategy with no brand removal option.
Also, they started out on Telegram already and have collected a huge amount of experience since then. Great options for building a Messenger or Telegram bot. The Russian team is actively listening to the user’s feedback and works on improvements. I've actually created a template for them for conference/event chatbots and also have a separate Chatfuel review on this blog.
This is how my template looks like in Chatfuel for an 'imaginary chatbot conference' 🙂
Positive:
Integration options such as Zapier or webhook
Fast updates to Messenger changes
A great number of functions overall
Negative:
Can be a bit complex to overview the whole interaction flow
No livechat yet for every account (already started to roll out)
Example: Techcrunch’s bot that delivers news from RSS feed in your Messenger.
The free plan comes with a mandatory'made by Chatfuel' branding. It's also limited to 5000 users. You can get rid of it by upgrading to PRO account and you'll also have access to the 'People' tab. Prices start at $15/month. As an official Chatfuel Partner, we can activate PRO accounts for our clients, and even offer to pay for Chatfuel for our Students in our Chatbot Tutorial PRO membership.
It is also a very big Messenger bot builder. Actually, I've written a separate review about ManyChat. Similarly to Chatfuel it has its early experiences with Telegram and was prepared for the Messenger platform opening last year. It’s especially popular among marketers for its easy usage and segmentation functions. The support is so-so, takes a while to answer.
One of the most popular functions of ManyChat is that it lets you send sequences and provides you valuable information
Positive:
Growth tools – they help you to get people into your Messenger funnel
Live chat directly from ManyChat
You can see the Click-through-Rate (CTR) on the buttons
Negative:
Often stability issues regarding the broadcasts (mine and my students experience)
Hard to have an overview (They have a great flow builder thou)
ManyChat is a great option for simple chatbots, the free version has unlimited users supply, but with ManyChat brand. If you want to get some of their growth tools and get rid of branding, pricing starts from $10 according to the subscribers.
Try out for free
5) Flow Xo
As its name suggests flows play a big part of this chatbot builder. I like that focus as a key part of chatbot design is keeping the user's flow smooth and frictionless.
Without coding and massive interactions, only simple chatbots can be created. Therefore they usually have a clear task to do. Such as booking the room. The designer has to look at the whole interaction, not separated units.
One nice thing Flow Xo offers is the implementation of other platforms. The use of this chatbot builder can get quite technical fairly quickly, you should be able to think in terms of attributes.
Flow Xo's visual flow builder
Positive:
5 platforms to deploy your bot to
Great implementation opportunities such as Google Drive, Trello or Gmail
Visual builder makes it easy to see the Flow
Negative:
The flow system brings limitation to the design
For broadcasting you need a webhook or some other trigger, limited data provided
The free plan allows 5 bots and 500 interactions. Standard price starts at $19/month.
6) Surveybot
As its name suggests the Surveybot has a clear focus on surveys. To the degree that it even allows you to not use your own Facebook page as the bot host. You can easily sign up with your FB account and also connect or create your FB page just by a button click. Actually, creating and connecting is not solved the best way. No biggie had to start the survey from zero after synchronizing my pages.
Some useful (survey) functions:
-if someone revisits, you can let them start the survey where they left off-you can make the survey anonymous (could still look data in Facebook Page I guess)- email notification after a completion- multiple answer possibilities (with checkboxes in webviews)
You can choose the type of question you’d like to use.
Positive:
Makes creating surveys very easy
Offers great ways to collect and analyze data
Easy implementation for creating posts or Messenger Code
Negative:
Practically only good for surveys
Only branded version
Example: their own bot, Surveybot
Overall, was a great experience using it, the free version allows up to 100 panels (users) and 10 questions per survey. Pricing starts at $35/month for 1000 users and adding way more features such as Zapier integration.
7) Octane.ai
I subscribed to their waitlist already in November 2016, so was happy when it opened its doors for me on the 1st of March.
You could say that is pretty late, and they have less experience, but I wouldn’t necessarily say that. One of the Co-Founders is Matt Schlicht who created Chatbots Magazine and the biggest chatbot group on Facebook.
A feature I really like allows you to see the statistics in the editor itself for every conversation you make.
Octane.ai shows you how many people saw the conversation and how many users read them
They have shifted their focus to e-commerce and niched down to Shopify stores.
Positive:
Great built-in statistics
Improving very dynamically
Some great features such as Forms and Campaigns
Negative:
All the flows show up automatically after your welcome message
Hard to have an overview/edit some parts
Example: 50 cent bot
They have a 30-day free trial as of now, and moved to paid only, so I'm going to take them out of the list with the next update.
8) Parlo.io
The Marketing Executive, Ryan Helmstetler, is an early member of our Chatbot Marketing FB group, so I’m aware of this bot builder for quite a while. Communication with the company is very good, a friend of mine also was able to sit down with them for a coffee in SF effortlessly.
Unfortunately, the lack of broadcasting in the free version made me not use it much. One can see that they are after bigger clients, agencies, as the middle package costs $400 per months. If someone is a heavy user, however, their integration and feature list look really promising.
Parlo's visual builder to create chatbots
Positive:
Great overview function for the flow (tree view)
Good support
Negative:
Strong limits on free plan (e.g- no broadcasting)
Hard to save, no testing opportunity
The free plan allows you to send 2500 messages a month, packages start from $400/month with more features.
9) ItsAlive
I’ve known this platform for a while but didn't test it up until recently. I knew there would be an update coming in April, so I was waiting for it. Now it’s May, so even the little things should be corrected by the French team after the update. Nice timing I would say.
You can choose different triggers for certain actions in ItsAlive
Positive:
Lets you nicely categorize the different recipes
Broadcast scheduling
Negative:
No proper failure message when I set up something incorrectly and was expecting it to work
Hard to have an overview and to connect recipes
Example: Web Summit Bot
ItsAlive just launched their 2.0 version. The Free plan offers 1 FB bot up to 1000 users. Prices start at $19/month and besides more users they offer more functionality and brand removal.
10) Leadflip
As its name already suggests, LeadFlip is focused on leads. Mainly in the Insurance and Finance sectors. After a nice onboarding, you can choose from 2 templates, Blank or Health insurance. Having 42 standard blocks to the health template is more than I expected, to be honest. Maybe that is a reason the finance template is still not in place though.
Leadflip did not spare with the blocks when creating their template 🙂
Positive:
Great Builder overview
Website as platform
Easy data saving
Negative:
No way to add rich media like images
No broadcasting
They have a lead-based pricing model, 50 leads per month are free and all the functions they offer. For 150 leads you'd pay $50/month and for $350/month you can have 1250 qualified new leads for your business with this chatbot builder.
11) Botsify
Botsify has been on my radar for a long time. As you can see on their feature list, they didn’t start yesterday. They also offer website integration for paid users. One of the things I’m most excited about is not deployed yet. Integrations with eCommerce stores such as Shopify or Woocommerce.
Botsify lets you match entities or user phrases
Positive:
Overall great functions
Powerful language learning ability
Negative:
No gallery option
No segmentation for message scheduling
The free plan includes 1 chatbot up to 100 unique users. Prices start at $10/month with website integration.
12) Dialogflow (formerly Api.ai)
Probably not the platform that you would consider for non-techies. However, you can manage to build a chatbot on Dialogflowwithout any line of code. Does it have an easy way to deploy as the others before? –No, but everyone who can read and copy paste some lines can do it.
Google’s last year acquisition is probably the most popular NLP (Natural Language Processing) platform out there. Actually, you can connect it with other platforms already mentioned here only for it's NLP function.
Dialogflow's language learning tool
Positive:
Very powerful language understanding trainer
Many platforms to deploy to – like Google Home, Skype or Twitter
Great integration opportunities
Negative:
No broadcasting
Limited usage without coding or integrating with other software
Dialogflow is free to use. It also offers voice solutions where they limit the free plan.
13) Chatteron
This platform is still in beta, but I think it has been open for quite a while. Anyways, a good visual builder makes it easier to have an overview on the bot. Chatteron offers a nice integration to monetize the bot via Radbots.
Positive:
Funny looking but a great visual builder
Monetization integration
Negative:
No broadcasting
No built-in testing interface
The free version has a limit of 15 000 messages/month, the business plan costs $0.001/message.
Morph.ai is a great platform to build a Messenger or a website chatbot. It comes with built-in small talk and overall a very good tool to have a great natural understanding for your bot.
The platform makes it easy to give the interaction over to a human and answer to the questions that surpassed the bots understanding capability.
Morph.ai creates this from the words that the bot uses. Just a fun addition.
Positive:
Advanced training and understanding modules
Website integration possibility
Advanced features like polls or forms
Negative:
It can be hard to connect and overview the flow
Limited targeting for broadcasting
Free plan is up to 1000 Messages a month, packages start at $49/month
15) Sequel
When I started to build chatbots, one of my ideas was to create a celebrity bot that can answer questions. My initial tests were on Sequel, one of the oldest bot builder platforms out there.
Within the bots, you can create different units - so-called episodes - that come with a nice visual builder. That way you can easily separate (but also connect) different flows inside of one chatbot.
I've started to build a Ronaldo bot on Onesquel, but never really finished.
Positive:
Opportunity to connect to many platforms such as Kik or Skype
A great visual builder that lets you have a better overview of the user’s journey
Useful features such as a built-in poll or emoji support
Negative:
The broadcasting function is a bit hard to manage, segment
Couldn’t find how to set up persistent menu
OnSequel is a free platform, no information on pricing on the website.
That was my list of best 15 Messenger bot builder platforms out there. What are your thoughts? What is your favorite? Did I miss any? Comment below.
During my research, I tested quite a few more builder platforms. I thought I would add them here as an extra. Who knows, they might catch up very soon, the market is very dynamic as you probably already noticed 🙂
Further Messenger Bot Builders
that didn’t make the list this time, but worth mentioning (they may later on…)
Rebotify
This beta bot builder platform has a strong start with its visual builder. Easy to understand and create a chatbot. Besides Messenger, they also provide you an opportunity to deploy the bot on Slack and the web (your browser). It seems that the Australian Rebotify only offers Text or Carousel units this time. Happy to see some improvements later on.
Converse.ai
I was amazed at the integration and channel options that converse.ai offers. Just to name some of them, Workplace as a channel and MailChimp or Hubspot as integrations. It was recently acquired by Smartsheet but will continue to be a standalone product.
However, I was disappointed by the builder itself. Not that it is not good, it’s just not good for this list. It seems to be very powerful and I can see more techy persons gaining huge value from Converse.ai's bot building platform.
You can see how powerful it can be in the right hands
Reply.ai
It has a nice signup built inside a conversation on the website. So they start with qualifying the users.
Reply.ai seizes the opportunity to collect some data inside the on-boarding conversation flow
Most likely I’ve fallen under they non-target audience as of now by giving a small number of expected users.
„Thanks! We have added you to the waitlist for our self-service platform, which we plan to launch at the end of Q1.”
Anyways, will update on this one, once Reply.ai opens up its self-service platform. - This has not happened yet (September, 2018Ö
Personify.ai
I created my first chatbot here in November 2016. Haven’t really used it since and was worried when I couldn’t log in now for writing my article. Internal server error [500] when I tried to log in, used different browsers as well. The blog hasn’t been updated this year. Not a biggie, but not the best signal to be honest. But tried a day later and it worked. The interface didn’t change (at least I didn’t notice).
Well, they haven't answered my email for a week by now, also could not log in for a couple of days. So not sure what's going on.Anyways, I've found it positive that it lets you create White Label solutions for clients.An example bot by Personify.ai is the @askelonmusk
Other Bot Builder Platforms I've tested:
If you liked this article, please share it with others, so they don't have to spend so much time looking for chatbot building platforms.
If you want to learn more about Messenger Marketing, register to my webinar in Messenger.Humanists in Britain and around the world are united in their condemnation of the brutal killings of journalists and cartoonists for the French magazine Charlie Hebdo in yesterday’s religiously motivated attack on free expression. Terrorists had previously attempted to firebomb the magazine in response to its publishing depictions of the prophet Muhammad.
And while humanist organisations around the world were not unique in stating their disgust at these brutal attacks, all were united in strongly urging people and governments to remember the crucial importance of the right to free expression.
The British Humanist Association (BHA) has published this statement in response to the violence:
‘No words can adequately condemn the brutality of this disgusting attack. Our thoughts have of course been with the people of France throughout this truly terrifying ordeal. ‘We must also be clear that the ones to blame here are the terrorist perpetrators. Those who cry out for further censorship of cartoonists and writers in the wake of tragedies like this will only embolden the murderous outrages of these criminals. ‘The right to free expression is a universal one, and it lies at the foundation of our every liberty. It must always be defended.’
The atrocity in Paris follows similar attacks over depictions of Muhammad in recent years, including the previous attack on Charlie Hebdo, riots caused by the film Innocence of Muslims in 2012, the 2004 assassination of filmmaker Theo van Gogh, and the Jyllands-Posten cartoons controversy in 2005.
BHA supporter Salman Rushdie, who in 1989 became the target of a fatwa for the publication of his novel The Satanic Verses, had this to say for the free expression organisation English PEN:
‘Religion, a mediaeval form of unreason, when combined with modern weaponry becomes a real threat to our freedoms. This religious totalitarianism has caused a deadly mutation in the heart of Islam and we see the tragic consequences in Paris today. I stand with Charlie Hebdo, as we all must, to defend the art of satire, which has always been a force for liberty and against tyranny, dishonesty and stupidity. “Respect for religion” has become a code phrase meaning “fear of religion.” Religions, like all other ideas, deserve criticism, satire, and, yes, our fearless disrespect.’
The International Humanist and Ethical Union (IHEU) also released a revised version of the Happy Human logo, seen proudly brandishing the banner Je Suis Charlie, which was widely shared online and held up at rallies around the world last night in solidarity with Charlie Hebdo.
In that same spirit of solidarity, the BHA has republished some notable Charlie Hebdo cartoons. It does so below.
Notes
The British Humanist Association is the national charity working on behalf of non-religious people who seek to live ethical and fulfilling lives on the basis of reason and humanity. It promotes a secular state and equal treatment in law and policy of everyone, regardless of religion or belief.
It stands in unity with people all over the world, of all backgrounds and beliefs, in their condemnation of these attacks."When Doves Cry" is a song by American musician Prince, and the lead single from his 1984 album Purple Rain. It was a worldwide hit, and his first American number one single, topping the charts for five weeks. According to Billboard magazine, it was the top-selling single of the year. It was certified platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America, shipping two million units in the United States.[6] It was the last single released by a solo artist to receive such certification before the certification requirements were lowered in 1989.
The song ranked number 52 on the Rolling Stone list of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time and is included in The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame's 500 Songs that Shaped Rock and Roll.[7]
Following Prince's death, the song re-charted on the Billboard Hot 100 chart at number eight, its first appearance in the top 10 since the week ending September 1, 1984. As of April 30, 2016, it has sold 1,385,448 copies in the United States.[8]
Background and composition [ edit ]
According to the Purple Rain DVD, Prince was asked by the director to write a song to match the theme of a particular segment of the film – one which involved intermingled parental difficulties and a love affair. The next morning, Prince had reportedly composed two songs, one of which was "When Doves Cry". According to Per Nilsen, Prince's biographer, the song was inspired by his relationship with Vanity 6 member Susan Moonsie.
Prince wrote and composed "When Doves Cry" after all the other tracks were complete on Purple Rain. In addition to vocals, he played all instruments on the track. The song's texture is remarkably stark. There is no bass line, which is very unusual for an '80s dance song; Prince said that there originally was a bass line but, after a conversation with singer Jill Jones, he decided that the song was too conventional with it intact.[9] The song features an intro of a guitar solo and a Linn LM-1 drum machine, followed by a looped guttural vocal. After the lyrics, there is another, much longer guitar and a synthesizer solo. The song ends on a classical music-inspired keyboard piece backed by another synthesizer solo. Keyboardist Matt Fink revealed in 2014 that the baroque synthesizer solo was recorded by Prince at half speed and an octave lower against a half-speed backing track, then sped up to create the final version. Fink was then tasked to learn and perform the solo at the album's speed.[10]
On versions edited for radio, either the song fades out as the long guitar and synthesizer solo begins, or the solo is eliminated altogether and the song skips to the ending with Prince's harmonizing and classical finish.
During live performances of the song on the Purple Rain Tour, Prince's bass player Brown Mark added bass lines in this song as well as other songs without bass lines.[11]
The song is in the key of A minor.
Reception [ edit ]
The song was number one in the US for five weeks, from July 7, 1984 to August 4, 1984, keeping Bruce Springsteen's "Dancing in the Dark", from reaching the top spot. "When Doves Cry" was voted as the best single of the year in The Village Voice Pazz & Jop critics' poll. Billboard ranked it as the number one single of 1984. In 2016, after Prince's death, "When Doves Cry" re-entered the Billboard Hot 100 at number 20, and later, back in the top 10 at number 8.
The B-side was the cult fan favorite "17 Days", which was originally intended for Apollonia 6's self-titled album. A 12-inch single issued in the UK included the album track, "17 Days", and two tracks from Prince's previous album, 1999, namely the title track and "D.M.S.R." The entire title, "17 Days (the rain will come down, then U will have 2 choose, if U believe, look 2 the dawn and U shall never lose)", is now the longest titled flipside of a Hot 100 number one, with 85 letters and/or numbers.
"When Doves Cry" has gone on to become one of Prince's signature songs. Spin magazine ranked the song 6th greatest single of all time. It was number 38 in Movement's list The Greatest Songs of All Time. Rolling Stone ranked "When Doves Cry" number 52 on their list of The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time (which makes it the second highest ranked song of the 1980s, after "The Message" by Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five). In 2006, VH1's "The 100 Greatest Songs of the '80s" ranked the song number 5 on the list. On October 13, 2008, the song was voted number 2 on Australian VH1's Top 10 Number One Pop Songs countdown. The "80 of the 80s" podcast ranks it as the number 59 song of the decade.[12]
"When Doves Cry" was sampled for use in MC Hammer's 1990 hit song, "Pray", one of the few samples of his songs legally sanctioned by Prince.
Music video [ edit ]
The music video (directed by Prince himself) was released on MTV in June 1984. It opens with white doves emerging from double doors to reveal Prince in a bathtub. It also includes scenes from the Purple Rain film interspersed with shots of The Revolution performing and dancing in a white room. The final portion of the video incorporates a mirrored frame of the left half of the picture, creating a doubling effect. The video was nominated for Best Choreography at 1985's MTV Video Music Awards.[13] The video sparked controversy among network executives who thought that its sexual nature was too explicit for television.
Track listing [ edit ]
7-inch single: Paisley Park / 0-20170 (US) [ edit ]
"When Doves Cry" – 3:47 "17 Days (The rain will come down, then U will have 2 choose. If U believe, look 2 the dawn and U shall never lose.)" – 3:54
12-inch single: Warner Bros. / W9286T (UK) [ edit ]
"When Doves Cry" – 5:52 "17 Days (The rain will come down, then U will have 2 choose. If U believe, look 2 the dawn and U shall never lose.)" – 3:54
"1999" – 6:22 "D.M.S.R." – 8:05
2×12" pack
CD single 1989 [ edit ]
"When Doves Cry" "Purple Rain" (album version)
Charts and certifications [ edit ]
Awards and nominations [ edit ]
Ginuwine version [ edit ]
A cover version by American singer Ginuwine was produced by Timbaland in 1996 for Ginuwine's The Bachelor album, Ginuwine's cover uses actual dove sound effects as texture for the song. The official music video for this version was directed by Michael Lucero.[53]
Charts [ edit ]
Year-end charts [ edit ]
Chart (1997) Position Germany (Official German Charts)[62] 80
Notable cover versions [ edit ]
See also [ edit ]
References [ edit ]
SourcesWILMINGTON, Mass. — The Boston Bruins have a lot of talented young defenseman at the NHL level and within their prospect pool.
We’ve all heard of Dougie Hamilton, Torey Krug, Matt Bartkowski and David Warsofsky, but one player who’s flying under the radar could make an impact for the B’s as early as the 2015-16 season.
That player is Linus Arnesson, a Swedish-born defenseman who has excelled at Bruins development camp over the last three days.
Arnesson will return to Djurgarden of the Swedish Elite League unless he makes the Bruins’ roster in training camp. Bruins assistant general manager Don Sweeney said Friday that arrangements are being made with Arnesson’s club to allow him to come back to North America for camp in September.
Right now, the 19-year-old blueliner is just happy for the opportunity to play in the Swedish Elite League for the first time in a few months.
“It’s going to be a great development for me to go to the (highest level of Swedish hockey) and hopefully make it to the Bruins someday,” Arnesson said after Thursday’s session at Ristuccia Arena.
Arnesson said he has been watching the NHL for a long time, specifically the Detroit Red Wings and their legendary defenseman Nicklas Lidstrom. There’s also one current player who Arnesson tries to emulate on the ice.
“Nicklas Hjalmarsson of Chicago. He’s a good solid two-way player,” Arnesson said. “I model my play after him.”
The Bruins will be very happy if Arnesson develops into a player of Hjalmarsson’s caliber. The Blackhawks D-man blocks a ton of shots, kills penalties, plays over 20 minutes per game against the opponent’s top forwards and provides 15 to 25 points per season.
Arnesson is a defensive defenseman who skates well, makes the smart and simple play, and is well positioned in his own zone. He plays a physical game and battles hard for puck possession in front of the net and in the corners. Sweeney noted Arnesson has become more confident with the puck over the last year and that “there’s a lot offensively he hasn’t tapped into yet.”
How close is Arnesson to being NHL-ready? “Hopefully after this season,” he said.
Arnesson signed an entry-level contract with Boston in June, so don’t expect him to be in Sweden for much longer. He’s developing an impressive two-way skill set that should help him become a top-four NHL defenseman in the near future.
Here are some other notes from Day 3 of Bruins development camp:
— Matt Grzelcyk returned to camp wearing a red non-contact jersey, but he did participate in several drills. The Boston University defenseman is recovering from shoulder surgery he had earlier in the year. He will captain the Terriers next season and make a full recovery, per Sweeney.
— Robbie O’Gara has impressed during development camp. He has good size and an all-around skill set that will continue to improve next season at Yale.
“I think the best part of his game that has gotten better is his ability to move the puck,” Providence Bruins head coach Bruce Cassidy said Thursday. “I think when you first saw him, when I first saw him, big guy, you’re assuming stay-at-home defensive defenseman. He has a good stick, always had good lateral feed from Day 1, and now you see a guy that can make plays with the puck as well below the goal line, breaking it out in the neutral zone. So more of a complete package than maybe you thought at first.”
— The Bruins have drafted several European players over the last few years, which has injected much-needed offensive skill and speed into the team’s prospect pool.
“The North American game has gone more towards a European game with puck possession, the way the lineups are filled out and I think the European game has moved a little bit towards the North American style,” Cassidy said. “These Swedes come over here and they’re gritty. You know, they’re hard on the puck, they’re hard to get the puck from, they compete for it. Whereas maybe years ago you wouldn’t have said that about them. So I see the game moving more to middle on each side.”
— Alex Globke, who won the Western Collegiate Hockey Association rookie of the year award as a sophomore forward at Lake Superior State last season, has displayed a powerful shot and good offensive instincts during camp. He also was invited to the Detroit Red Wings’ development camp earlier this month.Otto, the self-driving truck startup that was acquired by Uber for $700 million, has just completed the world’s first completely autonomous commercial freight delivery.
In partnership with Anheuser-Busch, Otto shipped 45,000 Budweisers 120 miles from a weigh station in Fort Collins, Colo. to Colorado Springs.
Though there was a professional driver in the truck the entire time, he never had to intervene and the truck was able to drive itself from exit to exit, according to the company. The software is programmed to hand off control to the human driver when the truck needs to exit the freeway.
“By embracing this technology, both organizations are actively contributing to the creation of a safer and more efficient transportation network,” Otto co-founder Lior Ron said in a statement. “We are excited to have reached this milestone together, and look forward to further rolling out our technology on the nation’s highways.”
It’s the first trip of its kind. While several companies — including Otto — have completed numerous fully autonomous trips along freeways, no one had completed an autonomous commercial delivery.
That means, though several sources pegged Uber’s acquisition of Otto as mostly an “acqhire” of Otto’s team, specifically co-founder Anthony Levandowski, Uber is now growing more serious about the trucking business. It’s a smart move for the company, which has worked to diversify its revenue streams with on-demand delivery and B2B services in an increasingly crowded ride-hail market.
The partnership just covers this single pilot trip, for which Anheuser-Busch paid Otto $470, so it’s not the partnership itself that’s significant. But rather that Otto’s autonomous technology, at least, is close to being market-ready.
This rush-to-market approach is true to the DNA of Otto, a now barely one-year-old company.
Otto’s founders — Ron, Levandowski, Don Burnette, and Claire Delaunay — are former Google veterans who worked on everything from maps to the self-driving car project. In fact, Levandowski was one of the original members of Google’s self-driving team.
As of its initial launch in May of 2016, the company’s ambitions were clear: The team was intent on bringing self-driving technology to market as fast as possible. Call it a reaction to working at a company that has yet to ship a product in spite of working on the technology for close to eight years.
That’s why the company decided to go into trucking. Trucks largely operate on freeways — an environment in which many companies, including Google, have mastered driving autonomously to a degree — and thus it is faster to develop and deploy the technology in trucks than it would be in passenger cars meant to navigate city streets.
Now, fresh off being acquired by Uber, Otto is moving quickly to commercialize its technology. The company has already begun ramping up its on-demand logistics service for trucks, called UberFreight. Essentially, the way it will work is Otto, care of Uber, will match either independent drivers or fleet managers who have room on their trucks with freight that needs to be shipped.
A trademark filing describes UberFreight as a “freight brokerage service” that also includes “[hardware and software] units for automated and semi-automated driving of vehicles” and “leasing of vehicles and trailers.”
Based on this description, it seemed likely that Otto will simply be known as UberFreight going forward because the trademark Otto filed in March 2016 was nearly identical. But the company says the service itself will be called UberFreight while the trucks will be under the Otto name.
According to Ron — who spoke to Recode on a recent visit to the company’s headquarters in San Francisco — though the company may be working closely with Uber on ramping up the freight-matching platform, Otto has remained largely independent.
That’s because beyond some of the fundamental aspects of the technology, little about Uber X and UberPool translates directly to Otto’s business. Instead, Levandowski has taken control of Uber’s self-driving operations while also helping to manage Otto.
However, honing an on-demand platform — like honing self-driving technology — is no easy task. Just ask Uber, which has been working on improving its software since 2009.
For now, UberFreight will launch as a two-sided marketplace for truck drivers and freight needing to be shipped, without much of the autonomous technology. Think of it as the same path that Uber took to perfect its technology for its traditional services — establishing both supply and demand and smoothing out the routing algorithms — before beginning its foray into self-driving cars.
But UberFreight won’t be the only “Uber for trucking” company on the road. Several companies attempting to solve the same logistical dilemma have sprung up, including Convoy, which has so far raised close to $19 million in funding.
When asked about competing with Uber, Convoy co-founder and CEO Dan Lewis said: “It will be interesting to see how Uber will use Otto’s self-driving technology. Convoy focuses on building great relationships with trucking companies and drivers, many of whom are also exploring emerging self-driving solutions. We are evaluating these options, among others, and |
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StringOrganisers of this year’s cancelled Pemberton Music Festival in Canada are telling ticket holders to claim their costs back from credit card companies after they declared bankruptcy.
The filing was made in court last week despite a bulk of the ticketing money being advanced to organisers, according to the Amplify website.
The British Columbia event’s main backers have refused to refund 18,000 ticket-buyers, according to Amplify, despite taking up to C$6m (£3.5m) in receipts from ticket operator Ticketfly.
The event’s website directs those wanting a refund to “contact their bank or credit card issuer directly at the contact numbers provided … in determining whether a refund can be obtained”.
Amplify suggests it could take months for ticket holders, some of whom paid up to C$1,000, to obtain refunds.
“[Bankruptcy accountants] Ernst & Young know that fans are going to have a very difficult time charging back their credit cards for their ticketing refund,” wrote Amplify’s Dave Brooks. “Why? Because Ticketfly will fight it. Any ticketing company in the music business knows that credit card chargebacks are a problem for event producers.
“These same ticketing companies employ very smart, capable people to fight those chargebacks and sources from Tickefly have indicated they’ll definitely be fighting these charges.”
However, there is better news for the music lovers that will now miss out on Pemberton, which was due to take place in July, with other festivals offering special deals.
Tall Tree Festival is offering free entry to Pemberton ticket holders, as is Ontario’s WayHome Festival, which is to feature Imagine Dragons.
Fans can also trade their ticket for 25 per cent off a ticket to CannaFest in August.
Image: Wyder92Many individuals polled by Gallup criticized Trump’s RNC speech for, quote, “not involving nearly enough flag-colored balloons.” Jim Watson/AFP/Getty Images
The Gallup polling firm posted an article Wednesday noting that Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump currently have the exact same favorable rating (37 percent) and unfavorable rating (58 percent) among Americans. The post included this nugget:
Trump’s speech got the least positive reviews of any [convention] speech we have tested after the fact: 35% of Americans interviewed last weekend said it was excellent or good. Of the nine previous speeches we have rated, the top one was Barack Obama’s in August 2008, which 58% of Americans rated as excellent or good.
Reached by phone, a Gallup spokesman said that the firm began polling on the subject with Bob Dole and Bill Clinton’s addresses in 1996, which means Trump finished last in a set of 11. (Sad!)
At the time, Slate writers found Trump’s RNC speech to be scary and narcissistic, but then again, we’re mostly coastal elite godless liberal sex perverts, so it is useful that Gallup confirmed that most Real Americans shared our feelings.
Going back even further, Trump’s speech appears to be the biggest loser since George McGovern’s “I’m Going to Lose 49 of 50 States and Turn My Name Into a Synonym for Political Failure” address in 1972, which, to his credit, McGovern did follow through on.
via TanielSteve Bannon plotted to plant a mole inside Facebook, according to emails sent days before the Breitbart boss took over Donald Trump’s campaign and obtained by BuzzFeed News.
The email exchange with a conservative Washington operative reveals the importance that the giant tech platform — now reeling from its role in the 2016 election — held for one of the campaign’s central figures. And it also shows the lengths to which the brawling new American right is willing to go to keep tabs on and gain leverage over the Silicon Valley giants it used to help elect Trump — but whose executives it also sees as part of the globalist enemy.
The idea to infiltrate Facebook came to Bannon from Chris Gacek, a former congressional staffer who is now an official at the Family Research Council, which lobbies against abortion and many LGBT rights.
“There is one for a DC-based ‘Public Policy Manager’ at Facebook’s What’s APP [sic] division,” Gacek, the senior fellow for regulatory affairs at the group, wrote on Aug. 1, 2016. “LinkedIn sent me a notice about some job openings.”
“This seems perfect for Breitbart to flood the zone with candidates of all stripe who will report back to you / Milo with INTEL about the job application process over at FB," he continued.
“Milo” is former Breitbart News Tech Editor Milo Yiannopoulos, to whom Bannon forwarded Gacek’s email the same day.
“Can u get on this,” Bannon instructed his staffer.
On the same email thread, Yiannopoulos forwarded Bannon’s request to a group of contracted researchers, one of whom responded that it “Seems dificult [sic] to do quietly without them becoming aware of efforts.”
Neither Bannon, Yiannopoulos, Gacek, nor the Family Research Council responded to multiple requests for comment on the exchange, and it’s unclear whether the men’s plans ever advanced beyond spitballing on email.
But the news that Bannon wanted to infiltrate the Facebook hiring process comes as the social media giant faces increased scrutiny from Washington over political ads on the platform and the part it played in the 2016 election. That charge — and the threat of regulation — has mostly come from the left. But conservatives, who have often complained about the liberal bias of the major tech companies, have also argued for bringing Silicon Valley to heel. Earlier this month, former White House chief strategist told an audience in Hong Kong that he was leading efforts to regulate Facebook and Google as “public utilities.”
The secret attempt to find bias in Facebook’s hiring process reflects longstanding conservative fears that Facebook and the other tech giants are run by liberals who suppress right-wing views both internally and on their dominant platforms. Facebook’s powerful COO, Sheryl Sandberg, is a longtime Democratic donor who endorsed Hillary Clinton in 2016. In May 2016, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg was forced to meet with dozens of prominent conservatives after a report surfaced that the company’s employees prevented right-leaning stories from reaching the platform’s “trending” section.
The company has sought to deflect such criticism through hiring. Its vice president of global public policy, Joel Kaplan, was a deputy chief of staff in the George W. Bush White House. And more recently, Facebook has made moves to represent the Breitbart wing of the Republican party on its policy team, tapping a former top staffer to Attorney General Jeff Sessions to be the director of executive branch public policy in May.
The job listing Gacek attached in his email to Bannon was for a public policy manager position in Washington, DC, working on the Facebook-owned WhatsApp messenger. The job description included such responsibilities as “Develop and execute WhatsApp’s global policy strategy” and “Represent WhatsApp in meetings with government officials and elected members.” It sought candidates with law degrees and 10 years of public policy experience.
Facebook did not provide a comment for the story. But according to a source with knowledge of the hiring process, WhatsApp didn’t exactly get infiltrated by the pro-Trump right: The company hired Christine Turner, former director of trade policy and global supply chain security in President Barack Obama’s National Security Council, for the role.Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Foued Mohamed-Aggad is said to have travelled to fight in Syria in 2013
French police have identified the third attacker at the Bataclan during the Paris attacks, Prime Minister Manuel Valls says.
Mr Valls did not name the man, but did not dispute reports naming him as French national Foued Mohamed-Aggad, 23, from Strasbourg.
Ninety people were killed at the Bataclan in last month's attacks.
All three gunmen who attacked the venue wearing suicide vests have been confirmed as French nationals.
Other attackers who took part in the co-ordinated attacks around Paris on 13 November that killed 130 people in total have either been identified as home-grown French or Belgian extremists.
Mohamed-Aggad reportedly travelled to Syria in late 2013 as part of a group of radicalised youth from Strasbourg that included his brother.
Several of the group were later arrested upon returning to France in spring last year. Mohamed-Aggad is believed to have remained in Syria.
Mohamed-Aggad was identified late last week by police after DNA samples were confirmed to match with members of his family, AFP reports.
The two others who blew themselves up at the music venue were identified as Frenchmen Omar Ismail Mostefai, 29, and Samy Amimour, 28.
The BBC's Hugh Schofield in Paris says we can now be comfortably sure that Mostefai, Amimour, Mohamed-Aggad, Bilal Hadfi and suspected ringleader Abdelhamid Abaaoud had all travelled to Syria. He says what makes Mohamed-Aggad slightly different is that he appears to have spent longer than the others in Syria.
In addition, two of the Stade de France attackers were believed to have come to Europe via the Greek island of Leros and may have been posing as Syrian refugees.
'I would have killed him'
Three men stormed the Bataclan at around 21:40 on 13 November, during a concert by the Eagles of Death Metal rock group. They opened fire on concert-goers, repeatedly reloading their guns before police started to arrive at the scene.
Image copyright AFP Image caption French police commandos came under heavy fire at the Bataclan
One of the gunmen was killed but the two others took hostages and eventually died when elite police units launched a final assault hours later.
French media say that Mohamed-Aggad was recruited by Mourad Fares, a man known to have actively recruited young Frenchmen on behalf of jihadist groups in Syria.
Fares was arrested in Turkey last year. French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve described him as a "particularly dangerous individual close to jihadist terrorist movements" including the so-called Islamic State (IS).
He was placed under provisional detention in France in September 2014 and is being prosecuted for a string of terrorism-related offences in France and Syria.
One other Paris attacker remains to be identified.
Image copyright AFP Image caption Ninety people were killed at the Bataclan on November 13
Mohamed-Aggad's father, Said, told Le Parisien that he had only learned of his son's role in the Bataclan massacre through the media and "would have killed him beforehand" if he had known that he would go on to carry out such an attack.
Said Mohamed-Abbag separated from his wife in 2007 and said his son had lived with his mother.
The other two Bataclan attackers were identified in the aftermath of the shooting.
Mostefai was identified from a finger-tip found at the venue. He was reported to have previously worked as a baker in Chartres near Paris but in 2010 was identified by authorities as a suspected extremist.
Amimour, from the north-eastern Paris suburb of Drancy, had been charged with terror offences in 2012 over claims he planned to travel to Yemen.
After being placed under judicial supervision, he disappeared, with authorities issuing an international arrest warrant.It's not too early to be thinking about your New Year's Eve plans. In fact, at some of the more popular venues, it may be too late. Whatever you do, make sure the CTA is a part of your plans, and leave the car at home. After all, who wants to spend New Year's Day in jail on a DUI charge.
The CTA is doing its thing again to make taking public transit the only way to go on New Year's Eve by offering penny fares again. For 25 years, the CTA has offered rides that night for just a penny. And really many operators just wave people on through. And it's not worth it for the CTA to reprogram train station turnstyles to accept a penny only, so the gates are generally opened at rail stations.
The CTA press release doesn't list the times for penny rides, but in past years it's been from 8 pm till 6 am. As CTA President Rich Rodriguez says, "Let the CTA be your designated driver."
Miller Lite sponsors New Year's shuttle. Another option for New Year's is the Miller Lite shuttle. The Chicago Free Rides shuttles will travel on a looped route throughout the city, with stops in the Loop, River North, Old Town, Lincoln Park and Wrigleyville neighborhoods, as well as busy "L" stops and popular retail establishments. Check the website for schedules.Credit: Action Lab Entertainment
BLOOD AND DUST: THE LIFE AND UNDEATH OF JUDD GLENNY #3
Writer(s): Michael R. Martin & Adam Orndorf
Artist Name(s): Roy Allan Martinez
Cover Artist(s): Brett Weldele
Ruth Glenny has been chained up in the attic for years after the last killing spree she went on when free. But now with their Grandpa and brother trapped by the thing in the swamp, Zeke and Baby Hazel have no choice but to unleash their mother and hope that she’ll stay sane long enough to save their family.
28 pgs./ M / FC $3.99
BLUE HOUR #2
Writer(s): Dino Caruso
Artist Name(s): Chad Cicconi
Cover Artist(s): Main cover: Chad Cicconi
Variant cover (limited to 1500, $4.99 price): Shawn Richison
Amid growing tensions among the colonists, the indigenous Maasym, and the colony security forces, an assassination attempt rocks the very fabric of Two-Sun Colony. The colonists struggle to find unity in the aftermath of the shocking attack.
32 pgs./ T / FC $3.99 (reg.), $4.99 (var.)
GHOUL SCOUTS VOL. 1: NIGHT OF THE UNLIVING UNDEAD
Writer(s): Steve Bryant
Artist Name(s): Mark Stegbauer, Jason Millet
Cover Artist(s): Mark Stegbauer and Jason Millet
Something stranger than usual haunts Full Moon Hollow, Paranormal Capital of the World. Adults either can’t see it, can’t remember it, or go crazy from it. So when a zombie outbreak threatens the town, only a group of misfit scouts can save it! Collects the fan-favorite miniseries. Be prepared. Be very prepared.
128 pgs./ E / FC $14.99
HERALD: LOVECRAFT AND TESLA #8
Writer(s): John Reilly
Artist Name(s): Tom Rogers (pencils), Dexter Weeks (color, letters)
Cover Artist(s): Tom Rogers
Howard’s ex-wife Sonia Greene steps up to the plate. In Vienna, the cult presents Adolf with an opportunity to finally make something of himself. Einstein goes head-to-head with Edison. Twain gets Tesla out of a hole. Houdini and Howard are invited to a very special wedding.
32 pgs./ T / FC $3.99
HEROCATS #13
Writer(s): Kyle Puttkammer
Artist Name(s): Sey Viani
Cover Artist(s): Sey Viani
Cover Variant: by Marcus Williams
Inks: Sarah Elkins
Colors: Sigi Ironmonger
Hero Cats of the Apocalypse. The perfect treat for this Halloween season.
32 pgs./ E / FC $3.99 (reg.), $4.99 (var.)
MIRACULOUS #6
*Cover pending approval
Writer(s): Zag Entertainment
Artist Name(s): Zag Entertainment
Cover Artist(s): Zag Entertainment
Arranged and Adapted by: Cheryl Black and Nicole D’Andria
Chloe accuses Marinette of stealing her brand new gold bracelet! This marks the beginning of a series of events that will allow Hawk Moth to akumatize Roger, Sabrina’s policeman father! He turns into Rogercop, a super-villian who claims to embody the law by ensuring a tyrannical justice in Paris. Ladybug and Cat Noir will have to prove that they are the real upholders of the law and to prove Marinette innocent!
64 pgs./ E / FC $4.99
MIRACULOUS: ORIGINS
Writer(s): Zag Entertainment
Artist Name(s): Zag Entertainment
Cover Artist(s): Zag Entertainment
Arranged and Adapted by: Cheryl Black and Nicole D’Andria
Every story has a beginning. Discover how Marinette and Adrien, two high school students practically like everyone else, became Ladybug and Cat Noir, and why Hawk Moth is their sworn enemy. This is the PERFECT jumping on point for new readers!
Based on the Animated Series by Zag Entertainment.
128 pgs./ E / FC $9.99
MONTY THE DINOSAUR #3
Writer(s): Bob Frantz
Artist Name(s): Jean Franco
Cover Artist(s): Jean Franco
Variant Cover: Jamie Cosley
Monty has had a busy few months but this might be the craziest of them all. Join our lovable duo as they stand up to the school bully and an angry movie usher. Oh, did we mention Santa Claus? We didn’t?! Well, the jolly old dude shows up and he’s got that tricky list of his. Does this mean coal for Monty? Only one way to find out.
32 pgs./ E / FC $3.99 (reg.), $4.99 (var.)
FULL MOON PRESENTS: OBLIVION
Writer(s): Tim Seeley
Artist Name(s): Romina Moranelli (pencils/inks), Marcelo Costa (colors)
Cover Artist(s): Tim Seeley (pencils/inks), Marcelo Costa (colors)
A sequel to the acclaimed Full Moon space western that introduced the world to "cowboys and aliens!" The backwater planet Oblivion has fallen on hard times, but everything's about to get harder for Marshall Zack Stone with the arrival of Lyz Azorr, the daughter of notorious outlaw, RED EYE!
128 pgs./ T+ / FC $14.99
PUPPET MASTER: HALLOWEEN 1989
Writer(s): Shawn Gabborin
Artist Name(s): Daniel J. Logan (pencils/inks), Dan Olvera (colors)
Cover Artist(s): Standard Cover A: Daniel J. Logan (pencils/inks), Dan Olvera (colors)
Variant B: Shawn Atkins (pencils/inks/colors)
Variant C: Kill Cover: Andrew Mangum (pencils/inks), Gene Jimenez (colors)
Variant D: Kill Cover Sketch: Andrew Mangum (pencils/inks)
Halloween night, 1989. An unknown creature steps out of a long forgotten cave beneath the Bodega Bay Inn. While their master sleeps, the Puppets fight back to protect her from this mysterious intruder. Join us as the Puppets dive headfirst into another beloved subgenre: the creature feature!
Variant and variant sketch covers limited to 1,500 copies each.
32 pgs./ T+ / FC $3.99 (reg.), $4.99 (var.)
PRINCELESS-RAVEN: THE PIRATE PRINCESS VOL. 3: TWO BOYS, FIVE GIRLS, AND THREE LOVE STORIES
Writer(s): Jeremy Whitley
Artist Name(s): Rosy Higgins, Ted Brandt, Sorah Sungh, Nicki Andrews, Bill Blankenship
Cover Artist(s): Rosy Higgins, Ted Brandt
After the confrontation at The Island of the Free Woman, Raven’s crew is worse for wear and one of their number is on the edge of death. But somewhere nearby is an island where a legendary woman can heal any ills. Can Raven and her crew get there in time and will this woman even help a crew of pirates?
128 pgs./ A / FC $14.99
SLEIGHER #4
Writer(s): Rob Harrington
Artist Name(s): Axur Eneas (Art), Alessandro Alessi (Colors), Chas! Pangburn (Letters)
Cover Artist(s): Axur Eneas
THE FINALE! As Christmas Day dawns, Sleigher must use his newfound yuletide powers to stop a troll witch from devouring the souls of the world's innocent children. Countless lives and (far more importantly) the glory of heavy metal itself, hang in the balance. Tune in to find out who'll be crowned the new X-mas idol!
32 pgs./ M / FC $3.99
SUPER HUMAN RESOURCES VOL. 2
Writer: Ken Marcus
Artist: Armando Zanker
Cover Artist: Armando Zanker
“Super Human Resources weaves the outsized antics of the super-powered and the travails of the ordinary with endless cleverness and invention.” - JAVIER GRILLO-MARXUACH (The Middleman)
Welcome back to the HR department of the world’s greatest super team. Tim from Finance soon discovers that Super Crises International has been infiltrated by sinister forces. And stupidity. Lots of stupidity. Collecting all four issues of the sequel to the sold-out, smash indie hit.
128 pgs./ T / FC $14.99
VAMPBLADE #9
Writer(s): Jason Martin
Artist Name(s): Winston Young
Cover Artist(s): Winston Young (cover A – regular, and cover B), Dan Mendoza (cover C and D), Daniel Campos (cover E and F)
Cover B – Risqué variant (limited to 1500): Winston Young
Cover C - Mendoza variant (limited to 1500): Dan Mendoza
Cover D - Mendoza Risqué (limited to 2000): Dan Mendoza
Cover E – Artist variant (limited to 1500): Daniel Campos
Cover F – Artist risqué variant (limited to 2000): Daniel Campos
Now that Katie’s figured out she can control the appearance of the Vampblade costume, its time for an all new look inspired by one of her favorite comic books! She’s still got two blades and a thirst for TSD’s (translucent space d!@#s – aka space vampires), but now she’s rockin’ a crazy mercenary vibe too!!
Features 3 regular and risqué variants showcasing the all new Vampblade costume!!
32 pgs./ M / FC $3.99 (reg.), $4.99 (var.)
VAMPBLADE VOL. 2
Writer(s): Jason Martin
Artist Name(s): Marco Maccagni, Winston Young
Cover Artist(s): Winston Young
Vampblade picks up right where she left off, embracing her new lifestyle of comic store owner by day and other-dimensional vampire slayer by night. But when you transform into a scantily clad 90s bad girl with giant blades and chains, keeping your anonymity is a challenge. Consequently, so is surviving the escalating arms race with hidden alien invaders!!
Collects the second story arc of the new hit Danger Zone series.
128 pgs./ M / FC $14.99
ZOE DARE VS THE DISASTEROID TPB
Writer(s): Brockton McKinney
Artist Name(s): Andrew Herman
Cover Artist(s): Andrew Herman
When the Earth itself is in danger from an alien threat, a professional stuntwomen is our only chance to save humanity! But is she up to the task? With the help of her punk rock, I.T. savvy sister and two A.I. enabled robots, the unlikely team begins the adventure of a lifetime!
Collects ZOE DARE VERSUS THE DISASTEROID 1-4.
128 pgs./ T / FC $14.99
ZOMBIE TRAMP #28
Writer(s): Dan Mendoza
Artist Name(s): Marcelo Trom
Cover Artist(s): Dan Mendoza (cover A – regular, and B), Marcelo Trom (cover C and D), Bill McKay (cover E and F)
Cover B - Risqué (limited to 2500): Dan Mendoza
Cover C - Limited variant (limited to 2000): Marcelo Trom
Cover D – Limited risqué variant (limited to 2500): Marcelo Trom
Cover E – Artist variant (limited to 2000): Bill McKay
Cover F – Artist risqué variant (limited to 20500): Bill McKay
Vindictive wardens, disgraced sandwich kings, and past enemies thought to be dead. Boy, Janey sure has her hands full in this action packed conclusion of Skanks, Shanks, and Shackles.
Features a risqué variant, plus limited edition (Marcelo Trom) and artist (Bill McKay) variants and risqué variants.
32 pgs./ M / FC $3.99 (reg.), $4.99 (var.)
ZOMBIE TRAMP HALLOWEEN SPECIAL 2016
Writer(s): Dan Mendoza, and Jason Martin
Artist Name(s): Dan Mendoza, Bill McKay, Brian Hess and more
Cover Artist(s): Dan Mendoza (cover A – regular, and B), Marcelo Trom (cover C and D), Bill McKay (cover E and F)
Cover B - Risqué (limited to 2500): Dan Mendoza
Cover C - Limited variant (limited to 2000): Marcelo Trom
Cover D – Limited risqué variant (limited to 2500): Marcelo Trom
Cover E – Artist variant (limited to 2000): Bill McKay
Cover F – Artist risqué variant (limited to 2500): Bill McKay
Zombie Tramp returns to celebrate the darkest holiday of the year, and she's bringing a murderer’s row of friends and creators with her! It's an all-new, double-sized Hallow's Eve romp stuffed with twisted tales, murderous tricks, and tainted treats! Featuring the talents of Dan Mendoza, Jason Martin, Bill McKay, Brian Hess, and many more!
Features a risqué variant, plus limited edition (Marcelo Trom) and artist (Bill McKay) variants and risqué variants.
64 pgs./ M / FC $4.99 (reg.), $5.99 (var.)Mr Hague is due to disclose more details of the plans when he meets his Canadian counterpart, John Baird, in Ottawa later today, a Foreign Office spokesman said.
The proposals involve "colocating" embassies and sharing consular services in countries where one of the nations does not have an embassy, the spokesman said.
Mr Hague and Mr Baird will sign an agreement and hold a press conference this afternoon to explain more about the plans.
Ahead of the meeting, Mr Hague said: "As the Prime Minister said when addressing the Canadian parliament last year: 'We are two nations, but under one Queen and united by one set of values'.
"We have stood shoulder to shoulder from the great wars of the last century to fighting terrorists in Afghanistan and supporting Arab Spring Nations like Libya and Syria. We are first cousins.Donald Trump’s inflammatory statements about Mexican immigrants, Muslim refugees and women who get abortions may eventually be his campaign’s undoing, some analysts say. But don’t tell that to the many supporters such as Titus Kottke, attracted to the Republican front-runner specifically because he shoots from the lip.
“No more political correctness,” said Kottke, 22, a cattle trucker and construction worker from Athens, Wisconsin, who waited hours last weekend to see the candidate in a line stretching the length of a shopping mall.
Trump is “not scared to offend people,” Kottke said. He agrees with some of the views Trump expresses but likes the fact that the candidate shows the confidence to reject the dogma of political correctness. That “takes away your freedom of speech, pretty much. You can’t say anything.”
For years, conservatives have decried political correctness as a scourge of orthodox beliefs and language, imposed by liberals, that keeps people from voicing uncomfortable truths.
Now, some Trump supporters – many white, working-class voters frustrated with the country’s shifting economics and demographics – applaud him for not being afraid to make noise about the things that anger them but that they feel discouraged from saying out loud.
“It’s a cultural backlash,” said Steve Schmidt, a Republican political strategist who ran Sen. John McCain’s 2008 presidential campaign. “Millions and millions of people in this country, blue-collar people, feel that their values are under assault, that they’re looked down upon, condescended to by the elites.”
Trump rival Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas and retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson, who has quit the 2016 race, are among the candidates who also have outspoken in decrying political correctness.
But Trump has made defiance of the manners usually governing politics a signature of his campaign.
“The big problem this country has is being politically correct,” he said in a debate in August, when pressed on his comments about women that brought criticism. “I’ve been challenged by so many people and I don’t frankly have time for total political correctness. And to be honest with you, this country doesn’t have time either.”
In doing so, Trump tapped into a frustration shared even by many voters who disagree with him on other issues. In an October poll of Americans by Fairleigh Dickinson University, more than two-thirds agreed that political correctness is a “big problem” for the country. Among Republicans, it was 81 percent.
That sentiment is clear in conversations with Trump supporters.
“Let him be a man with the guts to say what he wants,” said Polly Day, 74, a retired nurse from Wausau, Wisconsin, who came to a Trump rally last Saturday in nearby Rothschild. “Should he tone down? He’ll figure that out on his own. I like him the way he is.”
At the same rally, Kottke said Trump’s rejection of political correctness is one of the main reasons he supports him, along with the candidate’s determination to improve security, protect jobs and keep Muslims out of the country.
Plenty of others agreed with him.
“Finally somebody’s coming in that has the cojones to say something and to do something,” said Ray Henry, another supporter. “I think he’s saying what a lot of what America’s feeling right now … enough’s enough.”
Trump’s flouting of political correctness has turned out to be a potent rhetorical weapon, political analysts say, but could prove troublesome.
“At its best, not being politically correct comes across as direct, unfiltered and honest. At its worst, not being politically correct comes across as crude, rude and insulting,” said Whit Ayres, a Republican pollster who previously worked for Florida Sen. Marco Rubio’s presidential campaign. Trump’s supporters “may find it refreshing. That doesn’t mean they would find it presidential.”
Ayres and other analysts say Trump’s rejection of political correctness appeals to voters frustrated by the setbacks of the Great Recession and the global economy; immigration that has made the country more heterogeneous; and cultural trends such as gay marriage and measures to fight discrimination against African-Americans, which make them feel marginalized.
“This doesn’t fall out of left field,” said Marc Hetherington, a professor of political science at Vanderbilt University who studies polarization and voter trust. “But what these political actors have done, Trump and Cruz in particular, is give that … worry and frustration a voice.”
That frustration was made clear in a poll by Quinnipiac University, released Tuesday, that found a deep vein of dissatisfaction among Trump supporters.
Nine in 10 questioned said their values and beliefs are under attack. Eight in 10 said the government has gone too far in assisting minorities, a view shared by 76 percent of Cruz supporters. But Trump was unrivaled in claiming the largest number of supporters – 84 percent – who agreed that the U.S. needs a leader “willing to say or do anything” to tackle the country’s problems.
Political correctness entered the American vocabulary in the 1960s and 1970s. New Left activists advocating for civil rights and feminism and against the Vietnam War used it to describe the gap between their high-minded ideals and everyday actions.
“It was a kind of understanding that you can’t be perfect all the time,” said Ruth Perry, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who wrote a 1992 article on the early history of political correctness. “It was an awareness of the ways in which all of us are inconsistent.”
As it gained broader usage, political correctness came to mean a careful avoidance of words or actions that could offend minorities, women or others, often to the point of excess. Conservative critics have, for decades, pointed to it as an enforced ideology run amok.
“I think that the American people … are sick to death of the choking conformity, the intellectual tyranny that is produced by political correctness,” said Nick Adams, an Australian-born commentator who wrote “Retaking America: Crushing Political Correctness.”
Adams, who has lived in the U.S. since 2009, said he believes many voters are drawn to Trump’s rejection of that correctness, and his emphasis on reclaiming individualism, identity and self-confidence stripped away by it.
At the Wisconsin rally, a number of Trump supporters offered a similar appraisal.
“We have gone overboard with political correctness, everyone backtracking on their statements,” said Chris Sharkey, 39, of Wausau, who says he chafes at behavioral strictures in his workplace, where human resource officers tell employees to avoid discussing politics.
The U.S., Sharkey said, needs to step up screening of Muslims trying to enter the country and bring back jobs employers have moved overseas – and Trump shouldn’t have to apologize for saying so.
But some observers say Trump’s appeal is less about speaking a particular truth than it is giving frustrated voters a means to vent.
“There’s this sense of angry, white working-class discontent,” said Patricia Aufderheide, a professor of communication at American University who edited a book of essays on political correctness.
“Trump has given people permission to say |
, but beyond and around the world.” (Blinken generously overlooked the fact that Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Afghanistan all recognize the Crimean annexation.)
Indeed, it is when discussing Russia’s presence that Blinken was most on point. Where Russia was once seen as a primary security partner in the region and an indispensable member of the Northern Distribution Network, Moscow has made it clear that borders are but lines of convenience, to be ignored when the moment suits. Blinken continued:
“[Moscow is] threatening the fundamental principles that we all have a stake in defending in Europe and, indeed, around the world: the principle that the borders and territorial integrity of a democratic state cannot be changed by force; that it is the inherent right of citizens in a democracy to make their own decisions about their country’s future; that linguistic nationalism, something we thought was confined to the dustbin of history, cannot be allowed to be resurrected; and that all members of the international community, especially its leading members, are bound by common rules and should face costs if they don’t live up to the solemn commitments that they make.”
Blinken later took a question on territorial integrity from Brookings Institute President Strobe Talbott, who pointed to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s insinuations that Kazakhstan – and, by extension, Central Asia – had little historical backing for statehood. “Russia’s actions themselves … are sending a very discordant message to countries in the region, and that is causing them to look more and more for alternatives and different choices,” Blinken observed. Talbott followed by asking whether “the fear and concern in Central Asia about Russia play[s] to China’s advantage.” Blinken was blunt: “Short answer is yes.”
This shouldn’t necessarily come as a surprise, with Beijing and Astana recently inking $23 billion in deals and four of the five Central Asian states signing up for China’s Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank. (Turkmenistan remains the lone holdout.) And given Blinken’s commentary on China’s presence in the region, Washington may well be pleased to see China’s burgeoning role.
Nonetheless, Blinken claimed that the U.S. presence in the region would remain, at least rhetorically. “Today, there are those who look at the drawdown of our forces from Afghanistan and see through that a region of declining importance to the United States,” Blinken said. “Nothing could be further from the truth.” Facts on the ground, of course, belie this insistence, and Washington seems content with China injecting the economic aid the region so desperately needs. If Blinken’s discussion is anything to go by, the U.S. is far more willing to cede regional influence to China, keeping Russian irredentism and Islamist expansion at bay. Crudely, it appears Washington wants to keep the Chinese in, the Russians down, and the Islamists out. If that’s the policy, it’ll have do.NC’s election board has just reported a high number of complaints about electronic voting machine errors and wrong selections.
State Board of Elections spokesman Pat Gannon commented this week that the complaints involved touch-screen machines used for early voting. He noted that the complaints only came from 5 out of the 100 North Carolina counties, including:
Cumberland
New Hanover
Iredell
Mecklenburg
Catawba
The complaints noted that the machines wrongly identified a voter’s choice, but in all reported cases, the voters were able to correct their ballots before casting them.
“To my knowledge, at this point, we don’t have any cases where elections officials noted significant problems with any machines based on these complaints. Of course they’re all looked into and that’s why we encourage people to immediately flag down an election official,” commented Gannon.
Here’s a video from Virginia showing a touch-screen voting machine malfunctioning:
CBS’s affiliate WFMY-TV in Greensboro just released this report:
The NC State Board Of Election released the following statement regarding the complaints:
The N.C. State Board of Elections is aware that some voters have contacted advocacy groups or elections officials with concerns about touch-screen voting machines in several counties.
Similar reports have been made in recent elections, and we take them very seriously.
We want to ensure voters that safeguards are in place to ensure touch-screen machines accurately record voters’ selections.
Touch-screen machines are tested thoroughly before each election. They are recalibrated daily before voting begins to test and ensure accuracy. If a voter notices an issue with selection accuracy of a machine, they should raise their hand and notify an election official immediately. If needed, the machine may be taken out of service for recalibration, and the voter may be moved to a different machine.
Also, each touch-screen machine prompts voters to review their selections before casting their ballot. As with paper ballots, voters should check over their selections to ensure accuracy prior to casting their ballot. On touch-screen machines, voters also can review a real-time audit log that records all of their selections.
“We urge all voters to carefully review their selections before casting their ballots, and to immediately report any questions or concerns to elections officials,” said Kim Westbrook Strach, executive director of the N.C. State Board of Elections.
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December 9, 2016
Putin Orders Full Combat Alert As Obama “Christmas Threat” Becomes Reality
By: Sorcha Faal, and as reported to her Western Subscribers
A sobering Ministry of Defense (MoD) report circulating in the Kremlin today states that President Putin’s ordering to full combat alert status yesterday of the feared S-400 Triumf air defense missile systems in the Western Military District along the Federations entire border with NATO aligned nations was in direct response to the “Christmas Threat” issued against Russian military and civilian relief forces in Syria by President Obama. [Note: Some words and/or phrases appearing in quotes in this report are English language approximations of Russian words/phrases having no exact counterpart.]
According to this report, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and his American counterpart US Secretary of State John Kerry, along with the European Union, this past week completed a working agreement for the “political transition” of Syria--which is a term used by all foreign stakeholders in the Syrian conflict to describe an end to hostilities and the forming of a new system of governance in the country, though various parties have vastly different views on what that transition would look like.
Just hours before this “political transition” was to take place, however, this report continues, Secretary Kerry informed Minister Lavrov that President Obama had rejected this working agreement and stated that he, instead, had a “special Christmas present” planned for President Putin.
Within 2 hours of President Obama rejecting this working agreement, this report grimly notes, American-backed Islamic terrorists in Aleppo (Syria) coordinated with their US special forces advisors a cowardly bombardment of a Russian hospital killing both doctors and patients that Minister Lavrov declared as “a planned action” with President Putin, also, angrily declaring that the Federation will not forget and will never accept the American excuses for their complicity in the killing of these innocent Russian medics.
With the Foreign Ministery stating that the killing and wounding of Russian medical personnel in this rocket attack on a Federation military field hospital in Aleppo raises again the question of who is actively lending support to the terrorists in Syria, this report says, the American-backed Islamic terrorists depicted in the Western “fake news” mainstream propaganda media as “moderates” has now become a monstrous inversion of the truth—but that President Putin has not been blinded to, and as he previously stated about these Islamic barbarians: “To forgive the terrorists is up to God, but to send them to Him is up to me.”
As President Obama’s Islamic terrorists in Aleppo are preparing to meet their “god”, though, this report grimly continues, America’s leader has just given them the most terrifying “Christmas present” ever conceived of—thousands of ground-to-air portable missiles these monsters will use to sow chaos in the skies of not only Syria and Iraq, but throughout the European Union and United States too.
With America’s “vetted, trained and armed” Islamic terrorists now rightfully fearing that the US is going to abandon them as soon as President-elect Trump takes office, this report explains, President Obama was given unprecedented war powers to protect them by the US Congress yesterday with the passage of a 3,076 pages long new law titled S. 2943 – The National Defense Authorization Act For Fiscal Year 2017 that the US House of Representatives passed by a 375-34 vote and the US Senate, likewise, passed with a vote of 92-7.
Want to know more? Click HERE.
Buried deep within this new massive law, this report details, is Section 1224 that allows Man-Portable Air Defense Systems (MANPADS) to be given to Islamic terrorists in both Syria and Iraq and allows President Obama to waive restrictions on military aid for these modern day barbarians by deeming it “essential to the national security interests” and further allows him to bypass the provisions in the Arms Export Control Act—and with this waiver requiring a 15-day notification to the US Congress, as of tonight, Washington D.C. time, it is going to be out of session until January so that these missiles can go within hours from their storehouses in Europe were they’re readily available to the battlefields of Syria, Iraq, Europe and the United States.
This new law not only gives President Obama this extraordinary power to give these feared missiles to Islamic terrorists, this report continues, Section 1085, also, cuts President-elect Trump’s National Security Council staff to just 200 intelligence experts, as opposed to the 400 Obama and other past US presidents were allowed to have.
Conversely though, MoD experts in this report note, while this new law does hamper President Trump’s ability to form a National Security Council, it does give him extraordinary new powers to, basically, “sanction the entire world” should he wish to do so—and furthers allow him the power to deny entry to the US of anyone he so chooses, revoking any and all existing US visas, and allows him to seize any property and interests that are located in the US “or come within the possession or control of a United States person” for any reason he so chooses.
To the “farcical irony” of the majority of the Democrats and Republicans in the US Congress giving to President-elect Trump these enormous dictatorial powers after they had repeatedly warned the American people of their fears that he was going to be dictator is nothing short of astounding, this report concludes, but is countered with His Holiness Patriarch Kirill (the leader of the Russian Orthodox Church) nevertheless holding out hope that Trump is the only American politician to give Russians, and Christians, hope in successfully fighting off the Islamic State terror group—but that President Obama’s “Christmas Threat” may undo completely.
December 9, 2016 © EU and US all rights reserved. Permission to use this report in its entirety is granted under the condition it is linked back to its original source at WhatDoesItMean.Com. Freebase content licensed under CC-BY and GFDL.
[Note: Many governments and their intelligence services actively campaign against the information found in these reports so as not to alarm their citizens about the many catastrophic Earth changes and events to come, a stance that the Sisters of Sorcha Faal strongly disagree with in believing that it is every human beings right to know the truth. Due to our missions conflicts with that of those governments, the responses of their ‘agents’ has been a longstanding misinformation/misdirection campaign designed to discredit us, and others like us, that is exampled in numerous places, including HERE.]
[Note: The WhatDoesItMean.com website was created for and donated to the Sisters of Sorcha Faal in 2003 by a small group of American computer experts led by the late global technology guru Wayne Green (1922-2013) to counter the propaganda being used by the West to promote their illegal 2003 invasion of Iraq.]
[Note: The word Kremlin (fortress inside a city) as used in this report refers to Russian citadels, including in Moscow, having cathedrals wherein female Schema monks (Orthodox nuns) reside, many of whom are devoted to the mission of the Sisters of Sorcha Faal.]
Donald Trump Victory Averts World War III, But Starts American Revolution
They Are Going To Come For You…Why Are You Helping Them?
Return To Main PageKiwi director Peter Jackson says he'll be there to direct it if an idea to film Dr Who in New Zealand goes ahead.
Matt Smith, the 11th actor to play the time traveller in the hit BBC series, told the Waikato Times today he would start a campaign to film an episode in New Zealand with Sir Peter Jackson directing.
''I think it would be an absolutely wonderful place to film Doctor Who,'' Smith, on the phone from the UK to promote the latest series of the show, said.
''I'm told it's glorious. I'm told it's quite similar to England. ''
Let's get Peter Jackson to direct one and go and make it in New Zealand. I would love to, I will campaign endlessly to come over and film there,'' Smith, who has never been to New Zealand, said.
''There's clearly a great film industry out there. It's something I would be very interested in it's just whether we can persuade the producers to fly us all over.''
The idea is not as far fetched as one of the cult sci-fi series' plots with Jackson telling the Waikato Times today he was keen to help out.
''I'm a huge Dr Who fan, and I think Matt's fantastic. Just name a time and place, and I'll be there!''
Jackson, who hired seventh Doctor Sylvester McCoy for The Hobbit, is a huge Doctor Who fan and even own's McCoy's costume from the show. Smith said he was thrilled with Jackson's interest.
''I actually met (Jackson) at Comicon, which was very exciting to meet someone of his credence and calibre a wonderful film maker, and he mentioned that he enjoyed the show, so I was absolutely thrilled to hear that.''
''I have never been to NZ sadly, or Australia, it's on my list of to dos.''
The seventh season of Doctor Who started on Prime last Thursday with Asylum of the Daleks and continues this Thursday with Dinosaurs on a Spaceship.I was overweight my entire childhood. By my late teens, that was even more apparent; you don’t find many 5’10, 350-pound teenagers who have any interest in playing sports. Even football players with that build tend to be a bit taller. But I loved playing soccer and street/ball hockey with my friends and we kept ourselves out of trouble by hitting the mean side streets of Keele and Wilson every single afternoon with a couple of plastic nets, sticks, and beat up tennis balls.
I didn’t have the stamina (not even close) to play up front in soccer games, so I became a full-time goalkeeper. In hockey, though, I loved to score goals, so I watched NHL highlights every night and taught myself every trademark deke and shot I could in hopes that if I couldn’t out-run them, I’d out-skill them.
For the most part, it worked. I became the last person you ever wanted to leave remotely uncovered on my block. I’d pretty much only lose breakaway relays when I got bored. All of my friends thought that I was a superb hockey player that could have maybe done great things if I was in shape and on skates. I started to buy into it too.
The truth of the matter is, the thought was a wrong one, and the warning signs were always there. A game of street hockey filled with a bunch of kids is defined by rush plays. You play for the turnover, someone is always cherry picking, and nobody ever sets up a formation. You trade scoring chances until the sun goes down. It’s no shock that somebody with quick hands and a nose for the net is going to succeed there.
Eventually, I slimmed down and got to put some of the theory to the test. I still had places to go where I could play my style of game and keep my ego up, but it was around this time that I was invited to practice with people who actually played competitive ball hockey, and occasionally fill in during games when they were missing players. It was a massive reality check.
Competitive ball hockey, hacking and slashing aside, is incredibly structured. There’s too much cardio involved for it not to be; you can’t run around a full-sized rink for an extended period and expect a rush game. After 20+ years of teaching myself to be “guy with hands”, I realized that, while I could make a play that looked good, the key to sustainable success was fundamental play. It was being able to react to a set play just a little quicker than the others, make a routine pass with just a little bit less prior hesitance, or sneak into just the right spot to score on an otherwise unimpressive shot. “The little things,” as analysts tend to call them.
There’s a point to this, beyond humblebragging and humblebashing myself for how I play a sport at an extremely casual level.
Video via /u/ImHuge on /r/Leafs
The first overall pick debate, beyond being driven by the media to keep you paying attention to their outlets, comes down to two fantastic young players who play two very different games.
Patrik Laine is street hockey me. A much better and more talented version, of course, but the scouting reports and the highlight film all back that up. Nose for the net, wicked shot, makes himself available on the rush and has the hands to win 1-on-1 situations. It leads to some amazing plays, especially in a tournament like these World Championships where we’ve seen him start his run off by beating up on Belarus and Germany, who don’t know what to do with a player like that.
Will it translate? I’d imagine much of it will, pure skill is hard to come by. But 1-on-1 play gets tougher when you face better defencemen, and shots from distance get tougher when you face better-prepared goaltenders and forecheckers who aren’t as willing to give you open lanes. Being known as the show stopper prospect will lead to increased focus on you, and it’ll be interesting to see how much of that he can carry over, through, and beyond his opponents.
On the other hand, you have Auston Matthews, who’s stock has been argued to have been falling because while he’s producing, he doesn’t look as game breaking. His highlight reels aren’t full of snipes and dekes, but him sending a pass to an open man, skating into an unguarded area, taking the pass back and tapping it in. Or look at his assist yesterday; he’s patient until the exact second he sees Dylan Larkin free up, sends to him, moves in the direction he needs to be if Larkin doesn’t score, wins the loose puck, sends it to Chris Wideman and gets the team the goal. He’s impossible to strip off the puck, and he’s impossible to track; his game is defined by “anybody can do that” plays, but he does them a step faster and finds more success in the process.
A good comparable for Matthews is John Tavares. Both players were praised as consensus number one picks years before gracing the podium. Both chased records all the way up their development programs, both were considered too good for junior before the start of their draft year (Tavares stuck around) though, and both were suddenly questioned in the final months leading to the draft.
In both cases, people pointed to their age and their short highlight reels despite gaudy numbers as reasons why they were hesitant. Both Matthews and Tavares were days from being drafted in the class prior, but add a few weeks to the equation and you can say the same about a lot of talent. Both saw their status come into question thanks to a “stunning 200-foot player” (defenceman Victor Hedman or forward Jesse Puljujarvi) and an exciting late bloomer (Matt Duchene or Patrik Laine). Rumours that the Islanders would be scared off by the slightly older, good at the basics Tavares persisted all the way to the hour before the draft, when many still believed that the team would opt for Duchene.
Both turned out to be great forwards, and Hedman turned out to be an elite defenceman. But Tavares ended up removing all doubt from those who weren’t sure that the “simplified game” version of him could thrive. You don’t see him on SportsCentre as often as a player once hyped up as a generational talent would normally be, but he’s a quality point-getter on a team that isn’t overly high-octane, makes everybody around him better, and tilts the ice. He’s a highly cerebral, clinical player who gives his entire team options and pushes the scoresheet in an unassuming way.
Every team needs a player like that, especially if they still possess creativity and talent. Even the flashiest players need a linemate that they can expect to find in a predictable position. Defencemen value having a forward they know can lend them a hand, or even keep them away from duress to begin with. Tavares became that guy. Mike Modano, who Tavares idolized and arguably the man to beat if Matthews wants to become the best American player ever, was also that guy. Hell, Wayne Gretzky has more goals than any player in history, but how many of them do you remember for their flashiness, not their historical significance?
Auston Matthews doesn’t play like a kid trying to show off on his block, and that’s okay. Patrick Laine does, and that’s fine too. But highlight reel plays against weaker opponents are creating an illusion that he has more to offer, which might not necessarily be true; especially to a team like the Leafs, who already have William Nylander and Mitch Marner in the system for that purpose. The entertainment value might be tantalizing, but it’s the results and the relative ease in how he gets them that set Matthews apart as the consensus pick. Not only his style more likely to translate and better suited for the highest level, it also compliments what the team already has.
As for me, I’m going to shoot a ball into an empty net. You never know when your teenage years can come back around, right?Everyone loves a love story—especially a love affair. We may think ourselves above a juicy scandal…, but who are we kidding? Tragically, however, for many famous people of the past—from Oscar Wilde to Alan Turing to Tab Hunter—affairs could not only end careers and reputations, they could end lives. People who would much rather not have to hide their love have been forced to do so by rigid social propriety, religious moralism, and repressive law.
In other famous cases, however---like that of Virginia Woolf and her friend and lover Vita Sackville-West---an affair doesn’t end in tragedy but simply in a cooling of passions into a beautiful, lasting friendship.
While prudish outsiders may have been scandalized, neither Woolf’s nor Sackville-West’s husband found the relationship shocking. Leonard Woolf, his wife reported, regarded the affair as “rather a bore… but not enough to worry him.” Vita and her aristocratic husband Harold Nicolson, writes the Virginia Woolf blog, “were both bisexual and… had an open marriage.” Furthermore, the bohemian artistic circle in which the Woolfs moved---the Bloomsbury group---hardly troubled itself about such mundane goings-on as a steamy affair between two married women. So much for social scandal and soap-operatic theatrics.
But while their love was not forbidden, what passion they had while it lasted! One need only read their letters to each other, collected in The Letters of Vita Sackville-West to Virginia Woolf. Many of those epistles document the heated period between the mid-1920s, when their affair began, and 1929, when it ended on amiable terms (in a friendship the letters document until Woolf’s suicide in 1941).
“I am reduced to a thing that wants Virginia,” writes Sackville-West in a 1926 letter to Woolf, “You have broken down my defences. And I really don’t resent it… Please forgive me for writing such a miserable letter.” The brief, agonized letter captures the exquisite pangs and pinions of romantic infatuation. Woolf, in response, is the more reserved, but also the more colorful, with playful, cryptic images that hint at who knows what:
“Always, always, always I try to say what I feel,” she writes, “I have missed you. I do miss you. I shall miss you. And if you don’t believe it, you’re a longeared owl and ass…. Open the top button of your jersey and you will see, nestling inside, a lively squirrel with the most inquisitive habits, but a dear creature all the same—"
In her diary, Woolf described Sackville-West on their first meeting in 1923 as “a pronounced sapphist…. Snob as I am, I trace her passions – 500 years back, & they become romantic to me, like old yellow wine.” Woolf was ten years older than Sackville-West, and seemed to feel inferior to her lover, comparing herself unfavorably in a sexy 1925 diary entry:
Vita shines in the grocers shop in Sevenoaks…pink glowing, grape clustered, pearl hung…There is her maturity and full-breastedness: her being so much in full sail on the high tides, where I am coasting down backwaters; her capacity I mean to take the floor in any company, to represent her country, to visit Chatsworth, to control silver, servants, chow dogs; her motherhood…her in short (what I have never been) a real woman.
The two had other lovers, and Woolf, “as the older woman in the relationship,” the Virginia Woolf blog writes, felt “unwanted and dowdy” as Sackville-West strayed. But though the love affair ended, it not only produced a close friendship, but a novel, Woolf’s Orlando, which Vita’s son Nigel called “the longest and most charming love letter in literature.”
Their love and friendship will also soon produce a film, Vita and Virginia, directed by Chanya Button and written by Dame Eileen Atkins. And, if you were wondering what Vita and Virginia’s passionate exchanges would sound like in a 21st century idiom, have a look at “The Collected Sexts of Virginia Woolf and Vita Sackville-West” at The New Yorker. The eloquence of an epistolary romance may be a thing of the past, but email and text have their own efficient charms:
Vita: Hey girl
Virginia: Hey
Vita: Sup?
Virginia: In bed
Vita: Hot
Virginia: Come visit?
Vita: Mmm can’t. Have a toothache.
Cute. But what could ever replace one of Woolf's last letters to her friend and former lover, written in 1940 while Britain endured German air bombardments: "there you sit with the bombs falling around you. What can one say– except that I love you and I’ve got to live through this strange quiet evening thinking of you sitting there alone. Dearest---let me have a line…You have given me such happiness….”
Related Content:
Virginia Woolf’s Handwritten Suicide Note: A Painful and Poignant Farewell (1941)
Virginia Woolf Loved Dostoevsky, Oscar Wilde Sometimes Despised Dickens & Other Gossip from The Reading Experience Database
Virginia Woolf Offers Gentle Advice on “How One Should Read a Book”
Josh Jones is a writer and musician based in Durham, NC. Follow him at @jdmagnessLike every member of the female species, I read Tuvia Tenenbaum’s interview with Racheli Ibenboim, an up-and-coming female Hasidic politician, with great excitement. This is the interview in which Ms. Ibenboim answers deeply personal questions, thereby revealing everything Tuvia ever wanted to know about Hasidic sex.
When I read his highly apologetic, I’d-be-equally-voyeuristic-when-interviewing-a-man response to all the criticism hurled at him, I was reminded of this one time I interviewed a famous male Hasidic wannabe politician under the pretense of writing a profile about him.
But before I begin, let me tell you a little bit about myself.
To start with, I was not raised in a secular world where poking and prodding strangers about their wedding nights is common practice. I’m a “progressive Jew” by default but not by education. I come from a long line of men and women who prefer not to discuss their wedding nights with strangers. I grew up alongside the most renowned gatekeepers of wedding night sex of the ultra-Orthodox world and I was groomed to become one too. But with the years I have come to the conclusion that what they have taught and preached had more to do with common decency than with Judaism. And so I left them.
Now let’s talk about the interview with Plony Almony (his real name is irrelevant).
We meet at a café on the outskirts of town. Mr. Almony, after all, is a popular man. Luckily, no rabbi knows that I’m in town and no one has forbidden Plony from meeting me. A man, as every child of God knows, never shakes hands with women, unless she is his wife and he is not on his period. So when I approach Plony, I extend my hand to see whether he is menstruating.
He is not, and I am shocked that he would reveal that so soon into our meeting. For shame!
I get right to it.
“How does this work, this sex thing? You didn’t know your wife-to-be but you married her, a woman, and you were supposed to have sex with her. What went on in your head? Were you scared?”
Plony blinks, stares at me for an uncomfortable few seconds and asks if I am demented.
I blink back and continue.
“How does something like this work in practical life? You never touched the woman and now — how does it feel?”
“How is it supposed to feel?” he asks. Whoah, he’s bold. “It feels like every first sexual encounter does. Awkward. Good. But mostly awkward.”
He pauses, smiles sheepishly, and asks if we can move on now.
“Not really,” I say. “What did you feel the day after?”
“It was tough at first, this new life. But I got used to it, eventually. Life, you know.”
“Used to it? As in, there is no excitement in your marriage? And what about love?”
“I don’t know why you want to know all these things…” He’s still smiling. I take this as a sign to patronize him.
“You’re a special man, and that’s why I don’t let go of this topic.”
“Special man?” he asks. “This is the first time anyone has ever called me that. Thank you so much!”
“Plony,” I blurt out. “You’re a rebel!”
And with that, we wrap up our interview.
To be sure, we also talked about his community in the greatest of details and about an organization he’s involved in. But that’s completely irrelevant to his profile so this isn’t included here.
Please, don’t rush to “protect” Plony, as if he were a fragile thing in dire need of some secular Jew’s protection. Just don’t. Remember that the rabbis of the Talmud had opinions about penis size, and therefore it is okay to question a soon-to-be-famous man about his wedding night.
Chill out, folks. There are only Ten Commandments in the Bible, and none of them is Thou Shalt Not Be Curious, Thou Shalt Abstain from Inappropriate Voyeurism, and Thou Shalt Not Be an Unapologetic Obnoxious Journalist.
This story "How To Interview a Man About His Wedding Night" was written by Frimet Goldberger.The last month of Jesse Ryan Loskarn’s life was surrounded by a media frenzy, with what appeared to be the goal of destroying his reputation beyond repair. Newspapers and other media outlets depicted him mostly in a negative light and stole away any good he had done during his short but full life. During this tragic time he had no voice, but in his death he can be heard. Our society is quick to judge especially when the topic surrounding his death is so difficult. This letter written by Jesse Ryan Loskarn was found after he took his own life on January 23, 2014. If his words can help just one person who is suffering in silence it will be his greatest accomplishment.
Jesse Ryan Loskarn's Last Message:
On December 11, 2013, I was arrested for possession of child pornography. Writing those few words took a long time; seeing them in print is agony. But I owe many, many people an explanation – if that’s even possible – and that’s why I’ve written this letter.
The news coverage of my spectacular fall makes it impossible for me to crawl in a hole and disappear. I’ve hurt every single human being I’ve ever known and the details of my shame are preserved on the internet for all time. There is no escape.
My family has been wounded beyond description. My former boss and colleagues had their trust broken and their names dragged through the mud for no reason other than association. Friends’ question whether they ever really knew me.
Everyone wants to know why.
I’ve asked God. I’ve asked myself. I’ve talked with clergy and counselors and psychiatrists. I spent five days on suicide watch in the psychiatric ward at the D.C. jail, fixated on the “why” and “how” questions: why did I do this and how can I kill myself? I’ve shared the most private details of my life with others in the effort to find an answer. There seem to be many answers and none at all.
The first time I saw child pornography was during a search for music on a peer-to-peer network. I wasn’t seeking it but I didn’t turn away when I saw it. Until that moment, the only place I’d seen these sorts of images was in my mind.
I found myself drawn to videos that matched my own childhood abuse. It’s painful and humiliating to admit to myself, let alone the whole world, but I pictured myself as a child in the image or video. The more an image mirrored some element of my memories and took me back, the more I felt a connection.
This is my deepest, darkest secret.
As a child I didn’t understand what had happened at the time of the abuse. I did know that I must not tell anyone, ever. Later the memories took on new and more troubling meaning when I became a teenager. They started to appear more often and made me feel increasingly apart from everyone else. In my mind I instigated and enjoyed the abuse – even as a five and nine year old – no matter the age difference. Discussing what had happened would have meant shame and blame.
I always worried someone might look at me and know, so I paid close attention to others for any sign they might have figured it out. No one ever did. By my late teens I reached a sort of mental equilibrium on the matter. I couldn’t stop the images from appearing altogether, but I generally controlled when they appeared.
As an adult I thought I was a tougher man because of the experience; that I was mentally stronger and less emotional than most. I told myself that I was superior to other people because I had dealt with this thing on my own.
Those I worked with on the Hill would likely describe me as a controlled, independent, and rational person who could analyze a situation with little or no emotion. That’s how I viewed myself. In retrospect, the qualities that helped me succeed on Capitol Hill were probably developed partly as a result of the abuse and how it shaped me.
In the aftermath of my arrest and all that followed, the mental equilibrium I had created to deal with my past is gone. Today the memories fly at me whenever they choose. They’re the first thing I see when I wake and the last thing I think about before falling asleep. I am not in control of anything anymore, not even my own memories. It’s terrifying.
In my life, I had only ever mentioned the abuse to three friends, and then fleetingly so. I never spoke to a mental health professional about this or any other matter until I was in the D.C. jail. I talked with a counselor there about my crime and the horrible hurt I had caused so many people. I didn’t talk to him about my past. I didn’t think it mattered because I intended to kill myself as soon as possible.
The session ended and I left to be taken to a cell. Before I’d gone far, the counselor called me back. He said there was something he couldn’t put his finger on and he wanted to talk some more. And then he just stopped and looked at me, not saying a word. He was the first person in my life who I think had figured it out. And he was the first person I ever spoke to in any detail about those memories.
That conversation was the first of many that have already taken place, and many more to come, as I begin the process of trying to sort this out and fix myself.
I understand that some people – maybe most – will view this as a contrived story designed to find some defense for defenseless behavior. That it’s an excuse. In some ways I feel disgusting sharing this truth with you because in my heart I still struggle to see my five-year-old self as a victim. But I’m sharing this with you because it is the truth, not an excuse. And I believe it played a role in my story.
To my family, friends and Capitol Hill colleagues: I’ve had individual conversations with each of you in my mind. I’ve pictured your face as I admitted to my failure and heard the shock and disappointment in your voice. I lay awake at night reviewing these conversations over and over again. They are among the most excruciatingly painful aspects of this terrible, terrible nightmare.
To those who choose to sever all ties with me, I don’t blame you. No one wants to think or talk about this subject matter. All I can say is: I understand and I’m sorry.
To those of you who have offered words of compassion to me and my family: your kindness has been remarkable. Compassion is harder to accept than condemnation when you feel as disgusting and horrible as I do |
, has a 54 Wh battery.
Various and sundry other problems with unclear causes
Multiple reviewers have commented that the laptop runs remarkably poorly in Chrome, that its gaming performance is sometimes a regression over the Yoga Pro 2 and other Intel laptops, and that the Yoga Pro 3 is incontrovertibly slower than its predecessor. The overall picture painted by multiple reviews is of a product straining and gasping to manage more than a minimally acceptable level of performance. This is in direct opposition to the sleek, razor-thin Core M devices that Intel has previously demoed.
These issues don’t necessarily point to an underlying problem with Broadwell, however. It’s possible that Lenovo’s own software utilities for power management are improperly cutting clock speeds where the system needs them, throttling down hard in the middle of workloads where throttling shouldn’t occur, then failing to adjust power consumption in other areas. On a desktop, no one cares if the southbridge draws an extra 0.5W due to a driver flaw, but in a laptop with a 12W power ceiling, 0.5W is 4% of your power budget. The fact that Chrome runs poorly — markedly worse than Internet Explorer — could be indicative of GPU driver issues, while the 3.5W TDP target Lenovo apparently locked in would explain the throttling behavior. The Core M-5Y70 chip inside the Yoga 3 Pro already clocks its GPU down to 100MHz, as opposed to the 200MHz target of other ultrabooks — and if the chip is getting stuck at 100MHz on the graphics core while simultaneously driving a 3800×1800 screen, that would explain a great deal of sluggish behavior.
One of the reasons we can’t tell if the problems reviewers are experiencing are fundamental issues with Broadwell, or caused by Lenovo’s bad system design, is because the history of PC laptops is basically the history of terrible design decisions writ large upon an unsuspecting but increasingly unhappy populace. Granted, we see this trend across other device categories as well, but it’s always been the most pronounced in laptops. Boutique manufacturers use CPUs and GPUs that their chassis either can’t cool or can’t cool without sounding like jet turbines. Manufacturers opt for lower-durability construction and weaker hardware in the name of shaving a scant millimeter off a measurement. In this case, Lenovo cuts battery capacity, tosses in a high resolution display with an insane power draw, tightens the screws on the CPU to compensate, and then wraps the display in flimsy construction that multiple websites call out as flawed.
Why?
Because laptop OEMs are gutless and sell on specs, not on experience. Because even when they build $1200 hardware, they infuse that price point with $300 thinking. Crank up the resolution, but use a panel with a bad color gamut. Slash the thickness, but gut the battery life. Charge four figures, but refuse to remove the spyware and shovelware that infest most OEM laptops like a bad case of fleas. Include a terrible webcam, because you can get away with saving 20 cents on the part. Improve the specs on individual parts, but don’t combine those improvements into superior products.
I’m not saying Core M/Broadwell doesn’t have a problem. It’s possible that these weak performance figures and throttling issues are either caused by Intel drivers or by overly aggressive chip positioning. More laptop launches and reviews will establish which of these is actually the problem, but if I had to bet, I’d bet that the issues are mostly on Lenovo’s side. The CPU/SoC, for all its complexity, is still just one component in a complex system — and too many of the laptop’s issues may have little to do with the CPU core. Wall socket power consumption suggests, for example, that the chip does draw 3-4W in light workloads — well in line with Intel’s estimates.
Intel is investigating the issue and preliminary indications are that the situation may be partly resolved through a BIOS update. We’re in the process of reaching out to Lenovo and will update when we hear back.
Now read: Intel reveals Core M Broadwell performance and TDP: At 14nm, Intel finally goes fanlessPosted on October 3, 2012
Gibbs: Middle Class Has Been Buried "Dealing With Bad Economic Decisions From Former Administration"
On CBS's "This Morning" on Wednesday, Obama campaign adviser Robert Gibbs defended Vice President's comment that the middle class has been "buried" for the past four years.
"We had eight years of horrific economic decisions: Tax cuts for the very wealthy, Wall Street writing its own rules. It culminated in an economic disaster that took place about four years ago, of which we've had to dig out from each day of the last four years," Gibbs said.
"Let's be clear, the middle class has been buried for a lot longer than the time that we've been dealing with bad economic decisions from the former administration," Gibbs added.
On MSNBC "Morning Joe" today, deputy campaign manager Stephanie Cutter also weighed in on the "buried" comment controversy and said "we're not blaming our predecessor by any means."The preferred walking speed is the speed at which humans or animals choose to walk. Many people tend to walk at about 1.4 m/s (5.0 km/h; 3.1 mph; 4.6 ft/s).[1][2][3] Although many people are capable of walking at speeds upwards of 2.5 m/s (9.0 km/h; 5.6 mph; 8.2 ft/s), especially for short distances, they typically choose not to.[4] Individuals find slower or faster speeds uncomfortable.
Horses have also demonstrated normal, narrow distributions of preferred walking speed within a given gait, which suggests that the process of speed selection may follow similar patterns across species.[5] Preferred walking speed has important clinical applications as an indicator of mobility and independence. For example, elderly people or people suffering from osteoarthritis must walk more slowly. Improving (increasing) people's preferred walking speed is a significant clinical goal in these populations.
People have suggested mechanical, energetic, physiological and psychological factors as contributors to speed selection. Probably, individuals face a trade-off between the numerous costs associated with different walking speeds, and select a speed which minimizes these costs. For example, they may trade off time to destination, which is minimized at fast walking speeds, and metabolic rate, muscle force or joint stress. These are minimized at slower walking speeds. Broadly, increasing value of time, motivation, or metabolic efficiency may cause people to walk more quickly. Conversely, aging, joint pain, instability, incline, metabolic rate and visual decline cause people to walk more slowly.
Value of time [ edit ]
Commonly, individuals place some value on their time. Economic theory therefore predicts that value-of-time is a key factor influencing preferred walking speed.
Levine and Norenzayan (1999) measured preferred walking speeds of urban pedestrians in 31 countries and found that walking speed is positively correlated with the country's per capita GDP and purchasing power parity, as well as with a measure of individualism in the country's society.[3] It is plausible that affluence correlates with actual value considerations for time spent walking, and this may explain why people in affluent countries tend to walk more quickly.
This idea is broadly consistent with common intuition. Everyday situations often change the value of time. For example, when walking to catch a bus, the value of the one minute immediately before the bus has departed may be worth 30 minutes of time (the time saved not waiting for the next bus). Supporting this idea, Darley and Bateson show that individuals who are hurried under experimental conditions are less likely to stop in response to a distraction, and so they arrive at their destination sooner.[6]
Energetics [ edit ]
Energy minimization is widely considered a primary goal of the central nervous system.[7] The rate at which a human expends metabolic energy while walking (gross metabolic rate) increases nonlinearly with increasing speed. However, humans also require a continuous basal metabolic rate to maintain normal function. The energetic cost of walking itself is therefore best understood by subtracting basal metabolic rate from gross metabolic rate, yielding net metabolic rate. In human walking, net metabolic rate also increases nonlinearly with speed. These measures of walking energetics are based on how much oxygen people consume per unit time. Many locomotion tasks, however, require walking a fixed distance rather than for a set time. Dividing gross metabolic rate by walking speed results in gross cost of transport. For human walking, gross cost of transport is U-shaped. Similarly, dividing net metabolic rate by walking speed yields a U-shaped net cost of transport. These curves reflect the cost of moving a given distance at a given speed and may better reflect the energetic cost associated with walking.
Ralston (1958) showed that humans tend to walk at or near the speed that minimizes gross cost of transport. He showed that gross cost of transport is minimized at about 1.23 m/s (4.4 km/h; 2.8 mph), which corresponded to the preferred speed of his subjects.[8] Supporting this, Wickler et al. (2000) showed that the preferred speed of horses both uphill and on the level corresponds closely to the speed that minimizes their gross cost of transport.[9] Among other gait costs that human walkers choose to minimize, this observation has led many to suggest that people minimize cost and maximize efficiency during locomotion.[7] Because gross cost of transport includes velocity, gross cost of transport includes an inherent value of time. Subsequent research suggests that individuals may walk marginally faster than the speed that minimizes gross cost of transport under some experimental setups, although this may be due to how preferred walking speed was measured.[1]
In contrast, other researchers have suggested that gross cost of transport may not represent the metabolic cost of walking. People must continue to expend their basal metabolic rate regardless of whether they are walking, suggesting that the metabolic cost of walking should not include basal metabolic rate. Some researchers have therefore used net metabolic rate instead of gross metabolic rate to characterize the cost of locomotion.[10] Net cost of transport reaches a minimum at about 1.05 m/s (3.8 km/h; 2.3 mph). Healthy pedestrians walk faster than this in many situations.
Gross metabolic rate may also directly limit preferred walking speed. Aging is associated with reduced aerobic capacity (reduced VO 2 max). Malatesta et al. (2004) suggests that walking speed in elderly individuals is limited by aerobic capacity; elderly individuals are unable to walk faster because they cannot sustain that level of activity.[11] For example, 80-year-old individuals are walking at 60% of their VO2 max even when walking at speeds significantly slower than those observed in younger individuals.
Biomechanics [ edit ]
Biomechanical factors such as mechanical work, stability, and joint or muscle forces may also influence human walking speed. Walking faster requires additional external mechanical work per step.[12] Similarly, swinging the legs relative to the center of mass requires some internal mechanical work. As faster walking is accomplished with both longer and faster steps, internal mechanical work also increases with increasing walking speed.[13] Therefore, both internal and external mechanical work per step increases with increasing speed. Individuals may try to reduce either external or internal mechanical work by walking more slowly, or may select a speed at which mechanical energy recovery is at a maximum.[14]
Stability may be another factor influencing speed selection. Hunter et al. (2010) showed that individuals use energetically suboptimal gaits when walking downhill. He suggests that people may instead be choosing gait parameters that maximize stability while walking downhill. This suggests that under adverse conditions such as down hills, gait patterns may favor stability over speed.[15]
Individual joint and muscle biomechanics also directly affect walking speed. Norris showed that elderly individuals walked faster when their ankle extensors were augmented by an external pneumatic muscle.[16] Muscle force, specifically in the gastrocnemius and/or soleus, may limit walking speed in certain populations and lead to slower preferred speeds. Similarly, patients with ankle osteoarthritis walked faster after a complete ankle replacement than before. This suggests that reducing joint reaction forces or joint pain may factor into speed selection.
Visual flow [ edit ]
The rate at which the environment flows past the eyes seems to be a mechanism for regulating walking speed. In virtual environments, the gain in visual flow can be decoupled from a person’s actual walking speed, much as one might experience when walking on a conveyor belt. There, the environment flows past an individual more quickly than their walking speed would predict (higher than normal visual gain). At higher than normal visual gains, individuals prefer to walk more slowly, while at lower than normal visual gains, individuals prefer to walk more quickly.[2] This behavior is consistent with returning the visually observed speed back toward the preferred speed and suggests that vision is used correctively to maintain walking speed at a value that is perceived to be optimal. Moreover, the dynamics of this visual influence on preferred walking speed are rapid—when visual gains are changed suddenly, individuals adjust their speed within a few seconds.[17] The timing and direction of these responses strongly indicate that a rapid predictive process informed by visual feedback helps select preferred speed, perhaps to complement a slower optimization process that directly senses metabolic rate and iteratively adapts gait to minimize it.
As exercise [ edit ]
With the wide availability of inexpensive pedometers, medical professionals recommend walking as an exercise for cardiac health and/or weight loss. NIH gives the following guidelines:
Based on currently available evidence, we propose the following preliminary indices be used to classify pedometer-determined physical activity in healthy adults: (i). <5000 steps/day may be used as a'sedentary lifestyle index'; (ii). 5000-7499 steps/day is typical of daily activity excluding sports/exercise and might be considered 'low active'; (iii). 7500-9999 likely includes some volitional activities (and/or elevated occupational activity demands) and might be considered'somewhat active'; and (iv). >or=10000 steps/day indicates the point that should be used to classify individuals as 'active'. Individuals who take >12500 steps/day are likely to be classified as 'highly active'.[18]
The situation becomes slightly more complex when preferred walking speed is introduced. The faster the pace, the more calories burned if weight loss is a goal. Maximum heart rate for exercise (220 minus age), when compared to charts of "fat burning goals" support many of the references that give the average of 1.4 m/s or 3 mph, as within this target range. Pedometers average 100 steps a minute in this range (depending on individual stride), or one and a half to two hours to reach a daily total of 10,000 or more steps (100 minutes at 100 steps per minute would be 10,000 steps).[19]
In urban design [ edit ]
The typical walking speed of 1.4 m/s is recommended by design guides including the Design Manual for Roads and Bridges. Transport for London recommend 1.33 m/s in the PTAL methodology.
See also [ edit ](Phys.org) —Micromachines, nanorobots, multifunctional drug transporters, and matrices for tissue growth – these and many other applications would benefit from three-dimensional microstructures that present different (bio)chemical ligands that offer control over directionality. In the journal Angewandte Chemie, a team of German and American researchers has now reported the production of microparticles whose surface consists of three separate areas ("patches") that can be decorated with three different (bio)molecules.
"While the spatially controlled presentation of chemical and biological ligands is well established for two-dimensional substrates, very few methodologies exist for the spatially controlled decoration of three-dimensional objects, such as microparticles," explains Jörg Lahann (University of Michigan, USA and Karlsruhe Institute of Technology). "Such structures would be very useful for many different applications, such as the controlled interaction of particles with biological cells for tissue growth." Organs are three-dimensional structures made of different types of cells. The growth of organs requires supports that stimulate the three-dimensionally controlled colonization of these cell types. Future technical applications, such as micromachines, will require 3D particles that can control the self-assembly of three-dimensional structures. If an area can also be made to respond to a stimulus by swelling or shrinking, for example, it would be possible to produce movable miniature components for use in sensors, robotic arms, or switchable drug transporters.
Lahann and his co-workers have now developed a method that allows them to obtain three chemically different patches on the same microparticle. The technique they used is electrohydrodynamic co-jetting, a process in which the researchers pump three different polymer solutions through parallel capillaries. An electric field accelerates the ejected liquid, which stretches it out. The solvent simultaneously evaporates, leaving behind a microfiber consisting of three chemically different compartments. By cutting the fibers, the team produces fine microparticles that are also made of three chemically different segments.
For their starting materials, the researchers chose three biodegradable polymers based on lactic acid. The three polymers were each equipped with a different chemical anchor group (known as "click functionality"). It was thus possible to attach different ligands, such as different biomolecules, to the anchor groups in an orthogonal fashion, meaning that the surface reactions to attach the ligands do not influence each other. By using biomolecules containing fluorescent markers, the scientists were able to demonstrate by using a microscope that three different patches were indeed present on the same microparticle. "For practical applications the particles need to be just a bit smaller – that is our next goal," says Lahann.
Explore further: Researchers use nanoscale 'patches' to sensitize targeted cell receptors
More information: Joerg Lahann. "Chemically Orthogonal Three-Patch Microparticles." Angewandte Chemie International Edition, dx.doi.org/10.1002/anie.201310727Update: Fluke issued a statement on its Facebook page on Thursday to address SparkFun's multimeter issue, saying, in part:
Like any organization that designs and manufactures electronics, we actively work to stop lookalike products from making it to the marketplace. We do this to protect our company and the jobs of our employees. We also do so because it is a matter of safety for our customers. Our tools are used in high-energy industrial environments, where precision and safety is an absolute necessity.... We understand how troubling this is for a small company serving the needs of DIY-ers and hobbyists. Here is what we are going to do. Earlier today we contacted SparkFun and offered to provide a shipment of genuine Fluke equipment, free of charge for them to sell on their site or donate. The value of the equipment exceeds the value of the Customs-held shipment. SparkFun can resell the Fluke gear, recouping the cost of their impounded shipment, or donate it into the Maker community. While we will continue to enforce our trademark, we are taking this one-time action because we believe in the work of SparkFun supporting the Maker and education communities. This is important to us. We have been supporters of the Maker community for years through the donation of over half a million dollars worth of tools and employee time to organizations like First Robotics.
Original Story: A dark gray and yellow design trademark has landed a shipment of 2,000 digital multimeters (DMMs) in trouble with US Customs and Border Protection. In a blog post today, SparkFun, an online retailer that sells electronics and offers DIY classes, wrote that it must destroy a recent $30,000 shipment from its manufacturer because US authorities say the multimeters look too much like those sold by Fluke Corporation.
Although SparkFun has been selling the $15 multimeters for six years, the company received a notice from Customs on March 7. The notice said that the most recent shipment was excluded from entry into the US according to “US International Trade Commission Exclusion Order 337-TA-588.”
It seems that Fluke's 2003 trademark for a dark gray multimeter with yellow borders was the deciding factor for Customs. And although SparkFun contends that their yellow is a different yellow from Fluke's, US authorities want the multimeters sent back to China or destroyed.
For its part, SparkFun says it will have to destroy the shipment, “because the import taxes in China are so steep (yay free trade) that bringing them back into the country to have them modified would be more expensive than paying for the return shipping and taxes. Between bad and worse, we have to have them destroyed. Sorry Earth.” According to SparkFun, Customs says that having the multimeters destroyed will cost $150 an hour, but it is unknown how long the destruction will take.
SparkFun also decried its lack of options in its blog post: “Our multimeters are actually kind of orange, not Fluke yellow. The document from the Department of Homeland Security is matter of fact. Where is the opportunity for recourse? What is the appeals process? Because of a $150 per day warehousing fee, we are forced to decide quickly with limited legal guidance and mounting penalty costs.”
Still, the company says it has no hard feeling toward Fluke. SparkFun said it hoped Fluke might give SparkFun a 60-day temporary license. “There’s probably not enough time (the DMMs will be destroyed in a few days), but perhaps there’s a chance. We’d be happy to donate them to the cause of your choice,” SparkFun wrote.
Update: Here's a full-color image of a representative Fluke meter:Unless you are truly wanting to write a story for giggles, do not plan to fail at the start. There will be plenty of time to pull plot out of places you shouldn’t be shoving plot into, but the first two weeks are not that time. Leave the carnivorous sentient couchs and the broom handles that want revenge until you absolutely cannot salvage what you have on the page. Plan, but do not overplan. Before you start, you should have a character in a world with a problem. This is true for any novels. Think of the AIs that were smart enough to look at the overwhelming odds against them with all the orcs and turned and ran. You do not want your characters to look at the massive iceberg. All they need to see at the beginning is that tiny bit that floats. The more your story goes along, the more they try to fix it, the bigger the problem gets. Have a general idea of what you want to have happened by the end of the story too, then send the main characters out to solve their own problems. If a salesman’s mantra is ‘always be closing’ the author’s mantra has to be ‘always be escalating’. Each scene should change one problem at the end of it. So many unpublished books out there have a great beginning and an awesome ending and absolutely nothing changing for twenty chapters while the characters just muddle around the middle. If you’re bored with what’s happening on the page or if your characters are just standing around and talking, it’s the perfect time to make the worst possible thing happen and have them deal with the new problem as it exists now. If they’re looking for a guy who can solve the problem, kill him. If they need X to solve Y, have X not work. Have the secret entrance into the castle be fixed. Make sure your main character isn’t the best/brightest/smartest/richest person out there. If you’re good guys are only succeeding because the bad guys are just that dumb, that’s not exciting to read. Books are about the main character but the bad guy has to be a match enough to cast serious doubt in the good guys succeeding. In Greek legend, Heracles’s name literally translates to Hera’s glory. There needs to always be a real threat that your main characters can and will fail. Don’t write if you’re not feeling it. This is the opposite advise than what most nanowrimo’ers will tell you, but before you should sit down to write, you should have in your mind exactly what this scene is going to accomplish as a goal in the scene itself and how that is going to affect the plot as how it stands. It just so happens that a good length for a scene is around 1500 words, and you need to write 1660 words a day to reach your goal. Every scene in the story is a micro-short story with a beginning, middle and end. So within that scene, you need to set up what the problem is, what the main characters are going to do to fix it, and what the outcome is of their attempt, for better or for worse. If you plan to write one scene per day, your story’s pretty much set. If you do not know what you’re going to write about, don’t waste your time at the computer. Go for a walk, have a shower, play a couple games putting the “what has to happen right now?” question in the back of your mind. When you have to work through the rising and falling action with a climax within that scene, 1500 words isn’t going to seem like enough words to pull off all that that scene needs to do to change one point in your plot.
Bonus point:
Don’t follow a synopsis off a bridge. The more you write, the more your subconscious can take over. If you have no idea why you’re writing something, don’t sweat it. What you put in as a throw-away line can be the defining moment in chapter 23. I’m a skeptic at heart, but there is a magic to story telling where events that seem utterly unrelated can come together in a perfect moment of syzygy. Don’t try to control everything. If a plot point doesn’t come together of if that thing you thought was going to be the cornerstone of everything doesn’t seem to do anything or go anywhere, you can always delete it in the rewrite.
Bonus, bonus point:
You’re not going to be writing anything that just needs a dramatic “the end” before it gets sent off to New York for the fame and fortune you so richly deserve, but this is going to give you the clay in which you are going to need in order to make the second draft obvious that you knew the whole time how this story was going to end. When you rewrite it, don’t look at the words on the page as something that just needs to be polished, look at them as a stepping stone. No matter how much you preplanned, the characters on the page aren’t really going to feel real until you’ve stomped around in their boots for a while.Dec. 28, 2016, 7:50 PM GMT / Updated Dec. 28, 2016, 7:50 PM GMT By Mary Emily O'Hara
Truvada, the other “little blue pill,” is taken daily to prevent HIV and has been touted as a miracle drug responsible for lowering HIV rates across the United States. But soon, the daily pill may be overshadowed by an even simpler method—a single flu shot-like injection at the doctor’s office, once every two months.
The National Institutes of Health (NIH) announced last week that it was entering the first-ever global clinical trial of an injectable HIV-prevention drug called cabotegravir. The trial is taking place in eight countries across three world regions—the Americas, Africa and Asia—and researchers are enrolling 4,500 gay and bisexual men along with transgender women, pulling from groups with the highest rates of new infections.
HIV, the virus that causes AIDS BSIP/UIG Via Getty Images
"The annual number of new HIV infections among young people, especially young men who have sex with men and transgender women who have sex with men, has been on the rise despite nearly flat HIV incidence among adults worldwide," said Raphael J. Landovitz, the Protocol Chair for the study.
In the U.S., the Centers for Disease Control reported new HIV diagnoses have declined by nearly 20 percent—mostly among white gay and bisexual men. But HIV rates are on the rise for men of color and transgender women, as well as youth. Data suggests the disparity might be due to Truvada itself: A 2016 study found 74 percent of Truvada users were white, and the number of black users dropped between 2012 and 2015.
RELATED: Black Gay, Bisexual Men Have 50 Percent Risk of HIV
Patients participating in the new study will be randomly assigned to receive Truvada pills or cabotegravir injections, to compare the injectible drug’s efficacy with the established PrEP pill. Currently, Truvada is the only commercially available pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) medication, and the only FDA-approved HIV-prevention method, period.
Bottles of antiretroviral drug Truvada are displayed at Jack's Pharmacy on November 23, 2010 in San Anselmo, California. Justin Sullivan / Getty Images
Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases at the NIH, told NBC Out the hope is the injectable PrEP drug will work as well as Truvada—which currently has a roughly 99 percent rate of success in preventing transmission of the HIV virus.
“The ultimate reason for the trial is that many people who take Truvada have difficulty with having to take a pill every single day,” Fauci said. “That really becomes prohibitive, and sometimes people don’t adhere really well.”
Fauci explained that while it would be ideal for patients to only have a shot once a year, for example, the 8-week period is how long cabotegravir stays in the system inhibiting the virus from taking hold. If the current trial is successful, he predicted, researchers will likely begin to tweak the drug’s chemical makeup in an effort to make it last longer.
Full results of the trial are expected by 2021 but could come even sooner. A related trial testing the injections on cisgender young women is slated to begin in 2017.
RELATED: New Study Shows HIV Epidemic in New York in 1970
The stunning efficacy rates of Truvada have launched a race to expand the market. Researchers are currently studying an HIV vaccine that uses antibody injections, a microbicide gel that can be used as a sort of HIV-prevention lube and a slew of other HIV drugs for treatment and prevention.
Damon Jacobs, an HIV-prevention specialist who moderates the 15,000-member Facebook group PrEP Facts: Rethinking HIV Prevention and Sex, told NBC Out the plethora of future prevention methods looming on the horizon is “wonderful.”
“It’s not going to be one size fits all,” he said. “Just like with birth control: some women take the pill, some get an IUD. I’m glad we’re going in that direction for PrEP as well.”
According to Jacobs, the PrEP race in medicine is happening because of Truvada’s runaway success. While the studies showed Truvada prevents HIV transmission at near-total rates, it’s only over the course of the past couple years that the wider effects have been seen. Truvada was introduced commercially in the U.S. after its FDA approval in 2012—since then, New York City has announced new HIV rates fell below 2,500 for the first time since the epidemic exploded in 1981. Jacobs said PrEP was largely responsible for the decline.
“We’re seeing how well it works for communities when there’s wider implementation and access,” Jacobs added. “We’re looking at areas where the use of PrEP is being validated by local governments—subway ads, newspaper ads, doctors being supportive of it.”
There are still kinks to be worked out when it comes to PrEP. Truvada is expensive, and some communities—particularly gay and bisexual black men, who are at the highest risk for new infections—report frustrating experiences with doctors reluctant to offer PrEP medication. And within the gay community, critics suggest some men may be overly reliant on PrEP alone, rather than using condoms in addition to the drug.
RELATED: AIDS Activists Still Fight Stigma
But Jacobs said condoms and PrEP aren’t an either-or scenario. Truvada, he said, is filling the space that was left empty years ago in terms of HIV prevention.
“Even when the consequences of not using condoms was death, people weren’t using them,” he said. “Why would you think they’re going to start using them now?”
New drugs like cabotegravir are poised to fill even more gaps. One early study of Truvada (the “iPrex” trial) showed that while 93 percent of study subjects reported taking the daily pill, only 51 percent actually kept up the regimen. For patients who don’t adhere well to daily medication, a shot every two months is a highly desirable alternative.
For Jacobs, who works as a marriage and family therapist in addition to educating people about PrEP, the expansion of HIV-prevention methods is a boon not only to the health of Americans, but also to their emotional and sexual wellness.
“People are having sex for pleasure, to experience intimacy and connection with a partner,” Jacobs said. “These studies are beautiful, because they will allow more people to connect in meaningful ways.”
Follow NBC Out on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.Influential business leaders and lawmakers once again descend on the Swiss Alpine resort of Davos next week against a backdrop of rising populism, and early indications suggest they will at least acknowledge the dramatic political shifts of the last twelve months.
Election wins for Donald Trump and Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte, as well as the U.K.'s vote to leave the EU, were widely seen as a rejection of current socio-economic models. Populism became a key story of 2016 and will be front and center in Davos ahead of elections this year in France, Germany, the Netherlands and most likely Italy.
In a nod to this current mood, this year's World Economic Forum (WEF) is titled "Responsive and Responsible Leadership" and its official agenda describes a "weakening of multiple systems" that has eroded confidence and speaks of a possible "downward spiral" fuelled by protectionism, populism and nativism.A patient tormented by suicidal thoughts gives his psychiatrist a few strands of his hair. She derives stem cells from them to grow budding brain tissue harboring the secrets of his unique illness in a petri dish. She uses the information to genetically engineer a personalized treatment to correct his brain circuit functioning. Just Sci-fi? Yes, but...
An evolving "disease-in-a-dish" technology, funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), is bringing closer the day when such a seemingly futuristic personalized medicine scenario might not seem so far-fetched. Scientists have perfected mini cultured 3-D structures that grow and function much like the outer mantle -- the key working tissue, or cortex -- of the brain of the person from whom they were derived. Strikingly, these "organoids" buzz with neuronal network activity. Cells talk with each other in circuits, much as they do in our brains.
Sergiu Pasca, M.D., of Stanford University, Palo Alto, CA, and colleagues, debut what they call "human cortical spheroids," May 25, 2015 online in the journal Nature Methods.
"There's been amazing progress in this field over the past few years," said Thomas R. Insel, M.D., Director of the NIH's National Institute of Mental Health, which provided most of the funding for the study. "The cortex spheroids grow to a state in which they express functional connectivity, allowing for modeling and understanding of mental illnesses. They do not even begin to approach the complexity of a whole human brain. But that is not exactly what we need to study disorders of brain circuitry. As we seek advances that promise enormous potential benefits to patients, we are ever mindful of the ethical issues they present."
Prior to the new study, scientists had developed a way to study neurons differentiated from stem cells derived from patients' skin cells -- using a technology called induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs). They had even produced primitive organoids by coaxing neurons and support cells to organize themselves, mimicking the brain's own architecture. But these lacked the complex circuitry required to even begin to mimic the workings of our brains.
Based on an improved, streamlined method for producing iPSCs, Pasca's team's cortex-like spheroids harbor healthier neurons supported by a more naturalistic network of supporting glial cells, resulting in more functional neural connections and circuitry. Like the developing brain, the neurons form layers and talk with each other via neural networks. The spheroid technology is more consistent than earlier organoids in generating the same kinds of cortex-like structures in repeated experiments.
The budding cortex also lends itself to analysis using conventional brain slice methods. So, in a sci-fi future, it might potentially reveal what circuits went awry in the developing cortex of a particular individual with a brain disorder.
"While the technology is still maturing, there is great potential for using these assays to more accurately develop, test safety and effectiveness of new treatments before they are used in individuals with a mental illness," said David Panchision, Ph.D., NIMH program director for stem cell research.
What's next? Perhaps development of multiple neuron subtypes that normally populate the cortex, as well as long-distance connections between this cortex-like structure and other -- yet to be developed -- organoid structures.Spider lovers, get out your dancing shoes: Arachnologists in Australia have found seven new species of the colorful creatures known as peacock spiders, tiny jumping spiders notable for their bright rumps and disco-like mating rituals.
Since 2013, spider enthusiasts Jürgen Otto and David Knowles have been on a mission to formally identify peacock spiders Knowles had seen previously but hadn’t gotten the chance to name.
On one trip late last year, the amateur arachnologists walked along the edge of Lake Jasper in Western Australia with the sun beating down on them. Otto says he wasn’t expecting to find any spiders, since these animals shy away from the heat.
But the spider hunters got a pleasant surprise when Knowles spotted something crawling along near the sand track and signaled Otto.
“I noticed an interesting pattern on its back, certainly an unusual one, and some iridescent patches,” Otto says in an email. “It was of average size for peacock spiders and looked characteristic for the genus. One thing I noticed were the long [bristles] on the legs and also interesting marks behind the eyes. I could only see these details, though, after photographing it.”
View Images The new peacock spider Maratus bubo, so named for its owl-like ornamentation Photograph by Jurgen Otto
Otto later named this species Maratus vespa, after the Latin word for “wasp.” Two other trips around the country’s south and west coasts turned up six more previously unnamed species, which are described in a paper published May 22 in Peckhamia, a scientific journal specializing in jumping spiders. David Hill, the journal’s editor in chief, co-authored the paper with Otto.
The discoveries bring the number of known peacock spider species up to 48. Otto and |
see a pattern.Capacity grew like the dickens till 1980, was flat till '94 then resumed growing at a shallower but constant rate. Likewise, consumption grew quickly till the first yellow bubble in the '70s then dropped back and resumed growing at a slower but still constant rate. We talk about the drop in OECD demand as if it is a big deal but it is hardly noticeable.From this view it seems inevitable that consumption would intersect with capacity somewhere in the area of the second bubble without increased capacity or decreased demand - the boom in Chinese chachkas moved the date up. As we all know, when spare capacity is that slim the markets get nervous. The other thing that strikes me is just how constant the growth has been over the 3 decades and how little capacity has moved from it's trendline regardless of all the happytalk.We all know the IEA and EIA, not to mention IHS have been using the green line to make their forecasts, not the red one.Decided to do a visual rundown of the symbolism associated with Zuko’s face. Although we get more symbolic layering in Book 3, it should be noted that it’s Book 2 that plays around with good/evil symbolism as Zuko struggles with his decisions.
To give a few examples,
“The Serpent’s Pass” gives us this little bit of symbolism. After Iroh finishes what he has to say about change, he looks to Zuko who returns the look. As he does so, Zuko’s scar is hidden from the audience’s view for a good coupole of seconds.
The most notable example,. however, comes from “The Crossroads of Destiny,” where we get:
Katara offering to heal Zuko’s scar, and with that what the scar represents: Zuko’s identity as the banished prince.
Shortly afterwards, we get this very deliberate showing of either side of Zuko’s face after his encounter with Azula:
Because the scar and what it represents are still important to him, Zuko evidently chooses to side with Azula. However, by Book 3, Zuko finally changes for the better, and with that so does the meaning of his scar.A Kaepernick v. NFL lawsuit would be music to the ears of one media apologist for the renegade former quarterback -- and to entitlement champions everywhere. Jason Reid of ESPN's satellite blog, The Undefeated, suggests the unwanted Colin Kaepernick could potentially sue the National Football League because no team has signed him.
Implying Kaepernick is entitled to a roster spot on a pro football team, Reid wrote "the quarterback, who has been passed over repeatedly for jobs this offseason — jobs that have gone to far less accomplished passers — could potentially sue the league."
Reid also admits the NFL is under no requirement to employ Kaepernick and added that Commissioner Roger Goodell "refutes the claim that the NFL is punishing Kaepernick for his anthem protest and is determined to end his career."
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Yet Reid attempts to justify such a lawsuit. He writes, "It’s clear, however, what has happened to Kaepernick. All anyone has to do to see it is open their eyes, USC law professor Jody David Armour said."
Armour, the author of Negrophobia and Reasonable Racism: The Hidden Costs of Being Black in America, told Reid: “Some people will say that he isn’t with a team because he hasn’t earned it on the merits, he hasn’t earned it with his performance, not because owners and others have issues with his political positions." Then came Armour's "but monkey'':
But it’s hard to look at statistics on the number of players who have signed contracts who haven’t been to the playoffs, who haven’t been to a Super Bowl and who can’t point to the kind of record that he can point to and say that there isn’t something going on here in the way of a message being sent out in some kind of discrimination.
Reid found additional support for the possibility of a lawsuit from Susan Carle, a professor of law at American University’s Washington College of Law -- an expert in discrimination, labor and employment law. She said professional sports teams “have the complete right to choose the person they think is going to be best, and they can make that decision based on any reason except an illegal reason. So the only way that Kaepernick would have a viable lawsuit would be if he could show they were using an illegal reason” not to sign him. “And illegal reasons could include … race discrimination.” Carle said Kaepernick would "face a high bar to prove his case."
Another hurdle for Kaepernick would be the fact that nearly 70 percent of the players in the NFL are Black, making it difficult to portray the league as a race discriminator.
Despite the high bar, Reid insisted on yet another possible justification for a lawsuit by Kaepernick.
It seems apparent owners are using Kaepernick to dissuade players from being socially active during business hours, USC’s Armour said, which could also be part of a legal argument — if Kaepernick decides to make it.
There's not a shred of evidence of such collusion. Each team makes player personnel decisions on its own needs. Besides, Seattle is the only team that interviewed Kaepernick and its coach, Pete Carroll, said more than once that he approves of his players' activism. Reid cited just one current NFL player who said Kaepernick is "just not worth the hassle." And anonymous players don't control the league.
The bottom line for Reid is that anyone who supports politically correct causes is supposedly entitled to employment in the NFL.
Short of filing in the court of an activist judge, a potential lawsuit by Kaepernick would be plagued by bad facts and would have no legal legs whatsoever to stand on.It's official! Two-time Oscar winner Tom Hanks is coming to Broadway. Everyone's favorite nice guy actor will make his Main Stem debut in Lucky Guy, a new play from the late Nora Ephron. Directed by George C. Wolfe, Lucky Guy begins performances on March 1, 2013 at the Broadhurst Theatre. Opening night is set for April 1. Additional casting will be announced shortly.
Lucky Guy follows tabloid columnist Mike McAlary (Hanks) as he investigates the scandal and graffiti-ridden New York of the 1980s. McAlary reported on New York's major police corruption and his coverage of the Abner Louima case earned him a Pulitzer Prize before his untimely death in 1998.
Hanks earned Academy Awards for Philadelphia and Forrest Gump. He collaborated with Ephron for the films You've Got Mail and Sleepless in Seattle. His many other movie credits include the Toy Story series, Castaway, Big, Charlie Wilson's War, That Thing You Do, The Green Mile, Turner and Hooch, Bachelor Party, The Money Pit and Larry Crowne. He can be seen in theaters this fall in the new film Cloud Atlas.A bipartisan group of sixteen members of Congress sent a letter Thursday to Attorney General Eric Holder urging him to allow the University of Massachusetts to grow its own marijuana for medical research.
Marijuana used for research, and that distributed to patients in a closed federal program, is currently grown exclusively by the University of Mississippi. Patients who have smoked it and researchers who have tried to work with it say it's total swag (very low quality).
For eight years, UMASS Professor Lyle Craker has been fighting with the Drug Enforcement Administration to get a license to cultivate his own medical pot.
In February 2007 Craker looked to have won, when DEA Administrative Law Judge Mary Ellen Bittner ruled that his request was "in the public interest" and called on the agency to license him.
In a last-minute Bush Administration order, however, the DEA reversed Bittner's ruling and refused Craker the license, citing evidence that hadn't been presented during the initial hearing.
The letter from members of Congress encourages Holder "swiftly to amend or withdraw"
the decision and allow Craker to rebut the new DEA evidence.
Forty-five members of the House, along with Massachusetts Sens. Ted Kennedy and John Kerry, as well as the Lymphoma Foundation of America, the National Association for Public Health Policy, and the Multiple Sclerosis Foundation have all written the DEA in support of Craker's efforts.
Craker's advocates say that granting the license to do research would place science ahead of politics.
Meanwhile, the Washington Times reported Thursday that raids on medical marijuana clubs in California ordered by Bush administration holdovers have continued, despite President Obama's campaign pledge to end them.
"The president believes that federal resources should not be used to circumvent state laws, and as he continues to appoint senior leadership to fill out the ranks of the federal government, he expects them to review their policies with that in mind," White House spokesman Nick Shapiro told the Times.
During the campaign, Obama said that the "basic concept of using medical marijuana for the same purposes and with the same controls as other drugs prescribed by doctors, I think that's entirely appropriate."President Juncker met on 29 April in the margins of the European Council the Prime Ministers of Slovenia and Croatia, Miro Cerar and Andrej Plenković, on the management of flows of persons at the borders between Slovenia and Croatia and they stated the following:
"We had constructive talks in a solution-oriented spirit.
We agree that EU law reinforcing the controls at the Schengen borders and the security of our Union must be applied and implemented. In this context, we welcome the fact that Croatia will have full access to the Schengen Information System by 27 June 2017.
The Commission stands ready to and will assist Slovenia and Croatia in providing effective and non-bureaucratic short and long-term solutions for the implementation of the systematic checks at the borders. Slovenia and Croatia both consider the Commission's technical guidelines as very helpful and as a very good basis for their further cooperation.
Slovenia and Croatia agree that they will notify the Commission – in accordance with the Schengen Borders Code – of the decision to carry out targeted checks whenever the waiting time at specified land border crossing points between the two countries is longer than 15 minutes."Davey Browne Jr was taken to Liverpool hospital in Sydney following the fight
An Australian boxer has died four days after being knocked unconscious during a regional title fight in Sydney.
Davey Browne Jr, 28, was knocked out by Carlo Magali of the Philippines towards the end of a 12-round IBF super-featherweight contest on Friday.
Father-of-two Browne's life support was turned off after he failed to recover from his injuries.
The Australian Medical Association (AMA) has called for a ban on boxing following Browne's death.
Browne's death comes just six months after Queensland boxer Braydon Smith collapsed and died following a featherweight bout in his hometown of Toowoomba.
"One punch can kill, whether you are outside a pub on a Friday night or in a boxing ring, and this is the thing that causes young lives to be ended so traumatically," AMA vice-president Dr Stephen Parnis told Australian broadcaster ABC.
"The way that boxing is designed there will be these times inevitably where someone will get bleeding or irreversible damage to the brain and they will either lose their life or end up with brain damage."
New South Wales sports minister Stuart Ayres said the Combat Sports Authority, a state government agency, will co-operate fully with police in their investigation of Browne's death.
"My thoughts are with David's family and friends during this tragic time," Ayres said.
Police confirmed Davey's death on Monday and said a post-mortem would be conducted.
Browne was knocked out 30 seconds from the end of the final round of the 12-round bout - which would have given him a world ranking.Our Music (Happy Hardcore) enjoyed more support from A-List artists and Events in 2015 than the past 5 years, and I want you to know about it!
It would be awesome to see more people celebrating this! Lets get right into it motherfuckers
**We’ve had more support from bigger artists**
From Grammy Nominated Artists, to A-list festival DJ’s, right through to Kanye Wests Producer - There are some seriously impressive people that have been dropping the genre lately. Im just gonna drop this in a list here
Dillon Francis (Clip)
Hudson Mohawke
Porter Robinson
Krewella
Gareth Emergy
Da Tweekaz
Jaguar Skills
**We’ve had more support from the bigger events**
Darren Styles played his third consecutive year at EDC Vegas this year!
Nocturnal Wonderland had Darren and myself perform a back to back set to a room full of people who lapped it up
Joey Riot got the chance to play at Creamfields and decided to drop some of his well known Powerstomp tracks and got an eruption from the dance floor
*Update* Darren just came back from the sold-out Knockout Circus in Sydney and pushed the music to a 6000-heavy arena
**New People Are Discovering it**
Monstercat decided to launch this years catalogue with a Hardcore release by Stonebank (formerly Modulate / Rocketpimp)
Motherfucker did you see that shit? 4 Million Views!! Thats their most viewed video this year for real. That means more people enjoyed hearing a song at 170 Beats per minute that the more accessible styles such as Electro and Trap and yada yada. Always refreshing
Add this to the Nanobii Release (Rainbow Road) I’ve seen a surge in international producers who are trying their hand at the genre. Super props go to Titan Cube and Arcien who continue to impress
**Official Remixes are coming back**
Compare to a few years ago where every request was rejected. Check the list
Jack Ü and Justin Bieber - Where are Ü Now (Darren Styles & Gammer Remix)
Tnght - Higher Ground
Porter Robinson - Sad Machine
Omegatypez - Take Me High
Code Black and Atmozfears - Accelerate
Gareth Emery and Krewella - Lights and Thunder
Hudson Mohawke ft. Irfane - Very First Breath
**People seem less afraid of it**
Like Kutski for example who dropped our remix of ‘Take Me High’ in the middle of his Defqon set. See the video below and tell me that people weren’t eating that shit up
Or Audien, who can remix a Bastille Track, get that remix nominated for a grammy, but still not give a fuck and do this
*Update* Porter Robinson dropped our remix of Sad Machine on NYE
**They Let us into the Warehouse Project!?!?!**
Thanks to Hudson Mohawke we achieved the impossible. If you know anything about the warehouse project then you know that only the coolest music is ever allowed anywhere near the place
The biggest risk was Dougal and Myself closing the Warehouse project a few weeks ago. This wouldn’t have felt so nerve wracking if it was for the fact that we came on after Mark Ronson (Uptown fuck / anything by Amy Winehouse). Still, despite the +103939 BPM difference the floor remained active and up for it. We even got a write up by Vice Magazine here. Check the Quote
Seriously, we’ve never seen a group of people look so happy—even the security guard was finding it hard to keep his feet still
Check the video fam
**The Blogs have acknowledged us**
For my UK Hardcore people. The blog sites play a big part in the EDM Scene stateside. Consider them the ‘Ravin Eye’ of that world, its where people generally go for the news and gossip so believe me its important
We’ve had some pretty decent Mentions, check the links and quotes below
Happy Hardcore Is Massive: An Interview With Gammer (NestHQ)
people are ready for new sounds in the evolution of happy hardcore, especially in the states where it’s just beginning to pick up
Stonebank: He Never Lost His Hardcore (UKF)
Four million views can’t be wrong. As the EDM bubble bursts, there’s definitely a case for hardcore making more of a presence in the US
Hudson Mohawke Threw the Most Insane Warehouse Project Yet (Thump)
Seriously, we’ve never seen a group of people look so happy—even the security guard was finding it hard to keep his feet still
Where Are Ü Now (Darren Styles and Gammer Remix) (NestHQ)
music that’s fast, fun, euphoric, and not too serious. Coincidentally, legends of the scene, Darren Styles and Gammer have decided to label their latest remix under “happy hardcore”. It’s a rework of Jack Ü and Bieber’s “Where Are Ü Now” and it slaaaaays with a very similar energy to some of those earlier releases of the genre.
5 Reasons Why We Should Pay Attention to Happy Hardcore (UKF)
It’s certainly nothing new to take a pop tune and propel it into a totally new genre, although what Gammer and Darren Styles have done here is showcase their amazing creativity. The level of detail in their production is second to none. So much so Skrillex and Diplo elevated it from ‘cheeky bootleg’ to ‘official remix’.
**We’re doing alright on Beatport**
In 2015 - The top 2 Hard Dance artists are Happy Hardcore Producers
And 6 of the Top 10 tracks are Happy Hardcore
**Hardcore Promoters have taken more risks**
Promoters within the scene have continued to take big risks when it comes to putting on events
• HTID USA (Phoenix, AZ (USA) - Really pulled it out of the bag when they committed to a weekend-long rave with a more or less entirely international line up. PLUR was alive
• HTID In The Sun (Magaluf, Spain) - Only a few tickets from selling out. HTID re-imaged the week-long rave formula by relocating to magaluf. Were you there? Shit was insane
• Ravers Reunited returned to the well loved venue ‘The Emporium’ and packed it out with 1200 people!!!!!! Top Props
• Westfest Continue to give us a shot on the MainStage amongst some of the biggest acts in the country
**Everyone Does it For the Love**
Of course I haven’t forgotten about the scene itself. Alex Prospect has possible worked harder than anyone I know this year putting together his independent artist album
Billy Bunter has throw out a good chunk of artist albums. Like the Whizzkid album for example
Hardcore underground continue to support the lesser known artists with a constant flow of well produced albums. Thumpa should be given a medal for his support and passion for the freeform side of things
The flurry of new producers warms my heart, especially with the level of passion and time they’re putting into their productions.
**It continues to be most feel good music on the planet**
And I believe it. Its an awkward BPM and a nightmare for producers and DJs everywhere. But theres no denying that when the drop comes in, people just stop taking everything so seriously and end up enjoying themselves. Let me throw this quote in for the third time:-Image caption The sacred Aboriginal stone is only meant to be handled by male elders
A sacred stone not supposed to be seen by Aboriginal women has been withdrawn from a British auction following a public outcry in Australia.
The stone had been listed for sale at Canterbury Auction Galleries in Kent for up to £6,000 on Wednesday.
However on Tuesday night the Australian High Commission called the gallery to explain its significance.
It was withdrawn and efforts are being made to repatriate it to the Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory.
The stone, known as tjuringa, is used in the most profound ceremonies within Aboriginal culture and then secreted away, with only senior elders knowing how to retrieve it.
Tradition dictates that it must only be handled by Aboriginal male elders - and Aboriginal women who see it will be struck down and die.
Anthony Pratt, the managing director of the galleries said the stone had been brought in by a woman, who has not been identified, on regular valuation day in Sandwich, Kent.
'Revered'
"It wasn't quite what you'd expect to turn up in Sandwich. It's pretty unremarkable. It's not a work of art by any stretch.
"It's a flat, oval stone with a bit of decoration on the front. When I spoke to the high commissioner's personal assistant, they said that the vendor has good title to sell it.
"But they said it is revered and told me about its importance.
"We didn't want to offend anybody just for a sale so the decision was taken to withdraw it from the auction," he said.
The seller, also from the Sandwich area of Kent, was given the stone as a gift in 1961 by Archer Russell, an Australian naturalist and writer.
It is understood to date from some time before the 19th Century and belong to the Arrernte people of central Australia.
Bernice Murphy, the national director of Museums Australia, told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation: "It's more important to Aboriginal culture than the Elgin Marbles to Greece because this kind of object has a continuing religious association."JCPenney’s sales are still falling — just not as fast as they were before.
The flailing retailer gave that glass-half-full announcement Tuesday, hoping to ease Wall Street’s fears as the company scrambles to recover from ex-CEO Ron Johnson’s botched turnaround bid.
Penney said its comparable sales fell 4 percent in September, but noted that it was less steep than a nearly 10 percent drop in August.
CEO Mike Ullman, who took the helm in April, predicted sales trends will improve through the remainder of the year as a return to coupons and discounting lures back shoppers.
Penney said it expects to end the year with more than $2 billion on its balance sheet, following a $785 million stock issuance last month that caught investors off guard.
Penney’s battered shares — which have sunk to their lowest levels since the mid-1980s — rose as much as 7 percent on the news before losing nearly all of the gain to close at $7.77, up 6 cents, Tuesday.
Several analysts voiced skepticism about Penney’s upbeat report, raising doubts about Penney’s prospects in what promises to be a fiercely competitive holiday season.
Belus Capital Advisors analyst Brian Sozzi blasted the announcement as “just another cleverly worded press release designed to mask the truth.”William Carvalho has been awarded the newcomer of the year award by Sporting Lisbon after his breakthrough season in Portugal.
The 21-year-old has been strongly linked with a move to Manchester United after David Moyes repeatedly sent scouts over to watch him in action and although he has a €45 million release clause, interest is certainly building in him from United.
In Portugal’s crucial World Cup play-off against Sweden, Carvalho made his debut for the national side alongside Ronaldo as his progress continued this season, someone who he admits gave him advice on his future.
“Ronaldo gave me advice,” he said.
“He was really helpful and humble. It’s a dream to share a dressing room with him.”
Ronaldo himself made the move from Sporting Lisbon himself back in 2003 and Moyes needs to bring in some midfield reinforcement to improve the squad, so Carvalho could well move to Old Trafford.
He also spoke to Sporting Lisbon’s official magazine this week and admitted that he had ambitions to move to a big European club in the future.
“I’m sure I’ll continue to develop as a footballer if I keep up the hard work,” he said.
“I’ll never leave for an European club unless I know I’m good enough. At the moment I feel good at SCP. It’s here I want to be.
“Every footballer have the desire of playing at the best possible level. So do I.
“I’ve always dreamed of representing Sporting and I’ll never play for a different Portuguese club.”
Although his release clause is €45 million, Carvalho would likely leave Sporting Lisbon for less than that should a big European club come in with an offer and given how much United need another midfielder in the squad, Old Trafford could well be where he moves to.The creepiness appears to have peaked in the mid-1930s, about a decade after the parade first began. Most of the balloons, according to the pictures we found, floated fairly close to the ground. The ones that appeared high in the sky look smaller — but that could be a function of the photography. Most were photographed either near Columbus Circle (59th Street and Broadway, for those unfamiliar with New York) or down by the Macy's itself on 34th. But nearly all are bizarre. We segmented them into five categories.
There was a time when the balloons in the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade weren't inflated billboards for terrible movies and cartoons. Eighty years ago, the balloons were instead weird animals and dead-eyed people — suggesting that, for once, the dominance of marketing might have been a good thing.
MORE FROM THE WIRE:
Images below were adapted from the New York Public Library's collection; others, as identified, are from the Associated Press archives.
Disturbing animals
Associated Press
This "big cat" is from the 1931 parade, being dragged around by horrifying clowns, one of whom peers into the camera as if to warn you, the future observer, that you can never truly be safe.
New York Public Library
We think this is an alligator from the 1932 parade, but it could also be an animal we call the "murder raccoon."
New York Public Library
Christopher Columbus looks on as a pig — face furrowed deeply with lines of worry — floats past, its oddly-shaped nose constantly sniffing. (1932)
New York Public Library
Honorable mention: This chicken isn't scary, as such, but a 15-foot tall, unsmiling chicken isn't exactly cute.
Creepy humans
Camels may not get on that pilot's nerves, but the crying baby probably isn't terribly relaxing. (This is from 1932.)
Associated Press
There was a time (1930) when Americans gave thanks by watching wide-eyed disembodied heads float past their windows.
There is also an alarmed-looking woman holding something — a stick? She looks a bit like the mother from the Katzenjammer Kids.
Associated Press
This is Captain Nemo as seen in the 1929 parade, gloomily marching through Midtown on his hoof feet, lamenting the loss of his submarine.
Associated Press
From 1933, a clearly drunk butler falls on his face in the middle of Broadway.
New York Public Library
Merry Christmas from Uncle Sam.
Cute animals
Except for the weird star on his side, this is basically a regular dachshund at 100/1 scale. (1932)
Associated Press
The key to making alligators cute is the big round eyes. (1933)
New York Public Library
Or, maybe, the smile? The murder raccoon — which is otherwise pretty similar to this — has more of a sneer. This alligator looks happy.
New York Public Library
Same as the dachshund, although this cat looks as though it has been taxidermied.
Associated Press
Obviously a terrific photo, but also a very cute turkey that looks as though he's a bit bashful.
Things floating in the sky
One of these is, hands down, the creepiest image in the lot. You be the judge.
All via the New York Public Library.
Marketing opportunities
Even in the 1930s, there were still branded balloons.
New York Public Library
Felix, in 1932, and, of course:
Associated Press
In case you ever wondered how to make Superman look creepy, there you go. He looks like he just lost a fight with Bizarro Superman, and then had a few whiskeys.
This post originally appeared on The Wire.The M-388 Davy Crockett, also known as the Davy Crockett Atomic Battle Group Delivery System was a tactical nuclear warhead designed in the early 1960s for use as a deterrent or tactical defensive weapon in a theater nuclear war in Europe. It was named after David Crockett, the American folk hero who died defending the Alamo during the Texan War of Independence. It was produced in 1961-1962 and fielded in active service until 1971.
Contents show]
Development and usage
Developed from the proof of concept XW-51/54 nuclear devices of the Hardtack II tests, the Mark 54 and its warhead version, the W54 (used on the AIM-26 Falcon missile) became the lightest nuclear weapons in the United States' nuclear arsenal. It was produced from 1961-1962. About 400 warheads were produced before the system was retired in favor of cruise missile and artillery-based tactical systems. However, due to serious problems found within the launcher with its range and precision, it was never actually deployed into battle.
The M-388 Davy Crockett recoilless tactical nuclear launcher was a crew-served weapon that consisted of an XM-388 projectile launched from either a 120-millimeter (XM-28) or 155-millimeter (XM-29) recoilless rifle (the 120 millimeter version is shown here). This weapon had a maximum range of 2km (1.24 miles; 120 millimeter) to 4km (2.49mi; 155 millimeter). The XM-388 casing (including the warhead and fin assembly) weighed 35kg (76lbs), was 80cm (30´´) long and measured 28cm (11´´) in diameter (at its widest point). It is important to note that while the yield of the weapon is relatively small (ranging from only 10 tons to 1000 tons of TNT in production versions).
To give an idea of the explosive force involved, the Mark 1 gun-style fission bomb Little Boy dropped on Hiroshima produced a blast equivalent of between 12.5 and 15 kilotons (12,500 - 15,000 tons) of TNT. The small yield was necessitated by the launcher's relatively short range; any larger and the blast would likely injure or kill the men who fired it, as well as anybody around them. Nonetheless, the detonation of a Davy Crockett warhead is enough to disperse a substantial amount of nuclear fallout, and produce thermal effects far beyond those produced by conventional bombs.
During the Virtuous Mission, The Boss gave two experimental Davy Crockett warheads (with a vastly higher yield than conventional ones) and a launcher, that she acquired from a U.S. military base, to Colonel Volgin as a gift when she "defected" to the Soviet Union. Volgin then used one to destroy OKB-754, triggering an international dilemma, and leading to Operation Snake Eater. The Boss later used the second shell to obliterate Groznyj Grad and Graniny Gorki. These particular shells had a nuclear dispersal radius of at least three miles.[1]
The cases in which The Boss carried the Davy Crockett system would have, combined, weighed over 300 kilograms (nearly 700 pounds). The fact that she was able to carry the weapons cases indicated her strength. The same could be said of Volgin, who picked up the launcher and warhead (normally mounted on a heavy tripod) and fired it by hand.
Post-Snake Eater
Warning: The following information is from outside Hideo Kojima's core "Metal Gear Saga." It has some level of canonicity within the continuity, but reader discretion is advised.[?]
At some point, the Soviets managed to develop their own version of the Davy Crockett, copies of which were later stolen by the Department of Defense.
Main article: San Hieronymo Incident
During the San Hieronymo Incident, Cunningham had a Soviet-made Davy Crockett, which he intended to use on the Soviet missile base once Gene had launched the ICBMG, as a means to cover up the Pentagon's involvement in the incident. However, after being defeated in battle with Naked Snake, Cunningham decided to use the warhead to ensure that Snake died with him, even if it would ruin the Pentagon's plan of tarnishing the CIA's reputation. Before he could do so, an explosion resulting from his damaged flying platform sent the launcher and nuke flying out of his hands, where it landed harmlessly onto the cargo elevator beside Snake.
Non-"Metal Gear Saga" information ends here.
Post-San Hieronymo
By 1971, the usage and mass-production of the Davy Crockett was discontinued.
Appearances
Sources
Notes and referencesConvincenti segnali di disgelo: dopo Fast Racing NEO è RedOut a ridare speranza a un genere, quello dei giochi di guida arcade tutti neon e velocità ultraterrene, che sembrava essere rimasto, paradossalmente, fermo al palo. Il secondo gioco di 34BigThings, etichetta già responsabile di HyperDrive Massacre (gioco dalle ambizioni e dal taglio decisamente differenti), è l’evidente frutto del lavoro di chi è cresciuto tra Valparaiso e Mute City, abbozzando il logo Feisar sui libri tra i banchi di scuola e immaginando di poter affrontare una galleria con lo stesso piglio aggressivo di uno dei bolidi di Rollcage. RedOut è una lettera d’amore a un modo di intendere i giochi di corse (prima ancora che di guida) esplosivi, selvaggi e ipnotizzanti. Non è detto che tanta buona volontà sia sufficiente a raggiungere il risultato, così come non è garantito che basti essersi messi nel CV record su record tra WipEout 2097 e F-Zero X per tagliare subito in prima posizione il traguardo, al termine della prima prova di RedOut.
Proprio per nulla, perché RedOut va prima conosciuto, poi studiato, poi subìto, poi “risolto”. Quando scatta quel qualcosa, quando insomma si inizia a capire come girano i suoi ingranaggi e cosa serva per fondersi con il suo mondo che si scioglie attorno all’astronave, lanciata a 1000 km all’ora, il senso di esaltazione è totale. Il che testimonia, indiscutibilmente, la qualità del gioco di 34BigThings. Come i migliori nel suo genere, sa presentarsi in maniera crudele eppure elegante, ammantato di un suo fascino che in realtà pesca a piene mani da quegli universi futuristici sopra citati, ma che non di meno riesce a strappare applausi. Il tempo per godersi questo effetto di post-processing o quella bella costruzione poligonale è comunque ridotto allo scheletro. Continuano a volare schiaffi, con gli avversari che sfrecciano inclementi oltre ogni chicane, mentre al giocatore viene affidato il compito di controllare da vicino ogni guardrail futuristico. Impattando idealmente col setto nasale contro la visiera del casco.
Per stile e suggestioni, RedOut pare effettivamente il figlio illegittimo di WipEout, più che di qualsiasi altro peso massimo del genere. Con quel suo tono acido e volutamente spigoloso, con le sue barriere che come le corde di un ring elettrico assorbono (pur punendo) ogni curva mal calcolata dal pilota, con il design dei loghi, di altri elementi fittizi e dei menu che chinano la testa in direzione Designers Republic (e va bene così). Poi, però, scesi in pista, c’è di che sudare per capire come interpretare al meglio quello che, in effetti, non si limita a essere un WipEout con un altro nome. L’elemento di spicco, in questo senso, è rappresentato dal sistema di controllo, che gestisce l’idea degli aerofreni in maniera differente da quanto visto nel classico che fu di Psygnosis/Studio Liverpool. Lo schema definito, giustamente, “RedOut” prevede l’utilizzo dello stick analogico di destra per eseguire uno strafe dell’astronave. Ed è tutta lì la chiave: capire come farlo, quando farlo, quando smettere di farlo e poi tornare a premere furiosamente sul pulsante che fa esplodere i post-bruciatori (o quel che sono) delle varie astronavi, per schizzare a velocità ignorante verso l’ennesimo curvone e oltre quel dannato che si ostina a occupare la nostra terza, seconda, prima posizione.
Dopo un certo numero di brutte figure, ci sono arrivato anche io. Ed è in quel momento che la sinergia con RedOut è stata completa. Da lì in avanti io ho voluto bene a lui e lui ha continuato a tirarmi pesci in faccia, ma, ne sono certo, con maggiore rispetto umano e professionale. Perché fortunatamente non è sufficiente comprendere il modello di guida del gioco per assicurarsi le prime posizioni. Di certo aiuta, comunque, e dopo troppi fallimenti ho iniziato a mettermi al collo svariate medaglie d’argento, qualcuna d’oro e addirittura alcune di platino. Tutto fa brodo, perché ogni evento completato (a prescindere dal successo o meno) garantisce punti esperienza, che vanno ad accumularsi e consentono di passare di livello, sbloccando così altri eventi, raggiungendo una dopo l’altra le quattro classi di velocità disponibili, potendo accedere a nuove versioni delle astronavi o raccogliendo i fondi per installare potenziamenti strutturali o mod attive e passive “una tantum” sul proprio hyper-bolide. E questa è la modalità Carriera di RedOut.
La pista ghiacciata dell'Alaska e il suo basso tasso di amichevolezza.
Settantacinque prove organizzate attraverso 20 tracciati, cinque per ognuna delle quattro ambientazioni concepite dagli artisti di 34BigThings e fatte battere al ritmo di sette modalità di gioco. Non ci sono solo tornei |
a Wi-Fi connection, and then you can play it on your phone any time. Aaptiv Free Trial: If you sign up for a month of Aaptiv, you get a 7-day free trial of the app, so you can decide if you want to stay signed up or not.
If you think of a new program or have suggestion for the app, the good news is that Aaptiv is pretty responsive to user comments. In fact, if you go to their Ideas Portal, you can see plenty of others customers’ requests, and submit your own as well.
So now tell me – what do you do to stay fit on the road?
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Chelsea midfielder Ramires is confident he has put his injury nightmare behind him and is ready to help the team's bid to win four trophies this season.
Ramires has barely featured this term due to a painful thigh injury. He has started just three Premier League games, the last of which was against Liverpool two months ago.
But the Brazil international has finally made a full recovery and played his first full 90 minutes since August in the 3-0 victory over Watford in the FA Cup last week.
Chelsea have shown signs of fatigue in recent weeks as their pursuit of four competitions takes its toll, but Ramires says he is now in the right shape to aid their cause.
He said: "I am happy. I have been playing just five or 10 minutes before, but against Spurs I played for 45 minutes and Watford I played the full 90.
"I'm more confident because now I'm okay to play if Jose Mourinho needs me to play more games. I'm in the condition to do that.
"I have had to be patient. I stopped playing regularly for a long time and now for me it's very good to be playing more.
Chelsea's potential 'ins and outs' during the January transfer window 1 show all Chelsea's potential 'ins and outs' during the January transfer window 1/1 OUT: Kurt Zouma Reports in Turkey suggest that Besiktas are confident they have agreed a loan deal with Chelsea for the France Under-21 defender. Zouma has been playing second fiddle to John Terry and Gary Cahill in central defence, making just six starts. However, Mourinho rates the 20-year-old highly and needs him as back-up to the English duo. If he was allowed to leave, Mourinho would have to bring someone else in, which is counter productive. GETTY 1/1 OUT: Kurt Zouma Reports in Turkey suggest that Besiktas are confident they have agreed a loan deal with Chelsea for the France Under-21 defender. Zouma has been playing second fiddle to John Terry and Gary Cahill in central defence, making just six starts. However, Mourinho rates the 20-year-old highly and needs him as back-up to the English duo. If he was allowed to leave, Mourinho would have to bring someone else in, which is counter productive. GETTY
"I need to do more work to feel more well, but now I can help the team and I'm happy about that.
"It was a muscular injury in my abductor. It is a difficult area to get injured because all your movement depends on this. It was difficult for me because one day it felt very good, others not so good. But I try every day to help the team in games."
Ramires sees the fact that Chelsea have been able to cope without him so easily as a reason to be positive.
They currently lead the title race by two points, are in the semi-finals of the Capital One Cup, the last 16 of the Champions League and the FA Cup Fourth Round.
He added: "It's definitely a good problem to have, when the team has a lot of quality. A team that wants to win competitions and be champions can only gain from knowing that, if you change the players, you see others coming in who you know are not going to lose the momentum.
"The standard isn't going to drop because everyone in the squad has a lot of quality. It's very good for the coach and the squad to have that healthy competition among the players for positions."
Chelsea were only ahead of Manchester City in the Premier League on alphabetical order before the weekend, but the latter dropped back after drawing at Everton.
The two sides meet at Stamford Bridge on January 31st and Ramires, who has not won the title since moving to Stamford Bridge in 2010, feels Chelsea are better equipped to be crowned champions this time.
He said: "Last season we were okay but this season we have improved a lot compared to the last few seasons - everyone can see that.
"We were behind on points trying to catch teams in the past and now we're at the top of the League, even if Man City are right there with us. At this moment we know we only depend on ourselves.
"We have to make sure we get the three points in our home games and then we go to our away games trying to get more points and fight for the title. We are in a good position."To be fair, my only connection to SJWs is that I occasionally browse /r/TumblrInAction to remind myself how crazy the world can be. Regardless, I'd never use any of the wallpapers or materials used here and I cringe every time someone uses the phrase "pcmasterrace".
Regardless of how it's used here, the term "master race" unquestionably has a horrible past and specifically does refer to race regardless of what others have said here about not caring about " colour, creed or sexual preference
Imagine if instead it had been "PCMasterGender". 'Why would you use gender? It's got nothing to do with PC gaming: neither does race'. Of course it would be nonsense, just like "PCMasterRace" is. But you should still be able to see why some people might feel that it was exclusive... Why wouldn't they? We could have picked any other name to rally around and the name has no real meaning to PC gamers outside of a passing in-joke.
And even if I forget all of the above; I'd still feel awkward if I had a pcmasterrace laptop background out in public and an older vet, who neither has the time nor the mental capacity to understand the meaning behind it, saw it. I can only imagine how confused and upset that might make an older person to see language for which they only have one very upsetting context. And not the "I'm offended" kind of upset either. I honestly don't get why this subreddit clings to the name so strongly and honestly I think it'll one day be it's downfall if the community itself doesn't move on.
EDIT: to add something else.
I'm also well aware of course that it is a joke. It's a funny joke imo. I don't even find the joke particularly offensive. And I love offensive humour. I wish Tosh had never apologised for the rape joke. But the issue I see with the name is not it being used in this subredddit in context as a joke but when I see t-shirts, posters, stickers and fliers etc that will be seen by people who do not have the context.
To make a comparison, I think Tosh was well within his right to say "Wouldn't it be funny if like 5 guys just raped her right now", to the heckler complaining about rape jokes during his comedy sketch. You went to see an offensive comedian; there should be expectations. But if Tosh had just started walking round the street and shouting at random people that he thought they should be raped then I would think that was inappropriate.
I might still have no wish to legislate his choice to do that, assuming it wasn't harassment: freedom of speech. But I'd still say he was an asshole. And I feel much the same way about the whole PCMASTERRACE bit. Obviously it's no where near as bad as saying someone should be raped but I think taking the joke beyond it's context is dumb.Thank you for your service!
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*** Once you are validated and accepted into the program, please allow up to 5 working days to receive your confirmation and login credentials directly from FedVTE to gain access.Ahhhh, the remix category. Generally, people are polarized by this genre of music, loving or hating remixes with a furious passion. When pondering the more philosophical side of this category, a parallel (strange, and possibly dorky) thought continually crept into the forefront of my mind: the fluffernutter sandwich. A twist on the original peanut butter and jelly classic, the fluffernutter is peanut butter and marshmallow fluff - unexpected yet slightly familiar, delicious to fans and potentially unappealing to zealots of tradition. Whatever your preference -- fluffernutter or not -- our top ten remixes of 2011 is an amazing list, if we do say so ourselves. Check out the best remixes of 2011 (in our opinion) below, and be ready to brave some awesome collisions of unexpected yet fantastic unions.(Check out our complete collection of 100+ Abandoned Buildings, Places and Property.)
The European Union may appear on the surface to be a unified body but underneath each member country retains a unique and complex history. The rich stories of individual European nations can be read in part through the amazing abandoned buildings found across the continent. It is truly remarkable how intact some of these structures are even after centuries. From Finland to France, Belgium to Denmark and Poland to England here are seven amazing abandonments from all over Europe.
German Military and Hospital Complex
Berlin, Germany has been at the center of European history in many regards, most recently as the divided core of Germany before East and West reunification. This abandoned complex located in Beelitz (just outside of Berlin) dates back to the 19th century and was used by the Germans as a military hospital through the second World War. From the 1940s on it was continuously occupied and used as a military hospital by the Russians complete with a surgery, psychiatric ward and rifle range before being abandoned in the 1990s. During its years of operation, famous (or infamous) patients included Adolf Hitler and former East German leader Erich Honecker.
Belgian Beautiful Castle and Cathedral
Mesen, Belgium is the smallest town in Belgium with fewer than 1,000 residents. However, it is the home of one of the most beautiful abandoned castles one could imagine, built, rebuilt, modified and expanded from the 1500s onward. This gorgeous structure evolved from a defensive fortress to a boarding school over time before being abandoned in the middle of the 20th century. It has has decayed by natural means with very little outside interference or vandalism and conjures picturesque images of beautiful deserted buildings. Nonetheless, it is under threat of destruction. It seems that only in Europe, where such buildings are more abundant, could such a lovely structure be considered common enough to not necessarily warrant rehabilitation.
Danish Deserted Refrigeration Factory Complex
Copenhagen, Denmark has developed a rich tradition of industrial production in part due to its geography. Flanked on virtually all sides by water, it is no wonder this country has spawned many facilities like the refrigeration factory featured above. These pictures show the internal story of desertion, fire and other internal tales as well as the future plans for redevelopment on the site. Adjacent condos (shown in the last image) represent the likely direction of this abandoned property as waterfront real estate continues to replace old industrial uses.
English Abandoned Water Pumping Station
Ryhope, England is home to an abandoned water pumping station that almost seems like a retrofuturistic structure straight out of a cyberpunk novel. This deserted structure is a monument to the Victorian era of industrialization, dating back to the middle of the 19th Century. It was an important step in the modernization of clean water distribution in an era where urban densification and disease went hand in hand. Though the station is no longer in active use all of the machinery still works, a true testament to the capabilities of Victorian English engineers.
Finnish Abandoned Match Factory
Tempere, Finland is one of many places that saw considerable growth and prosperity during the industrial revolution. With a thriving Finnish timber industry came the matchstick factory featured above. Built between world wars, the factory was in continuous use until the mid-1970s at which point it switched industries with the times, become (among other things) an automobile plant for a period of time. Since being entirely abandoned the main building and surrounding structures have become hangouts for local teens as evidenced in the images above.
Polish Abandoned Chemical Factory Complex
Warsaw, Poland has had a long and trying history of war and strife. It is perhaps no wonder that even in the heart of a relatively prosperous Polish city one can still find a vast abandoned factory complex. This series of deserted structures began as an electric lamp production facility in the 1920s before being converted to construct radios for submarines by the Germans during World War II. It reverted to its old function after the war but was poorly managed and eventually abandoned altogether, with remnant containers of chemicals and other assorted scientific equipment left behind as a testament to its earlier uses.
French Abandoned Metro Station and Lines
Paris, France is notorious of late-running Metro trains due to frequent worker strikes – but perhaps less well known for its numerous abandoned Metro stations. Urban explorers manage to find their ways into some of these abandoned subway tunnels while others have been converted to new uses including (appropriately enough) official homeless shelters. Some of the tunnels can even be visited privately late at night in groups led by sanctioned rail-expert tour guides.
More Underground, Underwater and Other Wonders of the World
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Amazing Abandoned Cities, Places and Property of the World
7 Abandoned Wonders of the World
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7 Abandoned Wonders of the European UnionBy Alex Kirby, Climate News NetworkThis piece was first published at Climate News Network.
LONDON — Australians have received a stark warning that climate change is already increasing the intensity and frequency of extreme weather, posing serious and growing risks to people across the continent.
The country’s independent Climate Commission, established in 2011 to provide authoritative information on climate science and solutions, spells out the reasons which underlie its warning in a report, The Critical Decade: Extreme Weather.
It concludes that the world’s emissions of greenhouse gases will have to fall to almost nothing by 2050 in order to stabilise the climate. At the moment they are continuing to increase, with no sign that global agreement on reducing them is anywhere close.
The report singles out south-east Australia, with its many large towns and cities, as a region facing increased risk of extreme weather – heatwaves, droughts, bushfires and coastal flooding.
The Commission says regions across the south-east and south-west which are essential to Australian agriculture are likely to face a bigger drought risk.
There is also a high risk that recent extreme weather events – including cyclones – will become even more severe in coming decades, increasing the risks to human health, agriculture, infrastructure and the environment.
No time to waste
Strong action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions deeply and quickly, it says, is the only way to achieve a gradual halt to the trend to more extreme weather.
The report says: “How quickly and deeply we reduce global greenhouse gas emissions will greatly influence the severity of extreme events that our children, and especially our grandchildren, will experience. This is the critical decade to get on with the job.”
It gives some examples of what is already happening:
Heat: the number of record hot days in Australia has doubled since the 1960s. The summer of 2012/2013 was the hottest summer on record, with the hottest month and hottest day.
Rain: heavy rainfall has increased globally. Over the last three years Australia’s east coast has experienced several very heavy rainfall episodes, fuelled by record surface water temperatures in adjacent seas.
Drought: a long-term drying trend is affecting the south-west corner of Western Australia, which has experienced a 15% drop in rainfall since the mid-1970s.
Sea-level: the level has already risen 20 cm globally. This means that storm surges ride on sea levels that are higher than they were a century ago, increasing the risk of flooding along Australia’s coasts, where most of the population live. For instance, since 1950 Fremantle has experienced a three-fold increase in inundations.
Unrealistic ambitions
Some of Australia’s best-known natural features and ecosystems are threatened by climate change, the report says. Over the past three decades the Great Barrier Reef has suffered repeated bleaching from what it calls “underwater heatwaves”. The freshwater wetlands of Kakadu National Park are at risk from saltwater intrusion caused by rising sea level.
The report’s authors say the climate system has shifted, and is continuing to shift. Levels of greenhouse gases from burning fossil fuels have increased by around 40% since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, and the global climate system is warmer and moister than it was 50 years ago, making more frequent and more severe extreme weather likelier.
They say the climate system has strong momentum for further warming over the next few decades because of the greenhouse gases that have already been emitted and those that are still to come, making it “highly likely” that extreme weather will become even more severe in Australia.
Although 90 countries, representing 90% of global emissions, are committed to reducing their emissions and have programmes in place to achieve this, the report says, “much more substantial action will be required if we are to stabilise the climate by the second half of the century”.
To reach that target, global emissions must be cut to nearly zero by 2050, the authors say. Turn Down the Heat, a report on the latest climate science prepared for the World Bank and published in November 2012, said the world was on a path to a 4°C warmer world by the end of this century.
It said current greenhouse gas emissions reduction pledges would do little to reduce that much warming, which is at least twice as high as governments have agreed is the maximum acceptable for a stable climate.Xi Jinping Forever
Foreign and Chinese observers surprised at Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s maneuvers to shake up the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) — and at the same time arrogate powers of the party, state, and military to himself — may be in for another shock. Just two and a half years into his reign, Xi appears to be angling to break the 10-year-tenure rule for the country’s supreme leader, with the aim of serving longer than any Chinese ruler in decades.
According to three sources close to top CCP officials, Xi and several top aides are making plans to ensure that the strongman will rule until at least 2027, when he will still be a relatively sprightly 74 years old.
“Xi’s total dominance of the party-state-military apparatus — and the fact that he has so far not groomed any successor — indicates that he will remain China’s supreme ruler irrespective of whether he gives up his post of CCP general secretary in 2022,” said one of the sources, all three of whom asked to remain anonymous because of the sensitivity of discussing elite politics. While much could happen to derail Xi’s plans — including pushback from rivals, an international or domestic crisis, or health issues, among other things — Xi appears to be planning to stay in office for as long as he can.
Xi’s desire to rule for longer than a decade is best evidenced by his refusal to publicly groom potential successors. In China, leaders are often classified by their generation. Xi, a member of the fifth generation of leadership — a reference to cadres born in the 1950s — has failed to groom potential successors from the sixth or seventh generation.
Consider, by contrast, the actions of his predecessor Hu Jintao, CCP general secretary from 2002 to 2012, who was born in 1942 and was the core leader of the fourth generation. Not long after ascending to the elite Politburo Standing Committee (PBSC) in 1992, Hu started preparing to elevate fifth-generation cadres, including Xi Jinping (then Zhejiang province party secretary) and Li Keqiang (then Liaoning province party secretary and now China’s premier) to the 25-member ruling body, the Politburo. He also elevated slightly lower-ranking officials: By the mid 1990s, roughly 20 fifth-generation rising stars had achieved the rank of vice minister or above.
Equally significantly, in the years leading up to 2007’s 17th Party Congress, a major meeting that happens twice a decade, Hu picked roughly 30 sixth-generation rising stars and prepared them for major promotions.
By 2005, Hu and Jiang appear to have decided to install Xi and Li into the PBSC, as successors to Hu and then-premier Wen Jiabao. And by the end of 2005, a few dozen sixth-generation cadres had attained the rank of vice minister or higher.
If Xi were following the CCP’s tradition of injecting new blood into the ruling elite, he should by late 2015 promote a few dozen seventh-generation officials to ministers and vice ministers. However, only one seventh-generation cadre — Shanghai Vice Mayor Shi Guanghui (born 1970) — has attained the rank of vice minister since Xi came to office in November 2012. It seems very unlikely that he’ll elevate many more this year.
Xi seems poised to break another unwritten rule. Ever since the late 1980s, the top level of the party has unofficially followed the policy of qishang baxia, or “seven in, eight out”: A cadre 67 years of age or younger can still ascend to the PBSC, while one who is 68 or older cannot. At the major party congresses, held every five years, PBSC members 68 and over are expected to retire, while those under 68 can stay on. Of the current seven members of the PBSC, all but Xi and Li will be 68 or older by 2017 — and therefore should retire. But who will replace the ranks?
The three anonymous party sources indicate that at least three fifth-generation candidates who are confidants of Xi — Li Zhanshu (born 1950), Wang Huning (born 1955), and Zhao Leji (born 1957) — will likely ascend to the PBSC in 2017. More significantly, current PBSC member Wang Qishan (born 1948), the nation’s top graft-buster, would likely get a second term. This is even though Wang, a fellow princeling who has known Xi since the 1950s, will be 69 years old at the 19th Party Congress in 2017. That fifth-generation leaders will likely remain the bulwark of the party leadership until the 20th Party Congress in 2022 is another indication, the sources say, that Xi will try to stay on at least until the 21st Party Congress in 2027.
Given the expectation that a supreme leader should only remain in power for 10 years, how will Xi sidestep this entrenched tradition?
The Chinese constitution bars government ministers, including the prime minister, from serving more than 10 years. However, the CCP Charter — the Communist Party’s constitution — carries no stipulation about the length of service of cadres with ranks equivalent to minister or above. Instead, there’s an unofficial rule instituted by Deng Xiaoping, China’s paramount leader for most of the 1980s and 1990s, that members of the PBSC don’t serve more than 10 years.
But it’s possible that Xi could step down as president and still remain the country’s top official. In China, while the CCP and the government often appear to exist in parallel, the CCP in fact outranks and controls the government. For example, the top official in Hubei province is the province’s party secretary; the provincial governor ranks second. The same is true at the national level. Of Xi’s three titles – president, general secretary of the CCP, and chairman of the Central Military Commission (CMC), which oversees China’s military — the CCP position is by far the most important.
Besides holding onto the position of CCP general secretary, Xi has other options. One scenario is that Xi will revive the position of party chairman — which Deng abolished in 1982 in an apparent effort to weaken Mao’s legacy — and take the post himself. This would mean that the future general secretary would have to report to Xi, the party chairman.
Alternately, Xi could retire from the two top jobs of party general secretary and president but remain chairman of the CMC. There’s some precedent for this: Deng ruled China in the 1980s from his position as chairman of the CMC, and Jiang remained incredibly influential by holding onto that post for two years after he stepped down as president.
Moreover, in late 2013, just one year after gaining power, Xi created two super organs at the top of the party — the Central National Security Commission (CNSC) and the Central Leading Group for Comprehensively Deepening Reforms (CLGCDR) — which control the quasi police-state apparatus and economic policy, respectively. If Xi holds onto his chairmanship of the CMC and his two recently created organizations, whoever becomes general secretary of the CCP will likely have to defer to Xi.
Of course, Xi’s power grab — and his far-ranging anti-corruption campaign — could invite a ferocious pushback from members of rival CCP cliques. And having assumed control over domestic and foreign policy, Xi could find himself the scapegoat in an unexpected crisis at home or abroad.
Xi has a difficult task ahead of him. It’s possible that he will fail to consolidate power to a level that would allow him to remain in control past 2022. But Xi seems convinced that only a leader with supreme power — unencumbered by a fixed term in office — would ensure that China and the Communist Party will continue to prosper. And Xi seems convinced that he is the man to do it.
Feng Li/Getty ImagesPreview | Recap | Notebook
Bulls-Nets Preview
By SANTOSH VENKATARAMAN
Posted Mar 16 2011 3:40PM While the Chicago Bulls are atop the Eastern Conference on the strength of a seven-game win streak and the New Jersey Nets are still languishing near the bottom, Thursday night's matchup might not be a mismatch. That's because the Bulls may be short-handed as they to try to reverse their poor history in New Jersey against the Nets, who have won five straight. Chicago (48-18) has matched its longest win streak of the season as it tries to claim the No. 1 seed in the East over Boston and Miami. The Bulls are beginning a two-game trip to New Jersey (22-43) and Indiana. "We want to win every game we go into," guard Keith Bogans said. "We're not just going to say, 'We're playing so-and-so, we're playing this team.' They're an NBA team so they're capable of winning." It's unclear if the Bulls will have Carlos Boozer or Joakim Noah available after both missed Tuesday's 98-79 win over Washington. Boozer has missed the last three games with a sprained left ankle, and a timetable for his return has not yet been established. Noah sat out Tuesday because of flu-like symptoms. He was sent home from the team's shootaround in the morning after reporting that he wasn't feeling well, and the illness isn't believed to be serious. The Bulls have not won eight straight since a nine-game run March 19-April 2, 2005. They have lost 16 of their last 17 visits to New Jersey, and the Nets are on their longest win streak since a 14-game run March 12-April 6, 2006. "They're playing with a lot of confidence," Bulls forward Kurt Thomas said. "They feel they got a chance to get that eighth spot. We've just got to go in there and play our game, defend and hopefully we'll come out of there with a 'W.'" New Jersey is still a long shot to make the playoffs despite its recent strong play. The Nets did the Bulls a favor by winning 88-79 over the Celtics on Monday. Deron Williams had 16 points and nine assists as he returned after missing two games while his wife gave birth to the couple's fourth child. "I think we are playing good right now, we are jelling pretty well, having such a short time together. We're having fun," said Williams, acquired Feb. 23 from Utah. "These games are important right now, not only because we have a chance to make the playoffs, but for the future and going forward next year." Brook Lopez and Kris Humphries have keyed this win streak. Lopez is averaging 25.8 points on 56.8 percent shooting while Humphries is averaging 16.8 points and shooting 60.0 percent. "Five in a row, it's definitely something we haven't done this year, so it says something," Humphries said. Williams will be called upon to try to slow down MVP candidate Derrick Rose, averaging 25.4 points during the Bulls' win streak. The point guards met four times when Williams was with the Jazz. Their teams split those matchups, with Williams averaging 19.8 points and 10.3 assists and Rose at 24.3 points and 6.3 assists.
Copyright 2011 by STATS LLC and Associated Press. Any commercial use or distribution without the express written consent of STATS LLC and Associated Press is strictly prohibited Copyright 2011 by STATS LLC and Associated Press. Any commercial use or distribution without the express written consent of STATS LLC and Associated Press is strictly prohibited
Rose helps Bulls beat Nets for eighth straight win
Posted Mar 17 2011 10:57PM NEWARK, N.J. (AP) When the game got tight in the fourth quarter, Derrick Rose and the Chicago Bulls turned up their defensive pressure. And the streaking New Jersey Nets just couldn't keep up. Rose scored 21 points and the Bulls extended their longest winning streak in six years to eight games by holding the Nets to a season-low point total in an 84-73 victory Thursday night. "That's what we've been doing the whole year, playing defense," said Rose, who came up with a big steal and a layup in the closing minutes. "If our offense isn't going, and that rarely happens, we rely on our defense. That's what we did tonight, make it tough on them. At first, they were getting everything they wanted. Then we just closed down the paint and rebounded the ball." Chicago, which came into the game with the NBA's second-best defense allowing an average of 91 points, held the Nets to 35 percent shooting (29 of 83), including a 3-for-19 night from 3-point range. Rose also hounded Deron Williams on defense. Williams had been the catalyst of New Jersey's five-game winning streak, but he only managed five points on 1-of-12 shooting to go along with 11 assists. Williams has battled a wrist injury since being traded from Utah to New Jersey before the trading deadline, and he admitted it bothered him. But he said new coach Tom Thibodeau has turned the Bulls into a great defensive team. "We could have played a lot better and shot a lot better, 35 percent from the field is tough to win," Williams said. "But they're a good defensive team. That's what they pride themselves on." The Bulls (49-18) also are resilient. They blew a 14-point third-quarter lead before turning away the Nets after they tied it three times in the final 5:50. Chicago's eight-game winning streak is its longest since it won nine in a row between mid-March and early April 2005. This win gave the Bulls a half-game lead over idle Boston in the race for the best record in the Eastern Conference. "We know we still have a long way to go," said Luol Deng, who scored 19 points, including a go-ahead jumper with 3:58 to play. "We've got a great team. We've got guys who come off the bench and do a good job of carrying us. We're a deep team and we just have to keep on playing." Kyle Korver had seven of his 12 points in the final quarter and rookie reserve Omer Asik had 11 points and a career-high 16 rebounds. "We just want to take it step by step," Thibodeau said. "We don't want to get ahead of ourselves. We just want to concentrate on our improvement. If we do the right things every day, the results will take care of themselves." Brook Lopez scored 22 points for New Jersey, and Kris Humphries added 13 points and 16 rebounds. Lopez made two free throws with 4:06 to go to tie the game. Deng then came off a screen and hit a jumper to put the Bulls ahead for good. After the teams exchanged empty possessions, Rose stole a cross-court pass by Williams and scored on a drive to push the lead to 73-69 with 3:18 remaining. Anthony Morrow and Sasha Vujacic missed jumpers for New Jersey and Chicago took advantage. Korver hit a free throw after the Nets were called for an illegal defense and Joakim Noah, who was returning to the lineup after missing a game with flulike symptoms, went over Humphries for a rebound and scored for a 76-69 lead. After Vujacic scored on a goaltending call against Rose, Korver, who turned 30 on Thursday, hit a 3-pointer and Kurt Thomas converted a layup to put the game away. "We just couldn't score points tonight," Humphries said. "You look at the stat sheet and we shots in the 30s. We held them to a good amount of points and we just needed to turn it up offensively, but we weren't able to do that." Limited to 50 points in the first three quarters and only down by 10, the Nets made a run in the opening four minutes of the fourth, closing to 62-59 on a 3-pointer by Vujacic. The Bulls called timeout and quickly got Rose back in the lineup. The Nets kept it up but couldn't overcome Chicago, which won the rebounding battle 50-46. NOTES: Williams had dinner with his former Jazz teammate Korver on Wednesday.... Bulls F Carlos Boozer has missed four straight games with a sprained ankle.... The Bulls lead the season series 2-1.... Williams hit a runner at the end of the first quarter. It was originally ruled good but overturned after a videotape review.... The Bulls wore their St. Patrick's Day green uniforms.
Copyright 2011 by STATS LLC and Associated Press. Any commercial use or distribution without the express written consent of STATS LLC and Associated Press is strictly prohibited Copyright 2011 by STATS LLC and Associated Press. Any commercial use or distribution without the express written consent of STATS LLC and Associated Press is strictly prohibitedGuitar Messenger’s NAMM 2015 interview with Zakk Wylde began with a long black car with tinted windows pulling into the 7-11 parking lot where we’d been told to wait. After being whisked away from the convention grounds, we were welcomed as friends by Zakk in a spacious hotel room filled with unfamiliar gear bearing his trademark bullseye. After making himself a household name by destroying arenas with Ozzy Osbourne, charting his own path with Black Label Society, and partnering... Read More →
The past five years of Misha Mansoor’s career with progressive metal pioneers Periphery have been filled with exciting landmarks: tours with legendary bands like Dream Theater and Deftones, four varieties of a signature Jackson guitar, and now, a pair of high-charting albums on the Billboard Top 200. The band’s third full-length, the cinematic double-disc concept album Juggernaut: Alpha and Juggernaut: Omega, is actually their fifth release since 2010’s debut, Periphery. Filling out... Read More →
[Ryan’s Ibanez FR custom shop guitar is tuned down 2 whole steps to C Standard: C F Bb Eb G C] In this masterclass, Ryan breaks down his solo for the song ‘In Hell Is Where She Waits For Me,’ off The Black Dahlia Murder’s 2013 album, Everblack. The first part of the solo is played over a thrash riff alternating between C# and A notes. Although only single notes are being played in the rhythm guitar part, Ryan interprets the harmony as switching between C# minor and A7. Kicking off in measure 15, the second half of the solo switches… (Continue)
[Fredrik’s Paul Reed Smith Signature Model guitar is in Standard Tuning: E A D G B E] String-Skipping / Tapping Lick This lick utilizes both string-skipping and tapping techniques. Fredrik creates some interesting harmonic movement by outlining an Emin7 arpeggio, followed by a combination of Eaug(maj7) and Emaj7 arpeggios. He warns that “the tricky part is to mute the strings… it’s all about muting with this hand and that hand whenever you need to.” Pay special attention to ensure that all notes are cleanly separated and are not bleeding into one another when crossing strings. “When I tap, I tap with… (Continue)
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, a death-horse jingling with the trappings of divine honours!
Yea, a dying for many hath here been devised, which glorifieth itself as life: verily, a hearty service unto all preachers of death!
The state, I call it, where all are poison-drinkers, the good and the bad: the state, where all lose themselves, the good and the bad: the state, where the slow suicide of all—is called "life."
Just see these superfluous ones! They steal the works of the inventors and the treasures of the wise. Culture, they call their theft—and everything becometh sickness and trouble unto them!
Just see these superfluous ones! Sick are they always; they vomit their bile and call it a newspaper. They devour one another, and cannot even digest themselves.
Just see these superfluous ones! Wealth they acquire and become poorer thereby. Power they seek for, and above all, the lever of power, much money—these impotent ones!
See them clamber, these nimble apes! They clamber over one another, and thus scuffle into the mud of the abyss.
Towards the throne they all strive: it is their madness—as if happiness sat on the throne! Ofttimes sitteth filth on the throne—and ofttimes also the throne on filth.
Madmen they all seem to me, and clambering apes, and too eager. Badly smelleth their idol to me, the cold monster: badly they all smell to me, these idolaters.
My brethren, will ye suffocate in the fumes of their maws and appetites! Better break the windows and jump into the open air!
Do go out of the way of the bad odour! Withdraw from the idolatry of the superfluous!
Do go out of the way of the bad odour! Withdraw from the steam of these human sacrifices!
Open still remaineth the earth for great souls. Empty are still many sites for lone ones and twain ones, around which floateth the odour of the tranquil seas.
Open still remaineth a free life for great souls. Verily, he who possesseth little is so much the less possessed: blessed be moderate poverty!
There, where the state ceaseth—there only commenceth the man who is not superfluous: there commenceth the song of the necessary ones, the single and irreplaceable melody.
There, where the state ceaseth—pray look thither, my brethren! Do you not see it, the rainbow and the bridges of the Superman?—
Thus spake Zarathustra.
12. The Flies in the Market-Place
Flee, my friend, into thy solitude! I see thee deafened with the noise of the great men, and stung all over with the stings of the little ones.
Admirably do forest and rock know how to be silent with thee. Resemble again the tree which thou lovest, the broad-branched one—silently and attentively it o'erhangeth the sea.
Where solitude endeth, there beginneth the market-place; and where the market-place beginneth, there beginneth also the noise of the great actors, and the buzzing of the poison-flies.
In the world even the best things are worthless without those who represent them: those representers, the people call great men.
Little do the people understand what is great—that is to say, the creating agency. But they have a taste for all representers and actors of great things. Around the devisers of new values revolveth the world:—invisibly it revolveth. But around the actors revolve the people and the glory: such is the course of things.
Spirit, hath the actor, but little conscience of the spirit. He believeth always in that wherewith he maketh believe most strongly—in himself!
Tomorrow he hath a new belief, and the day after, one still newer. Sharp perceptions hath he, like the people, and changeable humours.
To upset—that meaneth with him to prove. To drive mad—that meaneth with him to convince. And blood is counted by him as the best of all arguments.
A truth which only glideth into fine ears, he calleth falsehood and trumpery. Verily, he believeth only in gods that make a great noise in the world!
Full of clattering buffoons is the market-place,—and the people glory in their great men! These are for them the masters of the hour.
But the hour presseth them; so they press thee. And also from thee they want Yea or Nay. Alas! thou wouldst set thy chair betwixt For and Against?
On account of those absolute and impatient ones, be not jealous, thou lover of truth! Never yet did truth cling to the arm of an absolute one.
On account of those abrupt ones, return into thy security: only in the market-place is one assailed by Yea? or Nay?
Slow is the experience of all deep fountains: long have they to wait until they know what hath fallen into their depths.
Away from the market-place and from fame taketh place all that is great: away from the market-place and from fame have ever dwelt the devisers of new values. Flee, my friend, into thy solitude: I see thee stung all over by the poisonous flies. Flee thither, where a rough, strong breeze bloweth!
Flee into thy solitude! Thou hast lived too closely to the small and the pitiable. Flee from their invisible vengeance! Towards thee they have nothing but vengeance.
Raise no longer an arm against them! Innumerable are they, and it is not thy lot to be a fly-flap.
Innumerable are the small and pitiable ones; and of many a proud structure, rain-drops and weeds have been the ruin.
Thou are not stone; but already hast thou become hollow by the numerous drops. Thou wilt yet break and burst by the numerous drops.
Exhausted I see thee, by poisonous flies; bleeding I see thee, and torn at a hundred spots; and thy pride will not even upbraid.
Blood would they have from thee in all innocence; blood their bloodless souls crave for—and they sting, therefore, in all innocence.
But thou, profound one, thou sufferest too profoundly even from small wounds; and ere thou hadst recovered, the same poison-worm crawled over thy hand.
Too proud art thou to kill these sweet-tooths. But take care lest it be thy fate to suffer all their poisonous injustice!
They buzz around thee also with their praise: obtrusiveness is their praise. They want to be close to thy skin and thy blood.
They flatter thee, as one flattereth a God or devil; they whimper before thee, as before a God or devil; What doth it come to! Flatterers are they and whimperers, and nothing more.
Often, also, do they show themselves to thee as amiable ones.
But that hath ever been the prudence of the cowardly. Yea! the cowardly are wise!
They think much about thee with their circumscribed souls—thou art always suspected by them! Whatever is much thought about is at last thought suspicious.
They punish thee for all thy virtues. They pardon thee in their inmsot hearts only—for thine errors.
Because thou art gentle and of upright character, thou sayest: "Blameless are they for their small existence." But their circumscribed souls think: "Blamable is all great existence."
Even when thou art gentle towards them, they still feel themselves despised by thee; and they repay thy beneficence with secret maleficence.
Thy silent pride is always counter to their taste; they rejoice if once thou be humble enough to be frivolous.
What we recognize in a man, we also irritate in him. Therefore be on your guard against the small ones!
In thy presence they feel themselves small, and their baseness gleameth and gloweth against thee in invisible vengeance.
Sawest thou not how often they became dumb when thou approachedst them, and how their energy left them like the smoke of an extinguishing fire?
Yea, my friend, the bad conscience art thou of thy neighbours; for they are unworthy of thee. Therefore they hate thee, and would fain suck thy blood.
Thy neighbours will always be poisonous flies; what is great in thee—that itself must make them more poisonous, and always more fly-like.
Flee, my friend, into thy solitude—and thither, where a rough strong breeze bloweth. It is not thy lot to be a fly-flap.—
Thus spoke Zarathustra.
13. Chastity
I love the forest. It is bad to live in cities: there, there are too many of the lustful.
Is it not better to fall into the hands of a murderer than into the dreams of a lustful woman?
And just look at these men: their eye saith it—they know nothing better on earth than to lie with a woman.
Filth is at the bottom of their souls; and alas! if their filth hath still spirit in it!
Would that ye were perfect—at least as animals! But to animals belongeth innocence.
Do I counsel you to slay your instincts? I counsel you to innocence in your instincts.
Do I counsel you to chastity? Chastity is a virtue with some, but with many almost a vice.
These are continent, to be sure: but doggish lust looketh enviously out of all that they do.
Even into the heights of their virtue and into their cold spirit doth this creature follow them, with its discord.
And how nicely can doggish lust beg for a piece of spirit, when a piece of flesh is denied it!
Ye love tragedies and all that breaketh the heart? But I am distrustful of your doggish lust.
Ye have too cruel eyes, and ye look wantonly towards the sufferers. Hath not your lust just disguised itself and taken the name of fellow-suffering?
And also this parable give I to you: Not a few who meant to cast out their devil, went thereby into the swine themselves.
To whom chastity is difficult, it is to be dissuaded: lest it become the road to hell—to filth and lust of soul.
Do I speak of filthy things? That is not the worst thing for me to do.
Not when the truth is filthy, but when it is shallow, does the discerning one go unwillingly into its waters.
Verily, there are chaste ones from their very nature; they are gentler of heart, and laugh better and oftener than you.
They laugh also at chastity, and ask: "What is chastity?
Is chastity not folly? But this folly came unto us, and not we unto it.
We offered that guest harbor and heart: now it dwelleth with us—let it stay as long as it will!"—
Thus spake Zarathustra.
14. The Friend
"One is always too many about me"—thinks the anchorite. "Always once one—that maketh two in the long run!"
I and me are always too deeply in conversation: how could it be endured, if there were not a friend?
The friend of the anchorite is always the third one: the third one is the cork which prevents the conversation of the two sinking into the depth.
Ah! there are too many depths for all anchorite. Therefore, do they long so much for a friend and for his elevation.
Our faith in others betrayeth that we would fain have faith in ourselves. Our longing for a friend is our betrayer.
And often with our love we want merely to overleap envy. And often we attack and make ourselves enemies, to conceal that we are vulnerable.
"Be at least my enemy!"—thus speaketh the true reverence, which dares not venture to solicit friendship.
If one would have a friend, then must one also be willing to wage war for him: and in order to wage war, one must be capable of being an enemy.
One ought still to honour the enemy in one's friend. Canst thou go nigh unto your friend, and not go over to him?
In one's friend one shall have one's best enemy. Thou shalt be closest unto him with thy heart when thou withstandest him.
Thou wouldst wear no raiment before thy friend? It is in honour of thy friend that thou showest thyself to him as thou art? But he wisheth thee to the devil on that account!
He who maketh no secret of himself shocketh: so much reason have ye to fear nakedness! Aye, if ye were gods, ye could then be ashamed of clothing!
Thou canst not adorn thyself fine enough for thy friend; for thou shalt be unto him an arrow and a longing for the Superman.
Sawest thou ever thy friend asleep—and know how he looketh? What is usually the countenance of thy friend? It is thine own countenance, in a coarse and imperfect mirror.
Sawest thou ever thy friend asleep? Wert thou not dismayed at thy friend looking so? O my friend, man is something that hast to be surpassed.
In divining and keeping silence shall the friend be a master: not everything must thou wish to see. Thy dreams shall disclose unto thee what thy friend doeth when awake.
Let thy pity be a divining: to know first if thy friend wanteth pity. Perhaps he loveth in thee the unmoved eye, and the look of eternity.
Let thy pity for thy friend be hid under a hard shell; thou shalt bite out a tooth upon it. Thus will it have delicacy and sweetness.
Art thou pure air and solitude and bread and medicine to thy friend? Many a one cannot loosen his own fetters, but is nevertheless his friend's emancipator.
Art thou a slave? Then thou canst not be a friend. Art thou a tyrant? Then thou canst not have friends.
Far too long have slave and tyrant been concealed in woman. On that account woman is not yet capable of friendship: she knows only love.
In woman's love there is injustice and blindness to all she does not love. And even in woman's conscious love, there is still always attack and lightning and night, along with the light.
As yet woman is not capable of friendship: women are still cats and birds. Or at best, cows.
As yet woman is not capable of friendship. But tell me, you men, who of you is capable of friendship?
Oh! your poverty, you men, and your sparingness of soul! As much as you give to your friend, I will give even to my enemy, and will not become poorer for it.
There is comradeship: may there be friendship!
Thus spoke Zarathustra.
15. The Thousand and One Goals
Many lands saw Zarathustra, and many peoples: thus he discovered the good and bad of many peoples. No greater power did Zarathustra find on earth than good and bad.
No people could live without first valuing; if a people will maintain itself, however, it must not value as its neighbor valueth.
Much that passed for good with one people was regarded with scorn and contempt by another: thus I found it. Much I found here called bad, which was there decked with purple honors.
Never did the one neighbor understand the other: ever did his soul marvel at his neighbor's delusion and wickedness.
A tablet of excellences hangeth over every people. Lo! it is the tablet of their triumphs; behold, it is the voice of their Will to Power.
It is laudable, what they think hard; what is indispensable and hard they call good; and what relieveth in the direst distress, the unique and hardest of all,—they extol as holy.
Whatever makes them rule and conquer and shine, to the dismay and envy of their neighbors, they regard as the high and foremost thing, the test and the meaning of all else.
Verily, my brother, if thou only knewest but a people's need, its land, its sky, and its neighbor, then you wouldst devine the law of its surmountings,, and why it climbth up that ladder to its hope.
"Always shall thou be the foremost and prominent above all others: no one shall thy jealous soul love, except the friend"— that made the soul of a Greek thrill: thereby went he his way to greatness.
"To speak truth, and be skilful with bow and arrow"—so seemed it alike pleasing and hard to the people from whom cometh my name—the name which is alike pleasing and hard to me.
"To honour father and mother, and from the root of the soul to do their will"—this table of surmounting hung another people over them, and became powerful and permanent thereby.
"To have fidelity, and for the sake of fidelity to risk honour and blood, even in evil and dangerous courses"—teaching itself so, another people mastered itself, and thus mastering itself, became pregnant and heavy with great hopes.
Verily, men have given unto themselves all their good and bad. Verily, they took it not, they found it not, it came not unto them as a voice from heaven.
Values did man only assign to things in order to maintain himself—he created only the significance of things, a human significance! Therefore, calls he himself "man," that is, the valuator.
Valuing is creating: hear it, ye creating ones! Valuation itself is the treasure and jewel of all valued things.
Through valuation only is there value; and without valuation the nut of existence would be hollow. Hear it, ye creating ones!
Change of values—that means, change of the creating ones. Always doth he destroy, who hath to be a creator.
Creating ones were first of all peoples, and only in late times individuals; verily, the individual himself is still the latest creation.
Peoples once hung over them tables of the good. Love which would rule and love which would obey, created for themselves such tables.
Older is the pleasure in the herd than pleasure in the ego: and as long as the good conscience is for the herd, the bad conscience only saith: "ego".
The crafty ego, the loveless one, that seeks its advantage in the advantage of many—it is not the origin of the herd, but its downfall.
It was always loving ones and creators that created good and bad. Fire of love gloweth in the names of all the virtues, and fire of wrath.
Many lands saw Zarathustra, and many peoples: no greater power did Zarathustra find on earth than the creations of the loving ones—"good" and "bad" are their names.
Verily, a prodigy is this power of praising and blaming. Tell me, ye brethren, who will master it for me? Who will put a fetter upon the thousand necks of this animal?
A thousand goals have there been hitherto, for a thousand peoples have there been. Only the fetter for the thousand necks is still lacking; there is lacking the one goal. As yet humanity has not a goal.
But pray tell me, my brethren, if the goal of humanity be still lacking, is there not still lacking—humanity itself?—
Thus spoke Zarathustra.
16. Neighbour Love
Ye crowd around your neighbor, and have fine words for it. But I say to you: your neighbor-love is your bad love of yourselves.
You flee unto your neighbor from yourselves, and would rather make a virtue of it: but I fathom your "unselfishness."
The Thou is older than the I; the Thou has been consecrated, but not yet the I: so man presses near to his neighbor.
Do I advise you to neighbor-love? Rather do I advise you to neighbor-flight and to furthest love!
Higher than love of your neighbor is love to the furthest and future ones; higher still than love to men, is love to things and phantoms.
The phantom that runs on before thee, my brother, is fairer than thou; why dost thou not give unto it thy flesh and thy bones? But thou fearest, and runnest unto thy neighbor.
Ye cannot endure it with yourselves, and do not love yourselves sufficiently: so ye seek to mislead your neighbor into love, and would fain gild yourselves with his error.
Would that ye could not endure it with any kind of near ones, or their neighbors; then would ye have to create your friend and his overflowing heart out of yourselves.
Ye call in a witness when ye want to speak well of yourselves; and when ye have misled him to think well of you, ye also think well of yourselves.
Not only does he lie, who speaketh contrary to his knowledge, but more so, he who speaketh contrary to his ignorance. And thus speak ye of yourselves in your intercourse, and belie to your neighbor with yourselves.
Thus says the fool: "Association with men spoils the character, especially when one hath none."
The one goeth to his neighbor because he seeketh himself, and the other because he would fain lose himself. Your bad love of yourselves makes solitude a prison to you.
The farthest ones are they who pay for your love to the near ones; and when there are five of you together, a sixth must always die.
I love not your festivals either: too many actors found I there, and even the spectators often behaved like actors.
Not the neighbor do I teach you, but the friend. Let the friend be the festival of the earth to you, and a foretaste of the Superman.
I teach you the friend and his overflowing heart. But one must know how to be a sponge, if one would be loved by over-flowing hearts.
I teach you the friend in whom the world stands complete, a capsule of the good,—the creating friend, who hath always a complete world to bestow.
And as the world unrolled itself for him, so rolleth it together again for him in rings, as the growth of good through evil, as the growth of purpose out of chance.
Let the future and the furthest be the motive of thy today; in thy friend you shall love the Superman as thy motive.
My brethren, I advise you not to neighbor-love—I advise you to furthest love!—
Thus spoke Zarathustra.
17. The Way of the Creating One
Wouldst thou go into isolation, my brother? Wouldst thou seek the way unto thyself? Tarry yet a little and hearken unto me.
"He who seeketh may easily get lost himself. All isolation is wrong": so say the herd. And long didst thou belong to the herd.
The voice of the herd will still echo in you. And when thou sayest, "I have no longer a conscience in common with you," then will it be a plaint and a pain.
Lo, that pain itself did the same conscience produce; and the last gleam of that conscience still gloweth on thine affliction.
But thou wouldst go the way of your affliction, which is the way unto thyself? Then show me thine authority and thy strength to do so!
Are you a new strength and a new authority? A first motion? A self-rolling wheel? Canst thou also compel the stars to revolve around thee?
Alas! there is so much lusting for loftiness! There are so many convulsions of the ambitions! Show me that thou are not a lusting and ambitious one!
Alas! there are so many great thoughts that do nothing more than the bellows: they inflate, and make emptier than ever.
Free, do you call thyself? Thy ruling thought would I hear of, and not that thou hast escaped from a yoke.
Art thou one entitled to escape from a yoke? Many a one hath cast away his final worth when he hath cast away his servitude.
Free from what? What doeth that matter to Zarathustra! Clearly, however, stall thine eye show unto me: free for what?
Canst thou give unto thyself thy bad and thy good, and set up thy will as a law over thee? Canst thou be judge for thyself, and avenger of thy law?
Terrible is aloneness with the judge and avenger of one's own law. Thus is a star projected into desert space, and into the icy breath of aloneness.
To-day sufferest thou still from the multitude, thou individual; to-day hast thou still thy courage unabated, and thy hopes.
But one day will the solitude weary thee; one day will thy pride yield, and thy courage quail. Thou wilt one day cry: "I am alone!"
One day wilt thou see no longer thy loftiness, and see too closely thy lowliness; thy sublimity itself will frighten thee as a phantom. Thou wilt one day cry: "All is false!"
There are feelings which seek to slay the lonesome one; if they do not succeed, then must they themselves die! But art thou capable of this—to be a murderer?
Hast thou ever known, my brother, the word "disdain"? And the anguish of thy justice in being just to those that disdain thee?
Thou forcest many to think differently about thee; that, charge they heavily to thine account. Thou camest nigh unto them, and yet wenteth past: for that they never forgive thee.
Thou goest beyond them: but the higher thou risest, the smaller doth the eye of envy see thee. Most of all, however, is the flying one hated.
"How could ye be just unto me!"—must thou say—"I choose your injustice as my allotted portion."
Injustice and filth cast they at the lonesome one: but, my brother, if thou wouldst be a star, thou must shine for them none the less on that account!
And be on thy guard against the good and just! They would fain crucify those who devise their own virtue—they hate the lonesome ones.
Be on thy guard, also, against holy simplicity! All is unholy to it that is not simple; fain, likewise, would it play with the fire—of the fagot and the stake.
And be on thy guard, also, against the assaults of thy love! Too readily doth the recluse reach his hand to any one he meeteth him.
To many a one mayest thou not give thy hand, but only thy paw; and I want thy paw to have claws.
But the worst enemy thou canst meet, wilt thou thyself always be; thou waylayeth thyself in caverns and forests.
Thou lonesome one, thou goest the way to thyself! And past thyself and thy seven devils leadeth thy way!
A heretic wilt thou be to thyself, and a wizard and a soothsayer, and a fool, and a doubter, and a reprobate, and a villain.
Ready must thou be to burn thyself in thine own flame; how couldst thou become new if thou have not first become ashes!
Thou lonesome one, thou goest the way of the creating one: a God wilt thou create for thyself out of thy seven devils!
Thou lonesome one, thou goest the way of the loving one: thou lovest thyself, and on that account you despisest thyself, as only the loving ones despise.
To create, desireth the loving one, because he despiseth! What knoweth he of love who hath not bee obliged to despise just what he loved!
With thy love, go into thine isolation, my brother,and with thy creating; and late only will justice limp after thee.
With my tears, go into thine isolation, my brother. I love him who seeketh to create beyond himself, and thus succumbeth.—
Thus spoke Zarathustra.
18. Old and Young Women
Why stealeth thou along so furtively in the twilight, Zarathustra? And what hideth thou so carefully under thy mantle?
Is it a treasure that hath been given thee? Or a child that hath been born thee? Or goeth thou thyself on a thief's errand, thou friend of the evil?—
Verily, my brother, said Zarathustra, it is a treasure that hath been given me: it is a little truth which I carry.
But it is naughty, like a young child; and if I hold not its mouth, it screameth too loudly.
As I went on my way alone today, at the hour when the sun declineth, there met me an old woman, and she spake thus unto my soul:
"Much has Zarathustra spoken also to us women, but never spake he to us concerning woman."
And I answered her: "Concerning woman, one should only talk unto men."
"Talk also unto me of woman," said she; "I am old enough to forget it presently."
And I obliged the old woman and spake thus unto her:
Everything in woman is a riddle, and everything in woman hath one answer—it is called pregnancy.
Man is for woman a means: the purpose is always the child. But what is woman for man?
Two different things wanteth the true man: danger and diversion. Therefore he wanteth woman, as the most dangerous plaything.
Man shall be trained for war, and woman for the recreation of the warrior: all else is folly.
Too sweet fruits—these the warrior liketh not. Therefore liketh he woman;—bitter is even the sweetest woman.
Better than man doeth woman understand children, but man is more childish than woman.
In the true man there is a child hidden: it wanteth to play. Up then, ye women, and discover the child in man!
A plaything let woman be, pure and fine like the precious stone, illumined with the virtues of a world not yet come.
Let the beam of a star shine in your love! Let your hope say: "May I bear to the Superman!"
In your love let there be valour! With your love shall ye assail him who inspireth you with fear!
In your love be your honour! Little doth woman understand otherwise about honour. But let this be your honour: always to love more than you are loved, and never to be second.
Let man fear woman when she loveth: then she maketh every sacrifice, and everything else she regardeth as worthless.
Let man fear woman when she hateth: for man in his innermost soul is merely evil; woman, however, is mean.
Whom hateth woman most?—Thus spoke the iron to the magnet: "I hate thee most, because thou attractest, but art too weak to draw unto thee."
The happiness of man is, "I will." The happiness of woman is, "He will."
"Lo! "Lo! now hath the world become perfect!"—thus thinks every woman when she obeyeth with all her love.
Obey must the woman, and find a depth for her surface. Surface is woman's soul, a mobile, stormy film on shallow water.
Man's soul, however, is deep, its current gusheth in subterranean caverns: woman surmiseth its force, but comprehendeth it not.—
Then answered me the old woman: "Many fine things hath Zarathustra said, especially for those who are young enough for them.
Strange! Zarathustra knoweth little about woman, and yet he is right about them! Does this happen, because with woman nothing is impossible?
And now accept a little truth by way of thanks! I am old enough for it!
Swaddle it up and hold its mouth: otherwise it will scream too loudly, the little truth."
"Give me woman, your little truth!" I said. And thus spake the old woman:
"Thou goest to women? Do not forget thy whip!"—
Thus spoke Zarathustra.
19. The Bite of the Adder
One day had Zarathustra fallen asleep under a fig-tree, owing to the heat, with his arm over his face. And there came an adder and bit him in the neck, so that Zarathustra screamed with pain. When he had taken his arm from his face he looked at the serpent; and then did it recognize the eyes of Zarathustra, wriggled awkwardly, and tried to get away. "Not at all," said Zarathustra, "as yet hast thou not received my thanks! Thou hast awakened me in time; my journey is yet long." "Your journey is short," said the adder sadly; "my poison is fatal." Zarathustra smiled. "When did ever a dragon die of a serpent's poison?"—said he. "But take thy poison back! Thou art not rich enough to present it to me." Then the adder fell again on his neck, and licked his wound.
When Zarathustra once told this to his disciples they asked him: "And what, O Zarathustra, is the moral of thy story?" And Zarathustra answered them thus:
The destroyer of morality, the good and just call me: my story is immoral.
When, however, ye have an enemy, then return him not good for evil: for that would abash him. But prove that he hath done something good to you.
And rather be angry than abash anyone! And when you are cursed, it pleaseth me not that ye should desire to bless. Rather curse a little also!
And should a great injustice befall you, then do quickly five small ones besides. Hideous to behold is he whom injustice presseth alone.
Did you know this? A shared injustice is half justice. And he who can bear it, should take the injustice upon himself!
A small revenge is humaner than no revenge at all. And if the punishment be not also a right and an honour to the transgressor, I do not like your punishment.
Nobler is it to own oneself in the wrong than to establish one's right, especially if one be in the right. Only, one must be rich enough to do so.
I do not like your cold justice; out of the eye of your judges there always glanceth the executioner and his cold steel.
Tell me: where find we justice, which is love with seeing eyes?
Devise me, then, the love which not only beareth all punishment, but also all guilt!
Devise me, then, the justice which acquiteth every one, except the judges!
And would ye hear this likewise? To him who seeketh to be just from the heart, even the lie becometh philanthropy.
But how could I be just from the heart! How can I give every one his own! Let this be enough for me: I give unto every own mine own.
Finally, my brethen, guard against doing wrong to any anchorite. How could a anchorite forget! How could he requite!
Like a deep well is a anchorite. Easy it is to throw in a stone: if it sinks to the bottom, however, tell me, who will bring it out again?
Guard against injuring the anchorite! If you have done so however, well then kill him also!—
Thus spoke Zarathustra.
20. Child and Marriage
I have a question for thee alone, my brother: like a sounding-lead, cast I this question into thy soul, that I may know its depth.
Thou art young, and desirest child and marriage. But I ask thee: Art thou a man entitled to desire a child?
Art thou the victorious one, the self-conqueror, the ruler of thy passions, the master of thy virtues? Thus do I ask thee.
Or does the animal speak in thy wish, and necessity? Or isolation? Or discord in thee?
I would have thy victory and freedom long for a child. Living monuments shalt thou build to thy victory and emancipation.
Beyond thyself shalt thou build. But first of all must thou be built thyself, rectangular in body and soul.
Not only onward shalt thou propagate thyself, but upward! For that purpose may the garden of marriage help thee!
A higher body shalt thou create, a first movement, a spontaneously rolling wheel—a creating one shalt thou create.
Marriage: so call I the will of the twain to create the one that is more than those who created it. The reverence for one another, as those exercising such a will, call I marriage.
Let this be the significance and the truth of thy marriage. But that which the many-too-many call marriage, those superfluous ones—ah, what shall I call it?
Ah, the poverty of soul in the twain! Ah, the filth of soul in the twain! Ah, the pitiable self-complacency in the twain!
Marriage they call it all; and they say their marriages are made in heaven.
Well I do not like it, that heaven of the superfluous! No, I do not like them, those animals tangled in the heavenly toils!
Far from me also be the God who limpeth thither to bless what he hath not matched!
Laugh not at such marriages! What child has not had reason to weep over its parents?
Worthy did this man seem, and ripe for the meaning of the earth: but when I saw his wife, the earth seemed to me a home for madcaps.
Yea, I would that the earth shook with convulsions when a saint and a goose mate with one another.
This one went forth in quest of truth as a hero, and at last got for himself a small dressed-up lie: his marriage he calleth it.
That one was reserved in intercoulse and chose choicely. But one time he spoilt his company for all time: his marriage he calleth it.
Another sought a handmaid with the virtues of an angel. But all at once he became the handmaid of a woman, and now would he need also to become an angel.
Careful, have I found all buyers, and all of them have astute eyes. But even the most astutest of them buyeth his wife in a sack.
Many short follies—that is called love by you. And your marriage putteth an end to your many short follies, with one long stupidity.
Your love of woman, and woman's love of man—ah, would that it were sympathy for suffering and veiled deities! But generally two animals alight on one another.
But even your best love is only an enraptured simile and a painful ardour. It is a torch to light loftier paths for you.
Beyond yourselves shall ye love some day! Then learn first of all to love. And on that account ye had to drink the bitter cup of your love.
Bitterness is in the cup even of the best love; thus doth it cause longing for the Superman; thus doth it cause thirst in thee, the creating one!
Thirst in the creating one |
many new distributed algorithms for collective search, and to learn about how evolution has shaped collective behavior in response to local conditions. It would be especially interesting to examine the search behavior of the many tropical ant species whose behavior has never been studied.
Author Contributions
SMC supervised the design of the arena, set up the experiment, wrote the protocols, and loaded the ants for the ISS (several times due to postponements of the flights), conducted the ground controls.; MCS performed the video analysis to extract the trajectories of the ants from video; both SPC and FRA contributed to data analysis and produced some of the figures; MJG collected some of the ants and advised on maintaining T. caespitum in the laboratory; MV collected some of the ants; DMG designed the experiment, participated in the design of the arena, supervised and did some of the data analysis, and wrote the manuscript.
Conflict of Interest Statement
The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.
Acknowledgments
We thank Taylor Prentice and Eleanor Spicer Rice for their help in collecting the ants, and Clint Penick for his advice in housing and feeding the ants. The experiment would not have been possible without the excellent work of Jacob Burrows Freeman in designing and constructing the arenas. We would also like to thank NASA and the Center for the Advancement of Science in Space for sponsoring this experiment, as well as the staff at BioServe Space Technologies. We are very grateful to the astronauts, Rick Mastracchio and Micheal Hopkins, for their careful attention in conducting the experiment on the ISS.
Supplementary Material
The Supplementary Material for this article can be found online at: http://www.frontiersin.org/journal/10.3389/fevo.2015.00025/abstract
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Your account has received a permanent suspension following an extensive audit of in-game behavior within recent League of Legends matches.
Here are some chat logs that were identified as negative by other players in the community. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ typing u meant?
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why we dont do that
yasuo stop farming go mid
if yasuo doesnt group we cant win actually
yasuo stop troll go mid
had to waste ult bcs yasuo just didnt want to stay with me
there is a chance to win if yasuo just groups up
there is still some chance
yasuo why u never with team always jungling
always
why suicide
i was alive
so im doing my job
with 200 hp
i done my job we lost and i go b
i did all i had
definetly more than u
i will for sure
we had a hope to win but yasuo cant find what to buy
im crying how we can lose this
easiest game of my life
dont fight
they were all in 5 as group for a moment but yasuo was too far and i couldnt ult
well atleast im the best in this team :P
np i can lose one game in 4
yasuo afk again :/
ye but yas half game afk
and when we group always yasuo splits
and i cant ult
and we lose
yasuo if u got boosted atleast train in normals
gg wp
i dont know how could this be lose
yasuo + malph how its even possible to lose
gg :/
ia am happy that im not part of this
report toxic kalista nami yasuo and tf
urf boring
u cant improve in it
hehe u can report me but tribunal checks the chat logs
tf just report out of air bcs u are raging wont do anything :)
rengar mute me im used to typing in all lel
ok
hmm maybe
ah i tried
geegee
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Is this email legit? UnsubscribeBecause of the changes to the Spore Crawler, the Zerg versus Zerg match up has started moving away from MutaWars and back into the Roach Hydra play that has been so dominant during the later periods of WoL. A popular build on the Korean ladder right now is the gasless Roach opening where the Zerg skips Zergling speed and Banelings in order to put out Roaches and upgrades as soon as possible.
Team Liquid player Snute has included his own spin on the build affectively known as the Snute build. Instead of an upgrade lead, Snute’s build focuses on a +1 Attack Roach timing attack that’s designed to deal damage at the very least deny his third. Snute also skips the Carapace upgrade in favor of more Roaches.
The Build
Standard Opening (pool to hatch, hatch pool)
Queen
21 supply (3:45) 1st Gas
2 more Queens (After first inject, move first queen to natural for tumor)
@128 gas – Evolution Chamber, +1 Ranged Attack when finished
@158 gas – Lair
When Lair is at 25/80 seconds - Roach Warren
When Main and Natural is saturated, 2nd and 3rd gas
When Roach Warren and Lair completes, Roach speed
PROS
- Earlier upgrades will give you more windows for timing attacks
- You will have better economy than your opponent
CONS
- Vulnerable to a Speedling-Baneling all-in
- Can be vulnerable to early Speedling attacks
- Skips Carapace upgrades so a longer game can be very difficult to play
Playing the Build
Your third base is dependent on what your opponent is doing. Normally, you start your third as you move out for your +1 timing attack. Scouting will be extremely important at this stage. If he is doing a standard double Evochamber gasless build and you see that he is not researching Zergling speed, you can take your 3rd after you start your Lair. Alternatively, you can research Zergling speed before the +1 Attack and Lair if you see your opponent taking his third early. If you’ve managed to get your third down, try and put 10 drones in your third so that you can have more mining time than your opponent.
After putting about 10 drones in your third, start massing Roaches. Snute doesn’t get Carapace upgrades in favor of more Roaches and an earlier +2 Ranged Attack and prefers to delay the upgrade after you are done with +2 Ranged Attack.
A later third from your opponent will mean that he’s been making Roaches as well. Make sure to just pressure or at least cancel his third and back off. Try to hit a +2 timing since your +2 will be earlier than his.
Versus a Speedling Baneling all-in, you should abandon your third and wall of your front. Start producing roaches as soon as possible. If you hold the attack with minimal losses, you will be ahead because your +1 should finish soon. If you did not scout the all-in up until it’s knocking at your door, you will probably lose the game so scouting will be key. Having a Spine will help as well.
Against a Mutalisk build, always hit the +1 Roach timing. At the very least, you are going to have your third and he will not. If he stays committed to Mutalisks, you need to add Hydras as well as Infestors. Put down Spore Crawlers to safe guard your base.We’d say this is one advantage of streaming porn on the internet rather than owning x-rated magazines. A 50-year-old man appears to have died after his six ton collection of x-rated porn magazines allegedly fell on top of him.
Not only that, but his body wasn’t discovered until six months later when his landlord stopped by to inquire about why the man hadn’t paid his rent.
It’s not entirely clear if the man, known as Joji, had a heart attack and fell into the pile of magazines which then toppled over and buried him, or if they had somehow fallen onto him first and then crushed him to death, but cleaners who were hired to haul the magazines away say that every nook and cranny of his apartment was filled to the brim with piles of magazines. (Metro U.K. also reports that when the cleaners found him, his eyes had popped out.)
And, in what is possibly the saddest and most horrifying aspect of this story, the cleaners say that even if he had lived after the initial accident, nobody would have heard Joji’s cries for help because the magazine piles would have muffled his cries.
Agencies/CanadajournalEddie Jones will announce a 32 or 33-man strong squad for the autumn Tests in London on Wednesday, and has already given us a few clues, but who should be in and out?
England coach Eddie Jones named a 45-man Elite Player Squad on 30 September and selected 37 of them to go to a training camp in Brighton which gave you a rough idea of the pecking order in most positions. Unfortunately only 34 of the 37 returned to the clubs fit for action with Wasps’ Sam Jones, Exeter’s Jack Nowell and Bath’s Anthony Watson all getting injuries that will keep them out of the games against South Africa, Argentina, Fiji and Australia.
On the plus side for the coach, Owen Farrell and Jonny May have both come back recently, although May was not invited to Brighton, and Northampton have been making positive noises about Dylan Hartley for what seems about the last month. But there are areas – such as back row and wing – where England’s strength in depth is going to be sorely tested.
The boss can name players who were not in the original 45, as long as, under the agreement with Premiership Rugby, he nominates which injured ones they are replacing.
So who should Jones go with amongst the players who are still standing? We have gone for a 33-man squad and scratched our heads for hours. But that is why the coaches get the big bucks and we don’t.
Full-backs: Mike Brown, Alex Goode, Mike Haley
Haley is just back for Sale after a long-term shoulder injury but impressed for the Saxons in South Africa although he is clearly third on the list behind Brown and Goode who have both done well at their clubs this season. Brown brings bite, snarl and bravery whilst Goode brings bravery and a bit more footballing ability. They will both make the squad next week and it is up to Jones to take his pick after watching them in training. Brown has won 11 of his 52 caps on the wing and could be an option there if things get desperate, which they might.
Wings: Semesa Rokoduguni, Jonny May, Marland Yarde
Chris Ashton must be regretting his suspension as a couple of injuries, to Watson and Nowell, would have knocked him up the pecking order but Jones should get Rokoduguni in – he has been in ridiculous form – and hope that May has rediscovered his sharpness after being out since January. Yarde has been brilliant in patches this season, and awful in others, and was not even in the original EPS but he may well get another chance but it would not be sniffed at, from this point of view, if Jones wanted to see what Olly Woodburn, of Exeter, is all about.
Midfield: George Ford, Owen Farrell, Jonathan Joseph, Elliot Daly, Ben Te’o
We are going to lump the 10s, 12s and 13s together because Jones will surely stick with the Ford-Farrell axis that served England so well in Australia when he names his starting XV. Jones name-checked Ben Te’o after Worcester’s game against Gloucester and although he has been out for a couple of weeks is back in action now. Daly has had the advantage of playing in a good Wasps team, Joseph is also back after a few weeks off but Henry Slade has not played with his usual zip and could miss out.
Scrum-halves: Danny Care, Ben Youngs, Dan Robson
Ben Spencer, of Saracens, was named in the larger group but not in the training squad indicating that Robson, who shares the No.9 shirt at Wasps with Joe Simpson, has the run on him. Robson and Simpson both started three of the first six Premiership games whilst Spencer started just one of Saracens’ first half dozen. A personal view is that Richard Wigglesworth is the form scrum-half in England, and he can play more than one type of game, but his time has probably gone.
Props: Mako Vunipola, Joe Marler, Dan Cole, Paul Hill, Kyle Sinckler, Ellis Genge
Marler has his work cut out to get a starting place in front of Vunipola who is off the scale at the moment and has possession of the loose-head jersey after Marler missed the Australia trip. Cole is in a similar position to Vunipola and was praised to the high heavens by Jones after the third Test in Sydney. Hill is clearly ahead of Kieran Brookes in England terms, if not Northampton, whilst both Sinckler and Genge have got stuck in brilliantly this season and are a couple for the future.
Hookers: Dylan Hartley, Jamie George, Tommy Taylor
If fit, Hartley is starting and captain but it would not be a complete disaster if he does not make it and George has to take over at hooker. The Saracens’ man is no novice, he has played over 150 games for his club, and been involved in plenty of high-octane matches over the last three seasons. In Toulon last weekend he showed he can do his stuff in the loose and the tight and this observer would lose no sleep if he had to start for England after eight caps off the bench. Luke Cowan-Dickie is another casualty, he has an ankle injury, but the make-up of the Brighton squad suggests Taylor was ahead of him anyway after a string of good performances for Wasps.
Locks: George Kruis, Joe Launchbury, Courtney Lawes, Josh Beaumont
Jones had wanted to shift Maro Itoje to the back row but he is crocked and out of the reckoning – a hammer blow for England and Saracens. Beaumont has been playing No 8 for Sale this season but Jones has already said that, like his dad Bill, he is a lock, so if he is going to get picked it will be in the engine room. Kruis is an established leader, and picks himself if he is fit, he has just had minor ankle surgery, whilst you could expect in-form Launchbury to line up against the Boks. Lawes could provide some tasty cover from the bench but Beaumont should not be ignored.
Back row: Billy Vunipola, Chris Robshaw, Will Welch, Jackson Wray, Nathan Hughes, Teimana Harrison
Jones has taken a real hit here with Sam Jones, James Haskell, Jack Clifford and Mike Williams all crocked hence the call for Itoje to play seven, but that has gone west with his hand injury. Luckily, Billy Vunipola is playing out of his skin and is a stone-bonking certainty to start against South Africa. The coach might want to have a look at Will Welch of Newcastle, who is regularly mentioned in dispatches by his director of rugby at the Falcons Dean Richards. Hughes, or Lawes, could do a turn at No 6 if anything befalls Robshaw but the Wasps’ man, like Ben Morgan, is miles behind Vunipola as a No 8 at the moment. Harrison, not in the EPS, may scrape into the training squad. Wray, of Saracens, could get the nod as Itoje’s replacement.TOKYO (Reuters) - Japan’s government should steer clear of picking industrial winners and losers and focus on opening the economy to trade and competition as the best way to boost growth, but not all those advising Prime Minister Shinzo Abe agree on which strategy to stress, a member of a panel on industrial competitiveness said.
CEO of e-commerce operator Rakuten Inc Hiroshi Mikitani, who is a member of Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's advisory panel on industrial competitiveness, looks on during an interview with Reuters in Tokyo March 13, 2013. REUTERS/Issei Kato
“We don’t have explicit confrontations and we don’t yell at each other in meetings, but I am sure that there are different philosophies about how, and how much, the government should be involved in creating the strategy and reforming particular industries,” Hiroshi Mikitani, CEO of e-commerce operator Rakuten Inc 4755.OS told Reuters in an interview on Wednesday.
Abe is expected to announce as early as this week that Tokyo will seek to join talks on the U.S.-led Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) pact, despite opposition from Japan’s farm lobby and other business sectors which fear fallout from removing tariffs and less visible barriers to trade.
His government is also set to unveil a growth and competitiveness strategy in June - the final piece of a policy triad after fiscal spending and hyper-easy monetary policy. Financial markets see joining TPP talks as a harbinger of reforms needed to unlock growth in the long-stagnant economy.
Mikitani, a Harvard MBA who founded Amazon rival Rakuten in 1997, said TPP was part of Abe’s broader effort to revive growth in the world’s third-largest economy.
“We need to open these markets. We need to adopt global standards as much as possible. That is the only way that all these Japanese companies can become globally competitive and if they cannot do that, we should not be in that industry,” he said in fluent English.
“The Japanese people need to admit that what we need is to strengthen our strong parts and give up some of our weak industries to other countries and rely on them.”
The days when Japan’s elite bureaucrats at the trade and industry ministry should decide what business sectors to promote are long past, Mikitani said, but not everyone agrees.
“Basically, METI (Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry) has a strong incentive to recreate the government-led industrial policies that were very successful in the 1970s and 1980s. But this is like going back to national capitalism,” he said.
“We are very much against the idea of picking up particular industries, or particular technologies or particular companies to invest national money into,” he said, referring to some of his private sector colleagues on the competitiveness panel.
“But certainly the bureaucrats are trying to give huge pressure.”
A string of Japanese blue-ribbon panels has crafted recommendations for structural economic reforms over the past decades, many of which have yet to be implemented.
But Mikitani said this time would be different because Abe, who returned to office after his conservative Liberal Democratic Party’s big December election win, was committed to change. Abe has since enjoyed popular support rates of around 70 percent.
“I think he believes deregulation will be the most important strategy for the revitalization of the Japanese economy and the competitiveness of Japanese industry,” he said.
“He knows that he will be more popular pushing for deregulation, ironically.”BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Radioactive material that went missing in Iraq has been found dumped near a petrol station in the southern town of Zubair, officials said on Sunday, ending speculation it could be acquired by Islamic State and used as a weapon.
A sign indicating radioactive material is shown in Anaheim, California March 17, 2011. REUTERS/Lucy Nicholson
The officials told Reuters the material, stored in a protective case the size of a laptop computer, was undamaged and there were no concerns about radiation.
Reuters reported last week that Iraq had been searching for the material since it was stolen in November from a storage facility belonging to U.S. oilfield services company Weatherford near the southern city of Basra.
It was not immediately clear how the device, owned by Swiss inspections group SGS, ended up in Zubair, around 15 km (9 miles) southwest of Basra.
“A passer-by found the radioactive device dumped in Zubair and immediately informed security forces which went with a special radiation prevention team and retrieved the device,” the chief of the security panel within Basra provincial council, Jabbar al-Saidi, told Reuters.
“After initial checking I can confirm the device is intact 100 percent and there is absolutely no concern of radiation.”
A security official close to the investigation said it had been established soon after the material was stolen that it was being kept in Zubair and controls had been tightened to prevent it being taken out of the town.
“After failing to take it out of the town, the perpetrators decided to dump it,” the security official said. “I assure you it is only a matter of time before we arrest those who stole the radioactive device.”
The material, which uses gamma rays to test flaws in materials used for oil and gas pipelines in a process called industrial gamma radiography, is owned by Istanbul-based SGS Turkey, according to the document and officials.
The material is classed as a Category 2 radioactive source by the IAEA, meaning that if not managed properly it could cause permanent injury to a person in close proximity to it for minutes or hours, and could be fatal to someone exposed for a period of hours to days.
SGS and Weatherford have both denied responsibility for the disappearance of the material last year.'Let’s do it together, let’s take a stand,' Paul says. | M.Scott Mahaskey/POLITICO Paul: A president should love liberty
NATIONAL HARBOR, Md. — Sen. Rand Paul urged the audience at the Conservative Political Action Conference on Friday to “imagine a time when the White House is once again occupied by a friend of liberty” — and signaled that he might fit that bill — in an unabashedly libertarian speech.
The Kentucky Republican spoke to a standing room-only audience, and attendees broke into cheers of “stand with Rand!” several times.
Story Continued Below
“You may think I’m talking about electing Republicans,” said Paul, who is heavily weighing a 2016 presidential bid. “I’m not. I’m talking about electing lovers of liberty.”
In a nearly 20-minute address, Paul, who sounded hoarse, offered doses of history with references to founding fathers and founding documents; railed against indefinite detention and National Security Agency data collection; and slammed the Obama administration for, in his view, falling short on defending civil liberties. He reiterated several times that a “great president” would handle things differently.
( PHOTOS: CPAC 2014)
“It isn’t good enough to pick the lesser of two evils,” he said of the two political parties. “We must elect men and women of principle and conviction and action who will lead us back to greatness. There is a great, great and tumultuous battle underway for the future, not for the Republican Party, but for the future of the entire country.”
Paul burst into the national spotlight almost exactly one year ago after mounting a filibuster tied to the Obama administration’s policy on using drones against American citizens. He nodded to that event, and referred to several other libertarian accomplishments, drawing applause.
“Let’s do it together, let’s take a stand,” he said. “When the president refused to rule out drone [use] against American citizens, I took a stand and filibustered.”
( PHOTOS: Highlights from Rand Paul’s filibuster)
The first-term senator also mentioned the lawsuit he has filed against the Obama administration over NSA data collection, saying: “Some things are worth fighting for. When I discovered the NSA spying is collecting every American’s record, I took a stand. I sued the president.
“It is decidedly not a time for the faint of heart,” he concluded. “It’s a time for boldness, [for] action. Stand with me, let us stand together for liberty.”
Paul insisted as recently as Friday morning that his “position on foreign policy and the arena of national defense is that it’s the most important thing that the federal government does.” But in his CPAC speech, he also made clear that he does not believe in compromising civil liberties for greater security.
The “sons of liberty,” he contended, would argue: “We will not trade our liberty for security. Not now, not ever.”
The firebrand libertarian speech was a sharp departure from the address he has frequently offered on the stump in recent months; typically Paul adopts a wry, understated tone as he jabs at government spending and also pushes for a broader GOP tent.
But at CPAC, he was clearly comfortable employing lofty rhetoric and references to historical figures and philosophers. He also invoked the band Pink Floyd, quoting the song “Wish You Were Here” in describing how some civil libertarian-minded people may be disappointed in the president.
“How will history remember Barack Obama?” he asked. “To those who had hoped President Obama would somehow be a champion of civil liberties, [Pink Floyd’s] Roger Waters might ask: ‘Did they get you to trade your heroes for ghosts? Did they get you to exchange a walk-on part in the war for a lead role in a cage’?”
Paul suggested to POLITICO last month that opposing indefinite detention could be a smart political move. He touched on the issue again in Friday’s speech, speaking emotionally about all of the minority groups that should rally against the policy.
“Justice cannot occur without a trial,” he said. “That fact should be abundantly clear to any group that has ever been persecuted. You can be a minority by the color of your skin or the shade of your ideology. Anyone who has ever paddled upstream, anyone who has ever been [in the] minority of thought or religion, anyone who has ever taught their children at home or sought to pray to God without permission should be alarmed that any government might presume to imprison without trial.”
This article tagged under: Republicans
CPAC
Rand PaulMontagna returns to the team this week after a week on the sidelines.
ST KILDA will welcome back Leigh Montagna and Luke Dunstan from illness and injury this Saturday, while Rhys Stanley has also been selected after booting three goals in the VFL last weekend.
RELATED: Round 15 game day activities
Making way is Farren Ray, who hasn't missed a game since round six last year, and Tom Lee and Brodie Murdoch. All three are due to play VFL, with Murdoch and Ray joining Sam Dunell as the emergencies for St Kilda.
But the Saints top-end midfield talent and all-round depth will be significantly improved this week courtesy of Dunstan and Montagna, who have both been prolific at various stages this year.
Meanwhile, tall forward and back-up ruckman Stanley, who will play his 50th game against the Tigers, has been rewarded for a solid fortnight for Sandringham after losing his place in the senior team.
"I thought he was our best tall forward on the day," St Kilda development coach Paul Hudson told SAINTS.com.au in his VFL player breakdown this week.
"He kicked some goals, lead for marks and presented well... on the whole we were happy with his output."
ST KILDA TEAM vs RICHMOND
B: Shenton Delaney Dempster
HB: Savage Gwilt Webster
C: Montagna Armitage Newnes
HF: Milera Riewoldt Hayes
FF: Billings Stanley Minchington
Foll: Longer Dunstan Weller
I/C: Ross, Simpkin, Jones, Steven
In: Stanley, Dunstan, Montagna
Out: Ray, Lee, Murdoch
Emerg: Murdoch, Ray, Dunell
Milestones: Stanley (50 games)Identical twins may be alike in everything from their eye color to their favorite foods, but they can diverge in one important characteristic: their weight. A new study uncovers a molecular mechanism for obesity that might explain why one twin can be extremely overweight even while the other is thin.
Heredity influences whether we become obese, but the genes researchers have linked to the condition don’t explain many of the differences in weight among people. Identical twins with nonidentical weights are a prime example. So what accounts for the variation? Changes in the intestinal microbiome—the collection of bacteria living in the gut—are one possibility. Another is epigenetic changes, or alterations in gene activity. These changes occur when molecules latch on to DNA or the proteins it wraps around, turning sets of genes “on” or “off.”
Triggered by factors in the environment, epigenetic modifications can be passed down from one generation to the next. This type of transmission happened during the Hunger Winter, a famine that occurred when the Germans cut off food supplies to parts of the Netherlands in the final months of World War II. Mothers who were pregnant during the famine gave birth to children who were prone to obesity decades later, suggesting that the mothers’ diets had a lasting impact on their kids’ metabolism. However, which epigenetic changes in people promote obesity remains unclear.
So when—many decades later—physiologist J. Andrew Pospisilik of the Max Planck Institute of Immunobiology and Epigenetics in Freiburg, Germany, and colleagues noticed an odd pattern of weight gain in some mutant mice, they were intrigued. The mice had only one copy of a gene called Trim28, and the researchers found that most them were either obese or lean, with few animals in between.
To discover why, the scientists measured gene activity in the animals. Trim28 controls the activity of several other genes, making it an epigenetic modifier. In the obese mice, the activity of an interacting set of genes was turned down. Previous studies have implicated these genes in body weight management, and some are activated in fat cells and the hypothalamus, the brain area that triggers hunger. The functions of the genes remain unclear, but Pospisilik and colleagues hypothesize that Trim28 helps form an epigenetic switch that can flip on obesity by suppressing these genes.
But could the same mechanism foster obesity in humans? After all, the mice have only one copy of the Trim28 gene, whereas people have two copies. To find out, the team took fat samples from children who were in the hospital for surgery. TRIM28 activity was abnormally low in fat from kids who were obese. “There’s a subset of children who look very much like the obese mice” in their TRIM28 measurements, Pospisilik says. The researchers also analyzed data on 13 pairs of identical twins in which one twin was obese. TRIM28 activity was diminished in fat from the obese twins, the scientists report online today in Cell.
“We show that you can have a strong phenotype [obesity] with absolutely no genetic underpinnings,” Pospisilik says. He notes that researchers used to think that epigenetic effects might tweak our weight by only a few kilograms. But if people gained an amount of weight equivalent to what the mice gained, he says, it would mean the difference between being “on the rugby team instead of the badminton team.”
“The study gives us a new potential mechanism of obesity,” says genetic epidemiologist Jeanne McCaffery of Brown University who wasn’t connected to the research. And that could be good news for researchers who are looking for ways to prevent or reverse the condition, she says. “There may be multiple subtypes of obesity that may be amenable to different treatments.”
Pospisilik suggests several risk factors for obesity in children, such as their mothers’ smoking and eating habits during pregnancy. But “the big question now is what is the trigger” that flips the obesity switch, says genetic epidemiologist Paul Franks of the Lund University Diabetes Center in Malmö, Sweden. “If you could determine what that was, you’d have the basis for intervention.”Edward Snowden signed on to work with intelligence contractor Booz Allen Hamilton only to obtain information about the United States’ surveillance programs, the NSA leaker told the South China Morning Post.
The paper, one of only three outlets to have acknowledged contact with Snowden along with The Guardian and the Washington Post, wrote on Monday that he admitted to taking the job just to collect intelligence.
“My position with Booz Allen Hamilton granted me access to lists of machines all over the world the NSA hacked,” he told the Post. “That is why I accepted that position about three months ago.”
According to the paper, Snowden was asked specifically if he went to the contractor to gather evidence of surveillance, to which he replied, “Correct on Booz.”
The Post said the interview was conducted on June 12. Snowden reportedly left Hong Kong late last week and was believed to be in Moscow as of Sunday. An indictment against him was unsealed in the US days earlier and American officials are seeking his extradition back to the States.
“I’m not going to get into specifics, but it is our understanding that he is still in Russia,” White House press secretary Jay Carney said during a briefing with reporters on Monday. "We have asked the Russians to look at all the options and expel Snowden to the US.”
Snowden, 30, has been charged with the unlawful disclosure of classified intelligence and is wanted in the US for a myriad of counts that could bring him decades in prison if convicted. During Monday’s presser, Carney said the decision on the part of Hong Kong to release Snowden “was a deliberate choice by the government to release a fugitive despite a valid arrest warrant.”
In the latest Post article, Snowden defended his actions and the method he went about selecting documents to send to The Guardian.
“I did not release them earlier because I don’t want to simply dump huge amounts of documents without regard to their content,” he told the paper. “I have to screen everything before releasing it to journalists.”
Snowden also hinted at the likelihood of more leaks to come:
“If I have time to go through this information, I would like to make it available to journalists in each country to make their own assessment, independent of my bias, as to whether or not the knowledge of US network operations against their people should be published,” he said.
Snowden took a job making six-figures at Booz Allen earlier this year rounding off a career that formerly found him working for the Central Intelligence Agency and Dell computers. Last week, Reuters reported that hiring screeners at Booz Allen found possible discrepancies in the resume Snowden submitted when he first sought work, but ultimately the contractors decided to bring him on board anyway.A midwife who caused a four-week-old baby to bleed to death in a botched home circumcision operation walked free from court yesterday.
Grace Adeleye, 67, carried out the procedure on Goodluck Caubergs without anaesthetic, using only a pair of scissors, forceps and olive oil.
The nurse, originally from Nigeria, had been paid £100 to perform the operation at the home in Chadderton, Greater Manchester, using a traditional African method known as ‘clamp and cut’.
But it went drastically wrong leaving the child with a serious wound and causing him to bleed to death despite the efforts of doctors at Royal Oldham hospital to save him.
Adeleye was found guilty of manslaughter by gross negligence after a trial at Manchester Crown Court and was given a 21 month suspended jail term yesterday.
Justice Keith Lindblom said the boy’s death had been ‘wholly unneccesary’.
‘It was a tragedy, he was a perfectly healthy baby, he was not ill he had no need of medical care and he would not have died if you had acted with their care expected of you as a nurse,’ he said.
‘No sentence would bring him back or ease the grief his family must ensure |
, wag their tails, eat, poop, get excited, bark, etc. You identify all of these creatures by the word “dog.” You identify all the creatures that move on four legs, have hair, eat, meow, purr, etc. as “cats.” You can do the same sort of thing for other species like spiders, squirrels, snakes, lizards, opossums, etc. Then, you observe that all of these creature types you have classified have something in common: they all move around freely on their own, eat and poop. They do these things in contrast to things like rocks, trees, pieces of furniture, etc. So you designate the things that move around freely on their own, eat and poop by the word, “animal.”
The second element in the structure is the meaning of “die.” When animals die, they stop moving, eating and pooping permanently, and their bodies decompose. One of the observations that provide the fundamental basis of the concept of death is your observation of certain animals that stop moving and stop taking any of their characteristic actions. They just sit there, start to decompose, break apart, and often smell really bad.
So the knowledge that all animals can die is the knowledge that all the things you designate as “animals” can undergo “death”: a permanent stoppage of their autonomous motion and animal-like actions. The knowledge that “all animals can die” is built on the knowledge that gives meaning to the concepts involved in that statement. This means that, ultimately, that knowledge is built on first-hand observation (sensory experience.) (See Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology by Ayn Rand for more detail on how concepts are derived from observation.)
Now how can the testimony of other people fit into your structure of knowledge? You know from firsthand experience that other people can have knowledge that you lack, and that they can communicate that knowledge to you. For example, when a friend or family member points behind you and says, “Look, there’s a Ferrari,” and you turn around and see a Ferrari you didn’t know was there. That’s a clear case of someone communicating knowledge that they have, but you lack. You also know from firsthand experience that people can tell falsehoods, whether intentionally, (lying) or unknowingly (errors.)
You also know from firsthand experience that people can leave your field of vision and come back later. They come back with the same memories they had when they left, plus some additional information from their time away. So it’s clear they didn’t just vanish and reappear, but continued to exist while you weren’t observing them. So you know that, at any given time, there are a lot of people that exist that you’re not directly perceiving.
Also, because other people resemble you in many respects: because they have senses with similar capabilities and limitations to yours; they have to learn things from personal experience or the instruction of others; they can make errors in judgment; because they have to learn things in much the same order you do (arithmetic before calculus), you can understand that other people have a structure of knowledge much like yours.
So you can know from firsthand observation that other people can report facts accurately from their observations and draw conclusions properly from the evidence they have, or they can be mistaken in the conclusions they draw from their observations. You also know that people can be accurate about what they have directly observed, or they can lie about their observations, distort them by omitting certain details, or they can misremember their observations.
In determining whether you can trust someone’s account of the facts, you are trying to determine what caused him to tell you what he did: Was it that the facts match what he is saying, or was it some extraneous factor that motivated him to lie or distort, or was there something that caused him to misremember? There are numerous ways to test this and the results of these tests can count as reasons to trust the person or not trust him.
The most obvious test of a person’s trustworthiness is your prior experience with him as a source of facts: has he been a consistently accurate source to the best of your knowledge in the past, or has he lied, distorted or misremembered? (And, especially in the case of someone who has misremembered in the past, a relevant factor is how long ago the claimed event took place.) Past lies are an obvious and major strike against a person’s trustworthiness.
Another major factor in favor of trust is if you can corroborate some portion of what the person is telling you with other evidence. The best kind of corroboration is firsthand physical evidence, where there is no question as to the trustworthiness of the corroboration itself. But corroboration from other, independent human sources is helpful as well, since it tends to increase the likelihood that the cause of the reports is the messengers’ recognition of facts, rather than some error or other agenda.
Another test is whether the messenger shows a strong concern for facts in general, or shows little regard for facts. Does he eagerly cite his sources for facts, or does he seem to expect you to take his word for what he says? Is he generally concerned with staying true to facts, or does he frequently take things on faith? Showing concern for facts is an indication of trustworthiness, whereas reliance on faith or emotional attachment to ideas is a count against it. If someone explicitly asks you to take a certain claim on faith, then that person is effectively telling you not to trust him on that claim: He is telling you that he does not have a good basis in evidence for what he’s claiming, so trust in him would not be reasonable.
The last test I’ll discuss here is the integration test. Is what the person telling you consistent with the knowledge you have gained from firsthand experience? Or, in other words, can the claim be integrated into your basic structure of knowledge? If a witness in a trial told you that he saw the accused man walk on deep water with no aid, or turn water to wine with the wave of his hand, or jump to the moon and back, the integration test would indicate that he’s mistaken, lying, or insane, and can’t be trusted in this instance. Everything you know about human beings shows that they can’t do these things.
Now this test must be used very carefully and only in comparison to things that you have very solid, firsthand evidence for. If abused, this test will lead to confirmation bias. (This is where an individual ignores genuine evidence that might require alterations in his ideas. If a messenger shows all the other signs of trustworthiness, and the claim is not as absurd as someone jumping to the moon, then the claim probably warrants at least a little bit of further investigation.)
If you apply these tests and abide by the results, then the acceptance of what others say can be a rational, observation-based practice. If you don’t apply the tests, then acceptance of what others say becomes faith on your part. Trust accords with first-hand evidence and is part of a rational approach to the world. Faith defies first-hand evidence and is irrational.
Science Relies on Trust; Religion Relies on Faith
Scientists rely on papers published by other scientists, and they don’t themselves redo every experiment of other scientists. So the collaborative (and competitive) scientific process, as it exists today, relies on trust. Scientists trust that the experiments described in the papers they read were actually done, and that the results were as they were claimed. But as a general rule, scientists do not take others’ results on faith. The modern scientific establishment has a system in place to carefully vet papers: peer review. Peer review is a process where experts in the relevant field carefully examine a submitted paper for errors, inconsistencies, and places where the data do not support a conclusion. Now peer review doesn’t completely guarantee that the claimed results are legitimate. Some people have successfully had bogus or fraudulent results published in journals. But part of what leads to the general acceptance of experimental results by scientists is the ability of other scientists to reproduce those results. A scientist who is especially concerned with the scientific legitimacy of a certain result may attempt to repeat the experiment and check the results. Or, he may choose to look for instances where other scientists have replicated the results, or used them profitably in their own research.
The main point here is that scientists are generally very concerned about the basis of scientific claims in observation. They generally are guided by the tests for trustworthiness that I described in the above section. If a particular paper contains an experiment whose results cannot be reproduced when someone attempts it, (rigorously and carefully) then the paper is considered suspect. If it is found that a scientist has falsified data, then that scientist is discredited and no longer trusted as a reliable source. If a theory is inconsistent with careful and repeated experimental observations, then the theory must be modified, discarded, or considered a mere approximation to the truth in certain conditions. Scientific trust in others is very much conditional on the evidence of their trustworthiness.
Religion, on the other hand, does not promote this observation-based, conditional trust. Religion encourages acceptance of what others–or a holy book–say, based on your feelings and the sheer fact that it was said by the source. This is the essence and one of the defining features of religion. However much people seem to think or reason about their religion, the fact that it is a religion means that there is some premise it relies on that is not supported by the evidence the person has. That is, there is some point that is accepted based on sheer emotional feelings, without rational consideration. For Jews, this is generally the existence of God and the divine origin of the Ten Commandments; for mainstream Christians, this generally includes the divinity and resurrection of Jesus; for Mormons, this further includes the prophethood of Joseph Smith; for Muslims, this is the existence of the (non-trinitarian) Allah and the prophethood of Muhammad; for Hindus, this is the existence of Brahman and the divine authority of the Vedas.
If there is not enough evidence to form a theory or viewpoint on a certain question (such as the origin of life) the scientist–or person going by reason–says “I don’t know.” In such cases, the religious person will often say something to the effect of, “My holy text says [X], so I believe [X].” This is a stark difference between reason/science and religion; a holy book is not evidence for its claims just because it is a holy book. (It must meet criteria for trustworthiness just like any other human testimony.)
All around the world, many parents push their children into believing in their own religion early in their children’s young lives. Children are forced to attend church, mosque or synagogue from a young age, and they are often threatened with endless punishment after death if they don’t believe. The arguments available for and against the existence of God are very abstract, technical and philosophical, and children are not yet equipped to deal with these arguments and judge their merits. So many religious believers use fear to push their children into belief: the fear of punishment after death and the fear of losing the approval and support of their parents, family and peers in this world. This is the encouragement of an unreasoning belief, motivated by sheer emotion, and as I showed in the first section of this essay, that’s what faith is. (“The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom…” –The Bible, Proverbs 9:10)
This contrasts sharply with the proper method of teaching the sciences (and other fields of knowledge) in school. A good teacher does not say, “Believe this or you’ll go to Hell,” or “Believe this or you’ll lose everyone’s approval.” A good teacher gives some logical reason for the student to accept the viewpoint, or at least consider it worthy of consideration. A good teacher gives some bit of evidence that supports major points being taught. A good teacher does not attempt to indoctrinate students with ideas that are way beyond their level of intellectual development. (It should be noted that a great many teachers today very often fall short of this standard. There are many problems with education, especially in the US, and this is one of them: Many teachers do indoctrinate their students with ideas that are beyond the level of sophistication they can genuinely understand.)
Conclusion
As I have shown, faith and trust are very different. Faith is the acceptance of other people’s claims on the basis of sheer emotion, without any genuine attempt to rationally check those claims. There are many different and conflicting religions in the world, and a person accepting one religion on the basis of faith has no more claim to truth than another with a different religion.
Evidential trust, on the other hand, is a part of the process of reasoning from evidence. Trust relies on a rational, evidence-based evaluation of the trustworthiness of other people. Those who fail the proper tests for trustworthiness are not to be trusted by a rational person. Modern science often relies on trust to some extent, but it need never rely on faith.
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(1) In regard to Augustine, note that his writing is consistent with the Biblical proverb: “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, and knowledge of the Holy One is understanding.” (Proverbs 9:10, NIV)
There was also the 2nd-Century church father, Tertullian, who wrote in De Carne Christi, “The Son of God was crucified: there is no shame, because it is shameful.
And the Son of God died: it is by all means to be believed, because it is absurd.
And, buried, He rose again: it is certain, because impossible.” As you can see, he regarded Christianity’s violation of reason as a major mark in its favor.
It was not until St. Thomas Aquinas (b. 1225) integrated Aristotle’s worldly, non-Christian philosophy with his influential theology that the Catholic Church started to put reason on a roughly equal footing with faith. With Aquinas, reason was given it’s secular sphere of dominance, and arguments for the existence of God allegedly proceeding from observations of the world/nature (natural theology) started to be seen as somewhat important to the justification of the Church’s doctrines.
(2) See also this YouTube video: Thinking Objectively.
It should be noted that modern dictionaries tend to be unhelpful in providing clarity on the proper meaning of “faith.” They tend to merely report on the various ambiguous and confused meanings that people attribute to the term. For example, dictionary.reference.com has various definitions for faith, including: “confidence or trust in a person or thing,” and “belief that is not based on proof,” and “strong or unshakable belief in something, esp without proof or evidence.” The first of these definitions, especially, is not suitable for use in philosophical thinking, because it leaves open the question of the basis of the person’s confidence or trust. There is a life-and-death difference between an engineer who has confidence that a bridge will bear its intended load based on a careful, scientific study of the bridge’s structural characteristics, and one who bases his confidence on his emotional attachment to the bridge’s beautiful shape or purpose. And there are many instances of this dramatic difference throughout all areas of human life. (This difference is fundamentally what accounts for the dramatic differences between Europe in the heavily religious Middle Ages and Europe as it is today.)
If the term “faith” is to bear any epistemological weight, it must include the basis of the confidence (or lack thereof) as part of its definition. This means that we should use “strong or unshakable belief in something without supporting evidence” as our philosophically correct definition of “faith.”
—–
Related Posts:
Introduction to Objectivism
The Bible (New Testament) as Evidence
One Internal Contradiction in the Christian Worldview: God’s Omniscience vs. Free Will
Objectivism vs. Intrinsicism vs. Subjectivism: A Short Summary
Other People as Egoistic Values Versus Other People as Objects of Self-Sacrifice in Ayn Rand’s PhilosophyLast Friday, engineers on Google parent Alphabet’s internet-by-balloon Project Loon tweeted that they hoped to bring emergency connectivity to Puerto Rico after Hurricanes Irma and Maria left more than 90 percent of the island without cellphone coverage.
Just seven days later, the Federal Communications Commission Friday gave the company a green light to fly 30 balloons over Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands for up to six months.
If all goes to plan, Alphabet's balloons will soon help replace the thousands of cellphone towers knocked out of service by hurricane-strength winds. The balloons would provide voice and data service through local carriers to users’ phones.
The details of those arrangements aren’t complete. But in its application to the FCC, Alphabet included letters and emails from eight wireless carriers in Puerto Rico, in which they consented for Loon to use their frequencies for disaster relief and to restore limited communications. Two of those agreements were dated Friday.
Alphabet has previously deployed Loon to provide emergency phone service, in Peru following flooding there earlier this year. In Peru, Alphabet had already been working closely with a local wireless network, Telefonica, to coordinate spectrum use and prepare handsets to work with its balloons.
Related Stories The Lawsuit That Could Pop Alphabet’s Project Loon Balloons In a reversal of Alphabet's case against Uber, a competitor just scored a big win against moonshot factory X in a suit over trade secrets. Uncategorized The Secret to Moonshots? Killing Our Projects At X, I see up close every day how messy innovation is Climate Desk After Hurricane Maria, Puerto Rico's Grid Needs a Complete Overhaul Allocating money to rebuild won’t be enough, experts say, unless the island can also rethink its entire energy strategy.
In Puerto Rico, “things are a little more complicated because we're starting from scratch,” an Alphabet spokesperson says. “Loon needs be integrated with a telco partner’s network---the balloons can’t do it alone.”
Project Loon was born in Alphabet’s moonshot X division, with the aim of serving the half of the world’s population that is still without internet access. It has launched several successful pilot projects, but has yet to be deployed commercially on a wide scale. It also is embroiled in a lawsuit with Space Data, a small company accusing Alphabet of patent infringement, misappropriation of trade secrets, and breach of contract following a failed acquisition bid.
With the FCC’s special temporary license in Puerto Rico, Alphabet plans to work along the same lines as in Peru. Thirty Loon balloons will float 20 kilometers (12.5 miles) above the earth in the stratosphere, relaying communications between Alphabet’s own ground stations connected to the surviving wireless networks, and users’ handsets.
Each balloon can serve 5,000 square kilometers (1,930 square miles), so the fleet is expected to provide service over all of Puerto Rico and potentially parts of the US Virgin Islands. Alphabet said it would consult with networks in the British Virgin Islands to minimize interference there.
Another issue is that Alphabet’s technology is still set up for Peru, so some handsets in Puerto Rico may need updates to use the balloon-connected service. Alphabet says it is working on temporary over-the-air software fixes for affected devices, which could include handsets from Apple, Samsung, and LG.
With approval in hand, Alphabet will turn to launching the balloons. Alphabet could not say when it will fly or when service would begin, but a spokesperson said, “We’re sorting through a lot of possible options now and are grateful for the support we’re getting on the ground.”
Restoring voice and data communications cannot come quickly enough for some of the affected. On Tuesday, Mother Jones reported Puerto Rico governor Ricardo Rosselló as saying, “Some people, even though we’ve documented the fact... that we’ve delivered food and water, it hasn’t gotten to some of them. Now, it could be for a whole host of reasons. One of them could be that they couldn’t hear it; the information didn’t get to them.”
CORRECTION, Oct. 7, 12:05 am: Project Loon is part of Alphabet, but is not part of Alphabet's Google subsidiary. An earlier version of this article incorrectly called Loon a Google project.Reddit Commenters Debate: Did Texas Deserve the Drought? By Terrence Henry Email
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Photo by Wyman Meinzer/Texas Monthly
Our story on how the drought killed over 300 million trees in Texas got picked up by the social news site Reddit today. And it didn’t take long for one commenter to pose the question: Maybe Texas was asking for it?
“Couldn’t happen to a more deserving state,” Reddit user quelar wrote. “Perhaps this may change some peoples minds about the dangers of global warming. But I know it won’t.”
The idea that Texas deserved the drought because of state officials that deny climate change (starting with the governor) and industry-friendly policies is no doubt offensive to a wide variety of people in the state. And turns out it’s offensive to many in the Reddit community, too.
RjoTTU0bio writes that he thinks the drought has forced many Texans to confront the reality of climate change: “As a Texan with a brother in Austin, parents in Houston, a girlfriend in Dallas, and that attends a college in Lubbock, I have seen it all. I witnessed the buffalo bayou drying up in west Houston, the dust storms in the plains, the drying up of lake Travis in Austin/Marble Falls, the yellowing of yards in the suburbs, and the fires (some controlled) that hit central and north Texas.”
“At one point I was driving from Lubbock to Dallas on 114, and as far as you could see to the south was dead burnt trees, and live trees to the north,” he continues. “I think the climate change skepticism is diminishing here in everyone other than the big oil employees.”
Jackson3135 concurs:
“I came in here for actual conversation and found only Texas bashing instead. Wow. Way to go, guys. You should feel proud of yourselves.
… Don’t come in here and say that you hope MY state, and the state where literally MILLIONS of people vote left, turns into an environmental s%*# hole, or that somehow every Texan is to blame for the right wing and is deserving of their policies’ resulting consequences.”
saktiDC backs that up:
“100% with you. I can’t believe people would go that direction with this. Climate change effects everyone, and Texas is on the front lines. Stay liberal Jackson! We’ll make Texas a swing state yet 🙂
But not everyone in the forum is against the idea that Texas, in a way, had this coming. cryptoz writes:
“Texas governor Rick Perry has chosen to pray for rain rather than do anything to address the actual problem. While I would never wish harm on people, it is interesting to see the people of Texas vote for politicians who are willfully ignorant of what a drought is and how it works. They definitely deserve what they get.”
And we’ll leave you with MoreBeansAndRice‘s response to that:
“Unless Rick Perry controls ENSO (La Nina was the primary driver of this drought) then I pretty sure that voting for him has nothing to do with the weather or climate.”originally posted by: slider1982
I am unable to get the videos to play,(My issue not the OP).. So if these people are so wealthy etc etc name names and get the ball rolling, we should have all heard of them!!!..
People come out with these statements yet we never really get anywhere after that, the world is ever changing and dots can be linked so much faster than ever previous..
So who are these elites?, I want names!!!
RA
Unless they're arrested and brought to trial publicly, we likely won't get any elites' names in relation to things like this. However, it seems more than a little fishy to me personally that this particular individual would agree to an interview that would be made public, showing her face all over the internet, yet apparently no arrests have been made in conjunction with what she alleges. She tells all to a talk show host, but isn't working with the FBI under protection to prosecute her "owner"? I don't know....it just seems like BS to me. Not the idea of elite pedophiles, but this particular allegation. Unfortunately, all the OP has is videos, and many of us can't watch them even if we had the time to waste on multiple youtube links. I'll believe stories like that when these people are actually held accountable...until then, it's just another wild claim.I kinda hope it is true though...it would be so jacked up if she were lying and damaging the credibility of millions of other real victims out there...or even worse, if she were actually playing a complicit role. Because if I were an evil person who was afraid of being exposed, I'd do my damnedest to undermine any effort at such exposure. I might even put a bull# story out there and make it sound as questionable as possible by using a talk show venue and social media to spread it, so that the next time someone comes forward, the serious people out there will remember that and just assume it's another attention seeking pile of nonsense.Enlarge By Justin Sullivan, Getty Images U.S. Army soldiers carry a critically wounded colleague on a stretcher Thursday to a waiting helicopter near Kandahar, Afghanistan. WASHINGTON Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Thursday that the United States and its allies are not "bogged down" in Afghanistan despite the delay of a planned offensive in the southern city of Kandahar. The remarks come one day after President Obama relieved the commander of allied forces in Afghanistan, Gen. Stanley McChrystal, and nominated Gen. David Petraeus to replace him. U.S. officials worked to allay concerns that the abrupt change reflects any lack of commitment on the part of the White House or flaws in its strategy. Obama said the United States will "not miss a beat" as a result of the change. HEARTS AND MINDS: Negotiation is Army's secret weapon One of the key advantages of appointing Petraeus is his familiarity with the region, Gates said. Petraeus heads Central Command, which oversees wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and so will need little schooling before assuming command. The Defense secretary said Obama himself raised the idea of replacing McChrystal with Petraeus during a meeting Tuesday. Key Senate leaders pledged to quickly confirm Petraeus' appointment in order to minimize any disruption caused by the change. Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., chairman of the Armed Services Committee, announced a Tuesday morning hearing. Obama accepted McChrystal's resignation after the general and his top aides were quoted in a Rolling Stone article describing their civilian leaders or counterparts in disparaging ways. Adm. Michael Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Gates praised McChrystal's career but did not defend or excuse the remarks in the article. "Honestly, when I first read it, I was nearly sick," Mullen said. "I was stunned." Mullen said the comments from McChrystal and his staff had the effect of challenging civilian oversight over the military, a bedrock principle. Nevertheless, Gates and Mullen drew a distinction between the intemperate remarks made by McChrystal and his staff and the conduct of the war. The leadership change comes at a critical time. About 30,000 additional servicemembers have been pouring into Afghanistan as part of a broader effort to seize the initiative from the Taliban. An offensive in Marjah, a Taliban stronghold in the south, decisively drove insurgents from the town this winter, but the U.S. military and Afghan government have struggled to build an effective local government in its wake. Coalition and Afghan forces are now turning their attention to Kandahar, which was the Taliban's spiritual homeland. Gates said the military needed more time to improve political conditions there before starting the offensive. "I do not believe we are bogged down," Gates said. "I believe we are making some progress. It is slower and harder than we anticipated." Guidelines: You share in the USA TODAY community, so please keep your comments smart and civil. Don't attack other readers personally, and keep your language decent. Use the "Report Abuse" button to make a difference. You share in the USA TODAY community, so please keep your comments smart and civil. Don't attack other readers personally, and keep your language decent. Use the "Report Abuse" button to make a difference. Read moreSEATTLE — The Seattle City Council voted unanimously to approve a bill allowing drivers for Uber, Lyft and other ride-hailing apps to form unions.
Council members voted 9-0 in favor of the ordinance, the first legislation of its kind in the country. The decision was greeted with cheers in a City Council chamber packed with supporters holding placards that read “Driver Unity.” The measure is likely to be challenged in court.
The vote is a victory for the App-Based Drivers Association, or ABDA, of Seattle, an organization of on-demand contract workers that lobbied with the local Teamsters union for the legislation. It is a fight that other drivers around the country have watched closely; union organizers in California have said that the outcome of the Seattle vote could influence actions taken in their own cities.
One member of the City Council, Nick Licata, called the vote “history-setting in what we’re attempting to do here in terms of advancing the rights of drivers.”Breaking News Emails Get breaking news alerts and special reports. The news and stories that matter, delivered weekday mornings.
Dec. 31, 2014, 8:26 PM GMT / Updated Dec. 31, 2014, 8:17 PM GMT
Recovering from one New Year’s Eve can be bad enough. Imagine experiencing 16 of them — all in one day. Such is the case for the crew on the International Space Station, which is in orbit about 220 miles above Earth. In one orbital day, as the space station zooms around the globe at 17,500 miles an hour, the crew will pass 16 times over a part of the planet where the clock is striking midnight. No need for a designated driver, however: Cmdr. Barry “Butch” Wilmore and his crew, which includes NASA’s Terry Virts, Russian cosmonauts Elena Serova, Alexander Samoukutyaev and Anton Shkaplerov, and European Space Agency astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti, plan to celebrate with fruit juice toasts, NASA says. The new year starts officially for the crew at 7 p.m. EST Jan. 31, which is midnight by the Universal Time Clock (UTC), also known as Greenwich Mean Time (GMT). In a prerecorded video greeting from space, Wilmore and Virts sent best wishes from space. “Happy New Year’s and a safe New Year’s down there, and we’ll enjoy our 16 New Year’s Eve celebrations here on board the space station,” Virts said.
It’s not all fun and games. The crew spent much of New Year’s Eve day working on a variety of experiments and preparing for the arrival of the next cargo supply ship. Launch of the Dragon resupply vehicle on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket is schedule for 6:20 a.m. EST Tuesday.
IN-DEPTH
SOCIAL
— James EngLouis van Gaal started slowly at Bayern Munich, Barcelona and AZ... Manchester United fans be warned
Van Gaal starts work as United manager this week
United had a disastrous 2013-14 season, finishing seventh in the league
Van Gaal has won league titles at all four clubs he has managed (Ajax, Barcelona, AZ, Bayern Munich)
But his teams traditionally start the season slowly
As Louis van Gaal arrives at Manchester United's Carrington training ground on Wednesday morning, he will do so in the knowledge that he has just 31 days to repair the damage done by the David Moyes era before Swansea City arrive at Old Trafford to kick off the Premier League season.
The Dutchman has already spoken of his desire to restore unity and togetherness into United's DNA. His Holland side at the World Cup was characterised as much by its defiant team spirit as it was by the flair of Arjen Robben and Robin van Persie.
'I hope the group in Manchester will become like this one,' Van Gaal said last weekend.
VIDEO Scroll down to watch David Beckham: Van Gaal and Giggs is a special line-up
All together now: Van Gaal with his Holland squad after they won their third-place play-off against Brazil
New beginnings: The experienced Dutchman starts work at Manchester United this week
It would be unfair, however, to expect an overnight transformation. Holland's determined World Cup campaign was two years in the making. History suggests that Van Gaal's methods are ultimately successful but they can take time to come into fruition. United supporters expecting a blockbuster beginning may be initially underwhelmed.
A Sportsmail study into Van Gaal's last 17 years in club management offers a revealing insight. More often than not, his teams start slowly. The Dutchman took over at Bayern Munich in the summer of 2009.
After 13 matches, Van Gaal had won just five and his team were seventh towards the end of November. They failed to win their first three Champions League group stage matches. By May, however, Bayern had discovered their form, winning the Bundesliga and reaching the Champions League final, where Van Gaal was defeated by Jose Mourinho's Inter Milan.
Timid starts are a surprising feature on Van Gaal's CV, a similarity United fans may note between their new manager and his illustrious predecessor Sir Alex Ferguson.
Stepping in: Assistant manager Ryan Giggs has been leading United's double sessions this week VIDEO Van Gaal can't wait to get started
At Dutch side AZ Alkmaar, Van Gaal achieved the improbable by seeing off the usual contenders in Ajax and PSV to win the Eredivisie in 2009. That triumph, however, followed consecutive defeats at the beginning of the season by NAC Breda and Ado Den Haag. After 11 matches, AZ were fourth.
Even though his period in charge of Ajax (1991-97) produced one of the most celebrated sides in the history of the European game, it should be remembered that Van Gaal required three seasons to win his first Eridivisie title with the Dutch club.
His first season in Catalonia was a success on the spreadsheet, winning the league after an impressive start, with Barcelona second after 14 games, but his style was greeted with dismay by the locals.
Short stay: Van Gaal lasted less than two years at Bayern Munich despite winning the Bundesliga
Against the odds: Van Gaal issues instructions while at AZ, where he won the Eredivisie in 2009
Writing in his book, Barca: A People's Passion, author Jimmy Burns recorded the feelings of supporters towards the end of his first season: 'The jury is out on Van Gaal, a Dutchman lacking the humanity of Bobby Robson and the popularity of Johan Cruyff, both of whose heads have rolled in the space of less than two years.
'Barca may be at the top of the league, but the fans are unconvinced. They have watched the team pathetically founder in Europe, while continuing to play lacklustre football in the League, winning seemingly by default rather than design.'
Divisive: Van Gaal was not always popular at Barcelona despite delivering two titles
Protests: Barca fans show their feelings towards Van Gaal at the Nou Camp in 2000
The La Liga title was sealed in 1998 and 1999, but once again teething problems caused near jaw-ache among the supporters. In December, Van Gaal's side were 10th after 14 games, having won only five. They would go on to win 19 of their next 24, winning the title once more.
It is a familiar narrative with the man they call the Iron Tulip for his robust exterior and extraordinary levels of self-confidence. It is this self-belief that allows Van Gaal to persist when all around the club will criticise.
His style does not appeal to everywhere, once triggering Bayern president Uli Hoeness to dismissively note: 'Louis van Gaal's problem is not that he is God but he's God's very own father. Louis was already there before the world even existed.'
My way or the highway: The Dutchman is expected to lay down the law at Manchester United
At United, senior officials are excited by Van Gaal's bravado. Following the crisis of conviction suffered by Moyes, they believe that the Dutchman will bring a welcome change in attitude and results.
United may be correct on both counts, but if history proves an accurate barometer, then a little bit of patience may be required before the silverware arrives.Former South Carolina quarterback Stephen Garcia opened up during an interview with WFNZ in Charlotte, talking about alleged illicit benefits obtained by SEC players during his time with the Gamecocks. Autographs are in the news due to so-called scandals involving Florida State quarterback Jameis Winston and suspended Georgia running back Todd Gurley.
Garcia, now a media member, said it was "absolutely ridiculous" that players could not profit off their own likenesses, via CBS Sports. The former South Carolina star also said he saw violations of NCAA rules frequently, including one anonymous player who allegedly made $160,000 on autographs. (That would be a ton of autographs.)
"I saw it all day, every day to be honest with you. I wish they came to me, but they thought of me as some rich white kid so I didn't really get benefits from that. I'm just being honest with you. I saw it firsthand with a lot of players and talking with other guys. You know I'm friends with a lot of players from around the SEC, and talking with them, it makes the Todd Gurley thing seem insignificant by a long shot."
During the course of his career at South Carolina, Garcia was suspended five separate times and was dismissed from the program during his senior year.
In April, our own Steven Godfrey went behind the scenes with real SEC bag men.
Update: South Carolina's response:The ETS World Championships are the single most important tournament in the Eternal Tournament Series, bringing the best and most successful players from a whole year of play together for one huge two week tournament. With a prize pool of $3000 and a first prize of $1000, there’s more than just fame and prestige on the line. Let’s not forget that the player who emerges from Worlds with the most Series Points will also be crowned Player of the Year!
The World Championships are still almost four months away, but there’s just over a single season left to qualify! Five of the fifteen direct invite slots have already been claimed, with two more to go to the winners of the Season 5 and Season 6 Invitational. Let’s take a look at who’s already going!
Qualified Players
Arno “Toth201” Askamp
Age: 27
Representing: Netherlands
Qualification Type: Season One Invitational Champion
Series Points: 23 Points (3rd overall)
Tournament Results: Season One Invitational Champion, Top 6 (Season Two Invitational), Top 4 (Midseason Major), ETS Winner, ETS Top 4, 2xETS Top 8 |
just said it again without evidence.”
Warren also said the analysis is “completely out of line with other projections.”
“To recap: After claiming repeatedly he had projections showing the #GOPTaxScam paid for itself, Mnuchin released a report showing that there were no such projections, and that even his own wildly optimistic made-up projections weren’t enough for the plan to pay for itself,” she wrote.
“The American people deserve to know how this #GOPTaxScam will impact the economy and how it will affect middle-class families. @USTreasury promised an economic analysis – but this isn’t it,” she continued.
Democrats have largely criticized the Treasury Department’s analysis of the tax bill, with Senate Minority Leader Sen. Charles Schumer Charles (Chuck) Ellis SchumerBrennan fires back at'selfish' Trump over Harry Reid criticism Trump rips Harry Reid for 'failed career' after ex-Dem leader slams him in interview Harry Reid: 'I don't see anything' Trump is doing right MORE (D-NY) slamming the projection as “fake math.”
The Joint Committee on Taxation (JCT) said in a report Monday that the bill wouldn’t produce enough revenue to pay for itself and that it would cost about $1 trillion over a decade.Mary Roberts Rinehart was born on August 12, 1876 in what is now known as the North Side of Pittsburg, but was then the city of Allegany, Pennsylvania. She grew up in a family that was not economically stable. According to her autobiography, My Story, her father was a man of big dreams but who had difficulty making them come true.
Mary Roberts was always a great reader and loved stories. While in high school, she wrote several short stories that were published in local newspapers, but rather than continuing with her writing, upon graduation she was decided to pursue a nursing career. She was fortunate to have an uncle, her father’s brother John, who could afford to pay her tuition, and so she attended Pittsburg Homeopathic Medical and Surgical Hospital. It was here that she met a young doctor, Stanley Marshall Rinehart, and at the end of Mary’s training, they married and set up a home that included space for Doctor Rinehart’s private practice in 1896.
Mary had three sons, but struggled during and after her pregnancies with illnesses. Severe gynecological problems that followed the birth of her youngest son led to years of treatment and surgeries. While recuperating from diphtheria, she submitted poems to the Pittsburg Sunday Gazette and was pleased to be paid for their publication. Her first short fiction, “His Other Self” was published by Munsey’s. While it seems likely that Mary might have been slower to develop a career as a writer, she was devastated to discover that her husband had been investing in the stock market on margin and the Panic of 1904 left them deeply in debt. She began to write longer work, serials that were published in Munsey’s. The Man in Lower Ten was quickly followed by The Circular Staircase (my all-time favorite) and The Mystery of 1122.
This was still an age in literature when magazine serials were often re-published as books. At the encouragement of her uncle John, Mary submitted The Circular Staircase to Bobbs-Merrill. It was published in 1908. The following year, Bobbs-Merrill published her other two serial novels and The Man in Lower Ten was the first ever mystery novel to become a best seller, ranking fourth on the annual roster of the time.
Mary’s talent and her work ethic should have meant the end of financial worries for the Rinehart family, but Mary could spend money quickly often faster than she earned it. She liked large old houses that required a lot of expensive renovation work.
She expanded her writing to include comic romance and also wrote a Broadway farce, When a Man Marries, based on her serial novella, Seven Days. Marry continued to write short fiction, novels, novellas and articles.
Her sense of adventure was boundless. Rinehart had a long standing relationship with The Saturday Evening Post. Just after World War One broke out in Europe, she badgered The Post to give her letters of introduction that would allow her to get war interviews. She traveled to Europe and immediately began to make connections that would allow her to the front lines. She experienced a number of bombardments, visited front line hospitals, and before she came home to America, managed to interview Winston Churchill, the exiled King and Queen of Belgium, as well as the Queen of England.
Her coverage of the war dominated the Saturday Evening Post and established Rinehart as the first female war correspondent. She followed her trip to Europe with a trip out west to stay at the ranch of a friend in Wyoming. They spent a lot of time taking trips by horseback through the recently established Glacier National Park in nearby Montana. Rinehart developed a deep friendship with the Blackfoot Tribe and became an advocate for Native American issues.
Mary Roberts Rinehart continued to write mysteries and other fiction, non-fiction and plays throughout her life. Several of her works were adapted for film, both silent and later on as “talkies.” Probably the most famous was The Bat, released as a silent film in 1926, remade as The Bat Whispers in a 1930 talkie. The one I remember is an updated version of The Bat released in 1959 starring the inimitable Vincent Price and Agnes Moorehead. (Comic book creator Bob Kane credits The Bat with inspiring him for the creation of Batman!)
When television became a popular medium, both The Circular Staircase and The After House were featured as live television drama in the late 1950s.
Mary Roberts Rinehart died in 1958 and is buried in Arlington National Cemetery where, according to the official Arlington website, she is remembered as:
Mary Roberts Rinehart- America's first woman war correspondent during World War I for the Saturday Evening Post; wrote mystery novels, including The Circular Staircase and The Bat; in 1921 was referred to as “America's Mistress of Mystery.”
And that, I think, is a grand remembrance for an outstanding woman.
Twice short-listed for Best American Mystery Stories, Terrie Farley Moran’s cozy mystery, Well Read, Then Dead will be released by Berkley Prime Crime in August, 2014. She blogs amid the grand banter of the Women of Mystery.
Read all of Terrie Farley Moran's posts for Criminal Element.GUELPH — The Guelph Storm has added a second assistant coach in the form of Luca Caputi.
Caputi, a 26-year-old Toronto native, is a former Ontario Hockey League all-star who played 35 games in the National Hockey League with the Toronto Maple Leafs and Pittsburgh Penguins. He wrapped up his playing career in Sweden last season.
Caputi joins head coach Bill Stewart and assistant coach Todd Harvey, although it has yet to be determined if he will be on the bench or in the press box.
Caputi, who has battled injuries the past couple of years, said deciding to stop playing wasn't easy.
"It's always a tough decision and not the easiest thing to go through, but it was something that made sense to me and my family," said Caputi. "Once I made the decision I pursued it pretty heavily."
He traveled with general manager Mike Kelly to Stewart's home in Bobcaygeon last week for a meeting.
Caputi said ever since he's turned professional he kept a journal of notes and ideas that he hoped to someday use as a coach.
"I saw myself being a coach later on. I used to write down drills that I thought I would bring as a coach and quotes from coaches. I've always been a student of the game, writing things down," Caputi said.
Coaches he's played for in the past include Dan Bylsma, Todd Richards, Ron Wilson and Trent Yawney.
"I know the Guelph Storm is a class organization and I'm just looking forward to learning and being a part of it," he said. "I'm learning from two guys that can teach me a lot. I'm looking to earn their trust and prove I can be a coach."Giovinco: 'I'd choose Toronto again'
By Football Italia staff
Sebastian Giovinco “knew it’d be a risk coming to Toronto, but I’d do it all again. The Italy door remains open.”
The Atomic Ant can’t stop scoring in MLS, but was snubbed by Antonio Conte for Euro 2016.
“I have to think about the future now and my future is playing for Toronto,” Giovinco told Sky Sport Italia.
Did he expect to be called up by Italy for the tournament?
“Let’s say recently I wasn’t feeling very confident, but I tried to continue working and will do even more so that I can get back into the Nazionale as soon as possible.
“I haven’t heard from Conte, no. I knew it was a risk coming here, but I’d do it all again and will stick with it.
“I am sure the Italy door remains open.”
Giovinco limped off during last night's MLS match with an adductor issue, but it is not believed to be serious.CLOSE Fidel Castro chose to be interred in eastern Cuba because that was where he was from and where his revolution started. Video by Jack Gruber, USA TODAY
Santiago de Cuba preparing for the arrival of the ashes of Fidel Castro. Castro chose to be interred in eastern Cuba because that was where he was from and where his revolution started. (Photo11: Jack Gruber, USA TODAY)
SANTIAGO DE CUBA — For Cubans who live in this eastern city of Cuba, Fidel Castro's decision to lay his ashes to rest here was an obvious one.
Havana may be the political, economic and tourism capital of this Carribean island, but the mountainous region around Santiago de Cuba was where Castro's revolution, and others throughout the county's history, first got started.
"This is where he dug the roots of his tree of revolution," said Magdeline Fernandez Gomez, 72, a lifelong Santiago resident whose husband fought with Fidel's bearded rebels in the Sierra Maestra mountains nearby.
People throughout Santiago spent this week preparing for Castro's funeral. They swept sidewalks, painted fences, and prepared his grave site. The country has been honoring the fallen communist dictator all week, with a ceremony in Havana on Monday featuring eulogies from foreign heads of state and a four-day funeral procession east toward Santiago.
When his ashes are interred at a cemetery on Sunday morning in a small, family ceremony, it will complete a historic story that started in this rural, remote region.
Armando Labaceno, a history professor who has written extensively about Santiago's history, said eastern Cuba has always been isolated from the cosmopolitan capital so far west. The eastern region - known collectively as Oriente - viewed Santiago as more of a capital than Havana ever was. That's why Castro's parents, from the eastern city of Birán, sent a young Fidel to school in Santiago.
Santiago de Cuba preparing for the arrival of the ashes of Fidel Castro. Castro chose to be interred in eastern Cuba because that was where he was from and where his revolution started. (Photo11: Jack Gruber, USA TODAY)
Labaceno said the region's isolation also bred a revolutionary spirit that has endured for centuries. Cuba's original freedom fighters - from Carlos Manuel de Céspedes to José Martí - had their strongest bases of support there.
So when Castro attempted his first uprising in 1953, he attacked the Moncada army barracks in Santiago. After he was arrested, freed and launched his second attack in 1956, he again landed in southeastern Cuba.
And while many remember him rolling into Havana in 1959 as the culmination of his rise to power, Castro actually declared victory a week before from a balcony over Céspedes Park in the heart of Santiago.
"Havana has always been the capital of Cuba, and we respect that Fidel had to live and work there," said Alberto Perez, 45, a refinery worker from Santiago. "But this is where Fidel's heart always was."
Castro's decision to be buried in Santiago also reflected a wish to be alongside Martí. The Cuban poet, writer, politician and freedom fighter is considered the original Cuban founding father. His statue dominates the Plaza of the Revolution in Havana, his writings are taught to schoolchildren like gospel and his image is seen on walls and murals as frequently as Castro's.
"Like bones to the human body, the axle to the wheel, the wing to the bird, and the air to the wing, so is liberty the essence of life," he wrote. "Whatever is done without it is imperfect."
Santiago de Cuba preparing for the arrival of the ashes of Fidel Castro. Castro chose to be interred in eastern Cuba because that was where he was from and where his revolution started. (Photo11: Jack Gruber, USA TODAY)
Labaceno said Castro may have implemented a Marxist, communist system of government after taking control, but he said the teachings of Martí formed the true ideological basis for Castro's rule.
"Everything that's happened in Cuba, Martí imagined it, wrote about it, proclaimed it," Labaceno said. "Fidel was the one who best interpreted that."
That's why Gomez tears up when she thinks about the upcoming funeral, when a monument to Castro will be unveiled besides the monument to Martí in Santa Ifigenia Cemetery.
She said there, Castro and Martí will continue serving as inspirations to all of the residents of eastern Cuba who will be ready to strike if another revolution is needed.
"For us, Fidel will live always," she said. "We will continue his fight."
Read or Share this story: http://usat.ly/2gwQxQFPHILADELPHIA (CBS) — The new director for the Mayor’s Office of LGBT Affairs is officially on the job.
Amber Hikes’ appointment comes after months of protests over racism at Gayborhood nightclubs and a recent ruling by the Philadelphia Commission on Human Relations Commission meant to offer remedies.
“It’s a challenging time, but it’s a pivotal point in our history,” says Amber Hikes, an Atlanta native and University of Pennsylvania grad. As director of LGBT Affairs, she’ll serve as the liaison between the LGBT community and city government. She’s spending her days getting to know City Council and government officials and her nights at community meetings.
READ: Montgomery County Guidance Counselor Pens Book Helping Students Get Into College
“I keep telling people — consider me your eyes, your ears, your voice,” says Hikes.
Hikes spent years organizing the Philadelphia Dyke Walk and did a stint on the board of the William Way Community Center before taking a job in California. She says she got a call from the Mayor’s Office and offered her current roles. The Kenney Administration replaced Nellie Fitzpatrick with Hikes hoping her community organizing background will allow the office to be more outward facing and on the ground with the LGBTQ community.
“My role will be understanding what the community wants and needs and communicating that back to the mayor,” says Hikes.
READ: Philly Students Being Mentored By Police: ‘I Just Wanted Someone To Talk To’
She’ll lead the new Commission on LGBT Affairs. Hikes says they’ll focus on four priorities, which include fighting for vulnerable populations, ensuring the city is adequately addressing LGBT concerns, increasing city accessibility to the LGBT population and data.
“We’ve had some challenges with data in the past because of privacy issues,” says Hikes. “People are not as out about that as they are about their race or their gender.”
Hikes is located in room 115 of City Hall.Martin Makary is a surgeon and professor at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. (Photo11: Johns Hopkins Medicine)
Medical errors kill about 250,000 people a year, a new study from a well-known Johns Hopkins medical school professor and author said Tuesday.
The study by surgeon and Johns Hopkins professor Martin Makary is the second to report the mistakes represent the third-leading cause of deaths in the U.S.
Death certificates in this country don't have a place for hospitals to acknowledge medical error, which the authors say shows reporting needs to be improved so the problem can be better estimated and addressed.
Death certificates in the United States, Canada, Great Britain and more than 100 other countries rely on what's known as International Classification of Disease (ICD) code, so human and system errors can't be recorded, according to the World Health Organization.
"People don’t just die from billing codes," said Makary, author of the 2013 book Unaccountable: What Hospitals Won't Tell You and How Transparency Can Revolutionize Health Care. "We do not have an open and honest way of measuring medical error."
Death certificates should include an additional form field where it could be noted whether patients' deaths stem directly from care they received and what type of problem it was.
Makary and co-author Michael Daniel wrote that strategies to reduce death from medical care should include making errors "more visible" when they occur, having remedies available to "rescue patients," and making errors less frequent by following principles that take "human limitations" into account.
Calculating how many mistakes in hospitals actually caused deaths has been the subject of debate since the National Academy of Science's Institute of Medicine first estimated in 1999 that up to 98,000 are attributable to medical mistakes.
In 2010, the Department of Health and Human Services' inspector general reported that up to 180,000 Medicare patients alone died a year from medical errors.
John James, a NASA toxicologist whose son died of what he believes was a hospital error, did the last report on the subject in 2013 and estimated between 210,000 and 440,000 deaths a year could be attributed to medical error.
Among the problems associated with calculating medical errors is that some are errors of omission rather than commission, James said in an interview Monday. Others include the fact that people are typically in hospitals because they aren't well, which means several factors can lead to death.
James would know. His son died at age 19 in 2003 after he collapsed while running, because his potassium was depleted. No one at the hospital where he was treated replaced his potassium, as a guideline said they should. James blames a series of medical errors — of omission, diagnostics and communication.
Makary says medical and legal protections are needed, as with hospital quality information, so causes of death are accurately reported. Doctors and others may not acknowledge mistakes for fear of malpractice suits, he says.
It's complicated, says James, adding, "I don't know what the right answer is."
Read or Share this story: http://usat.ly/26R27IMA DUTCH MAN and woman, aged 55 and 43, along with a Belgian woman, 55, have died since being treated late last month at the Klaus Ross clinic in the German town of Bruggen-Bracht near the Dutch border.
Two other Dutch women are being treated in hospital and German prosecutors in the town of Moenchengladbach have urged other patients showing any symptoms to “urgently seek medical advice.”
Dutch police, who are supporting the inquiry, appealed for information from other patients, as newspapers reported the clinic had been using an experimental transfusion.
Concern was first raised when a 43-year-old Dutch woman with breast cancer complained of headaches and became confused after being treated at the clinic on 25 July.
She later lost the ability to speak, and died on July 30 although the “cause of her death remains unclear,” the German prosecutors said in a statement earlier this week.
Health risk
Dutch police said today that many people from the Netherlands are known to have visited the clinic, and while “it is not yet known exactly what happened, there is a health risk to patients who have undergone treatment at this clinic.”
The Klaus Ross clinic said in an English statement on its website that it had heard “one of our patients unexpectedly has passed away.”
We regret this seriously and are in shock as we heard the news. Our thoughts and deep condolences are with her family, friends and loved ones.
“Our focus has always been and will always be to provide well researched alternatives to our patients.”
The clinic vowed to cooperate with the police investigation, but added “we regret the suspicion set in the media that alternative medicine, and our clinic especially, could be held responsible.”
Alternative medicine is always an extra tool to battle diseases.
The clinic said it always advised patients to be monitored by their own doctors.
© AFP, 20160 Police: Woman Shot Intruder 9 Times In Self Defense
- An intruder who was shot and killed after a confrontation with a Duluth woman in her shower was likely stalking her for days and may have other victims, Gwinnett police said.
Police: Woman Shot Intruder 9 Times In Self Defense School Counselor Shoots, Kills Home Intruder
The 53-year-old woman, who is also a veteran private school counselor, was alone at the time of the Wednesday morning attack. She lives on East Mount Tabor Circle in Duluth.
The woman was getting out of the shower when she was met by a strange man with a kitchen knife, police said. They said there was a struggle in the bathroom, and she fell in the tub. Police later identified the man as Israel Perez Puentes, a Cuban national who lived in Alpharetta.
"The male was armed with a kitchen knife, a struggle ensued between the two of them. She fell in the bathtub injuring herself," Gwinnett police spokesman Edwin Ritter said.
The woman tried to fight the man off with a shower a rod, and he forced her into her bedroom, police said. They said she told her attacker she had money in the room. But she grabbed a.22-caliber handgun and shot the man nine times, police said.
Police said the man ran out of a back door and collapsed in the yard. He later died at the Gwinnett Medical Center. The victim, who was injured in the scuffle, was also taken to the hospital for treatment of non-life-threatening injuries. Police have not released her name.
Police told Channel 2's Kerry Kavanaugh they don't know why the woman was targeted.
"He may have seen her somewhere and he identified her as being a potential victim and he basically stalked her until he found the right moment to act on it," said Ritter.
"Our department is looking into any other cases around metro atlanta area as well as our jurisdiction to see if he may be involved with any other sexual assaults that may have occurred."
Dan Tucker, a friend and neighbor, said he was amazed at how the victim defended herself against the armed intruder.
"She's smart, she's witty and obviously well prepared," Tucker said.
Ritter said the shooting investigation was ongoing but defended the victim, saying the shooting appeared to be justified, and that she acted in self-defense. He said there are no plans to charge her.
Police said Thursday that neighbors had spotted Puentes' car in the neighborhood several days before the attack but did not report it. Puentes' estranged wife told Kavanaugh he had been arrested for burglary in Johns Creek in December.With the halfway point of the season (in terms of games played) already behind us for some teams and the All-Star Game quickly approaching, here at MLFS, we decided to come up with our own fantasy All-Star teams. I’ll be covering the hitters for each league and 65 Mustangs will be covering the pitchers. We are ignoring the real life rules of needing a representative from each MLB team and instead will focus on who we think the best players are fantasy-wise per position. There won’t be any players on these lists because they “deserve” to be there (I’m looking at you Derek Jeter), but rather are guys who have had an impressive first-half. I will also be ignoring defense as it’s not fantasy relevant. Without further ado, here’s my National League Fantasy All-Star team.
Catcher: Jonathan Lucroy– I wrote about him last week and my feelings haven’t changed. He’s been the best catcher in baseball this season and it’s not close. Reserve: Evan Gattis and his 16 home runs.
First base: Paul Goldschmidt– This was close for me and I’ll reveal my reserve at the end, but Goldschmidt is having a monster first half. He’s currently hitting.301/.381/.537 with 15 home runs, 57 runs scored, 53 RBI, and seven stolen bases. All of these numbers are either first or second best among NL first basemen, except for his batting average and on-base percentage, which are both 4th best. Goldschmidt has two full seasons at the MLB level under his belt and his 2012 numbers all went up in 2013. This season, all his numbers are just about on pace with those of last season, except that he’s walking less and striking out more. He’s also hitting more ground balls and less fly balls than his career averages, but it’s also only a half-season worth of data. Look for these numbers (and his K’s and BB’s) to come back towards his career numbers and for him to continue to dominate in the second half. Reserve: Anthony Rizzo
Second base: Dee Gordon– Sweet Dee gets the nod here primarily because of his speed and his ability to steal bases. No one in baseball has more swipes than he does, and he currently has eight more than fellow speedster, Billy Hamilton. Gordon has good splits (.286/.342/.405) but offers zero power. According to FanGraphs, his Isolated Power (ISO) is 4th worst among qualified NL second basemen. What Gordon does do well – in addition to swiping bags – is get on base and score runs. The Dodgers have a solid offense with Gordon hitting leadoff, and with the likes of Yasiel Puig, Adrian Gonzalez, and Matt Kemp hitting beh ind him, it means if he gets on base he’ll have a good chance of scoring. Gordon gets the edge over the other candidates at second because he doesn’t need to have a good day at the plate in order to have a productive fantasy day. Going 1 for 4 with a single could also lead to a stolen base and a run scored for Gordon, while guys like Chase Utley, need that one hit to be a home run in order to match the same production. The book is still out on Gordon, as he only has 258 career games played (with a season high of 87 in 2012), but if he continues to get on base, he’ll provide solid fantasy production. However, as a one-trick pony, he offers very little fantasy value if he fails to get on base. He’s hitting more line drives and less fly balls this year than his career averages, which is exactly what he needs to be doing, and he’s striking out less as well. Gordon is likely a “safer” pick to continue to do well from a fantasy standpoint because of the aforementioned ability to be productive without having a solid day at the plate, but he also offers less upside than guys with power, like Neil Walker. Reserve: Anthony Rendon, but only if he qualifies as a second baseman in your league. If he does, he gets my vote over Gordon. Among NL second baseman, he has the most home runs and runs batted in, and is tied for first in runs scored. With a Nationals lineup that is quickly getting healthy, he may switch from third to second, so look for his lead in these categories to increase. I like him more than Gordon in the second half.
Shortstop: Troy Tulowitzki– I don’t think I need to address this one considering the season that Tulo is having, but I’ll just point out some of his more impressive stats. His 61 runs scored are 21 more than the next best NL shortstop. He’s leading all of baseball with a.352 batting average, a.447 on-base percentage, and a.625 slugging percentage. His.272 ISO is 2nd best in the NL, his walk percentage (14.1%) is tied for 11th best in baseball and first among NL shortstops, and his runs created plus (wRC+) are the best in baseball. Tulo is on pace to shatter most of his career highs and the only question is can he keep it up. If he can stay healthy (151 games missed the last two seasons), I don’t see why he can’t. I don’t think he’ll match his first half splits (not shocking, considering all three are best in baseball right now), but there’s no evidence to say he can’t. He’s walking more and striking out less than his career averages, and he’s also hitting significantly more line drives than he has in his past. These stats show me a player who is seeing the ball incredibly well and has the power to do damage when he gets a good pitch to hit. He also has the luxury of hitting in baseball’s best offense and he gets to play his home games at Coors Field. All signs point to Tulo continuing his dominance. Reserve: Hanley Ramirez
Third Base: Todd Frazier– Frazier is quietly having a great year. He’s hitting.283/.350/.515, with 17 home runs, most among NL third baseman, and tied for 10th best in all of baseball. His 50 runs scored and 45 RBI are both second among NL third baseman. He’s also the only NL third baseman with an ISO over.200 (his is.232, 15th best in baseball). The third base position has been a black hole fantasy-wise, especially in the NL, making Frazier’s season all the more valuable. Can Frazier repeat his success in the second half? Going back to 2012, his first full season in the majors, Frazier posted similar splits to his current ones (.273/.331/.498) with 19 home runs in just 128 games. He had a down year last season, hitting.234/.314/.407, again with 19 home runs, but this time in 150 games. Part of this down year can be attributed to his.269 batting average on balls in play, meaning he was a bit unlucky, but he also didn’t help create his own luck by hitting a career high percentage of ground balls and a career low percentage of line drives. His line drive percentage this season is the highest of his career, which suggests why he’s having a career first-half. Look for his numbers in the second half to land somewhere between his current splits and his splits from last season, around.275/.340/.500, with another 10-12 home runs, or in other words, for him to finish the year as fantasy’s best NL third baseman. Reserve: Anthony Rendon
Right Field: Giancarlo Stanton– Stanton is similar to Tulowitzki in that there isn’t much to say about him – he’s having a monster season. He’s hitting.310/.404/.596 and leading the NL with 21 home runs, 59 RBI, and a.286 ISO. He’s even got seven stolen bases and is likely the best fantasy player in your league. Stanton is keeping a torrid pace, but can he keep it up? The power has always been there for Stanton, as he already has 138 home runs in just 568 career games played. He hasn’t hit less than 22 in any year in the majors, and that came in just 100 games in 2010, his first season playing at the MLB level. The rise in his batting average from this year to last (.249 to.310) may look suspicious, but he hit.290 in 2012 and his career batting average is.272. A possible reason for this increase could be attributed to a career low strikeout rate and an increased percentage of line drive hit. His batting average on balls in play (BABIP) is high (.374), so look for his average to regress, but with his power, his batting average is just gravy anyway. I see no reason why Stanton can’t keep up his first half performance in the second half of the season. Reserve: Yasiel Puig
Center Field: Andrew McCutchen– McCutchen and Carlos Gomez have very similar numbers, but I give the edge to McCutchen because of his much higher walk rate and much lower strikeout rate, thus helping give him a substantial edge in OBP (.420 to.377). McCutchen does a little bit of everything, and does it all well. He hits for power (32 extra-base hits), average (.315 BA), scores runs (42), drives in runs (48), and steals bases (12). McCutchen could almost be grouped into the elite Tulo/Stanton group where not much needs to be said. We simply expect him to produce, and he does. Over the past two seasons (2012 and 2013) McCutchen didn’t hit less than.317/.400/.508, with 21 HRs, 97 runs, 84 RBI, or 20 SB in a season. Considering his current splits are right in between his 2012 and 2013 numbers, plus a career high walk percentage, he shouldn’t experience a significant drop-off in the second half. I don’t expect him to pass his career highs this season, but I do expect him to improve on his “lows” of the past two seasons. Reserve: Carlos Gomez
Left Field: Justin Upton– Left field in the NL has been similar to third base in that there is a dearth of talent this season. Seth Smith started strong, but playing in baseball’s worst offense (the Padres) has caught up with him. Smith still has a better BA and OBP than Upton, but Upton has double the HRs (16), eight more runs scored (38), 18 more RBI (42), and five more SB (6), earning him the “All-Star” nod. Upton also has the 4th best ISO in the NL at.242. Disconcerting for Upton and his second half, are his decreased walk totals and a strikeout percentage that is a career high (28.5%) and 8th worst in the NL. His current BA (.275) and OBP (.343) are right on par with his career averages, but his SLG is 40 points higher than his career average and it’s likely not sustainable. His home run to fly ball ratio (HR/FB) is currently 20.5% (5th best in the NL) and a large reason why he has 16 HRs. However, his career HR/FB ratio is just 14.9% and has never been higher than 18.8% for an entire season. His career high for home runs (31) came in 2011 and his HR/FB that season was just 14.8%. Right now, a large percentage of Upton’s fly balls are turning into HRs and look for that to drop-off in the second-half and hurting his fantasy value, as none of his other numbers jump off the page. It doesn’t help that the Braves offense is struggling right now and is second to last in runs scored in all of baseball. Reserve: Khris Davis– I mentioned adding Davis two weeks ago as a hot streak player to hold onto and he hasn’t cooled off yet.
That’s it for the hitters, and in two weeks I’ll be back with my American League Fantasy All-Star team so keep a lookout for that. Here’s the roster in the order that I would bat them:
Gordon- 2B McCutchen- CF Tulo- SS Stanton- RF Goldschmidt- 1B Lucroy- C Frazier- 3B Upton- LF
Follow me on Twitter @BenBBruno and check out my most recent post on the Washington Nationals here, where I discuss what happens to their lineup when Bryce Harper returns.(Reuters) - Forty-two students and five staff of an elementary school in Tacoma, Washington were taken to area hospitals on Friday after being sickened by fumes, possibly from a leaf blower being used on the school roof.
The students and staff from Edison Elementary School were treated for dizziness, nausea and headaches related to the fumes, which became noticeable shortly after classes began, Tacoma Fire Department Battalion Chief David McRoberts said.
McRoberts said the symptoms did not appear to be serious and a spokesman for Tacoma Public Schools said all of those affected were ready to be released from the hospital by mid-afternoon.
“We’re definitely thankful that all of the injuries and illnesses were minor and not worse,” the spokesman, Dan Voelpel, said.
“We don’t want to see any of our staff our students harmed while they’re at school,” he said, adding, “This is a very rare occurrence.”
Edison Elementary was evacuated shortly after students and staff complained of a heavy odor inside the building and began showing signs of illness, McRoberts said. The first to be transported to a hospital was a male teacher.
Hazmat and firefighting crews were still investigating the cause on Friday afternoon, but suspected that fumes from gas-powered leaf blower, used on the school’s roof during class time, were to blame, he said.
McRoberts said the fumes likely entered the building’s air-conditioning system and were circulated throughout the school. Fumes from an active paint project could have also caused or contributed to the incident.
Air-testing equipment could not identify a possible location for the source of the fumes. “They couldn’t find any reading in there, nothing out of the ordinary,” he said.
Firefighters used fans to circulate air and air quality testing equipment on school ground to ensure that the area was free of fumes before the children returned, McRoberts said.
Students and staff were allowed back in the building to continue schooling in time for lunch, McRoberts said.Rory Sloane resisted medical staff's initial attempts to get him off the ground
ADELAIDE superstar Eddie Betts is extremely confident club champion Rory Sloane will pass a series of concussion tests and be cleared to face Geelong at Adelaide Oval on Friday night.
Sloane was knocked out in the third quarter of the Crows' 46-point victory over Melbourne in Darwin last Saturday night.
"I think Rory will play," Betts told Adelaide radio station FIVEaa on Tuesday morning.
"He's acting really good around the club.
"I don't know what you have to do to play this week because I haven't been concussed, but he is going to have to pass a couple of concussion tests.
"I'm pretty sure he'll play."
The Crows could give Sloane up to the morning of the game to prove his fitness for the top-of-the-table clash with the Cats.
Sloane brushed aside the Crows' medical staff so he could play on, but Betts and skipper Taylor Walker showed great leadership in convincing him to leave the field.
"It was weird to see one of your leaders go down like that and to react like that," Betts said.
"If you know Rory, he's a warrior and he wants to get back out and give himself for the team.
"He got up, done a little skip, but he had to go off because they called for |
�ﾉ RAISE YOUR APPLE ヽ༼ຈل͜ຈ༽ﾉ 18:46:05 Ariadne11 purple, lichorat 18:46:08 lichorat the few the proud the STAYers 18:46:13 wrt_sngs_n_yr_slp BECAUSE GROW IS WHAT WE DO 18:46:21 Miniwoffer ヽ༼ຈل͜ຈ༽ﾉ RAISE YOUR <INSTERT FRUIT NAME> ヽ༼ຈل͜ຈ༽ﾉ 18:46:25 KrazyA1pha #BananasGrow 18:46:29 Clayh5 But i mean i already clicked it this round 18:46:33 Jebediah_Blasts_off ヽ༼ຈل͜ຈ༽ﾉ PRAISE YOUR BANANAS ヽ༼ຈل͜ຈ༽ﾉ 18:46:41 lichorat ooh Ariadne11 you garden? 18:46:42 impeccablepessimist what color am i? 18:46:49 wrt_sngs_n_yr_slp STAYERS ARE PARASITIC. ABANDON IF YOU DO NOT BELIEVE IN ONE TRUE BANANA 18:46:52 Miniwoffer RED 18:46:52 KrazyA1pha red impeccablepessimist 18:46:53 Clayh5 Red 18:46:53 lichorat impeccablepessimist you're red 18:46:55 thrillho10 Impec: red 18:46:57 Jerraldough ETA anyone? 18:47:00 impeccablepessimist thanks 18:47:03 lichorat Ariadne11 you garden? That is soooo cool. 18:47:04 Ariadne11 yeah, lichorat 18:47:04 Clayh5 Whats my color 18:47:05 wrt_sngs_n_yr_slp YOU WILL BE MET WITH A QUICK DEATH 18:47:05 KrazyA1pha thrillho10 you can tab-complete usernames 18:47:13 just type a couple letters and hit tab 18:47:15 Jebediah_Blasts_off 17 min 18:47:28 lichorat Jerraldough 11am PST 18:47:29 Miniwoffer STAY BY MY SIDE, JUST WANNA STAY BY MY SIDE 18:47:43 impeccablepessimist do we all lose since we have abondoners? 18:47:48 chickn_nugger no 18:47:54 impeccablepessimist or are they just out 18:47:56 chickn_nugger we will still grow but they will leave 18:48:01 impeccablepessimist ok good 18:48:03 lichorat #StayDrumfMyFriend 18:48:08 wrt_sngs_n_yr_slp TELL ME STAYERS. ARE YOU SATISFIED WITH YOUR LIFE. ARE YOU SATISFIED SITTING IN YOUR CHAIR NOT DOING ANYTHING 18:48:09 Jebediah_Blasts_off WE WILL GROW PAST ALL STAYERS AND ABANDONERS! 18:48:12 Abacap the banana lives on 18:48:17 Jerraldough 1 more hour to go 18:48:21 thrillho10 Does anyone know the purpose of this yet 18:48:25 Miniwoffer ᶘ ᵒᴥᵒᶅ STAYING IS BELIVING ᶘ ᵒᴥᵒᶅ 18:48:25 Jerraldough nope 18:48:26 lichorat Stayers are no abandoners 18:48:26 huzzarisme voted to GROW 18:48:28 Abacap 15 min left 18:48:36 wrt_sngs_n_yr_slp GROWTH IS PROGRESS. GROWTH IS EXPANSION. GROWTH IS LIFE. 18:48:37 lichorat staying means liking who you're with 18:48:40 you think they're cool 18:48:41 Miniwoffer ᶘ ᵒᴥᵒᶅ STAYING IS BELIVING ᶘ ᵒᴥᵒᶅ 18:48:44 carbonnanotube Damn sone, we have competition: https://www.reddit.com/r/EnclaveRobin/ 18:48:49 huzzarisme The script didn't work for me that time? 18:48:56 carbonnanotube https://www.reddit.com/r/joincalcium/ 18:48:56 GotTiredOfMyName voted to GROW 18:48:57 Juno_Malone ヽ༼ຈل͜ຈ༽ﾉ PRAISE YOUR BANANAS ヽ༼ຈل͜ຈ༽ﾉ 18:49:00 Miniwoffer Im sad we didnt stay last merge 18:49:07 wrt_sngs_n_yr_slp STAYING MEANS YOU DISLIKE THE UNKNOWN. GROWTH COMES WITH ALL THAT YOU HAVE FRIENDED HERE AND MORE 18:49:10 Ariadne11 me too Miniwoffer 18:49:10 shorty_06 I have returned my fellow banana people 18:49:21 Miniwoffer ᶘ ᵒᴥᵒᶅ STAYING IS BELIVING ᶘ ᵒᴥᵒᶅ 18:49:21 carbonnanotube https://www.reddit.com/r/hornboard/ 18:49:22 Gloras 🅱🅰🅽🅰🅽🅰 \ O / 18:49:27 Jebediah_Blasts_off WE WILL GROW! 18:49:29 Roboticide Wtf happened here. 18:49:34 Vechro bananas happened 18:49:40 Juno_Malone ALL MUST BE ASSIMILATED TO BANANA 18:49:44 Abacap WHERE ARE MY OG BANANAS AT 18:49:46 HatesRedditors I think redditors are creating little cargo cults 18:49:47 Astrofusion voted to GROW 18:49:51 Miniwoffer ᶘ ᵒᴥᵒᶅ STAYING IS BELIVING ᶘ ᵒᴥᵒᶅ 18:49:51 Abacap MY DAY 1's 18:49:54 wrt_sngs_n_yr_slp THIS IS NO CULT 18:50:00 HatesRedditors oh not you guys 18:50:00 wrt_sngs_n_yr_slp THIS IS LIFE 18:50:00 Roboticide Oh good someone i recognize is still here and sane 18:50:00 Gloras Could someone change the Subthbeme from the bana? its to NSFW 18:50:04 Clayh5 ITERATION 5 BANANA HERE 18:50:10 HatesRedditors i mean the OTHER redditors, clearly bananas are the way to go 18:50:13 Jebediah_Blasts_off 𝕋ℍ𝔼 𝔹𝔸ℕ𝔸ℕ𝔸𝕊 𝕎𝕀𝕃𝕃 𝔾ℝ𝕆𝕎, 𝕎𝔼 𝕎𝕀𝕃𝕃 𝔾ℝ𝕆𝕎 𝕌ℕ𝕋𝕀𝕃 𝕎𝔼 𝔸ℝ𝔼 ℝ𝕀ℙ𝔼 𝔸ℕ𝔻 𝕊𝕋ℝ𝕆ℕ𝔾 18:50:19 Roboticide voted to GROW 18:50:24 willymoop omfg 18:50:29 Abacap ヽ༼ຈل͜ຈ༽ﾉ PRAISE YOUR BANANAS ヽ༼ຈل͜ຈ༽ﾉ 18:50:30 chpx voted to STAY 18:50:30 chpx voted to GROW 18:50:31 willymoop I had gone out to lunch and back and this room hasnt ended 18:50:34 KrazyA1pha GROW BABY GROW 18:50:37 Jebediah_Blasts_off ヽ༼ຈل͜ຈ༽ﾉ PRAISE YOUR BANANAS ヽ༼ຈل͜ຈ༽ﾉ 18:50:37 Clayh5 Looks like we've successfully assimilated all the binary 18:50:38 wrt_sngs_n_yr_slp BECAUSE WE GROW WILLY 18:50:43 Miniwoffer Somone from the old merge please make a sub, and post it here! 18:50:43 RedMiist You all disgust me.. 18:50:47 Roboticide No but its also devovles quite a bit 18:50:48 wrt_sngs_n_yr_slp WE LIVE 18:50:53 willymoop ヽ༼ຈل͜ຈ༽ﾉ RAISE YOUR BANANAS ヽ༼ຈل͜ຈ༽ﾉ https://www.reddit.com/r/PraiseBanana/ 18:50:57 chpx It's a banana's nature to grow 18:51:04 willymoop there is a subreddit 18:51:06 Jebediah_Blasts_off ヽ༼ຈل͜ຈ༽ﾉ RAISE YOUR BANANAS ヽ༼ຈل͜ຈ༽ﾉ https://www.reddit.com/r/PraiseBanana/ 18:51:07 KrazyA1pha RedMiist did you stay on STAY last round? 18:51:12 RedMiist Yes 18:51:13 wrt_sngs_n_yr_slp RED MIIST JUST ABANDON FRIEND. YOU ARE HERE FOR THE WRONG REASONS 18:51:18 KrazyA1pha Just curious if it splinters off people who stay 18:51:21 Jerraldough ariadne11 grow! 18:51:22 KrazyA1pha guess it has to be more than half 18:51:23 TuckingFypeos Ohhh Clayh5 is still with us. I thought we lost you. 18:51:27 Jebediah_Blasts_off REDMIIST IS THE FOULEST OF HERETICS! 18:51:30 KrazyA1pha lol 18:51:33 RedMiist You're a tyrant wrt_sngs_n_yr_slp... 18:51:33 lichorat staying is for those who enjoy other's company 18:51:39 Juno_Malone Clayh5 is my original robinbuddy 18:51:42 MdxBhmt voted to GROW 18:51:46 TuckingFypeos Uberg33k voted Abandon. 18:51:52 wrt_sngs_n_yr_slp I AM NO TYRANT. BANANA IS THE ONLY TRUTH. 18:51:58 Miniwoffer ᶘ ᵒᴥᵒᶅ STAYING IS BELIVING ᶘ ᵒᴥᵒᶅ 18:52:01 willymoop Does anyone her play Dota 2 18:52:05 Juno_Malone TO BE BANANA IS TO BE OBJECTIVE. ヽ༼ຈل͜ຈ༽ﾉ PRAISE YOUR BANANAS ヽ༼ຈل͜ຈ༽ﾉ 18:52:06 Jerraldough 🍌🍌RAISE YOUR BANANAS🍌🍌 18:52:07 Jebediah_Blasts_off BANANA IS TRUTH! 18:52:10 wrt_sngs_n_yr_slp IF YOU DO NOT BELIEVE IN GROWTH I SEE NO REASON WHY YOU WOULD LEECH ONTO THE BANANA YOU HATE 18:52:12 Abacap Just a quick plug guys 18:52:16 lichorat staying is being happy with who you are and who you're with 18:52:19 shorty_06 TRUE BANANAS DO NOT STAY, THEY KEEP GROWING UNTIL THEY ARE PLUMP AND RIPE 18:52:20 willymoop 🍌 18:52:26 lichorat it's quality over quantity 18:52:28 Juno_Malone ヽ༼ຈل͜ຈ༽ﾉ GROW YOUR BANANAS ヽ༼ຈل͜ຈ༽ﾉ 18:52:30 willymoop 🍌🍌🍌🍌 18:52:31 Abacap If you play Wargame / Arma 3 / Squad/ similar games join us at https://www.reddit.com/r/ProjectMilSim/ 18:52:32 KrazyA1pha #BananasGrow 18:52:32 chpx and growing is wanting to share your happiness and the teachings of banana with others 18:52:34 Gloras https://www.reddit.com/r/oldbinarys https://www.reddit.com/r/oldbinarys https://www.reddit.com/r/oldbinarys (OLD MERGE) 18:52:37 wrt_sngs_n_yr_slp YOU WILL BE HAPPY WITH WHO YOU ARE AND WHO YOU ARE WITH. YOU WILL ALL BE THERE IN THE GROWTH' 18:52:37 Laserhamster1 There are less and less = every time 18:52:39 RedMiist Lichorat has the right ideals. 18:52:44 Ariadne11 staying because I don't want to become a banana 18:52:50 Jerraldough 🍌🍌PRAISE YOUR BANANAS🍌🍌 18:52:56 willymoop Guys, if no one says anything I can make a giant banana ascii art 18:52:57 KrazyA1pha there doesn't seem to be anything here about 18:53:00 lolol 18:53:01 chpx 🍌🍌🍌🍌 18:53:05 Clayh5 🍌🍌🍌🍌🍌🍌🍌🍌 18:53:06 Roboticide Wow, the group we merged with is literally retarded... 18:53:07 wrt_sngs_n_yr_slp YOU DON"T BECOME A BANANA. YOU ARE HUMAN YOU SILLY HUMAN 18:53:09 willymoop NO ONE TALK SO I CAN MAKE BANANA ASCII ART 18:53:11 KrazyA1pha 🍌🍌🍌🍌🍌🍌🍌🍌🍌🍌🍌🍌🍌🍌🍌🍌 18:53:12 Vechro yes 18:53:17 Jebediah_Blasts_off ヽ༼ຈل͜ຈ༽ﾉ RAISE YOUR BANANAS ヽ༼ຈل͜ຈ༽ﾉ 18:53:17 RandalGraves 100% yes. 18:53:20 wrt_sngs_n_yr_slp YOU BELIEVE IN THE DIVINE RIGHT OF GROWTH OF THE BANANA 18:53:20 Juno_Malone 10 MINUTES TIL THE BANANANING 18:53:24 KrazyA1pha ヽ༼ຈل͜ຈ༽ﾉ RAISE YOUR BANANAS ヽ༼ຈل͜ຈ༽ﾉ 18:53:25 willymoop _ 18:53:26 Articthunder voted to ABANDON 18:53:29 shorty_06 THE BANOFFEE IS ALMOST HERE 18:53:31 Jebediah_Blasts_off ヽ༼ຈل͜ຈ༽ﾉ PRAISE YOUR BANANAS ヽ༼ຈل͜ຈ༽ﾉ 18:53:31 HatesRedditors just pretend like you understand the banana shit, they won't turn on you that way 18:53:33 Abacap ヽ༼ຈل͜ຈ༽ﾉ RAISE YOUR BANANAS ヽ༼ຈل͜ຈ༽ﾉ 18:53:33 KrazyA1pha #BananasGrow 18:53:40 Roboticide Hey randal. My plane landed. 18:53:41 willymoop _ //\ V \ \ \_ \,'.`-. |\ `. `. ( \ `. `-. _,.-:\ \ \ `. `-._ __..--',-';/ 18:53:42 Clayh5 Arcticthunder youre an abandoning weed fiend 18:53:44 Juno_Malone ヽ༼ຈل͜ຈ༽ﾉ GROW YOUR BANANAS ヽ༼ຈل͜ຈ༽ﾉ 18:53:47 Articthunder voted to GROW 18:53:50 Articthunder just checking 18:53:50 lichorat Think about it: If we had more people we would stop knowing eachother. 18:53:52 RandalGraves roboticide...i bet you didn't think you'd be landing into this. 18:53:59 jf908 Can I make a filter to ignore all messages with the term "banana"? 18:54:01 Roboticide Nope. 18:54:02 KrazyA1pha We have to stay strong 18:54:02 Clayh5 Thats better 18:54:08 Vechro so what do we do with a shitty merge? 18:54:10 lichorat voted to STAY 18:54:12 KrazyA1pha GROW BABY GROW 18:54:15 Laserhamster1 Next grow does mean that we will know no one 18:54:17 Clayh5 Assimilate them 18:54:20 Laserhamster1 But 18:54:20 Roboticide Things apparently got weird during the descent. 18:54:20 tsuitujhui Banana 18:54:26 RedMiist Lichorat has the right idea. The more we grow the more the banana seperates 18:54:26 thrillho10 What's your fav fruit 18:54:27 carbonnanotube Push our banana focused adgenda 18:54:27 HatesRedditors we wait for the next merge then hope they overpower the banana people 18:54:27 wrt_sngs_n_yr_slp EVERYONE HERE WILL A S C E N D TO THE NEXT GROWTH 18:54:28 lichorat Vechro don't let there be a shitty merge STAY STRONG 18:54:30 Laserhamster1 Bananas grow 18:54:34 lichorat thrillho10 the durian 18:54:34 chpx banana obviously 18:54:38 Vechro there already has been a shitty merge 18:54:38 wrt_sngs_n_yr_slp WE WILL BE STRONGER WITH REINFORCEMENTS 18:54:39 Jebediah_Blasts_off ALL THINGS WILL BECOME BANANA! 18:54:39 Ariadne11 make your choice now: stay and see where that takes us, or grow and join some other weird group who might HATE bananas 18:54:41 KrazyA1pha A S C E N D 18:54:50 RedMiist We will never be able to stay now, the next merge won't let us stay and will overthrow us 18:54:51 lichorat Vechro, stop the maddness. Stay 18:54:53 Miniwoffer ᶘ ᵒᴥᵒᶅ STAYING IS BELIVING ᶘ ᵒᴥᵒᶅ 18:54:55 KrazyA1pha Stay doesn't work that way Ariadne11 18:54:58 Jebediah_Blasts_off 9 min 18:55:00 thrillho10 I had to google a durian 18:55:00 shorty_06 WE MUST SPREAD THE BANANA LOVE 18:55:02 lichorat KrazyA1pha it does 18:55:05 Laserhamster1 Half of this group hates banana already 18:55:06 [robin] could not send your message: 18:55:06 WE CAN CONVERT THEM 18:55:06 KrazyA1pha It doesn't split 18:55:08 Jerraldough 🍌🍌PRAISE YOUR BANANAS🍌🍌 18:55:09 carbonnanotube How long? 18:55:09 tsuitujhui Banana 18:55:11 shorty_06 THE MORE BANANAS THE BETTER 18:55:13 Jebediah_Blasts_off ヽ༼ຈل͜ຈ༽ﾉ PRAISE YOUR BANANAS ヽ༼ຈل͜ຈ༽ﾉ 18:55:18 KrazyA1pha Stay doesn't split the chat 18:55:21 willymoop ヽ༼ຈل͜ຈ༽ﾉ PRAISE YOUR BANANAS ヽ༼ຈل͜ຈ༽ﾉ 18:55:22 markelevra voted to GROW 18:55:22 tsuitujhui Banana 18:55:24 wrt_sngs_n_yr_slp WE CANNOT BE OVERTHROWN. GROWTH CANNOT BE STOPPED. 18:55:24 shorty_06 WE CAN CONVERT THE BANANA HATERS 18:55:27 thrillho10 voted to ABANDON 18:55:33 thrillho10 voted to STAY 18:55:33 zekdude voted to STAY 18:55:36 lichorat Look at all you GROWers who are part of the herd. 18:55:43 thrillho10 voted to GROW 18:55:45 lichorat Show that you can fight back. 18:55:47 Laserhamster1 I prefer bunch 18:55:47 KrazyA1pha GROW BABY GROW 18:55:47 zekdude voted to STAY 18:55:50 Roboticide If the majority votes to stay, does that mean we prevent a Merger? We could spare another group this pain. 18:55:50 lichorat STAY STRONG 18:55:51 Laserhamster1 To herd 18:55:52 zekdude voted to ABANDON 18:55:52 KrazyA1pha lichorat abandon then 18:55:54 chpx bananas travel in herds. we are bananas. 18:55:57 RedMiist You're all a hivemind. Staying is the way to go. Conserve what we have here 18:55:58 carbonnanotube Plus I mean we have a culture, look at the songs of our people on the sub! 18:56:00 KrazyA1pha we can do without you 18:56:01 lichorat voted to BACON 18:56:01 wrt_sngs_n_yr_slp THE STAYING IS A HERD JUST OF LESS SIGNIFICANT VALUE 18:56:03 zekdude voted to STAY 18:56:03 willymoop Does anyone want to play Dota 2 18:56:04 Roboticide voted to STAY 18:56:06 Ariadne11 I guess if you really want to become a banana and talk about bananas forever you can grow, and see if you survive 18:56:10 Jebediah_Blasts_off WE ARE THE BANANAMIND 18:56:10 KrazyA1pha GROW BABY GROW 18:56:11 wrt_sngs_n_yr_slp THEY"RE TURNING 18:56:16 Jebediah_Blasts_off WE WILL NEVER STOP! 18:56:18 willymoop Does anyone wanna play Dota 2 while waiting 18:56:19 zekdude voted to GROW 18:56:20 RedMiist You're all banana tyrants, we want to conserve this. 18:56:24 KrazyA1pha Just gotta grow into the biggest room on reddit 18:56:29 chpx ^ 18:56:33 lichorat We are a group of people who pushed back against the masses. 18:56:34 Jerraldough Oh fuck lol people are staying 18:56:35 KrazyA1pha It's all about growth 18:56:36 tsuitujhui ok, I made an AutoHotKey script that automatically votes Grow and types banana every 2 minutes. 18:56:36 jf908 We're ~10 minutes until voting ends 18:56:37 willymoop Eventually we will merge with the next biggest group 18:56:42 shorty_06 Guys, where has the subreddit gone? 18:56:43 Ariadne11 the biggest room on reddit isn't necessarily the best... 18:56:44 lichorat STAYers are REBEL's in the best way. 18:56:44 KrazyA1pha Never stop growing. 18:56:48 Jebediah_Blasts_off JOIN US ZEKDUDE! WE WILL GROW! 18:56:48 [robin] could not send your message: 18:56:48 Nice one tsuitujhui 18:56:49 carbonnanotube Is the sub broken for anyone else? 18:56:50 lichorat Ariadne11 exactly 18:56:53 shorty_06 Nice one tsuitujhui 18:56:55 willymoop # of people * 1.5 = Time 18:56:55 chpx voted to STAY 18:56:56 Ariadne11 the best subs have quality conversation 18:56:59 [robin] could not send your message: 18:56:59 Post the script in the subreddit? 18:57:01 Ariadne11 not quantity 18:57:03 lichorat voted to GROW 18:57:04 shorty_06 Post the script in the subreddit? 18:57:10 tsuitujhui k 18:57:12 wrt_sngs_n_yr_slp WHY NOT GROW? WHAT DO WE GAIN FROM STAYING IN OUR LONELY BUBBLE LIFE. LIVE A LITTLE. EXPLORE. SEE WHAT IS IN THE UNKNOWN 18:57:12 chpx If I stay will I still come with you guys if the majority votes GROW? 18:57:16 lichorat voted to GROW 18:57:19 Vechro the biggest room will be a live chat reddit with EVERYONE 18:57:21 Gloras (╯°□°)╯︵ ┻━┻ 18:57:24 RedMiist the biggest group will just be twitchchat, nobody could recognise eachother It will just be such a cluterfuck 18:57:28 Roboticide voted to GROW 18:57:31 Ariadne11 no one knows exactly what happens when we'stay' 18:57:32 willymoop Guys lets go to twitch and spam ヽ༼ຈل͜ຈ༽ﾉ PRAISE YOUR BANANAS ヽ༼ຈل͜ຈ༽ﾉ 18:57:33 KrazyA1pha GROW BABY GROW 18:57:40 lichorat voted to STAY 18:57:43 Ariadne11 and who knows, we could stay a few turns and then grow? 18:57:47 KrazyA1pha voted to DANCE 18:57:50 willymoop GUYS 18:57:51 Jebediah_Blasts_off BANANA BROTHERS WILL KNOW EACH OTHER! 18:57:54 carbonnanotube Ah crap, someone broke the sub 18:57:54 shorty_06 Has someone edited the subreddit CSS to make it all white? 18:57:55 lichorat Ariadne11 has the right idea 18:57:57 Laserhamster1 If you stay the chat ends 18:57:59 tsuitujhui sub is dead 18:58:03 willymoop https://www.twitch.tv/eternalenvyy <---- GO HERE AND SPAM BANANAS 18:58:06 shorty_06 The sub works if you turn of CSS 18:58:09 lichorat Laserhamster1 that's for abandon 18:58:12 Roboticide What sub? 18:58:12 KrazyA1pha explosivo64 where you at 18:58:14 lichorat the chat doesn't end with stay 18:58:16 shorty_06 Someone who knows what they're doing try to fix it 18:58:17 RedMiist Ariadne11 and Lichorat has the right ideas I've been talking about 18:58:20 Laserhamster1 Stay turns it into a subreddit 18:58:20 chpx subreddit is blank 18:58:23 RedMiist Staying is a great idea 18:58:29 shorty_06 Don't stay 18:58:32 Laserhamster1 And closes the chat 18:58:34 KrazyA1pha We must grow. 18:58:35 shorty_06 We already have a subreddit 18:58:40 KrazyA1pha We must always grow. 18:58:40 Miniwoffer GUys /r/PuzzleSolvers/ 18:58:45 HatesRedditors Your mom must grow 18:58:50 carbonnanotube anyone know how to fix that? 18:58:55 chickn_nugger JACKY MAO 18:58:59 KrazyA1pha Yeah, it's a CSS issue carbonnanotube 18:59:01 Juno_Malone ヽ༼ຈل͜ຈ༽ﾉ PRAISE YOUR BANANAS ヽ༼ຈل͜ຈ༽ﾉ 18:59:06 TuckingFypeos ヽ༼ຈل͜ຈ༽ﾉ RAISE YOUR BANANAS ヽ༼ຈل͜ຈ༽ﾉ https://www.reddit.com/r/PraiseBanana/ 18:59:28 Jebediah_Blasts_off ヽ༼ຈل͜ຈ༽ﾉ PRAISE YOUR BANANAS ヽ༼ຈل͜ຈ༽ﾉ 18:59:31 shorty_06 If you use RES just disable CSS for the time being 18:59:36 TuckingFypeos Wait wait wait 18:59:44 shorty_06 Can some try to fix it before the next merge though? 18:59:50 TuckingFypeos is it PRAISE your bananas or RAISE your bananas 18:59:52 carbonnanotube Fixed 18:59:53 chpx Can you post the entire thing? 18:59:55 KrazyA1pha there ya go 18:59:57 shorty_06 WE'RE BACK GUYS 18:59:57 Jebediah_Blasts_off ヽ༼ຈل͜ຈ༽ﾉ PRAISE YOUR BANANAS ヽ༼ຈل͜ຈ༽ﾉ 19:00:01 ヽ༼ຈل͜ຈ༽ﾉ PRAISE YOUR BANANAS ヽ༼ຈل͜ຈ༽ﾉ 19:00:02 shorty_06 THANK YOU 19:00:02 chpx ah yep it works 19:00:05 willymoop ヽ༼ຈل͜ຈ༽ﾉ PRAISE YOUR BANANAS ヽ༼ຈل͜ຈ༽ﾉ 19:00:06 KrazyA1pha merge coming 19:00:10 A S C E N D 19:00:11 Ariadne11 ten minutes until the end of this room 19:00:12 chisk_ when is the next merger? 19:00:14 carbonnanotube Miniwoffer, tisk tisk 19:00:25 Jebediah_Blasts_off ヽ༼ຈل͜ຈ༽ﾉ PRAISE YOUR BANANAS ヽ༼ຈل͜ຈ༽ﾉ https://www.reddit.com/r/PraiseBanana/ 19:00:25 lichorat miniwoffer i have joined 19:00:25 jf908 around 4 minutes 19:00:25 KrazyA1pha about 2 minutes or so 19:00:32 shorty_06 Shall I archive the chat now? 19:00:35 KrazyA1pha We must ascend 19:00:37 carbonnanotube sure 19:00:41 wrt_sngs_n_yr_slp A S C E N D 19:00:42 chpx voted to GROW 19:00:42 Jebediah_Blasts_off yes 19:00:43 KrazyA1pha there will be a warning before merge 19:00:47 chisk_ ENLIGHTENED BIRDMEN SPREAD OUT! 19:00:49 shorty_06 It's not long enough to copy 19:00:54 Miniwoffer Lol why did you Mod somone who spammed /r/PuzzleSolvers/ in chat :P 19:01:00 shorty_06 I'll copy this now 19:01:02 TuckingFypeos I can't sub because I'm already at 50 and I don't want it to mess up my front page. D: 19:01:02 [robin] could not send your message: 19:01:02 Just incase 19:01:05 could not send your message: 19:01:05 Just incase 19:01:12 lichorat R e m e m b e r only you can S T A Y and be exclusive. 19:01:13 shorty_06 Just in case 19:01:16 willymoop ヽ༼ຈل͜ຈ༽ﾉ PRAISE YOUR BANANAS ヽ༼ຈل͜ຈ༽ﾉ https://www.reddit.com/r/PraiseBanana/ 19:01:24 Guys when we merge 19:01:24 carbonnanotube Cause I'm dumb 19:01:26 KrazyA1pha A S C E N D 19:01:28 Jebediah_Blasts_off ヽ༼ຈل͜ຈ༽ﾉ PRAISE YOUR BANANAS ヽ༼ຈل͜ຈ༽ﾉ https://www.reddit.com/r/PraiseBanana/ 19:01:34 willymoop ヽ༼ຈل͜ຈ༽ﾉ PRAISE YOUR BANANAS ヽ༼ຈل͜ຈ༽ﾉ https://www.reddit.com/r/PraiseBanana/ 19:01:38 Miniwoffer I didnt delete anything, didnt want to be mean :P 19:01:41 jf908 voted to STAY 19:01:42 wrt_sngs_n_yr_slp I CAN FEEL IT BOYS. I CAN FEEL THE A S C E N S I O N 19:01:44 lichorat TuckingFypeos you can make multireddits, you know? 19:01:48 willymoop What color am I? 19:01:50 Jerraldough doot doot 19:01:51 impeccablepessimist orange 19:01:54 Gloras ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ 19:01:55 willymoop I AM THE COLOR OF THE BANANA 19:01:59 TuckingFypeos Yeah, but... that takes like... 30seconds worth of effort. 19:02:00 lichorat TukingFypeos it doesn't subscribe you 19:02:03 KrazyA1pha yeah, carbonnanotube maybe don't mod non-bananas 19:02:05 jf908 no bananas are not orange 19:02:09 Laserhamster1 RAISE THE BANANAS CMON 19:02:10 KrazyA1pha non-belie |
submitted to the board for review and approval in the next 90 days, UC said.
A rendering of what Fifth Third Arena will look like, from the outside. (Photo: Provided/University of Cincinnati)
Bohn made an enthusiastic pitch while asking for Board approval to raise the remaining funds.
"It's important to understand this will all be raised by private funds," Bohn said.
Construction is expected to begin immediately after the Bearcats complete the 2015-16 basketball season, with a target start of March 2016. Tuesday's action will allow the Populous/Moody Nolan design team to remain on its current schedule.
"From our standpoint, obviously, we're very experienced in our traveling," UC men's basketball coach Mick Cronin said, speaking before the Board of Trustees on Tuesday. "What I can tell you is that this on-campus arena would be as good or better, or maybe the best on-campus arena for competition in the country. This is truly state of the art. From a recruiting and competitive standpoint, this would be huge for us."
UC women's basketball coach Jamelle Elliott and volleyball coach Molly Alvey also attended the Board meeting Tuesday.
Ono and several others also spoke in favor of the renovation at Tuesday's meeting, but a faculty representative expressed concern about the amount of funds being raised for UC athletic projects. UC also is near completion of an $86 million renovation and expansion of its Nippert Stadium football facility, which will reopen for the 2015 Bearcats football season on Sept. 5 against Alabama A&M. That project also is being financed by private funds.
Another speaker in Tuesday's well-attended meeting said that some financial concerns could be alleviated if UC gains entrance into a major conference. UC right now resides outside the so-called Power Five as a member of the American Athletic Conference.
UC has been mentioned as a potential Big 12 Conference candidate, but nothing appears imminent on that front.
UC teams under the renovation plan would vacate Fifth Third Arena for the 2016-17 season. Bohn said that US Bank Arena, Cincinnati Gardens, Cintas Center (Xavier University) and Northern Kentucky University (BB&T Arena) are among possibilities as a temporary home. It is expected that UC teams will return to the renovated Fifth Third for the 2017-18 season.
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The current seating capacity of 13,176 will be reduced to about 11,500, according to the plan. Bohn said he would like to find a way to get it closer to 12,000, as plans continue to evolve.
The Enquirer reported last month that UC was close to approving renovations of the building, which opened in November 1989. In the first game, UC player Steve Sanders made a three-point shot at the buzzer as the Bearcats upset No. 20 Minnesota 66-64.
The facility has housed some of UC's greatest basketball teams and players, including the 1992 men's Final Four team and All-Americans including Danny Fortson, Kenyon Martin, Steve Logan and Sean Kilpatrick.
The building opened as the Myrl H. Shoemaker Center, named for the former Ohio Lieutenant Governor. The facility was renamed Fifth Third Arena in 2004, to recognize Fifth Third Bank's support of a UC athletic facilities improvement campaign.
The arena from its inception was criticized for its poor sightlines, most notably from the corners and high above. More than a few seats also are considered uncomfortable. The renovation plan includes a 360-degree seating bowl, and it will replace the current rollaway bleachers with permanent seats.
"There will be better sound, better views," UC architect Beth McGrew said. "There are no bad seats in this design."
A new roof is planned along with upgrades to concessions, lighting and the heating and cooling systems. Retail kiosks for fans will be located in the upper bowl. Many upper level bench seats will be replaced with chairback seating.WASHINGTON – An odd-looking Canadian coin with a bright red flower was the culprit behind the U.S. Defence Department's false espionage warning earlier this year, the Associated Press has learned. The odd-looking – but harmless – "poppy coin" was so unfamiliar to suspicious U.S. Army contractors travelling in Canada that they filed confidential espionage accounts about them. The worried contractors described the coins as "anomalous" and "filled with something man-made that looked like nano-technology," according to once-classified U.S. government reports and e-mails obtained by the AP.
The poppy quarter, billed as the world’s first coloured coin, was introduced in 2004. ( STEVE WHITE / CANADIAN PRESS FILE PHOTO )
The silver-coloured 25-cent piece features the red image of a poppy – Canada's flower of remembrance – inlaid over a maple leaf. The unorthodox quarter is identical to the coins pictured and described as suspicious in the contractors' accounts. The supposed nano-technology actually was a conventional protective coating the Royal Canadian Mint applied to prevent the poppy's red color from rubbing off. The mint produced nearly 30 million such quarters in 2004 commemorating Canada's 117,000 war dead. "It did not appear to be electronic (analog) in nature or have a power source," wrote one U.S. contractor, who discovered the coin in the cup holder of a rental car. "Under high power microscope, it appeared to be complex consisting of several layers of clear, but different material, with a wire like mesh suspended on top."
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The confidential accounts led to a sensational warning from the Defence Security Service, an agency of the Defence Department, that mysterious coins with radio frequency transmitters were found planted on U.S. contractors with classified security clearances on at least three separate occasions between October 2005 and January 2006 as the contractors travelled through Canada. One contractor believed someone had placed two of the quarters in an outer coat pocket after the contractor had emptied the pocket hours earlier. "Coat pockets were empty that morning and I was keeping all of my coins in a plastic bag in my inner coat pocket," the contractor wrote. But the Defence Department subsequently acknowledged that it could never substantiate the espionage alarm that it had put out and launched the internal review that turned up the true nature of the mysterious coin. Meanwhile, in Canada, senior intelligence officials expressed annoyance with the American spy-coin warnings as they tried to learn more about the oddball claims. "That story about Canadians planting coins in the pockets of defence contractors will not go away," Luc Portelance, now deputy director for the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, wrote in a January e-mail to a subordinate. "Could someone tell me more? Where do we stand and what's the story on this?"
Others in Canada's spy service also were searching for answers. "We would be very interested in any more detail you may have on the validity of the comment related to the use of Canadian coins in this manner," another intelligence official wrote in an e-mail. "If it is accurate, are they talking industrial or state espionage? If the latter, who?" The identity of the e-mail's recipient was censored. Intelligence and technology experts were flabbergasted over the warning when it was first publicized earlier this year. The warning suggested that such transmitters could be used surreptitiously to track the movements of people carrying the coins.
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"I thought the whole thing was preposterous, to think you could tag an individual with a coin and think they wouldn't give it away or spend it," said H. Keith Melton, a leading intelligence historian. But Melton said the Army contractors properly reported their suspicions. "You want contractors or any government personnel to report anything suspicious," he said. "You can't have the potential target evaluating whether this was an organized attack or a fluke." The Defence Security Service disavowed its warning about spy coins after an international furor, but until now it has never disclosed the details behind the embarrassing episode. The U.S. said it never substantiated the contractors' claims and performed an internal review to determine how the false information was included in a 29-page published report about espionage concerns. The Defence Security Service never examined the suspicious coins, spokeswoman Cindy McGovern said. "We know where we made the mistake," she said. "The information wasn't properly vetted. While these coins aroused suspicion, there ultimately was nothing there." A numismatist consulted by the AP, Dennis Pike of Canadian Coin & Currency near Toronto, quickly matched a grainy image and physical descriptions of the suspect coins in the contractors' confidential accounts to the 25-cent poppy piece. "It's not uncommon at all," Pike said. He added that the coin's protective coating glows peculiarly under ultraviolet light. "That may have been a little bit suspicious," he said. Some of the U.S. documents the AP obtained were classified "Secret/Noforn," meaning they were never supposed to be viewed by foreigners, even America's closest allies. The government censored parts of the files, citing national security reasons, before turning over copies under the U.S. Freedom of Information Act. Nothing in the documents – except the reference to nanotechnology – explained how the contractors' accounts evolved into a full-blown warning about spy coins with radio frequency transmitters. Many passages were censored, including the names of contractors and details about where they worked and their projects. But there were indications the accounts should have been taken lightly. Next to one blacked-out sentence was this warning: "This has not been confirmed as of yet.'' The Canadian intelligence documents, which also were censored, were turned over to the AP for $5 under that country's Access to Information Act. Canada cited rules for protecting against subversive or hostile activities to explain why it censored the papers. Associated Press writer Beth Duff-Brown contributed to this story from Toronto.The President is not your Favorite Late Night Host, your Mother, or your Spiritual Leader.
Anna Kirschner Norcross Blocked Unblock Follow Following Oct 18, 2016
I might be in the minority, but I don’t want my next president fighting over guest appearances in a sketch on SNL. Or wondering if they played the better straight man to Zach Galifianakis than their opponent did to Jimmy Fallon.
Call me old-fashioned, but I certainly don’t give a shit if the leader of my country could win Last Comic Standing. Call me INSANE, but I don’t believe you have to “entertain” me to be likeable.
You know how you can prove you are likable? Don’t be an asshole.
And last time I checked, those of us voting for the president are presumably responsible adults capable of making decisions and holding ourselves and others accountable. (That might be a stretch and a little naïve of me, but go with it.)
Big. Breath.
Stop asking the FEDERAL government to fix everything for you. Shouldn’t we expect more from ourselves and from our good ol’ U.S. of A. corporations?
As business owners, is it too much to ask that we be good corporate citizens? Stop looking for loopholes. Start making environmentally conscious decisions. Not because someone is going to slap us on the wrist, but because IT IS THE RIGHT THING TO DO!
As consumers and shareholders, the action is easy. STOP GIVING THESE FUCKERS YOUR MONEY!
And guess what else you can do as a voter? Participate in STATE and LOCAL politics where decisions can be made in the best interest of your smaller community instead of asking for a one-size-fits-all approach. The US is too large and too populated to believe that a Federal government can meet the needs of our diverse constituency.
Of course you can point to socialist-like successes in Europe and Canada. But it’s not comparable.
Free healthcare and college education and parental leave sound awesome, but guess what? It’s not fucking free. It’s called taxation! You know what happens when you have to pay for everyone else to get an advanced education? You have to ask for help to pay for YOUR OWN KIDS’ advanced education.
I’m not saying we shouldn’t be philanthropists or that helping those less fortunate is for suckers. What I’m saying is, demand more from EVERYONE around you. Get involved!
Do we need a US Department of Education? No, we do not. Because K-12 education is a STATE responsibility. Who knows better what the children in your community need than you? Where do you hold the most power? In your very own state and local legislature. Not behind some dude on Capitol Hill.
And one last thing. If you think the supernatural being in charge of whether you get to spend your afterlife in a white choir robe with a blinged-out halo or listening to Kenny G covering Metallica while being repeatedly stabbed in the thigh with a fork is going to consult with all the former Presidents, Congressmen and Supreme Court Justices on the exact definition of morality, you may need to re-think your religious affiliation.
If you find abortion or same-sex marriage morally reprehensible, here is my advice. Don’t do it. Meanwhile, shut your pie hole, Judgey McJudgerson. It’s not your call. And it is certainly not the government’s call. Take it to your church. Last I checked, it is separate from your “state.”Hillary Clinton appears to have won the popular vote. Justin Sullivan/Getty Images
Amid all the diagnoses of how Donald Trump won—all the campaign postmortems and think-pieces and conservative crowing and liberal soul-searching—a salient fact seems to have passed underappreciated.
More Americans appear to have voted for Hillary Clinton than voted for Trump.
True, a few ballots remain to be counted. But even as the electoral map turned red on election night, the models consistently projected a Clinton edge in the popular vote. As of 1 p.m. on Wednesday, she held a slim lead of 47.7 percent to 47.5 percent, according to CNN. That’s a margin of about 230,000 votes with 92 percent of the vote tallied. The precincts that remain are likely to widen that gap, according to the New York Times’ live forecast.
No, the result of the popular vote does not affect who won the election, which falls to the results of the Electoral College. It does not detract from Trump’s authority to run the country. It doesn’t make his victory illegitimate. The rules of the contest were clear to both candidates, and Trump won.
Still, it does matter that Clinton received more votes than Trump in the U.S. presidential election. It means that the majority of Americans are not Trump supporters—not even a plurality of Americans are Trump supporters. And it punctures the argument that Trump “has been given a mandate,” as his campaign manager claimed Wednesday.
That Trump won with fewer votes is largely an accident of geography and our electoral system, as I explained in an election-night post. The primary reason for the discrepancy is that Clinton’s votes were more heavily concentrated in a few big states, especially California and New York, which she won by 28 percentage points and 21 percentage points, respectively. Trump won the largest red state, Texas, by a more modest 9-point margin, while carrying several swing states by slim margins.
There is a case to be made that the electoral system is flawed and should be reformed or scrapped. But this case has been made before, and there’s no reason to believe it will prevail this time—or that a party that has now benefited twice in the past five elections from this particular flaw would allow for its fixing anytime soon.
That Clinton won the popular vote is not cause for Democrats to celebrate, nor is it cause for outrage. It’s simply an important reminder that this country remains deeply divided; that the election was far closer than the electoral map makes it look; and that we should all be wary of post-election arguments that make too much of Trump’s victory.
See more Slate coverage of the election.Image caption Mr Milburn said the UK had more children living in poverty than "many other nations"
Alan Milburn says he was asked by the coalition to "hold its feet to the fire" in examining its progress on social mobility and child poverty.
But just how much will his words hurt?
In this, the first of what is planned to be an annual "State of the Nation report", the commission led by the former Labour health secretary concludes that "Britain remains a deeply divided country", one where "being born poor often leads to a lifetime of poverty".
The commission says austerity has made it even harder to break ingrained cycles of poverty, that "disadvantage and advantage cascade down the generations".
It warns there is a danger that social mobility will go in to reverse after rising in the middle of the last century and "flatlining" towards the end of it.
The post-war years saw a big expansion of the middle classes, as the professional jobs market grew and more people bought their own homes, but there has been little change in the last quarter of the century.
Mr Milburn said over decades, the UK had become a wealthier society, but had "struggled to become a fairer one" and had more children living in poverty and lower levels of social mobility than "many other developed nations".
A total of 2.3 million children (one in six) live in poverty, he said, and this made it essential that the pattern where "birth not worth" determined a person's chances in life was changed.
Higher social mobility had become "the new holy grail of public policy". It is certainly something all parties now say they want to see.
'Generational unfairness'
The report from the Social Mobility and Child Poverty Commission has stinging words on some areas of government policy but they are sweetened with praise for others, including the fact that the coalition continues to "stick to its commitments" on ending child poverty and improving social mobility in "challenging times".
Mr Milburn told journalists at a news conference the government "deserved credit" for that.
But the target of ending child poverty by 2020 - begun under Labour and continued by the coalition government - would "in all likelihood" be missed, he said.
His most stinging criticism seemed to be about the way the young were likely to pay the highest price for a lack of social mobility and poverty during the global financial crisis.
He called for older generations to be asked to dig deeper.
The number of young people who have been unemployed for two years or more is at a "20-year high", he said.
And there was an "inter-generational unfairness" in terms of who was being asked to pick up the bill in the recession.
He did not call for pension cuts, but Mr Milburn said politicians should be prepared to "break political taboos" to talk about whether wealthier pensioners should lose benefits currently available to all - particularly the winter fuel allowance and the free TV licence.
Pensioners were usually more worried about their grandchildren than themselves, he said.
The commission is also looking to employers to do more - to offer better training, pay higher wages and open up professions to a wider pool of people. Two-thirds of children living in poverty, the report says, are living in homes with a working parent.
Schools and universities were also urged to do more.
He said schools in some areas were letting down pupils from poorer homes and those from middle-income homes too.
Schools should give more help to low-achievers from middle-income homes as well as the poorest, while the government should improve careers advice, give extra incentives for teachers to teach in the worst schools and pay colleges "by results they achieve for their students in the labour market - not the numbers they recruit".
'Missing state school pupils'
As for universities - which were the focus of an earlier report by the commission - he says the sector as a whole has drawn in more students from poorer homes but top institutions remain out of reach for too many.
Each year, he said, there were 3,700 "missing" state school pupils who had achieved the grades needed to get in to universities in the Russell Group (which represents some of the UK's leading universities) but did not go to them.
The commission called for the government to put social mobility at the heart of its policies and practices, so that it was a "golden thread" running through all it did. It concentrated on the overall UK picture, but pointed out that in Scotland and Wales, the issue "currently has a low profile".
In an age of austerity, the report's authors suggest creating a fairer society will be a job for all - and far from pain-free.You hear it all the time from doctors — they would never choose medicine if they had it to do all over again. It’s practically a mantra, with the subtle implication that the current generation of doctors consists of mere technicians.
When I first started in practice, I found such comments both perplexing and annoying. I loved medicine and was excited to come to work every day. I considered those naysayers jaded has-beens, fusty old-timers pining away for the nonexistent “days of the giants.”
However, as the years have passed, the warts of medicine have grown more conspicuous to me. During some of the more stressful days — crushed by impossible time constraints and ever more onerous bureaucratic demands — I can’t deny that the thought of giving up clinical practice has crossed my mind. Life would be so much easier….
Yet, each year, a new wave of enthusiastic medical students floods our clinics and our wards. Part of me always wonders: Why do these students still choose to become doctors?
It certainly can’t be the money — Wall Street is the faster and more reliable route to wealth, as evidenced by the skyrocketing of applications to M.B.A. programs.
Applications to medical schools, surprisingly, have held steady over all, despite an exodus of top students to finance and banking. According to the American Association of Medical Colleges, about 40,000 students apply to medical school each year, with some 17,000 matriculating. (For comparison, there are about 45,000 students starting law school each year, and 100,000 starting business school.)
Incoming medical students, while steady in their numbers, have had a major shift in their demography. In 1970, medical students were nearly entirely white men. Now half are women, and a third are Asian, black or Hispanic.
I recently worked with a third-year student who’d just interviewed a patient with chest pain. The chest pain turned out to be nothing serious, just some acid reflux — a fairly ho-hum case in a medical clinic. But the student’s eyes were ablaze with fervor. “This was such an exciting case,” she said. “I had the chance to figure out whether or not the chest pain was life-threatening. And the patient was so happy when I reassured him that it wasn’t.”
The awe of discovering the human body. The honor of being trusted to give advice. The gratitude for helping someone through a difficult illness. These things never grow old.
But the frustrations of daily clinical life continue to mount. Administrative requirements increase exponentially, while the time allotted for the patient visit remains 15 to 20 minutes. The additional paperwork, electronic documentation, phone calls, insurance forms and quality assurance measures are all expected to be subsumed into the same workday.
I once tried to calculate how many thoughts a primary care doctor has to juggle on a given day. (My tabulations came to 550; you can read about it in an article I wrote for The Lancet.) We keep pushing so many more balls into the air that there’s no doubt a few will fall. It’s this feeling of not being able to do as good a job as I’d like that makes me consider walking away from clinical medicine. I can’t countenance mediocrity, and I cringe whenever I feel that I can’t get it all done.
But then I cringe when I think about what it would mean for patients if doctors walked away from medicine because of the frustrations.
On top of that, I have to wonder about the alternatives if I gave up clinical medicine — pushing papers, sitting in endless PowerPoint meetings, crunching numbers — and realize that I am lucky and immensely privileged to be able to work directly with patients.
When I close the door to the exam room and it’s just the patient and me, with all the bureaucracy safely barricaded outside, the power of human connection becomes palpable. I can’t always make my patients feel better, but the opportunity to try cannot be underestimated.
If I’m having a really rotten day in clinic, all I need is one of these new medical students to pop in, even if they make a long day even longer. The fact that medicine is still compelling enough for 17,000 people each year to commit a decade or more of their life to training is inspirational.
And when my students and I have our inevitable “career talk,” I tell them that there is nothing else I’d rather do in my life than medicine. If I had it to do all over again, I’d end up right here in this office — telling them that there’s nothing else I’d rather be doing.Brand New, Again: 'Science Fiction' Is A Self-Revival
Enlarge this image toggle caption Brandon Sloter/Courtesy of the artist Brandon Sloter/Courtesy of the artist
On Tuesday, Aug. 15, the Long Island rock outfit Brand New announced a nameless new release via Twitter, a limited vinyl edition that sold out in minutes. Two days later, news broke that the 500 diehards who'd pre-ordered LPs had been mailed an early surprise: a mysterious CD with a single 61-minute track, indicating that whatever this was meant to be heard in its entirety. The band's own label, Procrastinate! Music Traitors, posted it for sale shortly thereafter, and by that Saturday it was on streaming services, but the mystery of it all still seemed to leave fans breathless. When magic is done right, wonder outweighs the desire to know how it all works.
Science Fiction is Brand New's fifth album, its first in eight years — and, if you believe the rumors that it plans to retire in 2018, possibly its last. In its time away, the group has been playing sleight-of-hand tricks with its own career: touring sparingly, releasing the occasional single, stimulating speculation about when it might return to the studio or break up for good. Characteristically, the road to the new music was winding, purposefully and meticulously skewed with the confidence that fans would follow it anyway. There are other survivors in Brand New's cohort of 2000s, Northeast-bred indie-emo, but few have a mythos as inscrutable or durable, commanding attention through years of inactivity.
It's easy to forget, after an eight-year absence, that before it came eight years of remarkable consistency. Brand New first found fame with its 2001 debut, Your Favorite Weapon, an emo record whose most memorable moment is its hit, "Jude Law and a Semester Abroad," a career-making single about adolescent insecurity and unrequited infatuation. 2003's Deja Entendu continued in that vein, balancing its penchant for emo's whinier weaknesses with impeccable pop structure. The Devil and God Are Raging Inside Me, the college to Deja's high school, arrived in 2006, a cult classic that abandoned jealous-boyfriend rhetoric and opted for an exploration of the afterlife. The closest thing to a misstep in the band's discography is 2009's Daisy, a set of simple, aggressive rock songs on which guitarist Vincent Accardi found new inspiration in tones ripped from Alice in Chains and Pearl Jam. It was still weird, still stamped with the massiveness the band had cultivated with longtime producer Mike Sapone, but it read as a conscious reversal from Devil and God's intersection of complexity and delicacy.
Science Fiction can best be described as a hybrid of Brand New's past and present selves. The 12-track, hourlong epic begins with an unidentified psychoanalytic recording, a woman recounting her dreams and coming to terms with some sort of sorrow or madness. "Lit Me Up" builds into dizzying, descending balladry, an intro that feels more like an intermission. The repeated lyric in the chorus, "It lit me up and I burned from the inside out / Yeah, I burned like a witch in a Puritan town," recalls the biblical themes of The Devil and God, mixed with a little secular specificity. (Amateur sleuths quickly noted the CD advances of Science Fiction were labeled "44.5902N104.7146W," the coordinates for the Devils Tower National Monument in Wyoming.) At the end of the track, one can hear some reversed vocals and then the loud click of an analog tape deck shutting off — beginning the band's final chapter, backwards.
YouTube
On any other Brand New record we'd have already heard frontman Jesse Lacey's habitual screams by now, a sound listeners have come to expect when the situation in a song gets overwhelming and demands a cathartic release. There's a taste of that on the following track, "Can't Get It Out," as Lacey breaks into the line "I'm just a manic depressive" with such self-assured transparency, it's as if he's hearing himself say it aloud for the first time. But for most of Science Fiction, his voice doesn't rise above a raspy whisper, creating an atmosphere of secrecy and perhaps projecting a newfound emotional maturity.
Throughout the album, Lacey seems to be wrestling with how to say goodbye. When he misses the mark — as with an insensitive Nagasaki metaphor in "137" — he makes up some of the difference in his delivery, delicate and dirge-like. On the final song, "Batter Up," he is more direct about facing up to ambivalence, singing, "It's never going to stop / Give me your best shot / Never gets forgot / Don't get what you want." The very last seconds of the record are swallowed by bulbous feedback, before a voice comes out of the ambiance to say, "It's what we're waiting for." The ending's simplicity makes it a perfect coda: We're done. Thank you for your graciousness for all these years.
Emo has a reputation for being juvenile, but the fact is fans are inclined to pledge a kind of lifetime loyalty to it — not just because it tends to find people at formative moments in their adolescence, but also by virtue of the kind of music it is: vulnerable, personal, frequently ineffable in its ability to identify with human experience. If you're open to emo, you often find community and understanding in it, an extramusical gift of belonging that can be hard to let go. (This is also why emo's best-kept secret to those outside its orbit, or to those insiders who opt for ignorance cloaked as anti-capitalist punk ethos, is that it makes money.) Brand New arrived in a time of commercial potential for emo but always teetered on the genre line, veering into broader indie rock territory. The benefit was mutual, freeing the band from emo's cultural stigma and lending the style itself a little plasticity.
Emo is even more malleable now, and the Brand New heard on Science Fiction knows it. There are hints of Pink Floyd here. "Same Logic/Teeth" feels like a B-side from Modest Mouse's The Moon & Antarctica (with some latter-day Modest Mouse thrown in on the pitch-dropped vocal line, "At the bottom of the ocean, fish won't judge you for your faults.") "No Control" offers a ferocious D-beat; "In The Water," a mournful harmonica; and there's a rolling roadhouse riff driving "451." The sequence of tracks has a cinematic cohesion, though it's left to the listener to resolve it into a bigger picture. Like good magicians, Brand New refuses to let the audience in on the secret.
In only revealing so many of their cards, the Brand New's creative minds are orchestrating a comeback in the most fitting way imaginable: on their own terms, for a finite amount of time (2018 is looming), with what may be the best album of their career. Nostalgia remains a factor in their successes, but it isn't the driving force: their loyal audience persists, and they've influenced a younger crowd to take part. Science Fiction is both a reunion and a career-closer, after years of stage-managed absence. Perhaps only Brand New could find a seamless way to do both.It's a drag, no, it's shameful and pathetic that the best hope for keeping Social Security intact is a deadlock on the panel that's looking into butchering the most successful program that emerged from the New Deal. But, as David Dayen and Joan McCarter pointed out last week, the prospect of stalemate on the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform is worth a cheer. That entity didn't get nicknamed the "catfood commission" for no good reason.
There is always the chance that President Obama would veto any cuts in Social Security the Congress adopted on the commission's recommendations in its forthcoming December report. But it's far better to keep those recommendations out of the hands of Congress in the first place since 99 percent of Republicans and an enabling one or two dozen Blue Dogs would likely approve cuts. There's an alliance of progressives led by Sen. Bernie Sanders and Rep. Raul Grijalva who have lined up 116 members of the Senate and House in opposition to any cuts. But welcome as that push-back is, well, you can do the math. If the commission's recommendations do make it to Congress, don't be surprised if Social Security cuts are labeled patriotic retirement enhancements.
The idiocy of taking the ax to Social Security got a good going over again Tuesday by Paul N. Van de Water. He's currently a senior fellow at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, and he has 25 years of top-level experience at the Social Security Administration and Congressional Budget Office. He wrote:
Here are the facts. Social Security is a well-run, fiscally responsible program. People earn retirement, survivors, and disability benefits by making payroll tax contributions during their working years. Those taxes and other revenues are deposited in the Social Security trust funds, and all benefits and administrative expenses are paid out of the trust funds. The amount that Social Security can spend is limited by its payroll tax income plus the balance in the trust funds. The Social Security trustees — the official body charged with evaluating the program’s long-term finances — project that Social Security can pay 100 percent of promised benefits through 2037 and about three-quarters of scheduled benefits after that, even if Congress makes no changes in the program. Relatively modest changes would put the program on a sound financial footing for 75 years and beyond. Nonetheless, some critics are attempting to undermine confidence in Social Security with wild and blatantly false accusations. They allege that the trust funds have been “raided” or disparage the trust funds as “funny money” or mere “IOUs.” Some even label Social Security a “Ponzi scheme” after the notorious 1920s swindler Charles Ponzi. All of these claims are nonsense.... Moreover, Social Security is the “polar opposite of a Ponzi scheme,” says the man who quite literally wrote the book about Ponzi’s famous scam, Boston University professor Mitchell Zuckoff.
"All these claims are nonsense." No matter how many times it gets said, the privatizers, whackers and hackers of Social Security, the guys who want to transform a secure program that has reduced poverty of the elderly into a bilk-the-pensioners scam will keep repeating the lies that the program is going broke and they know how to fix it. Just chop a little here and there and let their pals on Wall Street help out with some... uh... adjustments. The better Democrats on the campaign trail should use this opportunity to remind voters what's at stake.Intrigue of Agatha Christie proportions reigned supreme around the corridors of Rupert Murdoch's Surry Hills media bunker on Friday, as staff attempted to digest the shock news one of the media mogul's most controversial lieutenants, Col Allan, was coming home … on Monday.
Affectionately referred to as Col Pot, Murdoch's troops were told by News Corporation's New York-based chief executive, Robert Thomson, that Allan would provide ''editorial direction'' during a ''particularly challenging time'' for Murdoch's vast Australian operations.
The move was seen by many as casting a shadow of doubt over the performance of Murdoch's News Corp Australia chief executive Kim Williams, appointed to the role in November 2011.
Williams, a man who dines at top-end restaurants and wears designer suits, is seen as the polar opposite of Allan, who famously patronises strip clubs.
Thomson described the appointment as ''a temporary change'', but friends suspect Allan's tenure could extend indefinitely, allowing him to leave a firm imprint on Murdoch's mastheads. Not to mention several anxious editors.
Thomson said Allan would be ''working with Kim Williams and providing extra editorial leadership for our papers''. However, insiders indicated the shots were being called by Murdoch himself, keen to flex his media muscle on the coming election.
A former editor of The Daily Telegraph, Allan was appointed editor-in-chief of the New York Post by Lachlan Murdoch in 2001. He was famously at the centre of a scandal that engulfed Prime Minister Kevin Rudd during his first tilt for that office, when it emerged he had taken Rudd on a beer-fuelled night to see naked dancers ''gyrate'' at strip club Scores in 2003.
More recently he was personally pilloried in the aftermath of the Boston marathon bombings after he failed to apologise for the Post's coverage, which included publishing pictures of two innocent backpackers wrongly identified as suspects on its front page. At one stage, a fake apology was inserted into some copies of the paper, which purported to be from Allan. It read: ''This week, the New York Post acted recklessly and with flagrant disregard for the principles of good journalism. I'd like to take this opportunity to sincerely apologise to our readers, to the people of Boston, and to the three men who were mistakenly investigated as suspects.''More than 1000 people from various communities in New York and New Jersey attended, some coming from as far as two or three hours away. Over 100 leading prominent rabbis were seated on the platform. Many speeches were given, including two by rabbis from Jerusalem. The oldest participant was Chuna Stern, a Holocaust survivor over the age of 90, who came with great difficulty and had to be physically supported during the march. Numerous members of the press also attended.
One of the speakers, Rabbi Aron Jacobowitz explained the reasons for the Orthodox position: "Our community came to the Holy Land to study Torah, pray and absorb its sanctified atmosphere. They came to live peacefully alongside the residents of the land.
"Unfortunately, the Zionist movement came later, with a different purpose in mind. They came to take over the land and create a state, in violation of the Torah. Very quickly, they became involved in wars with the local non-Jewish |
of her future will now be decided by the university, which has procedures in place when a student is the subject of a criminal conviction.'
The court's controversial decision caused outrage on Twitter, with many claiming it was an example of 'white privilege'.
User @MrTuxed0 wrote: 'Lavinia Woodward gets 0 jail time as it "might hurt her career"? Maybe there's a good reason why drug addicted psychos shouldn't be surgeons.'
@anttmcdermottx said: 'If Lavinia Woodward wasn’t a privileged white girl she would be in prison by now. you can ignore the facts but it’s true.'
Another user added: 'Can we all just agree that if Lavinia Woodward was a man she'd be in jail for domestic violence with no prospect of being a doctor ever?'Just finished up a quick one day project… Was curious about Torando and since I’ve been playing with Django wondered about mixing the two… Of course at one level there isn’t much reason to put django and tornado together since django has a “fine” webserver built in and Torando is all about async.
Thus you need to invent an app that requires async, traditional http chat with long polling is the trick. So, pulling a demo from the NodeJS land and building a bunch of glue work I ended up with a working Django+Torando = Chat application. Sorry there is no demo, since it looks and works pretty much like the NodeJS chat application (borrowed their UI and JS).
However if you want to check out the code take a look at this:
http://github.com/koblas/django-on-tornado
The key part that’s interesting is this ability to add asyn requests to a django handler:Personal CI server on Amazon EC2
Personal projects may not always have a critical requirement for automation as part of the build process, but in a world where even static sites often want some sort of build step, getting things done without this type of tool can be painful at times. While many managed solutions exist for this purpose, the range of choices can be daunting, it can be hard to find a service which matches your needs, and these services can be expensive.
If the idea of managing your own solution is more appealing, getting up and running with Jenkins on EC2 is worth investigation. Jenkins gives you flexibility as your jobs can run more or less whatever commands you choose, and the costs stay low as you can easily stick with a very small EC2 instance.
This post walks through the following:
If you haven’t done so already, go ahead and sign up for an AWS account.
Setting up new EC2 instance
Head to the AWS EC2 panel, and hit ‘Launch new instance’ to start. This will take you through the configuration flow for your new instance.
You may have your own preferences for how this is configured, so feel free to use your own. Personally I selected a Ubuntu 14.04 SSD t2.small instance, sticking with defaults, with the following exceptions:
Configure Instance: Disable the 'auto-assign public IP’ option. These auto-assigned IP addresses are not persistent through reboots, so we’ll assign an elastic IP to the instance instead below.
Create a new IAM role for this new instance. I set up a policy allowing this role to perform actions in a specific S3 bucket (which hosts a static site), you’ll want to do similar for any resources on AWS which the instance needs to access.
Tag Instance: It’s useful to have a descriptive tag for the instance, such as; Key: Purpose, Value: CI.
Configure Security Group: At this stage it can be useful to whitelist your own access to the instance by setting up 2 rules: allow SSH on port 22, and TCP on port 8080 from 'My IP’. We go through security setup in more detail below.
Key pair: Rather than sharing keys around, create a new key pair for this instance.
Configuring EC2 for ssh access
Before we do anything else, we need to setup an Elastic IP in order to access our instance.
Under the NETWORK & SECURITY section in the sidebar, click Elastic IPs, select 'Allocate New Address’, and finally confirm.
Now make sure the IP is selected, and choose 'Associate Address’ from the Actions dropdown. Select your instance, hit Associate, and you’re done.
Next let’s make sure we can SSH into our instance. First of all we need to make sure our new private key is not publicly viewable:
1 $ chmod 400 /path/to/new_key.pem
Now we should be able to access the instance:
1 2 $ ssh -i /path/to/new_key.pem ubuntu@elastic.ip.address Welcome to Ubuntu 14.04.4 LTS...
Next up we should secure the server. This is a little beyond the scope of this article, but this is a great primer.
Setup Jenkins user
It’s best not to use the root user for everything, so let’s go ahead and setup a jenkins user:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 $ useradd jenkins # create jenkins user $ mkdir /home/jenkins # create jenkins home directory $ mkdir /home/jenkins/.ssh # create jenkins ssh keys directory $ chmod 700 /home/jenkins/.ssh # set owner read/write/execute for.ssh/ $ usermod -s /bin/bash jenkins # set jenkins shell to bash $ usermod -aG sudo jenkins # add jenkins to sudo group $ chown jenkins:jenkins /home/jenkins -R # set jenkins as owner of above
Whitelist Instance Access
Let’s configure the security group to allow Github to access the instance. Head to 'Security Groups’, and hit 'Create Security Group’. Set both the inbound and outbound lists like so:
Now head back to your instance, and select Actions->Networking->'Change Security Groups’, assigning the newly created group to your instance.
Installing Jenkins
Now that the instance is up and running, and allowing access to ourselves as well as Github, we can go ahead and install Jenkins.
Install Java
1 2 3 $ sudo add-apt-repository ppa:webupd8team/java $ sudo apt-get update $ sudo apt-get install oracle-java8-installer
Check this worked with:
1 2 $ java -version java version "1.8.0_101"...
Install Jenkins
These instructions are slightly tweaked from the official ones here to better handle the additional apt source.
Add the Jenkins key:
1 2 3 $ wget -q -O - http://pkg.jenkins.io/debian/jenkins.io.key | \ > sudo apt-key add - OK
Add Jenkins source. We’ll create a new.list file in /etc/apt/sources.list.d/ as changes to sources.list won’t persist through a rebundle:
1 $ sudo vim /etc/apt/sources.list.d/jenkins.list
Add deb http://pkg.jenkins.io/debian binary/ to this file, and save.
Update package index, and install:
1 2 $ sudo apt-get update $ sudo apt-get install jenkins
Run Jenkins setup wizard
Once this is complete, we can use the setup wizard by hitting [elastic IP]:8080 in our browser.
Configuring Nginx
Let’s configure nginx to act as a reverse proxy, so we don’t have to specify port 8080 when accessing Jenkins.
1 2 $ sudo apt-get update $ sudo apt-get install nginx
Add an HTTP inbound rule allowing traffic from your location on port 80, and you should see the nginx welcome by hitting the IP without a port specified.
Now let’s configure nginx to proxy port 80 to 8080 for Jenkins:
1 $ sudo vim /etc/nginx/sites-available/jenkins
Entering:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 server { listen 80 ; server_name your - ip - or - url; access_log /var/ log /nginx/ jenkins/access. log; error_log /var/ log /nginx/ jenkins/error. log info; location / { proxy_pass http : // localhost : 8080 ; proxy_redirect default; proxy_set_header Host $host; proxy_set_header X - Real - IP $remote_addr; proxy_set_header X - Forwarded - For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for; } }
Prepare nginx files/folders:
1 2 3 4 5 $ sudo mkdir -p /var/log/nginx/jenkins/ # create the logs dir $ sudo rm /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/default # disable default site $ sudo ln -s /etc/nginx/sites-available/jenkins \ > /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/ # enable jenkins site $ sudo service nginx restart # restart nginx
Hit your instance again now, and you should see Jenkins. Finally, we should remove the rule allowing connections through port 8080 from the security group.
Next steps
Congratulations! You have now successfully configured Jenkins to run on your own personal EC2 instance. This guide should have got you most of the way, for extra credit you might want to look into the following:MUMBAI: Tiger Global is leading a $150-million (Rs 950 crore approximately) financing round in online classifieds major Quikr, valuing it at a billion dollars post the investment, people familiar with the development told TOI. Quikr will join the fast-expanding list of privately held domestic tech unicorns, companies valued at over $1 billion, as an unprecedented amount of investor money flows into the Indian consumer internet sector. Others in this exclusive club include the likes of e-commerce biggie Flipkart Snapdeal, taxi aggregator Ola (post its new round), data cruncher Mu Sigma and mobile ad network InMobi.The new round will likely be Tiger’s largest investment ($110 million overall) in a domestic internet startup after Flipkart, in which it has pumped in over $700 million. Hong Kong-based Steadview Capital is expected to be the new investor boarding Quikr even as the six-year-old company holds talks with other potential investors like Silicon Valley venture fund Accel US, sources said.Existing investors, Swedish private equity fund Kinnevik and eBay, will participate in Quikr’s sixth institutional round of funding, sources said.When contacted, Quikr CEO Pranay Chulet declined to comment on the story. Emails sent to Tiger Global and Steadview Capital remained unanswered till the time of going to press.Quikr had raised $60 million in September last year, led by Tiger Global, at a valuation of $400 million. The New York-based investment fund has funnelled more than a billion dollars across two dozen consumer tech ventures, out of which three (Flipkart, Ola, Quikr) have been accorded the unicorn status.The funds raised by the classifieds major will be invested behind its mobile platform, which already makes up for 70% of overall transactions, and acquisitions. Quikr has been strengthening its verticals like home, cars, jobs, services and real estate at a time when vertical classifieds players have raised millions of dollars and are doubling down in the market. It plans to have separate heads of businesses for each of the verticals going forward, as reported by TOI earlier.The Mumbai-based company, which recently moved its headquarters to Bengaluru, has launched a slew of new products, including Quikr Nxt, a messaging service between buyers and sellers, and is facilitating deliveries in select cities. It is also looking to push new product commerce on the back of smaller merchants listing their goods (in categories like mobiles phones) on the site.The company, founded by Chulet, an IIT-Delhi and IIM-Calcutta alumnus, has in all raised $200 million in capital (excluding the latest round), and competes directly with OLX, which is backed by the South African internet and media giant Naspers. Quikr claims to be facilitating 1.5 million monthly transactions with 30 million unique users visiting the site. Based on the concept of the American classifieds giant Craigslist, Quikr registers listings for categories like jobs, automobiles, used goods, services and electronics.>>> @toi_tech >>> TOI_techLooking for news you can trust?
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Imagine this: To apply for a job, you’re asked to submit your application and resume six separate times because the employer can’t manage to hold onto each previous submission. Or the company somehow claims it never showed up in the first place. Infuriating, right? Now imagine that you’re trying to save your home—you’re stressed, probably unemployed and looking for a new job—and, in your effort to lower your house payments, your mortgage servicing company makes you submit your most important financial information six times.
As awful as that sounds, that’s the reality with the Obama administration’s main homeowner relief program, as a scathing new report by ProPublica, out today, illustrates. ProPublica’s Paul Kiel and Olga Pierce analyzed detailed survey data from 373 homeowners who applied for relief through the Home Affordable Modification Program, a multi-billion-dollar program intended to get servicers to lower mortgage payments and keep people in their homes. HAMP, as I’ve reported before, is more or less a failure, with less than 400,000 homeowners receiving permanent relief out of 1.3 million applicants; by contrast, more than 520,000 have been booted out of the program. Part of that failure can be chalked up to unscrupulous and profit-hungry foreclosure attorneys. But for the most part, mortgage servicers, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and the federal government are to blame.
Here’s what ProPublica’s survey found:
Seeking a modification has been an infuriating, stressful nightmare: a black hole of time lost repeatedly calling an 800 number, faxing and mailing the same documents over and over, and coping with the ramifications of errors made by poorly trained bank employees.
Here’s what those homeowners told us: On average, they’d been seeking a modification for more than 14 months.
The process is designed to last only a few months. Homeowners seeking modifications reported having to send the same documents nearly six times on average.
175 homeowners say they were advised, incorrectly, to fall behind on their mortgage in order to qualify for a modification.
One finding in the story especially popped out at me:
Servicing employees frequently, and incorrectly, suggest homeowners should fall behind on a mortgage in order to get help. Though servicers and housing counselors agree it is never a good idea to fall behind on your mortgage if you can help it, 175 homeowners reported being advised to do just that. [emphasis theirs]
Countless attorneys I’ve interviewed in my own foreclosure-related reporting have told me the same thing—that clients of theirs stuck in unaffordable mortgages, but still managing to pay on time, have asked for modifications but were told by servicers to go into default first. Only then would they get their modification. As you can imagine, given the utter failure of mortgage servicers to modify loans, many of those people told to default ended up in foreclosure court, where a judge, unaware of how Foreclosure Inc. operates, likely scolded them for “not paying their mortgage.”
There are plenty more startling statistics (and some sharp charts, too!) in ProPublica’s story. It’s yet another damning critique of HAMP, not long after the Huffington Post blasted the program, and will only increase demands that the program be scrapped altogether.Demolition teams began destroying parts of a Chinese church that has become a symbol of resistance to the Communist Party’s draconian clutch on religion, activists and witnesses said on Monday.
Sanjiang church in Wenzhou, a wealthy coastal city known as the "Jerusalem of the East", made headlines earlier this month when thousands of Christians formed a human shield around its entrance after plans for its demolition were announced.
Church members accused Communist leaders in Zhejiang province of ordering an anti-church crackdown and claimed there were plans to completely or partially demolish at least 10 places of worship.
After mounting their high-profile occupation in early April, many protesters withdrew from Sanjiang church after its leaders appeared to have negotiated a compromise with the government.
Picture of the felled church
However, that deal appears to have broken down in recent days with reports that some church leaders and worshippers had been harassed and detained by security agents and officials.
On Monday morning demolition teams began tearing down parts of the church in Wenzhou, a city around 230 miles south of Shanghai that has one of the country’s largest congregations.
“I saw three or four excavators out front, demolishing the church, and three or four out back, demolishing the annex building. I also saw a small excavator going inside the church doing demolition work inside,” said one witness who claimed there were around 100 police around the church, including armed officers.
Church members told The Telegraph authorities had attempted to silence the congregation
“All the roads are blocked, you can't get close to the church,” said a local Protestant leader, who asked not to be named for fear of reprisals from the government. “The two sides of the main hall are being demolished.”
Photographs sent to The Telegraph and posted on social media sites showed at least four excavators that appeared to be ripping down large sections of the church’s exterior.
Other images showed black police vans, military trucks and security agents standing on the main road outside.
It was not immediately possible to verify those pictures. Nor was it clear whether authorities planned to destroy the entire church, which has a large red cross on its spire, or just part of the structure.
Church members told The Telegraph authorities had attempted to silence the congregation and said they believed their communications were being monitored. “My phone is not safe,” said one.
Bob Fu, a US-based Christian activist, said: “This government-orchestrated barbaric forced demolition represents a serious escalation against religious freedom in Zhejiang. The Chinese regime chooses to disregard its own laws and the will of its best citizens.”
Church members accused Communist leaders in Zhejiang province of ordering an anti-church crackdown
The demolition of Sanjiang church would “definitely further erode the little remaining trust between millions of Chinese Christians and the Chinese government,” added Mr Fu, president of the Texas-based group China Aid.
“History has proved and will prove again with this case that another church revival will happen after this new wave of persecution.”
In an unusual step, Chen Yilu, the head of the Nanjing Union Theological Seminary, spoke out against the provincial government’s “crude and hard-line” handling of the Sanjiang church crisis.
In a strongly-worded commentary that has been circulating online, Mr Chen said the incident would damage the Communist Party’s image as well as harming “social stability”. He called on Beijing to “intervene as soon as possible to avoid further deterioration”.
Provincial authorities deny they are waging an orchestrated campaign against Christian places of worship. However, Feng Zhili, the head of Zhejiang’s ethnic and religious affairs committee, complained earlier this year that Christianity’s spread had been “too excessive and too haphazard”.
Other images showed black police vans, military trucks and security agents standing on the main road
In a recent interview Fenggang Yang, a leading expert on religion in China, said he believed the Asian country could overtake Brazil, Mexico and the United States to become the world’s most numerous Christian congregation by 2030.
However, Prof. Yang warned that Chinese Christians should brace themselves for growing interference as the Communist Party fought to stunt the Church’s growth.
One of the Party’s most senior officials hit out at those predictions last week, in an indication of Beijing’s discomfort at the rapid growth of Christianity.
Ye Xiaowen, a member of the elite 205-member Central Committee, dismissed Prof. Yang’s projections as “unscientific” and “obviously inflated”.
“It is completely meaningless to predict how many people might believe in Christianity in China in the future,” said Mr Ye, who was the country’s top official in charge of religious affairs until 2009.
Asked to comment on Monday’s demolition, a propaganda official from Zhejiang’s Communist Party Committee said, “I don’t know” before the line went dead.© Hasbro Productions
Twilight literally earning her wings. I know there's been a lot of speculation about Twilight becoming an alicorn (Thanks for the giant-spoiler,...). I've seen a lot of drama over it; some didn't like it because they thought that Twilight was going to leave her friends, some just didn't like the fact that she physically changed. As far as I'm concerned, unicorn or alicorn, she's still Twilight Sparkle. I actually like the direction the show has gone since then. Becoming the Princess of Friendship really shows how far Twilight has come since the beginning of the series. She can also still be a princess and still be with her friends as her council. It really gives the sense that friendship is indeed magic.I also wanted to do this because Twilight is my most favorite of the Mane 6 (Next to Applejack). I can actually identify a lot with her. She reminds me of myself when I was young, especially after seeing how she was in. I was kinda like that too. I had friends, but didn't want to spend too much time with them and didn't really appreciate them. That probably makes me sound like a jerk. By the time I was a teenager, I just lost touch with the friends I had and for a while I didn't think I needed friends. Now I see how wrong I was and can't imagine a life without my friends. So to all the friends I have made, I say thank you. And I'd like to thank, Tara Strong, the supporters, and all who makepossible, because it helped me learn to appreciate the friendships I've made all the moreTwilight SparkleSuch poetic irony, don't you think? The deaths of the little people working for corporate behemoths goes to pay bonuses to their company's top earners. Hey, it may be legal - but it sure lacks class.
Banks are using a little-known tactic to help pay bonuses, deferred pay and pensions they owe executives: They're holding life-insurance policies on hundreds of thousands of their workers, with themselves as the beneficiaries.
Banks took out much of this life insurance during the mortgage bubble, when executives' pay -- and the IOUs for their deferred compensation -- surged, and banking regulators affirmed the use of life insurance as a way to finance executive pay and benefits.
Bank of America Corp. has the most life insurance on employees: $17.3 billion at the end of the first quarter, according to bank filings. Wachovia Corp. has $12 billion, J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. has $11.1 billion and Wells Fargo & Co. has $5.7 billion. (Wells Fargo acquired Wachovia at the end of last year.)
The insurance policies essentially are informal pension funds for executives: Companies deposit money into the contracts, which are like big, nondeductible IRAs, and allocate the cash among investments that grow tax-free. Over time, employers receive tax-free death benefits when employees, former employees and retirees die.
Though not improper, the practice is similar to what is known as "janitors insurance," an insurance-on-employees technique that has long been controversial. Critics say the banks' insurance contracts are a way for companies to create tax breaks for funding executive pensions. And some families have complained that employers shouldn't profit from the deaths of their loved ones.Over the past two weeks random crimes were weaved into an already established media narrative and a new social media campaign was born: #Men are Trash. It’s now shameful to be a man. We look like sex crazed maniacs, and we should feel bad. That’s the latest feminist siren song enslaving schools of South Africans.
#MenAreTrash has been gaining huge traction on local social media over the last few weeks, at one point it was even trending number 1 on South African twitter. So what is this #? “Men are Trash”, for some it’s easy to read that phrase and label it an “attack on all men”. But one has to then ask themselves, what is a personal attack and what’s a necessary wake-up call.
According to the idea motivating this movement, man is the manifestation of villainy and violence. But if we are all that this tag suggests, why does feminist identity and behaviour involve blatant attempts to enter the masculine sphere of identity? If their cause is so anti-male, why can they only express their ideas through borrowed masculine traits? Are they trying to become the men they are so averse to?
Answer: They are trying to look powerful. They are trying to display wisdom. They are trying to appear strong and aggressive. They they doing this because power, or their conception of it, happens to be apprehended in masculine iconography. To understand their conception of power, I examined a few ancient figures who have become iconic vehicles for feminist cultural expression.
They Have A Phallocentric Conceptual Ideal
Their rhetoric bypasses Jesus’s ladylike mother in favour of her pagan predecessor, Horus’s mother, Isis. Today, this ancient goddess is synonymous with feminist branding and ideology. As an icon of girl-power, she is superficially inspiring but Isis has more influence on their identity than they would want to openly acknowledge.
It’s generally accepted that, unlike other cultures of the ancient near east, Egyptian women occupied a social role of complete equality with men. So it’s strange that the power of this mother goddess could only be imagined through a man’s role in a phallocentric myth.
Her story is this: her husband is emasculated through castration. Her intensely obsessive attachment to his manhood compels her to commit acts of fetishism and necrophilia. That is to say, she creates and magically animates a replica of his phallus which she proceeds to mount in order to conceive. Diodorus of Sicily (80-20 BC) wrote: “fashioning a likeness of it, she set it up in the temples, commanded that it be honoured, and made it the object of the highest regard and reverence in the mystic rites and sacrifices accorded to the gods.”
Having performed the sexual act on her own, Isis’s power is expressed by her playing the dominant role of a man in the sacred union. This, she proudly states in the Glorification of Osiris: “I have played the part of a man though I am a woman.”
They Have A Masculine Historical Ideal
The queens of the 18th Dynasty — Tiye, Hatshepsut and Nefertiti — are the most frequently referenced in feminist rhetoric, especially when African heritage needs to be validated and profited from. These three women reigned during Egypt’s age of empire. The state was wealthy, cosmopolitan and characterized by the abandoning of its old ways.
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Tiye and Nefertiti were women of influence and recent theories contend that they were co-regents. Hatshepsut did rule, spending most of her reign extracting resources from the soft target that was Nubia. All three derived their power and influence from their roles as the mothers and wives of kings. But at various points they decided to supplement their public image by representing themselves in masculine form and roles. This was done to legitimize their leadership capabilities.
So even though these feminist antecedents were among the wealthiest and most powerful people in their country’s most prosperous period, they still found their feminine form restrictive, most likely because an ancient ruler’s physical appearance would have to meet the public’s expectation of safety and security. Smiting the enemy or agents of chaos is the most familiar Egyptian iconographic motif. It’s a traditionally male military activity, thereby making the title of pharaoh a traditionally male title.
The mighty smiting queen is not just an idea of limited scope, it’s also based entirely on deception. These three had no significant military successes. They were basically imitations of a core foundational element of Egyptian culture. In the case of Tiye and Nefertiti, one would expect the mother and wife of the great religious and artistic revolutionary, Akhenaten, to at least be more creative with a lie than this heavy dependence on an established masculine tradition.
In resorting to masculine depictions and war motifs for the sake of a social equality that already existed, all three only reduced the inherent power they had as wives and mothers.
Conclusion
Men may be cast as the violent villain of the feminist narrative, but the reason why power seems inherent to masculine imagery is that significant cultural achievements exist to validate these symbols.
Negative campaigns like Men are Trash, and the conveniently coincidental Hollywood release of Wonder Woman this summer are just dramatic overcompensations for a glaring lack of significant achievement, a fact that feminists are painfully aware of. This is not a value judgment, it’s just women’s history, where the best is always yet to come.
In their effort to recreate the feminine form as a masculine phenotype, there is the sincere acknowledgment that power can only exist in broad-shouldered and warlike imagery. They are thoughtlessly going back in the direction of patriarchy while trying to cast themselves in their villain’s role.
As it has before, the pendulum will swing back from its current extreme. In the meantime, display the confidence that only your original form can possess in a world that is now full of poor imitations.
Read More: 5 Huge Problems That 50 Years Of Feminism CreatedDoodling could help the mind remain alert during dull tasks Doodling may look messy, but it could in fact be a sign of an alert mind, a study suggests. Plymouth University researchers carried out memory tests on 40 volunteers, asking them to listen to a phone call and recall names and places. Doodlers performed 29% better than non-doodlers, the team found. Experts said doodling stopped people from daydreaming, which was a more taxing diversion, and so was good at helping people focus on mundane tasks. During the study, half of the volunteers were asked to colour in shapes on a piece of paper while they listened to a 2.5 minute telephone message. The other half were left to their own devices while they listened. Both groups were told the message would be dull, the Applied Cognitive Psychology journal reported. Daydreaming distracts them from the task, resulting in poor performance
Jackie Andrade, lead researcher Afterwards, both groups were asked to write down eight specific names and eight places mentioned. The doodlers on average recalled 7.5, while the non-doodlers only managed 5.8. Lead researcher Jackie Andrade said: "If someone is doing a boring task, like listening to a dull telephone conversation, they may start to daydream. "Daydreaming distracts them from the task, resulting in poor performance. "A simple task, like doodling, may be sufficient to stop daydreaming without affecting performance on the main task." Professor Alan Badeley, from the British Psychological Society, said: "Doodling is a relatively undemanding task so this makes sense. "The temptation during meetings or telephone conversations that you are not particularly engaged with is to start thinking about things. You visualise things such as holidays. "That then takes you away from the task at hand. Or you may even end up nodding off. "However, by comparison, doodling is not that taxing and keeps you more alert so you are more likely to absorb what is being said."
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StumbleUpon What are these? E-mail this to a friend Printable versionIt sounds like America’s favorite $400 juice machine will be no longer.
“After selling over a million Produce Packs, we must let you know that we are suspending the sale of the Juicero Press and Produce Packs immediately,” reads the company blog post.
Juicero will also be giving people money back. “For the next 90 days, we are offering refunds for your purchase of the Juicero Press,” according to the note.
Founded by Doug Evans, San Francisco-based Juicero had raised more than $118 million in funding from prominent VCs like Google Ventures and Kleiner Perkins. Carmelo Anthony also invested through his Melo7 Tech venture fund. Even The Campbell Soup Company threw money at it. Juicero started raising funding in 2013 and launched 16 months ago.
The company was subject to mockery, particularly after a Bloomberg piece showed that the juice packets could be squeezed by hand and did not require a fancy machine.
After that, Juicero promised to lower prices, but apparently found that to be too difficult. Now the startup is hoping to find a buyer.
“We are confident that to truly have the long-term impact we want to make, we need to focus on finding an acquirer with an existing national fresh food supply chain who can carry forward the Juicero mission,” reads the blog post.
Inspired by the popularity of Keurig coffee cups, some venture investors have been looking for other kitchen appliances that could gain significant traction. “Juicing” is very popular in some parts of the United States, and the idea was that this would make it easier for people to make juice at home. But the upfront cost of the machine was high and people had to pay an added cost for the refillable packets.
Unfortunately, the machine, which was once priced at $700, was met with derision from the get-go. It became symbolic of Silicon Valley’s out-of-touch elites.
I tried the juices and can confirm they were tasty. RIP.Invoking comparisons to the financial event that sent markets spiraling and helped set off the financial crisis isn\’t usually undertaken lightly. So we take notice when analysts — and analysts known for being even-keeled, at that — call the muni market a \”Lehman-like\” event.
But the two jolts higher in rates look pretty similar on the AAA MMD 10-year scale, a benchmark muni index, according to Tom Kozlik and Alan Schankel, municipal credit analysts at Janney Capital Markets.
Muni-bond yields have risen alongside Treasurys over the past few months as investors have faced uncertainty about the Federal Reserve\’s plans for lighten its bond-buying program. But munis have also contended with fallout from the city of Detroit\’s bankruptcy filing, which served as one reason for retail investors to pull their money from the tax-exempt government-debt market.
Janney Capital Markets
Between May 1 and July 24 of this year, the AAA scale has risen 1.14 percentage points to 2.80% from 1.66%. In the aftermath of the Lehman Brothers bankruptcy filing in 2008, the same scale shot up to 4.86% on Oct. 15 of that year from 3.46% on Sept. 11, a gain of 1.40 percentage points.
Kozlik and Schankel write:
\”The near term movement of the market will potentially, like those in 2008 did, test the courage and perseverance of even the most patient investors. In fact, this market movement has already begun. During the middle of 2013 – from May 1 through June 24th – municipal benchmark yields experienced a \’Lehman-like\’ move when they rocketed up 114 basis points, the fastest increase since the 2008 Lehman Brothers bankruptcy filing.\”
As this \”Lehman-like\” event plays out, the Fed\’s monetary policy, Washington fiscal policy and regulatory reform implementation are all likely to rattle the market, providing the same level of volatility and unpredictability as existed in the aftermath of the Lehman filing, they say.
So what does this mean for investors? Don\’t ditch munis yet, but be careful. They write:
\”Through the financial crisis and the Great Recession, we continued to recommend the municipal bond market along with specific guidance, and we still like the sector generally despite our expectations of future volatility. We do, however, advise investors to be very selective among municipal issuers. Investors should concentrate on those which are higher rated — at least A rated or higher and which also have improving credit profiles.\”
— Ben Eisen
Follow Ben on Twitter @BenEisen
Follow The Tell blog @thetellblogSlaven Bilic set to be rewarded with new West Ham contract
West Ham are close to agreeing a deal to give manager Slaven Bilic a new contract at the end of the season.
The Croat, who replaced Sam Allardyce as manager in June 2015, has 15 months left on his current three-year deal.
Talks about a new improved deal were due to take place before Christmas, but were postponed after West Ham's poor start to the season. However, results have improved significantly since then and Bilic is set to be rewarded.
The Hammers boss has said, however, that he is not obsessing about it and remains focused on the next few games in hand.
"I spoke a few times about my contract and I am very happy with the way I approach that situation," he said on Thursday.
West Ham manager Slaven Bilic says he is not thinking about a new contract at the club. West Ham manager Slaven Bilic says he is not thinking about a new contract at the club.
"I have a contract and I am very happy here, and I always treat my next few games as my contract, and I don't think that much about it.
"Of course it would be nice but I have a year-and-a-half left on my contract. Nowadays in football if you have that or four years left there is no difference at all.
"The last example of Claudio Ranieri is the biggest and best one. If you asked anyone in or related to football who has the safest job, we would all say 100 per cent Ranieri. And then what happened with that?
France international Dimitri Payet left West Ham for Marseille
"So I am not bothered about that to be fair."
Since the start of December, West Ham have won six and drawn two of 11 Premier League games.
As well as better performances on the pitch, the West Ham board have been impressed with the way Bilic handled the acrimonious sale of Dimitri Payet to Marseille last month.
2:57 West Ham drew with Watford last time out - watch the highlights West Ham drew with Watford last time out - watch the highlights
They also demonstrated their faith in Bilic by making significant funds available for the signings of Jose Fonte from Southampton and Robert Snodgrass from Hull City.
Bilic will be given more money to spend this summer, with a striker and a right back top of his shopping list.
New customers: Grab a NOW TV Sky Sports Month Pass for £20pm for the first two months and catch a blockbuster period of live Sky Sports action. No contract.The Strongsville Education Association is blasting the Board of Education for requiring students to go to school if teachers strike on Monday.
The teachers' union, in a statement, said the board has "reached a new low" and that parents are being forced to "send their kids into an unknown and unsafe learning environment."
Chris Canning, SEA spokeswoman, said the board has chosen to pay for "security goons and babysitters" instead of paying |
great job of simply describing events and projects
that were associated with the JFK assassination... Provides fascinating insight
into the secrets that were playing out in New Orleans in the early 1960s.
Stephanie C. Fox
September 4, 2016
An incredible read. Helps put the pieces of the puzzle together
Mave111
September 2, 2016
Conspiracy Theorist's Dream Book.
Fascinating stuff. If you're a conspiracy theorist, this is for you!
Island Girl
August 26, 2016
It was amazing. Fascinating! Love a good "conspiracy theory" book.
The author does his homework, and his perspective makes a lot of sense.
Kelly
Goodreads.com
Aug 26, 2016
This book will make you stop and think.
What I liked about this book is that it was thorough and well researched.
This book adds to the landscape of understanding why we might have
man-made medical epidemics and pandemics. It is mind-boggling.
Lynn M. Griesemer
August 25, 2016
Great book which covers different historical topics.
Vince Albanov
August 24, 2016
Eye opener.. now a lot more make sense.
Amazon Customer
August 20, 2016
Excellent book. Five Stars.
Amazon Customer
August 19, 2016
Very interesting book!
Haterade
August 9, 2016
Intriguing mystery and great research.
Recommended reading for anyone who wishes
to know the truth about our government and medical profession.
Elwin R. Roach
August 3, 2016
I've read a lot of books regarding the JFK assassination.
This was, by far, the best and most informative!
Lois O
July 24, 2016
It was amazing. This is a very eye opening book.
I'd say if you don't want your comfortable illusions blown, avoid this book.
I'm still haunted by this book’s revaluations.
Violet Trout
Jul 21, 2016
Unique storyline. Very interesting reading.
Actually makes a lot of sense...
Kathleen Ziemer
July 15, 2016
Great, thanks. Five Stars.
Glenda Parks
July 14, 2016
Fascinating read. The CDC and NHI connections with Tulane
and Loyola are mind expanding without the drugs.
Timothy Desmond
July 5, 2016
Awesome read. Five Stars.
Huong Tran
June 27, 2016
Great read. Five Stars.
Phyllis
June 22, 2016
It was amazing. Should be a required read for all Americans,
especially those interested in recent history. It was amazing
the way the lives of people are interwoven into the fabric of
society, without their knowledge for decades.
Karen Defreitas
Goodreads.com
June 21, 2016
I'm a scientist (physicist) myself and found this account fascinating.
Excellent and well-documented. I appreciated the footnotes
and sources, as well as his understated writing style. A sober narrative,
not sensationalist, but disturbing in its implications. Mr. Haslam seems
to have been uniquely positioned to do the research and write this book.
Swannee Herrmann
June 19, 2016
Although this is a non fiction book, I couldn't put it down.
Marilee Wedgeworth
June 17, 2016
Dr. Mary’s Monkey is a compelling, provocative, and well written.
Unfortunately, the story is a strong indictment of how far
the United States has fallen since World War II. Medical ethics
have been thrown out like a pair of old worn out shoes.
Mr. Haslam did an excellent job in piecing the puzzle together
of the unsolved murder of a world renowned cancer researcher
in New Orleans, Dr. Mary Sherman. Well done!
Anonymous
Apex, NC, US
Audible.com
06-14-16
Interesting, especially if you live in New Orleans
Michelle Gorney
June 11, 2016
Excellent read, a warning to people of the misdeeds done
and ignorance demonstrated by professionals and public alike.
J. Heptonstall, UK
10 June 2016
Very interesting and scary at the same time.
Ena M. Joneson
June 8, 2016
Excellent book! Add it to your collection!
Years and years of dedicated research has been presented in a great read.
Learn about the New Orleans mystery and the connection to Lee Harvey Oswald.
L. Sacchetta
Canada
May 29, 2016
I could not put this book down.
This is a must read for all!
Olga Guerra
May 28, 2016
A must read for baby boomers.
He ties it all together in a nice neat package.
Sondra Edler
May 27, 2016
So informative. Five Stars.
V. E. Hansen
May 18, 2016
Great read. Five Stars.
John V. Richey
May 15, 2016
Your dogmatic commitment to the truth shines
the bright light of truth on a dark evil part
of our history. Thank You.
Gary
May 13, 2016
Not just JFK theory.
If you're interested in early vaccine and cancer research,
this is a must read. Everything else in this book
is fascinating, as well. Enjoy!
Miss Amanda
May 8, 2016
Excellent book and information!! If people only knew...
Elizabeth
April 28, 2016
This was an awesome read. One of those
"behind the scenes" historical events you never hear about.
Patricia Gorges
April 24, 2016
When everything CLICKED at the end,
I thought, “Read it again!” Can't wait!!!
Holly
04-14-16
posted on Audible.com
A massively impressive journalistic undertaking.
Greg Carlwood
Apr. 14, 2016
talk-show host: The Higherside Chat
Great book. Really makes you wonder about our government
and their ability to cover things up and sway public opinion.
Amazon Customer
April 5, 2016
Very, very interesting. I enjoyed it.
Gayle T. Ham
March 31, 2016
Definitely a book everyone should read.
Amazon Customer
March 27, 2016
Proof positive that the government is behind
much of the current cancer epidemic
Thomas Jefferson
March 24, 2016
Every American should read this book.
Phyllis Martin
March 21, 2016
Outstanding read!
Our government is beyond corrupt.
Their actions then and now are indefensible.
Geekykate
March 18, 2016
"Wow!" What else can you say? “Wow” about Lee Oswald!
“Wow” about cancer mutations! “Wow” about our government!
Betty Higbie
Anchorage Alaska
03-16-16
posted on Audible.com
Shocking...
I don't know where to begin.
Have an open mind and read this!
Tell everyone you know to read this. Scary, scary, scary!
A. Dulude
March 3, 2016
Ed Haslam is the BEST!!!.. Excellent writer and researcher,
sourced and first hand knowledge. He has exposed information
EVERYONE must know. I have bought at least 7 copies, keep some
and give others away to interested parties. I plan to continue to spread
this very important information.
Stacey
March 1, 2016
Are we the "Monkey's" now?
Extremely well researched/documented and written book.
This book re-emphasises just how significant an event the
assassination of JFK was and how, even in 2016, we are all
still living with the consequences of that tragic day.
Thomas Nehrmann
February 28, 2016
Be sure to read Mary's Monkey.
This is an eye opener. This is not fiction.
Carol M.
February 22, 2016
Wow! What a terrifying story. And it is all true.
You will know it if you read it. Great work, Edward Haslam!
Richard Matthews
February 17, 2016
This book seems to easily fit as one of the most important books
on the outskirts of the Kennedy assassination. The medical cover up
is so appalling, I cannot do justice describing it here. But the
ramifications are so bad, you could be angered just reading it.
Jason K. Woodburn
02-09-16
posted on Audible.com
Must read to understand our loss of freedoms and rights.
Makes me shudder to know how far down the rabbit hole
we have fallen in the 50 years since this travesty.
Barry Lowe
LIBERTY, NC, US
02-05-16
posted on Audible.com
Excellent. Well researched. Five stars.
Ken Harris
February 2, 2016
A great book for any American to read. Thank you Edward T.
for your diligence and hard work, as well as your great spirit
in the search for truth. I am sure Dr. Mary is proud of you.
Amazon Customer
January 27, 2016
Holy Cow! Very enlightening. Should be required reading
for those who endorse mandatory vaccinations.
jg
January 21, 2016
This book is solidly researched, and skeptical at every turn.
You'd have to be blind, or brainwashed, not to come away
with a slice of the truth from this book.
WriteOrWrong
January 16, 2016
New Orleans Uncovered! Eye opening!
Well written and documented by an author who was there!
ANTHONY L
January 16, 2016
Five Stars. Interesting angled story.
Kurt J. Wilhelmon
January 16, 2016
Five Stars. Fantastic read.
Really makes you ponder on the events of that time
Midnight Oak, UK
10 January 2016
Five Stars. Excellent.
V. Trapp
January 5, 2016
One of the best books I have ever read!
Truly an eye opener! I would recommend!
Amazon Customer, UK
23 December 2015
Love the book. Five Stars.
Linda Schreck
December 23, 2015
Have been wanting to read this book for a very long time.
Now that I have, I am drawn into the conspiracy.
When I was given the polio vaccine in Canada back in 1956 or so,
I did not swallow it. From reading this book, I am glad I spit it out.
When my brother got cancer, I wondered if he had swallowed it
Miriam Matthews
December 18, 2015
Interesting book! Five Stars.
Lilyanne F. Clark
December 14, 2015
Re mark able book. Couldn't stop until it was done.
Truly epic rollercoaster of political and scientific facts...
This book is a must read.
Krissy
December 12, 2015
posted on Audible.com
A fascinating tale that ties together the Mafia, CIA, NIH, and
secretly weaponized cancer with Lee Harvey Oswald and many
other true heavies... Maybe Alex Jones is right, and
the answer to 1984 is 1776!
Virgil Cane
December 10, 2015
This well-written book is a real page-turner.
It reads almost like a spy novel... A gripping thriller...
Violet Bunny
December 6, 2015
Great book. What on earth are we going to do
to prevent things like this from ever happening again?
Steven D Frahm
Royal Oak, MI
11-12-15
An on-the-edge-of-your-seat read.
Fascinating raw truth which carries a sadness of special value.
Jean Crone
November 10, 2015
Five Stars. Exhilarating
Amazon Customer
November 7, 2015
So many historical people involved in this "what if" novel
you’ll be left wondering about history and health since the early 1950's
Terry G Box DDS
November 5, 2015
Excellent information. Well written.
And must read for all people that love President Kennedy
and wonder why we have so much cancer in America today.
Kindle Customer
November 3, 2015
Five Stars. Loved it!
Fan
October 28, 2015
Well thought out, well researched, eye opening discussion
of research in America
Judy Noel
October 28, 2015
An interesting book about the times of JFK's demise, and
about Lee Harvey Oswald and what other scientists were doing.
Too bad about Dr. Mary and how she was electrocuted. Good book.
Roy Routson
October 27, 2015
Brilliant. Full of twist and turns. Couldn’t put it down.
Bonita W.
October 27, 2015
Keep an Open Mind. Very thought provoking and interesting read.
Lucy Hilton
October 26, 2015
Very good, it's a gift. Five Stars.
Edward F Moran
October 21, 2015
Haslam takes a wrecking ball to the official version of events.
The presentation is quite dispassionate, and the lineup of
incongruous factual evidence that can't be reconciled with
the official version of events is voluminous.
Amazon Customer, UK
20 October 2015
This book will anger you and make you sick,
if you know nothing about the corruption of our government
and medical field. Eye opening and terrifying for those
not afraid to know the truth!
Maya D Gilbert
October 19, 2015
Reading "Dr. Mary's Monkey" is like playing a mental game of "Twister".
Lorenzo St. DuBois
October 17, 2015
EYE OPENING!!!
Ron Nowviskie
October 11, 2015
Definitely worth reading!!
Mary J Davis
October 11, 2015
Gripping, well written and fascinating...
It's so interesting. Full of unanswered questions bound together
through people and events, Haslam's clear telling of really
complicated events and intricate relationships is gripping.
Mazcon, UK
9 October 2015
Excellent, excellent book! A Great Read.
The older I get, the less I am amazed. After retiring from
the Dept of Defense, I learned the gov’t is a dirty business. So sad.
BAB
October 9, 2015
Polio, Castro, JFK, Lee Oswald, et al
This is an insanely compelling convergence of some of the
most riveting and yet arcane episodes of our generation (boomers).
It's hard to put down and is extremely well researched and documented.
Draw your own conclusions, but it doesn't leave many options.
Bart G. Ramentas
October 6, 2015
SV40 Monkey Virus AKA Boomer Cancer
Great book. Story well told. Just wish I had more time
to read about what really happened in our ( America's) past
and why we are paying for it now.
M. Rapp
October 2, 2015
The truth is finally revealing itself!!!!!!!!!!!!
The consequences of those truths are being felt
worldwide today and will continue into the future.
Amazon Customer
posted on Audible.com
October 1, 2015
Five Stars. Re mark able true story with many
interesting (some horrifying) side links!
Alien Grandma
September 25, 2015
I have listened to your Dr. Mary's Monkey audiobook 4 times.
It is a brilliant piece of scholarly work. I get something
different and deeper each time I hear the book.
Audrey Muehe, Ph.D., Neuropsychology
Houston, TX
September 18, 2015
Must Read!
Everyone should read this book. It explains so much.
Mary Margaret Siegmund
September 9, 2015
A really great book.
Most shocking things to learn from this book.
Yue Li
August 31, 2015
Great Read if You Want to Know Inside Connections
to Cancer and the CIA assassination of JFK.
T Shendon
August 24, 2015
It’s a great book. I couldn’t put it down.
Rob McConnel
X Zone Radio host
Ontario, Canada
August 19, 2015
Shocking truth. I am amazed, shocked and stunned
that this book isn't on everyone's lips. It makes my mind boggle
that nothing is said in the mainstream media about this book.
Blain
August 14, 2015
Excellent riveting read.
Miss M Brown
United Kingdom
14 August 2015
One of the greatest true crime books of all time.
Richie Allen
radio talk show host
Manchester, England, UK
August 5, 2015
What an amazing book - great work! Thanks for writing such
a crucial and inspiring book. It has really lit a fire under me.
You've done society a great service and produced a hell of a read!
Rob Florence, author, filmmaker
New Orleans, LA
email to Author@DoctorMarysMonkey.com
posted July 10, 2015
This is a fantastical, wild story of real events that are
laced with murder, conspiracy, biological weaponizing of disease,
and a new JFK assassination theory. It is the well woven epic of
Mr. Haslam's theories derived from events which he observed
over the course of his life...
Carmelita R. Ave
July 9, 2015
The conspiracy kooks have been right all along.
George McRaeon
July 9, 2015
A must read!! I loaned it out and never got it back.
Wonderful book. Explains a lot about many things.
Cancer and the assassination of President Kennedy.
Terri LD
July 8, 2015
OMG. Intriguing.
Danita Thompson
July 4, 2015
Purely evil to the core. It answers a multitude of questions...
to reveal treason / treachery and lack of character / honor.
paschn "pete"
June 20, 2015
The best non fiction book I have ever read.
I have recommended it to dozens of friends
who all report back that it was one of the best
books they had ever read. This book has it all.
A book that one cannot put down
Jeff A. Absher
June 19, 2015
Five Stars. Good read.
Myra
June 14, 2015
Intriguing read. Did this truly happen? If so,
how can we trust anything the government is telling us?
The statistics presented have profound indications.
Becky Whitman
June 7, 2015
Very interesting! Five Stars.
Beth J Vincent
June 3, 2015
This book will blow your mind. It is a page turner from the start.
The writer takes a methodical approach to a murder mystery and
in the process, pulls up a bunch of rocks with 'bugs' underneath.
Percy Blakeney "ScarletPimpernel"
May 30, 2015
Fascinating!!! The author takes you on an easy read of the events...
I highly recommend this book... thanks for an intensive, exciting read!!!
Anona Fosbergon
May 30, 2015
Great book. Very eye opening. Five Stars.
Brandy Kinney
May 30, 2015
Fantastic read, cover to cover! Five Stars.
Ray H.
May 22, 2015
I loved this book, and I hated it. I wanted to scream in frustration
and anger, not at the author - at this country! I heard it twice and
bought the hard copy for underlining and mark ing relevant passages.
Be prepared to have a major paradigm shift.
Everyone should read this book!
Cindy
Leesburg, FL, USA
written on Audible.com, 08-24-14, posted here May 18, 2015
Amazingly thorough book with lots of sources to back up
the information provided. Much of the information in the book
came as a complete surprise, and although it seemed far fetched
at a glance, the author was very thorough in connecting all the dots.
Another Amazoner
May 12, 2015
Incredible True Story That Reads Like a Thriller.
A soberly researched, carefully considered and convincingly written
true story that takes you on a wild ride that keeps surprising, educating
and thrilling you with every new chapter. This is a singularly fascinating
and scholarly work of investigative journalism that will change how you think
about a LOT of things.
Dave
Glenview, IL, United States
4-27-15
posted on Audible.com
Mindblowing.
It's like riding a runaway freight train.
The story is amazing, and the read is excellent.
Kevin
Framingham, MA, United States
posted on Audible.com
You have done humanity a great service by writing this.
Helene, Vienna, Austria
email to author@DoctorMarysMonkey.com
April 30, 2015
Very Interesting! The writer did a great job
keeping my interest. I couldn't put this book down.
Painterb
April 25, 2015
Enlightening and very well structured.
Why are we in the midst of a cancer epidemic?
I highly recommend this book to everyone I know.
Amazon Customer
April 21, 2015
I thought this was one of the most captivating and memorable books
I've read in a long time... I couldn't put this book down until I finished.
J reader
April 20, 2015
Eye opening view of research in the medical world.
Helen Harden
April 19, 2015
WOW! Fantastic read.
Ferenie
April 12, 2015
An eye opener! Very interesting information of events
that happened around the time of JFK's murder. SV 40 changed
thousands and thousands of lives. And many have no idea!
dotlar
April 10, 2015
Dr. Mary's Monkey is a mandatory read!!
Very well written and documented... This is a must-read especially
for those born in the late 40's and 50's. You've been lied to!!
Robert S.
April 9, 2015
Really Good Book! Meticulously written and VERY well researched.
I really do believe Ed Haslam solved this gruesome murder
where the NOPD either could not or would not solve it...
K. Dimmick
April 7, 2015
Excellent read. This should do much to open the eyes
of the American public as to who really did murder the President.
M. Paul Regan
April 5, 2015
What a story. Really gets you thinking.
Very compelling and kinda scary, too.
Ron Wetsel
Apr 03, 2015
Goodreads.com
A well illustrated amazing account of a dark side of Sixties America.
Shocking occult events in his hometown.
3 April 2015
Peter Haggarty
U.K.
Wow- what a book!
Can’t get more intresting.
Vidar Gustadon
March 29, 2015
You will probably not look at the news ever again the same way.
Great book. Easy to read, and I know quite a few others who rarely finish books
these days who read it quickly and enjoyed it just as much. We don't usually all agree
on anything when it comes to books either, but in this case, we all loved it.
Colorgirl
TOP 1000 REVIEWER on Amazon.com
March 23, 2015
Provocative subject. If author’s conclusion about contaminated
polio vaccines causing a subsequent cancer epidemic is true,
this would blow the roof off health care practice in this country.
Clayton W. Robson
March 20, 2015
Interesting read.
HawkeyeIaAk
March 20, 2015
The author did an excellent job at combining the technical information
and a story line together in this book. Another fascinating example of why
we need to be careful about trusting implicitly medical decisions.
Stacey M. Asby
March 20, 2015
Dr. Mary's Monkey is a must read for all. Five stars.
March 20, 2015
Tim Higgins
Excellent true story about something and someone I had never heard of!
March 19, 2015
Amazon Customer
GET IT. READ IT. Amazing.
I was shocked at the facts in this book.
It was a great read, and I have shared it with many friends.
March 18, 2015
Ardys Goodine
Very intriguing!
March 14, 2015
karen
Loved this book. Could not put it down.
Learnt a lot, that not all is how it seems..
Amazon Customer
Australia
March 17, 2015
Very thought provoking! I couldn't put it down!
March 13, 2015
Irma Easley
Kentwood, Louisiana USA
Good book. Tells a story never heard before.
Is this the reason for a cancer epidemic in the USA?
March 12, 2015
Julius Wilson "Bodhitree"
Bogalusa, LA USA
As promised - Five Stars.
March 11, 2015
rkelley
Great read. Excellent details. Fact based book.
Louisiana harbors a whole bunch of secrets...
March 10, 2015
Ross
Covington, LA USA
A most important book, especially today.
Anyone who appreciates Truth will appreciate this book
and find it difficult to put down. Trust me you will NOT
be disappointed. This one was indeed inspired.
March 8, 2015
David B. Kurrasch
San Juan Capistrano, CA USA
Fascinating reading!!
February 28, 2015
Barbara Noll
This was a very good book. I never lost interest throughout the chapters...
February 23, 2015
Reader # 1
Every American needs to read this book. Period.
February 21, 2015
Julia Hopkins
This was a great read.
If Haslam's conclusions are correct, he's uncovered another layer
to the assassination conspiracy - a covert bioweapons program.
He draws many fascinating connections among people and places
in anti-Castro New Orleans. All in all, it was time well spent...
February 19, 2015
Angel
Mysterious underground lab in New Orleans.
I gave this book a high rating. Anyone interested in learning how
Dr. Mary Sherman died will enjoy this highly researched book.
February 16, 2015
Kindle Customer
Louisiana
Can NOT wait for the movie...
If ever a story needed to be told, it is this one.
If you THINK you are being told the truth regarding vaccines
from the powers to be, you better read this book.
Great graphics, and this edition has an updated chapter.
February 13, 2015
Trish
GREAT READ.
Opens new questions about the JFK assassination...
A well researched and documented account of relevant facts...
February 8, 2015
Paul Gibbs
Good read.
February 8, 2015
Daniel R. Heim
New Orleans
Very interesting.
February 3, 2015
Deborah A.
Anyone remember Jim Garrison of New Orleans?
If so, you will want to read this book!
Thanks so much, Ed, for "filling in some of the obvious gaps"
in the mysteries surrounding the Kennedy assassination.
January 30, 2015
Albert B. Duckett
Ocean Springs, MS USA
A great read.
This book raises a great many questions, but the facts quoted
certainly make it interesting from the first page to the last.
January 28, 2015
Clement Schrader
WOW... This book will blow your mind.
It is a non-fiction account of the animal virus's
that are injected into us through vaccines.
January 26, 2015
Jason Sadler
PALM DESERT, CA, US
It's been about 3 years since I've read this, so I'm going to read it again.
I see at the top of the title page of my copy that I had written:
"Disturbing. Fascinating. Infuriating." Thank You, Ed Haslam
for all the research and for writing this book!
January 22, 2015
S. B. Smith
Texas
Five Stars. Very intense story.
Much new information on the period and its activities.
January 20, 2015
Carolyn R. Patton
Baton Rouge, LA
Five Stars, excellent.
Well worth a read if you really want to know the truth on cancer.
January 19, 2015
Debbie Meyer
Very good book. Lots of information I didn't know.
I've read many books on the JFK assassination, but
now I know our government is way too frightening
January 18, 2015
Jesse
United States
I could not put this down!
This is a riveting book about the connections between the death
of this prominent New Orleans doctor, the Kennedy Assassination,
and the plot to kill Castro with cancer causing viruses. It connects
a lot of the dots that Jim Garrison missed during the Clay Shaw trial.
January 15, 2015
Ben Johnson
New Orleans, LA
This is a extremely fascinating book!!!!
I've read it before, but now I have the new hardback with
new information added. It's very hard to put down!!
Jan 10, 2015
Barbara rated it 5 of 5 stars
on GoodReads.com
An excellent read, that is a real eye-opener into the scary possibility
that our government doesn't have our best interests in mind.
January 4, 2015
Jack M.
Great story with a very plausible tale.
January 1, 2015
Allen Sprinkle, DDS
Just an incredible book and story.
December 30, 2014
SJV
Finally there is a book written that neatly ties up so many
loose ends for me. Easier to read than I had imagined...
December 29, 2014
George M.
A must read! Everyone is talking about this book.
Gave a copy to my son-in-law that is a doctor - he will enjoy.
December 26, 2014
Gary Sandifer
Well written. Well researched. You won't look at the
US government, news media and secret organizations
the same after reading this book.
December 24, 2014
Scott
Amazon.ca
Just when I thought things couldn't get any stranger
with the JFK assassination theories, I read this book...
This is a rock solid book which benefits from author
Edward Haslam's many years of patient, painstaking research
and actual experiences growing up and living in New Orleans.
December 9, 2014
Jeff Marzano
Essex Junction, VT USA
All I can say is WOW!
December 7, 2014
Sally RNRRT
GREAT READ! FACTS REFERENCED
December 5, 2014
R. L. Underhill
Champlin, MN United States
This is an astonishing book which should have received
far more media attention. The writing is as engaging
as that of any murder mystery, but the ramifications
of the documented facts presented are stunning and
world view changing.
December 1, 2014
William Galison
New York
Gives a richer context to the New Orleans aspect
of the JFK assassination. Must read for all Americans
that seek to regain their true history.
November 29, 2014
John Conlon
If you ever have questions about "why things are the way they are,"
get this book. You'll learn more than you want to.
November 27, 2014
C. Sanders
Arkansas
Everyone in America needs to read this book.
November 2, 2014
T.B.
A great read!
October 31, 2014
Vicki Smith
I could not put this book down! Very intriguing.
October 31, 2014
Stephanie Lee
Great book... I’m a happy customer!!
October 28, 2014
Haydee
Interesting, as well as frightening!
October 27, 2014
Happy
Cancer and the Kennedy assassination?
Very believable research and information.
This book will keep you interested and get you thinking.
When I finished, I found myself doing a lot of research and
found a lot of support for the author's positions.
October 22, 2014
J Wight
Five Stars. Interesting!
October 19, 2014
Roger C. Brown
Great read with some interesting information.
This is an interesting book if you want to know more
about what happened to J F Kennedy.
October 19, 2014
Vickie L. Williams
Sure makes you think and wonder what else we aren't being told.
October 17, 2014
B Smith
Five Stars. Great.
October 17, 2014
Jim Hennings
I enjoyed reading this publication, not so much for the horrible things
I've learned about some elements that my government is responsible
for, but rather to hold them accountable. It has to happen for this
country to heal. This is where Edward T. Haslam and his
outstanding work comes into play. I most strongly
recommend this astonishing publication.
October 16, 2014
James McDonald
San Diego, CA
Book was exactly as pictured. Good shape.
October 15, 2014
Ruth McCall
After reading it, you will find it credible.
The combination of ingredients sound so improbable
and yet far too many aspects of the story simply cannot be dismissed.
October 15, 2014
Pat H.
Although written very intelligently, possibly too over my head.
October 12, 2014
Carol Ann Horned
Springfield, MO
A revealing account of clandestine activities by federally
sponsored persons which resulted in the demise of Dr Mary
and several others. It is well researched and documented; a must read...
October 10, 2014
R. Martineau
Plymouth, MI USA
Read it. Really good book.
October 8, 2014
Sandinista Death Squad
Death Valley, CA
Five Stars. Couldn't put the book down!
Disturbing insight to how some of the government agencies operate.
October 7, 2014
Spilk
Great read! Since I live in New Orleans, I was attentive
to the situation while it was happening. Great read!
October 7, 2014
Kindle Customer
New Orleans, LA USA
Well-written and thought provoking.
October 6, 2014
Winifred J. Jones
A friend who worked with Dr. Mary recommended it,
and said she totally believes in its authenticity.
Extremely interesting eye-opener, especially for a
New Orleanian like me.
October 5, 2014
Running Bear
New Orleans
Five Stars. Excellent.
October 5, 2014
Hugh MacMillen
Excellent food for thought.
As crazy as it sounds, Haslam's account of contaminated polio
vaccines, a biological weapon, and the Kennedy assassination
are both fascinating and plausible.
October 4, 2014
Ann B. Austin
McKinney, TX
As a native New Orleanian, it's a fascinating read.
Opened my eyes as to the other facets of our city
that were involved in an important time for our nation
and the world. I encourage anyone to read it.
October 1, 2014
Mulein'
I’m glad that I bought it; it’s a very good read.
I enjoyed the suspense and mystery. Hope to meet the author.
A lot of dark secrets coming to light...
Don't give up, Ed. Keep going... I loved the book.
October 1, 2014
Randy Alcantar
A fascinating read, many revelations never known or published.
The news of that era did not connect the characters, nor
did they report the facts.
October 1, 2014
Dawn Long
Intriguing. An interesting read for history enthusiasts.
September 28, 2014
Ronald G.
An Eye Opener. Dr. Mary's Monkey is a book that will change
one's view of many subjects: polio vaccine, Mary Sherman's death,
bio-medical research, and the Kennedy assassination. It's quite a read,
and paired with Lee & Me by Judyth Vary Baker will show you
a new view of American history.
September 25, 2014
Anita T. Monroe
Clemson, SC
Love it! I love this book.
September 24, 2014
mrbrown4559
Ann Arbor, MI
Very good read! Shows connections of which most of us hadn't a clue.
Connects the dots to explain out how JFK, Mary, Lee harvey Oswald,
CIA, Mafia and others paths crossed!
September 23, 2014
Gil
Roy, Utah
Amazing story. This is an amazing collection of substantiated facts.
It answers many questions that exist today surrounding the death of
President Kennedy. I highly recommend this book.
September 20, 2014
JKG
REALLY, really, really good! This book needs more visibility.
It speaks to the way creepy idealist fanatics, with the covert and
often overt participation of our government, manipulates events
for the gain of individuals feigning patriotism.
Sean Fraser
September 19, 2014
A Bombshell of a Book. If you think that you have
a good understanding of the last fifty years or so,
you are in for a big surprise.
The polio epidemic, the Kennedy assassination, the unexplained
death of one of the nation's most prominent cancer researchers,
the Mongoose Project, the cancer epidemic, the attempts on Castro's life –
all are linked in ways you never expected.
Buckle your seat belt; it's going to be a bumpy ride.
18 Sep 2014
Anita T. Monroe
Clem |
involves 255 flats which will be made available via agreements to cede their use, the right of first refusal and direct acquisition. Since the municipal government took office, 455 flats have been added to the public rented housing pool.
Agreements have been reached for usage rights for 50 flats for a period of eight years and the purchase of 131 homes at prices under market value. City Council has exercised its right to first refusal to secure a further 28 flats, with the same procedure being considered to secure 46 more homes. The bulk of the homes are located in city neighbourhoods where the housing emergency is more pressing. The Mayor, Ada Colau, presented the new moves explaining: “The full potential of the law will be applied to guarantee the right to housing in the city”.
City Council has drafted a plan to tackle the irregular situations of families already living in homes which have been ceded or purchased from financial entities. The situation of tenants in financially vulnerable situations who have been living in the property for more than two years will be regularised ordinarily. In cases where tenants have been in the property for less than two years, other criteria will be taken into consideration such as links with the neighbourhood, schooling of children and reports from social services. Sitting tenants will be regularised provided they have not generated any conflicts with the community of residents.
A study has also been conducted on the evolution of rent prices for housing on the open market, showing an increase in prices, particularly in areas where there is more tourism. During the first nine months of 2015 Barcelona saw rent prices rise by 6.6% compared to the year before. The study shows that although prices vary by district, they do not correspond to the level of income in each zone. In the neighbourhoods with lowest incomes the financial effort required to pay the rent is greater.
Colau warned of the danger of a new housing boom due to the rise in rent prices: “An obligation for all public administration is that we do everything possible to avoid speculation with an asset of prime necessity such as housing”. The Mayor also noted: “The Generalitat and the state are not doing their homework. Housing prices are going up”, adding: “We’re calling for action and for us to learn from experiences such as that of Germany, where the state makes it possible to cap rent prices”."The director of Spanish National Radio (RNE), given the controversy and annoyance caused be the programme, has removed this episode from the Internet," a spokesman for the broadcaster, Carlos Garrido, told AFP on Thursday.
The management of the station also apologised to the former spokesman for Israel's foreign ministry, Yigal Palmor, who "raised the problem" in an article in the Jerusalem Post, he added.
The spokesman stressed that the programme was "radio fiction and in no way was a news segment."
The half-hour programme "From the Inferno", which has been broadcast since 2009 in the early hours of Saturday, deals with myths about the devil throughout the ages. Episodes have dealt with devil myths in the Third Reich in Nazi Germany and during the Iraq war.
The episode which sparked the controversy, called "The Jewish People: Propagator of the Satan Cult", was broadcast on July 25th.
The Anti-Defamation league, a New York-based organisation that fights anti-Semitism, said the broadcast included "slander" of Judaism lifted from the "Plot Against the Church", a book published in 1962 "filled with anti-Semitic rhetoric" that was written by a collection of Mexican priests under the pseudonym Maurice Pinay.
"The fact that a vehemently anti-Semitic work filled with anti-Semitic conspiracy theories and slander made it to the Spanish airwaves is seriously troubling and warrants immediate condemnation from the Spanish government," the national director of the league, Jonathan Greenblatt, said in a statement.
Greenblatt wrote to Spanish Foreign Minister Jose Manuel Garcia-Margallo to urge Madrid to publicly condemn the broadcast.
"Strong action will convey the seriousness of the government's commitment to combat anti-Semitism and, we hope, deter future incidents," he wrote in the letter.A big name from The Hunger Games franchise is coming to Syfy: Josh Hutcherson will guest judge an episode of the channel’s reality hit Face Off.
In the upcoming eighth season’s third episode — titled “Let the Games Begin” — Hutcherson will join The Hunger Games makeup department head Ve Neill and her fellow judges (Glenn Hetrick and Neville Page) to critique the contestants’ cinema-inspired predator creature designs.
The casting is fitting since Hutcherson’s character Peeta Mellark used camouflage makeup to conceal himself in the franchise’s first film (perhaps Face Off contestants should practice their craft by decorating cakes?).
Face Off returns Tuesday, Jan. 13 for a double-episode premiere. As previously announced, makeup legend Rick Baker (American Werewolf in London) will appear those first two episodes. Hutcherson’s episode airs Jan. 27 at 9 p.m.GOG, which has made its name offering DRM-free classic games for sale, is set to launch its own online gaming platform later this year called GOG Galaxy. The service will let you play games, challenge friends, view achievements, and get automatic updates for your games. It's like Steam, but without all the DRM. You won't need an internet connection to play games you've bought from Galaxy, and you can opt-out of the community aspects of the service entirely if you just want to play games.
GOG's video positions the new service as a Steam alternative, but Galaxy will also interoperate with Steam. Rock Paper Shotgun reports that Galaxy "plays nice" with Steam and other services, which could mean that you can compare achievements and see Steam friends from inside Galaxy. The service likely won't start offering the same kinds of AAA games Steam is known for, since everything on GOG is DRM-free, but in a time where so few online gaming platforms exist, Galaxy is a welcome alternative and complement to the leading online games store.There are three things that need to be mentioned before I begin to list off my rules for making bracket selections:
1. I am not particularly adept at picking a bracket that will win anything. I have finished dead last in bracket contests that I organized. I have chosen teams to reach the Final Four who have subsequently lost their first game in the tournament. I have also had successes, but I have absolutely had failures.
2. No one is actually good at this. It is a crapshoot. It is 98% luck. Without going as far to say that your dog could beat you, anyone who can grasp the general concept of seeding can pick based on any set of criteria and create a winning bracket.
3. Bracket success comes not from money, but from pride. Did you choose the champion? How were your Final Four picks? Did you stick your neck out and nail an upset or a Cinderella run? These are the questions that matter. I don’t care if the arbitrary amount of assigned points adds up to an office pool win. I care if you can watch “One Shining Moment” after the title game and be proud of your bracket. If you never crumple it up and throw it towards a trash can, you have succeeded.
#1: If you disagree with the above and are primarily concerned with winning your pool, pick the chalk.
If you’re most concerned with bringing home bacon, stick to the highest seeds and best bets. Consult Las Vegas’ favorites and choose them to advance. Make your upset picks subtle and not earth-shattering.
The odds are in your favor. People who place their eggs into the basket of one or two heavy favorites may lose all of their hopes in one game. You may be hurt by upsets when you pick chalk, but if you play safe enough, your bracket will be somewhat bulletproof. You will be in the mix, unless chaos reigns more than usual.
Which I hope it does because this is the no-fun, buttoned-up way to play. On to the fun stuff.
#2: Your Final Four’s seeds should add up to more than 7.5.
Historically, this is going to happen. We haven’t had a Final Four seed sum under 7.5 since 2009. It’s only happened 4 times since 2000.
I’m not advocating leaving the #1 seeds at home (especially not this year), but shoot for an outlier or two.
#3: A double-digit seed will make the Sweet Sixteen. Find them.
Since 1985, only twice has a double-digit seed failed to advance to the second week. On average 2.26 Cinderellas sneak through. It’s one thing to spot the team that will win once. It’s next level to spot the second upset.
#4: Pick at least one #10 seed, one #11 seed, one #12 seed, and one #13+ seed to win their first round game.
You should never use the phrases “my upset” or “the one upset I picked”. No, you should be picking much, much more than one. The 12s have become the trendy pick that everyone looks for, but there’s always gold in the even higher seeds. Look for teams that play a distinct style, have the size to keep up, or are filled with senior leadership to tussle with the big boys.
#5: Geography and game times are very important.
Just as NFL fans (and gamblers) have known for years, flying from the West Coast to the East Coast can be a burden on the body. The other way isn’t especially easier either. Be very wary of teams travelling far, particularly if they are playing early in the afternoon or late at night.
Not to mention, home town crowds can swing a game. If the higher seed isn’t exceptionally close to home, the entire building may be cheering for a fiesty underdog by about the second half 12 minute media timeout. For example, when Florida Gulf Coast topped Georgetown, that Philadelphia crowd (presumably with some of Nova Nation attendance) was quick to turn on the Hoyas.
When picking an upset, ask yourself, “If the lower seed hits a three with 10 minutes left to take the lead, how much of the crowd will be behind them?”. Kentucky playing in Lexington won’t lose a single fan. Duke playing in Houston or Wisconsin/Villanova out West can’t count on the same fate.
#6 : Your head is smarter than your heart, but who cares?
I pick Gonzaga, my favorite team, to reach their best case scenario every year. When they were a #1 seed in 2013, I picked them to win it all. When they lost early, I didn’t even care about my bracket. The years I don’t pick them to win the title, I hate the part of me that justifies the loss by saying “Well, it is better for my bracket.”
If you’re a fan of a team that can win the whole tournament, pick them to win the whole tournament. This is a superior way to live your life.
#7 : Pick a unique champion.
Speaking of champions, this is the one place picking the favorite hurts your chances at winning a pool. If you do and they do win, your first five rounds have to be better than everyone else who picked them. Go more obscure, though still realistic with your champ and your bracket is invigorated.
This year, this is a tough task. At the end of the day though, would you rather want to beat out all the Kentucky believers or take your chances on Virgina, Wisconsin, Villanova, Duke, Arizona, or Gonzaga beating the Cats? THAT’S RIGHT I SAID GONZAGA.
#8: Rooting for chaos is more important than rooting for your bracket.
Unless large sums of money are involved, this is always true. If a top seed is on the ropes, unless that team is YOUR team, you have to chose rooting for the upset. I don’t care if you picked them to win it all or you have their top scorer in the Palestra Back Fantasy Shootout (Still plenty of time to sign up!), March is supposed to have madness. It’s the madness that makes it great. Wait, I think I just stumbled into a Tom Hanks quote.
#9. If a game is truly stumping you, ask yourself these 5 questions:
Who is the best player in this game?
Who has the better coach?
Who has better guards?
Who has better big men?
Who is playing closer to home?
Whichever side wins that best out of five should be your pick.
#10. You get one bracket. That’s it.
None of this “Oh I picked them to make the Final Four in my friend’s bracket, but in my office one I picked someone else.”
It doesn’t matter how many pools you enter, if you pick Virginia to win it all, that’s what you’re eating for dinner. This is not a buffet. Now eat your Virginia and go straight to bed.
Shane McNichol is the founder, editor, and writer at PalestraBack.com. Follow him on Twitter @OnTheShaneTrain.
If you have any suggestions, tips, ideas, or questions, email them to palestraback@gmail.comPHILADELPHIA — Cheesesteaks? Never mind. Sichuan shoestring French fries? That’s more like it. Like many American cities, Philadelphia has greatly evolved both economically and culturally since 2000, the last time a major political party held its national convention here, not to mention the days when W. C. Fields made it a national punch line.
While its public school system remains a mess, its crime rate elastic and its poverty rate high, Philadelphia has been revitalized over the last decade and a half, with celebrity chefs, a vibrant technology sector and thriving art scene, all boxes to check for cities on the move these days.
“Yes, the schools are still a problem, crime is still a problem, gun violence is still a problem,” said Senator Bob Casey, a Pennsylvania Democrat who has watched Philadelphia evolve over several decades. “But people have much more optimism about the future now. With the pope coming in 2015 and the Democrats in 2016, it’s a one-two punch.”
The story of Philadelphia, which the Democrats chose on Thursday as the venue for their national convention in 2016, is less a tale of two cities than a nuanced novel with overlapping plots.Nespresso’s online experience has ossified the last few years. Now it is hurting the brand. Here is how.
Much to the chagrin of my many fiends who are coffee aficionados, I am an unashamed Nespresso fan. But I despair at the company’s disjointed, disconnected and dizzyingly confusing web presence that in turn makes for a poor omni-channel experience. Failure to solve for this is hurting the company, not least in lost opportunities to connect with its fans, allowing competitors a near open field upon which to plant their brands.
Nespresso Creatista – you beauty
Returning to Europe from the US provided a great opportunity to revisit coffee choices. For years a Nespresso fan and having accumulated an assortment of machines, I’d managed to fork lift my much beloved Maestria from Spain to the UK in hand luggage. (I know – don’t go there.) But I was increasingly disappointed with the machine and specifically its milk foaming capabilities. In fact, the one thing that lets down all Nespresso branded machines is milk foaming which I have consistently found to be sub par and well below barista expectations.
With that in mind, I was seriously considering abandoning the Nespresso nest and returning to a ‘bean to cup’ machine. That would have involved a much larger initial investment (capex) in exchange for much lower consumption cost (opex.) That was, until I stumbled across the Creatista Plus at a local Nespresso boutique. It is a natural replacement for the elegantly retro but now dropped Maestria. The R&D department at Sage (rebranded from the modest market Breville and with input from modern chef genius Heston Blumenthal) have rethought the user experience in numerous ways, creating (sic) an outstanding machine well worth the relative nose bleed price for a Nespresso machine. In essence they have captured the semi-manual processes of a Sage Oracle and shoehorned them into the Creatista and at a third of the retail price.
Superb in-store experience
I’ll not use this as a Creatista review per se except to say that Sage/Nespresso have brought bone idle but satisfactory semi-snobby home coffee making right up to date. More to the point, they’ve done it in an elegant package that is not only frugal on worktop space take up, but also the milk frother is genius, delivering exactly what I want in microfoam for lattes and egg white consistency for cappuccinos. The in store experience was professional and understated as the server deftly demonstrated latte art skills, registered the device for warranty all while skillfully upselling me on supplies.
I can readily appreciate the work and thought that Nespresso must have invested in order to get someone on the shop floor multi task proficient while supporting the premium brand ethos. But that’s where it stops.
Online and stuck in 2015
In the online world, Nespresso is no further along than it was in 2015, a time when I had to call in to get the Nespresso site to accept a change of country. Right now, it looks like I will have to go through that whole process again, despite the fact the boutique was able to register the Creatista to my current UK and emaił addresses. That’s a red flag straight away because in my eyes that should not have been possible without at least initiating a change of country, or requiring input by me for security reasons at the store.
I was able to confirm this disconnect when I logged into my Nespresso account. Sure enough, it still has me registered in the U.S. but more to the point, it is not offering me ways to make a country change. That means I cannot see an easy way to buy capsules online in my local currency or for my current lcocation. Even if that is possible, the amount of friction involved is unacceptable in 2017.
In early 2016, Stuart Lauchlan reporting on Nestlé’s 2015 performance concluded that:
Bulcke (then CEO) is setting very conservative expectations for Nestlé in 2016, which is probably wise. The 2012 strategic commitment to digital transformation gives the firm something of a head start on the competitors eating into its market shares across various brands, but there needs to be a shift to a front foot, rather than the defensive tone that’s been the case throughout 2015. Whether effective digital exploitation can enable that remains to be seen.
Prudent maybe but a year on and despite reported growth in the Nespresso business, the online investment appears to have stagnated beyond updating for new machines and coffee types. What’s more, and as I considered my approach to this topic, it dawned on me that despite Nespresso’s past appreciation of my lauding them on Facebook, the company has not been in touch on a proactive basis for over two years. In addition and since returning to the UK, I have gone to third party online suppliers rather than back to Nespresso. Why?
Third party winners
A search online for ‘Nespresso capsules‘ shows Nespresso owning the no.1 Google slot but third party suppliers are easily seen, owning the number two slot. These third party suppliers make the price difference play and, as a result, have won my business the last few months. As a Nespresso fan, I was initially dubious about coffee quality but quickly found a supplier that punches at Nespresso’s weight but at fractional cost. The next test is to determine whether that translates across to the Creatista or not. If it does, then given what I have said about the brokenness of the online experience, I don’t know how Nespresso wins me back into the fold.
Nespresso might well argue that its Facebook investment more than outweighs investments elsewhere and sure, accumulating 6.1 million likes on Facebook may well be something the online marketers feel very happy about. But Facebook is NOT the only destination and the very fact I can point to an alternative experience as a direct result of Google ranking should surely count for something.
Mindshift required
What makes this story all the more sad is the fact that Nespresso has a more than 30 year history in what we today call the subscription business model. As always in these situations, success in one channel doth not an omni-channel experience make. The fact the third party players exist, let alone thrive, through a combination of smart and brute force online marketing should tell the Nespresso mavens enough about how and where they could readily improve.
But – if the past couple of years is an indicator, that conservative streak Lauchlan identified last year is alive and well. Now, it is hurting the brand and taking away from the otherwise excellent in store experience. Technology alone will not fix this, it’s a mindshift issue.
Image credit - via NespressoSo, my Santa shipped out the gift ages ago. As the mail had been acting up lately I was ready to wait longer, but then the dreaded "last notice of posting gift" arrived, so I had to report no gift received.
Little did I know - I had been matched with the absolutely most caring Santa in the universe. My Santa decided to repurchase and resend everything in my gift. I am completely amazed by the generosity, it wasn't my Santa's fault that the postal services did not deliver.
Thank you so much for caring!
Oh and the gifts - I got the cutest T-shirt for my boy, it's perfectly sized for the next summer and both me and my SO enjoy it very much. My boy also seems to like the texture of the material, dunno about the message yet, hehe.
As for me - I got a wonderful mug and a roomy T-shirt. It's pretty awesome, though I have to protect it from my SO as he wants one terribly :)
Thank you Santa!This was a gift well worth the wait - everything in it is very thoughtfully chosen and absolutely beautiful.
The first thing that caught my eye was an absolutely stunning embossed black notebook - it's a lovely quality and I love the design. I'm going to save this one for something special - perhaps I will use it as a travel journal on my next adventure...
There were also a set of three notebooks with vintage map designs - again, really lovely, they're the perfect size to keep in my handbag for taking notes and recording ideas on the go.
A set of my favourite felt-tip pens too! Very well appreciated as my current set are, one by one, running low on ink and they're my favourites to use while I learn to sketchnote.
Last, but definitely not least, a brush pen. I've never worked with one of these before. I've had a bit of time to try it out and I love the feel and the way the lines come out. I'll get better with practice, but it seemed right that the first thing I should do is write a thank you!
I feel incredibly lucky. Thank you very, very much Stationery Santa, you chose items and designs that I adore and have given me a new skill to practice.This was written as part of our Non-Navies Series AND Matthew Merighi’s “Lessons from History” series.
By Matthew Merighi
In 1538, Christendom assembled one of the largest allied fleets in its history. Called the Holy League to honor its Papal sponsors, it numbered 157 ships and was drawn from many of the strongest maritime powers of the age, including Spain, the Papal States, Venice, and the Maltese Knights of St. John. This motley alliance had one goal: to defeat the fearsome fleet of the Ottoman Empire under the legendary pirate Hayreddin Barbarossa.
The early borders and expansion of the Ottoman Empire. Although a navy would have been useful, it was not necessary as maintaining land-power dominance to control outlying vassal states. As a result, their navy never developed until later years (image from Wikimedia Commons).
The Ottoman Empire was not always a maritime powerhouse. Until the mid 15th century, the Ottomans were best known for their dominant land forces which they used to counter that landpowers in their neighborhood. This all changed under the Sultan Mehmet II, who intentionally increased the size of the navy to fuel his wars of conquest and, specifically, to go after the greatest city in the medieval world.
A map of Constantinople and the infamous anti-access, area-denial (A2AD) chain across the Golden Horn. Mehmet II ordered his army to drag ships across the northern landmass to complete the city’s encirclement and take advantage of the lower walls on the city’s northern expanse (image from Wikimedia Commons).
In 1453, Mehmet II conducted his famous final siege of Constantinople. In order to fully surround the city, he needed to move naval forces into the Golden Horn. Unfortunately for him, the Byzantines used a traditional medieval anti-access/area-denial (A2AD) technology to keep out enemy navies; a massive chain lay across the entire expanse (see map above). To achieve his encirclement, Mehmet ordered his army to physically drag his ships out of the Bosphorus to the east of the city and, using logs as rollers, drag them across the northern landmass and deposit them in the western part of the Horn away from Byzantine forces. The move, though daring, was essential but not sufficient for the defeat of the city. Constantinople fell on 29 May 1453 only after the army breached the supposedly impregnable land walls to the west.[i] Even when it played a crucial role in operations, the Ottoman navy played second fiddle to the army.
An Ottoman galley. Using sails and oars, the galley could keep moving regardless of weather. The banners with the downward crossed swords at the bow and stern are the colors of Barbarossa while the one depicting three crescent moons is the Ottomans’ imperial flag (image from Wikimedia Commons and the Istanbul Naval Museum).
The mainline in the Ottoman navy for most of its history was the galley. For those unfamiliar, the galley was a warship first devised in the Classical era and first made famous in Greece, particularly in its roles in the Persian and Peloponessian Wars in the 300’s B.C. It had two methods of propulsion: sail-power and oar-power. Sails provided the fastest and most efficient speed but, in times of bad weather or no wind, or when rapid movements were needed in close combat, oars provided a useful alternative. Oar-power, while useful, did have a significant drawback: it required a lot of manpower. The Ottomans, however, possessed the bureaucratic acumen to recruit these rowers through a sophisticated administrative and judicial apparatus that levied paid conscripts from provinces around the empire. They divided up recruitment between coastal and inland provinces, leveraging experienced mariners from the coastal levies for work in rigging and the non-maritime minded levies from the inland provinces as rowers.[ii]
Although the 15th and 16th century century saw the rise of the high-sided, sail-powered galleass as a weapon of war, the galley remained a viable military technology throughout this entire period. The galley’s capabilities were not useful on the Atlantic and other harsh ocean waters but, inside the confines of the Mediterranean, their utility was still as manifest in the 1500’s as it was two thousand years earlier; weather was still unpredictable and the Mediterranean, although dangerous, was still not as violent as the deep ocean. Galleys had similar gunpowder armaments as their galleass competitors during this period, so they retained their lethality as well.
While the Ottomans were causing general mayhem for Christendom in the Eastern Mediterranean through the early sixteen century, including the conquest of Venetian islands and the expulsion of the Knights of St. John from Rhodes, another Islamic force caused similar problems on the Western shores. Piracy was rife across the entire Mediterranean but those in the west were of a particular brutal and effective breed. Chief among these brigands were the forces of the pirate brothers Uruj and Hayreddin.
While these two men were the scourges of the western Mediterranean, they were not natives to the region. The brothers lived and conducted piracy in the Aegean with the tacit backing of the brother of the man who would become Selim I, the ruling Sultan. Selim fought a brutal succession war against his brother but emerged victorious and had his brother executed in 1513. Sensing their mortal peril, the young brothers fled to safer waters in the west[iii]. They made a reputation for themselves there as ruthless raiders but also as folk heroes to the Islamic community when they used their fleets to smuggle Muslim refugees fleeing persecution in Spain. Their efforts were so successful that they amassed enough resources, both money and manpower, to conquer the city of Algiers in 1516, establishing themselves as the Sultans of North Africa and converting one the largest cities in the region into their own private pirate base. It is at this time that Hayreddin acquired his nickname Barbarossa (Red Beard) from European commentators.
Charles V of the Habsburg Empire. One of the greatest monarchs in European history, he laid the foundations for the world’s first global empire. A map of his European possessions in 1538 is shown on the right in red with Ottoman holdings in green. His personal motto, “Plus Ultra” (onwards and upwards) still graces the Spanish flag to this day (image of Charles from Wikipedia; map from Griffith University in Australia).
Unfortunately for the brothers, 1516 also marked the accession of a new king in Spain: Charles V. Charles was a young, dynamic leader who wanted nothing more than to establish himself as the universal king of Christendom.[iv] He was expansionist minded and could not tolerate the existence of Barbarossa’s raiding fleets in the south. He organized a counter offensive which, with himself at the head, wrested control of Algiers and other cities from the brothers. Uruj himself died in 1518 while fighting the Spanish, leaving Barbarossa to salvage what he could. Salvation came from an unlikely source: Selim I.
Selim I and Barbarossa both needed each other. Barbarossa was desperate for assistance from whatever source he could find to keep his pirate business turned political empire alive. Selim I, meanwhile, was fighting against the Habsburgs in central Europe and needed to maintain as much pressure on Charles V as he could. Selim I also needed a stronger navy to secure lines of supply and communication between the Ottoman capital and the newly-conquered province of Egypt.[v]
Selim I’s assistance to Barbarossa came with strings attached. Barbarossa lost his political independence but retained control of his territory. While Barbarossa retained OPCON over his forces, they were placed under Ottoman jurisdiction, essentially the medieval equivalent of ADCON.[vi] Imperial inspectors would personally inspect each ship, determine their capabilities, and issue a formal letter authorizing them to operate in certain sectors and solely against targets of states at war with the Empire. [vii] Thus was the transition from pirate to a state-sponsored corsair. For those familiar with navy history at this time, these corsairs were exactly the same as European privateers during this period.
A map depicting the locations of major pirate bases (in black and green) and areas that the Ottomans raided once Barbarossa’s forces were incorporated into the Empire (in red). No one was safe.
The benefits of the partnership paid off quickly. With his newfound resources and top-cover, Barbarossa’s forces were able to push back against the Habsburgs. In the East, Selim I died in 1522 and was replaced with his son Suleyman. Later known as “the Magnificent” and “the Lawgiver,” Suleyman proved a valuable partner and patron for Barbarossa. Suleyman’s forces in the East displaced the troublesome Knights of St. John from Rhodes in 1522,[viii] making them homeless for eight years until Charles V gave them the island of Malta in 1530. Recognizing Barbarossa’s talents and feeling the pressure of Charles V and the other naval superpower, Venice, Suleyman elevated Barbarossa to Admiral of the Ottoman Navy in 1533.[ix] In that same year, the Ottomans concluded a formal alliance with the Habsburg’s perennial European opponent, France.
Charles V was in a tough spot in 1537. Ottoman armies were invading through Hungaryhis North Africa campaign was stalling, and he was embroiled in a brutal war against the Ottoman-allied French in Italy. The Reformation was in full swing, undermining his position as the champion of a Christendom united under Catholicism. His Venetian allies were entirely expelled from the Aegean thanks to Barbarossa’s command of the Ottoman fleets in the Eastern Mediterranean. Charles was on the back foot and needed to find a way to put up organized resistance at sea. Using his position as the strongest Catholic monarch and the Holy Roman Emperor, Charles leveraged the Papal States to create a Holy League of naval powers to finally defeat the Ottomans once and for all. This League, founded in February 1538, was placed under the command of the Genoese pirate-turned-admiral Andrea Doria. Doria’s forces trapped Barbarossa and his 122 ships in the narrow strip of water between the north and south halves of Greece, near the city of Preveza. Victory seemed assured.
The straits of Preveza to the left which were the defining strategic moment in the Mediterranean for three and a half decades.
The Battle of Preveza was a disaster for the Holy League. At the outset of the battle, unfavorable winds kept the League’s fleet divided while the Ottoman galleys were still able to maneuver using oar power. Barbarossa, too, outfoxed Doria and seized the initiative despite the Ottomans’ smaller numbers. In total, the League lost 49 ships while the Ottomans did not lose any. The defeat was so lopsided that the Venetians had to pursue a separate peace with the Ottomans in 1540 in which they had to surrender a number of their islands and pay large war reparations. Barbarossa became a rock-star in the medieval naval community. Suleyman made him a permanent member of the Ottomans’ governing council and received fan mail from across Europe, including from the great English privateer Sir Francis Drake.[x] The Eastern Mediterranean was transformed into the so-called Ottoman Lake which freed up additional resources to fight the Habsburgs in the West. The Ottomans, despite their humble beginnings, truly evolved from dragging ships across the land to become the strongest naval power in the Mediterranean.
Lessons Learned
1) Be a realist and do not take things personally.
It would have been very easy for Selim I to get hung up on Barbarossa’s connection to Selim’s executed brother and ignore Barbarossa’s plight in 1518; worse yet, Selim might have welcomed Charles’ efforts against Barbarossa. Instead, Selim recognized a win-win opportunity and incorporated them into the Ottoman fold.
The same thinking goes for Suleyman’s cooperation with Christian France. Without the French causing trouble for Charles V, Barbarossa might have faced even more ships at Preveza and failed to triumph. Realism wins the day.
2) Meritocracy is the best way to select commanders
Just as Selim I could have easily overlooked Barbarossa’s difficult position in 1518, Suleyman could have easily overlooked the corsair for the position of Admiral of the Navy in 1533. The historical precedent was for the governor of the Dardanelles province, with the largest armory and naval base in the Empire, to be the Admiral[xi] but Suleyman took a chance and elevated the former pirate instead. This meant that the brilliant commander was in place for the Battle of Preveza whereas other commander might have failed to deliver a victory.
3) Technology is not enough to win. Also, old technology does not mean bad technology.
The victory at Preveza was only possible because the Ottomans used galleys rather than galleasses. Even though the initial design was pioneered millennia earlier, galley technology still had utility in the strategic game that the Ottomans played. Also, as Barbarossa’s actions against Andrea Doria at Preveza demonstrated, a good commander plays a greater role in a battle’s outcome than numbers or technology.
Matthew Merighi is a civilian employee with the United States Air Force’s Office of International Affairs (SAF/IA) currently transitioning to pursue a Masters’ Degree at the Fletcher School. His views do not reflect those of the United States Government, Department of Defense, or Air Force but is pretty sure the Navy is glad it does not have to fight Barbarossa in his prime.
References
[i] Imber, Colin. The Ottoman Empire, 1300-1650: The Structure of Power. United Kingdom: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009, p. 28-29.
[ii] Imber 2009, p. 306.
[iii] Imber 2009, 47.
[iv] Fodor, Pal, Geza David, and Gabor Agoston. Ottomans, Hungarians, and Habsburgs in Central Europe: The Military Confines in the Era of Ottoman Conquest. Netherlands: Brill, 2000, p. 154.
[v] Gürkan, Emreh S. ‘The Centre and the Frontier: Ottoman Cooperation with North African Corsairs in the Sixteenth Century’. Turkish Historical Review, 2010, p.132
[vi] For those unaware of the modern military terms, OPCON stands for “operational control” while ADCON stands for “administrative control.” OPCON is given to a person who ADCON denotes who is responsible for ensuring the administrative functions that support forces at sea. Basically, those with OPCON give people orders and those with ADCON tell people when their paperwork is out of order.
[vii] “Corsairs and the Ottoman Mediterranean,” Emrah Safa Gürkan and Chris Gratien,Ottoman History Podcast, No. 76 (October 26, 2012) http://www.ottomanhistorypodcast.com/2011/04/ottoman-mediterranean-corsairs-with.html
[viii] Imber 2009, 49.
[ix] Imber 2009, 51.
[x] “Corsairs and the Ottoman Mediterranean,” Emrah Safa Gürkan and Chris Gratien,Ottoman History Podcast.
[xi] Imber 2009, 297.
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Like this: Like Loading...Did he kneel? How can we know whether Jeremy Corbyn is fit to make decisions about interest rates and dealing with Isis unless we know whether he knelt in front of Her Majesty?
It looks as if he didn’t – but even if he did, I bet he did it in an ungainly fashion |
$1. It appears the buyers were cheated.”
White House Director of Social Media Dan Scavino Jr. called Newsweek’s headline “100% misleading” and added the hashtag, “#FakeNewsweek.”
Newsweek has updated the body of its story but the misleading headline remains. The story now cites a report that reveals the truth about the tree that could tumble at any moment.
“Without the extensive cabling system, the tree would have fallen years ago. Presently, and very concerning, the cabling system is failing on the east trunk, as a cable has pulled through the very thin layer of wood that remains. It is difficult to predict when and how many more will fail,” the updated story says, citing a document obtained by CNN.
Some industry insiders feel that Newsweek deploys over-the-top click bait on purpose in an attempt to gain coverage from media reporters at respectable news organizations. Even left-leaning reporters and news organizations criticized Newsweek for the misleading tweet.
“Another BS Newsweek tweet,” HuffPost reporter Yashar Ali wrote. “With 280 characters there’s no excuse for this.”
“Another Newsweek headline doing nothing for the credibility of the news industry as a whole. This headline is grossly misleading,” NBC News reporter Tom Winter wrote.
Newsweek sold for only $1 back in 2010 when the buyer was forced to assume the magazine’s financial liabilities. The magazine has issued at least 20 corrections in 2017 and even has a page on its website dedicated to its mistakes – however it has not been updated since September. The magazine admitted to over 50 mistakes in 2016 and recently issued an embarrassing retraction about a story that falsely detailed the life of the Las Vegas shooter's girlfriend with salacious information that turned out to be fake news.
The tree, which was planted in the early 1800s, is scheduled to be removed later this week.With their last extended road trip of the regular season completed, the Washington Capitals were back skating at their practice facility in Ballston on Monday for the first time in 10 days as they brace for what figures to be a rugged finishing stretch.
All but two of Washington's opponents over its final 10 games are jockeying for playoff position, among them Boston and Atlanta, each of which the Capitals play twice, and Calgary.
The Capitals also face nemesis Pittsburgh twice, including Wednesday at Verizon Center, and Ottawa, which is in fifth place in the East and has won twice in three games against Washington.
"You can say it's regular season, but I mean you look outside, look around you, and everybody is talking about playoff races," Capitals right wing Mike Knuble said. "It's warm outside. It feels like playoffs.
"You've got to build up to it. You can't wait until the [postseason begins] and just figure you're in the playoffs and start committing to making strong plays all over the ice, committing to the team game and playing our system well. It's got to start now, and it's great opponents. You can call them preseason playoff games, because that's what they are."
No games promise to have more of a playoff feel those between the Capitals and Penguins, the reigning Stanley Cup champions, who dispatched Washington in last season's Eastern Conference semifinals. There's also the subplot featuring Alex Ovechkin and Pittsburgh's Sidney Crosby, vying for the Hart Trophy awarded to the league's most valuable player.
Ovechkin leads the league in points (97) and is tied with Crosby for first in goals (45), but Ovechkin has missed 10 games this season, and that does not include a game misconduct he received in the first period of a 4-3 comeback victory at Chicago on March 14. Ovechkin was suspended the following two games before coming back to score the decisive goal in a 3-1 victory over Tampa Bay on Saturday.
"I think nobody can wait for this game," said Ovechkin, who is bidding to become the only player other than Hall of Famers Wayne Gretzky and Bobby Orr to win the Hart Trophy three consecutive seasons. "There's going to be lots of fans here, lots of attention, and it's going to be a fun game to play."
The Capitals (48-14-10) play seven of their remaining games at Verizon Center, where they are a league-best 26-4-4 this season. The Capitals, with a league-high 106 points, also are the front-runner for the Presidents' Trophy, which is presented to the team with the best record in the regular season.Thousands of travelers arrived at their destination only to find their checked bags were left behind at the Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport on Thursday after a Transportation Security Administration computer system suffered a technical issue that took the airport’s bag screening system out of operation.
The issue caused more than 3,000 bags to miss their flights between 6:45 a.m. and 9 p.m. on Thursday when the system — used to check bags for explosives — was brought back online, KSAZ reports.
“TSA is experiencing significant, unprecedented technical issues with its computer server allowing the automated screening of checked bags for explosives,” the TSA said in a statement Wednesday afternoon, urging travelers to get to the airport early and avoid checked bags if possible.
A rep for Phoenix Sky Harbor says that when the system went down, TSA agents began using a back-up process that involves K-9s and hand checking bags.
In some cases, the airport rep says bags were driven to nearby airports — which are actually hours away in Los Angeles, Las Vegas, and San Diego — for screening and then flown on to their destination.
The back-up process, while effective, is timely and caused many of the bags to miss their intended planes. The Sky Harbor rep urges passengers to make sure their carry-on bags were packed with enough items for a “few days.”
While there were no significant flight delays tied to the issue, passengers were not thrilled to learn their possessions were still in Phoenix.
“They said they had to do the bags manually, that’s all they said,” one traveler tells CBS5 AZ.
“It’s very stressful because I hope everything is still there that I packed because they’re hand-checking it, number one, and number two, that it gets there on time,” another passengers said.
The TSA says the issue was corrected at around 9 p.m. Thursday.
Update: @TSA has announced baggage screening is operational again at Sky Harbor. Thank you PHX travelers for your patience. — PHX Sky Harbor (@PHXSkyHarbor) May 13, 2016
Thursday’s baggage issues comes as the TSA is already facing criticism over increasingly long security lines across the country.
Some airports have threatened to fire the Transportation Security Administration over long lines at screening checkpoints, and other airlines are calling the agency onto the carpet, while an industry group has urged passengers to Tweet the photos of the seemingly unending lines.
System back online after thousands of bags missed flights out of Sky Harbor [CBS5 AZ]
TSA bag-screening issue causes major delays at Sky Harbor [KSAZ]In addition, I am delighted to announce that Bill Sanders has joined our line-up after graciously giving me permission to run his work.
A retired political cartoonist for the Milwaukee Journal and King Features Syndicate, Bill has produced thousands of editorial cartoons and appeared in over 200 newspapers and magazines. He has been featured in Newsweek Magazine and on CBS, NBC, National Public Television and Radio and BBC of London.
Thanks to Bill for his generosity… Please pay a visit to his
And now, on with the cartoons. It's a big day for the Saturday Cartoons… Our historic week and the election of President-elect Obama -- love that new title -- has made our cartoonist friends so prolific this week that I'm running more 'toons than I ever have.In addition, I am delighted to announce that Bill Sanders has joined our line-up after graciously giving me permission to run his work.A retired political cartoonist for the Milwaukee Journal and King Features Syndicate, Bill has produced thousands of editorial cartoons and appeared in over 200 newspapers and magazines. He has been featured in Newsweek Magazine and on CBS, NBC, National Public Television and Radio and BBC of London.Thanks to Bill for his generosity… Please pay a visit to his web site and take a look at his latest book "Whopperland II The Last Chapter," which examines the long-awaiting departure of George W. Bush.And now, on with the cartoons.
* * * * *
The Onion scares us this week with two pieces… The first shows what our future may hold in "Voting Machines Elect One Of Their Own As President."
And are we all really… this bad?
* * * * *
Thanks to all who have come to visit from other sites -- I'm glad you're here. But please know that this blog is about far more than the Saturday cartoons. They're merely a diversion and provide a humorous take on what's really on our minds. I primarily cover the U.S. Senate but also write about presidential politics and White House activities as well. So please take a look around beyond the 'toons -- and come back soon.In one of his very first substantive moves as president, Donald Trump signed an executive order Friday that will result in many first-time homeowners not getting a break on their mortgage bills.
Trump, who claimed a populist mantle in his first speech as a president, signed the executive order less than an hour after leaving the inaugural stage. It reverses an Obama-era policy.
The order will have the immediate effect of eliminating a planned reduction in the rate that most non-wealthy homeowners must contribute to the Federal Housing Authority’s insurance program. Beginning Jan. 27, most borrowers will have to pony up six-tenths of a percent of their mortgage each month, a quarter of a percentage point more than if Trump hadn’t removed the Obama-era reduction. Americans with $200,000 mortgages will pay roughly $500 more in 2017 than they would have if the rate reduction had stayed in place, according to the FHA.
Trump’s decision to undo the Obama-era rate reduction, thus resulting in an uptick on borrowers’ bills, will have very little effect on wealthier mortgage holders, since the program only applies to those with low incomes, middling credit scores or who have less than a 20% down payment on their homes. (Wealthier borrowers generally do not fit the program’s criteria.)
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The Obama administration’s Housing and Urban Development Secretary, Julian Castro, issued the rate reduction just a few days ago on the grounds that first-time home owners needed help to access the market at a time when mortgage rates were rising.
Congressional Republicans, including incoming HUD Secretary Ben Carson, opposed that decision. They worried that, by reducing the amount that homeowners are asked to pay each month, the FHA’s insurance program would collect less cash. The FHA uses its cash reserves to underwrite banks when high risk borrowers default on their mortgages. Without large reserves, taxpayers could be on the hook to bail out the banks. The FHA required a $1.7 billion bailout in 2013, when its reserves dried up.
By allowing homeowners to contribute less to the FHA fund, the Obama Administration was putting taxpayers “at greater risk for footing the bill for another bailout,” House Financial Services Chair Jeb Hensarling of Texas said in a statement Jan. 9.
Former HUD Secretary Castro argued the insurance program’s reserves are robust enough now to forego increased contributions.
The FHA mortgage insurance program was designed in part as an incentive program for banks: If banks offered mortgages to first-time and lower-income home buyers, or those with less-than-stellar credit, then the FHA would maintain an insurance program to bail out the banks if and when that higher risk population defaulted.
The program helps borrowers who can only make relatively small down payments—of 3.5% or more—or have credit scores in the mid-500s.
Housing industry groups are split over whether Trump’s executive order removing the Obama-era rate reduction will affect home buying. It’s a relatively small increase, but some argue that lining the FHA’s coffers could allow the federal program to offer its services to more borrowers—thus helping more low- and middle-income buyers access credit.
Others, including Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, argued that delivering low- and middle-income borrowers an even-higher mortgage bill was not in service of the “populist revolution” Trump promised.
“.@POTUS suspended a planned cut in FHA mortgage insurance premiums,” she tweeted on Inauguration Day, “which @nardotrealtor says will cost 40k families a shot at a new home.”
Write to Haley Sweetland Edwards at haley.edwards@time.com.Yesterday, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau finally took down its “Coming Soon” sign and hoisted the “Open For Business” banner. And as part of its grand opening celebration, the CFPB kicked things off with the launch of its credit card complaint portal.
In keeping with its belief that financial dealings should be clear and concise to the consumer the CFPB’s credit card complaint form is easy to use and access straight from the Bureau’s home page.
Additionally, the CFPB has opened up a hotline for those having trouble making their mortgage payments.
“Over the coming months, the agency will expand its Consumer Response Center to handle complaints about other consumer financial products and services under its jurisdiction,” reads a statement from the CFPB about its future goals for consumer interfaces.
CFPB Homepage [ConsumerFinance.gov]OVERLAND PARK, Kan. (BUSINESS WIRE), May 22, 2015 - The highly anticipated LG G4™, boasting an impressive collection of photography tools, will be available in all Sprint (NYSE: S) sales channels, including Sprint Stores, Telesales at 1-800-SPRINT1 and www.sprint.com, beginning on Friday, June 5. Offered by Sprint in two color options, Metallic Gray and Genuine Leather Black, LG G4 is an ideal gift for Father’s Day or graduation.
Sprint offers more purchasing choices for today’s most popular smartphones and tablets than any other U.S. carrier including:
Sprint Lease: LG G4 will be available through Sprint Lease for $0 down at signing and $18 per month. With Sprint Lease, qualified customers pay zero out of pocket at lease signing for their smartphone 1.
. At the conclusion of the lease period, customers in good standing have several options, including returning the LG G4 and leasing another device or purchasing it.
Sprint Easy Pay SM : Well-qualified buyers can purchase LG G4 with $0 down (plus tax), no finance fees and 24 easy monthly payments of $25 (SRP: $600; excluding taxes; service plan required).
: Well-qualified buyers can purchase LG G4 with $0 down (plus tax), no finance fees and 24 easy monthly payments of $25 (SRP: $600; excluding taxes; service plan required). Purchase LG G4 for $ $199.99 with a two-year agreement.
Purchase LG G4 for $599.99 without a contract.
Customers have the option to add a $10 early upgrade charge to Sprint Lease or installment billing payments. With this option, customers can turn in their device and enter into a new Sprint Lease or Sprint Easy Pay agreement after just 12 consecutive payments.2
Pre-order begins online today www.sprint.com/LGG4. For a limited time, customers purchasing LG G4 can receive a second 3,000mAh battery, a 32GB memory card and a convenient battery charging cradle by mail from LG for a savings of more than $100.3
Stuck in a contract with another carrier? Sprint will pay whatever it costs to switch, including early termination fees and remaining payments on the phone installment plans – no matter what is owed. Customers simply need to switch to Sprint and turn in their current phone. Sprint will refund the switching costs within approximately 15 days of successfully completing the online registration and providing a bill that shows the early termination charge or device balance due.
Take Photos from Amateur to Professional Quality
Customers can easily create and print professional-looking photography with the new LG G4. Two robust cameras takes selfies to a new level and make it easier than ever to capture life’s most exciting moments. LG G4 offers a 16 megapixel rear-facing camera with F1.8 aperture and an 8 megapixel front-facing selfie camera along with the following shutterbug-favorite features:
Manual Mode provides DSLR-like capabilities to adjust shutter speeds, ISO, white balance and more, with the ability to preview the photo before you snap the picture.
Laser Auto Focus technology allows you to take exceptionally fast photos so you never miss an opportunity to capture the moment.
Color Spectrum Sensor captures images with accurate and bright colors limiting white balance distortion.
Fast shutter speed gives more stabilization and excellent quality pictures in low light with incredible detail.
Take LG G4 on all your summer adventures with the ability to create production quality prints at 11" x 17" with 300dpi.
Following a multiyear overhaul, the Sprint network now provides significantly better call quality and faster data speeds in more places than before. Sprint has received a total of 104 first-place (outright or shared) RootScore® Awards for overall, reliability, speed, data, call, or text network performance in the 77 markets measured to date in the first half of 2015.4
About Sprint
Sprint (NYSE:S) is a communications services company that creates more and better ways to connect its customers to the things they care about most. Sprint served more than 57 million connections as of March 31, 2015, and is widely recognized for developing, engineering and deploying innovative technologies, including the first wireless 4G service from a national carrier in the United States; leading no-contract brands including Virgin Mobile USA, Boost Mobile, and Assurance Wireless; instant national and international push-to-talk capabilities; and a global Tier 1 Internet backbone. Sprint has been named to the Dow Jones Sustainability Index (DJSI) North America for the past four years. You can learn more and visit Sprint at www.sprint.com or www.facebook.com/sprint and www.twitter.com/sprint.
1 No equipment security deposit required. Req. service plan. Customer is responsible for insurance and any repairs. If service or lease is cancelled early, the remaining lease payments become due immediately and customer must return the device or pay the purchase option.
2 Customers have 30 days from their purchase date to add the early upgrade option.
3 Free 32GB micro SD Card and 3,000mAh extra battery with charging cradle provided by LG by mail. Customers who purchase an LG G4 in any channel is eligible to go to the website provided at time of purchase, input their IMEI from the device and show a photo/scan of their register receipt. Accessories will ship in 4-6 weeks. Terms and conditions apply. Offer period: 5/22 - 6/21. Customer must register by 7/6/15.
4 Rankings based on 77 RootMetrics (Jan. 1, 2015, to April 7, 2015) RootScore Reports for mobile performance as tested on best available plans and devices on four mobile networks across all available network types. Your experiences may vary. The RootMetrics award is not an endorsement of Sprint. Visit www.rootmetrics.com for more details.
View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20150522005413/en/Breaking News Emails Get breaking news alerts and special reports. The news and stories that matter, delivered weekday mornings.
Dec. 30, 2015, 2:35 PM GMT / Updated Dec. 30, 2015, 7:46 PM GMT By Elizabeth Chuck
The suspect in a "suspicious" fire at a Houston mosque is an adherent who attended services there, officials said Wednesday.
Gary Nathaniel Moore, 37, of Houston, was arrested Wednesday morning for the Christmas Day blaze, a spokeswoman for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives told NBC News.
Moore told investigators he had attended the mosque for five years, coming five times a day to pray, reported The Houston Chronicle. MJ Khan, president of the Islamic Society of Greater Houston, confirmed at a press conference Wednesday afternoon that Moore did attend prayer services there, but added, "I wouldn't call him a regular."If you read last week's RQT (Runequest Thursday #141) you know that the Brightwater Company has traveled to the White Moon to aid the goddess Annihila and her forces against the adherents of the old Blue Moon Doctrine, which coincidentally allow the Blue Moon folks far more power over the goddess in question.
Annihila, weakened by some sort of infestation in the Smoking Mirror portal network that stretches over much of the Moon (and further afield - the Brightwater Company controls a keyed gate to the Moon, which allowed them transit to its surface), along with her loyal adherents, is hard pressed by an army of High Folk, Imperial allies from the Red Moon, a number of troll cults, and some lowland savages that have recently been brought to heel.
A battle is inevitable. But this column is subtitled "The Little War" for a reason.
At present, it appears that the battle is one that the White Moon cannot win. But the Goddess, along with her Moonwolf advisors, has devised a plan to weaken the enemy while strengthening Annihila herself. By sending out hit squads, each comprised of an Annihilator and his or her Silver Ring of Aspirants, to strike through each Smoking Mirror at the forces that control, and presumably, poison it, against the White Goddess. While these missions are being carried out, the Brightwater Company appears, a surprise to all except the White Goddess who facilitated their transit.
She has a request for them. Will they undertake another mission, one as crucial to the survival of the White Army as those of the Annihilators. One which is only possible because the Brightwater Company has arrived.
The White Moon army is pinned between the approaching forces of the Blue Moon, and a coalition of lowlander tribes that have recently come under Blue Moon Control. If the White Moon forces advance to confront the Blue Moon, they expose their flank to the tender mercies of three tribes of savages. If the army remains where it is camped, it will face the combined might of both the Blue Moon and the lowlanders. These lowland tribes have been enemies, and neighbors, for centuries, which makes their sudden alliance under the High Folk seem suspicious indeed. And when the High Folk are involved, the suspicion is always of sorcery. The Brightwater Company, with not only a former avatar of the White Goddess and current manifestor of the Argrath, but also including a sorcerer of skill, seems the perfect choice to scout the area and perhaps break up this alliance of the moment.
Now, let us step out of the narrative and returning to our stated purpose: The Little War.
By which I mean the war the PCs in the RPG will fight, within the larger scope of the War of the Moon.
Obviously a war is underway, and a battle is likely in the very near future. How do we deal with the heroes of an RPG fighting in a battle?
Here is the way I am going to handle it:
1) Give the Heroes a smaller task within the war to affect the future in a magnified way. You can see in the set up I have provided here, that the Heroes of Brightwater have an opportunity to do something that could destabilize the alliance of the three tribes of lowlanders. Even partial success could make a big difference in the course of the war, or at least the upcoming battle. If one or more of the tribes, or some significant portion of them, can be delayed, or deterred, the White Army suddenly has options for maneuver that were previously denied them.
A Crucial Point: It all rides on the shoulders of the Player Characters. And the situration is one that they can approach in a variety of ways. More on this in the next post, where they will be confronted by their options - whether they like them or not.
Another Crucial Point: How it plays out will provide the players other opportunities to affect the course of the war. So their choices will matter, to them, and to the upcoming battle, possibly the rest of the war.
As I mentioned last post, I am using the excellent Monster Island supplement from The Design Mechanism. I am modifying it to suit my current purpose (transforming the Island to the White Moon, for one, but others, like ignoring the Kaiju as entities, playing fast and loose with the Smoking Mirror network, and the High Folk as written), but it is an excellent resource and deserving of greater recognition - and PLAY!
2) Use the Warfare system I have worked out previously. The Warfare System is a way to allow PCs to take part in a battle without having to run them through the entire course of one. My intent here is to allow Warfare rolls to determine collectively, how the Brightwater Company does, as well as how each member does individually, then:
3) Involve my PCs in the midst of the battle (or wherever else they decide to be, of course), detailing smaller "encounters" within the battle. Based on the rolls, what is available and what will be engaging, I will create a series of encounters within the battle to reflect the Brightwater Company's experience of it. This method was used to excellent effect in the old Lord of the Rings RPG by Decipher. My Warfare system allows for this sort of play, but could instead be used to determine the entire course of the PCs' interaction with a battle, if that is the preferred method.
It may be noted that I have not given away much about the mission the Birghtwaters undertake to destabilize the alliance of the Lowland tribes and the HIgh Folk. This is intentional, since my players read these posts and we have not played through it all yet. For those of you who are familiar with Monster Island (AND if you aren't go and buy the gosh-darned book already!), I have adapted a great set-piece locale from it "The Causeway of the Nightmarchers". The Heroes just survived my re-skinned Soul Harvester (the steampunkalicious description provided in Monster Island would not have worked for my version, so I portrayed it as more of a demonic construct produced by High Folk sorcery).
Stayed Tuned for the conclusion of the Causeway of the Nightmarchers.by BRIAN NADIG
The 16th (Jefferson Park) Police District Advisory Committee at its April 21 meeting honored a district sergeant for her apprehension of suspected burglars near Nagle and Higgins avenues.
16th District commander Roger Bay said that sergeant Laura Griffin "leads by example" and "puts her self in the right place," leading to arrests. The committee voted to award Griffin the district’s Officer of the Month Award for March for her arrest of the burglary suspects and the recovery of two loaded guns during traffic stops.
In response to a report of suspicious activity, Griffin arrested two 17-year-old males who were charged with three counts of burglary to parked cars at about 5:50 a.m. Monday, March 30, near New England and Higgins avenues, according to police. Money and headphones were among the items reported stolen from the vehicles, police said.
While she was off-duty, Griffin arrested a man in connection with a burglary at about 9:10 a.m. Saturday, March 14, to a garage near Foster and Mobile avenues, according to police. Griffin confronted the man as he was carrying a cordless drill from the garage, and while she was attempting to subdue the suspect, he was able to slip out of his sweatshirt and flee into his nearby home, police said.
The suspect, who was identified by police as Sean P. Dale, age 36, of the 5200 block of North Mobile Avenue, was arrested a short time later, police said.
The committee also presented Marco Bruno, Margie Luczak, Mark Lemus, Heather Serrano and Michael Keeney with the Officer of the Month Award for February. They were honored for their Feb. 21 arrest of a burglary suspect who struggled with several officers while he was being apprehended, according to police.More Mexican Food Recetas deliciosas to transport your tastebuds south of the border.
Portland is often called "the city of transplants." Young people move to the Rose City for school, the low cost of living, the outdoorsy opportunities, the music scene, or just to live somewhere ever-so-slightly weirder than their hometown. Oh, and the food: Portland has a seriously killer culinary scene at prices that make eating out in New York or LA seem like extortion.
Ironically, in coming to a town increasingly known for its food scene, those transplants often leave behind beloved food and drink from their hometown—it's why there are so many restaurants dedicated to regional American cooking, and why you can probably find a bar here that serves the cheap domestic lager from your part of the country. Some regional favorites are harder to find than others, though: many Portlanders, myself included, are originally from California, and one of the most common complaints I hear from those folks is that there isn't any decent Mexican (or Mexican-American) food in this town.
Well, I'm here to tell you that that's simply not true. There's plenty of good Mexican cooking in Portland, but sometimes you have to look a little farther afield. After five years here, I decided it was time I did just that. Here's the best of what I found—some around the corner, some well worth the drive.
Tacos at Uno Mas
Building on the pedigree of his mid-scale Mexican restaurants Autentica and Mextiza, chef Oswaldo Bibiano opened this diminutive, brightly colored taco shack in a "micro-restaurant" development on NE Glisan Street that also features a burger joint, a vegetarian Indian food restaurant, and a meatball sub establishment. After coming here, I'll be hard-pressed to ever make it back to the other three.
Uno Mas' tiny kitchen puts out huge flavors, and few of the 20-plus options disappoint. Standouts include rich, earthy beef barbacoa, braised until tender and pulled apart, and carnitas ($2 each) that, while not as crisp as I might have liked, displayed the exceptionally porky juiciness that can only come from cooking meat in its own fat. Seafood lovers will want to try the pulpo ($3.75): tender, perfectly cooked octopus swimming in a bright sauce of red chili, garlic, lime, and epazote.
Carnitas and Cochinita Pibil at Tortilleria y Tienda de Leon
This family-owned mercado and taqueria didn't exactly hit the real estate jackpot: sitting on a drab stretch of NE Glisan Street, a stone's throw from Gresham and right next door to a plasma donation center, Leon's exterior doesn't quite scream "destination dining." The food sure does, though. Carnitas and cochinita pibil—Yucatan pulled-pork in a spicy citrus and achiote marinade—are my go-to orders at this counter hidden in the back of an otherwise unremarkable Mexican grocer, but I have yet to try something I didn't like.
Meats come served as tacos, ($1.50) on massive plates overflowing with rice and wonderfully lard-filled beans ($8), or wrapped up in enormous burritos ($6) with rice, beans, and pico de gallo. Pork shoulder in a mildly spicy chili verde sauce of tomatillos and green chilies, chicken in dark brown Oaxacan mole negro, and marinated cactus salad are all equally worth your time.
Posole at El Pato Feliz
The only thing more colorful than the bright turquoise walls inside this hole-in-the-wall on SE 92nd Avenue might be the deep, fiery red hue of their posole ($10.99). It's a no-frills version of the dish that satisfies simply: a massive bowl of pork and hominy in an intense, fatty, red chili-fueled behemoth of a broth served with diced onion, sliced radish, and lemon, so you can garnish as you eat.
The generous hunks of pork shoulder come apart with ease, and what fat hasn't already dissolved in the broth will do so the instant it hits your tongue. Plump, starchy hominy kernels anchor a hearty soup that all but the most gargantuan appetites would have trouble finishing. Go on a rainy day, settle into the deep booths, linger over this warm and delicious meal, and watch the telenovela or soccer game on TV. No matter how long you sit there, you'll probably still have leftovers.
Guisados at Mi Mero Mole
Nick Zukin might be best known as half of the pastrami-slinging Kenny and Zuke's team, but he's also a well-traveled and researched Mexican food enthusiast. He opened Mi Mero Mole back in late 2011 to highlight guisados, the stews and stir-fries common to Mexico City street food stands. The restaurant has a rotating selection of over 60 different stews on any given day, and your best bet is to order a few different options served over rice in a fresh hand-made tortilla ($2.75 for veg/pork/chicken, $3.25 for beef, and $3.75 for seafood).
A recent visit yielded excellent chicken cloaked in a deep and layered chocolate mole, as well as lengua with cactus and potatoes simmered in a bright tomatillo salsa. But the real stars of the meal were meat-free: rajas con crema (roasted poblano, Anaheim chiles and onions in a seriously rich sour cream sauce) and a vegan stew of mushrooms, potatoes, and kale in an earthy red chili colorado sauce flavored with hot dried chilies and garlic. While the latter might seem like a Latino take on a hippy commune's curry for a crowd (kale isn't the first thing that comes to mind when I think about authentic Mexican cooking), Zukin's not simply pandering to dietary restrictions—you'd find most of the other ingredients throughout the Mexican capital.
Sopes at Taqueria El Cazador
This Foster Road taqueria is a bright spot on a stretch of road that seems to only get more depressing as it carves its way southeast. The massive menu offers everything from tacos to hamburgers and Denver omelets, but it's (unsurprisingly) best to stick to the more traditional fare. The sopes ($2.75) are fantastic; the thick, handmade, dense-but-not-heavy rounds of masa combine the best things about tortillas and fried dough. El Cazador's versions are heartier than many I've had, and come slathered with savory refried beans, covered with your choice of meat (carnitas and al pastor are worthy options, both sporting beautifully crisped crusts and no shortage of fatty pork juices), topped with shredded lettuce and chopped tomato for a hint of freshness, and drizzled with tangy crema and salty cotija cheese. Two make for a cheap, filling, and delicious meal, perfect preparation for a game of Ms. Pac-Man on the ancient arcade system in the corner.
Tortas at Güero PDX
This trendy little Airstream trailer is parked in what's easily the highest-quality food cart pod in the city (Pod 28), and they make some of the best tortas around. The crowd favorite carnitas torta ($8) is a stellar sandwich, with layers of tender shredded pork shoulder, cotija, avocado, cabbage and zingy pickled red onions crammed into a light yet sturdy torta roll from Vancouver, Washington's Veracruz Bakery. You can understand why the folks at Güero go out of their way for these rolls—the perfectly crisp crust gives way easily to a soft, slightly chewy interior that makes the ideal base for a torta.
The vegetarian refrito torta ($7) is no slouch either. These are simply some of the best lard-free refried pintos I've ever had, sporting the perfect textural contrast between firm whole beans and starchy, creamy crushed ones. They're complemented by an outstanding roasted serrano and poblano crema for a killer meat-free sandwich. Guero may be a bit preciously hip (taco tattoos reportedly used to net their owners a free taco), but one of these tortas, eaten on a sunny day with a beer from the beer cart next door, explains why people of any age would retire to Portland.*
Yeah, that was a Portlandia reference. No, I don't consider myself a serious writer, why do you ask?
Lamb Barbacoa at Oregon Flea Market
The average Portlander probably doesn't have a ton of reasons to go to Gresham, but one visit to this immense indoor Hispanic flea market on SE Stark might be enough to change that. Not only can you find everything from underwear to jewelry inside, they also boast one of the best traditional taquerias on the east side of the river tucked into the side of the building. The specialty is lamb barbacoa,, marinated with chilies and garlic and slow-roasted in banana leaves until tender and juicy. Order the lamb with light and pliant handmade tortillas ($2 per taco), and garnish with cilantro and onion from the generous tray brought to your table.
As good as the barbacoa undoubtedly is, don't be afraid to branch out: this is also the only place I've found serving quesadillas de huitlacoche (pictured at top, $8), the corn smut prized as a delicacy in Mexico. The slightly sweet and earthy fungus is sautéed with onions and healthy corn kernels, and stuffed with queso fresco into a gigantic pillowy handmade corn tortilla.
Tacos and Burritos at Taqueria Hermanos Ochoa's
The outer-west suburb of Hillsboro—affectionately known as "Hillsburrito" by many Portlanders—has plenty of destination-worthy taquerias, and Ochoa's might be the best of the bunch. The bright orange restaurant boasts a deep menu for people with shallow pockets. It would take years to work my way through everything they offer, but $1 tacos and a $7 burrito plate are a good enough place to start. Tacos come with generous portions of meat on slightly larger-than-average tortillas, with onion, cilantro, and lime on the side. A visit to the excellent salsa bar is mandatory, and a rainbow of chili heat awaits you. The burritos are carefully filled with your choice of meat and the usual rice, refried pintos, and pico de gallo; as if that wasn't enough food, you get even more rice, cotija-sprinkled refried beans, guac, and some ancillary roughage on the side.
The umami-rich, juicy and tender braised lengua is the best meat I've tried there; it's also the only time I've heard someone say "it's like kissing a cow" and mean |
during the weekend.
Prepare [ edit ]
First, watch True Blood. Otherwise do not read beyond this section, as major spoilers follow!
Together with a printout of this itinerary, the only other thing you need is a car full of gas. You will cover a reasonably long distance so it's recommended that you first fill up your tank.
Get in [ edit ]
The tour starts at Queen Sophie-Anne's mansion (26848 Pacific Coast Hwy, Malibu, CA 90265) in Malibu, about 18 miles east from Santa Monica. Be sure to enjoy the views of the Pacific Ocean along the way.
Get around [ edit ]
Bring or rent a car as there is no other realistic way to tour the various filming locations. The Los Angeles public transportation system is underdeveloped to say the least, and there are certain parts of the city where it's safer to avoid traveling on foot or by bus.
Bon Temps Cemetery
Bon Temps Woods
Sookie's House
Merlotte's Bar Sign
The tour [ edit ]
Sookie's Living Room
Front of Merlotte's Bar
Merlotte bar background
Starting in Malibu, right on the Pacific Coast Highway is Queen Sophie-Anne's mansion (26848 Pacific Coast Hwy, Malibu, CA 90265) This is the shooting location for actress Evan Rachel Wood's Sophie-Anne Vampire Queen of Louisiana's estate. It is here where we first meet Sookie's cousin Hadley who is also Sophie-Anne's lover and food source. The mansion is extravagant and houses the opulent chandelier-ed natatorium featured in the series. This room which features a pool, glass ceilings and walls and are reportedly lined with 500,000 seashells is where we see Sophie Anne lounge around lamenting her vampire life and yearning for the day she can once again see the sun.
From there you will be driving north on beautiful mountain roads through the Santa Monica Mountains to Calabasas where you will see Sookies House (1199 Las Virgenes Rd, Calabasas, CA 91302). Head northeast on CA-1 S (PCH) toward Santa Monica. After 3.2 miles turn left Malibu Canyon Rd that will turn into Las Virgenes Rd. Drive for 5 miles and you will see the Sookies House right at the intersection of Las Virgenes Rd and Las Virgenes Canyon Rd. Sookie's House is where much of the action takes places during the first two seasons of the show. Not only is it the residence of our main character, the location is also a safe haven for when she doesn't want vampire visitors (although Eric buying the house negated that rule). Left to her by her grandmother Adele Stackhouse after she was murdered in it by Drew Marshall the Bon Temps killer.
Next stop on the tour is The Junkyard Trial (11590 Tuxford St, Sun Valley, CA 91352). It's quite a ride from Calabasas. You will have to cover 30 miles which might mean that you will have to drive for more than one hour to get there. Start by driving north on Las Virgenes Rd and Merge onto US-101 S via the ramp to Los Angeles. Continue on US-101 S for 14 miles and then take the exit onto I-405 N/San Diego Fwy toward Sacramento. After 7.5 miles, take the exit onto I-5 S toward Los Angeles, drive for 4.4 miles and take the Lankershim Blvd exit. Merge onto Cayuga Ave and turn left onto Tuxford St. After one block your destination will be on the right. This is the location for the season one cliffhanger where Bill Compton is on trial for the killing of Long Shadow in Fangtasia. In consideration of the fact that Bill was defending his Sheriff, the Magister only sentenced him to create a new vampire to replace the one he killed. Unfortunately for Jessica Hamby that new vampire was to be her.
Now it's time to get to Merlotte's Bar & Grill (148 N Lima St, Burbank, CA 91505). The bar is in Burbank, 8.6 miles from The Junkyard Trial. To get to the bar please head northeast on Tuxford St and merge onto I-5 S. After 6 miles take the Alameda Ave exit. Follow signs for Alameda Ave W and after 2.3 miles turn left onto N Lima St. The bar will be on your left. Located just off the Warner Brothers lot (4000 Warner Blvd, in Burbank, California), the interior set for the bar might not be accessible to everyday visitors. If you would like an up close view of the exterior you should contact Warner Brothers VIP tours to ask for the guided studio tour. In the series, Merlotte's Bar plays a central role as it is the place of employment for a host of central characters. Sookie, Tara, Arlene, and even Jessica have worked at Merlotte's. Owned by the local shapeshifter Sam Merlotte, the restaurant also employs Lafayette and Terry as well as being the location of many a on screen deaths.
Next stop in our tour is The Hotel Carmilla (the vampire hotel) (8555 Beverly Blvd, Los Angeles, CA), located near Beverly Hills. To get there head southeast on N Lima St toward W Olive Ave. Take the 1st right onto W Olive Ave that will change into Barham Blvd. After 2.5 miles turn left onto Cahuenga Blvd W that will change later to N Highland Ave. Drive on those streets for 5 miles and then turn right onto Beverly Blvd. After passing La Cienega Street turn right and you will see The Hotel Carmilla. Filmed at the Sofitel Hotel, the Hotel Carmilla is the only hotel in the Dallas area that had undergone the extensive renovation necessary to accommodate vampire patrons with shutters that completely block out the sun, comfortable sleeping conditions and room service catering to both human and vampire whims. It is also where Sookie first meets another telepath in the bellboy Barry. On the show, the hotel is notorious for vampire and human orgy parties and while I can't verify that for The Sofitel we are talking about LA.
From the Vampire Hotel we will drive to another hotel- the Jackson Hotel (1770 N Serrano Ave, Los Angeles, CA 90027). Head east on Beverly Blvd toward N Rossmore Ave. Turn left onto N Wilton Pl and then right on Hollywood Blvd. After 5 blocks turn left onto Serrano Ave and you will see the Jackson Hotel. Here was where in Season 3 Alcide took Sookie to stay when she went to Jackson, Mississippi to look for Bill after his disappearance. It also is the stage for the fan favorite dream sequence where Eric floats up to her window and seduces her.
From the Jackson Hotel, get on US-101 S from N. Western Ave. Continue on US-101 to S Beaudry Ave. Take the Interstate 110 S exit from CA 110/Harbor Fwy. Take Wilshire Blvd and Francisco St. to W 7th st. Merge onto S Beaudry Ave htne left left onto Wilshire Blvd. take the 1st right onto Francisco st, then turn right onto W 7th st. Godric's Rooftop (1000 Wilshire Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90017) will be on the right. This pivotal, heartbreaking scene is where Eric and Pam's maker Godric decides to meet the sun. After a millennia of nonstop violence and bloodshed, Godric wanted to instill some empathy in the radical members of both the human and vampire communities. The scene was actually shot in Downtown LA but was supposed to take place in the Hotel Carmilla. Apparently the producers did not like the looks of the rooftop helicopter pad on the Sofitel and just painted a Carmilla logo onto this rooftop.
From Godric's Rooftop (1000 Wilshire Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90017), the next stop will be Tara's Mama's house (253 S Ave 19, Los Angeles, CA 90031). Start heading East on W 7th St toward Francisco St. Take the 2nd left onto S. Figueroa St then turn left onto W 5th St. Keep right to stay on W 5th St. As you keep right, follow signs for 110N/Harbor Fwy N and Merge onto 110N/Harbor Fwy. Exit Solano Ave toward Academy Rd. Continue on Solano Ave toward Academy Rd. Merge onto Solano Ave, turn left on N. Broadway, then turn left again to stay on N. Broadway. Take the 1st right onto S Ave 19. Tara's mama's house will be on the right. The Victorian house is where Tara's mother, Lettie Mae lives on the series. We first see it in episode two when Tara returns and find Lettie Mae drunk and then later in a house party scene in the backyard.
After visiting Tara's mama's house, our next destination is Maryann's House (3525 Locksley Dr, Pasadena, CA 91107). Start heading northwest on S ave 19 toward N Broadway. Take the 2nd right onto Pasadena Ave. Then take the 1st left onto N San Fernando Rd. Turn right onto the California 110N ramp. Merge onto 110N. Then exit California Blvd. Once you exit, turn right onto California Blvd. Then turn right onto Madre St and take the 3rd left onto Locksley Dr. Tara's mama's house will be on the left. Home of the season 2 antagonist Maenad Maryann, the mansion is where we see Tara after her run in with the giant pig and subsequent reckless driving arrest. Shown as basically a resort, the "informal halfway house" is stocked with bountiful food, servants waiting on her hand & foot, and conveniently a new boyfriend in Eggs. The house is also important to Sam Merlotte's back story as it is the location where he lost his virginity (to Maryann of course) and where he acquired his startup money to open the bar.
The outside entry of Fangtasia- Vampire Bar
Next destination will be the Fellowship Of The Sun Church (3888 Workman Mill Rd,Whittier, CA 90601). From Tara's mama's house, start heading east on Locksley Dr. toward S Lotus Ave. Turn right onto CA-19 S/S Rosemead Blvd and then onto 60E. Exit off of Peck Rd, turn left onto Durfee ave. Then turn right on Peck Rd, stay slight left to stay on Peck Rd. Continue straight onto Workman Mill Rd. Then the Fellowship Of The Sun Church will be on your left side right before you reach Mill Elementary School. The location is actually the SkyRose Chapel at Rose Hills Memorial Park and doubles as the notorious religious fanatic hangout for the Newlins in Dallas. The church is the setting for a good part of season two, and is where Jason succumbs to the temptation that is Sarah Newlin(the gorgeous Anna Camp) and then rescues Eric from the stake with his paintball arsenal.
To get to the Fangtasia (2913 E Anaheim St, Long Beach, CA 90804) from Fellowship of The Sun Church, head northwest and will turn left onto Workman Mill Rd. In about a mile, turn right onto Pioneer Blvd. Stay slight left to stay on Pioneer blvd. Take the 1st right onto Beverly Blvd and slight right onto the ramp to 605 South. keep left and stay on 605 South. Then merge onto CA-22W/E 7th St. Stay slight right onto CA-1N and turn left onto E. Anaheim St. Fangtasia will be on your right. If you've reached N. Gladys Ave, you've gone too far. Owned by the Sheriff of Bon Temps himself, Eric Northman, Fangtasia is the local hangout for vampires and fangbangers. The bar employs Pam, Ginger, Chow Lin and even Tara for a bit. It is also the site of Longshadow's death and where Lafayette was imprisoned for three weeks after he was caught selling V.
From the Vampire Bar, you can start heading towards the Bon Temps Police Station (4440 W 126th St, Hawthorne, CA 90250). Start heading east on E. Anaheim St. toward N Orizaba Ave. Turn left onto Redondo Ave and in about 1.9 miles, turn left onto E. Spring St. Take the ramp onto I-405 North. Exit on El Segundo Blvd and take right onto W. El Segundo Blvd. Turn left onto Grevillea Ave. Take the 1st right onto W. 126th st. The Bon Temps Police Station will be on the right. The site of many a bungled investigation, the Bon Temps Police Station is where Andy Bellefleur and Bud Dearborne attempted to solve the supernatural crimes that seem to litter their desks every other day. An actual jail in real life, the building is shown prominently during season 2 when Maryann's spell has taken over Bon Temps and she goes to break everyone out who has been arrested.
This location was Crawdad's Restaurant in the show.
Respect [ edit ]
Remember to be polite and respect the diverse group of people. Like any other states, be mindful of sensitive topics that includes immigration, race, gay rights, politics, religion and etc.
Wherever you decide to visit, please do not litter. Especially if you are planning on visiting the beach while in Malibu or Long Beach, make sure you throw away your trash in the trashcan.
Stay Safe [ edit ]
Things to keep in mind while traveling around Southern California:
-Although may cities in California can be safe, compared to many other states, California has a relatively high crime when it comes to the inner city parts of Los Angeles. Just be smart. As you stay out of run-down neighborhoods and take basic precautions against small crime, you'll be just fine.
-Keep your car locked, even if you are leaving for a minute. Don't leave any purses, luggage or valuable items in the car where people can easily see them.
-Have your ID with you at all times.
-Use caution when picking up hitchhikers.
-You may run into homeless people especially as you get closer to downtown LA. If they are asking you for money then you can choose to give them something or if you would like to decline then simply be nice by saying, "sorry, I can't help you" or quietly walk away. There is no reason to be mean or rude to them. That will only cause more drama and may get yourself in trouble.
-Be aware of Earthquakes. During your tour, if you do experience an earthquake, make sure you face away from windows and hide under any sturdy desks or table that can help you to avoid getting hurt from falling objects. If you are indoors, don't run outside. If you are outdoors, stay away from buildings and power lines.
-Wildfires are common between May and October. Please be careful when throwing out cigarette butts and never leave flames unattended.
-In case of an emergency, call 911.It is a jungle out there, and it is no less true about spiritual life than any other aspect of life. Do we really think that just because someone has been meditating for five years, or doing 10 years of yoga practice, that they will be any less neurotic than the next person? At best, perhaps they will be a little bit more aware of it. A little bit.
It is for this reason that I spent the last 15 years of my life researching and writing books on cultivating discernment on the spiritual path in all the gritty areas--power, sex, enlightenment, gurus, scandals, psychology, neurosis -- as well as earnest, but just plain confused and unconscious, motivations on the path. My partner (author and teacher Marc Gafni) and I are developing a new series of books, courses and practices to bring further clarification to these issues.
Several years ago, I spent a summer living and working in South Africa. Upon my arrival I was instantly confronted by the visceral reality that I was in the country with the highest murder rate in the world, where rape was common and more than half the population was HIV-positive -- men and women, gays and straights alike.
As I have come to know hundreds of spiritual teachers and thousands of spiritual practitioners through my work and travels, I have been struck by the way in which our spiritual views, perspectives and experiences become similarly "infected" by "conceptual contaminants" -- comprising a confused and immature relationship to complex spiritual principles can seem as invisible and insidious as a sexually transmitted disease.
The following 10 categorizations are not intended to be definitive but are offered as a tool for becoming aware of some of the most common spiritually transmitted diseases.
1. Fast-Food Spirituality: Mix spirituality with a culture that celebrates speed, multitasking and instant gratification and the result is likely to be fast-food spirituality. Fast-food spirituality is a product of the common and understandable fantasy that relief from the suffering of our human condition can be quick and easy. One thing is clear, however: spiritual transformation cannot be had in a quick fix.
2. Faux Spirituality: Faux spirituality is the tendency to talk, dress and act as we imagine a spiritual person would. It is a kind of imitation spirituality that mimics spiritual realization in the way that leopard-skin fabric imitates the genuine skin of a leopard.
3. Confused Motivations: Although our desire to grow is genuine and pure, it often gets mixed with lesser motivations, including the wish to be loved, the desire to belong, the need to fill our internal emptiness, the belief that the spiritual path will remove our suffering and spiritual ambition, the wish to be special, to be better than, to be "the one."
4. Identifying with Spiritual Experiences: In this disease, the ego identifies with our spiritual experience and takes it as its own, and we begin to believe that we are embodying insights that have arisen within us at certain times. In most cases, it does not last indefinitely, although it tends to endure for longer periods of time in those who believe themselves to be enlightened and/or who function as spiritual teachers.
5. The Spiritualized Ego: This disease occurs when the very structure of the egoic personality becomes deeply embedded with spiritual concepts and ideas. The result is an egoic structure that is "bullet-proof." When the ego becomes spiritualized, we are invulnerable to help, new input, or constructive feedback. We become impenetrable human beings and are stunted in our spiritual growth, all in the name of spirituality.
6. Mass Production of Spiritual Teachers: There are a number of current trendy spiritual traditions that produce people who believe themselves to be at a level of spiritual enlightenment, or mastery, that is far beyond their actual level. This disease functions like a spiritual conveyor belt: put on this glow, get that insight, and -- bam! -- you're enlightened and ready to enlighten others in similar fashion. The problem is not that such teachers instruct but that they represent themselves as having achieved spiritual mastery.
7. Spiritual Pride: Spiritual pride arises when the practitioner, through years of labored effort, has actually attained a certain level of wisdom and uses that attainment to justify shutting down to further experience. A feeling of "spiritual superiority" is another symptom of this spiritually transmitted disease. It manifests as a subtle feeling that "I am better, more wise and above others because I am spiritual."
8. Group Mind: Also described as groupthink, cultic mentality or ashram disease, group mind is an insidious virus that contains many elements of traditional co-dependence. A spiritual group makes subtle and unconscious agreements regarding the correct ways to think, talk, dress, and act. Individuals and groups infected with "group mind" reject individuals, attitudes, and circumstances that do not conform to the often unwritten rules of the group.
9. The Chosen-People Complex: The chosen people complex is not limited to Jews. It is the belief that "Our group is more spiritually evolved, powerful, enlightened and, simply put, better than any other group." There is an important distinction between the recognition that one has found the right path, teacher or community for themselves, and having found The One.
10. The Deadly Virus: "I Have Arrived": This disease is so potent that it has the capacity to be terminal and deadly to our spiritual evolution. This is the belief that "I have arrived" at the final goal of the spiritual path. Our spiritual progress ends at the point where this belief becomes crystallized in our psyche, for the moment we begin to believe that we have reached the end of the path, further growth ceases.
"The essence of love is perception," according to the teachings of Marc Gafni, "Therefore the essence of self love is self perception. You can only fall in love with someone you can see clearly--including yourself. To love is to have eyes to see. It is only when you see yourself clearly that you can begin to love yourself."
It is in the spirit of Marc's teaching that I believe that a critical part of learning discernment on the spiritual path is discovering the pervasive illnesses of ego and self-deception that are in all of us. That is when we need a sense of humor and the support of real spiritual friends. As we face our obstacles to spiritual growth, there are times when it is easy to fall into a sense of despair and self-diminishment and lose our confidence on the path. We must keep the faith, in ourselves and in others, in order to really make a difference in this world.Mark Woodward, spokesperson for the Oklahoma Bureau of Narcotics, is dumber than a pothead…
State Senator Constance Johnson has once again introduced a bill to decriminalize marijuana in Oklahoma. Like her earlier efforts, and unlike a joint, this one has no chance at passing.
From KFOR:
Whether states should legalize marijuana is a debate that continues. That debate is heating up this week on the tales of a newly released, controversial interview with the president. President Barack Obama is quoted in a recent article in the New Yorker magazine as saying he doesn’t believe marijuana is more dangerous than alcohol. State Senator Constance Johnson is taking it even farther, saying alcohol is more dangerous than marijuana and should be legal.
Don’t you like how having “common sense” and “knowing facts” is considered “taking things farther” by the news media? Here’s a statistic from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention:
There are approximately 88,000 deaths attributable to excessive alcohol use each year in the United States. This makes excessive alcohol use the 3rd leading lifestyle-related cause of death for the nation. Excessive alcohol use is responsible for 2.5 million years of potential life lost (YPLL) annually, or an average of about 30 years of potential life lost for each death.1 In 2006, there were more than 1.2 million emergency room visits and 2.7 million physician office visits due to excessive drinking. The economic costs of excessive alcohol consumption in 2006 were estimated at $223.5 billion.
Of course, you probably know what the CDC has to say about marijuana:
From 2005-2009, there were an average of 3,533 fatal unintentional drownings (non-boating related) annually in the United States — about ten deaths per day. An additional 347 people died each year from drowning in boating-related incidents.
Yeah, I went with the drowning stat! That’s because marijuana is so harmless that nothing’s listed on the CDC website. The odds are higher that you’ll be killed by a Minotaur than die from a marijuana overdose. Now, I’m sure some people have gotten cancer or whatever from abusing the product, but even then, it’s not on the same scale as the 88,000 deaths due to alcohol.
To get the whole story on Mary Jane’s chances of coming to the Sooner State, KFOR went to the Oklahoma Bureau of Narcotics – the same agency that receives funding to crack down on illegal marijuana use and distribution – to see what they thought about the push to ‘legalize it.’
Prepare to laugh your ass off like a group of stoners watching Chapelle Show:
Mark Woodward, with the Oklahoma Bureau of Narcotics, said, “I’ve seen [marijuana] wreck more lives than any other drug.”
Yeah, that’s real. The spokesman for the Oklahoma Bureau of Narcotics – the state agency that enforces drug laws – really claims that he’s seen marijuana “wreck more lives than any other drug.”
Uhm….. was he stoned when he said that, or was he simply referring to all the non-violent offenders who are locked up in Oklahoma prisons and / or had their life ruined due to felony marijuana distribution charges? I hope it’s one of the two, because if not he may just be the biggest idiot in the world.
Seriously, what a pile of resin. How can he get away with saying something that asinine? Do people actually buy this crap? At last check, there are still drugs called meth, crack, heroin, oxycontin, Tylenol and even alcohol that are way more dangerous and life wrecking than marijuana. I’d like to see Mark tell the family of someone who overdosed on heroin, battled meth addiction, or died from alcohol poisoning his thoughts on life wrecking drugs. Then I’d like to see that family smoke a bowl and forgive him.
Anyway, as a spokesperson and drug expert, shouldn’t Mark Woodward be fired for saying something so… wrong? He’s supposed to know his facts, right? That’s the whole point of being a spokesperson. You say things that are informed, correct and factual. Unless, of course, you have to follow some sort of agenda like keeping a substance illegal so the state agency you work for can continue to operate and waste taxpayers dollars. Then you do whatever it takes.
p.s. – Here are 10 reasons why marijuana should be legal in Oklahoma.By sharing my own painful truths when it comes to the distractions of the modern age, I have gained an unexpected insight. In the 18 months this blog has existed, I have been privy to a new distraction confession every single day.
Up until now, I never knew what to do with this unusual collection of painful admissions from an overly connected society. But today, in a moment of clarity, I knew. And a woman with 35 years experience as a day care provider held the key.
It came as a message in my inbox after the woman read my post “The Children Have Spoken” which included heart-breaking observations from children themselves about their parents’ excessive phone use.
As soon as I read the first sentence of the caregiver’s email, I knew this message was different than any I had ever received. The hairs on my arms stood up as I absorbed each word that came uncomfortably close to home.
It was a voice of heartache, wisdom, and urgency speaking directly to the parents of the 21st century:
“I can recall a time when you were out with your children you were really with them. You engaged in a back and forth dialog even if they were pre-verbal. You said, ‘Look at the bus, see the doggie, etc.’ Now I see you on the phone, pushing your kids on the swings while distracted by your devices. You think you are spending time with them but you are not present really. When I see you pick up your kids at day care while you’re on the phone, it breaks my heart. They hear your adult conversations. What do they overhear? What is the message they receive? I am not important; I am not important.”
In a 100-word paragraph this concerned woman who has cared for babies since 1977 revealed a disturbing recipe … How to Miss a Childhood.
And because I possess hundreds of distraction confessions, including stories from my own former highly distracted life, I have all the damaging ingredients.
All it takes is one child and one phone and this tragic recipe can be yours.
How to Miss a Childhood
*Keep your phone turned on at all times of the day. Allow the rings, beeps, and buzzes to interrupt your child midsentence; always let the caller take priority.
*Carry your phone around so much that when you happen to leave it in one room your child will come running with it proudly in hand—treating it more like a much needed breathing apparatus than a communication device.
*Decide the app you’re playing is more important than throwing the ball in the yard with your kids. Even better, yell at them to leave you alone while you play your game.
*Take your children to the zoo and spend so much time on your phone that your child looks longingly at the mother who is engaged with her children and wishes she was with her instead.
*While you wait for the server to bring your food or the movie to start, get out your phone and stare at it despite the fact your child sits inches away longing for you talk to him.
*Go to your child’s sporting event and look up periodically from your phone thinking she won’t notice that you are not fully focused on her game.
*Check your phone first thing in the morning … even before you kiss, hug, or greet the people in your family.
*Neglect daily rituals like tucking your child into bed or nightly dinner conversation because you are too busy with your online activity.
*Don’t look up from your phone when your child speaks to you or just reply with an “uh huh” so she thinks you were listening.
*Lose your temper with your child when he “bothers” you while you are interacting with your hand-held electronic device.
*Give an exasperated sigh when your child asks you to push her on the swing. Can’t she see you’re busy?
*Use drive time to call other people regardless of the fact you could be talking to your kids about their day—or about their worries, their fears, or their dreams.
*Read email and text messages at stoplights. Then tell yourself that when your kids are old enough to drive they won’t remember you did this all the time.
*Have the phone to your ear when she gets in or out of the car. Convince yourself a loving hello or goodbye is highly overrated.
Follow this recipe and you will have:
• Missed opportunities for human connection
• Fewer chances to create beautiful memories
• Lack of connection to the people most precious to you
• Inability to really know your children and them unable to know you
• Overwhelming regret
If you find this recipe difficult to read—if you find that you have tears in your eyes, I thank you, and your child thanks you.
It is not easy to consider the possibility that the distractions of the modern age have taken an undeserved priority over the people who matter in your life. In fact, when I admitted this difficult truth to myself almost two years ago, I experienced an emotional breakdown. However, that breakdown became a breakthrough that propelled me to begin my life-changing “Hands Free” journey.
Here’s the thing: You don’t have to follow the above recipe. Yes, it is the 21st century. Yes, the whole world is online. Yes, the communications for your job are important. Yes, at times you must be readily available. But despite all those factors, you do not have to sacrifice your child’s childhood; nor do you have to sacrifice your life.
May I recommend this recipe instead?
How to Grasp a Childhood:
Look into her eyes when she speaks to you … Your uninterrupted gaze is love to your child.
Take time to be with him—really be with him by giving your full attention … The gift of your total presence is love to your child.
Hold her hand, rub his back, listen to her heart beat, and smooth his hair … Your gentle touch is love to your child.
Greet her like you missed her when she was not in your presence … Seeing your face light up when you see her is love to your child.
Play with him … Your involvement in his activities is love to your child.
Set an example of being distraction-free while driving … Positive role modeling behind the wheel is love (and safety) to your child.
Create a distraction-free daily ritual … Consistently making him a priority each day is love to your child.
Focus and smile at her from the stands, sidelines, or the audience … Seeing the joy on your face as you watch is love to your child.
The recipe for “How to Grasp a Childhood” requires only one thing: You must put down your phone. Whether it is for ten minutes, two hours, or an entire Saturday, beautiful human connection, memory making, and parent-child bonding can occur every single time you let go of distraction to grasp what really matters.
The beautiful, life-changing results of your “Hands Free” action can start today … right now … the moment you put down the phone.
************************************************************
My life changed the day I stopped justifying my highly distracted life and admitted I was missing precious moments that I would never retrieve. I imagined my daughter standing on the stage of her high school graduation and asked myself: When she is 18 years old, will I wish I had spent more time on my phone/work/social life? Or will I wish I had spent more time investing in her?
The answer was simple.
My hope is that this post inspires one person to become aware of how often he or she uses the phone (or computer) in the presence of a child. Please help spread this critical message by clicking “share.” By falling into the right hands, it could be the best gift ever received.
*If you are interested in the impact this post had on those who read it, please read “How to Miss a Childhood: Update.”
*For tips about letting go of distraction to connect with the people you love please join “The Hands Free Revolution.” We are a growing community striving to grasp “the moments that matter” in life.
*For more information on transforming a distracted life into meaningful connection, you can pre-order my book on Amazon or Barnes & Noble. The book hits shelves on January 7th! Thank you for your support!For the World War II Pipeline Under The Ocean project, see Operation Pluto
Project Pluto was a United States government program to develop nuclear-powered ramjet engines for use in cruise missiles. Two experimental engines were tested at the United States Department of Energy Nevada Test Site (NTS) in 1961 and 1964.[1]
History [ edit ]
On January 1, 1957, the U.S. Air Force and the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission selected the Lawrence Radiation Laboratory (the predecessor of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory's, LLNL) to study the feasibility of applying heat from nuclear reactors to ramjet engines. This research became known as "Project Pluto". The work was directed by Dr. Ted Merkle, leader of the laboratory's R-Division.
The "Tory-IIC" prototype
Originally carried out at Livermore, California, the work was moved to new facilities constructed for $1.2 million on 8 square miles (21 km2) of Jackass Flats at the NTS, known as Site 401. The complex consisted of 6 miles (10 km) of roads, critical-assembly building, control building, assembly and shop buildings, and utilities. Also required for the construction was 25 miles (40 km) of oil well casing, which was necessary to store the approximately 1,000,000 pounds (450,000 kg) of pressurized air used to simulate ramjet flight conditions for Pluto.
The principle behind the nuclear ramjet was relatively simple: motion of the vehicle pushed air in through the front of the vehicle (ram effect), a nuclear reactor heated the air, and then the hot air expanded at high speed out through a nozzle at the back, providing thrust.
The notion of using a nuclear reactor to heat the air was fundamentally new. Unlike commercial reactors, which are surrounded by concrete, the Pluto reactor had to be small and compact enough to fly, but durable enough to survive a 7,000-mile (11,000 km) trip to a potential target. The nuclear engine could, in principle, operate for months, so a Pluto cruise missile could be left airborne for a prolonged time before being directed to carry out its attack.
The success of this project would depend upon a series of technological advances in metallurgy and materials science. Pneumatic motors necessary to control the reactor in flight had to operate while red-hot and in the presence of intense radiation. The need to maintain supersonic speed at low altitude and in all kinds of weather meant that the reactor, code-named "Tory", had to survive high temperatures and conditions that would melt the metals used in most jet and rocket engines. Ceramic fuel elements would have to be used; the contract to manufacture the 500,000 pencil-sized elements was given to the Coors Porcelain Company.
The proposed use for nuclear-powered ramjets would be to power a cruise missile, called SLAM, for Supersonic Low Altitude Missile. In order to reach ramjet speed, it would be launched from the ground by a cluster of conventional rocket boosters. Once it reached cruising altitude and was far away from populated areas, the nuclear reactor would be made critical. Since nuclear power gave it almost unlimited range, the missile could cruise in circles over the ocean until ordered "down to the deck" for its supersonic dash to targets in the Soviet Union. The SLAM, as proposed, would carry a payload of many nuclear weapons to be dropped on multiple targets, making the cruise missile into an unmanned bomber. After delivering all its warheads, the missile could then spend weeks flying over populated areas at low altitudes, causing tremendous ground damage with its shock wave and fallout. When it finally lost enough power to fly, and crash-landed, the engine would have a good chance of spewing deadly radiation for months to come.
On May 14, 1961, the world's first nuclear ramjet engine, "Tory-IIA", mounted on a railroad car, roared to life for a few seconds. Three years later, "Tory-IIC" was run for five minutes at full power. Despite these and other successful tests, the Pentagon, sponsor of the "Pluto project", had second thoughts. The weapon was considered "too provocative",[2] and it was believed that it would compel the Soviets to construct a similar device, against which there was no known defense. Intercontinental ballistic missile technology had proven to be more easily developed than previously thought, reducing the need for such highly capable cruise missiles. On July 1, 1964, seven years and six months after it was started, "Project Pluto" was canceled.
See also [ edit ]
References [ edit ]I came here to tell you something, following my deep scars
Before I am completely crushed by this vast world
Do you remember it? That sky of tears
That pain protected you for me
Your pain is always protecting you
So am I
Sasuke Uchiha pony! I'm a huge Naruto fan, and have recently decided to go back and rewatch the entire series... All the way through this time XD This crossover was bound to happen.
I normally don't stick to a grayscale when coloring, but I thought it added a nice effect to this particular piece, though |
neck and nobody knew what I was doing, I would not really get off that much masturbating near hot girls. The other big factor for me is the time factor. I found that knowing I have only 20-40 seconds to cum with the girl near me, this really gets me turned on.
Some of the members of Dickflash recognize that they have a problem. There is talk, if scant, of sex-addiction therapy. This thread started by "boaby fantastic" was illuminating:
I simply can't do it anymore. The terror of being caught, my heart racing every time a police car drives past; it was too much. Plus, there was the feeling deep down inside that what I was doing is simply wrong. Now, I don't want to judge anyone here, and I don't think I'm morally superior to any of you active flashers, but I found that I was basically just offending woman after woman to find the occasional one who enjoyed it. I flashed around 50 women I think...one enjoyed it, and one possibly enjoyed it. That just nawed [sic] at my conscience too much.
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Some parts of Dickflash don't fall along the spectrum of sexual assault; there's some mutually-consensual exhibitionism, which is a helpful cover for its corporate parent, AdultFriendFinder, part of the same group that publishes Penthouse. But consensual flashing, which would require communication with a partner, would actually negate the point for many of Dickflash's posters, including the remarkably self-aware "boaby fantastic," who also writes:
I have thought about trying permission flashes or whatever you might call them, but I believe part of the reason I feel the need to flash is kind of as a clumsy way of making contact with someone...Ironically, the thought of talking to a strange woman scares me alot more than showing her my dick.
And there you have it — that inability to connect with women, or engage in consensual activity with one, distilled. But not everyone is so conflicted. In a thread wondering if what the Dickflashers do is "ill," one poster opined that it's no different from being gay pre-Stonewall, and another said it was men's natural instinct to, well, peacock: "All that is different to 'normal' as far as flashers go is a higher than average sex drive, which means you're more likely to be aroused much of the time and as exposing your penis to a woman satisfies a sexual urge, that's what you do." (Meanwhile, the prevalence of incest themes on Dickflash is ripe for some Freudian to unpack.)
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No wonder most of the flashers show no interest in being rehabilitated. "Got 6 months prison, was out in 4 months with good behaviour, but lost wife, job, house in the process," wrote one. "Oh well, it was worth it!, and I'm still flashing!! (-:"
And it's not like prison has to be all that bad, as another poster reminded everyone.
The fun thing about prison is that when you get to reception they stripp you all naked in a big reception area where there's always women working there, some are nurses, female guards, office workers and staff. So they make you walk around some 50 feet or more buck naked and have the great chance of flashing some more and nobody will say nothing to you.
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After all, as he pointed out, "You cant get arrested... cause you already are."
Earlier: Subway Flasher Messes With The Wrong WomanRenderings for the new Facebook home in L.A. (Photo by Fotoworks, via Playa Jefferson)
Facebook is planning to move into a sprawling new office space in Los Angeles sometime later this year.
The omnipresent social media giant, based in Menlo Park, has just signed a lease for 35,000 square feet of space at a creative office campus in Playa Vista, according to The Real Deal. The company's new L.A. home, known as Playa Jefferson and located at 12777 West Jefferson Boulevard, is still under construction, but the Zuckerberg squad is expected to move in sometime in the spring or by summer. They'll be leaving behind their much smaller digs at The Campus, a nearby facility that is home to several tech companies.
According to the Playa Jefferson website, the entire campus—designed by architecture firm Gensler—will feature four large buildings, 200,000 square feet of overall office space, a 50′ glass atrium, and green-friendly landscaping. There will also be plenty of indoor and outdoor common space, bike racks, and, of course, room for food trucks.
The Real Deal estimates the lease for Facebook's new setup will be somewhere below $1.5 million a year. The rent is lightly less than the current asking price, as they signed the deal before the new year and now space is at more of a premium on the campus. We suspect they'll be able to make ends meet.
You can see more renderings of the new campus on the Playa Jefferson site and in this video with a sweet soundtrack:Ontario students between Grades 9 and 12 who said they had a traumatic brain injury in their lifetime, also reported drug use rates two to four times higher than peers with no history of TBI, according to research published today in The Journal of Head Trauma Rehabilitation.
"Overall, a teen with a history of TBI is at least twice as likely as a classmate who hasn't suffered a brain injury to drink alcohol, use cannabis or abuse other drugs," said Dr. Michael Cusimano, co-principal investigator of the study and a neurosurgeon at St. Michael's Hospital. "But when you look at specific drugs, those rates are often higher."
The research showed that, in the past 12 months, teens with a history of TBI said they were:
3.8 times more likely to have used crystal meth
3.8 times more likely to have used non-prescribed tranquilizers or sedatives
2.8 times more likely to have used Ecstasy
2.7 times more likely to have used non-prescribed opioid pain relievers
2.6 times more likely to have used hallucinogens
2.5 times more likely to have used cocaine
2.5 times more likely to have used LSD
2.1 times more likely to have used non-prescribed ADHD drugs
"On top of the other health consequences, substance abuse increases the odds of suffering an injury that could result in a TBI," said Dr. Cusimano, who is also a researcher with the Keenan Research Centre for Biomedical Science. "And using some of these substances may also impair recovery after injury."
Teens with a self-reported history of TBI also reported they were 2.5 times more likely to have smoked one or more cigarettes daily over the past 12 months and nearly twice as likely to have binge drank -- consuming five or more drinks in one sitting -- in the past four weeks.
Researchers defined TBI as any hit or blow to the head that resulted in the teenager being knocked out for at least five minutes or spending at least one night in hospital due to symptoms associated with the head injury. Some of these brain injuries could have been also called concussions, which are mild to moderate forms of TBI.
"Some people think of concussions as a less alarming injury than a mild TBI but this is wrong," said Dr. Cusimano. "Every concussion is a TBI. People should take every brain injury seriously because, as this research shows, the immediate and long-term effects can alter lives."
The data used in the study was from the 2011 Ontario Student Drug Use and Health Survey developed by the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health. The survey is one of the longest ongoing school surveys in the world. The OSDUHS began as a drug use survey, but is now a broader study of adolescent health and well-being. Questions about traumatic brain injury were added to the survey for the first time in 2011.
The study looked at reported substance use among 6,383 Ontario students in Grades 9 through12. Data allowed researchers to determine the substance use habits and history of TBIs among students but did not allow researchers to determine whether substance use or brain injury came first.
"These data show us that there are important links between adolescent TBI and substance use," said Dr. Robert Mann, co-principal investigator of the study, senior scientist at CAMH and director of the OSDUHS. "While we can't yet say which one causes the other, we know this combination of factors is something to watch because it can have a serious negative impact on young people as they develop."
Dr. Mann said the relationship between TBI and substance use is concerning and calls for greater focus on prevention. "In terms of our research, the next step is to get a better understanding of the direction of these behaviours and to hopefully pinpoint when and how this relationship starts."Egypt’s muted response to a deadly attack by its own Army on a Christian protest Sunday is furthering the anger of Christians, and threatening to escalate sectarian strife at a delicate time of transition.
Government officials have portrayed Sunday’s events as a clash with violent protesters provoked by “hidden hands” to “meddle with the country’s security and safety.” Protesters say their demonstration – protesting a recent attack on a church in southern Egypt as well as the Army’s dispersal of a protest the week before – was peaceful when it was attacked. At least 17 Christians died; most had gunshot wounds and signs of being crushed by vehicles.
While many Muslims joined Christians in mourning the victims Tuesday, others are still convinced that the Christians were the aggressors. Boula Zakie, who was hit by an Army vehicle during the attack, said he has received dozens of phone calls from Muslim friends asking why Christians attacked the Army.
“They don’t believe us,” he says. One of his friends was killed in the attack and another is in critical condition.
Christian anger
Egypt’s finance and deputy prime minister, Hazem al-Beblawi, tendered his resignation Tuesday over the Army attack on Sunday, but reports in state media said that it was rejected by Field Marshal Mohamed Hussein Tantawi, Egypt's military ruler. Mr. Beblawi could not be reached for comment.
The cabinet also promised to implement within two weeks a law that would ease building restrictions on churches, an area where Christians have long been discriminated against. But coming after witnesses said the Army opened fire and drove vehicles into a crowd of protesters, such measures are being rejected by many Christians. Few believe that a fact-finding committee ordered by the military will hold responsible those who killed the protesters.
“This is ridiculous. We have been talking about this law for so long, and only now they remember it?” says Karima Kamal, a columnist and author who writes on Coptic affairs. The entire government should resign, she says, and its refusal to acknowledge what happened will only spur more sectarian attacks. “This is not a response for a state or a government. It is as if nothing happened.”
Public anger
Thousands of Copts and Muslims directed intense anger at the military after the funeral of some of the victims Monday, chanting angrily for the removal of Field Marshal Tantawi. Some political parties have also blasted Egypt’s military council, which is ruling Egypt during the transition from the rule of former President Hosni Mubarak.
Political figure Ayman Nour said at a press conference Monday that, “There is no partnership between us and the council now that the blood of our brothers stands between us.'' The Free Egyptians party, co-founded by Christian businessman Naguib Sawiris, issued a statement warning the military council that "continuing to handle events with force will shake the trust that Egyptians have given it.”
Yet it is unclear how far the outrage over the attack extends. The Muslim Brotherhood released a statement criticizing Christians for holding a protest, saying the time was not right. Many Egyptians saw an entirely different version of events on state television, which broadcast incendiary reports that armed Christians had attacked the Army, and said Army soldiers had died. (No names or evidence of deaths among soldiers has yet been presented to the public.)
The state television reports spurred hundreds of Muslims to take to the streets, armed with sticks, to defend the Army against what they thought were armed and violent Christians.Abstract
Huntington's disease (HD) is a dominantly inherited neurodegenerative disorder caused by expanded CAG repeats in the huntingtin (HTT) gene. Although several palliative treatments are available, there is currently no cure and patients generally die 10–15 y after diagnosis. Several promising approaches for HD therapy are currently in development, including RNAi and antisense analogs. We developed a complementary strategy to test repression of mutant HTT with zinc finger proteins (ZFPs) in an HD model. We tested a “molecular tape measure” approach, using long artificial ZFP chains, designed to bind longer CAG repeats more strongly than shorter repeats. After optimization, stable ZFP expression in a model HD cell line reduced chromosomal expression of the mutant gene at both the protein and mRNA levels (95% and 78% reduction, respectively). This was achieved chromosomally in the context of endogenous mouse HTT genes, with variable CAG-repeat lengths. Shorter wild-type alleles, other genomic CAG-repeat genes, and neighboring genes were unaffected. In vivo, striatal adeno-associated virus viral delivery in R6/2 mice was efficient and revealed dose-dependent repression of mutant HTT in the brain (up to 60%). Furthermore, zinc finger repression was tested at several levels, resulting in protein aggregate reduction, reduced decline in rotarod performance, and alleviation of clasping in R6/2 mice, establishing a proof-of-principle for synthetic transcription factor repressors in the brain.2016 GOP HIT on HRC
From:HendricksL@dnc.org To: more creynolds@hillaryclinton.com, jschwerin@hillaryclinton.com tcarrk@hillaryclinton.com, Awatson@hillaryclinton.com, jlehrich@hillaryclinton.com, pramos@hillaryclinton.com, mcantrell@hillaryclinton.com, zpetkanas@hillaryclinton.com BrinsterJ@dnc.org, CrystalA@dnc.org, DillonL@dnc.org Date: 2016-04-28 15:18 Subject: 2016 GOP HIT on HRC
RNC Tweet 4/28/16 1:17 PM Read Here<https://twitter.com/GOP/status/725735587911606272> Even Olivia Pope & Assoc. can't clean up the truth about Clinton's "#Scandal<https://twitter.com/search?q=%23Scandal>"-ous candidacy gop.cm/D7Da8Y<https://t.co/pAEhEmSMe3> pic.twitter.com/4Fu6ugwJWt<https://t.co/4Fu6ugwJWt> [Media preview] Even Olivia Pope Couldn't Handle Clinton's "Scandal"-ous Case File<https://gop.com/even-olivia-pope-couldnt-handle-clintons-scandal-ous-case-file/> TEAM GOP<https://gop.com/author/team-gop> GOVERNMENT OVERSIGHT <https://gop.com/topic/government-accountability-government-oversight/> - April 28, 2016 [https://prod-static-ngop-pbl.s3.amazonaws.com/media/images/scandal-blog-header_1461793172_Content_Consumption_Large.png] (36)<https://www.facebook.com/sharer.php?u=gop.com/even-olivia-pope-couldnt-handle-clintons-scandal-ous-case-file>MORE Wednesday night, Hillary Clinton's senior leadership will headline a fundraiser<https://twitter.com/gdebenedetti/status/723137947927719937> with cast members from ABC's Scandal. As senior aides to Clinton at the State Department, Huma Abedin and Jake Sullivan should feel right at home with a show that regularly depicts political staffers flouting the law in their relentless pursuit of power. Unfortunately for them, even Olivia Pope & Associates can't clean up the messy truth about Clinton's fundamentally flawed and scandalous candidacy. Check out just some of scandals from Hillary's case file the gladiators at OPA would be working with: Her Secret Server Under FBI Investigation Clinton put our nation's security at risk by using her personal email and an unguarded, personal server to conduct official State Department business. Like many of the other clients at OPA, Hillary plays by her own set of rules, breaking five regulations and agreements<https://gop.com/clintonemails/> in the pursuit of "personal convenience." Despite her claims to the contrary, Clinton sent or recevied more than 2,000 emails containing classified information. Her unprecedented decision to set up her own unsecure server for both official and personal business has prompted an FBI invesitgation and a probe by the Intelligence Community's Inspector General. Benghazi Under her watch as Secretary of State, four Americans were killed in an attack on the U.S. facility in Benghazi. Both Clinton and the Obama administration have consistently misled the American people about the events leading up to and including the attack. While privately,<https://www.gop.com/timeline-clintons-public-claims-contradict-her-private-communications/?> Clinton made no mention of a video in emails to diplomats and family members, she publicly suggested that the attack had been "a response to inflammatory material posted on the Internet." To this day, Hillary maintains that the video "played a role," even while new information reveals that the State Department knew the attack had nothing to do with a video, even cautioning officials against legitimizing that false narrative. Official reports and accounts also confirm that the security situation at the Benghazi was woefully inadequate. But Clinton maintains that she was totally unaware of the many requests for additional security that were denied<https://www.gop.com/timeline-of-benghazi-attacks-warnings-and-requests-for-help/?filter_key=author__slug&filter_value=raj-shah> in the months leading up to the attack. Clinton Foundation: Conflicts of Interest and Foreign Donations Where did the Clinton Foundation end and the State Department begin? While Secretary of State, the Clinton Foundation accepted millions of dollars <https://gop.com/clinton-foundation-re-filed-years-of-tax-returns-heres-what-they-showed/> in foreign donations from countires with business before the State Department. Despite Hillary's pledge of "unprecedented" transparency, the Clinton Foundation failed to submit any foreign donations to State for review and did not disclose all donors as promised. But, more than that, the shadowy finances of Hillary's family foundation raise ethical questions about undue influence that are unprecedented for a presidential candidate. Also consider the fact that as Hillary has ramped up her run for the White House, donations to the Clinton Foundation have skyrocketed. Tax filings show that donations from foreign governments increased THREEFOLD in 2014. [https://prod-static-ngop-pbl.s3.amazonaws.com/media/images/web_conflict_1447797858.png] Among the nations shelling out the big bucks for the Clinton Foundation? Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, and Oman, countries not exactly known for their stellar records on human rights. Clinton's Revolving Door At the State Department Clinton staffers are notorious for cycling through various official government jobs and then collecting exorbitant paychecks based on their proximity to the Clinton universe. Most recently, Politico<http://www.politico.com/story/2016/04/teneo-final-221807> revealed the deep roots of Teneo Holdings, a global consulting group whose co-founders Doug Band and Declan Kelly used their ability to sell access to the Clintons to lay the groundwork for their firm. [https://prod-static-ngop-pbl.s3.amazonaws.com/media/images/cronyism_1448991230.png] Then there's, Clinton's top aide Huma Abedin, who now serves as vice chair of Clinton's presidential campaign. Abedin was granted "special government employee"<https://www.gop.com/top-clinton-aide-mired-in-conflict-of-interest/> status in 2012, which allowed her to work as a paid advisor to the Clinton Foundation, serve as an aide to Hillary, and take on private clients (including Teneo). Abedin also had an account<http://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/nation-world/national/article30714762.html> on Clinton's secret server. Lauren HendricksTata Steel workers have been urged to reject the "unacceptable" pension deal that will be voted on later this month.
The company made a commitment to secure jobs and production at Port Talbot and its other steelworks in December.
But Plaid AM Adam Price said Tata was being "opportunistic", adding workers should ask it to rethink the offer.
A Tata spokesman said it could not comment while the consultation with workers was under way.
It was hoped Tata's deal could bring an end to eight months of uncertainty for thousands of workers who faced losing their jobs when Tata's UK business was put up for sale.
The measures included:
A guaranteed, minimum five-year commitment to keeping two blast furnaces at the Port Talbot plant
A 10-year £1bn investment plan to support steel making at the site
A commitment to seek to avoid compulsory redundancies for five years
A consultation on replacing the current pension with a "defined contribution scheme" involving maximum contributions of 10% from the company and 6% from employees.
Mr Price told BBC Radio Wales's Sunday Supplement programme: "The economic climate that the steel industry faces in 2017 has been radically transformed.
"The medium-term outlook has improved and profitability has returned to Port Talbot.
"In this context it is by no means a forgone conclusion that the Tata steel workers will accept the pension deal on offer to the workers in the union ballot later this month."
'Inconceivable'
He claimed the company was "using the events of the last 12 months to pressure workers".
"In my view the workers would be wise to ask the company to think again, and to come back to the table with a firm guarantee in terms of the employment pact and the investment," he added.
"It is also inconceivable that such a large and powerful conglomerate should be allowed to walk away from its existing pension liabilities.
"If Tata is not prepared to do this, the company should be nationalised on a temporary basis and talks reopened with those firms that have been waiting in the wings to buy it."
Almost 7,000 people are employed by Tata Steel across Wales, including more than 4,000 in Port Talbot.
Image copyright Getty Images
A spokesman for the Steel Committee, that represents all the unions across Tata, said: "Whilst respecting Mr Price's opinion, it is vital that the workforce fully understand the proposal that they will be asked to consider at the end of this month.
"In that regard, the Pensions Office are currently embarked on a series of road shows, going out to plants, explaining to workforce the current position with regards to the pension scheme and the new pension offer.
"With regards to the other issues he raises, a key part of discussions with the company have centred around steel making and maintaining two furnace operation in Port Talbot and therefore maintaining production at the downstream businesses across south Wales and the UK."Tri-university team including ASU plans for future of the interstate with efficiency, safety and sustainability in mind
Stretching across the southernmost U.S. states, Interstate 10 is an east-west artery connecting people, cities and economies from sea to shining sea. It glimpses palm trees near the Pacific Ocean in Santa Monica, California, NASA Mission Control in Houston and the Atlantic Ocean in Jacksonville, Florida.
In Arizona, I-10 is a conduit between the cities of Phoenix, Casa Grande and Tucson. Together these metropolitan areas function as a growing southwest megaregion. Cities within a megaregion are tied together by strong links and can influence one another, even if they're hundreds of miles apart.
One of these connections is freight traffic, a material expression of the economy and a key dynamic within and between megaregions. Every day, trucks on I-10 carry the stuff of our livelihoods — from avocados to Ziploc bags — through Arizona and beyond. Along the way, they put significant wear and tear on the interstate, create demand for infrastructure, including rest stops and fuel stations, and affect driver safety. Changes in vehicle technology and fuel, as well as changes in the climate, are poised to affect freight traffic, interstate safety, infrastructure and economies.
A team of researchers from Arizona State University, the University of Arizona and Northern Arizona University are thinking ahead of these changes with a series of projects that will plan for the future of freight traffic on I-10 through Arizona with a focus on efficiency, safety and sustainability.
“Hopefully, in the long run, this research will help shorten commutes, save lives, create more breathable air and find a way to pay for all of it,” said Michael Kuby, a professor in ASU’s School of Geographical Sciences and Urban Planning.
Kuby is one of the three principal investigators on the project, along with Larry Head, a professor in the Department of Systems and Industrial Engineering at UA, and Edward Smaglik, associate professor in the Department of Civil Engineering, Construction Management and Environmental Engineering at NAU.
Recognized for its potential to improve Arizona livelihoods and the economy, the project was awarded a Regent Innovation Funds (RIF) grant from the Arizona Board of Regents. The RIF I-10 project complements an Arizona Department of Transportation (ADOT) project in conjunction with Texas, New Mexico and California DOTs.
"I'm hoping that by taking this different look at the corridor that we can contribute to the greater good of ADOT and what they are trying to accomplish," Head said.
Just passing through
Freight trucks are especially tough on roads, and they roll through Arizona continuously. Most of these trucks do not start or end their hauls in Arizona, but simply trundle on through between Texas and California.
“We're a pass-through state,” Head said. “The number of vehicles is pretty uniform over all time and all ways traveling through the state. In Phoenix and Tucson, you see bumps in the number of vehicles on the road based upon time of day, but with the freight trucks it's just a steady stream of about the same number of trucks all the time.”
Arizona bears the wear and tear, traffic, emissions and safety hazards associated with these big rigs, while the origin and destination states generate more of the jobs in logistics and manufacturing. One team is looking at ways Arizona can reap more benefits from this pass-through traffic. States recoup some of the wear and tear costs and pay for new infrastructure through several types of taxes. Notably, this occurs through fuel tax but also through sales tax and property tax. For diesel fuel used by trucks, an interstate compact ensures that each state receives its fair share of fuel taxes proportional to miles driven in each state regardless of where the fuel was purchased.
In most other ways, however, the benefits of the pass-through freight are hard to identify. Pass-through trucks don’t produce many jobs in-state, and existing taxes don’t address these trucking activities. For instance, sales tax is incurred only when the goods are offloaded and sold in the state. Property tax revenues may rise where improved transportation generates higher demand for land accessible to the infrastructure, but pass-through traffic generates little business en route. In addition, Arizona is one of a handful of states that don’t allow “tax-increment” financing based on anticipated future property tax increases.
The researchers see the RIF I-10 project as an opportunity to explore alternatives, including economic opportunities for the state. They will collaborate on an overall concept plan for the I-10 Arizona corridor as well as on six additional projects. These will focus on economic impact, infrastructure resilience, safety, weather prediction and warning, alternative fuels, and education.
From driverless trucks to haboobs
One project will evaluate an emerging technology called connected and automated vehicles (CAVs). Freight trucks operating as CAVs will be connected wirelessly, moving as a caravan with minimal space between them and operated by a single driver — or, perhaps one day, no driver at all. This technology has the potential to increase the efficiency at which freight trucks move along I-10 and would likely improve safety. A safer I-10 is something that could affect Head personally.
"Being in Tucson, I come to Phoenix at least once a week. It scares me. There are a lot of freight vehicles out there," Head said.
The team will simulate how a mix of connected and unconnected vehicles sharing the road will affect the quality of real-time traffic data. What if cars and trucks share all lanes of I-10, but only the trucks are equipped for connectivity? What if there’s a designated lane for trucks, but only some of the trucks are communicating? The simulations will help traffic engineers figure out how best to deal with partial information during the gradual transition to CAV trucks.
Another project will identify threats posed to transportation infrastructure by natural and man-made hazards. The team will then develop a framework for evaluating and selecting strategies for mitigating the harmful effects of these threats. With a better understanding of these issues, CAVs can be designed to ensure reliable, safe and efficient service under the extreme and variable climate conditions we are likely to face in the coming decades.
Dust storms are a common weather hazard in the Arizona desert. They can change roadway conditions from safe to threatening in the time it takes you to say “haboob.” But comprehensive data about the timing and location of dust storms do not exist.
To address this, the team is examining different data sources to develop a dust storm climatology and pinpoint locations along the roadway that are associated with higher risk. In parallel, researchers at UA and NAU are using sophisticated computer models to simulate the complex dynamics that control the formation and movement of dust storms. Ultimately, the teams will use this information to contribute to state and regional discussions about weather safety measures such as smart alerting systems and variable speed limits.
Alternative-fuel chicken and egg
One of the projects could help the alternative vehicle and fuel “chicken and egg” problem, as Kuby describes it. Currently, car and truck manufacturers are reluctant to ramp up production of alternative fuel vehicles due to a lack of fueling stations. Meanwhile, energy companies delay building alternative fuel stations because the vehicles that need them are such a small market share. Chicken, meet egg.
“You’ve got to break that cycle somehow,” Kuby said. “Lack of refueling stations is the No. 1 barrier to transitioning away from petroleum-based fuels."
To overcome this barrier, the team is thinking outside the usual planning methods and using a new “geo-design” approach for natural gas fuel stations. This alternative fuel is in the lead to be the future energy for freight trucks.
A geo-design approach is considered bottom-up because stakeholders are involved in the planning. The project team is building a geographic information systems (GIS) platform that will enable industry and government stakeholders to visualize related information, move stations around on a digital map, evaluate how well their deployment plan performs on several metrics and compare their plans with those of other groups. Geo-design has been pioneered successfully in recent years for land management, but this is the first time it will be applied to facility location.
In addition to the planning approaches of the project team for the I-10 corridor, the collaboration itself is innovative. Experts across fields and universities are coming together with stakeholders like ADOT and the freight industry in the first large-scale transportation project of its kind in the state. It is fitting to bring together such a diverse group, Kuby said, because transportation is by definition interdisciplinary.
“This is the first time," said Smaglik, of NAU, "we have a project between all of us, and you can see relationships and partnerships develop as we work through this. It’s going to be very exciting and very fruitful as we move into the future.”
Additional ASU faculty working on the RIF I-10 project include:
Mikhail Chester, assistant professor, School of Sustainable Engineering and the Built Environment
Randall Cerveny, President’s Professor, School of Geographical Sciences and Urban Planning
John Fowler, Motorola Professor of International Business, W. P. Carey School of Business
David Hondula, assistant professor, School of Geographical Sciences and Urban Planning
David King, assistant professor, School of Geographical Sciences and Urban Planning
Yingyan Lou, assistant professor, School of Sustainable Engineering and the Built Environment
Arnie Maltz, associate professor, W. P. Carey School of Business
Deborah Salon, assistant professor, School of Geographical Sciences and Urban Planning
Shane Underwood, assistant professor, School of Sustainable Engineering and the Built Environment
Postdoctoral students working on the RIF I-10 project include:
Samuel Markolf, Julie Ann Wrigley Global Institute of Sustainability
Fangwu Wei, School of Geographical Sciences and Urban Planning
RIF grants are funded through the Technology Research Initiative Fund, a voter-approved sales tax to fund K–12, community college and public university education and research. The Arizona Board of Regents manages the distribution of TRIF funds to the state universities.With the return of the Overwatch beta, we were given the chance to interview game director Jeff Kaplan on anything and everything we could think of. One topic seemed obvious – the brand new progression system, including levelling up, skins, cosmetics and loot boxes. He explained their thinking behind the current system, possible tweaks that need to be made, the importance of gathering data – and how, at Blizzard, “there is no such thing as a random loot system, no matter what people think.”
Kaplan also told us that Overwatch ranked matchmaking is planned to be part of the beta.
You can find my initial thoughts on the Overwatch progression system on page two of this article. If you’re unfamiliar with the system, it’s worth having a read over, and I put a number of its points to Kaplan over the course of this. Overall, I like it and Blizzard are very happy with what they’re seeing and the player base’s thoughts so far.
“Players have responded really well to the progression system, their behaviours have been what we hoped for and more, which is really cool.” Kaplan explains, “We added this custom game feature with all these great rulesets which players could set on their games and a lot of players are like ‘Yeah, I’m dying to get to that, but there’s no loot boxes for that, so I’m not going to do it right now, I want to get that skin that I’ve had my eye on.’”
He, personally, is “extremely pleased with the reaction” and says there’s more to come, “I’m excited too because there’s more content coming, legendary skins for all the heroes. It’s funny because we’re working on this stuff right now, so I often lose track of what’s in the game and what’s not in the game. I’ll login to the beta and I’ll go to the hero gallery all like ‘oh my god where’s that, wait till they see that, they’re going to be blown away.’”
We’ve seen glimpses of what might be on the way already with the Raptorian Pharah skin datamined this week, and even outside of big flashy additions, Kaplan’s seeing a good response to smaller cosmetic inclusions. He points to players having fun with the Hearthstone emote sprays as something he’s liked seeing.
But what about the system of distribution, the loot crates that players earn from levelling up? Kaplan’s happy with those too, particularly that they didn’t just default to a skin store and actually made it possible to earn things through play. He reconfirmed from previous interviews that the plan is to sell loot boxes if people want to buy them.
“We were running internally [at Blizzard] between phase one and two, about two months, and we put the system up and there was immediately [people] like ‘okay, this is awesome, but sometimes I have more money than I have time, it would be really great if I could buy a loot box’ – we like that idea. We want to make it available, we just haven’t got to it yet.”
But they won’t be selling credits or skins individually. Kaplan points out that buying boxes is similar to both, as there is a steady flow of credits from boxes, either by dropping as chunks of currency themselves or by getting duplicates of cosmetics that automatically turn into credits. On the pricing side, he says they simply don’t know and would want it to be “reasonable and non-offensive.” I asked specifically about a comparison to Hearthstone, and Kaplan said that’s where his hope would be, but also explained how the decisions are made.
“The pricing is something the game team advises on, but it isn’t something we’re actively focused on. We’re kinda more ‘hey, here’s a cool system’ and then it was almost like an afterthought [as a paid thing]. There are certain things, as a game developer, when somebody asks you ‘hey, would it be cool to sell these?’ and you take great offense and say ‘no, we’re not gonna do that.’ Y’know, we’re not gonna sell health packs in Overwatch, or bullets.
“But if someone wants to buy a loot box, that you can earn, that any player can earn at any time, I don’t really have a problem with that. I don’t think it hurts the game and I think it just helps with some player’s engagement – especially those who don’t have as much time as others.”
As for the actual opening part, Kaplan has some very interesting things to say not only about the Overwatch team’s policy, but Blizzard as a whole, when it comes to loot systems. “I think something that’s very important to note, and I’m not gonna go into a lot of detail here, is being the company that’s made World of Warcraft, Diablo and Hearthstone, I can clearly tell you that there is no such thing as a random loot system, no matter what people think. There is only an illusion of random. Sometimes we do a better job with that illusion than others.”
I asked specifically about Hearthstone’s pack rigging, where your chance of getting rarer cards scales up as you open more packs without doing so, and if Overwatch had a similar system. With a touch of humour, Kaplan says “I don’t know how it works on Hearthstone, but I will stand by what I said – there is no such thing as a random loot system. At least not here at Blizzard, we’re very careful about what we do.”
In the same theme, we also went over the idea of weighting crates towards characters that players are more active on, as I suggested last week. “That’s certainly great feedback,” says Kaplan, “I saw a Reddit post of that poor guy who has played nothing but Reaper and he has zero unlocks for him. That made me feel a little bad, it’s something we will think about and look at.”
Kaplan also mentioned that this player will have credits from duplicates and the like, which was something else I wanted to ask about. Specifically, were they happy with the credit retrieval rate and how many credits people got for dupes? It is, as with a lot of what Blizzard does, all about getting more data before making a |
les and marks through pages, as well as handwritten text in the sidelines of the legislation.Vancouver city councillors have voted unanimously to ban the use of e-cigarettes in public spaces around the city.
E-cigarettes are battery-powered vaporizers that simulate tobacco smoking without any real smoke. It generally uses a heating element known as an atomizer, that vaporizes a liquid solution known as e-liquid. The little device has gained a lot of popularity among tobacco users and something you are guaranteed to see at every local night market.
With the new ban in effect, users won’t be able to use their e-cigarettes in areas that smoking is not permitted (beaches, restaurants, patios, etc) which make the ideal location for e-cigarette users. The ban also restricts the sale of the e-cigarette to minors within city limits.
While most believe the device is a healthier and safer option to consume tobacco, the benefits and risks of e-cigarettes are still uncertain.
The ban also bring a lot of controversy in the city. According to a poll conducted by Metro, 65 percent of 2,500 readers opposed the ban. Health organizations however are glad the ban has passed.
“We see this as a public health victory. Tobacco smoking is still responsible for 85 per cent of lung cancer and 30 per cent of all cancer,” said Kathryn Seely, the society’s director of public issues.
What are your thoughts on the ban? Let us know by commenting below!We are nearing the end of an unremarkable and disappointing election campaign, marked by petty scandals, policy convergences and a dearth of serious debate. Canadians deserved better. We were not presented with an opportunity to vote for something bigger and bolder, nor has there been an honest recognition of the most critical issues that lie ahead: a volatile economy, ballooning public debts and the unwieldy future of our health-care system.
The challenges facing our next federal government do not end there, of course. The next House of Commons must find new ways to protect Parliament, the heart of our democracy. It needs to reform its troubled equalization program without straining national unity. Relations with the U.S. are at a critical juncture. Any thickening of the border threatens to punish all Canadians, while negotiations over perimeter security have implications for national sovereignty and economic security. Wars in Libya and Afghanistan, climate change, Canada's role in the world, the rapid and exciting change of the country's ethnic and cultural makeup - the list is great, as is the need for strong leadership in Ottawa.
Whom should Canadians turn to?
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The Liberal Party's Michael Ignatieff has been an honourable opposition leader; he has risen above the personal attacks launched by the Conservatives, he has stood up for Parliament, and he has fought hard in this election. But his campaign failed to show how the Conservative government has failed, and why he and the Liberals are a preferred alternative.
Jack Layton has energized the New Democrats and the electorate, and seems more able than the other leaders to connect with ordinary people. He has succeeded in putting a benign gloss on his party's free-spending policies, but those policies remain unrealistic and unaffordable, at a time when the country needs to better manage public spending, not inflate it. He has shown that a federalist party can make serious inroads in Quebec, but it has come at the cost of an unwelcome promise to impose provisions of Quebec's language law in federal workplaces.
Only Stephen Harper and the Conservative Party have shown the leadership, the bullheadedness (let's call it what it is) and the discipline this country needs. He has built the Conservatives into arguably the only truly national party, and during his five years in office has demonstrated strength of character, resolve and a desire to reform. Canadians take Mr. Harper's successful stewardship of the economy for granted, which is high praise. He has not been the scary character portrayed by the opposition; with some exceptions, his government has been moderate and pragmatic.
Mr. Harper could achieve a great deal more if he would relax his grip on Parliament, its independent officers and the flow of information, and instead bring his disciplined approach to bear on the great challenges at hand. That is the great strike against the Conservatives: a disrespect for Parliament, the abuse of prorogation, the repeated attempts (including during this campaign) to stanch debate and free expression. It is a disappointing failing in a leader who previously emerged from a populist movement that fought so valiantly for democratic reforms.
Those who disdain the Harper approach should consider his overall record, which is good. The Prime Minister and the Conservative Party have demonstrated principled judgment on the economic file. They are not doctrinaire; with the support of other parties they adopted stimulus spending after the financial crash of 2008, when it was right to do so. They have assiduously pursued a whole range of trade negotiations. They have facilitated the extension of the GST/HST to Ontario and British Columbia, and have persisted in their plan for a national securities regulator. The Conservatives have greater respect, too, for the free market, and for freedom of international investment, in spite of their apparent yielding to political pressure in the proposed takeover of Potash Corp.
Even more determination will be needed to confront the sustainability of publicly funded health care in an aging society. Health care is suffering from chronic spending disease. If left unchecked, it could swallow as much as 31 cents of each new dollar in wealth created in Canada in the next 20 years. In spite of some unwise commitments he has made on subsidy increases to the provinces, Mr. Harper has the toughness and reformist instincts to push the provinces toward greater experimentation (in private delivery, for instance) and change.
The campaign of 2011 - so vicious and often vapid - should not be remembered fondly. But that will soon be behind us. If the result is a confident new Parliament, it could help propel Canada into a fresh period of innovation, government reform and global ambition. Stephen Harper and the Conservatives are best positioned to guide Canada there.Share. Now every day can be a Walker day. Now every day can be a Walker day.
The Walking Dead will now be an ongoing part of Universal Studios Hollywood, with a year-round Walking Dead attraction coming to the Los Angeles theme park this summer. The attraction was first announced on Talking Dead Sunday night.
For the past four years, The Walking Dead has been a part of Universal’s seasonal Halloween Horror Nights, featuring elaborate mazes based on the hugely popular TV show, and its inclusion has been frequently credited for greatly increasing attendance to the already successful Horror Nights events. The ongoing attraction sounds like it will be a similar experience, as far as an attraction guests to the park walk through, rather than a ride.
The Walking Dead executive producer/director Greg Nicotero and his special effects company, KNB Efx, have partnered with Universal Studios Hollywood for the attraction, with Nicotero’s team constructing prosthetics, using original molds from the series, for the walkers that will be a part of the attraction.
Check out the video announcing the attraction:
Exit Theatre Mode
Universal says the Walking Dead attraction, “will create a no-holds-barred experience that significantly intensifies any other iteration previously developed within the theme park. Coupled with authentic walker make-up effects, sophisticated animatronic walkers, substantially more detailed set design and costuming, and highly recognizable props replicated from the series, the attraction will deliver an uncompromised realistic environment that brings guests even further into the most watched show in cable television history.”
Said Larry Kurzweil, President of Universal Studios Hollywood, in a statement, “’The Walking Dead’ is a phenomenon that has successfully and consistently affected the psyche of viewers on a global basis, since its debut. We’re taking its intensity to the next level by collaborating with the show’s award-winning production team to create an authentic living representation of the series that can only be experienced at Universal Studios Hollywood.”
Eric Goldman is Executive Editor of IGN TV. You can follow him on Twitter at @TheEricGoldman, IGN at ericgoldman-ign and Facebook at Facebook.com/TheEricGoldman.Before I begin this review of the Tt eSports Level 10 M Gaming Mouse, let me admit this: I am unworthy of this $100 pointing device. My daily work is done using an Apple Magic Trackpad, and at night I use a cheap Logitech Marble Mouse trackball. Nothing in my casual gaming life is so precise or sensitive that it relies on the weight or sensor resolution of my input device.
That said, I can appreciate a finely crafted peripheral and the desire to own it. After all, I have a Happy Hacking Keyboard Professional2, shipped from Japan for around $300. I mean it’s a keyboard—what difference could a simplified keyset and Topre keyswitches make in my daily coding life? Well, my fingers do a happy dance all day long, so you just leave me and my exotic keyboard alone.
Specifications
You can get this from the the product website. But, here are the highlights:
185g with cable, ~158g without (as weighed on my digital coffee scale)
147 x 67.5 x 38.8mm
Available in Diamond Black, Iron White, or Military Green
Laser-Sensor Engine with 8200 DPI, adjustable by GUI to modify sensitivity level (default DPI setting: 800/1600/3200/5000)
GUI adjustable polling rate
11 programmable command keys, with 128kb on-board memory for 5 different gaming profiles
Function-Lock mechanism to prevent accidental key commands
Lighting effects on 4 regions, with 7 color options
Air-Through ventilation system: Open Structure and Space
Intelligent X/Y axis to adjust the height and angle of the mouse.
Gold-Plated USB connector with rubber-coating finish
Packaging
The Tt eSports Level 10 M Mouse arrives in a sleeved and well-built cardboard case reminiscent of high-end earphones.
The case is pulled from its sleeve with a plastic strip, and it opens with a pair of gate flaps sealed by a metallic sticker. The flaps reveal the device, tied down in a recessed compartment. The cord is folded away out of sight, offering a clean first impression.
The compartment lifts away to reveal the rest of the trimmings. The cord is coiled, bound with a built-in Velcro cable wrap. There’s a neoprene bag for the mouse, with a drawstring and separate compartments for device and cord.
Beneath the bag lies a cardboard envelope. Inside is found a warranty policy and a software disc. Additionally, there are three postcards advertising the mouse in different colors—you know, in case you want to brag about your sweet new gadget to snail-mail friends.
Also in the box is a metal hex key ensconced within a bit of plastic-sleeved foam. This last bit is nice, and reminds me of the maintenance kit that shipped with my Randolph Engineering aviator sunglasses.
Except for the mouse and the bag and the tool, this will all go into the recycling bin. But, I’ll feel really bad about it and will leave the box on a bookshelf for contemplation until spring cleaning comes.
Fit and Finish
The Tt eSports Level 10 M Mouse feels like a $100 mouse designed by Germans. Or maybe Salarians—my overall impression of the design is: “I’m Commander Shepard, and this is my favorite mouse on the Citadel.” I know there’s an officially-branded Mass Effect 3 mouse, but this one actually looks the part.
In terms of aesthetics, the top of the mouse hovers above the base, exposing just a hint of innards through the gap. Visible are metallic red cables leading from the two buttons and click-wheel up front, down into a rubbery black box housing the rest of the electronics and other controls.
The base of the mouse is a folded plate of aluminum, 1/16″ thick, with plastic strips to manage sliding friction. The cord is anchored to the device through an extension of the metal base, a decision that suggests durability. The top of the mouse is a curve of smooth plastic, with thickness matched closely to the aluminum plate. Both are attached at domed points, fore and aft.
The aft dome offers height and tilt adjustments for the top, using the included hex key tool. The height travel is limited to about 1/8″ (~3mm) and the tilt travel goes about 5 degrees from vertical to the right.
The 6′ USB cord is jacketed in fabric, with a built-in Velcro cable wrap and an attached rubber cap for the connector.
Almost nothing on this device flexes or creaks in a cheap way. The main exception is a 4-way hat: It wiggles alarmingly and is destined to someday snap right off after snagging on something in your go-bag. I guess that’s what the neoprene sack is meant to prevent.
Functionality
The Tt eSports Level 10 M Mouse offers 11 programmable buttons: Left & right; a middle click wheel; two more on each side; and finally a 4-way hat toward on the left.
There are several RGB LEDs, which can be customized using the software explained in the next section. The most functional of these lights form a bar meter on the right button, indicating the current DPI level for the device. This DPI level is selected with forward and back on the 4-way hat, by default.
I’ve never found that my hands get particularly warm or sweaty while mousing. But, in case that’s a problem, there’s a honeycomb grille under the left button that allows air to circulate through the open design. There’s no fan to cause air circulation, however.
I’ve read that avid mousers grip with claws, palms, and fingertips. In trying these various techniques, I found that the open design offers a lot of nice nooks and crannies for fingers. There’s no give to the aluminum base, though, so mashing your fingers against the sides might get uncomfortable after a few hours of gaming.
But, despite the mysterious “Function-Lock mechanism”, the side buttons and the 4-way hat seem too easy to trigger when clutching the sides of the mouse. And yet, some are rather hard to trigger on purpose. I’m guessing that this is just something to get used to.
Software
The Tt eSports Level 10 M Mouse includes software for Windows, but it’s a mess: Part marketing presentation, part configuration tool, all clunky and sprinkled with typos. This does not feel like it should be part of a $100 mouse. Still, the features managed by the software are impressive.
A software disc is included in the box, but this contains an outdated version of everything. Your best bet is to visit the product site to download a firmware updater and fresh configuration software.
At the top there’s a “?” button, but it sends me to a product spec page for a “THERON” gaming mouse. That’s not the mouse I have on hand. There’s an “R” button, which leads me to register some sort of social profile sign-up page but I don’t know why I’d want to do that.
Moving on to “Macro Key”, you can build timed sequences of keypresses and additional commands. The UI for composing and editing is cumbersome, but I got used to it after awhile.
To assign macros and commands to mouse buttons, click the corresponding parts of the hero image of the mouse and use “Key Assignment” buttons on the right. Well, except for the last two—those launch product marketing videos, for some reason. Oh, that’s why the software download was over 40MB.
Under “Light Option”, you can choose from 7 colors for each of the 3 RGB LEDs illuminating the left mouse button, middle click wheel, and the Tt eSports dragon hiding under the ventilation grille. The DPI meter stays red, though. Colored lights are pretty.
In “Normal Mode”, the lights throb slowly; I’ve no idea why, and it leaves me vaguely unsettled. There’s also a “Battle Mode”, wherein “the illumination effects will change according to the clicking frequency”. I’ve yet to intuit the relationship during use, but this may appeal to RTS gamers whose skill is measured in actions-per-minute. Seems like it might make your mouse look like it’s on fire when you are.
Under “Performance”, you can tweak various settings such as DPI sensitivity, polling frequency, double click speed, cursor speed, scroll speed, etc.
Under “Profile Management”, you can save all the above into named profiles. This confused me at first: Although there are numbered tabs for profiles across the top of the UI, you first have to save a named profile. Once you have a named profile, then you can assign it to a numbered tab.
Despite my initial confusion, this seems handy for building up a library of named profiles devoted to specific games. Then, the numbered tabs let you assemble a 5 profile load-out when it’s game time.
Assembling a profile load-out is important: The 4-way hat is also a tricksy 12th push-in button that cannot be reassigned. When you to push it, the mouse cycles though the numbered profile tabs. This is where the light color customization becomes a handy feature: The color scheme can indicate which profile is currently active. And, when installed, the software offers an on-screen display of changes to DPI sensitivity and profile selection.
But, you don’t need the software once you’ve assembled a profile load-out: Profiles are saved to 128kb of memory within the mouse itself. The mouse also acts as a USB HID keyboard, so your macros are executed in hardware as simulated keystrokes. Thus, you can leave the software behind and carry this mouse in its neoprene bag to another machine, and find all your customizations have come with you.
In fact, I was totally surprised to find that all the keystroke macros I’d configured under Windows just worked when I connected it to my Mac. No special Mac OS X drivers, the macros and profile switching all just worked. Of course some Windows-specific commands didn’t work, such as launching programs. But, no big deal.
Conclusion
The Tt eSports Level 10 M Mouse is nicely packaged and well-built. It has a few awkward points and comes with cruddy software—but, overall, this is a fine piece of hardware with clever embedded tricks that go far beyond most mice I’ve pushed around.
I really like the design and build quality of this mouse—it feels quite durable, except for that loose and protruding 4-way hat. The fabric-jacketed USB cord is generously long and the addition of a built-in cable wrap is a nice touch.
Since I’m a casual gamer, I can’t really speak very much to how this mouse might improve my performance. The weight is nice and substantial, but can’t be customized like a Logitech G9X. I found the side buttons and 4-way hat are hard to use when I want to, yet easy to hit on accident depending on grip. I can’t imagine myself using these buttons deftly and in the heat of the moment, neither for programmed commands nor for profile switching. This mystifies me, but might just be due to the clubs I have for hands.
The height and tilt adjustments for the top of the mouse are interesting, but I can’t honestly say I noticed much of a difference. These small changes seem not to matter much to my comfort or casual gaming experience, but your mileage may vary.
And, someday soon I’m going to lose the little included hex key, probably when I recycle the packaging and forget I left the tool in the box. (Just like what I did with the maintenance kit that came with my sunglasses.) A standard Allen wrench should work in a pinch. Though, it might have been nicer if these sorts of adjustments used built-in thumbscrews, like a Mad Catz R.A.T.9.
Finally, the software makes me yearn for the mouse control panels of yore from Logitech and Kensington. It’s kind of a point-and-click adventure to come up with the right set of interactions to program the device to your liking. But, thanks to the hardware in the device, this software is not crucial to its usage once you’ve gotten some profiles loaded into it. Again, that profiles are stored in memory inside the mouse, and that it executes macros in hardware that even work on a Mac is a really neat trick.
Overall, I’ll repeat my admission that I am unworthy of this $100 pointing device. Though there are other interesting options at this price point, some gamers may find it a nice luxury addition to the kit bag. I think it’s worthy of the Icrontic Stamp of Approval for being a product I’d recommend.
The tT eSports Level 10 M Mouse is available in three colors; curiously all three colors are different prices, and pricing is all over the map. White (as reviewed) is $79.99 (currently $69.99 with rebate on Newegg) or $95.85 at Amazon. The Military Green is $74.99 after rebate at Newegg and $96.82 at Amazon. The Diamond Black is $89.99 after rebate at Newegg and $88.07 at Amazon. Who knows.Morocco on Thursday ordered 84 international staffers of the UN peacekeeping mission in Western Sahara to leave following a spiraling diplomatic spat over UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s comments on the disputed territory.
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UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric said Morocco's order was "in clear contradiction" of its international obligations and a challenge to the UN Security Council, which authorised the mission. The mission is meant to monitor a ceasefire and help organise a long-delayed referendum on the Western Sahara's future.
The council was meeting behind closed doors Thursday to discuss Morocco's actions. Dujarric said UN peacekeeping officials are planning for a number of possible contingencies, including terminating the mission.
The expulsion order was the latest development in a diplomatic spat between Morocco and the UN that has been intensifying this week following Ban's recent visit to refugee camps for displaced Sahrawis in Algeria.
Ban’s use of the term “occupation” sparked outrage in the Moroccan capital of Rabat, with Moroccan Foreign Minister Salaheddine Mezouar blasting the UN for abandoning its “neutral” stance on the territory.
It was followed by a demonstration Sunday that drew tens of thousands of people protesting Ban’s comments and pledging allegiance to Morocco’s King Mohammed VI in the heart of the kingdom’s capital.
Ban’s press office responded by conveying his “astonishment at the recent statement of the government of Morocco and expressed his deep disappointment and anger regarding the demonstration that was mobilised on Sunday, which targeted him in person”.
It was the start of a diplomatic war of words that has shown no sign of abating. Foreign Minister Mezouar has threatened further measures and has told reporters that “decisions will be announced” depending on the outcome of Thursday’s meeting.
A prickly position
Morocco has long had a prickly position on Western Sahara, a region it annexed in 1975 following the withdrawal of colonial power Spain.
Last month, Morocco suspended contact with the EU after a European court invalidated an EU farm trade accord with Rabat, saying it should exclude the disputed Western Sahara. In September, the Moroccan government boycotted Swedish companies over accusation of a change in Sweden’s stance on the issue, baffling firms such as IKEA.
The latest spat though is the biggest dispute between the North African kingdom and the UN.
Earlier this week, Morocco threatened to pull out its soldiers from UN peacekeeping missions. A statement from the foreign ministry said it was "examining the ways and means of withdrawing Moroccan contingents engaged in peacekeeping operations".
Morocco currently contributes more than 2,300 soldiers and police to UN peacekeeping missions, mainly in African countries such as Mali, Ivory Coast, the Central African Republic and Burundi.
The UN mission based in Western Sahara, MINURSO, was set up to organise a referendum on the future of the territory, but that never materialised.
The UN chief wants to achieve progress in resolving the 40-year conflict over Western Sahara before he steps down at the end of the year.
Following Morocco's annexation of Western Sahara, the North African kingdom fought a local independence movement called the Polisario Front until the UN brokered a cease-fire in 1991.
Morocco considers the vast, mineral-rich Western Sahara as its "southern provinces" and has proposed wide-ranging autonomy for the region, but the Polisario Front insists on self-determination through a referendum for the local population. That hasn't occurred because of disputes over voter lists.
(FRANCE 24 with AFP, AP and REUTERS)Arena shooter Drawn to Death is the first PlayStation Plus game to be announced for April.
What’s more, the day it becomes available for Plus members will be Drawn to Death’s release day, April 4.
Announced during Sony’s PlayStation Experience in 2014, the third-person shooter brawler takes place inside the pages of a notebook. Created by a high-school student, the drawings come to life and shoot it out in competitive online action.
Since its announcement, David Jaffe and his team at The Bartlet Jones Supernatural Detective Agency have added new features to the game, which he detailed in full over on the PS Blog.
Sphinx Missions : Wake the Sphinx and solve eight battle-focused riddles. For every riddle solved, a new weapon or level will be unlocked.
: Wake the Sphinx and solve eight battle-focused riddles. For every riddle solved, a new weapon or level will be unlocked. Character-centric Missions : Besides leveling, players can take on 15 missions per each of the six launch characters. Earn costumes and rare Taunts working through characters. Master all character missions and the player could come “face to face with the Volcano God.”
: Besides leveling, players can take on 15 missions per each of the six launch characters. Earn costumes and rare Taunts working through characters. Master all character missions and the player could come “face to face with the Volcano God.” Mystery Boxes : The boxes are filled with taunts and character skins. Get a free Mystery Box by playing three matches online and then earn Mystery Boxes for every 150 kills on the battlefield.
: The boxes are filled with taunts and character skins. Get a free Mystery Box by playing three matches online and then earn Mystery Boxes for every 150 kills on the battlefield. Climb the Tower : The launch tower is based on the theme Dark Fairy Tales. Play in ranked mode and earn a chance to reach the top of the tower. A sticker will be handed out for every floor reached.
: The launch tower is based on the theme Dark Fairy Tales. Play in ranked mode and earn a chance to reach the top of the tower. A sticker will be handed out for every floor reached. Insane Mystery Special Offer: A surprise not ready to be detailed – only the hint: “Destroy my enemies and my life… is yours!”
If you’d like a look at the game in-action, Jaffe and co. will be hosting a livestream on Twitch later today.
It kicks off at 3pm PT/6pm ET/10pm Uk.Although segregation on public buses was twice banned—under Browder v. Gayle in 1956, and Boyton v. Virginia in 1960—the Supreme Court rulings continued to be ignored, especially in the Deep South.Consequently, the Congress of Racial Equality planned a peaceful demonstration by black and white volunteers known as the “Freedom Ride. ” Knowing their actions would incite a crisis situation, activists hoped to force the government into action.Participants planned to ride in two buses from Washington, D.C., into Alabama and Georgia—both areas of powerful resistance. The groups hoped to reach New Orleans by May 17 to celebrate the anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education In a Teacher’s Domain video interview, James Farmer, the lead CORE organizer, explained that blacks and whites would swap seats, with blacks sitting in the front, and that they would also attempt to integrate rest stop bathrooms and waiting rooms.On May 4, at 11:00 a.m., the first of the two buses left Washington, D.C. The first bus, a Greyhound, carried seven freedom riders, including the group’s leader, Joe Perkins. There were also two undercover corporals, Ell Cowling and Harry Sims, who had been sent by Floyd Mann, the Alabama Highway Patrol manager, under the direction of Gov. John Patterson, to find out the group’s agenda.The first assault happened in Rock Hill, S.C., but more serious trouble waited for them in Alabama. As they entered Anniston, Ala., a group of about 50 people, many of them Klansmen, surrounded the vehicle.Although the driver may have welcomed the mob, the undercover agents rushed to block the bus’s doors. The crowd hurled rocks and brass knuckles through the bus windows and slashed its tires. After some time the police arrived. However as historian Raymond Arsenault revealed to NPR, they made no arrests and escorted the bus onto the main road, though brought it only as far as the city line.A caravan of Klansmen followed the bus. With its tires now flat, the mob began smashing its windows with crowbars and trying to push it over. Cowling stood guard in the doorway. Arsenault described how one of the men threw a firebomb into the bus, forcing the bus’s passengers to flee through doors and windows. Many of the passengers were beaten with bats and other weapons. He recalled, “At one point … the mob surged forward. But Cowling's pistol, the heat of the fire, and the acrid fumes wafting from the burning upholstery kept them away.”Eventually the police came and the wounded were taken to the hospital, where many of the blacks were refused treatment. Fred Shuttlesworth, who had earlier warned CORE leaders of trouble, sent several cars of gun-wielding pastors to retrieve the wounded from the hospital—the men had broken their promise to Shuttlesworth not to carry weapons. With weapons in view, they led the Freedom Riders past the same mob just outside.Man acquitted of murder of British student Meredith Kercher after spending four years in jail sought sum for unjust imprisonment
An Italian court has rejected a compensation claim for more than €500,000 (£426,000) by Raffaele Sollecito, who was cleared of the 2007 murder of the British exchange student Meredith Kercher after spending nearly four years in jail.
Sollecito, 32, had tried to claim the maximum possible sum from the state for wrongful imprisonment, after spending nearly four years in jail.
He and his former girlfriend Amanda Knox had each been facing more than 20 years in prison for Kercher’s murder before being acquitted by Italy’s highest court in March 2015.
Sollecito was arrested days after the murder. Kercher was Knox’s roommate in Perugia and had been studying on an Erasmus programme when she was stabbed to death in the flat they shared.
Sollecito said the protracted ordeal left his family with debts of €400,000. But his claim was rejected on Saturday by the Florence appeals court, which took into account contradictions in Sollecito’s statements at the start of the murder investigation.
While the court acknowledged Sollecito’s unjust imprisonment in the light of his eventual acquittal, it said in a ruling that he contributed by making “contradictory or even frankly untrue” statements in the early stages of the investigation, which constituted “intent or gross negligence”. The court ruled that this eliminated Sollecito’s right to compensation.
Speaking to Italian newspaper La Repubblica in the immediate aftermath of his acquittal, Sollecito said: “For seven years I have had a suspended life, I have lived with the fear of being arrested, but knowing I am innocent.”
Writing on Facebook after the latest court decision, Sollecito said: “I thought I had lived through the darkest pages of the Italian justice system, but despite being declared innocent by the supreme court, I must acknowledge that my harsh detention was justified.”
Sollecito’s lawyer, Giulia Bongiorno, said she would appeal the decision at the supreme court, arguing that the Florence appeals court had failed to consider that his conflicting statements in the early days of the murder investigation were given under duress.Image copyright AP Image caption Augustus (Ansel Elgort) and Hazel (Shailene Woodley) meet at a cancer support group
Teen romance The Fault in Our Stars trounced Tom Cruise's latest action movie when it opened at the US box office; now it's time for the UK's cinemas to be flooded with tears.
It is not much of a spoiler to reveal that, unlike many recent Young Adult books-turned-movies, The Fault in Our Stars does not feature any vampires (Twilight), or take part in a dystopian universe (The Hunger Games).
However, the love story of 16-year-old Hazel Grace Lancaster (played by Shailene Woodley) and Augustus Waters (Ansel Elgort), who meet at a cancer support group, has become a phenomenon.
People can relate to a love story. Everyone wants a beautiful love with someone Ansel Elgort, Augustus in The Fault in Our Stars
The book has sold more than nine million copies, more than 23 million people have watched the film's trailer and it took $48.2m (£28.7m) in its opening weekend at the US box office, leaving Tom Cruise's big budget blockbuster Edge Of Tomorrow trailing with just $29.1m (£17.3m).
Its success, says Elgort, is down to the fact that it's a "real story".
"You know people do like stories about vampires and there are very successful franchises and TV shows based on them or dystopian worlds.
"But young people [also] want stories that aren't fantasy, that are real and they can really relate to, because it's very close to themselves," he says.
Human beings
Author John Green was inspired to write the book after working as a student chaplain in a children's hospital, and it is dedicated to his friend Esther Earl, who died of thyroid cancer in 2010, aged 16.
The story doesn't shy away from the realities of cancer - Hazel wears an oxygen tube throughout the film, and Gus has lost a leg from the disease.
Image copyright AP Image caption Author John Green calls his millions of Twitter followers "Nerdfighters"
Elgort says he spent time researching his role with young cancer patients.
"The most important thing was just making him a real person, a regular guy and not playing his sickness," says Elgort.
"These characters, Gus and Hazel, they're so relatable because they're human beings - they're not cancer."
Green didn't write the screenplay - leaving the business of adapting his book to Scott Neustadter and Michael H Weber, who had a cult hit with indie romcom (500) Days of Summer - but he spent a lot of time on set, filming and tweeting from behind the scenes.
Image caption Angelica and Merrou were among hundreds of fans at an event in London this week
His own brief cameo was cut by director Josh Boone, but Elgort says his presence gave the cast "a lot of confidence".
Many have likened the author's status to that of a rock star, with 2.6 million followers on Twitter, who he calls his "Nerdfighters", and a YouTube channel, which he runs with his brother.
He has even been credited with "saving" Young Adult literature and the fans are certainly passionate.
A meet the cast event at The Apple Store on London's Regent Street attracted hundreds earlier this week, many queuing up from first thing in the morning.
Angelica, 17, had spent three hours making a shirt emblazoned with her favourite quotes from the book.
"It's not just one of those love stories. The characters are so intelligent and witty," she explains, having read the book "seven times this year, three times last year and a time before."
"It's one of those things that I can't even explain," she adds. "It's got me through so much."
Elysia, 14, is quick to dismiss the idea of "Sick Lit" as a booming Young Adult genre, claiming "it's just this story" that fans are interested in.
"It makes us feel the same way that [Hazel] feels about him (Augustus). It makes us sad, and at the same time it makes us happy," she says.
Image copyright Handout Image caption Elgort (left with Nat Woolf who plays Issac and Woodley) stuck as close to the book as possible
One fan called the character of Augustus Waters "the love of her life", and Elgort admits there was pressure to live up to the Gus readers have created in their minds.
"I was worried when I first started. He's so important to a lot of people who love him and were affected by him and the story - I didn't want to mess him up," says the actor.
"He's written in a certain way and that's the way I was going to portray him. I just wanted to stick as close to the book as possible."
That hasn't stopped some finding flaws in Elgort's performance, but he says he's happy with it.
"Even if I got a negative tweet or something, 'Oh you're a terrible Augustus', I wouldn't be offended at this point because I'm happy with my work and a lot of people are."
His performance has certainly had an impact. Tearful fans write about how to deal with their "cry-hangovers" and tell Twitter how many tissues they needed to get through a screening.
"Just seen The Fault In Our Stars," tweeted singer Nina Nesbitt after the UK premiere. "Swimming home in my own tears."
Image copyright AP Image caption Elgort and Woodley previously starred together in Divergent
For fans who have had cancer themselves, the story is especially moving.
Merrou, who is 17 and in remission from leukaemia, brought a sign she'd made to Monday's fan event. It read: "This film means everything to me because I am a cancer survivor".
"In some sort of crazy way I feel like John Green has got in my head and written a book that I get," she tells the BBC.
"Although it is such a sad story, it's helped me through so much as well.
"You feel very helpless and I think that he really captures that in the book. Even though it is make believe, he definitely got it right. He got me right."
Elgort acknowledges cancer is "a big theme in the movie", but he says that's not the only reason the story has touched so many people.
"Everyone is touched by cancer in their life, that's why people can relate to the story. [But] then it is also just a love story.
"Everyone wants a love story. Everyone wants a beautiful love with someone."T-Mobile US (NYSE:TMUS) wants to make sure the FCC knows the benefits of using Licensed Assisted Access (LAA) technology in, among others, the 3.5 GHz band, saying it's compatible with Wi-Fi and should be considered as the FCC adopts rules for the 3.5 GHz band.
T-Mobile representatives met via |
for traveling and winning, by the way).
Some SEC folks will get all magnanimous and tell you that playing East Patsy State helps the Fighting Petunias financially. So its about noblesse oblige.
Bollocks.
What it's really about is making life easier for the SEC. The top teams get an extra easy win, and the extra patsy means the bottom SEC teams can schedule four wins annually. That means the SEC bottom-feeders can schedule all the way to two games short of bowl eligibility.
Then, when eight or so teams are bowl eligible, pundits will be wowed by the depth of the SEC.
Further, the top-line SEC teams strength of schedule will be boosted by beating conference teams that schedule their way to a winning record or at least four wins.
Finally, eight conference games helps get teams preseason rankings, which is invaluable to the perception of a conference as well as the fortunes of its individual teams.
For example, take Mississippi State. Here's what they did last year. The Bulldogs have improved under Dan Mullen, but they would have been a middle-of-the-road team in the Pac-10 in 2010. They didn't beat any good teams, but they ended up 9-4 due to scheduling and finished ranked a wildly-inflated 15th.
And that earned them a No. 20 preseason ranking in the coaches poll, which the Bulldogs figure to maintain because they've scheduled four easy nonconference victories again: Memphis, Louisiana Tech, UAB and Tennessee-Martin.
No offense Mississippi State, but we'd love to see you schedule a game out West. You might enjoy a trip away from Starkville.
While we tweak in jest -- we're all friends here, right? -- this is a substantive issue.
Starting in 2017, you will have three conferences playing by one set of rules. And two others playing by another. That isn't good for college football.A longtime associate of Philadelphia U.S. Rep. Bob Brady has pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI during an investigation into whether Brady paid an opponent to drop his 2012 challenge for Brady’s seat.
Democratic political consultant Donald Jones appeared in court Friday, and his attorney, Alan Tauber, said it may not be the last time.
“The guilty plea is a cooperation plea,” Tauber said, “so he’s obligated to cooperate in any manner that the government feels is necessary.”
Prosecutors charged Jones and fellow consultant Ken Smukler with orchestrating a set of phony transactions to hide payments from Brady’s campaign fund to his former opponent, Jimmie Moore, and his former campaign manager, Carolyn Caveness.
Brady has not been charged, but prosecutors have alleged in court filings that he met with Moore and struck a deal in which Moore would withdraw from the race in return for $90,000 from Brady’s committee to retire Moore’s campaign debts.
Both Moore and Caveness have pleaded guilty to campaign finance violations in the case, and they have agreed to cooperate with prosecutors.
Jones may be called upon to testify against Smukler, who has also worked with Brady for many years.
Charges against Brady appear less likely now than earlier this year, since the five-year statute of limitations has expired on the meeting, payments and campaign finance reports involved in the alleged deal.
Jones could face a maximum sentence of five years in prison and a $250,000 fine.
Tauber said Jones regrets lying to authorities and wants to move on.
“He’s eager to put this unfortunate chapter of his life behind him and get back to being a hardworking, law-abiding and productive citizen,” Tauber said.Alcatraz Guide Home News Alcatraz Guide
Alcatraz Island
Alcatraz is a new player-hub located north-east of San Francisco. It's a non-combat area, this means you cannot draw weapons here. Read our guide for a virtual tour around the island.
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Expeditions
Expeditions are new, 4-player instanced Co-Ops that get gradually harder with enemies you haven't seen before.
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Self-Revive Guide
Having your Self-Revive ready is an important part of expeditions. Learn everything you need to know about self-revive.
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Cyber Rigs & Cyber Chips
Expeditions introduce new items that can drop: Cyber Rigs and Cyber Chips. They enhance an Arkhunters power.
Read Trion's Preview:
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Read also our guides about
Cyber Rigs
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Cyber Chips
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Hunter Requisitions
A new currency introduced with Alcatraz are so called Hunter Requisitions. You need them to enter Expeditions. Read the full guide on how to obtain them, and what you can spend them on.
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New Inventory Features
Alcatraz introduces two new inventory and loadout updates. You can now perform salvage matrix options from within the loadout or inventory screen. You can also see next to a weapon if it has a backpack or weapons synergy.
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Alcatraz Pursuits
Alcatraz introduces a bunch of new pursuits, helping you get closer to the EGO Cap.
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New EGO Cap
Alcatraz changed the EGO Cap to 6.000. Read the history of EGO Caps here.
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Updated Power Growth Rate
Meant is the power your character and NPCs gain when their EGO Rating increases. The current power growth rate made things challenging for low ego players. Read Rashere's explanation on what he did.
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Updated Arkbreaker Weapons
After the Weapon Bonus Roll changes, the Arkbreaker Weapons have been updated to Mk II Variants.
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Raising Event Rewards and Removal of Woot Loot
Woot Loot was based a lot on luck. So sometimes, your scrip and salvage income could be very high or very low, depending on your luck. To make Event Rewards more skill based, Woot Loot got removed and Event Rewards raised by roughly 25%.
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Additions to the Patron Pass
The Alcatraz update introduces new boosts as well as the new currency, Hunter Requisitions, both of which will be included in the Patron Pass.
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New Store Outfits
Fitting the prison theme, there are three new outfits coming out with the update: Convict, Inmate, Runaway.
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New Store Boxes
To get you started on expeditions, there are two new store boxes with Cyber Rigs and Cyber Chips.
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No comments posted here yet.programme of reform to make the roads ready for advanced driver assistance and driverless technology is launched
consultation ‘chance for everyone to have their say about new vehicle technologies’
A major consultation to help pave the way for automated cars to be used on British roads is being launched, with all drivers invited to have their say.
Under the proposed measures, rules will be changed so automated vehicles can be insured for use on the roads.
In addition, the Highway code and regulations are to be altered so advanced driver assistance systems that change lanes on the motorway and park the vehicle by remote control can be used safely.
Separately, the government will next month launch a competition for a further £30 million from the Intelligent Mobility Fund, for research and development of innovative connected and autonomous vehicle technologies.
This builds on the first £20 million awarded to a number of projects in February, and ensures the UK is able to take advantage of the latest technological developments in driverless cars research. An additional £19 million fund is also paving the way for driverless car projects in Greenwich, Bristol, and a joint project in Milton Keynes and Coventry.
The government is determined that Britain leads the way globally in embracing the safe development of driverless technology.
Transport Secretary Patrick McLoughlin said:
Driverless car technology will revolutionise the way we travel and deliver better journeys. Britain is leading the way but I want everyone to have the chance to have a say on how we embrace and use these technologies. Our roads are already some of the safest in the world and increasing advanced driver assist and driverless technologies have the potential to help cut the number of accidents further.
Business Secretary Sajid Javid said:
Britain’s auto industry has always been at the forefront of innovation and research. This additional £30 million of funding for reseach and development ( R&D ) is a further sign of our commitment to making sure we’re creating opportunities for UK businesses to thrive and attract global investment in world-class technology.
Cars with advanced driver assistance features, like remote control parking and motorway assist, are expected to be on sale in Britain in the next 2 to 4 years with automated and driverless vehicles expected on the roads any time from the mid-2020s onwards.
Advanced driver assistance systems and ‘self-driving’ technologies will transform travel helping deliver safer, smoother and smarter road journeys.
The consultation on the 2 changes is due to get underway today (11 July 2016) and will last for 9 weeks. It is the start of a rolling programme of reform on the roadmap to fully automated vehicles.
Under the proposals:
the ‘Highway code’ and regulations will be changed to support the safe use of remote control parking and motorway assist features
insurance law will be changed so that, in the future, motorists who have handed control to their ‘self-driving’ cars can be insured properly
The proposed changes to insurance will be brought forward in the Modern Transport Bill. Motor insurance will remain compulsory but will be extended to cover product liability for automated vehicles.
When a motorist has handed control to their vehicle, they can be reassured that their insurance will be there if anything goes wrong.
James Dalton, Director of General Insurance Policy at the Association of British Insurers (ABI), said:
The ABI’s Automated Driving Insurer Group has been engaged in constructive and productive discussions with the DfT for many months now so it is good to see the importance of insurance to the vehicles of the future recognised within this consultation. The development of automated driving will revolutionise motoring, potentially as important a road safety innovation as the seatbelt. Insurers strongly support the Government’s ambition of making the UK a world leader in this technology and believe the insurance industry has a key role in helping give consumers confidence in using these vehicles when they become more widely available.
The driver’s insurer will still pay out in the normal way so road accident victims are promptly reimbursed – but the insurer will then be able to claim the money back from the car company if the vehicle is deemed to be at fault.This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: Is the Democratic National Committee trying to undermine the presidential campaign of Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders? That’s the charge Sanders’ team is making after a dust-up over a breach of voter information. On Friday, the DNC suspended Sanders’ access to a critical database after finding his staffers had improperly viewed information collected by the campaign of front-runner Hillary Clinton. Several Sanders employees reportedly browsed and downloaded the Clinton campaign’s data after a computer glitch made it briefly available. The DNC responded by blocking Sanders from the voter database, effectively cutting off the campaign’s voter outreach and the source of an estimated $600,000 in donations per day. The DNC backed down after Sanders filed suit. But Sanders campaign manager Jeff Weaver accused party leadership of trying to thwart the Vermont senator’s bid.
JEFF WEAVER: By their action, the leadership of the Democratic National Committee is now actively attempting to undermine our campaign. This is unacceptable. Individual leaders of the DNC can support Hillary Clinton in any way they want, but they are not going to sabotage our campaign, one of the strongest grassroot campaigns in modern history. We are announcing today that if the DNC continues to hold our data hostage and continues to try to attack the heart and soul of our grassroots campaign, we will be in federal court this afternoon seeking immediate relief.
AMY GOODMAN: Though Sanders did win and was able to regain access to the database, he has also criticized the DNC for leaking the story to the media instead of handling the issue internally. Senator Sanders and former Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley have also accused the DNC of trying to help Clinton by limiting the number of debates and scheduling them during low-viewership times like Saturday nights. The Sanders campaign has fired one staffer and suspended two others involved in the data breach. At the Democratic presidential debate Saturday night, Sanders apologized to Clinton but called for an independent probe. Sanders suggested Clinton’s team may have accessed his data at other points during the presidential campaign.
DAVID MUIR: Senator Sanders, you fired a campaign staffer, you have sued the Democratic National Committee—all of this after your campaign acknowledged that some of your staffers, quote, “irresponsibly accessed data from another campaign.” The Clinton campaign called this a very egregious breach of data and ethics, and said, quote, “Our data was stolen.” Did they overstate this, or were your staffers essentially stealing part of the Clinton playbook?
SEN. BERNIE SANDERS: David, let me give you a little bit of background here. The DNC has hired vendors. On two occasions, there were breaches in information. Two months ago, our staff found information on our computers from the Clinton campaign. And when our staffers said, “Whoa, what’s going on here?” they went to the DNC quietly. They went to the vendor and said, “Hey, something is wrong,” and that was quietly dealt with. None of that information was looked at. Our staff at that point did exactly the right thing.
A few days ago, similar incident happened. There was a breach. Because the DNC vendor screwed up, information came to our campaign. In this case, our staff did the wrong thing: They looked at that information. As soon as we learned that they looked at that information, we fired that person. We are now doing an independent internal investigation to see who else was involved.
Thirdly, what I have a really problem with—and as you mentioned, this is a problem; I recognize it as a problem—but what the DNC did, arbitrarily, without discussing it with us, is shut off our access to our own information, crippling our campaign. That is an egregious act. I’m glad that late last night that was resolved.
Fourthly, I work—look forward to working with Secretary Clinton for an investigation, an independent investigation, about all of the breaches that have occurred from day one in this campaign, because I am not convinced that information from our campaign may not have ended up in her campaign. Don’t know that, but we need an independent investigation, and I hope Secretary Clinton will agree with me for the need of that.
Last point. When we saw the breach two months, we didn’t go running to the media and make a big deal about it. And it bothers me very much that rather than working on this issue to resolve it, it has become many press releases from the Clinton campaign later.
AMY GOODMAN: The dispute over voter information comes as the Sanders campaign says it’s on pace to break President Obama’s record for individual donations. Sanders has received over 2 million contributions so far, putting him in position to shatter Obama’s record of 2.2 million. The average donation to Sanders is less than $30.
Sanders is breaking donation records despite being subjected to what he calls a “blackout” in the corporate media. A recent report finds the flagship news programs at major networks—NBC, CBS and ABC—have dedicated 234 minutes this year to stories about Donald Trump, compared to just 10 minutes for Sanders. The Tyndall Report found ABC’s World News Tonight, for example, devoted 81 minutes to Trump campaign stories up 'til the end of November this year—and just 20 seconds to Sanders. This is for the entire year until December. The gap comes despite Trump and Sanders often having similar levels of support in primary polls, and often Sanders having much larger campaign rallies. In a statement, the Sanders campaign said, quote, “The corporately-owned media may not like Bernie's anti-establishment views but for the sake of American democracy they must allow for a fair debate in this presidential campaign.”
Well, we’re joined right now by Symone Sanders, national press secretary for the Bernie Sanders campaign. She’s joining us from Burlington, Vermont. That is the state that Bernie Sanders represents in the Senate.
Symone, thanks for joining us. Start off by talking about the significance of this breach. Your campaign has been shook up. You have a top digital staffer who’s been fired and two others who have been suspended.
SYMONE SANDERS: Thank you for having me this morning. So, yes, it—we were alerted earlier—late last week that a breach had indeed happened, due to a failure by the DNC’s vendor. After discussions with the DNC, it came to our attention that one of our staffers had inappropriately accessed data. That is not acceptable to the Sanders campaign, so that staffer was fired.
Thursday and Friday, we found out Friday that the DNC had shut off our access to our voter database. That was an egregious overreach of the DNC, and that was unacceptable to us. So we stood up, and we’re so happy that 550,000 folks across the country stood with us and signed petitions on Friday asking, and actually demanding, that the DNC restore our access to our voter database. That is a database that millions of people across America have worked to compile. That is a database that our over 2.3 million contributions have paid for. And that was a database that was ours. We are happy that late Friday evening, early Saturday morning, access to our database was restored.
And Senator Sanders, you know, on that debate stage Saturday night, he would—he did great. It was a big night for him. And he came out with boundless energy. He apologized for the issue at hand, on our staffer. And he also apologized to our supporters, because that is not the kind of campaign we’re running. And then he got back to talking about the issues.
AMY GOODMAN: Is your campaign alleging that Hillary Clinton’s campaign may have done the same, taking advantage of this breach in the DNC database?
SYMONE SANDERS: You know, we don’t know. That is why we are calling for an independent investigation of the DNC’s handling of all the campaigns’ data during this campaign season, because there’s no way for us to know without an independent investigation.
AMY GOODMAN: Now, I wanted to ask you about the press coverage. First of all, a lot of people might be surprised today to even know there was a Democratic debate on Saturday night, because these debates are taking place on Saturday night. In fact, the next one, while it’s not Saturday night, it will be Sunday night of the three-day Martin Luther King weekend—huge football weekend, right? That’s going to be January 17th. Who determines when these debates will take place? The Republican debates get massive attention. They’re during the week. Why are these sequestered like this?
SYMONE SANDERS: You know, I’m not sure. That is up to the DNC. The DNC sets the debate schedule. And here we are, coming off the heels of a Saturday night debate this Monday morning. We did—we put out a press release recently talking about the Bernie blackout, if you will. As you noted, a report recently came out that noted that Senator Sanders had only received 10 minutes of coverage from the flagship television newscasts this year, 20 seconds from ABC World News Tonight—just 20 seconds. So, we know that Senator Sanders is attracting thousands and thousands of people to his rallies across the country, more than any other presidential candidate in this race, Republican or Democrat. We know that he has raised millions of dollars. We just—we just announced that we had raised—we have over 2.3 million contributions to our campaign, more than any White House bid in history. Senator Sanders, in Republican match-ups, does better than Secretary Clinton, with Donald Trump and other Republicans in this White House race. He’s snagged endorsements from Communications Workers of America, the Working Families Party, Democracy for America, the National Nurses United, American Postal Workers. But these things are all but ignored by the flagship television newscasts.
AMY GOODMAN: So do you think that you’re being as ignored this week, when you have this issue of the controversy in the glitch—it will certainly turn things around—reporting on Bernie Sanders negatively?
SYMONE SANDERS: Well, I definitely don’t think we were ignored on Friday or Saturday. And it’s unfortunate that it took a, quote-unquote, “fiasco” or “scandal,” if you will, as other folks were reporting it, an issue, for flagship news stations to cover what is definitely a competitive Democratic primary. But, look, despite the fact that some flagship news stations have decided—have essentially locked Senator Sanders out of some of this coverage, the political revolution is rolling on. You know, Senator Sanders’ name ID is going up. In The Des Moines Register/Bloomberg poll that came out last week, Senator Sanders was polling at 39 percent. In that same poll in January of earlier this year, he was at 5 percent. So even without this coverage of these flagship television news stations, Senator Sanders’ support is growing. We are going out, and we’re meeting voters where they are, in communities across the country, not just in Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada, but in Virginia, in Alabama, in Colorado and all across this country. We are reaching out to folks and asking them to join the political revolution.
AMY GOODMAN: Interestingly, the presidential candidate who gained the most Twitter followers during the Republican debate last week was not one of the Republicans, was not Donald Trump, it was Bernie Sanders. Now, this was right around the time that Bernie Sanders did that interview with Killer Mike, the well-known rapper, hip-hop artist in Atlanta, Georgia, who introduced him at a rally there and also did that barbershop interview with him. Can you talk about the significance of this support, and also Bernie Sanders—something that didn’t get tremendous attention—just a few weeks ago, going to Sandtown, going to Baltimore, to where Freddie Gray was killed, and why he did this, right at the beginning of December?
SYMONE SANDERS: Yes. So, I think it’s important to note that the political revolution is a multiracial political revolution. The political revolution is young people, it’s old people, it’s men and women, gay, straight, white, black, Latino, who are standing up, saying, “Enough is enough.” And America is just not for the billionaires, that we, the everyday, hard-working people, want to be a part of what is happening in our democracy. So, yes, folks like Killer Mike have joined the political revolution. People like Susan Sarandon have joined the political revolution. And I think it’s important, because the senator’s platform, it just goes to show that it speaks to a broad range of people.
Yes, so on December 8th, we visited Baltimore, Maryland, and the senator took a walking tour of the Sandtown-Winchester neighborhood, which is the neighborhood where Freddie Gray lived and where he was arrested. That walking tour was extremely important, because as you walk the streets of that particular neighborhood in Baltimore, you notice that there aren’t things like a grocery store, that there aren’t things such as a bank, of a branch. So, where do folks cash their checks? Where do folks go to get quality groceries? The senator remarked in a meeting with pastors, following that walking tour, that, you know, people don’t understand, but it’s very expensive to be poor. And that visit to Baltimore not only shined a light on communities across the country that deal with these exact same things, but it also brought up issues of education. We talked about issues of economic inequality. We talked about historically black colleges and universities. We discussed these issues with African-American civic leaders and religious leaders from across the country. It was a very rich and fruitful conversation for both sides. And I think it was an—it was an amazing visit.
AMY GOODMAN: Symone Sanders, I want to thank you for being with us, national press secretary for the Bernie Sanders campaign, speaking to us from Burlington, Vermont. This is Democracy Now! When we come back, we go back to clips of the debate on Saturday night and speak with Phyllis Bennis and Bill Curry. This is Democracy Now! Back in a minute.Share. Get a glimpse at the special features on the new Blu-ray and DVD set. Get a glimpse at the special features on the new Blu-ray and DVD set.
Arrow: Season 4 hits Blu-ray and DVD this week, and IGN has the exclusive debut of one of the deleted scenes you'll find on the set.
In Season 4, Oliver Queen (Stephen Amell) decided to make a bold move with his public persona, running for Mayor of Star City. However, that mayoral campaign would not be an easy one and, given Oliver's secret life as Green Arrow, it was fraught with additional danger - leading to him to drop out the campaign at one point.
In this scene, political strategist Alex Davis (Parker Young) learns about Oliver's plans and begs him to reconsider.
Exit Theatre Mode
Arrow: The Complete Fourth Season is available on Blu-ray and DVD on Tuesday, August 30th. Special features include additional deleted scenes, a gag reel, Arrow's 2015 San Diego Comic-Con panel and the featurettes "Star Crossed Hawks: The Hunt for Vandal Savage" and "Smooth Criminal: The Damien Darhk Story."
For more on what's to come in Arrow: Season 5, premiering October 5th on the CW, check out our interviews with the cast from Comic-Con:
Exit Theatre Mode
Exit Theatre ModeLabor experts caution that the complaint, filed on Thursday, could be meant as a warning shot to discourage workers from participating since the labor relations board often takes months to make a ruling, but it nonetheless reflects how seriously the company has come to view a group that it had once dismissed as a nuisance.
William B. Gould IV, a Stanford University law professor and chairman of the labor board under President Bill Clinton, said the protests were more about employment conditions and retaliation against employees than a unionization drive.
“I don’t see this translating into a great deal of success in terms of unionizing Wal-Mart or in terms of being particularly effective in improving conditions,” Mr. Gould said. “But I must say if they’ve gone to the N.L.R.B. on this, that must show that Wal-Mart is really concerned.”
Since October, OUR Walmart has staged smaller strikes at individual stores, though none of those disrupted Wal-Mart’s operations, the company said. OUR Walmart said that last month 88 workers at 28 stores did not report to work, in a job action.
OUR Walmart has also flown dozens of workers to Wal-Mart’s headquarters and is encouraging religious leaders to hold a “Black Friday Prayer Vigil” to object to the company’s treatment of workers.
Wal-Mart had initially brushed off these actions as inconsequential public relations efforts. But it is taking them more and more seriously, sending a memorandum advising managers how to deal legally with protesters and warning some union-friendly groups that they might face arrest if they trespass during the protests.
All this points to an increasingly fierce contest between Wal-Mart and labor groups that are bent on mobilizing and organizing the company’s work force, with a near-term goal of pressing for higher wages and a longer-term goal of emboldening workers to demand a union.
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“You are going to see unprecedented activity from now and going into Black Friday,” said Dan Schlademan, a principal organizer of the events and director of Making Change at Walmart, an affiliate of the United Food and Commercial Workers Union.
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The food and commercial workers union has made Wal-Mart a target because the company has helped put many unionized supermarkets out of business and helped push down wages at many competitors. Wal-Mart, moreover, has vigorously resisted unionization drives, closing a store in Canada after workers there voted to unionize and arranging to have outside suppliers provide prepackaged meat after the butchers at a store in Texas voted to unionize in 2000.
The food workers union has been spending heavily on this push, paying more than $50,000 for hotel rooms near Wal-Mart’s headquarters last year when it sent employees and representatives to company events, according to a filing with the Labor Department.
In this week’s planned events, OUR Walmart, which stands for Organization United for Respect at Walmart, is enlisting a broad range of allies, arranging fliers and letters that community, church and civil rights groups can use to publicize the Black Friday protest. OUR Walmart has even prepared remarks that it is suggesting members of the clergy might use in prayer, “to call upon the world’s largest corporation to treats its workers with justice and fairness.”
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Many of those workers assert that Wal-Mart pays poverty-level wages, assigns too few hours a week and retaliates against protesting employees.
“I will be protesting because there has been retaliation from the company — they have fired people, they have reduced people’s hours for speaking out,” said Greg Fletcher, an electronics department employee at a Walmart in Duarte, Calif.
David Tovar, a spokesman for Wal-Mart, said the company prohibits retaliation, and respects the rights of associates to express their views. But, he added, “if people repeatedly have unexcused absences, if they purposefully disrupt the store, or create an unsafe working condition for our customers and associates, those issues will be addressed” in accordance with company employment policy.
In the filing with the labor board, the company said that the continuing protests were illegal because under the National Labor Relations Act, a union seeking recognition can picket for a maximum of 30 days. After that, it must either stop picketing or take a formal unionization vote. The company says the United Food and Commercial Workers Union is behind the protests and has exceeded the 30-day limit.
“Many of these ongoing tactics being orchestrated by the U.F.C.W. are unlawful,” Mr. Tovar said. “The United Food and Commercial Workers Union and its subsidiary, OUR Walmart, have been conducting illegal pickets and other demonstrations for several months now, clearly beyond what the law allows.”
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Officials with the union and OUR Walmart say the demonstrations and picketing aim to protest what they call illegal labor practices by Wal-Mart, specifically retaliating against protesting workers, and in no way aim to seek union recognition, as the company asserts.
The two labor groups insist the protests are being sponsored not by the union, but by OUR Walmart, which they say is an independent group.
Both groups acknowledge that the food and commercial workers provided guidance and financial support to OUR Walmart when it was founded last year. Indeed, in a 2011 filing with the Labor Department, the union described OUR Walmart as a “subsidiary organization.”
But Jill Cashen, a union spokeswoman, said that OUR Walmart had “grown and gained independence” and attracted thousands of members since that time, and that it would not be listed as a subsidiary organization in the union’s filing for 2012.
Angela B. Cornell, director of the labor law clinic at Cornell Law School, says the company probably knows that the labor board usually takes weeks or months to act, making it unlikely that Wal-Mart could obtain an injunction by Friday. She said she suspected the filing was more likely aimed at warning employees about engaging in what the company maintained was illegal picketing. A letter to the union from Wal-Mart uses the word “illegal” three times, though she said a one-time walkout like this was generally protected under the National Labor Relations Act.
“This was a strategic maneuver on their part,” she said of the company.Ocean Warming has been Greatly Underestimated
Posted on 14 October 2014 by Rob Painting
Key Points: The oceans are by far the largest heat reservoir on Earth, absorbing 93% of global warming. Because of this, accurate assessments of heat uptake are essential to balance the sea level budget, and for observationally-based estimates of climate sensitivity. Prior to 2005, when the Argo global array of submersible floats became operational, ocean temperature was much more sparsely sampled, especially in the southern hemisphere, leading to larger uncertainty over the evolution of ocean warming through time. Durack et al (2014) analyse the period from 1970-2004 combining ocean temperature and sea surface height measurements with climate model simulations, and find that sparse sampling in the southern hemisphere oceans, and limitations of previous analytical methods, has led to a substantial underestimate of warming in the 0-700 metre layer *. When corrected for this bias, Durack (2014) find that the top 700 metre layer of ocean, over the period 1970-2004, has warmed some 24-58% more than previous analyses have indicated.
Figure 1 - Observed (coloured bars) and modelled (grey bars) upper ocean heat content changes for the period 1970-2004 from previous analyses. Top coloured segments are the adjustments based on the Durack (2014) study. Units are x1022 joules 35 yr-1 and MMM = multi model mean. Image adapted from Durack et al (2014).
The Oceans Have Warmed, But How Much?
The Argo system of automated floats was constructed in order to provide more reliable and robust measurements of ocean temperature, and other quantities such as salinity and current velocity. Although they only measure down to typical depths of 2000 metres, and still exclude regions such as the Arctic and Indonesian Throughflow, the 3000+ floats represent a major step up in accuracy over older methods.
Figure 2 - typical Argo cycle.
By 2005 the Argo network rollout had achieved sufficient coverage to become operational, but prior to that the data collected came largely from ship-based methods which were more sparsely sampled in time and space, and typically only measured down to 700 metres. Some instruments, such as expendable bathythermographs (XBTs), have had major issues too because XBTs don't directly measure depth along with temperature, but instead rely on fall rates to estimate depth at each point in time a particular measurement is taken. Complications with fall rate estimates has introduced a considerable bias into the ocean heat content record that has had to be accounted for (Abraham et al [2013]).
Another issue is that some analyses (Ishii & Kimoto [2009], Levitus et al [2012]) use a method to infill poor or missing data that tends to underestimate any trend. These analyses use the climatological mean, or zero anomaly, to infill the missing data and therefore bias low any trend whether that be warming or cooling. This is particularly relevant to the southern hemisphere where measurements were much sparsely sampled than in the northern hemisphere. All-in-all, these and other sampling problems add much larger uncertainty to pre-Argo data.
Southern Hemisphere Ocean Warming Could Be Massively Underestimated
Unlike the ocean temperature record, precise near-global coverage of sea surface height has been collected by satellite altimetry since 1992. Durack (2014) make use of this satellite altimetry data, and climate model simulations of ocean heat uptake, circulation variability and sea surface height, in order to make a better estimate of changes in ocean heat content prior to 2004 - when the more well-sampled Argo float array took over as the main source of ocean heat content measurements.
It's a clever approach as the satellite sea surface height data contain information about changes in ocean heat content through the effect that temperature has on thermal expansion - raising sea surface height as it grows warmer, and lowering it through cooling. Provided that other sources that alter sea surface height both in time and location can be accounted for, it's possible to determine how much of the sea surface rise was caused by the increase in ocean heat content. This should reveal any discrepancies with previous ocean heat content estimates, if they exist. And that's precisely what they found.
Where Does Ocean Heat Go?
Based on consideration of oceanographic principles - and observations, of how the ocean circulation operates - there are key regions of the world oceans where we would expect the uptake of heat (and other qualities) to be greater-than-average. In the northern hemisphere the number one spot is the North Atlantic Ocean. Here surface currents converge and are forced downwards in the North Atlantic subtropical ocean gyre, and salty surface seawater transported north from the tropics finally cools and sinks further north near Greenland as part of the thermohaline circulation. In the southern hemisphere, the key regions are the subtropical ocean gyres, where convergence of surface currents occur, and the Antarctic Circumpolar Current.
Figure 3 - Chemical tracers in the sea, the banned refrigerant CFC-11 in this instance, highlight the major ocean ventilation pathways. As surface water sinks it takes properties such as heat and dissolved gases with it. Higher densities of dissolved CFC-11 gas at mid and high latitudes (orange/red) reflect the main ventilation sites. The climate models (c) strong match to the observations (b) suggests the models are reproducing the ocean circulation with great skill. Image from Durack (2014).
The Durack (2014) authors make use of the large collection of climate model simulations from the CMIP3 & CMIP5 project covering the period since 1970 - an interval during which sampling deficiencies are small enough to yield reliable ocean heat content estimates. The multi-model mean is a useful metric because, by averaging together all the individual model simulations, this has the effect of removing the inherent natural variability that exists in the climate system. Any chosen observational time period is not expected to match the multi-model mean exactly because the observations do include natural variability, i.e. the observations are equivalent to one climate model simulation, not the mean (average) of all the simulations combined. The observational mean and the multi-model mean, however, should prove instructive - see Figure 4.
Figure 4 - Upper ocean (0-approx 700 mtrs) heat content trends for 1970-2004. a) & c) are observations from Levitus et al (2012) and b) & d) from the CMIP5 historical simulations. The bottom two panels (c & d) show trends with the global average trend removed (anomalies). The Levitus (2012) observations are inconsistent with theoretical & modelled expectations - as highlighted by the black bars. Image adapted from Durack ( |
deal to purchase Lotus, with Alain Prost becoming a shareholder as Niki Lauda is at Mercedes.
However the board will only purchase the Lotus F1 team if Ecclestone enters a bilateral agreement similar to other leading teams, whereby the team shares in the so-called CCB bonus scheme. Under the scheme, introduced four years ago to reward the sports' biggest names, Ferrari receives $100m for its past successes and history and Red Bull receives over $70m for its four world titles since 2000.
The five teams in the CCBs scheme, also including Mercedes, McLaren and Williams, will receive the payments until the expiration of their bilateral agreements with F1 in 2020.
Renault won the 2005 and 2006 world championships and French sources suggest that Renault CEO Carlos Ghosn and his team are seeking CCB sums of around $35m in addition to any prize money the team may accrue. This would put it broadly in line with Mercedes, which had to fight hard for its CCB bonus when the deals were being done and was the last of the five top teams to sign as a result.
French sources say that in these negotiations Renault has argued that it deserves additional CCB recognition for its status and long contribution to the sport. It has powered cars to 168 race wins, 11 drivers' championships and 12 constructors' championships, but only two of each as a constructor in its own right.
This is the sticking point and while French sources last night were quite optimistic that Renault would reach agreement with CVC and Ecclestone and complete the purchase of Lotus, sources close to the negotiations say that a Renault withdrawal from F1 is now looking more likely.
If that were to happen the future of the Enstone based Lotus team is uncertain.
The sport would also have only three manufacturers of the hybrid turbo engines introduced in 2014 and only two of those are competitive; Ferrari and Mercedes. Honda is playing catch up having made a commitment in March 2013 to join in 2015. Its first engine tried to be radical and has been botched with some key design flaws, such as the compressor and an underpowered Energy Recovery System, which leaves the drivers without enough deployment on a lap, so they lose ground.
To be fair to Honda, engineers in current benchmark suppliers say that they had the same problems with test engines when they were preparing for 2014, The problem is that Honda is doing their development work in public with two world champions as test drivers.
Renault was one of the prime movers behind the switch to hybrid turbo engines, which it argued were more road relevant and even made it a condition of remaining in F1 that the rules moved this way. Ironically it was dominating the sport with Red Bull at the time and, although it won three races last season with its hybrid engine, this year it has gone backwards.
Looking further down the road, the three remaining engine manufacturers would have considerable power over the sport, no pun intended, as the cars will not run without these highly complex pieces of equipment and no other supplier could step in, given the lead times and investment needed to make a hybrid turbo power unit.
What do you think of this situation? How important is it to keep Renault in F1?(Image: © David Warner Ellis/Getty Images)
Freddie King is among the triumvirate of the greatest and most influential electric blues guitarists ever, revered with equal respect alongside the legendary blues gods B.B. King and Albert King.
Together, they are often referred to as "The Three Kings"—all complete masters of their craft and essential subjects of study for any inspiring blues guitar enthusiast.
In this edition of In Deep, we'll examine a few of the trademark Freddie King-isms that have earned him his rightful place as the forefront of electric blues guitar.
Of the three Kings, Freddie had a hard-driving intensity that gave his guitar lines and solos a fiery spirit. And though he was blessed with what were arguably the most powerful vocal pipes of the three, he distinguished himself as a player and composer by penning the greatest blues guitar instrumentals in the genre’s history, such as the classic masterpieces “Hideaway,” “The Stumble,” “Sen-Sa- Shun,” “San-Ho-Zay,” “Side Tracked,” “In the Open,” and many others, all songs that have been covered brilliantly by such blues-rock heroes as Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck, Johnny Winter, ZZ Top and Stevie Ray Vaughan. Freddie King was born as Frederick Christian on September 3, 1934.
Though his mother’s maiden name was King, in his early days as a performer he was thought to have changed his last name to King to align himself with B.B. King, then a rising star of blues guitar. His earliest records are credited to “Freddy,” but by 1968 he changed the spelling to “Freddie.” His recording career began in 1956, and by 1960 he had recorded the soon-to-be hit songs “Have You Ever Loved a Woman?,” “Love Her with a Feeling” and the instrumental smash "Hideaway," covered brilliantly by Eric Clapton with John Mayall on the Blues Breakers album, recorded in 1966.
Early photos of King show him playing a mid-Fifties Gibson gold-top Les Paul with P-90 pickups, which he used along with a Gibson GA-40 amplifier. Shortly thereafter, he switched to his trademark Gibson ES-345 guitars, cranked to massive volume through Fender Quad Reverbs.
He picked with his fingers, using a plastic thumb pick along with a metal index-finger pick, and his string gauges were very unusual: the top three string gauges were.010,.011 and.012—very light for the B and especially the G—while the wound strings were normal light-medium-gauge electric strings. King scored many early instrumental hits, the biggest being the aforementioned “Hideaway,” an easy-grooving 12-bar shuffle in E with a distinct, memorable melody.
FIGURE 1 illustrates a similar melody played within the 12-bar form. As melodic lines are played on the top two strings with abundant use of open notes—akin to the country blues of Lightnin’ Hopkins—a rhythm part is equally attended to, built from palm-muted two-note forms on the bottom two strings and balanced against the melodic development. In bar 2 of the example, a simple open- to-second-fret hammer-on is replaced with a “rolling” hammer-on, wherein the middle finger is hammered onto the first fret, instead of the second, followed by a slide up to the second fret. (This more intricate technique was later adopted and employed frequently by Stevie Ray Vaughan.)
Throughout this example, notice the subtle inclusion of single-note phrases that serve to connect the elements of the part while keeping it moving forward. Freddie revisited this melody for another of his classic instrumentals, “The Stumble.” FIGURE 2 illustrates a similar form, which begins with a melodic line close to that of “Hideaway” but is played over a different chord progression, starting on the IV(four) chord, A, in the key of E.
In this 16-bar form, a descending sliding double-stop lick, based on a sixth interval, is played on the G and high E strings, executed by picking the G string with the thumb and the high E string with either the index or middle finger. Pick each pair sharply and in a staccato manner (short and detached), and strive for absolute accuracy as you move quickly down the fretboard.
Freddie showcased a similar lick in “Hideaway,” with a band “breakdown” (the band lays out from playing the groove, supplying accented chordal stabs only).
FIGURE 3 offers a lick along these lines, initiated with a very cool and unusual E7add2 chord voicing. The band comes back in at bar 5, over A, and, in this example, further melodic development is performed on the top two strings. A great example of King’s relentlessly hard-driving style is a song called “Boogie Funk,” essentially a one-chord vamp played in A. The roots of this song can be found in the John Lee Hooker classic, “Boogie Chillen.” FIGURE 4 presents a repeating riff, built around an A5 chord, that features muted- string accents along with subtle half-step bends on the low E and A strings.
This is played with a “triplet feel,” so what is written as eighth notes is intended to be played as a quarter-note/eighth-note combo within a triplet bracket. I use a pick to play this part, alternating evenly between downstrokes and upstrokes, but Freddie would fingerpick such a part, so try using the thumb for the downstrokes and the index or middle finger (or both) for the upstrokes.
In FIGURE 5, I add a melodic figure to the form. After building intensity by riding on the I (one) chord, Freddie would switch briefly to the IV (four) chord and play a similar rhythmic lick.
FIGURE 6 offers a part along these lines, to be performed with the pick hand in the same manner as FIGURES 4 and 5. These examples just scratch the surface of Freddie King’s genius, so dig deep into his catalog to discover even more for yourself.“Asian women suck.” The person who said this to me was referring to Asian women dating white men.
As an Asian woman, perhaps it’s my feminist responsibility to defend my kind from any accusations that we suck. Instead, I confess that there are times when I really want to throw “unconditional sisterhood” out the window, and sympathize with those who hold this sentiment. Sometimes, I think some Asian women with white men do suck.
***
I am an Asian woman with a white boyfriend.
Just reading that sentence without knowing anything about my circumstances, how I got into this relationship, what I feel, what my boyfriend feels… how many of you will think one of the following?
Group A
Yellow fever
White fever
Asian fetish
White worship
Emasculating Asian men
White hegemony
Self-hating Asian
Gold-digger
And how many of you are genuinely inclined toward these lines of thought:
Group B
Love conquers all
Both partners are colorblind
Equal relationship
Respect for both races/cultures
Your personal preference
Mixing up bloodlines is good for humanity
And how many of you genuinely:
Group C
Don’t care
Have no opinion
Just think about that for a while — without being politically correct, what is your gut reaction to Asian women with white men?
***
When I started feeling attracted to the man who is now my boyfriend, I hesitated for a long time before acting on my feelings. He was a wonderful man who respected me and made me laugh, but I had reservations about joining the interracial relationship cliché. Another white guy with an Asian girl, I thought. No! I asked myself a lot of questions, had crazy schizophrenic-type dialogues with myself in my head:
Why was I initially attracted to him?
Has media bias against Asian men gotten to me?
But I grew up in an Asian country watching local shows and Korean dramas!
Am I emasculating Asian men by being with a white guy?
But he doesn’t have the Hollywood white-man-oh-so-masculine look, and he’s shorter and smaller than me and most Asian guys I know!
I’ve always been attracted to Asian guys! So why this guy?
I’ve never been in a relationship with a white guy before, so surely this isn’t about a racial preference or white superiority or all that post-colonial discourse.
Maybe I just like this guy because I met him at the Shanghai Barbie Store.
After this emotional tug-of-war, I gave the relationship a chance, and I am grateful I did.
But my entry into the white male/Asian female club does not mean I’ve gone on an “it’s always about love” kick and that I blindly celebrate all the relationships that, on the surface, look like mine.
There are the WM/AF relationships which I firmly believe are equal partnerships between two egalitarian, colorblind individuals who respect each other’s cultures and beliefs.
However, as someone recently reminded me, there are those kinds of WM/AF relationships that give the rest of us a bad name — the ones that are formed on the perhaps covert and destructive valuing of the white man’s race and culture over the Asian woman’s, where the white man has little regard for his partner’s culture, or sees her as a trophy. Some pairings are just blatantly unequal, and as that someone commented, “Only an AF who is really un-self-aware and/or self-loathing would date or marry such a man.”
“I’m not against white guys and Asian girls,” said a Chinese male friend. “It’s only when the Asian girl looks down upon her own race and chooses a white guy because she thinks he is superior in terms of looks, culture, money, and if their children continue to think that white is better… then I get frustrated.”
But how about relationships between white men and Asian women when there is no obvious white worshipping/Asian fetishizing/gold-digging going on? In those cases, surely the Asian woman doesn’t suck. However, internalized racism can be subtle, with prejudices not seeming like prejudices at all. Asian women only suck when they don’t think twice about saying things like:
I have a cultural/aesthetic preference for white guys.
Asian men have small penises, trust me, I’m Asian.
White guys are much more physically attractive compared to Asian guys.
Asian men are nerds and geeks and quiet losers.
Asian men aren’t romantic.
White guys are hot and sexy, while Asian guys are just loyal friends.
I will never date an Asian guy, I only date white guys.
I can’t date Asian men because they’re like my brothers.
Caucasian features are more attractive compared to the round face, olive skin, small squinty eyes Asian guys have.
Etc. along the same lines.
I’ve heard enough Asian women say these things as if they were absolute truths, without questioning how they came to their racial preferences, and not realizing how much these seemingly flippant remarks harm Asian men, create a rift between Asian men and women, and breed negativity towards Asian women who don’t hold these views.
Sometimes I wonder how an Asian woman can say she prefers white men because they are more aesthetically pleasing, when one day she might have a son who looks more like her side of the family than his father’s. This is why I feel bad for the very angry Asian-looking hapa son who hates his white dad and Asian mom — if his mother did think all the bullet points above, it’s no wonder her Asian-looking son is so resentful for being brought into a world where even his own mother could dismiss men with his features.
***
I keep a blog where I’ve occasionally touched upon my type of interracial relationship, particularly in two posts, The Asian Girlfriend Complex, and Ending Bias against White Male and Asian Female Couples?. I wrote these posts because I am very much aware of the negative associations (of Group A) that are often attached to my type of pairing. Compared to many Asian women I know, I’m perhaps a little too self-aware (or oversensitive) of what my relationship represents.
Most of the criticism I get on my blog understandably comes from Asian men who react to what they perceive is my “pro-white” message, simply because I am an Asian woman writing about dating a white guy. I welcome commenters who wish to discuss the issue civilly, but personal attacks are where I draw the line, and such comments deleted. However, I recently began an email conversation with one such “angry Asian man” who attacked me on my blog. Instead of simply dismissing him like I did the others, I decided I wanted to hear more in-depth from one of them.
Over the course of a week and 25 emails and perhaps 20,000 words exchanged between us, he’s no longer an angry Asian male caricature to me; he is a very real man with a name, an age, a place and identity. I think I’ve become a real person to him too instead of just another sucky Asian girl with a white boyfriend. Perhaps it surprised him that I actually agree with most of his points — that some pairings cannot be entirely race-blind if Asian females are marrying out at a higher rate than any other minority in the States; that people who state that it’s okay to hold a racial preference in dating are often unaware of the racist structure their preference is based on; that white media has done a great disservice to Asian men; that there are more tools to articulate white masculinity than there are to articulate Asian masculinity; that some of the most disparaging remarks about Asian men come from Asian women themselves, and are often based on nothing but bad stereotypes; that the world being what it is, me simply walking down the street with my Caucasian boyfriend can send a negative message about Asian men.
I don’t deny any of this, and I don’t deny that some Asian women — whether they are aware of it or not, whether it’s entirely their fault or not — can sometimes suck in regards of how they talk about Asian men. All I could tell my new Asian male email buddy was to have more confidence and optimism about finding love, and that I, at least, am one Asian female who is not with my boyfriend because he has a white behind, nor do I have any desire to emasculate Asian men by perpetuating negative stereotypes about them. I’ve always thought Asian men were attractive. That opinion hasn’t changed.
Would anyone say that all Asian women should refuse to date white men or break up with their current white boyfriends in order to make the world a better place? That’s ridiculous, and I think most Asian men would agree. In the end, everyone has the intrinsic right to date who they want — we should just be aware of what our relationships symbolize in a public sphere, and pursue romantic happiness without degrading the men from our own racial/cultural communities.
Thoughts about whether Asian women suck when it comes to interracial dating?Published: August 1st, 2007 16:19 EST Greg Palast - Old School Journalism at its Best By Djelloul (Del) Marbrook (Editor/Mentor) Journalism has its canonical heroes, like Bob Woodward and Seymour Hersh—journalists the establishment makes room for—and then there are the non-canonical heroes who, by choice or by virtue of the poobahs they have disturbed, operate outside the mainstream. The canonical heroes have achieved what their bosses have allowed them to achieve, pushing the envelope and fighting within the system. This is an increasingly forlorn arena. The non-canonical heroes achieve outside and often against the system, and they are rarely rewarded with either fame or money. The late I.F. Stone published a famous anti-establishmentarian weekly in Washington. It was for many years a sharp pebble in the shoes of big shots. Today Sam Smith publishes Progressive Review and the online Undernews, performing something of the same function, pointing out the warts and crimes of Big Media. Now when Rupert Murdoch has succeeded in buying The Wall Street Journal would seem to be a good time to consider the place of the non-canonical heroes in our society. That they have no place in Murdoch’s empire goes without saying, but they also have no place in a press that censors itself in the interests of corporados, among whom are some of its owners. Today the maverick forensic journalist Greg Palast announced that unless he gets some help from people who care about what the press is censoring, his rambunctious news operation will go under. Palast is doing exactly what is not being done in journalism: he talks about the elephant in the room and he promotes the idea that the money trail must be followed by journalists who understand forensic accounting. I’m giving Palast whatever I can afford today, to put my money where my mouth has been all these years. I urge you to send him whatever you can afford, because with a sold-to-the-highest-bidder government we will lose our prosperity, our rights and our lives unless we can find a way to support his kind of journalism. I know some journalists are turned off by his razzle-dazzle style, but there is substance there, too. He has no institution behind him and so he resorts to attention-getting language just to stay afloat. But if you have any doubt about his value watch him on PBS as he explains how the 2008 election has already been fixed. Then send him your help at the Palast Investigative Fund.Representative western blots (WB) are shown. Means ± SEM are shown. a, GAPDH co-immunoprecipitation with Rheb in cortical cultures is increased after 5 min treatment with NO donor CysNO and NMDA determined by western blot (WB). NMDA-induced increase in GAPDH-Rheb binding is blunted by the selective potent GAPDH nitrosylation inhibitor CGP3466B (2 nM) and by NOS inhibitors L-NAME & 7-NI (10 μM). b, Graph shows quantification of band intensities normalized to loading control from 3 replicates [ * P < 0.05; *** P < 0.001; ANOVA (Fisher’s LSD)]. c, WB showing GST pull down assay in HEK 293 cells. HA-C150S mutant of GAPDH binds to GST-Rheb with less affinity compared to HA-WT GAPDH. d, Graph shows quantification of band intensities normalized to loading control from 3 replicates [* P < 0.05; two-tailed t test]. e, WB showing increased levels of GST Rheb expression in HEK 293 cells co-transfected with increasing levels of GAPDH shRNA plasmid. f, WB showing decreased levels of GST Rheb expression in HEK 293 cells co-transfected with WT but not C150S mutant of HA-GAPDH. g, Graph shows quantification of band intensities normalized to loading control from 3 replicates [* P < 0.05; two-tailed t test]. h, NMDA stimulation of cortical cultures elicits a time-dependent decrease in Rheb levels in WT and iNOS KO but not in nNOS KO mice-derived neurons.HELLO AGAIN KICKSTARTER BACKERS!!! FANS AND NEW FACES!!
It is with great pleasure that I return to Kickstarter once again to fund a new set of Fantasy Norse 28 mm heroic miniatures!
In this campaign I intend to produce a host of 20 new Njorn characters of various roles sure to tread ruin upon their foes in the Frosty Ruins and forlorn wildernesses of the Great Cold North. Berserker, Hird, and Huscarls, Rangers, and Mages. And the Norns allowing, mayhaps even more. There are many allies at the call of the Northfolk if the need be.
Backers can pledge for an entire warband ( 10 figures in total as of the launch of the campaign ) cast in high quality white metal, or pick and choose individual figures from the selection funded by this campaign. OR backers can pledge for the same warband cast in high fidelity resin or resin solos of individuals funded by the campaign or a mix of both! The pledges are as follows:
SOLO METAL..................This pledge level rewards backers with 1 copy of any one of the figures successfully funded through this campaign cast in high quality white metal.
SOLO RESIN..................This pledge level rewards backers with 1 copy of any one of the figures successfully funded through this campaign cast in high fidelity resin.
WAR BAND METAL..............This pledge rewards backers with one full set of any 10 figures successfully funded over the course of this campaign cast in high quality white metal.
WAR BAND RESIN..............This pledge rewards backers with one full set of any 10 figures successfully funded over the course of this campaign cast in high fidelity Resin.
WAR PARTY METAL.......This pledge rewards backers with any 20 figures successfully funded over the course of this campaign cast in high quality white metal.
WAR PARTY RESIN.......This pledge rewards backers with any 20 figures successfully funded over the course of this campaign cast in high fidelity Resin.
Here be the place where stand the long list of the hardy souls afoot in the snows of the cold north and the price they demand for their hands in battle. many of the items pictured here are still slightly WIP but these will all be finished before the end of the campaign.
All items listed in this Section are offered as selections for the " Warband " and " War Party " pledge rewards. each of which offering a VERY hefty discount off of the RRP of Red Box Games figures ( $9-$10 ) per figure. Please keep in mind that these prices expire at the close of this kickstarter and that post campaign pledge-ups or jump-ins will not be allowed. if you want in on this deal you have to be a part of the kickstarter.
All of the characters listed here cost as follows;
#1 $7.00 metal, $15 resin
#2 $7.00 metal, $15 resin
#3 $7.00 metal, $15 resin
#4 $7.00 metal, $15 resin
#5 $7.00 metal, $15 resin
#6 $7.00 metal, $15 resin
#7 $7.00 metal, $15 resin
#8 $7.00 metal, $15 resin
#9 $7.00 metal, $15 resin
#10 $7.00 metal, $15 resin
#11 $7.00 metal, $15 resin
#12 $7.00 metal, $15 resin
#13 $7.00 metal, $15 resin
#14 $7.00 metal, $15 resin
#15 $7.00 metal, $15 resin
#16 $7.00 metal, $15 resin
#17 $7.00 metal, $15 resin
#18 $7.00 metal, $15 resin
#19 $7.00 metal, $15 resin
#20 $7.00 metal, $15 resin
.
After the close of the kickstarter, full collection and transfer of the funds gained by the campaign, and the full production process of the items funded by the campaign, Upon readiness of the rewards for fulfillment you will be issued a link to an external website which will allow you to select the specific items and quantity there of you would like to apply your pledge to as a reward. At this point you will also be billed for your postage as needed. This way all of the information is nice and neat and easily manageable and you do not have to fuss with multiple payments strung out over the course of delivery.
Here be the place where await the stranger folk a wander in the Cold North. Mayhaps they are friend. Mayhaps they are foe.
I work with a great team of very talented and reliable contractors who handle all of the mold making and metal and resin casting of my products and I operate a live webstore where in you can view and purchase any one of my currently available products.
http://red-box-games.com/
IMPORTANT!!! DO NOT add funds to cover postage to your pledge. Postage will be billed upon readiness to deliver. Any funds collected via kickstarter MUST be applied to the rewards ONLY.
This project is produced in the US so the postage within the US should not exceed $5 for most rewards packages. The reason I say most is just to caveat for the odd wonderfully insane backer who pledges for 20 sets of 20 figures. Obviously heavier packages that exceed the standard priority rate postage boxes would cost more to ship.
All packages shipped within the US will be shipped with all the necessary cushion and damage prevention measures we can provide to make sure that your goodies arrive safe and sound and in pristine condition. US backers will of course not need to worry about any import duties, customs fees, shipping company collapses, or bands of savage pirates preventing them from receiving their beloved Red Box Games minis.
I also have confirmation that we Will be fulfilling with help from oir very goodmfriends at Hasslefree miniatures in the UK Many thanks Dameon!!
AUSTRALIA: I do really love all you guys very much, and I am sorry yall always seem to get stuck at the end of fulfillment. To that end I am going to assure you that your rewards will be the first shipped when fulfillment begins. You have all been so patient and loyal and I do not want you guys to feel taken for granted at all. I cannot however absorb the customs fees and import duties or the postage costs fro shipping to Australia.
CANADA: again as above. I am eternally grateful for yall's continued support and patience and I assure you all that your rewards will be shipped along side of the Australian backer's rewards. The postage costs to Canada can fluctuate rather dramatically and there could be customs fees incurred.
I try to keep my postage costs as close to actual cost of the postage and materials as possible, subsidizing the costs of our time to sort and package as part of the cost of making this as affordable as possible for you all.
For those who are unfamiliar with me as a sculptor and with my business red box games I am a sculptor of finely detailed 28mm scale fantasy miniatures. Most often specializing in minis of a Norse theme. I founded my business in 2008 and have been producing miniatures ever since. In that time I have produced some 300 odd figures for my various ranges of Men, Elves, Dwarves, Goblins, Halflings, Orcs, Demons and Undead of all kind of role for each of those range themes. I have now run 9 kickstarters and have fully delivered on 7 ( 2 campaigns were canceled prior to reaching the funding goal ). I always strive to produce figures of the highest possible quality and have gone to great lengths and even significant personal difficulty to see to it that I deliver fully on all of my promises.If you’re covered in political stink, it might be prudent to avoid yelling “dirty politics” at others.
Lately, a mess of right-wing Tea Party groups have been wailing nonstop that they have been targeted, harassed and denied their civic rights by partisan, out-of-control, Obamanistic IRS thugs (no adjective too extreme when assailing Obama or the IRS). The groups certainly are right that it’s abhorrent for a powerful agency to run a repressive witch-hunt against any group of citizens just because of their political views. After all, liberals have frequently felt the lash of such official repression by assorted McCarthyite-Nixonite-Cheneyite forces over the years, and it must be condemned, no matter who the victims.
In this case, however, the right-wing groups were not targeted by government snoops and political operatives, but tagged by their own applications to be designated by the IRS as 501(c)(4) “social welfare” groups. This privileged status would allow them to take unlimited bags of corporate cash without ever revealing to voters the names of the corporations putting up the money. The caveat is that 501(c)(4)s are supposed to do actual social welfare work and cannot be attached to any candidate or party, nor can politics be their primary purpose.
Forget what the rule says, though. Such notorious political players as Karl Rove and the Koch brothers have cynically set up their own pretend-welfare groups, openly using them as fronts to run secret-money election campaigns. Suddenly, hundreds of wannabe outfits were demanding that they be given the special hide-the-money designation, too, brazenly lying about their overt political purpose. Some even asserted that they were engaged in no political activity, when their own websites bragged that they were.
It was these groups’ stupidity and audacity that prompted the IRS inquiries, and their current hissy fit about the agency is really just a PR effort to let them continue their “social welfare” fraud.
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79Syracuse, N.Y. — Neil Gold had heard rumors that the jacket Jim Boeheim wore for his now infamous ejection from the Duke basketball game would be among the auction items available at the Jim and Juli Boeheim Foundation's annual Basket Ball. Gold, who stores his collection of at least 100 SU basketball-themed items in his Manlius basement devoted to the Orange, attended the Boeheim gala on Saturday with his wife, Helene. He had every intention, he said, of scoring the winning bid on that jacket.
"For somebody like me — this was perfect," said Gold. "It was the first time we played Duke at Cameron. It was the first time Coach was thrown out of a real game. It's part of Syracuse basketball lore now."
The auction, conducted that night by Boeheim, with assistance from television personalities Bill Raftery and Sean McDonough, occurred during the gala. Gold guessed the bidding started at $5,000. Because opposing bids happened at the opposite end of Turning Stone's Event Center ballroom, Gold wasn't sure what kind of financial firepower he was up against.
All Gold knows is that the bidding "went on for a while." Boeheim, at one point, promised to wear the jacket to the winner's house, Gold said.
"He called me out during the bidding, saying I was the No. 1 fan," Gold said. "He goaded me a little bit. Little did he know that I was fully intending to get that."
The bidding ended on Gold's $14,000 pledge. Gold's attendance at the Duke game, where he sat directly behind the Orange bench and witnessed the SU coach strip off the very jacket he now possesses, makes the purchase more precious.
"I was right behind Coach," Gold said, "and I was the next one to be ejected."
(Gold was not tossed from the game. He just loudly disagreed with Tony Greene's charging call on C.J. Fair, the source of all the drama.)
Gold said his phone has been "ringing off the hook" since his name became attached to the jacket. The $14,000 bid secured the jacket, shirt and tie Boeheim wore that day. The jacket has Boeheim's name stitched inside it. Gold isn't sure what size Boeheim wears, "but I would guess it's a 44 — which would be perfect."
"I'm totally thrilled. I have no regrets whatsoever," Gold said. "The fact that it was for such a great cause made it such a no-brainer to try to get it."Flights as usual after failed coup attempt, Turkish Airlines chairman says
ISTANBUL
REUTERS photo
As of July 22, only 43 flights out of 1,459 had been canceled, Aycı added.
“Some 91 percent of these flights reached their destinations on time, as 88 percent of them departed on time,” he said.
All THY flights would operate normally, after the government declared a nationwide three-month state of emergency, the company confirmed in a written statement.
“In due course, all Turkish Airlines operations and flights are proceeding uninterrupted and will continue to do so,” it said.
“Turkish Airlines [is] united with all of the heroic and honorable Turkish people in [their] extraordinary efforts [and who] played an important role to terminating the malevolent illegal attempt on the evening of July 15,” the airline said in a statement on July 21.
THY had canceled 925 domestic and international flights on July 16, following the failed coup of July 15.
All scheduled THY flights to the U.S. resumed as of July 19, following a U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) ban that stopped all airlines, whether U.S. or foreign, from carrying out flights between the United States and Turkey after the coup attempt.
The coup attempting soldiers had entered Atatürk Airport on tanks, hampering operations.
However, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, who was on vacation in the Aegean resort of Marmaris, landed on a small jet at the airport, where a large crowd of anti-coup demonstrators had gathered and helped the police force the coup soldiers out of the area.
“All state and government authorities have also confirmed that it is a precautious action to protect the country from all possible threats, maintain all democratic rights and the continuation of all basic rights and freedoms,” the THY statement read.
THY’s shares are at their lowest in 3.5 years after plunging by 3.6 percent on July 20 to 4.87 Turkish Liras ($1.59), down from 5.97 liras ($1.94) at the close on July 15, only hours before the coup attempt.
The company flies to more countries than any other airline, with 331 aircraft flying to 290 destinations worldwide, 241 international and 49 domestic, the statement added.
Things are back to normal for Turkish Airlines (THY), the flag carrier’s chairman İlker Aycı has told Hürriyet Daily News, following a coup attempt on July 15 which hit Istanbul’s Atatürk International Airport, its main hub, forcing it to cancel a number of flights.Fly high in the land of rising sun as Mandarin Oriental, Tokyo announces the launch of its Helicopter Flycation. Elevating the experience of a luxurious stay, the hotel is luring guests with a stay package that includes a private helicopter tour of Mount Fuji. Offered from a starting price of $6,500 (JPY 775,000), the fly-in-chopper-stay-at-hotel package will indulge guests aboard a Eurocopter Hermès Edition and fly from Tokyo above the shoreline of Sagami Bay and over Lake Ashinoko to reach Mt. Fuji. After offering a chance to enjoy closeup views of the mountain, the 80 minute flight experience will continue with a sighting of Tokyo SkyTree tower before heading back. The helicopter’s spacious interior fitted with calf leather seats specially made by Hermès lives up to the standard set by Mandarin Oriental, Tokyo. Apart from the flight, the package also includes one night’s accommodation for two in luxurious 100m2 Oriental Suite, a round-trip limousine transfer to helipad and hotel, full breakfast for two at K’shiki or Oriental Lounge, a bottle of Ruinart Brut Rosé Champagne N.V. along with a seasonal pound cake. The UNESCO world heritage site and national treasure, Mount Fuji, is a 3,776-metre (12,380 ft.) high dormant volcano 100 kilometers southwest of Tokyo. Its breathtaking, gentle symmetrical lines and snow-capped summit have come to represent Japanese serenity and made it the country’s national symbol.
In spring, blossoming cherry trees create a pink carpet at the foot of the mountain which is a favorite destination for international and local travelers in Japan. Mandarin Oriental, Tokyo’s new Helicopter Flycation Package takes off from 1st April until 31st May 2015.
Mandarin OrientalBe sure to tune in for the next episode of people’s actual lives.
It’s been an intense and oftentimes horrific week, but for some reason President Trump decided Americans should head into Friday wondering if we’re on the brink of war.
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boy finally shook his head. "You're in the Great Monastery, to the north of your village. Have you ever seen the Great Monastery, boy?" The boy shook his head again, and Asmund nodded. It was the best response he could think of. A quiet minute passed between the two of them before Asmund asked his next question.
"What's your name, boy?" He asked. The boy sat there quietly for a moment more before shrugging. Asmund sighed and leaned back in his chair, looking the boy up and down. He had long, shaggy hair, most likely due to the difficulty of finding someone to cut a child's hair when one is dying of the plague. His blue tunic and trousers were both wet from the snow, but the boy didn't seem to care. He racked his brain for something to call the boy.
"Leogeon. That's your name. Leogeon means Strange One, boy. And a strange one you are indeed."
Leogeon shivered, even in his new blue robe. Not yet a priest, at least not officially, the robe did him little good. It was thin and not warm at all, not even sufficient to break the wind. The tall man stumbled towards the looming wooden doors that stood just out of his reach. It had taken him nearly a week to get here, and his stamina and strength was at its end. Finally, his long fingers caught the freezing-cold door and pulled it open. Before he stepped in, he shed the pack that hung from his shoulders. Only two things were to enter the High One's Sanctum- the priest-to-be, and the priest-to-be's clothing. Leogeon stepped through the entryway into the enormous stone chamber. The stones were warm, somehow, and the area was well lit, though not from any natural light. Torches burned on posts that bordered the Sanctum's pool, but they were not the source of the light. Small specks of golden flame floated through the chamber like fireflies, things that Leogeon recognized as the High One's light. He stumbled through the room, feeling his limbs warm up. He kicked off his shoes towards the door and came up to the lip of the pool. Peering into the clear water, he saw that it was about a meter and a half deep, coming up to about his chest. He dipped one foot in, and then the other. Soon, he was as deep in the water as possible. Asmund had told him what he had to do. He waded up to the far end of the pool, where a tall stone tablet stood. There were words inscribed on it.
"The Creed of the Follower." Leogeon whispered, stroking the centuries-old writing. The letters were faded. No-one was allowed into the Sanctum save to take the Creed, and thus it was ill-maintained. Leogeon breathed slowly. The stone's carvings slowly made sense to the tall priest-to-be. At the head, there was a figure wrapped in the coils of a mighty serpent and the wings of a dragon. The Sky Dweller, the High One himself. Below him, there were men, praying. They all wore robes, the same ones that Leogeon guessed he was wearing now. He followed the tale down. The carving to the far left depicted the Holy War, as it was called. It had come not long after Brym and Deharl's founding. The first of the High One's followers, the holy Ivar Torin. He had had a vision of the High One, where the High One demanded that he gathered his people, the Northerners of Deharl, together. Ivar had not gone unnoticed; when the king of Deharl had realized what was happening, Ivar's followers had already begun to take land away from the selae, the slender, pointy-eared swordsmasters of Deharl that had ruled the North for nearly two hundred years. That had sparked a war that soon spread to Brym. Ivar started the Inquisitors to fight the Paladins and the Deharlean military, carving a swath of land through the North.
Next to the Holy War carving showed Ivar and his acolytes building the Great Monastery into Mount Ahgi. It had taken until the end of Ivar's life, the story went, but it was a great and magnificent home for the High One's followers.
Finally, Leogeon turned to the last carving. This one did not depict the history of the High One's Order, but rather its future. It showed one man shining brighter than the sun, and leading the Order to an idyllic future. Not only that, it showed his armies slaying the so-called 'enemies' of the church. Leogeon frowned at the image. On it, Paladins and selae alike were slaughtered and destroyed. He gritted his teeth. The prophesized future of the church, known as the Cleansing, had nearly destroyed the church's reputation, not to mention the church itself. Most of the High One's modern followers hoped for a more peaceful future, though one no less idyllic than the one on the stone.
Leogeon returned to the Creed. He took in the words, verse by verse. His brown eyes went from word to word, and he murmured the oath slowly. It didn't count, of course, not until he held one of the tall staves of the priests or the blade of an Inquisitor that were kept in the back of the Sanctum, just behind the tablet. He pushed through the small opening on the side of the tablet and into the back. There was a long closet of sorts, with staves hanging on the left and the bronze swords hanging on the right. He looked from left to right. Even at the end, Asmund had urged the young man to take up an Inquisitor's sword, but Leogeon had chosen the more quiet life of the priest years ago. He pulled down one of the tall oak staves, one that was only slightly taller than he. Leogeon had no idea how the staves and blades were replenished. No-one did. It certainly helped that the Order was becoming smaller and smaller of late, after word of the Cleansing had spread to the people of the High One's church.
Leogeon walked back to the pool and dropped back in, coming up to the tablet again. He tightened his fingers around the well-carved wood of the staff as he said the binding words.
"By flames I swear," he began. "to serve the Sky Dweller with every breath I take. To spread word of the Golden Flame to the People. To save Gammesia from a dark future. To uphold morality and justice." Leogeon felt a warmth blossom in his chest, the first traces of the Golden Flame filling him. Two more verses.
"By flames I swear to guide Gammesia to peace and life well lived. By flames I swear to be a beacon of light in oncoming darkness. By flames I swear to live a life of Ivarord." Leogeon closed his eyes. He had just sworn to live his life for the Sky Dweller, and for nothing else. He began the final words of the Creed.
"By flames I swear my life to the service of the Sky Dweller, the High One. To the High One I give my soul." Leogeon fell silent as the chamber itself. The traces of golden light swirled around the figure in the pool, warming him. One by one, they drew closer, finally covering Leogeon in light. He felt himself fall slowly into the pool.
When Leogeon woke, night had fallen. The Sanctum was nearly dark, save for the torches that still burned. The lights in the air had not rekindled. Leogeon felt warm, though his whole body was covered in water. How, exactly, he hadn't drowned was a mystery. A miracle of the High One, it seemed. He drew himself up, out of the pool, and towards the door. One did not stay in the High One's holy Sanctum any longer than they were bidden, and Leogeon's time was over. He tied the laces on his hide boots and tied the strings of his robe, tightening it around his well-muscled chest. Asmund, through nigh-endless exercise, had given him the physique of an Inquisitor, even if he didn't need it.
Leogeon turned back to the tranquil chamber one last time, taking in the calm and beauty. A moment later he pushed through the doors and out onto the snowy stone of Mount Aghi. Wind blew at him harshly and strongly, but it no longer bother the man. He smiled. Truly a priest at last. He supposed he'd be sent somewhere as a missionary in a few month's time. Not quite what he'd like, but he would be given the time to study Ivar's words in a few year's time. Until then, High Monk Torvald would tell him what to do. He wandered down the path slowly, gazing out at the moon high in the sky. It was beautiful in the untouched North, particularly at night. Many complained that it was too cold, too far from society at the Great Monastery, but it was perfect, the way Leogeon saw it.
Life as a servant of the Sky Dweller had begun.0:33 Intro. [Recording date: February 11, 2014.] Russ: Our topic for today is a philosophical one--it's classical liberalism. I'm in favor of limited government; I want to know what I should call myself. Sometimes I call myself a classical liberal. It is my preferred title, but it confuses people. Sometimes I call myself a libertarian--sometimes a'small-l libertarian' to distinguish myself from the Libertarian Party. Sometimes I call myself a free market capitalist or a Smithian or a Hayekian economist. And people call me a right-winger or conservative. I don't think I'm either of those things. I want to hear what you are, Richard, and why; and I'm going to see where I fit in and what I agree and disagree with. Guest: Well, first of all there is really a terminological gulf, and this is what I think is the fundamental ambiguity. There are many issues in which there are subsets--that classical liberals and the hard-line libertarians are in agreement. And therefore the differences between them simply disappear when you start to take on many progressive policies. The grounds on they may be opposed will differ from group to group, but the fact of the opposition is going to be very strong. So, for example, there is neither the classical liberal nor the libertarian believes that the government ought to support or prop up [?] any monopoly institutions where it is possible to have a competitive industry. And so, at that particular point, both are in favor of a smaller government. The classical liberal says: Monopoly has changed output for the worse so therefore when the government spends money to create a worse situation, it's a clear no-starter. The libertarian says: The government is using force to interfere with advantageous relationships; we don't care about the consequences; don't give me all this fancy economics stuff; we're just against it. So, one of them tends to be more consequentialist--that's the classical liberal--the other tends to be more deontological--that turns out to be the hard-line libertarian. Russ: You meant the classical liberal. Guest: Yeah. The term libertarian covers both of these things when you are dealing with these external debates. But when you start to get a little bit more philosophical, trying to figure out how small the small government ought to be, how the government ought to be put together, the difference between the deontological approach to the hard-line libertarian, and, it turns out, the relatively consequentialist approach of the classical liberal lead to some serious differences over a wide range of issues. I'll just mention--for example, the hard-line libertarian says: You guys want to get together to restrict output? It turns out that that's a contract like any other contract. You enforce contracts, you enforce that contract. The common law took the position these contracts are contracts in restraint of trade, and its preferred [?] was not to enforce those contracts, even though it did not impose criminal sanctions on the parties who entered into it. The modern antitrust guy says: You know what? We have the Sherman Act, and we are going to punish this civilly and criminally, because we think these cartels can endure longer that might otherwise be the case, even if the agreements turn out to be unenforceable in terms of the legal system. So what happens is, you have three kinds of approaches there. The libertarian, who just doesn't think of this as a problem and whose basic attitude is: we've got free entry, that will take care of itself. And the classical liberal says: I really like unenforceability because it will tend to increase the decay. And then some of the hard-line modern economists come along and say: The Sherman Act is a pretty good thing on this stuff. To which some classical liberals like myself will say: You really have to worry about the probable enforcement with the antitrust laws; increase in the size of government. Are you really sure you need this thing, and if so, are you going to do it correctly? And I think the answer is, if you get the right people running the system of the antitrust law, it's fine; if you get the wrong people running the system of the antitrust law, it's horrible. And then there is a very difficult political judgment as to whether you think good guys or bad guys are going to be running the system. So the [?] it seemed with the people like Bob Bork, is they really did focus this field on the cartel-like activities of various [?] departments, which reduced the error rate. The danger, of course, is that you will get some other administration that will believe that predation is the dominant offense, so when people start getting better products at lower prices, this now becomes ruinous competition, and then you are right back into the Progressive mode because the ruinous competition theme is one that is very dominant in their work. So there are profound differences in methodology. There are profound differences with respect to the actual consequences of the difference between these two systems.
5:29 Russ: So, let's stick with competition as an example; and I want to turn eventually to intellectual property, where it also of course raises its head. In the case of competition and this question of enforcing cartels, you made the point that it depends on whether you think the good guys or the bad guys, whether good people or bad people are going to run the apparatus. Don't we want a system that doesn't require good people? Isn't that the essence of what we want to worry about ex ante? Guest: That's exactly the right attitude to have, because if you remember the situation, it's the famous line of Madison that says: Enlightened statesmen may not always be at the helm. So what you try to do is put government in a place where it can go through choppy seas with essentially inferior leadership. That is absolutely the first-best solution if you can get it. But unfortunately, one of the difficulties of the libertarian position that I think classical liberalism was sensitive to is that you are going to have to put people in the flesh there, and you are going to get yourself a random draw. And that if in fact you consistently get people at the bottom, no set of rules are going to be able to save you from the depredations that they will impose. So what you need to do is to understand that you need sound institutions that hopefully will put forward strong people into various kinds of public offices. Which means you have to create a whole culture of achievement which allow these people to flourish. You can survive the occasional bad guy, but you can't survive lots of bad people in these offices. One of the things that I try to emphasize all the time is that the reason we have such intense battles over ideas is that we understand that there are many people who are moved by ideas and will try to implement them in a decidedly non-public-choice way, if in fact they are put into positions of power. But the basic point [?] is still true; one of the reasons we want a Constitution which is both classical liberal with enumerated powers, with separation of powers in the government, with federalism and all the rest of that stuff, is, if you are going to have procedural safeguards of the kind you are talking about, they are going to work better if there are fewer unappropriated rents sloshing out there for political activists to get. So what happens is the classical liberal Constitution that I talk about in my book has at least a two-part strategy. And one of them is what you try to do is to shrink the things that are up for grabs in the public space. And then secondly what you try to do is to get a robust set of government institutions so that you can slow down the process of lawmaking, using as your sort of global background presumption that a statute shall be pursued bad unless shown to be a good. Which means that you want to slow things up by having veto gates[?] rather than rushing it through under a parliamentary [?] Russ: Well, I like that, and we'll come back to it, but I want to stick for a minute with the public choice issue that you raised. When we talk about the wrong people or the right people being in charge of a regulatory system, there are two kinds of good and bad. There is incompetence versus skill. Then there is corrupt versus honest. Guest: There's a third one. Which is the right vision versus the wrong vision. Russ: Okay, yeah, cool. Guiding principles, how they are implemented, whether they are implemented at all, might be one way to think about it. Here's the issue I have. You raised the, I think, the provocative idea, which, as somebody who deals in ideas I find very appealing--the idea that ideas are important because we can have people stand for something. We can have people put forward, not just be a technocrat, but actually be somebody that has a vision that we could decide to embrace through it, an election or through some other mechanism. The problem I have is I can't think of any empirical examples of somebody in a position of power where their principles cause them to do something that are politically unattractive. I'm sure there are some. Maybe you can think of them. I'm going to give you a couple of examples and then maybe you can tell me why those examples are not representative. So, my favorite example, I've mentioned before on this program, is Alan Greenspan. Alan Greenspan was a man of ideas. He was an acolyte of Ayn Rand; he clearly believed and I think still believes that he is a free market classical liberal. When he was put in charge of one of the most powerful parts of the U.S. government, which is the Federal Reserve--he was put in charge and since he was Chair, he didn't have absolute authority; he had some constraints on him. But when he had significant power in that office, he was not a particularly free market guy. He used the price of credit and the quantity of money to move things around to benefit, I think, the investor class. Worse than that, he supported the bailout of banks in 1995--just one example; I'm sure there are others. When Mexico was going bankrupt, it's creditors, many of them were American banks, and he said we have to support Mexico and guarantee their debt because it's a horrible thing to do that but it's the best of a bad lot. But of course what he was doing there was serving, I believe, his political interests, which were the New York banks--American banks, especially those near the Federal Reserve. So I don't see him, despite his incredible investment in ideas--that didn't constrain him at all. Similarly, Ben Bernanke--I think people would have been shocked, if in advance of Ben Bernanke's appointment to the Fed, if you'd asked him: if there is a really bad recession, do you think you'll increase the Fed's balance sheet by trillions of dollars, implement quantitative easing, support the guarantee of creditors to the banks that had made bad loans so that they'd get 100 cents back on the dollar? 'Oh, no, come on. Bernanke would never do that.' But he did. So, where is the hope for this utopian ideal that you put forward. Guest: Well, let me put it this way: I don't think it's utopian. But I think it's extremely difficult to implement. And if the reason I wrote the book on the Classical Liberal Constitution is I believe all the ideas that I stand for have been slipping into the background and in [?] a muscular progressivity. Now the real asymmetry here is that you face political heat if you are a small government type and somebody demands that you do something to aid them. But if you are a progressive who believes that you ought to aid people anyhow, it's much easier for you to align your ideals with the [?] political necessities. So, take somebody who is really consistent with these views and have a legislative program of this sort--go back to Woodrow Wilson. You know, this guy wrote books on Congressional governance and so forth; he was very much a fan of a unitary system; he believed in the expertise of administrative agencies. Essentially was pro-labor, anti-business. And he gets into this, and all of a sudden you start to see the Federal Trade Commission; you start to see the Clayton Act, which has an exemption from the [?] for the labor unions and the agricultural cartels, and then has an expansion of the potential liability with respect to companies merging that might not have been caught by the Sherman Act. So I mean, you can see people like that. On the other side, remember the early Reagan--I think it's fair to say that he came in with a fairly coherent ideology. I think he stuck it through to the beginning and did fairly well. Another one of my favorite presidents was widely reviled and completely misunderstood, is you start with Warren Harding, and he had to face one of these recessions in 1921 when he came into office. He did exactly the opposite of what Bernanke did--he kept the money supply relatively tight; the interest rates fairly high [?]; it turned out you bled out all of the difficulties associated with the system and the recovery began in 1922, 1923. He's remember for Albert Fall and the Teapot Dome Scandal. He's not remembered for having Andrew Mellon as the Secretary of Treasury and Charles Evans Hughes as the Secretary of State. And even his rather dubious Attorney General, which is Harry Daugherty, learned from the Wilson mistakes and pardoned Eugene V. Debs, who had been convicted under Wilson, who was a xenophobe when it came to all these national security kinds of issues. So, I mean, I do think you can find it. In my view you'll tend to find them largely, not exclusively, in the Republican Party, because I think they are more committed to small government. Russ: They more committed to talking about it. Guest: Well, no, no. I think these guys were committed to doing it. I mean, look, they are all facing adverse forces. And, people ask me what do I think the great achievement of Reagan was: I think in the first two years, he faced down the FAA (Federal Aviation Administration) strike and all the rest of it. But essentially his really fairly strong convictions after his political damage made that he changed the second derivative--so he increased the size of government at a slower rate. I think Bill Clinton to the extent that he supported free trade did so against the opposition of his party and was clearly right in so doing. I think he was wrong with respect to taxes, and so forth. But generally speaking if you ask me to rate his government, [?], I think he was actually better on many of these issues than others. In fact, to give you my hope for a decent America, strangely enough it relies largely on centrist Democrats, of whom there are very few today, combining with sort of moderate Republicans. And what they are supposed to do is support a market economy and try to keep the welfare state under control. And that means free states, free trade, relatively flat taxes. You don't want to have too many positive rights being created out of this system, and you want to deregulate labor markets. And then you have some kind of a transfer program on top of it. And mind you, this is not very stable. The only stable solution is one that you can't get to, which essentially has strong pro-market capitalism and the only public expenses are designed to improve infrastructure and maintain other standard kinds of public goods. I'm in favor of that in principle. I don't believe it's ever going to be obtained. So my question is how to make incremental improvements in the current system. Or more often, to fight bad ideas in the opposite direction. Minimum wage is a danger; living wage, which is 50% higher, is even more dangerous bill. You read something like a NY Times editorial on this, they say, well, in real terms the minimum wage compared to what it was in 1938 should be $18, so why are you guys complaining? My view is they made a mistake with the Fair Labor Standards Act back in 1938 when they put this in there, and I just don't want to compound the error when we are going forward today. So, unfortunately, Russ, given the current political configuration, most of my sort of practical levers are essentially designed to stop the expansion of government. There are very few levers I see now where it's going to be possible to reduce the size and scope of government, by which I mean something as simple as flattening the tax or removing or expanding the exemptions under the estate tax.
16:27 Russ: I'll give a cheerful perspective--kind of, sort of--and then I want to get back to some basics. But I do want to mention that demographics may be destiny. And if we are, I think, somewhat gridlocked in responding to the demographic change, which appears to be the case, it's going to be very difficult to roll back any of the health care for the elderly or Social Security for the elderly. That money will eat up a very large portion of government spending, leaving very little left for other types of mischief. And if you ask me--I'm not crazy about the health care part, as a soon-to-be 65-year old; God willing in 6 years I'll hit 65--but transfers between working people and old people are going to be limited by the political process. I think the political process will limit those. But they'll be out there. I agree with you; I don't think we can get rid of Social Security. But it's not the worst thing the government does. Health care I think is a little more destructive. I think that's a little more unhealthy--literally. But the worst--a lot of things the government does now, it won't be able to afford. And it will be interesting to see how the political process--I hope we both live long enough to see how the political process deals with that. Guest: Well, we're seeing it now. Look at Detroit. You are seeing the case of a city that has great expectations going into bankruptcy. And you know, it's a combination of ruinous policies, large public sector, endless transfer payments, job programs, and so forth, with the highly successful UAW (United Auto Workers) essentially driving down the number of jobs in Detroit and throughout Michigan to a fraction of what they were. People said we've saved General Motors. We have not saved it for the 85 or 90% of the workers who actually lost their jobs, in terms of total payrolls, 1979 when the favorable settlement was reached. Now, I think some of that reduction would have taken place in any event, so I don't want to attribute it all to unionization. But there is certainly the case that a firm which essentially has to pay all-in $75 an hour for a worker as opposed to one that has to pay, all-in, $45 an hour, is losing a lot of costs that they can't make up with efficiencies in other areas. So I think we've already seen that. If you look at the pension crisis in California, both at the state level and also the city level, God knows how many billions of dollars, probably $100 billion or more, are wrapped up in unfunded liabilities. And yet you see fierce resistance by unions and to some extent by the state officials against trying to trim this kind of operation. And what you've already seen is the consequences of it: most of these governments have had to cut back their police forces, their welfare services, their park departments--all kinds of standard activities--in order to make sure that the absolute priority given to these kind of pension obligations under the current laws as they see it are in fact going to be enforced. This is not coming in the future. It's coming. Yes, when you speak to younger people, as I do--I have three children--I mean, the tax burden doesn't escape them. They realize that the liabilities they have today are real, fixed, and finite, but large; and the benefits tomorrow are speculative and uncertain and may never materialize. Russ: That kind of sums it up. Guest: They don't see this as a bargain for them. They see this as an exaction. Look, I mean, I still have a standing government to the commission of Social Security--and health--I'm almost 71. And I say, I will give you all the money you've managed to take from me, and I will give you all the future benefits that you've promised to me, if you'll just leave me alone on Social Security and Medicare. I still might guard myself as actually better off because one of the things that's so crazy about this, particularly if you earn a decent income, as I'm fortunately able to do in this crazy environment, is that if you start to work past 70 years of age, getting Medicare on one hand, and you are paying much more in on the Medicare tax on the other hand, so what happens is you are a net transfer-or rather than a net transferee. I'd rather be a net transferor than a net transferee, but I'd rather be rid of the whole thing. But they don't let you out of it. In fact, I was involved in a lawsuit once where we tried to argue correctly--I have no doubt--that you ¬could opt out of Medicare Part A for hospitalization without having to repay all your Social Security benefits and abandon all other future Social Security benefits. But the government issued a rule saying only a cranky libertarian would believe in that kind of position. And they forced the tie-in. So what they are doing is they are basically saying if people want to get out of this system and sacrifice their benefits, they just don't want to be in the Medicare system, they can't do it. Unless they want to pay what turns out to be on average a quarter of a million dollars for the privilege of opting out of Medicare. Russ: I just want to say, I'm very pleased that EconTalk doesn't increase your tax burden in any way. Guest: Well, I'm not so pleased about that. But you know what--let me phrase it this way. I'm an academic. One of the things you learn to do as an academic is to do a lot of public speaking for free. It is in fact part of my job, as far as I see it. So I'm more than happy to do it. I mean, there are people who actually pay to get you to come and give lectures. But you asked me to pick up the telephone; you didn't ask me to go out to Topeka. Russ: That's right. And I prompt you for conversation. Which doesn't--you don't need much prompting, I have to say.
22:11 Russ: Let's get back to some of the basic philosophical issues, political economy issues. You've written that the key challenge facing any system of government and any philosophy of government is creating social order. What do you mean by that, and why does the classical liberal and hard-line libertarian vision struggle with that issue? Guest: Well, first of all, social order it seems to me requires two things, one of which the classical liberal and the hardcore libertarian are in line with. Which is that you have to have a mutual renunciation of the use of force as a tool in ordinary social arrangement. And everybody understands if you could get this by voluntary agreement, generally speaking your giving up the right to kill any random person is worth not very much, but what you really care about is making sure that no random person is going to kill you. But at this point it takes a Coasean turn, because the cost of running this system of universal agreement is impossibly high to achieve, even though the gains from achieving it are very, very great. So what the standard political philosophers did was to invent a social contract which was imposed abstractly or hypothetically, which required this by way of a bargain. And the reason we call it a'social' contract is because there is no real consent. The reason we call it a 'contract' is because we are confident no matter what the differences in human temperament, talents, or strengths, everybody is better off in uncertain proportions with respect to this rule. And that's the great argument of Thomas Hobbes. Now the question then is how do you implement that particular situation. And unless you have a force at the center [?] it's going to completely dissipate. But if you have a force at the center [?], the great risk is that tyranny will now displace anarchy. And the hard problem for a Hobbesian, for a Lockean, for an anarchical libertarian, is to figure out how you get those institutions in the middle which [?] and monopoly of force in them become a well-disciplined regulated monopoly, and that's what the Constitutional separation of power, all the rest of that stuff, is designed to achieve. I must stress, because you are a pessimistic guy in the abstract and rightly so, most efforts to put these institutions together fail; and in my view, if the only thing you have are legal constraints of bone against bone [?] they will fail as well. Now, ultimately success of institutions depends not only on their proper formulation, but on having a culture of cooperation and compliance to make it work. I think the classical liberal tends to be more sensitive to these various institutional and cultural issues than the hard-line libertarian, who doesn't want to choose between attitudinal preferences and saying any of them are better than any of the others. So that's the first half of it. The second half of this is a decent social order, requires that you start to have coordination between private individuals in order to get themselves going. And there's no question that the libertarian is right on this one as well--that the first and best system for getting social cooperation is to have a strong regime of freedom of contract, which allows people to pick their trading partners and put the rules together. And that the only way this system works is to have a state which is strong enough to make sure that others can't interfere with the contract. That's the force problem again. And then secondly strong enough so that it enforces the contract should one party opportunistically [?] to its form try to [?]. So now at this point they are both the same. So where is the difference? Well, there is nothing in the libertarian arsenal of tricks, which has been the control of force or the enforcement of voluntary agreements, that gets you a tax system. And how do you get that tax system? How do you design those public institutions? That is something where the classical liberal will do better. Now, when you say that you are in favor of taxation, what it means is you can exchange for, under the classical liberal formulation, the return of a package of goods and services from the state that exceed the amount of the taxes given. Now, these things are very hard to measure, particularly on the benefit side. And so every serious classical libertarian [liberal?--Econlib Ed.] has gravitated towards a proportionate tax on either income or consumption as a way to minimize political discretion, to give you the freedom you need to raise the amount of revenues that you start to need. And in effect to make sure there is going to be no kind of lobbying by private individuals in an effort to dump liabilities on their opponents and secure benefits to themselves. Now, you can have a flat tax state like Illinois, which is a complete fiscal mess. But one of the things that you know, as messy as it is, the Governor there and a lot of other people there are saying, We'd do a lot better in this state if we had progressive taxes like the great state of New York and the great state of California. And my view of course is that's exactly the opposite situation. Essentially what happens is the classical liberal doesn't say, I'm against all taxes; doesn't say that we want to shrink the government to the size of a [?] or something like that. But what it says is: We want to have a tax which is broad, non-discretionary, with some discretion on how you raise and lower taxes but let every citizen know that they are going to have to pay their proportionate share of the gain based upon their income so there is some kind of brake on what is going to be done. And then have institutions of limited government with Constitutional protections of private property, freedom of religion, and freedom of contract to get there. And hey, if you look at our original Constitution, as augmented by the Bill of Rights, it doesn't do this 100%. It makes many structural errors. It has several moral travesties in it, having to do with slavery, the fugitive slave laws, and the 3/5ths bills and so forth. But if you actually put the structure together, take the parts that have survived, understand them in terms of the general game plan, you can figure out what a sensible system of government is going to look like. And for characters in 1787 sitting in a cold room in Philadelphia that figured this out on the fly with all the political pressures on them, turns out to be one of the greatest intellectual and statecraft [?] achievements of all time. Russ: Bravo. Yes. I agree.
28:35 Russ: I'm going to ask you then, ask where the role of limited government starts and stops. But before we do that--that will be our next topic--I want to get to a famous Supreme Court case I don't fully understand, and I know that you do. And help educate me and our listeners about this, which is the Lochner vs. New York case of 1905. Explain what that is and why it is reviled by so many people; why you seem to like; and what it has to do with, if anything, our conversation |
can learn on YouTube.
jshaffer@baltsun.com
twitter.com/jonas_shafferLondon is often described as a collection of small villages, as opposed to one integrated city. When it comes to choosing your own corner of London it’s important to consider each area carefully. Every neighbourhood has its own culture and quirks, and prior to actually making a final decision on a place to live, it’s wise to get a feel for the place in question. When exploring a certain borough, be sure to look at the available transport links, the average prices, the commute time and the local amenities on offer.
Richmond
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Richmond is described as one of the best areas to live in London; it’s also one of the most picturesque. The River Thames is a major attraction of the area and allows for some beautifully positioned riverside homes, complete with stunning views.
Located just 8 miles south west of the centre of London, Richmond boasts a number of good transport links, with train services to Waterloo taking just under 20 minutes.
Richmond Centre is both vibrant and welcoming and you’ll find many shops, boutiques, pavement cafes and bars dotted around the town. There are also a number of high-end eateries and quaint pubs nearby.
Chiswick
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Just under 30 minutes from central London, the affluent and hugely prevalent area of Chiswick is a popular place to live. Originally a fishing village, many of the houses here are set upon the bank of the riverside. It’s an extremely quiet, leafy and green area, which makes it a great option for those that wish to escape the hustle and bustle of a busy city centre.
Many of the houses here lie within designated conversation areas and you’ll also find a number of Georgian, Victorian and Edwardian properties.
It’s a popular area for young professionals and also those with families. Chiswick is renowned for its excellent primary schools.
Dulwich
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A quintessential London village that boasts a fashionable vibe, Dulwich is certainly a popular spot for those that wish to be surrounded a number of organic food shops, good eateries and lively bars.
A combination of excellent state primary schools as well as a number of brilliant private schools, stunning period properties and a wholesome feel make this the perfect place for young professionals and those with young children.
East Dulwich is an upmarket area and one that also boasts affordable house prices. Fast connections to London Waterloo and London Bridge railways stations are readily available.
Balham
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Balham is quickly becoming one of the trendiest areas in London. An influx of quirky hangouts and indie traders has made this area one of the hippest places to live south of the river.
One of the best aspects to Balham is its great transport links, making it a hotspot for people that wish to work in London yet don’t want to live in the centre of the hustle and bustle.
There are a great mix of independent and chain restaurants in this area, making it a lively place to catch up with friends, and as such, a popular place for young professionals.
Muswell Hill
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Muswell Hill is another area of London that boasts good transport links, yet one that doesn’t sit in a busy or chaotic borough. It definitely has the feel of a village and boasts many parks, green areas, cafes, boutiques and health food stores.
The area is crammed with beautifully architecture, yet despite this, the rent isn’t as high as elsewhere.
The closest tube stations include East Finchley, Highgate and Bounds Green – walking takes around 15 minutes and there are also regular buses to these stations.Following the desecration of hundreds of graves at Jewish cemeteries and wave after wave of hoax bomb threats against Jewish community centers and day schools around the nation, Muslim veterans are offering their support and vow to protect these places of worship.
“I’m a #MuslimMarine in Chicagoland area. If you synagogue or Jewish cemetery needs someone to stand guard, count me in. Islam requires it,” one such veteran tweeted on Monday.
I'm a #MuslimMarine in Chicagoland area. If your synagogue or Jewish cemetery needs someone to stand guard, count me in. Islam requires it. — The Muslim Marine (@MuslimMarine) February 27, 2017
Tayyid Rashid, a 40-year-old former member of the Marine Corps, behind the tweet told.mic: "As I watch this horrible thing unfold here, I felt terrible about what happened in St. Louis and this heinous event in Philadelphia. I was moved to tears. This is absolutely not right."
The tweet has gone viral and has prompted other American Muslims to offer their support to the Jewish community.
Houston area Jewish community I spent ten years protecting our country and I will gladly protect Jewish places of worship if you need me! https://t.co/nUQpTFwxvA — Khalid whalid (@Khalidwhalid1) February 28, 2017
I'm a Muslim in #Harrisburg. If your synagogue or community center needs someone 2 stand guard, I will stand guard 4 you. Islam requires it. — Momin (@BhattiMomin) February 28, 2017
I'm no marine, but I'll stand guard if needed. https://t.co/qtSJ5YQ0JH — That One Jerk (@1UnknownCritic) February 27, 2017
I'm a Muslim in DC. If your synagogue needs someone to stand guard, I'll stand guard. Islam requires it. https://t.co/kw4acYBuPK — Qasim Rashid, Esq. (@MuslimIQ) February 27, 2017
MONEY BEING RAISED TO RESTORE VANDALIZED JEWISH CEMETERY IN PHILADELPHIA
This show of solidarity follows an online campaign called “Muslims Unite to Repair Jewish Cemetery,” which has raised more than $115,000 to repair the gravestones toppled over at the Chesed Shel Emeth Cemetery in the St. Louis suburb of University City, Missouri.
Earlier this week, dozens of volunteers from various faiths helped clean up the Mount Carmel Cemetery in Philadelphia, which was vandalized over the weekend.
ARMY VET FACES TRIAL FOR POSTING FLAGS AT VA SITE, SESSIONS ASKED TO INTERVENE
President Donald Trump, who has been criticized as lax in denouncing the threats and other anti-Semitic acts across the country, opened his address Tuesday night to a joint session of Congress with his strongest condemnation yet.
"Recent threats targeting Jewish community centers and vandalism of Jewish cemeteries," Trump said, "remind us that, while we are a country that disagrees on policy, we stand united in condemning hate and evil in all of its very ugly forms."
According to the JCC Association of North America, centers and day schools in at least a dozen states received threats, as of Monday. No bombs were found.
It was the fifth round of bomb threats against Jewish institutions since January, prompting outrage and exasperation among Jewish leaders as well as calls for an aggressive federal response to put a stop to it.
"The Justice Department, Homeland Security, the FBI, and the White House, alongside Congress and local officials, must speak out — and speak out forcefully — against this scourge of anti-Semitism impacting communities across the country," said David Posner, an official with JCC Association of North America. "Members of our community must see swift and concerted action from federal officials to identify and capture the perpetrator or perpetrators who are trying to instill anxiety and fear in our communities."
The FBI and the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division are probing the threats.
Attorney General Jeff Sessions called the vandalism and bomb threats serious, unacceptable behavior and said the department will "do what it can to assist in pushing back... and prosecuting anybody that we can prove to be a part of it."
"We are a nation that is a diverse constituency, and we don't need these kind of activities," Sessions said.
Rashid said he had one message to the people behind the valdalizations and threats.
"If you truly want to establish peace in the world, you have to learn to look at the world through the realities of the oppressed," he told.mic. "If we want to establish peace and live in a country of values and principles of the constitution, we have to engage in dialogue and efforts to hear out one another."
The Associated Press contributed to this report.Colombia’s police on Sunday opened fire and used teargas against international observers investigating a massacre allegedly carried out by an anti-narcotics unit a few days earlier.
The commission existing of Colombian and international officials, journalists and members of non-governmental organizations came under fire after traveling to the municipality of Tumaco in Nariño to investigate possibly one of the deadliest massacres in 15 years.
At least six and possibly as many as 15 civilians were killed on Thursday when an anti-narcotics police unit allegedly opened fire on protesting coca farmers.
Organizations that took part in the mission
United Nations
Organization of American States
Nariño Governor’s Office
Ombudsman’s Office
Semana
El Espectador
Pacifista
Marcha Patriotica
Justicia y Paz
The ombudsman’s office had undertaken the mission to verify claims that police would have massacred as many as 15 unarmed protesters on Thursday.
According to local media, one member of the humanitarian commission trying to investigate the massacre was injured in the shooting.
#URGENTE Misión Humanitaria de organizaciones nacionales e internacionales fueron atacadas con tiros al aire cuando se dirigían hacia el punto donde ocurrió la masacre en Tumaco, entre las personas que acompañaban la misión habían periodistas, mapp OEA y Diócesis de #Tumaco Programa Somos Defensores Contagio Radio Posted by Marcha Patriótica Nariño on Sunday, October 8, 2017
According to weekly Semana, whose journalist witnessed the shooting, the policemen had ordered the group to “go away” after which the observers informed the police they were authorized to travel through the coca-rich region.
Immediately after, the policemen threw teargas and shot stun guns. Members of the commission fled into the forest after which they seemingly continued to be shot at, also by regular rifles, in spite of regularly identifying themselves as civilians.
Policía dispara a comisión de verificación en Tumaco #TUMACO | Reporteros de ¡PACIFISTA! acompañaban a la comisión que verificaba este domingo la masacre en Tumaco, cuando la Policía disparó. #NiUnMuertoMás #ProyectoCOCA Posted by PACIFISTA on Sunday, October 8, 2017
The aggression targeting officials and civilians has further embarrassed the National Police that has sustained Thursday’s massacre was initiated by dissident FARC guerrillas.
These claims were immediately denied by locals and human rights organizations that claimed members of an anti-narcotics unit opened fire at protesting coca farmers.
The UN and government officials who were shot at were wearing clothing that made them easily recognizable.
Vice-President Oscar Naranjo confirmed the policemen acted outside the law.
The police’s anti-narcotics director Jose Angel Mendoza said that “of course the Police regrets this type of situation. We apologize to the commission members.”
Mendoza denied the policemen had used deadly force, which was rejected by the journalists who published videos of the shooting.James Pritchard, Canada's all-time leading scorer, is going to take part in his fourth Rugby World Cup after all.
The 36-year-old Australian-born fullback was not part of Canada's original 31-man roster. But he was added to the squad Thursday to replace Liam Underwood, who suffered a knee injury in Canada's opening 50-7 loss to Ireland on the weekend.
Underwood will miss the rest of the tournament.
"It's unfortunate for Liam to not be able to finish this World Cup as he is a versatile player for us, having the ability to play 10 and 15 [fly half and fullback] and his goal-kicking abilities," Canadian coach Kieran Crowley said in a statement.
"We've been in discussion with James over the last month and he obviously brings a level of experience to the team and he can play a number of positions if called upon."
Canada, ranked 18th in the world, plays No. 15 Italy on Saturday in Leeds, England. Pritchard does not figure in Canada's matchday 23.
Matt Evans and Harry Jones had been looking after fullback. But with Underwood gone, they will provide cover for fly half Nathan Hirayama, along with Connor Braid.
Pritchard, a versatile veteran who plays his club rugby for Bedford Blues in England, retired from international play soon after the original roster decision was made. But the retirement lasted just 35 days.
"I honestly thought retirement would of lasted longer than 35 days. Great to be back though," he tweeted.
"I'm incredibly excited to play in my fourth World Cup for Canada," Pritchard added in a statement. "To represent your country on the biggest stage in the world is the goal of every rugby player. It's unfortunate that it comes at the expense of Liam, who I wish a quick recovery."
The injury to Underwood comes after the 24-year-old from Toronto battled his way back from a concussion.
Pritchard has 61 caps and 607 points from 18 tries, 104 conversions and 103 penalties, dating back to his debut in 2003. He became the 20th player in test history to score 600 or more points July in Canada's loss to Samoa at the Pacific Nations Cup in Toronto.
He is eligible to play for Canada thanks to his Saskatchewan-born grandfather, whose father came to Canada from the United Kingdom to work on a farm just outside Regina.
In having four World Cups on his resume, Pritchard joins an elite group in fellow Canadians Gareth Rees, Al Charron, Rod Snow, Dave Lougheed, Jamie Cudmore and Mike James.It is astonishing that everything about the credit crisis is still discussed in the technical terms of economics. Although, as most commentators agree, almost all economists failed to predict the financial crisis that swept through the western economies in 2008 - we still slavishly discuss and analyse it in their technical terms.
Whether it is straight journalism, or columnists' rants, or even imaginative responses like the play Enron, the problem is described either as a technical system that went wrong or as a set of strange inventions that were then corruptly used by bad and greedy people. And in doing this all the journalists, and the critics, and the playwrights earnestly try and explain to us the system in the terms, and the framework of "market-speak" created by the economists and the financiers.
The high point of this came last week when lead items on TV news were devoted to the letters written by two opposing groups of economists. It was the height of absurdity as economists from the opposing camps came on News-24 to announce pompously that "this is far more important than politics". As David Blanchflower (ex-member of the Monetary Policy Committee) pointed out in a really good piece in the New Statesman - HERE - they have absolutely no basis for any of their claims. The reason is that they have no idea what is going to happen to the economy in the next 12 months.
But more than that - perhaps the economists are the problem? That they themselves cannot see the full dimensions of the project of which they have been a part.
But still we listen to them, and still our journalists use their language and assumptions.
Which means that despite the disasters we are still trapped in the economists' world.
But the moment you pull back and look at that world from a wider perspective strange things start to emerge.
When the neoliberal project first began in 1979 with Mrs Thatcher the idea was that politicians would give away power to the markets and the state would shrink. Over the past 15 years the idea of the "market" has been extended to practically every area of society - education, health, even the arts. But to make this happen those running the neoliberal project had to enforce it by creating vast and intricate performance indicators and feedback systems (which in many cases led to wide scale absurdities). And to do this they used the mighty power of the state.
The crucial thing is that these systems had practically nothing to do with the original idea of the "market". They are actually a strange pseudo-scientific piece of planning engineered by politicians and groups of technocrats that borrowed far more from cold-war ideas of feedback engineering and cybernetics than from the risky roller coaster of the market. And to create the systems they had to greatly enlarge the state and the extent of its power, which is the very opposite of the vision of a free-market utopia.
And when you examine the roots of the neoliberal idea of the market it gets odder still. The ideas that rose up in the post-war years that captured the imagination of people like Mrs Thatcher are actually a very strange mutation of capitalism. If you listen to interviews with Friedrich Hayek he talks far more like a cold war systems engineer discussing information signals and feedback than Adam Smith with his theories of Moral Sentiment.
While the roots of the technical systems that the banks created to manage risk also lie back in the cybernetic dreams of the 1950s and 60s. Dreams not of progress through the dynamism of markets - but of using computers to create a balanced, almost frozen world. - just like in the Cold War.
Which raises the question - have we misunderstood what we have lived through since 1979?
We think it was the resurgence of capitalism. But maybe it was something very different? Something that we can't see properly because we are still trapped in the economists' world and their mindset.
I am putting up a film I made as part of the Pandora's Box series - because I think it is relevant. The Pandora's Box series looked at how scientific ideas were taken up and used by politicians and other powerful groups to justify what were essentially political attempts to change and re-engineer the world.
In this episode I argue that Mrs Thatcher's monetarist experiment of the 1980s was not just giving power away to the markets. In reality it was a pseudo-scientific attempt to re-engineer Britain that had far more in common with the preceding Old Labour attempts at "scientific" economic planning that it did with any free market theory.
And I think it would be good to pull back and look at the recent crisis in the same terms.
The film also includes the most fabulous machine I have ever seen. A giant interconnected system driven by water to model the whole British economy.While New Orleans Saints fans are anxious about their defensive line since the suspension of Will Smith and the release of Alex Brown, Green Bay quarterback Aaron Rodgers has a different concern.
He knows at least one of the guys who'll be starting and he knows who's coaching the Saints defense.
"I think you still have some talented guys out there," Rodgers said. "Turk McBride is a guy that we have seen in Detroit in the past.
"Losing a guy like Will Smith does not make your defense better. He is one of the top guys, at his position, in the league. I have played against Gregg Williams before. I know what kind of coach he is. He is an extremely talented coach and he gets him team prepared. I know they will have something special for us and I know it will be a big challenge for us."PotCoin PotCoin logo Denominations Plural PotCoins Symbol Ᵽ.[1] Ticker symbol POT Development Initial release January 21, 2014 ( ) Ledger Hash function Scrypt Block reward Ᵽ210 Block time 40 seconds
PotCoin (code: POT) is a peer-to-peer cryptocurrency which exists with the aim of becoming the standard form of payment for the legalized cannabis industry.[2][3][4] PotCoin is an open source software project released under the MIT/X11 license and was technically nearly identical to Litecoin until August 23, 2015, when Potcoin changed to Proof-of-Stake-Velocity (PoSV). PotCoin is not managed by any central authority and provides a decentralised solution for the transfer of value.
History [ edit ]
PotCoin was released on January 21, 2014, via GitHub by three entrepreneurs from Montreal, Quebec, Canada, who hoped to create a cryptocurrency that would be adopted by the legal cannabis industry across the world.[citation needed] That is why this cryptocurrency was launched exactly at 4:20 p.m. The nicknames of PotCoin developers are Hasoshi, Mr. Jones and Smokemon 514. A week after launch, PotCoin had enough interest to merit multiple mining pools and on January 30, was added to a newly launched cryptocurrency exchange named Cryptorush allowing trading between Bitcoin and PotCoin.[citation needed] During February and March 2014, PotCoin gained mainstream media attention due to the large community and expanding development team. On February 17, Chronic Star Medical, a supplier of cannabis foods, was the first merchant to announce they would be accepting PotCoin as a form of payment. By the end of March, PotCoin was added to three cryptocurrency exchanges that account for the largest trade volume to this date and the development team had announced that they had secured their first seed-round investment.
On April 9, 2014, the PotCoin development team revealed their identities for the first time when co-founders and developers Joel Yaffe and Nick Iversen delivered a talk about PotCoin at the New York Cryptocurrency Convention.[5] The team also announced that they would be present in Denver on April 20 for the 420 counterculture holiday. On April 19, 2014, PotCoin witnessed a dramatic rise in price, taking its market capitalization over 1 million USD for the first time, fueled by excitement around the April 20th counterculture holiday. On April 20, PotCoin experienced its first major crash and depreciating to half its value in one day due to speculation by investors.
Early 2015 showed difficult times for Potcoin. The original development team broke apart and left for various reasons. At this point the community tried to rally Potcoin away from death as a community-driven coin. PotLabs, a group of people who had helped to develop many things for Potcoin in the early years, took charge of the push to keep Potcoin alive and moving forward.
On August 23, 2015, Potlabs released an update for Potcoin, one that was very anticipated.[by whom?] With this Potcoin began its move to the POSV algorithm. Over the next few weeks, there were some issues with the network getting up to speed. Many cryptocurrency exchanges also froze their Potcoin wallets waiting to see what would happen. Within a few weeks, the network began to get up to speed and when exchanges were notified they began to unfreeze their wallets allowing normal transactions to resume.
On June 13, 2017, PotCoin sponsored Ex-NBA Star Dennis Rodman's fifth trip to North Korea.[6] They also sponsored his June 2018 visit to Singapore so he could be there for the 2018 North Korea–United States summit.[7]
Overview and specification [ edit ]
PotCoin is based on a public ledger known as a blockchain. PotCoin was originally a fork of Litecoin-QT but with key differences including a shorter block generation time, a quicker halving schedule and an increased maximum number of coins. Before PotCoin was publicly released, 55 blocks were mined for checkpoints. The initial block reward (the number of coins rewarded for solving a block whilst mining) was set at 420 PotCoins but on June 1, 2014, the block reward was halved and currently[when?] stands at 210 PotCoins. Mining can be performed by hardware including CPUs, GPUs and more commonly scrypt ASICs.Ryan Petrich (@rpetrich) has done it again, this time releasing a killer jailbreak package that brings the iOS 7.1 Calendar app to iOS 7.0.x-powered devices. You can pick up the new jailbreak application – called Gregorian – now on the Cydia Store, and it’s available free of charge from Petrich’s beta repository.
The repo address is “http://rpetri.ch/repo” and you’ll need to add it to the “Sources” section of the Cydia app. Once you’ve done this, Gregorian will be available to download free for iOS devices running iOS 7.0 to iOS 7.0.6. The package is essentially a precise port of the iOS 7.1 Calendar application, meaning jailbreakers holding off on updating to the new mobile OS in order to preserve their jailbreak aren’t going to miss out on Calendar’s new events list feature.
As Apple explains online, the refreshed iOS 7.1 Calendar app allows users to check on a list of upcoming events displayed across multiple months on a single page. It’s a far easier way of gaining at-a-glance information concerning your upcoming schedule, and we’re really pleased to see it launch for pre-iOS 7.1 devices.
This isn’t the first time Ryan Petrich has saved jailbreakers from missing out by not updating their iOS firmware. Back when iOS 7.0.6 patched a serious SSL exploit in Apple’s mobile OS, Petrich released a similar patch that allowed jailbreakers to fix the vulnerability without having to lose their jailbreak.
Hopefully it won’t be too long until evasi0n7 is optimized for iOS 7.1, though as of this writing no information concerning a potential release has surfaced online. We’ll keep you posted on this front.
In the meantime, jailbreakers running an iOS 7.0.x-powered device can add the iOS 7.1 Calendar app to their iPhone now using Gregorian. As mentioned, it’s available free of charge from Ryan Petrich’s private repository.
See also: The TravelCard Is A Credit Card Size Battery Pack For iPhone, You Can Finally Replay Coldplay’s Performance From The iTunes Festival At SXSW, and MLB’s RBI Baseball 14 Will Be ‘True To The Roots Of The Brand’.ASIA/SYRIA - Archbishop Hindo: violence and intimidation of the Kurd militias on Christians increase in Hassaké
wars sectaniarism oriental churches Tuesday, 20 September 2016
Hassaké (Agenzia Fides) - In the northeastern Syrian city of Hassake, and the surrounding region of Jazira, Kurdish militias vying for control of the territory with the government army are carrying out acts of violence and intimidation against Christians: this is what Syrian Catholic Archbishop Jacques Behnan Hindo said to Agenzia Fides, reporting a long list of accidents and abuses that in his opinion constitute a genuine strategy aimed at expelling the remaining population of Christian faith from the city.
"Whenever the Kurdish militia enter in action to reaffirm its military hegemony over the city" explains the Archbishop, at the head of the Syrian Catholic archieparchy of Hassaké Nisibi, "the epicenter of their raids and acts of force is always the area of the six churches, where most of the Christians live. In many cases they expelled the Christians from their homes under the threat of Kalashnikovs. And where they enter, they loot everything". Archbishop Hindo confides that he was himself a victim of a recent act of intimidation, when some shots of gunfire were fired through the window of his house, and a bullet narrowly missed his head. "At that moment", added the Archbishop, "the area was presided by Kurdish militias, and there were no other armed persons nearby".
"For sure" points out Archbishop Hindo "these shots were not fired by jihadists, whose closest bases were located more than twenty kilometers away". According to the Archbishop, the Kurdish militias initiatives pursue the design to assert its control over the entire city of Hassaké, then consolidate their supremacy over the whole region, to the detriment of the government armed forces.
But a detail added by the Archbishop suggests that the situation on the field is confusing and in conflict with certain stereotypes on the Syrian conflict that circulate in the West: "In Shaddadi, which was once a jihadist stronghold", refers Mgr. Hindo "the situation is now in the hands of Kurdish militias. But under their command there are many of the local residents who had previously enrolled with the jihadist militias of Daesh". (GV) (Agenzia Fides 20/09/2016 fides)
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Collison to step in and up for CP3 | Cavs have multiple options for Bynum | Smith’s latest blunder costs Knicks | Lakers Nash eyeing a February return
No. 1: Clippers need Collison, and others, to step in and up for Paul — Clippers point guard Chris Paul will be sidelined for anywhere from 3 to 5 weeks, and potentially even longer, with a separated shoulder, which puts his back up, Darren Collison, into the pressure cooker for the next month or so. That would be the same pressure cooker he was in Friday night when Paul went down and the Clippers needed a huge effort from him and others (DeAndre Jordan on this night) to save the day against his former team, the Dallas Mavericks. It’s a tall order, filling the shoes of the MVP candidate and team leader, but one that the Clippers need Collison to tackle every night. As Broderick Turner of The Los Angeles Times reports, Collison’s time is now:
Jordan scored a career-high 25 points on 11-for-14 shooting. He also had 18 rebounds and two blocked shots.
“DJ was great,” Clippers Coach Doc Rivers said. “DJ got deep post position, and that’s where he’s effective. If he can get them deep, he can score.” Collison scored a season-high 20 points on six-for-10 shooting. Collison played all 12 minutes in the fourth quarter after Paul went down in the third. “Darren was terrific tonight,” Rivers said. “We just kept him aggressive. He obviously doesn’t see the floor like [Chris Paul]. There’s only one guy like that and that’s CP. But [Collison] has great speed and pace and he has a big heart. That’s what we needed tonight.” Jordan said his job is to be a defender, not to score. “It’s not really my first priority or second priority,” Jordan said. “I want to be the best defensive player out there. If I can go out there and control the paint for us and only have two points but grab 20 rebounds and a couple of blocks for our team and I play well defensively … that’s my only concern.” Collison will perhaps have the toughest job going forward. He’ll have to fill in for Paul while the All-Star point guard is out three to five weeks recovering from injury. “It’s going to be tough because he’s our engine,” Collison said. “He’s our leader. He does a lot for us. But at the same time, this team is very talented. We have the depth to overcome this. We’re all hoping that CP comes back as soon as possible.”
VIDEO: Doc Rivers talks about Chris Paul’s injury and what it does to the Clippers *** No. 2: Cavaliers have multiple options on Bynum trade front — One door closes for the Cavaliers on the Andrew Bynum trade front while another one seemingly always opens where the big man behemoth is concerned. With the chances of a Bynum-for-Pau Gasol swap fading in recent days, the Cavaliers have moved on and are exploring other options, according to Marc Stein and Brian Windhorst of ESPN.com. Those options include a potential deal that would require Richard Jefferson to pack his bags and relocate from Utah: Sources said Utah Jazz veteran swingman Richard Jefferson has emerged as a new trade target for the Cavaliers after ongoing talks with the Los Angeles Lakers on a deal centered around the swap of former teammates Pau Gasol and Bynum remained at an impasse Friday. A deal with Utah that would send Jefferson to Cleveland and likewise allow the Jazz to acquire and waive Bynum before the other half of his $12.3 million salary this season becomes guaranteed is one of three primary options for the Cavaliers. The other two, sources said Friday, are continuing talks with the Lakers this weekend in hopes of hashing out trade terms both teams can stomach, or electing to keep Bynum beyond Tuesday’s deadline and then reshopping him as a trade asset before the Feb. 20 trade deadline, or, if necessary, again in late June and early July. Any team that has Bynum on its roster Jan. 7 can immediately wipe $6 million of its books this season by waiving him that day by 5 p.m. But sources said that Cleveland is strongly weighing the idea of keeping Bynum if it can’t trade him by then, despite the fact it would fully guarantee the former All-Star center an extra $6 million. In that scenario — even if he never played another second for the Cavs — Bynum theoretically could be an attractive trade piece in connection with the June draft or immediately after it because his $12.5 million salary in 2014-15 is fully nonguaranteed. Any team that has Bynum on its roster in July can erase the $12.5 million as long as he clears waivers by July 10. *** No. 3: Smith’s ill-advised 3-pointer costs Knicks in loss to Rockets — If it was anyone else other than J.R. Smith and the New York Knicks, you might be surprised. But it’s not. And there is little left to the dark side of the imagination when it comes to the blunders committed by the Knicks during this time of horrors. Smith forgot the score late in Friday night’s game in Houston and hoisted a bone-headed 3-pointer with the game tied and the outcome still hanging in the balance. He later acknowledged that he’d forgotten the score and took that shot thinking the Knicks were trailing. It’s just the latest in a season-long series of miscues for a Knicks team that, as Frank Isola of the New York Daily News points out, cannot afford many more of these sorts of gaffes before someone gets run out of town: Last month, the Knicks lost a home game to Washington when they failed to use one of their three remaining timeouts after the Wizards had taken a lead in the closing seconds. Within days, [Andrea] Bargnani nearly blew a game in Milwaukee by attempting a 3-pointer with the Knicks leading by two and the shot clock turned off. “It was déjà vu,” said Anthony, referring to Smith’s and Bargnani’s untimely shots. As for Smith’s brain freeze, Mike Woodson said he was “surprised” by the shot but added that “we wouldn’t be having this conversation if he had made it.” The Rockets, who improved to 22-13, certainly weren’t at their best. Dwight Howard was outplayed by Chandler, while Lin scored all of his 14 points in the first half. James Harden was electric and lethargic at times. He scored 37 points on 10-for-19 shooting and went 12-for-12 from the line. But he also committed five turnovers, one of which led to Chandler’s game-tying free throws with 1:02 left. [Carmelo] Anthony finished with 25 points — on 23 shots — and eight rebounds and spent much of the game wincing. Before Thursday night’s win in San Antonio, he had missed three straight games with a sprained left ankle, and having to play 37 plus minutes in two consecutive games took its toll. If Smith remembers the score and Anthony holds for a final shot, the Knicks could have been headed to Dallas with a two-game winning streak. Now, they’re looking to avoid falling a season-high 13 games under.500. “We had a great opportunity,” Anthony said. “We have to learn from this.”
VIDEO: James Harden goes off for 37 in a win over the Knicks ***
No. 4: Report: Nash eyeing a February return to Lakers — Kobe Bryant and Steve Nash back together again, at the same time, too. That would be an excellent New Year’s prize for the Los Angeles Lakers, who don’t have either one of their future Hall of Famers at their disposal right now. Bryant is on the mend from a fractured knee that cost him all but six games this season, while Nash remains sidelined with the chronic nerve issues in his back and hamstrings that have derailed his entire season to date. But sometime in February is the target date Nash has pegged for what, as ESPNLosAngeles.com’s Dave McMenamin suggests, could be the two-time MVP’s final comeback attempt:
“At some point, I have to also realize, do the safest thing, the best possible opportunity to play basketball again rather than letting my angst get the better of me and jumping back in there,” Nash said after the Lakers’ shootaround Friday. “I know I can get healthy. It’s a matter of, ‘Can I sustain it?’ And I’m just trying to get that health under my belt for an amount of time where we feel confident that it can be sustainable is the tricky part, and that’s probably going to take a little while longer than I was hoping.” Nash, the league’s oldest player — turning 40 next month — originally hoped to return to the lineup sometime during the Lakers’ upcoming seven-game Grammys road trip Jan. 15-26, but he has since decided to use that time to go back to Vancouver, British Columbia, for the fourth time this season to undergo rehab with personal trainer Rick Celebrini. If all goes well, Nash will practice with the Lakers for a week when they return from their extended road trip and attempt a comeback during the first week of February with about 35 games left in the regular season. “It’s all super speculative at this point because it’s such a weird, tricky dimension when you’re talking about this nerve issue,” Nash said. Nash exited at halftime of the Lakers’ loss to the Minnesota Timberwolves on Nov. 10 and has not played since. He is averaging 6.7 points and 4.8 assists per game this season while shooting 26.1 percent from the field. He has two years remaining on his contract with the Lakers, set to pay him $9.4 million this season and $9.7 million in 2014-15. Nash said that the time away from the team — missing the past 24 games — is starting to wear on him. “That just eats away at me every day — how far away I am from the game,” Nash said. “It’s been almost two months now. It takes a while to get your rhythm and everything down. So the anxiety and stress over the last eight months have been very unwelcomed.” After his last trip to Vancouver in early December, Nash was able to participate in three straight days of Lakers practices without a setback. However, two days after the string of consecutive work, discomfort set in. “My left leg just like shut off,” Nash |
of French nuclear regulator ASN, said in a statement it could not pinpoint the location of the release of radioactive material but that based on weather patterns, the most plausible zone lay south of the Ural mountains, between the Urals and the Volga river.
This could indicate Russia or possibly Kazakhstan, an IRSN official said.
“Russian authorities have said they are not aware of an accident on their territory,” IRSN director Jean-Marc Peres told Reuters. He added that the institute had not yet been in contact with Kazakh authorities.
A spokeswoman for the Russian Emergencies Ministry said she could not immediately comment. It was not immediately possible to reach authorities in Kazakhstan or the Kazakh embassy in Moscow.
Peres said that in recent weeks IRSN and several other nuclear safety institutes in Europe had measured high levels of levels of ruthenium 106, a radioactive nuclide that is the product of splitting atoms in a nuclear reactor and which does not occur naturally.
IRSN estimates that the quantity of ruthenium 106 released was major, between 100 and 300 teraBecquerels, and that if an accident of this magnitude had happened in France it would have required the evacuation or sheltering of people in a radius of a few kilometers around the accident site.
The ruthenium 106 was probably released in a nuclear fuel treatment site or center for radioactive medicine, Peres said. Because of its short half-life of about a year, ruthenium 106 is used in nuclear medicine.
The IRSN ruled out an accident in a nuclear reactor, as that would have led to contamination with other radionuclides too. It also ruled out the crash of a ruthenium-powered satellite as an IAEA investigation has concluded that no ruthenium-containing satellite has fallen back on earth during this period.
Measurement from European stations showed high levels of ruthenium 106 in the atmosphere of the majority of European countries, at the beginning of October, with a steady decrease from Oct. 6 onwards.
The IRSN said that the concentrations of ruthenium 106 in the air that have been recorded in Europe were of no consequence for human health and the environment.
The institute also said that the probability of importation into France of foodstuffs, notably mushrooms, contaminated by ruthenium 106 near the site of the accident is extremely low.Alexis Ohanian, a co-founder and the executive chairman of Reddit, says Reddit Notes aren’t quite a currency. Instead, he says, consider one: “something of value, like sugar or gold or bacon.” Photo by Bryan Bedder/Getty Images for Shorty Awards
This article originally appeared in Inc.
The concept Reddit unveiled Friday—nonmonetary gifts known as Reddit Notes to be distributed to active redditors in mid-2015—has been years in the making, Inc. has learned. And it will look different than what many users expected. Reddit announced in September, as it closed a $50 million round of venture-capital funding, that it hoped “to find a way for its users ‘to own some of Reddit.’ ” And it decided at that point to allocate 10 percent of the new funding to making that happen. A blog post Friday announced a few more details, including that fewer than 1 million of the “digital asset” will be released to more than 6 million eligible active Reddit users, who are known as redditors.
The Bright and Hazy Future
The new post leaves much unclear, however, including how Reddit Notes will be structured; how users will be able to be trade, donate, or cash them in; and whether the Notes will actually have equity backing. For instance, in early online communications about the company’s plans for distributing some portion of the bounty from the September funding round, then-CEO Yishan Wong referred to the units as “a cryptocurrency” “exchangeable (backed) by those shares of reddit.”
But in an interview this week, the project leader of Reddit Notes, Daniel Lim, who has been with Reddit for two months, said explicitly that the current iteration of Reddit Notes are not going to have immediate cash value—or equity value. “It’s not a currency. In our minds it’s not equity,” Lim says. How should redditors think about Reddit Notes? “Think about how other companies reward their customers. Like McDonald’s Monopoly game.”
Alexis Ohanian, one of the founders of Reddit and the company’s current executive chairman, explained to Inc. that Reddit has been working with existing government regulations to structure the Notes, and not every detail is decided. “There are still things we have to figure out from a finance perspective,” he says.
“In a lot of ways, it’s not like a currency. It’s something of value, like sugar or gold or bacon,” he says. “It can be transferred.”
As a “digital asset,” is it cryptocurrency? While Reddit Notes will likely be based on the evolving block chain protocol, Lim says, well, not exactly. “I would not call it a cryptocurrency,” he says. “I would call it a digital asset and we are building something that will distribute it.”
The Idea’s Real Roots
According to company executives, including the big gift to the Reddit community in the $50 million funding round was one of the last significant moves by now-former CEO Yishan Wong, who put together the funding round. (Wong departed Reddit last month after a kerfuffle involving his decision to relocate the company from San Francisco to Daly City, California.)
But Inc. has learned the idea’s roots predate Wong’s two-year tenure at the company significantly. According to Ohanian, he’d been mulling the idea of giving back to the Reddit community for years, and brought up the idea to executives at Reddit’s parent company around September of 2011.
“After Reddit first spun out, they were looking for a CEO,” Ohanian says, of conversations with lawyers and a recruiter after Conde Nast released ownership of Reddit to Conde Nast’s parent company, Advance Publications. “I remember talking to all these lawyers about finding a way that users could own shares in the company.”
The lawyers were not so amenable to the idea from the founder. “They said, ‘absolutely not,’ ” according to Ohanian.
However Reddit Notes actually evolve and are distributed, the company is dedicated to the $5 million idea, from the inside—and outside. Investor Sam Altman, the influential president of startup school Y Combinator, of which both he and Ohanian are alums, said in an AMA that he vehemently supports the creation of the financial distribution to redditors—but hopes to see it grow over time.
We’re working on a way to give 10% of our shares from this round to the reddit community. I hope we can increase community ownership over time–I’ve always thought communities like reddit should mostly own themselves, and that it’s time for some innovation around corporate structure here.
Ohanian says regardless of the specific form the Reddit Note takes, the company is going to great lengths to ensure no favoritism of users happens in the distribution of the assets.
“Thinking of Reddit from the very start, I wrote that all redditors are equal; no redditor is more equal than others,” he says of an entry on the site’s original FAQ section. “Just as long as you are an active, good user, you are equal.”
See also: The Single Most Important Trend for 2015Spread the love
Yet more fallout from the government’s notoriously ill-conceived “gunwalking” scheme as Judicial Watch found one of the guns used in the Paris terror attacks of November 13, 2015 appears to have been sold illegally, without repercussion as part of Fast and Furious.
“A Report of Investigation (ROI) filed by a case agent in the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) tracked the gun used in the Paris attacks to a Phoenix gun owner who sold it illegally, ‘off book,’ Judicial Watch’s law enforcement sources confirm.”
According to the watchdog group, a paper trail left, in part, by a 4473 form — which tracks a firearm’s ownership history through serial numbers and other means — traced the weapon to a Phoenix seller who had previously been caught selling illegal weapons.
Evidencing a hallmark of the Fast and Furious scheme, the unidentified Phoenix seller had been caught twice previously for federal firearms violations — “for selling one weapon illegally and possessing an unregistered automatic” — for which no charges or prosecution ever developed.
In fact, according to unidentified and unverified “law enforcement sources involved with the case,” the ATF acted to ensure the seller’s identity and information pertaining to his involvement remained concealed from scrutiny — “kept quiet,” as Judicial Watch sources put it.
“Agents were told, in the process of taking the fully auto [mentioned above], not to anger the seller to prevent him from going public,” Judicial Watch says a “veteran law enforcement officer” explained.
For those unfamiliar with Fast and Furious, the ATF office in Phoenix devised an ill-fated plan, beginning in 2009, to allow gun buyers — “straw purchasers” for Mexican drug cartels — to purchase weapons and cross into Mexico without interference from agents. Ostensibly, this would allow the ATF to trace firearms to those powerful drug cartels; but whistleblowers and various investigators later discovered the feds made no attempts to follow through in tracking any of the thousands of weapons sold in this manner.
Many of these weapons have, however, been tragically linked to crimes against Americans, including the shooting of U.S. Border Patrol agent Brian Terry — killed in a shootout along the Mexican border in 2010.
Now, if what Judicial Watch uncovered holds weight, another Fast and Furious weapon has been used against civilians in an horrific way — thanks to the utterly irresponsible, nefarious scheme unleashed by the Obama administration’s feds.
As the watchdog group notes, it isn’t entirely certain whether or not the Phoenix seller’s identity has been suppressed by the ATF — the agency putatively tasked with reining in the selling and use of illegal weapons — because of his participation with Fast and Furious.
ATF spokesman Corey Ray opaquely told Judicial Watch “no firearms used in the Paris attacks have been traced” by the agency — leaving open the possibility the ATF hasn’t bothered to try. Asked to discuss the ROI report linking the Paris weapon to Phoenix, Ray flatly stated, “I’m not familiar with the report you’re referencing.”
Repeated calls by Judicial Watch to the Phoenix ATF office were never returned.
As the group noted, the Los Angeles Times reported previously a weapon intended to be used to carry out an attack last year at a controversial ‘draw the prophet Mohammed’ cartoon contest in Garland, Texas, had been purchased in a Phoenix gun store associated with Fast and Furious.
For obvious reasons, considering the ATF and feds never tracked the scheme’s weapons, most of the over 2,000 Fast and Furious weapons have been lost.
Apparently, however, the guns have a nasty habit of showing up in rather telling incidents — a weighty responsibility for the U.S. government, considering. It remains highly unlikely those agencies or individual agents will ever be called to task for tragic repercussions from the ill-begotten and scandalous program.Matt Fish opened the original Melt Bar & Grilled in Lakewood just six and a half years ago, and what's happened since is nothing short of amazing. In that time, the grilled cheese-and-craft-beer-themed eatery has added locations in Cleveland Heights, Independence, and Mentor.
There's been a lot of chatter about Melt's next big move, but Fish and company have been pretty tight-lipped about when and where that move would take them.
Now we know: Columbus.
"The buzz down there already has been pretty heavy," Fish admits. "They knew we were coming, but they did not know where or when."
The where is The Hubbard, a new five-story mixed-use building at the corner of Hubbard Avenue and North High Street. Located in the heart of the Short North area, the address is one of the most attractive in the entire city.
The when is November 1 at the latest, he says.
"I was approached by a developer to be one of the anchor tenants in a new building on High Street," Fish says. "It's an amazing spot. That's the only reason why I pulled the trigger to do it now instead of waiting another year like I planned. It's one of those opportunities that are too good to pass up."
The 5,000-square-feet space will most closely resemble new construction locations like Mentor and Independence. It will accommodate 140 guests, including the 30-seat bar. The beer list will contain 100 to 120 beers, 40 of which will be on tap.
"This will be the same concept, same menu, but a slightly different theme," Fish explains. "The design will be more Ohio-centric — still heavier on Cleveland memorabilia, because we're a Cleveland company — but it will be more of a melting pot of Ohio, with Cleveland, Columbus and Cincinnati stuff."
When the Columbus location opens its doors, the Melt family will grow by about 65 staffers to a total of 365, Fish says.
"We really turned the corner as a company when we opened Independence and Mentor," Fish explains. "We've become a professional company with a management team, training programs… It's almost down to a science."Spread the love
Waterford, MI – A Farmington Hills police officer described as “quiet and polite” by neighbors is sitting in the Oakland County Jail after being caught with child pornography.
Matthew Charles Parsons, 48, was a 20-year veteran of the department who received awards and commendations, but is now stripped of his badge and will face felony sex crime charges. His bond is set at $300,000.
Investigators from the Michigan Attorney General’s office and Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force showed up at the police department on May 25 with search warrants.
In addition to downloading at least 10 videos of child sexually abusive material, Parsons secretly filmed videos of a naked adult. The charges amount to “five counts of possession of child sexually abusive material, five charges of using a computer to commit a crime and three counts of illegally recording an individual.”
Police Chief Chuck Nebus says this is the first time that a crime of this nature has been exposed in the 40 year history of the Farmington Hill Police Department.
“We police our own. A police officer is not above the law. This incident is not a reflection of the Farmington Hills Police Department,” said Nebus.
According to Nebus’ release: “Officers shared with me that they want our residents to know that this incident is not reflective of the integrity and dedication of the officers who proudly serve and protect this community. Nothing is more important than earning and maintaining that trust.”
Parsons is on administrative leave and suspended without pay, pending an internal investigation that will determine the fate of his employment. Considering the authority that cops are granted by the state, and the ease with which that authority can be abused—especially on children—we would assume that Parsons will not keep his job.
However, police unions are known to step in and defend the bad behavior of cops so they can keep their jobs, even when the police chief doesn’t want the miscreant on his team.
But prosecutors appear to be very serious about going after child exploiters. A Florida cop was just sentenced to life in prison for producing, possessing and distributing child pornography, as well as attempting to coerce a minor into sexual activity. Michael Edwin was Officer of the Year in 2011, but left the Fort Pierce Police Department in 2012 after he was caught viewing and posting child porn in his patrol car.
Unfortunately, this kind of behavior can exist in any person, regardless of their profession. But there is an extra level of danger when cops do it, as many enforcers of the law think they are above the law. Blue Privilege is often given to misbehaving cops, which helps fuel this arrogance that manifests itself in deviant acts as those of Parsons and Edwin.In a special meeting Tuesday morning, the Mountain View City Council will consider immediately adopting just-cause eviction protections to prevent tenants from being ousted before Measure V takes effect. The meeting is scheduled for 10 a.m. on Tuesday, Nov. 15, in the council chambers.
These proposed rules would essentially forbid landlords from evicting tenants except under specific conditions, such as failure to pay rent or criminal activity. Just-cause rules have long been sought by tenant advocates, but council members have previously expressed concerns that the protections would cause landlords to become excessively picky in accepting new tenants.
With Measure V winning a solid majority in the Nov. 8 election, just-cause rules are set to become law next month after the election results are certified. But a new concern popped up in recent weeks as tenant advocates received reports that landlords were evicting households as a way to bring apartment units up to the market price before rent control protections kicked in. The city's independent mediation service, Project Sentinel, reported learning of 14 such evictions in Mountain View.
As an urgency ordinance, the just-cause protections will need at least five votes to be approved.
The meeting's agenda can be viewed at mountainview.gov.Amid fears that a tide of Euroscepticism could sweep London towards the exit, Wolfgang Schäuble urged Britain to avoid a referendum on EU membership that would create “uncertainty”.
“I would wish for more British involvement in Europe, not less,” he said in an interview with German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung.
“We want to keep Britain in the EU and not push it out.”
However, Mr Schäuble cautioned that any attempt to “blackmail” Germany with threats of an exit would not be tolerated.
“Our British friends are not dangerous, but a referendum would create uncertainty,” he added.
Last week, UK prime minister David Cameron described a British secession as “imaginable”, even though he would be against the move.
Mr Cameron has faced increased pressure from Tory backbenchers to claw back more powers from Brussels. David Davis, the Tory eurosceptic MP, has called for the British public to be given the chance to vote for a major repatriation of powers from the EU by early 2014.
The White House has also waded into the argument, warning that Britain’s position on the world stage could be significantly weakened by an exit.
Mr Schäuble renewed his call for an EU president that was “directly elected by the people, like in France and America”.
Herman Van Rompuy, the current president of the European Council, was elected by the 27 leaders of the EU, even though he was the only candidate to run for the post, while the president of the European Commission, currently Jose Manuel Barroso, was chosen by the European Parliament.
Separately, Italian caretaker prime minister Mario Monti said that he would consider running for a second term in next February’s election.
Speaking at an end-of-year news conference, Mr Monti, who resigned on Friday after 13 months in office, said that if a party or coalition offered a credible programme that he supported, “I would be ready to offer my encouragement, advice and if necessary leadership.”
He warned that Italy’s next government must not make easy election promises or backtrack on reforms started by his technocrat administration.
“We have to avoid illusory and extremely dangerous steps backwards,” he said.
Mr Monti, who was appointed to lead an unelected government to save Italy from financial crisis, has faced growing calls to seek a second term.Belgian police and soldiers sealed off part of central Brussels after finding gas canisters in a car driven by a man known to have been radicalised, officials said.
Belgium remains on high alert as it prepares to mark the first anniversary of last year's Islamic State-inspired attacks on the Brussels metro and airport which killed 32 people.
Prosecutor's spokesman Ine Van Wymersch said authorities did not want to take any chances and acted quickly'since the driver was known by judicial authorities and it was unclear why the gas canisters were there'.
'We are taking the case seriously,' Ms Van Wymersch added. She said the suspect was being interrogated.
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Belgian police and soldiers sealed off part of central Brussels after finding gas canisters in a car driven by a man known to have been radicalised
The Brussels prosecutors' office said the bomb disposal squad carried out several controlled explosions but found 'no detonating mechanism or other explosives in the car (pictured)'
A member of the bomb squad controls a robot as he investigates the car that was pulled over in Porte de Hal
Reports said the suspect had previously gone to Syria but officials did not confirm that.
'The car was stopped because the driver jumped several red lights. The police then noticed several gas canisters in the boot and rather than take any risks, they called for help from the army bomb squad,' a police spokesman said.
Local mayor Charles Picque said the driver was'someone potentially dangerous' who was listed as radicalised.
'When you put it all together... and that there were gas canisters in the boot, which he did not want to open, then obviously you have to be prudent,' he added.
The car was stopped because the driver jumped several red lights and police then noticed several gas canisters in the boot. Belgian police are pictured sealing off the area
The driver, who has been arrested, is alleged to have skipped traffic lights, and police discovered at least two cylinders inside the vehicle
It comes a year after 35 people were killed when Brussels airport and a metro station were attacked
The Brussels prosecutors' office said the bomb disposal squad carried out several controlled explosions but found 'no detonating mechanism or other explosives in the car.'
The security perimeter around Porte de Hal, in force from mid-afternoon, has also been lifted, it said.
Public broadcaster RTBF said the driver was 27 years old and had gone to Syria in 2014. He was allegedly arrested on his return to Belgium.
He was subsequently sentenced to five years in prison, suspended, at a trial of recruiters of foreign fighters for the Islamic State group in Syria.
The trial was of top jihadist recruiter Khalid Zerkani, who was sentenced in 2016 to 15 years in prison for recruiting dozens of people, including several who became key suspects in the Brussels and Paris attacks, to wage jihad in Syria.
Belgium is one of the largest sources of foreign fighters going to Syria and Iraq.
French police allegedly foiled an imminent attack in September when they detained several women driving a car filled with gas canisters next to Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris.
The area around the vehicle was evacuated after gas cylinders were discovered inside
The security perimeter was set up in the Porte de Hal neighbourhood, near the main Midi rail station in an area that is famous for a medieval fortress which attracts tourists.
Nearby buildings were evacuated and public transport either halted or diverted, causing rush-hour chaos.
The Brussels prosecutors' office, which confirmed the driver was known to police, said he was now being held for questioning to determine what his intentions were.
Gros dispositif et impressionnante évacuation du métro Porte de Hal. #Alertealabombe pic.twitter.com/PTBhFgi1wN — Sihame Haddioui (@SihameHaddioui) March 2, 2017
'It is absolutely too early to say that the driver had criminal intentions. All speculation in this sense is premature,' a statement said, adding that the identity of the driver could not be released while the investigation is underway.
Attacks carried out by home-grown, IS-inspired jihadists on March 22 last year rocked Belgium and sparked a major security clampdown.
The same jihadist cell also played a key role in the November 2015 Paris attacks which claimed 130 lives.Advertisement Officer shot, killed at Brentwood home later consumed by fire House set on fire, explodes; Shooter believed killed in fire Share Shares Copy Link Copy
A Brentwood police officer was killed Monday in a shooting at a house that eventually exploded and was consumed by flames.Video: House rocked by massive explosionAttorney General Joseph Foster announced Monday night that Officer Stephen Arkell, 48, was shot and killed when he entered the home at 46 Mill Pond Road in response to a call about a domestic dispute.Watch: News conference on death of Officer Stephen ArkellFoster said the shooter is believed to be Michael Nolan, 47. He said other officers were driven out of the home by gunfire.Click to view photos from the scene.Nolan is believed to have set the duplex on fire, and about 5:50 p.m., a massive explosion rocked the neighborhood and tore part of the roof off the building. The house was quickly engulfed in flame and destroyed.Foster said investigators believe Nolan was killed in the fire.Gov. Maggie Hassan ordered that flags be flown at half-staff in Arkell's honor. He was a married father of two teenage girls."Officer Arkell bravely answered the call of duty and made the ultimate sacrifice, a heroic demonstration of his commitment to the safety of his fellow citizens," Hassan said. "Like so many of our first responders do on a daily basis, Officer Arkell courageously put his life on the line to protect others, and in doing so, was tragically taken far too soon."A large police force from several agencies scrambled to the home after the initial report of shots fired came in. After the fire started, firefighters and other emergency workers were kept away from the building.Shortly before the explosion, media crews and others nearby were told to get back out of concerns that they might be in the line of fire. An officer was heard saying there may be a person with a long firearm in the house.Earlier, a person was seen being taken to an ambulance. That person was sitting up and did not appear to be seriously injured. Exeter Hospital said it was treating one patient who arrived from the scene. That person was not suffering from a gunshot wound.Fire officials said later in the evening that the fire was put out before it could spread to neighboring homes.The neighborhood is a community for people ages 55 and older.cmu.edu news
June 17: Carnegie Mellon Engineering Professors Create World's Smallest Fuel Cell Powered By Biology Contact: Chriss Swaney / 412-268-5776 /
Carnegie Mellon Engineering Professors Create
World's Smallest Fuel Cell Powered By Biology Outstanding Research Supports Work To Develop Renewable Energy Using Bacteria and Microtechnology
Chriss Swaney / 412-268-5776 / Swaney@andrew.cmu.edu PITTSBURGH—Carnegie Mellon University's Kelvin B. Gregory and Philip R. LeDuc have created the world's smallest fuel cell powered by bacteria. Future versions of the biology-powered fuel cell could be used for self-powered sensing devices in remote locations where batteries are impractical, such as deep ocean or geological environments.
"We have developed a biological fuel cell which uses microbial electricity generation enabled by microfluidic flow control to produce power," said Gregory, an assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering at Carnegie Mellon.
The new device, the size of a single strand of human hair, generates energy from the metabolism of bacteria on thin gold plates in micro-manufactured channels. The fuel cell recruits necessary bacteria to create a biofilm that utilizes natural organic compounds as fuel to generate power.
Future versions of this tiny bacteria-powered fuel cell could replace batteries in microelectronic devices. While batteries are used to do that today, fuel cells are able to store more energy in the same space.
"Our biology-powered fuel cell could be less costly to make and more easily deployed in remote areas than conventional batteries that require invasive maintenance," said LeDuc, an associate professor of mechanical engineering with courtesy appointments in Biomedical Engineering, Biological Sciences and Computational Biology departments.
Both researchers report that the evolution of microbial electricity generation is motivated by the potential for renewable energy sources and waste biomass to serve as a fuel for large-scale electricity generation.
"Our work also is prompted by increased interest in improved battery technology for small scale electronic devices and sensors," Gregory said.
###American author and professor Noam Chomsky was in Beirut to give a commencement speech and accept an honorary degree at the American University of Beirut. Al-Akhbar interviewed this critic of American imperialism about the ongoing conflict in Syria, Edward Snowden, and what is left of the “Arab Spring.”
Maha Zaraket: What is the title of your [commencement] speech?
Noam Chomsky: I do not remember if it has a title, but it is going to be some comments on legitimacy of borders and states and possibilities of eroding them.
MZ: Do you think the Middle East is going through a rewrite of Sykes-Picot agreement?
I have spent a lot of time looking through the classified documents in the US, which is maybe the freest society, most of the documents are classified to protect the government against its own population and not for security reasons.
NC: I think the Sykes-Picot agreement is falling apart, which is an interesting phenomenon. That is a century. But, the Sykes-Picot agreement was just an imperial imposition that has no legitimacy; there is no reason for any of these borders – except the interests of the imperial powers.It is the same all over the world. it is hard to find a single border that has any justification, including the US-Mexico border and the US-Canada border. You look around the world, just about every conflict that is going on results from the imposition of imperial borders that have nothing to do with the population.
I think as far as Sykes-Picot is concerned, it is beginning to erode. Whatever happens in Syria – it’s hard to imagine – but if anything survives, parts of Syria will be separated. The Kurdish areas are almost autonomous now and they are beginning to link up with the almost-autonomous parts of Northern Iraq Kurdish areas, and may spill over to some extent to southeastern Turkey. What will happen in the rest of the country is hard to say.
MZ: Do you think the new borders will be made by the local population? Or new imperialisms?
NC: I wish that were true, but that is not how the world works. Maybe someday, but not yet, not today.
MZ: What do you think of the Hezbollah intervention in Syria?
NC: They are in a very difficult position. If the rebels win in Syria, they become very exposed. That may mean their demise. There is reason behind it, I am not sure this is the right one, you could argue about it, but it is understandable.
MZ: Are you going to meet Nasrallah this time?
NC: No, I do not know if it is possible. But it is deeply in mind. It is difficult.
MZ: If you meet him again, what would you tell him?
NC: I would like to meet him, but just to find out more about their thinking and their plans. They are not coming to me for advice. You know.
MZ: You called for support of the Turkish protesters. How do you see the uprising in Turkey?
NC: I think the [Taksim demonstrators] are doing a great thing. I think it is extremely important. Of global importance. The initial reaction of the Erdogan regime was pretty similar to Mubarak and Assad: harsh brutal response to a legitimate set of demands.
As of this morning, the latest news, which may or may not turn out to be correct, there does seem to be some prospect of a peaceful settlement of the conflict. The news that was leaked by the representatives of the demonstrators, the Taksim negotiators, was that Erdogan has agreed to wait for a court decision on the Gezi park construction, and if the court authorized it, to have a referendum in Istanbul, which is quite different from a national referendum. I think these are good steps forward if they can be implemented.
MZ: Is it possible to link what is going on in Turkey to what been going on in Syria for the last two years?
NC: I think what is going on in Turkey is part of a general uprising throughout the world to harsh and autocratic economic and social policies that have been imposed everywhere for the past generation. And there have been reactions all over. Some of the reactions have been quite successful.
The most successful was Latin America. Latin America, for the first time in 500 years – it is not small, it has freed itself pretty much from Western domination, mostly US domination in the last century. That is a star development.
I think the Arab Spring was part of the same uprising. It is taking place in Europe, within Europe, in the peripheral countries, in Greece, Spain, and France, to an extent. Significant popular movements rising against the really brutal austerity policies, which are driving Europe not to suicide, but to disaster.
Europe is rich. It is not Syria, so it is not going to be suicide. But, essentially the policies are aimed in the direction of…dismantl[ing] the welfare state, which is one of Europe’s contribution to modern civilization.
MZ: Do you have any comments on the Edward Snowden Case?
NC: First of all, I think he has carried out a heroic act. That is the proper act of a citizen to let people know what their government is doing. For the most part, the public should know what their representatives are doing. Of course, governments never want that. They want to operate in secret.
I have spent a lot of time looking through the classified documents in the US, which is maybe the freest society, most of the documents are classified to protect the government against its own population and not for security reasons. I think anyone who tries to lift the veil on this is doing the right thing. In fact, the programs that the government was carrying out are really illegitimate and it was correct to expose them. I think he is going to suffer for it. You know. But it was the right thing to do.
MZ: After 9/11, the Americans asked, “Why does the rest of the world hate us?” Is it possible for us to ask, why do the Americans hate us?
NC: I think it is kind of interesting…because the question was asked a long time ago in 1958 when then-President Eisenhower asked his staff why is there a campaign of hatred against us in the Arab world, and not from the governments which are supportive, but from the population.
That same year, 1958, the National Security Council, the main planning body, came out with a document – it has been in the public domain for four years – in which they explained, they said that there is a perception in the Arab world that the US supports dictatorships and blocks democracy, and that we do it because we want to maintain control of their resources, their energy supplies. [The document said] this is what we ought to be doing, even though there will be a campaign of hatred against us.
That was 1958, and if you think of that year, that was right after Eisenhower had forced Britain, France, and Israel out of Egypt, so you might expect that there would not be a campaign of hatred, but there was. And those were the perceived reasons and pretty much the right ones.
After 9/11 George W. Bush, raised the question, why do they hate us? They hate our freedom and so on. The Pentagon Research Bureau did come out with a study, and their conclusions were the same as the National Security Council in 1958.
MZ: The second question: Why do they hate us? Why do the Americans hate us?
NC: Why the Americans …? They don’t. Why the American population? The American population does not have any idea about them.
MZ: American policymakers?
First of all, Israel was not opposed to Assad. He has been more or less the kind of dictator they wanted. He has done the kind of things they wanted.
NC: For the reasons that the National Security Council discussed. You have to block democracy and support dictatorships in order to control their resources. And the Middle East is not different from anywhere else. Why did they support Suharto in Indonesia? Same reasons.MZ: What do you think of Israel?
NC: Israel made a really faithful decision in 1971. In 1971, Israel was offered a full peace treaty by Egypt, nothing for the Palestinians, just full peace, full security, for the withdrawal from the Egyptian Sinai. Since then, it has been the same policy [of] expansion over security, but it is not unusual to do that. That is what states usually do, they are not concerned pretty much with security, but rather power. And that’s Israel’s choice. It can continue because the US supports it. If the US stops supporting it, it could not continue.
Israel is making extremely threatening remarks right now about Lebanon. I am not sure if you have been following it. But it is kind of in the background. They are not coming out with big public statements, but if you read the statements from people in intelligence, the military, and government, what they are saying publicly is that they are not going to allow weapons to go to Hezbollah, but what they say furthermore, is that they’ve learned the lessons of the last war, and they are not going to make those mistakes again. The next time, the war will be over in days, which means that they are going to wipe Lebanon out.
MZ: You don’t think the US will do anything to stop it at a certain level?
NC: Not under Obama. He’s the first US president who has imposed no restrictions on Israel. Every other president, at various times, imposed limits that Israel could not go beyond, like Reagan for example. Reagan supported the invasion of Lebanon in 1982, but in mid-August he ordered Israel to stop it because it was becoming harmful to US interests.
MZ: Would you link Obama’s decision to arm the Syrian revolution with Israel?
NC: These are separate. First of all, Israel was not opposed to Assad. He has been more or less the kind of dictator they wanted. He has done the kind of things they wanted. The US has no opposition to Assad. He was cooperating on intelligence and they did not like everything, but he was pretty satisfactory.
In fact, if Israel and the US really did want to undermine the Assad regime and to support the rebels, they have very straightforward ways to do it without arms. Israel could considerably mobilize forces in the Golan Heights. If they mobilize forces in the north, the Syrians are compelled to respond by mobilizing forces. But they do not do it, which can only mean they do not want the regime to fall.
MZ: Would you call the Arab Spring, the “Arab Spring,” or would you give it another name?
NC: I think it was a good name. But now it is – I do not know if it is an Arab Winter, but at least an Arab Autumn. I suspect there will another spring…I do not think that is a stable situation, probably more of the same. It seems to me a continuing process, and as I said, it is going on all over the world in different forms.
MZ: Are you still optimistic?
NC: You do not really have a choice. Objectively, we will probably all be under water in another generation or two, so not that it all matters, but there are certain possibilities for hope and progress.Discovery of vials of highly contagious 1950s smallpox in US storeroom prompts investigation
Updated
US officials are investigating how long-forgotten |
have the attitude of ”Why can’t blokes be in charge?” will be infuriated by it. But younger men and men influenced by their relationships with women are likely to be impressed, Mackay believes.
Tactically, Gillard is caught between the merits of adopting what might be dubbed a ”masculine” style (slug it to them) or taking a more ”feminine” consensual approach. Last week she went for the former. There was a certain irony in this, given that she was talking gender issues. When she gets into full fighting mode, Gillard has a touch of the Keating about her, which has its dangers but has appealed to feminist supporters.
One point is worth remembering in the debate about gender politics and the differences in gender support for the two leaders. There is cross-gender agreement among voters that they don’t much like either of the present leaders.Republican presidential nominee said he will accept the results of the election if he wins, at a rally on Oct. 20 in Delaware, Ohio. (The Washington Post)
Republican presidential nominee said he will accept the results of the election if he wins, at a rally on Oct. 20 in Delaware, Ohio. (The Washington Post)
A wave of apprehension and anguish swept the Republican Party on Thursday, with many GOP leaders alarmed by Donald Trump’s refusal to accept the outcome of the election and concluding that it is probably too late to salvage his flailing presidential campaign.
As the Republican nominee reeled from a turbulent performance in the final debate here in Las Vegas, his party’s embattled senators and House members scrambled to protect their seats and preserve the GOP’s congressional majorities against what Republicans privately acknowledge could be a landslide victory for Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton.
With less than three weeks until the election, the Republican Party is in a state of historic turmoil, encapsulated by Trump’s extraordinary debate declaration that he would leave the nation in “suspense” about whether he would recognize the results from an election he has claimed will be “rigged” or even “stolen.”
The immediate responses from GOP officials were divergent and vague, with no clear strategy on how to handle Trump’s threat. The candidate was defiant and would not back away from his position, telling a roaring crowd Thursday in Ohio that he would accept the results “if I win” — and reserving his right to legally challenge the results should he fall short.
For seasoned Republicans who have watched Trump warily as a general-election candidate, the aftermath of Wednesday’s debate brought a feeling of finality.
1 of 28 Full Screen Autoplay Close Skip Ad × Here are some of the Republicans who cut ties with Trump after lewd remarks View Photos Following a Friday report by The Washington Post on a 2005 video of the GOP presidential nominee, various Republicans have said they no longer plan to vote for him and some call for him to drop out. Caption Following a Friday report by The Washington Post on a 2005 video of the GOP presidential nominee, various Republicans have said they no longer plan to vote for him and some call for him to drop out. Sen. John McCain Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) joined the cavalcade of Republicans withdrawing their support for Trump. “There are no excuses for Donald Trump’s offensive and demeaning comments in the just released video; no woman should ever be victimized by this kind of inappropriate behavior. He alone bears the burden of his conduct and alone should suffer the consequences,” McCain said in a statement. Susan Walsh/AP Buy Photo Wait 1 second to continue.
“The campaign is over,” said Steve Schmidt, a Trump critic and former senior strategist on George W. Bush’s and John McCain’s presidential campaigns.
Calling a refusal to accept the election results “disqualifying,” Schmidt added: “The question is, how close will Clinton get to 400 electoral votes? She’ll be north of 350, and she’s trending towards 400 — and the trend line is taking place in very red states like Georgia, Texas and Arizona.”
[At third debate, Trump won't commit to accepting election results if he loses]
Clinton and Trump appeared together and traded jabs in delivering mostly lighthearted roasts Thursday night at the Alfred E. Smith Memorial Foundation dinner, a white-tie gala benefiting Catholic charities. The candidates used searing humor to taunt each other, reflecting the personal animus on display in the debates. Trump’s routine was at times unsettling, drawing some rare boos from the audience. Held at the Waldorf Astoria hotel in New York, the dinner is a traditional event on the calendar for presidential nominees.
Meanwhile, top Democrats fanned out to battleground states on Thursday to hammer Trump for what they described as an unprecedented attack on the country’s political system and to attempt to yoke Trump to Republican candidates down the ballot.
Campaigning in Miami, President Obama said Trump’s doubts about the election outcome are “not a joking matter. That is dangerous.”
The president eviscerated Republicans who have stood by Trump, singling out Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), who called Trump “a dangerous con artist” and condemned his more controversial comments during the GOP primaries but now plans to vote for him.
On Oct. 20 in Miami Gardens, Fla., President Obama said the fact that Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump refused to say during the final debate whether he would accept the result of the election “is not a joking matter.” (The Washington Post)
“Marco just seems to care about hanging on to his job,” Obama said, calling the senator’s positioning “the height of cynicism.”
And in Arizona, where polls show an unexpectedly tight presidential race, first lady Michelle Obama said Trump “is threatening the very idea of America itself” by suggesting he would not honor the election results.
“You do not keep American democracy ‘in suspense,’ ” Obama said in Phoenix.
[Rubio, once a shoo-in, fights the anti-Trump tide in Florida]
Sen. Tim Kaine of Virginia, Clinton’s vice-presidential running mate, held a rally at a downtown Charlotte brewery, where he said Trump’s claims of a “rigged” election reminded him of the Third World politicking he had seen as a young missionary in Honduras.
“The bigger we can win by, the harder it is for him to whine and have anyone believe him,” Kaine said, trying to galvanize supporters on the first day of early voting in North Carolina.
On the debate stage, Trump amplified what he had been saying for weeks at his rallies: that the election is “rigged.” Questioned directly as to whether he would accept the results should Clinton prevail, Trump said, “I’ll keep you in suspense.”
Clinton called Trump’s answer “horrifying,” both in the debate and to reporters overnight on her flight home to New York.
Trump’s advisers and surrogates struggled to explain the candidate’s position. Campaign manager Kellyanne Conway said it was too early to determine whether voting irregularities could make the difference between winning and losing. She and other Trump backers drew a parallel to then-Vice President Al Gore’s concession call to then-Texas Gov. George W. Bush, which he later withdrew as he awaited a recount in Florida.
“I’m going to keep reminding everybody about the 2000 election when Al Gore said he would accept the results of the election and then did not,” Conway said. “He retracted his concession.”
[Inside Donald Trump’s echo chamber of conspiracies, grievances and vitriol]
Reince Priebus, chairman of the Republican National Committee, contended that Trump and the party would stand by the results unless the margin is small enough to warrant a recount or legal challenges. Priebus said Trump is merely preserving flexibility in the event of a contested result.
“All he’s saying is, ‘Look, I’m not going to forgo my right to a recount in a close election,’ ” Priebus said. “We accept the results as long as we’re not talking about a few votes where it actually matters. I know him. I know where his head’s at.... I promise you, that’s all this is.”
Other Trump surrogates took a different interpretation. Keith Kellogg, a retired Army lieutenant general, accused the media of “splitting hairs” and insisted that Trump was “not threatening democratic norms,” while former New York mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani argued that any Republican would be “stupid” to accept the integrity of results before they are known.
“Suppose she wins Pennsylvania by 50 votes,” Giuliani said. He speculated, without evidence, that Democrats would “steal a lot more than 50 votes in Philadelphia. I guarantee you of that. And I’ll tell you how they will do it — they’ll bus people in who will vote dead people’s names four, five, six times... or have people in Philadelphia paid to vote three, four and five times.”
Democrats expressed dismay that the Republican nominee and his backers were advancing the idea of widespread voter fraud.
“He is just trying to find an excuse for the fact that he’s going to lose, and perhaps the fact that he’s going to lose to the first woman president stings a little sharper than it might otherwise,” said Jennifer Palmieri, the Clinton campaign’s communications director.
Prominent Republican senators in tough reelection bids distanced themselves from Trump’s posture. “Donald Trump needs to accept the outcome,” Sen. Kelly Ayotte (R-N.H.) said in a statement.
McCain (Ariz.), who lost to Obama eight years ago, said in a statement: “I didn’t like the outcome of the 2008 election. But I had a duty to concede. A concession isn’t just an act of graciousness. It is an act of respect for the will of the American people.”
As of Thursday afternoon, neither House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) nor Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) had offered any comment, underscoring the party’s unease with its own nominee and the political dangers of tangling with him.
[Election officials, Clinton team brace for fallout from Trump’s ‘rigged’ claims]
Benjamin L. Ginsberg, a lawyer at Jones Day who has been national counsel for several Republican presidential campaigns, said Trump’s stance puts the party in “quite a difficult position.”
“There will be Republican candidates who are winning by narrow margins and losing by narrow margins,” Ginsberg said. “The party as a whole has a collective interest in having the results upheld.”
Republican pollster Whit Ayres said that at the Las Vegas debate, Trump “blew his last chance to turn it around.” But, he said, “I am not convinced that the rest of the party will have as bad a night [on Election Day] as Donald Trump is going to have, because the Trump brand is so distinct from the Republican brand.”
Escalating the Republican angst was Trump’s rally Thursday in Delaware, Ohio, where he advanced conspiracies swirling around far-right websites about Clinton. He referred to reports that Democratic operatives with no direct connection to the Clinton campaign hired people to violently disrupt Trump events.
“This criminal behavior that violates centuries of tradition of peaceful democratic elections, a campaign like Clinton’s that will incite violence is truly a campaign that will do anything to win,” Trump said, going on to call Clinton “a candidate who is truly capable of anything, including voter fraud.”
Trump also mentioned an email, which surfaced on WikiLeaks through an illegal hack that U.S. authorities blame on the Russian government, in which interim Democratic National Committee chairwoman Donna Brazile seemed to suggest to the Clinton team that she had knowledge of a question that would come up in a primary forum earlier this year. While Brazile has denied that CNN provided any questions in advance, Trump called her actions “cheating at the highest level.”
Even as his party loses faith, Trump proclaimed that he was poised for victory.
“Bottom line, we’re going to win,” he told the boisterous Ohio crowd. “We’re going to win. We’re going to win so big. We’re going to win so big.”
Jenna Johnson in Delaware, Ohio; David Weigel in Charlotte; Krissah Thompson in Phoenix; and Juliet Eilperin, Jose A. DelReal and Karoun Demirjian in Washington contributed to this report.Zurgo Bellstriker Tiny Leaders, highly competitive and super fun.
Fun combinations include:
Braid of Fire + Hammer of Bogarden
Tuk-Tuk the Explorer and mass-kill spells
Hero's blade and Zurgo with dash or Tuk-Tuk in either his incarnations
--
Mouth of Ronom can take out creatures with prot. red. There's also ghostflame in the sideboard, and some extra artifact hate for the endless Swords of whatever. Some enchantments are always tough to combat in red - I suggest saving Chaos Warp until you absolutely need it.
Dualcaster mage is your secret anti-counterspell tech (I've considered actually trying him out as the commander).
Strategy: 2, 3, 4, or 5 for 1 their creatures with board wipes, then begin dashing Zurgo (no matter how often he's cast from the command zone, he's always R1 when dashed from your hand). Pile on a couple of creatures with recursion value like Chandra's Phoenix, Mutavault and Tuk-Tuk. If a game wears on, look for Valakut to provide game ending value (especially in concert with Prophetic flamespeaker).Up until now, much of our Chromecast usage has been relegated to streaming our music, videos, or local files. Pretty much everything we do is in some form of watching for entertainment purposes. But, what if you could turn your Chromecast-connected TV into a large dashboard of relevant and personal information?
Imagine yourself preparing for work in the morning and enjoying a cup of coffee. Instead of watching news or sports on the TV, however, you’re watching a totally customized TV experience with all sort of important details.
We came across this “morning dashboard” concept for Chromecast and think its designer/developer could be on to something.
The concept consists of four main categories:
Today report: Days agenda Agenda options based off calendar (e.g. Lunch options close to the office on your foursquare to-do list) Commute report Weather
Personal Report from yesterday: Activity Report Sleep Tracking Check-ins Driving data
Home Report: Sunrise/sunset temperature Package deliveries Carbon Footprint
Social Report: What you did last year today Buzzworthy news New shows available Birthdays
How cool would it be to wake up, tap a widget or icon on your phone and have your TV displaying a personal screen of all things pertinent? Move this into the office and you can have it updated throughout the day with team goals, agenda, news, calendar events, social media, and more.
Taking things one step further, imagine Google placing a bunch of your cards across your TV screen. Instead of scrolling through them in one long column, your Chromecast spreads them out and displays them in a clean and orderly fashion.
We love this concept quite a bit and think it could be a tipping point for Chromecast productivity, how about you?
via ChromeWatchingWhy the Washington Post's Attack on Bernie Sanders Is Bunk
By: Robert Reich
The Washington Post just ran an attack on Bernie Sanders that distorts not only what he's saying and seeking but also the basic choices that lie before the nation. Sanders, writes the Post's David Fahrenthold, "is not just a big-spending liberal. And his agenda is not just about money. It's also about control."
Fahrenthold claims Sanders's plan for paying for college with a tax on Wall Street trades would mean "colleges would run by government rules."
Apparently Fahrenthold is unaware that three-quarters of college students today attend public universities financed largely by state governments. And even those who attend elite private universities benefit from federal tax subsidies flowing to wealthy donors. (Meg Whitman's recent $30 million donation to Princeton, for example, is really $20 million from her plus an estimated $10 million she deducted from her taxable income.) Notwithstanding all this government largesse, colleges aren't "run by government rules."
The real problem is too many young people still can't afford a college education. The move toward free public higher education that began in the 1950s with the G.I. Bill and was extended in the 1960s by leading public universities was reversed starting in the 1980s because of shrinking state budgets. Tuition has skyrocketed in recent years as states slashed education spending. It's time to resurrect that earlier goal.
Continue reading the story here.After 35 years at WLS-Channel 7, Alan Krashesky is living proof that nice guys finish first.
In the 18 months since Krashesky succeeded the legendary Ron Magers as 10 p.m. news anchor, the ABC-owned station has maintained its dominant first-place position in Chicago television’s late-news battle. The same is true of the 5 and 6 p.m. newscasts Krashesky also anchors.
That’s no small feat at a time of shrinking news audiences and increasing competition from a multitude of platforms. Then again, Krashesky has never been associated with anything but a top-rated newscast since shortly after he joined ABC 7 in 1982 as a rookie reporter from KTBC, then a CBS affiliate in Austin, Texas.
At 56, the Philadelphia native and graduate of Ithaca College seems as youthful and energetic as ever. But his unaffected manner and likability belie a professionalism and commitment to excellence that have earned him the respect and admiration of colleagues and viewers alike.
“I’d like to congratulate Alan on more than three decades of great work and thank him for his contributions to our continued success,” John Idler, president and general manager of ABC, said Tuesday. “His leadership and seamless transition to the 10 p.m. news, together with co-anchor Kathy Brock’s continued dedication have helped us stay Chicago’s top choice at 10.”
As Krashesky marks the latest milestone in his career, he took time out to reflect on his remarkable run and share some personal insights about the challenges of the business:
Q. Hey, Alan, how’s it going?
A. It’s going great, Rob. I can’t believe I’ve worked 35 years at ABC 7. Aren’t we both still in our 30’s?
Q. Wow, 35 years at ABC 7. Other than the wide lapels and big hair, what do you remember most about those early days?
A. I was incredibly self-conscious about my age. Hired at 21 years old, I didn’t want anyone to know, out of concern that I would lose credibility. I actually asked Jerry Taft not to tell anyone my age. I can still remember the first time I saw the Chicago skyline, riding in a taxi from O’Hare down the Kennedy, heading to ABC 7 for the first time. I was awestruck.
Over the years, of course, I’ve managed to cover stories in practically every neighborhood of the city and every suburb. To this day, when I see that skyline, as I’m heading into work, I’m still impressed by the magnificence of Chicago — and humbled that I get to call it “home.”
Q. When you succeeded Ron Magers, you also stepped up in newsroom leadership. What is the importance of that role to you?
A. It’s been a very natural “succession,” if you will. I’m keenly aware that what I do is a “team sport,” and I enjoy working closely with our producers and managers in structuring and writing the elements of our evening and nighttime newscasts. I like the vibe in the newsroom and often work there between the 6 and 10 p.m. newscasts. We all bring our voices to the table — and I feel that’s an important part of the process. I simply want us to be the best at what we do.
It’s not a solo act. Likewise, my co-anchors, Kathy Brock at 6 and 10 p.m. and Cheryl Burton at 5 p.m., are partners in that process and our eventual success.
Q. Do you know any young people who watch local TV news? I don’t.
A. Well, they may not be traditional linear TV viewers, that’s true. I recently helped my youngest adult daughter move to Seattle and tried to understand when she told me she wouldn’t need a TV set. She streams what she wants, when she wants it, on her laptop and mobile devices. It’s an industry-wide challenge. That’s precisely why we’ve made such a strong digital move at ABC 7 to position our local news and other content on multiple platforms other than conventional broadcast TV.
The mobile platforms in particular lend themselves to shorter local news stories, which viewers can chose to watch as they wish. A viewer may first find out about a breaking story on a mobile phone, which may then cause them to turn to TV for the latest information or a more in-depth report. So we know we need to be available on all these electronic devices simultaneously — and adapt quickly to new technologies consumers may embrace.
I feel what we do best on TV is provide the latest local news for the Chicago area, especially in live breaking news situations or dangerous weather. Broadcast TV also includes a relationship component between anchors/reporters and the viewer which you don’t find on other platforms. If we’re talking solely about broadcast TV news, I’ll move my definition of “young people” to the 25-54 demographic. If we win those folks, I’m pretty happy.
Q. Considering President Trump’s assaults on “fake news” and press freedom, what do you wish viewers understood better about the media?
A. It’s not monolithic. Yes, there are news programs or print publications which may lean right or left – and there are some which deliberately position themselves to appeal to a political niche – but I think it’s problematic to lump them all together for the purpose of hitting a big target.
We also now live in a time where the coverage of events — through social media — spreads with an immediacy we haven’t experienced before. This is when source credibility is crucial and when a discerning public is essential. Likewise, it’s the responsibility of working press to ask the tough questions of our elected officials and to hold them accountable to the public they serve.
Our greatest asset is trust, earned not merely in a moment of coverage, but over years. We take that seriously – and we should.
Q. In a business thought to be as cynical as journalism, how have you managed to live your life as a person of faith? Has that informed your signature coverage of the Catholic Archdiocese and the Vatican?
A. You’re asking me this as we’ve just witnessed the horror of the massacre in Las Vegas and the prolonged suffering of those victimized by Hurricanes Harvey, Irma and Maria and the earthquake in Mexico...
It pains me personally – as does the violence we report on the streets of Chicago, or the stories involving the mistreatment of individuals or children. It should trouble anyone with a human heart. Perhaps I relate to it on a personal level, as my own life was impacted by violence – when my father was murdered in a robbery. At times, these problems can seem unsurmountable, and often defy reason. Yet, I remain convinced that the goodness within us is always greater than the evil we encounter. We’ve seen that again and again when people come together to help one another or to fight for what is just. My faith doesn’t give me the ability to know all the answers, but it allows me to trust in One who does.
Regarding covering the Roman Catholic Church, it’s certainly a highlight of my career. I’ve been privileged to witness the progression of three Popes and three Chicago Cardinals. Two of my favorite stories would be the car ride I took with Cardinal Cupich from Spokane to Pasco, Washington, just before he became Chicago’s Archbishop, and Cardinal Bernardin’s final trip to visit his family in the Italian Alps, before he succumbed to cancer. Those were opportunities to see the personal sides of those men. I’ve also witnessed the process of papal selection, a papal resignation and a papal funeral.
I love watching history unfold before my eyes. Along with all that, however, came the shocking reality of the sexual abuse crisis and our coverage of the response and eventual reforms. Hopefully those reforms are helping to restore the trust parishioners placed in their spiritual leadership.
Q. You’ve traveled all over the world for ABC 7. What’s your most lasting impression of those experiences?
A. Our individual hopes are universal. No matter where we live, no matter where we pray, no matter how much money we have in our pockets, we all desire food on our table, a roof over our heads, a safe place to call home, love from one another, laughter from our children, and the belief that somehow, our kids will be better off than we are.
Q. You seem to be such an easygoing, nice guy. Have you ever done anything to make Kathy Brock really mad?
A. Hmm... no... except not sharing my wife’s carrot cake recipe. You really don’t want to make Kathy mad. We joke that the success of our 27-year “TV anchor marriage” is that we only spend one hour of each weekday near each other.
Q. If you weren’t in TV news, what job do you think you would have now?
A. I’d love to travel around the world, with my camera in tow, and capture the fascinating stories of people I’d meet along the way. Of course, there’s always the matter of making a living...
Q. How long are you going to keep doing this?
A. Until somebody pays me to travel around the world, with my camera in tow...Trump University Is Like Other For-Profit Colleges But Without The Degree
Enlarge this image toggle caption Thos Robinson/Getty Images Thos Robinson/Getty Images
The documents released in the lawsuit against Trump University paint an unflattering picture. And as NPR has reported, the political repercussions could be hugely damaging for the Trump campaign.
Beyond politics, Trump U's moneymaking schemes highlight the lingering survival of a larger issue — cases of fraud in the for-profit college industry. A lot of the Trump U strategies sound like they were pulled straight from the playbooks of those colleges. But is that a fair comparison?
One huge difference between Trump University and the broader for-profit industry is that Trump's "school" was not actually a university at all. In fact, New York's Department of Education requested that the enterprise drop university from its name in order to continue to do business in the state. It didn't offer degrees; it was not accredited; and its students were not eligible for federal financial aid.
"With the exception of the word 'university,' there's nothing it has in common. They're just completely different," said Noah Black, a spokesman for Career Education Colleges and Universities, which represents for-profit colleges.
"It's an attempt by people opposed to having the private sector in education to confuse people into thinking our institutions have anything in common with Trump University," he added
Not everyone agrees with that.
"Obviously Trump University invoked the term 'university' euphemistically," said Barmak Nassirian, director of policy analysis at the American Association of State Colleges and Universities, which advocates for public higher education institutions.
In terms of its tactics, Nassirian said, it's "mostly a matter of degrees" that separate Trump University from degree-granting for-profit colleges.
The for-profit college industry
For-profit colleges differ from other post-secondary institutions in that, unlike their not-for-profit counterparts, these schools are businesses. That means they're looking to make money.
They've been good at it for a while. The for-profit industry saw a boom from 1998 to 2008, when enrollment more than tripled. By 2012, 10 to 13 percent of all college students attended a for-profit school, according to a Senate report that year, which examined the for-profit college industry.
Since then, the industry has been scrutinized. Last summer, the U.S. Department of Education made a "gainful employment" rule, which requires for-profit colleges to prove they prepare students for well-paying jobs before they can be eligible for federal student aid. A few months later, a federal judge told for-profit Corinthian Colleges to pay more than $500 million to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau for defrauding students.
The industry has taken a hit. At four-year for-profit schools, enrollment is down by nearly 10 percent. But despite the damage, these schools are not going away. More than 1 million students nationwide attended for-profit colleges this spring.
"The business model has not changed," Nassirian said. "In many ways, the Trump case was chump change."
High cost, high debt
A former Trump University manager testified that the school "preyed upon the elderly and uneducated to separate them from their money."
Sometimes, it was an aggressive separation, with Trump University employees pressuring customers to spend as much as $35,000 for retreats, online training and three days of in-person mentoring in the field.
Those who have come forward against the program sound like normal people trying to catch a break. One woman told the New York Daily News: "I wasted my entire life savings on Trump."
The expensive courses aren't new. The for-profit industry in general is one where high cost — and lots of debt — are common.
This year, the average tuition at for-profit colleges was more than $15,000, compared with around $3,000 at community colleges, $9,000 at in-state public universities, and $30,000 at private nonprofit universities.
Though not the biggest price tag, the high cost of for-profit colleges — and the longer amount of time it takes for students to finish them — means more borrowing. A ProPublica analysis of the 2012 Senate report found that 96 percent of students at for-profit schools borrow money.
Student loans, however, are common in every higher education sector.
"At almost any nonprofit or public institution, there is debt," said Black of the group that represents for-profit colleges. "Our schools don't necessarily encourage students to take on debt."
Encouraged or not, at for-profit schools, many students aren't able to pay that money back. Of the student borrowers nationwide who default on their loans, 70 percent attend either for-profit colleges or, to a lesser extent, community colleges, according to a paper presented by the Brookings Institution last fall.
Steep promises, low results
Trump University students were sold the prospect of wealth and success. To do so, the enterprise emphasized branding, particularly by using Donald Trump's name and his reality TV show, The Apprentice.
For many, those riches did not materialize. One former attendee called it a scam he was embarrassed to have participated in.
The intense focus on branding, without much return, extends to other for-profit colleges. The 2012 Senate report found that for-profit colleges spent an average $248 million on marketing and recruitment in 2009. In 2010, the industry hired more than 35,000 recruiters — about 10 times the staff dedicated to career services.
"Overpromise and underdeliver — that's the business model," said Nassirian, who advocates for public, nonprofit colleges. "You want to entice your prospect into making an impulse decision. What they're buying is a future experience."
Of course, all higher education students are investing in a better future. One way to measure that future's likelihood is graduation.
The National Center for Education Statistics estimates that a third of students at for-profit colleges will graduate with a bachelor's degree within six years. The rate is nearly twice that at nonprofit public and private institutions.
Black, of Career Education Colleges and Universities, says that's because the background of someone at Duke University, for instance, is different from that of a community college student.
"It's not an apples-to-oranges comparison," he said, adding that "few institutions in this country are serving the cross section of students" for-profit colleges serve: those who work while in school, those supporting a family, single parents and older students.
He says the issues for-profit colleges face — high debt, low returns — exist across higher education.
That means, no matter how the Trump University lawsuit plays out, its former students will have plenty of company.If you'll be after some light-hearted TV viewing to banish the January blues (and let's face it, who won't be?) you're in luck, as Netflix and DreamWorks are bringing six new original cartoon series to screens in the new year. Family-friendly Trolls: The Beat Goes On! -- which picks up where the previous series left off and premieres on January 19 -- has been positioned at the top of the companies' announcement, but retro fans will likely be more excited by the news that girl power icon She-Ra is also getting her own rebooted air time (premiere date TBC). The rest of the line-up includes The Boss Baby: Back in Business, Harvey Street Kids, The Epic Tales of Captain Underpants, Trollhunters (part 3) and 3 Below (the second instalment of Tales of Arcadia Trilogy). Premiere dates for these are yet to be confirmed, but they'll be available for Netflix members worldwide when they do land.Share. Adults only. Adults only.
To celebrate the release of the expletive-ridden, ultra-violent, ball-busting sequel Kick-Ass 2, we thought we'd rank our top 12 R-rated comic book movies. Y'know, those ones that are a little more adult, a little more bloody, and a little more terrifying to parents than the usual men-in-tights fare.
Once you've read our list, share your favourites in the comment section below.
12 300
300 is a brawny, sex-fueled and unapologetically bloody fan-boy favorite, the kind of movie that dazzles audiences with its sheer physical commitment to the cause. Zack Synder’s faithful adaptation of Frank Miller’s beautiful (but broad) source material suggested he was an agile adapter of comic books, which he confirmed two years later with his adaptation of Alan Moore’s Watchmen.
11 Blade
Blade is a movie fueled by spectacle, by outrageous, blood-soaked hyper-violence and beautiful people with immaculate skin. Yes, it’s silly, but it’s embracing its equally silly comic book roots, complete with a healthy splatter of black humour and enough gory practical effects to delight horror fans (few will ever forget Pearl.)
10 The Crow
Aka The Film That Launched 1000 Goths, The Crow’s seductive appeal is as much due to its moody gothic sensibilities as the tragic off-screen death of star Brandon Lee. Underneath its heavy eyeliner, however, resides a great comic book movie; just one that appeals directly to the romantic concerns of angsty teenagers.
9 Watchmen
Before 2009, adapting Alan Moore’s graphic novel was thought to be an impossible task, so dense were his ideas, so multi-layered his storytelling. And while director Zack Snyder did not please everyone (certainly not Moore himself), he delivered as slavishly faithful an interpretation he could within the three hours he had to work with. The film was immortalized, perhaps, by Jackie Earle Haley's perfect delivery of Rorschach‘s manic human-hot-chip victory call: “None of you understand. I’m not locked up in here with you. You’re locked up in here with…me!”
8 V for Vendetta
Loosely adapted from the Alan Moore graphic novel by the Wachowski siblings, V for Vendetta presents us with a jumble of fascinating ideas and an anarchic overtone, all wrapped up in a stylish package. Hugo Weaving steals the show as V, whose (now-iconic) mask meant the actor had to express primarily through flowery but chillingly alluring vocals.
7 Dredd
Lean and mean and spectacularly violent, Dredd was an unexpectedly entertaining take on the decades old 2000 AD character, pulling him from the ashes of 1995’s god-awful Sylvester Stallone-starring Judge Dredd. Kiwi actor Karl Urban does a remarkable job acting primarily with his chin, while the dystopian ‘Mega City One’ is peppered with the kind of creative detail one yearns for in most apocalyptic sci-fi actioners.
6 Kick-Ass
Kick-Ass was so cool it hurt; the spoiled, anarchic brat of every somber superhero movie that had preceded it. We loved it because it was bloody and sweary and satirical and so refreshingly for adults, yes, but it had a proper soul underneath the spandex, principally thanks to the touching relationship between Nicholas Cage’s hilariously overwrought Big Daddy and Chloe Grace-Mortez’ smack-talking Hit Girl.
5 Sin City
Airbrushed in black and white, Sin City is a sensationally stylized modern noir, a movie so cartoonish it leaves you yearning for a dive bar where the punters are one beer away from snapping pool cues over their knees. Here, men are grizzled and damaged, broads are the sultry trophies they fight for, and dialogue is served hard-boiled; it’s a perfect little piece of bloody pulp fiction.
4 Road to Perdition
Like The Godfather that preceded it, Sam Mendes’ measured Chicago gangland film concerned itself with the heritage of violence, in this case via Tom Hanks’ enforcer and his 12 year old son. Based on Max Allan Collins’ and by Richard Piers Rayner’s 1998 graphic novel (albeit with great liberties taken) Road to Perdition was a moody and understated second feature from Mendes that reinforced his talents behind the camera.
3 American Splendor
Pulled from the autobiographical panels of Harvey Pekar, the hilarious and heartbreaking American Splendor stars a grouchy Paul Giamatti as the 'everyman' cartoonist as he grumbles and stumbles his way through menial jobs, David Letterman, and cancer; a life that is banal and extraordinary in turn.
2 A History of Violence
An adaptation of John Wagner and Vince Locke’s graphic novel of the same name, David Cronenberg’s A History of Violence was a brutal character drama that mused on heavy themes like the omnipresence of violence and man’s duality while delivering slick, fast-paced action. Stands apart from most of its ‘comic book’ peers by actually addressing the consequences of violent acts, past and present.
1 Ghost World
Based on the graphic novel by Daniel Clowes, Ghost World is one of the most sophisticated examinations of disaffected youth ever seen in a film; like a Catcher in the Rye set in the ‘90s. Thora Birch and Scarlett Johansson star as a pair of best friends whose great joy in life is to reject the mainstream, until their outgrowth of adolescence sees them painfully drifting apart. While both Birch and Johansson are excellent (Birch has never been better), it is Steve Buscemi ‘s turn as a twitchy record collector that’s worth the ticket; he’s never been more, how do I put it, Buscemi-like.
Lucy O'Brien is Entertainment Editor at IGN AU. Follow her ramblings on IGN or @Luceobrien on Twitter.We’ve just made it even easier to use Webpack with |
community colleges and K-12 educators,” says Jacob Jones, a professor of materials science and engineering at NC State and principal investigator of the grant.
The bulk of the funding will be used to hire staff who will be dedicated to reaching out to potential industry and educational partners to identify ways that RTNN can address their specific needs.
“For businesses, our goal is to help them develop new products, improve existing ones, and help them move discoveries to market,” Jones says. “For educators, we want to introduce them to nanotechnology and give them resources they can use in the classroom.” The RTNN will also make laboratories and entrepreneurs better at what they do. David Berube, a professor of communication at NC State and lead of the social science component of the grant says, “We hope that this will allow us to develop best practices that can be used to ensure that future partnerships for innovation will be successful.”
And RTNN has a variety of resources that they’ll be using to help achieve those goals.
“NC State has an enormous amount of expertise in nanotech-related fields, from agriculture and plant biology to textiles and materials science and electrical engineering,” Jones says. “And across all three universities, our expertise touches on almost any area of nanotechnology you can think of. So, regardless of the challenges a corporation or entrepreneur may be facing, we will be in a position to connect them with relevant subject matter experts.”
In addition to providing expertise, it will also give the public access to a wide array of powerful tools to help them advance their innovations from concept to prototype and, ultimately, through manufacturing for the marketplace.
For example, NC State’s Analytical Instrumentation Facility has the ability to look at the structure of nanoparticles in three dimensions and the individual positions of atoms in a nano-device. The latter is done using a technique pioneered at NC State called “revolving STEM” and a state-of-the-art aberration-corrected scanning transmission electron microscope.
“This will be used to help develop and fine-tune technologies in fields from drug delivery to water purification to nanoelectronic devices,” Jones says.
Between NC State, Duke and UNC-Chapel Hill, RTNN has a suite of other facilities that will also be valuable to outside groups. These facilities have capacities including nanofabrication of electronics, textiles fabrication and characterization, sophisticated materials characterization, and labs that evaluate interactions between nanotechnologies and the environment.An unusual solar flare observed by a NASA space observatory on Tuesday could cause some disruptions to satellite communications and power on Earth over the next day or so, officials said.
The potent blast from the Sun unleashed a firestorm of radiation on a level not witnessed since 2006, and will likely lead to moderate geomagnetic storm activity by Wednesday, according to the National Weather Service.
"This one was rather dramatic," said Bill Murtagh, program coordinator at the NWS's Space Weather Prediction Center, describing the M-2 (medium-sized) solar flare that peaked at 1:41 am Eastern time in the United States, or 0541 GMT.
"We saw the initial flare occurring and it wasn't that big but then the eruption associated with it -- we got energy particle radiation flowing in and we got a big coronal mass injection," he said.
"You can see all the materials blasting up from the Sun so it is quite fantastic to look at."
NASA's solar dynamics observatory, which launched last year and provided the high-definition pictures and video of the event, described it as "visually spectacular," but noted that since the eruption was not pointed directly at Earth, the effects were expected to remain "fairly small."
"The large cloud of particles mushroomed up and fell back down looking as if it covered an area of almost half the solar surface," said a NASA statement.
Murtagh said space weather analysts were watching closely to see whether the event would cause any collision of magnetic fields between the Sun and Earth, some 93 million miles (150 million kilometers) apart.
"Part of our job here is to monitor and determine whether it is Earth-directed because essentially that material that is blasting out is gas with magnetic field combined," he told AFP.
"In a day or so from now we are expecting some of that material to impact us here on Earth and create a geomagnetic storm," he said.Repeat after me: I hereby resolve that, in the new year, I...
1. Will not get into arguments with other geeks about the age-old PC vs. Mac or Windows vs. OS X vs. Linux questions, because nobody ever wins religious debates. And, besides, Macs suck.
2. Will wait until I have seen at least one full episode of Joss Whedon's new TV series Dollhouse before I start writing letters to Fox begging them not to cancel it.
3. Will keep an open mind about the new Star Trek film and not prejudge it based on trailers that, let's face it, were probably assembled by some Hollywood PR people who aren't real Trek fans—why, they've probably never even been to a convention! I will further remember that eliminating prejudice is one of the tenets of the Federation.
4.
Will try very hard not to make iPhone-less people feel inferior when I take my iPhone out around them, including when I'm eating lunch with my friends and/or coworkers who have been holding out because they don't want to switch from Verizon. [Not that I am bitter.]
5. Will spread the gospels of XKCD and Penny Arcade to every geek person I know—some folks might not get the joke in every strip, but they are just too awesome not to share them.
6. Will follow @stephenfry, @JohnCleese, @wilw, @hodgman, @greggrunberg, @donttrythis (Adam Savage), @levarburton, @nasa, and @thinkgeek on Twitter. If I am not using Twitter I will finally realize what I've been missing and sign up right away. [Trust me on this one.]
7. Will allow for the possibility that the Watchmen movie will be good even if it is not 100% faithful to the comic books. I will remember that Batman Begins and The Dark Knight
were awesome despite the liberties they took with the characters and storylines involved. If necessary I will keep repeating to myself "Alan
Moore is not sacrosanct."
8. Will not feel bereft when Battlestar Galactica finally ends, by remembering that Caprica is coming in 2010, even though it will probably not be nearly as good, because let's face it, lightning doesn't strike twice in the same place, though Esai Morales and Eric Stoltz are pretty good so you never know. Further, I will try not to be too disappointed at the reveal of the Last Cylon, though I reserve the right to yell "Lame!" at the TV
screen.
9. Will not dwell on the plot holes in Lost, no matter how huge they may be, and just enjoy the show for the weird fun drama it is. I will remind myself that, even when it makes no sense at all, it's still more watchable than roughly 80% of the other shows on in prime time. Plus it has Michael Emerson in it, and he's awesome.
10. Will bring my kids to see X-Men Origins: Wolverine if they're old enough, and, whoever I end up seeing it with, will not whisper comments to them or to anyone else about each violation of Marvel canon as it occurs.
Any more? Leave a comment. And Happy New Year to all of our readers!
[Oh, and, before you comment about it, I feel I should mention that the "Macs suck" line was a joke.]Kiza asks:
In the past 15 years, we've seen more and more of anime influenced animation: we've had the colorful Totally Spies, the gag-action Teen Titans, two stories from the Avatar franchise, etc. And then we've seen animation that didn't go out of it's way to be "anime", but did have anime inspired elements: Ben 10, Generator Rex, etc. And now in the 2010s, we're seeing independent "anime" in the international scene. Even regions with not much of history in animation, such as the middle east, are trying their own take on anime, eg- Torkaizer. My question is, despite all these efforts to mimic the anime style, why do they feel so vastly different? You can watch all these, but they just don't feel anime enough. Is it because of the difference in their animation processes, the difference in storytelling, the uniqueness of Japanese culture, or something much different entirely?
Japan's anime industry has been around in various flavors since basically the beginning of motion pictures. After World War II and the postwar reconstruction, Japan got a taste of Disney's feature animation, and many young budding artists were incredibly impressed. But rather than ape the technique of American animators, Japanese animators came up with their own system and aesthetic. How a Japanese animator thinks about motion, design, writing for animation, and all the rest of it has been extremely different from how an American animator thinks about those things from day one.
Since the late 1950s, huge numbers of animators have worked their entire lives further developing and perfecting this technique. It was affected by things like budget, local tastes, and individual artist's personal styles. It's still developing. Anime in its current form is the product of all of that thought and experimentation. It's more than an art style, it's a filmic tradition.
But all of this happened in a way that was completely insulated from the rest of the world's animation production. It wasn't until the 90s that the Western animation business caught on to what Japan was doing. Some animators fell in love with anime, but many of the old school ones, including the teachers, hated it (from an animation standpoint). Japan wasn't following the "rules," and from their point of view, the animation style didn't work as well as the techniques they'd been honing for decades.
But as the younger generation of Western animators, the ones that had always been familiar with and (generally) liked anime started coming of age and becoming influential, that started changing. They started producing shows with an anime-influenced aesthetic. But when they're doing so, they're producing that animation with Western principles of squash and stretch, with Western approaches to color and layout, with storyboards and leica reels instead of e-conte (Japanese style continuity sheets). It's not the same thing.
Imagine a well trained French chef, who trained at one of the best culinary schools in Europe. Imagine that chef really likes sushi, and decides to make it, despite not having any real experience making it. That chef might be able to rely on their basic skills -- knife work, a good eye for ingredients, and a recipe for sushi rice -- and come up with something reasonably decent. But it wouldn't taste the same. That chef never trained with a real sushi chef, never practiced all of the things that sushi chefs do tirelessly. The end product would be a result of his own experiences and the techniques he's learned, and the end result is inevitably not going to match "proper" sushi.
It's the same thing here. When all of your techniques belong to another school with another set of principles, you can't expect to be able to perfectly imitate the work of a distant land with completely different teachings and principles. It just doesn't work. And I think the Western animators know this. That's why you see very few attempts to completely rip off anime, and more of a subtle influence on American animation styles and tastes. In order for the artists to do a good job, they still must communicate in their native language.
Do YOU have a question for the Answerman?
We want your questions! Send in as many or as often as you like. We can only pick three questions a week (and unfortunately I don't have ALL the answers) so if you haven't been chosen, don't be discouraged, and keep on sending.
HOWEVER... CHECK THE ARCHIVES FIRST. I've answered a lot of questions already! Here are some common ones...Augmented reality and holographic vision has plenty of applications from working with disabilities to working on the space station. But Microsoft's Hololens is expensive and bulky, and more limited devices like Google Glass have failed outright. But perhaps if top notch hologram power can be squeezed into in smaller frame, the AR revolution will finally arrive. That seems to be what Microsoft is working on.
Researchers at the Washington-state computer giant caution that they're still in "early days on the journey toward this vision, and there isn't a clear route to solving all the optical challenges" of a hologram eyepiece. But they've been able to solve major hurdles to create sharply focused holograms that can be made by a projector small enough to fit on a traditional glasses frame.
While the promise of holograms that can appear right before your eyes and in full color is obviously appealing, the practicality of the tech depends on the form factor it can fit into. No one really wants to wear a giant helmet with screens hanging in front of their face. "Today's near-eye displays feature a trade-off between bulkiness and field of view," researchers say. Holography "is often associated with noisy, low contrast, and mono color imagery, large bench-top form factors, high bandwidth requirements, and expensive computation," the researchers say at the beginning of their paper, "relegating it to the status of a perpetually 'future' technology. "
Microsoft is reportedly planning on releasing its next HoloLens in 2019. That model is bound to be a bit bigger than a pair of glasses, but the tech used to squeeze down holograms into such a small package will certainly come in handy, if not right away, then soon. That perpetual future might be coming sooner than expected.
Source: MicrosoftOne of the most misleading distortions being floated by political opponents of the Iran nuclear deal is the “24-day” loophole meme: Iran would be able to hide all evidence of any nefarious nuclear weapons work during the 24 days it may take inspectors to gain access to a suspicious site.
For starters, International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors would have continuous daily access to all Iran’s declared nuclear facilities. If Iran does not allow anytime inspections of any declared site, it could result in the reimposition — or “snapback” — of sanctions.
The 24-day rule applies only to undeclared suspect sites anywhere in the country. Because inspections anywhere at any time can be complicated to work out, a procedure was devised to address the problem.
Why 24 days? Iran and the atomic energy agency first would have a maximum of 14 days to come to an understanding about how to carry out the new inspections. In the absence of an agreement, the members of the Joint Commission – the United States, Britain, France, Germany, China, Russia and Iran — must resolve the issue, by consensus or a vote, within seven days. Tehran would have three days to implement the decision. So, the 24 days is not a gift to Tehran that would allow it to hide potential nuclear malfeasance — it is just the maximum period allowed to hammer out a way to inspect any undeclared suspicious facility in Iran.
More important, critics insist, Iran could use those 24 days to hide evidence of nuclear materials. This is not going to happen. It would be virtually impossible even in 240 days, let alone 24. Even a nanogram, or one-billionth of a gram, of leftover dust from nuclear-weapons related work — such as covert enrichment at a suspect site — could be detectable.
The main way the agency could find incriminating dust is with a “swipe sample” using a super-clean cotton cloth. The wipe would be applied to surfaces, especially where dust naturally collects, including corners of a room, cracks, bolt holes, equipment interiors and where walls meet the floor.
As the agency itself states: “Any nuclear process … will also produce particulate materials with particle dimensions in the 0.1 [to] 10 micrometer range. Such small particles are believed to be quite mobile and will travel several meters from their point of origin due to air currents or human activity. This mobility also makes it extremely difficult to clean up an area to such an extent that no particles remain available for swipe sampling.” [emphasis added]
The swipe samples from a suspect site would be taken to a laboratory, where the atomic energy agency can use a variety of highly sensitive methods to pick up any infinitesimal incriminating nuclear particles. Isotopic ratios, chemical forms or particle shapes can all provide clues about where the nuclear material came from and how it was produced.
One particularly powerful method is known as “fission track-secondary ion mass spectrometry.” Particles from a swipe sample are irradiated with neutrons on a Lexan (plastic) plate. If there are fissile materials in the sample, they would become unstable and split apart; heavy fission-product particles would be produced. In sufficient quantities, these particles would leave tracks in the plate that can be viewed by acid etching.
The lab scientist can then focus on suspect particles and examine them further with mass spectroscopy, a powerful way to identify particles based on their charge-to-mass ratio. The process is painstaking and time consuming, but it is a highly sensitive way of identifying suspect particles.
The bottom line is that it is almost impossible to get away with messing around with nuclear materials. Nuclear fingerprints are not removable.
“You cannot get rid of them by cleaning,” Stephan Vogt, head of the atomic agency’s Environmental Sample Laboratory told Reuters in 2013. “You cannot dilute them to the extent that we will not be able to pick them up. It is just a matter of time,” he stated, before the atomic energy agency detects any incriminating residue.
In fact, one potential problem with environmental sampling is that it can often be too sensitive. Because samples are frequently collected by nuclear inspectors who are working in contaminated environments much of the time, their clothing, equipment and even their hair can introduce false positives from different locations.
Such cross-contamination may have occurred in inspections of a bombed Syrian site while Olli Heinonen was head of the safeguards department. The result was a botched analysis and invalid conclusions.
To address the possibility of cross-contamination and false positives, the atomic energy agency has devised strict procedures that require two inspectors, sterile conditions, background and control samples and procedural training. Particle samples are also supposed to be processed in multiple laboratories in different countries under a double-blind procedure to preclude any tampering with results — or the planting of evidence. This was not done in the Syria investigation.
If the procedures are followed properly, the conclusions are considered highly trustworthy.
It is imperative that official IAEA sampling procedures are adhered to scrupulously, and that the integrity of inspectors is beyond reproach. If false accusations are made based on faulty procedures, it would cast doubt on the entire international monitoring system. This is why the atomic energy agency must be extremely careful that technical mishandling of the samples, as reportedly occurred during the Syria investigation, is not repeated in Iran.
Another important consequence of the exquisite sensitivity of IAEA’s particulate- detection methods is that it is virtually impossible to hide traces of nuclear material even outside the site, for example, by partial paving of a site. Some analysts have alleged that the paving work at Iran’s Parchin military complex could sanitize it. But this is incorrect. Environmental sampling is still possible where large parts of a site remain undisturbed. As Robert Kelley, a former IAEA inspector, explained about the Parchin site: “The fact that the building’s immediate vicinity has been largely untouched on the west side strongly suggests that the purpose of the earth-moving operations was for construction and renovation work and not for ‘sanitizing’ the site by covering up contamination.”
In addition, the preferred method of sampling at the Parchin site would be to take sample swipes from inside the buildings of interest. It matters little what construction Iran does outside. If outdoor sampling were needed for some reason, it could be gathered from the large undisturbed area west of the building of interest.
Twenty-nine top U.S. scientists — including Nobel Prize winners, senior experts in arms control and former White House science advisers – wrote to President Barack Obama this past weekend to praise the Iran deal. They called it “technically sound, stringent and innovative.” Instead of listening to the complaints about the 24-day meme, Congress should pay heed to these experts.Rayman, named platformer of the year and winner of multiple artistic and musical achievements, is available now on the Wii U with a brand new adventure. Michel Ancel, celebrated creator of Rayman®, Beyond Good & Evil® and the Raving Rabbids® brings his innovative creativity to this new and exciting platform. Rayman Legends makes full use of the power of the Wii U. With the new Wii U™ GamePad, discover new ways to platform with its touch-based gameplay, gyroscope technology, and even the ability to extend your playing experience when the TV is off. Additionally, the power of the machine has helped pave the way for new, more detailed graphics and lighting.
Rayman, Globox, and the Teensies are off wandering through an enchanted forest when they discover a mysterious tent filled with a series of captivating paintings. As they look more closely, they notice each painting seems to tell the story of a mythical world. While focusing on a painting that shows a medieval land, they are suddenly sucked into the painting, entering the world, and the adventure begins. The gang must run, jump and fight their way through each world to save the day and discover the secrets of every legendary painting.The tension over Ferguson continues to get worse around the country with President Obama, Attorney General Eric Holder and Al Sharpton leading the way.
According to local media reports, members of the New Black Panther Party planned to blow up the St. Louis Gateway Arch and to assassinate Ferguson Police Chief Tom Jackson and prosecutor Bob McCulloch in response to the non-indictment of former police officer Darren Wilson by a grand jury.
St. Louis-area media outlets are reporting that two New Black Panther Party men were plotting to use the Ferguson chaos that was projected post-grand jury ruling as a shield to kill Police Chief Tom Jackson and prosecutor Bob McCulloch.
New Black Panther Party members Brandon Orlando Baldwin and Olajuwon Ali Davis were taken into custody on Nov. 20 for providing false information while buying guns at Cabela’s in a suburban area of Missouri, federal prosecutors said.
Federal prosecutors also said the two bought what they believed to be a pipe bomb from undercover officers and were going to blow up the iconic Gateway Arch, media previously reported.
The two have been charged so far with aiding and abetting the making of a false written statement in connection with a firearms purchase, the New York Daily News reported.
But now law enforcement say the men’s plot went much deeper — and that the two were actually going to use the violence that was projected to erupt in the streets on the heels of the grand jury ruling as a cover to kill two key Ferguson officials: Mr. McColloch and Mr. Jackson.
Will these New Black Panther members be heavily prosecuted? Hardly. In typical fashion, Attorney General Eric Holder has their back and is giving them a pass with only minor gun charges. More from the Free Beacon:
The communist and racist New Black Panther Party plotted to bomb St. Louis’ Gateway Arch and assassinate local law enforcement officials, but the Justice Department so far has limited its prosecution of the group to an indictment of two members on minor gun charges.
The soft treatment for activities that normally would have brought federal terrorism charges appears to be part of efforts by Attorney General Eric Holder and the Justice Department to “go soft” on the racist group, according to former Justice official J. Christian Adams.
“I have always been perplexed why these guys get special treatment,” said Adams, who worked in the Justice Department Civil Rights Division and noted a similar conciliatory legal treatment of New Black Panther Party members in a 2008 case of voter suppression by the group in Philadelphia.
Justice Department spokesman Marc Raimondi declined to comment on the Black Panther bomb plot and would not say whether additional charges in the case are pending.
Back during the 2008 presidential election, New Black Panther Party members were caught on video intimidating voters outside of a Philadelphia polling place with nightsticks. Charges were completely dropped by DOJ in late summer 2009.
Because of the developments in Ferguson, now is a good time to remind everyone that as Senator Obama, the current President of the United States marched with the New Black Panther Party in the streets of Selma, Alabama. FromBreitbart:
Barack Obama appeared and marched with members of the New Black Panther Party as he campaigned for president in Selma, Alabama in March 2007.
The photographs, captured from a Flickr photo-sharing account before it was scrubbed, are the latest evidence of the mainstream media’s failure to examine Obama’s extremist ties and radical roots.
In his book Injustice: Exposing the Racial Agenda of the Obama Justice Department, DOJ whistleblower and civil rights attorney J. Christian Adams published more photos of Obama marching wit the Panthers, including the notorious Malik Shabazz.
Among those appearing with Obama was Shabazz, the Panther leader who was one of the defendants in the voter intimidation case that Attorney General Eric Holder dismissed. Also present was the Panthers’ “Minister of War,” Najee Muhammed, who had called for murdering Dekalb County, Georgia, police officers with AK-47’s and then mocking their widows.
Earlier this year, President Obama nominated cop-killer advocate Debo Adegbile to head up the Civil Rights Division at the Department of Justice. The copkiller Adegbile voluntarily advocated for during his time as the head of the NAACP legal defense fund is former Black Panther Party member Mumia abu-Jamal. In 1982, Abu-Jamal was unanimously convicted by black and white jurors for the murder Philadelphia Police Officer Daniel Faulkner. Abu-Jamal never denied the killing during his trial. He, and his supporters, are still unapologetic for Faulkner's killing. Under Adegbile's leadership Abu-Jamal's death sentence was overturned after arguments made in court that Officer Faulkner was and the justice system is, racially biased against black men.
"It is absolutely my honor to represent Mumia Abu-Jamal. It is my pleasure, it is my honor to have that opportunity and there is no question in my mind, there is no question in the mind of anyone at the Legal Defense Fund that the justice system has completely and utterly failed Mumia Abu-Jamal and in our view, that has everything to do with race and that is why the legal defense fund is in this case," attorney Christina Swarms said during the event. "We are acutely aware that the injustices of the criminal justice system are inextricably bound up in race."
After the Supreme Court threw out the Beard v. Abu-Jamal case in 2010, a petition was circulated calling for President Obama and Attorney General Holder to investigate the “long history of civil rights and constitutional violations" in Abu-Jamal's case. Thankfully, Adegbile's nomination was blocked in the Senate.
This is who President Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder are. Members of the New Black Panther Party are people they not only relate to, but stand by at all costs. This is exactly why they've turned Ferguson into a race case with zero evidence to prove their claims. This is why Ferguson is so important to them and despite what the majority in the media would have Americans believe, these associations greatly matter and provide the context for the actions of Obama and Holder moving forward.Breaking News Emails Get breaking news alerts and special reports. The news and stories that matter, delivered weekday mornings.
Oct. 1, 2017, 8:35 AM GMT / Updated Oct. 2, 2017, 1:25 AM GMT By Saphora Smith, Matt Bradley and Tim Stelloh
BARCELONA, Spain — Hundreds of people were injured when armed police descended on some polling stations in Catalonia on Sunday as defiant voters tried to take part in a banned referendum on independence from Madrid.
The Catalonian government said late Monday that about 90 percent of about 2.25 million voters backed independence. That would represent a turnout of about 42 percent of registered voters.
But as regional health officials announced on Sunday night that the number of people wounded had nearly doubled, rising from more than 460 to over 760, conservative Spanish Prime Minster Mariano Rajoy said there had been no referendum because "the great majority of Catalans have decided not to participate."
"They have sided with our democracy and the rule of law," Rajoy said during a news conference, adding: "Some have tried to break the rule of law, and we have answered with serenity and sanity."
Barcelona Mayor Ada Colau called for Rajoy's resignation and for the police to halt their violence "against a defenseless population."
The leader of the regional government, Carles Puigdemont, meanwhile, said, "Catalonia's citizens have earned the right to have an independent state in the form of a republic."
Photos: Hundreds Injured as Spanish Police Try to Block Catalan Referendum
"My government, in the next few days will send the results of today's vote to the Catalan Parliament, where the sovereignty of our people lies, so that it can act in accordance with the law of the referendum," he added.
Earlier, Spain's interior ministry said that nine policemen and two civil guards had been injured. One civilian was in a critical condition at a hospital in Lleida, a town in western Catalonia, a spokesperson from the hospital confirmed.
Spanish police hold voters outside a polling station in Barcelona early Sunday. PAU BARRENA / AFP - Getty Images
In the region of Girona, Spanish officers scuffled with angry voters before smashing their way into a school being used as a polling station and seizing ballot boxes as voting began.
Armed police also clashed with voters outside some polling centers in Barcelona.
Rubber bullets were fired at protesters in the center of the city, the Associated Press reported, with people showing minor wounds to TV cameras.
The poll has no legal status, as it has been blocked by Spain's Constitutional Court and Madrid for being at odds with the 1978 constitution, but tens of thousands of voters were still expected to take part.
Puigdemont said Spain had used "unjustified, irrational and irresponsible violence," adding that it wouldn't stop Catalans voting "peacefully and democratically."
He said batons and rubber bullets had been used against people who were protecting ballot papers and polling stations.
"Today Spain has lost even more that it had lost until now and the citizens of Catalonia we've achieved even more than we've had achieved till now," he said.
A man injured in clashes with Spanish armed police in Barcelona is escorted away by Catalan officers, Sunday.
Spanish deputy prime minister Soraya Saenz de Santamaria said Madrid intervened with "firmness and proportionality" against the Catalan vote, adding that the regional government had behaved with absolute irresponsibility in holding the referendum, according to the Associated Press.
But Juho Romakkaniemi, a senior European Union official, tweeted that while it was "clear" the Spanish government was legally right about the Catalan referendum, "excessive actions may endanger its legitimacy."
FC Barcelona — the city's top soccer club and a cultural symbol for the region — were due to play against Las Palmas — a team from Spain's Canary Islands off the coast of Africa — later on Sunday, but announced that they would play only behind closed doors with no crowd.
"FC Barcelona condemns the events which have taken place in many parts of Catalonia today in order to prevent its citizens from exercising heir democratic right to free expression," the club said in a statement posted to Twitter.
"Given the exceptional nature of events, the Board of Directors have decided that the FC Barcelona first team game against Las Palmas will be played behind closed doors following the Professional Football League's refusal to postpone they game," it added.
The club tweeted updates throughout the game.
Las Palmas had earlier said in a statement that they would play wearing Spanish flags on their jerseys because "we're against this referendum that no one has agreed to and we believe in the unity of Spain."
Spanish Guardia Civil guard smash the door of a polling station Catalonia's president was due to vote, early Sunday. LLUIS GENE / AFP - Getty Images
Spain's interior ministry posted a picture on Twitter early Sunday of what it said were the first ballot boxes seized by police. It also also posted video of officers carrying the boxes through crowds. "The police, despite harassment, remove ballot boxes from the illegal referendum at the Jaume Balmes institute in Barcelona," it said in a caption.
Crowds gathered outside Ramon Llull school, in Barcelona's central Sagrada Familia district, to cast their vote early Sunday but riot police arrived and scaled a fence to stop the process. Around the corner at Els Llorers school, voting went ahead unhindered.
It was unclear why police were seemingly blocking voting at some schools but not others.
Shortly after 2 p.m. local time (8 a.m. ET) Turull said 96 percent of polling stations were still open. Many supporters of the vote spent the night in polling booths in a bid to keep them open.
Related: Catalan Independence Referendum: What's Behind Divisive Spanish Vote?
He called on the international community to recognize that Catalonia was witnessing "human rights violations" and demanded the resignation of the Spanish government's representative in the region.
"This violence is not proportional," Turull added later at a press conference. He blamed Prime Minister Rajoy for the violence, saying it would never have happened had he allowed the vote to go ahead.
Meanwhile Raul Romeva, Catalonia's foreign affairs minister, said they would be asking Europe to look into the crackdown.
Earlier Sunday Puigdemont, the head of the regional government, urged Catalans to follow their convictions. "Everyone who wishes to vote can do so. Do what convinces you most: all the options are just as legitimate. Let's do it with the usual civility!" he posted on Twitter after casting his vote.
The region in northeastern Spain has a population of 7.5 million and is one of the country's powerhouses, accounting for around a fifth of Spain's economy.
It has a distinct language and culture, which were suppressed under Franco, a conservative monarchist whose regime dominated Spain for four decades.
Saphora Smith reported from London. Matt Bradley reported from Barcelona. Tim Stelloh reported from Alameda, California.TL;DR – Relationships and repaired and torn, and for some blackmail is the least of their worries
Score – 4 out of 5 stars
Review –
So at the end of last week’s episode Dark Clouds (review) we find that Aunty Linda (Deborah Mailman) didn’t just cause Koen’s (Hunter Page-Lochard) parents deaths through negligence, but she was actively trying to kill them, and then Waruu (Rob Collins) just slit Koen’s throat and slapped on some red kryptonite sap from a Melaleuca to stop him from regenerating. Oh boy, was that a lot to take in, and we have had a week to learn what everyone’s fate will be, and tonight’s episode Muya packs all the same punches and more, as we continue our drive to the end of the season. Just a warning, there will be some [SPOILERS] going forward so be careful.
So tonight we open with the aftermath of last week’s murder, but wait he isn’t dead, Koen Surprise. Well, it was sure a surprise for Waruu, as Koen beats him upside the head and makes a quick exit, but whatever Waruu did, it has messed up Koen’s abilities. Charlotte (Frances O’Connor) was been kidnapped by Jarli (Clarence Ryan) with possibly only the fact that she has a Hairy baby keeping her alive, but has she seen too much. Also Nerida (Jada Alberts), Latani (Rarriwuy Hick), and Alinta (Tamala Shelton) have made a run for it after finding out that Tim Dolan (Luke Ford) was a containment authority agent, but their flight is short lived as they are captured by the CA trying to get out of the city, and all that happens in the first couple of minutes. This season of Cleverman is not wasting a minute of screen time, there is no faff, no padding, and I wish more shows were like this.
One of the big themes this episode was redemption, both those seeking it and those giving it, and how there is power in forgiveness. Koen has every right to let Linda die, die alone, and not see her ancestors in the beyond. What she did is unforgivable, anyone would find it almost impossible to forgive such a betrayal, but Koen does. In many ways this shows that Uncle Jack (Jack Charles) was right when he said that Koen was the better choice for Cleverman, because does Waruu forgive, no, he slits his brother’s throat to get ahead. Also, does Slade (Iain Glen) forgive, no he uses terrorism to blackmail the government to further his goal, even when that means exploiting his own wife’s kidnapping. There is a moment when Koen could have let his hate overwhelm him but he doesn’t, and that is as good as any sign that he is ready to be a leader.
One of the highlights of this episode was the dueling monologues of Koen and Latani, as they both face off with personal demons, and in Latani’s case a very real demon. Koen yelling at Jack who isn’t there was so powerful because you feel the betrayal and the anger. What makes this even better is all of this is caught in one take, there are no cuts, and it shows the talent of the cast and crew that they pulled that off. With Latani, she is finding her strength, when she needs it the most, she is captured by someone who I have no qualms calling scum, with a gun to her head, with only moments to steady herself for what is to come. In many respects both of these monologues/soliloquies made me think back to The West Wing and Bartlet yelling at God in Latin, one of the best episodes in that series. All of these monologues work because the cast is game for anything, the writers Jada Alberts and Jade Allen know the characters and crafted this to their strengths, and Leah Purcell directs them wonderfully.
Finally, one thing I want to touch on for a moment is how wonderful it is that we have Indigenous languages on Australian TV. I grew up in a time where history at schools didn’t really go back past the First Fleet, Uluru was called Ayres Rock, and we still had not apologised for the Stolen Generation. Now while some of this has improved, there just is not a lot of Indigenous representation on Australian screens, let alone Indigenous languages and cultures. Also, I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, the makeup work in Cleverman is amazing. It is so good that we have the amazing talent of Weta Workshop and the production designers here in Australia, and that talent shows.
In the end, |
optimistic that tobacco could one day return to its former glory in the mountains, most farmers and agencies say that with cheaper foreign competition, larger farm production capability down east and rising awareness of the health risks associated with tobacco use, the golden days of the golden leaf in WNC has passed for good. Photo via E.M. Ball Collection, Special Collections, Ramsey Library, UNC Asheville.
Cloudy future
Two years after the buyout payments ended, farmers and agency officials alike have mixed opinions concerning the program’s overall impact. “The USDA thinks it was a good thing: It hit the objectives they wanted it to. It got the government — or, at least, got people to finally believe that the government was out of it,” says Zink. “Me, personally, I would have liked to have seen [quotas] stay on, because I’ve seen what it’s done to the economy in Madison.”
Duckett thinks the buyout “was probably the best deal we could get at the time. It got the growers some payment for a resource they’d come to count on.” And while he wishes that there’d been a dependable substitute crop for tobacco, “Unfortunately, I just don’t think that animal exists.”
For Upchurch, the final assessment is “subjective, depending on what situation you were left in. Farmers in the west were forced to find some new enterprise to maintain their farmland and that income they depend on. It’s been challenging for them, but we’ve seen a lot of innovation.”
Most folks, though, seem to agree that in WNC, tobacco’s glory days are over.
Duckett, for example, says: “I think that ship has sailed. There’s so many parts of the world that grow burley tobacco, and we have no way of competing with them on labor costs. Of course, nobody knows the future, but I don’t see the conditions ever allowing tobacco to be the go-to crop that it once was.”
Still, Duckett and others stress local farmers’ resilience. “If you work the land for a living, you’re tough and resourceful by definition,” he points out. “The buyout really brought that out in people, and the cooperation among growers in general, in learning and sharing ideas, has been great.”
Community-supported agriculture, for example, “was something I thought would never work initially. I didn’t think people would pay up front to get what you get from the grocery store. I’ve happily eaten crow on that.”
WILL TO SUSTAIN: Despite the challenges posed by the loss of the tobacco quotas and income, farmers across WNC have remained resilient and resourceful in branching out or expanding into new operations, such as livestock, nurseries or agro-tourism. ““If you work the land for a living, you’re tough and resourceful by definition,” says Duckett. ““The buyout really brought that out in people.” Photo courtesy of the N.C. Tobacco Trust Fund commission.
Duckett also cites the rise of the local food movement and programs like WNC Farm Link, which connects aspiring farmers with those approaching retirement and hoping to preserve their land for agricultural use.
Upchurch echoes that optimism. “There’s a lot of creativity there, a lot of people willing to try something new,” he says, noting that the small scale of the region’s farms has given local farmers “a better comfort level with taking chances and applying opportunity.” And in the coming years, he predicts, “You’re going to see a big, diversified list of ideas in western N.C.”
Zink, meanwhile, advises those still struggling to find new revenue sources to try “whatever suits you best. Any producer that comes into this office, that’s the first thing we look at: What type of farm do you have? They need to try and find what works for them.”Yesterday the High Court of England and Wales, per Mr Justice Leggatt, delivered a comprehensive judgment in Serdar Mohammed v. Ministry of Defence [2014] EWHC 1369 (QB), holding that the United Kingdom lacks detention authority under international humanitarian law/law of armed conflict with regard to individuals it captures in the course of the non-international armed conflict in Afghanistan, and that any detention of such individuals longer than 96 hours violates Article 5 ECHR, as well as relevant Afghan law. The judgment is on any account a heroic effort, with the single judge grappling with a host of complex, intertwined issues of international law and acquitting himself admirably in the process. Para. 6 contains a summary of the judgment for those who don’t want to read the whole thing.
Here are some of the highlights of the Court’s analysis:
(1) The ECHR applies extraterritorially to any person detained by the UK in Afghanistan.
(2) Derogations under Article 15 ECHR could also be used in an extraterritorial context.
(3) The detention of SM by UK forces in Afghanistan was attributable to the United Kingdom, and not to the UN.
(4) No conflict arose between relevant UNSC resolutions, which did not authorize SM’s continued detention, and Article 5 ECHR, and Article 103 of the Charter was inapplicable.
(5) SM’s detention was not authorized by IHL either, since IHL in NIACs contains no detention authority, and cannot prevail over Article 5 ECHR as lex specialis.
(6) SM’s detention violated Article 5 ECHR. While the detention up to 96 hours was Article 5-compliant, the 110 days that SM spent in UK detention were not.
The Court makes it clear that the position the UK government found itself in is largely its own doing (para. 417 ff). This is exactly right. The government’s own legal advisers informed it of the limited extant legal authority for prolonged detention. The UK government failed to enact its own domestic legislation on detention in Afghanistan, or to come to different arrangements with Afghan authorities. Similarly, the UK government chose not to derogate from the Convention, preferring instead to argue that the Convention does not apply. And now that this strategy has failed (and on several levels), much of what it has been doing is exposed as unlawful.
I imagine that the judgment will be appealed, and we shall we see what happens there. But whatever the appellate courts’ conclusions, I can only hope that their judges will show as much diligence and analytical precision as Mr Justice Leggatt.
Here are the highlights, with some commentary:
(1) The ECHR applies extraterritorially to any person detained by the UK in Afghanistan, under the ECtHR Al-Skeini judgment and the personal model of Article 1 ECHR jurisdiction as authority and control over individuals (para. 166 ff). The judge thought of Al-Skeini as follows:
136. A disappointing feature of the judgment of the European Court in the Al-Skeini case is its lack of transparency in dealing with its previous decision in the Bankovic case. Nowhere did the Court confront or expressly acknowledge the fact that it was departing from its previous approach or explain why it was doing so. The Bankovic case is not even mentioned except for citations to it in some footnotes.
137. It is clear, however, that in the Al-Skeini case the European Court has indeed departed from its approach in the Bankovic case on all the five points which I mentioned above. In particular:
i) The Court has now endorsed a principle of jurisdiction based on the exercise of effective control by a state over an individual;
ii) The Court has expressly resiled from the notion that Convention rights constitute a single, indivisible package and has said that they can be “divided and tailored”;
iii) The Court held that jurisdiction under article 1 is not limited to the territory of states which are parties to the Convention;
iv) In endorsing an approach which goes well beyond what the Court had found in the Bankovic case to be ordinary meaning and original intention of Article 1, the Court has effectively treated Article 1 as a “living instrument”;
v) Although the Court continued to pay lip-serve to the notion that jurisdiction is “essentially territorial” and that extraterritorial jurisdiction is exceptional, it is difficult to see how this can remain so when jurisdiction arises wherever in the world a state exercises effective control over an individual.
The judge did not put much stock in the ‘public powers’ concept that the ECtHR used to prop up the personal model of jurisdiction and prevent its collapse (see more here), but he was fully aware that it is prone to collapsing into the proposition that the state has the duty to respect human rights whenever it has the factual ability to violate them:
141. The decision of the European Court in the Al-Skeini case leaves many unanswered questions which will no doubt have to be worked out in later cases. For example, it is unclear whether, once jurisdiction is understood to rest on the exercise of control over individuals, there is any stopping point short of what the European Court in the Bankovic case saw as the logical conclusion that jurisdiction under Article 1 exists whenever an act attributable to a contracting state has an adverse effect on anyone anywhere in the world; and if so, what that stopping point is. In the present case, however, such difficult questions do not arise because the facts fall squarely within one of the core examples of the control principle set out in the Al-Skeini case and not merely within its penumbra.
The judge thus concluded that the claimant was within the UK’s jurisdiction, since detention undoubtedly qualified as an exercise of physical power and control over him (paras. 147-148). Note that the UK government’s immediate reaction to Al-Skeini was to say that it was contained to the unique facts of Iraq, and the MoD lawyers similarly tried to distinguish Al-Skeini in several different ways, all of which the Court ultimately found unpersuasive. The government’s strategy to deny the ECHR’s applicability to Afghanistan thus seems likely to fail, not just in the further proceedings in this case but in others as well.
(2) Disagreeing with the dicta of the House of Lords in Al-Skeini and the UK Supreme Court in Smith, the judge considers that derogations under Article 15 ECHR could also be used in an extraterritorial context (paras. 153-157), finding that:
155. Article 15 accordingly permits a state, within defined limits, to derogate from its obligations under the Convention “in time of war or other public emergency threatening the life of the nation.” This wording, however, (in particular the word “other”) tends to suggest that Article 15 was not intended to apply to a war overseas which does not threaten the life of the nation. That is no doubt because those who drafted the Convention did not envisage that a state’s jurisdiction under Article 1 would extend to acts done outside its territory. Now that the Convention has been interpreted, however, as having such extraterritorial effect, it seems to me that Article 15 must be interpreted in a way which reflects this. It cannot be right to interpret jurisdiction under Article 1 as encompassing the exercise of power and control by a state on the territory of another state, as the European Court did in the Al-Skeini case, unless at the same time Article 15 is interpreted in a way which is consonant with that position and permits derogation to the extent that it is strictly required by the exigencies of the situation.
I think this is perfectly sensible. Recall also the pending ECtHR Hassan case, where the Court may pronounce itself on extraterritorial derogations. I would only part ways with the judge when he says that the drafters of the Convention did not envisage extraterritorial Article 1 jurisdiction, since we really have absolutely no idea what the drafters of the Convention wanted or intended.
(3) The detention of SM by UK forces in Afghanistan was attributable to the United Kingdom, and not to the UN (para. 158 ff). Here we have an extended discussion of the Behrami and Saramati and Al-Jedda attribution saga. While the judge thought that the distinguishing in Al-Jedda between the situations in Iraq and Kosovo was not wholly persuasive, and while he did not reject Behrami outright (which I think he could and should have done), he considered that:
178. In these circumstances, although I do not find the question easy, I consider that the UN Security Council has “effective control” (and “ultimate authority and control”) over ISAF in the sense required to enable conduct of ISAF to be attributed to the UN. Thus, if the detention of SM had been authorised by COMISAF (in the way that COMKFOR authorised the detention of Mr Saramati) and a claim had been brought against the state from whose armed forces COMISAF was drawn on the basis that that state was in breach of Article 5 of the Convention, I would expect the European Court to hold that the detention was not attributable to the respondent state, applying the same analysis as it did in the Behrami and Saramati cases. (I am assuming for the purpose of this hypothetical case that COMISAF at the relevant time was an officer in the armed forces of a state which is a contracting party to the Convention.)
However, that notwithstanding, SM’s detention was still attributable to the UK because it was ordered not by the ISAF commander, but by UK commanders and ministers (para. 185), hence:
187. In these circumstances, it is in my view quite clear that the detention of SM is attributable to the United Kingdom. It is unnecessary for me to consider the possibility of joint responsibility, as I think it equally clear that the acts involved in the detention of SM are not attributable to ISAF or the UN.
(4) Accepting that he was bound by the House of Lords’ Al-Jedda decision that UN Security Council resolutions can prevail over the ECHR by virtue of Article 103 of the Charter (paras. 209-211), and that the UNSC resolutions relevant to Afghanistan authorized ISAF to ‘take all necessary measures,’ which include lethal force in self-defence, the judge considered that these measures must also include capturing adversaries on the battlefield (para. 218). However:
219. I accept this argument so far as it goes. In particular, I accept that the UNSCRs relating to Afghanistan were plainly intended to authorise the use of lethal force at least for the purposes of self-defence. I also accept that in these circumstances it must be the case that ISAF personnel were authorised to take the lesser step of accepting the surrender of individuals who were believed to pose an imminent threat to them or to the civilian population. I see no necessary implication, however, that this authorisation was intended to give ISAF a power to continue to hold individuals in detention outside the Afghan criminal justice system after they had been arrested and therefore ceased to be an imminent threat. 220. As mentioned earlier, the mandate of ISAF was to assist the Afghan government in the maintenance of security. In addition, the UNSCRs expressly affirmed the sovereignty, independence and territorial integrity of Afghanistan and recognised that the responsibility for providing security and law and order throughout Afghanistan resided with the Afghan authorities. In these circumstances, and in circumstances where (as discussed in part IV of this judgment) ISAF had no power under Afghan law to detain individuals other than to hand them over immediately to the police or a prosecutor, I can see no reason to interpret the authorisation to “take all necessary measures” to fulfil the ISAF mandate as permitting detention for any longer than was necessary to deliver them to the Afghan authorities.
Moreover:
221. Nor can I see any reason to interpret that authorisation as permitting detention by ISAF which violated international human rights law. In ascertaining the scope of the relevant authority, it seems to me that I must take into account the principles endorsed by the European Court in Al-Jedda v United Kingdom (2011) 53 EHRR 23. Section 2(1) of the Human Rights Act requires me to do so in circumstances where the opinion of the European Court is relevant to the question that I have to determine concerning the scope of the claimant’s Convention rights. As mentioned, the European Court considered there to be a presumption that, unless it uses clear and unambiguous language to the contrary, the Security Council does not intend states to take measures which could conflict with their obligations under international human rights law. In the Al-Jedda case the European Court did not regard even the language used in UNSCR 1546 and the letter from Mr Powell annexed to it which expressly referred to internment as sufficiently clear and unambiguous to override this presumption. In the resolution applicable in the present case there is no express reference at all to internment or detention. Although I consider that a power to detain is implied, there is nothing in the language of UNSCR 1890 which demonstrates – let alone in clear and unambiguous terms – an intention to require or authorise detention contrary to international human rights law.
Accordingly, the judge concluded that detention up to 96 hours, per the ISAF detention policy, for the purpose of transferring the detainees to Afghan custody, was included within the mandate, but that longer detention for the purpose of intelligence-gathering, under the UK’s own detention policy, was not (paras. 224-227). No conflict thus arose between UNSC resolutions and Article 5 ECHR, and Article 103 of the Charter was inapplicable.
(5) SM’s detention was not authorized by IHL either, since IHL in NIACs contains no detention authority, and cannot prevail over Article 5 ECHR as lex specialis (para. 228 ff). The judge noted that:
239. Neither CA3 nor Article 5 of AP2 contains any express statement that it is lawful to deprive persons of their liberty in an armed conflict to which these provisions apply. All that they do is to set out certain minimum standards of treatment which must be afforded to persons who are detained during such an armed conflict. The MOD argues, however, that a power to detain is implicit in CA3 and AP2.
240. This argument has the support of some academic writers and of the International Committee of the Red Cross (“ICRC”). Thus, Jelena Pejic, the legal advisor to the ICRC, has written: “Internment is … clearly a measure that can be taken in non-international armed conflict, as evidenced by the language of [AP2], which mentions internment in Articles 5 and 6 respectively …”
The judge then proceeds to disagree with the implicit NIAC detention authority argument for five reasons (note, however, that I think that the paper by Jelena Pejic was written in her personal capacity). First, because powers to deprive individuals of liberty should not be inferred indirectly or by implication (para. 242). Second, because the fact of detention in NIAC is not the same as authorization of such detention (para. 243). Third, the relevant treaty provisions, such as CA3, are of humanitarian character only and refer to treatment in detention, not detention itself (para. 244). Fourth, IHL-based authority to detain in NIACs would mean that non-state actors, i.e. rebels and other organized armed groups, would also have authority to detain, which would be anathema to most states (para. 245). Fifth, neither CA3 nor AP2 specify who can be detained, when and for how long.
I think the judge got it exactly right on this point. Detention authority in NIACs exists only on the basis of domestic law, and here there was no such basis in either Afghan law or UK law.
He then proceeds to look at the lex specialis principle, and correctly identifies its three different variants (total displacement, partial displacement, and as a tool of interpretation – para. 269 ff). He finds the total displacement version (i.e. that IHL applies to the complete exclusion of human rights) untenable, and considers that:
279. The difficulty is increased by the fact that the Convention contemplates and makes provision within itself for situations of war. Thus Article 15 (quoted at paragraph 154 above) permits a state to derogate from its obligations under the Convention in a time of emergency. The clear and necessary implication of Article 15 is that the Convention continues to apply in a situation of armed conflict except to the extent that (a) a contracting state derogates from its obligations under the Convention and (b) such derogation is permitted by Article 15.
(Recall again his previous acceptance of extraterritorial derogations). He similarly finds the partial displacement conception not entirely persuasive:
284. At least arguably, however, even in a case where such a conflict of obligations occurs, the only way in which the European Court or a national court required to apply Convention rights can hold that IHL prevails over Article 5 is by applying the provisions for derogation contained in the Convention itself, and not by invoking the principle of lex specialis. In considering the extent to which derogation is “strictly required by the exigencies of the situation” and therefore permissible, Article 15(1) expressly allows regard to be had to a state’s “other obligations under international law”, which plainly includes IHL. The obligation of a state to comply with IHL would thus be a compelling justification for derogating from Article 5 in relation to the detention of POWs during an international armed conflict. However, in circumstances where the Convention itself defines the conditions in which and the extent to which derogation from its obligations is permitted, and makes specific provision for derogation in time of war, it is difficult to see that there is any room for the lex specialis principle to operate as a basis for disapplying the Convention when it conflicts with IHL.
However, the judge notes that he does not have to pronounce on the validity of the partial displacement variant of lex specialis in the absence of any derogation, since in his view IHL in NIACs does not provide any express detention authority anyway (para. 287). He proceeds to find the more modest, interpretative version of lex specialis (i.e. that IHL is to be taken into account in interpreting the relevant provisions of human rights treaties) to be entirely unobjectionable, while noting the difference between the open arbitrariness standards used in Article 9 ICCPR and the closed list of grounds for detention in Article 5 ECHR:
291. Unlike Article 9(1) of the ICCPR, however, Article 5(1) of the Convention is much more specific and prohibits arrest or detention “save in the following cases” which are then exhaustively defined. Given the specificity of Article 5, there is little scope for lex specialis to operate as a principle of interpretation. Furthermore, in view of my conclusion that in a non-international armed conflict IHL does not specify grounds for detention or procedures to be followed, there are in my view no relevant rules of IHL with which to try to harmonise the interpretation of Article 5.
292. As I see it, where IHL would be relevant in applying the Convention is in situation where a state resorted to measures derogating from Article 5 on the basis that it was involved in a non-international armed conflict. In such circumstances it could be argued that, under customary IHL, certain fundamental guarantees against the arbitrary deprivation of liberty should still be respected (see paragraph 260 above). To the extent that such guarantees form part of customary IHL, derogations from them would be “inconsistent with [a state’s] other obligations under international law” and therefore not permitted by Article 15.
On this, again, the judge is in my view entirely correct.
(6) SM’s detention violated Article 5 ECHR. While the detention up to 96 hours was Article 5-compliant, the 110 days that SM spent in UK detention were not. Purely preventive security detention violated Article 5(1) ECHR absent a derogation (para. 310). SM was not brought promptly before a judicial officer, not given the possibility of judicial review of his detention. In particular:The numbers keep rising at Saskatchewan's infamous snake house — but the worst appears to be over.
A total of 310 garter snakes have now been removed from a home northwest of Regina, thanks to a local wildlife rehabilitation centre.
They were taken out in bunches after the case was first brought to the attention of Salthaven West Wildlife Rehabilitation Centre.
Salthaven spokesperson Megan Lawrence says they believe they've got most of them.
"Finding them has really slowed down so we think that's about it, though there could be a few hidden stragglers," she said in a text message to CBC News. "So I don't expect too many more."
It's believed the snakes were looking for a place to winter and came in through cracks in the foundation.
At their peak activity, earlier this fall, some had found their way upstairs into the kitchen and hallways.
A pile of plains garter snakes'rescued' from a home near Regina wriggle for the cameras at the Salthaven West Wildlife Rehabilitation Centre. (Megan Lawrence)
Salthaven West says 100 of the snakes will be taken care of in Prince Albert.
Students at Saskatchewan Polytechnic will be able to keep an eye on them there.
Another 98 of the snakes were released last month at Condie Nature Reserve near Regina.
There are 116 snakes still in care at Salthaven West's Regina facility.
Gartner snakes are harmless and in fact are welcomed by many farmers because they help control rodents.
Members of the family where the snakes were found have asked not to be identified.Learning more about the Brotherhood of Assassins takes players to Egypt in the next Assassin’s Creed title. In Assassin’s Creed Origins, players will explore the deserts, the Nile, and iconic Egyptian landmarks as Bayek. The protagonist is a formidable assassin with military training that players guide in discovering how the Brotherhood came into existence.
As many learned after the E3 2017 presentation of Assassin’s Creed Origins, in-depth loot and other RPG elements are featured in the upcoming title. Players got to see Bayek traveling around the Faiyum region as he enters restricted areas, rides across the land on horseback, and masters new combat options. In a post on the PlayStation Blog today, developers of the game specifically note that the Egyptian setting lends itself to more horizontal exploration rather than vertical. Instead of first seeking high vistas to see where to head next, players will find themselves drawn in by what is simply around the next corner.
Assassin’s Creed Origin‘s creative director Jean Guesdon revealed that the team heavily studied Egypt and met with historians to try to faithfully recreate the famed region as it would have appeared in antiquity. Guesdon also admits that the extensive research for the game was probably more than they have ever done for an Assassin’s Creed title to date.
That is not to say that a vertical element does not exist in Assassin’s Creed Origins. Players can briefly perch on iconic pyramids overlooking the landscape. All rock cliffs can be climbed giving rural areas that layer of exploration like cities in the series. Not to mention, the eagle Senu easily travels spaces Bayek cannot reach scouting out locations and enemies.
Bayek will travel Egyptian deserts, but lush areas are also included [Image by Ubisoft]
Bayek’s eagle is the source behind the Eagle Vision ability present in Assassin’s Creed games. Players can send Senu out to recon areas before they explore them, according to the Ubisoft blog. With Senu’s help, players will know where enemies are located and the avian companion can even dive down at enemies distracting them. Although Senu’s eagle assistance can be ignored, players will find information provided by her invaluable since there is no mini-map in Assassin’s Creed Origins.
The upcoming action game also features several RPG elements. Bayek will find and loot weapons off of defeated enemies. Players can spend points on new skills for both Bayek and Senu. The Egyptian landscape also offers a selection of merchants for players to visit. Blacksmiths sell new weapons, weavers sell new outfits, and bazaars offer new rare loot. The heat of the Egyptian deserts will also play a factor in the game, causing players to hallucinate should they become too hot.
Loot like bows, spears, and other weapons can be looted off of enemies [Image by Ubisoft]
As the Inquisitr reported, the latest entry in the franchise is expected to release on October 27, 2017. There are several editions that can be pre-ordered with different bonus items. Pre-ordering Assassin’s Creed Origins grants access to the Secrets of the First Pyramid mission.
[Featured Image by Ubisoft]Image caption Bird fossils are very rare because the bones are fragile and easily damaged.
Many early bird species suffered from the same catastrophic extinction as the dinosaurs, new research has shown.
The meteorite impact that coincided with the disappearance of the dinosaurs 65 million years ago, also saw a rapid decline in primitive bird species.
Only a few bird groups survived through the mass extinction, from which all modern birds are descended.
Researchers at Yale University have published their findings in PNAS this week.
There has been a long standing debate over the fate of the earliest "archaic" birds, which first evolved around 200 million years ago.
Whether their populations declined slowly towards the end of the Cretaceous period, or whether they suffered a sudden mass extinction at the Cretaceous-Tertiary (K-T) boundary is unresolved, owing to conflicting evidence.
DNA studies have attempted to date the origin of modern birds; some suggest that they appeared before the extinction of dinosaurs, with large numbers of them surviving through the extinction event.
But the molecular clock suffers from "method issues", explains Dr Longrich of Yale University, and well-dated fossils are needed for "stratigraphic constraint" of the extinctions.
There are problems with the fossil record however. It is incomplete, owing to the extreme rarity of bird fossils.
Bird bones are very difficult to preserve as fossils as they are small and light, and easily damaged or swept away in rivers.
But the new research, headed by Dr Longrich, has made use of fragmentary bird fossils collected up to 100 years ago, from locations across North America.
New diversity
The fossil deposits, in North and South Dakota and Wyoming in the US, and Saskatchewan in Canada, date from the last 1.5 million years of the Cretaceous period.
More precise dating places the bird fossils to within 300,000 years of the extinction event - a very short period on geological timescales.
These fossils had been studied before, but they have been "shoehorned" into modern groups on the basis of their overall similarity.
Dr Longrich and his team have reanalysed and reclassified these important fossil fragments, using features of the shoulder joint to assign the fossils to modern and ancient groups.
Image caption Archaic birds like Archaeopteryx looked very different to modern ones
The shoulder bone, or "coracoid" is used for classification because it is the most common bone fragment preserved, and it doesn't vary much between individuals of the same species.
Analysing 24 specimens, the researchers identified 17 species, seven of which were "archaic birds" that are not seen after the K-T mass extinction.
These findings show for the first time a diversity of archaic birds alive, right up until the end of the Cretaceous.
This would mean that the archaic birds went extinct abruptly 65 million years ago, and that modern birds must have descended from just a few groups that survived the event.
'Nail in the coffin'
Among the primitive species identified, there is considerable variation in size, but there are few other specific adaptations.
Modern birds, on the other hand, have a huge range of adaptations to their particular behaviours or living environments.
This variation would have therefore come about during an explosive evolutionary radiation from the few surviving groups, during the first 10 million years or so following the K-T mass extinction.
"It's similar to what happened with mammals following the age of the dinosaurs." said Dr Longrich.
"Given that the extinction affected mammals, reptiles, insects and plants, it would be remarkable if birds survived the event unscathed," the scientists say in an introduction to their research.
There is growing evidence for the theory that the archaic birds survived until the extinction; more and more bird fossils are being found in Madagascar, Mongolia and Europe.
But these fossils are not well dated, unlike the newly analysed fragments from North America.
Dr Longrich said that this evidence was "a nail in the coffin of the idea of a slow decline".Lionsgate’s “The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 1” has delivered an estimated $17 million in Thursday night grosses as it begins rolling out in North America.
That’s 33% behind last year’s massive $25.3 million Thursday night launch for “The Hunger Games: Catching Fire.” But it’s also the top Thursday night number this year by far — 60% ahead of “Guardians of the Galaxy” at $11.2 million, followed by “Captain America: The Winter Soldier” at $10.2 million and “Godzilla” at $9.3 million.
With Jennifer Lawrence returning as reluctant heroine Katniss Everdeen, the third edition of “The Hunger Games” also came in 14% below the $19.7 million earned by the first “Hunger Games” on its first night of release in March, 2012.
Thursday night numbers may have been held down the freezing weather that’s hit the Northern Plains, Upper Midwest and East Coast.
Lionsgate also reported that “Mockingjay” is up 5% overall so far from “Catching Fire” in international markets. It’s been the top opener of the year in all its early markets, including Scandinavia and Benelux.
“Mockingjay” posted the best opening day of the year in Australia and was up by 41% over “Catching Fire” in South Korea and 40% to 55% in Latin American markets. First-day launches in the UK and Germany were up 10%.
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Box office trackers have been forecasting “Mockingjay” will take in between $130 million and $150 million from 4,151 locations in North America during its openings weekend.
That will easily top the $100 million opening for “Transformers: Age of Extinction” in June — the year’s previous high-water mark.
“Catching Fire” took in $158.1 million in its opening weekend in the U.S. last year on its way to $425 million. It also grossed $440 million internationally.
“The Hunger Games” grossed $408 million domestically and $283.2 million internationally for a worldwide cume of $691.2 million
“Mockingjay – Part 1″ cost approximately $140 million to produce and also stars Lawrence, Josh Hutcherson, Liam Hemsworth, Julianne Moore and Philip Seymour Hoffman in one of his last roles before his death this year. Francis Lawrence, who oversaw “Catching Fire,” returns to the director’s chair.
The franchise is based on Suzanne Collins’ popular dystopian trilogy. Lionsgate opted to split the last book into two films, which were shot back-to-back. “Mockingjay – Part 2” will open on Nov. 20, 2015.Should predators like wolves, mountain lions, and bears be killed to protect livestock? It’s one of the most ethically controversial issues around—but ethics aside, evidence suggests that it just doesn’t work.
So concludes a review of scientific studies of so-called predator control and its effect, or lack thereof, on livestock losses. Published in the journal Frontiers in Ecology and Environment, the results are not pretty. Predator control is described as “a shot in the dark.”
The review’s authors, led by environmental scientist Adrian Treves of the University of Wisconsin and biologist Jeanine McManus of Slovenia’s University of Ljubljana, surveyed the literature on predator control and livestock in North America and western Europe. The literature was uneven: only a dozen studies met academic standards from which inferences could be made about their conclusions.
Of these studies—involving wolves, coyotes, Eurasian lynx, black and brown bears, and cougars—seven involved lethal methods. Of these seven studies, just two described how a decrease in livestock predation followed the killing of predators. The other studies found no effect, or even an increase in predation. Meanwhile, of five studies of non-lethal methods, such as using guard dogs or hanging warning flags, four resulted in reduced predation.
To be sure, these studies had issues. Few rose to gold-standard status; variables like weather and disease were frequently unaccounted for. The review itself isn’t a conclusion so much as a reckoning with a lack of good evidence. “Until gold standard tests are completed,” write the researchers, “the resulting uncertainty about the functional effectiveness of killing predators should guide evidence-based policy to non-lethal methods.”
That message comes at a tense moment. In the US, the headline-grabbing slaughter of Washington’s Profanity Peak wolf pack is only the latest episode in a years-long fight over wolf management in western and upper midwestern states. Mountain lion hunting is similarly contested, as is the status of grizzly bears, black bear hunts, and coyote killing.
The new study certainly won’t be the last word on these issues. They’re messy and complex, and often as much about politics and cultural identity as rationality and evidence. Still, note Treves and McManus, the federal and state agencies usually tasked with managing these programs are supposed to use the best available science. As of now, they’re not.
“We recommend that policy makers suspend predator control efforts that lack evidence for functional effectiveness,” write Treves and McManus, and “that scientists focus on stringent standards of evidence in tests of predator control.” Of the various reasons for killing predators, habit is a bad one. —Brandon Keim (Twitter / Facebook) | 14 September 2016
Source: Treves et al. “Predator control should not be a shot in the dark.” Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution. 2016.
Image: Alexandre Alacchi / FlickrMercedes boss Toto Wolff says that he expects Ferrari to be strong once again next year. In 2017, Mercedes were challenged to both the world and constructor's titles for the first time since the V6 hybrid era began in 2014.
Ferrari's title hopes slipped away after the summer break, with Sebastian Vettel eliminated from Singapore and Japan due to a first lap collision and a spark plug problem. In Malaysia, both Ferraris suffered reliability issues - Vettel in qualifying and Kimi Raikkonen before the race got underway.
Mercedes managed to wrap up both titles early, and with just one race left to run in 2017, Wolff has already offered his prediction for next season. He believes that Ferrari's resurgence will continue, and there will be another close fight at the front.
"We enjoyed the fight with Ferrari a lot," said Wolff. "There is a lot of respect and they are a fantastic team. So I expect it to be continued next year and |
.
2. Reverse Band Rows
This is a great movement because it also allows you extra work at staying tight in your bench position and replicates your bench movement.
3. Dumbbell Rows
These are great because they can be done in a way that supports the lower back (with the knee on the bench or a staggered stance) so it doesn’t over-tax your low back on your upper body days. You can also position yourself in way that allows you to get a great range of motion and strength for the lats, and really work on movement of the shoulder blades.
Explosiveness
This is another component of benching off the chest that many lifters don’t consider in their training. If you have a “sticking point” a few inches off the chest, what do you think is the best way to break through it, slow or fast? Developing the ability to drive quickly off the chest will carry you through sticking points and help utilize the strength you have to its full potential. Dynamic effort benching can be done with straight weight, but is commonly used with accommodating resistance like bands or chains because it further emphasizes the importance of accelerating the bar as quickly as possible and accommodates the strength curve of the bench. For speed bench, you want to lower the bar as quickly as possible while still maintaining tightness and a correct bar path (not doing so is an injury waiting to happen). Then once the bar reaches the chest, explode up in a straight line as quickly as possible. How speed bench is utilized in your training will depend on your program. If you train in a conjugate (or concurrent) system, you will have a dynamic effort day for this. If you train in a different type of program, speed work can be done after the main bench sets or before, depending on your program.
These are a few important components of building a big bench, starting with getting the bar off your chest as quickly and efficiently as possible. Always remember that sticking points can be from different causes, and those causes can each have layers of their own. As you gain more experience, you’ll become better and better at evaluating your weaknesses and finding the best ways to blow past them.A grieving Afghan mother took bloody revenge on the Taliban militants who gunned down her son, killing 25 and injuring five of them during a seven hour gun battle.
Reza Gul watched helplessly as her son died while he manned a village checkpoint with his small team of police officers in the lawless Farah province.
But flanked by her daughter and daughter-in-law, she led a counter strike on his attackers killing 25 militants and wounding another five during a ferocious seven hour gun battle.
Scroll down for video
Reza Gul (center), her daughter Fatima (left) and daughter-in-law Seema, killed 25 members of of the Taliban after watching them gun down her son
Fatima Gul, who also took up arms against the Taliban after her brother was killed during a Taliban raid on his police checkpoint in the Farah province
From left to right, Fatima, Seema and Reza Gul battled for seven hours against Taliban forces after they attacked a police checkpoint, manned by Reza's son
'I couldn't stop myself and picked up a weapon,' Gul told TOLO News. 'I went to the check post and began shooting back.'
Her daughter-in-law Seema added: 'The fighting was intensified when we reached the battlefield along with light and heavy weapons. We were committed to fight until the last bullet.'
She added that the combats zone was strewn with Taliban bodies when the fighting was over.
A spokesman for the Afghanistan's Ministry of Interior told the agency it was a symbol of a public uprising.
The Taliban is yet to comment about the incident.
Alongside other insurgent groups, the Taliban have escalated attacks across the country since the withdrawal of most of the US led forces from the country last month.
Targeting, government, security and foreign installations, especially in the country's capital Kabul, members of the public have also been caught in the crossfire.
At least 50 people were injured earlier this week, when a suicide bomber detonated his explosive vest in a crowd watching a volleyball tournament at an inter-district competition in Yahyakahil, Paktika province.
The attacks have prompted Afghanistan's president Ashraf Ghani to order a comprehensive review of the country's defense forces.
He is also rethinking Afghan policy towards controversial night raids, banned by his predecessor Hamid Karzai.
Afghan President Ashraf Ghani has ordered a top-to-bottom inspection of his country's military forces after a rise in Taliban attacks
Ghani is considering whether night raids, barred by his predecessor Hamid Karzai, should be reintroduced
The latest attacks come as it was revealed US President Barack Obama signed a'secret' order allowing the Pentagon to continue to target Taliban fighters even after the military withdrawal.
The president's decision, made during a White House meeting with national security advisers, also gives the military the green light to conduct air support for Afghan operations when needed.
Obama issued the guidelines in recent weeks, as the American combat mission in Afghanistan draws to a close, thousands of troops return home, and the military prepares for narrower counter terrorism and training mission for the next two years.
Afghan lawmakers have also approved agreements with the US and NATO allowing Western soldiers to remain in the country.Posted: February 12, 2016 by Jérôme Segura
Last updated: October 20, 2016
As reported by F-Secure, a recent malvertising campaign has been hitting several top publishers to push the Angler exploit kit and install the TeslaCrypt ransomware, according to the Finnish company. Some of these infections happened via Skype, which displays ad banners within its product.
We looked into the redirection mechanism and identified that these attacks came from a rogue advertiser abusing the AppNexus platform, and which was performing conditional forwarding to rotating Angler EK domains.
Rogue domain : hueyscatering.com/cTRVRZgacCqj6V0XrysHCkZPZC1QPx -> Angler EK landing page : ic7r0u7.ug2ggu8ti2.pw/civis/viewtopic.php?t=1f9&f=2.03b441441q56ci62s1
The advertiser used a domain that at one point belonged to a catering company, before it expired and was reutilized in these attacks.
The redirection to Angler is done server-side with threat actors having full control of who will or won’t be served the exploit kit.
The malicious code resides in an unusually long JavaScript file perhaps intended to confuse security scanners.
This attack was reported and blocked by Malwarebytes Anti-Exploit.Jairus Byrd and Rob Ryan : Saints minicamp
New Orleans Saints safety Jairus Byrd (31), shown here with defensive coordinator Rob Ryan, missed minicamp while recuperating from back surgery. (Photo by Brett Duke, Nola.com | The Times-Picayune)
(Brett Duke)
Join me for a live chat session today at 11 a.m. when we'll discuss - what else? -- the start of New Orleans Saints training camp.
Many things to discuss as the Saints prepare to open camp later this week at the Greenbrier resort in White Sulphur Springs, W.Va.
Here are the questions I'll be seeking answers to when I arrive at camp next week:
--Will Champ Bailey or Patrick Robinson nail down the other starting spot opposite Keenan Lewis?
--Who's the nickel? Will it be the loser of the aforementioned competition or Corey White, who worked almost exclusively there during minicamp?
--Are Jairus Byrd and Victor Butler healthy?
--Will the Saints stick to a 4-3 base defense or return to the 3-4?
--What role will Brandin Cooks play in the offense?
--How will the running back rotation work?
--Is Tim Lelito the answer at center?
--Can Ryan Griffin beat out Luke McCown for the backup quarterback spot?
--Can Derek Dimke unseat Shayne Graham as the place-kicker?
--Who will return punts and kickoffs?
What questions do you have about Saints camp?
To participate, just click the "reply" button at the bottom of this file and submit your question or comment. I'll re-join the session at 11 a.m. and "live" for the full hour, until noon. Looking forward to another lively session. Until then, fire away.And guess what? It’s other tumblr users doing it.
The only point where 4chan got involved was to mess with and expose the people from tumblr lying about being 4chan anons. Not only would channers NOT use Omegle, but a good portion of them moved to 8chan a long time ago, because the new mods at 4chan are ban-happy moral crusaders.
You can stop pretending as if this is the first time that people on tumblr have lied about something to further their own agenda, or deliberately set out to start shit with 4chan. Hell, it’s also not the first time that someone has tried to use 4chan as a scapegoat for their own actions, such as the hoax regarding alleged nude photos of Emma Watson (here’s another source for good measure, but just Google “Rantic marketing 4chan”, and you’ll find quite a few others), or the “feminists” that circulated child pornography onto 8chan, just so they could claim that it was the site users behind it.
In fact, 4chan has actually accomplished quite a bit for the betterment of others, while people on this site sit on the computer, and whine about meaningless trivialities that don’t mean squat to anyone with a goddamn brain.
4chan:
Meanwhile, what has tumblr done?:
So, what have you, or any of the so-called “activists” on tumblr, done for anyone else lately?
Yeah. That’s what I thought. A whole lotta jack and shit.
The only reason 4chan keeps becoming targeted is because whiny little teenage bags of snot can’t handle the fact that the people they hate the most (mainly for calling them out on their bullshit) accomplish more genuine good for others than they likely ever will.
In the end, it doesn’t matter what either side of this argument says about the other. You are not a “good person” just because you sit around screaming at the top of your lungs trying to convince people that you are. When it comes to 4chan, they let their actions speak for themselves. They show genuine altruism while under a veil of anonymity. They don’t go out of their way to be known or recognized individually for their contributions. That alone speaks volumes about how tumblr “activists” are merely wearing positive labels like a fashion trend, and not actually conducting themselves in any manner to attempt to live up to those labels. They are consumed with a rabid desire for others to see them as pious martyrs, regardless of whether or not they’re deserving of such impressions. Unfortunately for them, true goodness is determined by ACTIONS.
In the final tally, regardless of the other incidents 4chan has taken part in, tumblr still has them beat by a long shot when it comes to acting like horrifyingly disgusting human beings. Even when they’re pulling juvenile bullshit, at least 4chan doesn’t act self righteous about it.Distributed Ledger Platforms may be Getting All the Hype but the architecture of Bitcoin is more sophisticated than many people realise
I was a guest of the Financial Services Club Scotland last week. I presented an update on the world of cryptocurrencies to an engaged and well-informed audience in the library of the Royal College of Physicians.
I reprised my current theme that the world of “blockchains” is really two distinct worlds – the world of Ripple-like ledgers and the world of Bitcoin-like systems – that happen to be united by a common architecture, the Replicated, Shared Ledger. This unifying concept is based on the idea that each participant has their own copy of the entire ledger – and they trust the “system” – whatever system that is – to ensure their copy is kept in sync with everybody else’s. The differences are about what the ledger records and how it is secured.
Bitcoin-like and Ripple-like systems
Broadly speaking, Ripple-like systems are focused on the representation of “off-system” assets and are secured by identifiable entities. Systems like Ripple, Hyperledger and Eris are broadly in this world, I think. The security model of these systems is based on knowing who the actors are: if somebody misbehaves, we can punish them because we know who they are!
Bitcoin-like systems are more focused on “on-system” assets and are secured by an anonymous pool of actors. Bitcoin and Ethereum are broadly in this space, I think. The security model here is based more on game-theoretic analyses of incentive structures: the goal is to make it overwhelmingly in the actors’ financial interests to do the “right” thing.
There is, of course, some ambiguity since all platforms have some notion of “smart contracts” – or otherwise recording real-world agreements, as well as asset ownership. But this makes intuitive sense. If your platform is concerned with real-world assets and agreements then you necessarily need some concept of identity (who are the issuers?). And if you’re reliant on the performance of real-world actors, why not also rely on them for the overall system security? Likewise, if the whole purpose of your platform is to create and manage a new asset that can be controlled/subverted by nobody, then giving identifiable entities the power to control your security would seem to defeat the point!
Different design goals, different implementations. And the value of such systems to banks, corporations or individuals is, ultimately, an empirical question. I imagine 2015 will be the year where we discover many of the answers.
Incrementalism versus “Disruption”
But I went further in my talk. I observed that these two worlds also differ in one other respect: the Bitcoin-like systems could be disruptive to existing institutions if they gained widespread adoption, whereas Ripple-like systems seem, to me, to be far more closely aligned to how things work today and are, perhaps, a source of incremental innovation.
If this observation is correct, then firms looking at this space probably need to assess the technologies through different lenses. The question for banks for Ripple-like systems is: “how could we use this to reduce cost or improve our operations” whereas the question for Bitcoin-like systems is: “how would we respond if this technology gained widespread adoption?”
And to answer the last question, one must be sure to really understand what the system under analysis really is!
Bitcoin as a currency might be to miss the point
For me, it is a mistake to think about Bitcoin solely as a currency. Because the Bitcoin currency system is a masterclass in mirage: underneath the hood, it’s a fascinating smart contract platform.
Or, as I said at the Financial Services Club, every time you make a Bitcoin payment, you’re actually asking over 6000 computers around the world to run a small computer program for you… and your only task is to make sure that the computer program returns “TRUE”. Within the Bitcoin community, this is well-known, of course. Indeed, the work done by Mike Hearn and others to document the platform’s capabilities has been around for years. But I find most people in the broader debate are unaware that the platform is pretty much built on this capability – it’s not an add-on.
Bitcoin is a smart contract platform
I wrote a piece last year offering an intuition for how Bitcoin works, in terms of land. My point was that the fundamental building block of the system is the “unspent transaction output”, or UTXO. The UTXO is what you get when somebody “pays” you some Bitcoin. The “output” of their transaction is the money they paid to you. And whilst it sits in your “wallet”, it is, obviously, unspent. Hence “unspent transaction output”.
So you can think of the current state of the Bitcoin system as being a huge pool of UTXOs: all the payments that have been received by Bitcoin users that they have not yet spent:
Every payment that has not itself been spent is modeled in the Bitcoin system as an “unspent transaction output”. In general, each UTXO can only be spent by the owner of the “address” to which it was sent (not always, and this is the point; see later). And each UTXO has an identifier (the transaction it appeared in and its position in the list of outputs of that transaction) and a value: how many Bitcoins are represented by that UTXO.
But what people often miss is that these UTXOs are actually tiny little computer programs that live on the ledger, control access to bitcoins and run in response to specific incoming events. Smart Contracts, if you will. And the only way you get to spend the money controlled by that contract is if you can provide some input data that allows every node on the system to execute the program and check that it returns “TRUE”
If you can make the program return “TRUE”, you get to say what happens to the funds. If you can’t, then you don’t.
So, when you want to spend your money, here’s what you do:
Your wallet software writes a little computer program for you and then sends it into the bitcoin network. It effectively says to the network: “Please run this little program I’ve just given you. Then please find a program (“smart contract”?) on the platform with this ID for me. When you’ve done that, feed the output from my program into program you just located”. So this is a two step process: you provide your own little program… and the output of that is fed to the UTXO program that you want to spend.
The way you spend money in Bitcoin is to ask the platform to run a small computer program that you provide and feed the output of that program to the “smart contract” that is storing the funds you want to spend. If you can make this second program run successfully, you get to spend the money. In Bitcoin terminology, the program you provide is “scriptSig” and the UTXO program is “scriptPubKey”. Your goal is to provide a “scriptSig” whose output can be fed into “scriptPubKey” to make it return “TRUE”
So what are these little programs? In the common case, they’re really simple. The “UTXO program” simply says: “provide me with a digital signature that proves you own the key associated with the following Bitcoin address (and please also prove that you know the public key that corresponds to the bitcoin address)”. That’s why it’s called the “scriptPubKey”.
And the program you provide is just a way to ensure the bitcoin system sends this proof into the scriptPubKey program in the right way. It’s a way of providing a digital signature. Hence it’s called the “scriptSig”
If you don’t know the private key then you can’t generate the right signature and so you can’t create the input necessary to get the smart contract (scriptPubKey) to run successfully and you don’t get to spend the funds. So this, seemingly complex model, is just a way to ensure that the only person who can spend money at address 1abcde… is the person who knows the private key… exactly as we would want.
Why is it this complex?
But notice how powerful this is… because the other thing you do is tell the system to replace the existing scriptPubKey program with one or more new programs. And this is how your payment is modelled in the system. You pay somebody by creating a new program (a new scriptPubKey) that only they will be able to execute successfully. In this way, you can pay different people or send change back to yourself. The program that only you can run is replaced with ones that only the payees can run. And, in this way, the value has been passed from you to them.
So the result is that the original program living on the ledger is replaced by one or more new programs. In the usual case, one or more of these new ones will be associated with somebody else’s bitcoin address so only they will be able to control it. You have, in effect, paid them that money since the funds are now under their control
Paying somebody in Bitcoin is the same as replacing the program you control with ones they control. In this diagram, the funds you controlled have now been split between two new recipients. Only they can spend those funds.
Smart Contracts?
So what does this have to do with smart contracts? The key is that the model I outlined above is quite generic. The programming language is (just about) powerful enough to implement some interesting business logic that goes beyond “Richard paying money to Bob”. For example, you can write a program that will only return “TRUE” if you provide proof that you know the private key to multiple bitcoin addresses. This is a way to model “a majority of Board Directors must jointly sign before these funds can be spent”, perhaps. The Bitcoin “contracts” wiki page goes into far more depth.
However, the reality is that the capabilities of the platform are actually quite constrained – and I think this explains a lot of the interest in other platforms, such as Ethereum. However, it should be noted that Gavin Andresen has argued that Bitcoin’s limitations need not be a constraint.
So what?
Some might argue that it’s not necessary to think about Bitcoin in this way. But I think that would be a mistake. Because, while lots of people are getting excited about the potential of smart contracts for business, we’ve had a sophisticated smart contract platform running quite successfully for over half a decade, in the form of the Bitcoin network.
Sure – it’s very limited (that’s why systems like Ethereum are getting built). But it might be a mistake to bet that it won’t evolve.
Ultimately, my point is this: even if there’s a low probability of success for a potentially disruptive system, it surely makes sense to understand everything possible about what that system can actually do…
[Disclosure – I provide advice to Hyperledger in a personal capacity.]
[Update – 2015-03-30 Typos and replaced first diagram… I accidentally included an older version that used random IDs for UTXOs that looked like bitcoin addresses, which was very confusing…]Runners are always looking for the newest way to prevent running injuries and help them train smarter. From compression socks, foam rollers, and even full leg compression sleeves (ridiculous, aren’t they?).
Most of the products that you buy help you recover from hard training or treat running injuries. But I had an opportunity recently to diagnose my personal movement inefficiencies, inflexibilities, and weaknesses to prevent injuries from happening in the first place. Who needs to recover if you’re not that beat up from training in the first place?
Last week I went to the Maryland Sports Injury Center to receive a Functional Movement Screen, which identifies muscle strength and flexibility limitations. I’m a firm believer that the majority of running injuries can be prevented by not pushing the body to do too much, too soon, and by consistently incorporating strength and flexibility exercises in your training.
Since about April of 2009, I’ve been free of any major injury and ran the most I ever have in 2010 (a bit over 3,000 miles). So, I think I’m doing most things right with my training. I know I have some limitations – everybody does – but I was curious to see what an expert could learn from studying my own movements and what it can teach you.
I met with Jason Schrieber, a Certified Strength and Conditioning Specialist, a USA Weightlifting Club Coach, and HKC Kettlebell Instructor. He has a BS in Kinesiology, competed in mixed martial arts and powerlifting, and has taught Anatomy and Physiology, Health and Exercise Science, and Physical Education.
It was important to me to meet with someone who was not a runner but who’s had experience with runners. I wanted brutal honesty about my physical imbalances. I’ll see a different professional for my mental imbalances.
The Functional Movement Screen
We got down to business quickly and started the FMS, which is a series of 7 exercises and 3 simple movements to test for pain. They include:
Deep Squat
In-Line Lunge
Shoulder Mobility
Impingement Clearing Test
Active Straight Leg Raise (ASLR)
Trunk Stability Push Up
Press Up Clearing Test
Rotary Stability
Posterior Rocking Clearing Test
Each exercises is scored on a scale of 0-3, with 3 being perfect and 0 being a complete fail. The three movements to test pain are a simple pass/fail and include the impingement clearing test, press up clearing test, and posterior rocking clearing test. Most of the exercises are detailed in the video below.
As I went through each exercises, I became more and more confident that the numerous strength and core routines that I do on a regular basis have helped me become a better athlete. While each movement was different than what I routinely do after my training runs, they were similar enough that none of them were particularly difficult.
Now I want to go through and briefly describe each exercise, how I performed, and its importance to runners. I’ll stick to the actual exercises and leave out the three pain tests.
The deep squat is performed with a light bar held above your head. A perfect score is given if you can keep the bar above your head without it moving toward the front of your body and you can lower your thighs beyond parallel. I scored a 2 out of 3 in this exercise because the bar moved in front of me slightly. This is probably due to shoulder instability.
It’s important for runners to be able to go through a proper squat movement. If that movement is impossible, your hips and hamstrings are very tight and your stride mechanics are likely inefficient. I consider this exercise to be one of the most important and most predictive of running injuries.
The in-line lunge is essentially a split lunge with both feet pointing forward along one straight line. You hold a bar behind your back to keep your torso in line. You need to have great balance and leg strength to be able to do this movement without falling over. Lacking the coordination to do a simple lunge is problematic when you consider running is a series of one legged hops. I scored a 3 on this exercise.
The shoulder mobility exercise was done by putting your arms out to your sides and then twisting them behind you in opposite directions to have them touch between your shoulder blades. While I scored a 3 on this exercise, it was evident my right shoulder is tighter than my left – probably from spending too much time at a computer. This exercise is not as specific to running as the others.
Next was the active straight leg raise. This was a simple hamstring flexibility exercise where I laid on the floor and kept my left leg still while I raised my right. I fared poorly on this test and scored a meager 1 – my lowest score of the day. I’ve had minor hamstring issues in the past, but never anything serious. A score of 1 isn’t good though, so I’ll be working on increasing my hamstring flexibility.
The trunk stability pushup was the hardest exercise in the set. It was essentially a standard pushup except your hands are planted well in front of your shoulders. It requires a lot of core activation and stability to not let your stomach sag below your shoulders and knees. I scored a 3 on this exercise, but I think Jason was being lenient on me.
Finally, the rotary stability exercise tested balance and stability in the shoulder. It’s essentially a bird dog exercise and is featured prominently in the video above. You raise one arm in front of you while lifting the opposite leg behind you and then bring your knee to your elbow underneath your torso.
The only way you can score a 3 is if you can do this exercise with your leg and arm on the same side. I tried a few times and fell over each time. It wasn’t pretty, so I scored a 2. Jason said that he’s only seen one person ever score a 3 so I felt a little better about myself.
FMS Lessons on How to Prevent Running Injuries
The test was fun but more importantly, it gave me some actionable lessons that I can use in my training help prevent running injuries. First and foremost is my lack of hamstring flexibility. My long runs before the New York Marathon were 16 miles and then another 6 on the track at sub-6 minute pace. Remembering back on those workouts, my hamstrings failed first.
I learned several new active stretches to do for my hamstrings, which I’ll hopefully detail in a future video.
There’s also a clear tightness in my right side as opposed to my left. Again, this is probably because I spend too much time in front of a computer. I learned a great shoulder stretch to use and I need to be more aware of my posture while typing. These are good lessons for anyone and things I knew before heading in for the FMS. But seeing the results of poor posture in limited movement patterns really wakes you up to making change in your day to day life.
The FMS is something I’d recommend to any runner who’s curious about their imbalances, inefficiencies, inflexibilities, and poor movement patterns. My one criticism is that it’s not entirely specific to running. I’d love to see a running-specific FMS developed to evaluate the running stride and movement of runners (something a bit less involved and costly than Jay Dicharry’s sports lab).
I want to thank Jason for his help, guidance, and expertise during my time at the Maryland Sports Injury Center. He was very thorough going over each exercise and never once made fun of my running shorts. I came away from the Functional Movement Screen knowing more about my body’s limitations and imbalances – knowledge that I know will help me become a better runner. If you live in the greater DC area, definitely check them out.
Congrats to Steve T. for guessing my biggest inflexibility! I’ll think of a cool prize and get back to you.
Full disclosure: the FMS was complimentary in exchange for a review.© AP Photo/Nicholas K. Geranios In this photo taken July 24, 2009, Rachel Dolezal, a leader of the Human Rights Education Institute, stands in front of a mural she painted at the institute's offices in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho.
An NAACP leader and prominent civil rights activist in Washington state has been pretending to be black for years, her parents admitted local media Thursday.
Rachel Dolezal, who heads Spokane’s NAACP chapter and teaches Africana studies at Eastern Washington University, refused to directly answers any questions about her alleged racial ruse after it was exposed.
A KXLY reporter bluntly asked her, “Are you African American?”
After a stunned pause, she replied: "“I don’t understand the question."
The question of her race "is not as easy as it seems," Dolezal told the Spokane Spokesman-Review.
"We're all from the African continent," she added.
Dolezal’s parents, who are both white, provided a birth certificate and childhood pictures of their daughter to the Coeur d’Alene Press to back up their claims she has been grossly misrepresenting herself.
The birth certificate confirmed she was born to the white couple, and the pictures show Dolezal as a pasty, blonde child — a complete contrast the darker skin and curly brown hair she has now.
“It is very disturbing that she has become so dishonest,” Dolezal’s mother, Ruthanne Dolezal, told the Idaho newspaper.
Her parents also alleged a much wider web of warped lies Dolezal spun about her background. A black man who Dolezal has publicly claimed to be her son is in fact her adopted brother, they said — a fact Dolezal confirmed to the paper.
Dolezal also lied about growing up in a teepee, hunting for her own food with bows and arrows, being abused by a stepfather and once living in South Africa, her parents said.
Some of her family members did live in South Africa for four years, but “Rachel did not even ever visit us there,” her mom said.
Dolezal initially maintained that she is African-American, telling the Coeur d'Alene Press: "They can DNA test me if they want to."
Her parents told the Seattle Times Thursday they are estranged from their daughter and have no idea why she lied.
Dolezal was elected as the president of the NAACP Spokane chapter last November and took the post at the beginning of this year, according to her Facebook page.
She also chairs the city’s newly created police oversight commission.
She did not return a Daily News request for comment.
Dolezal is an adjunct professor at Eastern Washington University’s Africana Education program. Her bio on the school’s site says she is a widely popular speaker and visual artist whose “efforts were met with opposition by North Idaho white supremacy groups, the Ku Klux Klan, the Neo Nazis and the Aryan Nations, and at least eight documented hate crimes targeted Doležal and her children during her residency in North Idaho.”
Dolezal's Facebook page is filled with posts about civil rights marches, alleged instances of racism against her and supposed details about her childhood.
In one November 2013 post, she offered tips for black viewers to watch the period drama "12 Years a Slave," which she called "not the best film to take a white partner on a first date to."
She advised: "sit in the top, back row so that during the movie people aren't constantly looking at you to monitor the 'Black response' to the film."
The same day, she wrote another post about a slave character in the film, Patsey, played by Lupita Nyong'o.
"When Patsy [sic] makes the dolls with the braided arms in '12 Years,' it brought back memories of when I was a little girl and made the same husk dolls in the garden, only I braided their hair instead of the arms...," Dolezal wrote.
The Spokane chapter has not commented on the controversy. A Tuesday post on its Facebook page said Dolezal was interviewed by Al Jazeera about "police accountability in Spokane," with the clip to be broadcast "in several days."
Another post on the page, from January, shows Dolezal standing with a black man who is identified as her "father."
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jsilverstein@nydailynews.comA VERY peculiar engagement
Charles had a sex change - then hated being Samantha so became a man again. Now he's getting married. So is his fiancée barmy, brave... or just in love?
When millionaire property developer Charles Kane steps out with his new fiancée, people tend to either stare or discreetly do a double take.
It may be because Victoria Emms is a striking redhead and, at 28 to Charles’s 50, is young enough to be his daughter.
But they both suspect it is because they look - to use their own words - ‘eccentric’ or ‘odd’.
In Victoria’s eyes, Charles is ‘all man’, but others may disagree. Born Sam Hashimi, the businessman and divorced father-of-two had a sex-change operation in 1987 to turn him into glamorous interior designer Samantha Kane.
Third time lucky? Charles Kane as he is today with his fiance Victoria Emms
He spent £100,000 on cosmetic operations and tooth veneers to create the ‘ultimate male fantasy’ and was so convincing as a woman he had no trouble attracting men, and was briefly engaged to a wealthy landowner.
Then, in 2004, after seven years of living as a woman, he decided he’d made a horrible mistake; the result -he believes now -of a breakdown following the acrimonious end of his 12-year marriage and estrangement from his children.
Initially thrilled by his transformation, life as a woman quickly paled despite a jetset lifestyle in Monaco.
He hated the way female hormones made him moody and emotional. Shopping bored him and sex was a disappointment.
No matter how feminine he looked, he felt he was merely playing a role.
So, five years ago, Charles spent a further £25,000 on three operations to turn him back into a male after being referred by the gender clinic at London’s Charing Cross Hospital.
His breast implants were removed and male genitalia re-constructed from skin grafts.
The trouble was, he wasn’t the man he had been before.
When I first met Charles two years ago, he cut a rather sad figure rattling around his £2.6 million West London property.
Though dressed in a suit, he looked neither man nor woman, and vestiges of his beautiful alter ego Samantha remained.
His attempts at dating women, he told me, had met with outright rejection and humiliation and he feared he would never find anyone brave enough to love him.
This time, I return to find him smiling next to his fiancee, Victoria, a single mother to her son Albert, two-and-a-half.
They met at an art gallery in her home town of Malvern, Worcestershire, in June 2009 and last month she accepted his proposal of marriage.
'The ultimate male fantasy': Sam Hashimi (left) before he became Samantha in 1987. But no matter how feminine he looked, he felt he was playing a role
Truth be told, they do look rather odd together. She looks even younger than her years, while Charles’s dyed blond hair is reminiscent of the style he sported as Samantha Kane.
Though he is wearing a beautifully cut suit, he has teamed it with a pair of dusky pink, suede moccasins.
If this bothers Victoria, she doesn’t let it show. Instead, she proudly shows me her diamond engagement ring and insists Charles is a far better boyfriend for having once been a woman.
Because, unlike other men, she says, he truly understands women’s needs.
Describing him as her ‘soulmate’, she says: ‘I have always liked arty, intellectual, older men and when we first met we were immediately attracted to each other.
There was a spiritual connection. I didn’t know anything about him or his past. His hair was a bit feminine, but I just thought he was a pretty-boy type.’
On their first date, Charles told Victoria about his two sex-change operations and she says it didn’t put her off at all.
‘I thought this is someone who has really experienced life and is a very sensitive, understanding, wise person,’ she says.
‘I am quite a passive, feminine person, and it is Charles who is the dominant one in the relationship. He’s very much a man’s man, but he’s also a very good listener and gives me fantastic advice.’
'Men are from Mars and women are from Venus, and I’m in the unique position of having taken a very long trip to Venus before returning to Mars.'
Advice which apparently extends to clothes, hairstyles and make-up. While Charles is adamant he would never want to be a woman again, he admits there’s a part of Samantha that he misses.
Charles says: ‘When I told Victoria about my sex change, she didn’t make her excuses and |
Spaceport America Terminal Nears Completion
Spaceport America
At New Mexico’s Spaceport America, the planned home port of Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo fleet for suborbital space tourist flights, work is nearing completion on the facility's Terminal Hangar.
Spaceport America's Inaugural Launch
AP Photo/David G Pierre.
A rocket launched by UP Aerospace heads skyward Monday, Sept. 25, 2006, in Upham, N.M. The unmanned rocket that took off in the inaugural launch from New Mexico's spaceport crashed in the desert, failing in its mission to reach suborbital space.
Spaceport America Terminal Building Under Construction
Barbara David
A view of the Spaceport America terminal building under construction. The new commercial spaceport is rising out of the American southwestern desert near Las Cruces, NM, during its runway dedication ceremony on Oct. 22, 2010.
Virgin Galactic Spaceship Christens New Spaceport Runway
The Virgin Galactic suborbital vehicle SpaceShipTwo, called Enterprise, soars over New Mexico's Spaceport America terminal – still under construction – under the belly of its huge mothership WhiteKnightTwo during the spaceport’s runway dedication ceremony on Oct. 22, 2010.
Spaceport America's Runway Dedication
New Mexico Spaceport Authority
WhiteKnightTwo and VSS Enterprise appear on the Spaceport America runway during the runway dedication on October 22, 2010.
WhiteKnightTwo and VSS Enterprise Fly over the Spaceport
Spaceport America
WhiteKnightTwo and VSS Enterprise fly over the spaceport during the dedication ceremony on October 22, 2010.
Spaceport America: First Looks at a New Space Terminal
URS/Foster+Partners.
Dawn breaks in this new depiction of Spaceport America in New Mexico, the future home of Virgin Galactic's suborbital spaceliner fleet.
New Mexico Spaceport Seeks Voter Support
URS/Foster + Partners
Spaceport America is to blossom in New Mexico, a commercial venture to support suborbital and orbital access to space of passengers, satellites, and cargo. It is to be home base for Virgin Galactic's suborbital spaceline operations.
Sky High Groundbreaking: New Mexico's Spaceport America
Spaceport America Conceptual Images URS/Foster + Partners
An artist's concept of Spaceport America, a suborbital spaceport under construction in New Mexico.
New Mexico Spaceport Gets State Go-ahead
Virgin Galactic
Conceptual artwork depicts cross-section of proposed New Mexico spaceport. Sir Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic has struck a 20-year lease on the futuristic spaceport to handle the firm's suborbital spaceliner operations.
Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo Lands at Spaceport America
Virgin Galactic
The mothership WhiteKnightTwo carries Virgin Galactic's suborbital spacecraft SpaceShipTwo to New Mexico's Spaceport America, which will be its home base once the facility is complete.The German sports giant believes the rise of India's 1.1 billion population, which is expected to surpass China as the world's largest in the next decade, is an opportunity to persuade aspirational Indian villagers to trade their plastic chappals or flip-flops for one of the world's most iconic brands.
The idea was inspired by Mohammad Yunus, the Nobel Prize-winning founder of the Grameen microfinance bank in Bangladesh, but the company now believes his plan to sell the world's cheapest trainers has more chance of success in India.
The $1 trainers will be the latest in a growing trend which increasingly sees the world's poor as a potentially lucrative market rather than a begging bowl for aid.
In the past few years mobile phone companies like Vodafone and India's Reliance have had great success selling cheap mobile phones to rickshaw-pullers and roadside hawkers throughout India, while Tata, which owns Jaguar Land Rover, launched the world's cheapest car.
The Tata Nano was launched as the world's cheapest car for 'One Lakh' rupees or around £1200, and aimed to persuade families travelling five to a motorbike to trade up.
The company followed the model with India's cheapest water purifier and the country's lowest cost apartments.
Adidas had originally planned to launch its venture in Bangladesh but switched to India after a pilot project lost money. The company's boss Herbert Hainer blamed high import taxes and the firm's lack of presence in the country for the failure.
He is banking on the foothold Adidas's subsidiary Reebok has in India to keep production and distribution costs low. He believes in India, the firm can sell its trainers for $1 and still make money.
"The shoe will be sold in villages through a distribution network. We want the product to be self-funding," he said.BOSTON, Jan 22 (Reuters) - Harvard University has quietly become one of the biggest grape growers in California’s drought-stricken Paso Robles wine region, securing water well drilling permits to feed its vineyards days before lawmakers banned new pumping, according to records reviewed by Reuters.
The investment, which began as a bet on the grape market, has turned into a smart water play as the wells boosted the value of its land in the up-and-coming wine region of Paso Robles. But it has also raised questions about the role of big investors in agriculture in the midst of a water crisis.
“It remains to be seen what commitment they have to the business of agriculture,” said Susan Harvey of environmental advocacy group North County Watch, which has been following the drought closely. “Is Harvard going to keep pumping ground water, or cut back on returns to protect water quality and quantity?”
Brodiaea Inc, wholly owned by the secretive $36 billion Harvard endowment fund, has spent more than $60 million to purchase about 10,000 acres in Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo counties since 2012, making it one of the top 20 growers in Paso Robles.
Harvard Management Company, which runs the fund, declined to comment, citing a policy of not discussing individual investments. Brodiaea officials did not respond to repeated phone messages.
Dana Merrill, who owns a vineyard services firm near Paso Robles and sold land to Brodiaea in 2012, said the company was among several big investors that have entered the wine grape market in California in recent years. He said he didn’t believe Brodiaea’s land buys were part of a well-timed water play.
“You’ve got a value-added product, you’ve got agricultural real-estate as a hedge against inflation, and if you can be smart about operating it you can come up with a pretty consistent cash flow that can produce a return on investment that is not as volatile as other products,” he said.
Real estate brokers said irrigable land in the heart of the Paso Robles region is running about $15,000 to $20,000 per acre, versus $3,000 for an acre of dry pasture - a spread that has widened sharply as the drought has tightened its grip.
BUYING SPREE
Since it began its buying spree - which coincided with the start of California’s latest drought - Brodiaea has acquired rights to drill 16 water wells of between 700 and 900 feet deep, two or three times deeper than the average residential well, according to county records. Deeper wells will continue to give them access to water as shallower wells run dry.
“The area they bought in has some of the best groundwater in the region, and having working wells puts their investment in a strong position,” said David Hamel, a local real-estate appraiser.
No environmental advocacy group has accused Brodiaea of trying to profit from the drought, but North County Watch’s Harvey said the drilling of deep wells in the Paso Robles wine region has the potential to exacerbate problems for locals.
“A deep well pumping high volume can draw down wells up to a mile away,” she said.
As local lawmakers were trying to figure out how to deal with the worsening water shortage in Paso Robles in 2013, Brodiaea and a number of other investors, agricultural land owners and residents moved fast to secure water rights.
The company got permits for seven 800-foot wells on Aug. 21, 2013, six days before a ban on new pumping from the hardest-hit part of the basin took effect, according to previously unreported data from the records.
RISING PRICES
An analysis published by real estate investment company Pacifica Real Estate Group this week said it expected Paso Robles irrigable land prices to rise further due to increased interest from investors from Napa Valley and Sonoma, where an acre now fetches between $75,000 and $100,000. But, “with a three-year drought upon Paso Robles, good water supply will be one of the biggest factors.”
Harvard’s investment arm, often a pioneer in new asset classes, has faced criticism in the past for some of its timber and energy investments and last year the school signed on to U.N.-backed principles for responsible investment.
Investments in natural resources were a priority for Jane Mendillo who lead the endowment until December. She has been replaced by insider Stephen Blyth.
For the fiscal year that ended June 30, Harvard’s endowment returned 15.4 percent and for the last 20 years it returned an average 12.3 percent a year. During the most recent year, investments for natural resources returned 9 percent, beating the benchmark’s 7.5 percent return. (Additional reporting by Svea Herbst-Bayliss,; editing by Ross Colvin)UPDATE: Activision has clarified the info and stated that the Season Pass is not required for the zombies content and that the content will be part of individual DLC packs as well for those that don’t want to get the Season Pass.
Original Story:
According to a press release sent out from GameStop just now, Zombies are coming to Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare as part of the DLC Season. For fans that buy the season pass, you will get access to the zombies that does come to Advanced Warfare.
Breaking News for Call of Duty Fans – Zombies are Back! This just in, Zombies are back as part of the Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare season pass! Stop by any GameStop to pick up one of the most anticipated games to launch this year, along with 4-multiplayer map packs, Atlas Gorge, and yes – ZOMBIES. All this is available for purchase today GameStop as part of the Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare season pass for only $49.99.
There’s no confirmation if this is a separate mode or just more bonus waves for Exo-Survival.
We’re waiting for more details…stand by..
SOURCE: JoystiqSenate Judiciary Chairman, Chuck Grassley, is calling on Trump jr. to testify before the judiciary committee over the emails about his Russian meeting:
CNN – The heads of the Senate judiciary committee are writing a letter to Donald Trump Jr. Thursday requesting that he testify before the committee, Chairman Chuck Grassley told CNN. Grassley, R-Iowa, previewed his intentions Wednesday when he told reporters that he wanted former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort to testify before the committee as early as next week, following revelations related to Trump Jr.’s email exchange with a Russian lawyer regarding potentially damaging information against Hillary Clinton. Grassley’s comments also come after the top Democrat on the committee, California Sen. Dianne Feinstein told CNN Thursday she wanted Trump Jr. to go before the committee as early as next week.
Also, Grassley says he will subpoena Trump Jr. if he decides he doesn’t want to comply:
Grassley and Feinstein not ruling out subpoenas for Donald Trump Jr. testimony. More here: https://t.co/y5HpjEWFWC — Manu Raju (@mkraju) July 13, 2017
If this is a public testimony, it will be a YUGE spectacle and Democrats will undoubtedly try and make their mark in this one hearing.
Can’t. Wait.Mr. Paterno and three university presidents — Bryce Jordan, Joab L. Thomas and Graham B. Spanier — were determined to compete with their counterparts in the Big Ten off the field as well as on. The Paterno family endowed two professorships that testify to their commitment to the humanities; one is in the library. The other is in English. I’m well acquainted with that professorship, since I happen to hold it.
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I have had but one substantial encounter with Mr. Paterno, a postgame dinner 10 years ago (the Paternos host 50 or 60 guests on such occasions) during which I talked to him about Virgil and “Moby-Dick” — which he said he had recently reread. He noted that Ahab is furious that the whale can descend to the depths while Ahab himself remains on the surface of things. Since then, I’ve spoken chiefly to Sue, who works with Special Olympics and is friendly to my 20-year-old son, Jamie, who has Down syndrome. I’ve let her know that I’ve used the Paterno Fund for arts and humanities programming and disability studies. In this debacle, there seems no reason to think of her with anything but compassion.
And yet there is a sense in which the Paternos’ academic legacy makes the scandal worse, or more complicated, insofar as their reputation for academic integrity was well earned. Because of that reputation, Penn State faculty members were permitted to feel less conflicted about the school’s football program than our counterparts elsewhere; we took pride in the fact that the school had never run afoul of the N.C.A.A. and that its football coach benched star players for missing class. Now we are in shock.
The university’s acting president, Rodney A. Erickson, has promised a new era of transparency; he has also promised to appoint an ethics officer who will report directly to him. But it is entirely conceivable that when confronted by an issue with powerful repercussions for university business (whether with regard to athletics or to drilling for natural gas in the Marcellus Shale), an ethics officer will offer advice that tries to protect the university — and its leadership — from damaging public scrutiny. And again no one will know until it is too late.
Penn State has been an emphatically “top-down” university; decisions, even about academic programs, are made by the central administration, and faculty members are “consulted” afterward. Now Penn State will very likely lose its exemption from open records laws, and rightly so. But the administration must begin treating faculty members, and their elected representatives on the Faculty Senate, as equal partners in the institution. Perhaps if a faculty ethics committee had been informed about Mr. Sandusky in 2002, one of us could have advised administrators to inquire more aggressively into the case instead of circling the football program’s wagons.
The principle of “shared governance” is the least well understood aspect of academic freedom, and as a result, it is honored chiefly in the breach. But if the administration is serious about restoring shattered trust at Penn State, it must start by trusting its own faculty; and we faculty members — invisible so far, too stunned and depressed to speak — must work with the administration to repair what Mr. Sandusky and his enablers have destroyed.(Newser) – It's D-Day for GoDaddy: The domain king today faces a potentially devastating mass exodus over its brief support of the Stop Online Piracy Act, a controversial anti-piracy measure before Congress that's got First Amendment huggers hot under the collar. Seems GoDaddy's thumbs-up fell afoul of a single Reddit user, who uses the handle SelfProdigy and issued a call to dump the service that went viral. "My heart was broken," he says. "I've used them for years."
GoDaddy predictably reversed its SOPA position post-haste, but thousands had already left, many more were further enraged by the flip-flop, and the mass boycott remains set for today, notes FoxNews. “The outcry kind of forced our hand,” says imgur.com's founder, who has already taken his registry entries elsewhere. "I’m against the SOPA act and imgur as a company is against it. We just feel it is terrible that GoDaddy.com would support this legislation." (Read more GoDaddy stories.)Development on this project has been taken over by EpicSquid. For progress updates check out our discord here or follow my twitter here.
Roots is a magic mod about exploring the world, finding the sources of natural magic that exist within it, and using it to do cool things. To get started in the mod, you'll need to look around grassy biomes until you find an old, abandoned hut that looks like this:
Open up the chest inside to find some ancient books:
Open it up for a good general explanation of the mod:
Then have fun!
Currently, the mod features some of the following:
Rare, magical herbs to grow under magical moonlight
Dazzling spellcasting, with a nice variety of mobility, offensive, and defensive spells
New mobs! (currently just deer)
Modpack Guidelines:
What guidelines? Do what you want. :)
1.10.2 Page:
Roots is a simple magic mod based around using the innate powers of various living things to do magic. Getting Started:
First, break tall grass until you find an Old Root:
Then, craft a Runic Tablet like so:
All the information you need for the rest of the mod can be found in the tablet:
All of the mod's features are documented in an item known as the Runic Tablet.First, break tall grass until you find an Old Root:Then, craft a Runic Tablet like so:All the information you need for the rest of the mod can be found in the tablet: Gallery: The Future: We've created a Trello page where future plans for the mod will be planned out. These could change a lot when implemented, but if you want to get an idea of what the future holds, you can check out our ideas here.
If you have any other questions, ask them in our discord here.
Follow EpicSquid here for frequent progress updates!When: Sunday, 8:30 p.m. ET Where: Lincoln Financial Field, Philadelphia TV: NBC
Just 17 days after the Philadelphia Eagles defeated the Dallas Cowboys 33-10 in Texas, the teams meet again in Philadelphia with the NFC East lead on the line.
It is almost as momentous as the teams’ second confrontation last season. That game, played in Dallas, decided the division winner on the final day of the regular season. The Eagles won that one 24-22, but Tony Romo was not able to play.
Romo will be at quarterback for the Cowboys this time. Mark Sanchez will be behind center for the Eagles. DeMarco Murray and LeSean McCoy are the marquee running backs. Two improved but still unproven defenses will be trying to establish their credentials with the playoffs hanging in the balance.
ESPN NFL Nation reporters Todd Archer, who covers the Cowboys, and Phil Sheridan, who covers the Eagles, discuss the big rematch.
NFL Nation: Week 15 Previews Our NFL Nation reporters break down the Week 15 schedule: • Arizona at St. Louis
• Cincinnati at Cleveland
• Washington at N.Y. Giants
• Miami at New England
• Oakland at Kansas City
• Houston at Indianapolis
• Jacksonville at Baltimore
• Tampa Bay at Carolina
• Pittsburgh at Atlanta • Green Bay at Buffalo
• Denver at San Diego • N.Y. Jets at Tennessee
• Minnesota at Detroit
• San Francisco at Seattle
• Dallas at Philadelphia
• New Orleans at Chicago
Phil Sheridan: The Eagles beat the Cowboys on Thanksgiving with Romo looking very uncomfortable after the short week and, it turned out, without taking a painkiller. A year ago, the Eagles beat the Cowboys to clinch the division in a game Romo didn’t play in. Are the Cowboys feeling like a healthier Romo will be the difference this time around? Are they right?
Todd Archer: Let me take this from the Thanksgiving Day angle first. The Cowboys and Romo believe things will be different in the second meeting. Not in the potential outcome, but in how they play. They won’t use the quick turnaround from a Sunday night game at MetLife Stadium to a Thursday afternoon game at AT&T Stadium as an excuse, but I’ll call it a reason. On a normal Thursday, Romo would be going through his first practice of the week. That time he had to play a game. And, for some reason, he chose not to take a painkilling injection before the game. He was not the same quarterback that day. Things weren't “firing” as he likes to say. Given the state of his back, he needs rest. He had a full week to get ready for the Chicago Bears and completed 81 percent of his passes and threw three touchdown passes. As for last year, the Cowboys were driving to win the game with their backup quarterback, Kyle Orton, late in the fourth quarter before he threw a pick. I think they feel confident about their chances. That doesn’t guarantee a win, but the Cowboys will not walk into Lincoln Financial Field with any fear.
I wasn’t thinking the NFC East would be on the line after the Eagles whipped the Cowboys on Thanksgiving, but it is. Do you think the Eagles’ loss to Seattle does anything to bruise their confidence, or does the fact that these teams played such a short time ago and the Eagles won so easily help them?
Sheridan: I would see bruised confidence as a concern if not for the way these Eagles bounced back from that 53-20 abomination they played in Green Bay. They came back the next week and took care of Tennessee 43-24. Then they had the short week and the 33-10 win in Dallas. This team seems to maintain an even keel regardless of what happened the week before. So I do think they’ll file the Seattle game away and turn the page pretty quickly.
But I also think they did that with the Thanksgiving Day game. Everything went very well for the Eagles in that game. But they’re talking this week about how they expect a completely different Romo and a much more rested Dallas team. Winning the past two against Dallas has to boost their confidence, but I don’t think there’s much risk of overconfidence from this team. In that sense, a beating like the Seattle game helps keep the Eagles grounded.
The win over the Bears last week got the Cowboys over that eight-win hurdle. Is there a danger they’ll feel satisfied with that, or do you sense this team is really driven to win the division and get to the postseason?
Archer: That’s a good point, and we asked a ton of guys that very question. They all said the same thing: Getting past eight wins means nothing. For as young as this team is, I do believe it is pretty mature. All the Cowboys have guaranteed is a winning record. If they lose Sunday, then they could very well win the last two games, finish 11-5 and miss the playoffs. I don’t think they have any sense of accomplishment. A lot of these guys are playing for their futures, including coach Jason Garrett. The Cowboys put a lot of people on make-good deals. Getting to nine wins is a start, but it’s not a finish. This team needs to get to the playoffs. Garrett needs to get to the playoffs. The Cowboys still have a lot to prove. Instead of playing a winner-take-all game in Week 17, which is what they have done the previous three seasons, they have it essentially in Week 15.
As you look back to the Thanksgiving game, what surprised you the most about what the Eagles were able to do offensively or defensively? To me, it was how the Eagles' front controlled the game.
Sheridan: That’s a very good place to start. In the locker room afterward, the offensive linemen were talking about how much it felt like last season, when McCoy led the NFL in rushing. The Eagles had their no-huddle tempo going as well as it has in two years. Having publicly picked Dallas to win, I have to say I was a bit surprised by all of that.
It’s funny, though. Because they scored 33 and won, the Eagles got away with some stuff. They went only 1-for-5 in the red zone, for example. They aren’t likely to get away with that in the rematch. And they probably can’t count on Romo just failing to see an open Dez Bryant, as he did a couple of times in that game.
So I guess the answer is, I was surprised the Eagles dominated so thoroughly, but I also feel they were a millimeter or two from not dominating at all.
On Thanksgiving, the Eagles did a very good job of getting their no-huddle offense into a rhythm. Do the Cowboys have any answers for that or for McCoy this time?
Archer: There is a sign on one of the walls at Valley Ranch that says: Do Your Job. I’m sure every team in the league has a sign that says something like that, but in the first meeting, the Cowboys had players trying to do everyone else’s job, and it hurt them. When they won at Philadelphia a year ago, they were able to hold McCoy to 55 yards on 18 carries. They need to do something like that Sunday. To do that, they must contain the edges. On the first play of the Thanksgiving game, they did it perfectly. For the rest of the day, not so much. The Cowboys have to stay disciplined. They know they can’t get out of their gaps or else McCoy will expose them. Of course, they knew this on Thanksgiving, and they didn’t do it. To me, McCoy makes everything go with the Eagles' offense. If he’s running it, the passing game clicks. If he can’t run it, the passing game suffers. For as well as Sanchez played in the first meeting, I still think the Cowboys want to see if he can beat them with his arm.
In Dallas, we like to say the game is always about the quarterback. With Sanchez, is this game about him or is it about Chip Kelly’s system?
Sheridan: It’s kind of about both, or about Sanchez playing within Kelly’s system. If Sanchez can do that the way he did it in Dallas, the Eagles will be fine and Sanchez could emerge as the quarterback here. If Sanchez gets as flustered as he did against Seattle Sunday, the Cowboys are going to have a fine day, and the Eagles will be lighting candles to hasten Nick Foles' return.
I think it will be interesting to see if Dallas takes any cues from the Seahawks’ approach. Seattle didn’t do anything the Eagles didn’t expect. The Seahawks just played their base defense very soundly and turned those fast players loose. The Eagles weren’t able to control the line of scrimmage at all against the Seahawks. Dallas can’t upgrade its front seven dramatically by Sunday, but there is probably a blueprint for how to disrupt the Eagles’ offense that can be adapted.
If the Cowboys can get Sanchez out of his comfort zone, however they go about it, they can change the nature of the game.Image copyright Wojtek Memorial Trust Image caption Sculptor Alan Heriot made the statue
A statue immortalising a beer-drinking bear who saw action in World War Two has been unveiled in Edinburgh's Princes Street Gardens.
Wojtek - dubbed the "Soldier Bear" - was adopted by Polish troops and helped them carry ammunition at the Battle of Monte Cassino.
After the war he lived in Scotland at Hutton in Berwickshire, before ending his days in Edinburgh Zoo.
The event was organised by the Wojtek Memorial Trust.
The trust's secretary Helena Scott said: "The Wojtek Memorial Trust wishes to thank all our supporters and donors for their generosity which has enabled us to progress and achieve a key objective of the charity, namely to erect a monument fitting to Polish veterans of the Second World War, and to the many men, women and children displaced as a consequence of the war and its aftermath, as told through the story of Wojtek, the Soldier Bear.
"Trustees consist of individuals, each with their own personal interest of the story of Wojtek, and how that story may have touched their lives.
"For those born of Polish parents, the unveiling is particularly poignant because we represent a generation that bridges between those post-war Poles who settled in Scotland and the younger generation, those that have made Scotland their home in more recent years.
"Wojtek's story has enabled us to come together and to span a history of some 70 years of post-war Polish Scottish relations - to celebrate but also to commemorate."
Edinburgh city council approved the erection of the bronze statue of Wojtek on 16 September 2013.
The statue represents Wojtek and a Polish Army Soldier "walking in peace and unity" and represents his journey from Egypt to Scotland alongside the Polish Army.
Image copyright Other Image caption Wojtek was a brown bear that came to Scotland at the end of World War Two
The Lord Provost Donald Wilson said: "I am thrilled that the trust has succeeded in immortalising Wojtek the Soldier Bear in such a significant and appropriate way.
"The story of Edinburgh's adopted bear is a cherished one and has become a firm family favourite, but this statue stands for more than that.
"It makes a statement about fighting for freedom and showing support and comfort to those who are suffering.
"It celebrates the ties that have been established in Edinburgh and Poland between our communities and strives to further strengthen this bond over time.
"Being in the heart of the city, in the beautiful Princes Street Gardens and in the shadow of Edinburgh Castle, is exactly the sort of prime location this memorial deserves. I hope that it can be enjoyed by residents and visitors for generations to come."
Other guests included Fiona Hyslop MSP, Cabinet Secretary for Culture and External Affairs, representatives of the Polish government as well as sponsors and contractors.
Wojtek - also known as Voytek - was rescued as a cub in the Middle East in 1943.
The Polish soldiers adopted him and as he grew he was trained to carry heavy mortar rounds.
When their forces were deployed to Europe the only way to take the bear with them was to "enlist" him.
So he was given a name, rank and number and took part in the Italian campaign.
At the end of the war the bear - who had also learned how to smoke and drink beer - was billeted at an army camp in the Scottish Borders.
When the Polish soldiers were demobilised he was taken to Edinburgh Zoo where he eventually died in 1963.
Image copyright Other Image caption Wojtek went on many journeys as he accompanied the Polish soldiers from the Middle East to ScotlandGet the biggest daily news 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
The Ultimate Fighter enters its twentieth season with a new weight class and a world championship on the line.
Under the guidance of star coaches Anthony Pettis and Gilbert Melendez, sixteen of the top 115lbs female fighters on the planet will live together, train together and compete for the right to be crowned the first ever UFC Women's Strawweight Champion.
Every week, Scotland's Joanne Calderwood gives her behind-the-scenes take on The Ultimate Fighter experience.
"I was the only fighter on Team Pettis who worked with the whole coaching staff before my quarter final but it didn't really help. Even though I was going to both training sessions, you were lucky if you were getting an hour per session.
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To be honest, my training back home picks up before a fight and it's all hands on deck. The training in TUF just wasn't as serious as how I would usually train so it wasn't the ideal fight camp.
My fight against Rose Namajunas was hard. I felt like I was alone in there. Usually I fight with a gameplan which I've worked on with my coaches and my team are constantly giving me instructions. For this fight, I felt like Anthony Pettis and his team were just telling me to be aggressive and to be first.
In the first round, I tried to go forward and it didn't work so when I came back between rounds, they told me to maybe just counter more in the second round. By that point it was a bit late.
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Rose definitely won the first round but luckily I started the second round pretty well and, who knows, if I hadn't got caught when we went to the ground, maybe I could have won that round and we'd have gone to a third.
It was a good fight and Rose is a really talented mixed martial artist so it was great to be in there against her and if I had to lose to someone, I'm glad it was her because I know she's always improving and she's always mixing things up and picking up new techniques.
Rose was aggressive in the fight but that didn't surprise me. I was ready for it, I knew I was in for a fight. It was just weird circumstances. I was in the changing rooms while Carla Esparza and Tecia Torres were fighting, just sat around thinking, 'Wow, I'm going out there to fight the biggest fight of my life and nobody's here. I'm not warmed up, I don't know if I'm ready to go.'
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That was hard but when you're in the cage, your body just adjusts; you're on autopilot. I tried to react in the moment but, at the end of the day, usually on fight night I've got my corner team that I've got some confidence in, who tell me what needs to be done and who encourage me.
These coaches, they didn't know you as a fighter and they're not truly invested in whether you win or lose. Normally you've got your team behind you, who know what kind of fighter you are and what you best react to.
Of course, everyone was in that boat, so I'm not making excuses. Sometimes people rise to the occasion and clearly it just wasn't my night.
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I was upset to lose and I felt like I'd kind of let everyone down. I just didn't expect it. That was not part of my plan at all. I went in there to win, as everyone did. It's tough to lose, especially with the way I lost because I tapped out.
I had so much support and my training up until I went into the house was going great and then that loss just brought it all back that my team wasn't there with me.
I couldn't watch the fight again until I saw the episode this week so I couldn't tell my coaches what actually happened. I thought I judo threw Rose and got caught but it turns out I got caught in the switch.
I can never really remember my fights so it was tough not having my coaches there to tell me exactly what I'd done wrong. It's pretty hard having to wait a few months before you can properly talk it over with your team.
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The UK fans have been amazing to give me that extra support, especially when I'm not really putting myself out there or begging for attention. The amount of support I get in response to me just being myself and from my performances in the cage, is great.
Despite the loss, fighting really is the best job in the world. I love training and I love to be challenged. Then, when I get a fight, I feel like I can put all of my hard work into practice. I love this sport - I love Muay Thai and now I'm in love with MMA - and I get to do it every day. It's an awesome job.
I actually think Gilbert Melendez will beat Anthony Pettis by decision this weekend. I can see Melendez trying to grind out a win and I don't know how good Pettis' knee is going to be after a year out. Coming back from injury and maybe having to go the distance in a five round fight won't be easy.
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I think if the fight finishes early it'll be Pettis but if it goes to the judges it'll be Melendez. I like the two of them a lot but I'm not going to favour Pettis just because I was on Team Pettis!"
The Ultimate Fighter: A Champion Will Be Crowned airs every Wednesday night at 3am on BT Sport 1 and repeated at 10pm on Thursdays on BT Sport 2
Coaches Anthony Pettis and Gilbert Melendez fight at UFC 181 on Saturday night for the UFC lightweight championship
UFC 181 coverage starts at 12am on BT Sport 1
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Mirror Fighting Facebook PromotionLindbergh and her fellow student researchers left the water’s edge that day, got some ice cream, and got to work recreating their experiment, a study of “tin whiskers,” potentially dangerous hair-like filaments that can develop on soldering spots on metal circuitry, under spaceflight conditions. The original experiment had taken them about two years to build. This time, they hustled, made some extra tweaks, and got it on a Dragon capsule bound for the ISS atop a Falcon 9 rocket, developed by SpaceX.
Lindbergh drove from her hometown of Charleston, South Carolina, to Cape Canaveral, Florida to watch the launch in June 2015, less than a year after the original attempt. The rocket took off—and then blew up two minutes later.
No one was injured in either explosion, nor in a third incident in September 2016, when a Falcon 9 rocket exploded on the launchpad two days before its scheduled resupply mission. That’s key here, that there’s no loss of life in these kinds of flights. In the grand scheme of things, in the record of space exploration, which has claimed lives, the mourning period for cargo is quite short. Failures may cause delays in research, but experiments can often be rebuilt and supplies replenished.
Still, there’s a certain anguish in witnessing your precious work or equipment vanish in an instant. “I don’t think my brain could process it right away,” said Mike Safyan, the director of launch and regulatory affairs at the San-Francisco based company Planet, which lost 26 imaging satellites in the 2014 explosion and eight more in the 2015 incident.
Putting |
had a strong hold on the enterprise market with Windows, and now it's taking all of that work and pulling it together with a business-friendly Windows Phone platform. Windows Phone 8 will come with a complete security platform with Secure Boot and encryption (which is a derivative of Windows Bitlocker). It'll make app distribution and deployment flexible for business, offering up a mechanism for private distribution and full-on onsite management.
Businesses will also be able to manage Windows Phone 8 devices through a software management system. And finally, Windows Phone 8 will run the Microsoft Office suite — though we have yet to see how it will look in that mobile form.
New Start Screen
Ah, the new Start Screen. "It's the sexiest thing in Windows Phone 8," Belfiore said. And this should definitely the case for more visually motivated users. As we wrote in our story about the Start Screen and current Windows Phone devices, the new Start Screen is the most visible end-user feature of Windows Phone 8 (at least that's been announced so far).
Microsoft has taken its Live Tiles and made them more customizable, bringing a new small size to the experience.
"These live tiles are the heart and soul of the Windows Phone," Belfiore said. "We know that our users really love their phones, and we think the biggest reason is because Live Tiles make the phones so special and so personal."
Users will be able to choose between a small, medium and large size for their Live Tiles. And now the entire screen is available for Live Tile pinning — the arrow and empty space on the right-hand side have dissapeared. To that end, users can pin more on their Start Screen.
And of course, Windows Phone 8 and Windows 8 are coming even closer together. As Microsoft said, they're "better together."
"The intent in our changing the Live Tiles support is not just to make Live Tiles more personal, but to give a more consistent experience between Windows 8 Live Tiles and Windows Phone 8 live tiles," Belfiore said.“Brain death” was introduced to the world, in 1968, by a committee at Harvard Medical School. “Responsible medical opinion,” the committee reported, “is ready to adopt new criteria for pronouncing death to have occurred in an individual sustaining irreversible coma as a result of permanent brain damage.” People on ventilators in intensive care units, their brains destroyed by trauma or disease, their hearts still going strong, may have been breathing, taking in nourishment, excreting waste, and healing from infection, but, at least in the opinion of doctors, they were dead—“heart-beating cadavers,” as bioethicists came to call them. Thirteen years later, the President’s Commission for the Study of Ethical Problems in Medicine and Biomedical and Behavioral Research endorsed this opinion, recommending that all states adopt statutes to give doctors the right to pronounce brain-dead people legally deceased. Today, in every state, if your brain, including the brain stem, has been irreversibly and completely destroyed, you are dead.
As I wrote in the magazine, in 2001, death was legally redefined, in large part, to facilitate organ donation, a practice that, because of advances in immunosuppression and surgical technique, was increasingly effective, and, therefore, frequent. People in need of organs were, in the words of Henry Beecher, the Harvard committee member credited with writing the report, “stacked up waiting for suitable donors.” As Beecher knew, patients on life support—a population that was growing, thanks to the increased efficacy of intensive-care units—were the definition of the suitable donor, because their hearts still beat well enough to perfuse the organs with oxygen, keeping them viable. But such people were, according to the laws of the time, still alive. To Beecher, this was an outrage of inefficiency. “Can society afford to discard the tissues and organs of the hopelessly unconscious patient when they could be used to restore the otherwise hopelessly ill, but still salvageable individual?” he asked. If, on the other hand, brain-dead people were legally dead, then the supply problem was solved: transplant doctors could remove a still-beating heart (and a patient’s other organs) without committing murder.
Among the challenges that advocates of the new definition of death faced was explaining to the public why this redefinition was not simply a conceptual gerrymander. Was there some reason, other than “responsible medical opinion,” to move life’s most enduring boundary? In recommending the adoption of brain-death laws, the Presidential bioethics commission provided a rationale: the brain-dead person was dead because the brain was the maestro that conducted the body’s various instruments, and, without it, the body no longer exists as an integrated whole. Indeed, the committee concluded, the reason that cardiac arrest constituted death was that, when the blood stopped flowing, the brain eventually died. Brain death had always been the true death; we just didn’t know it.
As effective as these two committees were at putting to rest the anxiety that transplant doctors were high-tech grave robbers, they could not possibly have foreseen developments like the advent of the Internet, the health-care funding crisis, the debate over medical malpractice, state-by-state tinkering with concepts of life and death, rising suspicions about the authority of public institutions, and the deteriorating sway of medical opinion. Those are among the factors that fuelled two recent cases, one in California involving a thirteen-year-old girl who suffered surgical complications, and one in Texas, involving a thirty-three-year-old pregnant woman who became comatose for unknown reasons. The furor over these tragedies indicates that the hard-won consensus about brain death is more fragile than anyone might have thought.
Each case is heartbreaking in its own way. In California, a thirteen-year-old girl, Jahi McMath, hemorrhaged after throat surgery performed at Oakland Children’s Hospital on December 9th. Blood loss deprived her brain of oxygen, and she lapsed into a coma. On December 11th, her doctor called the neurologist Robin Shanahan to determine, as the attending physician put it to the court, “whether or not Ms. McMath had sustained an irreversible cessation of all functions of the entire brain.” Shanahan detected no brain activity. On December 12th, McMath was declared dead, and a death certificate was issued.
While the families of the brain-dead usually take doctors at their word, or at least accept that their loved one’s life is over, something went wrong; both the hospital and the family lawyered up. The hospital portrayed the family as ignorant. “There is absolutely no medical possibility that Ms. McMath’s condition is reversible or that she will someday recover from death,” Shanahan told the California Superior Court. Meanwhile, experts consulted by the McMaths’ legal team—who included a “forensic-intelligence analyst,” an Ohio doctor who concluded that the teen-ager was reacting to the presence of her family and thus could not be dead, along with a lawyer known for his opposition to California’s malpractice laws—insisted that Oakland Children’s had misdiagnosed her.
“Plaintiffs are Christians with firm religious beliefs that as long as the heart is beating, Jahi is alive,” the lawyer wrote in a brief filed after the hospital refused to comply with McMath’s parents’ wish to prepare her for transfer to a rehabilitation facility, on the grounds that a tracheotomy and other procedures would amount to providing treatment to a corpse. National media interest followed, featuring, among other angles, the possibility that the hospital had declared McMath dead in order to limit its malpractice liability to the two-hundred-and-fifty-thousand-dollar limit imposed by California law in the case of a child’s death—or, conversely, that the family resisted the diagnosis in order to reap the much higher damages available for a permanent injury. On January 7th, McMath, still on a respirator, was transferred to another facility for care.
In the Texas case, the roles of the family and hospital were reversed. Shortly before Thanksgiving, thirty-three-year-old Marlise Machado Muñoz got out of bed to check on her crying child in the middle of the night. Her husband, Erick Muñoz, a paramedic, got up and discovered her on their kitchen floor, unconscious and not breathing. She had been there at least an hour, and neither his attempts nor those of emergency-room personnel could revive her. At John Peter Smith Hospital, in Fort Worth, her heart stopped beating, multiple times. The family, in accordance with her wishes, told the staff not to make further resuscitation attempts, but was informed that the hospital could not comply: she was fourteen weeks pregnant, and Texas law forbids withdrawing or withholding life support from a pregnant woman until the fetus is viable and can be delivered. Later, according to Erick Muñoz, doctors told him his wife was brain-dead, but would be kept on the machines for at least another twelve weeks.
As if the end-of-life dilemma it presented weren’t complicated enough, the Muñoz case became a beginning-of-life dilemma as well. Abortion-rights activists charged state lawmakers and hospital officials with turning Marlise Muñoz into an incubator. A spokesman for the Texas Catholic Conference expressed “sympathy for those going through this grief and tragedy. But the fact is, this is still a life. Life begins at conception.” The hospital sidestepped that question. “This is not a difficult decision for us,” a hospital spokesman told the Associated Press. “We are following the law.” Some, including a couple of the experts who helped draft the law, tried to put aside the question of fetal rights. They insisted, instead, that the law was meant to bar removing life support from a living woman carrying a child—not the body of a woman who had died while pregnant. Muñoz “is neither terminally nor irreversibly ill,” said one of the experts. “Under Texas law, this patient is legally dead.”
But perhaps not. While the hospital refuses to disclose any specifics, it appears that Marlise Muñoz has never been declared dead. The paradoxes of the living corpse seem to be just as bewildering—or at least as open to interpretation—to the hospital as they are to the McMath family.
The public confusion set off by both cases has alarmed bioethicists. To them, the matter was straightforward. “There are no ethical issues in the care of someone who is brain-dead, because the patient is now a corpse,” the Baylor ethicist Laurence McCullough told USA Today. The ventilator only gives “the appearance of life,” Arthur Caplan, the head of the bioethics division at N.Y.U.’s Langone Medical Center, told the paper. “You can’t really feed a corpse.” Both promised that treatments were futile: Muñoz’s fetus was already devastated by the extended deprivation of oxygen. And brain-dead people, Caplan declared, will eventually “start to decompose,” even if the machines are left on.
Bioethicists were also concerned about how the cases might affect public confidence in the concept of brain death. “A lot of these activities have a public-education element to them, and unfortunately, in this case, the public [is] being miseducated,” Alexander Capron, the University of Southern California professor who directed the committee that crafted the first definition of brain death, told the Los Angeles Times. Caplan worried that the McMath case would encourage other families to “ultimately say, ‘I’d like to take this body home and wait for a miracle.’ That would be a public policy of disrespect for dead bodies.”
But brain death is not quite as certain as these bioethicists might like. A doctor can’t always determine whether the brain is truly dead. The diagnosis is made the old-fashioned way: by careful observation. A doctor checks to see whether the eyes are responsive to light or touch; she pricks the nailbeds to discern whether the pain registers; she tests muscle reflexes; she determines whether the buildup of carbon dioxide triggers spontaneous breathing if the ventilator is shut off; and she may use an electroencephalograph to detect electrical activity in the brain. (However, even a dead brain may produce some voltage.) If all the findings are negative, then the declaration is made.
Even then, the doctor can be wrong. Patients declared dead have begun to breathe on their own, after the machines were withdrawn; organ donors have shown signs of life, even as their organs were being removed; and, in at least one case, the harvest was aborted and the patient eventually went home, neurologically impaired but decidedly alive. And there are cases, well-known among transplant doctors and ethicists, in which people have taken home “dead bodies” that have gone on to live for long periods. In one case, a three-and-a half-year-old boy whose brain was destroyed by infection was taken home by his mother, who cared for him for twenty years in her basement before he finally died, from cardiac arrest, in 2004. Evidently, the body does not always fall apart in the absence of its maestro.
Our sense that a body is not dead until it is still and cold may be uninformed and unscientific, but so is our sense that the sun moves across the sky from east to west, and most of us live our lives as if this were the case. Of course, you can’t plan a rocket trip to the moon based on that understanding of heavenly movement, and you can’t harvest organs from a body based on our instinctual understanding of death. The concept of brain death has its uses; organ transplants save many lives. But it has its limits, too, as these cases show, chief among them the fact that it is a concept dreamed up by humans in their quest to overcome suffering, one that can have difficulty standing up to the power of love and the implacable mysteries of death.
Gary Greenberg is a practicing psychotherapist and the author of “The Book of Woe: The DSM and the Unmaking of Psychiatry.”
Photograph by Zephyr/Getty.If you haven’t figured it out by now, I have a pretty odd and twisted sense of humor. I think that’s why I love Halloween so much; it’s one time of year when my eccentricities are perfectly acceptable! It is comforting, however, to see that others out there have the same weird sense of humor, like Instructables founder ewilhelm. He turned a stuffed koala bear into this hilarious animal attack costume, and also used a stuffed dog and pair of pants to make another variation. What do you think? Do you find this costume funny? [how to make an animal attack costume]
Project estimate:
Stuffed animal, on hand or $1
T-shirt, on hand or $1
Red fabric paint, on hand or $1 and up
White felt, on hand
Needle and thread, on hand
Total: Free and up
MY LATEST VIDEOSWhat do you get when you mix one part action movie with one part holiday flick and add in a dash of sweaty tank top? Die Hard, John McTiernan’s genre-bending Christmas action masterpiece for the ages, which sees a badass NYPD cop take on a skyscraper full of bad guys in the midst of an office holiday party. Here are 30 things you might not know about the movie.
1. IT’S GOT A LITERARY BACKGROUND.
Think some action-loving Hollywood scribe came up with the concept for Die Hard? Think again. The movie is based on Roderick Thorp’s 1979 crime novel Nothing Lasts Forever, which is a sequel to his 1966 novel, The Detective. In 2013, Thorp’s long out-of-print book was resurrected to coincide with the film’s 25th anniversary.
2. IT WAS INSPIRED BY THE TOWERING INFERNO.
The idea for Nothing Lasts Forever was inspired John Guillermin’s 1974 disaster flick The Towering Inferno. After seeing the film, Thorp had a dream about a man being chased through a skyscraper by a group of men with guns. He eventually turned that snippet of an idea into a sequel to The Detective.
3. FRANK SINATRA GOT FIRST DIBS ON PLAYING THE ROLE OF JOHN MCCLANE.
Getty Images
Because he had starred in the big-screen adaptation of The Detective, Frank Sinatra had to be offered the role in its sequel. At the age of 73, he smartly turned it down.
4. BRUCE WILLIS’S BIG-SCREEN DEBUT WAS WITH FRANK SINATRA.
In 1980, Willis made his film debut (albeit uncredited) in the crime thriller The First Deadly Sin. He has no name and if you blink you’ll miss him, but the role simply required that Willis entered a diner as Sinatra’s character left it. Maybe it was kismet?
5. CLINT EASTWOOD PLANNED TO TAKE A STAB AT THE PART.
Originally, it was Clint Eastwood who owned the movie rights to Nothing Lasts Forever, which he had planned to star in in the early 1980s. That obviously never happened.
6. IT WAS NEVER SUPPOSED TO BE A SEQUEL TO COMMANDO.
This is one of the most popular internet stories about Die Hard. But according to Stephen de Souza, the screenwriter of both Die Hard and Commando, while there was a sequel to Commando planned, the only similarity with Die Hard is that they both took place in buildings. According to de Souza, Escape Plan is the closest to his original Commando 2 idea and Die Hard was never supposed to be anything but Die Hard.
7. BRUCE WILLIS WASN’T EVEN THE STUDIO’S THIRD CHOICE FOR THE ROLE.
If Die Hard was to be a success, the studio knew they needed a bona fide action star in the part, so they set about offering it to a seemingly never-ending list of A-listers of the time. Rumor has it that Sylvester Stallone, Harrison Ford, Robert De Niro, Charles Bronson, Nick Nolte, Mel Gibson, Richard Gere, Don Johnson, Burt Reynolds, and Richard Dean Anderson (yes, MacGyver!) were all considered for the role of John McClane. And all declined it.
8. BRUCE WILLIS WAS CONSIDERED A COMEDIC ACTOR AT THE TIME.
Die Hard’s producers had nothing against Bruce Willis, of course. He just wasn’t an immediate choice for the role because, up until that point, he was known solely as a comedic actor, not an action star. Following the success of the film, the action genre really became Willis’s bread and butter, and although he has two Emmys for his comedy work, it has remained as such to this day.
9. BRUCE WILLIS WAS BARELY EVEN SEEN ON THE MOVIE’S POSTERS.
Twentieth Century Fox
Because the studio’s marketing gurus were unconvinced that audiences would pay to see an action movie starring the funny guy from Moonlighting, the original batch of posters for the film centered on Nakatomi Plaza instead of Willis’s mug. As the film gained steam, the marketing materials were altered, and Willis was more prominent in the promos.
10. WILLIS WAS PAID $5 MILLION TO MAKE THE MOVIE.
Even with all the uncertainly surrounding whether he could pull the film off, Willis was paid $5 million to make Die Hard, which was considered a rather hefty sum at the time—a figure reserved for only the top tier of Hollywood talents.
11. WILLIS SUGGESTED THAT BONNIE BEDELIA PLAY HIS WIFE.
Though we suspect that she wasn’t paid $5 million for the gig.
12. BRUCE WILLIS WAS ABLE TO SAY YES THANKS TO A WELL-TIMED PREGNANCY.
The first few times Bruce Willis was asked to star in the movie, he had to say no because of his commitments to Moonlighting. Then costar Cybill Shepard announced that she was pregnant. Because her pregnancy wouldn’t work within the show, producer Glenn Caron gave everyone 11 weeks off, allowing Willis to say yes.
13. SAM NEILL WAS ORIGINALLY APPROACHED FOR THE PART OF HANS GRUBER.
But Neill ended up turning the film down. Then, in the spring of 1987, the casting director saw Alan Rickman playing the dastardly Valmont in a stage production of Dangerous Liaisons and knew they had found their Hans.
14. DIE HARD WAS ALAN RICKMAN’S FEATURE FILM DEBUT.
Though Rickman may have played the part of Hans as cool as the other side of the pillow, it was actually his first role in a feature film.
15. JOHN MCTIERNAN TURNED THE MOVIE DOWN, TOO.
And not just once, but on a few different occasions. His reason was that the material just seemed too dark and cynical for him. “The original screenplay was a grim terrorist movie,” McTiernan told Empire magazine in 2014. “On my second week working on it, I said, 'Guys, there's no part of terrorism that's fun. Robbers are fun bad guys. Let's make this a date movie.’ And they had the courage to do it.”
16. MCTIERNAN SEES IT AS A SHAKESPEAREAN TALE.
In the original script, the action in Die Hard takes place over a three-day span, but McTiernan—inspired by Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream—insisted that it be condensed into a single evening.
17. NAKATOMI PLAZA IS ACTUALLY FOX PLAZA.
Yes, the corporate headquarters of 20th Century Fox—the very studio making the movie—proved to be the perfect location for the movie’s much-needed Nakatomi Plaza. And as it was still under construction, there wasn’t a whole lot they needed to do to the space to make it movie-ready. The studio charged itself rent to use its own space.
18. THE ROOM WHERE THE HOSTAGES ARE BEING HELD IS LITERALLY SUPPOSED TO BE FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT'S FALLINGWATER.
"In this period, Japanese corporations were buying America," production designer Jackson De Govia said in the Die Hard DVD audio commentary. "We posited that... Nakatami Corporation bought Fallingwater, disassembled it, and reassembled it in the atrium, like a trophy."
19. THAT PANORAMIC VIEW OF THE CITY BELOW? IT’S NOT REAL.
A 380-foot-long background painting provided the illusion of a breathtaking city view in the movie. And it was a state-of-the-art one, too, with animated lights, moving traffic, and the ability to change from night to day. The painting is still the property of the studio and has been used in other productions since.
20. THE FILM’S SUCCESS SPAWNED A BONA FIDE FRANCHISE.
In addition to its four sequels, Die Hard has spawned video games and comic books, too.
21. JOHN MCCLANE’S TUMBLE DOWN A VENTILATION SHAFT WAS AN ACCIDENT.
Or maybe “error” would be a better word. But in the scene in which McClane jumps into an elevator shaft, his stunt man was supposed to grab onto the first vent. But he missed. By a lot. Which made the footage even more exciting to watch, so editor Frank J. Urioste kept it in the final cut.
22. ALAN RICKMAN’S DEATH SCENE WAS ALSO PRETTY SCARY.
At least it was for Rickman. In order to make it look as if he was falling off a building, Rickman was supposed to drop 20 feet onto an air bag while holding onto a stunt man. But in order to get a genuinely terrified reaction out of him, they dropped him on the count of two—not three, as was planned.
23. BRUCE WILLIS SUFFERED PERMANENT HEARING LOSS.
Twentieth Century Fox
In order to get the hyper-realism that director John McTiernan was looking for, the blanks used in the guns in the movie were modified to be extra loud. In one scene, Willis shoots a terrorist through a table, which put the action star in extremely close proximity to the gun—and caused permanent hearing loss. He referenced the injury in a 2007 interview with The Guardian. When they asked Willis his most unappealing habit, he replied that, “Due to an accident on the first Die Hard, I suffer two-thirds partial hearing loss in my left ear and have a tendency to say, ‘Whaaa?’”
24. ALAN RICKMAN WASN’T FOND OF THE NOISE EITHER.
Whenever he had to shoot a gun in the film, Rickman couldn’t help but flinch. Which forced McTiernan to have to cut away from him so that his reactions were not caught on film.
25. GRUBER’S AMERICAN ACCENT POSED NOTHING BUT PROBLEMS.
The scene in which Rickman, as Gruber, slips into an American accent and pretends to be yet another hostage who got away was insisted on by screenwriter Steven de Souza, who wanted them in a room together to duke it out. But McTiernan was never happy with Rickman’s American accent, saying, “I still hear Alan Rickman’s English accent. I was never quite happy with the way he opened his mouth [in that scene]... I shot it three times trying to get him to sound more stridently American... it’s odd for someone who has such enormous verbal skills; he just had terrible trouble getting an American accent.”
26. HANS GRUBER’S GERMAN IS MOSTLY GIBBERISH.
And the bulk of his German cohorts were not German either. Bruce Willis, on the other hand, was actually born in West Germany to an American father and a German mother.
27. BRUCE WILLIS HAS FOUR FEET.
As Willis spends much of the movie in his bare feet running through broken glass, he was given a pair of rubber feet to wear as a safety precaution. Which is great and all, but if you look closely in certain scenes, you can actually see the fake appendages.
28. YOU CAN SEE—BUT NOT TOUCH—JOHN MCCLANE’S SWEATY TANK TOP.
Getty Images
In 2007, Willis donated the blood-soaked tank top he wore in Die Hard to the National Museum of American History at the Smithsonian.
29. “YIPPEE-KI-YAY” STOLE THE MOVIE.
It was a simple line: “Yippee-ki-yay, motherf*cker!” But it became the film’s defining moment, and the unofficial catchphrase that has been used in all four Die Hard sequels as well.
30. CREDIT FOR THE LINE IS OWED TO WILLIS.
In a 2013 interview with Ryan Seacrest, Bruce Willis admitted that “Yippee-ki-yay, motherf*cker!” was really just a joke. “It was a throwaway,” said Willis. “I was just trying to crack up the crew and I never thought it was going to be allowed to stay in the film."EXCLUSIVE: Ferguson fumes at Nani after winger punches reserve midfielder Petrucci
Nani has moved a step closer to the Old Trafford exit after an incident which ended with him landing a blow on a young Manchester United team-mate.
Words were exchanged between Nani and reserve team midfielder Davide Petrucci after a training ground challenge at Carrington.
Nani later called the 20-year-old Italian over in the gym and the rest of the squad thought the pair would talk through their differences, but they were said to be stunned when Nani appeared to land a punch on Petrucci.
Bust up: Nani is believed to have struck United team-mate Davide Petrucci
Other players quickly stepped in to prevent further trouble.
United manager Sir Alex Ferguson is still said to be considering what disciplinary action to take against the frustrated Portugal winger, who was hauled off at half-time against Liverpool last week following an abject first-half performance.
Ferguson is believed to be fuming over the incident, which took place earlier this week and will only harden his resolve to offload Nani at the first opportunity.
A £25million deal to sell him to Zenit St Petersburg in the summer fell through because his 'unreal' wage demands put off the Russian club.
It is believed that Nani wants to run down his contract, which has almost two years left, after United refused his request for a new deal worth £130,000 a week.
Row: Nani was upset with Davide Petrucci (pictured) at Manchester United's training ground in Carrington
Unhappy: Nani was said to be annoyed with his team-mate over a challenge during training
The 25-year-old has cut an increasingly frustrated figure, having failed to make any impression this season.
He was booked less than two minutes into United's first game of the season at Everton and then upset Ferguson by missing a penalty against Galatasaray last week.
He is expected to be in the squad to face Tottenham today but only because first-choice right winger Antonio Valencia has been ruled out with an ankle injury.
The Valencia blow adds to United's problems after captain Nemanja Vidic was ruled out for eight weeks following more surgery on his injured right knee.
'I don't think Nemanja was ever 100 per cent,' said Ferguson. 'I noticed a couple of times in training that he was limping and then he started feeling tightness in his knee.
The main operation was to correct the cruciate ligament but there is always the danger that the cartilage is also damaged and that was the case.'
Sportsmail contacted United on Friday night but they declined to comment.
Raging: Sir Alex Ferguson is believed to be fuming at the Portugal international over the incident
Angered: Ferguson was already frustrated with Nani after he missed a penalty against GalatasarayChanging Mturk submit button functionality & A new way to prevent duplicate workers on separate HITs
Previously, I’ve posted some simple ways to prevent workers from completing your mturk HITs because they already completed an identical one last week or last month, etc. (here, here, and here). Sometimes keeping track of long lists of mturk workers who have completed your previous HITs is difficult. Editing, copying, and pasting a list of 1000 workers that took your survey last time and can’t take it this time takes a while and is prone to mistakes. The best method I can suggest when this is difficult is to start databasing your workers. This is how I manage my Mturk participants, but it requires a decent amount of knowledge of JavaScript, PHP, and MySQL. If that is not your cup of tea, I have been trying to work on an especially simple method using cookies, though it is by definition imperfect.
Cookies are simply small bits of data that a webpage can store on your computer, then later read back. It’s how website “remember” that you are logged in, for instance. Using a small amount of JavaScript, you can set a cookie that is named after your study. The existence of the cookie with that particular name means that the worker completed that study already. When you post a study later and want to exclude people who took your first study, your HIT will have some JavaScript in it that searches for that cookie you created earlier. If it exists, the person took your first study and is excluded, if it doesn’t, they can take your new study. There is no copy and pasting, and no long files full of worker IDs.
However, as I said, it is imperfect. Some users turn off cookies, preventing you from setting the cookie. Some users clear their cookies regularly, deleting the cookie you created. Cookies are computer based, not user based. So a user can go to a different computer and still take your new study. Also, a second person can try taking your study on the same computer and be prevented from doing so because the cookie applies to anyone using that computer, not the specific person. Given the large amount of mturk workers, and the base-rates for the problems I just mentioned, I would guess that this method would prevent about 90% of workers who you don’t want taking your studies from doing so. It may be more or less. The key factors are how many people regularly clear their cookies or complete HITs on multiple computers.
Here is the commented code you can copy and paste into your HIT template window. It first loads jQuery, then adds an event listener to the Submit button, then checks if a cookie exists with the same name as the cookie that gets created when the submit button is clicked. All you need to change is the studyName value to something unique for your study. However, what happens on line 20 is up to you. right now it simply alerts the user that they have taken your study before. Someone more useful would be to prevent any other content from loading and telling them to not accept/return the HIT. Since exactly how it gets implemented can change for HIT to HIT, I didn’t not specify a procedure beyond alerting the user. The cookies are set to last a maximum of 1 year. You can hypothetically make it longer, but likely people have deleted their cookies by then anyway.
Github code here
1: <script src="https://code.jquery.com/jquery-1.10.1.min.js"></script> 2: <script type="text/javascript"> 3: //this code assumes jQuery is implemented, though it would not be difficult to do this with straight javascript..ready() assures the code runs after the submit button is added 4: $(document).ready(function () { 5: var studyName="dm102513";//replace this value with a unique, acceptable cookie name... no spaces and stick with alphanumerics and underscores 6: $("#submitButton").click(function(){ 7: var exdate=new Date(); 8: exdate.setDate(exdate.getDate() + 365); 9: document.cookie=studyName+"=1; expires="+exdate.toUTCString()+"; domain=mturkcontent.com; path=/";//When the user clicks the Submit button, it creates a cookie that you can read later as having already completed this survey 10: }); 11: var i,x,y,ARRcookies=document.cookie.split(";");//variables necessary to read the cookies. Last variables separates all available cookie names into an array we will loop through to find our cookie 12: for (i=0;i<ARRcookies.length;i++){ 13: x=ARRcookies[i].substr(0,ARRcookies[i].indexOf("="));//x=cookie name 14: y=ARRcookies[i].substr(ARRcookies[i].indexOf("=")+1);//y=cookie value 15: x=x.replace(/^\s+|\s+$/g,"");//Remove white space 16: if (x==studyName && y==1){ 17: //If your cookie exists AND the value is 1, they have taken your survey before. 18: //Here you would put code that somehow prevents them from doing anything for your HIT, like not loading content etc. 19: //However, for our purposes here, I just put a simple alert in. Change this to whatever code works for you. 20: alert("You are not eligible for this HIT because you have already completed an identical HIT."); 21: } 22: } 23: }); 24: </script>
AdvertisementsChicagoist's "Beer of the Week": Goose Island's Mild Winter Ale
By Chuck Sudo in Food on Dec 10, 2008 8:00PM
Goose Island's been working a lot with rye malt recently. Their Juliet ale, brewed with rye, marionberries and aged for six months in Robert Kraig cabernet casks, has been a popular selection among those Chicagoist staffers who've tasted it (Jacy and myself). This week, we're featuring another rye-based Goose Island offering that's been flying off shelves.
"Mild Winter" can be read as wishful thinking for the type of winter we'd like to have. It's also Goose Island's latest brew. It's a surprisingly malt-forward and spicy ale, even for one with rye as the primary malt, so we asked Goose Island's Mary Pellittieri for more info about the ingredients. Pellittieri didn't disappoint. Mild Winter is a tawny red ale uses roasted barley and dark chocolate malts, in addition to rye, and hopped using Pilgrim, Willamette and Tettnang. Pellittieri said that Mild Winter was designed as an English mild ale, but with a high specific gravity and 4.4 percent ABV content, it doesn't finish like one.
Goose Island has been hosting pub crawls in conjunction with Mild Winter's release. The next one is Saturday in the South Loop form 2-9:30 p.m. The crawl starts at Reggie's Music Joint (2105 S. State St.) and moves to Krolls Bar and Grill (1736 S. Michigan Ave.), Weathermark Tavern (1503 S. Michigan Ave.), Grace O' Malley's (1416 S. Michigan Ave.), Wabash Tap (1233 S. Wabash Ave.), and Blackies (755 S. Clark St.). IF you can't make that, get your hands on a sixer of this week's "Beer of the Week," Goose Island's Mild Winter Ale.UPDATED 5:40pm: The New Zealand Herald has received a package with a note claiming it's a vial of a substance claimed to be a sample of the deadly Ebola virus.
Sky News reports the vial is part of a package from a 'jihadist group'.
New Zealand authorities are now working to safely contain the package before sending it to the Infectious Diseases Reference Laboratory at the Royal Melbourne Hospital.
Victorian health authorities have confirmed to Sky News that they have been informed of the situation, but are waiting for further details from their New Zealand counterparts.
In an email sent to NZME. staff on Albert Street, employees were told the mailroom was temporarily closed and police were on site following receipt of a suspicious letter and package.
MORE: Another suspicious bottle has been sent, this time to Parliament's mailroom
Sample from NZ sent to be tested for Ebola
The Ministry of Health is adamant there is not an Ebola virus case in New Zealand.
Sky News reported earlier this afternoon that a sample from New Zealand is going to be tested in Australia for the deadly disease.
The Ministry says the matter is being dealt with by Auckland police and there is no Ebola.
A plastic bottle behind the scare will been swabbed for DNA and checked for fingerprints.
Police have secured the bottle and transferred it to ESR.
After those tests have been carried out, it'll be sent to Melbourne for further testing.window._taboola = window._taboola || []; _taboola.push({ mode: 'thumbnails-c', container: 'taboola-interstitial-gallery-thumbnails-5', placement: 'Interstitial Gallery Thumbnails 5', target_type:'mix' });
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70 degrees Fahrenheit. At altitude, Kittinger encountered temperatures of minus104 degrees. Holloman Air Force Base had an altitude chamber that could create such an extremely low temperature, so it was a matter of finding ways to reset the faceplate defogging system under more realistic flight conditions using this chamber. Some relatively minor adjustments to the gondola made sure Kittinger would not get stuck in the seat again. The problem with the sun glare on the instrument panel proved simplest of all to fix - all it required was a simple cardboard sunshade around the panel. Kittinger feared senior officers in the Air Force would decide that Excelsior was too dangerous after the close call of the first flight and was greatly relieved when Colonel Stapp told him the second flight was approved. All the fixes took less than a month to do.
Excelsior II took place on December 11, 1959. One hour after launch, Captain Kittinger was floating 74,700 feet above the New Mexico desert. This time, everything worked perfectly. Immediately after stepping off the gondola, Kittinger began a slow turn. He dropped one foot and lowered his arm and the turn stopped. Fourteen seconds after leaving the balloon, the pilot parachute deployed. The small parachute pulled out the drogue and the main canopy deployed at 18,000 feet, exactly as planned. This "roaring success" cleared the way for another test.
Excelsior III
Early on the morning of August 16, 1960, Kittinger prepared to board the balloon for the third jump. For this flight, the gondola carried two placards. One was a license plate that his son had cut off of a cereal box. His son was in Ohio, the license plate was from Oregon, and the flight took place in New Mexico. Such details didn't matter to the younger Kittinger - he felt the gondola needed a license plate. The other was a sign that read "This is the highest step in the world".
Excelsior III, launched from Tularosa, New Mexico, carried Kittinger to 102,800 feet. During the ascent, the pressurization in his right glove failed and his hand began to swell. It reached nearly twice its normal size and was very painful. Afraid that he would be ordered to jump early because of the malfunction, Kittinger did not report the problem until he was at altitude. Seventy seconds before jumping, he cut away the radio antenna to prevent hitting it. For the first time in the flight, Captain Kittinger was truly alone.
After stepping off "the highest step in the world," he fell on his right side for about eight seconds, then rolled over on his back to watch the silvery balloon against a black sky. Sixteen seconds after Kittinger left the gondola, the pilot chute sprang out, followed by the drogue that stabilized him. His top speed, reached at 90,000 feet, was an incredible 625.2 miles per hour! While falling under the drogue chute, he turned to face El Paso, Texas, then back to face New Mexico.
Suddenly, Kittinger felt as though he was being choked - the helmet was rising again. Fortunately, as his descent continued, the sensation eased. At 21,000 feet, Kittinger entered a solid layer of clouds. Instinctively, as though he were hitting a solid object, Kittinger drew his feet up. He'd never fallen through clouds before. The main parachute deployed four and a half minutes after he left the balloon, after a fall of just over 16 miles. He emerged from the clouds at 15,000 feet. Two helicopters circled around him as he descended to the desert floor.
Prior to landing, Kittinger was supposed to release the instrument box beneath his container. Only one side released, so he landed with its additional weight.
The landing was hard and the seat kit inflicted a severe bruise on his leg. Otherwise, he was unhurt. The helicopters landed at almost the same instant as Kittinger and medical technicians rushed to his aid. "I'm very glad to be back with you all," was how Kittinger greeted the recovery team.
The total time since leaving the balloon was 13 minutes, 45 seconds.
Excelsior and Red Bull Stratos Joseph Kittinger was involved almost from it's inception in the Red Bull Stratos project, an sport/science effort to try to break the records achieved by him in the 60's and to test a future generation of hardware, pressure suits and techniques to advance the science and knowledge about high altitude bail-outs. The Austrian parachutist Felix Baumgartner was the pilot of the effort. The participation of Kittinger in the project was as mentor and Capcom I, that is the voice that links the ground Control Center with the pilot. On October 14th, the project performed the third and final jump over New Mexico, managing to beat four of the five records that Kittinger owned. As Stratocat's editor I want to pay my humble tribute not only to the men and women behind the Red Bull Stratos but to those who along history, contributed in one way or another to pave the way that led to this extraodinary jump. See our timeline: The road to the Biggest JumpWell, it looks as though Donald Trump is going back on what he said early this morning about meeting with the New York Times. He IS going to meet with them after all, his team says.
Trump is heading over to the Times’ headquarters now, press secretary Hope Hicks told CNNMoney around 9:45 a.m. A portion of the meeting will be an on-the-record interview, as the newspaper originally wanted. “Mr. Trump’s staff has told us that the President Elect’s meeting with The Times is on again,” Eileen Murphy, head of communications for the Times, said in a statement. “He will meet with our publisher off-the-record and that session will be followed by an on-the-record meeting with our journalists and editorial columnists.”
So, there’s that. I have to wonder who conceded what and when. There’s a very short timeline here. Oh well, only four more years of impulsive decisions made on Twitter, I guess? I dunno.Searching for adventure on two wheels. Kelly Herrington Blocked Unblock Follow Following May 30, 2017 A new rider on a new bike, learning the ways in Moab, Utah, on the back of a Honda CRF250L Rally.
Our first night camping on BLM Land. (photo by Django)
With snow falling around me, I thought ahead to my 30th birthday. It would arrive in mid-May when the snow had long melted. Other than the waning seasons, there wasn’t much else I expected to change when the day comes and goes. Certainly no more momentous than the 29 earlier. Then comes my friend Django, who mentioned a trip to Moab he would be going on. It was a motorcycle adventure, the kind you fantasize about as a kid. Surviving off what you can carry on your bike, changing flat tires while the sun expires, the smell of gasoline and campfire permeating your gear. On a whim, I asked if I could go. We’ll get to the trip shortly. First, I had a much more important task: I needed to learn how to ride a motorcycle. At twelve weeks before taking off for the desert I sat on my first bike, a 2001 Suzuki DR200. It’s white and blue with no effort dedicated to anything but moving and stopping. For those wondering, I asked the same question, what does 200 mean? It means the engine has 200cc of displacement, or simplified, how much the bike goes vroom. Your typical Harley might have anywhere from 800cc-1200cc. So I thought this would be a piece of cake.
My first time on a bike, a 2001 Suzuki DR200.
After an hour or so of learning how to shift from neutral to first, I set out with two buddies on a gravel road in David City, Nebraska. I can’t remember the last time my body felt both fear and euphoria at the same time. Maybe back when I had achieved another “first.” It wasn’t anything like I had imagined. I picked up the basics easily enough, but seeing my friend Eric on his bike showed me that this is a practiced skill like anything else. That day on a bike ended with me having fallen twice. I earned a nasty bruise on my shin and painful shoulder. I walked away knowing that I would need some proper gear and bike I that I could learn with on my own. Most importantly I had an ear-to-ear grin stuck to my face. With a bit of research on bikes, both used and new, I discovered the newly released Honda CRF250L Rally. I was in love and now invested into this hobby for a very long time. The bike would give me the power I needed, some new safety features like ABS, and in my opinion, a gorgeous look.
Transporting the Rally back home.
Actually getting the Rally was an entirely different story that involved placing deposits at five separate dealerships, a 10-hour road trip, and a lot of anxious days wondering if I would actually get it in time. With one week left before setting off, I was legally licensed and insured. With a brand new Rally sitting in my driveway. Then, just like that, it was May 18th. My 30th birthday. The day we set off for Moab. I had put 11 miles on my new bike and wasn’t comfortable yet leaving my neighborhood. All geared up and ready to hit the road. At this point, I should introduce the friends that were going on this trip, the ones who helped teach me, and made this dream a possibility. Wes, Django, and Eric. Their bikes of choice were a Kawasaki KLR 650, a Kawasaki KLX 250, and a Yamaha WR 250r, respectively.
The whole gang. We rented a 1-ton truck from Enterprise to load two bikes in the bed and haul a trailer holding two more.
My previous experiences with Moab consisted of seeing interstate mileage markers getting smaller and then disappearing behind me as I traveled on I-70. Having never set foot in the town, I pictured a one intersection oasis in the desert. Moab turns out to be a mecca of outdoor adventure, both on wheels and on foot. It’s brimming with tourists and the shops they cater to. With two hours left of daylight, we arrived to an already packed city. We decided to set up camp on BLM land outside of town. This is shorthand for designated areas that the Bureau of Land Management has set aside for public use. With hardly a drop of pink sunlight still illuminating the surrounding cliffs we set out and put some Utah sand on our bikes. I would be lying if I told you I was having fun at this moment. I quickly discovered my shift lever was too low to work comfortably with my boots. I was physically exhausted from the trip and all I wanted to do was sleep. We drove by some campers who appeared to have brought an entire outdoor store with them, this ends up being a common occurrence but I felt entirely unprepared for the days ahead.
Sunrise on our first campsite. (photo by Django)
That night we ate dehydrated food, the first decent meal in two days. I scarfed down a pouch of beef strogonoff, it was incredibly salty, but warm and welcome. A couple from Belgium who were traveling the country in a rented van rolled up to our campsite and asked to share it with us. They had already spent several weeks touring the national parks, but Moab was their favorite. I went to bed hoping I would feel the same way. That first day, with a properly adjusted shift lever, we drove into town and set up our next campsite on the banks of the Colorado river. The Utah air was cool and clean. I pictured both my lungs and my bike breathing it in, its restorative properties circulating through our bodies.
Catching a bit of shade.
Hurrah Pass was our first official trail. You get there via an unpaved road that dips into valleys and climbs up cliff sides. On the way to the trail head I was too nervous to match the speed of the riders I let pass me by. I could tell the Rally wanted more from me. I had it on a leash as it begged to go faster, to explore the unmarked trails we passed. I could feel the eyes of judgement as I sat on my brand new bike, with my brand new gear, and my brand new appreciation for dual sports. Looking the part only gets you so far.
At the peak of Hurrah Pass.
But as the mileage climbed on my odometer, so did my confidence. I met new and challenging obstacles with each turn. I was thankful for the boots that allowed me to stand on the pegs with ease. The Rally pulled me through everything. At this point I learned that simply giving it more throttle was the cure for what ailed us. GoPro Footage Most of this trail relied on me knowing when to drop down into first gear to climb rocky steps, or when to shift up to second and third gear to keep momentum. At the peak we looked out and could see the Potash fields in the distance. Their sparkling blue shimmer looked like pockets of sky buried in the sand.
Sparkling blue Potash fields near Moab.
As the days continued, the trails would take use through dozens of creek crossings, snow capped mountains, endless miles on White Rim Trail, and the ironically grippy Slick Rock. Having started the trip with 11 miles, we ended at over 500.
Climbing up the La Sal Mountains. Taking the back entrance into Arches National Park. Balance Rock in the background.
Now, I don’t have a lot of experience, so I can’t say how the Rally stacks up to the competition. But for a beginner, this bike taught me a lot, and still has so much more to teach me. Eric, the most experienced rider in our group, loved the power and control. He is coming from a WR250r, long considered the best 250 dual sport available. In his hands I could see how the Rally was way more capable than I was. The Rally weighs about 350lbs, which makes it considerably heavier than the KLX250 and WR250r, but considerably lighter than the KLR 650. In sand this was great, the rear wheel felt planted and pulled me through it. It was also a relief that I was able to pick it up by myself the first time I dropped it. The weight wasn’t noticeable when climbing. On the highway at 65mph, the windscreen completely protected me, and I had no trouble maintaining speed uphill. The KLX for comparison struggled to keep up and would get tossed around from gusts. The Rally has over 10 inches of ground clearance, which makes obstacles rarely noticeable. The suspension is fairly bouncy, so some riders might want to adjust it. After a day of I riding I was loving it.
On the way back to Moab from White Rim Trail
I never got close to an empty gas tank and was getting between 50–85 mpg, depending on if I was trail or tarmac. The Rotopax was there as an emergency reserve and I never needed it. In fact, I was able to donate its precious contents to the KLX which was running with a stock tank. Our last night in Moab had us traversing about 20 miles in the dark. The LED headlights did wonders for illuminating the trail ahead, not just for me, but for the whole group. There wasn’t a single trail in Moab that the Rally wouldn’t be able to handle. The larger gas tank and great mileage made long distance trails like White Rim possible. I was completely comfortable cruising on the highway, or darting up mountains in first gear. Be it sand, rock, water, mud, or pavement, the Rally was at home.
Taking a break on White Rim Trail.
I made two modifications to my bike before setting out. I added some Zeta handguards and a Seat Concepts seat that reduces the total height by 1 inch. The handguards were a must-have on this trip, and saved me on at least two occasions from broken levers. At 5'8", the seat was also extremely helpful and comfortable. Everything else was stock, including the tires, which handled the trails with ease. I rode with Enduristan Bilzzard Saddlebags, a Wolfman Enduro tank bag, and a Kriega US-20 Drypack for a tail bag. This was the perfect amount of storage for the length we were traveling. Everything but the tank bag was waterproof. The Rally also has an internal compartment, great for a GoPro and the bike registration.
Overlooking Moab from La Sal Mountain. (photo by Django)Julian Bond, chairman emeritus of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, joined anchor Thomas Roberts on MSNBC on Tuesday where he said that he did not believe the federal government was complicit in any wrongdoing given the news that the Internal Revenue Service singled out conservative groups for added scrutiny. He said that it is right of the government to look into the Tea Party, which he called “overtly racist” and the “Taliban wing of American politics.” Bond made these comments after noting that his group was illegitimately targeted by the IRS in 2004.
RELATED: Rep. Issa Rips Obama Over IRS Scandal: ‘How Dare The Admin Imply’ They’ll ‘Get To The Bottom Of It’
Bond said that his group was singled out by the IRS in 2004 after he delivered a political speech critical of President George W. Bush. Though his organization was later cleared, Bond said that his group was “unfairly targeted.”
However, Bond said that there are no parallels between that case and the charge that the IRS devoted undue scrutiny to conservative groups seeking tax-exempt status.
“I don’t think there’s a double standard at all,” Bond said. “I think it’s entirely legitimate to look at the tea party.”
“I mean, here are a group of people who are admittedly racist, who are overtly political, who tried as best they can to harm President [Barack] Obama in every way they can,” Bond continued.
“They are the Taliban wing of American politics and we all ought to be a little worried about them,” Bond asserted.
When asked if his assessment of the Tea Party was “a little harsh,” Bond said that it was not. “The truth hurts,” Bond insisted.
Watch the clip below via MSNBC:
> >Follow Noah Rothman (@NoahCRothman) on Twitter
Have a tip we should know? tips@mediaite.comIn 1843, Sarah Forbes Bonetta was born a princess of the Egbado clan of Nigeria’s Yoruba people. However, when she was 4 years old, her entire family was killed in a slave raid, and King Gezo, the most infamous slave trading monarch in West Africa, took her as prisoner. Shortly after, a British commander named Frederick Forbes suggested Gezo give Bonetta to Queen Victoria as a diplomatic gift. “She would be a present from the King of the Blacks to the Queen of the Whites,” he said.
Thanks to this bizarre turn of events, Bonetta wound up at Windsor Castle in 1850. The Queen, impressed with Bonetta’s intelligence and musical talents, declared the girl her goddaughter and agreed to take on her educational expenses. Until her death in 1880, Bonetta lived among the British middle class ― ostensibly happy, or, at least, financially comfortable. Her story is often framed as a bizarre sort of fairytale, of a woman saved from horrific circumstances and plopped into a life of luxury.
When London-based contemporary artist Heather Agyepong learned Bonetta’s story, it touched her on two levels. First, due to the lack of visibility of black diasporas predating the 1940s, Agyepong was surprised that there were black people in Britain in the 19th century. “It was both overwhelming and embarrassing as I was a little ashamed I didn’t know that the diaspora has been around for over 500 years,” she explained to The Huffington Post.
But Agyepong’s fascination with Bonetta went deeper. She found herself wondering, despite the happily-ever-after tone that normally accompanies Bonetta’s life story, how she really felt inside. What would it be like to lose your entire family and live in a world so different from the one you once knew? “How can a black woman living in Victorian Britain within the realms of aristocracy have such an pleasant experience?” Agyepong asked.
Heather Agyepong
Agyepong scrutinized the formal portraits of Bonetta ― dressed in a gown, bonnet and pearls ― in which she appeared regal, composed and in control. But how much could she really glean from a sepia-toned, posed portrait anyway? “Her portraits reminded me of the way some black women feel they need to compose themselves in such a way that suits others but not ourselves,” Agyepong continued.
As a young black woman living in London, Agyepong’s experiences traveling throughout Europe have been tainted by discrimination and abuse, from strangers on the street laughing at her to soliciting her for sex. Some of this assault stems from the historical sexualization of black women’s bodies. “I could be wearing a huge polo, wool jumper, boyfriend jeans and trainers and some creep would still look at me like a prostitute,” Agyepong said. “It’s ingrained.”
All women, but especially women of color, learn to walk in the world acknowledging that some view them as sexual objects before human beings. Another fallacy that permeates Western culture ― less directly damaging but perhaps more insidious ― is the myth of the “strong black woman.” Although women of color have certainly displayed tremendous strength to endure the injustices that shape their daily lives, the surface compliment can easily metamorphose to imply black women don’t feel pain, or black women don’t need help.
“I started to reimagine, well, maybe she suffered from the same struggles I have, maybe she pretended things were all right when they weren’t,” Agyepong expressed.
Heather Agyepong
In a series titled “Too Many Blackamoors,” Agyepong inserts herself into Bonetta’s narrative, recreating her 19th-century portraits with her own image. The title takes its name from a 16th-century letter distributed throughout Elizabethan England, which called for mayors and sheriffs, under the Queen’s will, to expel superfluous “blackamoors” from the land.
At first, Agyepong’s portraits look like they were plucked straight out of the 1800s. Look closer, however, and certain contemporary details come into view ― Doc Martin boots, Peter Fryer’s 1984 book Staying Power: The History of Black People in Britain. Agyepong’s process, technically referred to as “Re-enactment Phototherapy,” is inspired by the work of two phototherapists, Rosy Martin and Jo Spence, who explored the relationship between photography, memory and identity by deconstructing the self-portrait.
“I reimagined my own struggles, worries and insecurities onto Bonetta in order to allow myself to reflect, relive and possibly heal from those traumas,” Agyepong said. “I also really wanted other black women to share the experience with me, maybe evoke a cathartic experience whilst looking at the images to encourage a dialogue not just between others but between themselves.”
Heather Agyepong
Through the project, the artist hopes to dismantle the stereotype of the strong black woman, or at least make space for nuance, complexity and dissent. Agyepong spoke of the images in conjunction with her own struggles with mental health, her reluctance to reach out for help because “I felt it didn’t fit the image of what I saw a black woman to be. All the talk about mental health was around white women so I thought, well, I can’t be depressed.”
Black women are burdened with innumerable weights and anxieties each and every day. As Jenna Wortham recently wrote in The New York Times, in reference to recent incidents of police violence against black people: “All the rage and mourning and angst works to exhaust you; it eats you alive with its relentlessness. These slayings obey no humane logic. They force you to reconcile your own helplessness in the face of such brutal injustice, and the terrifying reality that it could happen to you, or someone you hold dear.”
In addition to living with the threat of brutal injustice, enough to make anyone anxious or depressed, women of color are left out of the larger conversation regarding mental health. The subject, for many, remains stigmatized and out of reach. “It seems like for generations, black women have hardly been included in conversations about mental well-being and, to be honest, I’m just over it,” Agyepong said.
Heather Agyepong
Some of Agyepong’s photos are currently on view as part of the group exhibition “Unmasked Women,” which grapples with the current state of black mental health for young women in the United Kingdom.
The show’s curator Nicole Krystal Crentsil spoke to The Huffington Post about the difficulty of seeking help from therapists who are not a part of, or educated about, the black experience. “Some therapists are not aware of what it’s like to be brought up with racial oppressions and institutionalized pressures,” she said. “They think talking to your mum would solve all your issues.”
Agyepong, along with nine other young women artists, contributed their work in order to show young black women in the U.K. and beyond that they are not alone, that it’s OK to not be OK. “I’m sick of internalizing traumas, sick of pretending to make someone else feel comfortable whilst others can live free with their belly hanging out,” Agyepong said.
“I just want to live as carefree as possible and bring whoever is around me with me. We need to dig ourselves out of these boxes as black women because as someone who has come out from the other side of mental health issues I feel that I owe it to them to speak up for the women who are still suffering in silence. I just want to leave the viewer empowered in whatever way I can; to feel release, ease, a sigh of relief.”
“Too Many Blackamoors,” commissioned by Autograph ABP, will go on view as part of “Visible:In,” during Art Licks weekend, from Sept. 29–Oct. 2, at Seen Fifteen in London.Looking for news you can trust?
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This story originally appeared in The Atlantic and is republished here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.
Back in 1997, ecologist Robert Constanza and a team of researchers set out to quantify a seemingly unquantifiable abundance: the value, in dollars, of the world’s ecosystems.
But first they needed a good, concrete list of what exactly it was the ecosystems provide. They came up with 17 discrete categories, which they labeled “ecosystem services,” although some are technically goods. There were the obvious things, like food (game, fish, nuts, and so on) and raw materials (timber, fuel, etc.). But there were also more subtle effects, such as how wetlands protect some coastal areas from the battering of storms or how forests convert carbon dioxide into oxygen. Cultural and recreational uses also made the list.
And so what’s the value of all that? Or, as the authors framed it, how much would we have to pay to recreate those services if for some reason they didn’t occur naturally? Fifteen years ago, they estimated that cost to be around $33 trillion ($48.7 trillion in today’s dollars)—more than the GDP of the entire globe at the time.
Now Constanza has returned to this project and, in a new paper co-authored with many of his original collaborators, he concludes that that 1997 estimate fell quite short. Armed with data from a massive international survey of ecosystems and their relationships with human well-being in communities around the world, Constanza and his team now say that ecosystems are worth way, way more than they had thought: $142.7 trillion.
As Carl Zimmer explains in the New York Times, much of the increase comes from a better understanding of just how valuable some of these ecological services are. “Coral reefs, for instance, have proved to be much more important for storm protection than previously recognized,” he writes. “They also protect against soil erosion by weakening waves before they reach land. As a result, Dr. Costanza and his colleagues now consider the services provided by coral reefs to be 42 times more valuable than they did in 1997. They estimate that each acre of reef provides $995,000 in services each year for a total of $11 trillion worldwide.”
But, unfortunately, Constanza’s update was necessitated not only by improved data, but because the size of our ecological resources has diminished so greatly over the past decade and a half. Costanza and his colleagues wanted to know the value of that depletion. Zimmer writes:
But they also had to take into account the fact that many ecosystems have suffered since 1997. Many coral reefs, for example, have been dying off because of pollution and other human activities. Dr. Costanza and his colleagues estimate that the world’s reefs shrank from 240,000 square miles in 1997 to 108,000 in 2011. If coral reefs and other ecosystems were still as healthy as they were in 1997, the value of their services today would have been considerably higher: $165.8 trillion. In other words, deforestation and other damage we’ve inflicted on the natural world has wiped out $23 trillion a year in ecosystem services. To put that loss into perspective, consider that the gross domestic product of the United States is $16.2 trillion.
At best, the $142.7 figure is a rough estimate, but this follow-up work is a good demonstration of why honing in on that number, even roughly, is so important: Understanding what we have makes us more able to understand what we’re losing.Khalil Shreateh, a self-professed IT expert from Palestine, hit the headlines four years ago when he hacked Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s wall. Shreateh was frustrated that Facebook was ignoring a big security flaw, so demonstrating it on Zuckerberg’s own Facebook wall was an easy way to get the company to act. Shreateh discovered a security flaw in LinkedIn last month, and he reached out to The Verge after becoming frustrated that the company was ignoring his report — just like four years ago.
The flaw worked by smuggling more complex code into images hosted on the service. By altering the source value of a posted image, an attacker could execute a remote script when the user clicked on the picture. In the most troubling version of the exploit, the attacker could disguise that script as a LinkedIn authentication prompt, which could potentially trick users into sharing their password. The authentication prompt would even automatically pop up if a LinkedIn user simply visited the post and was logged out of the service. LinkedIn patched the flaw after being contacted by The Verge.
While the flaw would have needed to be executed on a LinkedIn account with a large following, or distributed to victims through a phishing email, it was easy enough to spot once Shreateh detailed it to The Verge. In correspondence seen by The Verge, LinkedIn security engineers initially dismissed the report as requiring “user intervention” to trigger, despite the authentication prompt popping up automatically if you viewed a post and weren’t logged in.
"I was amazed with the all replies I got from Linkedin,” explains Shreateh to The Verge. “Linkedin and other companies should take security issues on a top high level where a specialist security employee gives a direct response with any security report.” Shreateh isn’t a full-time security researcher, but he’s been investigating web flaws for around nine years now. CNN even visited Shreateh at his home in Palestine previously, and he has been awarded bug bounties for at least 10 Facebook exploits in the years following his Zuckerberg wall hack.
Shreateh’s obvious frustrations are understandable. Barely a week passes without a high profile security breach, often affecting thousands or millions of users. Researchers regularly report these vulnerabilities, and if companies are slow to respond then it puts users at risk. “After the researcher contacted us to disclose an issue on our platform, we actively engaged with them to understand it and quickly implemented a fix after we were able to reproduce the issue,” says a LinkedIn spokesperson in a statement to The Verge. “The issue had the potential to impact users only if they responded to a phishing email from an attacker and then entered their credentials. We do not believe any exploitation has occurred. We value our hard earned and well established track record of working with security researchers to protect our members."People cheer in front of the Supreme Court after a ruling was announced on the Affordable Care Act on June 25, 2015, in Washington, D.C. (Mark Wilson/Getty Images)
Republicans are getting very worried about repealing Obamacare, and tensions have begun to boil over, as The Post's Mike DeBonis reports.
A new poll shows exactly why they should be concerned.
The Quinnipiac University poll shows that just 16 percent of Americans want Congress to repeal all of Obamacare, while 51 percent say it should repeal only parts and 30 percent say it shouldn't repeal anything. This echoes other polling showing the Affordable Care Act rising in popularity and that full repeal has fallen out of favor — even as the GOP prepares to repeal the law one way or another.
Even more illustrative in the new poll, though, is this: Voters indicated they'll actually punish those who vote for repeal. Quinnipiac asked them whether they would be more likely or less likely to vote for a senator or member of Congress who votes for repeal, and by nearly a 2-to-1 margin, they said less likely.
Fully 43 percent said they would be less likely to vote for someone who repeals Obamacare, while only 24 percent said they would be more likely.
This is in contrast to an NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll from March 2014 that asked basically the same question. Back then, 47 percent said they would be more likely to vote for someone who votes to repeal Obamacare, while just 32 percent said they would be less likely.
So it's basically been flipped. The bloom is off the repeal rose, it would seem.
Of course, this doesn't mean repealing Obamacare is necessarily going to lose a whole bunch of Republicans reelection races come 2018 (if they actually wind up repealing it). In addition to the 24 percent who want their member to support repeal, another 29 percent say it makes no difference. That's a majority combined.
But it's also clear that we've seen a pretty demonstrable flip in voter desires when it comes to repealing Obamacare. What seemed like a good idea in the abstract for many voters no longer seems so; about half of those who once said they would be more likely to vote for a repeal advocate no longer say that. And even Republican voters aren't terribly gung-ho about repeal; just 50 percent say a repeal vote would make them more likely to back a politician.
The evolving nature of the Obamacare repeal debate renders poll questions like this somewhat limited in value. What if Republicans have a replacement plan to sub in for Obamacare when they replace it? What if they keep many of its popular components, like coverage for preexisting conditions and allowing kids to stay on their parents' insurance until they're 26? Perhaps people won't view that as simply repealing the law, but keeping some parts of it. Maybe they'll warm to the GOP's still-elusive alternative.
Either way, though, the R-word has suddenly become a scary one for voters, which makes it a scary one for members of Congress. And that's before they even set about figuring out whether their replacement will actually work — which involves a whole other series of pitfalls.Maricopa County's top cop, Sheriff Joe Arpaio is being accused of letting personal information about his challenger be exposed to potentially tens of thousands of people.
It happened in an Arpaio advertisement for re-election as the Maricopa County sheriff.
Arpaio's challenger, Paul Penzone, is already fighting the sheriff about alleged inaccuracies in that ad.
Penzone said that ad exposed his birth date and Social Security number. The information is seen on court documents shown in the ad.
With that information, identity thieves could steal your identity and use it to open accounts and more.
In an on-camera interview, Penzone told me that "it's unethical and there's no place for a law enforcement officer to expose anyone to be a potential victim of [identity] theft."
Penzone said that he thinks the information was shown in the ad deliberately.
We asked the Arpaio re-election team for an interview about the incident. Instead, they sent an email saying "including that information on the ad was an honest mistake and ended airing a week ago." They said a new ad had blurred any personal information.
Penzone is taking it seriously. He said he is hiring an ID theft protection service and monitoring his credit. And he said that even though his information has been blurred, it's not enough.
"No, it's not OK. The damage is already done. My information has been out there for a week, maybe two, and seen hundreds of times," Penzone said.
If your personal information has been exposed, remember to check your credit report for unknown activity.
Click here to get a free report three times a year, one from each credit reporting agency.
GET HELP WITH YOUR CONSUMER PROBLEMS IN PERSON! On Thursday, October 20th, from 5-8 pm, we're taking Let Joe Know on the Road.
We'll be at Tempe Marketplace, with 25 attorneys and consumer experts covering issues like landlord/tenant, HOAs, family law/child support, car repair/buying,health insurance, employer issues, consumer scams, contracts and more.
Talk with the experts one-on-one.
Just bring your paperwork and come to the District Stage at Tempe Marketplace (at the 202 and McClintock).
And it's all FREE!
Also, "like" the Let Joe Know Facebook page and tell me about any consumer problem there.There's a run-off special election for California's Assembly District 51 coming up on Tuesday, December 5, 2017.
Voters will choose between the top two vote-getters in October’s primary: Wendy Carrillo and Luis Lopez. Before you vote, the ACLU of Southern California wants to make sure you have the information you need to elect a champion for social justice.
Candidate Scorecard: To view the scorecard in full size, click to download it as a PDF.
To verify that you are a resident of state Assembly District 51, go to findyourrep.legislature.ca.gov.
To help constituents of Assembly District 51 elect an advocate for issues such as racial justice, health care, economic opportunity, immigration, criminal justice, policing |
houses in the social housing sector have been built without the requirement of a central heating system. We have created a technology which produces significant energy savings and slashes running costs for the homeowner
David Maxwell, Tyrone Timberframes The partnership claimed that when completed, the housing development would "future proof" new homes against adverse energy costs and address the impact of fuel poverty. Construction is set to begin shortly at Madrid Street and the first completed houses will cost in the region of £100,000. People who want to live in the properties will have to get their hands dirty though. Habitat for Humanity is a Christian organisation which helps families to build their own homes, with the help of volunteers. The entire project will require 84,000 hours of volunteer time. Heat recovery The properties will be made air-tight and will be fitted with triple-glazed windows. They will also contain a "whole house ventilation" system which will recover at least 80% of the heat from stale air in the home and redistribute it into a supply of fresh filtered air. David Maxwell and Peter Farquharson launched the £5m housing investment The executive director of Habitat for Humanity in Northern Ireland, Peter Farquharson, said the ambitious plan would "fundamentally change how people view new homes" and have a "far-reaching impact for the community and the sector". Tyrone Timberframes has produced energy efficient timber frame houses for the the self build market over the past number of years but this is the first time their products have been used in the construction of social housing. The company's managing director, David Maxwell, said the firm was excited about the "enormous potential" of the scheme. "We envisaged some time ago that the house of the future will be environmentally friendly and highly energy efficient," he added. "As a result of investing in research and development we have created a technology which produces significant energy savings and slashes running costs for the homeowner."
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StumbleUpon What are these? E-mail this to a friend Printable versionMy eldest daughter, Emmy, was epileptic in the womb. This means that the abnormal foetal movements during the last two months of my pregnancy were actually epileptic seizures. She had her first seizure outside the womb at three months, followed by many months in hospital, before being discharged into my completely untrained hands.
Emmy, 18, has what the professionals call PMLD – profound and multiple learning difficulties. She is quadriplegic, with cerebral palsy and intractable epilepsy. Basically that means that she is buggered. She cannot walk, talk, toilet herself, feed herself, etc. She can communicate in a fashion, by laughing, crying and smiling, but you cannot be sure that it is controlled. When she was 10 months old (1992) we were told by the wise and the wonderful at Great Ormond Street that she would die very soon. If she didn't die very soon she would die a little bit later. If she didn't die then she would probably be a vegetable for the rest of her "short" life. There was no counselling or support. We saw a geneticist who told us not to have any more children, and that was it. There was the usual gaggle of meetings with social services, who offered us residential care or possibly a bit of respite in the community, but they weren't sure. Our GP was very kind, but she had never had a case like this before.
For the next 18 months I had to deal with the hugely complex array of appointments, whilst having this dreadful thought in the back of my head that my daughter was going to die.
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She didn't. I stopped believing the doctors. I started believing in my daughter.
And yet no one believed in me. There was no joined-up thinking. No early intervention, no support structure. No recognition of what that day at Great Ormond Street had done to us as a couple, or our little family.
When you give birth to a child whose life is going to be bombarded with medical complexity, you begin a journey that is impossible to be prepared for. For the first 10 years we simply existed. Every few months she would have a bout of pneumonia and we would prepare for her possible departure. It was a staggeringly difficult time. When she was four we found Helen House Hospice in Oxford, and thanks to them many of these interruptions were made more manageable. We came to understand what "life-limiting" meant. And how to come to terms with the fact that our gorgeous child was not going to live into adulthood.
We still had little or no support from our local authority. I think we got a respite weekend a month, for a child who could have up to 40 fits a day and was heavily medicated. Plus I had two more babies. We had a social worker, but to be honest I can't remember her. I think I saw her twice a year to review the care package.
We also received little or no support from our families. My parents did a fair amount, when she was well. David's family live in the US, which isn't really convenient for babysitting.
Coming to terms with your child's passing is a journey that is very difficult to explain. It doesn't really happen overnight... well it didn't for us. It wasn't like there was one day when it dawned on us. But repeated events. The pneumonia and recovery, maybe it started to take a little longer. I couldn't say. But even at eight or nine I think I was still fairly idealistic. I knew she could go, but I hadn't really got my head round her handicaps. We had, after all, had several near misses already. But she was still such a baby in my eyes. And the steel cage I had built around myself to protect me from the so-called "professionals" worked very well. Unfortunately what it also did was block out my husband for a lot of the time.
Her brother and sister were also still very small. As they began to gain some independence reality began to strike. She was still here. I was still caring. All the time, three hospital appointments a week, often more.
But at no point was there one person who stuck with us, to catch me as I started to fall. Briefly there was one social worker who went above and beyond; but she got disillusioned and left the profession.
Because of the nature of my daughter's diagnosis we, my husband and I, decided early in her life that we wished her care to be palliative. To most people this would mean end-of-life hospice care. But for us it means whole life care. Which means that her life is about quality now, rather than using medical intervention to keep it going. Therefore we do not wish her to be tube-fed, to be resuscitated, have intravenous medication other than pain relief, or any other intervention.
Her quality of life is about being able to make the very few decisions she can make herself. This includes eating, which is under her control. And breathing. She and I have "agreed" many times over the years that it is her call. She decides if she is going to wake up, not me. So far, she has chosen to wake up.
When we first asked for no intervention I don't think we fully understood what we were saying. It was more a reaction to what everyone was doing and taking into account the fact that they kept telling us she was going to die. So if she was then let her. But now I do understand. She should never have survived. For whatever reason, she did. That does not make it right to keep that life going "just because you can".
What a family like ours goes through is grieving for a very long time with the end never actually happening, and also caring. So two of the most stressful jobs wrapped up in one package. It appears to be taboo to admit how hard it is. As a society we don't seem to want to admit to the hurt of watching our children live half-lives, quarter lives even. Does Emmy have a quality of life? I don't know. Do I love her? Absolutely. Will I miss her? With all my heart. When she dies, will it be a relief? Without question.
Gradually you recognise that extending this life, it isn't your call. You are simply a manager of a body. It is down to her if she wants to keep going. My job is to make sure she is comfortable. That she has a reason to smile when she can. That she is loved by her family, and at the end of the day her family have the energy and capacity to love her.
Society now appears to be about extending life. Ticking medical boxes and covering arses that enable life to be prolonged without necessarily asking the terribly important question. Who are we doing this for? Because it is not for me, or my family. We have been through quite enough. And I cannot imagine it is for my daughter. What she has had to go through does not bear thinking about.
And why is it still taboo to talk about this issue? Why, with an ageing population, and more babies surviving premature birth and birth trauma, is it still considered politically incorrect to tackle the really important and, lets face it, unavoidable issue, of who are we maintaining life for? I can only speak from the experience of my daughter. I do not know what it is like for anyone else. I would never claim to know. But I do feel that it shouldn't be wrong to say what you really feel.
Why is there nowhere in this country that provides long-term palliative care for young people whose lives are not going to be improved by medical intervention? They are just going to be extended. Extension does not mean made better, it just means longer.
The decisions that have to be made are complex. But decisions have to be made, and this is clearly where a huge problem exists, because no one wants to make them. You are held hostage by a social welfare service that is not structured to provide care but to avoid spending money. And the sad reality is that children and young people with complex health needs cost money. Families can't even be paid properly for the care that they provide.
My daughter is now 18. Were she not profoundly disabled she would be at college or something. Were she out of work she could claim housing benefit. But as a profoundly disabled 18-year-old living in an annexe of her parents' house she is not allowed housing benefit because her landlord is her father and God forbid she may be abusing the system. No one will support her accommodation needs. Why? Well, that is the question they must answer, because we certainly didn't realise that in her being at home we would be paying for her accommodation and that of her two carers as well. Maybe I am being petty here, but when my daughter was discharged from Hammersmith hospital in 1992 no one told me that I would still be fighting 17 years later. No one told me that my fight would get as ugly as it has done. No one told me that I would be judged by people who had/have never met her and have refused to meet her. Or who would twist the situation to avoid facing up to the horrific reality. We, her parents, have had to make decisions that no one else will face. Quality versus quantity. Palliative versus intervention. It is just adding insult to injury that my daughter becomes a box-ticking exercise rather than one of decision-making.
I am not alone in my outspokenness on these issues. But maybe right now I am just that little bit angrier that it is discretionary, not legal, whether Worcestershire County Council meets her housing needs. Discretion should not come into it.
If we are going to maintain life then we have to treat those who are managing those lives with respect. That includes the carers, the families and the individuals themselves.
We don't do that. Our local authority has spent more avoiding their responsibilities than meeting them. And that is wrong.
Do you recognise this description of family life? What should be done to make life easier for profoundly disabled children and those who care for them? Tells us about your experiences. Write to: yourstory@independent.co.ukAn Ebola outbreak in Nigeria’s oil producing hub of Port Harcourt could spread wider and faster than in the financial capital, Lagos, the World Health Organization warned on Thursday.
The UN health body said the virus’ arrival in Port Harcourt, 435 kilometres (270 miles) east of Lagos and home to oil and gas majors such as Shell, Total and Chevron, showed “multiple high-risk opportunities for transmission of the virus to others”.
Of the 255 people currently under surveillance for signs of the disease, the WHO said 60 were considered to have had “high-risk or very high-risk exposure”.
Until the Port Harcourt case was announced, Nigeria’s government had indicated that the virus was contained in Lagos.
But the warning will raise fears about the spread of the virus in Africa’s most populous nation, top economy and biggest oil producer plus its health sector’s ability to cope with a wider outbreak.
Ebola, which has hit five countries in West Africa and caused nearly 2,000 deaths this year, first arrived in Nigeria when a Liberian finance ministry official died in Lagos on July 25.
He was taken from the city’s airport to a private hospital by two officials from the West African regional bloc ECOWAS.
One of the officials later died of the disease but the other evaded detection to travel to Port Harcourt, where he fell ill and was treated in secret at a city hotel room by medical doctor Ike Enemuo from August 1-3.
The ECOWAS official recovered but the WHO said Enemuo continued to treat patients at his private clinic and operated on at least two people, despite showing symptoms of Ebola from August 11.
He was taken to hospital on August 13 after his symptoms worsened but before that had “numerous contacts with the community”, including visits from family and friends to celebrate a birth.
In hospital, members of his church visited “to perform a healing ritual said to involve the laying on of hands”, while “the majority” of staff treated him before his death, the WHO said.
“Given these multiple high-risk exposure opportunities, the outbreak of Ebola virus disease in Port Harcourt has the potential to grow larger and spread faster than the one in Lagos,” it added.
There have been three confirmed case of Ebola in Port Harcourt so far, including Enemuo. Seven people have died in Nigeria in total out of 18 confirmed cases.
An elderly woman who was a patient at the hospital where Enemuo was treated died from the disease.
Enemuo’s wife — who is also a doctor — was in an isolation unit in Lagos, while his sister was under quarantine in Port Harcourt, Nigeria’s health minister Onyebuchi Chukwu said on Wednesday.
The WHO said family members, healthcare workers and patients at the hospital where Enemuo was treated were at the most risk with church members who visited him.
Nigeria’s federal government is currently working with its counterparts in Rivers State, the WHO, UN children’s fund UNICEF and Doctors Without Borders (MSF) on emergency measures to contain Ebola.
In addition to a 26-bed isolation facility 25 kilometres (16 miles) east of Port Harcourt, a mobile laboratory is in the city to help diagnose cases.
WHO-trained contact tracing and decontamination specialists are on the ground with burial teams, given that Ebola is transmissible even after deathThe third principle relates to how Modi views India in relation to the world. (Source: PTI)
Now that the Modi raj is officially in place, pundits in the West have been left scratching their collective head in their efforts to provide some insight into the real Narendra Modi and what to expect in the years ahead. He could be a Ronald Reagan or a Richard Nixon or even a Deng Xiaoping. Maybe, going from being a tea seller’s son to a strongman on the cover of The Economist is a journey that parallels that of a grocer’s daughter who became Britain’s Iron Lady, in which case, he is surely a Margaret Thatcher. In the absence of any meaningful analysis and without much of a breadcrumb trail to follow in India, Narendra Modi has become a victim of analytical laziness. The real Modi seems destined to be caricatured by competing canned — and false — analogies.
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Ironically, more so than any leader in modern Indian history, Modi is already showing signs that he is intent on writing his own narrative. In fact, we should prepare for several parallel Modi narratives. He has already defied predictability. Consider this: he choked up on his first day in Parliament’s Central Hall, suggesting that beneath that singularly robust exterior may lurk more than just a singular Modi; he bypassed the “Hindu nationalist’s” hard power playbook and opted for a decidedly soft power photo-op with Pakistani counterpart, Nawaz Sharif.
How, then, do we anticipate what Modi raj might mean for India and the world? A good place to start is to ask: no matter which Modi ends up governing the country, what are the constants? Here, three fundamentals — Modi operandi, if you will — stand out.
The first principle stems from the central objective that will drive his agenda. Modi will be itching to spread the Gujarati rate of growth across India. This was, after all, the central argument for his mandate. It is also the experience he is likely to draw from. The second principle has to do with his beliefs about how to achieve the objective. Given his outsider status, Modi will emphasise less government at the Centre. His lean ministerial ranks are an early signal of this belief being put into practice.
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The third principle relates to how Modi views India in relation to the world. Even though foreign policy was not a significant part of his campaign, it is clear that he derives inspiration from abroad. Here, his admiration for China, Israel and Shinzo Abe’s Japan means he will take a more assertive and “business-like” stance on foreign policy.
Interestingly, these principles as a collective also encompass a bundle of contradictions. Navigating past them successfully may need more than one Modi at the helm.
Consider each in turn. First, on scaling-up the Gujarati rate of growth. It has been argued that the market has already sent a strong signal of its confidence in Modi. The stock market has rebounded and foreign institutional investments, which had hit a low of $29 billion in 2013-14, are projected to double in the excitement following the elections. However, most of these investors are going to be interested in India’s relative strength: the services sector. But meaningful growth in India, given the state of the country’s development and size of its population, cannot happen without growing the manufacturing sector. The services sector produces fewer jobs for each rupee it contributes to the GDP and since the population is young and relatively unskilled, services jobs are predominantly lower value-added in nature. Currently, manufacturing makes up no more than 15 per cent of the economy. Even bringing the national share of manufacturing closer to that of Modi’s Gujarat, to, say, 25 per cent, could create 100 million jobs in India. Enabling such a transformation will be no mean feat. Gujarat has a long history of trading and manufacturing. To up-shift manufacturing nationwide to Gujarati levels will require many structural changes — from infrastructure and reliable energy to tax relief, among others. The Modi administration does not, as yet, have the leverage to bring about fundamental but necessary reforms in labour regulations or land acquisition.
Making structural changes will require more government intervention. But this runs counter to Modi’s second principle — achieving mean governance with lean government. Modi favours a lean government model, with power moved to the edges and, preferably, to the private sector. The idea, in theory, is sound: move decision-making closer to where the decisions have an impact, where information is better, and where actions can be better monitored. Also, by removing hierarchical layers, you reduce red tape and opportunities for corruption.
However, this decentralised model can undermine the first principle. It may diminish the resources that are dedicated to true public goods, which will, in turn, make it harder to create the environment to enable a robust manufacturing sector. A second implication is that with lean government there is potentially less oversight of the middle level and of the point of interface with the grassroots level. Much of the corruption and red tape in India happens in the middle and at the edges. With less oversight, there is less leverage that the Modi government has to effect change in the most opaque parts of the bureaucracy and the public sector.
From his record in office in Gujarat, it would seem that one of Modi’s closest international allies would be Japan’s Shinzo Abe. Japan has been supportive of a greater role for India in Asia and the world. In addition, Japanese investments in India will be invaluable. Japan has already played a crucial role in signature projects such as the Delhi Metro Rail Corporation and the ongoing Delhi-Mumbai Industrial Corridor, and India is one of the top beneficiaries of Japan’s overseas development aid.
Continuing down this path would be just fine, since there are mutual benefits to stronger India-Japan ties. However, this places India on the wrong side of the growing tensions between China and Japan, particularly over the Senkaku-Diaoyu islands. Excessive closeness to Japan will limit Modi’s leverage with the most significant emerging global power, a potential saber-rattler along the northern borders and India’s largest trading partner. This dilemma is even more acute when one takes into account the fact that Modi has expressed open admiration for both Japanese industrial prowess and the Chinese model of lifting a nation out of poverty. Making friends on both sides of an international divide is easier when one is operating out of Ahmedabad; not so when your letters of friendship are addressed from 7, Race Course Road.
In sum, Modi has his work cut out for him. In most of the crucial arenas, he will have to take positions on opposite sides of an issue and devise policies that may be in collision with each other. There is only one solution: we may need more than one Modi in office. Maybe, he can continue to use those campaign holograms even while he is in office. It is just that he will not be transported into the persona of a Reagan or a Thatcher. The inner contradictions of Modi operandi may demand his simultaneous transportation to different avatars of himself.
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The writer is the senior associate dean of international business and finance at The Fletcher School at Tufts University and founding executive director of Fletcher’s Institute for Business in the Global Context
express@expressindia.comDonald Trump is denying the accounts of at least a dozen women who have accused him of sexual misconduct. But the lawsuit-loving businessman is no longer committed to suing them.
“Let’s not waste any more time. These stories were fabricated. They’re total lies,” Trump told ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos in an interview that aired Thursday.
“So you’re gonna go through with the lawsuit?” Stephanopoulos asked.
“We’ll find out. Let’s see what happens with the election. We’re going to find out,” Trump responded to Stephanopoulos. "You shouldn't be wasting time."
At an event in Gettysburg, Pa., last weekend, Trump vowed to sue all of his accusers.
"Every woman lied when they came forward to hurt my campaign," Trump said at the time. "Total fabrication. The events never happened — never. All of these liars will be sued after the election is over."
Trump also repeated the statement in Thursday's interview that he wouldn’t commit to accepting the results of the election if he were to lose.
‘I’ve said it a million times. I’ll make that decision at the right time, I mean don’t worry about it,” Trump said. “But we have a rigged system.”
Copyright 2016 KINGEspañol Ecuador’s government and the European Commission launched trade negotiations in Brussels today with one objective: to reach a trade agreement. The negotiations, which will be held until this Friday, mark the first official dialogue between both parties since the South American country withdrew from talks in 2009. The outcome of this process is already in doubt, however, due to Ecuador’s obsolete approach to protectionism as a supposed way to guarantee economic growth.
EU talks with the Andean region date back to 2007, when the European Union started to negotiate a trade agreement with the Andean Community of Nations (CAN) — a trade bloc between Colombia, Peru, Ecuador, and Bolivia. The European Union is the second most important trading partner for the Andean region, with major imports including manufactured goods, transportation machinery, and equipment, as well as chemical goods. In turn, CAN supplies the European Union with primary goods, fuel, and minerals.
At the end of 2008, however, problems surfaced when CAN members differed on major elements of any trade deal. The European Union then had to continue towards agreements with each country on a bilateral basis. Further complicating the situation, Bolivia rejected outright and Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa halted negotiations in 2009. That left Peru and Colombia as the only group members to sign a trade agreement with the bloc in 2012.
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Then in 2013, after seeing his Andean neighbors enjoy economic returns from the agreements, Correa decided to resume trade negotiations.
Trade Agreements to Promote Protectionism
EU leaders tend towards understanding new markets and the liberalization of goods, services, government acquisitions, and investments as benefits of trade agreements. In this particular case, the European Union guarantees CAN preferential access to its market, through the Generalized Scheme of Preferences (GSP). The GSP offers generous tariff reduction to developing countries on their exports to the European Union, which extends in some cases to being exempt from export tariffs entirely.
Since its creation, the European Union has always pushed forward free trade policies that promote free movement of goods, services, people, and capital. In contrast, Ecuador’s Correa administration has worked hard to adapt its trade agreements to preserve central planning and protectionism.
During an April 2013 economic conference in Germany, Correa asked the business community to invest in Ecuador with the following claim:
“We are a project of the left, but a modern left — conscious of the role of private companies in development, but also conscious of the role the state must have.”
Even though Correa is aiming to close the deal with the European Union during the first months of this year, he stressed that he wouldn’t complete a deal “at any cost.” He reassured the nation that an agreement with Ecuador would in no way be a free trade agreement — pointing to calamities that “lame liberalization” has caused in Latin America.
Ecuador’s minister of knowledge and human talent, Guillaime Long, stated in an interview with newspaper El Telégrafo that an FTA would “undermine all the effort we are making to diversify the economy, change our productive matrix, and distance ourselves from the exclusively primary-exporter model.”
Instead, the minister asserts that a potential EU agreement that Ecuador might sign would “aim to stabilize banana, shrimp, and flower exports — in other words, all current economic activities in Ecuador.” Ecuador also reserves its right to apply internal taxes on EU products, as well as taxes on currency outflows.
This means the trade agreement, if we can even call it that, must suit Correa’s project for the country’s development, based on a production assortment of the government’s choosing.
Outdated Debates Guide Policies for the Future
Correa is not the first one to claim he’s changing the “production matrix,” and to use this to justify the protection of certain sectors. However, economist Alberto Benegas Lynch disagrees, and he believes that protectionism neglects consumers, while benefiting incompetent businesses.
“If a company needs a period before becoming competitive enough, they are the ones who should take on the costs, and not rely on consumers,” he countered regarding the famous infant industry argument.
Ecuador, unfortunately, is far from completely alleviating tariffs: industry lobbies keep impeding free trade and the consumers’ freedom to choose.
Those in the government of Ecuador don’t seem to understand that free trade never stunts development. In his interview, Minister Long explains his approach to international economic relations:
“Let’s recall that powerful nations always seek liberalization, but in times of weakness, they have also adopted highly protective measures to protect their emerging industries.”
A broader familiarity with past economic patterns would save us from making the wrong decisions: the world didn’t develop through protectionism, but in spite of it. Bruce Bartlett explains in this Cato Institute article how the United States suffered from protectionist policies for several decades, and the only positive impact they had was its independence. In fact, British protectionism was the major cause for the American revolution.
The many compelling arguments against protectionism naturally lead us to the alternative — free trade — as a way to achieve development and social cohesion. Many observers believe protectionism led to both world wars; even socialism at the end of 19th century was against protectionism. Consider that in 1896 the Argentinean Socialist Party addressed the “abolition of direct taxes, especially on consumption and customs” in their political platform.
According to The Economist, the debate over protectionism versus free trade had its peak in the 19th century, more than 200 years ago. Even though these protectionist ideas remain enticing, the period of the great depression in Europe and the United States led economists to overwhelmingly and finally admit that protectionist policies at best are viable for limited and short-term instances. Even John Maynard Keynes acknowledged that in the long-term, the best policy for economic growth is free trade.The House passed legislation on Tuesday that seeks to cut off North Korea’s access to financial institutions around the world amid its nuclear provocations.
The measure, passed 415-2, would direct the Treasury Department to ban U.S. financial institutions from engaging in transactions that benefit people or entities associated with the North Korean government.
It would also authorize cutting off financial assistance to foreign governments that knowingly fail to prevent transactions that benefit the North Korean regime.
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“It’s time for those banks to choose between aiding and abetting the North Korean government or standing for peace with America and its allies,” Rep. Andy Barr Garland (Andy) Hale BarrSchumer urging ex-congressional candidate Amy McGrath to run against McConnell House Dems unveil initial GOP targets in 2020 Poll shows 25 percent view McConnell favorably, lowest among leaders in survey MORE (R-Ky.), the author of the bill, said during House floor debate.
Barr said that existing sanctions on North Korea from the U.S. and other allied countries currently don’t go far enough in fully eliminating the isolated nation’s access to financial systems.
“Foreign banks can either do business benefiting North Korea or business with the United States. They cannot do both,” he said.
The legislation is named after Otto Warmbier, a University of Virginia student who was arrested and imprisoned while visiting North Korea in 2016.
Warmbier suffered a neurological injury due to a still-unknown cause and went into a coma. He died shortly after his return to the U.S. in June, following almost a year and a half in captivity.
The bipartisan sanctions legislation that President Trump signed into law in August established sanctions targeting North Korea’s shipping industry and people who use slave labor. That package also included new sanctions on Russia and limited Trump’s ability to lift them without congressional approval.
The House is also expected to consider legislation on Wednesday that would impose new sanctions on Iran’s ballistic missile program. Consideration will come after Trump announced earlier this month that he would not certify that Iran is complying with the international accord to curb the country’s nuclear program.
Congress has 60 days to reimpose sanctions that were lifted as part of the Iran nuclear deal. For now, however, the House is only considering non-nuclear sanctions.Notes Arriving in March 1999 with an album cover that referenced The Exorcist and a title scalped from a well-known Glasgow gang slogan, youd have expected Mogwais Come On Die Young to be an apocalypse-harbouring, pre-millennial assault on the senses. Instead, we were treated to a darkly elegiac - surprisingly restrained - response to the aural fireworks of their Young Team debut from two years earlier.
Recorded and mixed at Dave Fridmann's Tarbox Road Studios in Upstate New York, Come On Die Young begins with a sample of Iggy Pop eulogising the genius of punk rock and ends with a track entitled Punk Rock/Puff Daddy/Antichrist. This thoughtful and irreverent diptych enclosed an hour of music that was as beautiful as it was blistering and as poignant as it was unpredictable: preconceptions of what to expect from a Mogwai album, disassembled at a stroke.
Come On Die Young was - and remains - a hugely accomplished, elegant and important album, setting a benchmark for the fierce intelligence that would characterise Mogwais future body of work. The reissue of Come On Die Young - fifteen years after it originally hit the shelves - recognises the vital role this album played in Chemikal Undergrounds development as the label approaches its 20th anniversary in 2015.Amazon S3 Filesystem for Python
I'd like to announce an new Python module to make working with Amazon S3 files a whole lot easier.
The S3FS class in fs-s3fs wraps an Amazon S3 bucket in a PyFilesystem interface. There was an S3FS class built in to the first version of PyFilesystem, but it had suffered from using an older version of 'boto' (Amazon's S3 interface) and was in need of maintenance. The new version is up-to-date with PyFilesystem2 and boto3, and works with Python2.7 and Python3.X.
If you aren't familiar with PyFilesystem, it is a common interface to anything that resembles a filesystem. Amazon S3 isn't quite a full filesystem, but close enough that it can be made to work in the same way as the files and directories on your local drive (or any other supported filesystem for that matter).
For instance here's how you might uploads files from your local drive to an S3 bucket:
from fs.copy import copy_dir copy_dir('~/projects','s3://backups')
This backs up a 'projects' folder in your home directory to a bucket called 'backups' with a simple file copy. The two strings are FS URLs and could refer to any of the supported filesystems. You could use the same function to download files from S3 straight in to a zip file with copy_dir('s3://backups', 'zip://bucket.zip') -- literally any combination of source and destination will work.
This magic is supplied by a relatively new feature to PyFilesystem, which is the automatic discovery of new protocols. The beauty of this system is that applications using PyFilesystem can now work with S3 without any changes. For example Moya gains the ability to serve index pages for S3 buckets.
If you have S3 configured on your system, here's how you can serve index pages for a bucket:
$ pip install moya fs-s3fs -U $ moya serve s3://mybucket --show-debug
© 2017 Will McGugan Serving an S3 bucket with Moya and PyFilesystem.
I've been guilty of using this blog for announcements rather than discussing techie things, but I kind of feel that the magic here is worthy of a more detailed blog post. Let me know in the comments if there is anything that could use further explanation.
If you have any issues with S3FS (it's a relatively young project), let me know on S3FS GitHub issues.President Donald Trump outlined the specifications for his proposed wall on the Southern border in comments to reporters on Air Force One Thursday night, making the case for a “transparent” wall.
According to a transcript of his comments released by the White House, Trump was asked by a reporter whether he was joking about wanting a solar paneled wall.
Trump said he wasn’t joking, and added, “one of the things with the wall is you need transparency.”
“You have to be able to see through it,” he said, calling for a “steel wall with openings” so one can “see what’s on the other side of the wall.”
The president then explained that making the wall transparent would be necessary to protect people from getting killed by 60-pound sacks of drugs that could be thrown over the wall.
“And I’ll give you an example,” Trump started. “As horrible as it sounds, when they throw the large sacks of drugs over, and if you have people on the other side of the wall, you don’t see them — they hit you on the head with 60 pounds of stuff? It’s over.”
“As cray (sic) as that sounds, you need transparency through that wall,” Trump concluded. “But we have some incredible designs.”
It’s likely that “cray” is a typo, less likely that Trump has recently taken to using a term popularized by a sublime 2011 collaboration between Jay-Z and Kanye West.
[image via screengrab]
—
Follow Aidan McLaughlin (@aidnmclaughlin) on Twitter
Have a tip we should know? tips@mediaite.comDespite the fact that it’s been on the radar for over a year, and has now been on the shelves for several weeks, it’s still difficult to wrap your head around Mario + Rabbids: Kingdom Battle. Placing Mario in a franchise crossover outside of Nintendo is a neat idea, sure, but a franchise crossover with a cast of weird creatures from another franchise, without actually involving the protagonist of that world? Imagine if, to flip it around, they released a Rayman game which featured Goombas in it, but only Goombas.
Admittedly, the Rabbids have struck out on their own, they’re kind of like the Minions of the gaming world, although thankfully not quite so overused (yet), and despite the weirdness, there’s a lot of appeal in the game itself. One of the most enticing aspects of Kingdom Battle is the soundtrack, which was done by Grant Kirkhope. Kirkhope is one of the most lauded, beloved composers in gaming history; his partnership with Rare resulted in some of the most iconic scores of that era, from Banjo-Kazooie to Donkey Kong 64 to Perfect Dark. When the news broke that he’d done the music for a Mario game, the internet caught fire, but the thing is, it was news to him as well.
In a recent interview with NPR, Kirkhope revealed that when he’d originally signed the contract, he thought he’d been put on a standard, Ubisoft only Rabbids title. It was only when he went to meet the team in Paris and actually saw the game for the first time that all became clear. It wasn’t some grand trick though, seemingly |
showed that 75 percent of Americans had a positive view of the speech, and that 56 percent would be more likely to vote for him following the speech.
CNN apparently thinks so little of its own instant polling service that it buries the results in the bottom paragraphs of a tedious article citing the newspapers in Spain.
The mainstream press, typically, failed to integrate in any meaningful way with the actual delegates, which the delegates appreciated.Nick Giambruno, Editor International Man
Casey Research
When I hear about strategies that purport to legally allow US citizens to avoid having to pay income taxes, the first thing that usually comes to mind is that it is some sort of dodgy cockamamie scheme.
This is because the US government is no slouch when it comes to shaking down its citizens for every penny it can get away with. The mind-boggling spending on welfare and warfare policies necessitates this. It would be dangerously foolish in the extreme to think you could slip one past them.
There really was no sure way to legally escape the suffocating grip of US taxes besides death and renouncing your US citizenship … until recently.
Every other country in the world (besides the US and Eritrea) practices a system of residence-based taxation. This means that citizens are not liable for paying income taxes to their home country if they become a legal resident of another country and earn their income there.
Take, for example, an American expat and a Canadian expat who both live and earn income in Singapore. The Canadian would only be responsible for paying the much lower Singapore income taxes, while the American would be responsible for paying Singapore income taxes AND American income taxes (though the IRS does allow for around $100k of foreign earned income to be excluded from income taxes if certain conditions are met).
This is because the US taxes its citizens by virtue of their citizenship (citizenship-based taxation), regardless of where they live and earn their money. Even leaving the US permanently does not absolve you from paying US income taxes. Though Eritrea also practices citizenship-based taxation, it is an impoverished African country and has no ability to effectively enforce it. That’s the key difference. The US government can effectively enforce its citizenship-based taxation policies thanks to its massive economic, political, and military weight and the fact that it does not recognize any limit to its jurisdiction (consider FATCA and Edward Snowden).
American expats are therefore in the uniquely unfavorable position of having arguably the worst tax policies and a government that can effectively enforce them. For many, it is a tight and suffocating tax leash. It is no wonder, then, that a record number of Americans gave up their citizenship last quarter to escape these onerous requirements. (You can find more about citizenship-based taxation versus residence-based taxation in this article.)
There is, however, another way besides death and renunciation to legally escape US income taxes, thanks to the Caribbean island of Puerto Rico.
Puerto Rico is an unincorporated territory (commonwealth) of the US, and this allows it to have a special tax arrangement. Namely, legal residents of Puerto Rico who earn their income in Puerto Rico do not pay US federal income taxes (though they still have to file a federal tax return).
All Puerto Ricans are already US citizens, and since it is a commonwealth of the US, Americans are generally free to stay on the island without restriction and do not even need a passport to travel there.
In order to obtain legal residency status in Puerto Rico and the associated tax benefits, one would have to be physically present on the island for at least 183 days a year.
While US citizens who become legal Puerto Rican residents do not have to pay US federal income taxes on income earned on the island, they still have to pay local Puerto Rican taxes. This only amounts to 4% in certain cases, a pittance in comparison to combined US federal, state, and sometimes city income taxes.
This low 4% rate only applies if the services are performed in Puerto Rico for clients outside of Puerto Rico—otherwise a local income tax of as much as 33% is applicable. For example, an investment manager based in Puerto Rico who performs services for US-based clients would be eligible for the lower income tax rate. Consult a tax expert to discuss individual cases and circumstances.
In addition, Puerto Rico recently slashed its taxes on dividends and interest to ZERO, and capital gains taxes to as low as zero (maximum of 10%). This is part of a recent program over the past year or so in which Puerto Rico has been promoting itself as a tax-friendly jurisdiction open to Americans, in order to compete with its better-known Caribbean neighbors like the Cayman Islands.
Taken together, Puerto Rico is an attractive destination for American companies and individuals who have portable incomes, such as software developers, writers, Internet businesses, and especially those dealing with investments, like hedge funds, in which the majority of the earnings are derived from investment income like dividends, interest, or capital gains.
Spending half the year in Puerto Rico, with its beautiful white sand beaches, Caribbean climate, and close proximity to the US is not a bad proposition.
In short, thanks to a system of citizenship-based taxation, becoming a legal resident of Puerto Rico is the only way for Americans to keep their US citizenship and legally avoid US federal income taxes.
There have been at least 40 Americans who have taken advantage of this special arrangement with Puerto Rico and moved there during the past year. Earlier this year billionaire hedge fund manager John Paulson was said to have been exploring this option. Check out the short clip below from Bloomberg about an American who has moved to Puerto Rico for exactly these reasons.
Survival Solar Battery Charger - Free Today! Of course, the US government could always pressure Puerto Rico to change its policies, but people in the know view that as unlikely. For now, Puerto Rico and its special tax situation definitely deserve consideration for Americans. Puerto Rico may be the best internationalization option for Americans at present, but its conditions may be unworkable for many. Fortunately, many other options exist for internationalizing at least part of your wealth—and your life, should you want to leave your home country and live elsewhere. And honestly, with the global economy in the state it’s in, just about everyone would benefit from internationalizing… it isn’t just for Americans. But how to get started? What are the best ways to move wealth offshore, and what are the best destinations for it? Should you internationalize in the same countries that you move your wealth to? All these questions, and many more, can be answered in one convenient, trustworthy resource. This resource has its roots deeply intertwined with the original “International Man”—legendary contrarian and speculator Doug Casey himself. So you can be confident that every detail has been thoroughly vetted, to not just maintain your wealth and lifestyle… but in many cases, to improve them. Get all the details and get started on your path to internationalization right now.Mike Skeen Press Release
Long Beach, Calif. – After many years away from racing BMW E30s, Mike Skeen decided to get back behind the wheel of a fine piece of German engineering in the new Hawk Performance Audi R8 LMS Ultra.
CRP Racing has acquired an Audi R8 Ultra from Audi Sport customer racing, a car that CRP owner, Nicholas Short, believes is the future for the CRP team. “We are very happy with our choice and believe that with the engineering support and constant development that Audi offers, we will return to the top step of the podium,” said Short.
“It came as such a shock,” exclaimed Skeen. ”I haven’t had a lot of time in an R8, except for a few laps at Road Atlanta and little jaunt around Charlotte Motor Speedway in Dave’s road-going car, but I’ve had the Audi itch for quite some time. I stole my girlfriend’s A4 to get the Quattro experience–I’m glad she hasn’t noticed the cage and racing seats yet–but they tell me this thing is rear wheel drive!”
Short was very positive about the experience so far, saying, “We looked at a lot of options available to us and the reason we went with Audi is, firstly, their car is very fast and has shown to be a winner world wide. Secondly, their customer support program is way beyond that of anything else that is offered by any other manufacturer to a customer in the USA. We have been welcomed by Audi to its customer program with open arms, something we have not experienced before with previous cars we have run. This program came together very quickly and I cannot say enough about the Audi staff that stepped up to make this happen for Long Beach. We must also thank our sponsor, Hawk Performance, for supporting our decision to change manufacturers and look forward to bringing them the results they deserve.”
“As a sponsor, I am very pleased to see that we are moving to Audi and their terrific R8,” said Dave Roberts, President and CEO of Carlisle Companies/Hawk Performance. “I own an R8 street car and if the race car is as capable as the street car, it will make the team a World Challenge front runner in 2014. I am confident that with the R8 being prepared by Nick Short of CRP Racing and with Mike Skeen behind the wheel, the Hawk/CRP Racing/Audi Team will challenge for the championship this year. I can’t wait for the race this weekend at Long Beach.”
“Audi has proven to be a competitive platform in Pirelli World Challenge and really everywhere they’ve competed,” said Skeen. “They have made a concerted effort to support and develop the R8 with the teams that campaign them, and I look forward to being a part of that. CRP Racing has proven it can run up front and I think we can get back to that level with this partnership.”
Follow @mikeskeenracing on Twitter and @thegingerstig on Instagram for pictures, and updates, and all that. You can even watch the race live Sunday night at www.world-challengetv.com at 4 pm Pacific.Story highlights Altered photo of woman's daughter with Clinton appeared with anti-Muslim rhetoric
Anti-Defamation League helped woman get that photo removed
(CNN) When a photo of her 4-year-old daughter posing with Hillary Clinton was turned into a disturbing meme, Jennifer Jones said she was in shock.
"I felt very violated and helpless and that I failed my child that this was out there for the world to see," she told Alisyn Camerota on CNN's "New Day" on Tuesday.
The photo featured Jones' daughter, Sullivan, dressed as Clinton for Halloween and posing with the presidential candidate. The day after the election, the photo was edited to contain anti-Muslim rhetoric and a provocative message about Clinton's stance on the refugee crisis.
Jones said she refused to remain powerless and took action to get the meme removed from the Internet.
After tracing the meme back to a Facebook page, Jones ultimately got the page administrators to take down the photo with help from her friends and family who bombarded the page owners with pleas to remove it.
Read MoreIn this freewheeling episode, Andrew walks through a recent decision in California regarding a key employee who worked on self-driving cars and was recruited by a competitor.
First, however, the guys talk about Episode #73’s discussion with Travis Wester and what lessons hopefully we all can take away from it, including answering a listener question from Lyman Smith on how to go about finding primary sources.
Next, the guys discuss “Mr. Met” and the doctrines of factual and legal impossibility. Can a four-fingered mascot really give anyone the “middle” finger??
In the main segment, Andrew breaks down the recent federal court opinion in California enjoining a former Waymo employee from working on Uber’s self-driving car program, and along the way highlights the differences between non-compete clauses, non-solicitation clauses, and trade secrets.
After that, Andrew tells a fun story in answering a listener question from Michael Grace regarding the craziest legal argument Andrew’s ever heard.
Finally, we end with the answer to Thomas Takes the Bar Exam question #26 about composite sketches inspired by dead witnesses. We’ll release a new #TTTBE question this Friday, and, as always, answer that question the following Tuesday. Don’t forget to play along by following our Twitter feed (@Openargs) and/or our Facebook Page and quoting the Tweet or Facebook Post that announces this episode along with your guess and reason(s), and don’t forget that patrons who support us at any level get early access to the answers (and usually a fun post analyzing the question in more detail).
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Direct DownloadAnd who benefits from Goldman’s payments? Not the investors who were the actual victims of the misconduct; as I noted before they end up paying more money by seeing principal cut on the loans they own. Some homeowners get affordable loans or reduced mortgage debt, even though Goldman Sachs specifically harmed investors. But the biggest beneficiaries in this transaction are the Justice Department, the New York Attorney General’s office, and the other state and federal agencies who receive cash awards, from the civil penalty and the resolution of other claims.
The upshot: Law enforcement settled a case on behalf of investors and then walked away with the proceeds, while investors got nothing. Goldman Sachs and the Justice Department get to divvy up the profits of a fraud scheme perpetrated on the public.
The Goldman Sachs settlement is the last of a series of enforcement actions hammered out by a state/federal task force on financial fraud, co-chaired by New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman. Four other banks—JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Citigroup, and Morgan Stanley—paid similarly dubious fines over the packaging and sale of fraudulent mortgage-backed securities. The origins of this task force represent a failed choice by Schneiderman that let even more damaging misconduct on the part of banks go relatively unpunished.
I recount this full story in my book Chain of Title, which comes out next month. But to summarize, mortgage companies (units of these same big banks) delivered millions of forged and fabricated documents to courthouses and county registrars nationwide, false evidence used to foreclose on homeowners when the companies otherwise had no standing to do so. This was dubbed foreclosure fraud, and with millions of examples of wrongdoing, it represented the best opportunity to prosecute executives who authorized and directed the scheme, as well as to use that legal exposure to reach an equitable resolution that kept people in their homes.
Instead of a vigorous investigation, the Justice Department and 50 state attorneys general moved directly to negotiating a settlement. Schneiderman initially opposed that, but reversed himself. He theorized that the real money wasn’t in foreclosure fraud, but in this criminal packaging and selling of securitizations, this defrauding of investors. So he made a deal to create a task force with enough resources to examine and prosecute that misconduct.
All that evidence of fraudulent foreclosures, the largest consumer fraud in American history, turned into the National Mortgage Settlement, a “$25 billion penalty” against five mortgage companies, where only $5 billion was in the form of cash. Despite promises that 1 million homeowners would see principal reductions from that settlement, only 83,000 ever did. But no matter; Schneiderman promised that the task force would result in outcomes “an order of magnitude” bigger.
That simply didn’t happen. Once you weed out the tax deductions, the payments with other people’s money, and all the rest, the final task force tally is miniscule. A couple years ago I surmised that the $36.65 billion coughed up by Bank of America, Citigroup, and JPMorgan Chase translated into just $11.5 billion in reality. And the Goldman settlement looks like it will cost the bank more like $0, when all is said and done.
So the most wide-ranging financial crisis misconduct was quickly settled without investigation. And despite Schneiderman swearing that the task force would explore all options for accountability, none of its members ever issued a single criminal subpoena. The banks bought their way out of the problem on the cheap, no executive saw a jail cell or had to return a penny of personal compensation, and the law enforcement agencies, not the victims, reaped the majority of the rewards.
At that March 9 Democratic debate, Sanders closed his remarks on Goldman Sachs by vowing, “we are going to bring justice back to a broken criminal justice system.” He has no idea how dire that need is. We don’t have a justice system with the courage to convict everyone, regardless of wealth and power. And that ensures that the wealthy and powerful will keep committing crimes.What Is Life? The Physical Aspect of the Living Cell is a 1944 science book written for the lay reader by physicist Erwin Schrödinger. The book was based on a course of public lectures delivered by Schrödinger in February 1943, under the auspices of the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies where he was Director of Theoretical Physics, at Trinity College, Dublin. The lectures attracted an audience of about 400, who were warned "that the subject-matter was a difficult one and that the lectures could not be termed popular, even though the physicist’s most dreaded weapon, mathematical deduction, would hardly be utilized."[1] Schrödinger's lecture focused on one important question: "how can the events in space and time which take place within the spatial boundary of a living organism be accounted for by physics and chemistry?"[1]
In the book, Schrödinger introduced the idea of an "aperiodic crystal" that contained genetic information in its configuration of covalent chemical bonds. In the 1950s, this idea stimulated enthusiasm for discovering the genetic molecule. Although the existence of some form of hereditary information had been hypothesized since 1869, its role in reproduction and its helical shape were still unknown at the time of Schrödinger's lecture. In retrospect, Schrödinger's aperiodic crystal can be viewed as a well-reasoned theoretical prediction of what biologists should have been looking for during their search for genetic material.[original research?] Both James D. Watson,[2] and Francis Crick, who jointly proposed the double helix structure of DNA based on X-ray diffraction experiments by Rosalind Franklin, credited Schrödinger's book with presenting an early theoretical description of how the storage of genetic information would work, and each independently acknowledged the book as a source of inspiration for their initial researches.[3]
Background [ edit ]
The book is based on lectures delivered under the auspices of the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, at Trinity College, Dublin, in February 1943 and published in 1944. At that time DNA was not yet accepted as the carrier of hereditary information, which only was the case after the Hershey–Chase experiment of 1952. One of the most successful branches of physics at this time was statistical physics, and quantum mechanics, a theory which is also very statistical in its nature. Schrödinger himself is one of the founding fathers of quantum mechanics.
Max Delbrück's thinking about the physical basis of life was an important influence on Schrödinger.[4] However, long before the publication of What is Life?, geneticist and 1946 Nobel-prize winner H. J. Muller had in his 1922 article "Variation due to Change in the Individual Gene"[5] already laid out all the basic properties of the "heredity molecule" (then not yet known to be DNA) that Schrödinger was to re-derive in 1944 "from first principles" in What is Life? (including the "aperiodicity" of the molecule), properties which Muller specified and refined additionally in his 1929 article "The Gene As The Basis of Life"[6] and during the 1930s.[7] Moreover, H. J. Muller himself wrote in a 1960 letter to a journalist regarding What Is Life? that whatever the book got right about the "hereditary molecule" had already been published before 1944 and that Schrödinger's were only the wrong speculations; Muller also named two famous geneticists (including Delbrück) who knew every relevant pre-1944 publication and had been in contact with Schrödinger before 1944. But DNA as the molecule of heredity became topical only after Oswald Avery's most important bacterial-transformation experiments in 1944. Before these experiments, proteins were considered the most likely candidates.
Content [ edit ]
In chapter I, Schrödinger explains that most physical laws on a large scale are due to chaos on a small scale. He calls this principle "order-from-disorder." As an example he mentions diffusion, which can be modeled as a highly ordered process, but which is caused by random movement of atoms or molecules. If the number of atoms is reduced, the behaviour of a system becomes more and more random. He states that life greatly depends on order and that a naïve physicist may assume that the master code of a living organism has to consist of a large number of atoms.
In chapter II and III, he summarizes what was known at this time about the hereditary mechanism. Most importantly, he elaborates the important role mutations play in evolution. He concludes that the carrier of hereditary information has to be both small in size and permanent in time, contradicting the naïve physicist's expectation. This contradiction cannot be resolved by classical physics.
In chapter IV, Schrödinger presents molecules, which are indeed stable even if they consist of only a few atoms, as the solution. Even though molecules were known before, their stability could not be explained by classical physics, but is due to the discrete nature of quantum mechanics. Furthermore, mutations are directly linked to quantum leaps.
He continues to explain, in chapter V, that true solids, which are also permanent, are crystals. The stability of molecules and crystals is due to the same principles and a molecule might be called "the germ of a solid." On the other hand, an amorphous solid, without crystalline structure, should be regarded as a liquid with a very high viscosity. Schrödinger believes the heredity material to be a molecule, which unlike a crystal does not repeat itself. He calls this an aperiodic crystal. Its aperiodic nature allows it to encode an almost infinite number of possibilities with a small number of atoms. He finally compares this picture with the known facts and finds it in accordance with them.
In chapter VI Schrödinger states:
...living matter, while not eluding the "laws of physics" as established up to date, is likely to involve "other laws of physics" hitherto unknown, which however, once they have been revealed, will form just as integral a part of science as the former.
He knows that this statement is open to misconception and tries to clarify it. The main principle involved with "order-from-disorder" is the second law of thermodynamics, according to which entropy only increases in a closed system (such as the universe). Schrödinger explains that living matter evades the decay to thermodynamical equilibrium by homeostatically maintaining negative entropy (today this quantity is called information[8]) in an open system.
In chapter VII, he maintains that "order-from-order" is not absolutely new to physics; in fact, it is even simpler and more plausible. But nature follows "order-from-disorder", with some exceptions as the movement of the celestial bodies and the behaviour of mechanical devices such as clocks. But even those are influenced by thermal and frictional forces. The degree to which a system functions mechanically or statistically depends on the temperature. If heated, a clock ceases to function, because it melts. Conversely, if the temperature approaches absolute zero, any system behaves more and more mechanically. Some systems approach this mechanical behaviour rather fast with room temperature already being practically equivalent to absolute zero.
Schrödinger concludes this chapter and the book with philosophical speculations on determinism, free will, and the mystery of human consciousness. He attempts to "see whether we cannot draw the correct non-contradictory conclusion from the following two premises: (1) My body functions as a pure mechanism according to Laws of Nature; and (2) Yet I know, by incontrovertible direct experience, that I am directing its motions, of which I foresee the effects, that may be fateful and all-important, in which case I feel and take full responsibility for them. The only possible inference from these two facts is, I think, that I – I in the widest meaning of the word, that is to say, every conscious mind that has ever said or felt 'I' – am the person, if any, who controls the'motion of the atoms' according to the Laws of Nature". Schrödinger then states that this insight is not new and that Upanishads considered this insight of "ATHMAN = BRAHMAN" to "represent quintessence of deepest insights into the happenings of the world. Schrödinger rejects the idea that the source of consciousness should perish with the body because he finds the idea "distasteful". He also rejects the idea that there are multiple immortal souls that can exist without the body because he believes that consciousness is nevertheless highly dependent on the body. Schrödinger writes that, to reconcile the two premises,
The only possible alternative is simply to keep to the immediate experience that consciousness is a singular of which the plural is unknown; that there is only one thing and that what seems to be a plurality is merely a series of different aspects of this one thing…
Any intuitions that consciousness is plural, he says, are illusions. Schrödinger is sympathetic to the Hindu concept of Brahman, by which each individual's consciousness is only a manifestation of a unitary consciousness pervading the universe — which corresponds to the Hindu concept of God. Schrödinger concludes that "...'I' am the person, if any, who controls the'motion of the atoms' according to the Laws of Nature." However, he also qualifies the conclusion as "necessarily subjective" in its "philosophical implications". In the final paragraph, he points out that what is meant by "I" is not the collection of experienced events but "namely the canvas upon which they are collected." If a hypnotist succeeds in blotting out all earlier reminiscences, he writes, there would be no loss of personal existence — "Nor will there ever be."[9]
In a world governed by the second law of thermodynamics, all isolated systems are expected to approach a state of maximum disorder. Since life approaches and maintains a highly ordered state, some argue that this seems to violate the aforementioned second law, implying that there is a paradox. However, since the biosphere is not an isolated system, there is no paradox. The increase of order inside an organism is more than paid for by an increase in disorder outside this organism by the loss of heat into the environment. By this mechanism, the second law is obeyed, and life maintains a highly ordered state, which it sustains by causing a net increase in disorder in the Universe. In order to increase the complexity on Earth—as life does—free energy is needed and in this case is provided by the Sun.[10][11]
Editions [ edit ]
Erwin Schrödinger (1944), "What Is Life? : The Physical Aspect of the Living Cell". Based on lectures delivered under the auspices of the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies at Trinity College, Dublin, in February 1943.
See also [ edit ]Matt Johnson, who also goes by Mattafact, has had it with the Los Angeles Clippers.
While the team has pulled itself out of the generations-deep hole it was once in, the Clips have quickly secured a reputation for itself as squad of really, really talented players who just can’t seem to close the deal. Season after season.
But the start of this latest season has been especially rough for the team and its fans, who are now experiencing a losing season at 6-7.
Johnson, a 30-year-old Atlanta-based TV reporter who was born and raised in Ventura County, Calif., has released a hip-hop track featuring a beat made by producer Smuff tha Quiz to, uh, express his frustrations:
“Being a Clipper fan is a perpetual cautionary tale,” Johnson raps, before bringing it all home with the memorable chorus: “You think you got it bad? / Your team is making you sad? / I’m a Clipper fan, sadness is all I’ve ever had. / I’m a sucker for dunks, and a glutton for punishment / Clipper basketball, can’t get enough of it.
Johnson, whose been a Clips fan since the 2001 season, shares with Upvoted that the latest Warriors loss (117-124) was the tipping point for him.
“A 23-point lead, really? The fact they couldn’t step on their throat when they hate that stupid team and that stupid team hates them was just so deflating,” Johnson says. “It just made me really question whether they’d ever be able to overcome all the devastating losses we’ve seen them endure.”
Below, Johnson answers a few questions about his music and his thoughts on the future of the Clippers.
How long did it take you to create the song and video?
I started writing some of the song after the first Warriors loss, and then finished it right after the second loss. I finished writing it and recorded it that night [of the second game] in my closet with my USB mic and MacBook.
What’s the response been like so far from Clipper fans?
I had a feeling that it would be popular among Clipper fans but I didn’t think it would be this popular. And I wrote this BEFORE they got blown out by two teams… so I think we’re all at that tipping point where we’re wondering what’s up with Doc’s rotations and why certain players keep going about their same predictable routines that have not gotten the team anywhere.
It’s not allllll sadness, right? What’s your fave Clipper memory from the last few years?
My favorite moment has to be Chris Paul hitting the one legged series clinching shot. The future was so bright. It was so unexpected. I was at work on my lunch break at a Firehouse Subs in San Diego just losing my mind and jumping up and down. Unforgettable.
It’s not allllll sadness, but then it kind of is because any happy moment has been followed up with some kind of just inexplicable soul-crushing moment. The year the Clippers were good with Dunleavy in the playoffs… the Daniel Ewing moment.
Last year, they knocked off the Spurs in the best playoff series I’ve ever seen. They follow it up with the worst playoff loss in NBA history. I mean, at least when they were awful there was no chance I’d crawl up in a ball and cry myself to sleep after a loss. Now that’s in play every night.
Who’s your favorite Clippers player?
Blake is my favorite player and I’m a Blake apologist for sure, but there’s got to be a better way to get him to play better in fourth quarters. It’s been disappointing to watch the team unravel late in games partly because the players are not in the best positions to succeed.
Your 2011 song “The Blake Show” is considerably more upbeat and optimistic than this one—what’s changed for the Clippers between then and now, you think?
“Blake Show” was when possibilities were endless and we all thought CP3 was the kind of player to change the Clippers culture. What’s changed is that the culture is still the same, but instead of being the laughing stock of the league for never sniffing the playoffs, they’re a laughing stock for how they have choked away play-off games.
Do you make music not about basketball?
Before this, my other most popular songs have been about journalism! I’ve always been good at just taking a concept and expanding it into a song. Whether it’s journalism, being a father-to-be, or the Clippers.
What are your thoughts on Doc Rivers?
I like Doc but being a motivator is supposed to be his strength and he’s failing at that right now. When a team has the biggest playoff loss of all time, you have to put the blame on the shoulders of the coach.
All these other collapses, that’s the coach not keeping his team motivated. He’s also a pretty bad team builder as a GM, yet again proving coaches should never be GMs. But if he and Josh Smith turn out to have yelled at each other because Doc wanted him to stop chucking up 3s then maybe he IS trying to make basic adjustments. But that’s giving Doc a lot of credit.
What do you think the Clippers need to do to turn it around?
The Clippers need a serious Come to Jesus moment. They’re up 23 on the Warriors and [are] still complaining about calls in the typical fashion that got them hated by every ref and opposing player in the league.
Doc’s rotations have obviously been suspect. For all of Josh Smith’s flaws, he could match up well against that daunting Warriors small ball lineup. Now is the time to be experimenting with those kind of lineups.Going into my first race weekend in the Formula 2 series in Bahrain, the team and I were, of course, hoping that we could win. But the main goal was to score as many points as possible, and to not lose too much ground to the lead.
I knew the Prema Racing car was good – last year's result proved that – but three days of pre-season testing in Sakhir suggested it would be not be an easy weekend.
We looked quite competitive over one lap, but we were struggling a little bit on race runs. The degradation was really high – tyres are, of course, a key factor in the championship, and Bahrain is the most difficult track on the schedule in that regard.
I had to adapt my driving style. In GP3, where I raced last year, you could push a little more on the tyres and they had less of a'memory'. Here, any errors you make at the beginning of a stint you end up paying for.
From the test to the race weekend, we worked hard on this aspect. Still, it was definitely a nice surprise how it all turned out.
Pole by seven tenths
After the first run in qualifying, we were already first, but I wasn't really happy about my lap. So for the second run, we decided to go out in the middle of the session, run free of traffic, with no trouble.
I knew the second 'push' lap was good before I crossed the line, but when I saw the laptime, I was surprised by how fast it was. But the car was absolutely amazing. My engineer honestly gave me a perfect car – I don't think I've ever driven a car as perfect as that, it was just unbelievable on one lap.
The rest of the session was going to be a bit stressful, but we weren't that worried. You never know in racing, but we felt the lap was really good. And then the others were compromised a bit because of the yellow flags from the crash between Gustav Malja and Nabil Jeffri.
So I lined up in first for my debut F2 race the day after, and I got quite a good start – which I wasn't confident about in the beginning. Starts with the GP2/11 are quite hard; you need to manage the throttle a lot. I wasn't really experienced with that – in GP3, you just go flat out.
After two laps, Norman Nato took the lead, but I was able to stay behind without using the tyres too much. At one point, I felt confident in the tyres and I overtook him, and I started to pull a small gap.
But at the end of the first stint we were in a difficult position. There were two problems – Artem Markelov was coming to us, and Norman was trying to undercut.
We had to react – in the moment, I just decided to pit because I felt the tyres were going, but that was a bad call, which I will learn from. Even pitting on the lap we wanted to, we were overtaken by Norman anyway.
In the end, we finished third, and we were quite happy with it.
The charge
After the first race, we looked at possible strategies for the sprint and we realised a one-stop was possible. On paper, it actually looked the better option. But for the first five laps I was still going to drive like I was going to the end on one set.
Myself and my engineer agreed that, if we got a good start, a one-stop would be worth it – because I could get into clean air and pull a gap. If I didn't have a good getaway, it wouldn't make much sense to push hard in traffic.
But I went sixth to third at the start and, after an early safety car, I could pass Alex Albon and Luca Ghiotto. And we decided to push.
When I came out of the pits after stopping, the gap to the lead was huge, something like 26 seconds. There were nine laps to go and I had to pass 13 cars. I honestly thought then that we'd made the wrong choice.
But then I decided that I need to concentrate, do the best I can and not worry about what position we're in.
It was really fun but I was a little bit fortunate - I think the drivers knew I was coming with a different strategy so they didn't really try to fight. Still, it was definitely a challenge to navigate traffic while maintaining good laptimes – it looks quite easy on TV, but it's not that easy.
I didn't really believe I would be winning the race until three laps to the end. And on the last lap, after passing Oliver Rowland for second, I was actually confusing race leader Ghiotto with his teammate Markelov – the only other driver to go for a one-stop in this race.
I thought he was ahead, on new tyres, and I was preparing to finish second. But I caught up really fast and I got past in Turn 4 – which is when I realised that it was actually Ghiotto and that his tyres were completely done.
Optimistic for Barcelona
We really didn't expect to have this a good weekend in Bahrain – leading the championship, two podiums, one win, it was a really nice surprise.
Next up is Barcelona, the other track where we had a pre-season test, which I was very happy with.
We were quite okay on the qualifying side, and we looked quite strong this weekend in Bahrain, so I don't see any reason why we should drop off.
And the race runs were a lot more positive in Barcelona, with the degradation looking a lot easier to manage.
We never know what to expect regarding the conditions, and it'll surely be a lot different to testing. But all that said, I do feel more confident going into Barcelona than I had been heading into Bahrain.It seems more and more Americans are starting to disapprove of the way Republicans are legislating. But that's just because they don't know what Republican lawmakers know: The end is near, people |
outside his rally in San Jose, CA. Mexican flags were waved, Trump hats were burned, women were pelted with eggs and water balloons, men were sucker-punched, and white Trump supporters were chased and attacked like beasts of prey.
In every case, assailants or their enablers were seen waving Mexican flags, a symbol of the fierce pride that was sorely insulted by Trump’s candidacy.
Is this the behavior of people who are truly proud, or is it a collective tantrum by people who are secretly ashamed?
“If you’re so proud of Mexico, why are you here?”
San Jose’s police chief Eddie Garcia told his men not to intervene in the violence. He implausibly claimed that 250 cops were unable to handle an estimated 400 rioters. He is also, as luck would have it, a proud supporter of La Raza. In other words, a Latino cop who supports a pro-Mexican racial-identity group told his men to stand and watch while Mexicans beat up white people. San Jose’s Latino mayor blamed the violence on Trump rather than the actual perpetrators of the violence.
Outside a Trump rally in Anaheim late in May, a protestor said:
I”m a proud ass Latino, homie. I”m a proud Latino.
The question begs itself, and I’m hardly the first to ask it: If you’re so proud of Mexico and America maltreats you so horribly, why are you here?
Are you proud of Mexico City’s vibrant dungheaps? Are you proud of the fact that your country is such an anarchic, corrupt war zone that millions of its citizens are fleeing it for the USA? Are you proud of a homicide rate five times that of the US? How about a per-capita income that is only one-third that of the US? Are you proud of the fact that Hispanic Americans’ mean IQ is 11 points lower than that of white Americans? Are you proud of the fact that at base, the only thing Mexicans ever invented is the humble yet universally adored nacho?
Rather than dare to honestly answer any of these questions”possibly because any honest answer would induce humiliation rather than pride”they insist that America was “stolen” from them.
Land that is won in a war is not “stolen.” The fact is that in what is now known as the entire American Southwest, a grand total of only 10-15,000 mestizos occupied the land when Anglos took it by force. But that was the 1840s”these days, there are single weeks where more than 10,000 Mexicans illegally invade the United States. And the nation of Mexico had only claimed that “stolen” land in the 1820s. By the time the Mexican-American War rolled around, its inhabitants totaled an estimated one percent of Mexico’s population. And, perhaps most humiliatingly, the scant technology they enjoyed had been brought to them by their Spanish conquerors. The country they’re allegedly “reclaiming” is so much more advanced than it was when a tiny smattering of their distant ancestors occupied it, it’s not even funny. All right, it’s a little funny. OK, it’s hilarious.
The lament that America’s immigration laws are unjustly exclusionary might make a sliver of sense if anyone could point to a nation on earth that enforces its immigration laws more loosely than the USA. Certainly America’s immigration policies are a lot more welcoming than Mexico’s.
Pay to Play - Put your money where your mouth is and subscribe for an ad-free experience and to join the world famous Takimag comment board.LONDON (Reuters) - The tobacco industry makes $7,000 for each of the more than 6 million people who die each year from smoking-related illness, the health campaign group World Lung Foundation (WLF) said on Thursday.
An ash tray with cigarette butts is pictured in Hinzenbach, in the Austrian province of Upper Austria, February 5, 2012. REUTERS/Lisi Niesner
Last year, more than 5.8 trillion cigarettes were smoked, similar to 2013, as rising tobacco use in China counters declines in other countries, according to a report on Thursday led by WLF.
In their global Tobacco Atlas, the WLF and the American Cancer Society said that in 2013, the last year for which detailed figures were available, tobacco industry profits were more than $44 billion. Meanwhile, 6.3 million people died from smoking-related illness, equivalent to a profit of $7,000 for each death caused by tobacco.
The report said that, if current trends continue, a billion people will die from smoking and exposure to tobacco this century.
Besides causing lung cancer, which is often fatal, tobacco use is also a major risk factor for a range of other illnesses. It is the world’s leading preventable cause of premature death from chronic conditions such as heart disease, strokes and high blood pressure.
In China, the world’s most populous country, almost 2,250 cigarettes were smoked per person over age 15 last year, making it one of only around a dozen countries topping 2,000.
The average Chinese smoker consumes 50 percent more than in 1980, a symptom of a broader phenomenon, as tobacco use declines or is stable in many wealthy, developed nations but growing in poorer regions such as Africa and parts of Asia.
“The significant reductions in smoking rates in the United Kingdom, Australia, Brazil, and other countries that implement increasingly tight tobacco control laws have been offset by the growing consumption in a single nation: China,” the report said.
Many countries around the world have introduced some anti-tobacco laws, including curbing advertising and banning smoking in enclosed spaces such as bars, restaurants and offices.
But the Tobacco Atlas found that only 10 percent of the world’s population are covered by comprehensive bans on tobacco advertising, promotion and sponsorship, and only 16 percent by comprehensive smoke-free legislation.
Low- and middle-income countries now account for more than 80 percent of tobacco users and tobacco-related deaths.
The Tobacco Atlas also found that smoking among women is also on the rise, driving up rates of female lung cancer.
In an indication of future trends, there are 24 countries where girls smoke more than boys, compared to just two countries where more women smoke than men, it said.
“Whether it’s the link between tobacco and increasing rates of lung cancer among women or the ever-increasing number of health conditions and deaths related to tobacco use, the health and economic case for reducing tobacco use has never been clearer,” said John Seffrin, chief executive of the ACS.The Archbishop of Canterbury has apologised for the "hurt and pain" the Church of England has caused for the LGBT community.
The Rev Justin Welby said it was a "constant source of deep sadness" people were persecuted because of their sexuality.
"I don't have the right to speak for everyone. I wanted to take this opportunity...to say how sorry I am for the hurt and pain, in the past and present, the church has caused," he said.
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Mr Welby made the comments after a four-day meeting of 39 Anglican primates in Canterbury, in which Anglican leaders agreed to restrict a liberal US-branch of the church, including banning it from decision-making for three years.
Mr Welby insisted the US Episcopal Church had not been sanctioned but had faced "consequences", and the decision was supported by the "overwhelming majority" of Anglican priests.
The leaders upheld a "traditional doctrine" of marriage as being between a man and a woman.
The decision has been heavily criticised and crowds of people gathered in protest outside Canterbury Cathedral.
Labour MP and former Anglican minister Chris Bryant, who is gay, said he had "fully given up on Anglican church" after the decision.
He tweeted: "I've finally given up on Anglican church today after its love-empty decision on sexuality. One day it will seem wrong as supporting slavery."
The Archbishop of Uganda walked out of the summit after failing to get a resolution passed for the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Church of Canada to withdraw from Communion activities.
Stanley Ntagali said the churches should be excluded "until they repented of their decisions that have torn the fabric of the Anglican Communion at its deepest level".
Mr Welby has been asked to lead a task group "with the intention of restoration of relationship, the rebuilding of mutual trust, healing the legacy of hurt, recognising the extent of our commonality and exploring our deep differences".
Additional reporting by Press Association
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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 nowWASHINGTON — The Sinai Peninsula isn't a U.S. combat zone, but it soon could be.
A pair of senators are pushing the Defense Department to reclassify deployments to the Egyptian region as combat zone assignments, complete with the corresponding tax breaks that come from that.
"The men and women who serve overseas put their country before their own lives, often in dangerous situations, and troops stationed in the Sinai are no different," Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, said in a statement.
"These men and women serving in this region have been facing life-threatening conditions for years and deserve the same benefits as military deployed in designated combat zones."
He and Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., introduced legislation this week to force the change. The Defense Department in the past has resisted the move, saying the region does not meet the criteria for a combat zone designation.
About 725 U.S. troops are currently stationed in the region as part of a 35-year-old peacekeeping mission.
In the last seven months, four U.S. service members have been wounded during patrols there. U.S. and international forces on the peninsula have been targeted by both regional separatist fighters and Islamic State group militants.
Two years ago, Defense Department officials designated the Sinai Peninsula as a qualified hazardous duty area, making troops stationed there eligible for imminent danger pay and hazardous duty living stipends.
But the designation of the area as a combat zone would also allow troops to collect their pay during those deployments tax-free, the same as how paychecks for troops in Iraq and Afghanistan are handled.
"As terrorist groups like ISIS spread throughout the region, the dangers these servicemembers face has increased," Klobuchar said. "Current rules regarding benefits for those serving in the Sinai do not reflect these new threats."
No timetable has been set for when the legislation might be considered by a Senate committee.
× Fear of missing out? Fear no longer. Be the first to hear about breaking news, as it happens. You'll get alerts delivered directly to your inbox each time something noteworthy happens in the Military community. Thanks for signing up. By giving us your email, you are opting in to our Newsletter: Sign up for the Early Bird BriefMicrosoft is trying to cram Kinect-like features into its future flagship Windows Phone handsets. At least one device, codenamed McLaren, will debut on a range of US carriers later this year with features that let you hover your finger over the screen to interact with games and applications without ever touching the display. Sources familiar with Microsoft's plans tell The Verge that the technology, known internally as 3D Touch or Real Motion, has been developed by Nokia over a number of years. Evleaks first unveiled the existence of Nokia McLaren, and we understand the device will largely be seen as a Lumia 1020 successor with a similar hump in the rear casing for a powerful camera.
The unique aspect of McLaren will be the number of sensors on the device to make way for the 3D Touch system. While Microsoft is reaching out to top developers to support the new system with apps and games, 3D Touch will be unique to its own devices and will not be available initially on handsets from Samsung, HTC, among others. Features like answering calls by holding the phone to your ear will be supported, along with the ability to set the phone down on a table to enable speakerphone, or to hang up a call by placing it in your pocket. Phones that support 3D Touch will use a number of hardware sensors to allow devices to mute when they are covered by a hand or held to a chest, or to dismiss alerts by waving a hand in front of the screen.
Eliminating buttons is a key aspect
Microsoft is also planning to detect how a phone is held by grip, allowing a 3D Touch-enabled phone to block an orientation switch when you’re lying down in bed. The sides of the phone will also be used to interact with the operating system, and a camera feature will let you zoom simply by dragging your fingers along the side of the device. Central to Microsoft’s thinking are ways to simplify devices and remove buttons like the power button so phone owners can simply grip their device to power it on.
While Microsoft had originally planned to debut its 3D Touch features with Windows Phone 8.1 and a Nokia "Goldfinger" handset, we understand that the work has been pushed to an additional update planned for later this year. Goldfinger still exists, but it’s simply being used as an engineering device to prepare developers for the upcoming changes and the McLaren launch.
MixView brings a new Tile layout to Windows Phone
Another key part to the 3D Touch experience is several UX changes to Windows Phone. A new MixView, originally detailed by WP Central, allows 3D Touch users to hover over a Live Tile and tap down in the air, without touching the display, to reveal a number of smaller Tiles that are relevant to that particular app. On a Facebook Tile you may see a messaging Tile and phone Tile appear that will allow Windows Phone users to quickly call pinned contacts. The Tiles displayed on screen look like they have simply exploded from the original tile, and the concept comes from the Zune MixView feature that placed a music artist at the center of the screen surrounded by related content.
As Amazon is reportedly preparing similar 3D features for its upcoming smartphone, the real question for Microsoft will be whether its own system is unique enough to act as a differentiator in the high-end smartphone market. Samsung has its own Air Gestures to change music tracks, accept phone calls, and scroll through webpages, but they’re often gimmicky and underused. If Microsoft’s 3D Touch system is easy to use then it could be as natural as the screen double tapping to power on a handset that currently exists on most Nokia Windows Phones today. If it’s not, then it’s a big gamble on bringing Kinect-like interactions to the device that lives in your pocket.If Disney gets it right, the smartband technology could ripple through the leisure industry to other parks or even zoos, museums and Las Vegas resorts. And there is an added element of pressure for Mr. Staggs. Disney is set to name a new chief executive in 2016, and he is one of several leading candidates. Successfully completing the project would be an important feather in his cap.
Image A guest uses a MagicBand at Disney’s Animal Kingdom Lodge in Orlando. Credit Gregg Matthews for The New York Times
Mr. Staggs said that about three and a half million people had participated in tests of the new system, adding that the early feedback had been “fantastic.” Among the findings: Because guests no longer have to present paper tickets at turnstiles, the system has reduced the park entry time by 25 percent.
The technology allowed Disney to accommodate 3,000 additional daily guests at its Magic Kingdom park over Christmas. Mr. Staggs said use of the new FastPass reservation system has increased 40 percent over the old one, freeing people from standing in line and increasing the number of experiences they have there.
Still, investors have been keenly waiting for financial evidence that the $1 billion investment is paying off. Disney’s parks business has lately been a good one — operating profit climbed 17 percent last year, to $2.33 billion — but the company’s spending on the project has dented margins at its flagship property here. Underscoring its importance to the company, analysts have peppered Disney executives with questions about the system in recent conference calls.
“We have a positive view of the project, and technology this complex always takes longer than you expect to roll out,” said Michael Nathanson, an analyst at the research firm MoffettNathanson. “But we’re still trying to figure out how to measure the return on what is a rather large investment. That’s where the frustration is.”
Robert A. Iger, Disney’s chief executive, has encouraged patience. “This is still a very new product, so we are not even close to being able to quantify it,” he told analysts in February.
The dearth of information has allowed rumors to flourish. Coursing through the many blogs that track Disney’s parks are reports that the new system is overbudget. Some armchair analysts have speculated that Jack Dorsey, a Twitter co-founder and chief executive of Square, the mobile payments company, recently joined the Disney board to offer MagicBand help.The White House hasn’t specified how it would seek to roll back Obama-era financial regulations, but has projected in a budget proposal released Tuesday it would save the United States $35 billion over 10 years through its efforts.
President Trump’s first formal budget plan reflects his promise to dismantle the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act with a pledge to foster “economic growth and vibrant financial markets” by scrapping its “regulatory excesses.”
The budget doesn’t specify which specific parts of the law would be rolled back to generate savings and boost the economy.
Some of the promised $35 billion could come through defunding the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), an agency established by Dodd-Frank to crack down on predatory lending and fraud.
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Republicans have long targeted the CFPB, and the budget calls for the agency to be placed under the congressional appropriations process by 2019. The Federal Reserve, which currently funds the agency, would reduce the CFPB budget for fiscal 2018.
“CFPB’s interpretation of the Dodd-Frank Act has resulted in an unaccountable bureaucracy controlled by an independent director with unchecked regulatory authority and punitive power,” the White House wrote.
“Restructuring is required to ensure appropriate congressional oversight and to refocus CFPB’s efforts on enforcing the law rather than impeding free commerce.”
Eliminating the CFPB altogether would only save roughly $6 billion over 10 years, and funding for the Securities and Exchange Commission and Commodity Futures Trading Commission budgets remained the same. The Internal Revenue Service got a $239-million cut, so the White House is factoring other yet to be determined actions to spur economic growth.
Like many targets set by the administration, the White House’s expected $35 billion in savings is ambitious, and beyond what many economists deem probable. The Congressional Budget Office projected that the Financial CHOICE Act, the most sweeping potential changes to Dodd-Frank, would only save the U.S. $24 billion.
The bill is widely considered too conservative to pass a narrowly divided Senate, meaning anything the Trump administration could get done with Congress could need a narrower scope, limiting the size of the impact.“We’ve said all along that we’d take a disciplined approach, where we could take a path to profitability,” Roberts said in a conference call. “It was responsible.”
Still, Comcast is paying considerably more than Fox to keep the Olympics in the NBC family than General Electric did for the Vancouver and the London Games. Neal Pilson, a former CBS Sports president, said, “I think Brian felt some pressure to validate the merger, and I think this also establishes that, as everyone felt, the Olympics were more important to NBC than they were to any other network.”
ESPN and Fox bid as if they did not feel they had to win the auction. In a statement, ESPN said: “We made a disciplined bid that would have brought tremendous value to the Olympics and would have been profitable for our company. To go any further would not have made good business sense for us.”
Craig Moffett, an analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein, said Comcast’s winning bid was out of character for a company that has been “relatively cautious.” But, he added: “I think it’s fair to say that at this price, the Olympics are going to be a loss leader for Comcast and they will have a negative effect on short-term earnings. Still, strategically, it’s possible they can pay for themselves.”
By combining NBC’s broadcast and cable networks with Comcast’s sports assets, which include the Versus sports channel, the Golf Channel and 11 regional sports networks, Roberts said he believed his Olympic investment could turn a profit. Mark Lazarus, the chairman of the NBC Sports Group, said that there were more ways to make an Olympic profit “than the old NBC was capable of doing.”
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NBC’s Olympic cable coverage has in the past been on the USA, MSNBC, CNBC, Bravo and Oxygen channels. The old NBC was personalized by Dick Ebersol, who ran the network’s sports division for nearly 22 years until resigning last month in a salary dispute that was the climax of a power struggle with Comcast executives. Ebersol had been critical to every Olympic bid since the acquisition of the rights to the 1996 Atlanta Summer Games; he also engineered two pre-emptive bids within a few months in 1995 that brought NBC the rights to every Olympics from 2000 to 2008, at a cost of $3.5 billion to General Electric.
The timing of Ebersol’s departure puzzled Barry Frank, an executive vice president of I.M.G. and a former Olympic negotiator. “Why would you let Dick Ebersol go, and a month later, buy four Olympic Games, when what Dick did best, better than anyone else, is produce the Olympics?” he said Tuesday.
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Clearly, Comcast felt it could could replace Ebersol in NBC’s executive suite with Lazarus, and replace Ebersol in the Olympic production control room with some of his disciples. Comcast is also ending Ebersol’s practice of tape-delaying many sports, especially the most popular ones, like figure skating and gymnastics, and more recently, snowboarding, to build a four- or five-hour prime-time program.
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Even as NBC introduced online streaming, Ebersol nonetheless delayed showing some events during the 2008 Summer Games in Beijing and even more last year in Vancouver.
But fans grew angry with NBC’s ways as they found it increasingly easy to learn the results of Olympic events, or watch events live on pirate Web sites. Lazarus said NBC felt it was time to make all events available live, to all coasts, on television, on broadband, and perhaps through other technologies.
“We have a smart plan to let the superfan watch events live and not detract from prime time,” Lazarus said. “We don’t think that streaming will affect the shared experience of families watching together at night.”
NBC will still have a traditional package in prime time, with taped and live coverage.
Comcast did not reveal any production plans, but one addition to the lineup of networks, probably in time for London next year, will be Versus. Comcast’s hope is to use the Olympics as a way to raise its number of subscribers and the monthly fees they pay. “If you can add 20 or 30 million subscribers,” Pilson said, “and raise fees by 30 or 40 cents a sub, that’s significant money.”
The auction began Monday with Fox’s presentation, which was followed Tuesday by ESPN’s and NBC’s pitches. After NBC’s presentation, all three networks deposited sealed bids in a plexiglass box. Fox dropped in four envelopes, ESPN put in two and NBC dropped in a thin envelope and a noticeably thicker one. The I.O.C. deliberated for several hours and did not tell ESPN and Fox they had lost until well after informing NBC of its victory.
What I.O.C. officials saw inside the envelopes were the details of the Comcast/NBC bid: $775 million for Sochi, below the $820 million paid for the money-losing Vancouver Games; $1.22 billion for Rio de Janeiro in 2016; $963 million for the 2018 Winter Games — which will be in Munich ; Pyeongchang, South Korea, or Annecy, France — and $1.41 billion for the 2020 Summer Games.
“We were blown away by the NBC presentation and the passion the team has for the Olympics” Richard Carrion, the I.O.C. member in charge of the auction, said in the conference call.
But he added, “I’d be less than honest if I said the dollars didn’t come into play.”A man says he was attacked by two men while riding the New York City subway because he was wearing a Donald Trump hat.Corey Cataldo, 24, of the Bronx, said he was riding the uptown 5 train from Union Square to Morris Park Friday, when another rider on the subway spotted his "Make America Great Again" hat and apparently didn't like it.He spoke exclusively on television for Eyewitness News reporter Lucy Yang.Cataldo explained that the situation heated up as the train got close to the 138th Street/Grand Concourse station."He asked me if I'm a Trump supporter. I said 'yeah' and thought he'd say'me too.' People have been doing that," Cataldo said. "But no. This man was not a Trump supporter."Cataldo said the man stood up and became flustered."The next thing I know, I have hands around my neck and I'm being choked," Cataldo said. "I try to fight him off, and another gentleman comes over, pretends like he's going to help me and says 'get off of him.' He shoves me up against the wall, up against the window."He said no one on the train did anything to help. He was finally able to escape.The NYPD has been notified of the incident, and they're looking for the two men involved.Cataldo, who is an electrician, said he is still able to work but he has lingering pain in his shoulder following the incident.He said he has "a lot" of Trump's "Make America Great Again" ball caps, and has given out many to show support for his now president-elect.***While this weekend’s Six Hours of Silverstone marks the first race in FIA World Endurance Championship without Audi in the LMP1 ranks, the German manufacturer is not completely absent from the paddock, as Audi has continued as the safety and medical car provider.
***It’s understood Audi has fulfilled the final year of its contract with the WEC to provide vehicles for all regular season six-hour races. As previously announced, BMW will supply vehicles for the 24 Hours of Le Mans, as part of a new agreement.
***A total of 27 race cars are set for this weekend’s season-opener, with no changes to the entry list other than the late confirmation of ByKolles’ driver lineup, which sees James Rossiter and Dominik Kraihamer added alongside Oliver Webb.
***ByKolles team director Boris Bermes told Sportscar365 that he hopes that Robert Kubica, who stood down from his planned full-season program, will be able to return later this year. The German squad completed a day-long “surprisingly good” test with its revised Nissan-powered CLM P1/01 on Tuesday at Snetterton, according to Bermes.
***No fewer than eight drivers are set to pull either double or triple duty this weekend, between the WEC and European Le Mans Series races at Silverstone and the British GT Championship season-opener in Oulton Park, which runs on Saturday and Monday.
***Nico Lapierre, Nicki Thiim, Christian Ried, Matteo Cairoli and Darren Turner are listed for both the WEC and ELMS races, with Jonny Adam set to undertake the WEC and British GT events. Duncan Cameron will hop back and forth between Silverstone and Oulton Park for ELMS and British GT, with Matt Griffin adding the WEC race as well, as the only triple-duty driver.
***AF Corse has eight cars entered in three series this weekend: two in GTE-Pro and another two in GTE-Am (Spirit of Race and Clearwater Racing), with two additional Ferrari 488 GTEs in the ELMS, while also operating the AT Racing Ligier JS P3, as well as a British GT entry.
***Reigning Michelin Le Mans Cup champions TF Sport, meanwhile, will make its ELMS debut, as well as enter two cars in British GT.
***Further details of the Ginetta LMP1 were revealed during a well-attended technical briefing on Thursday. Representatives from both Rebellion Racing and KCMG were among those on-hand, with Bart Hayden revealing to Sportscar365 an interest of returning to the top prototype class, given the right circumstances.
***A total of ten Ginettas are set to be built, including one factory test car that is slated to be on the ground by September, along with three spare tubs and six race cars. According to technical director Ewan Baldry, approximately 35 percent of car’s design is already complete, with wind tunnel testing set to begin in June.
***The Ginetta’s Mecachrome engine is derived from its 3.4-liter V6 turbo powerplant currently used in GP2, which has been run for more than 7,000 km in testing. The LMP1 version, however, will feature direct injection.
***Paolo Catone, the architect of the Peugeot 908 and more recently the BR01 LMP2 car, has joined Ginetta as a technical consultant and, according to Ginetta Chairman Lawrence Tomlinson, is currently spending five days every two weeks in the constructor’s workshop in Leeds.
***Rebellion’s Hayden told Sportscar365 that the pricing on Ginetta’s LMP1 program is “very competitive.” The British constructor announced Thursday that its new-for-2018 car will be on sale for $1.67 million, with a $744,282 per year engine lease/support package. Rebellion is only one of two teams to have fielded LMP1 Privateer entries under the current regulations.
***Hayden said they currently have no plans for additional IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship races beyond the previously confirmed Sahlen’s Six Hours of The Glen and Motul Petit Le Mans. The team expects to take delivery of its third Oreca 07 Gibson chassis just prior to Le Mans, with a decision yet to be made if the new car would head straight Stateside, or replace one of the two existing WEC chassis.
***Longtime Audi UK motorsports press officer Martyn Pass turned up into the Silverstone media center with Porsche apparel on Thursday, with Pass brought on board to support the sister brand’s LMP1 activities this year. He also remains employed to Audi for its GT racing programs.
***Luca Pignacca, Head of Design at Dallara, recently visited the University of Moscow with GP2 ace Sergey Sirotkin to discuss the new Dallara/BR Engineering LMP1 program. Students from Russian universities will be part of the BR1 project, with Sirotkin set to play a role in the car’s development, alongside countryman Mikhail Aleshin.
***A European-based historic series, featuring Le Mans-eligible prototype and GT cars from 1995-2011, will launch later this year. A pilot six-hour race, with eligible cars from the FIA Sports Car Championship, European Le Mans Series, American Le Mans Series, Intercontinental Le Mans Cup and Le Mans Series, is set for Sept. 15-17 at Spa, followed by a six-round series in 2018. Nic Minassian has been named the series director for the championship, which will be run by Masters Historic Racing.
Jake Kilshaw and Laurent Mercier contributed to this reportFlorida quarterback Will Grier was on hand for Florida’s 31-17 win over Tennessee on Saturday.
It was his first visit to The Swamp since attending the LSU game last year, and he was happy to be back at his future home.
“It’s a great place to watch a game, much less play here,” Grier said. “I’m excited to get here. The crowd was unbelievable, it’s a college football town.”
The Army All-American was upset to see Jeff Driskel leave the first quarter with a season-ending injury, but the performance of Tyler Murphy and the offense impressed him.
“I think they performed well,” he said. “Sometimes you have to deal with adversity, and that sometimes shows you what your real character is. I think Murphy coming in, he did real well picking up where Driskel left off and I think overall the team did well. Putting up 31 points against another SEC school is a successful day.
“I hate it for Driskel, that’s tough. Prayers go out from me to him and his family and everybody else. Like I said, Murphy stepped in, did well and from now on it’s going to be his team and I think he’ll be alright.”
Grier also praised the play-calling of offensive coordinator Brent Pease. He has noticed receivers getting open for UF this season, but sometimes they’re not being found.
“I definitely see that,” Grier said. “I think Pease does a really good job. The chemistry between the quarterback and OC is huge, and then the chemistry between quarterback and receivers is huge. So I think all of that may have not come together. They’re still building and working on it.”
The 6-foot-3, 180-pounder from Davidson (N.C.) plans to officially visit for Florida’s football banquet weekend and attend the Arkansas and Florida State games.
He will be an early enrollee in January.
“Redshirt is the plan right now,” Grier said. “We’re kind of playing by ear, but redshirt would be best for me, so we will see.”
“I’m focused on school and working out first, just getting my body ready, getting prepared mentally, learning the playbook and just getting into the swing of things.”The MAIUS 1 experiment was launched on 23 January 2017 at 3:30 CET on board a sounding rocket from Esrange Space Center near Kiruna in northern Sweden.
German scientists have, for the first time, succeeded in producing a Bose-Einstein condensate in space and using it for interferometry experiments.
NASA is interested in the German know-how for its Cold Atom Laboratory (CAL), a device for the investigation of ultrasound quantum gases.
The MAIUS 1 (Matter-Wave Interferometry in Microgravity) experiment could be described as one of the most complex experiment ever flown on a sounding rocket. MAIUS 1 was launched at 03:30 Central European Time (CET) on 23 January 2016 on board a sounding rocket from the Esrange Space Center near Kiruna in northern Sweden. During the approximately six-minute microgravity phase of the flight, German scientists succeeded in producing a Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) in space for the first time and performing atom interferometry experiments with them. "Bose-Einstein condensates are produced when a gas is cooled down to close to absolute zero," explains Rainer Forke from the Space Administration at the German Aerospace Center (Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt; DLR). "We are delighted to be able to demonstrate that the MAIUS 1 system works perfectly in space. During the microgravity phase, around 100 individual experiments were carried out on different aspects of matter-wave interferometry."
Ultra-cold atoms in a mini-lab
Scientists from 11 German research facilities have, over a few years, miniaturised the technology for the production of Bose-Einstein condensates in order for the experimental set-up to fit into the payload module of a sounding rocket around two and a half metres high and 50 centimetres in diameter. "Normally, such a device fills a whole laboratory room," says Stephan Seidel, scientific leader of MAIUS 1 from the University of Hannover. "Designing a system so compact and robust that it can fly on a sounding rocket has been a major challenge for scientists and engineers." To produce a Bose-Einstein condensate, a cloud of atoms – in this case the researchers used rubidium atoms – must be cooled down to almost minus 273 degrees Celsius. Conventional cooling methods are not sufficient for this purpose. In a two-phase process, the movement of the atoms is therefore first decelerated using lasers – because the faster an atom moves, the higher its temperature.
Tiny lasers are installed in the MAIUS device, whose beams slow down the rubidium atoms. The particles are then loaded into an atomic trap from which they cannot escape. This trap is created by means of an atom chip on which magnetic fields are generated. The magnetic containment can be thought of as the 'walls' of the trap. After laser cooling, the second phase of the temperature reduction begins in the magnetic trap. During this, the magnetic field is reduced, so that the height of the 'walls' is reduced. Consequently, only the coldest and hence most motionless particles remain in the trap, while the more mobile atoms can surmount the lower barrier. The ultra-cold atoms produced in this way are used in MAIUS for matter-wave interferometry. "The stimulus for extending interferometry with matter waves for as long as possible also has an important application aspect," says Ernst Rasel, project manager at the University of Hanover. "The sensitivity of an atom interferometer namely scales quadratically with the free evolution time of BECs in such a measuring device, so it is not surprising that long-term satellite missions are also under consideration. The use of quantum sensors in satellites for more precise geodesy and navigation is also being discussed."
German expertise is also in demand for NASA's ISS experiment
"We are very interested in German expertise for our Cold Atom Laboratory (CAL), a facility for the study of ultracold quantum gases," says Mark Lee from the US space agency NASA. "CAL is scheduled for launch to the International Space Station (ISS) in June 2017." In 2007, as part of QUANTUS (Quantum Gases in Microgravity) – the predecessor project of MAIUS 1 – scientists succeeded in producing a Bose-Einstein condensate in microgravity for the first time. To this end, the QUANTUS system was integrated into a capsule, which was used to carry out drop-tower experiments at the Center for Applied Space |
illegal immigrants to their home countries!
As the widespread cover-up of migrant rape and violence continues – with any non-flattering observations about migrant behavior condemned by governmental officials and main stream media sources as “hate speech” – Germans are increasingly taking matters into their own hands. A group called “Dusseldorf is Watching” attracted 2,300 members in less than 24 hours as people clamored for the opportunity to protect themselves. Its members plan to attend major events to protect women from gangs of migrants.
Sign the petition! Urge Congress to ‘halt Muslim immigration now!’
There are growing concerns the suppressed anger and frustration will lead to a rise of the far-right neo-Nazi parties in Europe, particularly Germany. As Vox World noted, “Sympathy for neo-Nazi beliefs is rising, although neo-Nazism remains a fringe political movement. … [The] neo-Nazi groups’ message of xenophobia and hate seems to be finding an increasingly receptive audience among ordinary Germans.”Plenty of questions came to mind for those who took a close look at the diorama China used as a backdrop to a model of its lunar rover, Jade Rabbit, when it went on display last month at the China International Industry Fair in Shanghai.
Behind the rover, set up on a mock moonscape, is an oversized picture of the Earth from space – with a nuclear bomb going off in the area that would be Europe.
In the above image of the display, which DefenseTech found on a Hunan Province government website, the rover is blocking the nuclear explosion. In the other photo – a detail from the original image used to create the display – the distinctive mushroom cloud is clearly visible.
As far as we’ve been able to tell from monitoring some of the media buzz on this, the Chinese government has offered no explanation. The original is a stock photo available by download to anyone, Epoch Times reported last week.
Okay, so it’s possible those responsible for setting up the display didn’t look closely enough at the Earth image to notice that something, well, unpleasant was happening in Europe.
You’d also have to assume that the art director or technicians who found and acquired it for the display did not read English, since the image is called “Nuclear Explosion on Earth from Space.”
China launched Jade Rabbit – Yutu in Chinese – on Dec. 1. It marked China’s first soft landing on the Moon. Yutu, which has been sending back video and still images from the lunar surface, is named for a pet rabbit belonging to Chang-e, goddess of the moon in Chinese mythology.
Yutu touched down on the moon Dec. 14.A general view of St. Peter's Square during the John Paul II Beatification Ceremony held by Pope Benedict XVI on May 1, 2011.
Being the pope carries many benefits: You’re Christ’s representative on Earth, leading a religion of 2.3 billion Roman Catholics around the world and getting driven around in a tricked-out Mercedes-Benz Popemobile.
But it also means becoming the head of a sprawling financial empire. The new pope, who is being elected at a conclave that began today, will not only take control of one of the world’s major religions; he will also oversee a massive religious business whose holdings are worth billions of dollars, but whose finances on a yearly basis are often rocky.
The finances of the Roman Catholic Church are decentralized and hard to value. Individual dioceses keep their own books and behave as independent corporations overseeing the finances of the parishes they represent. And the Vatican itself has been notoriously secretive about its vast financial holdings, which include real estate, priceless works of art, and a full-fledged media conglomerate.
In 1981, partly to quiet suspicions that the Vatican was hiding extreme sources of wealth, Pope John Paul II began releasing annual financial reports. The reports, which are helpfully translated into English by the Holy See’s press office (see the most recent example here), outline in broad terms the financial states of both the Holy See, which is the religious part of the pope’s empire, and the Governorate of Vatican City State, which handles all the governmental functions.
These reports aren’t as complete as the ones you would get from a publicly traded company — they list only net revenues and expenditures, and don’t offer line-by-line details of why, exactly, the Vatican’s deficit or surplus rose or fell in a given year. Nor do they list or attempt to value any of the Vatican’s extensive real-estate or art holdings. Still, for those of us who have wondered about how far the pope’s economic reach extends, they provide a welcome glimpse into the Church’s coffers.
I made a chart containing the net surpluses and deficits for both the Holy See and the Vatican City government from 2005 to 2011, the last year for which data are publicly available. The blue line represents the Holy See, and the red line represents the Vatican City government. As you can see, both the Holy See and the Vatican City government have been struggling financially in recent years, though the Vatican City government has recovered from its low point, while the Holy See has not.
Photo: Kevin Roose
The Holy See went from a surplus of 2.4 million euros in 2006 to a deficit of more than 9 million euros in 2007 — primarily, the 2007 statement explains, because of currency fluctuations, and “the deficit of Vatican Radio and the publication costs of the ‘Osservatore Romano,’” the Holy See’s semi-official newspaper.
The Vatican City government, on the other hand, had a surplus of 6.7 million euros in 2007, but swung to deficits in 2008 and 2009. Its main explanation for the deficits was the “notable economic and financial burden of protecting, evaluating and restoring the artistic heritage of the Holy See,” as well as a decline in visitors to the Vatican Museum caused by a tourism drop-off after the global financial crisis. Since the crisis, though, traffic to the museum and overall revenue has rebounded, leading to government surpluses of 20 million euros or more in each of 2010 and 2011.
The Vatican’s overall finances have long been problematic. As a 1987 Fortune investigation detailed, personnel costs and pensions are a major cost headache of both the Holy See and the Vatican City government. The Vatican also has a radio station and a newspaper, both of which have traditionally lost money (just like their secular counterparts!). Then there is the travel: When the pope tours the world, an entourage follows him, and all of that must be paid for, along with stadium rentals, security squads, and translators.
The Vatican does have its own mini-hedge-fund — called the Administration of the Patrimony of the Holy See — but the organization, which manages the Vatican’s stock and real-estate holdings, typically favors an ultraconservative, low-risk investing strategy, meaning that it misses out on some market rallies. In addition, the Vatican’s heavy real-estate exposure means that the book value of its holdings can fluctuate dramatically with the broader market.
There is another interesting figure in the Holy See’s financial reports: the amounts of money donated to Peter’s Pence, the pope’s personal collection fund made up of donations from Catholics all over the world. (According to the financial reports, Peter’s Pence is best thought of as “the fund which goes to the Holy Father’s works of evangelical solidarity.”) This fund is used to cover budget shortfalls when they arise, and to carry out other kinds of capital projects in and around the Vatican.
As the below chart shows, donations to Peter’s Pence have been relatively steady since 2005. The peak in recent years was in 2006, when $97 million U.S. dollars were given to the fund. Donations slipped in 2007, but recovered in 2008 and 2009. In 2011, the Peter’s Pence fund took in $69.7 million — well short of its 2006 peak, but better than 2010, when it took in only $67.7 million.
Of course, these are small numbers compared to the overall size of the Vatican’s financial empire. In 2004, the AP estimated that the Holy See’s real estate, excluding St. Peter’s Basilica and the Sistine Chapel, was worth nearly a billion dollars. Then there is the untold quantity of priceless artwork, including world-famous works by Michelangelo and Raphael. The Vatican doesn’t even try to apply a fair-market value to its art collection — the price used to be listed on the church’s books as 1 lira — but it’s safe to say that if sold, even a fraction of the works could likely fetch billions more.
The new pope, whoever he may be, could solve all of the Vatican’s cash-flow problems for years by unlocking some of that value. But since the Vatican frowns on the idea of selling its art (“They belong to humanity,” a Vatican budget official told Fortune of the artworks in 1987), it’s highly unlikely he would ever choose to do so.
The more likely scenario is that, once elected, the new pope will continue to preside over a volatile and diversified business empire whose fortunes rise and fall with the greater economy, just like his predecessors did. Which means that in addition to putting out papal encyclicals, the new pope might want to learn the ways of the market, too.by Mark Bowytz in CodeSOD on Edit
Besides contributing at @TheDailyWTF, I write DevDisasters for Visual Studio Magazine, and involved in various side projects including child rearing and marriage.
If you ever hit upon a scenario where you need to mine meaningful text data out of any set of HTML files, you will likely find yourself facing a potentially hairy situation.
With the ads, silly social media add-ons, sidebars, toolbars, and likely WTF-level web page coding practices, unless you’re looking at a set of pure vanilla, consistently designed pages, it can be a big mess.
Your average developer, when faced with this situation, would do what any sane person would do – first try to tackle the problem on their own and after a few frustrating iterations, eventually turn to the Internet to solve their problem. Thankfully, as it turns out, the problem of parsing text out of web code has been solved several times over effectively turning your development task into an integration task. Hooray!
The expert, above average coders take a different route – they persevere. They will hack away at the problem and end up with a monster function like the one that Joe discovered. According to him, he caught it in the act after noticing that (only) 700k files were processing very slowly one morning.
public static string StripTagsCharArray ( string source ) { try { string result ; // Remove HTML Development formatting // Replace line breaks with space // because browsers inserts space result = source. Replace ( " \r ", " " ) ; // Replace line breaks with space // because browsers inserts space result = result. Replace ( "
", " " ) ; // Remove step-formatting result = result. Replace ( " \t ", string. Empty ) ; // Remove repeating spaces because browsers ignore them result = System. Text. RegularExpressions. Regex. Replace ( result, @ " ( )+ ", " " ) ; // Remove the header (prepare first by clearing attributes) result = System. Text. RegularExpressions. Regex. Replace ( result, @ " <( )*head([^>])*> ", " <head> ", System. Text. RegularExpressions. RegexOptions. IgnoreCase ) ; result = System. Text. RegularExpressions. Regex. Replace ( result, @ " (<( )*(/)( )*head( )*>) ", " </head> ", System. Text. RegularExpressions. RegexOptions. IgnoreCase ) ; result = System. Text. RegularExpressions. Regex. Replace ( result, " (<head>).*(</head>) ", string. Empty, System. Text. RegularExpressions. RegexOptions. IgnoreCase ) ; // remove all scripts (prepare first by clearing attributes) result = System. Text. RegularExpressions. Regex. Replace ( result, @ " <( )*script([^>])*> ", " <script> ", System. Text. RegularExpressions. RegexOptions. IgnoreCase ) ; result = System. Text. RegularExpressions. Regex. Replace ( result, @ " (<( )*(/)( )*script( )*>) ", " </script> ", System. Text. RegularExpressions. RegexOptions. IgnoreCase ) ; //result = System.Text.RegularExpressions.Regex.Replace(result, // @"(<script>)([^(<script>\.</script>)])*(</script>)", // string.Empty, // System.Text.RegularExpressions.RegexOptions.IgnoreCase); result = System. Text. RegularExpressions. Regex. Replace ( result, @ " (<script>).*(</script>) ", string. Empty, System. Text. RegularExpressions. RegexOptions. IgnoreCase ) ; // remove all styles (prepare first by clearing attributes) result = System. Text. RegularExpressions. Regex. Replace ( result, @ " <( )*style([^>])*> ", " <style> ", System. Text. RegularExpressions. RegexOptions. IgnoreCase ) ; result = System. Text. RegularExpressions. Regex. Replace ( result, @ " (<( )*(/)( )*style( )*>) ", " </style> ", System. Text. RegularExpressions. RegexOptions. IgnoreCase ) ; result = System. Text. RegularExpressions. Regex. Replace ( result, " (<style>).*(</style>) ", string. Empty, System. Text. RegularExpressions. RegexOptions. IgnoreCase ) ; // insert tabs in spaces of <td> tags result = System. Text. RegularExpressions. Regex. Replace ( result, @ " <( )*td([^>])*> ", " \t ", System. Text. RegularExpressions. RegexOptions. IgnoreCase ) ; // insert line breaks in places of <BR> and <LI> tags result = System. Text. RegularExpressions. Regex. Replace ( result, @ " <( )*br( )*> ", " \r ", System. Text. RegularExpressions. RegexOptions. IgnoreCase ) ; result = System. Text. RegularExpressions. Regex. Replace ( result, @ " <( )*li( )*> ", " \r ", System. Text. RegularExpressions. RegexOptions. IgnoreCase ) ; // insert line paragraphs (double line breaks) in place // if <P>, <DIV> and <TR> tags result = System. Text. RegularExpressions. Regex. Replace ( result, @ " <( )*div([^>])*> ", " \r\r ", System. Text. RegularExpressions. RegexOptions. IgnoreCase ) ; result = System. Text. RegularExpressions. Regex. Replace ( result, @ " <( )*tr([^>])*> ", " \r\r ", System. Text. RegularExpressions. RegexOptions. IgnoreCase ) ; result = System. Text. RegularExpressions. Regex. Replace ( result, @ " <( )*p([^>])*> ", " \r\r ", System. Text. RegularExpressions. RegexOptions. IgnoreCase ) ; // Remove remaining tags like <a>, links, images, // comments etc - anything that's enclosed inside < > result = System. Text. RegularExpressions. Regex. Replace ( result, @ " <[^>]*> ", string. Empty, System. Text. RegularExpressions. RegexOptions. IgnoreCase ) ; // replace special characters: result = System. Text. RegularExpressions. Regex. Replace ( result, @ " ", " ", System. Text. RegularExpressions. RegexOptions. IgnoreCase ) ; result = System. Text. RegularExpressions. Regex. Replace ( result, @ " • ", " * ", System. Text. RegularExpressions. RegexOptions. IgnoreCase ) ; result = System. Text. RegularExpressions. Regex. Replace ( result, @ " ‹ ", " < ", System. Text. RegularExpressions. RegexOptions. IgnoreCase ) ; result = System. Text. RegularExpressions. Regex. Replace ( result, @ " › ", " > ", System. Text. RegularExpressions. RegexOptions. IgnoreCase ) ; result = System. Text. RegularExpressions. Regex. Replace ( result, @ " ™ ", " (tm) ", System. Text. RegularExpressions. RegexOptions. IgnoreCase ) ; result = System. Text. RegularExpressions. Regex. Replace ( result, @ " ⁄ ", " / ", System. Text. RegularExpressions. RegexOptions. IgnoreCase ) ; result = System. Text. RegularExpressions. Regex. Replace ( result, @ " < ", " < ", System. Text. RegularExpressions. RegexOptions. IgnoreCase ) ; result = System. Text. RegularExpressions. Regex. Replace ( result, @ " > ", " > ", System. Text. RegularExpressions. RegexOptions. IgnoreCase ) ; result = System. Text. RegularExpressions. Regex. Replace ( result, @ " © ", " (c) ", System. Text. RegularExpressions. RegexOptions. IgnoreCase ) ; result = System. Text. RegularExpressions. Regex. Replace ( result, @ " ® ", " (r) ", System. Text. RegularExpressions. RegexOptions. IgnoreCase ) ; // Remove all others. More can be added, see // http://hotwired.lycos.com/webmonkey/reference/special_characters/ result = System. Text. RegularExpressions. Regex. Replace ( result, @ " &(.{2,6}); ", string. Empty, System. Text. RegularExpressions. RegexOptions. IgnoreCase ) ; // for testing //System.Text.RegularExpressions.Regex.Replace(result, // this.txtRegex.Text,string.Empty, // System.Text.RegularExpressions.RegexOptions.IgnoreCase); // make line breaking consistent result = result. Replace ( "
", " \r " ) ; // Remove extra line breaks and tabs: // replace over 2 breaks with 2 and over 4 tabs with 4. // Prepare first to remove any whitespaces in between // the escaped characters and remove redundant tabs in between line breaks result = System. Text. RegularExpressions. Regex. Replace ( result, " (\r)( )+(\r) ", " \r\r ", System. Text. RegularExpressions. RegexOptions. IgnoreCase ) ; result = System. Text. RegularExpressions. Regex. Replace ( result, " (\t)( )+(\t) ", " \t\t ", System. Text. RegularExpressions. RegexOptions. IgnoreCase ) ; result = System. Text. RegularExpressions. Regex. Replace ( result, " (\t)( )+(\r) ", " \t\r ", System. Text. RegularExpressions. RegexOptions. IgnoreCase ) ; result = System. Text. RegularExpressions. Regex. Replace ( result, " (\r)( )+(\t) ", " \r\t ", System. Text. RegularExpressions. RegexOptions. IgnoreCase ) ; // Remove redundant tabs result = System. Text. RegularExpressions. Regex. Replace ( result, " (\r)(\t)+(\r) ", " \r\r ", System. Text. RegularExpressions. RegexOptions. IgnoreCase ) ; // Remove multiple tabs following a line break with just one tab result = System. Text. RegularExpressions. Regex. Replace ( result, " (\r)(\t)+ ", " \r\t ", System. Text. RegularExpressions. RegexOptions. IgnoreCase ) ; // Initial replacement target string for line breaks string breaks = " \r\r\r " ; // Initial replacement target string for tabs string tabs = " \t\t\t\t\t " ; for ( int index = 0 ; index < result. Length ; index + + ) { result = result. Replace ( breaks, " \r\r " ) ; result = result. Replace ( tabs, " \t\t\t\t " ) ; breaks = breaks + " \r " ; tabs = tabs + " \t " ; } // That's it. return result ; } catch ( Exception ex ) { log. Error ( ex ) ; return source ; } }The Obama administration was on track to come up with an estimate of how many Americans’ information is snared by the government’s foreign surveillance — then the Trump administration took over and things got bogged down.
Now that has turned into a significant hiccup as the intelligence community asks Congress to renew those surveillance powers before they expire at the end of the year.
Some powerful members of Congress have demanded that the Trump administration restart efforts to come up with an estimate, saying Americans deserve to know who, exactly, is being caught up in the U.S. dragnet on electronic communications.
Without it, some of them say, it could be tough to continue the surveillance programs — or at least will require some serious restrictions.
“Congress must reauthorize the program, but knowing the scope of incidental collection will help us determine what, if any, additional privacy protections are needed to ensure we honor the Fourth Amendment,” said Rep. F. James Sensenbrenner Jr., a Wisconsin Republican who has been at the forefront of these issues since writing the original Patriot Act in 2001. “If the administration does not disclose the scope of the intrusion, Congress should assume the worst and pursue more restrictive protections for Americans’ data.”
The issue stems from intelligence gathered under Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which allows the government to collect information from foreign sources. No American, and no person inside the U.S., is to be targeted.
But if a foreign target is talking to an American, those communications can be collected — and in some cases the American can be “unmasked,” meaning their name is attached to communications.
That happened late last year with Michael Flynn, who at the time was a top security adviser to candidate Donald Trump. His communications with a Russian official were unmasked, then somehow leaked, in a way that embarrassed Mr. Trump.
A number of members of Congress want to know how many more Americans are in Mr. Flynn’s situation, with their communications snared in what the government calls “incidental collection.”
Civil rights advocates said the Obama administration was close to producing an estimate, having worked through a number of objections and hurdles.
“We had gotten past these arguments,” said Elizabeth Goitein, co-director at the Brennan Center for Justice.
But when Mr. Trump’s team took over, that progress reversed.
New Director of National Intelligence Daniel Coats, a former Republican senator from Indiana, said he looked at the issue, talked it through with the National Security Agency and concluded it was impossible to follow through.
“I went out there. I talked to them. They went through the technical details. There were extensive efforts on the part of, I learned, on the parts of NSA to try to get you an appropriate answer. We were not able to do that,” he told Congress in a June hearing.
He said working on an estimate would siphon personnel from focusing on hostile foreign countries. He also said trying to figure out a number could mean unmasking more Americans, which would raise privacy concerns.
Timothy Barrett, a spokesman from ODNI, said analysts had been working before and after Mr. Trump’s inauguration to come up with a plan to get a number.
“In each instance, they were unable to do so,” he said.
Critics say the Obama administration seemed willing, and they are not sure what has changed substantively.
Neema Singh Guliani, legislative counsel with the American Civil Liberties Union, said the intelligence agencies are “thumbing their nose” at Congress.
“It’s that [they] don’t want to provide this number, and the change in leadership has affected that,” she said.
Rep. Zoe Lofgren, a California Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, said Congress deserves the answer.
“We have gotten stonewalled now on a bipartisan basis,” she said. “We were on the verge at the end of December with the old administration with getting the information, which as legislators we’re entitled to get.”
A Republican House Judiciary Committee aide told The Washington Times that the committee is continuing to work with the intelligence agencies to try to come up with another way for lawmakers to get a picture of the scope of the surveillance.
The issue seems to be a bigger hurdle for the House, where top members on both sides of the aisle are demanding answers, than the Senate.
The top Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California, said the estimate would be good to know but isn’t necessarily key to the debate on reauthorization.
The House-Senate divide has played out in the past. The last time provisions of the Patriot Act were due for renewal, the House demanded a major rewrite, while senators were more inclined to give the intelligence community a free hand.
In the end, the House largely prevailed by using the looming expiration as a bargaining chip.
Without changes, the powers would have expired altogether, so faced with that choice, intelligence officials and senators accepted more restrictions rather than lose access to the information altogether.
Copyright © 2019 The Washington Times, LLC. Click here for reprint permission.Maneka Gandhi sent letters to Defence Ministry.
The Army has a problem on its plate. Union Minister for Women and Child Development and animal rights activist Maneka Gandhi has objected to two traditions in the forces that, according to her, amount to cruelty to animals.
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She has written to Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar that the practice of animal sacrifice in the Gorkha regiment and another of airdropping living animals for regiments posted in inaccessible areas to provide them fresh meat must be stopped. Gandhi had written a similar letter to Parrikar’s predecessor in the ministry, Arun Jaitley, earlier.
The Gorkha regiment has been around since the time of the British, and animal sacrifice has been followed since its inception.
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At the same time, the Gurkha brigade in the British Army, a throwback to its Indian days, ended the practice of sacrificing male buffaloes in all its units stationed in Hong Kong and Brunei back in 1973. Similarly, the Gurkha brigade of Nepal allows sacrifice of only one animal for all its men, Army officers said.
In the Indian Army, many top officers, including Chief Dalbir Singh Suhag, belong to the Gorkha regiment. Sources said the Army has urged that its age-old traditions not be tampered with.
According to sources, Gandhi’s first letter, sent in July 2014, called the practice “unnecessary”. “The government of Uttarakhand has banned animal sacrifice even for the Army, and the regiments stationed in Uttarakhand have stopped killing animals. Therefore killing animals for sacrifice is not intrinsic to any culture or practice followed by a regiment. Hence it needs to be immediately stopped,” she wrote.
The other practice the minister has sought an end to is officially called ‘meat on hoof’. Started during World War II, it involves dropping live animals from choppers with parachutes strapped on them.
Gandhi has called the practice, followed for border troops, “barbaric”. “It may have had its use during that period when communication and roads were not available, but there is no reason why the animal should be subjected to such cruel practices in present times, especially when pre-packaged meat products are easily available.”
Sources said both Parrikar and Jaitley have sought the Army’s views on the matter.
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Neither the Army nor the Ministry of Defence responded to email queries.WIRED
The smallest Raspberry Pi yet might be its biggest: the charitable foundation behind the UK's best-selling computer have launched their latest model, the Raspberry Pi Zero, for the absurd price of just £4 ($5 in the United States).
The miniaturised Zero features a core that is 40 percent faster than the Raspberry Pi 1, with 512MB RAM, a MiniHDMI port and two Micro USB ports, including one for power.
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The Raspberry Pi Foundation said that the Zero, which will be made in Wales and runs full Raspian as well as applications including Scratch and Minecraft, was as revolutionary as the first Pi. "It is about as big a change as the original Raspberry Pi was," Raspberry Pi founder Eben Upton tells WIRED. "Really everything we've learned has been packed into this one device."
As before, users will have to supply their own power, keyboard, mouse or input device, and screen. But many of the Pi Zero's components have been simplified or otherwise removed in order to keep the cost of the board as low as possible. "Every single component on that board had been made to justify its existence," Upton tells WIRED.
Read next How to make your own NES Classic Mini using Raspberry Pi How to make your own NES Classic Mini using Raspberry Pi
But getting the Zero down to the bare-bones price of £4 was not just about cutting features -- it is to some extent a result of the Raspberry Pi's massive success as the UK's most successful computer in decades. Selling and making more computers has enabled it to cut costs where it was not able to before, and be even more ambitious with the price. "There are economies of scale that weren't available to us when we started," Upton admits.
There are places you can take this that you can't take the original Pi. Eben Upton, Raspberry Pi Foundation
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For that reason the Zero was made with components on just one side of a circuit board instead of two. "Being physically small makes it physically cheaper," Upton added. "It's fairly hard to imagine taking much more cost out. You're talking about the cost of moving a physical product around that has atoms, that has metal in it -- you get down to the point where the cost of the metal connectors makes an impact."
The necessities of cost and space have resulted in an engineering solution with an extraordinary aesthetic. In person -- WIRED was granted an early hands-on -- the Zero is extremely beautiful and precise; it is compact, symmetrical and, like the original, naked, exposing its inner-workings to anyone with an interest in tinkering with its possibilities. "It's nice when things look attractive because they are functional," Upton tells WIRED.
Greg White
Read next Raspberry Pi wins UK's top engineering award Raspberry Pi wins UK's top engineering award
The size and simplicity of the board makes many more types of projects, from robotics to Internet-connected devices, easy to build. The creative possibilities are massive. "There are places you can take this that you can't take the original Pi," Upton tells WIRED.
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Small it might be -- and cheap it definitely is. But the Pi Zero is still a fully-featured computer, and will be capable of some powerful functionality. For the price of a single latte, Upton says, the Zero will provide somewhere between the raw power of the original Pi and its second generation.
Gallery: The $5 Raspberry Pi Zero could be as revolutionary as the original Gallery: The $5 Raspberry Pi Zero could be as revolutionary as the original + 6
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The Zero gives the Raspberry Pi Foundation, which recently merged with Code Club, the chance to reach many more young people and give them a route into computing -- which has always been its principal goal. At £4 it is conceivable that the Zero will become a genuine impulse purchase, or even a freebie for an enterprising school or retailer. Around 10,000 Zeroes will be attached to the front of the Raspberry Pi magazine Magpi shortly after launch, Upton said. But imagine if a Zero was given away with every copy of Minecraft -- or The Beano? The launch plans for the Zero are aggressive: tens of thousands are ready to ship Upton said, and with around five launch partners it is expected that demand will far outstrip supply.
The Zero will be launched alongside the existing range of Raspberry Pi computers, which now start at around £16, Upton said. The plan is not to replace the larger machines with the Zero, but to launch them as complementary products. "I don't think this is a change in direction for Pi, it augments what we were doing," he tells WIRED. Neither does he see any immediate way the Zero could be even cheaper -- at least not in 2016. "Certainly nothing has happened yet [that would make that possible] and I probably can't see it on the horizon," he said. "I think we are basically done [for now]."
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Which is not to say the Pi does not still have a long way to travel. In the next few weeks that will include about 300 vertical miles, in fact, as two Raspberry Pi machines are due to travel aboard an Orbital Sciences Cygnus spacecraft atop an Atlas V rocket to the International Space Station, where British astronaut Tim Peake will conduct 'Astro Pi' experiments designed by UK schoolchildren.
Upton jokes that it took about two years of "basically filling out paperwork" to get the Pi signed off for space travel, but for a generation of young engineers the experience of seeing their work in orbit will be invaluable. As has been the case before in the story of Raspberry Pi, and is true again for the Zero, it is the seemingly mundane things -- cost, paperwork and economies of scale -- that can sometimes have the biggest impact.
The full specs of the Raspberry Pi Zero, available via element14, The Pi Hut and Pimoroni, include:Apple on Monday publicly launched its new Apple TV Remote app, mimicking the functionality of the Siri Remote used with the company's fourth-generation set-top box. But users who want to control iTunes media on their Mac will still need to use the legacy iTunes Remote app.
Navigate Apple TV with touch gestures
Quickly enter text, email addresses, and passwords using the keyboard
Ask Siri to find something great to watch, listen to, or play
Control the movie, TV show, or song that's currently playing
Play games using the accelerometer and gyroscope
Turn on Game Mode for simplified game controls
The new Apple TV Remote app is a free 5.5-megabyte download available on the App Store. It requires an iPhone, iPad or iPod touch running iOS 9.3.2 or later.In the app description, Apple says the new app delivers "the best of the Siri Remote." That includes voice search through the iOS device's built-in microphone— but only for the fourth-generation Apple TV.Without Siri, the Apple TV Remote app also works with a third-generation streaming box with Apple TV Software 7.2.1, or a second-generation model with Apple TV Software 6.2.1. A Wi-Fi connection to the Apple TV is required.Other features from the app, according to Apple, include:Announced at the Worldwide Developers Conference in June along with tvOS 10 and iOS 10, the new Apple TV Remote app has been available in beta for developers to test up until Monday's release. Rather than a simple upgrade of the existing iTunes Remote app for iOS— which can also be used to control an Apple TV —the new app is a complete revamp.The new Remote app replicates all of the functionality of the Siri Remote with one key omission —volume control. While the Siri Remote has dedicated volume buttons and infrared blaster to work with legacy devices, the iPhone lacks an IR blaster to adjust the volume on a receiver, TV set or soundbar.The Apple TV Remote app cannot access other types of devices, such as iTunes music playback controls from a nearby Mac or Windows PC. Those functions are still available in the iTunes Remote app, which remains a free download on the App Store.Notably, the iTunes Remote app has not been updated since December of 2015, and it is still not a 64-bit application. That's in violation of Apple's own rules —third-party app updates were mandated to be 64 bits as of June 1, 2015Baahubali is a path breaking film in many ways. In a country that is home to the culturally hegemonic behemoth known as Bollywood, it’s rare that so-called “regional” (as if Bollywood and Hindi don’t have a “region”) cinema can stand up and proclaim boldly to be a pan-Indian phenomenon. The cinema of the south is often relegated to either poor imitations of Rajinikanth’s antics or is used as some token in film schools because, for some reason, you can’t be considered a real film connoisseur in India unless you can pronounce the names of three obscure Malayalam films.
Baahubali, when it first released, seemed to be a challenge to all this. In a country in which caste and region very fundamentally determine what gets to constitute the mainstream narrative, a Telugu movie stubbornly insisting on being so larger-than-life, is certainly rare. It was with this hope that I went to see Baahubali the first time; and despite my angst against that version, the reason I returned to watch the sequel this past weekend.Suicide Squad MTV Trailer: The Bat & Bad People That Can Do Some Good by Ben Kendrick
– on Apr 10, 2016
in Featured, Movie Trailers 2K Shares Share Tweet Email Copy Link Copied
[Update: Be sure to check out our Suicide Squad trailer analysis to catch all the hints and Easter Eggs!]
The DCEU has official set its big screen stage with the release of Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice. The film opened to a divisive response from fans - after reviewers slammed the Batman V Superman (read: Batman + Superman + Wonder Woman V Lex Luthor + Doomsday) mega-movie; however, as we suggested in our Batman V Superman review, there were actually a lot of great moments in Dawn of Justice. Much like Marvel's Iron Man 2 before it, Batman V Superman was hampered by a studio working extra-hard to inject loads of shared universe setup while also attempting to tell a standalone story.
Now, with key characters now introduced and overarching story threads now in place, Warner Bros. has slightly more room to tell standalone DCEU stories (albeit stories with shared universe connections). Ultimately, whether the DCEU will ever be able to challenge Marvel Studios' box office numbers remains to be seen but, for all the controversy over Zack Snyder's vision, moviegoers will get to test out two more DCEU entries prior to Snyder's return with Justice League Part 1. After a fan-favorite debut in Batman V Superman, Warner Bros. has a lot riding on Wonder Woman (set for June 2, 2017) and with an all-star cast, a zany premise, as well as a new Clown Prince of Crime, DC fans are, no doubt, hoping that David Ayer's Suicide Squad (set for release later this year) will be more positively received than its DCEU predecessor.
It's been a few months since Warner Bros. unveiled a new trailer for their DC villain team-up movie; however, the film made a big splash at the 2016 MTV Movie Awards. The show was taped on Saturday night - presumably since censors have, in the past, struggled to keep up with MTV presenters and winners that, intentionally or unintentionally, push the boundaries of what can be said on the teen-focused cable network. As a result, a few details about the larger show (specifically the entire list of MTV Movie Award winners) and Suicide Squad segment (but not the trailer) leaked ahead of time.
While fans at home would have to wait until today to see MTV |
about a pacifist named Billy Jack who occasionally finds it necessary to kick people in the sternum. For 1974’s Trial of Billy Jack, Laughlin leveraged the popularity of the earlier installments and insisted the film open in 1500 theaters in a single day.
Despite poor reviews, the film raked in millions and major studios took notice. Jaws, opening the following year, rolled out wide and ushered in the concept of the summer blockbuster. Though it’s often credited with instituting the practice, it’s Laughlin who should get the credit—or blame—for vacuuming up revenue on opening weekend.
4. The Addams Family Merges the Small and Big Screens
The 1954 film Dragnet, a big-screen adaptation of the television series starring Jack Webb as stoic Sergeant Joe Friday, was a curiosity: Why should audiences pay for a premise they could see for free on television?
Star Trek had a profitable time in the ‘80s due to pent-up fan demand, but television adaptations were still few and far between until 1991’s The Addams Family, a kitschy homage to the 1960s series about a brood of eccentrics, made a tidy $113 million. In short order, movies based on The Fugitive, Twin Peaks, The Brady Bunch, and dozens of others hit multiplexes, ready to cash in on nostalgia and brand recognition. (Trek, however, remains the king: the 2009 reboot is the highest-grossing TV-to-movie adaptation to date.)
5. Taking Independent Film Out of the Shadows
Forget Kickstarter: Television actor John Cassavetes had to round up improvisational actors and use checks culled from series guest spots to mount Shadows, an independent feature released in 1959 that explored taboo topics like race and sexuality. What he lacked in polish he gained in complete autonomy from the studio system. That do-it-yourself mentality later fed the 1990s emergence of filmmakers like Richard Linklater, Kevin Smith, and Spike Lee—knowingly or not, all of them informed by Cassavetes and his urge to express himself without a filter.
6. Snow White’s Creative License
The 1937 movie Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs is mostly remembered for being both the first animated feature and the birth of Walt Disney as an entertainment powerhouse. Lost in the shuffle was the film’s foreshadowing of Hollywood’s savvy approach to merchandising tie-ins. A coordinated push was timed to the release for a series of Snow-centric goods like hats (modeled by a young Lucille Ball), bath powders, and even a soundtrack. If you get a kick out of your Darth Vader coin bank, you have Sneezy, Grumpy and the rest to thank for it.
7. Seeing More in The Robe
Movie theater attendance declined sharply beginning in the 1950s. Taking a bite out of the box office was the advent of television, which had grown from being virtually non-existent during the late 1940s to being in 33 percent of homes by 1952.
In order to maintain their business, Hollywood decided to expand horizontally. Though widescreen—a filmed image appearing approximately twice as wide as it is tall in various aspect ratios—had been invented decades prior, it wasn’t until 1953’s biblical epic The Robe was released that filmgoers noticed how a screen that filled their peripheral vision could be more immersive.
Fox marketed it as CinemaScope; unlike earlier, more expensive attempts, only an anamorphic lens was needed to film the effect. Viewers reacted positively and widescreen is now the industry standard. (Fox wasn’t so confident, though: They also filmed the movie in a standard ratio, just in case.)
8. Indiana Jones and the Target Demographic
When Jack Valenti took over the Motion Picture Association of America in 1968, he recognized an emerging maturity in film, with sex, language, and violence no longer prohibited by the puritanical Hays Code created in the 1930s. By 1984, the MPAA’s system had morphed to include G, PG, R, and X—a spectrum that deemed movies suitable for children, general audiences or people in trenchcoats.
There was a considerable gulf, however, between the innocuous PG (Parental Guidance) label and the violence and sexual content of an R film. That middle ground was on gory display in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, Steven Spielberg’s sequel to his blockbuster Raiders of the Lost Ark. In Temple, Harrison Ford contends with monkey brain appetizers, whipped children, and a voodoo priest ripping the still-beating heart from a hapless human sacrifice. It received a PG rating. So did that year’s Footloose. Something was very wrong.
Spielberg suggested to Valenti that a new advisory be created to bridge the gap between family fare and ultraviolence. The result was PG-13, which gave parents a clue to reconsider how appropriate a movie may be for their teenagers. It was too late for Jones, though: 1984’s Russian invasion flick Red Dawn became the first movie to sport the rating.Sen. Rand Paul Randal (Rand) Howard PaulThe Hill's Morning Report — Emergency declaration to test GOP loyalty to Trump The Hill's 12:30 Report: Trump escalates fight with NY Times The 10 GOP senators who may break with Trump on emergency MORE (R-Ky.) is being confronted with new evidence his 2013 book Government Bullies borrowed whole paragraphs from the work of other writers.
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The new finding, first reported in Buzzfeed, lists four paragraphs in which Paul uses nearly identical phrasing as earlier reports. Paul did cite the publications in the notes of his book, according to the publication.
Three pages of his book had already been found to come from conservative think tank reports, according to Buzzfeed.
The paragraphs in question Thursday borrowed from two articles that appeared in the Cato Institute’s Regulation Magazine, according to Buzzfeed. Paul also cribbed from the magazine Environmental Protection.
Earlier this week, Paul said he would implement a new policy in his office to more rigorously vet his publications and speeches. Paul has acknowledged the improper citation from the book after Buzzfeed found earlier instances.
Paul had said earlier in the week that he could not rule out other instances of plagiarism being found.
Doug Stafford, Paul’s senior adviser, issued a statement Tuesday, saying a large number of staffers "provide supporting facts and anecdotes – some of which were not clearly sourced or vetted properly."
Paul has taken responsibility for the errors in the book, but has maintained that he never intentionally tried to pass off other people’s work as his own.
I'm not perfect,” Paul said earlier this week on Fox. “I do make mistakes. In the book in fact we made a mistake. It should have been blocked off or indented to show that it was a quotation. It was footnoted at the end. We didn't try to pass off anything as our own.”Photo
Phys Ed Gretchen Reynolds on the science of fitness.
Exercise may affect how and when we move, even when we aren’t exercising, according to a fascinating new study in mice. The findings suggest that, by influencing our built-in body clocks, exercise may help our bodies to recognize the optimal times we should be moving, and when we should be still.
Most of us have heard of circadian rhythms. Our heartbeats, hormones, hunger, alertness, digestion, fatigue and other bodily functions move through regular cycles on a schedule that is both predictable and syncopated, changing as circumstances demand.
But probably few of us realize that physical activity, both in people and most animals, likewise tends to follow a broad, circadian pattern.
Most obviously, we tend to sleep at night, hardly moving, and be active during the day.
But during the day, too, physical activity by people usually shows certain patterns, although those patterns noticeably change with age, recent science shows. In a telling 2009 study published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, scientists asked young adults and older people to wear activity monitors for a week as they went about their normal lives and then plotted each volunteer’s 24-hour movements.
The graphs showed that the young people moved quite a bit during the day, with frequent peaks and valleys in their activities. These patterns weren’t neatly consistent; some days someone might sit and barely move early in the day, and on other days he or she might be moving early on and quiet later.
But there was generally an internal logic to the movement, the scientists concluded. If someone had been still for some time, he or she then would start moving; and if someone had just moved or exercised a lot, he or she often would take some time to settle, since presumably the body was still physiologically aroused, but would then be still.
In essence, the young people’s bodies seemed to be somehow remembering and responding to what that body had just been doing, whether sitting or moving, and then calculating a new, appropriate response — moving or sitting. In doing so, the researchers felt, the body created a healthy, dynamic circadian pattern.
Interestingly, these dynamic patterns of movements in the young people were quite similar to those seen in healthy, young lab animals, said Frank A.J. L. Scheer, an assistant professor at Harvard Medical School and director of the Medical Chronobiology Program at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, who oversaw the study, suggesting that there are biological imperatives to movement patterns even among those of us who live modern, office-bound lives.
Those “memory” in those patterns was reduced drastically with age, however. In the 2009 study, older people showed less movement during the day and more random movement at night. They were still when they probably should have been moving and restless when they should have been still. Their movement patterns in general became more random, Dr. Scheer said.
But whether these undesirable changes were caused solely by aging or also to other factors was not clear. So for the new study, which also was published in P.N.A.S., Dr. Scheer and his colleagues, including Kun Hu at Harvard and Johanna Meijer at Leiden University in the Netherlands, gathered mice ranging in age from young adults (6 months old) to almost ancient (2 years old) and settled them in cages equipped with infrared sensors that would constantly monitor their physical activity.
They also gave the animals running wheels, because exercise can so dramatically increase the difference between activity and quiet and has many effects within the body that can influence daily movement.
They let the animals run at will for a month.
Unsurprisingly, the young mice, which ran quite a bit, rapidly developed substantial peaks and valleys of activity, with clear demarcations between the movements associated with daytime and night.
The older animals had similar, but more blunted patterns.
Then the scientists removed the wheels.
Within days, all of the animals began showing more random patterns of movement. They might suddenly race around the cage during what should have been their quiet period or crouch unmoving when they would normally have been active.
And most interesting, the patterns of the young mice and the old mice were much more alike than they had been before.
That finding suggests, Dr. Scheer said, that exercise affects daily movement patterns more than age does. Take away a young mouse’s running wheel and its activity patterns will look similar to that in an older animal.
However, as soon as the researchers restored the running wheels to the animals’ cages, both young and old mice began exercising again and had soon reinstated their old, healthy patterns of movement. Elderly mice had some peaks and valleys, and the young mice many.
Of course, exercise by definition influences how much activity someone completes during the day. But Dr. Scheer and his colleagues believe that something deeper and more interesting also occurs with exercise. It seems to affect the body’s internal clock mechanisms and therefore its circadian rhythms, especially those related to activity. It may keep those patterns healthier, even with age.
By prompting the release of a wide variety of biochemicals in the body and brain, he suggested, exercise almost certainly affects the body’s internal clock mechanisms and therefore its circadian rhythms, especially those related to activity. Exercise seems to make the body better able to judge when and how much more it should be moving and when it should be at rest.
Of course, this study was short-term, involved mice rather than people, and wasn’t designed to identify just how exercise might affect the body’s internal clocks, Dr. Scheer points out.
But it does suggest that, among its many virtues, exercise improves the rhythm of our lives.Dark days in ghost town of Tokyo: The deserted streets of a once vibrant capital now crippled by power cuts
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It is one of the great cities of the world, home to 13million and as advanced as any metropolis on the planet.
Now Tokyo, usually so full of life by day and night, has the aura of death about it.
Its lights have been cut, supermarket shelves are empty, there are queues for everything and aftershocks come every day.
Ghost town: A landmark crossroads in Tokyo's Ginza district is eerily dark and empty as people stay indoors after warnings about a radioactive cloud from the stricken nuclear plant 150 miles away
You could find a few die-hard Brits and other expatriates who wouldn't leave their beers on the counter in the party-time district of Roppongi for any threatening radioactive cloud, but mostly Tokyo has become eerily quiet. Nobody wants to venture out and the streets are deserted.
Everyone, it seems, shares the opinion that something very bad is happening at the Fukushima nuclear power plant 148 miles away, and nobody wants to risk breathing the air.
The British government has joined other nations in urging its citizens to leave the country whatever way they can, including banding together to join a charter flight. Other Britons trapped in the tsunami-stricken Sendai area have been offered the chance of being driven to Tokyo on a chartered bus.
Dimmer: Buildings in Tokyo turn down the lights as part of electricity saving efforts to avoid massive power outages and, right, its usual neon shine
PANIC BUYING AS CHINA SEES HOPE IN SALT
Shelves were stripped of salt in China yesterday by shoppers hoping it would help ward off radiation poisoning from Japan. They were under the false impression that consuming enough table salt would protect them from contamination.
Rumours also spread that sea salt supplies would be spoiled by radiation. The wave of panic in Beijing, Shanghai and other parts was said to have been fuelled by text messages via mobile phones. Prices of salt jumped five or ten-fold – if it could be found at all. In China, table salt is fortified with potassium iodide to help prevent iodine deficiency, a major cause of learning difficulties. Potassium iodide can help protect the thyroid gland from radiation injury, but experts say that to get the equivalent of the 130mg dose needed to protect against radiation, someone would need to consume 750 teaspoons of iodised salt every day. A tiny fraction of that salt intake would be fatal. The Chinese government is trying to counter the fears.
A range of national and provincial agencies issued notices to crack down on hoarding and spreading rumours, and warned of fines of up to £200,000 for inflating prices. The country’s largest salt producer, China National Salt Industry Corp, issued a statement saying that ample reserves were available and that ‘panic-buying and hoarding is unnecessary’.
But it will be a long journey because the vehicle will have to skirt around the nuclear power plant which stands between Sendai and the capital.
Some Britons have taken their own steps to get out of Tokyo, among them 23-year-old Kezia Poole, an English language teacher from London who has lived in Japan for 13 months.
'I'm flying to the Australian Gold Coast tomorrow,' she said. 'I'll sit back and breathe in the clean, fresh air. It's just not worth waiting around in Tokyo listening to officials telling us this and telling us that.'
She leaves behind a city in fear – a city that was plunged into darkness last night as electricity was cut to conserve power following the massive loss of production at Fukushima.
In Roppongi, the red-light district which is usually thick with crowds, where English girls play hostess to deceitful Japanese husbands, there was hardly a customer in sight.
A British hostess, who would give her name only as Jenny, was already on her way home before midnight, when usually business is thriving.
'They've said I can leave early,' the blonde, heavily wrapped in leather and furs, said in her north country accent. 'A lot of us haven't seen much of the news – how bad is it, then?'
There was no one in the whole of Tokyo who could tell her that, and even if they did, would it be the truth?
For the words coming from the lips of government spokesmen and the Tokyo Electric Company officials who have been holding daily press conferences carry mixed messages: 'We are working at the problem, the radiation is not harmful to humans, you should stay indoors and keep the windows closed, the levels have gone up, the levels have gone down, we've managed to pour water on the rods and that should cool them, the radiation has gone up again.'
Little wonder that many businesses sent their workers home early in the hope of beating the evening rush hour.
The result was long queues at stations for trains, many of which were suddenly cancelled because of fears that rolling blackouts would affect services.
'I just want to be with my children right now,' said an insurance company secretary waiting in the biting cold in a long queue.
'I don't know if my train is running, there are no cabs available and I have no other means of getting home. Everyone wants to leave Tokyo, or at least be home with their families because of the uncertainty.' Some, braving the cold and whatever they feared might be carried in the air, stood in front of public TV sets to watch government officials trying to explain what was happening at Fukushima. Their reaction was sceptical.
No man's land: The normally bustling streets of the dynamic city are virtually deserted
Darkness falls: The usually brilliantly lit skyline has been shrouded in darkness to conserve scant resources of electricity as the crisis continues
WHAT TO DO IF YOU'RE EXPOSED
Once someone has been exposed to a high, prolonged dose of radiation, there is little they can do to reduce the risk of radiation sickness or cancer later in life. Levels outside the Fukushima plant are still low. But if reactors or waste fuel overheat and explode, a plume of more dangerous radiation could spread for miles.
In this worst case scenario, the danger will come from clouds of radioactive gas and dust, both of which are invisible. If breathed into the body they would damage DNA and increase the risk of cancer, particularly in the thyroid, lungs, stomach and intestines. Anyone exposed to radioactive dust should dispose of their clothing as hazardous waste immediately and wash their hair and skin with soap as thoroughly as possible. Staying indoors can cut exposure to the dust – but will do little to protect against a leak of radioactive gas.
'We're living in modern times. We have robots in the factories, our technology is world famous and yet we end up pouring buckets of water on a nuclear plant,' said one office worker.
'This is taking us back years. We're going to be in darkness for a long time.' Whether he meant darkness at night because of power cuts or darkness because of what lies ahead for the nation, didn't seem to matter.
It is going to be dark in Tokyo and up the coast, where hundreds of thousands shiver and cry for everyone and everything they have lost, for a very long time to come.
Business is slow: A taxi driver reads a newspaper as he waits for a fare on an empty street Contrast: An evacuee from a junior high school studies under the light of a kerosene stove at a makeshift shelter in stricken Ofunato
Eerie: People weave their way between blacked out high rises. Tokyo faces at much as six months of blackoutsArchitecture Ancient Persian City of Pasargadae This was the first settlement on the plateau for which Cyrus was responsible. The palace and various other buildings were set among gardens, and the many columns, surmounted by bulls' heads, show that the ideas behind the apadana were already in full force. Pasargadae can be described as the forerunner of Achaemenian architecture, but the terrace near Masjid-i-Sulaiman, with its gigantic walls and the ten flights of stairs leading up to it, can be attributed to the Persians and to a period prior to the building of Pasargadae and Persepolis. Fire Temples At Pasargadae there is also a fire temple. These temples were square towers, built of well-bonded stone with mock loopholes and windows in dark materials; inside, the sacred fire was kept alight by the Magi, who belonged to a Median tribe specially trained in the study and practice of religious ritual. At one time these buildings were thought to be 'towers of silence'. Similar structures can be found near Persepolis and at Naksh-i-Rustam, along with four-sided monuments having ornamental bas-relief battlements, that have been identified as fire altars.
Tombs Not far from Pasargadae, at Meshed-i-Murgad, stands the tomb of Cyrus, a rectangular building set on a base of seven stone-courses, with a gabled roof made of flat stone slabs. It can be compared with monuments in Asia Minor. At Naksh-i-Rustam, near Persepolis, are the royal rock-tombs standing one beside the other. The tomb of Darius Codamannus at Persepolis was never finished. The tombs are hollowed out of the rock on the pattern of the tomb of Da-u-Dokhtar in the province of Fars. The architects carved from the rock itself an imitation of a palace facade with four engaged columns, crowned by 'kneeling bull' capitals which support an entablature decorated with a Greek moulding; above this is carved a line of bulls and lions, on which rests a dais held up by Atlantes; the king, turning towards a fire altar, stands on steps beneath the emblem of Ahura Mazda whose face is inside the circle. Private tombs have been discovered (like the one at Susa) in which a woman of high rank, adorned with jewels, was laid in a bronze receptacle. Ancient Persian City of Persepolis It was here that the Achaemenian genius developed to the full. The barracks and citadel were built on a mountain overlooking a wide plain in the direction of Shiraz. The lower slopes were levelled off for an esplanade on which a virtual city of palaces was built. Although excavations have now uncovered almost all the buildings, we still have no very clear idea of the purposes for which they were intended, although it would seem that the buildings in question are almost exclusively state or ceremonial edifices. From the walled esplanade a great stairway with a double ramp leads down into the plain; opposite the highest landing are the propylaea of Xerxes, a massive four-sided structure open at each end and along the sides and decorated with colossal human-headed winged bulls. Around the entrance, spaces left empty with regular hollows cut out of the rock were intended for terrace gardens. What is left of the palace is a veritable skeleton structure of doors and windows hewn from great blocks of stone that served as supporting props for walls that have long since vanished. Here the Egyptian gorge was used, and the king was portrayed on the lateral blocks of stone inside the doorways. On the right side a stairway, decorated with bas-reliefs, led to the apadana of Darius and Xerxes. The apadana, used as an audience chamber, was a typically Achaemenian structure. Its roof was supported by columns about seventy feet high-fluted, slender shafts that were mostly set on a bell-shaped base and were crowned by typically Achaemenian capitals like the one from Susa which is now in the Louvre. The lower part of these eighteen-foot-high capitals was made up of volutes, like C's set back to back, which supported the main part of the capital - the forequarters of two kneeling bulls, joined together. Beams rested on the saddle and in turn supported the larger beams of the roof so that some weight was taken by the bulls' heads. The apadana at Susa had thirty-six columns and covered an area of almost two and a half acres. This chamber at Persepolis had the same number of columns and was surrounded by a single peristyle that had two rows of six columns on three sides. Ancient Persian City of Susa The old royal cities continued to be important alongside the new capitals. At the ancient Elamite capital of Susa, on a hill, Darius I built his winter residence, with its vast apadana which was restored by Artaxerxes II (Mnemon). It was explored by M. Dieulafoy, who retrieved some of its glazed ornamentation, and then by J. de Morgan in 1908, who uncovered the building's plan by tracing cuttings in the ground pavements (made of a sort of concrete composed of chalk and pounded baked clay) which corresponded to the baked-brick walls dating from 440. The palace was planned on similar lines to the one in Babylonia, with chambers arranged around a rectangular court. Plastic Arts (Sculpture) The plastic arts were primarily devoted to the ornamentation of the palaces. Bas-reliefs formed the main part of the Persepolis ornamentation: the double stairway which led on to the terrace and into the palace chambers was decorated with two kinds of bas-relief. The motif of the lion attacking a bull, a familar device since the earliest period of Mesopotamian art, appeared on the triangular panels of the balustrades; elsewhere, the king 'in majesty' was found. On a dais shaped like a throne, a colossal prototype of the royal Persian throne (the Peacock Throne), the king sits in a great chair. Beneath the dais, lines of figures are carved, whose dress indicates that they belong to the various satrapies. The second type of bas-relief depicts processions of guards, courtiers and tribute-bearers. The artist has taken immense trouble to differentiate the characteristic features of their dress. The Persians wear a single or embattled tiara and long robes whose wide sleeves are adorned with symmetrical folds in imitation of drapery (a concession to Greek influence) but of a completely uniform treatment. Over one shoulder they carry a quiver holding a bow and arrows. The Medes, wearing caps, have a short tunic, and trousers, entirely free of folds, caught in at the ankle. They carry daggers with scabbards of the same shape as those of Scythian origin. The tribute-bearers are distinguished more by the nature of their gifts than by their costume and are preceded by a chamberlain. Along the great routes of the empire, even in the most outlying regions, artists carved bas-reliefs in the king's glory, like the one carved on the rock at Behistun, which accompanies Darius' proclamation and portrays him as a conqueror in an already familiar pose, with the defeated enemy beneath his foot. Graeco-Persian reliefs from the end of the 5th century have been discovered in the region of Dascyleium in Bithynia, depicting a procession of men and women on horseback and a Persian sacrifice with two priests (Magi), the lower half of their faces veiled, carrying a mace in their hands, nearing an altar, with the heads of a ram and a bull on a brushwood stake at their feet. At Susa, glazed bricks, copied from Babylonia, took the place of the marble ornamentation of Persepolis. The Achaemenians, howewer, used a different method from that of by their teachers. Instead of clay they used chalk and sand. The bricks were first baked in a moderate heat and then the outline of the figures was added in blue glaze and the bricks were returned to the oven; finally the areas outlined in blue were filled in with chosen colours and received one last baking to complete the process. The ornamentation of the staircase balustrades at Susa drew its inspiration from the Theban tombs with their superimposed lotus flowers, and from Aegean art with its alternating volutes. The gates were adorned with lions, their coats dappled grey-green or blueish, set in a framework of zigzags and palmettes interspersed with scallops and rosettes. The palace walls were embellished with mythological beasts, whose origins can be traced back to Babylonia, with scallop-edged wings and breasts coloured alternately yellow and green. Elsewhere, as at Persepolis, there were robes of lavish embroideries on material of white or yellow ground, adorned with three-towered castles and eight-pointed stars, the folds indicated in dark colours; these garments had wide yellow or purplish-brown sleeves; the shoes of the guards were yellow, their quivers made of panther skin and their hair held back by a bandeau. Between the gateways sat sphinxes wearing the horned tiara head-dress, their heads turned to look behind them in an inscrutable attitude but one which adds a great decorative appeal to this motif which recurs on the seal of Darius' chancellery, where the sphinxes turn to face towards each other. Minor Arts Metal-work, of the utmost importance to an equestrian people, suffered no decline under the Achaemenids. Bronze was used for the facing of certain parts of buildings, such as doors. For work in gold and silver an especially elaborate technique was employed, with silver dishes in repousse (foreshadowing Sassanian plate with its rosette and boss-beading ornamentation), angled rhytons whose bases are formed by the head of a goat or an ibex, vases with handles ending in an animal's head or else made to represent an animal's body (like the two handles of the same vase, one of which is in Berlin and the other in the Louvre, depicting a winged silver ibex incrusted with gold), a triangular stand from Persepolis composed of three roaring lions, the realistic treatment of which contrasts with that of the bronze lion found at Susa, comparable in pose to the lion from Khorsabad but far more stylised and suggestive of the monsters of the Far East. Jewellery shows a wide variety of influences. Some ornaments from the Oxus treasure in the British Museum - gold plaques, bracelets and rings - indicate the same Scythian influence that can be found in other treasures. Gems from the Susa sepulchre - crescent-shaped earrings decorated with coloured stones set in gold, and bracelets with no clasp but tipped with a lion's headand incrusted with turquoise and lapis lazuli, illustrate a technique which was to be adopted by the 'barbarians'. (See: Jewellery: History, Techniques.) Achaemenian glyptics surpassed in refinement anything hitherto known: one of the finest intaglios shows the king in his chariot out hunting with bow and arrow, his horses at full gallop. A plaque used as a mould for inlaid gold leaf has been found, as well as a small head of extraordinary delicacy - all that remains of a statue, for after the looting by Alexander's soldiers statuary, like everything else, survived only in a mutilated condition. On the obverse side of the gold coins called darics, the Achaemenid kings, kneeling on one knee, are depicted as archers.Фото © Денис Ляшков, фейсбук
«Альфа-банк» разместил у себя в фейсбуке изображение девушки с поднятым большим пальцем вверх и ехидной улыбкой, и фразами «Держитесь!», «Всего доброго» и «Хорошего настроения» — именно эти слова произнес премьер-министр России Дмитрий Медведев, отвечая на вопрос жителей Крыма, почему не индексируется пенсия.
Клиенты банка, в свою очередь, опубликовали фотографию банкомата, на которой видно, как «Альфа-банк» общается с ними фразами премьер-министра страны. На экране высвечивается «Баланс вашего счета 0 рублей. Держитесь. Счастья, здоровья!», а обновленное меню предлагает нажать на кнопку «Держаться». Также можно нажать на «Всего доброго» или «Хорошего настроения».
В комментариях под этим постом «Альфа-банк» написал: «Заметьте, мы не пишем, что денег нет», и поставил смайлик. Спустя время появился новый: «Деньги есть». В настоящий момент пост «лайкнули» более 1,6 тысяч человек, еще 634 сделали репост.
Напомним, 24 мая Медведев посетил Крым, где местные жители пожаловались ему на небольшие пенсии и спросили, почему они не индексируются. В ответ на это премьер-министр сказал, что «денег нет, но вы держитесь», и пожелал «всего доброго, хорошего настроения».Naya Rivera is no longer on the Columbia Records roster, multiple sources have confirmed to Billboard.com. The "Glee" star signed with the label in 2011, and did not release a full-length with Columbia.
The 27-year-old, who plays Santana Lopez on the hit Fox series, was one of the first "Glee" actors to land a solo record deal, and announced plans to begin work on an album in summer 2011. Last September, "Sorry," Rivera's debut single featuring then-boyfriend Big Sean, was released; the song did not chart on the Hot 100 and has sold 34,000 downloads to date, according to Nielsen SoundScan.
After getting engaged in last October, Rivera and Big Sean abruptly called off the wedding last month. "Sean wishes Naya nothing but the best and it is still his hope that they can continue to work through their issues privately," read a statement from Big Sean's camp about the broken engagement.
'Glee' Recap: 'The Back-Up Plan'
Meanwhile, rumors persist that Rivera has been fired from "Glee," which is winding down its fifth season. Although a rep for the singer/actress called reports of her firing "absolutely untrue" to The Hollywood Reporter, other reports have claimed that a feud with co-star Lea Michele has led to Rivera's permanent dismissal.
Since "Glee" began airing in mid-2009, its cast of rising young talent has struggled to get their respective solo projects off the ground. Lea Michele's debut album "Louder" was at long last released in March, and has sold 87,000 copies to date, according to Nielsen SoundScan. Other "Glee" cast members, including Darren Criss and Amber Riley, are still prepping their proper debuts.
(Additional reporting from Shirley Halperin)Three brothers, including a seven-month-old baby, were pulled alive from the rubble of a collapsed building on the Italian holiday island of Ischia after it was hit by an earthquake that killed two people and injured 40.
Firefighters, who at times had to dig away at the rubble with their bare hands, described the survival of the baby boy as “a miracle”.
The infant, Pasquale Marmolo, was rescued by firemen at around 4am local time on Tuesday after spending more than 10 hours trapped beneath the wreckage of the smashed building.
Still wearing a nappy and a little cotton sleep suit, he cried but seemed otherwise unscathed as he was pulled to safety.
“0400, Ischia, a miracle – baby pulled alive from the rubble,” the Italian fire service announced in a tweet.Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), whose bid for the Democratic nomination for president has drawn the largest crowds on the campaign trail, is raking in major money as well.
His campaign reported on Thursday that it had raised $15 million over the last two months.
It is an impressive haul for a candidate few thought would be more than a socialist-minded megaphone. But Sanders has taken off, becoming the closest thing to a challenger to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in the primaries.
Clinton continues to be a juggernaut, reportedly raising $45 million in the last three months and enjoying wide leads in public opinion polls.
But Sanders likely has a larger base of donors. His campaign reported receiving 400,000 contributions during the past two months from 250,000 total contributors. Nearly 87 percent of the total amount raised during the quarter came from the donors who contributed $250 or less.The politics of Canada function within a framework of parliamentary democracy and a federal system of parliamentary government with strong democratic traditions. Canada is a constitutional monarchy, in which the monarch is head of state. In practice, the executive powers is directed by the Cabinet, a committee of ministers of the Crown responsible to the elected House of Commons of Canada and chosen and headed by the Prime Minister of Canada.
Canada is described as a "full democracy",[1] with a tradition of liberalism,[2] and an egalitarian,[3] moderate political ideology.[4][5][6] Far-right and far-left politics have never been a prominent force in Canadian society.[7][8] Peace, order, and good government are stated goals of the Canadian government.[9] An emphasis on social justice has been a distinguishing element of Canada's political culture.[10] Canada has placed emphasis on equality and inclusiveness for all its people.[11]
The country has a multi-party system in which many of its legislative practices derive from the unwritten conventions of and precedents set by the Westminster parliament of the United Kingdom. The two dominant political parties in Canada have historically been the Liberal Party of Canada and the Conservative Party of Canada (or its predecessors) however, the social democratic New Democratic Party (NDP) has risen to prominence and even threatened to upset the two other established parties during the 2011 federal election. Smaller parties like the Quebec nationalist Bloc Québécois and the Green Party of Canada have also been able to exert their own influence over the political process.
Canada has evolved variations: party discipline in Canada is stronger than in the United Kingdom, and more parliamentary votes are considered motions of confidence, which tends to diminish the role of non-Cabinet members of parliament (MPs). Such members, in the government caucus, and junior or lower-profile members of opposition caucuses, are known as backbenchers. Backbenchers can, however, |
It was like a human suffering from AIDS whose death was not caused by AIDS directly, but by pneumonia, flu, infection, etc. However it is AIDS that made the curable illnesses lethal.
Until recently the world enjoyed a sustained period of high growth and low inflation and the fact that it came to such an abrupt end does not come as a surprise. It was in the very nature of the pyramid scheme mechanism. The deposit creation process with a ratio above 100% guaranteed impressive-looking economic growth figures. At the same time there were no extra cash hitting Main Street, as there was no extra cash printed. In this context, the high growth of property prices is no surprise. In their huge majority and extent, these are, in practice, cashless interbank transactions. The world stayed oblivious in this economic miracle like customers of a pyramid scheme being happy with the figures on their statements until they wanted to withdraw money. But like with any pyramid scheme, the financial system ran out of cash, with the outcome of a lack of liquidity, not high inflation.
Table A
UK BANKS
[source: http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_7648000/7648508.stm,
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/money/property_and_mortgages/article5106455.ece]
BANK LOAN/DEPOSIT RATIOS MARKET SHARE HSBC 90% 2.8% RBS 112.3% 6.2% Barclays 123.45% 6.3% Lloyds TSB 140.84% 8.1% Alliance & Leicester 172.41% 3.6% Bradford & Bingley 172.41% 3.9% HBOS 175.43% 20.1% Northern Rock 322.58% 8.1% Weighted average LOAN/DEPOSIT RATIO = 174.26%
Additional information:
the RBS position includes ABN AMROwithout it RBS position was around 135% [source: MS Research/Howard Davies Presentationhttp://www.lse.ac.uk/collections/meetthedirector/pdf/Banking%20and%20the%20State%2002.10.08.pdf] Abbey position after acquisition of Bradford & Bingley was 75% [source: http://www.santander.com/csgs/StaticBS?blobcol=urldata&blobheader=application% 2Fpdf&blobkey=id&blobtable=MungoBlobs&blobwhere=1205449310144&cachecontrol= immediate&ssbinary=true&maxage=36000] Table B
[source: MS Research/Howard Davies Presentationhttp://www.lse.ac.uk/collections/meetthedirector/pdf/Banking%20and%20the%20State%2002.10.08.pdf]
COUNTRIES/REGIONS LOAN/DEPOSIT RATIOS UK 137% Germany 121% USA 105% France + Benelux 103% UK + Asia 89% February 2009Image caption One mother said her daughter was "panicking" when she saw the Maths question
An exam board has apologised for "poorly wording" an A Level Psychology test question weeks after making an error in a GCSE paper.
Students saw a question asking them to "calculate the mean percentage of words", normally seen in a Maths exam.
Exam board OCR has since apologised and said it would "correct this in our marking".
It follows a mistake it made in a GCSE English Literature exam question on Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet in May.
OCR said about 5,000 A Level candidates had been affected, but it was not yet known how many tackled the question.
'So angry'
Damian Walmsley, deputy head teacher at St Mary's College in Hull, said students who sat the exam on Wednesday had been left "disconcerted and confused" by the question.
"The exam was stopped briefly by the invigilator, who contacted the exam board and got advice for students to ignore the question," he added.
A mother from Hull, who wished to remain anonymous, said her daughter was "panicking" when she saw the question.
"They were asked to calculate the mean percentage of words recalled and then given data to do this from a maths test containing only numbers, is the gist of it," she said.
"I am so angry."
Some students spoke out on social media saying how they were left confused "doing a psychology paper and not a maths paper".
Image copyright Twitter
Image copyright Twitter
Image copyright Twitter Image caption Students took to social media to air their concerns
Russell Hobby, general secretary of school leaders' union NAHT, said: "Mistakes in exam papers undermine the confidence of students, teachers and schools. It is crucial that processes are in place to prevent these from happening.
"OCR has rightly confirmed that marking of the paper will reflect this mistake. It's crucial that this is clearly communicated to schools."
In a statement, the exam board said: "OCR can confirm that a question worth 2 marks out of 90 on an A Level Psychology paper (H567/01) was poorly worded.
"We apologise to candidates for any confusion and will correct this in our marking."Another is found burnt and mutilated near a bus stop
Four transgender women have been murdered within weeks of each other in Pakistan.
Three transgender women were shot dead in a drive-by on the night of 8 May.
The two motorcycle riders opened fire on a group transgender women who were standing on the corner of a busy street in Rawalpindi.
Billi and Shah Zaib died at the scene and Saima Shahzadi died the next morning in hospital. Four others, including two transgender women, were injured.
‘The attackers could be those who did not like the presence of transgenders in the locality,’ Almas Bobby, president of the Hijra Foundation Pakistan told the Dawn news site.
The shootings came less than a week after the burned and multilated body of another transgender woman was found near a bus stop in Islamabad.
Police said Bijli, 30, was strangled.
The deceased was identified by other transgender women based on her clothes. She was reported missing 10 days before her body was found.Jonathan Talley taken into custody by George County Sheriff's Office in Mississippi
The ex-boyfriend of a woman who was found shot to death inside a Pearl River home was arrested by Mississippi authorities, officials said.Jonathan Talley, 35, was arrested Friday on charges of first-degree murder and second-degree kidnapping, the St. Tammany Parish Sheriff's Office said.Investigators said the homicide was reported Friday morning when Talley returned home with his 3-year-old son to George County, Mississippi, and told his parents that he had shot his ex-girlfriend, Aimee Kirst, 33.Kirst's body was found insider her home off Highway 41 in the Pearl River. The Sheriff's Office said she died from an apparent gunshot wound to her head.Investigators said Talley had an active restraining against him for assaulting Kirst last year. He was also arrested last year for reportedly threatening Kirst, and bringing a firearm to a friend's home, where she was also staying."That particular incident prompted the protective order, which ultimately caused (Talley) to lose custody of their 3-year-old son," the Sheriff's Office said.The Sheriff's Office said investigators are working to determine a motive in Friday's shooting. Detectives believe the boy was at the home when Kirst was shot."This is truly a tragedy. This young lady unnecessarily lost her life. What is even more tragic is that her 3-year-old son will now have to grow up without his mother and his father," said Sheriff Randy Smith.Talley was arrested by the George County Sheriff's Office in Mississippi. He will be extradited back to Louisiana.Keep up with local news, weather and current events with the WDSU app here.Sign up for our email newsletters to get breaking news right in your inbox. Click here to sign up!
The ex-boyfriend of a woman who was found shot to death inside a Pearl River home was arrested by Mississippi authorities, officials said.
Jonathan Talley, 35, was arrested Friday on charges of first-degree murder and second-degree kidnapping, the St. Tammany Parish Sheriff's Office said.
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Investigators said the homicide was reported Friday morning when Talley returned home with his 3-year-old son to George County, Mississippi, and told his parents that he had shot his ex-girlfriend, Aimee Kirst, 33.
Kirst's body was found insider her home off Highway 41 in the Pearl River. The Sheriff's Office said she died from an apparent gunshot wound to her head.
Investigators said Talley had an active restraining against him for assaulting Kirst last year. He was also arrested last year for reportedly threatening Kirst, and bringing a firearm to a friend's home, where she was also staying.
"That particular incident prompted the protective order, which ultimately caused (Talley) to lose custody of their 3-year-old son," the Sheriff's Office said.
The Sheriff's Office said investigators are working to determine a motive in Friday's shooting. Detectives believe the boy was at the home when Kirst was shot.
"This is truly a tragedy. This young lady unnecessarily lost her life. What is even more tragic is that her 3-year-old son will now have to grow up without his mother and his father," said Sheriff Randy Smith.
Talley was arrested by the George County Sheriff's Office in Mississippi. He will be extradited back to Louisiana.
Keep up with local news, weather and current events with the WDSU app here.
Sign up for our email newsletters to get breaking news right in your inbox. Click here to sign up!
AlertMeWill Your Next Alderman Support Food Trucks?
By Melissa McEwen in Food on Feb 12, 2015 5:00PM
Public Building Commission of Chicago (From the Chicagoist Flickr Pool)
Here at Chicagoist we wanted to highlight a food policy issue for this month’s Aldermaniac election. We choose food trucks because they are popular among a group of people who tends to not vote in these elections—Generation Y. In addition to having to do with food and drink, it is also about how our city chooses to regulate businesses.
While many cities have thriving food truck scenes, many food trucks in Chicago have gone out of business. Despite that the food truck scene in Chicago is diverse—from The Salsa Truck with their excellent companion restaurant to the Southern Pitch Food Truck. We’d love to see how it grows without the burden of unnecessary regulations.
Specifically we asked candidates with an email address or a contact form the following:
Would you support repealing the rule that says food trucks must be 200 feet away from a restaurant in order to operate?
The law in question can be found in the Chicago City Code ยง 7-38-115(f).
When the law was put into place, the Council was transparent that the rules purpose was to protect restaurants from competition from food trucks.
Currently the rule is being challenged in court by the Institute For Justice, but that’s a slow process. In the meantime the Alderman could change the rule. Below we feature the opinions of many candidates, some who disagree and some who agree. Regardless of how you feel we encourage you to find out your ward and make sure to vote in the election. Early voting started Monday and the main election day is Feb. 24, 2015.
Ward 1
YES- Joe Moreno
“Some of the best restaurants in the world began as humble food carts. Those in opposition of reform often posit the notion that food trucks will negatively impact nearby restaurants. To say that these restaurants could be upended by a food truck disregards the quality of service found in these places. In the 1st Ward we have so many award-winning food establishments that have made a name for themselves by perfecting their art. I think they'll be just fine. Section f of city code 7-38-115 makes it virtually impossible for food trucks to operate in high-density areas where the demand is clearly present. We love food in the 1st Ward whether it comes from a food truck or a traditional sit-down place. ”
Ward 2
YES- Steve Niketopoulos
“
”
MAYBE- Bita Buenrostro
Yes, I think it is a completely different experience to dine indoors and visit a food truck. I understand there need to be checks and balances in place to make sure no one takes advantage, but I see food trucks as small businesses. As an example of how food trucks can lead to more specialty restaurants, "5411" used to be a food truck, and with success they expanded into a sit down restaurant in Wicker Park. I think food trucks are fun, a fixture for immigrant populations, and often partner with charities or a good cause. I think they have a lack of representation in the city because of their small business nature, so I'd like to see some of these codes revisited.
“ I support the safe operation of Food Trucks and the innovation that they have brought to Chicago's hosting and tourism industry. Right now, the question about the food truck exclusion zone is a more complex issue than a simple yes or no. Before considering repealing or reducing the zone, I need to perform research in our 2nd ward. As your Alderman, I will be speaking with a good number of restaurant owners and food truck operators, Chambers of Commerce, and residents in our 2nd Ward to come to an informed opinion that best represents their needs. At this time, I am not able to give a commitment to such a proposal without understanding the likely impacts on commerce and economy and jobs. ”
Ward 3
NO - Pat Dowell
Ice Cubed, which has now gone out of business, at a food truck hearing in 2012 (Avi Schwab/Chicagoist Flickr Pool)
Ward 7
YES- Chevette Valentine
“ Yes I would, I feel that just as there are restaurants in the area that also pose competition to the other food service providers, the rule should be omitted. The purpose of the food truck is to make purchasing a fresh and hot meal in a timely manner, many of the customers who frequent trucks do so for timing and cost reasons, but mainly for the convenience of not having to travel far distances and [lose] time from work.
I would stand behind repealing said rule, and would present said amended rule to the Mayor in confidence he would understand the rationality and reasoning, as he is the first to support the food truck industry! ”
NO- Keiana Barrett
“Presently, changing the law is not a legislative priority, given the vast array of community development challenges the 7th Ward must confront. While I recognize the importance of small businesses to the economy, the 7th Ward must build comprehensively, with robust commercial corridors before focusing on making changes such as those proposed.”
Editor's note: the original statement sent to us by Barrett's campaign was exactly identical to Joe Moore's, which was not available publicly. We asked if the language had come from an industry group and did not receive a response.
Ward 9
YES- Ted Williams
(Avi Schwab/Chicagoist Flickr Pool)
Ward 26
MAYBE- Adam Corona
“Currently I am not opposed to repealing the rule in question. Within the 26th ward community there is the vibrant and beautiful Humboldt Park, which is an area which could present a great location for these food trucks to conduct their operations, but due to the proximity of certain restaurants they are currently unable. For a community as diverse as the 26th Ward many residents are unable to find a variety of choice in their options of food. The presence of these food trucks could, at least in theory, offer a solution to this problem. In allowing the food trucks to operate near or in the park people would not only be encouraged to visit the ward more frequently, but also allow for a more diverse selection of food.
My only concern regarding a change of the law would be competition. The people who either own or are employed by these food trucks might be members of the 26th ward community, but most would be transient businesses. If non-competition clauses could be added or be used to amend the current law I would feel comfortable that these food trucks could operate in a way that is economically beneficial to the community, rather than compete with local businesses hiring local workers. ”
Ward 36
NO- Christopher Vittorio
“ I would not support repealing this law.”
Ward 43
YES- Caroline Vickrey
“ As a huge fan of the Austin, Texas, food truck craze (my son goes to school in Austin and we have dined on many a fine meal at amazing food trucks, as well as in the many fine restaurants that have emerged nearby out of the culture of excellent food), I wholeheartedly support a repeal of the 200 foot ban. ”
Ward 44
YES- Scott Davis
“ I would be in favor of the repeal and generally would support less regulation of Chicago food trucks because I think they are a great way for entrepreneurs to start out and eventually expand into the restaurant business once they establish a successful food truck. The current restrictions are designed to protect existing restaurant owners and I believe we should repeal the ordinance to encourage competition in Chicago. ”
Ward 45
YES- John Arena
“Alderman Arena asked me to pass on to you an answer to your question regarding repealing the rule that says food trucks must be 200 feet away from a restaurant in order to operate.
The short answer is yes.
The long answer is Alderman Arena voted against a food truck ordinance because it was too restrictive. The ordinance called for 32 locations in which food trucks would be able to operate within 200 feet of an existing relationship, but the ordinance didn't include where those areas would be.
Ald. Arena supports lifting the ban entirely and letting food trucks operate in a competitive environment. Easing restrictions on food trucks gives entrepreneurs greater flexibility. In New York City, for example, Shake Shack began as a food cart, and now it has expanded throughout NYC and beyond. We should encourage that kind of economic development in Chicago.
The idea of an either/or choice between food trucks and brick-and-mortar locations is a false choice, because many food trucks are associated with a brick-and-mortar location. This is just another way of helping restaurants serve food.”- Dave Miranda, campaign spokesperson
Ward 49
NO- Joe Moore
“ I would not support changing the law at this time. The law appears to be working and strikes a reasonable balance by legalizing food truck entrepreneurs and increasing consumers' dining options while at the same time recognizing the important role that traditional restaurants play in Chicago's economy. ”
Ward 50
YES- Peter Sifnotis
“ As a candidate who strongly objects to the obstacles our city puts in the path of small businesses, I'd be happy to answer your question.
I believe the ordinance prohibiting food trucks from operating with 200 feet of fixed restaurants is designed to protect established businesses and prevents the creation of jobs. It limits the ability to operate a business and reduces opportunity for entrepreneurs. This comes at a time when Chicago is growing at a rate much slower than other major metropolitan areas. The requirements set forth in the food truck ordinance seriously stymie the growth of an industry that can increase the marketability of this city, ensure only the well-connected can start-up successfully, limit innovation, and impact the quality of life for our citizens. ”Google DeepMind is one of the world’s best A.I. development teams one need look no further than its latest success, AlphaGo’s victory over the world Go champion. The gold standard for A.I. has its limits, though, as revealed in a new paper.
Essentially, DeepMind’s programs might be able to tell a hawk from a handsaw, but ask it to tell a hand-wave from a hand-job, and you might not be so fortunate.
In a new, unpublished paper uploaded to the arXiv online repository, DeepMind researchers describe the creation of a new dataset designed to help A.I. programs learn how to identify different types of human actions and differentiate between them. The results indicate while A.I. can pretty accurately identify objects and individuals, they have an incredibly long way to go before they’ll be able to tell what those objects or people are actually doing.
The types of A.I. built by DeepMind and their rivals at places like Facebook and Apple use deep-learning algorithms which are taught to find patterns across insane troves of data. For example, in teaching a facial recognition program how to identify people and describe their emotions as perceived through faces, an A.I. would be introduced to hundreds of thousands or even millions of photographs of people and scan for clues that pinpoint what features most distinguish faces from one another, and what features and facial contortions best correlate with what kind of emotional states.
But recognizing static objects is one thing. Recognizing what a moving object is doing? In motion? That’s an entirely different thing — the addition of a z-axis on data that already possesses the x- and the y-axes. And for that, you need to show A.I. programs videos. Lots of them.
“A.I. systems are now very good at recognizing objects in images, but still have trouble making sense of videos,” a DeepMind spokesperson told Inverse. “One of the main reasons for this is that the research community has so far lacked a large, high-quality video dataset. We hope that the Kinetics dataset will help the machine learning community to advance models for video understanding, making a whole range of new research opportunities possible.”
The applications borne out of an A.I. program which can recognize and identify human action are enormous. Let’s say national security personnel is using A.I.-infused surveillance to scan for threats in a large crowd. Currently, a program might only be able to pick out suspects who have already been identified as potential threats. But a system which can recognize actions might be trained to flag down individuals who are doing suspicious things, like walking around in strange patterns, exhibiting unusual movements characteristic of suspects, and more. Beyond that, recognizing action might also pinpoint small details in, say, a beating heart, which are traits associated with arrhythmia or other disorders.
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So the DeepMind team collated a collation of 300,000 video clips from YouTube which illustrate over 400 different classes of human actions. This Kinetics dataset dwarfs similar collections being used by the research community — primarily because Google is able to harness the sheer amount of video clips uploaded to YouTube (which Google owns).
The new paper illustrates how DeepMind A.I. systems trained off the Kinetics dataset exhibit an 80 percent or higher accuracy in classifying actions like “riding a mechanical bull,” “presenting weather forecast,” “sled dog racing,” “bowling,” and “picking fruit.”
List of 20 easiest and 20 hardest Kinetics classes sorted by class accuracies by DeepMind A.I.
Meanwhile, accuracies for classifying other actions like “tossing coin,” “shooting basketball,” “drinking beer,” “sneezing,” and slapping,” drop down to less than 20 percent for the DeepMind A.I.
Why? There are a ton of different reasons, but it usually just comes down to the fact that some actions are harder to identify without stronger, more vivid context clues. “Currently, much video understanding relies heavily on image understanding and is not able to reliably recognize dynamic patterns; for example, distinguishing different types of swimming or dancing,” said DeepMind’s spokesperson.
Moreover, training A.I. to recognize action patterns is still really new. The Kinetics dataset is one of the first robust training materials curated specifically for this cause. “The success in image understanding has been due to the use of neural network models, trained using deep learning,” says DeepMind. “However, these models require very large-scale datasets for their training. Such datasets are available for images, but until now, there have been no datasets of comparable size and quality available for videos.”
There is some hopeful news, however. The results indicate that the A.I. didn’t develop any gender-based biases in identifying action classes — meaning no single gender dominated the ID of actions. (There was, for obvious reasons, a gender imbalance when it came to certain actions like “shaving beard” — mostly male — and “cheerleading” — mostly female.) In the sense, DeepMind is making good progress in combating biases that have been a headache for A.I. researchers across the world.
If Google is serious about turning itself into an “A.I.-first” company, it’s certainly going about it better than its rivals.In the go-go world of software development, we're so consumed with learning new things, so fascinated with the procession of shiny new objects that I think we sometimes lose sight of our history. I don't mean the big era-defining successes. Everyone knows those stories. I'm talking about the things we've tried before that … didn't quite work out. The failures. The also-rans. The noble experiments. The crazy plans.
I'm all for reinventing the wheel, because it's one of the best ways to learn. But you shouldn't even think about reinventing a damn thing until you've exhaustively researched every single last wheel, old or new, working or broken, that you can lay your hands on. Do your homework.
That's why I love unearthing stories like The Lessons of Lucasfilm's Habitat. It's basically World of Warcraft … in 1985.
Habitat is "a multi-participant online virtual environment," a cyberspace. Each participant ("player") uses a home computer (Commodore 64) as an intelligent, interactive client, communicating via modem and telephone over a commercial packet-switching network to a centralized, mainframe host system. The client software provides the user interface, generating a real-time animated display of what is going on and translating input from the player into messages to the host. The host maintains the system's world model enforcing the rules and keeping each player's client informed about the constantly changing state of the universe.
This was the dark ages of home computing. In 1985, that 64k of memory in a Commodore 64 was a lot. The entirety of Turbo Pascal 3.02 for DOS, released a year later in 1986, was barely 40k.
The very concept of a multiplayer virtual world of any kind – something we take for granted today, since every modern website is essentially a multiplayer game now — was incredibly exotic. Look at the painstaking explanation Lucasfilm had to produce to even get folks to understand what the heck Habitat was, and how it worked:
The technical information in The Lessons of Lucasfilm's Habitat is incredibly dated, as you'd expect, and barely useful even as trivia. But the sociological lessons of Habitat cut to the bone. They're as fresh today as they were in 1985. Computers have radically changed in the intervening 27 years, whereas people's behavior hasn't. At all. This particular passage hit home:
Again and again we found that activities based on often unconscious assumptions about player behavior had completely unexpected outcomes (when they were not simply outright failures). It was clear that we were not in control. The more people we involved in something, the less in control we were. We could influence things, we could set up interesting situations, we could provide opportunities for things to happen, but we could not predict nor dictate the outcome. Social engineering is, at best, an inexact science, even in proto-cyberspaces. Or, as some wag once said, "in the most carefully constructed experiment under the most carefully controlled conditions, the organism will do whatever it damn well pleases."
Even more specifically:
Propelled by these experiences, we shifted into a style of operations in which we let the players themselves drive the direction of the design. This proved far more effective. Instead of trying to push the community in the direction we thought it should go, an exercise rather like herding mice, we tried to observe what people were doing and aid them in it. We became facilitators as much as designers and implementors. This often meant adding new features and new regions to the system at a frantic pace, but almost all of what we added was used and appreciated, since it was well matched to people's needs and desires. As the experts on how the system worked, we could often suggest new activities for people to try or ways of doing things that people might not have thought of. In this way we were able to have considerable influence on the system's development in spite of the fact that we didn't really hold the steering wheel -- more influence, in fact, than we had had when we were operating under the delusion that we controlled everything.
That's exactly what I was trying to say in Listen to Your Community, But Don't Let Them Tell You What to Do. Unfortunately, because I hadn't read this essay until a few months ago, I figured this important lesson out 25 years later than Randy Farmer and Chip Morningstar. So many Stack Overflow features were the direct result of observing what the community was doing, then attempting to aid them in it:
We noticed early in the Stack Overflow beta that users desperately wanted to reply to each other, and were cluttering up the system with "answers" that were, well, not answers to the question. Rather than chastize them for doing it wrong – stupid users! – we added the commenting system to give them a method of annotating answers and questions for clarifications, updates, and improvements.
– we added the commenting system to give them a method of annotating answers and questions for clarifications, updates, and improvements. I didn't think it was necessary to have a place to discuss Stack Overflow. And I was … kind of a jerk about it. The community was on the verge of creating a phpBB forum instance to discuss Stack Overflow. Faced with a nuclear ultimatum, I relented, and you know what? They were right. And I was wrong.
The community came up with an interesting convention for handling duplicate questions, by manually editing a blockquote into the top of the question with a link to the authoritative question that it was a duplicate of. This little user editing convention eventually became the template for the official implementation.
I could go on and on, but I won't bore you. I'd say for every 3 features we introduced on Stack Overflow, at least two of them came more or less directly from observing the community, then trying to run alongside them, building tools that helped them do what they wanted to do with less fuss and effort. That was my job for the last four years. And I loved it, until I had to stop loving it.
Randy Farmer, one of the primary designers of Habitat at Lucasfilm, went on to work on a bunch of things that you may recognize: with Douglas Crockford on JSON, The Sims Online, Second Life, Yahoo 360°, Yahoo Answers, Answers.com, and so forth. He eventually condensed some of his experience into a book, Building Web Reputation Systems, which I bought in April 2011 as a Kindle edition. I didn't know who Mr. Farmer was at this time. I just saw a new O'Reilly book on an area of interest, and I thought I'd check it out.
As the co-founder of Stack Overflow, I know a thing or two about web reputation systems! Out of curiosity, I looked up the author on my own site. And I found him, with a tiny reputation. So I sent this friendly jibe on Twitter:
But the last laugh was on Randy, as it should be, because I didn't realize he had over 6,000 reputation on rpg.stackexchange.com. Turns out, Randy Farmer was already an avid Stack Exchange user. And, as you might guess given his background, a rather expert Stack Exchange user at that. The Stack Exchange ruleset is complex, strict, and requires discipline to understand. Kind of like.. maybe a certain role playing game, if you will.
Randy is the sort of dad who had his first edition Dungeons & Dragons books bound into a single leather tome and handed it down to his son as a family heirloom. How awesome is that?
If we've learned anything in the last 25 years since Habitat, it is that people are the source of, and solution to, all the problems you'll run into when building social software. Are you looking to (dungeon) master the art of guiding and nudging your online community through their collective adventure, without violating the continuity of your own little universe? If so, you could do a whole heck of lot worse than reading Building Web Reputation Systems and following @FRandallFarmer on Twitter.902 SHARES Share Tweet
President Donald J. Trump held a rally tonight in a state that was the turning point for him winning the 2016 General election for POTUS. (Full Speech Down Below)
When President Trump won Florida with all 29 of the electoral votes, it was at that moment that Trump supporters began realizing he would win the election. It was also that same moment, that the pro Hillary media began having meltdown on National television. Anyway, to show his appreciation, he held a rally with many people from Florida and Alabama. Many were unable to enter the building! It was a great crowd and President Trump did not disappoint. Americans all needed to hear this speech!
Around 8 p.m. Trump totally got the crowd roaring with why he wants Roy Moore in the Senate! He started with a rip roaring question that caused the crowd to erupt in cheers!
“How many people here are from the GREAT State of Alabama??”
Alabama was definitely being represented! And Penscacola is just miles away from the Alabama border! There are no numbers on how many attended at the moment, but the place was completely packed!(Full Speech Down Below)
Trump continued with “So did you see what happened today?” The crowd cheered again and then Trump asked the big question!
“Did you see the yearbook? Gloria Allred -every time you see her…you know something has gone wrong!“
The crowd was cheering so loud after that one! Trump continued, “We cannot afford to lose that seat in Senate. To a liberal democrat who is completely controlled by Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer. (Followed by very loud boo’s from the crowd.) We can’t do it…his name is JONES and he is their total PUPPET. We need someone in that seat who will vote our [ MAGA agenda]. Then President Trump listed what will be happening to help America back to her former prosperity. He listed:
tough on crime
strong on border
strong on immigration
building the wall
strong on military
continuing the fight for veterans
we want great conservative Judges like Gorsuch
people who will protect your gun rights
great trade deals instead of horrible ones
and we want jobs jobs jobs
President Trump then ended the Roy segment with,
“So get out and vote for ROY MOORE.”
The crowd went wild and Trump had Pensacola completely fired up! Trump gives us all a sense of pride and an amazing energy! An incredible rally! After speaking for a while longer, he wrapped up the rally with,
“Our revolution didn’t end on November 8th…it was just the beginning…never give up, never back down and never ever stop dreaming…together we will indeed make America strong again, we will make America proud again, we will make America wealthy again, we will make America safe again, and put it all together and what have we got? MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN. Thank you…God Bless and God Bless America.”
Snow began to fall from the ceiling and the Trump Pence Merry Christmas signs were waving as the crowd erupted in a sense of Patriotic appreciation!
President Trump was speaking honestly and with his heart. WOW. GREAT rally! It ended, with an amazing rendition of “You can’t always get what you want”, by a female choir. Absolutely beautiful! Here is the President’s Full Rally Speech:
Main Image: Lindsey Michelle & Dagger News Compilation
Like this: Like Loading...Terror suspects on the Home Office watch list are entering the UK in the runup to the Olympics without the necessary security checks, according to frontline officials at Heathrow.
One senior border officer told the Observer that inexperienced new recruits, deployed to shorten queues after complaints over lengthy waiting times, are repeatedly "missing" passengers of interest who should be referred to counterterrorism officers when they reach passport control.
The official said he was personally aware that three terror suspects – all of whose names are registered on the Home Office suspect index system – had been waved through by staff on his shifts since the start of July. Border officials should immediately notify counterterrorism police or MI5 if they suspect that "SX travellers" are attempting to enter the UK. Another colleague alleged that five suspects were "missed" in one day earlier this month.
"It's all new faces," said the senior official. "The rest of the staff, I have no idea where they have come from, how long they are here for, what their background is. These are people who have been forced by their own department to come here."
The crisis comes days after G4S, the world's biggest security firm, announced it could not provide enough security guards for the London Olympics, forcing the government to call up 3,500 troops to meet the shortfall. Last month John Evans, head of MI5, said the Games offered an "attractive target for our enemies, and they will be at the centre of the world's attention".
The intelligence and security committee also warned that the Olympics had diverted MI5, MI6 and GCHQ from other potential threats to Britain, citing the "vulnerability of the UK at this critical period". It identified potential sources of threat including al-Qaida and its affiliates planning an attack on the Games or participants, especially US or Israeli nationals, and also the possible threat from republican dissident terrorist groups.
Speaking on condition of anonymity, the UK Border Agency official said: "How many other misses have occurred? The missing of counterterrorism 'hits' is a huge thing, but new recruits are not getting enough time to be taught.
"It is vital these people do not get in without being noted and that the information is passed to the police or security services. Once they're in, you've no idea where they might be going."
Many of those drafted in to help cope with border staffing shortages before the Olympics are individuals who have been working elsewhere in the Home Office and have received only basic training to work on airport passport desks. Some have had only a day's training instead of the standard six to eight weeks.
The revelations of lax practice are particularly alarming, coming ahead of pre-Olympic week during which the vast majority of athletes, media and officials will arrive. On 25 July – the day when traffic through Heathrow airport is expected to be most intense – the staffing roster shows, according to union sources, that more than half the employees on duty are from relief staff.
It is understood that counterterrorism police at Heathrow are urgently seeking a meeting with senior UKBA management over the missed alerts. Mark Reckless MP, a Tory member of the home affairs select committee, said: "I know the home secretary would be extremely concerned if the warning index checks were being missed."
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from Bandar Abbas who have recently been arrested say that they were questioned about the activities of Rezvani and their interrogators warned them not to associate with him.
Since 2005, more than 60 Baha’is have been physically assaulted or murdered by government officials or plainclothes assailants. Not one of these cases has been prosecuted. If Rezvani’s murder is not investigated, it will only add to the assumption that government officials ordered his murder.
His death comes a month after the inauguration of Iran’s new president Hassan Rouhani, who is often described as a moderate. Many hoped that he might change the course of Iran’s atrocious human rights record.
ALSO READ Portraits of life in post-revolutionary Iran
However, as media attention focused on the hopeful prospects of a new regime in Iran, Ayatollah Khamenei, the country’s supreme leader, issued a new series of fatwas in which he projected himself as the leader of the entire Shi’a world.
According to a report by Ali Mamouri for al-Monitor, the fatwas adopt a “hostile view…toward Iran’s Baha’i community, wherein any association with them has been deemed unlawful, and the Baha’i faith has been labeled false and misguiding.” Mamouri further suggests that, “these fatwas of Khamenei have been issued as other Shiite authorities, in the hope of eliminating prejudice against the Baha’i community, have recently issued humanitarian and tolerant fatwas regarding the Baha’i.”
“Such a horrible event creates an atmosphere of insecurity”
In another fatwa Khamenei forbids the publication or public announcement of crimes or corruption related to government officials. In light of Rezvani’s murder, this does not bode well for the Baha’i community in Iran, which may well witness an uptick in violence in the coming months.
News media in Iran has been silent on the murder of Rezvani. However, several Persian language outlets outside of Iran, including BBC Persian and Voice of America, have reported the story.
Human rights organizations, including Iran Human Rights Documentation Center and Iran Press Watch, have reported that Ayatollah Masumi Tehrani recently met with a group of Baha’is, which his website confirms. According to Iran Press Watch, the Ayatollah said the following in his meeting with the Baha’is: “The heart-wrenching and unfair murder of the late Mr. Ataollah Rezvani is a cause for grief and sadness, and I offer my condolences to his family and friends…My ardent hope is that with the spread of rationalism and avoidance of blind religious fanaticism in Iranian society we will not witness such horrifying crimes any more. I also hope that the authorities identify and punish those responsible for these crimes.”
Additionally, a group of nearly 50 prisoners of conscience in the infamous Rajai Shahr prison in Iran have written a letter in support of Rezvani. They “condemn this vicious act and demand the immediate investigation and prosecution of the perpetrators of this incident and those who ordered it in a fair court of law.”
They further state that, “such a horrible event creates an atmosphere of insecurity among fellow members of Iran’s Baha’i community as well as other minority groups.” They also remind the reader that on the basis of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Iranian constitution, “all citizens have equal rights, and the government is responsible for protecting their personal, financial, and social safety.”
Rezvani’s family members have made appeals to the Iranian government to launch a full investigation of the murder.
The views expressed in this article do not necessarily represent those of Your Middle East.
EDITOR’S PICK Israel’s black gold shifts the balance of powerWhite House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs has been slapped around silly by commentator after commentator, decrying his anti-Lefty rage. But as I read the battle, it seems to miss a pretty fundamental point:
It's certainly not fair to criticize Obama for not being a Lefty. He wasn't ever a Lefty. He didn't promise to be a Lefty. And there's no reason to expect that he would ever become a Lefty.
But Lefties (like me) who criticize Obama are not criticizing him for failing our Lefty test. Our criticism is that Obama is failing the Obama test: that he is not delivering the presidency that he promised.
When Candidate Obama took on Hilary Clinton, he was quite clear about what he thought about the way Washington works. And he was quite clear about why he was running for President. As he said:
[U]nless we're willing to challenge the broken system in Washington, and stop letting lobbyists use their clout to get their way, nothing else is going to change. And the reason I'm running for president is to challenge that system.
Read it again: "The reason I am running for president is to challenge that system."
Or again:
[I]f we do not change our politics -- if we do not fundamentally change the way Washington works -- then the problems we've been talking about for the last generation will be the same ones that haunt us for generations to come.
Or again:
But let me be clear -- this isn't just about ending the failed policies of the Bush years; it's about ending the failed system in Washington that produces those policies. For far too long, through both Democratic and Republican administrations, Washington has allowed Wall Street to use lobbyists and campaign contributions to rig the system and get its way, no matter what it costs ordinary Americans.
Or again, as he asked, again and again:
Do we continue to allow lobbyists to veto our progress? Or do we finally put our national interests ahead of the special interests and address the concerns people feel over their jobs, their health care and their children's future?
Or again, as he explained:
We are up against the belief that it's OK for lobbyists to dominate our government -- that they are just part of the system in Washington. But we know that the undue influence of lobbyists is part of the problem, and this election is our chance to say that we're not going to let them stand in our way anymore.
Or perhaps put best:
We need to challenge the system... And if we're not willing to take up that fight, then real change -- change that will make a lasting difference in the lives of ordinary Americans -- will keep getting blocked by the defenders of the status quo.
Once Obama clinched the nomination, however, his rhetoric changed. And as he came to office, his focus, as a senior administration official explained, was to clean up the Executive, and leave to Congress the problem of cleaning up Congress (begging the obvious question: Does the president believe the problem with Washington is the presidency, and not Congress?)
Since coming to power, Obama has pushed just one piece of legislation that would have any effect at all on the power of lobbyists over Congress. That bill has not passed, and even if it had, it would have changed nothing in the lobbyists' power. He has not even indicated that he would support the only substantial reform of lobbyists power with support in Congress today -- the Fair Elections Now Act. Indeed, "congressional reform" doesn't even merit a mention on the "Additional Issues" page of whitehouse.gov (though "sportsmen" does).
Obama's strategy as president has not been to "change the way Washington works." Rather, he has pushed reforms in the same old way, with the same old games. As Glenn Greenwald put it, speaking of health care:
The way this bill has been shaped is the ultimate expression -- and bolstering -- of how Washington has long worked. One can find reasonable excuses for why it had to be done that way, but one cannot reasonably deny that it was.
Now I'm not sure whether it is leftist, or rightist, or centerist to govern through special interest deals. It certainly is Clintonist. It's precisely the administration that Hillary "lobbyists are people, too" Clinton promised. And were she president, and had she done exactly what Obama has done, then no one, I included, would have any reason to criticize her.(MoneyWatch) I'm a time management nut, and so I am surprised that the most important aspect of personal productivity is rarely discussed. It is to do creative work when you're naturally creative, and do productive tasks when you're naturally in "get it done" mode.
Every person I've ever met, taught, or learned from, is more creative at some point in the day than others, so much so that they are a creative genius at some times. The same person is a productivity machine at other times in the day (or, a "productivity genius"). The key is to know what your natural daily rhythm is.
First, some definitions. Creative tasks are those that require "invention" -- which the Greeks understood as a combination of originality and discovering what's going on. Writing poetry is creative. So is writing a proposal. And getting ready for a meeting, when you're getting your facts in order and thinking about how to present them and respond to questions. Answering a tough email is creative, as is offering critiques on a marketing strategy, or preparing a bid.
A productive task is something you try to dispense quickly, where the key is efficiency. Answering routine emails, returning calls, getting through the stuff on your desk are productivity tasks.
So, how do you sync up when you do each? Here's how:
1. Keep a "genius log" for three days to map your daily cycle. During the 72 hours, when you're at work, set an alarm every 1-2 hours. When it goes off, record these quick data points:
- The exact time of day.
- The task you're working on.
- Where it is on the creativity-productive continuum, with "100% C" meaning total creativity, "100% P" meaning that you're doing your best to be a productivity machine.
- How effortless it is, on a one to 10 scale, with 10 being "completely effortless" and one being "personal hell."
After making these notations, reset the alarm for a time between 60 and 120 minutes. Repeat until the end of the workday, and for the next two days.
To learn more on how to do the genius log, get some tips to not hang yourself up, and see a sample of my own log, go to my personal blog.
2. After the three days, go over the data and search for when your creative genius and your productive genius come out to play.
3. Without being a weirdo, match your creative tasks and your productive tasks to your daily genius cycle. For me, I'm more creative between 6 a.m. and 9 a.m., better at productive from 9 a.m.-12 p.m. My best time for combinations -- meetings that involve creativity, for example -- is lunch. By 5 p.m., I can barely string a sentence together, so my creative genius has gone home for the day. But I can slam through emails until 9 p.m.
One of the big insights you'll get from this activity is when to shut down and go home. There's little point staying late, if both your creative and productive geniuses have left you. On those awful days when you need to flex your schedule because of jetlag, or an early meeting with someone overseas, see whether you're more creative or productive. I've learned that I can be productive from 3 a.m.-5 a.m., but around 5 a.m., my creative genius takes over.
Here's a challenge: Instead of reading this blog post and saying "makes sense, I should do that," actually give it a try. You might be surprised. If you can become 5 percent better at matching your time to your natural genius cycle, you'll net an extra day a month. Become 10 percent better and you get two. Many people find they can easily get a 30-50 percent gain. You do the math.
If you do try it, I hope you'll record what you find in a comment below.A Canadian woman's house is collapsing under the weight of the 350,000 books she rescued from a neighbour who was planning to burn them after her bibliophile husband died.
Shaunna Raycraft, from Pike Lake, Saskatchewan, stepped in when her widowed neighbour began to burn her husband's collection of books. "There was a house floor-to-ceiling with books. He was the collector; she had tried to get someone to appraise the books but they wouldn't come out [to the rural setting]. She didn't know how to deal with them so she started to burn them," Raycraft told Canadian national broadcaster CBC.
But Raycraft and her husband, both book lovers, couldn't stand to see the book bonfire – "There was a first edition copy of Black Beauty on the top pile and the bottom was all charred off [from being burned] but the top was just immaculate," she said – and bought the lot. Thirty tonnes of books later, she realised what she had let herself in for. From How-To manuals to a 1907 first edition of Beatrix Potter's The Tale of Two Bad Mice, Shakespeare to textbooks, the collection was so large the couple had to buy a small house and install it on their land to store the books, which fill 7,500 boxes.
"It took a minimum of three days to pack the baseball books alone into boxes [and] five days for the Bibles and religious texts," she told UPI. "Most of the boxes are still unopened and unsorted."
After trying and failing to sell the books online and to used book stores, Raycraft is now having to contemplate burning them herself. "We're talking 30 tonnes of books. The weight of the books is pulling the house apart," she said. "We are kind of at a standstill. I work at two jobs. My husband is a full-time student. We have three kids and no time. And no money. And so we're at the point now where were looking at having to burn some of the books ourselves."
Her goal, she said, is to get a sea container brought to the house to help store the books. "When you say to somebody, 'I have 350,000 books,' it just goes over their head — they have no concept. It's very hard to take a box in and say, 'Here, sort through this and see what you want'," she said.shadow
Interverrà davvero, in costume medievale, alla festa di compleanno dei barbacani di Capodimonte
«Ebbene sì. L’ho detto e lo farò». Non manca l’ironia a Sylvain Bellenger. Il direttore del museo di Capodimonte ieri, in diretta a Radio Marte, ha accettato l’invito al party contro i bastioni di sicurezza.
Lei pensava fossero un elemento antico.
«La parola è francese e indica elementi di origine medievale. Ho pensato fossero contrafforti del Settecento. Invece sono la dimostrazione che a Napoli succede sempre la stessa cosa....».
E cosa succede a Napoli?
«Ci si lascia paralizzare dalla paura e non si decide. Poiché tocca a me intervenire — al direttore del museo spettano anche le decisioni sul Bosco — ho detto ai miei architetti che concedo loro due mesi per sapere se il pericolo c’è o non c’è. Se il muro di cinta del bosco regge o no. Loro mi diranno che è ok e io ordinerò la rimozione dei barbacani».
Il ministro Franceschini ha detto che Capodimonte è tagliato fuori dalla città....
«Capodimonte è tagliato fuori da tutto. Ancora oggi avevo al telefono un gruppo di americani che, da Roma, raggiungerà il litorale laziale per arrivare a Capri, Positano e Sorrento. C’è una organizzazione internazionale che, con precisione spaventosa, tiene fuori Napoli. Sappiamo che al porto arrivano più di 10mila persone al giorno. Il punto è: dove vanno? Di certo Capodimonte è invisibile. Nel weekend il New York Times è uscito con tre pagine su Napoli e il turismo e non una sola linea era per Capodimonte. È come se a Parigi ci si dimenticasse del Louvre. Neanche i napoletani hanno idea di quel che c’è qui: è il museo più bello di Napoli, il secondo o il primo d’Italia e lo conosce il due per cento della popolazione».
E tutto ciò non ha nulla a che fare con la mancanza di collegamenti?
«Per andare a Versailles occorrono 45 minuti su un treno orribile più 15 minuti a piedi: ogni anno ci sono 5 milioni di visitatori. Il problema si chiama marketing. Bisogna mettere Capodimonte sulla mappa del mondo. Ricordo che da studente venivo sempre a Napoli per le mostre di Nicola Spinosa, ma il mondo è cambiato. Una mostra, per quanto ben fatta, non dà al museo una sua identità. Un museo deve essere un luogo di vita per la città, di piacere, di educazione, di divertimento. Noi siamo molto in ritardo, siamo come la Francia negli anni ‘70».
Come si recupera questo ritardo?
«Vorrei poter intervenire sugli aerei che a intervalli regolari passano 200 metri sopra di noi provocando danni a tele e porcellane. È scandaloso! Alla National Gallery o al Louvre succederebbe? No».
E intanto, nel museo, su cosa interviene?
«Su tante cose che non vanno bene perché la gente a forza di essere abbandonata si è abituata a trovare normali cose che normali non sono: un museo che sia troppo freddo, troppo caldo, luci senza lampadine, bagni sporchi. Ecco, questo è il mio lavoro per ora. Sono un idraulico».
Risolte le questioni idrauliche cosa farà?
«La mia idea è fare con le collezioni una mostra permanente, dove tutte le opere sono spiegate al pubblico come lo sono negli eventi. Io non aspetto che il pubblico chieda, io lo metto al centro del museo insieme con l’educazione. Il mio ruolo è conservare, far conoscere e studiare. Intanto risolvo problemi grandi e piccoli in questa magnificenza, dove ci sono 127 gallerie enormi, piene di capolavori che sono in tutti i libri del mondo».
Ha qualche progetto sul fronte contemporaneo?
«Ho in mente una mostra su Pablo Picasso, e su Matisse, per far conoscere il ventesimo secolo. Per completare l’offerta del contemporaneo — poderosa grazie a interventi come quelli di Lucio Amelio — e creare un raccordo con le collezioni di epoche precedenti. E poi c’è il Bosco che ha la possibilità di essere insieme Central Park e una super Villa Medici. Dove trascorrere il fine settimana, portare i cani, e venire a studiare le piante d’epoca».
Lei dove ha scelto di vivere in città?
«A Capodimonte. Vivrò di fronte al museo, nel Bosco. Ci sono dei lavori da fare: non c’è doccia, né acqua. Ma è una necessità assoluta essere qui. Sono venuto a Napoli con lo spirito di un missionario».
Cosa la piace di Napoli?
«Tutto, è deliziosa. Ma mi fa arrabbiare. Ha presente Balzac? ‘’Splendeurs et misères’’». (Anna Paola Merone)East MVP of the First Trimester: Kyle Lowry, Toronto
The numbers, as Adam Sandler might say this time of year, are really not too shabby.
Averages of 25.4 points, 7.6 assists and 5.1 rebounds per game wrapped in a PER of 25.4 that still ranks No. 1 among every single basketball player whose address can be found on the Eastern half of the conference divide?
I wish I were slipping in my old age like LeBron James.
But you know by now how we operate at First Trimester time. Although LeBron could easily (and justifiably) serve as our selection here, it's true that we tend to favor candidates at this stage whose chances of figuring in the real-life MVP race come April are on the long-shot side.
Just to show them a little love that likely won't be forthcoming later.
Allow us, then, to slight King James for a trimester and focus on two lead guards playing the best ball of their lives. Ask us to pinpoint the most impactful player in the poor Leastern Conference so far and we find ourselves flip-flopping between Kyle Lowry and John Wall.
Right.
Might as well flip a coin.
If you were forced to choose one to build around in drafting mode, Wall would naturally have the edge as a certifiable max guy known for playing at top gear. He awoke Friday morning averaging a robust 18.0 points, 10.5 assists and 4.7 boards, good for a PER of 21.3 as the high-speed force behind Washington's 20-8 start despite being forced to play without backcourt sidekick Bradley Beal for the season's first nine games.
Statistically, though, Lowry has the edge for now. Narrowly.
With All-Star backcourt mate DeMar DeRozan missing the entire month through injury, Lowry is shooting.407 on 3-pointers in December while hiking his PER into the NBA's top 10 at a heady 24.0. Lowry is basically a 20-8-and-5 guy now and has nudged Toronto all the way up to No. 2 in the league in offensive efficiency (111.7 points per 100 possessions) as well as No. 2 in average nightly point margin at a healthy plus-8.1.
I'm guessing King James will understand, with his Cavs off to such an uneven start, once he reads those last two paragraphs again.It looks like GOP Virginia gubernatorial candidate Ken Cuccinelli's unexpectedly (by the MSM) narrow loss to Democrat Terry MecAuliffe is going to get more than the usual amount of spin, so it's refeshing to see this blunt summary:
It was a base election. McAuliffe declared in his victory speech that “a historic number of Republicans” supported him. But that’s just not how it happened. The Democrat won only 4 percent of self-identified Republicans, according to exit polling. His key was getting more of his people to the polls — 37 percent of voters self-identified as Democrats and 32 percent self-identified as Republican. [Why Terry McAuliffe barely won, by James Hoheman, POLITICO, November 6, 2013. Emphasis in original]
Exit polling confirms Cuccinelli fatal failure to turn out his base: he got only 56% of the white vote, and white turnout was down:
There are important changes to the demographic turnout from four years ago that made the race close this year. The conservative vote was down slightly - from 40 percent in 2009 to 36 percent today - and they were slightly less supportive of the Republican candidate. White evangelicals - who voted strongly Republican Tuesday and four years ago - made up 27 percent of the vote, down from 34 percent in 2009. A majority of white voters - 56 percent - favored Cuccinelli in the race, but their percentage of the electorate was down slightly (72 percent now compared to 78 percent in 2009), while the percentage of black voters - who vote overwhelmingly Democratic - has rose (20 percent now compared to 16 percent in 2009). McAuliffe wins nailbiter Virginia governor's race, By Fred Backus, Sarah Dutton and Rebecca Kaplan, CBS News, updated November 6, 2013
This of course is exactly the result that VDARE.com repeatedly predicted once it became clear that Cuccinelli's campaign was being run by Establishment GOP consultants, who among other things persuaded him to suppress his earlier opposition to illegal immigration, although this was actually more popular than his stands on social issues, which he just downplayed.
Another eminently winnable election has been blown—just as with Romney and McCain.
When will they ever learn? It's clear now that they won't. That's why there's going to be a Third Party.ZEPHANIAH Skinner's decision to walk out on the Western Bulldogs has put the issue of recruiting indigenous players back in the AFL spotlight.
Skinner, who battled homesickness for the past two years, informed the club yesterday he no longer had the desire to play AFL.
The high-flying forward is expected to return home to Nookanbah in remote Western Australia, after playing eight games at the Kennel.
It is understood Skinner was positive about continuing his career when he left for his end-of-season break but changed his mind upon his return to Whitten Oval.
Despite his homesickness issues, Skinner's news came as a surprise to the club.
Pick Me: The Dogs could land the next Trent Cotchin
"Zephi this morning told his teammates he will be retiring from AFL football and returning home to be with his family and community, where he feels a strong sense of responsibility," list manager Jason McCartney said.
"We really didn't want to lose Zephi, as he is a well-liked person here, but respect his decision to return home to his family."
Skinner's departure adds to the concern about indigenous player retention at AFL level. Three senior football officials yesterday said alarm bells were ringing and encouraged the AFL's multicultural department to investigate.
Indigenous players who have recently left the game include Liam Jurrah and Kelvin Lawrence (Melbourne), Nathan Krakouer (Gold Coast), Nathan Djerrkura (Bulldogs), Troy Taylor and Relton Roberts (Richmond) and Rhan Hooper (Brisbane).
Approximately five indigenous players will be added to AFL lists for next season, including two at next Thursday's national draft.
High on the list of concerns is a lack of indigenous coaching and welfare resources at AFL clubs.
Only five clubs have an indigenous assistant coach or welfare officer - West Coast, Bulldogs, Fremantle, Hawthorn and Gold Coast. Skinner was taken with pick No.88 in the 2010 national draft.
Originally published as Skinner pulls pin on Dogs careerThe Four Reasons Pragmatic Progressives are Supporting Jill Stein
Tony Brasunas Blocked Unblock Follow Following Oct 8, 2016
It’s early October, and the usual suspects in the corporate media are bellowing hyperbole about the supposed “craziness” of supporting anyone other than the two most disliked presidential candidates in history.
Why might the Paul Krugmans, Ezra Kleins, and Charles Blows of the corporate media world be veering into shriller and shriller tones?
Most likely because both practical and idealistic voters are increasingly supporting Jill Stein, and one of the jobs of the corporate media is to prop up the corporate parties. When someone doesn’t listen to you and you don’t have reason on your side, you often raise your voice.
The truth is, there are dozens of reasons not to support Trump or Clinton, ranging from the way Clinton issues dangerous military threats about Russia, Syria, and Iran; to the way Trump brashly scapegoats Muslims and immigrants; to the uncomfortable sense that the Trumps and Clintons are actually longtime friends and attend each other’s events and donate to each other. Idealists could probably list one hundred reasons to avoid these candidates.
I attended Jill Stein’s energetic event in Oakland last night, and instead of talking to the idealists, I asked the pragmatists there why they were supporting Stein.
Here is what I gathered, the four main reasons pragmatic progressives are supporting Jill Stein:
The Electoral College. It actually doesn’t matter who you vote for if you live in any of the 41 states that aren’t contested for the presidency. Such is the system we use to elect the president that voters in the vast majority of the country aren’t counted anyway. Most states already heavily support one of the corporate parties, and in order to determine the president, votes aren’t counted, only states. For instance, your vote won’t in any practical sense count to determine the president if you live in CA, NY, TX, OR, WA, NJ, MA, any states in the south, or any of the entire Western half of the country except for CO and NV. If you want your vote to count for something in these states, the pragmatic thing to do is to vote for the candidate who truly represents your views, since you’re not actually electing a candidate. Your vote is sending a message, nothing more. The Immediate Crucial Issues. “Not one more black life taken by police,” Jill Stein said yesterday in Oakland, to immense applause. This issue of racist law enforcement is something we need to send a message about right now. The other candidates don’t care about this issue, and don’t care about so many other crucial issues. We can’t just stamp our approval on a corporate candidate who is silent on today’s crucial issues, say pragmatic progressives. The awful Dakota Access pipeline is at stake today; for-profit prisons are entrenching virtual slavery today; corrupt weapons deals are arming terrorists today; the earth’s atmosphere went over 400ppm of carbon dioxide this month — there are too many huge issues right now that need our voice. If you believe in the actual functioning of democracy, the most practical thing you can do is to use your one sacred vote to communicate to your representatives what you see as most important. The Necessity of a New Party. The DNC rigged the primary on the Democratic side, and apparently they’re getting away with it. Despite leaked emails, proven media collusion, outright fraud, and electoral ‘irregularities’ in dozens of states, nothing has happened. To get out of one of several lawsuits, the DNC shockingly argued that everyone already knew they were biased against Bernie Sanders from the start, thus admitting manipulation. Having rigged this one, there is zero reason to believe the DNC won’t rig future primaries or elections, or do whatever else they need to do to defeat progressives and install corporate candidates in power. The DNC runs the Democratic Party, so to vote Democratic at this time is to stamp our approval on the subversion of democracy itself. It’s time to build a new party, say pragmatic progressives. The Green Party isn’t perfect, but it’s growing into something good, and it’s certainly the best of the options available. If we can’t win this year, at least we can win 5% of the vote, which will legally secure financial and ballot status for the party for future elections. The Track Record of ‘Lesser Evilism.’ The idea of voting for the “lesser of evils” that is promoted by the punditocracy in the New York Times and other corporate media outlets is supposedly to avoid certain bad things. We’re supposed to tolerate somewhat bad things to avoid very bad things. Does this work? Well, there’s a track record on this now. Since 1992, the corporate media and some well-meaning friends have been yelling at idealistic and pragmatic progressives to vote for “lesser evils” in order to avoid things — to avoid endless wars in the Middle East, to avoid corrupt corporate lawyers writing legislation, to avoid giant taxpayer bailouts for Wall Street, to avoid massive domestic spying and the renewal of the Patriot Act, to avoid inaction on Climate Change, to avoid Wall Street fraud, to avoid the militarization of the police, to avoid growing income inequality, to avoid more people slipping into poverty, and much more. The problem is, the track record of doing this shows that we’ve actually gotten nearly everything we feared. The bad things we were supposed to be avoiding have come to pass. The track record speaks for itself. At a certain point, if the team keeps losing, you have to bench the quarterback, even if the backup doesn’t have much experience. We have to free ourselves from this two-party prison that is sliding to the right, impoverishing our country, destroying the planet, and setting us on a crash course for more wars, more terrorism, and more refugee crises.
Those are the four main reasons pragmatic progressives are supporting Jill Stein and rejecting the media’s shrill cries to get on board with the corporate candidates.
The core problem progressives have with supporting Donald Trump is that, while he might “shake the system up” (best case scenario), he’s a racist egotistical bully and is likely to exacerbate racism and jingoism and make countless awful decisions.
The problem with supporting Hillary Clinton is that, while she might do one or two slightly progressive things (best case scenario), she’s a corrupt, dishonest warmonger who has benefited from fraud and said nothing about it. She’s funded her campaign entirely from corporate cash, so despite what she says, she’s likely to implement TPP or something similar to finalize the corporate takeover of our public government and military.
To many progressives, both of these corporate candidates are atrocious and unacceptable, there are no good reasons to vote for them, and supporting Stein is obvious. On the other hand, some progressives will vote for Clinton, persuaded by this “lesser evil” strategy. Others will actually vote for Trump, refusing to approve of the DNC’s corrupt leadership. The reality is that under either of the corporate candidates, the planet and our democracy will suffer. Who really wants war with Russia, Syria, or Iran? Who really wants corporate boards to be able to legally overrule Congress? Please raise your hand.
What the pragmatic progressives I spoke with are doing is calling out the truth on these problems, and taking logical and practical steps to solve them — including voting. If we are to confront runaway climate change, institutional racism, endemic corruption, and election fraud, and create a better political system, there is no more time to wait.
If you believe in progressive ideas, particularly if you live in one of the 41 states disenfranchised in this presidential election, you too might be a pragmatic progressive supporting Jill Stein.
You might just need to grab a pair of earplugs if you read the corporate media.Chunichi Dragons ace Kazuki Yoshimi remained untouchable this season, throwing seven scoreless innings in a 3-1 win over the Central League-leading Tokyo Yakult Swallows.
Yoshimi (2-0), who has returned from Tommy John surgery, has yet to allow a run in 20 innings this season. The 30-year-old allowed six hits but no walks, while striking out nine.
“It’s still early,” Yoshimi said of his streak. “I just want to go out each game and forget about what’s come before.
“I’m not really back yet. If a year from now, I’m pitching well, then you can say I’m back.”
Shuhei Takahashi broke up a scoreless pitchers’ duel in the fourth inning with a two-run double off another comeback kid, Yakult starter Nagisa Arakaki (1-1). Arakaki, who was traded to the Swallows last summer, won this spring for the first time in two seasons and is nine years removed from his last 10-win season. The 34-year-old righty allowed two runs on eight hits and two walks over six innings.
Yakult was unfortunate not to open the scoring in the top of the fourth. With one out and a runner on second, Kazuhiro Hatakeyama smoked a grounder into right. Dragons right fielder Atsushi Fujii charged and threw a strike home.
Dragons catcher Masato Matsui obstructed home plate without the ball. Swallows runner Shingo Kawabata slid into Matsui’s leg and then tried to scramble behind him. Matsui held on to Fujii’s throw but neglected to tag the runner. Plate umpire Kazuhiro Kobayashi called the runner out without a tag as is the custom in such plays in Nippon Professional Baseball.
“The team helped me out there,” Yoshimi said. “If the fielders make an error, I have to have their back. Today they had mine.”
Nobumasa Fukuda drove in the Dragons’ third run in the seventh on a sharp grounder that Swallows center fielder Yuhei Takai overran. Fukuda went to third with a triple when the ball rolled all the way to the wall without an error being charged.
Hatakeyama broke up the shutout with a ninth-inning opposite-field homer off Koji Fukutani, who earned his fifth save.The writer Hannah Arendt noted how, during the refugee crises of the 1930s, the treatment received by those fleeing repression was determined, even when they escaped, by their oppressors.
Those whom the persecutor had singled out as scum of the earth—Jews, Trotskyites, etc.—actually were received as scum of the earth everywhere,’ she wrote. ‘[T]hose whom persecution had called undesirable became the indesirables of Europe.
Arendt provides a useful framework to think about Tony Abbott’s extraordinary statement in Sri Lanka: his comment that, though his government "deplores the use of torture we accept that sometimes in difficult circumstances difficult things happen".
On one level, the Abbott "torture happens" line might be understood as old-fashioned realpolitik. Because Australia wants to repatriate Sri Lankan asylum seekers, Abbott needs to paint the authoritarian regime there as evolving to democracy (despite Amnesty International’s assessment that "the government is slowly but surely dismantling institutions, including the judiciary, that protect human rights".) Because Abbott seeks co-operation against people smugglers, he’s willing to provide warships to one of the most bloodsoaked militaries in the world.
Yet if the claim that extreme circumstances justify extreme measures sounds familiar, that’s because it’s the syllogism upon which the institutionalised cruelty of Australia’s refugee policy depends.
Think of Scott Morrison transferring a disabled four-year old Tamil asylum seeker to the isolated and squalid detention camp in Nauru on the basis that "no exceptions" could be made to the offshore processing of asylum seekers. "If you are fit enough to get on a boat," he said, "then you can expect you’re fit enough to end up in offshore processing." |
or buy into the newest blockchain trend, MetaStable looks closely at the real-world use cases of various digital currencies, and aims to make at least decade-long bets on the most “credible candidates,” Seims tells Fortune. “There’s a handful of, say between five and 10 of these major use cases that could be trillion-dollar blockchains,” he says. “It’s all very long-term focused, and we think we’re in super early days right now. It really comes down to which do we think is the strong enough technology, that we think can win.” (So far, MetaStable has also exhibited an edge in dodging some of the duds: It skipped The Dao’s token offering last year, correctly predicting that it would be hacked; and also steered clear of the cryptocurrency Steem, which has largely turned out to be a flop.)
Through mid-March, MetaStable’s flagship fund had returned 539% over its short lifetime, including 86% in the first two-and-a-half months of 2017 (a time period in which the Bitcoin price was up almost 28%).
Since then, though, Bitcoin and Monero have each more than doubled; Ethereum, meanwhile, is worth more than five times what it was four months ago. (Year to date, the Ethereum price has risen more than 2,300%.) That means that MetaStable’s returns are actually much, much higher than the ones listed in its March presentation documents. A person close to the fund simply says it has “vastly outperformed Bitcoin;” that puts its 2017 returns at a minimum of 170% and likely far greater. Fortune estimates that MetaStable’s returns since its inception now exceed 1,000%.
One caveat is that the fund is likely relatively small by hedge fund standards, which makes it somewhat easier to post outsized return figures. Still, in the fledgling industry of cryptocurrency hedge funds, MetaStable appears to be one of the heavyweights. A recent Forbes report listed its assets at $45 million, but that was before the recent surge in cryptocurrency prices over the last few months. MetaStable’s portfolio more than doubled in value in May alone, according to a source close to the fund; on June 23, after a Bitcoin and Ethereum price crash, the hedge fund reported total assets of $69 million in a regulatory filing.
It’s not clear how much of those assets are venture capital dollars; typically, when VC firms invest in other funds (the startup accelerator Y Combinator, backed by Sequoia, is one prime example), they can choose to invest in the company itself (or “general partner”) or in the actual fund that company manages, or both. In the case of Polychain, for one, Union Square Ventures said it backed the firm but also put some money into the hedge fund.
The abundance of capital is also enticing a slew of other cryptocurrency hedge funds to test the waters for themselves. According to Hedge Fund Alert, there are at least 15 such funds already up and running, but as many as 25 more are in the works.
Investors should expect similar restrictions and high fees as the ones that exist with traditional hedge funds: MetaStable requires a minimum investment of $1 million, and has a “2 and 20” structure for one of its funds, charging a management fee of 2% of assets, and a performance fee of 20% of the profits. A riskier fund has a 1.5% management fee and a 25% performance fee.
Update: This story has been updated to reflect that Bessemer Venture Partners is also an investor in Polychain Capital.New J.League chairman Mitsuru Murai said Wednesday that he considered a banner displayed by Urawa Reds fans on Saturday to be racist.
Regarding the banner at Reds’ home game against first-division rivals Sagan Tosu that read, “Japanese only,” Murai said, “I recognize it as a racist expression.”
The club has until Friday to submit a report of its investigation into the manner and the league will determine what disciplinary action to take.
In 2010, Reds were censured and fined ¥5 million over racist remarks by some of their supporters toward opposing players, and it is possible that a similar punishment may be meted out this time. League regulations also allow for sanctions such as ordering games played at neutral venue or behind closed doors or the deduction of championship points. None of these sanctions have ever been used in the J.League.
The banner, which was displayed at an entrance to the stadium could have various interpretations such as “Only Japanese allowed,” but Murai said the issue is not the intent of the banner, but how it is perceived by others.
“More than what was meant by the people who made it, the expression carries meaning that is perceived as being racist,” Murai said.
The club has identified those responsible for the banner and has questioned them. Reds are also looking into allegations that racist expressions were also made during the game. According to the club, those responsible for the banner said, “It’s intent was not racist.”ANAHEIM, Calif -- At the outset, the StarCraft 2016 World Championship at BlizzCon on Nov. 4-5 felt like an awkward funeral to the game that started me down the esports journalism path years ago.
Fans came to watch hometown hero Alex "Neeb" Sunderhaft at the Anaheim Convention Center in an attempt to bring the world title to America, but he was easily dispatched in the quarterfinals, turning the atmosphere into a wake. The huge, custom-built arena wasn't even half full. The attention was more focused on the Overwatch World Cup, the exhibition tournament of the game that Blizzard is putting all of its money behind to be the next big esport come 2017. The "Champion Hall of Honor" with the banners of all the former StarCraft world champions was missing one in Lee "Life" Seung-hyun, the redacted world champion of 2014 who was banned from competitive gaming earlier this year for his hand in match-fixing. Editor's Picks Podcast: Is Overwatch the next big thing? What was the atmosphere like at BlizzCon when Byun took down Dark? What does the future look like for StarCraft II? Is Overwatch the next big esport? All this and more on the esports podcast.
BlizzCon 2016 in pictures Five champions were crowned throughout the Blizzard esports universe at this year's BlizzCon. Check out the best moments from the weekend in Anaheim.
The one man army of esports The strict and meticulous life of the "ideal" pro gamer didn't suit Byun "Byun" Hyun Woo; he walked to the beat of his own lanky, awkward drum. 2 Related
The outlook seemed grim. But that wasn't how the story ended.
The tale of StarCraft
StarCraft is one of the toughest games in the world to play whilst having one of the easiest premises to go along with it. From its vanilla version in the late 90's to the technological spectacle of Legacy of the Void today, the game has always begun the same. You play one of the three races -- the human Terran, advanced psionic life-form Protoss, or arthropod alien Zerg -- start with a certain number of workers, mine minerals to gather money, and then use said money and other resources to create a military to expand your empire and crush your opponent's.
Over the past almost two decades, this simple but complex chess-like game set in intergalactic space has become a staple of South Korean culture. "StarCraft: Brood War" created the competitive video gaming boom in the early 00's in South Korea, and esports as you know it today began in the cable television studios of Seoul. Seemingly-unremarkable men were catapulted to superstardom with the introduction of the Starleague tournament which crowned the best Brood War player in South Korea, and thus, the world.
Legendary pro gamer Lee "Flash" Young-ho started playing professional StarCraft: Brood War in South Korea at 14 years old. His fans call him "The Ultimate Weapon." Helena Kristiansson/ESL
My first introduction to StarCraft was seven or eight years after it first made an impact in South Korea. A friend sent me a video of one of the Starleague broadcast openings, where the top players were highlighted in a quick 45-second video with a popular rock or pop song, usually from the West, in the background. I'd never played StarCraft and had no inkling at what these teenagers were doing in their colorful uniforms, but I was hooked.
As a fan of the theatrics and production value of professional wrestling, framing these guys as superhero-like figures intrigued me, pulling me into the mix. Regardless of what competition or conflict was about to take place, I wanted to see what happened next, the booming voices of the Korean commentators drawing me into the show with their wild gestures and inflections.
Back in 2007 and 2008, there were no official English casters for the Starleague or the Proleague, the yearlong team-based competition that pitted all the professional teams against each other like the NBA or NFL. There was no streaming platform like Twitch to watch the games on. Instead, a majority of matches for Proleague and Starleague were only viewable on websites where the quality was around 144p and the capacity of viewers was only around 150. So if you wanted to watch your favorite teams play, you had to get into the room earlier than everyone else, needing to virtually wait in line to watch a grainy, almost unwatchable rebroadcast of the games in a language that I didn't even understand. This is the esports version of your grandfather telling you he had to walk twelve miles in the snow to get a newspaper as a child.
It wasn't easy. I slowly started learning the knowhow of the game from the mass quantity of matches I was consuming, and with my introduction to English fan sites like Team Liquid -- yes, it was a fan site before it became a professional gaming team backed by Peter Guber, the co-owner of the Golden State Warriors -- it was easier to follow along. Players like Lee "Jaedong" Jae-dong were revered by the non-Koreans that watched him from afar. Storylines were built and produced like UFC fights of today. Ongamenet and MBC, the two South Korean gaming cable channels, took these teenagers and 20-somethings with a talent in one thing and turned them into larger than life heroes.
Jaedong was the Legend Killer, the Tyrant. Lee "Flash" Young-ho, his greatest rival who he'd face in numerous Starleague and individual tournament finals, was considered more android than human, being dubbed the Ultimate Weapon. Big finals would be occupied with intro videos where the two finalists would stare each other down like they were about to fight in a boxing ring. The final series itself would take place in spacious auditoriums, gymnasiums, or even grander settings; for one Starleague, which was sponsored by Korean Air, the final match was placed inside an airplane hangar, where the two finalists had extravagant entrances with the crowd (live and at home) hanging on every part of the production.
If you won three Starleague tournaments, you received a special golden mouse trophy only awarded to the greatest players of all time. Players would have fan girls swarm them at every opportunity to get a picture or autograph. When it was ever a player's birthday, the camera would swing to his team's bench and it would be covered in presents brought by the fans. There was even a dedicated community of people who did English fan casts of the bigger matches. You always felt like you were witnessing something cool, something that was special. Everything, from the opening intro to the credits rolling, was an event.
How the West was won (and South Korea was lost)
Internationally celebrated StarCraft commentator Dan "Artosis" Stemkoski was one of the first professional English-language casters in the South Korean professional scene. He moved to South Korea in 2008. Blizzard Entertainment
When StarCraft II was released in 2010, the Western world for the first time was given a sneak peek into the world of what South Korea had been living in for a decade at that point. The success of SCII as a competitive title with Blizzard's backing is what began the competitive gaming boom in the Western hemisphere. Tournaments like Major League Gaming, Intel Extreme Masters, DreamHack and others jumped onto the SCII train, and the game, while less difficult than the original, was a massive win for the tournament organizers that bought in.
For the first few years of the game's life, SCII was the king of esports in the West. Weekend tournaments at events like MLG and IEM would become two-day story arcs. Players would talk trash against one another, and you'd watch as heroes and villains faced off for the crowd's enjoyment The American crowds would rally behind their hometown heroes against the all-winning South Koreans, and you could feel the atmosphere change instantly whenever a South Korean would drop a game to a non-Korean. If a non-Korean could actually win the tournament against all odds, they were put on a pedestal, heralded as the beloved David that was somehow capable of slaying the Goliath in South Korea, a country that is intertwined with the game itself.
Issue being, however, that this boom was but an echo of the original one. StarCraft, as in the original, and the phenomenon that it was will always be tied to the culture of South Korea. SCII, on the other hand, didn't have nearly the same success as the original in that country. The new version was praised by the Western regions, but given a lukewarm welcome in South Korea. The fans wanted to see the original version. They wanted to see their stars, the Tyrant vs. the Ultimate Weapon, in the game that they had been following for a decade. Not this new "superior" version with shinier graphics and less depth whose star South Korean players were ones that couldn't cut it in the previous, tougher game.
It's not hard to see why SCII didn't take off in South Korea. It's the same if you took the NBA of today and told all the fans that they were going to be creating a sport called "basketball 2" that they are creating a separate league for next year. The hoop's rim will now have fire around it, the center court logo will now be a trampoline, and every three-pointer will now count for seven points. When a gigantic fan base -- and a national culture -- rallies behind something, changing it is only going to anger and drive people away. If something has worked for a decade, why change everything now?
StarCraft II eventually started declining in popularity in the West and never gain traction in South Korea. By the end of 2016, the StarCraft scene had become a strange inverse of when I started following it. Now it was the West and its viewership that was keeping it alive while the South Koreans preferred to watch or play the team-based games League of Legends or Overwatch. SCII is a lame duck in Korea, and a large number of former Brood War players have gone back to streaming the original game online to the dedicated fan base that has never left the original, making more money there than they ever could in the newer version.
The spectacle lives on
A week prior to the BlizzCon World Championship, it had been announced that most of the professional teams in South Korea had dropped or will be dropping their StarCraft II clubs by the end of the event. Those uniforms that had intrigued me almost a decade ago were now going to be no more in the world of SCII. Proleague, the main team league of StarCraft, was also discontinued.
There would be no Overwatch League without StarCraft II, but that didn't seem to matter anymore. As previously mentioned, the fanfare was low following Neeb's speedy departure from the event, and aside from John "Totalbiscuit" Bain's special King of the Hill event on Friday night with former stars taking the stage, the tournament felt like a footnote to the other events going across the convention halls. But then came finals day, and it all changed. The silence turned into cheers, and interest picked up as the tournament made its way down to the final four and eventually the finals. By the time the final kicked off between the world's strongest Terran Byun "ByuN" Hyun-woo and the world's strongest Zerg Park "Dark" Ryung-woo, there was no way inside the packed arena. Everyone had shown up to see who would be crowned the world champion of StarCraft II.
Fans cheer in the StarCraft II Arena as "ByuN" Hyun Woo, a Terran player from South Korea, competes on stage against Zerg player Park "Dark" Ryung-woo in the 2016 World Championship grand finals during BlizzCon in Anaheim, California. Brinson+Banks for ESPN
And when Byun finally beat Dark in an unforgettable 4-2 series win, the crowd jumped from its chairs, cheering for a player that had played the game since the very beginning of the professional SCII scene. Byun had made a name for himself early in the lifespan of the game before vanishing during the middle expansion before ultimately returning with the final iteration of the SCII franchise to become the world champion in marvelous fashion. The fan favorite, Byun described it as the best day of his life, physically hugging the trophy in bliss as the crowd flashed their cellphones at the golden moment.
In the end, this was not the revitalization of SCII as a leading esport. Although it was the sixth most-streamed esport on Twitch in Aug. 2016, its viewership numbers still pale in comparison to the top competitive titles, and the scene's demise in South Korea is only going to dilute the player pool even more come the 2017 campaign.
But it did show what StarCraft is all about, from the day it began to its current standing: a glorious spectacle. The feeling of witnessing something special. One-on-one showdowns where the only person you can blame for defeat if yourself. It's something that team-based games, for how popular they are, can't match when compared to StarCraft.
People came to see the two best players in the world mine with their workers and create the world in front of them. StarCraft, especially SCII, will never be what it once was, but it doesn't need to. Every year, the fans will return, and regardless of how the professional scene is doing or how low the attendance is on the first day, come the final, people will show up, wanting to see a show. And the beautifully complex but simple game will give them one.In an ambitious move, a Californian utility plans to create a massive, distributed “powerplant” by installing a total of 2 square miles of solar cells on the roofs of businesses. Southern California Edison plans to install 250 megawatts’ worth of solar power, generating enough electricity to power 162,000 homes.
Green Wombat reports:
It’s a potentially game-changing move, one that could lower the cost of solar cells as manufacturers ramp up production to meet the utility’s schedule of installing a megawatt-a-week of arrays until it reaches the 250-megawatt target. That alone is more than United States’ entire production of solar cells in 2006 and will generate as much electricity as a small coal-fired power plant, albeit with no greenhouse gas emissions.
The $875 million initiative also marks the first big foray into so-called distributed energy by a major utility. Instead of building a centralized power station and the expensive transmission system needed to transmit electricity to the power grid, Edison will connect clusters of solar arrays into existing neighborhood circuits. A significant hurdle for the massive megawatt solar power plants planned for California’s Mojave Desert is the need in some cases to build multi billion-dollar transmission systems through environmentally sensitive lands to bring the electricity to coastal metropolises.
The initiative will work like this: Edison will lease the warehouse rooftop space from building owners in Riverside and San Bernardino counties. The utility will outsource the installation, and retain ownership of the solar cells.
This plan will be exciting if it is achieved, and it will become a model for other utilities to follow.
Via: Green Wombat(photo by Eliot Lee Hazel)
On September 9, we’ll be releasing INTERPOL‘s first new album in 4 years, ‘El Pintor’ on LP, compact disc and all digital formats in North, Central and South America (Soft Limit will be handling the rest of the world). Recorded at Electric Lady Studios and Atomic Sound in New York City with engineer James Brown, the band’s fifth album – taut and epic in equal measure – finds Interpol recharged, and ready to reclaim their mantle as one of the planet’s best. ‘El Pintor’’s songs (track listing below) were written and produced by Interpol, with Daniel Kessler playing guitar & piano, Samuel Fogarino on drums, and Paul Banks on vocals, guitars, and taking over bass duties for the first time. The album also features contributions from The Secret Machines’ Brandon Curtis (keyboards), Roger Joseph Manning, Jr. (Beck, Air) playing keyboards on “Tidal Wave,” and Rob Moose (Bon Iver) playing violin and viola on “Twice as Hard.” ‘El Pintor’ was mixed by Alan Moulder at Assault and Battery Studios, and mastered by Greg Calbi.
(making of ‘El Pintor’ clip directed by Adam Levite)
‘El Pintor’ track listing :
1. All the Rage Back Home
2. My Desire
3. Anywhere
4. Same Town, New Story
5. My Blue Supreme
6. Everything is Wrong
7. Breaker 1
8. Ancient Ways
9. Tidal Wave
10. Twice as Hard
Interpol will be touring all summer, with festival performances including Governors Ball (this weekend), Lollapalooza, FYF Fest, Austin City Limits Festival, Glastonbury, and Roskilde already confirmed. They’ll be back on the road this fall with more dates to be announced soon.
Preorder from The Matador Store for an exclusive white vinyl version of the LP with alternate art, accompanied by a limited-edition 12”x12” silkscreen print on very fine cardstock (while supplies last)
(Note: exclusive white vinyl LP with alternate art will also be available at your local independent record store)
Preorder on iTunes and receive an exclusive bonus track on release date plus an early download of “All The Rage Back Home” in mid-July.
Preorder ‘El Pintor’ from the Interpol store
Interpol On The Web:
Official Site
Facebook
Twitter
Interpol YouTube Channelsee also Muslim hate crime hoaxer's sister blames the NYPD The sister of the Muslim teen who lied about being...
Mayor Bill de Blasio said Friday he’s “really angry” at the Muslim student who cops say lied about a bias attack on a Manhattan subway — because real victims will now be met with more skepticism.
“I am really angry at this young woman for, in effect, doing a huge disservice to everyone,” the mayor said, speaking of accused hoaxer Yasmin Seweid during his weekly call-in show on WNYC radio.
Seweid, 18, of North New Hyde Park in Nassau County on Long Island, admitted to cops Wednesday that she’d made up a story of being accosted on a subway on Dec. 1 by three white drunks who called her a terrorist, taunted, “Donald Trump!” and tried to pull off her headscarf.
The Baruch College business major told cops she’d actually been out drinking with friends and lied about the attack to distract her strict Islamic father, who’d been furious over her being out late, sources told The Post.
The mayor said, “She did a disservice to the NYPD, who put real time and energy into investigating a claim, which is another example of how diligent the NYPD is when it gets reports of hate crimes.
“She did a disservice to the taxpayers” who have to pay for the investigation, he said.
“She did a disservice to the truth and you are exactly right,” he said. “There is an obvious spike in hate crimes.
“We can’t have deniers telling us that the rhetoric of many people, including Donald Trump, didn’t lead to that. And she in effect is enabling those who say, ‘Oh, this is not a big deal,’” the mayor complained.
“So, you know, I can’t account for individual human failings, but I can say this is deeply troubling and anyone within the sound of my voice — don’t even think about making a false report because there are real consequences and now she is going to face real consequences for what she did.”
Seweid has been charged with obstructing governmental administration and filing a false report, according to a high-ranking police source.
Both charges are misdemeanors punishable by up to a year in jail.In an age when Apple has become the top music retailer without selling a single physical disc, audio engineers are increasingly creating specially mastered versions of songs and albums designed to counteract the audio degradation caused by compression. Though audiophiles typically scoff at paying for compressed audio, preferring vinyl or high-end digital formats such as DVD-A, mastering engineers are doing their best to create digital masters that can pass through Apple's iTunes algorithms with minimal sonic corruption.
To highlight work done to improve the sound of compressed music files, Apple recently launched a "Mastered for iTunes" section on the iTunes Store. It now also provides a set of recommendations for engineers to follow when preparing master files for submission to the iTunes Store. To qualify for the "Mastered for iTunes" label, Apple says that files should be submitted in the highest resolution format possible, and remastered content should sound significantly better than the original.
How does this work? Ars spoke with Masterdisk Chief Engineer Andy VanDette, who recently completed a project remastering the bulk of Rush's back catalogue. As part of the process, VanDette created special versions of each song specifically for uploading to the iTunes Store. He described the often lengthy, trial-and-error process of trying to make iTunes tracks sound as close as possible to polished CD remasters.
The state of compressed audio
All music purchased from iTunes is compressed using a "lossy" compression algorithm called Advanced Audio Coding (AAC). Lossy compression algorithms toss out some of the information contained in a digital file in exchange for very small file sizes. Formats like AAC (and MP3) try to be intelligent about what information is tossed out in order to maintain fidelity with the original, uncompressed file. They do so by eliminating frequencies and harmonics least likely to be discerned by the average listener.
(The JPEG image format attempts to do the same thing with photos, eliminating details and colors that aren't likely to be noticed by the average viewer. This is why JPEGs can sometimes look blocky if saved at a high compression rate.)
A number of music industry luminaries, including Jimmy Iovine (head of Interscope-Geffen-A&M), Dr. Dre, and most recently Neil Young, have bemoaned the fact most music now plays back from a compressed file, resulting in a "degradation" of the sound an artist originally tried to create.
"We live in the digital age, and unfortunately it's degrading our music, not improving it," Young said in January during the D: Dive Into Media conference.
Young and his cohorts are attempting to make uncompressed, higher-end audio formats a common standard across the industry. Music throughout the last decade is typically recorded using 24-bit samples at 96kHz, and advances in computing power and hard disk space have recently made even higher quality, 24-bit 192kHz digital recording possible.
However, even the standard CD format comes in a much lower resolution—just 16-bit 44.1kHz. Compared to 24-bit 192kHz digital audio, a finished CD only has roughly 15 percent of the information captured during the recording process. Compressing the songs on a CD further into 256kbps AAC "iTunes Plus" format cuts the data down to just one-fifth of the size of CD audio, or as little as three percent of the original 192kHz recordings.
"We're working with [Apple] and other digital services—download services—to change to 24-bit," Iovine said. Young also admitted to working with Apple to make 24-bit audio standard across its mobile devices, though he suggested that no progress has happened since Steve Jobs—known for his love of classic rock—died last October.
As an audio engineer, VanDette is "hopeful" hardware and storage capabilities will one day make uncompressed, 24-bit audio a practical standard. For instance, digital music service HDtracks already offers a catalogue of 24-bit audio files at various sampling rates up to 192kHz. But such audiophile quality is only beneficial to those with expensive stereo equipment capable of reproducing the subtle nuances captured in these higher-quality files.
"I am encouraged to see a growing catalog at HDtracks, but being able to have your entire album collection in your pocket is cool, too," VanDette told Ars. As long as iPhones and iPods are the most common playback equipment, and the iTunes Store the top source for music, compressed audio files are, practically speaking, here to stay for the foreseeable future.
If you can't beat 'em, join 'em
Want an uphill battle? Try pushing the bulk of consumers to embrace niche audiophile formats and upgrade to capable equipment. Instead, audio engineers have taken to mastering versions of songs and albums specifically for the iTunes Store.
A similar mastering process is already done to prepare albums for other physical formats. As previously noted, recording is typically done in a digital 24-bit 96kHz format. However, audio released in CD format is 16-bit 44.1kHz quality, requiring a conversion from the original source. Engineers adjust equalization, levels, compression, noise filters, and other parameters to cram as much of the source material into those limits.
(Returning to our earlier photo analogy, the process is similar to converting a 14-bit RAW file from a DSLR into a standard 8-bit TIFF.)
Recording can also be done at varying bit-depths and sampling rates. Sometimes it's still done using vintage analog gear (see recent Grammy winners, The Foo Fighters). Albums are still released on analog vinyl format, and in some cases are made available in high-end digital formats such as Super Audio CD (SACD) or DVD-Audio (DVD-A). A mastering engineer will take whatever source material is provided—analog or digital—and optimize it for each release format, taking into account each format's unique strengths and limits.
VanDette explained how mastering varies depending on the age of the original recordings as well as the final output format. Many master recordings for Rush albums are from vinyl's heyday, he said. "Back then we would try and hide as much top end as possible, knowing that the end users' styli would be crap."
"Most listeners today swear they love the bottom end on vinyl, but I remember in the heyday of vinyl, it was all about top end," VanDette told Ars. "'If we could only have a clear top end without all those pops and clicks' we thought," he said, noting the tendency of low-end record players to introduce unwanted noise. "Back then, bottom was the enemy. It made the grooves [in the vinyl] too wide, and forced us to turn down the overall level of the disc."
The constraints of vinyl aren't a concern when mastering for a CD, so it's possible to boost overall levels as well as low frequencies without ruining the rest of the mix. "While remastering the classic Rush albums, I added as much LF as I could, always aware not to cloud the classic 'ping' on Neil's snare, muddle Geddy's voice, or bury Alex's guitar," he said.
"These are some finely balanced mixes, even 35 years later," VanDette said. "I wanted to make sure the listener still heard the classic album come through, without it being too loud, boomy, or modern sounding."One Pierrepont Plaza. | One Pierrepont Plaza Hillary HQ: In Brooklyn Heights, of Downtown Brooklyn
You can call Brooklyn Heights many things, but “cool,” as the promotional materials for the building that will house Hillary Clinton's new campaign headquarters have it, is not one of them.
“It’s an area that’s been gentrified so long that gentrification is not an issue,” said Joan Byron, a 39-year Brooklynite and the policy director at the Brooklyn-based Pratt Center for Community Development.
Story Continued Below
On Friday, Politico reported that Clinton had finally signed a lease at One Pierrepont Plaza, the 19-story building on the edge of Brooklyn Heights that Democratic donor Bruce Ratner topped out in 1987.
The building perches on a park at the edge of residential Brooklyn Heights—a tony, historic neighborhood with Civil War-era houses that cost more than $6 million.
It’s a neighborhood that prides itself on its Dutch settler origins, its Revolutionary War history, and its famous old merchants, like Hezekiah Beers Pierrepont, the grandson of a founder of Yale and the namesake for Pierrepont Street, which, in turn, gave its name to One Pierrepont Plaza.
This is not the Brooklyn of "Girls," though its creator Lena Dunham lives there.
"This is like the wealthy opposite of that," said Byron. "There’s the poor and struggling opposite of that Brooklyn in Brownsville. This isn’t that either. This is like the blue-blooded first suburb."
“Brooklyn Heights has been the upper crust of Brooklyn for a long time,” said former Giuliani deputy and mayoral candidate Joe Lhota, a 28-year Brooklyn Heights resident.
It’s a neighborhood where parents pay more than $35,000 a year to send their children to Saint Ann’s School, also on Pierrepont Street, or to the similarly priced Packer Collegiate Institute, just a few blocks away.
Its food options are, by Manhattan standards, limited, and many of the restaurants close early.
But if One Pierrepont belongs to Brooklyn Heights, it also belongs in some ways to adjacent downtown Brooklyn.
For years now, downtown Brooklyn has been an office district in the making. One Pierrepont played a big role in that.
It was the first major office building developed in Brooklyn in a quarter century. It presaged the rise of downtown Brooklyn as a 17-million-square-foot office district.
The building’s first tenant was Morgan Stanley, followed soon thereafter by Goldman Sachs and the Royal Bank of Canada.
"It brought different people into the community, into Brooklyn, corporate people," said John LoCicero, former chief political aide to Mayor Ed Koch, who presided over the building’s completion.
It’s still occupied by Morgan Stanley, as well as the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District, according to the developer’s website. Rents run roughly $40 a square foot, according to Mark Weiss, a vice chairman at Newmark Grubb Knight Frank, a commerical real estate brokerage.
Since Clinton is taking nearly 80,000 square feet, that means her rent will run about $3.2 million a year.
The 80,000 square feet is both significantly larger and significantly nicer than her 2008 offices in Virginia.
The building can also lay claim to a multiplicity of subway lines (the 2,3, A, C, 4, 5, R and F), as well as easy access to Brooklyn neighborhoods where staffers and volunteers might live.
“It’s a good building,” said Weiss. “It’s Class A enough. For Brooklyn. What do you really need for a presidential campaign?”
Clinton's spokesman declined to comment.Jerusalem (CNN) US President Donald Trump recognized Jerusalem as Israel's capital on Wednesday and announced plans to relocate the US embassy there, upending seven decades of US foreign policy in a move expected to inflame tensions in the region and unsettle the prospects for peace.
Trump also signed a waiver officially delaying the move of the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem for six months, a National Security Council official said. But the State Department's security arm is planning for potentially violent protests at US embassies and consulates.
CNN's Oren Liebermann, who is based in Jerusalem, walks us through what's at stake.
Why is declaring Jerusalem the capital such a big deal?
The final status of Jerusalem has always been one of the most difficult and sensitive questions in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. For years, US policy has been to avoid declaring Jerusalem the capital of Israel in the absence of an Israeli-Palestinian peace deal, as the Palestinians also claim Jerusalem as their capital. It was argued that a unilateral decision would break with international consensus and prejudge an issue that was supposed to be left to negotiations.
Recognizing Jerusalem as the capital has also moved the United States a big step closer to relocating the embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, which would be seen as cementing Israeli sovereignty over the city.
How would the embassy move work?
In theory, moving the embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem could be simple. There is already a US consulate in Jerusalem -- but the US has decided against simply switching the names on the doors, upgrading the consulate to an embassy in Jerusalem and declaring the Tel Aviv location a consulate.
Instead, Trump directed the State Department "to begin preparations to move the embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem." His directive, Trump said, would allow the State Department to begin hiring architects and building contractors to build an embassy that would be "a magnificent tribute to peace."
But the challenges are not simply logistic. Moving the embassy risks setting off diplomatic crises with Arab states that could include widespread protests outside US diplomatic offices in those and other countries. There was widespread condemnation from the Arab world after Trump's decision was announced.
Give me some history...
The United Nations partition plan drawn up in 1947 envisaged Jerusalem as a separate "international city." But the war that followed Israel's declaration of independence one year later left the city divided. When fighting ended in 1949, the armistice border -- often called the Green Line because it was drawn in green ink -- saw Israel in control of the western half, and Jordan in control of the eastern half, which included the famous Old City.
When did that change?
During the 1967 Six-Day War, Israel occupied East Jerusalem. Since then, all of the city has been under Israel's authority. The city marks "Jerusalem Day" in late May or early June. But Palestinians, and many in the international community, continue to see East Jerusalem as the capital of a future Palestinian state.
Who lives in Jerusalem?
Roughly 850,000 people live in Jerusalem -- 37% are Arab and 61% are Jewish, according to the independent think tank Jerusalem Institute. The Jewish population includes around 200,000 ultra-Orthodox Jews, with the rest split generally between religious Zionist and secular Jews. Of the city's Arab population, 96% is Muslim; the other 4% is Christian.
The vast majority of the Palestinian population lives in East Jerusalem. Although there are some mixed neighborhoods |
1996 that flooding danger from upstream dam failure was a more serious threat than the agency would publicly admit. The NRC failed from 1996 until 2011 to assess the threat even internally.
In July 2011, the NRC staff completed a report finding “that external flooding due to upstream dam failure poses a larger than expected risk to plants and public safety” [emphasis added] but the NRC did not make the 41-page report public.
Instead, the agency made much of another report, issued July 12, 2011 “Recommendations for Enhancing Reactor Safety in the 21st Century,” sub-titled “The Near-Term Task Force Review of Insights from the Fukushima Dai-Ichi Accident.”
Barely four months after the continuing accident began in Japan, the premature report had little to say about reactor flooding as a result of upstream dam failure, although an NRC news release in March 2012 would try to suggest otherwise.
That 2012 news release accompanied a highly redacted version of the July 2011 report that had recommended a more formal investigation of the unexpectedly higher risks of upstream dam failure to nuclear plants and the public. In its release, the NRC said it had “started a formal evaluation of potential generic safety implications for dam failures upstream” including “the effects of upstream dam failure on independent spent fuel storage installations.”
Bland PR
Six months later, in September 2012, The NRC’s effort at bland public relations went controversial, when the report’s lead author made a criminal complaint to the NRC’s Inspector General, alleging “Concealment of Significant Nuclear Safety Information by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission.”
In a letter dated Sept. 14 and made public the same day, Richard Perkins, an engineer in the NRC’s Division of Risk Analysis, wrote Inspector General Hubert Bell, describing it as “a violation of law” that the Commission “has intentionally mischaracterized relevant and noteworthy safety information as sensitive, security information in an effort to conceal the information from the public.
“This action occurred in anticipation of, in preparation for, and as part of the NRC’s response to a Freedom of Information Act request for information concerning the generic issue investigation on Flooding of U.S. Nuclear Power Plants Following Upstream Dam Failure.
“Portions of the publically released version of this report are redacted citing security sensitivities, however, the redacted information is of a general descriptive nature or is strictly relevant to the safety of U.S. nuclear power plants, plant personnel, and members of the public.
“The Nuclear Regulatory Commission staff has engaged in an effort to mischaracterize the information as security sensitive in order to justify withholding it from public release using certain exemptions specified in the Freedom of Information Act.
“The Nuclear Regulatory Commission staff may be motivated to prevent the disclosure of this safety information to the public because it will embarrass the agency. The redacted information includes discussion of, and excerpts from, NRC official agency records that show the NRC has been in possession of relevant, notable, and derogatory safety information for an extended period but failed to properly act on it. Concurrently, the NRC concealed the information from the public.”
The Inspector General has not yet acted on the complaint.
Huffington Post picked up the story immediately as did the Union of Concerned Scientists and a number of online news sites. The mainstream media showed little or no interest in a story about yet another example of the NRC lying to the public about the safety of nuclear power plants.
An NRC spokesman suggested to HuffPo that the report’s redactions were at least partly at the behest of Homeland Security. A second NRC risk engineer, who requested anonymity, said that Homeland Security had signed off on the report with no redactions. As HuffPo noted:
“If this were truly such a security concern, however, it would be incumbent on the agency to act swiftly to eliminate that threat, the engineer stated. As it is, the engineer suggested, no increased security actions have been undertaken.”
Blacked-Out Sections
This same engineer expressed serious misgivings, shared by others in and out of the NRC, that a nuclear power plant in Greenville, South Carolina, has been at risk from upstream dam failure for years, that the NRC has been aware of the risk, and that the NRC has done nothing to mitigate the risk. In the redacted report, the NRC blacked out passages about this plant.
South Carolina’s Oconee plant on Lake Keowee has three reactors, located 11 miles downstream from the Jocassee Reservoir, an 8,000 acre lake. As HuffPo put it: “the Oconee facility, which is operated by Duke Energy, would suffer almost certain core damage if the Jocassee dam were to fail. And the odds of it failing sometime over the next 20 years, the engineer said, are far greater than the odds of a freak tsunami taking out the defenses of a nuclear plant in Japan.
“’Although it is not a given that Jocassee Dam will fail in the next 20 years,’ the engineer added, ‘it is a given that if it does fail, the three reactor plants will melt down and release their radionuclides into the environment.’”
When the NRC granted an operating license to the Oconee plant in 1973, danger from upstream dam failure was not even considered, never mind considered a threat against which some protection was needed. The NRC and the plant’s owner both say the Jocassee Dam is not an immediate safety issue. Oconee’s initial license was for 40 years. It is now the second plant in the U.S. that the NRC has granted an extended license for another 20 years.
The Union of Concerned Scientists, which says it is neither pro-nuke nor anti-nuke, but committed to making nuclear power as safe as possible, has considered the risk factors for Oconee. The NRC wrote in 2009 that “a Jocassee Dam failure is a credible event and in 2011 wrote that “dam failures are common” and that since 1975 there have been more than 700 dam failures, 148 of them large dams 40 feet or more high. The Jocassee Dam is 385 feet high.
For a dam like Jocassee, the NRC calculates the chance of failure at 1 in 3,600 per year or 1 in 180 each year for the extended license. NRC policy, when enforced, requires nuclear plant owners to mitigate any risk that has a 1 in 250 per years chance of occurring.
Oconee has three nuclear reactors, each of which is larger than the reactors at Fukushima, and so has more lethal radioactive potential. Duke Energy reported its own upstream dam failure calculations to the NRC no later than 1996 and the NRC has responded by requiring no safety enhancements to address the threat.
Noting that the upstream dam failure risk does not take into account possible earthquakes or terrorist attacks, the Union of Concerned Scientists wrote:
“The 34 reactors of concern are downstream from a total of more than 50 dams, more than half of which are roughly the size of the Jocassee dam. Assuming the NRC’s failure rate applies to all of those dams, the probability that one will fail in the next 40 years is roughly 25 percent,a 1 in 4 chance.”
List of Reactors Potentially at High Risk of Flooding due to Dam Failure
Alabama: Browns Ferry, Units 1, 2, 3
Arkansas: Arkansas Nuclear, Units 1, 2
Louisiana: Waterford, Unit 3
Minnesota: Prairie Island, Units 1, 2
Nebraska: Cooper; Fort Calhoun
New Jersey: Hope Creek, Unit 1; Salem, Units 1, 2
New York: Indian Point, Units 2, 3
North Carolina: McGuire, Units 1, 2
Pennsylvania: Beaver Valley, Units 1, 2; Peach Bottom, Units 2, 3;
Three Mile Island, Unit 1
Tennessee: Sequoyah, Unit 1; Watts Bar, Unit 1
Texas: South Texas, Units 1, 2
South Carolina: H.B. Robinson, Unit 2; Oconee, Units 1, 2, 3
Vermont: Vermont Yankee
Virginia: Surrey, Units 1, 2
Washington: Columbia
(Source: Perkins, et al., “Screening Analysis,” July 2011)
William Boardman lives in Vermont, where he has produced political satire for public radio and served as a lay judge.CHICAGO, IL (March 1, 2017) - Scholastica, a peer review and open access (OA) publishing platform for academic journals, announces "Democratizing Academic Journals: Technology, Services, and Open Access," a new white paper on the state of academic journal publishing. The paper proposes an upending of the corporate publisher paradigm to make OA journal publishing sustainable.
The white paper argues that the best solution to make research OA is democratization of journal publishing via widespread adoption of publishing services that will foster competition in the marketplace and allow journals of all sizes to publish on their own.
Since the 1960s corporate publishers have been infiltrating academic journal publishing. Today, five corporate publishers control the majority market share of academic journals, with profit margins from journal subscriptions and OA publishing fees exceeding 30%.
For years, the academic community has been trying to work with publishers to make journals more affordable. However, both camps have opposing incentives - academia seeks to lower journal production costs and access barriers while corporate publishers seek profit.
The centralization of journals among fewer hands has created substantial power differentials between academic institutions and corporate publishers. Consequently, corporate publisher motivations have prevailed resulting in a virtually irreversible stalemate in negotiations to lower journal prices.
Scholastica's white paper brings together research on the state of journal publishing and insights from 5 expert OA advocates to assess the past and present journal publishing landscape and pinpoint ways to make OA publishing sustainable.
The white paper overviews:
The past and present state of journal publishing
Current alternatives to the corporate publisher model
Steps to realize a sustainable open-access friendly journals model of the future
The paper argues by moving journal publishing back to the nonprofit sector and publishing digital-only using online services, rather than outsourcing to publishing companies, the academic community will regain control of research production costs and access.
Scholastica hopes this white paper will offer context surrounding the journals crisis as well as a fresh perspective on how to rectify it.
"This paper really gets to the core of why we started Scholastica 5 years ago. Our goal is to build modern and affordable journal management software that lowers the barriers to entry to run a journal," said Co-Founder Brian Cody. "We provide the tools and journals decide their publishing and funding models without needing to outsource publishing to a middleman."
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Scholastica gratefully acknowledges the following white paper contributors:
Björn Brembs, Professor of Neurogenetics at the University of Regensburg and OA advocate
Dan Morgan, Digital Science Publisher at University of California Press
Roxanne Missingham, Chief Scholarly Information Officer at Australian National University and Australian OA Support Group Deputy Chair
Stevan Harnad, Professor in the Department of Psychology at Université du Québec à Montréal, Professor of Web Science at University of Southampton, Green OA advocate
Ulrich Herb, OA expert at Saarland University and State Library and member of multiple OA working groups
About Scholastica: Scholastica is a web-based software platform for managing academic journals with integrated peer review and open access publishing tools. Founded in 2011 in response to a growing need for a more affordable and efficient way to peer review and publish scholarly journals, Scholastica's mission is to give editors the tools they need to easily manage and publish peer-reviewed journals at a price anyone can afford. Over 400 journals across disciplines use Scholastica.
Website: scholasticahq.com
For more information:
Danielle Padula at dpadula@scholasticahq.comBRUSSELS -- Mexico forward Jesus "Tecatito" Corona has left the national team camp to return to Portugal for personal reasons.
Corona, 24, had been set to feature for Mexico in Friday's friendly against Belgium and Monday's game against Poland.
A Mexico statement said: "Jesus Manuel Corona has left the Mexican national team due to his wife having complications in her pregnancy and unfortunately losing the baby."
Porto player Corona spoke to Mexico manager Juan Carlos Osorio and federation officials, who organised his return to Portugal.
"It really hit him hard," Mexico's director of national teams Dennis te Kloese said. "He was really looking forward to these two games close to his home in Europe."
Reports also broke on Thursday that Mexico internationals and Porto players Hector Herrera and Diego Reyes had been implicated in the recent Paradise Papers scandal.
Tom Marshall covers Liga MX and the Mexican national team for ESPN FC. Twitter: @MexicoWorldCup.'I was given every s*** job in the world by Obama': Biden makes astonishing revelations about his relationship with the President as it's claimed he was 'frozen out' by White House over gay gaffe
Vice President Joe Biden reveals he willingly took the President's more 'bothersome' tasks but in turn wanted to be included in major decisions
The deal was kept for the first term but after Biden said he was 'absolutely comfortable' with gay marriage before Obama, he was frozen out
He was allowed to attend strategy meetings and wasn't happy when Obama's team didn't refute rumors about him being replaced by Clinton
Now the relationship is beginning to thaw but he is plagued by the prospect that Obama and his advisers want Clinton in 2016 and not him
Vice President Joe Biden has revealed that the President assigned him ‘every s*** job in the world’ but he still wasn’t able to win Obama’s full support and began being effectively frozen out after one of his infamous gaffes.
The 71-year-old argued that he was happy to do the less glamorous tasks- like handling the at-times petty Senate fights and calming the fears of the infamously paranoid President of Afghanistan Hamid Karzai- but only at a price.
‘When the president asked me what portfolio did I want, I said, “Base it on what you want of me to help you govern…But I want to be the last guy in the room on every major decision… You’re president, I’m not, but if it’s my experience you’re lookin’ for, I want to be the last guy to make the case,”’ Biden said in a lengthy Politico profile.
He went on to admit that Obama kept up his end of the bargain for the majority of their dealings, but the article reveals that there has been a definite frost between the two men that came after Biden announced his approval of gay marriage before the President.
Two years later, the chill in their once buddy relationship is only now beginning to thaw.
Scroll down for video
Iced out: After Joe Biden announced that he supported gay marriage before the President, Obama's team made an active effort to exclude him from meetings and keep him out of the public eye (seen together this week)
Less-than-stellar gigs: The Vice President revealed that he told Obama he was happy to take the more bothersome tasks off his hands but as long as Obama consulted with him extensively about decisions
Trouble began brewing during the 2012 re-election campaign as there were rumors that the Obama team was considering replacing Biden with then-outgoing-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
When questioned about it by Biden, all involved parties denied any truth to said rumor and said so publicly, but not as forcefully as Biden wanted.
Rivals: The position of Vice President typically leads to the nomination after two terms but Hillary Clinton is roundly seen as the Democratic candidate in 2016
Not only were they not being as strong in their denials as Biden wanted, they were also lying. There was some truth to the speculation as pollsters from the campaign had begun slipping in questions about what the public would think if Clinton was brought in as number two.
Around the same time, Biden also gave the higher-ups in the campaign, like Strategist David Plouffe and manager Jim Messina reason to be upset after upstaging the President by coming out in support of gay marriage before the President.
The two men met and Biden apologized, asserting that it was an accident- just another in Biden’s long history of gaffes- but insiders apparently felt that it may have been a calculated move to signal his loyalty to the progressives who felt they were being ignored by Obama.
The apology was not enough and Obama’s staff reportedly turned hostile to the Vice President.
He was banned from strategic planning meetings that he had been included in during the first campaign, and nixed plans for Biden to headline private dinners with potential fundraisers. They even tried to block not one but two possible candidates when the Vice President was trying to pick a new chief of staff.
They also reigned in his public leash by dramatically limiting the number of appearances that Biden made in the months after the gay marriage slip.
Throwing his support: One of the biggest symbolic slaps in the face came when Obama chose to give his first televised interview of the second term with Clinton at his side rather than Biden
Another symbolic slap in the face came immediately after they won re-election, with the President deciding to appear with Clinton, his outgoing Secretary of State and former campaign enemy, rather than Biden for his first televised interview in his second term.
SECRETS FROM THE WHITE HOUSE: NEW REVELATIONS ABOUT THE OBAMA-BIDEN RELATIONSHIP
Vice President Biden offered to take on whatever projects President Obama wanted him to tackle and he landed 'every s*** job' Obama didn't want to deal with
Included managing the withdrawal of American troops from Iraq and hand-holding the reportedly paranoid Afghan President Hamid Karzai
Biden was reportedly furious after he got wind that pollsters from the 2012 re-election campaign started asking whether voters would like it if he was subbed out for Hillary Clinton
Obama's staffers denied the rumors publicly but Biden thought they should have been stronger in their reactions
They also told Biden that there was no truth to the rumors but didn't admit to the poll question Obama's team thought that Biden purposefully announced that he was 'absolutely comfortable' with gay marriage before the President in order to set himself up as a more progressive Democrat should he run in 2016 The 2012 campaign manager is now in charge of an influential PAC and said that he wouldn't pick sides between Biden and Clinton but accidentally said last month that he thinks Clinton is the'strongest' candidate. Biden refused to talk to him when he called to apologize.
Time has apparently helped soothe the wounds, however, as Biden has recently been given some slack and allowed more appearances both on the road touting administration initiatives and in front of the camera. He made the morning news show rounds immediately after the State of the Union and embraced his likeability as a guest on Seth Meyer’s inaugural episode of Late Night.
The prospect of top Democratic advisers propping up Clinton's campaign while still technically claiming to stay neutral before Biden officially decides about 2016- a call he says he will make after the 2014 midterms- continues to plague the Vice President.
Even though he has been let back into the fold somewhat, his theory was given some credibility after Messina, who has since left the White House and launched a progressive PAC that is expected to play a major role in the 2016 race, told a reporter that they would likely be backing Clinton- without even mentioning the Vice President as a possible candidate.
'I think the numbers clearly show that she’s the strongest presidential candidate on the Democratic side and Priorities is going to be there for her if she decides to run,' Messina told The New York Times last month.
Politico revealed that after the interview, Messina felt that he may have overstepped the bounds and both called the White House to give them a heads up and Biden to apologize: the Vice President reportedly didn't respond.
One of Biden’s biggest strengths is the power of his decades-long relationships with Senators and members of Congress. The President’s reluctance to form bonds with people on Capitol Hill during his time in office has been not only a criticism of his leadership style but has also been detrimental to negotiations time and time again.
‘You know, I disagree with Joe Biden on a lot of stuff… but this is an individual who understands relationships… and I just get a completely different feeling with the president,’ Republican Congressman Tim Griffin from Arkansas told Politico.
One of his closest friends and Republican political allies is fellow septuagenarian John McCain, and though the Arizona Republican doesn’t doubt that Biden has no plans to go into retirement without putting up a fight, he also knows that Biden is rational about his chances.
Letting him loose: Biden has been allowed to make more public appearances in recent months, including his guest stop on Seth Meyer's inaugural episode of Late Night
‘The difference between Joe and someone like (former Senator Ted) Kennedy is that Ted gave up his ambitions...Joe never stopped wanting to be president,' McCain said.
‘I think he’d still like to be president. Hell, I’d still like to be president… but there’s a difference between liking being president and actually (getting elected), and I kind of get the impression, without him saying it, that he knows how formidable Hillary would be.’A girl broke Frank Relle’s heart, but a city captured it.
He was bouncing back from a soured romance his freshman year at Tulane, around the same time his best friend was hurt in a car accident. Together, they went on long walks in their corner of New Orleans.
“We recovered from our respective illnesses walking around the Garden District and making up stories about the houses we saw,” Mr. Relle recalled. “It got me thinking about how you could use the house as a backdrop to the personality of those inside and get at the theater of their lives.”
It would not be until 2004 — after “I had been fired by everybody I worked for” — that he returned to his hometown and started “New Orleans Nightscapes,” a series of long-exposure pictures of everything from grand manses to shotgun shacks. The images glow with a moody mix of colors, each one hinting at the dramas and routines played out inside. Small wonder one of those images was used as the cover for “Nine Lives: Mystery, Magic, Death and Life in New Orleans,” by Dan Baum, who tells the city’s story through characters and storms.
Photo
The range of homes — from luxe to louche — reflects his family’s own experiences. His great-great-grandfather had come to New Orleans from Sicily in 1898, settling on the West Bank area by the Mississippi River. His own parents raised him in the North Shore by Lake Pontchartrain. As a child, he enjoyed the good life, before his father lost it all.
“I was riding fancy horses that pranced,” he said. “When his business went bad, the next thing I knew, I was working in a cemetery with a guy named Pee Wee telling me about a whole different type of life he knew versus what I had growing up.”
Later, though his dorm mates at Tulane considered him a local, Mr. Relle said his suburban upbringing made him more of an outsider. Yet even as he worked his way through college waiting tables in the French Quarter, tourists looked to him for advice on what to see. Those experiences — and his broken heart — led him to explore and learn about the city around him.
He started the project almost by accident in 2004, when he was showing someone how to do a long-exposure at night. He liked what he saw and started to pursue it, going around in his grandmother’s Lincoln Town Car, at first using available street light, or plugging his lighting rig into an outlet while the home’s owner was asleep.
He has since gotten a lot more technical, with a lighting truck that he uses, as well as getting permission from the homeowners and the help of the police to close down streets.
Photo
He had barely begun the project when Hurricane Katrina hit in 2005, forcing him to crash with Chris Callis, his mentor in New York. He was dejected, thinking the project was doomed to end early. One day, he had a conversation with Charles Traub, a professor at the School of Visual Arts.
“I thought the project had been done,” Mr. Relle said. “But Charles told me: ‘No, the story of those houses is just beginning. You’ve got to go back.’ The hurricane actually extended the life of this project and my understanding of it as well. It broadened my view of New Orleans, taking me to places I had not been before.”
In some cases, it is hard to tell which images were done after Katrina. Weather and time had already nipped away at some of the homes he had photographed before the storm. Others, afterward, looked solid.
What the series aims to do, he said, is to present a view of the city beyond the much-photographed scenes familiar to most (not an easy task in a city with so many historic buildings). To help viewers see beyond that, he wants the houses he photographs to serve as a backdrop to discussions about who lives there and how.
“There are no people in my photos, but they are all character sketches of the people I grew up with,” he said. “I want to make things that encapsulate that and are able to communicate that not in explicit terms, but giving people access and letting them create their own narratives.”
Photo
Frank Relle is currently curating a photography exhibit about Louisiana sponsored by the United States Embassy in Moscow. The show will open in mid-May at the Multimedia Museum House of Photography in Moscow.
Follow @frankrelle, @dgbxny and @nytimesphoto on Twitter. Lens is also on Facebook.Spoilers about what will bring Barry Allen (The Flash) into the world of Arrow
We’ve already known that DC Comics’ Flash, Barry Allen, would be speeding into Starling City starting with the 8th and 9th episodes of Arrow Season 2. Now, thanks to a report on TV Line, we know what brings him into town:
I’ve got fresh intel on exactly what brings Central City PD CSI Barry Allen to Oliver’s orbit. The would-be speedster travels (not by foot, I assume) to Starling City while investigating a series of brutal slayings that he believes may have a connection to his mother’s years-ago murder — a crime for which his father has been unjustly imprisoned.
Interestingly, the death of Barry Allen’s mother is a very important plot point in the recently-released Justice League: the Flashpoint Paradox animated film, which, if you haven’t seen it, is definitely worth checking out.
You can read the original TV Line report here. We really need to get on updating our compiled Arrow Season 2 spoilers page… watch this space. Thanks to Jim for the tip, and if it’s just Flash updates you’re here for or looking for in the future, be sure to follow our Flash-based Twitter feed:
Follow @FlashTVNewsEndangered species may become extinct 100 times faster than previously thought, scientists warned today, in a bleak re-assessment of the threat to global biodiversity.
Writing in the journal Nature, leading ecologists claim that methods used to predict when species will die out are seriously flawed, and dramatically underestimate the speed at which some plants and animals will be wiped out.
The findings suggest that animals such as the western gorilla, the Sumatran tiger and the Malayan sun bear, the smallest of the bear family, may become extinct much sooner than conservationists feared.
Ecologists Brett Melbourne at the University of Colorado at Boulder and Alan Hastings at the University of California, Davis, said conservation organisations should use updated extinction models to urgently re-evaluate the risks to wildlife.
"Some species could have months instead of years left, while other species that haven't even been identified as under threat yet should be listed as endangered," said Melbourne.
The warning has particular implications for the International Union for the Conservation of Nature, which compiles an annual "red list" of endangered species. Last year, the list upgraded western gorillas to critically endangered, after populations of a subspecies were found to be decimated by Ebola virus and commercial trade in bush meat. The Yangtze river dolphin was listed as critically endangered, but is possibly already extinct.
The researchers analysed mathematical models used to predict extinction risks and found that while they included some factors that are crucial to predicting a species' survival, they overlooked others. For example, models took into account that some animals might die from rare accidents, such as falling out of a tree. They also included chance environmental threats, such as sudden heatwaves or rain storms that could kill animals off.
But Melbourne and Hastings highlighted two other factors that extinction models fail to include, the first being the proportion of males to females in a population, the second the difference in reproductive success between individuals in the group. When they factored these into risk assessments for species, they found the danger of them becoming extinct rose substantially.
"The older models could be severely overestimating the time to extinction. Some species could go extinct 100 times sooner than we expect," Melbourne said.
The researchers showed that the missing factors - the number of males to females, and variations in the number of offspring - were capable of causing unexpected, large swings in the size of a population, sometimes causing it to grow, but also increasing the risk that a population could crash and become extinct.
To test the new models, Melbourne's team studied populations of beetles in the laboratory. "The results showed the old models misdiagnosed the importance of different types of randomness, much like miscalculating the odds in an unfamiliar game of cards because you didn't know the rules," he said.
For some endangered species, such as mountain gorillas, conservationists could collect data on specific individuals and plug them into models to predict their chances of survival. "For many other species, like stocks of marine fish, the best biologists can do is to measure abundances and population fluctuations," Melbourne added.
Craig Hilton-Taylor, who manages the IUCN red list in Cambridge, said extinction estimates are often inadequate. "We are certainly underestimating the number of species that are in danger of becoming extinct, because there are around 1.8 million described species and we've only been able to assess 41,000 of those," he said.
The latest study could help refine models used to decide which species are put on the red list, he said. "We are constantly looking at how we evaluate extinction risk, and it may be they have hit on something that can help us," he said.
More than 16,000 species worldwide are currently threatened with extinction, according to a 2007 report from the IUCN. One in four mammal species, one in eight bird species and one in three amphibian species are on the organisation's red list. An updated list is due to be published in October.
Next week, the IUCN is expected to highlight the dire state of the world's corals after surveying the condition of more than 1,000 species around the world.Beretta 92FS/M9 Frame
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For my next project, I will be doing the Beretta 92FS frame. For those who aren't familiar with this pistol, the above pictures will give you an idea of what it looks like. I recently purchased a used (police trade-in) Beretta 92FS pistol to use as a reference while I make the solid model of the frame. As of right now the only references I have for this project is the pistol I bought. I also have the drawing below, but it doesn't give near enough detail. I'm trying to get my hands on any reference information that will help me out while I'm working on the solid model. So if anybody has any useful information (blueprints, sketches, etc.), please let me know. I would really appreciate any help you can give me to help this project take its first steps.
I started to work on the solid model of this project. So far I have the rough profile of the pistol. Below is a pic of what I have done so far. If you have any information you can share with me on this pistol I would really appreciate it.
I now have a pretty good start on the solidmodel. I've been using the Co-ordinate Measuring Machine (CMM) at our shop to measure some of the complex hole locations and surfaces. Below you will see how far along I am with this solidmodel.
I got some more work done on the solidmodel. About the only thing I have left is the back of the frame where the hammer slides in. Some of this area is pretty complex, so it's going to take some time to get all the measurements and transfer that data to the solidmodel. Below is what the model now looks like.
I now have the solidmodel complete!!! I'm going to go back and triple check all my measurements before I start the machining to insure I didn't make any mistakes. I created a Solidworks E-drawing of this frame if any of you would like to check it out to see if I've missed any features. Please let me know if you find anything wrong. The E-drawing is located under Downloads. Below is what the final model looks like.
Since I now have the solidmodel finished of this frame, I decided to have it "printed" out on a rapid prototype machine also know as stereolithography. You can read more about stereolithography here. Doing this will allow me to test fit some of the parts, and insure my solidmodel is correct before I start the complicated machining process. I've looked the prototype part over and everything seems to be ok so far. I'm now getting REALLY excited about starting the machining of this frame. Below you can see a couple pics of what the "printed" frame looks like. This frame is made of a clear type of material so it was hard to get a good picture, but maybe you can get an idea of what it looks like. I had to use some "silly putty" to help stand the part up for the pictures.
I cut the aluminum blocks from a 12 foot bar of 6061-T6 aluminum we had at the shop. The dimension of the block is 5" x 1½" x 7.760" Below you can see a pic of my reference Beretta 92FS frame setting on top of the aluminum block. I stripped my Beretta 92FS pistol down to just the bare frame, and I used it to help make the solidmodel. I hope to be able to turn this 5.7 pound block of aluminum into a working pistol frame.
I got the 1st operation programmed for the CNC machining center. Here is a picture of the block of material in the machine ready to be machined...
The first tool to run was the 1/2" hog end mill. This tool was used to rough out most of the material. I stopped the machine mid-way through this tool to show how much material was being removed...
The next picture I took was after the outside profile had been roughed out. You can see the block of material is now taking the shape of the pistol frame...
Below is a pic after the 1/2" hog end mill was finished roughing the frame...
You can't really see it from the pictures, but the 1/2" hog end mill leaves a rough surface finish on the material. So I used a 1/4" carbide end mill to make the finish passes around the frame. I used the flash on the camera for this picture to try and show how clean the outside of the frame now looks...
The next picture is after all the holes were drilled...
The next tool to run was the 1/4" ball nose carbide end mill. This is the tool that can really turn a block of material into a work of art. This tool profiles across the whole frame by machining square corners into smooth surfaces. This tool takes a really long time to run because it's machining back and forth across the frame stepping over 0.006" each time. This tool made a total of 1260 passes back and forth across the profile of the frame. Below are a few pics showing what the frame looked like after this tool...
I then ran a couple different smaller end mills to finish up some minor details and to cut the rail for where the slide will fit. Here is what it looked like after those tools...
That's the end of the 1st operation. There are some other cuts I could have made on this operation, but I'm saving those for further down the road. If I made some of those cuts now, it would have made the frame really weak and hard to hold onto for future operations. I bead blasted one of the frames to reduce the glare in the next pictures. Below are some better pics, and the last pic is showing the difference between the freshly machine frame and the one that had been bead blasted...
I hope to find time to program and machine the 2nd operation in the next few weeks.
I found time to test fit some of the parts to the "printed" stereolithography prototype frame. I didn't add all the parts including some of the springs because the plastic frame wouldn't be able to withstand the forces put forth by some of the springs. I didn't find any problems assembling the parts to the frame, so this far everything looks good to go. Below are some pretty cool pics of how the clear plastic frame looks with the parts assembled...
I got the 2nd operation machined. I had to make a special fixture plate to hold the frame flat and square while I done the machining. I designed the fixture plate so I could use it for both the left and right machining processes. I also made the plate to where it would touch as many surfaces as possible, so it would help keep the frame level during the machining process. Below you can see what the fixture plate looks like...
After I got the fixture plate machined, it was time to start machining the 2nd operation on the frame. Below you can see what the plate looked like in the vise before I clamped in the pistol frame...
I then clamped the frame in the vise and used a machinist level to make sure the frame was flat in both the "X" and "Y" directions. The plate worked perfectly, because everything came out exactly level. Below you can see what the frame looked like before I started the machining process...
First I used a 1/2" hog end mill to cut around the outside of the frame to remove the slab of material left over from the 1st operation. Here you can see what it looked like with the slab removed...
Next, I used a 3" shell mill to bring the frame to the correct thickness. I stopped the shell mill while it was cutting to take a picture to show exactly what it was doing. You can see this picture below and also the picture after the shell mill was finished cutting...
Then I used the 1/2" hog end mill again to rough most of the material away so I could run |
of Virginians who know that our Second Amendment rights come with responsibilities to keep guns out of dangerous hands," said Amy McPike, a Loudoun County volunteer for the group.
Americans for Responsible Solutions, a gun control group led by former U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, has endorsed the Democratic ticket in Virginia, but has yet to announce any donations. It has spent more than $700,000 on Virginia campaigns in recent years, according to data compiled by the Virginia Public Access Project.
On the other side of the gun debate, the National Rifle Association - headquartered in Virginia - has endorsed all three Republicans running for statewide office.
The organization's political arm funded an ad in support of GOP attorney general nominee John Adams that also accused Herring of taking "away the rights of gun owners to protect themselves." This is a reference to Herring's decision to stop recognizing out-of-state concealed carry permits, since reversed by McAuliffe's gun deal.
A spokeswoman for the National Rifle Association declined to comment on the ad or how much it cost.
Adam Zuckerman, Herring's campaign manager, said "the fact that the NRA is going all in to elect John Adams shows that they know he'll be the attorney general for the gun lobby, not Virginia families."
Virginia's gubernatorial contest is the nation's marquee race this year. That status, plus lax campaign finance laws, has attracted a blizzard of outside spending.
Political arms of Planned Parenthood, the Virginia League of Conservation Voters, a Democratic redistricting group backed by former President Barack Obama and California billionaire Tom Steyer's NextGen American have commited to spend more than $8 million to support Northam and other Democrats.
The same groups, along with Priorities USA - which spent more than $200 million on behalf of Hillary Clinton and Democrats running for the Senate in 2016 - announced Thursday they will spend $2 million to coordinate with Northam on a digital ad campaign. Virginia's campaign finance laws allows candidates to coordinate with outside spending groups.
That campaign, designed to reach more than 1.2 million voters before Election Day, will mark the first time that Democratic groups are pooling resources and data to reach voters online, organizers said. They described their coordinated campaign as "first of its kind" for Democratic groups in the way they are pooling resources and data to reach voters online.
On the Republican side, the Republican Governors' Association has put in $8 million behind Gillespie and the Koch-funded Americans for Prosperity has launched an ad campaign against Northam worth at least $1.4 million.The European Parliament has come out against changes that could expand the UN International Telecommunication Union's oversight of the internet. A newly issued resolution warns that "the ITU, or any other single, centralised international institution, is not the appropriate body to assert regulatory authority over either internet governance or internet traffic flows," and raises concerns that some of the proposals could undermine the free flow of online information. Any new regulations, the resolution says, should make certain that "freedom of expression and assembly... are respected and the observance of free market principles, net neutrality and entrepreneurship are ensured."
The ITU has been discussing an update to its 1988 telecommunications treaty since earlier this year, and leaked documents suggest that it's interested in adding internet-specific provisions, some of which would condone countries filtering their internet or attempting to charge for accepting traffic from major websites. The US government, Google, and several internet advocacy groups have already officially opposed it, with "father of the internet" and Google Chief Internet Evangelist Vint Cerf arguing that it could "dramatically limit free expression on the web." The ITU will discuss updating its regulations over the first half of December in Dubai.Hewlett Packard has updated its widely distributed Microserver Series to Gen8. This extremely affordable server which was initially made for SMB and home servers has become very popular in the virtualization scene. Due to its low price and power consumption you can find this system in many virtualization home labs. The Generation 8 Microserver (Gen8 or G8) comes with more power, upgraded ports and an integrated iLO.
The HP Microserver Gen8 is available in 2 versions - G1610T and G2020T. Both models are equipped with a 2 core CPU and can support up to 16GB of RAM. The system is shipped with 4 hard drive trays, which allows the installation of any SATA hard drive. It also has a CPU socket, so you can change the CPU.
HP Microserver Gen8 G1610T (2x 2.3 GHz)
HP Microserver Gen8 G2020T (2x 2.5 GHz)
HP Microserver Gen8 E3-1220V2 (4x 3.1 GHz)
Features
The Server is shipped with the following configuration:
Prozessor:
Intel® Celeron® G1610T (2.3Hz/2-core/2MB/35W) Processor
Intel® Pentium® G2020T (2.5GHz/2-core/3MB/35W) Processor
Intel® Pentium® E3-1220V2 (3.1GHz/4-core/8MB/69W) Processor
Memory: 2GB PC3-12800E DDR3 UDIMM
Hard Disk: - (4 hard drive trays)
- (4 hard drive trays) LAN: 1x 10/100/1000 MBit (332i)
1x 10/100/1000 MBit (332i) Storage Controller: HP Dynamic Smart Array B120i
HP Dynamic Smart Array B120i Power Supply: 150 Watt, non-redundant
150 Watt, non-redundant Ports: VGA, 5x USB 2.0, 2x USB 3.0, 2x RJ-45, MicroSD slot
HCL and ESXi 5.x Support
The server has hardware support for virtualization (Intel VT-x and EPT) and a 64-bit CPU. It is listed in the VMware HCL but not at hp.com for VMware Support. I can not recommend to use this System in a productive environment (at least due to its missing redundancy), but as a home lab, or a small home server it should be fine. The Network Controller (332i) is supported. The embedded Storage Controller (B120i) is not supported, but the system can be upgraded with a HP Smart Array P222 Controller, which is supported.
Delivery and assembly
The server is very handy and fits easily on or below a desk. Compared to the old Microserver, the front is not secured with a lockable door. To install additional components, the mainboard has to be removed. To change the CPU, just remove the passive heatsink and change the CPU.
The CPU can be replaced with:
Setup
The IP address of the iLO is configured though a DHCP Server and you can access it either with HTTP or HTTPS. The default login is admin and password. The iLO enables the server to be powered on and off remotely. Additionally it comes with a KVM and remote media Java application. To install the ESX server you have to launch the KVM und Remote Media application, mount the ISO file The System has been tested with ESXi 4.0, ESXi 4.1, ESXi 5.0, ESXi 5.1 and ESXi 5.5. Use HP Customized ESXi Images for better hardware support.
Difference between G7 (N36L / N40L / N54L) and Gen8
+ CPU socket (changeable CPU)
CPU socket (changeable CPU) + 16GB memory max
16GB memory max + Integrated iLO and Mobile App Support
Integrated iLO and Mobile App Support + 2x USB3.0 port
2x USB3.0 port + Internal microSD slot
Internal microSD slot + 2x onboard nics
2x onboard nics - 5,25" Slot
5,25" Slot - no eSATA port
no eSATA port - no PCIe 8x slot
Result
The HP Proliant Gen8 is a great upgrade from the well known NxxL series. With two or three Systems you can build a reliable homelab and start to play around various VMware features. You can create a cluster, try vMotion, HA, DRS and resource pools or even create your personal vCloud or VDI environment. When you have an additional SSD, you can use vSAN to transform the local storage into redundant shared storage. The server runs pretty quiet, so you can run it near your desk.
Shopping GuideThe local WordPress community in Seville welcomed a diverse group of attendees to WordCamp Europe 2015 over the weekend. WordPress enthusiasts and professionals from Europe and beyond made strategic connections, contributed, found jobs and employees, and enjoyed presentations from a selection of world class speakers.
Seville has got the imaginative juices flowing and led to some exciting changes of life direction #wceu — Fi Barnes (@Barnes_Fiona) June 28, 2015
Very happy to announce @SergeyBiryukov will be joining @yoast, spending 50% of his time on WP core. #WCEU was productive. — Joost de Valk (@jdevalk) June 28, 2015
At the conclusion of the WordCamp, organizers announced that the 2016 event will be held in Vienna, Austria, June 24 – 26. Applications for the host city were opened in March and closed at the end of April.
The WordCamp Europe organization team received strong applications from the WordPress communities in Vienna, Bratislava, and Berlin. Some of the most important criteria in the selection process included organizer experience, location, venue, contributor day, and budget.
Berlin was ruled out due to lack of experience among the organizers.
“The reason that we ruled out Berlin is that there hasn’t yet been a WordCamp in Berlin and we felt that the team needed more WordCamp organizing experience,” Siobhan McKeown said in the official announcement. “We’d love to see a WordCamp Berlin in the future – such a wonderful city needs a wonderful WordCamp.”
Although Berlin has actually hosted three WordCamps in the past, including WordCamp Germany 2010, WordCamps Berlin 2012 and 2013, other more weighty factors pushed Bratislava and Vienna ahead as potential host cities.
Bratislava brought a strong and diverse local team to the table, but Vienna ultimately surpassed the other applicants when it came down to logistics.
“In the end, the venue, location, and available dates for the WordCamp won out,” McKeown said. “We loved the Bratislava application, but none of the venues were completely suitable for our event.
“The venue in Vienna, however, was perfect. We also have 100% confidence in the Vienna local team: they organized a successful WordCamp Vienna in 2015, and Paolo Belcastro, the lead applicant for WordCamp Europe 2016, has been involved in WordCamp Europe for the past three years. This means that the local team will have a leader with a ton of WCEU experience.”
With a successful WordCamp Europe 2015 in the bag, the organization team will now set its sights on Vienna and continue its year round planning efforts. Speaker selection usually begins five or six months in advance for this event, so those planning to apply have plenty of time to prepare.
Like this: Like Loading...Edward Snowden on Monday questioned if the woman set to replace Debbie Wasserman Schultz as interim chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) is also biased against Sen. Bernie Sanders Bernard (Bernie) SandersPush to end U.S. support for Saudi war hits Senate setback Sanders: 'I fully expect' fair treatment by DNC in 2020 after 'not quite even handed' 2016 primary Sanders: 'Damn right' I'll make the large corporations pay 'fair share of taxes' MORE (I-Vt.).
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"Did the #DNC seriously just swap the Chair fired for anti-Sanders bias with a different anti-Sanders official?" the former government contractor tweeted.
He included in the tweet an image of an email between a reporter and Donna Brazile, the DNC vice chairwoman who will serve as interim chairwoman following Wasserman Schultz's resignation at the end of this week's Democratic National Convention.
In the email, the reporter asked Brazile if she would be able to talk about the fight between the Sanders campaign and the DNC over adequate representation on the party's Platform Committee.
In response, Brazile said: "I have no intentions of touching this. Why? Because I will cuss out the Sanders camp!"
Did the #DNC seriously just swap the Chair fired for anti-Sanders bias with a different anti-Sanders official? pic.twitter.com/kTAntcz4NM — Edward Snowden (@Snowden) July 25, 2016
Wasserman Schultz announced on Sunday she would resign at the end of the convention. The Florida congresswoman still planned to open the convention, but on Monday she abandoned those plans after she was booed at an appearance before her home-state delegation.
On Monday, Brazile apologized for the emails that attacked the Sanders campaign.
“On behalf of the party, I wanted to apologize for the salacious and sensitive, very mean-spirited emails that were referenced to in the WikiLeaks,” she told Fox News on Monday.
But Brazile said the Democrats must not let the messages divide them ahead of the general election.The Obama administration has accused the regime of Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad of carrying out a chemical weapons attack outside Damascus that killed nearly 1,500 people.
But maybe it’s a frame job, and Obama actually conspired with al Qaeda to gas innocent Syrians as a pretext for going to war against Assad. That’s what right-wing radio host Rush Limbaugh wondered aloud on his radio show Tuesday. (Limbaugh’s theorizing was first noted by Mother Jones’ Kevin Drum).
“Now, if this is right—and I say “IF” in capital letters—if this is right, this is the setup of all time,” Limbaugh told his listeners Tuesday, pointing his listeners to an opinion piece titled “Did the White House Help Plan the Syrian Chemical Attack?” Limbaugh then said, “At any rate, it looks like there was US intel involvement dating a week before the alleged chemical weapons attack in meetings that were anticipating a war-changing event. So we could be looking here at a frame job, a pretty big setup.”
The opinion piece, written by Yossef Bodansky, a former Republican congressional aide, suggests that the attack was “a pre-meditated provocation by the Syrian opposition,” part of a pretext for U.S. military action in Syria that could bolster the rebels and defeat Assad. Limbaugh found it convincing, offering that Obama’s (inconsistent) support for popular uprisings elsewhere in the Middle East was part of a grand strategy to empower al Qaeda. “The regime’s agenda appears to be eliminating dictators in favor of Muslim radicals,” Limbaugh said. (When Limbaugh says “regime” he is referring to the Obama administration, not the Syrian dictatorship).
Limbaugh continued:
He got rid of Mubarak. He’s a dictator. He might have been a horrible guy, but he was stable. Khadafy may have been a horrible guy, but he was stable. We’re getting rid of all of these dictators—which, of course, sounds great—but they’re being replaced with Muslim radicals, i.e., the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and al Qaeda is basically who’s in Syria. If they get rid of Bashar in Syria, it will be al Qaeda. Muslim radicals. Sharia is on the march in the Middle East is what’s taking place here.
Some conservative websites have also latched onto Bodansky’s theory.
Limbaugh later appeared to deny or blame the genocide that occurred against Bosnian Muslims in the former Yugoslavia in the late 1990s, by way of explaining how the chemical weapons attack near Damascus could all be a ruse. “We were tricked into launching air strikes against the Serbs because we’d been convinced that the Serbs were wreaking havoc against the poor Bosnian Muslims,” Limbaugh said, citing Bodansky, “when in fact the attacks had been provoked by forces sympathetic to the Bosnian Muslims to create this reaction of ours.”
More than 100,000 people were killed in the Balkan wars of the 1990s, most of them Muslims. Dozens of former military and political officials have been convicted of war crimes by an international tribunal set up by the United Nations. A month before the disputed incident Bodansky accuses Bosnian Muslims of staging to provoke NATO intervention, 8,000 Bosnian Muslims were killed by Bosnian Serb forces at Srebrenica, an incident for which former Bosnian Serb officials have been convicted of genocide. There is no “stand your ground” defense to crimes against humanity.
“In both cases, Muslims are involved. In both cases, Democrat Party presidents are involved,” Limbaugh said. “In both cases, Muslims conduct a deception, an operation of deception that we either are party to, lured into, or we are fooled by, one of the three.”
Perhaps it sounds far-fetched to you that Obama, the entire US intelligence apparatus, and the intelligence communities of France and Germany would conspire with extremists to stage a brutal chemical weapons attack, then frame Assad in order to deliberately enable al Qaeda and advance the cause of Islamist radicals seeking to impose a strict interpretation of religious law on the world. If so, you probably haven’t been listening to Limbaugh much these past few years.Following the Minnesota Legislature’s passage of a bill to legalize same-sex marriage and the striking down of key parts of the Defense of Marriage Act by the U.S. Supreme Court last week, the 41st annual Twin Cities Pride Festival was a historic event. MinnPost contributing photographer Terry Gydesen was on hand to capture the festivities.
MinnPost photo by Terry Gydesen
MinnPost photo by Terry Gydesen
MinnPost photo by Terry Gydesen
MinnPost photo by Terry Gydesen
MinnPost photo by Terry Gydesen
MinnPost photo by Terry Gydesen
MinnPost photo by Terry Gydesen
MinnPost photo by Terry Gydesen
MinnPost photo by Terry Gydesen
MinnPost photo by Terry Gydesen
MinnPost photo by Terry Gydesen
MinnPost photo by Terry Gydesen
MinnPost photo by Terry Gydesen
MinnPost photo by Terry Gydesen
MinnPost photo by Terry Gydesen
MinnPost photo by Terry Gydesen
MinnPost photo by Terry GydesenPresident Donald Trump’s team made little effort to consult with federal agency lawyers or lawmakers as they churned out executive actions this week, stoking fears the White House is creating the appearance of real momentum with flawed orders that might be unworkable, unenforceable or even illegal.
The White House didn’t ask State Department experts to review Trump’s memorandum on the Keystone XL pipeline, even though the company that wants to build the pipeline is suing the U.S. for $15 billion, according to two people familiar with the matter.
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Defense Secretary James Mattis and CIA Director Mike Pompeo were “blindsided” by a draft order that would require agencies to reconsider using interrogation techniques that are currently banned as torture, according to sources with knowledge of their thinking.
Just a small circle of officials at the Department of Health and Human Services knew about the executive action starting to unwind Obamacare, and only less than two hours before it was released. Key members of Congress weren’t consulted either, according to several members. And at a conference in Philadelphia, GOP legislators say they had no idea whether some of the executive orders would contrast with existing laws — because they hadn't reviewed them.
The breakneck pace of Trump’s executive actions might please his supporters, but critics are questioning whether the documents are being rushed through without the necessary review from agency experts and lawmakers who will bear the burden of actually carrying them out. For example, there are legal questions on how the country can force companies building pipelines to use materials manufactured domestically, which might not be available or which could violate trade treaty obligations. There’s also the question of whether the federal government can take billions from cities who don’t comply with immigration enforcement actions: Legal experts said it was unclear.
“You want to make sure when you’re dealing with high stakes, important issues you’re getting the best information from the breadth of expertise that exists in government,” said Max Stier, president of the Partnership for Public Service, a nonpartisan nonprofit that supports the civil service. “You don’t know what you don’t know.”
The White House did not respond to a request for comment.
Trump, less than a week into his presidency, is continuing the improvisational style he used to run his company, his campaign and his transition. He’s relying on a small circle of trusted advisers to act decisively. And he’s emphasizing the theatrics of autographing official-looking leather-bound documents in the Oval Office.
People familiar with Trump’s planning say he wanted daily events to show supporters he would follow through on the items of his campaign agenda. “He was determined to show people that he’s getting to work from Day One,” one person familiar with his planning said. This person said he wanted to take charge and show his supporters that former President Barack Obama’s tenure was decisively over.
But the process is playing out chaotically both inside the White House and throughout the federal government.
Inside the West Wing, it is almost impossible for some aides to know what is in the executive orders, staffers say. They have been written by Stephen Miller, Trump’s senior White House adviser for policy, and Steve Bannon, Trump’s chief strategist, according to people familiar with the matter. Ideas for some of the Trump executive orders came from transition officials and so-called “landing teams,” sources say, who weren’t working in the White House.
View Spicer on Trump import tax Sean Spicer talks about the import tax on Thursday.
Aides have also said that it was sometimes a game-time decision if Trump was going to sign a certain executive order that day.
The only other administration that began with such swift executive actions was Ronald Reagan’s, said David Vladeck, a law professor at Georgetown University and a former official at the Federal Trade Commission. Those directives were more heavily vetted.
“If you don’t run these kinds of initiatives through the affected agencies, you’re going to get something wrong,” Vladeck said. “A government by edict is not a sustainable idea.”
By contrast, the Obama White House ran executive orders through a painstaking weeks-long process of soliciting feedback from agencies and briefing lawmakers, according to a former official. Sometimes it even asked expert lawyers in the private sector to check its work.
House aides said they were largely unaware of Trump’s executive orders as they were being drafted, but that “it isn’t that surprising” coming from Trump, according to a senior Republican aide. Congressional leadership has tried to keep up with shifting policies from the Trump administration, according to several aides, who say Trump’s top officials often seem uninterested in details.
“Well, I think that you’ll see this is obviously a transition that’s underway here,” South Dakota Sen. John Thune, the third-ranking Senate Republican, said in Philadelphia as he opened the Republican retreat there. “I expect you’ll see, probably, better coordination with time.”
There’s also an irony in Trump flexing his executive power so fully because the approach goes against what Trump and Republican members of Congress have said about executive actions in the past.
For example, in 2012, Barack Obama’s increased interest in using executive orders developed a critic: a certain Manhattan billionaire. “Why is Barack Obama constantly issuing orders that are major grabs of authority?” Trump asked on Twitter.
Former Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, now a lobbyist, said he continues to have deep reservations about any aggressive use of executive action, whether it comes from a Republican or Democrat.
“You don't want to have an imperial president," Lott said. “It’s just not the best way to govern. These things need to be figured out by Congress. We have allowed the presidency to become too powerful.”
Lott said he understood that Trump wanted to come out of the gate quickly, and he applauded some of the actions, including the pipeline change. “But I’ve been where Mitch is going to be, who is going to have to say, Mr. President, we cannot do that or we will not do that. Sometimes, the president needs that,” Lott said, referring to about Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.
Experts warned that the quick moves could hurt Trump down the line and cause him to eventually slow down.
The State Department exhaustively reviewed the Keystone XL pipeline over many years before Obama rejected it, but Trump didn’t call upon agency officials’ expertise, even though reviving the project could prove complicated. It isn’t clear how Trump’s memo, which invites TransCanada to reapply for a permit, might bear on the company’s $15 billion claim against the U.S. under the North American Free Trade Agreement.
“The notion you would do something like this on an issue impacting a claim against the U.S. government for $15 billion without getting a full briefing from people involved — that’s more than unusual, that’s reckless,” said Keith Benes, a former State Department lawyer who handled Keystone.
There’s also the issue of Trump’s sweeping orders on immigration Wednesday that came with big promises but little clarity on who will ultimately foot the bill. For example, building a wall along the Mexico border is likely to cost at least $20 billion, and tripling border enforcement agents will likely cost billions more.
Trump has promised that Mexico will reimburse the United States for the cost of constructing the wall, and the executive order included vague language about the financing of the additional agents.
“He needs money to do it,” said Theresa Cardinal Brown, director of immigration policy for the Bipartisan Policy Center. “You can’t shuffle money around even within a department. You have to go back to Congress.”It's time to click open this weekend's Baltimore Ravens mailbag...
@jamisonhensley do you think Kubiak stays at the end of the season? — Ravens Make Playoffs (@TheReal_DorianK) December 10, 2014
@jamisonhensley What are the odds that Campanaro is ready to go on Sunday? — Kenny (@bakerspazing) December 10, 2014
@jamisonhensley Is Harbaugh reminding the team of that horrible loss to Jacksonville a couple of years ago when they took them lightly? — Jiji N. (@JijiNakaba) December 10, 2014
@jamisonhensley How many games do you think we would've won if Jimmy Smith didn't get injured? — Misagh Dorost (@misagh19) December 10, 2014
@jamisonhensley The Ravens have to get a decent corner in Free Agency....Right? Who could they bring in??? #Ravens — 80 Percent (@dtgordo) December 10, 2014
@jamisonhensley chances Steve Smith, Sr. retires after this year? If he does, do the Ravens stand pat with their current WR corps? — Leonard Monfredo (@lmonfredo2) December 10, 2014
@jamisonhensley: It's too early to say. Not to dodge the question, but Gary Kubiak's chances of being one-and-done as the Ravens' offensive coordinator is tied to two key factors: the number of teams looking for head coaches and how teams view Kubiak's health. Kubiak deserves to be a head coaching candidate based on how he has dramatically turned around the Ravens' attack. The Ravens' offense, which was ranked No. 29 last season, is on track to being a top-10 one for the first time since 1997. Joe Flacco is on pace to set career highs in passing yards, completion percentage and touchdowns. What may concern NFL owners looking for a head coach is the fact that Kubiak is one year removed from having a mini-stroke on the field. Still, if there are six to seven teams seeking head coaches this offseason, you should expect to hear Kubiak's name being linked to these vacancies.@jamisonhensley: Slot receiver Michael Campanaro isn't listed on the injury report, which means he'll be available for Sunday's game against Jacksonville. It seems like a safe bet that the rookie seventh-round pick will be active considering the right knee injury to Torrey Smith. Campanaro was just starting to find a niche in the Ravens' offense before injuring his hamstring. He had a season-high 40 yards on three catches in his last game, which was in late October. Kamar Aiken is expected to start along with Steve Smith if Torrey Smith is sidelined. The Ravens will then split reps between Campanaro, Marlon Brown and Jacoby Jones at the No. 3 spot unless someone gets hot.@jamisonhensley: Probably not. John Harbaugh tends to focus on the present, not a game three years ago. For the most part, the Ravens beat the teams they're supposed to. They're not like the Pittsburgh Steelers, who have a history of overlooking struggling teams. When the Ravens play these last-place teams, I remember what former Ravens linebacker Jarret Johnson once told me. Leading up to these types of games, Harbaugh's attention to detail is even more heightened in practice, so there's little chance of players letting down. The Ravens are an impressive 35-8 (.814) under Harbaugh when playing teams with losing records.@jamisonhensley: Of the Ravens' three losses since cornerback Jimmy Smith went down with a season-ending foot injury, I would say the Ravens would've won one of them. The Ravens could've used Smith in that final quarter against Philip Rivers and the San Diego Chargers. I'm still focused on the long-term impact of not having Smith. As I've written before, the Ravens would have a better chance of making a deeper run in the postseason with their top cornerback. It's difficult to think the Ravens can stop quarterbacks such as Tom Brady Peyton Manning and Andrew Luck in the playoffs with their current secondary.@jamisonhensley: Based on the Ravens' history, don't look at the unrestricted free agents. The Ravens usually sign cap casualties because they don't cost the team compensatory picks. Someone like Houston's Johnathan Joseph could be cut to free up salary-cap room. I'm not saying the Ravens will go after him if he's available. Joseph is probably too expensive, especially if the Ravens are keeping Lardarius Webb and his big cap number. The point is it's a stronger likelihood that the Ravens will sign a corner who's been cut than one whose contract has expired (unrestricted free agent).@jamisonhensley: There are two big decisions facing the Ravens at wide receiver: the futures of Steve Smith and Torrey Smith. No one has asked Steve Smith about retirement, and I'm not sure he would answer if questioned. Smith has made a strong impact in his first season, leading the team in receptions (61) and receiving yards (889). Joe Flacco makes an effort to keep him involved. But Smith turns 36 next year and is a very strong personality. I think it will be the Ravens who ultimately decide whether Steve Smith is on the team or not in 2015. The other issue is with Torrey Smith, who will be a free agent this offseason. The Ravens would like to keep Torrey Smith, and he seems to enjoy being here. I see the Ravens retaining Torrey Smith as long as another team doesn't significantly overspend on him.Hey Niche Gamers! For those who don’t know us or what the site encapsulates, here's a brief run down for you.We’re the premiere source and community for both niche and unique games across the globe. We truly care about our fellow gamers as our supporters—not the advertising companies, publishers, and so on. We cannot stress this being our core goal with Niche Gamer enough.What comes from this is that relying on advertising revenue is simply not a sustainable and/or ethical practice for us. We don’t want to keep focusing on numbers of views every day; instead, we want to focus on the quality of our content, the amount of exposure we can give those unloved games, and the mutual love for games we can share with our fans.We want to make Niche Gamer bigger and better, but sadly we don't have the money to keep doing this on our own. We don’t have the capacity to grow the site any further out of our own pockets, so we're looking to you guys to help us.All of the funding spending with our Patreon will be disclosed every month in our backer newsletter.A message from Brandon, the Editor in Chief:"I’ve always looked at Niche Gamer as a dream project of mine, but also as an investment, and I have lots of plans outlined that will grow the website, the community, the brand, and the quality of our work. I just can’t do all of that without your help."If you want to donate once (that's totally fine), you can do so via our Paypal donate page, over on our websiteThere's always someplace new on the horizon. From southern China to Arkansas, here are the must-see travel destinations of 2012.
Imagine lazing in a hammock on a remote beach in Panama, where boldface names like Angelina Jolie and Michael Jordan have been spotted. It’s a trip within reach—rustic-but-stylish hotels start at $99—and a country that’s remaking itself for 2012.
Discovering new destinations might seem next to impossible, but one of the wonders of travel is that there’s always someplace new on the horizon. And even when you think you know a place, there’s a hidden side ripe for exploration. To uncover 2012’s most exciting destinations, T+L crisscrossed the globe, bringing back everything from Toronto’s new hot spots to secluded resorts in northern Mozambique.
Some of our picks reflect travelers’ increasing thirst for adventure and desire to immerse themselves in local ways. “Our clients are interested in remote, off-the-beaten-path destinations that still retain their traditional culture,” says Scott Wiseman, president of Abercrombie & Kent USA.
Take Xishuangbanna, at the foot of the Himalayas in China’s southern Yunnan province. Though often overlooked in favor of Lijiang and Tibet, it’s home to an ethnically diverse population that still follows age-old customs—making it the place to get a cultural fix without the crowds. And a luxurious new Anantara resort means roughing it is not required.
Looking for something even more remote? It’s hard to top Corumbau in Brazil’s southern Bahia. The original inhabitants named it "far from everything" for good reason: a sojourn requires a bone-rattling, four-hour drive from the nearest airport. The rewards—deserted beaches, super-fresh seafood—make up for the journey.
For each destination, we’ve provided a breakdown of the kind of traveler it’s well suited to, the best time to go, and how to get there. Not all the destinations for 2012 are exotic and far-flung. Cutting-edge architecture and youthful creative energy are driving a renaissance in Guimarães, one of Portugal’s oldest cities.
Culture is also making over places such as Bentonville, AR, which Walmart heiress Alice Walton has graced with a free world-class museum of American art on 120 wooded acres.
Whether you’re a jet-setting sybarite, a design buff, or a thrill-seeking flashpacker, the places we’ve collected here will inspire you to make 2012 a year of new discoveries. —Jennifer ChenTuesday, June 5, 2012 at 12:17
Deri Groves with African Grey parrot Alfie THERE'S no place like home according to Alfie the runaway parrot.
Traditionally from warmer climes in the African rainforest, the prized bird has spent the last 13 weeks frequenting trees near his former home in Cwmbran.
He flew off his perch in early March, after owners Deri and Michelle Groves left a door ajar when they moved house to Llantarnam.
Devastated by Alfie's successful bid for freedom, the couple put posters up in the hope their beloved pet would be found.
Several eagle-eyed residents phoned Mr Groves to say his five-year-old African Grey Parrot he bought for £750 as a baby, was still in the area.
Spotted at allotments by Rhiw Melin, near the Queen's pub and at a BBQ at Penyrhoel, where he ate food from someone's hand, it was clear Alfie was enjoying the warm weather like the rest of us.
But after spending some time in a cherry tree near his former home in Upper Cwmbran, where he lived until December, his final destination was fields several four miles away.
"The vet told us Alfie would make his way back to by his old house as they are very intelligent birds.
He used to look out of the window to the fields where people saw him," said Mr Groves.
Last Saturday, the bird's three month adventure finally came to an end, when again, the temptation of food was too good to resist.
Local farmer John Roberts and grand-daughter Anna coaxed him down from another tree, before putting the bird safely in the shed.
Although Mr and Mrs Groves were over the moon to see Alfie again later that day, it seemed he had picked up an unfortunate habit.
"We cried tears of joy. But all he kept doing was wolf-whistling!" 48-year-old Mr Groves said.
A week on from his exertions, Alfie is still a little worse for wear- having been pecked by other birds jealous of his colour, he has lost his tail and is extremely undernourished.
However, Mr Groves hopes his friendly pet will soon be on the mend with treats of monkey nuts, apples and the occasional cooked roast dinner.
The parrot is also recovering his voice by mimicking Mcdonald's adverts off the television.
"How he survived was a miracle. I'm really thankful to everyone who helped find him," Mr Groves said.
The pet owner, who also has a Boxer dog Tyson, is now urging other owners who have lost their pets not to give up their search.The video will start in 8 Cancel
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A gamer girl who live streams footage of her playing video games has been banned after being accused of flashing her vagina.
Lea May, who goes by the username LegendaryLea online, uses the popular service Twitch to share her gameplay footage online.
However the online star, from San Diego, California, has been banned following a series of complaints.
Fans |
– Jeremy
Follow me on twitter, @307x.Dubai: The UAE’s second medal in the Olympics won by an athlete of foreign origin last week triggered a debate on social media on Monday, with hundreds of users sharing their opinions on whether Emiratis should consider this a national achievement or not.
Judoka Sergiu Toma, originally from Moldova, won a bronze medal, the UAE’s second-ever Olympic medal last week.
However, some Emiratis expressed their opinion on Twitter over the idea of granting UAE citizenship to a foreign player just to earn Olympic medals.
The UAE has sent a 13-member contingent, including at least six of foreign origin.
Lieutenant General Dahi Khalfan Tamim, Deputy Chairman of Police and General Security in Dubai, criticised the author of an article in an Arabic newspaper for describing the medal as a great achievement for the UAE even though Toma was not Emirati by birth.
The author of the article, Sami Al Reyami, editor-in-chief of Emarat Al Youm, argued in favour of such players, saying that in events like the Olympics, giving citizenship to talented players is a widespread practice and that Toma’s representation was not a threat to the Emirati identity. “He is an Olympic champion...He gifted the UAE and Arabs the first Olympic medal in Rio Olympic games and raised the UAE flag in front of hundreds of thousands of people as the national anthem was being played. The entire world now knows the UAE has earned a medal,” Al Reyami wrote.
In response to Al Reyami’s article, Lt Gen Dahi tweeted: “I know that many people are happy with Sergiu [Toma] earning an Olympics medal for the UAE, congratulations to those who are happy about it, but I personally don’t feel anything unless it was that the sons of this nation had earned it.”
In another tweet, he wrote: “Why not give the UAE citizenship to every good foreign player out there and win all medals, since this is something to be proud about.”
Lt Gen Dahi said what Emiratis have achieved and continue to achieve in other championships is something honouring to everyone, but in Toma’s case he does not represent any Emirati or Arab.
Kuwait and Qatar are the two other GCC countries known for sending foreign players for the Olympics. Ruth Jebet of Bahrain, who won gold in the women’s 3,000-metre steeplechase race on Monday, is of Kenyan origin.
His tweets triggered reactions from other Emiratis and Arabs. Many of them supported him while a few others said Toma is now considered an Emirati regardless of his origin.
Some, however, demanded that the Olympics committee should resign or be held accountable for taking such decisions.
Mohammad Al Hashemi @5ald975 said: “If this was an achievement by an Emirati or any other Arab carrying the citizenship it would have felt different. We have all what it takes to bring talented athelets to train our youth.”
@a77adawn tweeted: “Let’s tell those who don’t know what nationalism is that we are people who only raise our heads high to achievements of our sons.”
Abdullah Rasheed @abdullar57 tweeted saying, “The question is why can’t Arab nations with a total population of 300 million be able to prepare sportsmen who can compete internationally and earn medals.”
Abdulkhaleq Abdullah, a professor of political science, also joined the debate: “If Jamaica, which is considered a small and poor nation managed to have their own talented runners, then why is the UAE and other GCC countries unable to have their own talented runners and swimmers.”
He also said: “I ask the national council to open a file on foreign players representing the UAE in Rio 2016 and hold the Olympics officials accountable. Whoever is responsible owes everyone an apology and should be courageous enough to resign for himself.”
Contesting his point, user @CBR971 said: “Toma is still considered an Emirati after all and we are proud of him as we are proud of our nation..”
Agreed @aligamdi40 wrote: “He won representing the UAE and his achievement is not personal to him but to all Emiratis.”
Another user, @abo22v3, said: “I will be the first to welcome him [at the airport], because whoever raises the Emirati flag deserves appreciation.”Ian Begley ESPN Staff Writer
The Associated Press reported that Isiah Thomas will remain with Madison Square Garden as he completes his contract as president of the New York Liberty but will not work with the Liberty under its new ownership in the coming season. The Madison Square Garden Company offered the following statement further clarifying Thomas' role: "Isiah's contract ends in May and while we no longer own the Liberty, we will continue to honor his contract like we would any other executive. Isiah will continue to focus on his NBA TV job and managing his own business venture, Cheurlin Champagne." The Liberty finished in first place in the Eastern Conference in the first three seasons of Thomas' tenure, one of the strongest runs in the history of the franchise. The Liberty went 7-27 in 2018 amid uncertainty over the club's future as it was up for sale by then owner James Dolan. The club was sold to an investment group led by Nets minority owner Joseph Tsai.View this email in your browser C21U Seminar Series
"The Unexpected Pedagogical Benefits of Making Higher Education Accessible"
Speaker: David Joyner
November 10, 2015
Klaus Advanced Computing Building, Room 2405
11:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m.
You are invited to join C21U for a seminar featuring Dr. David Joyner and his presentation of, "The Unexpected Pedagogical Benefits of Making Higher Education Accessible."
If you are unable to attend in person, this talk will be streaming at http://www.cc.gatech.edu/event-webcast beginning at 11 am ET.
Many ongoing efforts in online education, such as the proliferation of MOOCs and the expansion of the low-cost online programs, are driven by the desire to make higher education more accessible through increased affordability and flexibility. Implicit in these efforts, however, is the acceptance that the quality of the education may have to suffer to increase accessibility. Perceived drawbacks of these efforts include limited access to instructors and teachers, greater reliance on more inexpensively-produced materials, and less rigor behind the evaluation of assessments. It has come as a surprise, then, that in the Georgia Tech Online Master's of Science in Computer Science program, a low-cost online Masters degree, instructors and students alike have often observed that the learning experience is actually superior to what they have experienced in traditional on-campus education.
In this talk, Joyner will discuss the two primary factors that have led to this trend: first, how the accessibility of the program has allowed it to attract a high-quality student body, and second, how the structure of the program has allowed those students to have a significantly greater impact on the quality of the courses than they might have in a traditional program.
Questions about this event? Contact Amanda Madden, amadden@cc.gatech.edu.SAN FRANCISCO — As he demonstrated in Game 2 while petulantly arguing balls and strikes, there’s still a childish side to 21-year-old mega-talent Bryce Harper.
But the Harper whom the Giants saw in Game 3 was all grown man. Some might say Superman.
Harper’s mammoth home run off Jean Machi in the ninth inning was frosting on the Washington Nationals’ 4-1 victory in Game 3 of the N.L. Division Series at AT&T Park. It was the two remarkable catches that he made in left field that frosted the Giants. For good measure, he drew the pivotal walk in front of Wilson Ramos’ bunt that broke the game open in the seventh.
With runners at first and second and one out in the second inning, Brandon Crawford ripped a ball into left-center that looked like it might be a two-run double. But Harper, fighting a brutal sun, raced back and made a very tough catch up against the fence.
“Off the bat, I knew I hit it well, so I was hoping it would find the gap and maybe hit off the wall,” said Crawford. “He made a great play on it.”
Harper wasn’t sure if he could get it. “Having to deal with that sun, it was very tough,” he said. “You just try to battle out there, make some catches and not let them score.”
Mission accomplished. Giants manager Bruce Bochy said it was a huge early turning point that allowed Washington starter Doug Fister to settle in.
“I thought Crawford’s ball was in there,” Bochy said. “That’s a game-changer. Harper made a good play, and then he made another good one later.”
The second grab occurred in the seventh inning after the Nationals had broken through with three runs. Brandon Belt opened the bottom half of the inning with a single and advanced to second on a Crawford grounder. Travis Ishikawa lofted a soft fly in short left-center that looked like it would drop and score Belt.
But Harper steamed over and plucked the ball just before it hit the grass, effectively ending that rally.
“You never know what could have happened if that ball drops in and we score,” said Ishikawa. “Hats off to him. He made some incredible plays today.”
Nationals center fielder Denard Span couldn’t decide which play was better.
“Because of the sun, that first one was an unbelievable play,” Span said. “It saved a couple of runs, it kept us out of a long inning, and it kept us in the ballgame. On the second one, I thought the ball was going to drop for sure. I was going to cut it off, and then he came out of nowhere and was able to pick the ball right before it hit the ground.”
Washington manager Matt Williams knows how brutal the sun can be in San Francisco in midafternoon, so he had nothing but praise for Harper’s catches. They were bigger than his home run, he maintained.
“First and foremost, he was great defensively,” Williams said. “He went up against the wall and made that with a couple guys on that could have changed the game for us.”
Then came the homer in the ninth, a bomb onto the arcade off Machi that made it 4-0. It was Harper’s third career postseason homer and second in this series, all accomplished before age 22. Only three other players have done that at such a young age — Mickey Mantle, Miguel Cabrera and Andruw Jones.
Harper was prouder of his catches on this day. He said playing in Nationals Park all season helped him learn how to deal with a tough sun.
“We have that in D.C. in center, so I really had to deal with it all year long,” he said.
Crawford saw it a little differently. Sun or no, he believes very few left fielders make either play.
“I played with him in the Fall League in 2011, so I got to see him quite a bit,” Crawford said. “He’s just a real good athlete, and he had a good game out there today.”
“It’s easy to forget he’s just 21,” added Ishikawa. “It feels like he’s been in the league for a lot of years, and he plays like it, too. He definitely plays above his age and does a lot of great things.”
Follow Carl Steward on Twitter at twitter.com/stewardsfolly.How much are your old prescriptions worth? Maybe not much to you. But for some companies, your medications, test results and hospital records are the building blocks of a multinational business.
They collect millions of data points every day, analyze them and sell them to drugmakers and other health care players looking for insights into the medical marketplace.
But as the industry has grown, so have concerns about patient privacy. Adam Tanner takes a look at the promise and pitfalls of big medical data in his upcoming book “Our Bodies, Our Data.” His answers have been edited for length and clarity.
Q: What kind of information is collected?
A: This kind of information doesn’t have your name but has intimate details about you and your medical condition. You go to your doctor, he enters information about you into his electronic medical records system and he sends you to the pharmacy to get a prescription. All of that stuff is covered by your insurance and produces paperwork. And all the details about that process can be sold by companies called data miners.
When I tell people that your blood test information is sold to commercial companies they often feel rather uncomfortable with that.
Q: How big is this business?
A: This is a multibillion dollar industry that spans the whole world. The biggest is Quintiles IMS. That’s a $20 billion dollar company. Sometimes you have well-known companies that you would not expect who are involved in this. For example, IBM has put together a division which has profiles on hundreds of millions of patients.
Q: But aren’t there patient privacy laws that govern the use of this data?
A: You can sell this data as long as it is anonymized to certain standards. However, since the U.S. rules were written decades ago, the ability to gather huge amounts of data and compare it has grown greatly. It means that clues from different aspects of your medical treatments may make it possible for outsiders to figure you out.
Q: What’s the worst case scenario for the future?
A: The risk is that all of these anonymized profiles which have detailed histories of people become easily identifiable in years to come.
Why would you want to re-identify medical data? Perhaps you’re a political opponent of someone and you want to destroy them. Perhaps you’re a romantic rival of someone at work. Perhaps you’re a foreign government that wants to control a legislator.
In recent years, we’ve seen a big upswing in medical records theft and hacking. All those kinds of things put more and more information out about us.
Q: Can I opt out of sharing this information?
A: It would be almost impossible. That’s why the best approach is that we as a society come up with new rules, rather than put the onus on individual patients.
Q: Are there societal benefits to the medical data business?
A: There are a lot of smart, well-intentioned people in this industry and they talk a lot about this promise of big data in medicine to lead to great breakthroughs. So far this commercial trade has led to interesting insights rather than big discoveries or cures. I think there’s a way to both advance science and to allow patients to have more control over their data.Andrea Leadsom’s appointment as environment secretary has raised significant concerns among senior environmental and agricultural figures over her suitability for the role.
Leadsom’s lack of top-level political experience, absence of track record in farming or environmental areas and ideological approach to policy are all cited as fears. However, her junior ministers are viewed more favourably in terms of tackling the enormous challenges faced by her department.
The Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) is one of the ministries that will feel the greatest impact from Brexit. It has a very wide brief - from farming to fishing to floods and from pollution to protection of the natural world - the vast majority of which are currently governed by EU rules.
Leadsom, who is taking on her first cabinet role, is a supporter of “reducing burdensome EU red-tape, saving farmers time and making food cheaper” and in 2007 argued that farming “subsidies must be abolished”.
“It was very bad day for the environment when Leadsom was appointed secretary of state,” said Tom Burke, at green thinktank E3G and adviser to three previous Conservative environment secretaries. “She has no instincts for it and no knowledge of it. All her instincts are that it gets in the way of the economy and she will want to remove all those things. It really is putting a fox in charge of the hen house.”
“She also doesn’t have a lot of experience and these are complex issues that require a lot of nuance and balancing of conflicting interests,” Burke said.
Most of the major farming and environmental groups need to develop a working relationship with Leadsom and are unwilling to speak publicly of their concerns, but senior figures were extremely critical of her track record and her performance during the referendum campaign and subsequent Tory leadership contest. A common concern was that she will take an ideological approach to the brief.
However, Stanley Johnson, a former Conservative MEP and co-chair of Environmentalists for Europe (E4E), which campaigned against Brexit, said: “I have absolutely no reason not to imagine that she will be a first-rate secretary of state.”
He said lack of a track record on Defra issues need not be a problem: “That’s what all ministers are meant to be able to do, to pick up on the background.”
He said E4E “will be absolutely concerned to ensure that the substance of the environmental achievements that have been put in place during Britain’s 40-year membership of the EC and EU will be retained as far as conceivably possible.”
Owen Paterson, a previous Tory environment secretary, said he wished Leadsom well but did not wish to comment further. Caroline Spelman, Paterson’s predecessor in the role, said: “Having worked in the agricultural industry before entering parliament, I was lucky to possess some prior knowledge of how to tackle these problems, but I soon realised that I also needed to draw upon the wealth of knowledge and expertise that exists within the department.”
Spelman said: “Currently, around 80% of the UK’s environmental legislation has been set and is regulated through our membership of the EU - much to the benefit of Defra’s partners. Therefore, I would urge Andrea to engage with these organisations, as well as our international colleagues, at the earliest opportunity. I wish her good luck in her new role.”
John Sauven, Greenpeace executive director, said: “Andrea Leadsom will be responsible for the safety of the food we eat, the water we drink and the air we breathe. Her advisers at the late Department of Energy and Climate Change were able to persuade her that climate change was a real threat. We hope that she’ll be an equally fast learner when her new advisers give her the talk about the necessity of protecting our birds and the bees.”
Defra’s junior ministerial appointments have been more warmly received. George Eustice, who campaigned to leave the EU, has been reappointed as farming minister. He alarmed environmentalists in May by saying that Brexit would see the end of “spirit-crushing” EU directives that protect habitats and birds habitats.
But, after frequent changes in that post, the senior farming figure told the Guardian: “What is reassuring is that there has been some continuity with Eustice.” The senior environmentalist said: “He does strategy and detail, which is rare and he does know agriculture, which is important. But he has to renegotiate the common fisheries policy, so good luck to him.”
Therese Coffey, a member of the Free Enterprise Group of Tory MPs and who voted in favour of the ill-fated attempt to sell off the nation’s public forests in 2011, replaces Rory Stewart as environment minister. “I have always been impressed with her,” said the farming figure. “She strikes me as a very thoughtful, sensible and pragmatic.” Coffey campaigned to remain in the EU.
Burke said Defra was going to be a very difficult ministry to run during forthcoming Brexit negotiations. “The [Brexiteers] have made enormous promises about the environment and farming that are going to be very difficult to meet. The idea that the Treasury is going to let the farming community keep the money it currently gets from the EU is la-la land. Defra is going to be at the front in terms of broken promises.”
Leadsom is unlikely to achieve one policy she backed while campaigning for the Conservative leadership: the repeal of the ban on fox hunting with dogs. “There is no way that is going to get through the House of Commons,” said to one former environment minister.Munster head coach Rob Penney has made 10 changes to the side that beat Treviso last week for tomorrow night's RaboDirect PRO12 clash against Leinster at the Aviva Stadium.
Munster head coach Rob Penney has made 10 changes to the side that beat Treviso last week for tomorrow night's RaboDirect PRO12 clash against Leinster at the Aviva Stadium.
O'Connell among 10 changes to Munster team for Leinster clash
Paul O'Connell, Peter O'Mahony, Conor Murray and Tommy O'Donnell all return to the side after helping Ireland to the Six Nations Championship.
Ian Keatley, man-of-the-match when Munster beat Leinster 19-15 at Thomond Park in October, returns to the side to partner Murray at half-back.
Denis Hurley comes in to partner Casey Laulala in the centres, with Keith Earls and Simon Zebo named on the wings.
O’Connell is a welcome addition to the team after missing the Treviso clash with a slight shoulder niggle, with props Dave Kilcoyne and BJ Botha are both drafted into the side to join hooker Damien Varley in the front-row.
O’Connell joins Dave Foley in the second-row with captain O'Mahony coming into a back-row that also includes O'Donnell and James Coughlan.
Munster team to play Leinster: Felix Jones; Keith Earls, Casey Laulala, Denis Hurley, Simon Zebo; Ian Keatley, Conor Murray; Dave Kilcoyne, Damien Varley, BJ Botha; Dave Foley, Paul O' Connell; Peter O'Mahony(Capt), Tommy O'Donnell, James Coughlan.
Replacements: Duncan Casey, James Cronin, Alan Cotter, Donncha O'Callaghan, CJ Stander, Duncan Williams, JJ Hanrahan, Gerhard van den Heever.
Online EditorsRussia under prime minister Vladimir Putin is a sham democracy, Mikhail Gorbachev has said in his harshest criticism yet of the ruling regime.
"We have everything – a parliament, courts, a president, a prime minister and so on. But it's more of an imitation," the last president of the Soviet Union said.
Gorbachev, who oversaw the softening of the communist system and subsequent dissolution of the Soviet Union, has become increasingly critical of the modern Russian state, accusing its leaders of rolling back the democratic reforms of the 1990s.
Speaking at a press conference ahead of his 80th birthday, Gorbachev criticised Putin for manipulating elections.
In response to the prime minister and former president's comments that he and his protégé, President Dmitry Medvedev, would decide between them who would run for office in March 2012, Gorbachev said: "It's not Putin's business. It must be decided by the nation in elections."
He called Putin's statements a sign of "incredible conceit".
Asked how he thought the regime approached human rights, Gorbachev said: "There's a problem there. It's a sign of the state of our democracy." He was echoing statements made by Navi Pillay, the UN high commissioner for human rights, during a visit to Russia last week.
Gorbachev said United Russia, the ruling party founded with the sole goal of supporting Putin's leadership, was a throwback.
"United Russia reminds me of the worst copy of the Communist party," he said. "We have institutions but they don't work. We have laws but they must be enforced."
Its stranglehold over political life would eventually backfire. "The monopoly ends in rotting and hampers the development of democratic processes."
Gobachev said he did not like how Putin and Medvedev were behaving. "It's a shame that our modern leaders aren't very modern," he said.
Gorbachev now runs a charity foundation that will hold a gala at the Royal Albert Hall in London on 30 March to mark his birthday. He co-owns the country's leading opposition newspaper, Novaya Gazeta.
Held up in the west as a hero for his softening of the Soviet system and eventual acceptance of its fall, Gorbachev remains widely despised inside Russia, where he is seen as a traitor who allowed the empire to crumble and ushered in a period of great uncertainty. Over the years he has aligned himself with the cause of Russia's sidelined liberals.
On Monday, Gorbachev called the regime's campaign against jailed oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky politically motivated. "Politics shouldn't have been involved in [the case], but they were," he said.
He noted the case of Natalya Vasilieva, a court clerk who worked on the Khodorkovsky trial and broke ranks to publicly announce that the judge had been pressured throughout and had a verdict and sentence pushed on him.
"I fully believe her," Gorbachev said. "People can't stand it anymore – she saw what was happening with her own eyes."
• This article was amended on 22 February 2011 to restore missing text in the third paragraph.US and Swiss project, OpenLaw, is launching a new smart contract platform that will allow lawyers to make legally binding and self-executing agreements on the Ethereum blockchain.
The OpenLaw system allows lawyers to make use of a searchable database of templates on the platform (see video below) to then create customised contracts for specific transactional uses, e.g. a finance agreement, or a short-term employment contract.
The named parties can then confirm and activate the contract on the Ethereum blockchain using e-signatures and then have the contract self-execute its key agreements via the same blockchain.
The idea is that this will then provide a transparent and secure contracting system that always allows all permissioned parties to see what is happening without the need for a central authority to manage or control the execution of the contract. The use of templates and a very fast route to completion should also greatly reduce the need for laborious legal work.
In short, this creates a much more efficient means of contracting, which should also be secure and far cheaper than traditional manual and ‘off-chain’ methods. While the initial examples of contract templates are relatively straight-forward, there is no reason why more complex contracts could not also be formed and executed in this way. The limits are mainly those set by the users of the system, rather than the technology which appears to be highly flexible and adaptable.
OpenLaw’s team said in a detailed public post that this was ‘the first project to comprehensively stitch together traditional legal agreements with blockchain-based smart contracts in a user-friendly and legally compliant manner’.
The move comes at a time of growing interest and experimentation with smart contract technology. This month has seen European start-up, Agrello, launch its smart contract platform which will use its own currency, DELTA, to engage with contract template makers and sell its services.
Meanwhile, US-based smart contract pioneer, Clause, has just announced the formation of the Accord consortium involving several other tech companies and law firms, including US firm Cooley. The consortium also aims to make use of blockchain tech to enable the broader use of smart contracts, in this case via Hyperledger.
The OpenLaw project is the brainchild of US-based Aaron Wright and David Roon, and has been supported by ConsenSys, a Swiss blockchain venture production company.
Wright is an Associate Clinical Professor at Cardozo Law School and director of the school’s Blockchain Project. He is also chair of the Enterprise Ethereum Alliance’s Legal Working Group. Zurich-based Roon is also a specialist in the use of Ethereum and is the creator of Cubefriendly, an open data database engine.
As set out in their Medium post, the founders of the project believe that smart contracts will usher in potentially one of the biggest changes to the legal world for centuries.
‘The first written agreements appeared over 4,000 years ago in Mesopotamia. Yet, despite the pervasiveness of legal agreements, and despite serving as the cornerstone of the $437 billion US legal industry, the way contracts are created and generated has not undergone significant changes. While agreements are no longer memorialised in clay, lawyers have failed to take advantage of advances in computing to streamline and simplify their work,’ they say.
They go on to explain that everything from drawing up new contracts, to getting agreements and signatures from counter parties is a slow and inefficient exercise. Contracts sent around the world as attachments via email is also a messy and insecure system, they state. Moreover, once they are signed, most contracts end up badly stored on disparate data-bases and are not visible to all parties. They also need someone, usually a lawyer or someone in a company, to ‘activate’ the contract and make it do its work. This is also slow and can lead to human errors.
The smart contract system, especially when placed on a blockchain, removes many of these challenges. If you’d like to see a bit more about how the system works, check out the two videos below. The first covers the template to signature stage, the second covers self-execution of contracts via a blockchain. (Note: both videos were produced by OpenLaw.)The Indian Space Research Organisation on Monday launched the GSAT-19 satellite, one of the heaviest communication satellites, with the GSLV MK III-D1 rocket. The rocket became the heaviest to be launched by the Indian space agency ever with the heaviest single payload put in orbit as well.
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The rocket lifted off from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre at Andhra Pradesh’s Sriharikota at 5.28 pm. The rocket has the capability to carry a payload as heavy as 4,000 kg and put in into the Geosynchronous Transfer Orbit. It can also carry a 10,000 kg payload and put in into the Low Earth Orbit.
A jubilant Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) Chairman A S Kiran Kumar said it “is a historic day” and the the Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle Mark-III (MkIII D-1) has successfully demonstrated its capabilities with the injection of GSAT-19 into the desired orbit.”It is a great success in the first maiden attempt and GSLV MkIII has successfully put in orbit GSAT-19 which is a next generation satellite,” Kumar said.”I wish to congratulate the entire team which has relentlessly worked each day for today’s launch from 2002,” he added.
The launch marks another success for India’s space agency that has made record-setting launches during the past year. Prime Minister Narendra Modi congratulated ISRO on today’s launch success. “Congratulations to the dedicated scientists of ISRO for the successful launch of GSLV – MKIII D1/GSAT-19 mission,” PM Modi tweeted.
Kudos came from President Pranab Mukherjee as well. He tweeted: “Heartiest congratulations to ISRO on the historic launch of GSLV-Mk III. GSLV-Mk III is the heaviest rocket ever made by India and is capable of carrying the heaviest satellites made till date. The nation is proud of this significant achievement.”
ISRO has plans to use the rocket for manned missions in the future. The rocket is a three-stage launch vehicle which has two solid motor strap-ons, a liquid propellant core stage and a cryogenic stage. The rocket is 43.39 metre in height which is roughly the height of a 12-storey building.
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Today’s GSLV mission is significant for India as ISRO had been depending on foreign launchers for orbiting communication satellites weighing more than 2,300 kgs. The GSLV MkIII-D1 is capable of lifting payloads or satellites weighing upto 4,000 kgs into the GTO and 10,000kgs into the Low Earth Orbit. It was a textbook launch as every stage of the three-stage GSLV MkIII with indegeneous cryogenic engine performed well.Close
German automobile manufacturer Daimler, the parent company of Mercedes-Benz, is looking to launch at least six and at most nine models of electric cars.
The move will place Daimler in competition with companies such as Tesla Motors and Audi in the rapidly growing electric car industry, with the company set to unveil a new electric vehicle next month at the Paris Motor Show.
The information, reported by Reuters, came from a person who is familiar with the plans of Daimler.
In July, Daimler said that it was accelerating the development of not only premium electric vehicles, but also self-driving car technology.
The statement was made by Daimler CEO Dieter Zetsche at the quarterly earnings call of the company, and came after news that rival Audi was likewise looking to hasten the development of its own electric cars.
Daimler will be increasing this year's budget for its research and development division for the purpose. No figure was provided, but in 2015, Daimler spent about $7.3 billion in the department.
Daimler's efforts will finally be shown in October in Paris, following through with an earlier report by Germany-based trade magazine Automobilwoche that the company will launch more than six models of electric cars between the years 2018 and 2024.
Daimler unit Mercedes-Benz, meanwhile, is said to be planning to launch an entirely new line of electric vehicles, including two sedans and two sports utility vehicles. The name of this sub-brand of electric vehicles is not yet known, but the source of Reuters added that one of the SUV models will be a plug-in hybrid with an engine utilizing fuel cells. The range of the vehicle would be up to 50 kilometers, or 30 miles, from the electric power and then could shift to electricity generated by hydrogen to keep going.
Automobile manufacturers based in Germany used to shun the electric car market because of the limited driving range of the vehicles and the high costs associated with them. However, the companies now find themselves making heavy investments in the segment because of the increasing outcry against diesel fumes. In addition, developments in battery technology have largely improved the range of electric cars.
Zetsche believes that by 2020, Mercedes-Benz will be able to overtake BMW and Audi in the luxury car market. While part of the confidence on the company's future performance is on its future electric cars, Daimler expects that the biggest contributor to the company's worldwide expansion will be coming from China.
ⓒ 2018 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.Quote: ATLfit10 Originally Posted by Could you possibly measure the distance from weather strip to weather strip on the rear roof (where the spoiler is located) on both cars.
If the measurements are very close it could be cheaper alternative for those of us wanting a duckbill/more spoiler options, to modify an older civic wagon spoiler.
Quote: Originally Posted by Chad T Love that wagon!! I really miss the Hondas with the low hood line like that. I'll bet the Fit feels like a lot bigger car from the inside as well. I know mine feels huge after driving the Omni.
Quote: Originally Posted by Occam I've always thought of those Civics as more the predecessors in spirit to the CR-V than the Fit... The Fit is seems to be 'fit' the niche of the Civic hatchback, though all cars have grown in size since those days. If I remember correctly, they were offered with an AWD system that was later adapted for the CR-V, right?
I'll do that for you here shortly when I have to uncover the wagon/move it so I can mow my lawn.The thing is that Civic wagon owners also have little/no options for duckbill spoilers. Wagon owners often end up modifying spoilers for other cars such as using an OEM optional CR-V wing and modifying it to fit.I'll measure my 1992 hatch's area too, as it seems to have more of the same curvature of the roof skin. The EE wagon has a super flat roof skin that is verythe fit and it's ever curvy/never straight roof skin.Well the Fit surely feels larger in the dash-to-windshield area, because it certainly is. It's like an "unusable" space though. The Fit has great outward visibilty, but believe it or not, the wagon hasvisibility. The wagon makes you feel like you're right on top of the road because there's not that expansive dash-to-windshield area. You can sort of "lean over" the hood and look down at the road on the EE wagon while driving, as as the pics illustrate the EE wagon has a more steep hood/windshield grade than the Fit.Technically I suppose the Civic wagon, especially the RT4WD model, was the predeccessor to the CR-V. The RT4WD, or Real Time 4 Wheel Drive, drive train was carried over from the Civic wagon directly to the CR-V with only a few changes. The CR-V was obviously a taller/larger/heavier vehicle though, so drivetrain similarity is the biggest thing that ties the Civic wagon to the CR-V.Everything else such as size of chassis, interior room, cargo room, etc. is just really identical for the EE wagon and Fit.Some other random thoughts from me when comparing the Fit and 88-91 Civic (EE) wagon:I've driven plenty of stock EE wagons to know that in 100% stock form they do leave much to be desired when compared to the Fit.The 1.5L D15B2 found in the Wagovan (this was an actual base model trim with vinyl seats such as the "CX" base models found in later Civics) and wagon DX models only put out 92hp. It didn't have anywwhere near the low end grunt (if you can call it that lol) that the L15A Fit engine has, but pulling 200 less pounds around meant the wagon was comparaple quickness wise. The RT4WD Civic wagon had the amazing D16A6 1.6L bulletproof engine that had 108hp and a much more usable powerband/torque curve, but also had the extra RT4WD drivetrain to lug around.Handling wise the Fit rapes a stock wagon. Even though the wagon was built with the superior-in-overall capability front and rear double wishbone suspension, it's dampers and springs were far from "sporty." Once modified the wagon can handle amazingly well for such an awkward, top heavy looking vehicle. In stock form it (EE wagon set-up) pales in comparison to the Fit's sporttuned Mac front strut/rear torsion beam set up. Tossing on some lowering springs/dampers or full coil-overs on the wagon (there are TONS out there) immediately transforms the ride/handling of the vehicle.13'' steelies with 5'' wide econotires (RT4WD had 14'' steelies lol) also hampered the lateral g capabilities of the EE wagon. The Fit also rules here, especially the Sport models with their 16'' wheels and wider tires.Having said all of this wagons can be foundif you look hard enough, and with some minor mods you can have a "poor man's Fit" that can cost a fraction of what any Fit, new or used, will cost. As I said before you'd get all of the |
and comfort to those who are racist, or those who play the politics of race for partisan gain? Absolutely. You bet. A visit to the Drudge Report at any given time in recent months bears witness to story after story, time and time again, day after day, week after week, month after month, of a laundry list of stories with racial innuendo and suggestion and implication that I would like to believe are below the standards you would set for yourself and your profession.
More from The Hill:
Boehner John Andrew BoehnerEx-GOP lawmaker joins marijuana trade group Crowley, Shuster moving to K Street On unilateral executive action, Mitch McConnell was right — in 2014 MORE-obama-has-qopportunity-to-leadq-on-fiscal-cliff" mce_href="http://thehill.com/homenews/house/267059-boehner-obama-has-qopportunity-to-leadq-on-fiscal-cliff"> • Boehner: Obama has 'opportunity to lead' negotiations on fiscal cliff
• Speaker faces conservative backlash over call for immigration reform
• Conservatives press the states to keep fighting ‘ObamaCare’
• McConnell: GOP not budging on tax rates
Do these stories help Republicans? No. I once wrote a piece about the "Drudge delusion.” I was dead wrong about 2010. I was damn right about 2012. These stories embody a road to demographic ruin for Republicans. In the aftermath of this last election I wrote a piece for The Hill about "Why Obama Won.” One of the major reasons is that when voters are demeaned, ridiculed and insulted they tend to vote in larger numbers than expected against those who demean, ridicule and insult them.
This brand of politics, journalism and media is not only unworthy of our nation and our profession, it is unworthy of any individual, party and profession that should give at least a modicum of respect to all of God's children, created in His image, no matter what their race or religion or color or creed or nationality or heritage or background or personal beliefs.
My Brother Drudge, you have attained a level of power, influence and stature and with this goes responsibility, which I propose you exercise in the manner I suggest here.
The election is over and with this, certain things need to be said, one of which I have just said here.Tom Perez’s great DNC purge of Sanders supporters isn’t about politics…
Plow Plot Blocked Unblock Follow Following Oct 20, 2017
They are hiding the budget.
Tom Perez has removed or demoted the majority of liberal supporters from the DNC leadership structure, replacing them with lobbyist and Clinton loyalists.
A lot of people believe this is political pay-back because these people supported Bernie or Keith Elison who ran against Perez.
To me, this theory seems strange because even if Tom was that petty, he knows this move would leave the DNC free falling in popularity as any good will that the DNC had earned back from Bernie supporters would evaporate.
No, this wasn’t petty revenge, this was desperation. The event that triggered this purge was the Unity Reform Commission.
The Unity Reform Commission (URC) has been working since 2016 trying to unify the party and make a set of rules that would make elections more fair and bring more people into the party.
Made up of both Liberals and Corporate Whores (lobbyists) it’s not really going well.
The Whores have been resistant to any inclusive policy like open primaries, reducing the power of super-delegates, or not rigging the election for establishment candidates.
The Liberals have been resistant to the idea the DNC should take any-and-every corporate bribe offered to them so the two factions have had a hard time agreeing on much of anything… but there was this one thing.
Both the Whores and the Liberals agree that the DNC’s budget and spending practices should not be a secret.
Right now only two people in the entire Democratic party get to actually see how the money is spent: Tom Perez as the Chair of the DNC and The Treasurer.
Now we need to look at who was removed from the party to understand the meaning behind what he did.
There are two main bodies inside the DNC that were purged. The Rules and Bylaws committee and the Executive Committee.
Ray Buckley — Lost his place on the DNC Rules and Bylaws committee as well as the Executive Committee.
James Zogby — Removed from the Executive Committee and removed as Co-Chair of the Resolutions committee.
Barbra Casbar Siperstein — Removed from Executive Committee
Alice Germond — Former DNC Secretary, removed altogether from her At-Large appointment.
These were all high ranking people who had been in the democratic party for a long time. They had done nothing wrong and they were in the upper most levels of power which makes them dangerous.
They were in positions where if they actually saw the way the DNC spends money, they might expose the bribery, the kick backs, and the corruption.
These people were removed because Tom and the Clinton (Corporate Whore) wing of the party can’t trust them not to flip the table once they saw the truth.
They were replaced with lobbyist and Clinton loyalists who could be trusted to protect the corruption.
For example, Donna Brazil was placed on the Rules and Bylaws committee which determines the rules for running the primaries and elections. This committee also chooses how the rules are implemented within the party.
You might remember Donna Brazil as the woman who had to leave CNN in shame and resign from her position as acting DNC chair for misconduct after it was exposed that she was emailing Hillary Clinton the questions for presidential debates early.
Why put such obviously corrupt and hated people in charge? Why drive away half the party again guaranteeing your loss across the board in 2018 and 2020?
My guess is that Tom knew if the Unity Reform Commission called on the budget to be made available to the Executive Committee then it would expose criminal wrong doing so he stacked the deck.
He replaced the people he couldn’t trust on the Rules and Bylaws Committee with loyal drones who would then make the rules for who exactly gets to see the budget. Then he put people he can trust not to expose the crimes on the Executive Committee.
He’ll have Donna Brazil say, “Sure, that makes sense that more than two people should be able to see the budget. We’ll let the Executive Committee and ONLY the Executive Committee have access to the budget as well.”
This way Tom doesn’t have to explain why the budget is being kept a secret and there is no risk of anyone leaking the budget or exposing the crimes.
All the people on the Executive Committee are also implicated in the corruption.
It’s just like the mob except instead of killing snitches, they are killing democracy.For months now, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump has faced repeated demands to release his tax returns to prove his financial worth, but he has refused. So over the weekend, someone decided to do it for him by sending some of his tax info to a reporter at the New York Times.
After the Times wrote a story suggesting that Trump may have avoided paying taxes for close to two decades as a result of a large tax loss on his real estate investments, the candidate threatened to sue the newspaper. But would Trump have a leg to stand on legally?
The short answer is yes and no. The New York Times would have a fairly compelling First Amendment case to make, but Trump also has some legal weight on his side.
Obviously, newspapers like the Times and the Washington Post publish leaked information from anonymous sources regularly, including the classified information the Post got from CIA whistle-blower Edward Snowden, the diplomatic cables that the Times, and other papers obtained from WikiLeaks.
Good reminder that crucial journalism sometimes involves sources who break the law & journalists risking prosecution https://t.co/co4d9P1ffI — Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) October 2, 2016
Even farther back, the Post published the Pentagon Papers—classified documents on the war in Vietnam that were leaked by Daniel Ellsberg—and it also published information it got from an administration source about the Watergate break-ins and the connection to President Richard Nixon.
The core of any argument about stories of this kind is that they are protected by the First Amendment because there is a clear public interest in having the information released that outweighs the fact that it was classified, or may have been obtained by illegal means.
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But the Republican candidate has a potential ace up his sleeve when it comes to making a case against the New York Times should he decide to do that. That’s because there are both federal and state laws that specifically forbid the publication of tax returns without the permission of the individual in question. Federal law says it is an offense to “willfully print or publish in any manner not provided by law any such return or return information,” and both New York and New Jersey law make it a crime to “divulge or make known in any manner the amount of income or any particulars set forth or disclosed in any report or return.”
One legal analyst also argues that the New York Times left itself wide open to such a case because editor Dean Baquet said in a recent public forum that he knew publishing such information would be illegal, but that he was willing to risk jail time to do it anyway. Saying this could qualify as “willful” disregard of the law, lawyer Robert Barnes wrote for the site LawNewz, and a court would take that into account when assessing the newspaper’s right to do so.
The Times could obviously argue that the public interest outweighs the restrictions imposed by these laws, but not everyone is convinced it would succeed.
Jonathan Zittrain, a professor at Harvard Law School and an expert in the First Amendment, told the Washington Post that a court could decide that if the public interest was so compelling, then newspapers or the public should try to compel the candidate to authorize the IRS to release his tax information lawfully.
Donald Trump finally admits President Obama was born in the United States. Watch:
A number of other legal analysts, however, seem to think that the Times would have a fairly open and shut case on its hands if Trump decides to sue.
Although no recent First Amendment cases could be seen to apply directly to the publication of tax returns from a candidate for president, lawyer Floyd Abrams said that “all the cases make it extremely unlikely that the Times could constitutionally be held liable for publishing such a newsworthy story, a month before a presidential election, about a candidate for President.”
First Amendment expert Robert Corn-Revere went even further, saying “the notion that the Times could be held liable in some fashion for publishing information it lawfully obtained about Donald Trump’s taxes is delusional. There are hard First Amendment cases but this would not be one of them.”
Trump has made it clear that he is not a fan of the media, and has said that if he becomes president he intends to “open up” libel laws to make it easier to sue the press for reporting certain things. Whether he wants to get a head start on that by suing the New York Times remains to be seen.Crackle Originals
Snatch Season 2* – September 13
* Exclusive sneak peek on Amazon devices via the Sony Crackle app starting August 31.
What's New
#Followfriday
6 Bullets
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A Dark Truth
Appleseed: Alpha
Arlington Road
Art Heist
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Bad Country
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Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure
Bill and Ted's Bogus Journey
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Breach
Bulletproof
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Driving Lessons
El Mariachi
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Goat
Guess Who
Harry Brown
High School High
Hudson Hawk
Isle of The Dead
John Carpenter Presents Vampires: Los Muertos
John Carpenter's Vampires
Johnny Mnemonic
Kingpin
Kung Fu Hustle
Layer Cake
Paranormal Activity: The Ghost Dimension
Pledge, The
Premium Rush
Priest
Prom Night
Retreat
Risky Business
Running with Scissors
S.W.A.T.: Firefight
School of Rock
Shortwave
SLC Punk
Stomp the Yard: Homecoming
Stranger Than Fiction
Striking Distance
Take Shelter
The Cave
The Fan
The Human Contract
The Hungover Games
The Marksman
The Mortal Instruments
The Mothman Prophecies
The Natural
The Professional
The Suburbans
The Tourist
Tortured
Two for The Money
Under Suspicion
Urban Justice
Wieners
You Got Served: Beat the World
Yours, Mine & Ours
Available One Month Only
6 Bullets
7 Seconds
A Dark Truth
Appleseed: Alpha
Arlington Road
Art Heist
Ava's Possessions
Bad Country
Beverly Hills Ninja
Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure
Bill and Ted's Bogus Journey
Black Dynamite
Breach
Bulletproof
Cliffhanger
Devil's Whisper
Driving Lessons
El Mariachi
Gabriel
Gattaca
Ghost Rider
Goat
Guess Who
Harry Brown
High School High
Hudson Hawk
Isle of The Dead
John Carpenter Presents Vampires: Los Muertos
John Carpenter's Vampires
Johnny Mnemonic
Kingpin
Kung Fu Hustle
Layer Cake
Paranormal Activity: The Ghost Dimension
Pledge, The
Premium Rush
Prom Night
Retreat
Risky Business
Running with Scissors
S.W.A.T.: Firefight
School of Rock
Shortwave
SLC Punk
Stomp the Yard: Homecoming
Striking Distance
Take Shelter
The Cave
The Fan
The Human Contract
The Hungover Games
The Marksman
The Mortal Instruments
The Mothman Prophecies
The Natural
Tortured
Two for The Money
Under Suspicion
Urban Justice
Wieners
You Got Served: Beat the World
Yours, Mine & Ours
Monthly Seinfeld Theme: Emmy-Nominated Guest Stars
The Old Man (Bill Erwin) (418)
The Lip Reader (Marlee Matlin) (506)
The Raincoats, Part I (Judge Reinhold) (519)
The Raincoats, Part II (Judge Reinhold) (520)
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Revolver
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The Karate Kid (1984)
The Karate Kid (2010)
The Steve Harvey Show Season 2
Walker, Texas Ranger Season 3
Who's the Boss Season 2The open-source Mozilla project has been offering cash bounties for security bugs for six years now, but often bug finders simply turn down the cash.
Between 10 percent and 15 percent of the serious security bugs reported since Mozilla launched its bug bounty program have been provided free of charge, according to Mozilla. "A lot of people would say, 'Don't worry about it. Donate it to the EFF [Electronic Frontier Foundation] or just send me a T-shirt,'" said Johnathan Nightingale, the director of Firefox development, in a recent interview.
Mozilla was a pioneer in this area. It started offering a US$500 bounty for security bugs in August 2004. Since then, it's had more than 120 bugs reported by about 80 researchers. The project recently upped its bounty and is now paying out a maximum of $3,000 for critical security bugs. A few weeks later, Google announced that it, too, would pay up to $3,000 for security bugs reported in its products.
"It's been a really successful program for us. We're really happy with it," Nightingale said.
Ironically, it's Mozilla -- the project that's been built on free contributions -- that pays bounties for bugs, while its biggest competitor -- Microsoft -- has so far refused to pay out.
Mozilla doesn't pay for the vast majority of bugs that get reported -- just for security flaws -- and developers don't complain, Nightingale said. "Security bugs are unlike other things," he said. "There are other markets."
Browser bugs can be worth a lot of money on the black market, for example, where they are snatched up by criminals looking for ways to sneak their malicious software onto people's computers. By offering a cash bounty, Mozilla hopes it can tip the scales a bit, and get some finds from people who would like to do the right thing but also really need the money.
"In North America, $3,000 is not nothing," he said. "But in a lot of the world, $3,000 is a big deal, and our contributions come from lots of places."
It may be that cash payments for security research are becoming the norm. Mozilla developers say other software companies are starting to take notice and are now talking about bug bounty programs of their own.
Robert McMillan covers computer security and general technology breaking news for The IDG News Service. Follow Robert on Twitter at @bobmcmillan. Robert's e-mail address is robert_mcmillan@idg.comCLOSE USA TODAY Sports reflects on Peyton Manning's career.
Peyton Manning. (Photo11: Andrew P. Scott, USA TODAY Sports)
Four years after parting ways with Peyton Manning, Indianapolis Colts owner Jim Irsay announced that the Colts will build a statue outside Lucas Oil Stadium that will feature the newly retired quarterback. Irsay also said that the Colts will retire Manning’s No. 18 jersey.
"It will be a destination," Irsay said. ""Just like Jim Morrison's grave."
He then turned to Manning on the stage, and said with a chuckle, "this isn't a grave Peyton."
Irsay also announced the team will retire Manning's No. 18.
“I can’t tell you how honored and humbled I am by that …,” Manning said. “It was my honor and privilege to play for this organization for 14 years.”
During Friday’s news conference, Manning recounted poignant memories, comical anecdotes, signature victories and painful losses with the Colts, with his voice occasionally cracking with emotion.
We had such a special group …,” Manning said. “And the most important thing about it, everyone knew how special it was. What a unique group we had. It really was special.”
"That was a tough, emotional day four years ago," Manning said. "But I'm glad to be back. I'm glad to be back. I really enjoyed driving over here... I haven't been back here to the facility in four years... It was fun to come back here on a joyous occasion. It certainly felt comfortable coming here. It felt right."
As for his future, Manning said he hasn't decided on anything.
"I haven't made anymore decisions, or had any conversations about what's next," Manning said. "I think I'll be able to keep a fairly normal and busy offseason, kind of normal commitments that I do anyway... The biggest mistake would be to rush into something and go, 'Wow, what am I doing? I'm not ready for this?' I haven't had a fall off in about 25 years and so something about that has some appeal to it."
Friday’s scene -- with Irsay and Manning smiling together --- was difficult to imagine after the quarterback’s unceremonious departure in March 2012, when the Colts cut Manning after 14 seasons.
“It seems like a short four years ago we were up here on a difficult day …,” Irsay said. “As we temporarily went different directions, we both enjoyed a lot of success on the field. It was always strange watching 18 out there without the horseshoe on his helmet. Not always easy …. We kind of feel like he is ours.”
The Colts, of course, drafted Andrew Luck with the top pick in the 2012 draft, and Manning signed with the Denver Broncos that year. Manning helped lead the Broncos to two Super Bowl appearances in four seasons, punctuating his illustrious career with a victory in Super Bowl 50.
After Manning left the Colts, there were clear signs of acrimony between Manning and Irsay.
Irsay had told USA TODAY Sports in October 2013 that he was disappointed that the Colts won only one Super Bowl, which came after the 2006 season, during the Manning era. When asked if Manning harbored any resentment toward the Colts, the quarterback that week told The Indianapolis Star, “To answer a question like that doesn’t serve me well.”
Follow Eric Prisbell on Twitter @EricPrisbellNode.js 8.3.0 is now available shipping with the Ignition + TurboFan execution pipeline
Node.js Foundation Blocked Unblock Follow Following Aug 10, 2017
This post is brought to you by Myles Borins who is a @nodejs ctc member / developer advocate for Google Cloud.
Why is this so exciting?
Iginition + TurboFan are the new interpreter and compiler that have been a part of V8 since version 5.9. They replace Full-codegen and Crankshaft, technologies that have been shipping in V8 since 2010. The new execution pipeline has been optimized with modern JavaScript in mind, you can read more about it in this blog post.
How will this change impact Node.js users?
The biggest thing that Node.js developers will need to pay attention to will be changes to the performance profile of their application. To learn more about this please read this blog post by David Mark Clements and Matteo Collina.
Should we upgrade to the latest version of Node.js today?
You should begin testing your applications on 8.x today as it will be promoted to LTS in October. This can include testing locally, in a staging server environment, and even in a small production roll out if you are set up to do so. If your team is not currently using Node.js 7.x or 8.x in production at all, it might be prudent to wait until October to begin shipping 8.x.
What should we do if we find bugs or performance regressions?
Please report all problems to our issue tracker. You can follow our issue template to help craft your report. When reporting bugs it is incredibly helpful to provide us with a reproduction of the bug using only the Node.js core libraries. If you believe you have found a performance regression providing a minimal benchmark is extremely helpful, you can get pretty far with just console.time()
🎉 🎉 🎉
Getting Ignition + TurboFan into Node.js 8.x has been a work in progress for over 4 months! It inolved an early commitment by both the V8 Team to offer engineering support and the Node.js CTC to postpone the 8.x release.
Getting to the point where we could land V8 6.0 on Node.js 8.x involved:
This is an exciting milestone that involved co-orindated participation across organizations, time-zones, languages, and philosophies. Thank you to every person who played a hand in making this happen; it takes a village.
You can learn about additional features in Node.js 8.3.0 in this blog post.LAWRENCE, Kan. -- Nobody else was doing much scoring for No. 10 Kansas on Monday night. Nobody else was rebounding or playing much defense, either.
Jeff Withey stepped up and did all three.
And etched his name in the school's record books, too.
The senior center had 16 points, 12 rebounds and a school-record 12 blocks for only the second triple-double in Kansas history, and the Jayhawks held off a furious comeback by San Jose State for a 70-57 victory.
"He was the only guy who played worth a flip," Kansas coach Bill Self said. "He did a good job covering up for a lot of mistakes, because we made a ton of them tonight."
Withey scored 10 points during a 20-2 run early in the second half, and achieved the Jayhawks' first triple-double since Cole Aldrich in an NCAA tournament game against Dayton in 2010 when the 7-footer blocked Xavier Jones' shot with 7:43 left in the game.
"I've been wanting that for a while now, and it's only me and Cole that have it, so it's pretty special to me," Withey said. "They kept on driving in and, you know, I just kept on blocking it. It's what I do."
Kansas (5-1) certainly needed every last one of them after taking a 60-36 lead with just over 11 minutes left, and then watching the Spartans (2-3) go on an 18-2 run of their own.
The Jayhawks finally put it away when Elijah Johnson hit a floater with just over a minute left for a 66-57 lead, and when Withey's rejection of D.J. Brown turned into a run-out that Ben McLemore finished off with a windmill dunk with about 30 seconds remaining.
"We didn't back down," San Jose State coach George Nessman said. "We kept bucking up and sticking our chest out there, and that was important for us."
James Kinney stuck his chest out the farthest, scoring 19 of his 30 points in the second half for the Spartans. At one point, the senior guard scored nine in a span of about 90 seconds as San Jose State was mounting its big second-half charge.
"I wasn't going to give up. I'm not going to get embarrassed out here," Kinney said. "Once everyone saw I was going to keep fighting, they just tagged along."
McLemore finished with 13 points despite missing all seven of his 3-point tries, and Travis Releford also had 13 points for the Jayhawks. Kevin Young added eight rebounds.
Playing its first game since romping to victory in the CBE Classic last week, the Jayhawks looked fresh and smooth in building a double-digit lead late in the first half.
San Jose State answered with nine straight points spanning halftime to get back into it.
That's when Kansas went on its big run.
It began with a 3-pointer by Johnson, and the momentum really started to build when Young followed up Withey's miss with an easy basket down low.
Withey scored six of the Jayhawks' next eight points as the lead slowly grew, and the crowd at Allen Fieldhouse began to realize that he was making history. He surpassed the 10-rebound mark midway through the second half before getting his 10th block to mark the triple-double.
"Most of the time -- I'm guilty of it, too -- we get caught standing around watching Jeff, like a fan or something, and that's when we need to snap back to it," Johnson said. "Jeff saved us a lot of times. There were times I caught myself looking instead of playing."
Unofficially, it was Withey's second time reaching the milestone.
The senior had 18 points, 12 rebounds and 10 blocks against Pittsburg State in an exhibition game last season, when All-America forward Thomas Robinson missed the game due to injury.
It also comes with an asterisk in the Kansas record books.
The school didn't keep records for blocked shots during the 1950s, when Wilt Chamberlain was plying his trade on the hardwood. He undoubtedly had his share of triple-doubles while playing for the Jayhawks -- but officially, only Aldrich and Withey have done it.
"On the sideline, I kept thinking some of the shots were going in, and then bang, they were going the other way," Nessman said. "We try to tell our guys to jump into shot-blockers, but he's so good at staying down, it's hard to get him off his feet."
Kinney did the best job of getting shots up, over and around him.
In doing so, he nearly stole Withey's thunder.
The spunky guard hit consecutive jumpers to end the Jayhawks' big second-half run, and then added a fall-away 3-pointer with just over 10 minutes remaining to close the gap.
He added another 3-pointer with 6:44 left to trim the Spartans' deficit to 60-51, and then hit his fourth 3 as the shot clock was winding down to make it 64-57 with 2:39 to go.
That's when Kansas finally put the game away.
"I just don't think we have any fold in us. That's not who we are. We have a great group of kids," Nessman said. "We came here to play for a full 40 minutes."EDMONTON – RCMP are issuing a warning about the release of a violent offender who has just finished a 16-year sentence for over a dozen offences, including a number of crimes of a sexual and violent nature.
Donald Bradshaw will be living in the Grande Prairie area, and RCMP believe there’s a risk of significant harm to the community, and in particular, to individuals who become involved in a relationship with him.
Bradshaw is described as a 61 year-old Metis male, 5’9″, 211 lbs, with hazel eyes and grey hair.
His former charges include: sexual assault, obstruction of justice, assault causing bodily harm, assault, forcible confinement, overcoming resistance, possession of a firearm and ammunition, and restricted weapon, and counseling an indictable offence.
Bradshaw’s assault charges date back to 1970.Metro has identified two sources of money that could be used to prevent some of the proposed fare increases and service cuts being considered to close a $290 million shortfall.
It will be up to the agency’s governing board to decide whether, or how, to use those funds.
One option under consideration involves a maneuver the board used last year — and a practice members pledged to curb: using federal grant money earmarked for capital investments to pay for preventive maintenance.
Using the grant money would lessen the amount available for longer-term investments. And federal lawmakers have warned the agency against the practice.
The second source involves $23 million for rail car spare parts — costs that could be pushed to the capital budget, another short-term fix that would still need to be paid for in the long run.
[Congress warns Metro: Don’t use federal money for short-term budget fix]
Board members said they’ve recently received approval from the Federal Transit Administration, clarifying that preventive maintenance falls within the bounds of how Metro is allowed to use grant money and that it’s a common practice among federal transit agencies.
[Budget proposal paints grim portrait of Metro’s future]
The budget for the current fiscal year includes $95 million in grant money for operating expenses; General Manager Paul J. Wiedefeld’s proposed budget for the fiscal year that begins July 1, cuts the amount to $60 million.
Some board members say that if the amount is increased to $80 million or $90 million, it would free up enough money to allow them to pare some of the fare increases and service cuts Wiedefeld has proposed.
Board member Malcolm Augustine isn’t entirely comfortable with the practice but said, “We’re in extraordinary times, you know? Maybe this will give Metro a chance to turn the corner and have that growth we’ve been looking for.”
Wiedefeld’s $1.8 billion operating budget includes a host of fare increases and cuts to bus and rail service to help close the looming shortfall. Under his proposal, bus fares would increase 25 cents, to $2 per ride. For rail passengers, the minimum and maximum fares would increase to $2.25 and $6, respectively — up from $2.15 and $5.90. The cost of daily parking also would increase by 10 cents.
Riders would face longer wait times between trains, and a slew of low-ridership bus routes would be eliminated.
The board’s finance committee is expected to decide in March how best to close the $290 million budget shortfall.
One bright spot: the District, Maryland and Virginia all have agreed to give Metro the extra money Wiedefeld asked for in their subsidies to the agency.
Metro Board Chairman Jack Evans said preventing fare increases should be the board’s top priority. That’s also the view of Michael Goldman, chairman of the board’s finance committee. The problem with restoring service cuts, he said, is that it also affects Wiedefeld’s proposal to lay off 500 workers.
But Augustine argues that it’s not that clear-cut. Increasing fares will undoubtedly result in a drop-off in ridership — which potentially could also lead to the need to reduce staffing.
“What I have heard over and over and over again from people is that they have sacrificed a lot,” Augustine said. “We’re going to have to take a look at what we can do to bring this budget into balance. But riders feel like they’ve already sacrificed quite a bit on the service side and on the price side.”
Still, all the talk of preferences is preliminary. Board members say they want more feedback from customers, including the results of a survey that riders have until Monday to complete.
[Metro gets some financial breathing room — but only for the short-term]
There’s also a possibility Metro might need the money to deal with more immediate problems — like this year’s budget.
Goldman said the board is still waiting for updated ridership and revenue numbers for the current fiscal year. He and others are anxious to see whether Metro’s financial projections for the year are on target — and whether the cost of disruptions related to the agency’s SafeTrack rebuilding program will be more than projected.
In addition, Wiedefeld acknowledged last week that the agency might have lost money during the weekend of the presidential inauguration — despite the fact that the Women’s March on Washington was the agency’s second-highest day of ridership in history. While the agency was lauded for its performance that weekend, all the extra staff, police presence and train service cost money.
“There are definitely funding implications to that, there’s no doubt about it,” Wiedefeld said.
[Even with 1 million rides, Metro may have lost money from Inauguration Day and Women’s March]
If revenue this year falls short of costs, Goldman said, the agency might be forced to use any money it had hoped to tap to cover next year’s gap, to plug this year’s budget hole.
“We don’t know to what extent SafeTrack work has resulted in a loss of revenue that’s greater than anticipated for this fiscal year, and we don’t know if there’s a big hole that has to be backfilled by the jurisdictions,” Goldman said.
“It’s kind of a lot of moving pieces,” he said.Note: Your cards don't actually hologram out like that. False advertising, I know.
This is Coin (despite clearly being a card), a digital credit card that can store all your other credit cards (plus magnetic strip membership cards) so you only have to carry one. That way you don't have to walk around with a wallet so fat that, after years of sitting on it lopsided, will cause you to develop back and buttcheek problems. That's a real thing BTW, I didn't just make that up. You enter your individual credit card's data via swiping through a smartphone dongle, then the data is added to the Coin card. You choose a card by scrolling through a LCD display on the back. Plus it uses a low-power Bluetooth signal to let you know if you ever venture too far away from the card with your phone. They're available for $50 pre-order now and are supposed to ship summer 2014. Will they? Beats me, next summer -- that's a long time. I know if I owned the company I'd already have everybody's money and be on a beach in Costa Rica by then. But don't let that stop you, I'm sure they're legit.
Keep going for a video about the card.
Thanks to T8RO, who mentioned already only having a single debit card. Me? I've only got a Blockbuster card.Mega now accepts Bitcoin as payment, also hints at e-mail, chat, voice expansion
Kim Dotcom has just announced through Twitter that Mega, his successor to Megaupload, will now be accepting Bitcoin as payment for its cloud storage services. You can purchase your Mega service with Bitcoin through Mega’s newest reseller, Bitvoucher. Bitcoin is a P2P digital currency that allows you to instantly make a payment to anyone, anywhere in the world. It does not operate under a central authority, such as banks or the government, but instead is operated by only the Bitcoin network. This allows everyone to be able to use its services, and it also allows users to make payments that cannot be traced by the government.
You have 6 options to choose from when buying the Mega services through Bitvoucher. There are 3 monthly options, ranging from 500GB for 0.5150 Bitcoin to 4TB for 1.5462 Bitcoin. There are also 3 yearly options, with 500GB for 5.1551 Bitcoin (which comes out to about 0.4296 Bitcoin per month) to 4TB for 15.4663 Bitcoin (about 1.2889 Bitcoin per month).
Dotcom also tweeted that Mega plans on offering secure e-mail, chat & voice, video, and “mobile” services. He talks about how services such as Gmail, iCloud, and Skype are based in the U.S., making them not private enough. The data contained in this services can be viewed by the U.S. government if they demand access to them. His tweet regarding the issue says, “Fact: Gmail, iCloud, Skype, etc. have to provide (by law) secret & untraceable NSA backdoors to all your data. #GetOutNow.”
Dotcom says that Mega is all about privacy and that they are “The Privacy Company”. It wants no roots with the U.S. government and wants to offer users a safe and private place for them to share data. Mega has come a long way, reaching over 3 million users in only 4 weeks. It’s definitely gone a long way in a short amount of time, and it’d be interesting to see where it’s headed next. Are you using the Mega cloud-storage service?
[via Dotcom]There are many professional sc2 players at in the scene but how did they get there? What are the true challenges that an up and coming player would have to face now? I had a chance to chat rising to Sc2 player and a friend of mine Ferry "Darkomicron" van de Pol about the challenges he is currently facing in his path towards becoming a professional Sc2 player.
Tell us a little about yourself.
Darkomicron: Well hello, |
-group (F=4.97, df=1, 120, p=0.03) and region of interest-by-group-by-run-by-visit (F=2.37, df=5, 517, p=0.04) interactions. The region of interest-by-group interaction showed that the experimental group had significantly elevated amygdala activity compared with the control group (the mean percent signal change over all runs/days was 0.19 [SD=0.03] for the experimental group and −0.02 [SD=0.02] for the control group [t=7.63, df=403, p<0.001, d=1.44]). Within the intraparietal region, the average percent signal change was significantly higher in the control group than in the experimental group (mean over all runs/days, −0.06 [SD=0.04] for the experimental group and 0.03 [SD=0.02] for the control group [t=2.74, df=403, p=0.04, d=0.89]).
The region of interest-by-group-by-run-by-visit interaction (Figure 1A) showed that the groups did not differ significantly in amygdala activity during the visit 2 baseline or practice but differed significantly from each other during all subsequent runs (t values, >2.52; df=31; p values, <0.02; d values, >0.87). The control group had significantly higher intraparietal activity than the experimental group during the third training and transfer runs at visit 3 (t values, >2.34; df=31; p values, <0.03; d values, >0.84) but did not differ significantly from the experimental group at any other run.
FIGURE 1. Regional Percent Signal Change for Each Region of Interest, Run, and Group in a Trial of Real-Time fMRI Amygdala Neurofeedback for Major Depressive Disordera a In each group, the average percent signal change for the happy-rest condition for each run in the left amygdala (panel A) and in the left horizontal segment of the intraparietal sulcus (panel B). b Significant difference from the initial pre-neurofeedback baseline run, p<0.05. c Significant difference from the corresponding run in the experimental group, p<0.05.
Paired-sample t tests were performed to examine whether activity increased significantly from pre-neurofeedback baseline in each group and run. In the control group, there was no run in which amygdala activity differed significantly from baseline. In the experimental group, amygdala activity during the visit 2 practice run was not significantly elevated above baseline, but all subsequent runs, including visit 3 baseline and both transfer runs, were (t values, >2.67; df=17; p values, <0.02; d values, >0.61). In the intraparietal region (Figure 1B), the control group had significantly increased intraparietal activity from baseline during run 3 and the final transfer run at visit 3 (t values, >2.42; df=14; p values, <0.02; d values, >0.69). No other runs showed a significant change in the control group. In the experimental group, there was no run in which intraparietal activity differed from baseline. An independent-samples t test comparing neurofeedback success in the experimental group (for amygdala activity) and the control group (for intraparietal activity) was not significant, indicating that by study end the control group was as effective at regulating hemodynamic activity in the intraparietal region as the experimental group was at regulating activity in the amygdala.
Autobiographical Memory Performance
For the linear mixed model using the ARMA1 covariance structure, there was a significant group-by-visit-by-type interaction (F=29.2, df=3, 61, p<0.001) and a significant group-by-visit-by-type-by-valence interaction (F=5.58, df=3, 66, p=0.002) (Table 2).
TABLE 2. Autobiographical Memory Performance at Baseline and Follow-Up in a Trial of Real-Time fMRI Amygdala Neurofeedback for Major Depressive Disorder Percent of Memories Experimental Group Control Group Baseline Follow-up Baseline Follow-Up Memory Typea Mean SD Mean SD Mean SD Mean SD Specific 52.5 13.1 69.5b 10.0 54.8 16.9 52.1c 14.7 Positive 33.1 10.8 46.8b 12.7 34.1 11.1 33.3c 13.1 Negative 19.4 8.9 22.7 8.6 20.7 9.2 18.8 8.9 Categorical 22.5 10.0 14.0b 8.6 21.2 7.9 26.0c 14.2 Positive 11.7 7.2 3.7b 6.7 11.8 9.0 14.4c 8.6 Negative 10.8 8.7 10.4 8.4 10.4 7.4 11.6 6.9 Extended 13.3 9.1 6.0b 4.2 14.1 10.7 10.7c 7.1 Positive 4.6 5.8 1.6b 2.7 5.1 6.0 3.4c 2.8 Negative 8.7 7.4 4.4b 4.6 9.0 7.6 6.4 4.8 Semantic 7.8 4.1 6.0 8.0 7.4 7.8 8.9 7.2 Positive 4.6 4.5 4.0 6.2 3.7 4.6 5.9 6.4 Negative 3.2 4.2 1.9 3.7 3.7 4.3 3.0 4.0 None 3.9 4.6 4.5 5.2 2.5 2.3 2.3 3.7 TABLE 2. Autobiographical Memory Performance at Baseline and Follow-Up in a Trial of Real-Time fMRI Amygdala Neurofeedback for Major Depressive Disorder Enlarge table
The group-by-visit-by-type interaction revealed that at visit 1, the groups did not differ significantly on the percent of memories recalled at any specificity. At visit 4, the experimental group recalled more specific and fewer categorical and extended memories than the control group (t values, >3.03; df=54; p values, <0.004; d values, >0.74). The percent of semantic memories recalled did not differ at visit 4. The group-by-type-by-valence-by-visit interaction revealed that these effects were driven by a change in the percent of positive memories recalled. The experimental group recalled more positive specific memories at visit 4 than the control group (t=2.87, df=31, p<0.001, d=0.99) but did not differ in the percent of specific negative memories recalled at visit 4. The experimental group recalled fewer positive categorical and extended memories than the control group at visit 4 (t values, >2.40; df=31; p values, <0.02; d values, >0.83). The percent of distinctly valenced semantic memories recalled did not differ between groups, and in no case did any score at visit 1 differ between groups.
Paired-sample t tests were performed within each group to examine whether scores significantly changed from baseline to follow-up. In the experimental group, the percent of positive specific and overall specific memories recalled increased significantly (t values, >4.59; df=17; p values, <0.001; d values, >1.10) and the percent of categorical positive, overall categorical, extended positive, extended negative, and overall extended memories recalled decreased significantly at visit 4 relative to visit 1 (t values, >2.32; df=17; p values, <0.03; d values, >0.60). In the control group, there was no significant change in memory recall.
Association Between Memory Recall, Neurofeedback Success, and MADRS Change
Using linear regression, we examined the association between residualized MADRS scores at follow-up and residualized amygdala activity during the final transfer run. Residual MADRS scores at the final visit were significantly correlated with residual amygdala activity during the final transfer run (β=−15.5, t=3.09, p=0.004; adjusted R2=0.21). While the association with intraparietal success was in the same direction, it was not significant (β=−2.46, t=0.81, p=0.43; adjusted R2=0.09), and it was significantly different from the model examining the association between residual amygdala activity and residual MADRS scores (z=2.66, p=0.004).
A regression analysis was performed for residual positive specific memory recall and residual MADRS scores at follow-up. The same pattern was seen as with amygdala neurofeedback success; residual positive specific memory recall was associated with decreased residual MADRS scores (β=−0.19, t=2.16, p=0.04; adjusted R2=0.13). Residual positive specific memory recall was also significantly associated with residual amygdala activity during the final transfer run (β=29.1, t=3.10, p=0.004; adjusted R2=0.21).
To determine whether residual amygdala activity was a mediator of the association between residual positive specific memory recall and residual MADRS change, we performed a Sobel test, which was significant (Z=2.18, p=0.03) (Figure 2). When both residual amygdala activity and residual positive specific memory recall were included in the model, the effects of memory recall were no longer significant (β=−0.07, t=0.71, p=0.48), while amygdala activity was (β=13.5, t=2.33, p=0.027; final model adjusted R2=0.25).
FIGURE 2. Overall Mediation Model in a Trial of Real-Time fMRI Amygdala Neurofeedback for Major Depressive Disordera a MADRS=Montgomery-Åsberg Depression Rating Scale. In A, the predictor is residualized positive specific autobiographical memory recall at follow-up. In B, the mediator is residual amygdala activity during the final transfer run. In C, outcome is residual depressive symptoms. C denotes the relationship between predictor and outcome, and C′ denotes the same relationship after controlling for the effect of the mediator.
Discussion
In this randomized clinical trial, we found that training that enhances the amygdala’s hemodynamic response to positive memories significantly reduced depressive symptoms in depressed participants. These data qualitatively replicate and extend results from our previous study in an independent sample of depressed participants (9), which showed that in a single amygdala rtfMRI-nf session, participants learned to regulate their amygdala response during positive memory recall and manifested mood improvements. In the present study, the experimental group showed a mean decrease in MADRS score of 50% over the course of the intervention, and 32% of participants met criteria for remission at study end. This remission rate is similar to rates seen with antidepressant medications (37) and cognitive-behavioral therapy (38). The average decrease in MADRS score in the control group was 8%, and 6% of control participants met criteria for remission at study end, demonstrating a modest placebo response and suggesting that while the mental strategy of recalling positive memories likely played some part in symptom improvement, neurofeedback from the amygdala was crucial.
The importance of amygdala neurofeedback to the antidepressant effect is further highlighted by the results of a previous study (39) that found that simply instructing depressed individuals to recall positive memories to improve mood actually worsened mood ratings. Our results suggest that positive memory retrieval while engaging the amygdala, which notably improved the recall of specific positive memories, instead holds the potential to improve mood. The finding that intraparietal activity did not change in the experimental group suggests that feedback from the amygdala is necessary for enhancing control of that region. In contrast, the control group did increase intraparietal response to a degree similar to the experimental group’s increase in amygdala response, but depressive symptoms improved to a greater extent in the experimental group, suggesting that the observed effects were due to amygdala rtfMRI-nf in combination with positive memory recall. Furthermore, while the correlation between residual intraparietal activity and residual MADRS scores was in the same direction as that observed between amygdala activity and MADRS scores, the association was not significant, supporting the hypothesis that enhanced control of amygdala activity led to the clinical effects, and not simply control over hemodynamic activity more generally.
Our interpretation that the amygdala response to positive memory recall is involved in recovery from depression is further supported by the mediation analysis. These data showed that while residual positive specific memory recall at follow-up was negatively associated with residual MADRS scores at follow-up, residual amygdala activity during the final transfer run accounted for a significant amount of variance in this correlation. This proposed model suggests that recalling more positive specific memories can reduce depressive symptoms, but more so when the amygdala is engaged. As the amygdala is part of the salience network (12), and our whole-brain analysis revealed increased activity in multiple nodes of the salience network after training, training participants with depression to engage the amygdala during positive memory recall conceivably enhances the affective or attentional significance of these memories. We thus propose that the synergy between amygdala activity and positive memory recall drives the clinical improvements.
The rtfMRI-nf training also resulted in an increase in the percent of specific memories recalled and a decrease in the percent of overgeneral memories recalled in the experimental group. This effect was predominantly attributable to positive memories. Overgeneral memory recall, especially for positive events, is an enduring cognitive deficit observed in patients with depression (26) that is not addressed by current treatments (28) and reportedly confers vulnerability to persistent depressive episodes (40). The finding that rtfMRI-nf improved positive specific memory recall thus suggests that this intervention may reverse a pathological construct that predisposes to or maintains depressive episodes.
Several study limitations merit comment. First, only two rtfMRI-nf sessions were performed. While improved clinical scores could be seen after a single session, additional score improvements were evident after a second session. Furthermore, while baseline amygdala activity during positive memory recall was higher during the second session relative to the first, this activity was still lower than that observed during the transfer runs, suggesting that additional learning might have occurred. Determining the optimal number of sessions and whether booster sessions are needed is an important future direction for this research. Additionally, our entrance criteria resulted in a large proportion of patients being excluded (primarily because of medication status or not meeting DSM-IV-TR criteria for major depressive disorder), limiting the generalizability of our findings. Further testing in larger, more heterogeneous samples that include medicated individuals is necessary to determine the subpopulations or characteristics for whom this intervention is best suited. Finally, patients were only followed for 1 week after the final rtfMRI-nf session, whereas acute treatment trials more commonly include follow-up periods lasting 2–8 weeks. Therefore, while we were able to show that amygdala rtfMRI-nf resulted in significant and large clinical improvements, the duration of this improvement was not assessed.
In conclusion, we have shown that rtfMRI-nf training aimed at increasing amygdala response to positive memory recall results in significant clinical improvement in patients with depression and increases the percent of specific memories recalled on an autobiographical memory test. This neurofeedback intervention targets a specific fundamental mechanism identified by neuroimaging research (blunted amygdala activity during positive memory recall), it appears safe and well tolerated, and it gives patients a sense of control over their treatment and symptom improvement. This novel intervention therefore merits further testing as a potential treatment for depression, and it can serve as a model for novel neuroscience-based interventions.THOMAS F. BERTONNEAU writes:
The criminals have been identified and confronted, two arrested, one killed. Good. [CORRECTION: Two are still at large and one has turned himself in. Read here.]
But there is this, from the NBC Website: “Authorities identified the three [Charlie Hebdo murderers] as Said Kouachi and Cherif Kouachi, both French and in their early 30s, and 18-year-old Hamyd Mourad, whose nationality wasn’t immediately clear.”
I have italicized the incredibly stupid, incredibly mendacious, utterly wicked elements of the sentence.
— Comments —
Neil writes:
I was listening on and off all day to CNN.
The reporters constantly referred to “The Prophet Mohammed.” Funny, I’ve never heard them refer to “Jesus the Savior.” And “Allah Akbhar” is “God is Great,” not “Allah is Great.” I guess the attackers were a bunch of Deists.
One reporter even referred to “growing Islamaphobia” in Europe.
But they all said that the attack had a “chilling effect” on free speech. Sounds like CNN and the media have been chilled already.
Mary writes:
My thoughts yesterday, after reading that all of our world’s leaders came to the same conclusion – the wholly insubstantial and false notion that this massacre was simply an attack on “freedom of speech” – were that if that’s all these great minds could come up with we’re in big trouble. Either they’re all idiots or “freedom of speech” is truly the idol of the modern world (or both). How dangerous. Something profound beyond words (mine anyway) is at stake. Islam knows this. This incident is one of what will be many more. They have watched our families break down and our faith weaken and by this have been emboldened to reignite the centuries-old war against their enemy, once magnificent and unstoppable: the West, created by God on the foundation of the natural order, which we persist in corrupting. Our nonsensical babble about “freedom of speech” only proves to Islam they are correct. We have lost any real sense of how freedom truly manifests itself.
My apologies if it’s too soon to say this: that “freedom of speech” itself was the undoing of the victims, for subversive publications usually exist not to uphold important universal principles but to undermine them. In the name of their idol they poked a rattlesnake and paid the ultimate price. The editor stated that he would rather die standing than live kneeling. I have no doubt he made that statement with passionate fervor for what he believed was something noble and grand but his publication did not reflect that nobility, and the fact is that the trouble started when France got off it’s knees. The French should march under banners reading: Repeupler Foyers Français! Repeupler les Eglises de France! (more apologies, I used google: Repopulate French homes! Repopulate French Churches!). France can still be saved but will need a sane Catholic leader at the helm who will exhort them to help the Eldest Daughter of the Church earn back her title.ISTANBUL — Islamic State militants pushed on Monday into the eastern edge of the Syrian Kurdish town of Kobani on the Turkish border, after sustained shelling that drove back the Kurdish fighters and Syrian insurgents fighting alongside them, killing 16 and raising fears of a massacre of civilians, Kurdish fighters and activists said.
Anwar Muslim, a coordinator in Kobani for the People’s Protection Committees, a Kurdish militant group known as the Y.P.G., said Monday night that 12,000 civilians were trapped inside the town. He said that his group was running out of heavy ammunition, and with Islamic State militants close by the population was in constant fear of car bombs or suicide bombers.
Rooz Bahjat, who identified himself as a senior security official with the Kurdistan Regional Government in Iraq, said that as many as 9,000 Islamic State fighters were closing in on the area, leaving other fronts in eastern and northern Syria and even as far away as Iraq to attack what he called “a bastion of democracy and secularism” in Kobani, which has given shelter to internally displaced Syrians from a wide range of ethnic groups.
“The whole might of ISIS right now is turned onto Kobani,” he said.
His information could not be independently verified, but Kurdish officials have been warning for days that without more military aid, Kobani will fall. And Islamic State fighters in Raqqa and Aleppo Provinces have said in recent interviews that they were redeploying toward Kobani after having faced United States-led airstrikes in their strongholds elsewhere in Syria.Border Security Force (BSF), the country’s largest border guarding force, has decided to replace the routine physical training drills for its jawans and officers with yoga. The decision to replace the daily 45-minute physical training drills with yoga at all its units was taken by BSF Director General K K Sharma after 1,900 personnel of the force recently completed a special training under the tutelage of Baba Ramdev at his facility in Uttarakhand’s Haridwar.
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“Yoga has been made mandatory in the force and the jawans and officers will now undergo regular training in this skill. The routine PT exercises will be replaced by yoga,” the DG told reporters. He added that a committee of senior officers of the force has been constituted that will suggest if, apart from yoga, any other physical exercises are required to be included in the daily regime of the 2.5 lakh personnel-strong force.
Ramdev had conducted a special 10-day session for the personnel of the force at his Patanjali yoga institute which ended earlier this week. Sharma had recently said the paramilitary force has decided to “intensify” yoga training of its troops and the aim is to have at least one trainer in this discipline in each platoon-level formation.
A platoon, comprising about 35 personnel, is the minimum strength of an operational team in the force. Yoga acts as a stress buster and it is important for the men and women of the force, as they are deployed in some of the most difficult areas as part of their duties in border guarding and internal security domain, the BSF Director General had said.
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BSF guards India’s two important borders with Pakistan and Bangladesh apart from conducting anti-Naxal operations in the Left Wing Extremism hit states of Chhattisgarh and Odisha.WATCH: Rep. Polis's Epic Blowup on House Floor Over Immigration
The gay Colorado Democrat had a conniption when the presiding officer warned a colleague not to address the undocumented immigrants sitting in the House chamber in support of immigration reform.
Rep. Jared Polis, a gay Democrat from Colorado, arguably lost his cool on the House floor Wednesday night when the presiding officer chastised a colleague for daring to mention the undocumented immigrants sitting in the House gallery to hear the chamber debate the languishing immigration reform bill.
After Rep. Joe Garcia finished his floor speech in support of H.R. 15, the comprehensive immigration reform bill, Rep. Jackie Walorski (R-Ind.), who was serving as Speaker Pro Tem, reminded the Florida Democrat that members of Congress are not allowed to address anyone sitting in the chamber's gallery.
That reminder incensed Polis, who took the opportunity to emphatically slam Republican leadership that continues to delay a vote on the bill, a version of which passed the Senate in June with every Democrat — and 14 Republican Senators — in support.
"Madame Speaker, the gentle people in the gallery… would not have to be in the gallery… advocating if this House simply took up the bill," Polis began. "Do you think they want to be spending their time here, Madame Speaker? Is that what you think?!"
"And you're saying we're addressing them, and that's what you're upset about Madame Speaker?" Polis continued, raising his voice to a pitched scream. "I want you, Madame Speaker, to address the reason that they are here! They are here because our government is tearing apart their families, Madame Speaker!"
When Walorski tried to point out that all members are forbidden from addressing guests in the gallery, Polis refused to relent.
"I want the Speaker to understand that the Speaker is obstructing H.R. 15 from coming to the floor! Will the Speaker understand that?" Polis shouted, repeating that question several times. "Will the Speaker understand that the Speaker is preventing HR 15 from coming to the floor, and that is why there are men and women in the gallery that are potentially facing deportation, and their families are being torn apart. It's very simple. Very simple, Madame Speaker."
Watch Polis' epic rant in the CSPAN video below, with the confrontation starting at the 2:45 mark.First, the good news: Yamauchi announced at yesterday’s press Q&A session that many updates and patches will be issued at the “first of December” (though it wasn’t entirely clear to me if that literally meant December 1st or early within the month). Polyphony Digital has also posted this notice on their website to reassure us that the game’s online services will continue to be optimized and upgraded to handle the additional load generated by players around the world.
Unfortunately, I have very little else to report from the Q&A session. Sony organizers, sadly, cut the session short, and other press members overloaded Yamauchi with questions that ranged from off-topic to incredibly stupid (“What’s your favorite car?”, “Why aren’t there any Norwegian tracks in the game?”, “Why should people buy GT5 over other racing games?”). I stayed up until 6:00AM the previous night after the launch party, compiling questions for the event, and was extremely disappointed that I was not able to get answers to these pressing issues. Sorry, guys…
More Posts On...6th October 2016
Scientists calculate the upper limit of human lifespan
Gains in the maximum human lifespan reached a plateau in the 1990s, according to researchers. They report that the absolute physical limit of human lifespan is 125 years.
A study published yesterday in Nature by the Albert Einstein College of Medicine suggests that it may not be possible to extend the human lifespan beyond the ages already attained by the oldest people on record.
Since the 19th century, average life expectancy has risen almost continuously – thanks to improvements in public health, diet, living standards and other areas. On average, for example, U.S. babies born today can expect to live to nearly 79, compared with only 47 for those born in 1900. Since the 1970s, the maximum duration of life – the age to which the oldest people live – has also risen. But according to the Einstein College researchers, this upward arc for maximal lifespan has a ceiling: and we've already touched it.
"Demographers, as well as biologists, have contended there is no reason to think that the ongoing increase in maximum lifespan will end soon," said senior author Jan Vijg, Ph.D., professor and chair of genetics. "But our data strongly suggest that it has already been attained and that this happened in the 1990s."
Dr. Vijg and his colleagues analysed data from the Human Mortality Database, which compiles mortality and population data from more than 40 nations. Since 1900, those countries generally show a decline in late-life mortality: the fraction of each birth cohort (i.e. people born in a particular year) who survive to old age (defined as 70 and up) increased with their calendar year of birth, pointing toward a continuing increase in average life expectancy.
But when the researchers looked at survival improvements since 1900 for people aged 100 and above, they found that gains in survival peaked at around 100 and then declined rapidly, regardless of the year people were born. "This finding indicates diminishing gains in reducing late-life mortality and a possible limit to human lifespan," said Dr. Vijg.
He and his colleagues then looked at "maximum reported age at death" data from the International Database on Longevity. They focused on people verified as living to age 110 or older between 1968 and 2006 in the four countries (the U.S., France, Japan and the U.K.) with the largest number of long-lived individuals. Age at death for these supercentenarians increased rapidly between the 1970s and early 1990s, but reached a plateau around 1995 – further evidence for a lifespan limit. This plateau, the researchers note, occurred close to 1997 – the year of death for 122-year-old French woman, Jeanne Calment, who achieved the maximum documented lifespan of any person in history.
Using maximum-reported-age-at-death data, the Einstein researchers put the average maximum human lifespan at 115 years – a calculation allowing for record-oldest individuals occasionally living longer or shorter than 115 years (Jeanne Calment, they conclude, was a statistical outlier). Finally, they calculate 125 years as the absolute limit of human lifespan. Expressed another way, this means the probability in any given year of seeing a person live to 125 anywhere in the world is less than 1 in 10,000.
"Further progress against infectious and chronic diseases may continue boosting average life expectancy – but not maximum lifespan," says Dr. Vijg. "While it's conceivable that therapeutic breakthroughs might extend human longevity beyond the limits we've calculated, such advances would need to overwhelm the many genetic variants that appear to collectively determine the human lifespan. Perhaps resources now being spent to increase lifespan should instead go to lengthening healthspan – the duration of old age spent in good health."
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Comments »The FBI encourages commercial computer repair and maintenance techs to spy on their clients, and does it in a twisted, questionable manner, according to media reports.
© AFP 2018 / Bryan R. Smith Trump Announces Former Indiana Senator as Spy Chief Nominee
The Geek Squad, a subsidiary of American multinational consumer electronics corporation Best Buy, offers assistance in PC repair, maintenance, and software installation for customers who do not want to hassle with their computers. But these ‘geeks' also spy for the FBI, and do it in a legally questionable way.
In 2011, Mark Rettenmaier, a prominent Orange County physician and surgeon, visited the Mission Viejo Best Buy to get his HP Pavilion desktop computer repaired. Rettenmaier was met with an unpleasant surprise when the Geek Squad technician, who turned out to be an FBI informant, as well as his supervisor and his supervisor's colleague, claim that they opened a file containing an image that met the definition of child pornography. The agency charged Rettenmaier with possession of child pornography, but a later investigation exposed wrongdoings on behalf of the FBI.
By now you understand that if you bring your computer to Best Buy, or any other big-ticket computer maintenance company, know that they will shuffle through your personal files.
There is an interesting legal trick, though.
If a technician finds something that can be considered to be criminal, they are obliged to report the discovery to law enforcement, and are legally protected by the "private search doctrine," a tricky piece of US legislation which states that your discovery does not require a search warrant. Law enforcement agencies can then conduct a follow-up search, also without obtaining a search warrant, but the second search cannot exceed the scope of the original search conducted by the first geek.
Back to the Rettenmaier story. The FBI paid the Geek Squad technician a $500 reward for finding the image, raising the question of whether the technician's pillaging falls into the "private search" category. Andrew Fleischman of Fault Lines argues that since a technician is paid to dig around on your computer, it's no longer "for the love of the game," but rather a workaround, a proxy for FBI to conduct warrantless searches.
It turns out that the image in question on Rettenmaier's desktop was discovered in unallocated space on the hard drive, indicating that the file was not a legitimate part of hard drive content, as it could be a file marked as deleted and treated by the computer as free space. In a court of law, no one can say who downloaded the file to the drive, or when. Rettenmaier, could claim to have no idea that the file was there in the first place. From a legal point of view, he was not "knowingly in possession" of the file.
The FBI is aware that files from unallocated hard drive space cannot be used as evidence, thanks to another case ruled that very year, and omitted this fact before Judge Marc Goldman, who authorized a raid on Rettenmaier's home in 2012.
© AP Photo / Evan Vucci National Intelligence Director Reveals He Is Unsure of RT’s Presence in US
If that is not enough, James Riddet, Rettenmaier's defense attorney, discovered, after reviewing case material, that the FBI agents suffered suspicious memory losses.
"FBI records reviewed by OC Weekly contain discrepancies about the picture and offer conflicting narratives about the agency's actions against his client. [Riddet] also wants additional records, which he believes have been hidden," says OC Weekly's Scott Moxley.
The discrepancies in question have led Riddet to believe there was no child porn on computer.
US District Court Judge Cormac Carney agreed that those discrepancies raised questions, and ordered government officials to conduct a new, ‘diligent' search for evidence, compelling Gannon to provide additional testimony as to whether she saw the image before approving a search warrant. By his order, the FBI agents, who have probably accused an innocent person, will also be questioned under oath.
The FBI is in an embarrassing position, but the story is not over. According to US legislation, companies like Best Buy are legally obliged to report any illegal content they find. The agency could have used this fact in the first place, but did not. Why would they do that? Arguably, it is because paying Best Buy employees $500 is far beyond the concept of ‘private search' and a clear violation of the Fourth Amendment of US Constitution that prohibits unreasonable search and seizure.If you've had a laptop computer lost or damaged during security screening at Los Angeles International Airport, you are not alone.
Laptop computers are the item most often listed as lost or damaged in claim reports filed against the Transportation Security Administration at LAX, according to an analysis of TSA records.
In a three-year period, passengers at LAX filed 1,702 claims, second only to New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport, with 2,277 claims, according to the records for November 2007 to December 2010.
At LAX, passengers filed 202 claims against the TSA for the lost or damaged laptop computers, 166 claims for clothing, 132 claims for digital cameras and 124 claims for luggage locks, the records show.
The average dollar amount cited in the claims for laptop computers was $1,437, according to the records. To determine whether the federal agency is responsible, TSA officials say, the claims are researched using information provided by the passenger and its own video surveillance footage.
But the chances of getting reimbursed are pretty low. The TSA paid out only 13% of those LAX passengers' claims for laptops. As for lost or damaged digital cameras, the TSA approved fewer than 1% of those claims.
TSA spokesman Nico Melendez said passengers who worry about losing valuable items at LAX should either pack them in a carry-on bag or leave them at home. Do not put them in your checked bags, he said.
And if you do lose something at the airport, Melendez said, first check lost-and-found desks operated by the airport police, the TSA and the airlines.
• Texas dumps its bill against pat-downs
In other TSA-related news, a bill to prohibit the agency from performing invasive pat-down searches in Texas was withdrawn last week after the federal government threatened to make the Lone Star State a no-fly zone.
The bill, written by state Rep. David Simpson (R-Longview), would have made it a misdemeanor for any public servant to touch certain body parts during a search without probable cause.
The bill was approved by the state's House, but the bill's sponsor in the Senate withdrew the legislation after U.S. Atty. John Murphy delivered a letter last week to state lawmakers. In the letter, Murphy said the proposed law would conflict with federal law and would force the TSA to cancel all flights if it could not ensure the safety of the passengers and crew.
In a statement posted on his campaign website, Simpson called the federal government's threat a "brazen show of disregard for the dignity and the constitutional rights of American citizens."
• Many small-business owners won't vacation
The nation's economy may be improving, but many small-business owners say they are still not ready to take time off to relax this summer.
A survey of 501 small-business owners taken this month by a division of American Express found that only 46% of such entrepreneurs planned to take a full week of vacation this summer, compared with 67% in 2006.
Asked why they planned no weeklong vacation, 37% said they were too busy, 29% said they couldn't afford it, 10% said they had no one to fill in for them, and 16% said they never take a vacation. The remaining 8% said they didn't know why or declined to answer.
• Charity auction features autographed luggage
If you hurry, you might still have time to bid on Weird Al Yankovic's fur pouch messenger bag or Lindsay Lohan's duffel bag. Donald Trump's attache case and Chelsea Handler's tote might also be available.
To raise money for charity and promote JetBlue Airways' policy of allowing passengers to check one bag free of charge, the airline is auctioning off autographed luggage donated by 50 celebrities.
The first round of EBay auctions ends Monday, and a second round runs Tuesday through June 6. Proceeds go to Do Something, a nonprofit that tries to encourage volunteerism among youngsters.
As of last week, the luggage drawing the highest bids — more than $1,000 — was the signed briefcase from Trump. Inside, the Donald has packed two round-trip tickets to anywhere JetBlue flies, two VIP tickets to the Miss USA pageant in Las Vegas and two tickets for the pageant's after party.
hugo.martin@latimes.comThe latest police investigation into Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's affairs involves |
Michael Brown in Missouri, which "turned out to be justified," he said, compared to how Obama speaks of violence from Muslim extremists.
“How could you hold a press conference about Ferguson and not hold a press conference when Christians and Jews were slaughtered?” he asked.
Pressed about his earlier claim on Obama loving America, Giuliani said, "I don't back off of that one bit."UPDATE: It looks like numerous online sources have gotten the story wrong. In short, the actual law that will come into operation on January 1, 2015, demands that cloud data storage that originates from Russia stays in Russia. In other words, companies will be required to have localized cloud servers on the territory of Russia, and this includes Apple (as well as any other company that has anything to do with the cloud). The previous conception, that it's an anti-iPhone law, was completely wrong.
Original post follows below:
According to a report published on Tuesday, Russia will ban the Apple iPhone and Apple iPad beginning on New Year's Day. Honestly, when we first saw the report, we figured that this was due to the same motives that caused a business group to dismantle a memorial to Steve Jobs in St. Petersburg. Instead, it seems that it is iCloud that has Russian authorities concerned.The new law will ban any device that has the iCloud software inside. The reason is that the data saved in iCloud is not stored locally. The servers employed by Apple are based in the U.S., not Russia. This is not a law that was created to harm Apple specifically, as it applies to all online services including social networks.Apple could put up a server farm in the country, but that would probably be a bad precedent for the tech titan. Russia could even decide to enforce the ban at the retail level, which also would be bad for Apple. Those in Russia who currently own an iPhone or iPad that supports iCloud, might have to put up with relentless searches from the authorities.Thanks for the tip!source: progorod translated ) via GSMDomePhotographing the Sun poses challenges but can be highly rewarding, from beautiful sunrises and sunsets, to recording sunspots and eclipses. But the Sun is extremely bright and proper safety precautions must be maintained for safe solar viewing and photography.
The Night and Astro-Photography Series: 1a) Nightscape Photography with Digital Cameras
1b) Planning Nightscape Photography
1c) Characteristics of Best Digital Cameras and Lenses for Nightscape and Astro Photography
1e) Nightscape Photography In The Field Setup
1f) A Very Portable Astrophotography, Landscape and Wildlife Photography Setup
2a) The Color of the Night Sky
2b) The Color of Stars
2c) The Color of Nebulae and Interstellar Dust in the Night Sky
2d) Verifying Natural Color in Night Sky Images and Understanding Good Versus Bad Post Processing
2e) Verifying Natural Color Astrophotography Image Processing Work Flow with Light Pollution
2f) True Color of the Trapezium in M42, The Great Nebula in Orion
2g) The True Color of the Pleiades Nebulosity
3a1) Nightscape and Astrophotography Image Processing Basic Work Flow
3a2) Night Photography Image Processing, Best Settings and Tips
3a3) Astrophotography Post Processing with RawTherapee
3b) Astrophotography Image Processing
3c) Astrophotography Image Processing with Light Pollution
3d) Image Processing: Zeros are Valid Image Data
3e) Image Processing: Stacking Methods Compared
3f1) Advanced Image Stretching with the rnc-color-stretch Algorithm
3f2) Messier 8 and 20 Image Stretching with the rnc-color-stretch Algorithm
3f3) Messier 22 + Interstellar Dust Image Stretching with the rnc-color-stretch Algorithm
3f4) Advanced Image Stretching with High Light Pollution and Gradients with the rnc-color-stretch Algorithm
4a) Astrophotography and Focal Length
4b) Astrophotography and Exposure
4c) Aurora Photography
4d) Meteor Photography
4e) Do You Need a Modified Camera For Astrophotography?
4f) How to Photograph the Sun: Sunrise, Sunset, Eclipses (YOU ARE HERE)
5) Nightscape Photography with a Barn Door Tracking Mount
6a) Lighting and Protecting Your Night Vision
6b) Color Vision at Night
7a) Night and Low Light Photography with Digital Cameras (Technical)
7b) On-Sensor Dark Current Suppression Technology
7c) Technology advancements for low light long exposure imaging
8a) Software for nightscape and astrophotographers
Contents
Introduction
Energy from the Sun and Safety
Measure Your Filter Transmittance
Clean Optics are Needed for High-Dynamic Range Solar Photography
Sunrise / Sunset
The Green Flash
Solar Disk Photography
Eclipse Photography
Lunar Earthshine During Totality
Totality Exposure Sequences
Full Range Totality Exposure Sequences, Best With Computer Control
Simplified Totality Exposure Sequences Using Bracketing, No Computer Control
If you find the information on this site useful, please support Clarkvision and make a donation (link below).
Recommended Cameras and My Gear List for Photography
Introduction
The Sun is a tremendous energy source, filling our daytime world with light and warmth. That light shows us the beauty of our world. Photographs with the Sun in the frame range from sunrise/sunset with foreground elements (Figure 1) to close-up images of the solar disk and eclipses.
The Sun illuminates the Earth with over 1,300 watts per square meter. That is like running a hair dryer every square meter! And most of the energy from the Sun is not light we can see; it is ultraviolet and infrared. This means photographing the Sun can be quite dangerous and if good precautions are not followed, you can damage your eyes and equipment. In any scenario, if the Sun is too bright to look at, STOP LOOKING, and you should never get in a situation where you have to do that. Even with a bright Sun, avoid long stares, because there may be more infrared light cooking your retina than you realize. This is especially true when doing sunrise/sunset photography with telephoto lenses--the larger apertures relative to the size of your eye collects a lot of energy, and viewing through the optical viewfinder directs that light into your eye.
Figure 1. Serengeti Sunrise, Tanzania. A Canon 300 mm f/2.8 lens at f/8, ISO 100, 1/8000 second exposure (manual exposure).
Energy from the Sun and Safety
Examine the solar spectra in Figure 2a, 2b and 2c. Zenith angle is the angle from the zenith, so the horizon at sea level would be at 90 degrees zenith angle. Visible light ranges from about 400 to 700 nm (0.4 to 0.7 micron). There is a lot of sunlight both at shorter (UV) and longer (IR) wavelengths. In fact, over 50% of the Sun's energy is infrared and above the atmosphere, less than 40% is in the visible (Table 1). At sea level with the Sun overhead, about 55% of the Sun's energy is infrared, and as the Sun appears lower in the sky, the proportion of infrared increases (over 80% at zenith angle 80 degrees). The changing proportions are due to the changing absorption in the Earth's atmosphere with different path lengths of sunlight at different zenith angles.
When the sunlight is not absorbed from a thick atmosphere (Sun near the horizon), a filter must be used to view or photograph the Sun. A filter needs to block at least as well in the IR as in the visible, and to at least 2000 nm and preferable 2500 nm (most materials if blocking to 2000 nm will block to 2500 nm).
In Figures 2a, 2b, and 2c, I show the level of 1 and 5 milliwatt red lasers. For anyone who has experienced a laser pointer into your eye, you know how jolting that can be. At 5-milliwatt, reports indicate this is about the level where eye damage might occur (depends on duration of exposure). Note that the solar spectra are significantly above the 5 milliwatt level except for the Sun at zenith angle 90 degrees at sea level (Figure 1b). If you have observed sunsets at sea level you know that if the atmosphere is clear, the Sun can still be extremely bright if the Sun is as little as a degree above the horizon. In such cases, clouds near the horizon can help to block some sunlight (Figure 6). At higher altitudes, the atmosphere tends to be less absorbing, and danger increases, even when the Sun is near the horizon. For example, note that the bottom portion of the Sun in Figure 1 is not overexposed, but the top is. A few moments after the image in Figure 1 was obtained, the Sun became too bright to safely image without filters.
Figure 2a. The solar spectrum above the atmosphere and at various angles through the atmosphere. Zenith angle is the angle from the angle of the Sun from directly overhead. At sea level with the Sun on the horizon, the solar zenith angle is 90 degrees. Visible light covers the range 0.4 to 0.7 microns (400 to 700 nm). Note the level of a 5-milliwatt laser, which is too bright to look at.
Figure 2b. Same as Figure 2a but with the Sun closer to the horizon.
Figure 2c. Going up in elevation allows more energy from the Sun to reach the Earth's surface at all wavelengths, including UV and infrared.
If you are imaging the Sun with a telephoto lens, the amount of energy that goes into your camera, and your eye if looking through the viewfinder can be damaging. For example, a 300 mm f/4 lens has and aperture diameter of 75 mm, and a collection area of 44.2 square cm, and collects over 180 times the power of a 5 milliwatt laser when the Sun is about 20 degrees above the horizon. If you have ever unfortunately been exposed to a little red or green 5 milliwatt laser pointer for even a fraction of a second, you know that power level causes extremely uncomfortable reaction, and if exposed for a long period could damage the eye. Proper filtering is critical for safe solar viewing and photography, especially when the Sun is high in the sky.
I have seen people on the internet recommend using 10-stop ND filters to photograph the Sun, e.g. during an eclipse with the Sun high in the sky. This could be VERY DANGEROUS. Many high density filters have higher transmission in the infrared, and this is infrared beyond 1000nm, so your camera and eyes would not see the IR light, but you would be cooking them, potentially damaging your eyesight if looking through the viewfinder, or damaging the camera. Some on the internet advocated the Big Stopper 10-stop filter, saying it is "fairly good IR/UV." See http://breakthrough.photography/product/x4-neutral-density/, which shows the LEE Big Stopper filter transmission zooming up at 700 nm. THAT IS BAD FOR SOLAR VIEWING. The other filter on the page looks better, but the transmission curves only go to 700 nm.
Filter transmission curves to 1000 nm are also not good enough. Many materials become transparent beyond 1000 nm where there is a lot of solar energy. You can't see this light, but solar energy beyond the visible is larger than in the visible, and you can cook your eyes, giving permanent eye damage even if all visible light were blocked!
Second, a 10-stop filter has a transmission of 1/1000. A solar filter needs to block much more light. Typical solar filters transmit only 1/100,000 of the light from the Sun and block IR and UV at least as much as visible.
The heat can also damage cameras, especially if used with larger lenses, and the damage can be greater if your camera is on a tripod staring at the Sun.
I would not use a filter for solar viewing/photography unless 1) I could see the transmission specifications to at least 2000 nm and down to 280 nm, or is a solar filter deemed safe by a reputable manufacturer of solar filters. Table 1 shows the relative spectral energy into the eye. For example, examine the 2nd row: sea level, sun overhead. There is 0.1331 watts/square centimeter incident and 0.41 (41%) is visible light, 55% is infrared (last column of numbers in burnt orange), and almost 4% is UV. According to Espenak and Anderson (2008) and other references, a safe filter density for visible light is Optical Density (OD) of 4.5 or higher. Optical Density is the -log base 10 of the transmission, so transmission,
on a 0 to 1 scale, so:
OD 0.0 = 1.0 transmittance = 100%,
OD 1.0 = 0.1 transmittance = 10%,
OD 2.0 = 0.01 transmittance = 1%,
OD 3.0 = 0.001 transmittance = 0.1%,
OD 4.0 = 0.0001 transmittance = 0.01 %,
OD 4.5 = 0.000031 transmittance = 0.0031 %,
OD 5.0 = 0.00001 transmittance = 0.001 %,
OD 5.5 = 0.0000031 transmittance = 0.00031 %,
OD 6.0 = 0.000001 transmittance = 0.0001 %.
Some references use substantially lower OD (more transmission) in the infrared, but I question if they did the detailed spectral modeling and integration of the spectral energy as a function of wavelength. I computed the integrated energy in several spectral ranges and based on the OD 4.5 visible criterion for the visible, and computed the equivalent IR energy into the eye (bottom rows in Table 1). I recommend querying manufacturers of solar filters for their spectral data to see if they meet the requirements in Table 1. See page 71 of Espenak and Anderson (2008) Figure 4.1 for a spectral plot of various filters. Some commercial filters do not even meet the relaxed criteria, let alone the values in Table 1. The data in Espenak and Anderson's Figure 4.1 appears to originate from publications in the 1990s and may not be indicative of current products.
Note that the recommended UV protection level of OD 4.5 or better in Table 1 is not relaxed even though the relative intensities are low than in the visible. This is because UV breaks chemical bonds, and low intensity means that the rate of bond breaking is smaller, but bonds are still being broken. Personally I want to minimize UV exposure to my eyes, and I recommend you should too. Figures 3a, 3b show spectra of some solar filters.
I have inquired with some solar filter manufacturers for spectral transmission data on their filters. I include information I have received below. Watch here for updates. It should be noted that the graph on page 71 of Espenak and Anderson (2008) is very out of date for current Thousand Oaks Optical products; see Table 1 and Figure 3a for more current data.
Table 1: Relative Solar Energy Versus Wavelength Solar
Irradiance Modeled Relative Energy Fraction 0.3-3.0μm
W/cm2 Ultraviolet
(0.3-0.4μm) Visible
( 0.4 - 0.7 μm) IR
0.7-1.0μm IR
1.0-1.4μm IR
1.4-3.0μm IR
1.0-3.0μm All IR
0.7-3.0μm 0.1331 0.0739 0.3997 0.2321 0.1564 0.1386 0.2948 0.5269 Above Atmosphere 0.0790 0.0374 0.4129 0.2711 0.1639 0.1152 0.2791 0.5502 Sea Level, Zenith angle = 0 degrees 0.0771 0.0357 0.4104 0.2725 0.1655 0.1164 0.2819 0.5544 Sea Level, Zenith angle = 20 degrees 0.0705 0.0300 0.4001 0.2776 0.1713 0.1214 0.2927 0.5703 Sea Level, Zenith angle = 40 degrees 0.0556 0.0183 0.3669 0.2897 0.1885 0.1370 0.3255 0.6151 Sea Level, Zenith angle = 60 degrees 0.0208 0.0013 0.1976 0.2996 0.2695 0.2325 0.5020 0.8013 Sea Level, Zenith angle = 80 degrees 0.0004 0.0000 0.1774 0.3859 0.3125 0.1251 0.4375 0.8228 Sea Level, near horizon, airmass =33 0.0887 0.0407 0.4166 0.2686 0.1614 0.1132 0.2746 0.5431 1 km elevation, Zenith angle = 20 degrees 0.0938 0.0429 0.4175 0.2667 0.1605 0.1129 0.2735 0.5401 5000 feet elevation, Zenith angle = 20 degrees 0.1014 0.0460 0.4169 0.2634 0.1598 0.1144 0.2742 0.5376 8000 feet elevation, Zenith angle = 20 degrees Minimum Recommended Filter Optical density for Safe Solar Viewing 4.5 4.5 4.3 4.1 4.0 Sea Level, Sun high in the sky 4.7 4.6 4.4 4.2 4.1 8000 feet elevation, Sun high in the sky Filter Optical Density 5.7-6 5.7-5.1 5.2-5.5 5.5-6 (6) Thousand Oaks Optical Glass 2+ (Reflective) 2017 5.7-6 5.7-5.1 5.1-5.7 5.7-6.1 (6.1) Thousand Oaks Optical RG Film (Reflective) 2017 5.6-6 5.6-5.0 5.0-4.8 4.7-4.8 (4.6) Thousand Oaks Optical Black Polymer (Absorptive) 2017 5.6
(at green) Orion glass solar filter TAC-ORI-FIL-S70-9 (digital camera measurement) 5-5.5 +/-0.5 5.7-5.0 (5.0-4.4) Orion glass solar filter TAC-ORI-FIL-S70-9 (spectrometer measurement)
Amazon search: Thousand Oaks Optical glass solar filters
Amazon search: Thousand Oaks Optical solarlite solar filters
Amazon search: Thousand Oaks Optical solar filter sheet
Amazon search: Thousand Oaks Optical solar eclipse glasses CE and ISO Certified
Figure 3a. Optical Density of some Thousand Oaks Optical solar filters. Graph from Thousand Oaks Optical, with permission.
Figure 3b. Optical Density of an Orion solar filter, measured by the author. Uncertainty in the baseline is ±0.1 OD through the visible, rising to ±0.5 OD in the UV and ±0.3 OD at 0.88 microns. The value in the green, ~0.53 micron, of an optical density of 5.5 agrees within uncertainty with the digital camera measurement in Table 1. The high frequency variations are due to noise in the measurement. The visible light range is from about 0.4 to 0.7 microns.
Your eye safety is not worth the risk to use any filter that simply looks dark in the visible. Be sure it adequately protects UV and IR.
Measure Your Filter Transmittance
You can test your own filters with a digital camera and a thermometer. I want to stress that this test may not guarantee your filter is safe for solar viewing or solar photography, but it might expose a filter to alert you that it might not be safe.
To measure the transmittance of a filter with a digital camera, simply make an exposure without the filter, and one with the filter in place. Image a scene that has at least a small area of uniform brightness. Choose a location for your tripod-mounted camera in shade viewing a sunlight scene. The shade is important to reduce ambient light on the camera. This is a tough measurement with a brightness difference of about 100,000:1 and you do not want stray light entering the camera. NOTE: this exercise also has lessons for imaging during the eclipse to minimize stray light.
For example, I placed my tripod-mounted camera in shade with the back of the camera facing a dark indoors. I imaged the cloudy sky between the branches in the middle of the scene in Figure 4 and used that small area for measuring brightness in the scene. Selecting a small box in the middle of the scene with clear boundaries (the branches in Figure 4) means accurate placement of a selection box to get an average intensity value in the filtered and non-filtered images.
Make the exposure with no filter at ISO 100, f/16, manual exposure. Choose an exposure time to put the histogram near mid scale on the camera LCD. On the right image (no filter) in Figure 4, the center cloudy area had a luminance value of 170.6 on a 0 to 255 scale. Next put on the solar filter. Cover the camera in a black cloth or mostly opaque blanket or coat. With your head under the blanket viewing the exposure indicator, move the ISO to 1600, and the f-ratio to wide open. I used a 70-200 mm lens at 70 mm. Next adjust the exposure to give close to the same histogram level as the image with no filter. Cover the viewfinder and make an exposure. Once you have obtained the images, toggle between the two, filter and no filter images, viewing the LCD on the back of the camera to see if there is a shift in the histogram position. I look at only the green channel because a color balance shift will cause the blue and red channels to shift relative to green. If you see a shift in the histogram peak, adjust the exposure and try again. Once you have a pair at the same level, within what is possible with your exposure increments, look at the exposures. The example in Figure 4 was:
No filter: ISO 100, f/16, 1/200 second.
Filter: ISO 1600, f/2.8, 4 seconds.
Next compute the exposure change: 1/200 to 4 seconds is 4 / (1/200) = 800. The f/2.8 to f/16 is 5 stops, so 25 = 32. The ISO change is 1600 / 100 = 16. Because the intensities in the two images are close to the same, the transmittance, T, is
T = 1/(800 * 32 * 16) = 1 / 409600 = 0.0000024
The optical density is -log 10 (0.0000024) = 5.6.
You could do a more accurate transmission for all three colors by converting the raw images with a linear output, and including the ratio of the linear intensities of the two images.
Infrared Assessment. There are two crude methods for checking infrared light if you don't have a near infrared camera with response to 3-microns (3000 nm), or an infrared spectrometer. Put your solar filter on a lens, the largest aperture lens the filter can cover. Put the lens on a tripod with no camera attached. Aim the lens at the sun with the filter in place. Hold the palm of your hand at about the position of the focal plane (typically 43 to 47 mm behind the flange of the lens). Do you feel any heat? If you do, especially it it hurts, that is IR light passing through the filter. If you can feel heat, that is not good. Next try putting a thermometer at the focal plane in the position of the sun in the focal plane. Over a minute or so, do you see a rise in temperature? If so, that is bad. If you move the thermometer away from the focal plane and the sun, does the temperature go back down? If so, that is an indicator of heating that might be damaging to your eyes. I personally would not use such a filter.
A solar transmission measurement like that in Figure 4 also shows if the filter changes white balance. The filter used in Figure 4 significantly changes white balance. Make a custom white balance for your camera + solar filter.
Figure 4. Two digital camera exposure, one with no filter (left) and one with a solar filter (right) can be used to measure transmittance and evaluate changes in white balance. Both images used daylight white balance.
Clean Optics are Needed for High-Dynamic Range Solar Photography
If you plan on photographing a solar eclipse, especially the earthshine during a total solar eclipse, this is a very high dynamic range situation, on the order of 30-million to 1 (30,000,000:1). Photographing the landscape with the sun in the frame at sunrise and sunset are also high dynamic range situations. Even tougher is earthshine during the partial phases of a solar eclipse, 10 billion to 1 (10,000,000,000:1). To image high dynamic range situations like these, optics must be very clean and high quality. Dust on lenses, e.g. Figure 5, scatters light, reducing contrast, and can destroy the ability to record and bring out the fainter parts of the scene.
Figure 5. Dust on a lens reduces contrast, compromising image dynamic range. The dust on this lens has been enhanced with light from the side and unsharp mask to show the problem. But a bright sun next to a dark lunar disk is a challenge to image, and dust like this would impact the result.
Sunrise / Sunset
If the Sun is low in the sky, the atmosphere absorbs a lot of the energy. so you can image the Sun without filters. But when the Sun is higher in the sky, the danger mounts. A quick image with a wide angle lens, which has a small aperture will not damage a camera quickly, but as the aperture diameter increases, the risk increases. And by that I do not mean f-ratio.
For example, consider a landscape scene with made with a 15 mm f/2.8 lens versus a 50 mm lens. The key to light collection is not f/ratio, it is lens aperture area. For example, the 50 mm f/1.8 lens has an aperture diameter of 50/1.8 = 27.8 mm, an area of 606 square mm. A 15 mm f/2.8 lens has an aperture diameter of 15/2.8 = 5.36 mm, or an area of 22.5 sq mm. The 50 mm f/1.8 collects 606 / 22.5 = 26.9 times more light. That means about 27 times more heat into the camera and your eye if looking through the viewfinder.
About an hour after sunrise on a cold February morning, I took a 50 mm f/1.8 lens outside (no camera) (Sun quite low at 10 degrees altitude) and focused the Sun on the palm of my hand. Within a few seconds it burned my hand, and 2-hours later that burn spot still hurt. And that was less than 10 seconds of exposure. Put that lens on a camera aimed at the Sun, especially on a tripod, and you can damage the camera electronics and shutter. If you looked through the viewfinder, you can damage your eye.
And even if you image at f/8 or f/16, the camera does not close the aperture until you press the shutter on most modern cameras (film or digital).
When the Sun is low in the sky near sunrise or sunset, the Sun many be photographed without a filter if there is sufficient haze or clouds in the atmosphere as illustrated in Figure 1, 6 and 7. Note that none of those images were made in a clear atmosphere. The haze and clouds add color and interest. Note in Figure 1 the bottom 1/3 of the solar disk is dark and the top 2/3 is already overexposed. When the Sun rises more than a solar diameter above the horizon, it may already be too bright to safely photograph without a filter. An exposure of 1/8000 second, f/8, ISO 100 is about an upper limit for safety, as this is already 20 times brighter than daytime landscape exposures on a clear day with the Sun high in the sky. Even at these levels eye protection must be worn. I was wearing sunglasses that significantly reduced the intensity. Note that most modern cameras keep the lens aperture wide open and only close the aperture when the shutter button is pressed to take the picture.
The image in Figure 7 was obtained just after sunrise and is near the upper limit for safe imaging without a filter. The image illustrates another aspect of solar photography: the Sun is out of focus and the focus is on the nearby eagle.
Figure 6. Hawaiian Sunset. Canon 300mm f/4 lens at f/4, ISO 100, 1/2500 second, -1.3 stops metered.
Figure 7. Tawny Eagle Sunrise, Tanzania. Canon 300 mm f/2.8 L IS lens + 1.4x TC = 420 mm at f/4, 1/6000 sec, ISO 400 (manual exposure). Gallery image with more details.
The Green Flash
Any object beyond the earth, when viewed low in the sky is stretched out into a small spectrum due to differential refraction in our atmosphere. For example, view a bright star near the horizon and it will likely show as a small spectrum (assuming it is not bouncing around a lot from atmospheric turbulence) when viewed in a telescope. Blue is bent the most, so is on top, then green, yellow, orange and red on the bottom. As the object is viewed nearer the horizon, the shorter wavelengths are absorbed and scattered away so we only see the longer wavelengths.
For extended objects like the Sun or Moon, the spectra from adjacent spots on the solar or lunar disk means the spectra overlap. Only at the very top of the Sun or Moon will the spectrum be distinct. Most of the time there is too much haze and the blue and green colors and sometimes even the yellow color is lost due to absorption and scattering. As the atmosphere becomes clearer, the shorter wavelengths may be seen. In exceptionally clear conditions, the last spec of the Sun before dropping below the horizon at sunset, or the first spec that appears at sunrise can appear green. This tiny spot is more like "The Green Blip" rather than a flash. In theory, if the atmosphere were clear enough, a "blue flash" can be seen. Indeed, my father described to me seeing a blue flash, from a Navy ship in the South Pacific.
I have observed thousands of sunrises and sunsets, in all kinds of conditions, from sea level looking over the ocean to 14,000 foot mountain tops overlooking ocean or land. I have seen the green flash many times. Most commonly in Hawaii. From Mauna Kea, Hawaii I have see it with a cloud bank as the horizon line, but that is unusual as cloud banks usually have fuzzy boundaries. Viewing a green flash at sunset one needs to be careful not to expose your eyes to the bright Sun. Wait for the last bit of Sun to drop below the horizon before looking. Binoculars or viewing with a telescope or camera telephoto lens in the viewfinder usually helps.
Photographing the green flash can be challenging to get the exposure correct. If you meter, you stand a chance of overexposing the spot. If manual, there is no time to change as it happens in only a second or so. The image in Figure 8 was done by metering and setting the exposure compensation to -1.3 stops. More recently I tend to use manual and set the exposure just a few seconds before the flash is set to appear.
Figure 8. The Green Flash, Hawaiian Sunset. Canon 300mm f/4 lens at f/8, ISO 100, 1/200 second, -1.3 stops metered.
Solar Disk Photography
Imaging the solar disk to show detail on the disk with telephoto lenses and telescopes can be very dangerous. Such imaging is typically done with the Sun higher in the sky so atmospheric turbulence is lower, and more detail can be recorded on the Sun. But that means the atmosphere is not filtering the sunlight. Danger to your eyes is much greater, and so is danger to equipment. With telephoto lenses and telescopes, fires might be started.
Use only SOLAR FILTERS from reputable dealers and filters that are specified safe for solar viewing. See:
http://www.thousandoaksoptical.com/solar.html
Amazon search: Thousand Oaks Optical glass solar filters
Amazon search: Thousand Oaks Optical solarlite solar filters
Amazon search: Thousand Oaks Optical solar filter sheet
Amazon search: Thousand Oaks Optical solar eclipse glasses CE and ISO Certified
Note: I have limited data on the optical density of these filters (see Table 1).
http://www.telescope.com Orion Solar Filters
Amazon search: Orion solar filters
To image detail on the Sun, one needs a combination of pixel size and focal length. This is called the Plate Scale. See Image Plate Scale for more details and how to compute plate scale for your cameras and lenses. For camera plus lens fields of view, see Field of View. Unless you have extraordinary atmospheric conditions, it is usually difficult to resolve features smaller than about 2-src-seconds. Figures 9 and 10 show possible detail on the Sun from 6 to 2 arc-seconds per pixel. To achieve finer resolution than 2-arc-seconds, photographers usually make a short video and apply software that assembles the best parts of the image using multiple frames.
Figure 9. The Sun at various plate scales on October 24, 2014 at 3, 4, and 6 arc-seconds per pixel. Imaged at 1000 mm f/8 with Orion reflective solar filter, ISO 100, manual exposure at 1/200 second. Gallery image with more details and a larger image.
Figure 10. The Sun on October 24, 2014 at 2-arc-seconds per pixel. Imaged at 1000 mm f/8 with Orion reflective solar filter, ISO 100, manual exposure at 1/200 second. Gallery image with more details and a larger image.
Eclipse Photography
Partial Phases. Even a small part of the Sun is extremely bright. Precautions for partial phases are the same as imaging the full disk of the Sun.
Figure 11. Partial solar eclipse of May 20, 2012. Clouds covered the event but the Sun peaked through the clouds occasionally giving this artistic view. Canon 300 mm f/2.8 L IS lens + 2x TC (600 mm) at ISO 400, 1/13 second, f/6.3 through an Orion reflective solar filter.
Totality Phase. For totality you do not need a filter, but it would be good to have a timer that is set to go off a few seconds before the end of totality so you can put the filters back on.
Figure 12. Total solar eclipse of March 9, 2016 by Arief R. Sandan (Ezagren) (This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 1.0 Generic license.) Image from Wikipedia.
Perhaps the best tool for knowing what the corona of the Sun will look like during a total eclipse is data from the Large Angle and Spectrometric Coronagraph (LASCO) on the SOHO spacecraft. The latest images are located here. The relevant images are the C2 and C3 images:
C3 - a white light coronagraph imaging from 3.7 to 32 solar radii (blue)
Latest image
Latest image C2 - a white light coronagraph imaging from 2 to 6 solar radii (orange)
Latest image
Figure 13. LASCO C3 image: wide field. For comparison, the field of view of a 100 mm lens on a 35 mm full-frame camera is shown.
Figure 14. LASCO C3 image. For comparison, the field of view of a 300 mm lens on a APS-C format camera is shown.
There are many strategies on the internet for exposure times during a totality. The inner corona and solar prominences are quite bright, though much fainter than the solar disk. However, I find much of the information out of date. I see recommendations on focal lengths, but more important is plate scale:
plate scale = 206265 * pixel pitch in mm / focal length in mm (result in arc-seconds per pixel).
The 206265 is the number of arc-seconds in one radian. For more information and tables of plate scales for various pixel sizes and focal lengths see Plate Scale
Examine the image in Figures 9 and 10 and decide on the plate scale you would like for your images. Be aware that imaging finer than 2 arc-seconds per pixel becomes difficult due to atmospheric turbulence, especially during the rapid temperature changes around totality. My choice is close to 2-arc-seconds / pixel and not worse than 3 arc-seconds per pixel.
With today's high resolution digital sensors, typically in the 4 to 5 microns per pixel (0.004 to 0.005 mm), diffraction limits resolution at f-ratios slower about f/8 (e.g. |
the mix the bold Heidelberg Project, an effort to change the lives of East Side residents through street art. Construction is also underway for a new hockey arena, the future home of the Red Wings. Riverside bike paths and oodles of stunning architectural landmarks make Detroit city ready to claim a spot among great U.S. cities—and remain there. Detroit: Why You Need to Go Now (Photo: Thinkstock/iStock)LDS temple to be built in Pocatello
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POCATELLO — The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints announced a new temple will be built in Pocatello.
Church President Thomas S. Monson made the announcement during the Church’s Sunday morning session of the 187th Annual General Conference. No groundbreaking date was announced for the Pocatello Temple.
Monson also announced the pending rededication of the Idaho Falls Temple. The newly renovated temple will be rededicated on June 4.
Idaho has four operating temples (Boise, Idaho Falls, Rexburg and Twin Falls). The Meridian Idaho Temple is nearing completion and will be dedicated on November 19.
With a state population of 1.7 million people, Idaho is home to approximately 450,000 Latter-day Saints, according to Mormon Newsroom.
Also announced on Sunday were temples in Brasilia, Brazil; the greater Manila, Philippines, area; Nairobi, Kenya; and Saratoga Springs, Utah.My Buzzword Series is back!
If you enjoy this article, make sure to to check out the others! Feel free to drop me a request for a topic or other buzzwords in a message here or at lyonfacedblog@gmail.com
While typical media fandoms will divide people based on what they enjoy, usually via genre or franchise, anime has a few extra labels that have become fairly common around forums and discussion boards lately: Casual and Elitist. Though it’s certainly not a new concept to distinguish fans by filing them into a ranking system, anime fans have been hammering pretty hard on these two particular categories for the last few years, especially with the emergence of easily accessible anime, including older out of print shows that were previously difficult to attain and view. While the definitions can change based on who is using the term and whom they are referring to, these labels have been used frequently enough in a decent variation of context for them to be easily definable, as well as showing the effects they have on the community as a whole.
Although a scale of how one person enjoys a hobby in comparison to another is not new, especially in certain ones that particularly garner forms of comradery or competition (see video games,) and considering anime is a medium with a thriving niche community to boot, it’s not entirely surprising that these kinds of labels would sprout sooner or later. What anime brings to the table in a unique way, that is really only comparable to video games, is the intermingling of taste, genre, and personal threshold for certain writing tropes that can be used to score a person against their peers.
When it comes to the interactions of individuals in a group, it is fairly common for the members of that group to compulsively give each other terms to establish a sort of ranking. This can include creating leadership roles, helper roles, or divvying tasks to people based on their skills. In regards to the anime community, it’s not typically structured this way, but rather based on individual taste, attitude towards other’s opinions and opinions about themselves and their own voice amongst other fans. While it may be fairly common for someone to give themselves a label based on their preferred genre, style, or show (Eva-fan, moe-fan, SOL-fan, shounen-fan, etc.) the labels we will be discussing here are rarely taken on by someone with a since of pride or for identification amongst other people.
What is typically considered a Casual anime viewer is fairly self-explanatory, but it’s not necessarily in reference to how frequent anime is watched per day. Casual anime viewers will typically watch shows that are very popular or easy to digest, and are typically understood to avoid particularly challenging anime or shows that are out of their general comfort zone. Typically, those with a sense of what an anime “casual” would watch normally denotes a limited range, pertaining mostly to battle shounen (Dragon Ball franchise, HunterxHunter, Hitman Reborn,) long-running shounen (“The Big 3” or One Piece, Naruto, and Bleach,) ecchi/harem anime (Sword Art Online, Highschool of the Dead, Highschool DxD,) and very well known and discussed shows/films that don’t fit into those categories (Cowboy Bebop, Mirai Nikki, Ghibli films, etc.) While it’s completely fine to like shows under these categories and rarely stray from them, others within the anime community may be pessimistic to what they perceive as a forcibly limited experience and not allowing oneself to really delve into what anime is capable of presenting. In other words, they are only willing to try what they are confident they will enjoy instead of taking a risk on shows they aren’t sure of due to aesthetic, thematic, or stylistic reasons.
It’s fairly easy to label newbies as casuals considering they are just getting into anime and will normally watch the most popular shows, like the slew of new anime fans that poured in at the height of the first season of Attack on Titan. While it might be funny for those who have been into the medium for a few years to pick on these fan, there are a number of people who take these labels seriously, whether they are giving or receiving them. Depending on a new fan’s first impressions with a larger, normally online community, the attitudes and actions of older more experienced fans can push them away from anime as a whole, which isn’t something a community that desires to be inclusive should condone, no matter the taste difference. Normally those who are most guilty of these actions have somewhat of a superiority complex, and that persona has a stereotype of its own: Elitist.
Elitism has two particular definitions that are necessary in order to understand the label properly. An elite group of people would be a selected group that has power or influence, or are meant to represent the best of the best of a community.[1] Elitism represents not only a belief in an elite of a community, but also pride and privilege for those that are a part of that select group.[2] In this case, an elite group for the anime community would probably be those that have seen the largest amount of anime (in terms of show count or time spent watching) as well as having a wide variety of anime that they have tried, depending on the priorities of the fans considering the ranking. Despite the positivity that this kind of term would normally bring when bestowed on another person, the label in the anime community refers to an attitude of being superior to others in terms of anime preferences and taste that is not necessarily well founded. This includes snubbing popular shows only for their popularity and mass appeal, and the rejection of other fans’ ideas or critiques mainly based on their show preference rather than the quality of their arguments. There are some fans who wear the label of elitist ironically in order to make fun of those that carry a superiority complex, though many of them would fall under the unironic usage of the label despite their persistence to the contrary.
In order to accuse someone of being an elitist, they normally will be derogatory towards others and gravitate towards certain shows that they deem to be unique, deep, underrated, and/or thematically unique/having an aesthetic that makes them stand out from most of the anime library. This can include shows that are generally considered to be good in quality, like The Tatami Galaxy, Ping Pong The Animation, and Katanagatari, but it can also refer to shows that have left the community more divided in regards to the show’s merits, like Kara no Kyoukai, the Monogatari series, and Aku no Hana.
The stereotypical go-to show for an elitist to praise is that of Legend of the Galactic Heroes which is a long, multi-season space opera that was originally released during the late 80’s to the late 90’s. It oozes what appeals to the modern anime elitist stereotype: multiple interwoven plot-lines, complex characters, well written drama, its age, and a lot of these qualities making the show typically overlooked by the fan population at large. While this should not reflect poorly on a good show, it is always worth recognizing the kinds of people that an anime will attract. While an anime elitist will praise certain kinds of shows, however, it is typical for them to shit on shows that they dislike, either for their quality or depth in writing, popularity, fanbase, release date, and other qualities. To phrase it another way, elitists tend to be much more critical of shows in terms of their technical qualities, and will most likely go out of their way to both critique shows and post their ideas online. They may also find challenging shows in order to be able to put another feather in their cap in regards to “experience” for the sake of it rather than attempting to broaden their horizons.
What exactly breeds this kind of animosity, though? Why would people in what has traditionally been a niche hobby want to alienate others based on their taste? What can really be gained from it? Well “traditionally” is a decent indicator as to why this might be. While the first breed of anime fans grew up with the likes of Astro Boy and Neo Human Casshan, the difficulty in acquiring other anime that had been licensed by companies in the West, let alone translated into English, was slim to none. Anime would receive its first boom in the early 90’s with the likes of films like Akira becoming popular world wide in the late 80’s and Ghost in the Shell releasing in the mid 90’s, which left a heavy influence on much of Western pop culture, with Akira being primarily responsible for the cyberpunk genre that saturated much of anime at the time. While it’s arguable that the most vocal and common anime fans on the internet are those that grew up in the late 90’s/early 00’s with Toonami and Adult Swim, these spaced out groups of people can easily be attributed to this rise in feelings of superiority. Those that have been familiar with anime longer and have experienced more of the trends and changes that the media has gone through may feel distanced from the newer ones coming in on the backs of Attack on Titan or Sword Art Online, shows that someone who grew up with Voltron or Yu Yu Hakusho might consider beneath their own tastes for various reasons, be it style, writing, setting, or even how it’s animated.
With the rise of the internet came anime that was more easily accessible, and in the age of streaming and pirating, there’s little to wonder why the fanbase is so large. Being an outcast or special for enjoying anime is no longer really something that occurs, and older fans might be bitter about this since not too long ago admitting you liked anime to some people translated to you admitting to liking tentacle porn. Although that ignorant mindset still exists, it’s a lot more difficult to come by nowadays, and the amount of anime being released has also increased exponentially in order to take advantage of this boom in fan population. Older fans may feel ostracized by the anime coming out now not holding the same kinds of themes, styles, or influences that the ones they love the most did, it reflects poorly on them when they lash out at those that enjoy what is currently being released. Sure, not all that tote the elitist mindset love old anime necessarily, but they do have a similar mindset towards the newer fans that cosplay as Kirito or the Scouting Regimen soldiers at cons and seem to be noncritical about what they love. On the flip side, casual fans might criticize others on taking anime too seriously and not letting themselves enjoy anything without pointing out flaws and inconsistencies, or being just as narrow-minded as they accuse casuals of being while seeking out things they dislike just to have the ability to make fun of it.
The in-fighting in the community is inevitable, though it’s unfortunate that it misses the point of enjoying a hobby in the first place: people enjoying things in their own way. Their values in regards to that hobby is based on what they personally consider to be the most important aspects of that hobby, and their tastes and decisions will be molded by it. If someone enjoys escapism anime or shows that allow them to be immersed in a big world with lots of characters like One Piece, what’s the problem? If someone else enjoys watching poor quality shows every now and then in order to appreciate their favorites more highly, is there anything wrong with that? Someone loving Love Live! and Code Geass isn’t necessarily going to hate G Gundam or Tenchi Muyo! just because they’re older as long as they’re willing to be open-minded. An older fan’s love for traditional animation and the feeling of older anime shouldn’t be used as an excuse to shut themselves off and berate new-comers; it is an opportunity for them to show what they grew up with and, in time, be willing to watch new shows that they can find appealing for the same reasons the shows they loved growing up did. Anime fans have such a great wealth of shows to choose from and explore, as well as peers that they already have something in common with, that they’re only hurting themselves when they try to categorize some being better or worse than others.
While it’s likely that we will never really be rid of labels like these in anime (or video games, for that matter) it’s important not to let yourself be ruled by them. These kinds of categories don’t mean anything beyond the person using them, and while it’s generally important to understand why they are being used, refraining from using them greatly benefits not only individuals, but the community as a whole. All of anime should be explored and enjoyed, and the discussions generated from differing opinions makes the community better and open, which reflects positively on all of us.
Banner source from here.
Sources:
[1] – Elite definition – Dictionary.com
[2] – Elitism definition – Dictionary.com
Thanks to my friend Ntaig for helping me edit this article.In a large stand mixer bowl, with mixer fitted with the dough hook attachment, stir milk, water, yeast and sugar together. Let it sit for 5-10 minutes to proof the yeast. If mixture is foamy, then you can continue. (If nothing happens, then odds are your yeast is no good, or you killed it with hot water and milk! Try to get your water and milk to be warm to the touch, like baby bath water.)
Stir in salt, egg, butter, pumpkin puree, cinnamon, nutmeg, and half of the flour and mix. With mixer on, pour in remaining flour bit by bit until dough pulls away from the sides and is sticky but when touched doesn’t really stick to your hands. (For me, that was 2 tablespoons shy of 3 cups of flour.) Once you reach this stage, turn mixer on for 4-5 minutes to knead the dough.
Then, lightly grease the dough and bowl and cover it with a tea towel and allow dough to rise for 1 hour. Stick it somewhere warm and draft-free.
Lightly grease a bundt or angel food cake* pan with non stick cooking spray and set aside.
Create a coating station by placing sugar and cinnamon together in a small bowl and melting the butter in another bowl. Set both bowl near your work surface. Punch down dough and remove it from bowl to your work station. Cut dough into small pieces about 1 tablespoon in size. Roll in butter, coat in cinnamon sugar and place into the prepared pan. Repeat until no dough remains. If there is extra butter or sugar, pour it over the top of the dough pieces in the pan. Cover pan with plastic wrap and let it rise another hour in a warm spot in your kitchen.
Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.
When it’s finished rising, bake monkey bread for 25 minutes or until the top begins to brown slightly. Remove from oven and cool for 20 minutes.
While monkey bread is cooling, prepare glaze by mixing powdered sugar, maple syrup, half-and-half and vanilla together in a small bowl until smooth.
Remove warm pull apart pieces onto a serving dish and drizzle with glaze. Serve warm.
*I used an angel food cake pan that had a removable bottom and some of the butter and sugar mixture leaked out of the bottom and made a mess of my oven! If you are going to use a similar pan, make sure to place the pan on a baking sheet, or wrap the bottom of the pan with foil.Apple and Amazon have agreed to end an exclusivity agreement that made Audible the only seller of audiobooks inside of iTunes.
The agreement had been in place for over a decade, since 2003, but came to an end earlier this month following complaints from German publishers and investigations by European antitrust regulators, who were concerned that the agreement was stifling competition and raising prices.
Regulators began investigating in late 2015. It appears all investigations are being suspended in light of the companies’ decisions to end the exclusivity agreement.
The change is “likely to improve competition”
“With the deletion of the exclusivity agreement, Apple will now have the opportunity to purchase digital audiobooks from other suppliers,” Andreas Mundt, president of Germany’s antitrust agency, said in a statement. “This will enable a wider range of offer and lower prices for consumers.”
In a statement, Audible confirmed that it had removed the exclusivity provision in its agreement with Apple, and added that it will continue to offer audiobooks through iTunes. Apple did not respond to a request for comment.
The European Commission said it welcomed the agreement. It said the change is “likely to improve competition” for audiobook distribution in Europe — though, since the agreement applied elsewhere, it could have the same effect globally, too.
Audible has dominated the audiobook market for years now. And with iTunes being one of the key places that consumers go to buy audiobooks, the agreement could have put serious limitations on the industry. Publishers either had to go through Audible, or miss out on a major storefront. They’ll now be able to go directly to Apple for distribution.
Update January 19th, 11:15AM ET: This story has been updated with comment from Audible.When a sick 10-month old baby was turned away EIGHT times from hospital, her mum needed to do something that would make doctors sit up and listen - so she invoked a powerful health protocol called Ryan's Rule.
A traumatised Gold Coast mum has opened up about her recent experience at a Queensland hospital, that saw her and very sick 10-month old daughter, Arabella, being sent home a total of EIGHT times before anyone took her concerns seriously.
Trust a mother’s intuition
Lili Curtis visited Gold Coast University Hospital eight times over the course of 17 days, each time desperate to get the medical attention she believed her daughter needed. And each time she was turned away because Arabella was apparently not sick enough to be there. But on her final visit, Lili’s gut instinct took control.
She knew, as all mother’s do, that something was very wrong with her daughter and she refused to take no for an answer. Lili exercised her right to invoke Ryan’s Rule, a Queensland-only health protocol that allows people who do not think their health concerns are being taken seriously enough to call upon extra help.
It was a decision that ultimately got to the bottom of little Arabella’s troubles. After the head of paediatrics was called in to review Arabella’s case, she was diagnosed with a form of bronchitis and treated with a long course of antibiotics. At a follow-up appointment, Arabella was referred to a lung specialist in Brisbane, as her moist cough had been dragging on for more than four weeks and was showing no signs of clearing.
It was only thanks to Ryan’s Rule that Lili was able to take matters into her own hands. Without this protocol, who knows what the outcome would have been for this little bub. Arabella is one of the lucky ones - unlike toddler Ryan Saunders, the brave little soul whose tragic story paved the way for the implementation of this protocol that honours a parent’s indepth knowledge of their own children.
The story behind Ryan’s Rule is a sad one
Before Ryan Saunders got sick, he was just an ordinary Central Queensland kid. But in 2007, when he was incorrectly diagnosed with mumps at Emerald Hospital, things deteriorated before his heartbroken parents knew what hit them.
When Ryan’s conditions worsened he was transferred to Rockhampton Base Hospital, to try and find out the root of his pain. Doctors did not discover that little Ryan had a serious bacterial infection for another 24 hours, and treated him solely with regular doses of Panadol.
On 26 September 2007, 30 hours after being admitted to the hospital in Rockhampton, little Ryan died as a result of toxic shock, leaving his parents and his hometown of Emerald in a state of utter despair and disbelief.
Some four years later in 2011, the then-state coroner, Michael Barnes, handed down his findings on the case. This is how The Courier Mail reported on the judgement:
In his coronial inquest findings delivered today, Mr Barnes said director of paediatrics at Rockhampton Base Hospital, Dr Peter Roper “repeatedly made a serious error of judgment” when he declined to conduct blood tests, despite being urged by a number of junior doctors to do so.
“When a CRP test was finally done it demonstrated a highly infective process was underway but by that stage Ryan could not be saved,” Mr Barnes said in his findings.
“The evidence indicates that, had the same test been done the night before or immediately after the ward round, the outcome may have been different.”
Even though the doctor in question was cleared of unsatisfactory professional conduct by the Medical Board of Queensland, Michael Barnes was still very critical of the quality of care that Ryan received. As a result, a complete review was ordered of Queensland Health procedures.
Ryan’s Rule was implemented across Queensland to ensure that there would be no more children turned away, misdiagnosed or left untreated. Ryan’s Rule is now a right that every parent across the state has.
On the Queensland Government Health website, Ryan’s Rule is explained as follows:
Ryan Saunders was nearly three years old when he tragically died in hospital. His death was found to be, in all likelihood, preventable. Staff did not know Ryan as well as his mum and dad knew him. When Ryan’s parents were worried he was getting worse they didn’t feel their concerns were acted upon in time. Ryan’s Rule has been developed to provide patients of any age, families and carers with another way to get help.
Ryan’s Rule will never bring little Ryan Saunders back. But we hope, with hands on our hearts, that Ryan’s parents know their little boy’s death brought about some radical change in Queensland hospitals, and we pray that other states will soon adopt this potentially lifesaving protocol too.By Leo Babauta
A craftsman masters his trade by repeated practice, with care and continual learning, with devotion to the purpose.
It takes the same kinds of things to master the craft of discipline:
Repeated practice
Single-minded devotion to the purpose
Continual learning
Care
I’ve been giving some thought to what it takes to master the craft of discipline, and have been following some practices that I’ve found extremely useful:
Do the task even when I’m not in the mood. Procrastination is such a common problem that I believe it to be universal. The main reason we procrastinate, without admitting it to ourselves, is, “I’m not in the mood to do this.” The task is probably difficult or confusing, and so it’s uncomfortable, and you’d rather go to things that are easier, that you’re good at. You’d rather clean your house or trim your nails or check your email than start writing the next chapter of your book. But if we wait until we’re in the mood, we’ll never master life. Instead, practice this: set yourself to do a task, and start doing it, no matter what. Don’t let yourself check email, or social media, or go clean something, or do a quick chore or errand. Sit down, and do it. It will be uncomfortable. You can still do it even if it’s uncomfortable. Exercise even when you really don’t want to. Yes, this is the same thing as procrastinating — we put off exercise for many reason, usually because it’s hard and we’d rather do something easier. But I look at it as something I need to do to take care of myself, like eating healthy food and brushing my teeth. You wouldn’t skip brushing your teeth for a week, would you? Your teeth would rot. Similarly, skipping exercise for a week rots your body. Instead, practice this: tell yourself you’re going to do a workout/run at a certain time, and then show up. Do it even if you’re tired or feeling lazy. Ignore the lazy feeling, the distractedness, and suck it up. You’ll find that you feel great for having done it. Either way, you’ll start to master doing things that are uncomfortable. Sit with a little hunger. We tend to panic when we get hungry, and run for the nearest junk food. What I’ve learned is that you can be hungry and it’s not the end of the world. We don’t always need to be stuff and satisfied with crazy delicious food. Instead, practice this: don’t eat if you’re not hungry. When you get hungry, sit there for a moment and turn to the hunger, and see how it really feels. It’s not so bad. This practice isn’t to make you starve yourself (not great), but to show you that a little discomfort won’t ruin your life, and that you can make conscious choices about when and how much to eat. Talk to someone about something uncomfortable. We avoid difficult conversations, because they’re not fun. They’re scary, uncomfortable. But that leads to all kinds of problems, including resentment, a worse relationship, worsening of the situation, and more. Instead, practice this: When you have a problem with someone, instead of replaying the problem in your head, talk to the person in a gentle, compassionate way. Try to see the situation from their point of view, not just yours. Bring it up with a simple, “Hey, can we talk about ___?” And tell them how you feel, without accusing them or making them feel defensive. Ask them how they feel about it. Approach it with the attitude of finding a solution that works for both of you, that preserves your relationship. What you learn from this is that pushing through this uncomfortable situation will resolve a lot of difficult problems. Stick to a habit. One of the hardest things people face with changing a habit is sticking with a habit after their initial enthusiasm dies down. It’s easy to do a habit for a week — but what about pushing through the second and third weeks? It gets a lot easier after those weeks, but a lot of people drop the habit too early. Instead, do this: Commit to one small habit for two months. Make it just 5 minutes a day, and do it at the same time each day, having as many reminders set up as possible so you don’t forget. Track the habit on a calendar or log, so you see your progress. Show up every day and do it. You’ll start to master the formation of new habits, which will open up all kinds of changes. Turn toward the problem. When we have a problem, often we avoid even thinking about it. Think about whether you have one of these problems: you’ve been avoiding exercise, you’re overweight, you’ve been avoiding a major project, you put off dealing with your finances, you’re unhappy about some situation in your life. Often these are uncomfortable situations, and we’d rather not face them. Instead, practice this: See the obstacle as the path. Don’t avoid the obstacle (the difficult situation, the problem you fear), don’t go around it, don’t ignore it. Turn toward it. See it. Acknowledge it. Figure out what’s going on. Find out how to navigate within the problem. You’ll find that it’s not easy, but not as bad as you thought, and you’ll be happy you did it. And more importantly: you’ll get stronger from facing the problem. See the good in the activity. Discipline is really learning that you don’t need some incredible reward — there’s inherent good in just doing the activity. For example, if you’re going to eat healthy food, you don’t need to make it taste like your favorite dessert or fried food (rewarding food) — you can just enjoy the activity of eating fresh, healthy food. If you’re going to exercise, it doesn’t need to give you a flat stomach or nice arms — you can just enjoy the activity. Practice this: No matter what the activity, find the good in doing it, and the activity becomes the reward. Meditate. People think meditation is difficult or mystical, but it’s fairly simple. Practice this: Take 2 minutes to sit still, and focus on your breath, noticing when your mind wanders and gently returning to the breath. There are lots of other ways to meditate, but this is the simplest, and it shows you how to watch the urges that come up, and see that you don’t need to act on those urges.
You might not be good at these at first, but that’s why you practice.
You’ll learn, through these practices, to get good at discomfort, to show up even when you don’t feel like it, to stick to something even when the enthusiasm wanes, to not act on your urges right away, to enjoy any activity as a reward in and of itself.
Does life need to be pure discipline and no fun? Of course not. But if you can enjoy any activity, in the moment, why not learn to master something that will pay off for you in the long run?Model and emissions
We used the global ECHAM5/MESSy atmospheric chemistry (EMAC)–general circulation model at a spatial resolution of T106L31, that is, with a spherical spectral truncation of T106, which corresponds to a quadratic Gaussian grid of approximately 1.1° × 1.1° latitude × longitude (∼110 km at the Equator), with 31 vertical hybrid terrain-following and pressure levels up to 10 hPa in the lower stratosphere. The core atmospheric model is the 5th generation European Centre Hamburg (ECHAM5, version 5.3.01) general circulation model33. EMAC includes sub-models that represent tropospheric and stratospheric processes and their interaction with oceans, land and human influences34,35,36. It uses the Modular Earth Submodel System (MESSy, v.1.09) to link submodels that describe emissions, atmospheric chemistry, aerosol and deposition processes; the results have been tested against in situ and remote sensing observations37,38,39,40,41,42,43,44,45,46,47,48,49.
Following up on Lelieveld et al.21, who focused on the year 2005, we present results for the years 2010, 2025 and 2050, applying monthly varying emission data from Doering et al.50, also used by Pozzer et al.32. The data are from the Emission Database for Global Atmospheric Research (EDGAR), prepared by the Joint Research Centre of the European Commission in Ispra (Italy) at a resolution of 0.1° latitude and longitude50,51. For the year 2010 we performed sensitivity calculations in which seven main emission categories have been removed one by one to compute the impact of these sources and to estimate their contributions to air quality control and related mortality. We first calculated the apportionment of source categories to the total PM 2.5 and O 3 concentrations and then applied the computed fractions to the total mortalities attributable to air pollution.
The categories are: (1) ‘Natural’ (NAT), mostly desert dust but locally also sea salt and dimethyl sulphide derived sulphate, some nitrate and ammonium from natural sources, volcanic sulphur emissions and organics released by the vegetation; (2) ‘Industry’ (IND), including iron and steel, chemical, pulp and paper, food, solvent and other manufacturing sectors, oil refineries and fuel production; (3) ‘Land transport’ (TRA), that is, road and non-road transport on land; (4) ‘Residential and commercial energy use’ (RCO), referring to local and commercial energy use from small combustion sources for space heating and cooking, including diesel generators and biofuel use; (5) ‘Power generation’ (PG), that is, public energy production by fossil fuel fired power plants; 6) ‘Biomass burning’ (BB), that is, tropical forest fires and deforestation, savanna and shrub fires, middle and high latitude forest and grassland fires, and agricultural waste burning; and (7) ‘Agriculture’ (AGR), dominated by ammonia emissions associated with the use of fertilizers and domesticated animals. Not included in these categories are air traffic and shipping. We find that the removal of individual source categories leads to a near-linear response in the modelled contributions to mortality, indicated by the small scaling corrections needed (about 10%) to add up to 100% in the country level contributions, that is, in Table 2 and Extended Data Table 3.
The BaU scenarios for 2025 and 2050 assume that energy and food consumption are largely determined by population growth and economic development, which in turn drive air pollution sources based on current legislation and technology32,50,51. This represents a pessimistic, but plausible future prospect. Comparable to Shindell et al.52, and different from the Representative Concentration Pathways of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change53, the BaU scenario differentiates between air pollution and climate change mitigation measures, as the latter typically require relatively long-term and structural societal changes. The scenarios used here are based on projections for energy and fuel computed by the Prospective Outlook for the Long-term Energy System (POLES) model51,54 and for agriculture, land-use and waste projections by the Integrated Model to Assess the Global Environment (IMAGE)55.
The population development in the BaU scenario is consistent with our mortality calculations, as described below, projecting 9 billion people in 2050. For additional details we refer to Pozzer et al.32 and references therein. While BaU projections should not be conceived as ‘predictions’, especially for 2050, they represent the current trajectory into the future and may be considered a worst-case scenario, to explore what can be expected if air quality policies and health care remain as they are today. Note that these results are not sensitive to differential toxicity assumptions as the total mortality induced by PM 2.5 is not affected, only the attribution to source categories. For the future scenarios we used the baseline mortalities for 2010. Hence the implicit assumption is that smoking habits, diets and health care remain unchanged.
The model meteorology has been forced by pre-calculated sea surface temperatures and ice coverage based on a 10-year climatology (2000–2009) adopted from the AMIP-II database56,57. The model was applied in atmospheric chemistry-transport mode by switching the coupling between radiation and atmospheric chemistry off, so that atmospheric composition changes do not influence the model dynamics32. This is justified considering that air quality projections are primarily driven by emissions rather than climate change58,59, even though natural sources, biomass burning and deposition processes can be influenced by climatic conditions20,59,60,61,62. For example, Fang et al.62 project a 4% climate change effect for PM 2.5 related mortality and less than 1% for O 3 related mortality by the end of the 21st century.
Although our model resolution does not resolve small-scale heterogeneities in the urban environment, a comparison with satellite and ground-based remote sensing observations indicates that this is not critical. The exposure response functions used to calculate mortalities are based on annual mean concentrations for which these heterogeneities largely average out. This is illustrated by Extended Data Fig. 3, which compares a simulation for the year 2010 with ground-based AERONET remote sensing data of aerosol optical depth (AOD) (http://aeronet.gsfc.nasa.gov). Since our model approximates though not replicates meteorological conditions for the year 2010, and local flows near the AERONET stations cannot be captured, substantial scatter around the ideal 1:1 comparison is expected. The comparison shows that the model mean error and bias are small (the latter absent for the annual mean), and the correlation good. We have also performed a comparison between MODIS (satellite) and AERONET data of AOD, leading to similar spread and correlations, the latter also increasing through averaging (not shown).
The primary differences in the relationships between emissions and exposures for ground level sources, such as traffic, in comparison with elevated sources, such as power plants, have been accounted for in our model43. The relative impacts of secondary particles (such as sulfates and nitrates) from these sources are expected to be realistically simulated. On the other hand, models such as ours cannot capture the fine structure of near-source gradients in ultrafine PM along transportation corridors. Because of this our estimates of the relative impacts of urban traffic and urban sources of primary fine particles may be biased downward, though only to the extent that ultrafine PM is in fact responsible for the mortality seen in cohort studies. As discussed above, the relative toxicity of various constituents of ambient PM 2.5 has not been well established. Our sense is that the sensitivity study, allowing for carbonaceous particles to be five times as toxic as sulfates, nitrates and crustal material, is adequate to cover any potential differences in the relationships between emissions, exposure and differential toxicity of traffic related PM 2.5.
To investigate if our model reproduces urban concentration increments of PM 2.5 and O 3, that is, comparing the urban background with the rural environment, we compare our results with recent case studies63,64,65,66,67. For Paris and London our model computes urban PM 2.5 increments of 18% and 2%, respectively, consistent with the measurements and highly resolved model calculations. Our model calculations suggest that the leading sources of PM 2.5 in Paris are residential energy use, agriculture and traffic. Agricultural emissions (NH 3 /NH 4 +) are transported from the rural environment and contribute to PM 2.5 in the city. For London we calculate that PM 2.5 is most strongly influenced by agriculture, traffic and power generation. The limited contribution by land traffic and the importance of atmospheric transport for air quality in London have been corroborated by observational analysis63. For Beijing we calculate an urban PM 2.5 increment of 5%, consistent with the conclusion by Zhang et al.67 that regional |
Natural World Heritage of UNESCO in 1972, the Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage UNESCO, 2003, the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, 2008, the Declaration and Programme of Action adopted at the World Conference Against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance in 2001; the Ibero-American Cultural Charter of 2006, the Agenda 21 for culture, and the Declaration of Bogotá – First Meeting of the Andean Council of Ministers of Culture and Cultures, 2012, and other statements issued by the Ministers and High Authorities of Culture of Mercosur, the Andean Community of Nations (CAN), the Bolivarian Alternative for the Arnéricas (ALBA) and the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR) in their regular meetings;
AND CONSIDERING:
The need to establish a new international economic order and a new financial architecture, in order to cope with multiple current crises and to ensure funding mechanisms for sustainable development;
The cultural character of sustainability is intrinsic to the concept; the very notion of “support” emerges from a cultural milieu and reproduces itself socially from a consensus of values among different social groups, each group being imbued with its symbolic baggages, historical heritage and its relations with the territory and environment;
The UNESCO document, “The Power of Culture for the Development”, states that: “The culture, in all its dimensions, is a key component of sustainable development”;
The conviction that, beyond its traditional role in the promotion and protection of arts and heritage, cultural policy must exert transformative force, promoting interculturalism, the full exercise of cultural rights, social inclusion and good relations, as well as the strengthening the ties of people and communities with the territory and the cohesion and convergence of the distinct social groups;
The transversality and the strategic role of culture in building a response to the challenges of sustainability and human development with equity and social inclusion;
The recognition of the diversity of cultural expressions as an essential condition for sustainable development for the benefit of present and future generations;
The need for coordination of efforts to deepen the dialogue between countries of the region with a view to recovery of culture as an indivisible dimension of sustainable development;
The need to actualize these principles, in the city of Rio de Janeiro, in June 2012, of the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development, known as Rio +20;
AGREE TO
1.Request that the negotiating authorities of the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development treat, in its final document, culture as the fourth pillar of sustainable development; thus recognizing culture as the organizing dimension and generator of balance between the three pillars already acknowledged — the economic, the social, and the environmental;
2. Promote the concept of “Living Well” as a perspective of sustainability — traditionally expressed as Sumak Kawsay, in the Quechua language; Sumaq Qarnana, in the Aymara language, and Teko Pora, in the Goaran language. This form of citizen ethics, was born of and organized through the articulation of dynamic and sustainable systems of economic, political, social, cultural and environmental, that have aimed to ensure the reproduction of life within an intergenerational horizon;
3. Emphasize that respect for cultural diversity and the promotion of interculturalism are indispensable for the consolidation of peace and global security by supporting the democratic coexistence with fair and mutual respect among peoples;
4. Affirm cultural rights as part of the human rights and ensure their full enjoyment, as well as the democratization of the cultural processes;
5. Promote, at the national and regional level, articulated and transversal public policies focused on protection, promotion and safeguarding of the cultural and natural heritage, recognizing them as both a heritage and an indispensable link between past, present and future;
6. Underscore the need to start a negotiation for a Universal Declaration of the RIghts of Nature, in which it is recognized that Nature is subject to cycles and the evolutionary process of humanity;
7. Highlight the importance of the social dimension of a culture for sustainable development, which includes effective in civic education, the exercise of democratic values and opportunities of access to information, knowledge and artistic creation, as well as the broad freedom of expression;
8. Reaffirm culture in its economic dimension, as it induces the creation, innovation, entrepreneurship and generation of wealth and employment opportunities and considering that the cultural production processes should enhance the local specialties and traditional knowledge;
9. Develop joint actions aimed at strengthening the creative economy of the region, fostering the exchange of experiences and policies that promote the economic potential of cultural communities and different creative territories for value innovation, inclusion, sustainability and cultural diversity;
10. Recognize, in the same way, the environmental component of the cultural diversity of South American people, that demonstrates the preservation and legitimacy of indigenous peoples over their own territories and modes of interaction with the ecosystem in which they live, as well as preservation and protection of tangible and intangible heritage of the region;
11.Guarantee protection, recognition and appreciation of knowledge from the cultures of indigenous peoples of South America, people of African descent and the diverse communities of our countries;
12. Pursue the effectiveness of regional cooperation efforts with regard to the strategic role of culture and the challenges of sustainability, taking into consideration the construction of more equal societies, conscious and inclusive;
13. Develop joint initiatives to strengthen the transversal character of culture and its relationship with other public policies that contribute to poverty eradication and promotion of Living Well;
14. To continue, with the support and participation of different sectors of civil society, the debate on culture and sustainability beyond the period of the UN Conference on Sustainable Development.
The Ministers and High Authorities expressed their commitment to forward this Declaration to national government bodies involved in the official negotiation process of the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development, as well as to promote it in multilateral forums in which they participate.
Signed in Sao Paulo, on April 14, 2012.Vikings are awesome, as are the myths of pre-Christian Scandinavia that come with them. There are giant hammers, eight-legged horses and Ragnarok, in which the universe is kicked to death by fire and the bad guys pilot a ship made of corpse fingernails. It's like one giant, eternal '80s metal album cover. But for many people -- those who feel a deep connection to Norse culture, want to join a prison gang or are just angry at their parents for making them get up early for church when they were young -- Scandinavian paganism is alive and well, known as Odinism or Asatru by modern followers.
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Above: Everything we know about Vikings that doesn't also involve Dungeons and Dragons.
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The Reality:
You're begging us now, "Please, Cracked, don't tell us that all of that stuff about Thor and his hammer, Odin, Loki and other Marvel properties are horseshit made up to sell some books!" Unfortunately, our dedication to the truth is only seconded by our dedication to killing your dreams. Pretty much everything we know about Scandinavian paganism comes from the Eddas, two books compiled in the 13th century by a guy with the hilarious, Muppet-like name of Snorri Sturluson.
Aww, he looks like a Zoloft commercial.
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But wait, the 13th century's still pretty old, right? Yes, but there's a problem here: Snorri wrote the books several hundred years after Scandinavia had been Christianized. Oh, and Snorri himself wasn't exactly a true believer: he declared that the "gods" he was writing about were just dead heroes who got talked up later.
Some random hobo ended up memorialized as Odin.
That would be bad enough, but Snorri's collections also contained elements that seem to be cribbed from the hot new religion, like Odin sacrificing himself by hanging on a tree and getting pierced by a spear. In fact, some buzzkill scholars have even suggested that Ragnarok itself is no more than a retelling of the end of paganism under Christianity, or even a co-opted version of the Biblical book of Revelation. Basically, Snorri was working at the end of a 200-year-old religious telephone game, and we've just got no way of knowing what was in the original version and what was the result of one guy saying, "You know what religion needs? More giant hammers."
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For more modern ideas that were here before us, check out 11 Modern Technologies That Are Way Older Than You Think and 6 Depraved Sexual Fetishes That Are Older Than You Think.
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Do you have an idea in mind that would make a great article? Then sign up for our writers workshop! Do you possess expert skills in image creation and manipulation? Mediocre? Even rudimentary? Are you frightened by MS Paint and simply have a funny idea? You can create an infograpic and you could be on the front page of Cracked.com tomorrow!Many Republicans [particularly those up for re-election next year] say privately they would appreciate the opportunity to move beyond the Bush administration, and that Cheney's outspokenness does not help their cause. But publicly, few are willing to kick Cheney to the curb.
“One of the things the media could do-- some of the media-- is to move the debate off Sarah Palin and Rush Limbaugh. This is probably not the future of the Republican Party."
Sunday's TV pundits laid out two very distinct visions of how the Republican Party can try to stop its slide into oblivion. Cheney, declaring that one of the last of the nationally respected members of his party, Colin Powell, isn't even a Republican anymore, opted for Door #1 : continuing to transform the GOP into the intolerant, small-minded, regionally-based party of Rush Limbaugh. The party's last presidential candidate weakly, almost apologetically, piped up that Republicans have to reach out to people beyond the base, "a handful of uber-wealthy patricians who want to protect their inherited privilege at any cost... and a big mass of pork-rind eating, truck nutz sporting, bitter sons of Jefferson Davis."Although most Republican Party elders have been pushing 3 younger right-wing extremists as "the future"-- Paul Ryan (R-WI), Eric Cantor (R-VA) and Kevin McCarthy (R-CA)-- the party is still seen as mired in the past and stuck with the Bush Regime albatross around its neck. Cheney has pushed himself forward as the party's leading voice, defending the previous administration and its failed policies, especially torture, and taking on the unseemly and unprecedented role of viciously attacking the new president.And then you've got the increasingly bloody knife fight between Romney, Huckabee, Gingrich and Palin, each vying to be the Republican nominee for 2012-- in case something goes terribly wrong and the party can stage a come-back. It must have been a tough day to get relevant guests today so John King dragged out Bill Bennett's carcass to pontificate on how Sarah Palin isn't the future of the GOP-- and neither is Limbaugh.He was pushing Ryan, Mike Pence, Pyush Jindal, Jon Kyl and David Petraeus. (Donna Brazile was pushing Meghan McCain: "She’s refreshing, she’s honest and she’s a face that could really help them galvanize young people and independents.”)
Labels: Republican image make-overLouis Theroux fans hoping to watch My Scientology Movie in Ireland look set for disappointment as the country’s blasphemy laws threaten to keep it from cinemas.
The controversial film is directed by John Dower and sees Theroux “investigate and attempt to get under the skin of the holy grail of stories: America’s homegrown religion created by a science fiction writer and structured like a corporation… with Tom Cruise”.
It is being distributed in the UK by Altitude, the company behind Oscar-winning Amy Winehouse documentary Amy, but as of yet there is no Irish distributor and Graham Spurling, managing director of Irish independent cinema chain Spurling Group Cinemas, has shared his doubts that it will be getting one.
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Mr Spurling was hoping to run a live Q&A event in October, but Ireland’s 2009 Defamation Act forbids “publication or utterance of blasphemous matter” against any religion, with a fine of €25,000 (£21,700) for those who breach it. He told Irish lifestyle website Joe that distributors are wary of screening it because they would not be protected from any potential legal action.
There is a chance that distributors might attempt to use a loophole that allows for the screening of works with “genuine literary, artistic, political, scientific or academic value”, but the financial risk could well be deemed too high.
Earlier this year, Hamish Moseley, head of distribution for Altitude, described My Scientology Movie as an “incredibly funny, fascinating and at times unnerving insight into the infamous and controversial religion” with Theroux “bringing his inimitable approachable style to the big screen where it feels at home with the subject matter”.
Speaking about the film, Theroux said: “More than 10 years ago, I approached the Church to see if they might let me in to make a documentary. I thought I might be able to bring a sense of nuance and perspective to people’s understanding of a faith that has been much ridiculed.
“Just as I have done with other non-mainstream stories, I hoped to see it from the inside and make a human connection with its clerics and congregants. But I was repeatedly turned down.”
Created by US author L Ron Hubbard in 1954, Scientology is described as “a religious system based on the seeking of self-knowledge and spiritual fulfilment through graded courses of study and training”. It is officially recognised as a religion in the UK, the US and Australia among other countries, but has been labelled a cult by various authorities and criticised for alleged brainwashing, preferential treatment of celebrities and financial exploitation. The Church of Scientology vehemently denies these accusations.
Scientology has proved a stumbling block in Ireland before, when Alex Gibney’s 2015 documentary about the controversial religion, Going Clear, failed to secure an Irish release over libel claims.
The Church of Scientology put Theroux and his crew under surveillance and threatened them with legal action throughout the making of My Scientology Movie. It sparked a huge reaction when it screened at the Edinburgh and Tribeca film festivals this year and is set for release on 14 October.Please enable Javascript to watch this video
James Garner, the understated, wisecracking everyman actor who enjoyed multi-generational success on both the small and big screens, has died. He was 86.
Police, who were called to his residence Saturday night in Los Angeles, say he died of natural causes.
Garner starred in hit TV series almost 20 years apart -- "Maverick" in the late 1950s and "The Rockford Files" in the 1970s.
He also had a notable film career, starring in such classics as "Sayonara" (1957), "The Great Escape" (1963), "The Americanization of Emily" (1964), "Grand Prix" (1966) and "Victor/Victoria" (1982), as well as the TV movies "My Name Is Bill W." (1989) and "Barbarians at the Gate" (1993). More recent films included "Space Cowboys" (2000) and "The Notebook" (2004).
He was fiercely independent, challenging the studios on both "Maverick" and "Rockford" when he felt he wasn't being treated fairly. He sued studios twice and won both times.
"The industry is like it always has been. It's a bunch of greedy people," he told The Los Angeles Times in 1990.
Garner was given a Screen Actors Guild Life Achievement Award in 2004. The actors' union head issued a statement about his death Sunday.
"James Garner was the definition of the smooth, dashing leading man, but his talents were so much more than skin deep," SAG-AFTRA President Ken Howard said. "He was a hard worker who dedicated himself wholly to whatever he set out to accomplish, whether it was serving his country or performing for the camera."
A versatile star
He was a valued and convincing pitchman -- in his 1970s and '80s commercials for Polaroid cameras, he had such good rapport with co-star Mariette Hartley that viewers were convinced they were married -- and was nominated for a slew of awards, including Emmys, Golden Globes, SAG Awards and an Oscar (for 1985's "Murphy's Romance"). His performance in "The Rockford Files" won him an Emmy.
He could do serious. His performance in the TV movie "My Name Is Bill W." -- about the founding of Alcoholics Anonymous -- was straightforward and uncompromising. He could also show real heartbreak, whether it was cradling fellow escapee Donald Pleasance in "The Great Escape" or talking with Gena Rowlands in "The Notebook."
But he was rarely one to blow his own horn.
"I got into the business to put a roof over my head," he once said. "I wasn't looking for star status. I just wanted to keep working."
Humble beginnings
James Scott Bumgarner was born April 7, 1928, in Norman, Oklahoma. His mother died when he was 5 and his father remarried a year later. Garner didn't get along with his stepmother and, after a particularly vicious argument, left home at 14. His father, who divorced his stepmother, eventually moved to Los Angeles. At 16, Garner followed, attending Hollywood High School and finding a job as a swimsuit model.
"I made 25 bucks an hour!" he told People magazine. "That's why I quit school. I was making more money than the teachers. I never finished the ninth grade."
After joining the Merchant Marine and the National Guard, he served in the Korean War, where he won a Purple Heart. After the war, he returned to Los Angeles and took up acting -- for the same reason he started modeling, he told the L.A. Times.
"What was I qualified to do to make a living? Nothing," he said. "You don't need qualifications as an actor or a politician. And I didn't want to be a politician."
A small part in Broadway's "The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial" led to a contract with Warner Bros., which cast him in both TV and movie roles. After a performance as a Marine captain in "Sayonara," he took the lead role in a new TV series, "Maverick," which was to make his reputation in many ways.
Leaving his mark
In 1957, "Maverick" was, well, a maverick: a Western filled with comedy, which often parodied other TV Westerns. As a show on ABC, then the third-ranked of the three broadcast networks, it wasn't expected to do well against competitors "The Ed Sullivan Show" and "The Steve Allen Show." But it won its Sunday-night time slot and became one of the hottest programs on television. In turn, Garner -- who played Bret Maverick, a roving card player -- became one of the medium's biggest stars.
But Garner became dissatisfied with the show's grind and being treated like "ham in a smokehouse," as he put it. In 1960 he sued producer Warner Bros. for breach of contract. He won the case and left the show, which replaced him first with Roger Moore (as Beau Maverick) and then Robert Colbert (as Brent) but soon left the air entirely.
Garner, however, was on the verge of movie stardom. Director William Wyler cast him in the film version of Lillian Hellman's play "The Children's Hour" as a sympathetic doctor; two years later Garner starred as Lt. Bob "The Scrounger" Hendley in "The Great Escape," one of the great war movies.
He remembered star Steve McQueen as being rebellious. "Steven would drive that motorcycle with the swastikas on it all over Munich. People would yell. They didn't think that was too good, and I didn't either," Garner told People in 1998.
But the two were close, he added -- in fact, McQueen was his next-door neighbor in Los Angeles. "He looked at me as an older brother," he told the magazine.
Garner followed "Escape" with the film he ranked as his favorite, "The Americanization of Emily." The film, which had a script by Paddy Cheyefsky ("Marty," "Network"), was about a self-described "coward" Navy officer who romances an Englishwoman (Julie Andrews) and -- against his will -- takes part in the D-Day invasion. "Emily" was nominated for two Oscars and helped make Andrews, a famed stage actress whose film "Mary Poppins" was released earlier that year, a star.
His 1966 film, the John Frankenheimer-directed "Grand Prix," gave him another passion -- auto racing. He founded an auto-racing team and drove the pace car in the Indianapolis 500 three times. It was an avocation he shared with a friend, Paul Newman. Garner was also a good golfer and an avowed fan of his alma mater, the University of Oklahoma, where he endowed a chair at the college's drama school.
Garner's movie career languished in the late '60s, though he had a mild hit with "Support Your Local Sheriff!" (1969), and he returned to television in the 1970s. After the short-lived "Nichols" he took the role as Jim Rockford in "The Rockford Files," which was as much an anti-detective series as "Maverick" was an anti-Western. (Both shows were produced by Roy Huggins, who also created "77 Sunset Strip" and "The Fugitive.")
Garner's Jim Rockford may have carried a gun, but he did so rarely (he didn't have a permit anyway) and he would much rather talk than shoot. Once imprisoned for a crime he didn't commit, the Pontiac Firebird-driving detective lived in a dilapidated trailer on the Malibu coast. His friends included a grumpy LAPD detective, a former cellmate, a disbarred lawyer and his father, a retired trucker.
Aging amid stardom
Garner did many of his own stunts on "Rockford," and they took a toll, he told People in 1994.
"The work on the show had worn me down to a nub," he said. Over the course of the series, he broke bones, strained muscles and was even treated for depression. "I was sick and tired of it all." Garner also had quintuple bypass surgery in 1988 and had a stroke in 2008.
He left "Rockford" in 1980, partly because of his ailments and partly because of contractual problems with the studio, which eventually led to his lawsuit. After it was settled, he returned to the role for a series of TV movies in the '90s.
But "Rockford" cemented Garner's status on Hollywood's A-list. He made a number of TV and theatrical movies in the '80s, some duds -- "Tank" (1984) and "Sunset" (1988) -- and some successful: He earned praise for his performance in "Victor/Victoria" and an Oscar nomination for "Murphy's Romance."
He worked steadily in the 2000s, with notable performances in TV's "Barbarians at the Gate," the film version of "Maverick," the miniseries "Streets of Laredo" and the theatrical film "The Notebook." He also returned to series television, joining the cast of "8 Simple Rules" after the death of John Ritter.
The work in front of a live audience intimidated him, he said, despite his experience.
"I started in theater, and that's what scared me to death," he told CNN's Larry King in 2004.
Actor, husband, activist
Garner famously had one of Hollywood's longest-lasting marriages. He married Lois Clarke in 1956 after a brief courtship; they were still married at Garner's death, 58 years later.
"I just let my wife get away with murder," he joked to The Los Angeles Times in 1994.
His co-stars were equally smitten with Garner.
"Jim is funny and dear, and he laughs at my jokes," Sally Field told People in 1985, before the release of "Murphy's Romance." "That's what makes Jim sexy; it doesn't change with years."
Garner was also a longtime political activist. He helped organize the 1963 March on Washington and frequently donated to Democratic candidates and liberal causes.
But he'll likely be best remembered for a James Garner persona that seemed inseparable from the real-life man: professional, unruffled, witty and never too impressed with himself.
"I'm a Spencer Tracy-type actor," he told People in 2005. "His idea was to be on time, know your words, hit your marks and tell the truth. Most every actor tries to make it something it isn't (or) looks for the easy way out. I don't think acting is that difficult if you can put yourself aside and do what the writer wrote."
He is survived by his wife and their two daughters, Kim and Gigi.
More Video:Google is Being Questioned by Regulators Over Location Data Collection on Android Phones
Location services have been a part of Android since its original release. This has always involved a little controversy on the privacy aspect of such services, because if a user keeps location enabled on an Android smartphone, the device’s cell tower location is being continuously sent to Google.
For privacy-focused users, this hadn’t been a huge issue as Android always had a toggle to switch location off in the settings menu. This supposedly meant that the device would not send any location data to Google.
This was the assumption up till now. But a Quartz report published a few days ago shows that the assumption is false. Even if a user disables location on his device, it will still keep sending the addresses of nearby cell tower address in the form of Cell ID codes if the phone is using Google’s Firebase Messaging push service. Google has been collecting Cell ID data since the beginning of 2017. The company confirmed that the location data was being collected, but claimed that “it had never been used or stored”. The issue is severe enough to even affect users who did not have a SIM card in their devices.
Simply put, this is an invasion of privacy. If a user disables location on his device, then there remains no grounds for Google to keep collecting the location data at all. We previously noted that as of now, the only option to be sure that Google is not collecting location data from your phone is to completely remove Google services from your device.
Now, a report by CNNMoney states that Google is facing scrutiny for reportedly collecting data about the location of smartphone users without their knowledge. Firstly, the report says that regulators in South Korea summoned Google representatives this week to question them about the Quartz report.
The head of Korea Communications Commission (KCC)’s privacy infringement division told CNNMoney: “KCC is carrying out an inquiry into the claims that Google collected users’ Cell ID data without consent even when their smartphone’s location service was inactive.”
The report added that UK data protection officials are also looking into the matter. A spokesperson for the Information Commissioner’s Office told the publication: “Organizations are required by law to be transparent with consumers about what they are doing with personal information. We are aware of the reports about the tracking system and are in contact with Google.”
For its part, Google told CNNMoney that the data was collected to improve notifications and message delivery, and claimed that it was not stored on Google servers. It further claimed that Android phones are no longer requesting Cell ID codes, and stated that collection should be phased out this month. A Google spokesman stated: “In January of this year, we began looking into using Cell ID codes as an additional signal to further improve the speed and performance of message delivery.” As Google says that it never incorporated the data into its system, “that data was immediately discarded, and we updated [the network system] to no longer request Cell ID,” the spokesman added.
The CNNMoney report notes that as Google has collected Cell IDs without consent, the company may have violated South Korea’s Location Data Protection Act. This would be the case regardless of whether the data was stored on Google’s US servers or not, according to an official with KCC’s commission’s privacy infringement division. The official added that as of yet, an official investigation has not been launched, and “more information will likely need to come from Google’s U.S. headquarters”.
It is clear that Quartz’ discovery has far-reaching implications. It is imperative that Google should completely stop collecting location data without users’ consent as soon as possible. If the company does not do so, the consequences may prove to be severe.My girlfriend and I bought a house and I’m going to be taking you all on a tour of it in an upcoming post. But first, I’d like to show you the old apartment while pointing out some useful and not so useful features for tall people.
The apartment is the ground floor of an updated old house (1906 if I recall correctly). As was fairly common back then, the house has 9′ ceilings throughout. Just about anyone can appreciate open spaces, but for tall people in particular it feels less cramped. Contrarily though, old houses tend to have low basement ceilings and this house is no exception, making the basement off limits for me. So my girlfriend got to use the finished portion of the basement essentially as an extra large walk in closet.
An extension was added on the back of the house, enlarging the kitchen, which is clearly the highlight of the house. Custom cherry cabinets were installed that go right up to the ceiling. This is a brilliant use of space, and though tall people will like it most, not so tall people can still get at it with a stool. I don’t understand why cupboards so often end a foot short of the ceiling…
The main counter tops are at an unfortunate 36 inches. However, the island has been raised up to 39 inches. Given the variation in the nature of kitchen tasks, plus the variety of heights of people that use a given kitchen, it only makes sense to have multiple counter top heights. Though 39 inches is far better for me than 36, it was still really short, hence my use of a kneeling chair or a raised cutting board.
The sink is one of those deep ones, which is a major pain in the tall back. Luckily the faucet is fairly high and close to the front edge of the sink, so at least you can get a glass of water without hunching. The fridge is the freezer on bottom french door style, so the most frequently used items are at a higher height and thus reasonably accessible for tall people.
Though the french doors on the back of the house let in a lot of light, my vision line is at the top of the door where there is no window. The crescent window above the door is a great addition for tall people as it allows us to see the sky.
The doorway leading to the kitchen has a brick archway that seems like it was built to fit me. Not once did I ever hit my head.
That’s it for the kitchen. Other than that, the only other tall specific aspects of the house that warrant mention are the shelving and windows throughout that make fine use of the 9′ ceilings.
The apartment was truly a score. Rent was reasonable, it was central, and all the tall friendly features made it comfortable. Though it was a bit sad leaving for the last time, our new old house has its perks too. Best of all, we own it, so we are free to modify it as we see fit. Subscribe or check back soon for a tour of the new place and some hints on the modifications come!Tropical Storm Colin has made landfall in the Florida Panhandle.
The storm hit land near the Big Bend area about 2 a.m. Tuesday with 50 mph winds.
It's moving northeast towards the Atlantic.
Gov. Rick Scott declared a state of emergency for 34 counties, including most of Central Florida. Local emergency managers said they are prepared for 2-4 inches of rainfall over the next 24 hours.
Heavy rain and winds gusting at up to 40 mph are expected in Orange, Seminole, Osceola, Lake, Volusia, Brevard, and Indian River counties.
As of 11 p.m., the storm had maximum sustained winds of 50 mph, according to the National Hurricane Center in Miami.
A squall line with heavy rain and wind gusts in excess of 40 mph had already made its way onto Florida's west coast earlier this afternoon.
Tropical Storm Colin formed in the Gulf of Mexico and made landfall in the Florida Panhandle on June 7, 2016.
The squall moved northeast through the Tampa Bay area and was bringing rain to parts of northern Central Florida.
Forecasters say Colin should move quickly across North Florida toward Jacksonville and into southeastern Georgia by Tuesday morning.
The storm should be off Georgia's coast and into the Atlantic Ocean by about 4 a.m.
Forecasters don't expect Colin to directly hit Central Florida, but say the outer bands will bring heavy rain, wind gusts and a moderate risk of tornadoes.
Most of Central Florida was under a tropical storm warning Monday.
The warning was first issued for both of Florida's coasts, including Flagler, Volusia and Brevard counties. It was expanded this morning to include Lake, Orange and Seminole counties.
All of Central Florida is also under a flood advisory until Tuesday morning. Forecasters say the area should see rain most of today, with the heaviest starting later this afternoon.
Tornadoes possible
Storm force winds of 39 mph up to 57 mph are expected to move into the Orlando-area after sunset and continue through early Tuesday morning, when Colin moves off Georgia's coast.
Forecasters are warning residents to be alert and ready tonight, as most of the threats could come while people are sleeping.
"Tornadoes will be possible with any passing squall after sunset," Bragaw said. "Be ready to take quick action, especially if you live in a mobile home or a building that is particularly vulnerable to damaging winds."
Seminole County emergency officials are monitoring river and lake levels in the Little Wekiva River Basin, which includes the communities of Altamonte Springs, Longwood, Heathrow and neighborhoods along Markham Wood Road. That area is prone to flooding during periods of heavy rain.
Price gouging hotline
Attorney General Pam Bondi today activated Florida's price gouging hotline: 1-866-9-NO-SCAM.
The counties where the governor declared a state emergency are prohibited from "price gouging," meaning anyone with "extreme increases in the price of essential commodities" during the emergency can face prosecution, Bondi said.
"Florida consumers need to be diligent during this state of emergency to ensure they do not become victims of price gouging," Bondi said in a statement. "Taking advantage of consumers during a declared state of emergency is not only reprehensible, it is illegal and will not be tolerated."
Her office said the law prohibits "extreme increases in the price of essential commodities, such as food, water, hotels, ice, gasoline, lumber and equipment" needed because of the emergency.
Delays at airport
The Orlando International Airport has 31 departure delays and 33 arrival delays as of 5 p.m. today. The airport has also had four flight cancellations on the departures and arrivals from Pensacola and Panama City to Orlando. Delays are from the northeast corridor — Washington D.C., Boston, Buffalo and New York City — and as far west as Los Angeles, Denver and Chicago. "We're monitoring the flight activity right now…The advice with passengers is to check with their airline for the schedule," said Carolyn Fennell, spokeswoman for the airport.
Preparation is key
At a news conference today at the state's emergency operations center in Tallahassee, Scott warned of heavy rain, storm surge and even tornadoes that could spawn from the storm.
"Every person in our state needs to follow this and be prepared,'' Scott said.
Officials are warning all Central Florida residents to have their emergency plans and kits ready.
They're also telling people to keep cellphones charged and handy, and to pay attention to changing road conditions.
The Florida Highway Patrol is reminding drivers to keep their headlights on in the rain and to increase the distance between vehicles.
Officials at the Orlando International Airport are monitoring the storm.
SunRail trains are running on time. Any changes in service will be posted on the SunRail website and on Twitter.
LYNX staff is monitoring the storm but they do not expect changes to service. For the latest about LYNX, visit golynx.com, facebook.com/golynx or call 407-841-5969.
LakeXpress ended its fixed-route bus service at 4 p.m. today until further notice. All trips on Lake County Connection with return times scheduled after 2 p.m. today will also be canceled. For questions about LakeXpress, call LakeXpress Customer Service at 352-326-8637, visit www.ridelakexpress.com, or contact Lake County Public Transit at 352-323-5733.
Schools, libraries
Schools in Orange, Osceola and Lake counties plan to operate on a normal schedule on Tuesday, but they'll monitor the weather. Seminole is already on summer break. The University of Central Florida and Seminole State College closed early Monday, and will resume normal operations on Tuesday.
Staff writers David Harris, Gray Rohrer, Christal Hayes, Jason Ruiter and Martin E. Comas contributed to this report.
sallen@orlandosentinel.com or 407-420-5417In 2013, then-Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (Nev.) articulated what was a general belief among Democrats: the Affordable Care Act would help the party. Granted, the timeframe Reid predicted was that it would help last November — during the election that in fact relegated Reid to minority-leader status. But the idea that being the party that helped Americans get access to affordable health care would be a boon was not unique to Reid.
For a long time, Obamacare was viewed fairly negatively, according to regular polling from the Kaiser Family Foundation. In recent surveys |
who said faith had sustained him through his presidency, which ends in January.
“We’re not afraid to stand with religious dissidents and believers who practice their faith even where it is unwelcome.”
German minister of state Hermann Groehe defended the right to convert to another faith — a right not recognized in some Muslim countries.
“It is unacceptable that up until now laws in some countries threaten those who want to convert with the death penalty,” said Groehe, without naming any countries.
President Asif Ali Zardari of Muslim Pakistan said there was “nothing more un-Islamic” than discrimination, violence against women and terrorism, but also denounced hate speech against Islam in countries he did not identify.
“The imaginary fear of Islam has been rising,” Zardari said. “This is exactly what the terrorists had hoped to provoke. Those in the West who accept this are falling into the trap of the terrorists.”
Zardari, whose wife, former prime minister Benazir Bhutto, was assassinated by a suicide bomber last year, proposed an international agenda to combat hate speech, religious discrimination and bigotry and promote religious dialogue.Update: A racist note sparked protests at a Minnesota college. The school now says the message was fake.
Following days of demonstrations against hate speech at a liberal arts college in Minnesota, the school has reached an agreement with student protesters.
St. Olaf College President David Anderson sent an email to students late Monday stating that the administration had agreed with the student-led group “Collective For Change on The Hill,” which interrupted a college forum earlier in the day to present administrators with their demands.
“This the first step in a process towards a long-term solution, and all of us on campus are committed to moving forward in a spirit of collaboration to address these important issues,” he said.
We started by blocking off the cafeteria. We are blocking off the whole building now. Join us! If you are not on campus share this! Posted by Teresa Calderon on Saturday, April 29, 2017
The students had been protesting racism at the school in Northfield, Minn., since the weekend, when a black student reported having found a note on the windshield of her car that read: “I am so glad that you are leaving soon. One less n‑‑‑‑‑ that this school has to deal with. You have spoken up too much. You will change nothing. Shut up or I will shut you up.” Students gathered Saturday night inside a student union building, sharing their own on-campus experiences with racism and chanting: “This ends now.”
The protests continued through Monday, when students were expected to boycott. Then the school administration canceled classes “so that we may have time for faculty, students, and staff to continue the discussions about racism and diversity on our campus,” St. Olaf spokeswoman Kari VanDerVeen said at the time.
The racist note was the latest incident in a series of similar expressions against students.
“It’s been something that’s been going on all year,” Samantha Wells, a senior who said she found the racist note, told fellow students during the weekend demonstrations, according to the Northfield News. “We’ve done so much digging and this stuff has happened for decades. There’s one thing that happens and it stops and then it happens again and then it kind of stops. I think the big message is we shouldn’t let this happen again. The administration needs to do something that stops it indefinitely.”
“We are protesting to help change the institutional structure that perpetuates racism here at St. Olaf,” she told The Washington Post in an email Monday afternoon.
Wells and her fellow protesters presented the college president with an agreement, which includes assembling an autonomous task force to research the topics raised by the students’ demands. Those demands include administrative changes, such as racial and cultural sensitivity training; a curriculum that encourages a racial awareness and inclusion; and a policy on racial threats and hate crimes.
“We are committed to our cause and will not rest until substantial changes are discussed with the administration,” Wells said. “We want it in writing that we will be heard and that our concerns are serious.”
[A white supremacist is accused of punching a protester. Classmates say he makes them feel ‘unsafe.’]
Nearly 3,000 full-time students were enrolled in St. Olaf College in fall 2016; 2,214 of the students were white and 63 were black, according to enrollment figures.
During the current school year, there have been nine reported acts of hate speech on campus — three incidents during the first semester and six during the second semester — according to the college.
School officials called it “deeply troubling” that some racist messages were being sent directly to specific students and said the administration is working to find those responsible for the “hate-filled acts.”
“The racist message a student received this weekend follows several other racist acts on campus throughout the year, including written racial epithets and a message targeted at another student,” VanDerVeen, the school spokeswoman, said in a statement. “In addition to the sharp rise in incidents, it is also deeply troubling that the perpetrators have begun directing messages to specific members of our community.
“These acts are despicable. They violate every value we hold as a community, and they have absolutely no place at St. Olaf.”
In an April 21 email to students, Anderson, the college president, compared the recent incidents to a form of terrorism.
“I am as angry and frustrated as you are at the repeated violations of our values and community norms by someone who defaces the campus with scrawled racial epithets,” Anderson wrote. “I would love nothing more than to discover who is responsible for these acts and to remove that person from our community.”
Anderson wrote:
I say “that person” because I am pretty sure that this is the work of one or a small number of people. (It may not even be an Ole). This person uses the same modus operandi every time this happens; even the handwriting on the notes is similar from incident to incident. This person has adopted a strategy similar to the one terrorists use: under the cover of darkness and anonymity engage in acts that frighten, dishearten, and frustrate people with a goal of unsettling the community and turning people against one another. When this person first struck in the fall, I swiftly informed the community and unequivocally denounced the person and this person’s acts. I implored anyone in the community with information about the perpetrator to come forward, and I reinforced the values of this place. I have deliberately not repeated my announcement every time this person scrawls another racial epithet somewhere because then this person wins. I don’t want to give this person the power to evoke at will a message to the campus from the President. Nevertheless, whenever this person acts, we announce it, we denounce it, and we assert the strength of the community over against these terrible actions. We cannot let this person win. This is a painful and challenging matter for our community. We have an open campus, and while that is generally a very good thing it does provide opportunities for a vile coward like this person to keep on committing these acts. We can’t post a guard at every wall on campus, or blanket the campus with cameras, or invoke a curfew after dark. Instead, this ends when someone on campus — student, faculty or staff — tells us who this person is or helps us with information that enables us to identify this person. This person’s actions don’t define us. We won’t let this person win.
The Northfield News reported that a student discovered a similar note on his car earlier last week.
Then, the outlet reported, another student found a note in her backpack that read, “Go back to Africa.”
[‘Go back to Africa’? This man will — if racists pay his way.]
Students are now calling on St. Olaf administration to put an end to it.
Officials at the college said they appreciate those who are “advocating for meaningful action” and are listening to their concerns.
“The students in Buntrock Commons last night shared their fear, anger, and frustration,” VanDerVeen, the spokeswoman for St. Olaf, said in the statement. “These recent acts of racism have opened painful — and important — discussions about how we can do better as a community in addressing the broader issue of racial discrimination.”
St. Olaf student response to racist incident on campus. Resisting with love A post shared by Annna Wolle (@annalillian15) on Apr 25, 2017 at 11:00am PDT
This story, which was originally published May 1, has been updated.
Read more:
There’s a well-funded campus industry behind the Ann Coulter incident
There was no Ann Coulter speech. But protesters converged on Berkeley.
I invited Ann Coulter to speak at UC Berkeley. Here’s why.“Captain’s Log, Star Date, 4231.6. We’re orbiting a planet which is exactly like earth in almost every way, except there is no government,” Kirk said, as he sat aboard the Star Ship Enterprise. “My objective is to beam down to observe a world in complete and total anarchy. Because of the extreme danger in the situation, I alone will beam down. Kirk out.”
Spock said, “Captain, I request permission to beam down with you.”
“Negative, Spock,” said Kirk, “The Federation gave us specific orders to see if a single human could survive on planet Anarchy for an entire... six months. We need you aboard the ship in case anything should... happen.”
“Very well, Captain,” said Spock. “Live Long, and Prosper.”
Out in the middle of a grassy field, Captain Kirk, commander of the Star Ship Enterprise appeared in a swirl of light. The planet looked Earth-like in every way, with green trees, and blue skies, and small animals gathering food for the winter.
“Something... must be wrong,” Kirk said to himself, “This can’t be Anarchy, can it?”
Kirk took his communicator out to speak to the ship, “Uhura, come in.”
“Yes commander,” said Lieutenant Uhura.
“Am I on the right... planet?”
“Yes commander, you beamed down successfully. We beamed you just outside the city, in case they were hostile. The city of Libertania is just to your north,” said Uhura.
“So it is, Kirk out.” Kirk snapped his communicator shut, and looked around. The city of Libertaina sparkled in the distance. Beaming towers of silver and gold lined the horizon, and a nearby highway whisked with futuristic cars. Kirk decided to go check out the highway, unsure if he would find a friend, or foe.
Instantly, a police car pulled over, and two officers got out of the car, and shouted to Kirk, “You there!”
Kirk put his hands up, “I am Commander James T. Kirk of the USS Enterprise. I come in peace.”
“Peace eh?” said one of the officers, “That happens to be one of my favorite words.” The officers lowered their weapons and approached Kirk. “What are you doing all the way out here?”
“I want to see if the rumors are true. To see if this planet... is a barren wasteland of robbers, swindlers, and murderers fighting each other to the death.”
The officers laughed, “Heh heh, well, we’ve got our fair share of bad guys. But don’t worry. It’s perfectly safe here, provided you have insurance. In fact, we can take you to get some.”
“Insurance? Why would I need insurance?” said Captain Kirk.
“Why would you need insurance!?” said the first police man. “Why, to protect you from the very people you just mentioned. In a voluntary society, insurance is everything! Come with us, please, it will all make sense soon.”
Kirk agreed, and the three men walked to the police car. Just before getting in the car, Kirk noticed a symbol on the side of the car. An emblem of a blue shield with a red sash that said, Liberty Insurance Police Force.
“Wait a second,” said Kirk, as he closed the door from inside the police car. “You guys aren’t... part of the government?”
“No,” said the second cop, “There is no government on the planet of Anarchy. No, we’re a private police force. But, don’t worry. It will all make sense once you get to the city.”
The city was beautiful. Sky scrapers, houses, trees, gardens, and parks, with the smokey scent of barbecue ribs and freshly cut grass in the distance, which reminded Kirk that he’d been in space a little too long. Soon, the private police dropped Kirk off at the insurance company, and Kirk entered the building. A friendly insurance sales agent, walked up to Kirk with a smile. “Welcome, Kirk! Welcome!” he said, in a thick German-like accent. “I’m so glad you made it safely. Have a seat. My name is Hans. How was your trip?”
Kirk shook his hand, “Good, but... I’m a little confused,” he said, sitting down, “I thought that this planet would be more... dangerous.”
“Well – it is. I mean, it can be, IF you don’t have insurance. But, please, can I get you anything? Coffee? Mint?”
“No thanks,” said Kirk, sensing he was going to be given a sales pitch.
Hans got down to business. “There is no government in Anarchy. So everyone has to take care of themselves. No one will feed you, or clothe you, or keep you safe, except for YOU. Sometimes we have murders, and robberies. That’s why it’s so important that you buy insurance from us, today!”
“Why would I want insurance?” said Kirk. “I’ve got my insurance right here!” Kirk took out his phaser and pointed it in the air.
Hans smiled at the phaser, “Well, it’s your choice. But if you sign up with our company, we’ll insure you against all violent acts. If someone steals from you, we’ll pay for the damages. If someone attacks you, we’ll pay for the hospital. If someone kills you, we’ll pay the life insurance. We’ll even have private security guards to roam the neighborhood to insure that you’re safe.”
“What if you don’t have any money?” said Kirk, skeptical of the salesman. “Are the poor just left to die in the streets?”
“The poor benefit from our protection too,” said Hans, “After all, if we catch a criminal, that’s one less criminal to bother anyone else. But Kirk! I want to tell you about an amazing deal! For a limited time, we offer the first month free! This will give you time to get a job, and begin a payment plan. See, there are a lot of cheaper insurance companies around, but – just between you and me – we’re the best!” Hans winked at the captain.
Kirk put his phaser away, and leaned forward in his chair, “What’s the catch?”
Hans said, “Clever man. There’s always a catch! But it’s a small thing: If you initiate any violent acts against someone else’s will, then you will lose your insurance immediately.”
“Why?” Kirk asked.
“Because,” said the insurance agent, “Violence is expensive. We have all sorts of contracts with other insurance companies that bind us to pay for any violent acts you commit, so we simply can’t have you attacking people physically. Why, it’s bad for business!”
Kirk decided he needed help. He used his communicator to hail the ship, and explained the whole situation to Spock.
“Fascinating,” said Spock. “Yet, very logical. An entire society based on insurance. Without the guarantees of government, people purchase their own private guarantees.”
Kirk asked, “Do you recommend purchasing the insurance?”
“I do indeed,” said Spock. “I believe you should get the free trial insurance for a month, and then pay for the other five months, once you’ve found a job to pay for it.”
“Acknowledged. Kirk out,” said Captain Kirk, as he closed his communicator. “I’m in!”
Hans invited Kirk to sign on about 40 different dotted lines. All the different contracts just in case he got attacked by an alien Gorn, or if his house was robbed, or a thousand other scenarios... which private courts to use, and which arbitrators to use... the standard formalities.
“How long is your stay on Anarchy?” asked Hans, as Kirk finished signing the last contract.
“Six months,” said Kirk.
Hans said, “Well then, here’s a map. There are taxi’s just outside. Have a nice stay! And remember to mention us to your friends!”
Kirk thanked Hans, and searched for a place to live. He was amazed to find that everywhere he went, everyone asked to see his insurance card. The grocery store, the bar, the lake, even the street security. And when he flashed the Liberty Insurance card, people would smile and nod, as if they knew that it was the best insurance around.
“Kirk to Enterprise,” said the Captain, talking into his communicator. “Come in Spock.”
Spock said, “Yes, Captain?”
“I bought the insurance, and everyone, everywhere is checking it. Even the grocery store... checks my insurance... why is that?”
“Presumably because they want non-violent customers,” said Spock. “We can logically assume that doing so would lower their own insurance premiums.”
Kirk said, “But do they really need to check it every time? The movie theater? The parks?”
“Obviously, Captain,” said Spock. “Serving customers without insurance could be a huge liability on this planet. If even one violent act occurred on their premises, it could tarnish their safety record, and raise their costs. Captain, this planet is beginning to sound more logical than Vulcan.”
“Spock, sometimes I think every planet is more logical than Vulcan,” said Kirk, “But thank you for the analysis. Kirk out.”
In the first couple months, Kirk found a place to live, and even got a job washing aliens. He made a moderate income – more than enough to pay for the best insurance in town. As he walked on the street, he noticed that police men and women from all the different companies were all so polite and friendly. They treated him like a potential customer. But the most friendly of all was the Liberty Police Force.
“Top of the morning to you, Kirk! Are you happy with your service?” said the Liberty officer.
“Quite!” Kirk said. “It’s so nice around here, you might as well take a break at the doughnut shop.”
The officer shook his head, “No, I couldn’t do that. I’m on the lookout for criminals. By the way Kirk, do you own a gun?”
“No, but I do have a phaser. Why?” Kirk asked.
“Even better!” said the cop, “We encourage our customers to be armed in case of an emergency. If you pass our safety course, then you could qualify for a big discount on your bill. Here, take this flyer.”
Kirk took the flyer, which showed an alien in a James Bond style pose, with the heading “Liberty Gun Training Course”. Kirk called the Enterprise to explain the whole situation to Spock.
“Fascinating,” remarked Spock, “A society where the police encourage gun ownership. Presumably, the more insured people own guns, the safer the community, and the more money the insurance company saves in the long run. Truly astonishing, Captain.”
The next week, Kirk took the gun safety course. He demonstrated that he was an expert marksman, able to shoot an alien dummy from 50 feet away right between the eyes. He passed the safety course with flying colors, and even qualified for a free gun. After that, Kirk’s insurance dropped 15%.
For five months, things were looking pretty good for Captain Kirk. Then, one night, it happened. An alien Gorn snuck into Kirk’s rented cottage. The Gorn opened the window, slithering with his lizard like breath. Kirk was snoring, asleep in the bedroom. The Gorn disarmed the house alarms that the insurance company had Kirk install. He tip-toed to Kirk’s phaser, and pointed it directly at Kirk.
But Kirk woke up just in time to kick it out of the Gorn’s hands! The phaser went flying. Kirk and the Gorn wrestled until Kirk picked up the phaser, and shot, missing the Gorn, and vaporizing a lamp. Then the Gorn leaped out the window.
“Caught him!” Officer Block said, stunning the Gorn with a phaser. “Finally! Now I can get that bonus!”
The Gorn was put in handcuffs, and brought to a private jail. The Gorn’s insurance company met with Liberty Insurance, and agreed to bring the case to a private court. This court had a Triple A rating, and the judge was selected because he was known to be extremely fair in these types of cases.
“I decree,” the judge said, “That the Gorn loses his insurance.”
“NOOOOOOOOO!” yelled the Gorn, in his native tongue. He was drug out by the court security, and brought to his residence. Because the streets were all private, no street security would let him on their property. The mall wouldn’t let him in without insurance. The theater wouldn’t let him in. Neither would the grocery store. And especially not the bank. The Gorn simply had nowhere to go.
“How am I supposed to eat?” wondered the Gorn, “I can’t get food. I can’t work. I can’t even leave my house. Savages!”
Then, a private company called Jail-Co stepped up to the plate. Jail-Co said, “We’ll give you food, water, and shelter, but you need to stay in our jail. For the next seven years, you’re going to work, work, work. You’ll be under constant watch, from all our security guards. You’ll mow lawns, clean toilets, and pick up garbage. You’re going to earn your stay here at Jail-Co.”
“What happens after seven years?” the Gorn asked in his language.
“If you have excellent behavior, then we’ll recommend you for temporary insurance.”
“Really?” the Gorn said, “You’ll do that for me?”
“No!” the Jail-Co agent said, “You’re doing it for you. It’s your choice to join our jail or not. You can stay in your house, which will be like a permanent jail anyways. Or you can join our jail, and work for us, and maybe one day, go back into society.”
The Gorn thought it over, and finally said, “No way. I’d rather starve than go to your lousy jail!”
“Have it your way,” said the Jail-Co agent, as he left.
===
On Captain Kirk’s last day on the planet of Anarchy, he paid a visit to the Gorn. With his translator, Kirk told the Gorn, “Don’t you know that you’ll never get insurance again? You can never leave this house. No one will ever want you on their property without insurance. You can’t even... go to the movies. You’ll just be stuck at home forever. You’re basically in a worse jail than Jail-Co. At least at Jail-Co, you could get paid, and you could earn your insurance back.”
The Gorn thought about it, “You know, maybe you’re right,” he said. Finally, he decided to call Jail-Co.
Kirk beamed up to the Enterprise in a flash of light. Everyone welcomed Kirk, after his six month stay. “It’s so good to be back,” he said, “But... Spock... do you think the Gorn will ever return to society again?”
“It is likely,” said Spock, “Gorns have shown themselves to be very civilized when they have something to gain from it. If he works hard for seven years, and maintains perfect behavior, he could be offered temporary insurance. And perhaps, after a few more years, he’ll be offered full coverage.”
“And if he remains violent?” asked Kirk.
Spock said, “Then he will remain in the jail system as long as he wishes. Or else, he will return to his house, never to be allowed into society again.”
“It’s too bad we have to leave,” said Kirk. “I was looking forward to learning more about a world without government.”
“Indeed,” said Spock. “It appears that Anarchy could very well provide more safety and freedom than all the alternatives that have been tried throughout the course of history.”
* Variations of a private law society are offered by many Austrian economists, including Murray Rothbard, Hans Hoppe, Walter Block, Robert Murphy, Samuel Konkin III, and Joseph Salerno. But it isn’t the only solution. Many other solutions have been proposed, and nobody really knows what would happen in a world without government. But the point is that there are many solutions to private law society, and in a free market, the best solutions would rise to the top. In that sense, a libertarian society could be a much safer world than the one we live in today.LA Galaxy forward Gio dos Santos would not explain his reasons for skipping this summer's Copa America Centenario with Mexico.
LA Galaxy forward Giovani dos Santos blasted the media for portraying him as problematic following the news that he had rejected a call-up to the Mexico team for this summer's Copa America Centenario.
Mexico coach Juan Carlos Osorio on Tuesday confirmed that Dos Santos had declined the invitation to play in the special event, which will be held from June 3-26 across the United States.
"I am not a controversial player," Dos Santos told La Pasion de Televisa. "I have worked very hard to get where I am today. You [the media] are never going to be happy. When I say something you are always going to see the negative side. You will never be happy with anything, but that is part of football."
During his news conference in Mexico City to reveal the 23-man squad for the tournament, Osorio refused to elaborate on the reasons for Dos Santos' absence, saying only: "To be ethical, what was spoken about will stay between the two of us."
Dos Santos, 27, has not played for Mexico since the CONCACAF Gold Cup last summer. He has scored five goals in seven games for the Galaxy this season.
Asked by reporters to reveal his motives for rejecting the call-up, Dos Santos bristled at the reporter's use of the word "rejected."
"I am not going to give details. I am going to leave this where it stayed. People can have all the opinions they want. If I am not among the 23, I am not on the team. It is tough to answer these kind of questions, especially now because this news is so recent."
Dos Santos sent out three separate messages via Twitter on Tuesday, with the final message saying he wished Osorio and the entire squad the best of luck at Copa America.
Agradezco profundamente a la FMF considerarme. No puedo participar en esta ocasión, pero mi corazón estará con ustedes siempre. - Giovani Dos Santos (@OficialGio) May 18, 2016
Espero pronto pueda regresar con gran entusiasmo de llevar la camiseta de mi tan amado país. - Giovani Dos Santos (@OficialGio) May 18, 2016
A Juan Carlos Osorio y a mis hermanos de la Selección Mexicana, les deseo un excelente torneo, mucho ánimo y éxito en esta Copa ¡Con todo! �� - Giovani Dos Santos (@OficialGio) May 18, 2016
"I am very grateful to the FMF [Mexico federation] for taking me into consideration. I cannot participate at this time, but my heart will always be with you," read the message. "To Juan Carlos Osorio and my brothers of the Mexico national team, I hope you have a great tournament with much success at this Copa. Give it your all!
"I hope to return soon with great enthusiasm and wear the jersey of the country I love so much."
El Tri is in Group C of the Copa America Centenario, alongside Jamaica, Uruguay and Venezuela. The squad opens its campaign against Uruguay on June 5 in Phoenix before traveling to Pasadena to face Jamaica on June 9 and to Houston to close the group stage against Venezuela on June 13.
Mexico warms up for the competition with friendlies against Paraguay (Atlanta on May 28) and Chile (San Diego on June 1) and goes into this summer's competition off the back of a 12-match undefeated streak.WATCH: It’s been just over a week since 17,000 Canadians found out they’ll lose their jobs as Target pulls out of Canada. Now, we have a long list of creditors that Target owes money to, including food banks. Vassy Kapelos explains.
Chapman’s Ice Cream is owed $19,987. Coca-Cola Canada is hoping to recoup at least a portion of the $339,699 owed to it by Target Canada, which filed for bankruptcy protection last week.
The City of Winnipeg is owed more than $14,000, while Target’s Canadian arm is in arrears with the central Ontario city of Barrie to the tune of nearly $195,000.
A 45-page document included in the U.S. retail giant’s Canadian filing last week reveals a very—very—long list of companies, suppliers, landlords even municipalities and governments that the departing department store chain owes billions to.
All told, Target Canada owed roughly $5 billion to creditors when it filed for bankruptcy under the Companies’ Creditors Arrangement Act in an Ontario court last Thursday. That amount makes it likely one of the largest bankruptcies in Canadian history, experts suggest, certainly in the retail industry.
“It’s got to be one of the bigger ones, in terms of the size of the debt,” a lawyer source said, asking not to be named because her firm is part of the proceedings.
MORE: Here’s why Target failed in Canada
Target also owes landlords and governments sizable amounts of money. Hillcrest Mall Management Inc., a property company in Ontario who owns the real estate housing at least one Target store, is owed $1.7 million.
The Canada Revenue Agency and provincial governments are similarly owed millions in taxes. Target Canada’s unpaid tax bill from the CRA is $12 million. The B.C. and Quebec governments are owed $2.6 million and $6.5 million, respectively.
“You charge your customers HST on behalf of the government, with the idea you’re supposed to remit that over,” Vanessa Ibe, a lawyer at Toronto-based Rosenbaum & Frank, said.
But a bankruptcy filing freezes out all creditors from collecting on what they’re owed until a judge approves a repayment plan.
Liquidation
Target Canada lists the value of its assets as being about the same as its liabilities, with its 137 store leases as well as merchandise inventory and some real estate set to be sold off very soon.
The proceeds from those sales will go to paying off creditors, though it’s far from certain whether the money it gets will be enough to pay 100 cents on the dollar of what it owes.
Lawyers for the Canadian arm of the U.S. department store chain have until mid-February to file details about how the failed chain will pay its creditors.
WATCH: Target is closing shop in Canada. Retail Marketing Strategist Andrew Sharpe joined Aaron McArthur on Prime to discuss why Target failed in Canada.Posted 23 January 2014 - 01:59 PM
Hey folks,Touching on Elo again. Recently the reduction in wait times that you have noticed was due to the Elo threshold for searching players being increased from 1000 to 2300. After reviewing metrics, this was not needed to be this wide. We are going to run a test (which goes live without having to patch) at setting this to 1400. As of 11:30AM Pacific time, we set it to 1400 and are letting the numbers adjust so we can look at as broad of a spectrum as possible.What I ask is if you have noticed a change between now and that time, what was the change you noted.Please click one of the options in the following poll.Thanks for your time.-PaulPoll Feedback thread: http://mwomercs.com/...djustment-poll/Trijicon HD Night Sights Yellow front GL101Y
Reading
Description
The Trijicon HD GL101Y for the Glock pistol are a three dot tritium night sight, yellow front post accent design. The rear is U-notched and serrated. These sights have a.144 inch front sight width and.215 visible blade height. The rear U-notch is.169 and the rear visible blade height is.231, the HD's come in two front sight colors red and yellow. I chose yellow because I prefer yellow/green to red for catching my eye. I purchased the HD's when they were first released in 2011 for retail price, which I think was $150 at my local gun shop. They have not really come down in price anywhere and are available for $141.00 on Amazon. I have carried these HD's on my EDC G19 for about five and a half years, jumping from two different G19's (Gen4 to Gen3). I have fired over 50k rounds through both pistols with the HD's installed on them.
Reason for Purchase
In 2010 the Gen4 series of Glock was released and I had picked up a G19 to replace my Gen3 G17 I was carrying at the time. I had OEM night sights on the gun (just like my duty gun) and that was how I carried concealed until Trijicon HD's were released into the market. At that time the group I was training with made a hard switch to the HD's and I did the same, picking up a set of the yellow front HD's for my new EDC Gen4 G19. This was a "new" development at the time in the carry world and a lot of people made the switch. Coming from OEM night sights from Glock it was a huge improvement in visibility and at the time that was what I wanted, front sight visibility during the draw.
First Opinion
are.159 front sight width. The front sight was very easy to pick up for me as I did a bit of dry fire to get used to picking them up while drawing. Out of the box I immediately remember making the comment "these are huge, and bright!" The front sight was a visibly larger than the OEM night sights I replaced them with. I believe the factory Glock night sights are.159 front sight width. The front sight was very easy to pick up for me as I did a bit of dry fire to get used to picking them up while drawing.
The rears were very easy to pick up and the serrations aided in front sight alignment. I did not particularly care for the U-notch as it had no felt difference to me at the time. It allowed me to align the front into the rear notch very easily and that was what I bought them for. Note that the above two photos were taken after I installed the HD's on my EDC gun (in 2011, I believe) and after about 500 rounds of shooting and constantly checking zero of the gun I ended up pushing the rear sight to the right a good bit.
In the Field
The next few years after I got the HD's I would hit the range and randomly post up Range Reports, at the time usually shooting a 200 Drill. As my EDC Gen4 G19
As you can see from the above IG video, the front yellow front sight was very easy to pick up when drawing quickly and following up shots. The close range (7 and in yards) fast shooting was very smooth and very applicable to what an EDC gun would need for possible application in most CCW or LE Duty pistol engagements of that distance.
I shot with the OEM barrel for a few years and then moved later on I had a barsto barrel fitted into my EDC Gen4 G19. I started going through the process of getting used to the zero and accuracy standards with the HD's.
One of the early 200 drill targets I shot with the barsto.
. Around the same time I had Sometime around July of 2015 I swapped the barsto to a Gen3 G19 and put a newly purchase S3F Threaded Barrel into my EDC Gen4 G19. After a bit of zeroing I started to dial in the sights to the barrel. The 175 was not a normal 200 drill at the time and I began to have some issues with the HD's in terms of 25 yard accuracy. My normal accuracy range was in the mid 150's for a 200 drill with the S3F and HD's. I continued to try to iron out the accuracy quirk I seemed to have developed and would compare against a Gen3 G19 with Defoor all black sights I had, I posted about one trip in this range report post. The Defoor's were just more accurate for me at 25 yards, which translated to more accurate up close, especially after Ameriglo released the Defoor front night sight - GL-312-165. Around the same time I had posted a review of three different Ameriglo iron sights for Glock's including the all black Defoor sights. It would be a constant battle between the HD's and Defoor's because I really like a skinny front sight and trade off was the bright yellow easy to see front sight.
Ownership and Usage
I am not nice and I do not baby my firearms. They get slapped around during training, I hit stuff with them, I rack them off things, people and holsters. I have broken sights before in various ways and these sights were no different having been on two different EDC guns for a number of years and having seen thousands of hours of dry fire, training and range time.
I had to rezero the HD's a few times over the years and move them around as needed. The front sight never budged and it took a good beating. I do not remember what I hit it on but you can see a nice little dent on the side. I do not know what the HD's are made out of but clearly it is something resilient.
The rear sight had one spot which was a little out of spec and required a little bit of filing when I first got it on the base which connects to the bottom of the dovetail.
As you can see the front edges of the HD's which would point towards the front sight are pretty shiney, that's because they have gotten a lot of contact due to their design.
The one thing you constantly hear online and anyone with any time of experience carrying with HD's knows that the front of the rear sights is super sharp. The HD's were designed to have a slight forward angle which allows the person running the gun to catch clothing and other objects when trying to rack using the rear sight. In this context Trijicon did |
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One day, her speech therapist brought out Connect Four and played it with her as a part of her session. That’s cool, I thought, innocently. They’re using games to help her recover. Then, something clicked. All of the sudden, my new board gaming obsession had another layer. Tic-tac-toe was fine in therapy, but my wife is an intelligent, dynamic person. I wanted to see what we could do together to facilitate her recovery and with games more our style.
I started bringing Bananagrams and Tides of Time to our room where we would play when she was not resting. Frequently, I would have to guide her through her turn and offer gentle rule reminders. I found myself paying more attention to her plays than my own. But, it did not matter so much if she remembered the rules or played all that well. The process of following instructions, keeping to turn order and selecting from a finite set of actions triggered and, I think, helped rebuild thinking processes that the traumatic brain injury had affected. And, equally important, the games keep her interested and happy while doing so.
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Sorry, Iron Man— she’d literally talk to the character—I need to take Dead Pool this turn.
After we were discharged and returned home, we gradually introduced cooperative games like Pandemic and Harry Potter: Hogwarts Battle to our gaming diet, and then, slowly, more complex games—both cooperative and competitive—such as Memoir ‘44, Euphoria and Mansions of Madness (2nd Edition). Some days, learning a new game or even returning to one we haven’t played in a while is easy. Things click into place and we’re playing almost as we did before, albeit at a slower pace. Other times, even playing familiar games, she can struggle to complete her turn. It all shows both how far we’ve come and how far we have to go. While it can be frustrating for both of us, it also serves as a good benchmark to track her progress.
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Early in her recovery, we returned to playing Marvel: Legendary, a game that she had loved before her accident. While she did not remember even getting it, she responded eagerly to it because of the theme. Marvel comics were a touchstone from her childhood, and that part of her memory was still intact. The game is a deck-builder: You start with a few cards offering very limited options and gradually add more complex cards to play with. In a way, my wife could develop and grow with the game. It helped that she got to pick her favorite superheroes and villains to play with. With set events on each turn, she developed a rhythm: villain, fight, recruit, discard, draw, repeat.
At first, there was no strategy. She would simply recruit whichever hero she liked the best (Iron Man was and is a perennial favorite). Over the course of several weeks, once the mechanics of the game became more automatic, she vied for more optimal cards to suit her needs. Sorry, Iron Man— she’d literally talk to the character—I need to take Dead Pool this turn.
To look at my wife, you would not know the hell she has been through and the cognitive fog she continues to fight.
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I later learned from a speech pathologist friend that there’s a checklist of cognitive traits treated in cases such as my wife’s, and gaming checks off many (if not all) of the relevant boxes: expression (verbal and tactile), auditory and reading comprehension, attention/concentration, initiation, mental processing, reasoning and memory. Not only does gaming give much-needed practice in all these areas, it also actively assists her in rebuilding how to think.
Weeks into her recovery. I have observed my wife play increasingly difficult and complex games at higher and higher levels of function. Brain injuries are invisible afflictions. To look at my wife, you would not know the hell she has been through and the cognitive fog she continues to fight. Gaming is a safe space where she can exercise herself mentally and behaviorally. She still frequently experiences “brain burn,” but that, too, is improving (both in games and in daily living). As she continues to improve, she is able to handle increasingly difficult games. Her current favorite game is a toss up between Terraforming Mars and Viticulture.
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Today, almost a year later, we’re fortunate to be a part of a weekly game group full of people supportive of my wife and her recovery. The group, run by Jamey Stegmaier of Stonemaier Games, has been welcoming to both of us, gently assisting my wife as needed during play, and we’ve even had the opportunity to play test new games and expansions. Giving critical feedback has enabled my wife to continue to stretch her brain while also empowering her, and I’m grateful to Jamey for being so open to us.
She is a far cry from how she was months, weeks, even days ago, but we still have a long way to go. So, we will continue fighting World War II and Voldemort. We will keep building farms and hunting Dracula. We will keep playing for her (and my) health, sanity, and enjoyment because I’m convinced it has helped save both of our lives as we know them. After all, they’re not only games.
Jeffrey Spenner is a musician living in Missouri with his wife and five (yes, five) cats. He contributes to the site The Game Blob (www.thegameblob.com) where he focuses on his wife’s “Board Game Therapy” as she recovers from a severe brain injury.The spaces behind the iconic illuminated signs of London's Piccadilly Circus are set to be occupied for the first time since the 1950s, as part of a renovation by Fletcher Priest Architects that includes a huge rooftop extension.
Fletcher Priest received planning permission earlier this month to transform the various buildings that make up the Piccadilly Lights complex into offices, shops and apartments for developer Land Securities.
This includes the building behind the glowing signs, much of which has sat derelict for over 60 years.
The British firm plans to insert a new top-lit winter garden behind the signs. It will also add a new faceted roof across the entire urban block, featuring decorative ceramic tiled surfaces, angular windows and secluded balcony terraces.
The aim is to solve the "jigsaw puzzle of uses and apparently contradictory interests with a playful, rational approach that belies the complexity of the site".
The tile-clad volume will extend up from the roofline of all the buildings, which date back as far as 1910. Beneath it, new workspaces aimed at Soho media companies will each have access to their own private terrace.
Related story Heatherwick gets go ahead for canal-side shopping centre in London's King's Cross
People on the street will only be able to glimpse the extension from certain locations, but its colourful surface will offer a bright contrast to the old gables.
Inside, the new spaces will feature window seats and built-in ledges that function as worktops.
Situated in the heart of London's West End, Piccadilly Circus is a major traffic interchange, home to the London Pavilion and Criterion Theatre. During the second world war it was filled with clubs serving American soldiers, and also featured the popular Café Monico.
Numerous buildings covered in illuminated signs once filled Piccadilly, but the one on Fletcher Priest's site is the last left, so became a city landmark that has proved impossible to develop over the last 60 years.
But the firm's plan to rework it has now won approval from both Westminster Council and London mayor Boris Johnson.
"This exciting multi-layered proposal reflects the dynamism of Piccadilly Circus itself, which is London’s most popular and inclusive public space," said studio co-founder Keith Priest.
"The equivalent of Tokyo's Shibuya or New York City's Times Square, it expresses the essence of the city – its highs and lows, its glamour and grunge."
"We hope to revive the area and capture the essence of its history and identity: the fascinating story of Monico, from its days as a restaurant that was once a regular tea-dance venue, to the origins of Rainbow Corner as a meeting place for American GIs in London, and more recently as the backdrop to a dazzling array of films," he added.
Fletcher Priest has offices in London, Cologne and Riga, and is also currently working on a 25-storey tower in the UK capital's Bank of England Conservation Area.
For job opportunities at Fletcher Priest Architects, visit their company profile on Dezeen Jobs.Sols 864-866: Hello Again, Pink Cliffs!
9 January 2015
The drive toward “Pink Cliffs” went according to plan, so in the Sol 864 plan we will be doing a very short drive (called a “bump”) toward our drilling target: “Mojave” (shown above). Before the drive, ChemCam will analyze 5 locations in a line across a possible mineral vein in the rock, at a target called “Harrisburg”. This type of observation, called a “raster”, was quite common before ChemCam’s focus problems, but this will be the first time doing a 5-point raster since the focusing laser stopped working. ChemCam is still collecting images and spectra at multiple focus positions per point, to make sure we get good data.
After Harrisburg, ChemCam will also study a broken rock target called “Beers”, where it will take spectra and several stacks of images at different focus positions. This will provide good data for testing the focus, plus interesting science data from the freshly exposed portion of the broken rock. Mastcam will provide supporting images for both ChemCam observations, plus an image of a location where the rover ran over a small sand ripple, at a target called “Doughnut”. (I promise, Homer Simpson did not name our targets today!) Navcam will also do a dust devil search.
After that, the rover will drive about 10 meters to get into position for drilling, and we will take Mastcam and Navcam images of the surroundings. On Sol 865, our main activity is a measurement of methane in the atmosphere by SAM (Sample Analysis at Mars – the onboard chemistry lab).
And then on Sol 866, we have some routine atmospheric observations by ChemCam, Mastcam, and Navcam.
by Ryan Anderson
--Ryan is a planetary scientist at the USGS Astrogeology Science Center and a member of the ChemCam team on MSL.
Dates of planned rover activities described in these reports are subject to change due to a variety of factors related to the Martian environment, communication relays and rover status.From: Robert J. Birgeneau, Chancellor <CALmessages@berkeley.edu>
Date: Mon, Jan 10, 2011 at 10:30 AM
Subject: Chancellor Birgeneau comments on Arizona shootings
To: "Staff, All Academic Titles, Other Members of the Campus Community, Deans, Directors, Department Chairs, Students," <CALmessages@berkeley.edu>
Dear members of our campus community:
This weekend's shooting of Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords and the deaths and injuries of many others in the horrific event in Tucson, Arizona[,] have shocked our nation. We here at UC Berkeley offer our sincere condolences to everyone who has been personally affected by this tragedy.
Such a brutal and violent attack on an individual who has devoted herself to public service is deeply regrettable. It calls upon us as an academic community to stop and ponder the climate in which such an act can be contemplated, even by a mind that is profoundly disturbed. A climate in which demonization of others goes unchallenged and hateful speech is tolerated can lead to such a tragedy. I believe that it is not a coincidence that this calamity has occurred in a state which has legislated discrimination against undocumented persons. This same mean-spirited xenophobia played a major role in the defeat of the Dream Act by our legislators in Washington, leaving many exceptionally talented and deserving young people, including our own undocumented students, painfully in limbo with regard to their futures in this country.
On our own campus, and throughout all the campuses of the University of California, we must continue to work toward a climate of equity and inclusion for all. We must be vigilant to condemn hate speech and acts of vandalism on our campuses by those wanting to promote enmity. We must work to support dialogue about our differences and eschew expressions of demonization of others, including virulent attacks on Israel, anti-Muslim graffiti, racism towards African-Americans, Chicano/Latinos and other underrepresented minority groups, and homophobic acts. Continuing to support our principles of community will ensure a better and safer campus. We must do this now so that our students, as future leaders of this great country, will continue to set the standard for a better and safer nation.
Robert J. Birgeneau
Chancellor, UC BerkeleyOne business day after praising a convicted killer for completing her sentence for murdering her family, a Calgary judge was at it again Monday — congratulating another youth killer for his rehabilitation.
Calgary Court of Queen’s Bench Justice Scott Brooker was given an update on a now 19-year-old man who he convicted of manslaughter in the stabbing death of a city resident three years ago.
Defence counsel Andrea Serink said her client, who has recently moved into a group home, has been progressing well and plans to attend university in the fall.
“The transition (to a group home has) gone very well,” Serink said.
She said her client has been taking hip hop dance lessons — a type of dance he excels in — and is looking for a job.
“Once he completes his sentence he’ll be one of the mentors that goes into (Calgary Young Offenders Centre) to teach dancing,” Serink said.
Her client also addressed court, saying he’s now going to Alcoholics Anonymous to deal with the addiction problem which brought him before court in the first place.
“That should be one of your priorities,” Brooker said.
“Don’t overload yourself before university,” the judge said.
Brooker said he was hesitant to congratulate the offender for taking advantage of the opportunities he’s been afforded to better himself.
“With a certain amount of trepidation all I can say is keep up the good work,” he said.
Last Friday Brooker presided over the final progress hearing for the Medicine Hat girl who was given a 10-year custodial and community supervision sentence for three counts of first-degree murder in the slayings of her parents and younger brother.
The now 22-year-old was just 12 when she had her 23-year-old boyfriend break into her parents home and kill them before they murdered her eight-year-old brother.
Brooker created some controversy by suggesting her growth from a pre-teen killer to a young woman with a potentially bright future would have made her parents happy.
“I think your parents would be rather proud of you,” he told the triple murderer, whose sentence ended Saturday.
“You’ve indicated through your conduct over the last 8 1/2 years (since her conviction) you have a desire to atone for what you did,” Brooker said.
Serink’s client was sentenced to a year of custody followed by a year of conditional supervision for manslaughter in the killing of John Walmsley on March 17, 2013, outside the Drop In Centre.
KMartin@postmedia.com
On Twitter: @KMartinCourtsThis Sunday, June 26, 2017, photo provided by Transportation Security Administration (TSA) shows a TSA agent holding a live lobster that weighs roughly 20 pounds at Boston's Logan International Airport. TSA spokesman Michael McCarthy said Monday, June 26, that the lobster found Sunday in the passenger's checked luggage at the airport's Terminal C is the "largest" he'd ever seen. (Transportation Security Administration via AP)
BOSTON (AP) — The Transportation Security Administration says a 20-pound (9-kilogram) live lobster has been spotted in a passenger’s luggage at Boston’s Logan International Airport.
TSA spokesman Michael McCarthy says the lobster found Sunday in the passenger’s checked luggage at the airport’s Terminal C is the “largest” he’s ever seen.
McCarthy says the TSA doesn’t prohibit transporting lobsters. The TSA website says a live lobster is allowed through security but must be transported in a “clear, plastic, spill-proof container.”
McCarthy says the lobster was in a cooler and “cooperated quite nicely with the screening process.”
He shared a picture of a TSA agent holding up the crustacean on social media.Underneath a 26-floor office tower in Stockholm, an underground space once used as an archive for a newspaper will soon become a farm. And because of a unique business model, the urban farmers growing greens in the new farm won’t pay rent–their farm will pay for itself in heat.
Like some other indoor farms, the Plantagon CityFarm, set to begin production in early 2018, will grow greens in vertical towers under LED lights. But by capturing the heat from the lights–heat that would normally have to be vented out of the room and require air conditioning to keep the plants from overheating–the farm operators can send it into a heat storage system for the office building, and the heat can be used to help keep the offices warm through the winter.
The system will save the office building 700,000 kilowatt-hours of energy a year, worth roughly three times as much as the previous tenant of the basement was paying in rent.
“[The building owner] agreed to give us a free lease for three years, so we don’t pay one single Swedish kroner for the room,” says Plantagon cofounder Hans Hassle. “This is the challenge, very often, for urban farmers: If you really want to grow things in the city, you have to find new business models that actually make the food not too expensive in the end.”
The company plans to sell food directly to people working in the offices above, along with two restaurants that are located in the high-rise. Roughly a third of the produce will be sold to nearby grocery stores, all close enough that the greens can be delivered without fossil fuels. Another third of the produce will be sold in an on-site store in the skyscraper.
“In Sweden, we have a higher demand for locally grown food than we do for organic food,” Hassle says. “People tend to want to know where the production comes from.”
If organic kale or lettuce travels hundreds or thousands of miles to a store, Hassle says, the environmental footprint could be higher than the same greens, grown without pesticides or herbicides, inside the closed-loop system of the indoor farm. Like other indoor farming, the Plantagon system also uses a tiny fraction of the water used on outdoor farms. The heat is captured in water that travels in tubes over the LED lights, and then sent into a heat pump system. Carbon dioxide from the offices will also be sent to the farm, and fresh oxygen from the plants will be sent back to office workers.Paul joins several major candidates who have already filed
Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul has filed his paperwork to run in the New Hampshire primary, capping off a busy week of candidates visiting the Statehouse.Paul arrived in Concord just after noon on Friday to file his paperwork. Later in the evening, he'll host a town hall in Portsmouth.Candidates have until Nov. 20 to submit their paperwork and $1,000 fee to appear on the Republican or Democratic primary ballot in the state's first-in-the-nation presidential primary.Several major GOP candidates, such as former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson, have yet to file.
Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul has filed his paperwork to run in the New Hampshire primary, capping off a busy week of candidates visiting the Statehouse.
Paul arrived in Concord just after noon on Friday to file his paperwork. Later in the evening, he'll host a town hall in Portsmouth.
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Candidates have until Nov. 20 to submit their paperwork and $1,000 fee to appear on the Republican or Democratic primary ballot in the state's first-in-the-nation presidential primary.
Several major GOP candidates, such as former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson, have yet to file.
AlertMeWASHINGTON, Jan. 20 (UPI) -- Radar developed to allow the U.S. military to see into homes has spread to police departments, USA Today reported Tuesday.
At least 50 law enforcement agencies, including the FBI and the U.S. Marshals Service, are using the handheld Range-R devices. The newspaper said some began using them more than two years ago with no public notice.
Since 2012, the Marshals have spent at least $180,000 on the devices, according to federal records. They can determine how many people are in a house and their locations, using radio waves that can detect motion as slight as human breathing.
In December, a U.S. appeals court in Denver upheld the arrest of an alleged parole violator by federal marshals that involved the use of Range-R. But the judges expressed misgivings about the technology, saying there is "little doubt that the radar device deployed here will soon generate many questions for this court."
In 2001, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled police needed a warrant before using thermal imaging to detect heat in a home.
Christoper Soghoian, principal technologist for the American Civil Liberties Union, suggested high-tech surveillance can be more intrusive than police breaking down the door. He added that the secret introduction of technology prevents public debate.
"What happens in your home is supposed to receive the highest level of protection under the law," Soghoian said. "At least if the police kick down your front door or knock on your front door and demand to come in, you know they are looking inside...you can at least voice your opposition. When the police use a device like this, you have no idea that they are doing it."
USA Today reported that other advanced technology is available that allow police to get data from cell phones. "When law enforcement agencies introduce surveillance technology without telling Congress and the courts it short circuits democracy," Soghoian said.By Jonathan Fildes
Technology reporter, BBC News
The firms fear the clause will give future governments too much power Some of the biggest names on the web have written to Peter Mandelson to express "grave concerns" about elements of the Digital Economy Bill. Facebook, Google, Yahoo and eBay object to a clause that they say could give government "unprecedented and sweeping powers" to amend copyright laws. "We urge you to remove Clause 17 from the bill," the letter read. However, the government has said it believes the clause will "future-proof online copyright laws". "The law must keep pace with technology, so that the Government can act if new ways of seriously infringing copyright develop in the future," a spokesperson for the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (Bis). The consortium believe that if Clause 17, as it is known, is approved it will give "any future Secretary of State" the ability to amend copyright laws as they see fit. DIGITAL ECONOMY BILL Legal framework for tackling copyright infringement via education and technical measures Ofcom given powers to appoint and fund independently funded news consortia New duties for Ofcom to assess the UK's communications infrastructure every two years Modernising spectrum to increase investment in mobile broadband Framework for the move to digital radio switchover by 2015 Updating Channel 4 functions to encompass public service content, on TV and online Age ratings compulsory for all boxed video games aimed at those over 12 years "This power could be used, for example, to introduce additional technical measures or increase monitoring of user data even where no illegal practice has taken place," the letter read. This would "discourage innovation" and "impose unnecessary costs" representatives of the firms wrote. Others have suggested that the clause could be used to tweak laws so that search engines could not publish summaries of news stories in their results. Bis said that clause 17 was a necessary extension of its plans to reduce copyright theft and that fears that government would mould copyright laws to their needs were unfounded. "Business will not wake up one morning to a world in which government has taken extensive digital powers," the spokesperson said. "There are substantial constraints on how the power can be used, with requirements for a consultation and votes in both houses of Parliament before anything can happen." However, the consortium of companies say the clause is so broad ranging that it could risk "legitimate consumer use of current technology as well as future developments". READ THE LETTER
Letter to Lord Mandelson [533 KB] Most computers will open PDF documents automatically, but you may need Adobe Reader Download the reader here "We all acknowledge that new business models need to emerge to support creative content," the letter from European and UK representatives of the firms reads. "They are inherently risky and entrepreneurs rely heavily on there being a consistent and stable approach to copyright enforcement. "This clause would inject an unprecedented level of uncertainty in this regard." Other groups including US digital rights group The Electronic Frontier Foundation have objected to it. Clause 17 is part of the government's Digital Economy Bill, outlined in the Queen's speech in November 2009. The bill includes a shake-up of the radio spectrum, a classification system for video games and plans to tackle illegal file-sharing. The so-called "three strikes" element of the bill would give regulator Ofcom new powers to disconnect persistent net pirates. The plans have proved controversial with lobby organisation The Open Rights Group urging people to contact their MP to oppose the plans. The bill will have its second reading in the House of Lords on 2 December. It will have to go through various other readings and drafts before it becomes law.
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That’s been especially true for most of the past 20 years at the U.S. Military Academy, where the success of the football team often dictates the mood of the Corps of Cadets. There are more privileges when the football team is winning, the mood on the post, as the Army campus is called, is lighter, and the gray days don’t feel quite so daunting.
Which is why last Saturday’s 31-14 win over Rice on a hot, humid afternoon was all about bright blue skies and cheery grins for everyone in uniform — football uniforms on the field at Michie Stadium or the summer whites the rest of the corps was wearing in the stands.
For the first time in two decades, Army was 2-0. Since the last time, the Black Knights have had one winning season (7-6 in 2010), been coached by seven different men and went 0-13 in 2003, a mark for futility that has never been reached before or since in college football.
In 1996, that 2-0 start led to a 10-2 season that included a bowl bid, a fifth straight win over Navy and the Commander-in-Chief’s Trophy. Army hasn’t won the CIC since and last fall lost to Navy for the 14th straight time.
Which is why 2-0, including an upset win at Temple in its opener, was such a big deal.
“I love the way winning feels, especially around here,” said Jeff Monken, the third-year coach who appears to be close to finally engineering Army’s long-awaited turnaround. “It means so much, not just to the team but to the corps. Saturday night, I went home with a smile on my face and started thinking about what we were going to need to do to beat UTEP. That’s the way coaches are: You’re really happy to be 2-0, but it doesn’t take long to get focused on trying to be 3-0.”
That’s what Monken was doing Sunday morning when there was a knock on his door. A handful of school officials were on his doorstep. Army’s coaches all live on the post, and Monken, who was an assistant at Navy for six years, was relaxing with his wife and three daughters before heading to work. Like a lot of college teams nowadays, the Black Knights practice on Sunday afternoon, then take Monday off.
As soon as Monken opened the door, he knew the visit wasn’t to ask how early prep was going for UTEP.
Sophomore cornerback Brandon Jackson, the officials told Monken, was dead. They didn’t have many details; it had been a one-car accident in Westchester County shortly before 2 a.m.
[Army cornerback dies in car accident]
“Tragedy is a part of life, I think we all understand that, especially at a place like West Point,” Monken said Tuesday night, his voice filled with sadness. “We all know that even when these things happen, you still have to keep on living.”
He paused. “Still, we’re all reeling right now.”
Jackson was, in many ways, a poster-boy Army recruit: Born and raised in Queens, he was overlooked by most Football Bowl Subdivision recruiters. John Loose, then an assistant coach at Lafayette, began recruiting him because he was a good student and, Loose believed, someone who could start right away at Lafayette, a program in the lower-tier Football Championship Subdivision.
Then, Monken got the Army job and hired Loose, who had been on the last successful Army staff, under Bob Sutton in the 1990s. Loose convinced him that Jackson was a perfect target for Army: He was a good student, a good player and, as with many service academy athletes, had a tie to the military: His mother, Morna Davis, was in the Army reserves and deployed to Iraq in 2006. Unlike many athletes, Jackson saw the chance to serve in the military after graduation as an opportunity, not a roadblock.
He became a starter three games into his freshman season, intercepting two passes in that first start against Wake Forest. By season’s end he was the team’s fifth-leading tackler and this year was a key to the team’s improvement on defense.
He was a rising star as a football player and as a cadet.
[The Other College Football Top 25: Suspended refs to Ballage’s barrage]
Still in a state of shock, Monken went to meet with his team on Sunday. There would be no practice. The academy prepared as best it possibly could for the reaction to the news in the locker room. Grief counselors were available. So, of course, were the coaches.
“They’ve had all that, but more than anything I think they’ve leaned on each other,” Monken said. “That’s the way this place is. There’s a closeness among the cadets because of the shared experience and that’s especially true on the football team. It really is a brotherhood — not just because we say it is, but because that’s the way the players really feel.”
On Monday, Monken met with his leadership council, 14 players who represent all four classes. The first question he asked them was whether they wanted to play on Saturday in El Paso.
“The answer was emphatic and unanimous,” Monken said. “I was pretty certain it would be because I knew they’d all feel like they were letting Brandon down if we didn’t play.”
Then, Monken asked the harder question: Did he think they could prepare for the game as if it were any other without even considering the notion that they had an excuse for losing? “I said, ‘You can go out there and get your butts kicked and people will feel sorry for you and say it was understandable. Or, you can go in there the way you went into the first two games with an absolute belief you’re going to win the game.’ ”
The answer Monken got came in the form of another question: When do we start preparing? Monken hadn’t decided until that moment whether to practice on Monday or give the players another day off to deal with their grief.
They practiced on Monday.
Monken and the council will meet again before Saturday’s game to decide how they want to honor Jackson on the field.
“One thing I don’t want is for them to feel pressure to win for Brandon,” Monken said. “You should never feel pressure to win for anybody. But there’s no doubt we’re going to honor him in a number of ways throughout the season — some will be subtle, some won’t be subtle. But I know he’ll never be far from our thoughts.”
It will be weeks, according to police, before the cause of the accident is known. Regardless, everyone at West Point will continue to deal with Jackson’s loss, even as they honor him.
The gray days will return, inevitably, in a few months. The mission of the football team to make them a little less bleak is now that much more difficult — and that much more important.
For more by John Feinstein, visit washingtonpost.com/feinstein.YouTube Decides Obama Singing Al Green Is Fair Use; Restores All The Videos
from the your-move,-BMG dept
Earlier this week, we wrote about BMG issuing a takedown to YouTube over a Mitt Romney advertisement that used a clip of President Obama singing one line of an Al Green song. As we noted at the time, this seemed like a clear fair use case. Also, people pointed out that it was clearly an attempt to stifle speech since BMG only went after the Romney commercial, and not the original clips of Obama singing. Realizing this, BMG then also issued takedowns for those videos. If YouTube wanted to retain its DMCA safe harbor provisions, it is supposed to keep those videos down for 10 days and then it could (but does not need to) restore them. However, Google has jumped the gun and restored the videos already (you can see it here ), saying that the company made a determination that the content does not violate copyright laws.At this point, the ball is back in BMG's court. Technically, it can now file a lawsuit against the uploaders of the video if it wants (so, the Romney campaign, the Associated Press and others). Also, it could potentially try to go after Google itself, claiming that the safe harbors no longer apply due to the early reposting. Of course, one would hope that BMG realizes that pursuingof these strategies would lead to ridicule and, quite possibly, a court issued rebuke for wasting their time with a bogus copyright claim. Unfortunately, for reasons that remain a mystery to me, when it comes to copyright claims, many copyright holders fail to recognize this kind of likely outcome ahead of time.
Filed Under: al green, barack obama, copyright, fair use, mitt romney
Companies: bmg, google, youtubeForce used incapacitating grenades for five years without home secretary’s approval and despite warnings, inquiry hears
Greater Manchester Police used incapacitating CS gas grenades for five years without permission from the home secretary, a public inquiry has heard.
The force’s firearms unit used the weapon even though government scientists refused to sanction them and a national policing body described them as “dangerous”.
The revelation emerged at a public inquiry into the fatal police shooting of Anthony Grainger during a swoop on a stolen Audi in a car park in the Cheshire town of Culcheth.
The inquiry at Liverpool crown court heard that CS dispersal canisters (CSDC) were thrown into the car during the armed operation. They are designed to incapacitate suspects by spreading an irritant that temporarily restricts breathing and sight.
The inquiry heard that GMP’s firearms unit was told by the Home Office’s police scientific development branch in January 2005 that the CS grenades could not be sanctioned because they were potentially dangerous and had not been properly tested.
Yet despite the warning, the force purchased seven CSDC canisters on 9 July 2007, a further 24 on 23 August that year, then “more and more again” in 2008, 2009, 2010 and 2011, the inquiry heard.
The force temporarily paused their use in October 2007 when other emergency service partners raised concerns about “excessive irritant” in the CS canisters following an incident when they were used.
In 2009, a member of the National Police Improvement Agency advised GMP that its use of the gas grenades was “dangerous”, the inquiry heard.
Jason Beer QC, counsel to the inquiry, told the chairman, Judge Thomas Teague QC, that GMP’s use of the CS grenades should be investigated as part of the 14-week inquiry.
He said: “This may raise issues for GMP which extend beyond the use of CSDC on 3 March, including, first, whether GMP knew that its use of the CSDC between 2007 and 2012 was without the approval of the home secretary.
“Second, why GMP introduced the use of the CSDC without the approval of the home secretary, without taking any of the steps required by the statutory code of practice to secure such approval and in breach of the statutory code of practice.
“Third, what steps GMP took after a member of the National Police Improvement Agency advised GMP in 2009 that its use of the CSDC was dangerous.”
The inquiry will on Monday hear testimony from senior police officers during two weeks of evidence being heard behind closed doors. The inquiry has heard that the operation, dubbed Operation Shire, was beset with incorrect and out-of-date intelligence and that commanding officers had “significant” competency problems.
Grainger, 36, and two associates were suspected of planning an armed robbery of a Sainsbury’s store when 16 firearms officers descended on their stolen Audi shortly after 7pm on 3 March 2012.
A police marksman known only as Q9 told the inquiry he shot Grainger through the chest because he saw him lower his right hand out of sight and believed he was reaching for a firearm. No guns were found in the car or in properties linked to Grainger.
GMP had not returned a request for comment at the time of publication.ANN ARBOR—You’re standing near an airport luggage carousel and your bag emerges on the conveyor belt, prompting you to spring into action. How does your brain make the shift from passively waiting to taking action when your bag appears?
A new study from investigators at the University of Michigan and Eli Lilly may reveal the brain’s “switch” for new behavior. They measured levels of a neurotransmitter |
the defensive as they have to turn towards the back wall.
However, as a lot of people know (except almost all junior players…), it can also be a liability of a shot. If you play it badly and it’s either loose and in the middle or too short, you can come under a lot of pressure or even lose the rally.
So how do we make it a weapon and not a liability?
The Technique
There can be a number of reasons why Cross-Courts from the back don’t make the grade. Some people get too ‘front-on’, which is to say their body faces the front wall as they hit the ball. If you do this, you typically lose engagement in the hips and torso which means you don’t get the same swing, which can cause the shot to come up short.
Do your best to remain more ‘side-on’, having your body facing the side wall, although you may need to play about with this and find a middle ground between being side-on and front-on.
Another thing to be aware of when playing this shot is the follow-through. A lot of players finish their follow-through very quickly, which means they lose a bit of their accuracy and ball control. Your hand should go through the ball when you’re playing this shot by quite some distance, so just check you are allowing it to do so and also letting it do so in the right direction!
It can also be an idea to snap your elbow and lower arm more, especially if the ball is in the back corner or getting behind you, as this can give the ball a little bit more impetus for making it to the other back corner of the court.
Added Deception
An added benefit of remaining more side-on is that you take up roughly the same position that you would if you were going to play straight, which means the shot can have some natural disguise, which could help to make it an even more devastating attacking threat.
Make sure you don’t play any rash Cross-Courts from the back but wait for the right opening and then make sure you achieve that depth and width with the quality of your technique!Reuters Assyrians attend mass in Damascus, Syria.
ISIS has destroyed one of the ancient wonders of Iraq by bulldozing the ziggurat pyramid in Nimrud, once the capital of the Assyrian empire stretching from Egypt to parts of modern-day Iran and Turkey.
The discovery of the destroyed temple came as Iraqi troops announced on Sunday that they had liberated Nimrud, and were expected to check the archaeological site for mines and booby traps before opening it up for experts to inspect the damage.
Satellite images published by the Times show that the temple, which dated back 2,900 years and towered over the surrounding desert, was flattened between August and November.
The ziggurat was known as one of the most spectacular sacred structures from ancient Mesopotamia. It was once 60m (200ft) high and wide, though more recently its remains were measured at 42m in height.
The pictures also show what the Times report described as "an enormous hole" where the site's main palace and its collection of Assyrian friezes once stood.
A spokesperson for the Assyrian Confederation, Afram Yakoub, told Christian Today that the destruction of the ziggurat was "a failure for the world community which hasn't been able to protect world heritage sites in war zones", adding that "it's a shame for Iraq which has seen so much destruction [of] ancient heritage."
Yakoub continued: "The Assyrian nation has survived countless attacks, massacres and genocides throughout history, this recent destruction saddens us but it also makes us more determined to fight for our survival as a nation."
Nuri Kino, founder and president of campaign group A Demand For Action, told Christian Today that he had spoken this morning to an Assyrian man who fled Mosul in 2014.
The man said: "We knew the destruction would be more than we believed before but... when the news came about Ziggurat it felt like torture. I don't think people understand what the world is losing here, maybe we need to compare the loss to if something would happen to the pyramids in Egypt.
"ISIS has destroyed a treasury that is thousands and thousands of years old, this is a crime to humanity, they need to be held responsible for their crimes. They are destroying the cradle of civilisation."
A report from the American Schools of Oriental Research confirmed: "Imagery dating to early October shows the almost complete levelling of the ziggurat mound, with the majority of damage occurring between August 31 and October 2, 2016".
The commander of the Mosul operation, Lt Gen Abdul-Amir Raheed Yar Allah, said troops had re-taken Nimrud which was seized by ISIS in 2014, after heavy fighting. He released a statement saying that "the 9th division of the Iraqi army has liberated the town of Nimrud completely and raised the Iraqi flag over its buildings after the enemy suffered heavy casualties".
The soldiers also captured the village of Numaniya, on the edge of the city.
Nimrud was first bulldozed last year as part of what the Iraqi government says is a campaign by ISIS to destroy symbols that militants consider idolatrous.
Unesco described the act as a war crime, while activists, officials and historians condemned ISIS at the time for the destruction of the ancient Assyrian archaeological site.
Video footage released last year by ISIS showed its fighters destroying relics with electric drills and explosives.
Nimrud – which lies on the eastern bank of the Tigris river, around 20 miles south of Mosul – was first excavated in the 1840s by the British explorer Austen Henry Layard.
Many of the site's relics are in the British Museum as well as the Metropolitan Museum in New York and Iraq's national museum in Baghdad.Getting unicode right in Python
Posted by Nick Johnson | Filed under python, text, unicode, rant
Yup, I'm back from holidays! Apologies to everyone for the delayed return - it's taking me a long while to catch up on everything that built up while I was away.
Proper text processing - specifically, correct handling of unicode - is one of those things that consistently confounds even experienced developers. This isn't because it's difficult, but rather, I believe, because most developers carry around a few key misconceptions about what text (in the context of software) is and how it's represented. A search on StackOverflow for UnicodeDecodeError demonstrates just how prevalent these misconceptions are. These misconceptions date back to the days before unicode - longer than many developers have been in the industry, including myself - but they're still nothing if not widespread. This is in part because a number of well known and popular languages continue to, at worst, perpetuate the misunderstandings, and at best are insufficiently good at helping developers get it right.
We can divide languages into four categories along the axis of unicode support:
Languages that were written before unicode was defined, or widespread. C and C++ fall into this category. Languages in this category tend to have unicode support that's spotty, not built into the language, or difficult to use correctly, making the path of least resistance the wrong one, more often than not. Languages that should know better. These languages were written after unicode was already widespread, but managed to get things horribly wrong. They have all the weaknesses of category 1, without the excuse of age. Prime amongst these, in my experience, is PHP, though there are doubtless many more languages that do just as badly. Languages that get it basically right, but have a few critical flaws. Languages in this category are'modern' and understand unicode, but fail to make the path of least resistance for developers the correct one, which results in some serious shortfalls in unicode support for things implemented in these languages. Python 2.X, to my dismay, falls into this category - more about which, later. Languages that Get It Right. They support unicode, and they make it easy to do the right thing, and hard to do the wrong thing. Java and the.NET platform both fall into this category.
So what's the deal with unicode, and how are we getting it wrong? Joel's post, the absolute minimum every software developer absolutely, positively must know about unicode is an excellent place to start for this, but for the sake of brevity and those who are naturally impatient, I'll summarize.
Characters and bytes
The essential fact that you must understand in order to handle text properly is the abstract concept of a character. A character is a representation of a single symbol in a piece of text - a platonic ideal, of sorts. Crucially, a character is not a byte. Let me repeat for emphasis: A character is not, not, not a byte. Furthermore, there's no single way of representing a given character as one or more bytes - as I said, a character is the platonic ideal of the smallest unit of text.
Unicode, then, is a way of defining a set of characters that everyone can agree on. It consists of a huge database of characters, and each one is associated with a unique number, called a code point. Thus, the english letter capital A has the codepoint U+0041. The euro symbol has codepoint U+20A0, and so forth. A text string is simply a series of these codepoints, representing the character for each element in the string.
Of course, sooner or later, you need a way to store and transmit your platonic unicode strings. It helps if you choose a method that other people can understand, so that you can send text to them, and they to you, in a mutually comprehensible fashion. This is where character encodings come in.
A character encoding defines a mapping between our platonic characters and some way of representing them as bytes. The mapping doesn't have to be complete - it may have no way to represent certain characters - and it doesn't need to use the same amount of space for each character - some characters may be encoded as a single byte, while others may require several.
Because there are many ways of representing the same character as bytes, this means that if you have a series of bytes, but do not know their encoding - even if you know the data is textual - the data is meaningless. You can guess, but you'd be doing just that, guessing. In short, bytes are not text. If you forget everything else in this article, remember that. In order to read and write text, you must first know the encoding you are using, whether from of convention, out of band information, or any other mechanism.
How Python handles unicode
This is where Python's unicode support comes in. In Python's type heirarchy, there are three distinct string types: 'unicode', which represents unicode strings (text strings),'str', which represents byte strings (binary data), and 'basestring', which acts as a parent class for both of the other string types. This is where, in my opinion, Python makes its misstep in handling unicode which pushes it into category 3, instead of category 4, by my definition above.
As I've just spent several paragraphs belabouring, bytes and characters are fundamentally different entities, only interconvertible with the help of a character encoding. Python, unfortunately, does its best to help you forget this, with two separate missteps:
The first is of debatable significance: treating sequences of bytes as strings. It's arguable whether or not this is a good thing; Java and.NET support the proposition that it's not, while other languages make good arguments in the other direction. In any case, it's certainly true that certain operations you might want to preform on text strings - regular expression matching, string replacement, and so forth - don't entirely make sense on sequences of bytes. Python, though, treats bytes as just a different type of string, and allows the same set of operations on both.
The second misstep is the more significant one: Python's attempt at transparently converting between byte strings and character strings. In a variety of circumstances, Python will attempt to convert a byte string to a unicode string or vice-versa, when the situation warrants - for example, when attempting to concatenate a byte string and a unicode string together. Since, as we've previously detailed, conversion between the two types is meaningless without an encoding, Python relies on a 'default encoding', specified by sys.setdefaultencoding(). On most platforms, this defaults to ASCII, and it's almost certainly wrong for any given conversion. Other places this encoding is used include calls to str() or unicode() without specifying an encoding yourself, and functions that expect one type of string but are passed the other.
One solution to some of your unicode woes, then, would be to call sys.setdefaultencoding(), setting the default encoding to whatever you ought to be using. This only masks the root problem, though, which is your failure to handle text correctly in the first place. It may also be impractical, since many apps, particularly webapps, may have to deal with multiple different text encodings in different places.
The correct solution is to fix your code so that you handle text correctly. Here's the cliff's notes on what you should be doing:
All text strings, everywhere should be of type unicode, not str. If you're handling text, and your variable is a str, it's a bug!
To decode a byte string as text, use var.decode(encoding) (eg, var.decode('utf-8'), with the correct encoding. To encode a text string as bytes, use var.encode(encoding).
Never ever use str() on a unicode string, or unicode() on a byte string without a second argument specifying the encoding.
Whenever you read data from outside your app, expect it to be bytes - eg, of type str - and call.decode() on it to interpret it as text. Likewise, always call.encode() on text you want to send to the outside world.
If a string literal in your code is intended to represent text, it should always be prefixed with 'u'. In fact, you probably never want to define a raw string literal in your code at all. For what it's worth, though, I'm terrible at this one, as I'm sure pretty much everyone else is, too.
Python 3, by the way, fixes things, and gets unicode and string handling right, putting it solidly into category 4. See this section of the What's new page for details.
Hopefully this made sense, and if you had any doubts about what exactly unicode is and how to handle it, they're now cleared up. Next time you get a UnicodeEncodeError or UnicodeDecodeError in your app, then, you'll know exactly what's gone wrong, and how to fix it!
DisqusWelcome to the DMLP's Database of Online Legal Threats! The database contains lawsuits, cease & desist letters, subpoenas, and other legal threats directed at those who engage in online speech. You can view, search, and comment on every entry in the database. Interested in lawsuits against bloggers? You'll find them on the Lawsuits Involving Blogs page. How about threats involving forum posts and user comments? You'll find those here. You can use our advanced search page to sort the entries by any criterion of your choosing, as well as perform full-text searching of the underlying documents.
We need your help to keep the database accurate and up to date. If you've been threatened with legal action or know of someone who has, please let us know by using our contact form or by entering the information directly into the database through our easy to use threat entry form.Students in Robbi Giuliano’s fifth-grade class sit on yoga balls as they complete their assignments at Westtown-Thornbury Elementary School in West Chester, Pa. (MATT ROURKE/ASSOCIATED PRESS)
Last July I published a post titled “Why so many kids can’t sit still in school today.” It hit a nerve and became one of the most-read pieces on this blog last year, with readers continuing to click on it, along with related posts, such as “The right — and surprisingly wrong — ways to get kids to sit still in class” and “A therapist goes to middle school and tries to sit still. She can’t. Neither can the kids.”
Here is a new post on the same subject, by Aleta Margolis, founder and executive director of the Center for Inspired Teaching, a D.C.-based nonprofit organization that works with teachers, principals, and entire school faculties to foster the best teaching practices. Margolis writes about how teachers incorporate movement into lessons to make it part of learning, not just a break from it.
By Aleta Margolis
As an educator for the past 25 years, I’m delighted that our national conversations about teaching and learning are beginning to recognize that excellent instruction engages students intellectually, emotionally, and physically. We’ve come a long way in our understanding of the development of young minds. Yet despite research proving the lasting benefits of serious play, too many of our classrooms remain still, silent places, lacking any element of physical movement.
It’s critical to maintain time for recess and free play that builds students’ balance systems (as powerfully described by Angela Hanscom), but we also need to emphasize the important role that physical movement can and should play within the classroom. Movement is a powerful teaching tool, and when we as teachers thoughtfully incorporate physical elements into instruction, we elevate the learning experience. As part of my work at Center for Inspired Teaching over the past 20 years, I train teachers to provide this type of active, student-centered instruction because it’s how students learn best.
The teachers we train learn to create lessons in which students use their bodies to explore the math and literacy concepts their brains are learning. Teachers who’ve graduated from our programs are using movement to teach in classrooms across the District, across all disciplines and grade levels.
One teacher has her students measure their pulse and breath rates before and after a set of jumping jacks and then asks them to create graphs to display these results.
Another teacher makes a large outline of Washington D.C. using masking tape on the floor of his classroom and then has his students, brought together from schools across the District, map out the city’s geography by walking to and from important sites — the Capitol, the White House, the Potomac River, and also their homes, their schools, their playgrounds.
A third teacher has his students estimate the perimeter of their playground and then physically measure the distance using their own feet and the standard foot on a ruler.
Vigorously shaking a container of cream to create butter teaches students about the difficult realities of frontier life and also about the science of their own bodies, about lactic acid and what happens when muscles are used too hard for too long. When students time each other running for 30 seconds, they get to practice using basic time measurements and also to begin asking big picture questions about advanced issues such as time perception. Why does 30 seconds feel so long when you’re out of breath but so short when you’re playing a game?
A graduate of one of our programs recently described the wealth of learning that can derive from physical movement, in this instance from an activity she calls “indoor ice skating“:
Thanks to my training, I understood the benefits of this play. By having to hold the paper plate to the ground with their feet, the kids were using concentration skills.... The gliding actions were helping to build their muscles and tone their gross motor skills. The act of having to navigate their skating around other kids, to take care of themselves and others and share the space, was helping them work on self-control and peer-to-peer social-emotional development. The fun and the joy of it were helping to get their blood pumping and adrenaline boosting.
As this teacher describes, movement isn’t a break from learning; movement is learning, and the opportunities for thoughtful exploration in the classroom are endless.
Inviting students to participate physically can feel like inviting classroom chaos, and it’s critical to recognize and respect that when teachers ask students to participate physically, we’re asking them to complete far more complex, demanding work than just sitting and listening.
So how do you teach teachers to take this next step in building their practice? The answer lies in ensuring professional development engages teachers the way we expect them to engage their students — physically as well as intellectually. By taking teachers completely out of the typical training model, which requires them only to stare passively at PowerPoint slides, my colleagues and I ask teachers to tap into new ways of problem solving, community building, and communicating with those around them.
Incorporating movement-based activities can help learners of all ages articulate and internalize new ideas, and this process invites adult participants to leave their comfort zone and reexamine their roles as both teachers and learners. They explore the relief that students feel at being invited to move, as well as the uncertainty and shyness that can arise when something new and unexpected is introduced.
After participants experience this shift in mindset, my colleagues and I then focus on shifting classroom practice, training teachers to implement research-based strategies to infuse movement into lessons through careful planning, the setting of clear expectations, and the creation of meaningful work that authentically requires students to be fully engaged, in both body and mind.
It’s difficult to train teachers this way and equally difficult to teach this way, but it’s worth it. It’s worth it because higher-level instruction, provided by teachers who have strong training and support, elevates classrooms from static places where we create forced fidgeters and compliers to vibrant learning environments that build expert problem solvers, inventors, and creators. For school to be a place where the talents of young people are cultivated rather than extinguished, we need to give students the freedom and responsibility to tinker, explore, test, prod, and physically interact with the world around them.
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A therapist goes to middle school and tries to sit still. She can’t. Neither can the kids.Weston Imer, a 12-year-old living in Colorado, is running operations for Donald Trump’s presidential campaign in one of the state’s most populous counties.
Technically, Imer’s mother, Laurel Imer, is the official field coordinator for the Trump office in Jefferson County, Colorado. But her son, the co-chair for the Jefferson County Trump campaign, has taken a large share of the responsibility in persuading people to vote, according to KDVR, a local news station.
Sitting behind a desk at the Trump office, Imer makes phone calls to supporters and coordinates volunteers. He said he hopes his experiences will inspire his peers to do the same.
“Get involved,” Imer told KDVR. “That’s what I’m going to say. Just get involved. Kids need to be educated.”
Imer’s mother said working for the campaign was a good introduction to the U.S. political process for her son before he goes back to school this fall.
“You have a responsibility to your children to teach them,” she said.
Imer said running the operations from Trump has prompted his own political ambitions.
“Watch for me — 2040,” he said. “And Barron Trump, if you are watching, in 2040 I’ll take you as my running mate.”
Write to Mahita Gajanan at mahita.gajanan@time.com..- Clarity and renewal can be the fruit of disputes and disagreements, Bishop James Conley of Lincoln said to his priests on Monday, reassuring them in the face of confusion regarding Amoris laetitia.
“Amoris Laetitia will continue to be discussed among the Church's bishops and the Holy Father, in order to bring clarity and understanding to difficult questions,” Bishop Conley wrote in a Dec. 5 letter to the priests and seminarians of his diocese.
“I appreciate that public disagreement in the Church can become a source of discouragement. The history of the Church has included great theological disputes, which have been the source of division but, ultimately, have led to clarity, and to renewal.”
He reflected that “the Church is the Bride of Christ, and is protected and guided by the Holy Spirit … We can have confidence in the enduring grace of God to lead us, as it has done in many moments of difficulty or disagreement in the Church's history. The lessons of history are that we need not be dismayed or anxious by the challenges of our own time.”
Pope Francis' March 2016 apostolic exhortation on love in the family has been met with a varied reception and interpretation within the Church.
Its eighth chapter, on accompanying, discerning, and integrating fragility deals with, among other things, the pastoral care of the divorced-and-remarried, who have not been admitted to Communion unless they commit to living in continence with their partner, forgoing the acts proper to married couples.
Yet ambiguous language in that chapter has led to uncertainties about this practice and about the teaching and status of the apostolic exhortation. Some have maintained it is incompatible with Church teaching, and others that it has not changed the Church's discipline. Still others read Amoris laetitia as opening the way to a new pastoral practice, or even as a progression in continuity with St. John Paul II.
In June, a letter signed by 45 theologians identified 19 propositions in Amoris laetitia “whose vagueness or ambiguity permit interpretations that are contrary to faith or morals, or that suggest a claim that is contrary to faith and morals without actually stating it.” And in November, a letter sent by four cardinals to Pope Francis was made public, which had requested that he “resolve the uncertainties and bring clarity” regarding his exhortation.
Bishop Conley's letter to his clergy is a pastoral response to the situation, and begins by acknowledging that “in recent weeks, some of you have asked me about media reports of controversy and disagreement about the interpretation of Amoris Laetitia.”
“Disagreement and conflict in the Church can be unsettling,” he wrote. “Yet moments of sincere disagreement provide the occasion for the Holy Spirit to bring deeper clarity to our understanding and proclamation of the faith. The questions being posed to the Holy Father are intended to help achieve clarity.”
He added that discussion on Amoris laetitia “is an opportunity to grow in our understanding of the Church's teaching on the sacraments, the nature of mercy, the process of evangelization and conversion, and the pastoral mission of solidarity and accompaniment. I know that many of you have questions about the meaning of Amoris Laetitia, and its impact on our pastoral ministry. I am writing to address those questions.”
The bishop acknowledged that the exhortation does contain “insightful reflections on family life in the modern world, and on the meaning of mercy and charity in pastoral ministry … the Holy Father calls us to discern the hearts of those entrusted to our care, and to facilitate meaningful encounters with Jesus Christ, who loves us, and who calls us to love, uniquely, exclusively, and irrevocably.”
He also stated that Amoris laetitia “also includes some passages which have proven challenging to interpret and understand, especially regarding the pastoral care of Catholics who are divorced and civilly remarried, or cohabiting.”
Bishop Conley affirmed that the exhortation “does not repudiate the indissolubility of marriage, or the Church's moral teachings regarding divorce,” and neither does it “change the Church's understanding that conscience must be formed according to truth, and that a well-formed conscience cannot guide us in a manner contrary to divine revelation.”
“Sexual relationships outside the bonds of marriage constitute circumstances of grave sin,” Bishop Conley taught. “The Lord calls those who are divorced and civilly remarried, or who are cohabiting, to continence … like every person who is conscious of grave sin, divorced and civilly remarried Catholics who engage in ongoing sexual relationships may not approach Holy Communion.”
He said that “faithful pastoral care requires that we encourage Catholics to live according to the Gospel's teaching, and accompany them as they grow in understanding and acceptance of the Lord's call … the goal of our pastoral ministry is the salvation of souls – holiness – which is borne of cooperation with grace, and obedience to truth.”
The bishop indicated that he had provided the priests with the pastoral guidelines of several diocese, among them those of the Philadelphia archdiocese, the Phoenix diocese, and the province of Alberta.
“I have provided these particular documents because they reflect the most faithful interpretation of Amoris Laetitia, and covey the intepretation that is to be considered normative in the Diocese of Lincoln,” Bishop Conley wrote.
Concluding, the bishop wrote, “I ask each one of you to continue praying for the Holy Father, who is Christ's vicar on earth. I ask you to pray for the Church's bishops, unworthy successors of the apostles. And I encourage you to continue to lead the Church in fidelity, in charity, in hope, and in peace.”Warriors coach Steve Kerr discusses the grind that is the 82-game NBA regular season and how the fatigue caused mistakes against the Celtics. (0:31)
This story appears in ESPN The Magazine's April 11 Warriors Issue. Subscribe today!
To most of the crowd at The Second City comedy club in Chicago, Steve Kerr is still the Bulls hero who hit that dagger in Game 6 of the 1997 NBA Finals. The titles he later won in San Antonio? A postscript for this audience. The championship he led the Warriors to last year as a rookie head coach? Nothing compared with the punch he took from Michael Jordan!
Actor Jamison Webb is working at The Second City when Kerr and his coaching staff come for the show on a late-January night. During intermission, he sends a runner out to ask whether Kerr might like to step up onstage and do an improv game. "He came out, and the place just erupted," Webb says. "He had everything you need for it, which is just confidence and going with the flow, having a good time and not worrying about how he was looking.
"When you're performing and existing in that state, it really frees you up. You just kind of go into this zone where you're so focused on what's going on in the moment, all the other stuff kind of fades away."
Kerr and his wife, Margot, have been coming to the club since Kerr played for the Bulls in the mid-1990s. They had young kids, and any night out was something to savor. But mostly, they just liked to laugh. He made prank calls to radio shows as a teenager. Legend has it that his mother, Ann, still has a tape of his "greatest hits" somewhere. Now, on an off-night before a game with the Bulls, he's riffing with one of the most famous comedy groups in America.
Editor's Picks Podcast: ESPN The Mag Deputy editor Ty Wenger talks with Kevin Arnovitz and Ethan Sherwood Strauss on the their contributions to latest ESPN Magazine dedicated to the Warriors. Plus, Golden State head coach Steve Kerr joins the show for a thrilling discussion.
Kerr gets a huge ovation, and the Warriors' coaching staff laughs hardest of all. It has been awhile since they've seen him cut loose.
Kerr had back surgery in July, just weeks after Golden State won the 2014-15 NBA championship. The surgery created a fluid leak in his spine, which needed to be repaired by a second surgery in September. In late September, Kerr and Margot had a joint 50th birthday party (their birthdays are a day apart). "He put on a really good face," Margot says. "But you could see he was in a ton of pain."
For months, he was a shell of himself, battling intense pressure headaches and searing pain behind his eyes. The worst of it was not understanding what was wrong or knowing whether it would ever get better. As an athlete, you break a bone and the doctor tells you it will heal in four to six weeks. This was different. Kerr had no answers. It wasn't his back that hurt, it was his head. He felt sick, weak, tired and dizzy. He sat out the first 43 games of the season, leaving 35-year-old assistant coach Luke Walton in charge of the best team in the league.
"Of course I get angry and pissed off sometimes," Kerr says. "But I can't hang on that. It does you no good."
He feared he might never feel 100 percent again, but on a January road trip through Detroit, Cleveland and Chicago, he at least wanted to feel more like himself. And so it is that he owns the moment at The Second City. "That was right when I started to feel like I could start to live my life again," Kerr says. "I am coming out of this."
It'd be great to put a bow on this and say that Kerr got up on that stage, crushed it and went back to coaching without any more pain. But that's not how this goes.
There is no satisfactory explanation for why Kerr developed his headaches. A current theory is that the change in the volume of spinal fluid after the initial surgery knocked his body out of homeostasis and contributed to a condition known as new daily persistent headache syndrome. But it's just a theory. He has had a terrible migraine basically every day since July. Some days he'll feel better and go for a hike. Other days he'll be seeing spots and looking for a chair to grab or a wall to lean on so he doesn't fall over.
A few weeks after the Second City night in Chicago, Kerr finds himself in the coaches' office before a game in Phoenix with an ice pack on his neck. It is the last game before the All-Star break, and all he wants to do is get home to San Diego to rest, do some yoga, enjoy the sun, order takeout and binge-watch Netflix. But when he gets home, the family's beloved 10-year-old golden retriever, Oscar, who had been ill, goes downhill quickly.
During the worst parts of the summer and fall, taking Oscar for walks had been one of the few bright spots for Kerr. "It was almost like he waited for Steve to get home so he could say goodbye," Margot says. "It was really sad."
Is it all some sort of test? The universe's way of evening things out for a guy who won five NBA titles as a player and one as a coach? Karmic retribution for being given the opportunity to coach one of the greatest basketball teams of all time? Is there some lesson he needed to learn from all this? Some way his team needed to grow?
"We talked about this, especially when we were really in the midst of it and we just didn't know what was going to happen," Margot says. "Like, what is the lesson? We would sit there and look at each other and just say, 'There's got to be something good that comes out of this. There has to be, because it's the balance of the universe.
"But who knows? We may never know."
Pity feels selfish. What makes him feel better is closing his eyes and remembering the joy of hugging Margot and his three kids on the court after the Warriors beat the Cavaliers to close out the franchise's first title in 40 years.
"I get chills just thinking about it," Kerr says. "As a coach, it takes on even more meaning because you feel responsible for a lot of people and for their happiness and well-being."
His back had been bothering him throughout the playoffs, but he chalked it up to long hours and stress. In Game 5 of the Finals, he made a move that really tweaked it. He might have made things worse by playing beach volleyball and golf the week after the championship parade. Soon, while others were dreaming of how many more championships the Warriors' talented young core might win, Kerr was struggling to walk from his hotel room to the car during the Las Vegas Summer League. Doctors told him he had a ruptured disk.
"He'd walk through the casino and have to stop every 20 yards to sit down at those little chairs they have in front of slot machines," Margot says. "He had no choice, he had to get the back surgery."
On top of the world one night, reeling and writhing with constant pain just a few weeks later. Nothing gold can stay. "It reminds you of how fragile everything is," Kerr says. "It sounds like a cliché, but it really is true. "We're all vulnerable. So vulnerable."
Kerr took care of himself long before the back issues and headaches began. He worked out almost every day. He kept things balanced. When the Warriors had an off-day, he told his staff not to come into the office, and he discouraged his players from excessive media or sponsor obligations. "He does everything right. He takes care of himself, he treats people the right way," Walton says. "Karma should be on his side."
Last season Kerr would come home from road trips and gush to Margot about how much fun he was having coaching this team. "He was just giddy. He was on cloud nine," Margot says. "Because he knew how special this team was and how rare it was to get this kind of group together."
Even this year, as he has endured the worst of it, ask Kerr what he has learned and he'll say how grateful he is. "To do this for a living, enjoy the camaraderie and the lifestyle and how that affects our families, we're some of the luckiest people on earth, we really are," he says one rainy afternoon in Sacramento in early January.
The day before, he'd felt so awful he had to cancel lunch with a friend and postpone this interview.
There are some things a man needs to keep inside.
On Jan. 18, 1984, during Kerr's freshman year at the University of Arizona, his father was shot and killed by political extremists in Lebanon. Dr. Malcolm Kerr was a prominent Middle Eastern scholar and president of the American University of Beirut.
Kerr doesn't like to discuss that time in his life very often. He'll answer a question or two, then politely ask to change the subject. But as he went through hell this summer and fall, he drew on the lessons he learned and strength he found after his father's murder. "Same way," Kerr says. "Just go day by day. Immerse yourself in the things you love and the people you love, and keep moving."
Alone at home and trying to heal himself, he cut out sugar and beer and processed foods. He did yoga and moving meditation. At night, he read spiritual books like You Are Here, by the Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh. He practiced breathing through the unyielding pain.
Margot scoured the Internet looking for novel treatments that might help. She joined support groups of people who deal with chronic headaches. "We didn't do anything for months and months," she says. "Every so often, he would be feeling OK and then the kids would come up with something and we'd decide to go out to dinner. Then it wasn't even worth it because we could tell he was so uncomfortable."
Eventually, the isolation became almost as painful as the headaches. On days that he felt well enough to leave the house, Kerr would watch |
nasty’ person (who refused to give grapes). However, Subiaul et al. [5] did not find that chimpanzees show a spontaneous preference for a ‘generous’ donor despite following similar methods to those employed in the previous study. Studies with other species suggest that domain-specific skills analogous to reputation judgments are widespread in the animal kingdom [6]–[9]. But these abilities are mostly confined to mating or fighting contexts and are probably highly constrained [5]. As domesticated animals, dogs (Canis familiaris) represent an interesting case. Humans actively selected dogs for activities such as hunting, herding, retrieving or guarding [10]. These tasks required intensive social interactions between dogs and humans and therefore a human-driven selection would have favored individuals that were responsive to a broad range of stimuli, such as verbal cues, and had adequate behavioral plasticity, allowing external shaping [11]. For this reason dogs might have evolved some special socio-cognitive abilities, which enabled them to interact and communicate with humans [12]. Several studies suggest that dogs’ cognitive skills in some areas seem to be more flexible than those of species more closely related phylogenetically to humans [13], [14]. In addition dogs use human communicative cues in a highly flexible manner from a very early age and therefore dogs seem to have a high predisposition to develop some understanding of human communication [14], [15]. Finally, dogs’ closest living relatives, the wolves, do not seem to use human given communicative cues as flexibly as dogs even if they are raised under very similar conditions [14], [16], [17]. This seems to change only when wolves are trained in a special way (e.g., by using a clicker) or are exposed extensively to human given communicative cues [18]–[20], but see Gacsi et al. 2009 for an alternative explanation. Taken together these facts suggest that selection processes during domestication affected dogs’ abilities in this domain [17], [21], [22]. Dogs also show other remarkable social capabilities. For example, dogs know when humans’ attentiveness is directed towards them and behave accordingly [23]–[26]. Furthermore they can discriminate between humans using facial cues [27] or scent [28]. Dogs readily form attachments to individual humans [29], and even prefer human company to that of other dogs [30], [31]. These findings suggest that humans are highly relevant social partners for dogs. As this interspecific relationship seems to be crucial for dogs, it would be advantageous for dogs to be able to predict human behavior, based on direct or indirect experience, in order to attach themselves to the more “caring” human. However, only a few studies have examined dogs’ ability to understand third-party interactions. Two studies provide some evidence that dogs recognize the individual roles of other dogs in a play context with conspecifics [32] and in third-party conflicts [33]. In a study involving interspecific play, Rooney and Bradshaw [34] showed that spectator dogs preferred the winner of a playful tug-of-war game (dog vs. human), irrespective of whether the winner was the dog or the human. But it is important to note that the dogs maintained their preference for the winner even if they had not observed the game beforehand. Thus, it is possible that the dogs were only reacting to subtle signals from the demonstrator dog rather than that they were assessing the human play partner on the basis of the outcome of the game. Three recent studies are most relevant to dogs’ tendencies to select humans based on their behavior. Petter et al. [35] found that dogs preferred a cooperator over a deceiver. In an object-choice task, subjects approached the cooperative human tester (i.e. who always pointed at the baited container) more often than the deceiving tester (i.e. who always cued the empty container). These results indicate that dogs can learn to differentiate between two strangers based on direct interactions with them. Another recent study hypothesized that dogs are able to make reputation-like inferences after witnessing third-party exchanges between humans. Kundey et al. [36] found that dogs chose the demonstrator who gave food to a human recipient more often than the demonstrator who withheld food. However, the dogs in this study also preferred the human who “gave” food to a wooden box over a human who withheld food, suggesting that rather than forming a reputation based on an observed interaction, dogs simply associated food with one but not with the other experimenter. Marshall-Pescini et al. [37] conducted a similar study and addressed these problems by including a ghost condition, in which no beggar was present. In this control condition, dogs did not prefer one over the other experimenter. This result suggests that dogs did not prefer the generous donor because of her specific behavior, but rather took the beggar-donor interactions into account. However, in this study, a control for potential side preferences was missing, so it is possible that the dogs simply preferred the side from where they saw the food coming and did not use the experimenter-specific information gained through observation of the third-party interactions (see [3] for a similar argument about the behavior of capuchins in a similar setting). In the current paper we focused on another trait, which might be relevant for dog-human interactions: the human’s attention. The discriminating factor was whether the human paid attention to the dog (nice experimenter) or did not (ignoring experimenter). In the first experiment, we investigated whether dogs can distinguish between a “nice” and an “ignoring” person after having controlled direct interaction with both. In the second experiment, the test dogs only witnessed social interactions as uninvolved bystanders. In these interactions, both experimenters interacted with another dog that was well-known to the subject. Importantly, contrary to Marshall-Pescini et al. [37], our choice situation differed from the experience/demonstration situation in that it required flexibility in their response and ruled out local enhancement as a factor, see [3]. Given the prior studies, which suggest that dogs are able to evaluate humans by eavesdropping, dogs should prefer the “nice” experimenter based on direct experience (experiment 1) as well as on indirect experience (experiment 2).
Experiment 1 In this experiment we assessed whether dogs use information about the typical behavior of other individuals after they had direct experience with two different female experimenters. The subjects had never interacted with the experimenters previously and only had controlled experiences with both of them during the experience/demonstration phase of this experiment. One of the experimenters engaged in a friendly interaction with the dog, using a cheerful and friendly voice and interacting in a playful manner, whereas the other experimenter ignored the dog and did not speak to him/her. After several interactions with both experimenters subjects were free to choose between the two different experimenters. If they took their experiences into account, i.e. made predictions about the person’s future behavior, they should approach the nice experimenter and/or remain next to that experimenter for a longer period of time given the choice. Methods The procedure of the current study was non-invasive. In Germany, no special permissions for use of dogs in this kind of socio-cognitive studies is required, an IRB approval was not necessary. The two studies were performed in full accordance with German legal regulations and the guidelines for the treatments of animals in behavioral research and teaching of the Association for the study of Animal Behavior (ASAB). All dogs were registered in the dog database of the Department of Developmental and Comparative Psychology (MPI EVA) and were recruited by phone. All dog owners with their dogs participated on a volunteer basis. Subjects Thirty-two dogs, 16 males and 16 females, living as pets with their owners participated in this experiment. Five additional dogs had to be excluded due to being uncomfortable in the testing situation. For more detailed information about subjects in experiment 1, see Table S1 (supplemental material). Only dogs older than one year (mean age +/− SD = 5+/−2.6 years), unfamiliar with both experimenters, and motivated to interact with strangers (according to the owners’ information), were selected from a database of owners who had volunteered to participate in this type of behavioral study. No breed was excluded. The experiment was conducted in a room dedicated to dog studies and the owners were not present during testing. Experimental Set-up and General Procedure The experiment took place in a small empty room (8.70×4 m). The two female experimenters (MN and BM) resembled each other in physical appearance to exclude possible preferences for one or the other physical aspect, but differed in other aspects (clothing, glasses, hairstyle). The dog and the human experimenter interacted directly. The procedure began with four experience trials per experimenter followed immediately by the first experimental trial. After a break of about 10 minutes the dog received one additional experience trial per experimenter followed by a second experimental trial. This was immediately followed by two additional blocks of one experience trial and one experimental trial, conducted without a break. Every dog participated in seven experience trials with each experimenter and four experimental trials altogether. Experience Trials An unfamiliar helper led the subject on a leash into the testing room and walked around in order to familiarize the dog with the room. Then the helper released the dog from the leash and left the room. After a few seconds the first experience trial started. One experimenter entered the room and interacted with the dog according to her role. The “nice” experimenter behaved in a friendly way, i.e. she displayed play signals such as patting the floor, clapping, petting the dog, friendly shoving the dog and encouraging vocalization in order to establish a playful situation [38, see video in supplemental material]. Importantly, all dogs joined the interactions voluntarily. For more details on the proportions of interactions, see “results” section. The “ignoring” experimenter ignored the dog, i.e. she walked through the room without talking to the dog or making eye contact with the dog. She passed the dog several times, but never reacted to the dog (see video in the supplementary material). Half of the dogs experienced MN being “nice” and half of the dogs experienced MN being “ignoring” (mirrored by the second experimenter BM). Which type of experimenter (nice/ignoring) the dogs experienced first was counterbalanced across subjects and the sequence of experience trials was semi-randomized with no more than two demonstrations by the same experimenter given in a row. The second experimenter entered the room immediately after the first experimenter had left. Each experience trial lasted 30 seconds and there was never more than one experimenter in the room interacting with the subject at a time. Experimental Trial The experimental trials took place in the same room as the demonstrations. Both experimenters entered the room and sat down on the floor, 6.60 m from each other at predetermined locations. The experimenters were seated in different corners of the room with their bodies oriented towards the door from which the dog entered. A 2×2 m area around each experimenter was marked to ensure that the dogs’ approaches towards the human could be coded. When both experimenters were seated at their respective locations, the helper entered the room with the dog on a leash and placed him/her at a predetermined location by the door, equidistant to both experimenters (4 m) (see Fig. 1). After a few seconds the helper released the dog, so the dog could move freely about within the room. During the entire duration of the trial both experimenters remained in the same position with a neutral facial expression and never reacted to or interacted with the dog. One trial lasted 30 seconds. The position of the experimenters was counterbalanced within and across subjects. PPT PowerPoint slide
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larger image TIFF original image Download: Figure 1. Set up in the experimental trials. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0046880.g001 Coding and Analysis All demonstrations and trials were filmed with four fixed wide-angle cameras and recorded on a Sony DV-Walkman outside the test room. Two cameras filmed the whole testing area from two different corners. The other two cameras observed each 2×2 m area above where the experimenters were sitting during the experimental trials. With this top view we could assess exactly when the subject was within 2 m of the experimenter. During the “nice” experience trials, we coded (1) the duration and the kind of interaction with the experimenter. Interaction was subdivided into cuddling, i.e. the experimenter stroked the dog and talked to him/her in a whisper, and romping, i.e. patting the floor, clapping, shoving and chasing the dog or running away and stimulating the dog with encouraging vocalizations. In addition, we coded (2) exploring, i.e. the dogs moved around the room and were not in the vicinity of the experimenter or were not interested in her, and (3) being stationary, i.e. dogs stayed/sat/laid still. During the “ignoring” experience trials, we additionally analyzed (4) the following behavior, i.e. the dog followed the ignoring experimenter at a short distance or directly beside her, including when the dog became intrusive (e.g. jumping up onto the experimenter), and (5) looking behavior, involving gaze being directed at the experimenter while remaining stationary. During the experimental trials we coded two measurements: the dog’s first choice between both experimenters, and the duration that the dog stayed in the proximity of the experimenter. First choice was defined as the experimenter that the dog approached first, having at least one paw inside the area that had been marked with tape around the experimenter. We also analyzed the latency for first choice (from the moment the dog was released up until the time that s/he made her first choice; if the dog chose the experimenter in a later than the first trial, 30 s of previous trials without choosing this experimenter were added to the latency). Duration was coded as the amount of time within each trial that the subject stayed next to each experimenter. Again, proximity to the experimenter was coded when at least one of the dogs’ paws was inside the area marked with tape. Additionally, we coded the durations of behaviors of all subjects during the experimental trials. We looked at the exact behavior the dogs showed in proximity to each experimenter: (1) interaction with the experimenter was defined as direct body contact with one of the experimenters, (2) being stationary was defined as the dog standing/sitting/lying next to one of the experimenters, (3) other behavior was coded when dogs spent time inside the taped area, but were engaged in other actions (e.g. sniffing the ground). In addition, the actions outside the taped areas were coded as follows: (1) interaction with the helper, (2) being stationary and (3) other behavior. Experimenter 1 (MN) coded all material from videotape. A second coder, unaware of the purpose of the study and blind to which experimental condition the dog was in, coded 20% of the video material for reliability purposes. Reliability agreement was excellent for all measures (Choices: Cohen’s Kappa = 1.00, N trial = 28, P<0.001; Duration nice experimenter: Spearman correlation r = 0.996, N trial = 28, P<0.001; Duration ignoring experimenter: Spearman correlation r = 0.996, N trial = 28, P<0.001). For the behavior analyses of the experience trials, a second coder coded 20% of the experience trials. Reliability agreement reached a high level for all measured durations (Spearman correlations; Cuddling, romping, being stationary, following, looking: all r >0.9, N trial = 98, P<0.001; Exploring: r = 0.877, N trial = 98, P<0.001). The reliability data for dogs’ behavior in experimental trials reached an excellent level of agreement in the following measures: interaction nice, being stationary nice, other behavior nice, interaction ignoring, being stationary ignoring, other behavior ignoring, being stationary outside, other behavior outside: all r >0.9, N trial = 28, P<0.001. Reliability agreement for the interaction with the helper did not reach an acceptable level r = 0.39, N trial = 28, P = 0.036), which is why this measure was not used for further analysis. All analyses were done using SPSS 16. Trials in which the dogs chose none of the experimenters were excluded from the analysis (28.1%). The number of dogs that chose at least one experimenter dropped over trials (N Trial1 = 31, N Trial2 = 27, N Trial3 = 15, N Trial4 = 19). We checked whether assumptions for parametric tests were fulfilled by applying Levene’s Test and by visually inspecting plots of residuals versus expected values. Both indications showed violations of the assumptions (duration nice experimenter: F 3,28 = 3.475, P = 0.029; duration ignoring experimenter F 3,28 = 3.039, P = 0.045). Based on theses results we used non-parametric exact test statistics. We used Wilcoxon exact signed-ranks test for analyses within groups and Mann-Whitney U test for analyses between groups. All statistical tests were two-tailed and the alpha level was set to 0.05. Results During the “nice” experience trials, the dogs spent 88.9% of each trial interacting with the experimenter (range: 60.4%–100%). In 61.9% of interaction time the experimenter cuddled the subject and in the remaining interaction time (38.1%) she played with the dog. The subjects explored the room over 5.6% of the trial time and were stationary 4.9% of the trial time. For the “ignoring” trials the proportion was as follows: Exploration 35.7%, following behavior 20.4%, being stationary 42.8%. While the dogs were stationary, they gazed at the experimenter 58.6% of the time. First experimental trial analysis showed that the dogs did not approach the nice experimenter or the ignoring experimenter significantly more often (N nice = 19, N ign = 13, Binomial test: P = 0.377). Furthermore, in the first trial subjects did not spend more time next to one or the other experimenter (mean nice: 6.9 s; mean ignoring: 5.2 s; Wilcoxon exact signed-ranks test: T = 281.00, N = 30 (2 ties), P = 0.325). If we compare the median percentage of first approaches across all experimental trials, subjects did not prefer to approach one of the experimenters more often (nice E: 67%, ignoring E: 33% of trials, Wilcoxon exact signed-ranks test: T = 204.50, N = 25 (7 ties), P = 0.252). Analysis of latencies revealed that the dogs did not approach one experimenter faster than the other (mean nice: 12 s; mean ignoring: 26 s; T = 177.5, N = 32, P = 0.107). However, comparing the median time spent in proximity to each experimenter over all trials, the dogs stayed close to the nice experimenter longer than they did to the ignoring experimenter (T = 336.5, N = 30 (2 ties), P = 0.031) (see Fig. 2). There was also a correlation between an individual’s time spent next to the nice experimenter over all trials and an individual’s percentage of first approaches to the nice experimenter (r = 0.388, N = 32, P = 0.028). PPT PowerPoint slide
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larger image TIFF original image Download: Figure 2. Average duration spent next to each experimenter in experiment 1. Figuer 2 displays medians and interquartiles of the average duration the dogs stayed in the proximity of an experimenter over all trials (in experiment 1). https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0046880.g002 A comparison between females and males with regard to the time spent in proximity to each experimenter over all trials revealed no significant differences (Mann-Whitney U test: duration nice experimenter: U = 105.0, N f = 16, N m = 16, P = 0.396; duration ignoring experimenter: U = 105.0, N f = 16, N m = 16, P = 0.396). Analyses of the durations close to the nice vs. ignoring experimenter for the first and the second half of trials separately revealed a difference in the first half of trials (trial 1 and trial 2; mean duration spent close to nice E: 7.3 s, mean duration spent close to ignoring E: 5.0 s; T = 346.5, N = 31 (1 tie), P = 0.05) but not in the second half (trial 3 and trial 4; mean time spent close to nice E: 8.2 s, mean time spent close to ignoring E: 5.9 s: T = 151.0, N = 21, P = 0.23). We also tested whether dogs preferred one of the two female experimenters (MN or BM). We found no preference in the mean duration over all trials (T = 205.50, N = 30 (2 ties), P = 0.59) as well as in the duration of the first trial (T = 288.00, N = 30 (2 ties), P = 0.26). Given the difference in durations close to the nice vs. the ignoring experimenter, we also coded subjects’ more detailed behavior towards the two experimenters. The more detailed behavior of the subjects during all experimental trials is composed as follows. Behavior in close vicinity to the experimenters (inside the tape marked areas): interaction with: nice 6.3% vs. ignoring 6.5% (T = 253.5, N = 31 (1 tie), P = 0.919); being stationary: nice 5.3% vs. ignoring 2.9% (T = 73.0, N = 14 (18 ties), P = 0.217); other behavior: nice 10.1% vs. ignoring 6.9% (T = 382.0, N = 32, P = 0.027). In the remaining experimental trial time (i.e. outside the tape marked areas) subjects were stationary 27.4% of the time; they interacted with the helper 3.5% of the time and engaged in other behavior 30.1% of the time. There was no detectable difference in the detailed behavior towards the two experimenters in trial 1 (Wilcoxon exact signed-ranks test: all P>0.2). Discussion In this experiment we found that dogs stayed next to the “nice” experimenter longer than they did to the “ignoring” experimenter. This indicates that the dogs used their knowledge about the experimenter’s behavior based on the direct experiences that they had had with them. Local enhancement and location relative to the experimenters [3] can be both excluded as determining factors in the dogs’ choice because the experience trials did not occur in a particular location within the testing room and were therefore disassociated from the experimenters’ subsequent location within the room during the experimental trial. An analysis of the first and the second half of trials separately revealed a preference for the nice experimenter only in the first half of trials. The fact that they did not prefer the nice experimenter in the second half of trials could be explained by a fatigue effect, which might confound the results of later trials. The subjects may have lost motivation because both experimenters did not react to them during the experimental trials, although their roles were enforced during the course of the experience trials. Another explanation for the absence of significant differences in the second half of trials could simply be the smaller sample size, since almost one third of the subjects stopped choosing either experimenter (descriptive data support this possibility). Again, this is not surprising since in the first two experimental trials dogs had direct experience with both experimenters and had the opportunity to learn that none of them would interact with them in the experimental trials. Interestingly the dogs did not show any preference in the very first trial irrespective of the measure used. It could be that the dogs had to get used to the different setup of the experimental trials compared to the experience trials (i.e. experimenters were sitting still instead of walking around the room). We found no preference for the nice experimenter in the subjects’ first choices. One explanation could be that the sample size for that analysis was too small as the percentage of the “nice” choices were in fact correlated with the time spent next to the nice experimenter. Another possible explanation for this result is that approaching is simply not a costly behavior for dogs. In contrast, spending time with the human may be more important, which is why dogs showed a preference in the amount of time they spent with one over the other experimenter.
Experiment 2 In this experiment we tested whether the dogs developed a preference for a nice experimenter after having had indirect experiences with her. As in the first experiment, subjects were not familiar with any of the experimenters and only had controlled experiences with them. In this experiment subjects did not interact directly with the humans, but instead observed interactions between a “nice” experimenter and a demonstrator dog, and an “ignoring” experimenter and a demonstrator dog. The prediction was that if dogs are able to form reputation judgments based on third-party interactions, they should preferentially approach the nice experimenter first and/or stay next to her for longer. Methods Subjects. Thirty-two dog pairs participated in this experiment. All dogs lived as pets with their owners. From sixty-four dogs 32 served as subjects (16 males, 16 females), and the other 32 dogs participated as demonstrator dogs. Four additional dog pairs had to be excluded for several reasons (one subject never chose any of the experimenters, one subject constantly jumped over the Plexiglas barrier during demonstrations, two demonstrator dogs were not motivated to interact with the nice experimenter). Each of twenty-nine dog pairs lived together in one household. The three remaining dog pairs knew each other well. None of the dogs participated in experiment 1. As in the previous experiment only dogs older than one year (mean age +/− SD = 5.4+/−3.4 years), unfamiliar with both experimenters and motivated to interact with strangers (according to the owners’ information) were selected from a database of volunteer owners. For information about the subjects’ name, breed, sex, age on the test day and social rank related to the partner dog see Table S1 (supplemental material). No breed was excluded. The owners were not present during testing. Experimental Set-up and General Procedure The experiment took place in the same room as experiment 1. The two experimenters were the same as in the previous experiment (MN and BM), but here they did not interact directly with the subjects. Instead, the subject stayed behind a foldable Plexiglas partition (about 1.80×1.70 m) (see Fig. 3) in the middle of the test room and observed the experimenters interacting with their partner dog. PPT PowerPoint slide
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larger image TIFF original image Download: Figure 3. Demonstration in experiment 2 (A nice experimenter, B ignoring experimenter). https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0046880.g003 The procedure began with four demonstration trials per experimenter followed immediately by the first experimental trial. After this first block there was a break of about 10 minutes. Subsequently, the dog received one additional demonstration trial per experimenter followed by a second experimental trial. This was immediately followed by two additional blocks of one experience trial and one experimental trial, conducted without a break. So that every dog received seven demonstrations per experimenter and four experimental trials altogether. Which role (ignoring vs. nice) each experimenter (MN and BM) played was counterbalanced across subjects. Demonstration Trials An unfamiliar helper led the subject on a leash into the testing room and walked around in order to familiarize the dog with the room. Afterwards s/he positioned the dog behind the Plexiglas partition (see Fig. 3). Then, the partner dog entered the testing room and after a few seconds the first demonstration began. The experimenters behaved in the same way as in experiment 1. The “ nice” experimenter behaved in a friendly manner towards the demonstrator dog and played with her while the “ignoring” experimenter ignored the demonstrator dog. Both experimenters paid no attention to the subject behind the Plexiglas partition. Before each experimental trial the helper led the partner dog into another room and afterwards led the subject out of the testing room. Again, the sequence of the demonstrations was semi-randomized (no more than two demonstrations by the same experimenter were given in a row) and the type of experimenter that the dogs experienced first was counterbalanced across subjects. Each demonstration lasted 30 seconds and there was only ever one experimenter in the room at a time with the demonstrator dog. Experimental Trial After both dogs had left the testing room together with the helper, the two experimenters entered the testing room and folded the Plexiglas partition so that it was flat against the wall. They sat down on the floor, 6.60 m from each other (so that the set up and the procedure were the same as in the experimental trials of experiment 1). The bodies of the experimenters were oriented towards the door from which the dog entered. Again, a 2×2 area was marked with tape around each experimenter ensuring that dogs’ approaches could be coded. The helper entered the room with the dog on a leash and placed him/her equidistant to both experimenters (4 m). Each experimental trial lasted 30 seconds. During this time the experimenters remained in their positions with neutral facial expressions and refrained from reacting to the dog’s behavior. The positions of the experimenters (nice and ignoring) were counterbalanced within and across subjects. Coding and Analysis This experiment was recorded in the same way as experiment 1. During the demonstration trials, we coded the same behaviors as in experiment 1 for the demonstrator dog. Additionally, the behavior of the observer dog was also analyzed. We coded (1) the looking time towards the experimenter, (2) the time that the dogs stayed/laid/sat still, (3) the time subjects vocalized (including all vocalizations such as barking, whining and whimpering) and (4) the time subjects spent scratching or jumping up onto the barrier. During experimental trials, again, the dependent measures were first choice, i.e. the experimenter (ignoring or nice) that the dogs chose to approach first, and duration spent in the vicinity of each experimenter, i.e. how long the subject stayed close to each experimenter. Furthermore, we computed the latencies for first choices. For all measures we used the taped area around the experimenters (2 m) to operationalize whether the subject was close to the experimenter or not. Again, we coded the exact behavior of subjects during the experimental trials with the same definitions as in experiment 1: (1) interaction with the experimenter, (2) being stationary, (3) other behavior. Actions outside the taped areas were coded with the same criteria: (1) interaction with the helper, (2) being stationary and (3) other behavior. All trials were coded from video by experimenter 1 (MN). For reliability purposes a second coder (the same as in experiment 1; unaware of the purpose of the study and blind to the experimental condition) coded 20% of the video material. The agreement for the first choice data reached 100% (Cohen’s Kappa = 1.0, N trial = 26, P<0.0001). The reliability agreement for the time spent near the experimenters was excellent (Duration nice experimenter: Spearman correlation r = 0.995, N trial = 26 P<0.001; Duration ignoring experimenter: r = 0.989, N trial = 26, P<0.001). For the behavior analyses, a second coder coded 20% of the demonstration trials. Reliability agreement for the demonstrators’ behavior reached high levels for all measurements (Spearman correlations; Cuddling, romping, exploring, being stationary, following: all r >0.9, N trial = 98, P<0.001; Looking: r = 0.879, N trial = 98, P<0.001). Reliability analyses for subjects’ behavior reached high agreement in most measures (Vocalization: r = 0.900, N trial = 98, P<0.001; Jumping and scratching on barrier: r = 0.904, N trial = 98, P<0.001; Being stationary: r = 0.865, N trial = 98, P<0.001) and an acceptable level of agreement for looking at the experimenter (r = 0.721, N trial = 98, P<0.001). The reliability agreement for the dogs’ behavior in experimental trials was excellent for all measurements associated with both experimenters: interaction nice/ignoring, being stationary nice/ignoring, other behavior nice/ignoring (all r >0.9, N trial = 28, P<0.001), for being stationary (r = 0.957, N trial = 28, P<0.001) and for other behavior outside the taped areas (r = 0.971, N trial = 28, P<0.001). Level of agreement for helper interactions reached an acceptable level: r = 0.753, N trial = 28, P<0.001. All analyses were done on SPSS 16. Again, all trials in which none of the experimenters were chosen were excluded from the analysis (23.6%). As in experiment 1, the number of dogs that chose at least one experimenter dropped over trials (N 1 = 30, N 2 = 23, N 3 = 21, N 4 = 20). We aborted two tests after the first experimental trial because the demonstrator dogs were no longer motivated to interact with the “nice” experimenter. The first trial data of both dogs were included in analysis. For a better comparability of the data with those of experiment 1, we used non-parametric exact test statistics. We used Wilcoxon exact signed-ranks test for analyses within groups and Mann-Whitney U test for analyses between groups. All statistical tests were two-tailed and the alpha level was set to 0.05. Results Demonstrator dogs interacted 92.8% of trial time with the “nice” experimenter (range: 79.8%–99.8%). In 59.7% of the interaction time, the experimenter cuddled the demonstrator and in the remaining interaction time (40.3%), she played around with the dog. During the “nice” trials the dogs spent a marginal proportion of the time exploring the room (5.5%) and being stationary (1.4%). During the “ignoring” trials, demonstrators spent 43.3% of the time exploring; they followed the “ignoring” experimenter 31.6% of the time and were stationary in 24.6% of the trial time. While dogs were stationary they gazed at the experimenter 64.1% of the time. Analyses of subjects’ behavior revealed significant differences in “nice” demonstrations versus “ignoring” demonstrations in certain aspects. Dogs vocalized more during “nice” demonstrations than during “ignoring” demonstrations (mean nice: 27.0% vs. mean ignoring: 12.5%, Wilcoxon exact signed-ranks test T = 23.0, N = 26 (6 ties), P<0.001), they spent more time scratching and jumping up on the barrier in the “nice” trials than in the “ignoring” trials (mean nice: 5.3% vs. ignoring: 3.2%, T = 52.0, N = 21 (11 ties), P = 0.03) and they looked longer towards the experimenter (mean nice: 80.4% vs. ignoring 74.9%, T = 142.0, N = 32, P = 0.02). In addition, subjects tended to sit, stay or lay still longer during the “ignoring” demonstrations (mean nice: 73.2% vs. ignoring: 78.6%, T = 356.0, N = 32, P = 0.085). Regarding data analyses of experimental trials, subjects did not show any preference for approaching the nice experimenter first in the first trial (N nice = 19, N ign = 13, Binomial: P = 0.377). Also if we compare the median percentages of first approaches over all trials, we found no preference for the nice experimenter or the ignoring experimenter (T = 146.50, N = 21 (11 ties), P = 0.284). We also found no differences in the latencies to approach one or the other experimenter (mean nice: 12 s; mean ignoring: 19 s; T = 259.5, N = 32, P = 0.938). Subjects in this experiment did not stay close to the nice experimenter longer than to the ignoring experimenter in the first trial (mean nice: 6.5 s; mean ignoring: 6.8 s; Wilcoxon exact signed-ranks test: T = 211.50, N = 29 (3 ties), P = 0.902) or over all trials (T = 215.5, N = 29 (3 ties), P = 0.970) (see Fig. 4). When we compare results split by sex, we found no differences within groups as well as between groups in all trials (all P>0.1) and |
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Open bar ** Taco buffet ** DJ Morse Code
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Pocket Gamer’s Big Indie Pitch at E3 with ZQGame, Gree, and Samsung US
Time: 5-8PM
Location: Bottle Rock, 1050 S. Flower St, Los Angeles
Information: Pocket Gamer
Tix: Eventbrite (Free)
The legendary Pocket Gamer Big Indie Pitch is back on the 10th June kindly sponsored by ZQGame, GREE and Samsung US!
Taking place in the trendy Bottle Rock venue in the heart of the city, the pitch is the perfect chance to get your game into the hands of leading journalists from across the world. Handing you 3 minutes with each journalist, attendees will get to sell the strength of their game as well as receiving invaluable feedback on how to take their idea further.
To get involved, all you have to do is RSVP to the event by CLICKING HERE and let us know all about your game. We’ll then go through the entries, pick out our favourites and invite them along to be shown off in front of the assembled media dignitaries. One word of warning though: you only have until the 30th May to get your entries in so get entering while you can.
And if you’re not a developer simply want to come along and enjoy the show, then you’ll be pleased to know that you’re more than welcome to come along too. Simply RSVP as a spectator below, bring along a business card and we’ll let you in. There’ll be food, drink and excellent company so you really would be mad to miss out.
Sign up to the Big Indie Pitch in now and come take a swing at gaming super stardom![/box_light][box_light]
★ Pocket Gamer Mobile Mixer at E3 ★
Time: 8:30PM-12AM
Location: Bottle Rock, 1050 S. Flower St, Los Angeles
Information: Pocket Gamer
Tix: Eventbrite (Free)
The Pocket Gamer team are back in luscious Los Angeles for E3 and we’re hosting another one of our legendary mixers.
Taking place on Tuesday 10th June at Bottle Rock our latest mobile mixer will be the perfect place to catch up with all the attendees at LA’s hottest conference.
As per usual, we’ll be hosting a fun and informative panel to help you get the conversation started. With the help of one of the Pocket Gamer team and our wonderful sponsors from ZQGame and Everyplay our panellists will be coming together to talk about a hot topic in the mobile gaming world.
But that’s not all, of course. After the constructive arguing has died down, we’ll be settling in to an evening full of fantastic conversation and brilliant beverages to help you turn those casual connections into brilliant business contacts. And of course, we’ll have some of our team around to chat to in case you think you’ve got the next major story in mobile gaming on your hands.
As with all our events, we welcome all individuals working in the games industry – so please bring along your business card to gain entry at the door. Mixers are always popular, so sign up now and avoid the queue![/box_light][box_light]
Gay Game Industry Professionals: SIXTH Annual E3 Party
Time: 9PM-???
Location: Revolver Video Bar, 8851 Santa Monica Boulevard, West Hollywood, California 90069
Information: GGP: Gay Game Industry Professionals
RSVP: Facebook
It’s Time to Kick Off our 6th ANNUAL GGP OUTING — join us for an evening of cocktail and revelry![/box_light][box_light]
The MIX 5 LA
Time: 7PM-???
Location: Ten Ten Wilshire, 1010 Wilshire Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90017
Information: The MIX 5 LA
RSVP: Website
Presented by Media Indie Exchange and IndieCade
The Media Indie Exchange (MIX) is all about the games. It was designed by indies and indie game enthusiasts with the primary focus of providing a casual yet professional setting for indie developers to demo their unreleased projects exclusively to the media and industry leaders behind closed doors.
This platform gives the press the opportunity to make connections with a diverse group of indies and get to the root of why we are passionate about great gaming experiences without distractions or filler.
The MIX 5 LA is being organized by MIX co-founders Interabang Entertainment and John Polson, with help from Indie Press Day, and held just a block away from the Los Angeles Convention Center during the first night of E3. The event is differentiated from others by being one of the only evening happenings where playing fresh games is the main attraction.[/box_light][box_light]
The Video Game Show Comedy Show @UCBTLA
Time: 7PM-???
Location: Upright Citizens Brigade LA, 5919 Franklin Ave, Los Angeles, CA 90028
Information: Upright Citizens Brigade Theater
RSVP: $5 at door, First Come First Serve
In honor of E3, join your favorite comedians and fellow gamer brethren in a conversation about consoles, save files and Joust… oh sweet, JOUST!
THERE WILL BE AWARDS FOR BEST VIDEO GAME COSPLAY (HINT: SAMUS).[/box_light][box_light]
8bitLA Presents FREE E3 PARTY AT EIGHTY TWO BARCADE
Time: 6PM
Location: Eighty Two, 707 E. 4th Place, Los Angeles, California 90013
Information: Facebook
RSVP: Facebook (Free, 21+)
Featuring live chiptune music from…
Chibi-Tech http:// chibitech.bandcamp.com/)
Legendary chiptune / videogame composer from Japan performing in Los Angeles for her first time ever!!!
Space Boyfriend (http://spaceboyfriend.bandcamp.com/)
Timon Marmex (http://timon.bandcamp.com/)
Wizwars (http://wizwars.bandcamp.com/)
MEISHI SMILE (http:// meishismile.bandcamp.com/)
Space Town Savior (http:// spacetownsavior.bandcamp.co m/)
and DJ SysOp!!!
8bitLA, SoftEgg, and EightyTwo present the first ever E3 Chiptune Party featuring live chiptune music from Japan’s legendary chiptune / videogame composer Chibi-Tech in her first ever show in Los Angeles! Also performing are the amazing Meishi Smile, Space Town Savior, WizWars, Space Boyfriend, Timon Marmex, and DJ Sysop!
The event is going to be held at Eighty Two, a new retro video game arcade and bar located in the Los Angeles Arts District, just on the edge of Little Tokyo in Downtown Los Angeles. Eighty Two f eatures the best of vintage 80’s video arcade games in perfect condition, as well as vintage pinball machines of all eras in perfect working order, as well as a full bar with an excellent assortment of cocktails!
Come for the music, stay for the games! This is an amazing, once-in-a-lifetime event that you will not want to miss![/box_light][box_light]
Twitch Bootie Mashup Party @ E3: Featuring DJ’s A+D!
Time: 9:30PM-2AM
Location: The Exchange, 618 S Spring St, Los Angeles, CA 90015
Information/RSVP: Eventbrite (Free)
Your favorite party, every year! Age 21+. Dress Code Enforced. Sponsored by Turtle Beach.
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Uplay Lounge
Time: Daily from June 9-12
Location: The Standard LA, 550 S Flower St, Los Angeles, CA 90071
RSVP: Uplay Members
Are you a true gamer? Are you absolutely passionate about Ubisoft games? The Uplay lounge is back this year with an even more immersive Ubisoft experience with more games, more demos, more goodies, more exclusive interviews… Live E3 from backstage with the Uplay lounge!
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GAME OVER: Art Inspired By Games
Time: Open Daily
Location: Giant Robot, 2062 Sawtelle Blvd, Los Angeles, California 90025
RSVP: Facebook
GiantRobot, AngryBananas.com, DESTRUCTOID & Meat Bun are proud to present GAME OVER – Art Inspired by Games.[/box_light][box_light]
iAm8Bit’s The Future of Gaming Opening Reception
Time: 6PM
Location: iAm8Bit, 2147 Sunset Blvd, Los Angeles, California 90026
Information/RSVP: Facebook (Free)
Industry Luminaries and Renowned Artists Conceptualize The Future of Videogames.
Featuring Theories from:
* David Smith * Keiji Inafune * Kim Swift * Jesse Schell * Kellee Santiago * Lorne Lanning * Meggan Scavio * Nolan Bushnell * Seamus Blackley * Seth Killian * Ted Price * Tim Schafer * Warren Spector *
…and Art by:
* Boneface * Eden Soto * Henrik Johansson * Jude Buffum * Kelice Penney * Ken Garduno * Kevin Stanton * Mitch Ansara * Naomi White * Nicole Gustafsson * Theresa Huarte * Timothy J. Reynolds * Travis Chen *[/box_light]
[box_dark]Wednesday, June 11[/box_dark]
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Video Games Live
Time: 8PM
Location: Nokia Theater at LA Live, 777 Chick Hearn Ct, Los Angeles, CA 90015
Information: Video Games Live
Tix: $25.95-$75.95
THIS SPECIAL PERFORMANCE WILL BE TAKING PLACE RIGHT ACROSS THE STREET AND DURING THE BIG E3 VIDEO GAME CONVENTION! EXPECT MANY SPECIAL GUESTS AND WORLD PREMIERES FROM AROUND THE WORLD!!
ULTIMATE GAMER V.I.P. EXPERIENCE PACKAGE (http:// www.videogameslive.com/ index.php?s=vip)
PRE-CONCERT ACTIVITIES
– Guitar Hero competition starts 1 hour prior to concert; winner plays on stage with the Symphony.
– Costume contest with winner selected from the stage just prior to the concert.
POST-CONCERT ACTIVITIES
– Meet and greet reception with game industry luminaries (open to all ticketholders)
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Digital LA – E3 Digital Drinks @ Continental Club
Time: 7-9PM
Location: Continental, 116 W 4th Street, Los Angeles
Information: Eventbrite
Tix: Free with E3 Badge
Join us for our Digital Drinks during E3 at the new Continental Club in downtown LA. Catch up with friends u didn’t get a chance to find / meet on the show floor. Trade notes with fellow attendees and friends on your fave E3 news, parties, etc. Cash bar. Drink specials available for our group when you like the Continental Club facebook page.
FREE to attend when you flash your E3 pass, just register so you’re on our list.
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WIGI Wonderland: Breaking Through The Looking Glass Ceiling
Time: 7PM-12AM
Location: Belasco Theater, 1050 S. Hill Street, LA 90015
Information: Event PDF | Website
Tix: Free with E3 Badge, please donate to the cause
Visit WIGI and help sponsor this great event!
A mash up of two current topics. Busting out the political topic of women and minority’s struggles to “break through the glass ceiling” inspired by Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and “Through the Looking Glass”.
Get it??…. glass ceiling…. looking glass.
This year’s EXTRAVAGANZA will be extra meaningful, and even more fun to explore! Interactive displays and installment featuring high‐tech attractions and entertainment to inspire a creative audience. Bringing the core values of WIGI upfront by highlighting a diverse environment and the strength of the game industry as it pushes for a Breaking of the Glass Ceiling!
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PocketGamer’s E3 Party with Gamevil and Chukong
Time: 7PM-11PM
Location: Belasco Theater, 1050 S. Hill Street, LA 90015
Information: PocketGamer
Tix: Eventbrite (Free)
The Pocket Gamer crew are back in Los Angeles for E3! As anyone who attends E3 will know, the only place to be is at the Pocket Gamer party!
Our Hawaiian themed party is on the 11th June and sponsored by the almighty Gamevil and Chukong. We’ll be opening up LA’s Belasco Theatre’s Ballroom to your weary E3 bodies so you can party your pains away.
All you have to do is sign up to the event on this page, bring a business card and your best Hawaiian outfit…It’s that easy!
We’ll have a photobooth in action with genuine Hawaiian props to go crazy with as well as a DJ who’ll be settling us all into a lovely Luau before things go loco later on.
So come say aloha to Pocket Gamer at our Hawaiian E3 party – we’re going to be bringing the spirit of the 50th state into town!
RSVP below and come early to avoid the long queues outside! As with all our events they are FREE to attend for anyone working in the games industry.
***Please note RSVP’s are limited to the 4 attendees per company (this does not apply to the event sponsors!) A current business card MUST be presented on entry***
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IGDA E3 Networking Mixer
Time: 6PM-9PM
Location: Figueroa Hotel, Tangier Room, 939 S Figueroa St, Los Angeles, CA 90015
Information: IGDA
Tix: Eventbrite (Free or Donation)
Once again the IGDA will be hosting a professional networking event at E3 2014! This event provides a casual atmosphere designed for networking, discussion and relaxing after a busy day on the show floor (or in constant meetings) – and without needing to shouting over really loud music! Snacks are provided and IGDA members receive two free drink tickets while tickets last. (Not a member? Join today!)
Don’t miss this opportunity to attend what some attendees in 2013 called “the best evening event at E3.”
Please note that RSVP is requested for planning purposes only. An RSVP is not required to attend and does not guarantee admittance should the event reach capacity.[/box_light][box_light]
Sunset Overdrive Event at Century City Microsoft Store hosted by Major Nelson
Time: 6PM-9PM
Location: Century City Microsoft Store, 10250 Santa Monica Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90067
Information: Major Nelson Blog
Tix: Free Admission
Insomniac Games is taking the Sunset Overdrive E3 show floor experience outside of the LA Convention Center for one night only! Join us at the Century City Microsoft store to be among the first gamers to go hands on with this upcoming Xbox One exclusive. Attendees will also have the chance to meet the Insomniacs that make Sunset Overdrive and Xbox Live’s Major Nelson. Ice cold Overcharge Delirium XT awaits! (Yes, seriously)[/box_light][box_light]
VRLA Mixer
Time: 7-10PM
Location: Ace Hotel, 929 S Broadway, Los Angeles, CA 90015
Tix: Eventbrite (Waitlist)
You’re invited to the first annual Virtual Reality Los Angeles E3 Mixer! Join us for a night of VR fun in downtown LA, just a few blocks from E3. Mix and mingle with fellow VR enthusiasts and discover VR games you won’t find on the show floor.
The party will be hosted at the Ace Hotel in Segovia Hall (2nd floor) and will transition to the roof, where DJ Chrome Canyon will be spinning some extra fresh beats. First 100 drinks are on us!
We kindly request that each guest RSVP on this page. The event is 21+[/box_light][box_light]
GAME OVER: Art Inspired By Games
Time: Open Daily
Location: Giant Robot, 2062 Sawtelle Blvd, Los Angeles, California 90025
RSVP: Facebook
GiantRobot, AngryBananas.com, DESTRUCTOID & Meat Bun are proud to present GAME OVER – Art Inspired by Games.
[/box_light][box_light]
Uplay Lounge
Time: Daily from June 9-12
Location: The Standard LA, 550 S Flower St, Los Angeles, CA 90071
RSVP: Uplay Members
Are you a true gamer? Are you absolutely passionate about Ubisoft games? The Uplay lounge is back this year with an even more immersive Ubisoft experience with more games, more demos, more goodies, more exclusive interviews… Live E3 from backstage with the Uplay lounge!
[/box_light]
[box_dark]Thursday, June 12[/box_dark]
[box_light]
GAME OVER: Art Inspired By Games
Time: Open Daily
Location: Giant Robot, 2062 Sawtelle Blvd, Los Angeles, California 90025
RSVP: Facebook
GiantRobot, AngryBananas.com, DESTRUCTOID & Meat Bun are proud to present GAME OVER – Art Inspired by Games.[/box_light][box_light]
Uplay Lounge
Time: Daily from June 9-12
Location: The Standard LA, 550 S Flower St, Los Angeles, CA 90071
RSVP: Uplay Members
Are you a true gamer? Are you absolutely passionate about Ubisoft games? The Uplay lounge is back this year with an even more immersive Ubisoft experience with more games, more demos, more goodies, more exclusive interviews… Live E3 from backstage with the Uplay lounge!
[/box_light][box_light]
8BitLA & CIA’s E3 Afterparty ft Radioactive Chicken Heads, Mega Ran, Space Boyfriend and Wizwars
Time: 8PM
Location: California Institute of Abnormalarts, 11334 Burbank Blvd, North Hollywood, CA
TIX: $10 at Door
Thursday, June 12th – The ultimate E3 at the WEIRDEST venue in Los Angeles! Check it:
THE RADIOACTIVE CHICKEN HEADS
RANDOM aka MEGA RAN
SPACE BOYFRIEND
WIZWARS
with VISUALS BY VJ TIM ABAD
Doors at 8pm
All Ages
$10
at the California Institute of Abnormalarts
11334 Burbank Blvd, North Hollywood CA[/box_light][box_light]
Annual GameDev E3 Drinkup
Time: 6-9PM
Location: Broadway Bar, 830 S Broadway, LA
RSVP: Facebook
This month we celebrate E3 with our annual DrinkUp in Downtown LA. If you’ll be attending E3 this year, we encourage you to join us for a special evening of free drinks from Twitch [first 50 in the door], raffles and a special DJ set with chiptune and nerdcore hip-hop artist, MegaRan!
E3 – Los Angeles – RSVP
50 free drinks by Twitch
Contact: @JonathanHawkins – Jonathan Hawkins[/box_light]A thief who tore the pinky finger off a Cherry Creek mall shopper while stealing an iPad was sentenced today to 25 years in prison.
Brandon Smith, 22, apologized to the victim, Bill Jordan, who did not appear in court for the sentencing hearing because he fears for his life.
That is because Smith also tried to solicit someone to kill Jordan so that no witness could testify against him for the theft.
“I would like to say I am sorry for what I did for messing up Bill Jordan’s finger and everything,” Smith said during his hearing. “All of this was motivated by drugs. I wish Bill Jordan were here today so he could hear me tell him I am sorry.”
Smith pleaded guilty to aggravated robbery for the iPad theft, netting himself a 25 year sentence.
He also pleaded guilty to assault in the second degree related to the attempt to have Jordan killed garnering another 12 years in prison. A third robbery charge was also part of the plea agreement and got him an additional four years in prison.
Denver District Judge Edward Bronfin ruled the sentences would run concurrently for a total of 25 years behind bars.
On April 15, 2010, Jordan was headed out of the mall when Smith grabbed onto his shopping bag to take the iPad.
The strings from the bag were wrapped around Jordan’s hand and when Smith pulled on him, he tore away the skin on Jordan’s left hand and the pinky finger had to be amputated.
Prosecutors later learned Smith sent a letter from jail asking a friend to take care of Jordan so that he could not testify against him.
Smith’s sister, Elizabeth, addressed the judge to try to plea for leniency for her brother.
“He didn’t mean to hurt anyone,” she said. “He planned to go to college and finish school but he didn’t make it there.”
But the judge called Smith a danger to the community, citing his juvenile record where he tried to return some stolen shirts at the Park Meadows Mall and threatened employees that he would return with a gun.
“What I have seen is Mr. Smith simply trying to game the system and work things to his advantage,” Bronfin said. “Hopefully the Department of Corrections will give him guidance.”
Felisa Cardona: 303-954-1219 or fcardona@denverpost.comGet the biggest daily stories by email Subscribe Thank you for subscribing See our privacy notice Could not subscribe, try again later Invalid Email
By Mary McDonnell
A student yesterday claimed he is selling drugs to put himself through college.
He told how he earns around €5,000 a year from dealing cannabis to other people at university.
The young DCU student said: “It was about making sure my parents didn’t have to put me through college.
“I didn’t want to be a burden on them. Their financial situation isn’t great.”
The student earns around €100 per week by selling cannabis for one and a half times what he pays for it.
The standard rate for a college grant is just over €3,000 if you move away from home.
And the dealer said there’s high demand for what he sells.
He claimed he answers at least three calls a day from other students and that 15 people call to his house every week to buy drugs.
The dealer added he’s not the only one doing it, saying: “I know three others in DCU, two in UCD, and one in WIT who sell cannabis to pay for college.
"Time constraints definitely come into it. You need time to study.
“It only takes five minutes to hand a little plastic bag to someone that you get €50 for. It’s fast money.
“It’s not a big risk. Most of the time people just come over and they take the money off me or I just meet them outside. It’s a quick deal. No one’s going to see it happen. And even if they see, I don’t think anyone cares.”
Union of Students in Ireland welfare officer Greg O’Donoghue said he was shocked by the claims.
He added: “This is the first case I have heard of. I recommend people to not do that.
“I would be worried – it’s an illegal drug. It’s bad enough smoking it let alone selling it.”
Tony Geoghegan, head of Merchants Quay drugs services in Dublin, warned a conviction for dealing will stay with someone for the rest of their lives.
He added “a lot of cannabis grown here is particularly strong” and students who deal are “supporting a whole underground criminal movement – getting involved in criminality and making the problem worse”.Pleasant Riggs Crump (December 23, 1847 – December 31, 1951) is the last verifiable veteran who fought for the Confederacy during the American Civil War. Although he was survived by several other claimants in the 1950s, such as William Lundy, John B. Salling and Walter Williams, historical research has subsequently debunked these claims. Crump officially remains the last surviving veteran of the Confederate Army.
Biography [ edit ]
Born in Crawford's Cove, St. Clair County, Alabama, Crump and a friend left home and traveled to Petersburg, Virginia, where Crump enlisted as a private in the 10th Alabama Infantry Regiment in November 1864. Assigned to Company A, Crump saw action at the Battle of Hatcher's Run, and participated in the siege of Petersburg before witnessing General Robert E. Lee's surrender at Appomattox Court House to Union General Ulysses S. Grant. Returning home to rural Alabama, Crump soon relocated to Lincoln, in nearby Talladega County. There, at the age of 22, he married a local woman named Mary Hall. They had five children from their marriage, which lasted until she died on December 31, 1901. Crump later married Ella Wallis of Childersburg in 1905. After her death in July 1942, he lived with a grandson's family. The United Confederate Veterans awarded him the honorary title of colonel in its organization. In 1950, he met with 98-year-old "General" James Moore, who was recognized as the only other Confederate veteran remaining in Alabama.
Crump died shortly after his 104th birthday, exactly fifty years after his first wife, Mary Hall died. He is buried in Hall Cemetery, in Lincoln.[1]
See also [ edit ]
References [ edit ]
Further reading [ edit ]The quirky characters of The Office made TV audiences laugh, cringe and maybe even shed a tear for nine seasons.
Whether it was terrible life advice from Michael Scott, beet farming tips from Dwight Schrute, a sweet love story between Pam and Jim or epic inter-office pranks, the show made selling paper Scranton, Pa. feel riotously relatable.
We've said goodbye to the antics that filled a void in our own 9-to-5 jobs. But before we file away our dreams of being employees of Michael Scott or colleagues with Angela, Oscar and Kelly, let's relive the funniest Office moments of all time and all cubicles.
SEE ALSO: 50 of the Greatest Things That Ever Happened on '30 Rock'
Grab a tissue from the stock room because this is sure to be a bittersweet experience. And if ever you feel the pangs of the worker grind, know that The Office will probably air in syndication for all time.
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What did we miss? Share your favorite moments in the comments.
Homepage image courtesy of NBC Universal Inc.Before he strode onto the NFL draft stage beside Roger Goodell to announce the Ravens first round pick, before he became a national treasure with an instantly viral fist pump, TJ Onwuanibe was in the commissioner’s private lounge doing breathing exercises. But before that, he was an 11-year-old kid in a hospital bed, clutching onto his favorite football and coming to grips with the word “cancer.”
On Feb. 16, 2015, TJ was admitted to the Children’s National Medical Center in Washington, D.C. after his parents noticed that he had been struggling to read his euphonium sheet music. Doctors soon diagnosed him with grade 4 choriocarcinoma, an extremely rare form of brain cancer. But they didn’t use that word: cancer. Doctors told TJ that he had something growing in his head—a highly aggressive tumor—and they needed to remove it immediately. TJ’s first question was, “Can I finish the basketball season first?”
Chemotherapy began on the first day of March, and it wasn’t until a nurse put a “Cancer Fears Me” hat on his head that it registered. Wait, he had cancer, that word he had only seen in movies and on TV? “Does this mean I’m going to die?” TJ asked his mom, followed by, “Does this mean I’m going to lose my hair?” TJ had been growing out his afro for three years.
As he went through the chemo treatments—six cycles spanning nearly four months, overlapping his 12th birthday and coming with all of the usual, unpleasant side effects—TJ refused to use the word cancer. But eventually, he embraced it and decided that he was going to beat it.
More than anything, TJ missed playing football. Well, he still played. But only now it was in the hospital, with doctors and nurses, throwing his favorite football back and forth from his bed or in the hallway. His parents bought him the ball before he got sick, but it wasn’t until he was cooped up in the hospital that he started carrying it with him everywhere.
“The nurses knew something would be up if I didn't have the football,” TJ says.
Doctors quickly realized that in order to engage TJ you had to talk about football, and you better be willing to discuss his beloved Baltimore Ravens. To pass the time, he would memorize and recite the Ravens players’ stats, year-by-year. On the day he got his head shaved (he had been hanging on to the last three patches of hair left from his afro for as long as he could), he was given a signed Dennis Pitta jersey to buoy his spirits.
He missed the sport so much that while he was undergoing the chemo treatments, he coached his younger brother’s flag football team. As he went through his fourth cycle of chemo, his biggest concern was who the Ravens would draft. During his sixth (and final) cycle, he woke up in the middle of the night and asked his mother if she thought his football coach would let him get the number 91 back when he returned to the team.
• PETER KING’S WEEKLY HOT READ: Want more insider information from Peter King? Check out the MMQB Hot Read
Chemotherapy ended in late July, and that was followed by six weeks of proton radiation. But by October, the oncologist delivered positive news from his MRI, to which TJ replied, “Well, then this brings us to the key question for today.” He didn’t even have to specify. The doctor knew what he meant. But, unfortunately, no, he was not yet cleared to play football.
In March of this year, just a couple weeks after TJ turned 14 and 18 months since he finished treatment, doctors told him that his cancer was officially in remission. TJ’s first thought upon hearing the news was that now, finally, he could play football again. This time he was right.
At one point during chemotherapy, a social worker gave TJ a packet from the Make-A-Wish foundation. When he was asked if he had any ideas for a wish, TJ quickly responded that he wanted to meet Ray Lewis, his favorite player. When she encouraged him to think bigger, he said “Meet Ray Lewis today!” After toying with the idea of a trip to the French Riviera (“the expensive” dream), TJ decided on announcing the Ravens first-round draft choice (“the once in a lifetime” dream) in the 2017 NFL draft.
He never expected it to be granted.
On Friday, April 21, TJ attended what he believed was just a regular school assembly, in which he was set to perform as a featured dancer for a Hamilton song. But after the performance was over the school’s principal called TJ back up to the stage, and a video of John Harbaugh came onto the screen. Harbaught told TJ that his wish was being granted, and he would get to announce the Ravens first-round pick.
“My brain was going error, error,” TJ says.
It’s the first day of the 2017 NFL draft, and TJ is wearing his Terrell Suggs jersey and cradling his football, which is now fully frayed at both edges, the pigskin brown peeled off by years of overuse revealing its cream-colored entrails. The football will be in TJ’s arms for the entire day, as he sits, as he walks, as he does interviews, as he lays down in bed. Over the last two years it has morphed from regular football to magical talisman.
“It helps keep me calm,” TJ says. “When I hold it, it calms my nerves.”
TJ has already been on SportsCenter and had an interview with the Fox affiliate in Philadelphia that morning. When asked how he’s holding up, he says, “I am technically still awake.” When asked if he, as a Ravens fan, feels bad for Browns fans who find themselves at the top of the draft yet again, he breaks out laughing. When a video producer tepidly admits that she is a Steelers fan, TJ gets up from the restaurant table and jokingly walks away. And when a reporter conflates two stats in Ravens history, TJ quickly corrects him. His true fan credentials are not to be impugned.
TJ has never been the talkative one in his family—that designation goes to his eight-year-old brother, Chidi—but since his diagnosis he has became more comfortable when conversing. Last September TJ gave a speech at his middle school, which included lines such as: “Communicating is one of the ways that I was able to get taller on the inside, where it matters.” And: “My heart has grown. Empathy is a fire that can touch anyone.”
This improved level of comfort would be beneficial for him on this day, as when he walked down the street in Philadelphia after lunch he was stopped nearly a dozen times by strangers. They told him that they saw him on TV, that he was famous, amazing, a superstar, an inspiration. Several asked for pictures.
That afternoon TJ checks out the NFL Experience, does three separate interviews and meets Dennis Pitta. Everywhere he goes he’s asked who he wants the Ravens to pick. And every time he answers, a cornerback. He’s convinced that is what the team needs most. He’d be happy with a receiver, but his heart is set on a cornerback.
Late afternoon he heads back to his hotel, exhausted from all the walking and talking, and collapses into bed—football in hand. But by 7 p.m. he was dressed in his grey checkered suit, pink shirt and purple bow tie—for the Ravens, of course. He’s ready for the draft.
After the Kansas City Chiefs trade up to take QB Patrick Mahomes, an NFL representative comes to whisk TJ and his dad backstage. He walks down the aisle, up a staircase, then another, through a back door, into a labyrinth of hallways draped on all sides with black curtains, and finally into the green room.
He eats a sugar cookie as he strides down another set of stairs, this time into the special off-stage lounge created for commissioner Roger Goodell—replete with snacks, a tray of brownies and a fridge of Pepsi products. TJ waits here as the picks tick from 14 to 15 to eventually the Ravens at 16. As he waits, he goes through his breathing exercises to calm down—in through the nose, out through the mouth. His dad reassures him that he’s been through all the hard stuff already, the cancer, the chemo. This, now, is the easy part.
Then TJ meets Goodell, who shakes his hand, asking him if he’s any good at football and if he’ll see him back here one day to have his name called. “Yeah, in about eight years,” TJ replies.
Sitting in a beige chair, TJ is a pent-up ball of nervous energy, his arms gyrating up and down, rubbing the arms of the chair.
“Is that an arm exercise?” Goodell asks.
“I have no idea,” TJ responds.
Goodell assures him that he’ll do great and to get back to his breathing exercises, as he goes over the pronunciation of TJ’s last name with his father. An NFL staffer hands TJ a sample draft card, and they practice the sentence he’ll have to say. With the 16th pick in the 2017 NFL draft, |
buttons for: reply, reply-all and delete.
The pattern works well for these types of application scenarios:
You have a list where it makes sense to show details (e.g. list of contacts, products, etc.)
You have a large list that has items that need to be prioritized (e.g. RSS readers)
You need to switch between items frequently but want to stay in the same context (e.g. email)
Let’s use the Microsoft RSS Reader UWP example app to illustrate the master-detail pattern’s features.
If you want to follow along or see the code first-hand, find the RSS Sample’s source code here on GitHub.
Master-detail modes
The master-detail pattern works well on a wide range of device types and display sizes. However, you should consider how you want to use the pattern on different display sizes.
There are two popular modes that will help with this:
Side-by-side
Stacked
The determination between which approach to take comes down to how much horizontal room your app has. Here’s a table of typical effective pixels available per “size class” (if you’re not familiar with Effect Pixels (epx) see this one minute video).
Size class small medium large Typical screen size (diagonal) 4″ to 6″ 7″ to 12″, or TVs 13″ and larger Typical devices Phones Phablets, tablets, TVs PCs, laptops, Surface Hubs Common window sizes in effective pixels 320×569, 360×640, 480×854 960×540, 1024×640 1366×768, 1920×1080 Window width breakpoints in effective pixels 640px or less 641px to 1007px 1008px or greater
Side by side
There many scenarios in which your application will have plenty of horizontal space to stretch. The recommended guidelines for this mode is when your application has 720 epx or more available; this puts us in to the “Medium” and “Large” size classes seen above.
A few of these are:
Devices that let you size the app window larger (PC, HoloLens, Surface Hub)
Windows 10 Mobile running Continuum
Windows 10 Mobile (landscape orientation)
In the side-by-side approach, you can have both the master view and the detail view showing simultaneously. Using our RSS example, here’s the side-by-side approach:
Stacked
If your application is running in between 320 to 719 epx, you can’t comfortably fit the master and details next to each other, so we’ll need another way to display the master and detail.
A few examples of this scenario are:
Any device that lets you resize the app window (e.g. PC, HoloLens)
Windows 10 Mobile (portrait orientation)
For this case, you can use the stacked approach. In stacked, the master view gets the full screen space, then, when a selection is made, the detail view gets the full screen space.
With this approach, we’re “stacking” the pages in a single area and navigating between them. For example, the user selects an item in the master, the app will navigate to the Details View. When they want to see another item, they’ll navigate back to the master and select another item.
The stacked approach can be implemented with page navigation within a Frame element. In the diagram below, the “page control” you see is where the navigation occurs between the master view and the detail view.
Using our RSS sample app, here are a couple screenshots of the master and detail in stacked mode. Note that the app is running on a desktop PC, but with the window sized small, you’ll see the same appearance as it were on a mobile device. What matters is not the device, but the available screen space!
The “Breaking Point”
You’ll notice that we have this point where we need to change between the two different modes, depending on the current app width. For our master-detail, we’ve decided to do this at 720 epx. This means that once the application window gets resized to above or below 720 epx, we should be switching between side-by-side or stacked mode.
The Universal Windows Platform has a great feature to help with changing modes: the AdaptiveTrigger. Using an AdaptiveTrigger in your view’s VisualStates, you can adapt the UI when the application’s window size reaches that “breaking point.” In the RSS sample, you can see how this is done on the MasterDetailPage.xaml.
First, let’s look at the master-detail layout; there’s a Frame element for the master content (ListView of feeds and articles) and a WebView for the detail content (the selected article). Notice the default width of the MasterColumn is set to 360.
<Grid.ColumnDefinitions> <ColumnDefinition x:Name="MasterColumn" Width="360" /> <ColumnDefinition x:Name="DetailColumn" Width="*" /> </Grid.ColumnDefinitions> <Frame x:Name="MasterFrame" /> <WebView x:Name="ArticleWebView" Grid.Column="1" Visibility="Collapsed" /> </Grid>
Now, let’s look at line 49 in the VisualStateGroups. You’ll see the VisualState named “NarrowState.” In this visual state, the MasterColumn.Width changes to * (star, which means “take all the available space”) and the DetailColumn.Width changes to 0.
Because the AdaptiveTrigger is set to 720, anything between 0 and 719 will use the NarrowState and anything 720 or larger will use the DefaultState.
<VisualStateManager.VisualStateGroups> <VisualStateGroup> <VisualState x:Name="DefaultState"> <VisualState.StateTriggers> <AdaptiveTrigger MinWindowWidth="720" /> </VisualState.StateTriggers> </VisualState> <VisualState x:Name="NarrowState"> <VisualState.StateTriggers> <AdaptiveTrigger MinWindowWidth="0" /> </VisualState.StateTriggers> <VisualState.Setters> <Setter Target="MasterColumn.Width" Value="*" /> <Setter Target="DetailColumn.Width" Value="0" /> </VisualState.Setters> </VisualState> </VisualStateGroup> </VisualStateManager.VisualStateGroups>
To see this in action, run the RSS reader example and resize the window from big to small and back. You’ll see the visual states change and switch between the side-by-side and stacked modes.
Additional Detail Functionality
In the beginning of this article, we briefly touched on how you can have context-aware functionality when using a master-detail. The example was having a “reply” button for an email app. However, you can go much further with it. Here are some more examples of functionality you can put into the detail view:
Product list: Order, track, add to wish list
Contact list detail options: Call, email, drive to
Inventory list detail: Reorder, mark damaged, ship
Another takeaway is that you can share the same controls (e.g. Buttons) for frequently used functionality and that functionality would intuitively be for that selected item in the detail view.
UWP Community Toolkit
If you’re building an application that could benefit from a master-detail implementation, you can skip a lot of the work by using the MasterDetailView control in the UWP Community Toolkit. With as little as a few lines of code and a couple DataTemplates (one for the master’s items and the one for the detail view), you can be up and running quickly.
Here’s the example from the UWP Community Toolkit demo app:
<controls:MasterDetailsView ItemsSource="{Binding Items}" ItemTemplate="{StaticResource ListTemplate}" DetailsTemplate="{StaticResource DetailsTemplate}"> </controls:MasterDetailsView>
Resources
Updated June 28, 2018 8:17 amConsumer Reports says it can't recommend the iPhone 4 because the antenna issue can be replicated and is, in fact, serious. Fanboy response: suck it up and buy a case. Molly response: epic rant. Also, the RIAA's wildly inflated file-sharing damages are smacked down once again, and Reddit begs for money.
Now playing: Watch this: Ep. 1267: Fix your brain!
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EPISODE 1267
Judge Slashes “Unconstitutionally Excessive” File Sharing Fine By 90%
http://gizmodo.com/5584018/judge-slashes-unconstitutionally-excessive-file-sharing-damages-by-90
Ballmer: Windows 7 Tablets Aplenty Coming By Year’s End
http://gizmodo.com/5584832/ballmer-expect-plenty-of-windows-7-tablets-by-years-end
http://www.zdnet.com/blog/microsoft/microsofts-ballmer-windows-7-slates-are-coming-this-year/6791
Google Secretly Invested $100+ Million In Zynga, Preparing To Launch Google Games
http://techcrunch.com/2010/07/10/google-secretly-invested-100-million-in-zynga-preparing-to-launch-google-games/
Fring: Skype blocked us. Skype: Fring lies
http://techcrunch.com/2010/07/12/fring-skype/
Skype Cowardly Blocks fring
http://www.fring.com/blog/?p=2322
Fring's mis-use of Skype software was damaging to our brand and reputation
http://blogs.skype.com/en/2010/07/fring.html
Lab tests: Why Consumer Reports can’t recommend the iPhone 4
http://blogs.consumerreports.org/electronics/2010/07/apple-iphone-4-antenna-issue-iphone4-problems-dropped-calls-lab-test-confirmed-problem-issues-signal-strength-att-network-gsm.html
AT&T handing out free 3G MicroCells to loyal customers?
http://www.engadget.com/2010/07/10/atandt-handing-out-free-3g-microcells-to-loyal-customers/
Reddit Literally Begging Users for Money
http://gawker.com/5584355/conde-nasts-largest-web-property-literally-begging-users-for-money
Facebook to launch child safety ‘panic button’
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/10572375.stm
Zuckerberg’s legal papers served up alfresco
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/business/law_and_lunch_order_tX7WzX2OkLvL3clv5wgtvK
App Inventor for Android
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/07/app-inventor-for-android.html
Run Android Apps on Your Windows PC
http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,2845,2366186,00.asp
Poof! After Wireless, the Computer Mouse Turns Invisible
http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2010/07/computer-mouse-invisible/
Today’s featured Buzz Out Loud remix(es) at the end of the show:
Thomas Canada!
https://podcast-files.cnet.com/podcast/BOLremix_ThomasCanada_klezmer.mp3
Jim Tucker(stein)
https://podcast-files.cnet.com/podcast/BOLremix_JimTucker(stein)_klezmer.mp3
Voicemail (800-616-2638)
Matt: bar tweaker
Email (buzz@cnet.com)
In regards to episode 1266:
Y’all were talking about Hulu and it’s $10 monthly–ad included–subscription service and I have an opposing viewpoint on the issue.
I pay for cable and that cable includes ads. I pay for HBO and HBO includes ads. HBO has ads before and after a program, not during. I pay extra for HBO because I am delivered uninterrupted content and that adds value to the channel; enough value that it’s worth paying for. There is no value to HBO if they interrupted East Bound and Down with ads (or if it censored the awesome Kenny Powers which it would have to do if it did rely on ads like a traditional network). Likewise Hulu is a supplemental service to my cable, and it isn’t quite a cable replacement. It may not be directly linked to my FiOS in terms of a supplemental package for my cable (like HBO is), but I as the consumer view it as supplemental to my cable. If I am paying for supplemental service I would not personally want interruptions. Sure they’re adding more content, and iPad/iPhone apps, but Netflix already exists in this arena for cheaper (and Buffy is available on Netflix instantly too…) and you get those discs at home. If Hulu needs to pack in the cost effectiveness then charge $10 once for the mobile app, or only add ads to the beginning or end of shows.
Simply put the outrage isn’t because there are ads exactly, its because we’re being asked to pay a premium for almost no additional value added. It’s simply not worth it, and we were all waiting in anticipation for something worth paying for.
Love the show!
Peace on ya,
Jason
**********
hi guys just listened to your latest podcast, thought i would let u know that google sent my house a letter of apology about the wifi packet collecting, and a free google t shirt i dont know y they sent my house this but they did,
it might be the fact that my cousin works for ASIS (Australian Secret Intelligence Service) any way just letting u know
thanks tayler
**********
Use your Blackberry to send your idea for the app that you would make for your own phone!
Send us a comment via Blackberry Messenger. Our PIN # is 24523C65.
Now playing: Watch this: Ep. 1267: Web ExclusiveUCLA Alumni Affairs and UCLA Extension invite you to take a class for free. Browse more than 600 courses and find one that excites you or helps you get ahead in your career. Your free-course benefit is good for one year after your graduation.
Enrollment for Spring 2019 courses will begin the first week of March.
Explore a range of course offerings - from screenwriting to interior design, accounting to economics, financial management to exercise physiology. Some classes meet in the classroom, and many are offered online so if you live in Westwood or West Virginia, we've got you covered.
*This benefit is open only to Fall 2017 and Winter, Spring and Summer 2018 UCLA undergraduate and graduate degree recipients. If you no longer qualify, you can still take advantage of a 10% discount as a UCLA Alumni Association member.According to Ideal.es, the Alcazaba of Almería, confirmed in July to be a season six Game of Thrones location, filming will occur at the thousand-year-old fortress on October 20th and 21st.
This scheduling was inferred from the Alcazaba stating that the decks would be closed to visitors on those dates. Though the shooting dates are not officially confirmed, the speculation is solid, based on this and the dates coinciding with the announcement of the Almería province filming period: October 10th-23rd.
A few days ago, La Voz de Almeria reported their own sources gave them the dates the 20th and 21st for the Alcazaba, making it seem more and more likely that this is accurate.
The purpose of Alcazaba for Game of Thrones is unknown. Speculation runs from new possible Dornish location, to another site for Meereen. Dorne is the most popular guess though- with GoT not returning to Seville, it seems like more Dornish locations are needed, and the Alcazaba does look like a place from George R. R. Martin’s Dorne.
Filming in Almería in general is expected to begin on the 10th, at the set in El Chorrillo, Sierra Alhamilla. At least one cast member is in the area already. Iain Glen was photographed with the staff of a restaurant in Almería:
Meanwhile, back in Northern Ireland, filming and sightings continued as usual, with everyone’s favorite Worst Kept Secret™ popping up in Belfast.
One fan spotted Kit Harington at the Crown Bar:
Was nice to see #kitharington (Jon Snow) in my local @CrownBarBelfast tonight. I'm never one to rush up to a celebrity, so no picture. — Julie Ann Nugent (@JulieAnnNugent) October 7, 2015
And not too far away from Belfast:
Our reader Tir Airgid has provided these new photos of the Riverrun set in progress in Corbet, Northern Ireland. These photos were taken the day before yesterday, on Tuesday October 6th. There have been some rumors surrounding the set, with IrishThrones tweeting yesterday that a gallows had been built, but the day before that tweet was shared, this was the appearance of the sets.
You can see the wooden structure in the center taking shape, but it’s too unfinished to determine what it is- a gallows, or the beginning of some other type of platform.
Thanks to WotW readers Tir Airgid and H. Stark!The Australian Greens say it's outrageous that other parties are shielding the federal parliament and public service from corruption investigations, by refusing to vote on the creation of a national version of ICAC.
"I am disgusted that Labor and the Abbott government have joined forces to stand in the way of a national ICAC and I think Australians will be too," said Greens Leader Christine Milne.
"It is ridiculous to suggest that corruption stops at state borders. Our federal politicians must be subject to the same scrutiny that has exposed so many abuses of public trust in New South Wales.
"How can these politicians pretend there's no need for an ICAC at the federal level? What have they got to hide?
"What we saw in the Senate this morning were cynical delay tactics, but they won't be able to hide forever.
"It's so clearly obstructionist that the public just won't stand for it. We must build confidence in our national parliament.
"Only last week it was alleged that an ABS staff member was involved in insider trading, and that's on top of the RBA bank note scandal.
"If Labor or the Abbott government have suggestions to improve the national anti-corruption legislation then my door is open and the Greens are ready to negotiate. This bill has been before the parliament since last year, but so far we've heard nothing.
"The people who elected us deserve to have confidence in our integrity, so the Greens won't back down on this," said Senator Milne.
"Are the Liberal and Labor parties so corrupt that they can't stand the heat of a national ICAC? What other reason can there be for wasting today's opportunity and denying this kind of oversight?"Exhibition Overview Press Release PDF
In this two and a half month long exhibition, Resobox Gallery will be turned into an “amigurumi room”, filled to the brim with cute crocheted and knitted creatures!
Beginning December 12, 2014, Resobox Gallery will be exhibiting 4,000 amigurumi contributed by over 140 artists from 32 different countries. Resobox Gallery wants to turn the space into an “amigurumi room”, filled to the brim with cuddly and cute handmade creatures. This is a unique exhibition in that it’s not highlighting an individual artist, but a concept. The concept, amigurumi, is a culture that began in Japan, but is now cherished by crocheters and knitters all over the world. Resobox Gallery was so inspired by the amount of amigurumi artists out there that they decided to embark on a journey to create an exhibition showcasing the united, global love of this cute craft.
PLUS, all of these wonderful handmade amigurumi will be for sale! Great for Christmas, New Year’s, and Valentine’s Day gifts for all ages.
In The Press
RESOBOX in Mexico: Cool Japan World Trial in Mexico
RESOBOX was selected as one of 7 companies in “Cool Japan World Trial in Mexico” hosted by Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry of Japan! We had a booth on 1/31 and 2/1 at Plaza Carso in Mexico City. On display at our booth were calligraphy pieces by Shoko Kazama, kimono art by MAYUKO Okada, komodaru (sake barrels) by Kishimoto Kichiji Shoten and some amigurumi from the World Amigurumi Exhibit!
Watch our promotional video: Mookie’s Adventure!
Go on a video tour of the World Amigurumi Exhibition!
What Are Amigurumi?
Amigurumi (lit. crocheted or knitted stuffed toy) is the Japanese art of knitting or crocheting small stuffed animals and anthropomorphic creatures. The word is derived from a combination of the Japanese words ami, meaning crocheted or knitted, and nuigurumi, meaning stuffed doll. Amigurumi are typically animals, but can include artistic renderings or inanimate objects endowed with anthropomorphic features, as is typical in Japanese culture. (Wikipedia)
Amigurumi stems from animism, a philosophy in the foundations of many Japanese traditions and customs. Animism is the belief that gods belong to everything: water, food, nature, buildings and houses, even technology. In Japanese, this is called “Yaoyorozu no Kami”. In fact, Japanese people often put eyes, arms, and legs onto non-human objects and give them imaginary lives in order to feel closer to these objects and show them respect as co-existing partners in this world.
As a Japanese cultural center located in Queens, NY, one of the most diverse cultural areas in the world, Resobox Gallery wants to explore how the ideas of animism and amigurumi are perceived in other places internationally.
Join us at Vogue Knitting Live NYC in January!
RESOBOX will collaborate with Vogue Knitting Live and have a small pop-up World Amigurumi Exhibition booth at the show. Also, on January 18, 2015 from 11:15 am – 12:00 pm, Takashi Ikezawa, creator and owner of RESOBOX will provide a lecture about the company, including why and how the cultural center began its “World Amigurumi Exhibition” and Helen E. Moss, an advisor at RESOBOX and a crochet instructor in Queeens and Manhattan, will talk about amigurumi and show off some of the more intricately designed amigurumi from the “World Amigurumi Exhibition”.
Vogue Knitting Live NYC will take place at the New York Marriott Marquis, January 16-18, 2015. For more information please visit their official website.
Partners
Helen E. Moss (Mookie’s Mother)
Little Yarn Friends (Website | Facebook)
日本あみぐるみ協会 Japan Amigurumi Association (Website – Japanese | Facebook)
AmigurumiPatterns.net (Website | Facebook)
CROCHET GEEK (Youtube| Facebook)
Where in the World Are Our Amigurumi Artists?
Adriana Fralick | Aeron Aanstoos | AkaiitoRisu | Alexandria Gold | Alyssa Schultz | Anna AuntieSocial with Auntie Social Designs | Anna Sparkman | Bluebird Loft | Blue Butterfly Company | Crafty Kitty Crochet | Dawn Vogel | Dr. Frank | The Elliott’s Closet | Emyli Clark | Erica Kimberly | Fairyland Amigurumi | Grampa’s Workshop | Heebobo by Sandy Yeung | HiddenAlly | Isa Amigurumi | JENNYBEARTM | JNArts | Kate Wood – Small and Great Crochet | Kathryn Perdue | Kelsey Liggett | Laura Armbrecht | Lauren Schoener | Lazymuse Productions | Leah Namour | Lilacs Lovables | Lory Gil | Marcy Bridges – Moon’s Creations | Marie Fontanilla | Melissa Hershman | MindlessDelights | MochiQtie | Nadia’s Place | Natalia Pleshkova | Nightside INK | NORA CONNOLLY | A Peacock Picnic | Pigswife | Pocket Sushi by J Tea | Sabreena Conyers | Sarah Cole | Sherily Toledo | Sonja Nelson | Stephanie Hawkins of Nurdi Babi Crochet | Tisha Samone Arther | Vanessa Chan | Wing Lee Chiang
Amigurumi no antoco | Amigurumi no Yossando | Fil de laine* | Hama-chan | haru*maki | happysmile | Hiro-DesignWorks | Hiruneko-tei | K&K Crafts and Designs | Kerorin| Kiyoka@Taremimi | lemo | Lumiena | nagomi | Nozomi Uematsu | piggiesagogo | Popopo-hompo | Rahyu | rota | Utata
Actante Dorado | BettiCrafts by Bettina | Bigunki | Clanyskull
Cranberries Knot | ElRincondePatri | I am a Mess by Aurea
mencantoo | Retales&Agujas | SILAYAYA | Tremendu
Blossom Bazaar | BOOTNECK BABIES
Dawn Finney | Ikkle Dragon Crafts
Irene Strange | Studio Ami |Zoe Mizzi
kllylmrck | krokrolamb| Little Yarn Friends
Snacksies | Stuff Susie Made | Yunie’s
Jenny Efstathiou | Karin Godinez
KATS Handmade Items | Marilena Efstratiades (mademeathens)
The Wandering Deer
Anna Nurwidayanti | Bbiribiri | Desa Boneka
Keli Shop Craft | Yuni Bening
Fayette Dream | Fire dragon
MarroCraft | Susana Bahena | TARTESAN
Brama Crochet | Crochet on a Tree
Dani and Bel | GIOVANNA CARGNELLI
à voir etc…
Labry Studio
Petits Pixels
Asch Tiny Studio
Atelier De Nana
Bennelle
Janagurumi
LiatiB
Shivani Toys
Crafterzan
Tiki Crochet
Carla Ferretti
Anzhela Martirosyan
A.G. Creates
lesfrotteurs
Daniela M. Galbreath
Crochet4yoUBG
móhu
Amigurumi BB
Handmade By Marika
Leonor Gonzalez
MANUSKA
Designs By Mamta
Tjan Toys
Viviana Handmade
The Flying Dutchman Crochet Design
April Nana
Silvia García
imagadaisukiAlternative Cancer Treatment Center In Arizona
Euromed Foundation Alternative Cancer Treatment Center is located in Arizona and focuses on holistic approach to treating various types of cancer using both traditional and alternative therapies and procedures. At Euromed Foundation we focus on providing you with the necessary knowledge and tools that help you pave your way towards healing. We use a combination of various therapies that will help your body to heal and fight cancer through strengthening and improving your immune system.
What Types Of Cancer Does Arizona Euromed Foundation Treat?
Experienced doctors at Arizona’s Euromed Alternative Cancer Treatment Clinic use integrated approach which helps your body kill the cancerous cells while at the same time restoring your body’s natural ability to heal - your immune system.
At Euromed we treat various types of cancer at different stages using a comprehensive cancer care program which is tailored specifically for each patient:
Experienced and knowledgeable staff in alternative and conventional medicine
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Please feel free to contact us for a free consultation to discuss your condition in more detail.Spinner Nathan Lyon is the first beneficiary in the change to Australia’s selection panel, having been recalled to the national one-day line-up for this month’s tour to Zimbabwe after more than two years on the outer of the white ball game.
Lyon was the most surprising inclusion in the 14-man squad to tackle Zimbabwe and South Africa in a two-week round-robin ODI tournament in Harare beginning on August 25.
The squad, announced today by newly installed chairman of selectors Rod Marsh, also includes exciting young allrounders Mitchell Marsh and Ben Cutting as well as pace bowler Kane Richardson who have been in outstanding form during the recent Australia A series in Queensland and the Northern Territory.
However, a change in personnel around the selection table has not delivered a change in fortunes for perennially peripheral opening batsman Phil Hughes who was once again overlooked despite a number of factors in his favour.
Hughes last week became the first Australian man to score a double century in a top-tier 50-over match when he blasted an unbeaten 202 against South Africa A, and he seemed the likely replacement for regular opener David Warner who will miss the tour due to the impending birth of his first child.
Instead, the selection panel of Marsh, Mark Waugh, Trevor Hohns and coach Darren Lehmann opted for just six specialist batsmen with Shane Watson and wicketkeeper Brad Haddin (both of whom have opened for Australia in ODIs) most likely to accompany Aaron Finch at the top of the order.
Marsh conceded that Hughes – along with paceman Clint McKay and left-arm spinner Xavier Doherty – was unlucky not to have made the squad but claimed there was no obvious vacancy to slot him into the top six.
“We would have loved to pick Phillip but it’s quite difficult to find the spot for him with a strong batting line-up,” Marsh said.
“He was in superb form during the recent Australia A one-day matches, including a stand-out double-century and the NSP will certainly be continuing to watch him closely.”
The quandary faced by the new selection panel, which already has half an eye on the upcoming World Cup to be played in Australia and New Zealand in February and March, is that the rare winter hiatus for Australia’s senior cricketers has meant little or no recent form guide for many players.
The exception has been those such as Finch and all-rounder Glenn Maxwell who have been involved in the English county cricket, and the likes of Marsh, Cutting and Richardson who have been involved in four and one-day cricket with Australia A.
However, the inclusion of Lyon would appear to be more of a speculative decision by the selectors given that the off-spinner last represented Australia in an ODI in the West Indies in March 2012, and finished with the unflattering figures of 0-147 in his most recent outing – a four-day game for Australia against India A in Brisbane.
“Nathan has done very well in Test match cricket,” Marsh pointed out.
“He first came under notice in T20 cricket, he's bowled well in last year's Ryobi Cup and I guess the unlucky one there is Xavier Doherty.
“But having said that we know exactly what Xavier is capable of.
“We're not 100 per cent sure of what Nathan is capable of seeing as his last ODI for Australia was in the West Indies and that's a couple of years back now.
“We want to give him another opportunity before we even start talking too much about the upcoming World Cup.
“It's not to say that Doherty won't be in that squad but we just want to have a look at Nathan on top of some pretty good Test match form.”
Even though McKay – like Doherty – has been a regular part of Australia’s one-day plans in recent years, the selectors decided that the short one-day series in Zimbabwe was an ideal opportunity to give other players in the mix for a World Cup berth a chance to push their case.
With further ODI commitments against Pakistan, South Africa, England and India ahead of Australia’s opening World Cup fixture on February 14, Marsh said the panel was not locked into a preferred starting XI and was keen to explore all available options.
That was certainly the thinking behind the inclusion of Cutting, Richardson and Mitchell Marsh who is viewed by many as Australia’s next star all-rounder in waiting.
“The thing we like most about Mitch Marsh at the moment is his bowling,” the selection chairman said.
“He's capable of opening the bowling, he's capable of bowling throughout the middle overs.
“I'm sure if he's a finisher yet, but he's bowled pretty fast.
“That's a really good sign for Mitch and a true all-rounder if he can get in the team for his batting or his bowling.
“He's certainly getting close to a true allrounder which is really good news for Australian cricket.
“(Richardson) has bowled beautifully.
“Mark Waugh has seen him bowl every ball up there in Darwin and he's been terrific (and Cutting has been in) terrific form for Australia A.
“He's bowled his heart out in the four-dayers and the one-day games in Darwin.
“Outstanding form last summer in the Ryobi Cup as it was then. He's earned his spot.
“That's what Australia A is all about, you really perform well in Australia A and you're a chance if we can fit you in.”
Quick Single: Changes for Australia A squads
Australian squad for tri-series in Zimbabwe: Michael Clarke (c), George Bailey, Ben Cutting, James Faulkner, Aaron Finch, Brad Haddin, Mitchell Johnson, Mitchell Marsh, Glenn Maxwell, Nathan Lyon, Kane Richardson, Steve Smith, Mitchell Starc, Shane Watson.With its dramatic scenery and unique wildlife, Milford Sound is one of New Zealand’s most breathtaking regions.
Cruising along calm waters between sheer cliffs carved by centuries of ice erosion, immerse yourself in a mysterious world in an undersea viewing chamber and catch sight of majestic Mitre Peak and cascading waterfalls that thunder into the depths below. It’s no wonder Rudyard Kipling described it as the ‘eighth wonder of the world’.
Milford Sound is one of the wettest places on earth raining around 200 days of the year with an average annual rainfall of 7 metres. Rainfall can reach 250 millimetres in 24 hours and creates dozens of temporary waterfalls that cascade down sheer cliff walls – it’s a spectacular sight.
Southern Discoveries lets you discover Milford Sound your way with a variety of cruise options to suit your taste and timeframes. To get there, you can travel by car, coach or by air.
As the longest and most established operator in Milford Sound, this magical fiord is our home – and we’d like to share our backyard with you.It’s looking increasingly likely that there will never be another Mac Pro. Here’s why that would be a shame.
Pro buyers depend on Apple to make the hardware that satisfies our needs. And we’re flexible. We’ve adapted over the years to new CPU architectures, port changes, capability changes, price increases, and a slower update pace.
The 5K iMac is a truly great computer. It’s the best general-purpose desktop Apple has ever made. It almost replaces the need for the Mac Pro. Many of us can get by with the 5K iMac.
But there are some things that only a Mac Pro can deliver.
More than 4 cores. Per-core performance has been eking out diminishing returns for years, so today’s newest processors aren’t much faster than those from a few years ago. If you need more performance for parallel workloads — very common for video, photography, 3D, science, medicine, and software development — the only way to jump meaningfully ahead of mainstream CPUs is to add more cores.
Today’s Mac Pro-class Xeon CPUs easily pack 8 cores at pro-accessible prices, 10 or 16 for a bit more, and scale all the way up to 22 cores.1 It may take a decade for an iMac to match the speed of today’s 16-core Xeons.2
High-end GPU power. Only the Mac Pro has the space, budget, heat capacity, and PCIe bandwidth to offer high-performance desktop- and professional-grade GPUs. If gamers, game makers, visual effects workers, and OpenCL aren’t enough, the rapidly-emerging VR and AR markets should be — they’re the next wave of high-end pro buyers who need the fastest hardware money can buy, and Apple has nothing to offer them.
The most RAM. The brand-new MacBook Pro maxes out at 16 GB and the iMac maxes out at 32 GB from Apple or 64 GB with aftermarket RAM. The three-year-old Mac Pro can go to 64 GB from Apple, 128 GB aftermarket. Some pro workloads simply need more RAM than the consumer and mobile chips support.
The freedom of thickness and AC power. High-core-count CPUs and powerful GPUs need far more wattage and thermal management than the other Macs will ever have the thickness or battery capacity to accommodate. The Mac Pro doesn’t need to be small, thin, lightweight, or power-constrained — the rest of the lineup fills those roles well, freeing the Mac Pro to be as big as it needs to be.
Silence. Unlike every other Mac except the low-performance 12-inch MacBook, the Mac Pro remains inaudible in most rooms even under sustained heavy workloads — you don’t hear the fan spin up — because its size and clever thermal design allows for a massive heatsink, cooled by a huge, slow fan.
This isn’t only important for pro environments such as recording studios and video sets, but it’s nice for all of its users (and their officemates). The Mac Pro is the only Mac that handles heavy workloads gracefully.
Reliability and longevity. The Mac Pro’s workstation chipsets, Xeon CPUs, and ECC RAM are all designed with more strict tolerances, resilience, and error correction than the mainstream components in every other Mac. And the heavy-duty thermal design keeps components cooler, which prolongs their life and improves stability. Most Macs have long lives before they break or become outdated, but Mac Pros outclass every other model by starting with a huge performance lead, then working hard for years without breaking a sweat.
And by separating the computer from the display, either can be upgraded more freely, promoting customer investment in high-end displays and high-end computers as needs and technologies change.
Taking the burden off of the other Macs. Pros wouldn’t be as angry about the limitations of the new MacBook Pro line if there was an alternative that solved their needs. The Mac Pro sweeps up countless edge cases with one product at the top of the line — the only downside is cost, but many pros would rather spend money than compromise on their needs.
Just as the Mac’s power lets iOS be simpler, a healthy Mac Pro frees up the rest of the Mac lineup to make more aggressive progress.
Current sales aren’t an indicator of future sales. Apple shouldn’t use the (presumably) low sales of the current Mac Pro to justify discontinuing the line entirely. The 2013 Mac Pro was introduced with a substantial price increase, far less internal expansion, fewer and more expensive processor options, and a forced dual-workstation-GPU configuration even for buyers who would’ve been fine with a single GPU. Then it was abandoned for three years, during which 5K displays finally came to market, but without a good option for Mac Pro buyers.
The 2013 Mac Pro was a victim of limited configuration options in a market that values versatility and edge-case handling, poor timing behind the 5K transition, and years-long neglect. A 2017 Mac Pro need not suffer from the same issues |
clothing but can also be used on containers such as wallets and bags. However, buttons may be sewn onto garments and similar items exclusively for purposes of ornamentation. Buttons serving as fasteners work by slipping through a fabric or thread loop, or by sliding through a buttonhole. Other types of fastenings include zippers, Velcro and magnets.
History [ edit ]
Buttons and button-like objects used as ornaments or seals rather than fasteners have been discovered in the Indus Valley Civilization during its Kot Diji phase (c. 2800–2600 BC)[1] as well as Bronze Age sites in China (c. 2000–1500 BC), and Ancient Rome.
Buttons made from seashell were used in the Indus Valley Civilization for ornamental purposes by 2000 BC.[2] Some buttons were carved into geometric shapes and had holes pierced into them so that they could be attached to clothing with thread.[2] Ian McNeil (1990) holds that: "The button, in fact, was originally used more as an ornament than as a fastening, the earliest known being found at Mohenjo-daro in the Indus Valley. It is made of a curved shell and about 5000 years old."[3]
Functional buttons with buttonholes for fastening or closing clothes appeared first in Germany in the 13th century.[4] They soon became widespread with the rise of snug-fitting garments in 13th- and 14th-century Europe.
Buttons as containers [ edit ]
Since at least the seventeenth century, when box-like metal buttons were constructed especially for the purpose,[5] buttons have been one of the items in which drug smugglers have attempted to hide and transport illegal substances. At least one modern smuggler has tried to use this method.[6]
Also making use of the storage possibilities of metal buttons, during the World Wars, British and U.S. military locket buttons were made, containing miniature working compasses.[7]
Materials and manufacture [ edit ]
Henri Jamorski Button Factory,
Paris, France, 1919 Button stamping machine,Henri Jamorski Button Factory,Paris, France, 1919
Because buttons have been manufactured from almost every possible material, both natural and synthetic, and combinations of both, the history of the material composition of buttons reflects the timeline of materials technology.
Buttons can be individually crafted by artisans, craftspeople or artists from raw materials or found objects (for example fossils), or a combination of both. Alternatively, they can be the product of low-tech cottage industry or can be mass-produced in high-tech factories. Buttons made by artists are art objects, known to button collectors as "studio buttons" (or simply "studios", from studio craft).[8]
In 1918 the U.S. Government made an extensive survey of the international button market, which listed buttons made of vegetable ivory, metal, glass, galalith, silk, linen, cotton-covered crochet, lead, snap fasteners, glass, enamel, rubber, buckhorn, wood, horn, bone, leather, paper, pressed cardboard, mother-of-pearl, celluloid, porcelain, composition, tin, zinc, xylonite, stone, cloth-covered wooden forms, and papier-mâché. Vegetable ivory was said to be the most popular for suits and shirts, and papier-mâché far and away the commonest sort of shoe button.[9]
Nowadays, hard plastic, seashell, metals, and wood are the most common materials used in button-making; the others tending to be used only in premium or antique apparel, or found in collections.
Over 60% of the world's button supply comes from Qiaotou, Yongjia County, China.[10][11]
Decoration and coating techniques [ edit ]
Historically, fashions in buttons have also reflected trends in applied aesthetics and the applied visual arts, with buttonmakers using techniques from jewellery making, ceramics, sculpture, painting, printmaking, metalworking, weaving and others. The following are just a few of the construction and decoration techniques that have been used in button-making:
Styles of attachment [ edit ]
Three plastic sew-through buttons (left) and one shank, fabric-covered button (right)
Different examples of shirt studs
Plastic studs for bedclothes
Shank buttons have a hollow protrusion on the back through which thread is sewn to attach the button. [19] Button shanks may be made from a separate piece of the same or a different substance as the button itself, and added to the back of the button, or be carved or moulded directly onto the back of the button, in which latter case the button is referred to by collectors as having a'self-shank'.
buttons have a hollow protrusion on the back through which thread is sewn to attach the button. Button shanks may be made from a separate piece of the same or a different substance as the button itself, and added to the back of the button, or be carved or moulded directly onto the back of the button, in which latter case the button is referred to by collectors as having a'self-shank'. Flat or sew-through buttons have holes through which thread is sewn to attach the button. [20] Flat buttons may be attached by sewing machine rather than by hand, and may be used with heavy fabrics by working a thread shank to extend the height of the button above the fabric.
buttons have holes through which thread is sewn to attach the button. Flat buttons may be attached by sewing machine rather than by hand, and may be used with heavy fabrics by working a thread shank to extend the height of the button above the fabric. Stud buttons (also push-through buttons or just studs) are composed from an actual button, connected to a second, button-like element by a narrow metal or plastic bar. Pushed through two opposing holes within what is meant to be kept together, the actual button and its counterpart press it together, keeping it joined. Popular examples of such buttons are shirt studs and cufflinks.
buttons (also push-through buttons or just studs) are composed from an actual button, connected to a second, button-like element by a narrow metal or plastic bar. Pushed through two opposing holes within what is meant to be kept together, the actual button and its counterpart press it together, keeping it joined. Popular examples of such buttons are shirt studs and cufflinks. Snap fasteners (also pressure buttons or press studs) are metal (usually brass) round discs pinched through the fabric. They are often found on clothing, in particular on denim pieces such as pants and jackets. They are more securely fastened to the material. As they rely on a metal rivet attached securely to the fabric, pressure buttons are difficult to remove without compromising the fabric's integrity. They are made of two couples: the male stud couple and the female stud couple. Each couple has one front (or top) and rear (or bottom) side (the fabric goes in the middle).
Fabric buttons [ edit ]
Covered buttons are fabric-covered forms with a separate back piece that secures the fabric over the knob.
are fabric-covered forms with a separate back piece that secures the fabric over the knob. Mandarin buttons or frogs are knobs made of intricately knotted strings. Mandarin buttons are a key element in Mandarin dress ( Qi Pao and cheongsam in Chinese), where they are closed with loops. Pairs of mandarin buttons worn as cuff links are called silk knots.
or frogs are knobs made of intricately knotted strings. Mandarin buttons are a key element in Mandarin dress ( and in Chinese), where they are closed with loops. Pairs of mandarin buttons worn as cuff links are called. Worked or cloth buttons are created by embroidering or crocheting tight stitches (usually with linen thread) over a knob or ring called a form. Dorset buttons, handmade from the 17th century to 1750, are of this type.
Button sizes [ edit ]
The size of the button depends on its use. Shirt buttons are generally small, and spaced close together, whereas coat buttons are larger and spaced further apart. Buttons are commonly measured in lignes (also called lines and abbreviated L), with 40 lignes equal to 1 inch. For example, some standard sizes of buttons are 16 lignes (10.16 mm, standard button of men's shirts) and 32 lignes (20.32 mm, typical button on suit jackets).
The American National Button Society (NBS)[21] has its own button sizing system which divides button sizes into'small','medium' and 'large'.
Buttons in museums and galleries [ edit ]
Some museums and art galleries hold culturally, historically, politically, and/or artistically significant buttons in their collections. The Victoria & Albert Museum has many buttons,[22] particularly in its jewellery collection, as does the Smithsonian Institution.[23][24][25][26]
Hammond Turner & Sons, a button-making company in Birmingham, hosts an online museum with an image gallery and historical button-related articles,[27] including an 1852 article on button-making by Charles Dickens.[28] In the US, large button collections are on public display at the Waterbury Button Museum of Waterbury, Connecticut,[29] the Keep Homestead Museum of Monson, Massachusetts,[30] which also hosts an extensive button archive,[31] and in Gurnee, Illinois at The Button Room.[32]
Gallery [ edit ]
Clam shells used for making buttons
Hand-painted Satsuma ware self-shank button
Wedgwood button with Boulton cut steels, depicting a mermaid & family, England, circa 1760. Actual diameter: just over 32mm (1 1 ⁄ 4 ")
17th century Spanish metal button
Buttons in politics [ edit ]
The mainly American tradition of politically significant clothing buttons appears to have begun with the first presidential inauguration of George Washington in 1789. Known to collectors as "Washington Inaugurals",[33] they were made of copper, brass or Sheffield plate, in large sizes for coats and smaller sizes for breeches.[34] Made in twenty-two patterns and hand-stamped, they are now extremely valuable cultural artifacts.
Between about 1840 and 1916, clothing buttons were used in American political campaigns, and still exist in collections today. Initially, these buttons were predominantly made of brass (though horn and rubber buttons with stamped or moulded designs also exist) and had loop shanks. Around 1860 the badge or pin-back style of construction, which replaced the shanks with long pins, probably for use on lapels and ties, began to appear.[35]
One common practice that survived until recent times on campaign buttons and badges was to include the image of George Washington with that of the candidate in question.
Some of the most famous campaign buttons are those made for Abraham Lincoln. Memorial buttons commemorating Lincoln's inaugurations and other life events, including his birth and death, were also made, and are also considered highly collectible.[36]
Phobia [ edit ]
Koumpounophobia, the fear of buttons, is a surprisingly common phobia. Sufferers frequently report being repulsed by the sight of buttons, even on other people, and being unable to wear clothing with them. Sufferers also report buttons being dirty and smelling.[37][38] The phobia may bear some passing resemblance to trypophobia and obsessive–compulsive disorder, but is separate and distinct.
References [ edit ]Breaking News Emails Get breaking news alerts and special reports. The news and stories that matter, delivered weekday mornings.
May 16, 2016, 9:28 PM GMT / Updated May 16, 2016, 9:50 PM GMT / Source: Associated Press By Corky Siemaszko
The tiny Vermont college that Bernie Sanders' wife used to run is going out of business — done-in by a $10 million real estate deal that she spearheaded.
Burlington College, which had been crushed beneath weight of the property purchase made in 2010 while Jane Sanders was college president, will close at the end of the month, the college confirmed on Monday.
Democratic presidential candidate, Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and his wife Jane Sanders, wave after a campaign rally Tuesday, May 3, 2016, in Louisville, Ky. Charlie Riedel / AP
"These hurdles are insurmountable at this time," Dean of Operations and Advancement Coralee Holm said in a statement. "It is with a great sense of loss to the educational community that Burlington College's progressive and unique educational model will no longer be available to students."
In a letter to students and parents, College President Carol Moore said the closure brought a "deep sense of loss and sadness." Current students, she said, will be able to transfer credits and continue their education at a neighboring college.
There was no immediate reaction from Jane Sanders.
When NBC News sought comment from the Democratic presidential candidate — who has called for making public colleges and universities tuition free — campaign communications director Michael Briggs emailed back a one-word response: "No."
Determined to double the then-200 student enrollment by 2020, Jane Sanders pushed to purchase the 32-acre parcel of land along Lake Champlain from the Roman Catholic Diocese of Burlington.
Sanders, who had been president since 2004, left the private liberal arts college in 2011.
Buildings and property of Burlington College in Burlington, Vermont, on Feb. 22, 2015. Wilson Ring / AP
Four years later, Burlington College — desperate to get its books back in the black — took a huge loss when it sold the land to a developer for $7.65 million. It was not enough the save the school.
In April, the college's lender informed them the line of credit would not be renewed. And on Friday, the college's Board of Trustees agreed to shutter the 44-year-old school.
On Saturday, the last class to graduate from Burlington College collected their diplomas.SAFE and Farm Watch’s vigil for chickens in Aotea Square, Auckland, Aotearoa New Zealand. Activists who investigate the abuse of animals are often targeted by the criminal legal system. (Photo: Simon Oosterman/Flickr)
When Patty Mark, an unassuming 66-year-old grandmother in Melbourne, got wind of appalling animal abuse happening right next door, she did what every caring grandmother would do: She helped the animals in need. Some were starved. Others had been mutilated. One was so infected with pus that she lost half her body weight when the diseased liquid was drained out of her belly. Mark documented the nightmarish abuse and brought a small handful of near-death hens to a veterinarian for emergency care.
In late May, Mark was shockingly arrested for her act of compassion. Mark’s problem is that the animals she rescued were not the dogs and cats we hold dear in Western culture – as in the case of an Army veteran in Georgia who smashed out the windows of a hot car to rescue a dog trapped inside, and who recently had charges against him dropped – but, rather, hens at an egg farm. For taking the abused animals to a vet, she is now facing serious charges that could land her in prison.
I have a special interest in Mark’s case. For 10 years now, I, too, have left the safety and comfort of my day job (most recently, as a corporate lawyer) to walk behind the closed doors of animal agricultural facilities. I, too, have been horrified by what I saw on the other side. Every farm I have visited – factory farm or family farm, battery cage or free range – has been filled with violence that would shock the conscience of ordinary people. And, I, too, have rescued a handful of the most desperate victims.
These industries know they cannot win in the court of public opinion so they are fighting in the court of law.
In January, I and a handful of other investigators with the grassroots animal liberation network Direct Action Everywhere released footage of what we found when we visited a “Certified Humane” Whole Foods egg supplier. During the investigation, we, like Mark, rescued a hen who was near death, and who we named Mei Hua (“beautiful flower”) and nursed back to health.
The stories being told from such investigations and rescues are having an impact. In May, Gallup released a poll indicating that an astonishing 32 percent of Americans – up from one in four in a 2008 poll – believe that animals should have “the same rights as people.” Influential voices across the world are recognizing and rejecting the violence we perpetrate on animals, with a New York Times columnist noting that we have moved passed the era of animal welfare and entered “what might be called [an era of] animal dignity.” The tide, in short, is turning.
That is why Mark’s case is so important to industries that profit from violence against animals. With public sentiment shifting against them, these industries must fight back. They know they cannot win in the court of public opinion, so they are fighting in the court of law, where lobbyists and lawyers give these industries an unfair advantage. And with increasing prosecution of nonviolent activism, and so-called ag-gag laws spreading across the world (most recently, Mark’s own Australia), industry just might succeed. If investigators such as Mark – or me – are sent to prison for documenting and remediating abuse of animals, the investigations will stop. And the loser will be public dialogue, corporate accountability and, most importantly, the animals that are the victims of this violence.
But there is another path forward. If the public comes out strongly in favor of work such as Mark’s (and her groundbreaking organization Animal Liberation Victoria), and against attempts by industry to silence whistleblowers and dissent, the investigations and rescues will continue. And what those investigations will show is not just isolated acts of cruelty, nor individual acts of compassion. In the face of dark and terrifying violence, rescues such as Mark’s light the path to a different and better world, a world where the animals of this earth are treated not as objects or machines, but as the living, breathing and feeling beings they are.The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is contemplating a new administration against the backdrop of 8 years of left-wing environmentalism pushing “climate change” as the crow-bar to achieve their agenda items.
More and more Americans are becoming aware the larger climate goals have nothing to do with the environment, and are driven by a group of elites who have worked earnestly to create the pop culture narrative toward “climate change” as a social engineering tool.
The ultimate objective of decades of selling and reinforcing this narrative is a secondary global financial market based on ‘carbon-trading’ to create, essentially, a new financial exchange similar to the futures market on Wall Street. Once established the exchange can use purchases and sells of ‘carbon credits’ to generate a new global oligarchy.
Their unified goal (for decades) has been to create an entirely new secondary financial market where global elites can control all human activity beneath their ruling dictates. The essence of pushing the various “climate change” initiatives are simply tools to achieve this objective, nothing more.
WASHINGTON – Environmental Protection Agency chief Gina McCarthy said Monday that failure to address climate change by the incoming Trump administration would leave the country in environmental and economic “paralysis.” “If we place rancor over action, we will fall victim to our own paralysis,” McCarthy said. “The train to a global clean energy future has already left the station,” she told a packed ballroom at the National Press Club in Washington. And the U.S. cannot choose to be left behind. The Clean Power Plan, the centerpiece of President Obama’s climate agenda, “marked a turning point” as a sign of U.S. commitment to combat global warming. But tackling climate change is bigger than any one regulation, she said. (read more)
You can always tell what the opinion is of the larger operational entities by looking at how generally “free markets” respond independently or organically. ie. “energy futures”:
AdvertisementsPope Francis greets Palestinian authority President Mahmud Abbas at the end of a holy mass in St Peter's Square on May 17, 2015 in Vatican (AFP Photo/Alberto Pizzoli)
Vatican City (AFP) - The Vatican came under fire from Israel Friday after signing a historic first accord with Palestine, two years after officially recognising it as a state.
The accord, which covers the activities of the Church in the parts of the Holy Land under Palestinian control, was the first since the Vatican recognised Palestine as a state in February 2013.
The product of 15 years of discussions, the agreement was finalised in principle last month despite Israel's opposition to both the symbolism of Palestine signing international accords and the specific content of the agreement.
"This hasty step damages the prospects for advancing a peace agreement, and harms the international effort to convince the Palestinian Authority to return to direct negotiations with Israel," Israeli foreign ministry spokesman Emmanuel Nahshon said in a statement.
Palestinian Foreign Minister Riad Al-Maliki said at Friday's signing ceremony that it would "not have been possible without the blessing of his Holiness Pope Francis for our efforts to reach it".
The minister said the "historic" accord enshrined Palestine's special status as the birthplace of Christianity and the cradle of the monotheistic religions (Christianity, Islam, Judaism).
Paul Gallagher, the British archbishop who is the Vatican's de facto foreign minister, signed the accord on behalf of the Holy See in the presence of guests including Vera Baboun, the mayor of Bethlehem, the Palestinian town considered to be the birthplace of Jesus Christ.
- Model text or one-sided -
Gallagher said the accord's provisions to ensure the rights of Christians should serve as a model for other Arab and Muslim states in their relations with Christian minorities facing increasing persecution in the Middle East.
He said it was "indicative of the progress made by the Palestinian Authority in recent years, and above all of the level of international support (for recognition)".
"In this context, it is my hope that the present agreement may in some way be a stimulus to bringing a definitive end to the long-standing Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which continues to cause suffering for both Parties.
"I also hope that the much desired two-State solution may become a reality as soon as possible. The peace process can move forward only if it is directly negotiated between the parties, with the support of the international community," Gallagher said.
"This certainly requires courageous decisions, but it will also offer a major contribution to peace and stability in the region."
The Vatican's recognition of the state of Palestine followed a November 2012 vote in favour of recognition by the UN General Assembly.
The Palestinian Authority considers the Vatican one of 136 states to have recognised Palestine's sovereign status, although the number is disputed and several recognitions by what are now European Union member states date back to the Soviet era.
The Vatican has had diplomatic relations with Israel since 1993 but has yet to conclude an accord on the Church's rights in the Jewish state which has been under discussion since 1999, with issues related to the status of Jerusalem proving hard to overcome.
Nahshon said the Vatican-Palestinian accord contained "one sided texts" which "ignore the historic rights of the Jewish people in the Land of Israel and to the places holy to Judaism in Jerusalem".
He added: "Israel will study the agreement in detail, and its implications for future cooperation between Israel and the Vatican."Researchers from the University of Michigan developed a new phosphorescent OLED (PHOLED) emitter that extends the lifetime by a factor of 10. Researchers have been trying to develop an efficient, long-lasting blue PHOLED emitter for years now, and this may be the breakthrough everybody's been waiting for.
OLED makers SDC and LGD already use red and green PHOLED emitter materials in their OLED panels. While phosphorescent emitters do not last as long as fluorescent emitters, they are much more efficient. All commercial OLED displays currently use a fluorescent blue emitter as the best PHOLED blue to date only lasted for a few hundred hours.
The researchers, collaborating with Universal Display scientists already explained in 2008 why blue PHOLEDs do not last very long. They said that the high energies required to produce blue light are more damaging when the brightness is increased to levels needed for display or lighting panels. A concentration of energy on one molecule can combine with that on a neighbor, and the total energy is enough to break up one of the molecules.
The first idea was to spread the light-producing energy, so that molecules aren't as likely to experience the bad synergy that destroys them. To achieve this, the team arranged the molecules so that they were concentrated near the hole-conducting layer and sparser toward the electron conductor. This drew electrons further into the material, spreading out the energy.
This technique extended the lifetime of the blue PHOLED by three times. The team further discovered that splitting their design into two layers (and halving the concentration of light-emitting molecules in each layer) extended the lifetime tenfold.
A commercial blue PHOLED is very exciting for the OLED industry. Universal Display estimates that adding a blue PHOLED to an AMOLED display will reduce the power consumption by about 30% (see chart above). It will probably take years before this technology is commercialized and adopted in OLED panels on the market, but this is the first time we hear of a promising blue PHOLED approach.
Several research groups and companies are trying to develop more efficient fluorescent emitters, trying to achieve PHOLED-like efficiency without the heavy metals. Professor Chihaya Adachi at Kyushu University is developing TADF (Thermally Activated Delayed Fluorescence) emitters that seem promising.
TADF based OLEDs are also being commercialized by Cynora (based on copper). Researchers from the Universities of Bonn, Regensburg, Utah and the MIT also developed a new method to enable phosphorescence OLEDs without any heavy atoms at room temperature.
Source: EurekAlert
Disclosure: the author of this post holds shares in Universal DisplaySome morning in the future, you take a pill — something for depression or cholesterol. You take it every day.
Buried inside the pill is a sand-sized grain, one millimeter square and a third of a millimeter thick, made from copper, magnesium, and silicon. When the pill reaches your stomach, your stomach acids form a circuit with the copper and magnesium, powering up a microchip. Soon, the entire contraption will dissolve, but in the five minutes before that happens, the chip taps out a steady rhythm of electrical pulses, barely audible over the body's background hum.
The signal travels as far as a patch stuck to your skin near the navel, which verifies the signal, then transmits it wirelessly to your smartphone, which passes it along to your doctor. There's now a verifiable record that the pill reached your stomach.
A company rendering of the Proteus system
This is the vision of Proteus, a new drug-device accepted for review by the Food and Drug Administration last month. The company says it's the first in a new generation of smart drugs, a new source of data for patients and doctors alike. But bioethicists worry that the same data could be used to control patients, infringing on the intensely personal right to refuse medication and giving insurers new power over patients’ lives. As the device moves closer to market, it raises a serious question: Is tracking medicine worth the risk?
Making each pill count
The new device looks to tackle one of the simplest and least discussed problems in medicine: patients don't always take their prescriptions. Most studies find around half of patients skipping out on prescribed medicines, which makes it hard for doctors to know if a given medicine isn't working because it's badly suited to a patient or because it isn't being taken at all. Some patients forget medication, endangering their treatment, while others stop treatment early, needlessly prolonging illnesses. It's a massive source of waste in the medical profession, and solving it would add billions to hospitals and insurers' bottom lines.
Proteus was formed with an eye towards solving that problem, according to the same health-tracking logic as Fitbit and Apple's HealthKit. If patients can see how well they're doing, they'll want to do better, and adding in external measurements can give them a direct sense of how the medication is helping them get better. "Once a patient is using our solution, they can see how they're using their drugs, they can see how it affects their body, and we can create all kinds of behavioral tools that enable them to keep doing that," says Proteus CEO Andy Thompson.
"It means much, much more than just that we can track your compliance."
The Proteus device will still only monitor pill intake, but it can be paired with other metrics for a much more comprehensive picture of how your body responds to the medication. "It means much, much more than just that we can track your compliance," Thompson says. "It means patients are going to be actively engaging with their health care on a regular basis just by using their smartphone."
Self-tracking or surveillance?
But not everyone's convinced that the ability to track pills will be good news for patients. The right to refuse treatment is an important, fragile principle in health care. Many are worried that tracking whether a pill is being consumed will be the first step towards punishing patients that don't comply. While doctors can’t force a patient to take a pill, court orders frequently mandate treatments involving specific drug regimens.
"It's a different world than saying I consent to taking these pills."
NYU bioethicist Arthur Caplan says he can imagine a judge using Proteus to enforce medication as part of a sentence: miss a pill, and your parole is revoked. "The temptation in the legal system to say, 'I can monitor you and make sure you're not a threat' is going to be huge," Caplan says. "Maybe that's good, maybe it's bad, but it's a different world than saying I consent to taking these pills." Those court orders are rare at the moment, since there’s no way to ensure a patient is taking medication outside of a controlled treatment facility — but as pill-tracking becomes easier, those measures could become much more common.
That's particularly likely given the way Proteus is entering the market. The device's first partnership bundles it with Abilify, a powerful antipsychotic most commonly used to treat mood disorders, schizophrenia, and Tourette's. The most common effects are improved concentration and decreased hallucinations, but it comes with extreme side effects like increased suicide risk and a lower seizure threshold. It's most often prescribed in cases of severe mental illness, often in psychiatric institutions or as part of a court-mandated treatment program — exactly the scenarios bioethicists like Caplan are most worried about.
Another tool for courts
Patients' best protections are medical privacy laws like HIPAA, which prevent medical data from being shared with anyone outside the hospital system. That would stop your boss or your parents from using Proteus to make sure you haven't fallen behind on your anti-anxiety medication. But those laws won't keep data out of the hands of healthcare providers, and Caplan is concerned the pill could also be used to enforce compliance. Insurers might offer a discounted rate on tracked pills, then hit patients with a $100 co-pay for every treatment they miss. It's not as oppressive as a court order, but the end result would be similar.
Proteus says it's already consulting with patient advocates and bioethicists on the ethical issues involved, but acknowledged that there are serious questions at stake. "We think Dr. Caplan has thoughtfully raised important points," the company said. "We agree with everything he says."
Still, those concerns are unlikely to keep Proteus out of the hands of doctors. The upcoming FDA approval will focus largely on safety and efficacy, leaving the larger ethical challenges to be solved after the drug is released to doctors and patients at large. With the technology available, it will be up to the courts to decide when it’s legal and ethical to use it. As far as Proteus is concerned, the power of the technology outweighs the risks. "There are challenges with bringing digital into any sector," a company representative said. "The reason to embrace the challenge in health care is because the need is so great."Nagpur: A sordid tale of sexual abuse of three girls ‘adopted’ by a former scientist in the city brought to mind the scary tale of Austrian Josef Fritzl, who raped his daughter for 24 years in captivity. In the case that came to light on Wednesday, the eldest daughter, 16, is learnt to have told police that she was exploited since she was in Standard 1, while the one aged around 11 too has been facing sexual abuse for last many years. The youngest daughter is just six-and-half-years-old.The 72-year-old Maqsood Ansari, a former assistant scientist with a top institution in the city, allegedly exploited his three adopted daughters by threatening them for last several years. Dhantoli police arrested Ansari on Wednesday and charged him with rape and provisions of Protection of Children From Sexual Offences Act, 2012.Ansari, who married at least twice but is never known to have fathered a biological child, had apparently adopted his daughters at tender ages on the pretext of bringing them up and educate them. Police have now discovered that Ansari had been forcing himself upon the daughters regularly.The rape survivors have been rescued from their residence at Ajni Chowk and shifted to the government shelter. Neither of Ansari’s two wives stayed with him, which made matters worse for the three young girls. The eldest survivor, whom the elderly scientist had also offered to marry, was the first to walk out and share her plights with others. Shockingly, no one, including a NGO claiming to be working for children and also working with police department, offered to help the girls.DCP, Zone-I, Deepali Masirkar, who was instrumental in bringing the case to fore, rescued the rape survivors after she was alerted by NGO Save The Children India. The NGO was approached by the eldest daughter through a friend’s family, sources said. “An NGO is providing means for the girls to continue going to their schools,” she said.Masirkar, appealed to society to wake up to such dangers within the four walls of the house. “The girls probably presumed that such exploitation was part of a man’s normal behaviour, until they learnt otherwise from the rest of the society. Later, it must have been the fear of losing a stable life and shelter that stopped them from opening up,” she said.Masirkar also said the police will also probe how the girls were adopted. “In the initial stage, police could not find any adoption documents during the house search and the culprit too is not forthcoming about any legal information on the adoption,” she said. Senior PI Rajendra Mane is investigating the case.(With inputs from Vishakha Virkhare)In this video, Broadly meets Yena Kim and her dog Bodhi, the Shiba Inu social media star that dresses better than any guy we've ever met. In the online world of fashion and dogs, Bodhi is known simply as Menswear Dog, and with appearances in GQ and his own book, Menswear Dog Presents the New Classics: Fresh Looks for the Modern Man, the name is quite fitting.
Kim tells us about Bodhi's rise to Instagram stardom in the three short years that he's had his own account. Bodhi's knack for style became clear to her when she jokingly decided to throw a shirt on him one day to see how he'd react. Kim had assumed he'd run off and continue doggy-life-as-usual, but was pleasantly surprised to see that he instead began posing, clearly aware of his angles. She snapped a few photos, as any dog owner would, and posted them on Facebook. The photos quickly gathered more likes than Kim had ever accumulated on her previous content, she says. The next day, when the photos of Bodhi were picked up by menswear bible GQ, she knew she and Bodhi had tapped into something special.
Kim takes us inside one of Bodhi's modeling shoots where she describes his personal style as "classic with a touch of vintage and a touch of trend." To us, Bodhi looks like a trendy dog about town, mysteriously chill as he lets Kim undress and pose him between camera flashes and wardrobe changes. His expression remains calm and bored, though he throws in the occasional yawn for flare. Kim believes that dressing Bodhi actually calms him down. "That's really why we started, because he was okay with it and he was posing for us," she says. "I think he's the perfect fit and the perfect face, if you will."Troy Goode was arrested following a concert in Southaven after ‘acting strange’ and taking LSD, according to police – who allegedly threatened his wife and family members with arrest if they visited him in hospital
The family of a man who died after being “hogtied” by police in Southaven, Mississippi, say they were threatened with arrest after they requested to visit him in hospital before his death.
Troy Goode, a chemical engineer from Memphis, Tennessee, died on Saturday evening after Southaven police were called to a reported disturbance. Goode was arrested after “acting strange” and resisting officers, according to police. Goode and his wife, Kelli, had attended a rock concert in the city and the 30-year-old father had taken LSD, according to police.
Eyewitness video shows Goode was placed face-down on a stretcher with his arms and legs bound during the arrest, before he was placed in the back of an ambulance. He told officers he was having trouble breathing in this position, according to lawyers for the Goode family. He died in hospital about two hours later.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Eyewitness video shows Goode was placed face-down on a stretcher with his arms and legs bound during the arrest.
“The use of force was unnecessary. Troy was not a threat to anyone,” attorney Kevin McCormack, who represents the Goode family, told the Guardian. McCormack added that as a cause of death had yet to be established, the family were not yet calling for criminal charges against the officers.
“We are calling for an investigation by the Mississippi attorney general and we’ll have to wait for the autopsy report to determine cause of death to decide exactly what action should be taken,” he said.
According to the lawyer’s account, Kelli Goode had asked Southaven police officers if she could accompany her husband to the hospital but was told she would be arrested for obstruction of justice if she arrived at Baptist Memorial Hospital-DeSoto, where her husband was taken.
McCormack says family members later called the hospital and were told again they would be arrested if they visited. It is unclear if police or hospital staff members made these comments, and neither responded to a request for comment by deadline.
“No mother and no wife should be prevented from doing that,” McCormack said. “They were obviously distraught. They didn’t know... what Troy’s condition was, they didn’t know if he was going to be OK.”
Within an hour of the second visitation request, the hospital called the family to confirm Goode had died.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Troy Goode with his son. Photograph: Courtesy the Goode family
The eyewitness video was posted to YouTube by David McLaughlin, an attorney based in Memphis, |
Putin announced a seven-point plan, including a halt to "active offensive operations" by the Ukrainian military and pro-Russia rebels, international ceasefire monitoring, unconditional prisoner exchanges and humanitarian aid corridors.
Image copyright AFP Image caption The summit has also called for Russia to end the annexation of Crimea
Image copyright Reuters Image caption Ukrainian government forces are manning checkpoints in Mariupol - as rebel shelling was heard in surrounding areas
At the Wales summit, Nato said it "stands with Ukraine" in the face of Russia's "destabilising" influence.
Nato also called on Russia "to pull back its troops" from Ukraine and end the "illegal" annexation of Crimea.
Nato Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said no-one wanted conflict with Russia and the best way forward was a political solution.
Some 2,600 people have died in fighting between Ukrainian troops and rebels. Ukraine's military says 837 its soldiers have died since the conflict erupted in April.
Mariupol threatened
Ukrainian government forces have recently suffered several losses of territory, after rebels launched offensives in both the Luhansk and Donetsk regions, and further south around the city of Mariupol on the Azov Sea.
Reports are emerging that the separatists have begun shelling the outer defences of Mariupol. Eyewitnesses spoke of gunfire.
At the scene: Fergal Keane, Mariupol
Image copyright AFP Image caption Mariupol residents hope for peace but brace for war
Tonight we can hear explosions close to Mariupol. These come after a day in which rebel forces pushed towards the city from the recently taken town of Novoazovsk.
At a Ukrainian government position on the edge of Mariupol, troops told us they had pulled back after coming under fire from what they claimed were Russian tanks.
However, when the local governor Serhiy Taruta arrived on the scene, he insisted there had been no retreat. "It is just our soldiers relieving other soldiers on a rotation," he said.
The situation is confused and the atmosphere volatile. At one point a vehicle arrived with a wounded man. The soldiers - from the volunteer "Azov" battalion - screamed at journalists to put down their cameras.
Later, several hundred people gathered in Mariupol to demonstrate for peace. They will be hoping the talk of a ceasefire plan becomes a lasting achievement in the next few days. In the meantime, however, the city is bracing itself for war.
Analysis: Jonathan Marcus, BBC diplomatic correspondent
'Unacceptable' actions
During the two-days of talks, Nato leaders are also discussing the rise of Islamic State (IS), and Afghanistan where Taliban militants launched a deadly attack on a government compound on Thursday.
An IS video released on Tuesday showed the killing of US journalist Steven Sotloff, just days after the group beheaded another American reporter, James Foley.
Image copyright Facebook Image caption David Haines was captured in March last year with an Italian aid worker and two Syrians
In the latest video, an IS militant is also seen threatening to kill a UK hostage, aid worker David Haines, who was seized in March 2013 in Syria's Idlib province.CENTRAL KITSAP — Kitsap County Sheriff’s Office detectives searching the Lake Tahuyeh-area property where three people were found dead Saturday discovered miscellaneous shell casings outside, along with about $60,000 cash in the master bedroom and 33 mature marijuana plants in a garage, according to court records.
Investigators also found a single latex glove near the burned truck where John D. Careaga’s body was found, located in a remote part of North Mason County near Dewatto, about 15 miles from Careaga’s house near Lake Tahuyeh.
John Careaga, 43, wife Christale Lynn Careaga, 37, and the couple’s sons in their blended family, Hunter E. Schaap, 16, and Johnathon F. Higgins, 16, were all killed, according to investigators.
Investigators do not believe the dead were randomly targeted and believe that John Careaga might have been the prime target.
“I think (the killer or killers) had more interest in him only because he was isolated and not found at the residence like the others were,” Detective Lt. Earl Smith said.
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The Sheriff’s Office’s entire detective division is working on the case, and authorities have met and spoke with agents with the FBI and ATF, Smith said.
The inventory of the investigator’s search of the property and the truck were included with search warrants for first-degree murder and first-degree arson. The warrants were requested from a Kitsap Superior Court judge and filed Tuesday.
They do not contain a narrative of how detectives think the evidence fits into what happened to the family and only list the specific items taken.
More than $50,000 was found in a safe under the master bedroom bed, and $7,000 was found in a bank bag in a master bedroom dresser, according to documents.
<p>From left: John Careaga, Christale Careaga, Jonathon Higgins, and Hunter Schaap.</p>
The Careagas owned Christale’s Java Hut and Juanito’s Taco Shop on Kitsap Way, and it is not uncommon for small-business owners to keep cash on hand.
Along with the 33 mature marijuana plants in the garage, investigators found 10 grow lights.
Under state law, medical marijuana patients can band together and grow multiple plants for use, though it is unknown whether anyone on the property was authorized to conduct a collective grow.
The shell casings, which investigators wrote were mostly 9 mm, were located on a back deck and on the driveway, according to documents. The bodies of the three family members were found inside the residence. Investigators have declined to say how the four people were killed.
Investigators also took samples from the fire, cellphones and other items from the residence.
The incident began when a person called 911 at 11:28 p.m. Friday and said violence was being committed in the house off Gold Creek Road. The line disconnected, and 911 dispatchers were unable to reach the caller. When authorities arrived, the house was on fire. The remains of the three people were found by firefighters. John Careaga's body was found in the burned truck Sunday.
Copyright 2017 Kitsap SunRWW’s Paranoia-Rama takes a look at five of the week’s most absurd conspiracy theories from the Right.
This has been a very sad week for Right Wing Watch as it marks the end of the Jade Helm 15 military exercises that caused an uproar within right-wing media, although something tells us that there will be more bizarre conspiracy theories to look out for…
5) Glenn Beck Was Right! See, This Thing He Read On The Internet…
Since the so-called Islamic State began gaining ground in parts of Syria and Iraq, Glenn Beck has been ticked off that so few people recognize that he prophesied the whole thing back in 2011. Except, of course, Beck didn’t do that, as he actually predicted that an Islamic caliphate would “ control the Mideast and parts of Europe,” claiming it would spread northward from Tunisia and Egypt across the Mediterranean until it reached Greece, Italy and Spain.
Obviously, ISIS doesn’t exactly have territory throughout Europe, as Beck predicted, but now he has finally found proof that he was right all along: an online petition calling on Munich to end its Oktoberfest celebrations out of respect for Muslim refugees.
“A caliphate will be established. It will cause chaos. It will spread and begin to destabilize Europe and the western… Posted by Glenn Beck on Wednesday, September 16, 2015
As the myth-busting website Snopes points out, the petition on Change.org to ban Oktoberfest was not started by a person living in Germany and “even if the petition were written in earnest, it would represent one person’s opinion and not that of all Muslim refugees.”
“Additionally, the viewpoint expressed by the petition appears to be a minority opinion, as the petition has only managed to muster a few hundred signatures, and the majority of those appear to have come from people who signed in order to add hateful comments,” Snopes continues. “Those comments lead us to believe that this petition may was created by an Internet troll in order to foment outrage. The fact that this petition was posted on 11 September, a day on which items critical of Islam tend to reach fever pitch, supports this hypothesis.”
Other petitions on the website, which can be submitted by anyone for any reason, include demands that President Obama “allow a high school student to have a party after homecoming and for WaWa to bring back roast beef sandwiches.”
Of course, Beck is desperate to find anything to support his claim that the caliphate is gaining a foothold in Europe, even if the “proof” comes from something just as credible as a chain letter. Next, Beck will demand that if you don’t send this email to seven other people, you will be cursed for life and your first crush will never love you.
4) ‘They’re Going To Eat Their Children’
Like Beck, televangelist Jim Bakker comes up with apocalyptic predictions, warns of impending financial crashes, nuclear EMP attacks and divine judgment, sells costly prepper food, urges viewers to buy gold, pushes bogus narratives about anti-Christian persecution in America and promotes a generally dystopian view of the world and its future.
Bakker, however, is a bit more honest about his role as a doomsday prophet.
While selling his survivalist food buckets earlier this month, Bakker said that in order to survive America’s impending collapse, people need to store their food in secret, because otherwise others will come for it. Even their “sweet neighbors” will do whatever it takes to get food, Bakker warned: “They’re going to eat their babies…they’re going to eat their children.”
3) First They Came For Kim Davis…
Next week, Kentucky clerk Kim Davis will receive an award at the Family Research Council’s Values Voter Summit for her decision to go to jail rather than allow deputy clerks in her county to issue marriage licenses to gay couples.
The Religious Right has latched on to Davis’ defiance of the courts, despite the fact that her cause is deeply unpopular in the rest of the country.
The head of Liberty Counsel, the anti-gay group representing Davis and a cosponsor of FRC’s summit, has repeatedly compared Davis to a Jewish victim of Nazi Germany.
Another Religious Right hero who has similarly defied the federal courts on marriage equality, Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore, is so enchanted with Davis that he rewrote the famous anti-Nazi poem, “First They Came For The Socialists,” to make it about Davis’ plight:
While Moore hoped that Davis’ commitment to using a public office to impose her religion on others would inspire more conservatives to get involved in U.S. politics, one far-right activist said that Davis’ experience is proof that Americans should “flee” the country to safer shores.
“God tells us how to solve the problem, he says flee,” John Price said. “There’s a time to fight and there’s a time to flee.”
2) Islamic Training Camps In The US: Just Asking The Question
The day following the CNN Republican presidential debate, Donald Trump held a rally in New Hampshire where he fielded a question from a man who had something to say: “We have a problem in this country, it’s called Muslims. We know our current president is one, you know he’s not even an American. We have training camps growing where they want to kill us. That’s my question, when can we get rid of them?”
Trump responded vaguely about how he is “going to be looking at a lot of different things,” and his campaign manager later insisted that Trump just wants to stay focused on the “bigger issue” of Obama “waging a war against the Christians in this country.”
Anyone who follows the far-right media could have expected that GOP presidential candidates would eventually be confronted with claims about radical Islamic training camps in the U.S.
“Fears of ‘Muslim training camps’ have simmered on the far right for years, especially since the rise of the Islamic State,” writes Jenna Johnson of the Washington Post. “World Net Daily and Judicial Watch — the latter an advocacy group that has successfully sued for records from Hillary Clinton’s tenure at the State Department — have published stories that allege FBI knowledge of dozens of camps, many across the deep South.”
As Max Fischer points out at Vox, Fox hosts like Bill O’Reilly and Lou Dobbs both pushed claims about secret Islamic training camps throughout the U.S., and “just this spring, FBI arrested a Tennessee man named Robert Doggart who was plotting to lead a far-right militia on a killing spree against a heavily Muslim community in New York state. Doggart believed the community was a ‘Muslim Jihadist Training Camp,’ according to a post he made on his web site.”
1) Farewell, Jade Helm 15!
While everyone was excited for the imposition of martial law and FEMA camps, the military training exercise Jade Helm 15 ended on Tuesday without any of the wild predictions championed by the far-right coming true.
It was quite a letdown: No “round-up of patriotic men,” no exploitation of a system of secret tunnels and closed Walmart stores, no nuclear electromagnetic pulse attack on Texas.
But maybe President Obama really was plotting to engineer such dastardly deeds, but was exposed by true heroes like Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and Rep. Louie Gohmert who gave legitimacy Jade Helm 15 paranoia.
Now that Jade Helm 15 is over, the same politicians and pundits who used the military drill to promote baseless fears about the Obama administration will quickly find a new conspiracy theory to latch onto as the cycle endlessly repeats itself.Speaking at the Chaos Computer Club (CCC) Congress in Berlin on Tuesday, a pair of researchers demonstrated a start-to-finish means of eavesdropping on encrypted GSM cellphone calls and text messages, using only four sub-$15 telephones as network “sniffers,” a laptop computer, and a variety of open source software.
While such capabilities have long been available to law enforcement with the resources to buy a powerful network-sniffing device for more than $50,000 (remember The Wire?), the pieced-together hack takes advantage of security flaws and shortcuts in the GSM network operators’ technology and operations to put the power within the reach of almost any motivated tech-savvy programmer.
“GSM is insecure, the more so as more is known about GSM,” said Security Research Labs researcher Karsten Nohl. “It’s pretty much like computers on the net in the 1990s, when people didn’t understand security well.”
Several of the individual pieces of this GSM hack have been displayed before. The ability to decrypt GSM’s 64-bit A5/1 encryption was demonstrated last year at this same event, for instance. However, network operators then responded that the difficulty of finding a specific phone, and of picking the correct encrypted radio signal out of the air, made the theoretical decryption danger minimal at best.
Naturally this sounded like a challenge.
Working the audience through each step of the process, Nohl and OsmocomBB project programmer Sylvain Munaut demonstrated the way in which GSM networks exchange subscriber location data, in order to correctly route phone calls and SMSs, allows anyone to determine a subscriber’s current location with a simple Internet query, to the level of city or general rural area.
Once a phone is narrowed down to a specific city, a potential attacker can drive through the area, sending the target phone “silent” or “broken” SMS messages that do not show up on the phone. By sniffing to each bay station’s traffic, listening for the delivery of the message and the response of the target phone at the correct time, the location of the target phone can be more precisely identified.
To create a network sniffer, the researchers replaced the firmware of a simple Motorola GSM phone with their own alternative, which allowed them to retain the raw data received from the cell network, and examine more of the cellphone network space than a single phone ordinarily monitors. Upgrading the USB connection allowed this information to be sent in real time to a computer.
By sniffing the network while sending a target phone an SMS, they were able to determine precisely which random network ID number belonged to the target. This gave them the ability to identify which of the myriad streams of information they wanted to record from the network.
All that was left was decrypting the information. Not a trivial problem, but made possible by the way operator networks exchange system information with their phones.
As part of this background communication, GSM networks send out strings of identifying information, as well as essentially empty “Are you there?” messages. Empty space in these messages is filled with buffer bytes. Although a new GSM standard was put in place several years ago to turn these buffers into random bytes, they in fact remain largely identical today, under a much older standard.
This allows the researchers to predict with a high degree of probability the plain-text content of these encrypted system messages. This, combined with a two-terabyte table of precomputed encryption keys (a so-called rainbow table), allows a cracking program to discover the secret key to the session’s encryption in about 20 seconds.
This is particularly useful, the researchers said, because many if not most GSM operators reuse these session keys for several successive communications, allowing a key extracted from a test SMS to be used again to record the next telephone call.
“There is one key used for communication between the operators and the SIM card that is very well protected, because that protects their monetary interest,” Nohl said. “The other key is less well protected, because it only protects your private data.”
The researchers demonstrated this process, using their software to sniff the headers being used by a phone, extract and crack a session-encryption key, and then use this to decrypt and record a live GSM call between two phones in no more than a few minutes.
Much of this vulnerability could be addressed relatively easily, Nohl said. Operators could make sure that their network routing information was not so simply available through the Internet. They could implement the randomization of padding bytes in the system information exchange, making the encryption harder to break. They could certainly avoid recycling encryption keys between successive calls and SMSs.
Nor is it enough to imagine that modern phones, using 3G networks, are shielded from these problems. Many operators reserve much of their 3G bandwidth for internet traffic, while shunting voice and SMS off to the older GSM network.
Nohl elicited a laugh from the audience of hackers when he called the reprogrammed network-sniffing phones “GSM debugging devices.” But he was serious, he said.
“This is all a 20-year-old infrastructure, with lots of private data and not a lot of security,” he said. “We want you to help phones go through the same kind of evolutionary steps that computers did in the 1990s.”The head of the House intelligence committee is “alarmed” by the intelligence community leaking to the media regarding Russia’s alleged interference in the election without informing Congress.
The CIA has not issued any public statements, and all assertions are based on anonymous leaks.
Congress and the federal government are both currently engaged in concurrent investigations into the allegations that Russia wanted President-elect Donald Trump to win the presidency. FBI Director James Comey agreed with the CIA’s assessment, according to a Washington Post report Friday, however, earlier reports citing lawmakers briefed by the FBI stated the FBI did not concur with the CIA.
“In the course of the House Intelligence Committee’s ongoing oversight of cyber-attacks during the U.S. presidential campaign, we have not received any information from Intelligence Community (IC) agencies indicating that they have developed new assessments on this issue,” said chairman Rep. Devin Nunes in a statement Friday.
Nunes said he was “alarmed” that new information regarding the investigation “continues to leak to the media but has not been provided to Congress,” despite his Dec. 12 letter which requested further information on Russian involvement in the election. Nunes also noted he requested the intelligence community to provide a classified briefing in order to “set the record straight” on its current assessment of the issue.
“Earlier this week, I met separately with [Director] FBI James Comey and DNI [Director of National Intelligence] Jim Clapper, and there is strong consensus among us on the scope, nature, and intent of Russian interference in our presidential election,” said CIA Director John Brennan in an agency-wide message.
The White House announced that President Barack Obama ordered a full investigation into the claims against Russia last Friday.
While the intelligence community now appears to be in agreement regarding the Russian interference in the election, CIA and FBI officials do not think the Kremlin had a “single purpose” in doing so; intelligence officials also believe the Kremlin wanted to deteriorate confidence in the electoral system.
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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.PopZette Morgan Freeman: Trump Is ‘A Guy Who Will Not Lose’ Actor changes his tone quite a bit on the 45th president
Previously a vocal Hillary Clinton supporter, actor Morgan Freeman is now spreading a message of hope when it comes to President Donald Trump’s time in office. Freeman had positive things to say about the new president in a recently published interview in AARP: The Magazine.
“I’m holding out hope that Donald Trump has to be a good president. He can’t not be. What I see is a guy who will not lose.”
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That’s quite a change for Freeman, who previously narrated a political ad for Hillary and called criticism of the Clintons and their corruption “political hogwash.”
[lz_ndn video=31906516]
Freeman said of Trump’s first days in office, “I supported Hillary in the election, and now it feels like we are jumping off a cliff.” Despite his words — Freeman said he doesn’t fear the future or the changes Trump is bringing about. “We just have to find out how we land. I’m not scared, though.”
Freeman is not the only usually liberal actor to urge others to give Trump the benefit of the doubt and to find ways to work with the new administration rather than against it.
Actor Jeff Bridges said in a recent interview with CNN Money, “How are we going to come together and realize that we’re on this little dust spec in space, you know?”
He added, “Things are finite here … How are we going to work together to make the most beautiful existence that we can?”
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Related: New Film Takes Aim at Liberal Elites – Horrors!
Bridges said liberals angry at losing the election should “put a check” on their aggression and stop “being so sure that Trump is an a**hole and that he’s going to be terrible.”
The actor said we all have a common goal — hitting a much different tone than all the other celebrities who promote and repeat aggression and divisiveness. “You can have very strong opinions, but to go after this peace and this beauty that we’re after, I think we gotta show up and give a little space for something beautiful to bloom out of it.”
Bridges ended his comments by quoting one of his most beloved movies, “The Big Lebowski.” He said, “As the Dude might say, ‘This aggression will not stand.'”
Related: Madonna’s Words at the Women’s March: ‘Disgusting’
With their latest comments, these two pop culture figures draw a sharp contrast with the celebrities who have bullied Trump’s 10-year-old son, talked about blowing up the White House — and promoted impeachment virtually from the moment Trump was sworn in as the 45th president.
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At least not everyone in Hollywood has lost their mind and gone into full meltdown mode.The good news for the neutral was that Manchester United, Chelsea, Liverpool and Arsenal all won at the weekend, but the bad news was so did Manchester City.
Not only did they win, but they handed out a good old-fashioned spanking to Tottenham, thrashing them 4-1 to extend their record winning streak to 16 league matches.
This was the same Spurs side who last month embarrassed Real Madrid 3-1 in the Champions League, but on Saturday they were made to look second-rate as they were ripped apart by goals from Ilkay Gundogan, Kevin de Bruyne and a pair from Raheem Sterling.
Christian Eriksen got a very late goal for the visitors but it couldn’t even be called a consolation. Not on a day when the Sky Blues underlined just how wide the gap is between themselves and the rest of the Premier League.
They lead United by 14 points and the odds are that chasm will only increase between now and the end of the season.
How things stand after Sunday's action... pic.twitter.com/CZ2hVsrbRd — Premier League (@premierleague) December 17, 2017
What else might happen? Considering only Everton have taken a point off City this season (a 1-1 draw in August) Pep Guardiola’s side are a good bet to emulate Preston North End and Arsenal as the only sides to go a season unbeaten in the top-flight, and they are well set to break Chelsea’s record (set last season) of 30 wins in a Premier League campaign; with 17 victories already, they need 14 more wins from their remaining 20 fixtures.
Another Chelsea record in danger is the 95 points they amassed in winning the 2004-05 title. City already have racked up 52 and with sixty still on offer they are on course to become the first club to reach a century of points.
BBC Sport wonders if anyone can beat City, let alone stop them winning the title, and the answer is ‘no’.
“The Premier League’s finest managerial minds have tried different methods in a bid to halt Manchester City’s runaway lead in the Premier League - with equally unsuccessful results,” says the Beeb.
In beating their nearest rivals (BBC Sport notes that City are the first team since Wolves in 1953-54 to defeat Spurs, Man Utd, Arsenal, Chelsea and Liverpool in the league before Christmas), City are also knocking their confidence.
All the numbers look good for Manchester City right now %uD83D%uDE4C pic.twitter.com/vPNA7ddlOk — B/R Football (@brfootball) December 18, 2017
The Gunners, beaten 3-1 at the start of the month, haven’t been the same side since, while United, who lost to City last weekend, laboured to a 2-1 win over WBA yesterday.
How Tottenham respond to Saturday’s mauling will be a test of character for Pochettino’s young side. “I think it was a good experience for the team,” reflected Pochettino. “When you win and play well you maybe don’t learn, so you must learn this type of game.”
The worrying news for Tottenham and the rest of City’s rivals, says BBC Sport, is that the club intend “to build a dynasty to rival that of Manchester United”.
Guardiola will be offered a new contract at the end of the season as the Sky Blues look to ensure the Spaniard stays put and turns them into the most dominant club in Europe, as United were for a while under Alex Ferguson.
Premier League results
Leicester City 0 Crystal Palace 3
Arsenal 1 Newcastle United 0
Brighton & Hove Albion 0 Burnley 0
Chelsea 1 Southampton 0
Watford 1 Huddersfield Town 4
Stoke City 0 West Ham United 3
Manchester City 4 Tottenham Hotspur 1
West Bromwich Albion 1 Manchester United 2
AFC Bournemouth 0 Liverpool 4
Tonight’s Premier League fixtureWhen Mylan’s CEO, Heather Bresch, appeared before lawmakers last September to explain the skyscraping price of life-saving EpiPens, she touted coupons that would cut out-of-pocket costs for customers rather than plans to lower prices. Executives for Turing Pharmaceuticals, Valeant, Marathon, Kaléo, and many others used the same strategy amid price-gouging claims.
But the wallet-friendly deals are deceptive, lawmakers and advocates argue. They recommend a hard pass—and a growing number is working on legislation to help you do it.
After an initial approval last week, a California bill heading to the Senate aims to prohibit drug companies from offering coupons for brand-name drugs if a cheap generic is available, the Los Angeles Times reports. Similar legislation is pending in New Jersey and passed some five years ago in Massachusetts.
“A lot of people won’t like that,” California Assemblyman Jim Wood (D-Healdsburg) acknowledged to the Times. He introduced the anti-coupon bill there this year. “When folks are offered a coupon, they’ll take it, and the drug companies know this,” he said. “What consumers may not realize is that this contributes to increases in insurance premiums.”
Though out-of-pocket costs go down, insurance reimbursements go up, maintaining company revenues and keeping shareholders happy, Wood explains. “This behavior is purely profit-driven,” he added. It’s not the drug company looking out for its customers and vulnerable patients.
A study last year by researchers at UCLA, Harvard, and Northwestern noted that drug manufacturer coupons insulate consumers from drug price hikes, undermining insurers’ ability to push back on egregious pricing. Looking at the impact of coupons on 23 brand-name drugs between 2007 and 2010, the researchers found that the coupons increased the sale of those branded drugs by more than 60 percent by squashing generic competition. That increased spending from $30 million to $120 million per drug in the study. In other words, that’s about $700 million to $2.7 billion overall for just those 23 drugs.
The findings make sense: with a coupon, consumers will continue to go for the brand-name drug they are familiar with from marketing campaigns, such as direct-to-consumer television advertisements, without seeing any direct effects of the price hikes. The US is one of only two countries in the world that allows direct-to-consumer drug advertisements (the other being New Zealand). And most other developed countries regulate drug pricing.
Matt Schmitt, a strategist at the UCLA Anderson School of Management and study coauthor, told the Times that drug companies have worked out that it’s better for them to offer discounts than lower prices. “But insurers get stuck paying full cost for branded drugs, which drives up premiums for everyone.”
Schmitt argues that the new anti-coupon bills will eliminate one reason that insurance premiums keep hiking up. A spokesperson for the powerful pharmaceutical lobbying group, PhRMA, disagreed.
“This legislation is trying to solve a problem without identifying what the problem is,” PhRMA spokesperson Priscilla VanderVeer said. When asked if she thought drugs were priced fairly for patients, she responded: “I don’t understand the question.”A federal appeals court on Friday struck down the birth control mandate in ObamaCare, concluding the requirement trammels religious freedom.
The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals — the second most influential bench in the land behind the Supreme Court — ruled 2-1 in favor of business owners who are fighting the requirement that they provide their employees with health insurance that covers birth control.
Requiring companies to cover their employees’ contraception, the court ruled, is unduly burdensome for business owners who oppose birth control on religious grounds, even if they are not purchasing the contraception directly.
“The burden on religious exercise does not occur at the point of contraceptive purchase; instead, it occurs when a company’s owners fill the basket of goods and services that constitute a healthcare plan,” Judge Janice Rogers Brown wrote on behalf of the court.
Legal analysts expect the Supreme Court to ultimately pick up an appeal on the birth-control requirement and make a final decision on its constitutionality.
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In the meantime, Republicans in Congress have pushed for a conscience clause that would allow employers to opt out of providing contraception coverage for moral or religious reasons.
The measure emerged most recently during negotiations to fund the federal government. Some House Republicans wanted to include the conscience clause in a legislative package ending the government shutdown.
The split ruling against the government on Friday was the latest in a string of court cases challenging the healthcare law’s mandate.
Friday’s ruling centered on two Catholic brothers, Francis and Philip Gilardi, who own a 400-person produce company based in Ohio.
The brothers oppose contraception as part of their religion and challenged the Affordable Care Act provision requiring them to provide insurance that covers their employees' birth control.
Refusing to abide by the letter of the law, they said, would result in a $14 million fine.
“They can either abide by the sacred tenets of their faith, pay a penalty of over $14 million, and cripple the companies they have spent a lifetime building, or they become complicit in a grave moral wrong,” Brown wrote.
The Obama administration said that the requirement is necessary to protect women’s right to decide whether and when to have children.
The judges were unconvinced, however, that forcing companies to cover contraception protected that right.
Brown wrote that “it is clear the government has failed to demonstrate how such a right — whether described as noninterference, privacy, or autonomy — can extend to the compelled subsidization of a woman’s procreative practices.”
She added that denying coverage of contraception would not undermine the Affordable Care Act’s requirements that health insurance provide preventative care.
The Gilardis’ employees will still be covered for a series of counseling, screenings and tests, she noted.
“The provision of these services — even without the contraceptive mandate — by and large fulfills the statutory command for insurers to provide gender-specific preventive care,” she wrote. “At the very least, the statutory scheme will not go to pieces.”
The two other judges on the panel disagreed with parts of the ruling and said the rights of religious people do not extend to the companies they own. They also disputed that the Gilardis were unduly burdened by the coverage requirement.
Christian groups cheered the decision and said it makes it clear that the government cannot force Americans to violate their conscience.
“The D.C. court has affirmed that this principle applies to everyone, be they small business owners or nuns,” said Ashley McGuire, a senior fellow with the Catholic Association, in a statement.
“Hopefully the Obama administration will finally stop bullying religious employers and repeal its oppressive mandate.”
Churches and other houses of worship are exempt from the ObamaCare mandate to cover contraception. People who work for religiously affiliated institutions can get birth control directly from their insurance companies.
— This story was updated at 3:06 p.m.(written from a Production point of view Real World article
Captain Picard's secret mission fails, leading to him being captured by Cardassians. As he is tortured by his captors, Captain Jellico and the Enterprise attempt to prevent war with the Cardassian Union.
Contents show]
Summary Edit
Teaser Edit
Jean-Luc Picard is drugged and questioned by Gul Madred. He sits in the middle of a dark room answering in a monotone. Picard reveals details about his mission to Celtris III and the personnel involved. Madred then asks his prisoner about the defense plans for Minos Korva. Picard truthfully states that he has no knowledge of such plans. Madred has his Cardassian subordinate increase the dosage and has Picard answer the same questions again.
Act One Edit
"Captain's Log, stardate 46360.8: The negotiations with the Cardassians have made little progress. I believe a military confrontation may be unavoidable."
Captain Edward Jellico, Commander William T. Riker, Counselor Deanna Troi, Gul Lemec, and his aides are in the observation lounge. Despite Jellico's assurances to the contrary, Lemec divulges that he knows that Captain Jean-Luc Picard, Lieutenant Worf, and Doctor Beverly Crusher have gone into Cardassian territory and killed fifty-five men, women, and children. When asked for proof, Lemec reveals they have Picard held prisoner. The Cardassians exit, leaving the officers stunned.
Jellico then reveals the mission plans to his first officer and counselor and reveals that the USS Enterprise-D is supposed to rendezvous with the away team at the Lyshan system in eight hours. Since the negotiations have taken longer than expected, he will send Riker in a shuttlecraft.
In the interrogation chamber, Madred unshackles Picard. They briefly discuss the ruins of the First Hebitian civilization of Cardassia Prime. The ancient tombs contained artifacts made of a rare, breathtaking stone called jevonite, but were plundered by impoverished Cardassians. When Picard requests to be returned to his ship, Madred informs him that he is considered to be a criminal because he was captured attempting to invade a secret Cardassian facility. Madred offers Picard the chance to make his trial and eventual punishment civilized, provided he agrees to divulge information about the Federation's defense plans for Minos Korva. Picard reiterates that he has no knowledge of any such defense plans. Madred rejects Picard's denials, informing him that he was lured into a trap, precisely because the Cardassians believe that, as captain of the Enterprise, he would have full knowledge of the Federation's defense plans.
Madred's guards promptly enter and drag a struggling Picard to the center of the room. His captor warns him, "Wasted energy, captain. You might come to wish you hadn't expended it in such a futile effort." Picard protests that torture is forbidden under the terms of the Seldonis IV Convention, governing the treatment of prisoners of war. His pleas are ignored, however, as Madred uses a PADD to lower a steel suspension rack from the ceiling above him. Before continuing, Madred asks Picard, "Do you have any physical ailments I should know about?" He then approaches the captain with a knife which he says is made of jevonite. As he uses the knife to cut Picard's jumpsuit, Madred tells him he will no longer have the privilege of rank or individuality. From now on, Picard will be referred to only as "Human." The guards pull Picard's clothes down to his ankles and restrain his wrists in manacles which connect to the steel rack above. The captain is left naked and suspended, by his wrists, above the floor.
Act Two Edit
"First Officer's Log, supplemental: I have returned from the rendezvous point in the Lyshan system with Doctor Crusher and Lieutenant Worf. Captain Picard's fate is still unknown."
In sickbay, the away team is treated for minor injuries. Jellico orders Riker to have La Forge analyze the team's tricorder readings, but the first officer wants to begin planning a rescue mission for Picard. Captain Jellico believes such an attempt would be foolhardy.
"Good morning, I trust you slept well", Madred says when he enters the interrogation room. Picard has spent |
the Ice Age.”
The book, Fall Out: A Year of Political Mayhem, by the paper’s political editor Tim Shipman, revealed how Mr Johnson insisted: “The Channel is really a river whose tributaries used to be the Seine and the Thames.
“It became bigger and bigger as the ice melted until it separated Britain from France.”
(Image: REUTERS)
Reversing it would be “a great symbol of European commitment”, he said.
Building a road link between the Strait of Dover, the world’s busiest shipping lane, would hammer business on ferry lines and the Channel Tunnel, which took six years to build and opened in 1994.
The £9billion, 31.35 mile rail tunnel links Folkestone with Coquelles near Calais.
A total of 23.5 miles runs underwater - the longest undersea portion in the world.
At its lowest point, it is 250ft deep below the sea bed, and 380ft below sea level.
The tunnel was one of the biggest engineering projects ever undertaken in the UK.
More than 13,000 workers from England and France worked on the vast scheme.
Eleven boring machines, each weighing 1,110 tonnes, were used in the excavation works, according to Eurotunnel.
Its website says that in 1802, French mining engineer Albert Mathieu put forward a plan to “tunnel under the Channel, with illumination from oil lamps, horse-drawn coaches and an artificial island mid-Channel for changing horses”.While Lansing’s economy has greatly improved in recent years, it continues to fare less well than other capital cities. (Photo: Rod Sanford/lSJ) Story Highlights Compared to other capitals, Lansing ranks 46th on poverty.
With a median age of about 34, Lansing is one of the youngest capitals in the country.
The decline in manufacturing had a big impact on Lansing.
Lansing ranks in the middle on factors such as population, education, crime and economic output
Ross Feldpausch liked his job at a local heating and cooling company, but after chatting with a neighbor who works for the state, he saw an opportunity.
In early July, Feldpausch joined the more than 14,000 people in the tri-county area who earn their pay from state government. The 37-year-old Fowler man now is a maintenance mechanic for the Department of Technology, Management and Budget, where his benefits — Michigan offers its employees among the most generous health plans in the nation — are a big boon to his big family.
"It helps because now I can have them all on the health insurance," Feldpausch said of his wife and four kids. "It's a little better pay, which makes everything a little easier."
Greater Lansing reaps rewards as the seat of state government, local officials said, but as the capital of one of the poorest and least-employed states in the nation, the area lags behind other statehouse metropolises in the U.S.
Compared to its 49 fellow capitals, the Lansing metropolitan statistical area had one of the lowest median household incomes in 2012, the most recent year for which complete data were available, and among the highest unemployment and poverty rates that year, according to a State Journal analysis of Census and other data.
Though the Lansing area's unemployment rate improved greatly between 2012 and July 2014, it still remained among the lowest among the nation's capitals.
Compared to fellow Great Lakes capitals in Illinois, Indiana, Ohio and Wisconsin, the Lansing area ranks dead last on those measures.
That's because all the activity surrounding the Capitol isn't enough to counter the economic headwinds that dragged on Michigan as a whole, said Charles Ballard, an economist with Michigan State University. Namely, that means the decline in manufacturing.
"The sector that was the bulwark of our economy back 30, 40, 50 years ago has declined very substantially," Ballard said, "and it's been a very tough transition for Michigan and for the Lansing region."
Database: See how Lansing compares to other U.S. capital cities
Statistically, Lansing could be a contender among capitals.
While income, poverty and unemployment pulls Lansing down, on other factors such as population, education, crime, ethnic diversity, and economic output, Lansing is decidedly middle-of-the-road among the nation's capitals. It's not high-performing, but not down-and-out, either.
With a median age of about 34, Lansing is one of the youngest capitals in the country.
"We have a great opportunity, I think, but it really takes jobs," said Karl Dorshimer, director of economic development for the Lansing Economic Area Partnership. "It takes a strong economy and once you get it going, it continues to grow and it continues to hire, and I think we're right on the threshold of that."
'A pillar of our economy'
Housing a statehouse doesn't necessarily equal wealth.
It's true that the wealthiest capital region — Juneau, Alaska — also reported the highest share of its workforce in public administration, a category that includes state workers.
But Tallahassee, Fla. is the nation's poorest capital, and it had the seventh-highest share of its workforce in that category.
Rather, capitals are subject to statewide economic trends like any other city, Ballard said. In Lansing, that meant the loss of General Motors Co. jobs.
The Lansing area lost more than 7,000 manufacturing jobs between 2000 and 2012, Census data show, more than any other industry.
Michigan lost about 323,000 manufacturing jobs in that time.
But Ballard said that hit was softened by the thousands of state government jobs here.
The Lansing area lost public administration jobs, too, though the losses were not as steep as in manufacturing
"It's a pillar of our economy," Ballard said.
"Without the state capital and all the offices and organizations associated with it, the Lansing-area economy would be greatly diminished."
Add in Michigan State University — education and healthcare jobs made up more than a quarter of the local workforce, and nearly 2,300 such jobs were added between 2000 and 2012 — and Lansing ranks well against Michigan metro areas.
All the unions, lobbyists, and trade groups who come to be near the statehouse bring lots of outside money to spend on local hotels, meeting spaces, restaurants and more, said Jack Schripsema, president of the Greater Lansing Convention & Visitors Bureau.
He said statewide associations made up about 60 percent of the groups with whom CVB worked with last year.
"That's our bread and butter," he said.
The Lansing area gained the most jobs in the arts, entertainment, and hospitality sector that supports tourism.
More than 3,000 jobs were added there between 2000 and 2012, the Census data show. But those jobs typically are lower-paying.
'Highly educated people'
Among the Great Lakes states, Madison, Wis. is the wealthiest capital, with an unemployment rate nearly half that of Lansing's — both in 2012 and in July — and a median household income nearly $11,000 higher.
Statistically, the biggest difference between Lansing and Madison is education.
About 32 percent of Lansing's 25-and-older population have at least a bachelor's degree, ranking 22nd among all U.S. capitals. Meanwhile, 42 percent in Madison have a bachelor's, making it the second-most educated capital in the U.S.
If Lansing wants to see Madison's wealth, it should "do things that draw in energetic and highly educated people," Ballard said, because higher skilled equals better paid.
"In the last couple years there's been a strong recognition of that," said Dorshimer.
Greater partnership
He said local economic developers have encouraged more partnership between employers and educators such as MSU and Lansing Community College.
They've put a premium on trying to encourage grads from those institutions to stay in the area and making sure university employees want to live in the Lansing area.
Tim Daman, president and CEO of the Lansing Regional Chamber of Commerce, said the financial, health care and advanced manufacturing sectors, plus a burgeoning technology sector, are becoming increasingly important locally, and officials should "continue to diversify this economy" beyond state government.
The Capitol is important, Daman said, "but it can't be the only driver of our economic development efforts."
Ballard said he's also seen improvements in the local parks, arts and nightlife that attract young professionals.
How Lansing stacks up
Among the 50 U.S. state capitals, Lansing was one of the poorest and least-employed in 2012, the most recent year for which data were available. Unless otherwise noted, ranking is among all 50 state capitals. Compare all the capital cities with this database.
Lansing metro Lansing metro rank Michigan rank Population 464,458 28th 8th Share of state population 4.7% 38th N/A Gross domestic product $19.4 billion 29th (out of 43) 13th (out of 50) Share of GDP from government 22.8% 12th (out of 43) 32nd (out of 50) Share of state's GDP 4.6% 36th (out of 43) N/A Median household income $50,185 39th 32nd Poverty rate 17% 46th 36th Unemployment, 2012 9.7% 42nd 50th Unemployment, July 2014 7.6% 39 (out of 43) NA 25 and older with at least a bachelor's 31.7% 23rd 35th Share of workforce in public administration 8.6% 22nd 46th Share of population non-white 17.9% 27th 25th Share of population Hispanic 6.1% 24th 37th Share of population foreign-born 6.4% 27th 28th Median age 34.4 7th (youngest) 38th Violent crime per 100,000 residents 355.8 22nd (out of 37) 39th (out of 50) Murder per 100,000 residents 3.4 19th (out of 39) 47th (out of 50) Rape per 100,000 residents 46.2 34th (out of 38) 48th (out of 50)
Source: U.S. Census, Bureau of Labor Statistics, FBI data
A capital economy, by the numbers
18,756
Number of public administration workers in the Lansing area in 2012, a category that includes state workers. That number is down 2,728 from 2000, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. By comparison, the area lost 7,018 manufacturing jobs during that same period.
$4.4 billion
Amount of gross domestic product in the Lansing area that came from government activities, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
4.7 million
Number of tourists who came
to Greater Lansing in 2012, according to an outside study conducted for the Greater Lansing Convention & Visitors Bureau. They spent a combined $470 million in the area.
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KERRVILLE, Texas -- A 10-year-old Texas boy with special needs is fighting for his life after suffering burns on more than 20 percent of his body.
His mother says that her son was intentionally set on fire by other children he was playing with.
According to local reports, Kayden Culp had been playing in a field in Kerrville, Texas. His mother, Tristyn Hatchett, says that she believes the two boys he was playing with doused the 10-year-old with gasoline and set him on fire.
She wrote on her Facebook page, "This was no accident!"
A Youcaring page set up for the Culp family says that the boy has suffered first- and second-degree burns to his body and remains on life support at an area hospital.
The Fire Marshall is investigating the incident, officials say.Half Moon Ventures (HMV) has begun a standalone utility-scale solar energy project in Jefferson, Wis. S&C Electric Co. is performing engineering, procurement and construction services. Green Earth Developers LLC is providing preliminary engineering and construction management services.
HMV says the 1 MW photovoltaic project will be the state's first solar energy facility that directly connects to the power grid, and it will help meet Wisconsin's renewable portfolio standard goal of 10% of energy production by 2015. The project is scheduled to be completed by the end of this year. Once online, the solar facility is expected to generate more than 1.5 GWh of electricity per year.
WPPI Energy has agreed to purchase output from the project. The wholesale power supplier serves Jefferson Utilities, the community's municipally owned utility, as well as 50 other locally owned, not-for-profit utilities in Wisconsin, Michigan and Iowa.- Citrus County Sheriff Mike Prendergast says 36-year-old Chad Robison is one thing: "I want to emphasize this is a textbook case of an online sexual predator."
Robison spent six years as music director of Seven River Presbyterian in Lecanto but in May, a coworker, planning to play on joke on Robison's computer, allegedly discovered a mountain of child porn.
"On his personal laptop we have more than 3,000 videos and 350,000 photographs that our detectives have combed thru," said the sheriff.
Investigators say many of those videos were recorded online webcam chats between Robison and underage girls, as young as 14, through the website Omegle.com. It's a cam-to-cam chat site with users all over the globe.
"We have videos of Robison having virtual sex with an underage female who is not local as well as trying to coerce young girls to show him their breasts," he said. "The defendant was secretly video and recording females in his restroom at his home over the course of the time he gathered pictures and videos."
As for his role at the church, Robison was fired and banned from the facilities shortly after the material was found. Investigators say, at this point, it doesn't appear any of the illegal images were taken on church property.
Hours after being booked Thursday on several sex charges, Robison was released from jail on $26,000 bond. He didn't respond to questions from reporters.
The church did comment however, saying in part that it is fully cooperating with the Citrus County Sheriff's Office. Investigators are asking any possible victims to come forward. Officials say potential victims could be local, across the U.S. and even in Canada.Okay, Internet! Okay. I’ll play The Stanley Parable. Jeez, I’ll play so you’ll stop hassling me. I’ve got tea to drink and stuff, y’know. I mean so what, yes, it is my kind of thing. And I do like wry and creepy first-person games, and The Stanley Parable is one of those peculiar story-driven, non-linear, thought-provoking, brilliant-constructed, acutely clever, well-written mods that we love to post about, but some of us want to sit about watching Chinese action movies at ten o’clock at night, and totally don’t have time to download 450mb of Half-Life 2 mod (which you only actually need Source SDK to play) and then wander through corridors figuring out what the hell is going on, and smiling all the while at that incredible voiceover.
It’s brilliant. Exquisite, even. I can’t spoil it by talking about it, but there’s a trailer below, if you want to take a look. But you shouldn’t look. You should play it.Americans love to gripe about ridiculous-sounding regulations. We scoff at state rules that bar kids from running lemonade stands without proper permits and federal code that makes it a crime to sell earplugs when their noise-reduction rating isn’t written in a particular font (Helvetica Medium, for the record). There is even a popular twitter account, @CrimeADay, that churns out mentions of absurd-sounding regulations on a daily basis.
Certainly, not all laws are equally enforced, nor do they affect us all in the same ways. Yet once a rule is on the books it can have real consequences for individuals, businesses and communities—as can the delay or lack of clear requirements. Scientific American has looked into a suite of health-related federal regulations and guidance actions—including some that could affect tobacco use and food safety—that are likely to advance or stall out in 2018.Two Kentucky Republicans have introduced a bill that would make the Christian bible, especially the crucifixion of Jesus, the trials of Job and the Ten Commandments part of the public high school curriculum.
Republican Reps. DJ Johnson and Wesley Morgan say the bill would provide a “prerequisites to understanding contemporary society and culture.”
“Whether you believe that it’s the word of God or you think it’s complete fiction, you can’t deny the impact it’s had on our culture,” Johnson said of the Bible.
The lawmakers say this bill is not meant to promote Christianity and that schools should remain neutral on the topic of religion. The bill, however, does not ask educators to talk about other religions.
Jim Potash, president of the Kentucky Secular Society, is not buying the neutrality claim.
“I don’t think it really would be just teaching about religion,” Potash said. “I think I’d have to worry about them actually preaching religion.”
If any school is going to teach religion it must be a world religion or comparative religion course in which all religions are discussed openly and a healthy debate among students can be had there.
The answer is not treating the bible as if it has some usefulness outside of religion.
Even religious scholars agree the bill is problematic.
“We want to take (the texts) seriously as sources from that time period without treating them uncritically as straightforward history,” said Mark Chancey, a professor at Southern Methodist University. “That’s a delicate dance because the minute teachers begin treating the Bible as straightforward, completely unproblematic history, they’ve slipped into making theological claims.”
This bill, which is not the first of its kind in the state comes only weeks after Kentucky Gov. Matt Bevin declared 2017 the “Year of the Bible.”
Any claim that this is not a covert operation to push Christianity on Kentucky students is total nonsense.An armed robbery ended in an apparent suicide after a high-speed police chase through Auburn. Auburn Police Chief Paul Register said a man robbed a business at gunpoint at approximately 11:50 a.m. near the intersection Cox Road and West Longleaf Drive. The suspect fled in a red Jeep Wrangler and the Auburn Police Division spotted the suspect's vehicle approximately one minute later, according to Register.
Lee County sheriff's deputies got involved in the chase. "During the pursuit, the suspect in the situation did fire a shot at law enforcement," Register said. "A shot was returned by law enforcement."
Register said the pursuit lasted several miles after the exchange of gunfire, until the suspect crashed into a white SUV after shooting himself near the intersection of South Gay Street and Brookside Drive. He was pronounced dead at 1:04 p.m. "There was another vehicle that was hit, and those people have been transported [to the hospital] for minor injuries," Register said.
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Daniel Chesser, public relations specialist with Auburn City Schools, said Wrights Mill Road Elementary School, Auburn Junior High School, Auburn High School and Dean Road Elementary School were placed under a lockdown for approximately an hour, but were given the all-clear by the APD. Traffic on South Gay Street was closed for several hours as police investigators from the APD and the Lee County Sheriff's Office processed the crime scene. Police identified the suspect as Bobby Keith Brumfield, 40, of Franklinton, Louisiana, on Thursday, Feb. 25, according to a news release issued by the Auburn Police Division. Brumfield was a registered sex offender in Louisiana, according to the release. At the time of the robbery and pursuit, Brumfield was wanted by the East Baton Rouge Sheriff's Office for aggravated burglary, second-degree battery, second-degree robbery, simple assault and theft of a motor vehicle, according to the release. The cases remain under investigation by the State Bureau of Investigation, APD, the Lee County Coroner's Office and the Alabama Department of Forensic Science Medical Examiner's Office. Maria McIlwain contributed to this report.
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Do you like this story? The Plainsman doesn't accept money from tuition or student fees, and we don't charge a subscription fee. But you can donate to support The Plainsman. Support The PlainsmanCLEVELAND, Ohio -- Receiver Terrelle Pryor gave the Browns another chance after the Redskins offered him a one-year deal after all, a league source told cleveland.com.
It had been reported here Friday that he didn't, but a source close to the situation said that he did.
When he came back, the Browns' original offer had been reduced, the source said.
At that point, it made more sense for Pryor to take the higher offer from the Redskins, which is worth $6 million and a chance to make $2 million more in incentives. It also included a $3 million signing bonus.
The source said Pryor wanted to return to the Browns and held out as long as he could for the Browns to increase their original offer of about $8 million over four years with a sizable guarantee.
The Browns also really wanted to keep Pryor, and had been working to do so since training camp.
Pryor and his agents, Drew and Jason Rosenhaus, didn't accept that offer because Pryor didn't want to be locked into $8 million a year when the felt he could make more, especially if he topped his 1,000-yard season in 2017. One source told cleveland.com he was hoping to make elite receiver money, up to $15 million a year.
Three teams offered him a multiyear deal worth $10 million and one offered $11 million, the source said. But again, Pryor and his agents felt he could get more after 2017 with another big year.
Pryor also didn't accept any of those other offers because he wanted to remain with the Browns, which he had been adamant about throughout the process.
He held out as long as he could, hoping the Browns would increase their offer. They came up a little, the source said, to about $8.5 million a year, but not enough for Pryor's liking.
When the Browns opted not to franchise Pryor by March 1 at about $15.7 million, it became clear they weren't going to budge much, the source said.
Browns head of football operations Sashi Brown, who had been working hard to extend Pryor throughout the season, also made it clear at the NFL Combine that the Browns had alternate plans and were prepared to go in another direction.
"We'd like to have Terrelle back and that's a priority for us,'' he said. "That said, we're not going to panic if he's not back, also.
"I appreciated his remarks with the press about wanting to stay in Cleveland, and then it's on us in this process here to try to make sure we can exhaust all options to make that happen.''
He also said of not franchising him, "we understand that means he's effectively a free agent.''
At that point Pryor knew he might not be back, but continued to hope things would change.
The two sides stayed in contact, but remained far apart, despite the fact the Browns had an NFL-high $102 million in cap space.
In the two-day negotiating period before free agency, Pryor received the offers from the four teams, but none he was willing to accept.
He hit free agency on Thursday and soon watched the Browns sign receiver Kenny Britt, 28, to a deal similar to the one they had offered him: four years, $32.5 million ($8.1 million average), including $17 million guaranteed. Britt, a ninth-year pro, had almost identical numbers to Pryor in 2016: 68 catches, 1,002 yards and five TDs. Pryor had 77 catches for 1,007 yards and four TDs.
The Browns on Thursday also signed free agent guard Kevin Zeitler to a five-year contract worth $60 million, making him the highest paid guard in the NFL with an annual average of $12 million a year.
The same day, the Browns spent $16 million to effectively purchase a second-round pick from the Texans in the Brock Osweiler trade.
"They were willing to spend a lot of their cap money, just not on (Pryor),'' the source said.
On Thursday night, Pryor headed to Washington to visit with the Redskins and they offered him the one-year deal. Pryor still wanted to return to Cleveland, where he felt comfortable and where he loved playing for Hue Jackson.
So they shopped the offer to the Browns, but they declined to match or exceed it, the source said. The offer was less than what they were going to originally pay him.
Pryor, 27, signed with the Redskins, and will have the chance to hit free agency again after the season.
"He has a lot of faith in himself to have a great season,'' one source close to Pryor said.
Pryor will play with quarterback Kirk Cousins, who finished last season as the No. 7 quarterback in the NFL with a 97.2 rating. Cousins signed his $24 million franchise tender this week and expects to be in Washington, despite the fact he asked owner Dan Snyder to trade him, according to ESPN's Chris Mortensen.
The source said Pryor is excited to be in Washington despite the fact he didn't want to leave Cleveland. He loved the fans, his teammates and his coaches.
The Browns were the only team to give him a chance when he converted from quarterback to receiver, and Jackson helped mold him into a 1,000-yard receiver last season.
He had made it clear to his agents that he wanted to return to Cleveland despite the 1-15 record last season.
"I do love being with the Browns and like I said before, this thing isn't about joining a different team because a different team's good.
"That's not what it's about. I love the building process here. I started out in my career never coming in the front door. I've alway got to go in the back, the hard way and the long way.''
Like his teammate Joe Thomas, he wanted to be part of the turnaround under Jackson.
"I have no problem with, just because we were 1-15 or whatever this year, coming back,'' he said. "I don't mind starting fresh next year and continuing to grow, because I think it's more exciting when you're on the bottom. I'm always citing starting from the bottom and getting to the top, and I think it's a greater feeling and it would be great to give Cleveland what they're looking for.''
In Washington, the Redskins lost Desean Jackson and Pierre Garcon and needed a featured receiver. In Cleveland, the Browns have Corey Coleman and now Britt, and Pryor may not have started as much as he will in Washington.
"He'll leave the door open to coming back to Cleveland,'' the source said. "It's really where he wanted to be all along.''COPLEY TOWNSHIP, Ohio -- A licensed practical nurse at an assisted living home here is accused of sexually abusing a woman with a mental health condition living at the facility.
Edward McShaffrey, 58, of Akron, is charged with one count of fourth-degree felony gross sexual imposition. McShaffery is not in police custody and a warrant was issued Wednesday for his arrest.
The incident happened about 3:20 a.m. Saturday at the Brookdale Montrose senior living center on Brookmont Road. A portion of their clients are in the assisted living part of the building, according to its website.
The 69-year-old woman is unable to consent to such actions with the McShaffrey because of what police described as a "diagnosed medical condition," according to court records.
A co-worker walked into the woman's room on Saturday. She reported to police she saw McShaffrey lifting the woman's shirt up and sexually molesting her.
Copley Police Chief Michael Mier said the employee contacted her supervisor and the company went through an internal protocol before reporting the incident to police.
McShaffrey was immediately suspended from working at the facility pending an internal investigation by the home, Mier said.Detectives then launched an investigation that resulted in the criminal charge. Mier said detectives are still investigating the case.
The company said in an emailed statement that they fired McShaffrey. They said they performed a background check on McShaffrey before they hired him and found nothing that would "show any cause for concern."
"The safety and wellbeing of our residents are our highest priorities," the statement says. "We have worked closely with the local authorities and the appropriate state agencies on an investigation of improper conduct of one of our associates."
Brookdale costs from $2,600 to $4,975 per month for assisted living, depending on the person's mental health condition, their website says.
McShaffrey became a licensed practical nurse in 2004, state records say. He has no violations as a nurse and his nursing license is listed as active.
Attempts to reach McShaffrey were unsuccessful.Performing hot chemistry in plastic reaction vessels may sound perverse, but UK researchers have shown that it is possible to carry out a range of hydrothermal chemical syntheses in sealed reactors made from 3D printed polypropylene.
The approach enables sealed lab-scale reactors of, for example, 1ml or 2 ml capacity to be printed, with the possibility to scale up to bigger vessels as required. It also allows the printing of grids of sealed chambers – in the new work a 5x5 array was fabricated – for high-throughput screening of reactants and conditions. Normally, for the type of reaction under (hydrothermal synthesis involving heating mixtures at up to 140°C for many hours) expensive precision-machined stainless steel autoclave bombs are usually needed. The new work could make such experiments far less costly and more accessible to less well-resourced labs.
The work was led by Lee Cronin and Ross Forgan at the University of Glasgow, who had already pioneered the use of 3D printing for creating reactionware of specific geometrical configurations to help control the chemistry within. ‘I wanted to know if we could extend the idea of using 3D printing to make compartments that could tolerate heat,’ says Cronin. ‘What about solvothermal chemistry?’
Using polypropylene, the team first partly printed the vessels. ‘We then pause it in the middle, add the reagents, finish the printing so that the reagents are sealed inside, and put it in the oven,’ Cronin says. After heating at an appropriate temperature and time, the vessel is removed, drilled or cut open and the products removed.
If the reactors were heated to 150°C, the plastic deformed and the vessels failed. But below this temperature the vessels retained their integrity. To test whether the vessels could successfully host solvothermal chemistry, the group synthesised two well characterised metal-organic frameworks (MOFs); the first in a 3 ml capacity reactor that required heating for 18 hours at 130°C, and the second in a 20 ml reactor that was heated at 140°C for 18 hours. In both cases, the yields and sample purity were comparable with conventional methods.
To test the system’s versatility, the researchers printed a 5x5 grid of reaction chambers with a 1ml capacity. In a bid to create novel co-ordination polymers, each chamber was charged with a combination of diacid linkers, bis(pryidine) based pillars and metal cations. After heating at 120°C for 48 hours the array was removed and holes drilled into each chamber to identify ‘hits’ – wells that contained crystals suitable for structure studies. In this way, and following further experiments with the reactor array to identify optimal synthetic conditions, two new three-dimensional coordination polymers were discovered. A larger printed reactor was then used to scale up the synthesis of one of the polymers, providing a sample comparable to that prepared with conventional equipment.
‘We have shown that the concept works, and that you can use it to discover new materials,’ says Cronin. ‘Clearly there are limitations involving solvent compatibility and taking the temperature beyond 150°C. But most hydrothermal reactions use alcohol or water and most are done at 140 to 150 °C. Also there are other plastics available that do melt at higher temperatures.’
‘Cronin and Forgan’s work has enormous potential in the development of new materials,’ says Neil Champness, head of inorganic and materials chemistry at the University of Nottingham in the UK. ‘One of the key results is the ability to explore a large a variety of reaction conditions in a relatively simple and cheap manner. This should accelerate materials discovery in this field of research and for the area of MOFs where there are almost limitless combinations of components this is an enormous step forward.’Long-term residential leases of up to 10 years being considered by Victorian Government
Updated
New laws to offer residential rental leases of up to 10 years are being considered by the Victorian Government in order to provide better protection for those who cannot break into the housing market.
Consumer Affairs Minister Jane Garrett said she would investigate whether five or 10-year leases were fair for landlords, while offering better protection for low-income earners, the elderly and those with disabilities.
"For people now for whom renting now is a medium to long-term option, they're often being faced with being kicked out of their houses every 12 months to two years," Ms Garrett said.
"This creates a lot of uncertainty and distress and we want to make sure that for people who need to rent for longer periods, that they are able to have some certainty around their housing options.
"There's complexity around this obviously. How do you get rent increases? What does happen if somebody needs to unexpectedly move or the property owner needs to sell?
"That's why we're having such a detailed consultation, because we want to get the balance right."
Public consultation is now underway as part of the three-year review into the Residential Tenancy Act.
We think it can provide considerable security, particularly for those people who've been priced out of the housing market. Emma King, Victorian Council of Social Services
Emma King from the Victorian Council of Social Services said the Government had fallen behind when it came to reforming residential tenancy laws.
"We know that significant numbers of people are going to be renters for life, so we really need to modernise tenancy laws to reflect this new reality," Ms King said.
"We need to strengthen the security of tenure and private rental, as well as adopt minimum rental standards [to protect] tenants.
"Really, Australia and Victoria, we've been behind the eight-ball so we think this is an absolute move in the right direction.
"We think it can provide considerable security, particularly for those people who've been priced out of the housing market.
"For some tenants... if they have to move regularly often they have to have their children change schools and a whole host of other things."
Ms King said it would provide more security for people struggling financially and those priced out of the housing market.
Ms Garrett said long-term leases were common practice overseas.
"This is really important because the way Victorians are living has changed dramatically," she said.
"A lot of people don't seek to own their own homes or can't.
"We know in Europe long-term leases are very common because of the fact that there are lot more people renting than seeking to own their own home.
"We just want to make sure there are options in our system that gives certainty to both tenants and landlords."
Topics: state-parliament, states-and-territories, housing, vic
First postedDENVER � The Colorado Senate this morning passed a Pueblo lawmaker�s bill that would create a discount rate of college tuition for illegal immigrants who attended high school in the state.
Under SB15, sponsored by Sen. Angela Giron, D-Pueblo, those students would pay more than the in-state rate of tuition, but less than the nonresident rate that currently applies to them.
Colleges would have the option not to offer the third rate of tuition, and students would be required to enter the legal immigration pipeline in order to qualify for it.
Proponents say the change would bolster revenue to colleges and follow through with the state�s public-education investment in the students. They also contend that many students who would benefit from the third tier of tuition were brought to the country illegally by their parents and had no choice in the matter.
Opponents contend the bill would create an incentive for illegal immigration to Colorado. They also argue that it presents students with false hope because they would not be able to work legally in the country until they attain citizenship.
The bill�s passage in the Democratically controlled Senate was not a surprise. Its first true test will come next, when it is heard by a Republican House committee. A similar bill last year died at that stage.Remember when Uber said its “median driver” in New York made more than $90,000 a year, and then couldn’t find a single one who did? Yeah, they’re paying for that now.
The ride-sharing company will pay the Federal Trade Commission $20 million to settle charges that it misled people over how much they could earn driving. Uber is also settling an FTC claim that its vehicle-financing programs, designed to make cars available to people who need them, were not in fact the “best financing options available.”
By settling, Uber has not explicitly admitted to any of the FTC’s allegations. But the evidence against the company is compelling. For years, the company exaggerated and obfuscated how much its drivers really earned, in part by quoting rates that ignored the significant out-of-pocket costs borne by independent contractors, such as gas, insurance, and vehicle maintenance.
The most egregious example of this was in New York, where in May 2014 Uber claimed its drivers were earning a median annual income of $90,766. (The blog post seems to have been removed from Uber’s site, but you can view a copy here, courtesy of Internet Archive.) Uber lured prospective drivers with this promise even as it cut rates in the city by 20%, a bid to make its service “cheaper than a New York City taxi.” In San Francisco, Uber said its median driver was making $74,000.
According to the FTC, the median Uber driver in New York around that time was actually earning about $62,000, and the median driver in San Francisco $53,000. That’s not bad money, but it’s a far cry from what the company advertised. The FTC also concluded that fewer than 10% of drivers in New York and San Francisco were earning Uber’s stated rates. The agency found a similar trend by analyzing the hourly rates Uber quoted to drivers on Craigslist in 14 other cities in December 2014:
FTC
“In many instances, Drivers have not made the promised amounts even when factoring in non-hourly earnings, such as payments for time-limited promotions and other incentives,” the FTC complaint reads.
In a |
to extend its electoral foothold beyond Queensland, potential rivals insist they're prepared for a spirited fight. Northern Territory Country Liberal senator Nigel Scullion says he's ready to ''take off the gloves'' if a Katter candidate takes him on. ''I don't think the very small following KAP may have does anything outside of North Queensland. Clearly, that's why we have the K in KAP. It's the bloke in the hat; he's well known; he's like everyone's granddad,'' Scullion says.
Katter says he is confident of gaining multiple Senate seats, including seats outside Queensland, but stresses the need to put internal stumbles behind the party. ''We've got to be careful - we've had a couple of grenades go off in our hands so we've got to be a bit careful with candidates.'' With PADDY DOULMANWednesday on the House floor, Rep. Luis Gutiérrez (D-IL) criticized Texas for its conspiracy theories and then said God must understand Spanish because he named his son Jesus.
Gutiérrez said, “Reality and Texas should get to know one another. Now, let’s remember, this is the same set of Texas politicians – including the governor and some Republican members of Congress – who are reluctant to tell some of their base voters that no, in fact, President Obama does not have a secret plan to use Wal Mart department stores as internment camps for gun owners, which is the latest conspiracy theory promoted by Chuck Norris and others.”
“We can all get a chuckle from the story about Operation Jade Helm – the alleged U.S. military invasion of Texas – but it’s not as funny when we begin to realize that for many of the Republican Party in Texas, crazy is a constituency that must be dealt with delicately,” he continued. “So I want to end by speaking directly to the millions of families who are waiting for Texas politicians and judges to stop the delay tactics.”
“And I will use the language many of them speak and which God understands as well, or at least I assume he speaks Spanish, because he named his only son Jesus,” he added.
Despite Gutiérrez’s claim, the modern “Jesus” name originates from early old English Biblical translations of the Lord’s name, Yeshua, in an attempt to match pronunciation. There was no letter “J” in Hebrew, Greek or Latin prior to the 14th century.
Follow Pam Key on Twitter @pamkeyNENWhile BTS has revealed their second concept photo of ‘The Mood for Love pt.2’, the talk about their ideal type is also on the news.
Rap Monster said, “I like sexy person who’s mind is also sexy. I also like a person who have confidence and cares for others.”
On the other hand, J-Hope replied, “I like a person who only looks and cares about me. I want her to assist me in the future.”
Meanwhile, Jimin said, “I didn’t think much about my ideal type. I really didn’t have much chance to meet anyone. Please just come to me, please.”
V said, “I like a thoughtful person since I don’t think much. I hope she cares for me. Kaya Scodelario, she’s very lovely.”
Sugar said that, “I like a person who doesn’t care much and is quiet. I also hope she is similar to me and is interested in music.”
Jungkook said, “I like a person whom I can learn from and who fits me.”
Lastly, Jin answered that, “Since I love puppies, I like a person who is like a puppy, both inside and outside.”Australian scientists have worked out how to control fluid at the nanoscale
SCIENCEALERT STAFF 3 JUL 2014
Computer modelling has revealed a simple technique can pump fluid confined in tiny spaces, and could be used to desalinate water and to improve lab-on-a-chip devices.
The simple method used a computer model to predict where highly confined fluids will move, and then used this information to work out how to "pump" the fluid without the need for a mechanical pump or the use of electrodes.
Developed by a team led by Swinburne University of Technology, this is the first model that has successfully shown how these liquids move on such a tiny scale.
“Conventional fluid dynamics modelling works perfectly with things we can see such as the flow of air over an aircraft,” said Swinburne University of Technology Professor Billy Todd, the study leader, in a press release.
“But when devices get to nanometre size or 1 billionth of a metre – about one ten-thousandth the diameter of a human hair – the fundamental assumptions of fluid mechanics break down. It is difficult to force fluid to flow in confined dimensions that are just a few atoms thick.”
The researchers used supercomputers to study the interface between the solid surface and the fluid at nanometre dimensions, and discovered that using a rotating microwave field they could effectively pump the fluid.
“Several years ago, researchers in France and Germany developed a theory that a rotating electric field could induce water molecules to spin and that this spin motion could be converted into linear streaming fluid motion,” Todd explained.
“If the symmetry of the confining walls could be broken such that one wall was hydrophilic and attracted water, while the other was hydrophobic and repelled water, then mathematically it was demonstrated that water could be made to flow in just one direction, namely along the channel.”
Todd and the team developed this theory further and performed the first molecular dynamics computer simulations to demonstrate this effect.
They discovered that using a rotating microwave field they could pump the water at the nanoscale, without significantly heating the water.
So far however, this discovery hasn't been verified in the lab. But if confirmed, it could have big implications for lab-on-a-chip diagnostic devices and could also help to more efficiently desalinate water.
See a simulation of water molecules being acted upon by the rotating electric field below.
The top wall (blue atoms) is hydrophobic, while the bottom wall (pink atoms) is hydrophilic. The flow of water is strongest at the top wall interface, with water molecules moving from right to left.There’s something I need to get off my chest. Something which has been weighing me down for a while, a feeling that I’ve confided in only those I trust. I’m not too bothered about White Hart Lane getting knocked down.
Before you reach for your pitchforks, allow me to explain myself.
I love Spurs and breathe Spurs. I spend most of my waking life worrying, talking, tweeting and day-dreaming that I play in the hole behind a strong “English” number 9. It’s a daydream that I don’t think I’ll ever let go of, but the stadium? I’ve already consigned it to rubble.
This Sunday as the final whistle rings out perhaps a wave of nostalgia will hit me, but there won’t be tears, there won’t be sadness, it will be a “ahhh finally” kind of feeling.
At the last North London derby, I was one of those that took a long time to exit the ground and was swept along into a spontaneous “Oh When The Spurs.” It was a beautiful moment, an unscripted moment of pure feeling, we’d beaten them, buried a hoodoo and we were celebrating, was it made extra special given the significance of the stadium?
No.
(Well maybe a little, but only because we had denied them that bragging right and a banner at their ground)
What was significant was how we’ve moved on. Progression isn’t always at the cost of tradition, modernity isn’t the killer of history. We can move forward without forgetting. Sunday isn’t an end, it’s a new chapter of our book, a glorious and interesting book.
White Hart Lane in its current form has changed immeasurably from its early days, what happens after Sunday is just another, although more significant, renovation
Stadiums change or get knocked down. White Hart Lane in its current form has changed immeasurably from its early days, what happens after Sunday is just another, although more significant, renovation.
White Hart Lane is a building. It is stands, a concourse, a pitch and a collection of offices etc. It is a home, but it isn’t Tottenham. This building as tied as it is to Tottenham and the culture isn’t Tottenham Hotspur, what makes the club important is you me and everyone else that invests time, blood and sweat into it. The stadium may have seen some great things, but you can’t escape the fact its bricks and mortar.
Perhaps another reason I am unfussed about the stadium renovation is I don’t have the connection others do to it. I’m immensely proud of everything Spurs has achieved, but these achievements aren’t mine. The Spurs I’ve known most of my life has been one that flashes style, but bathes in stupidity. Only the recent Pochettino incarnation has hinted at something different, therefore for these reasons they deserve a clean slate, a new arena in which to make their history.
Had I grown up with the Angels, Push and Run, Ossie, Hoddle or Hazard, then perhaps the stadium would mean more to me but it doesn’t. Those days of glory passed me, but what I see today, makes me believe that Kane and co need a fresh start, a place with which to start a new chapter free from Spursy, free from “Three Point Lane” and free to make this club the force it can be.
I grew up the son of an immigrant and a northerner who moved to London. I had no family ties, no history with the club. My father never took me to Tottenham, I found Spurs by my own volition and I never started going regularly until we will elbow deep into mediocrity. Perhaps my early memories, which are normally the most influential ones, tie us to Calderwood and Austin, to just about beating FC Zimbru and to just about being decent.
I’m the first Spur in my family, and although I fully understand why the stadium may connect you to family members past and present, it isn’t something I share, I want us to move forward and ultimately be better.
Only the recent Pochettino incarnation has hinted at something different, therefore for these reasons they deserve a clean slate, a new arena in which to make their history
We’ve spent too long staring back, it’s time to look straight ahead. New stadium, new beginnings, new start with a team already on its way forward.
Perhaps as I’ve got older I’ve looked for different things from football, but “modern” doesn’t always mean against football. Across Europe teams have moved to new stadiums and seen their performances and the fan experience improve.
Juventus, Dortmund and Bayern Munich for example have all moved/upgraded. Last night Atletico Madrid played their last European fixture at the historic Vicente Calderon, every team is moving forward, to not step forward is to step back. White Hart Lane can no longer hold us, it isn’t able to give us the fans what we need. It’s too small, too old, too difficult to get in and out, and if you’ve attempted to get a beer and go to the loo at halftime, you know the pain.
It’s sad when you move on, but we all spend every day of our lives doing it.
Sunday will be historic because it is our last, but it isn’t our final game. Looming above the Paxton is what will be ours very soon. We are upgrading, it is a time for celebration not melancholy. On and off the field optimism surrounds us. We’re moving forward, celebrate the past and hope for the future. The renovation of White Hart Lane is a symbol for where we’re heading.
This isnt a moment for sorrow. The end of the match against United symbolises the start of something new. It will be great, and if it isn’t does it matter? We will still be Spurs.
Watch the Memory Lane documentary now in exchange for a small donation to the Exposure charity.November and the next FIFA international window are just around the corner. These games come between the conference semifinals and the conference finals in the Audi 2015 MLS Cup Playoffs and will include World Cup qualifiers, Euro 2016 qualifying playoffs and friendlies all over the world.
Perhaps most notably, MLS will have at least one representative in Africa's World Cup qualifying tournament as Seattle Sounders forward Obafemi Martins was recalled to the Super Eagles for the first time in two years for a home-and-home series against Swaziland.
Here is a running list of MLS players that have been summoned by their national teams for November's FIFA window. The list will be updated as more rosters are announced.
Brazil - at Argentina (11/12; Watch live on beIN SPORTS at 6:50 pm ET), vs. Peru (11/17) - 2018 FIFA World Cup qualifying
Kaká (Orlando City)
Cameroon - at Niger (11/13), vs. Niger (11/17) - 2018 FIFA World Cup qualifying
Ambroise Oyongo (Montreal Impact)
Tony Tchani (Columbus Crew SC) * injured
Canada - vs. Honduras (11/13; Watch live on TSN at 10 pm ET), at El Salvador (11/17) - 2018 FIFA World Cup qualifying
Sam Adekugbe (Vancouver Whitecaps)
Russell Teibert (Vancouver Whitecaps)
Will Johnson (Portland Timbers)
Kianz Froese (Vancouver Whitecaps)
Marcel De Jong (Sporting Kansas City)
Wandrille Lefevre (Montreal Impact)
Karl Ouimette (New York Red Bulls)
Cyle Larin (Orlando City)
Tesho Akindele (FC Dallas)
Congo DR - at Burundi (11/12), vs. Burundi (11/15) - 2018 FIFA World Cup qualifying
Cedrick Mabwati (Columbus Crew SC)
Costa Rica - vs. Haiti (11/13; Watch delayed on beIN SPORTS at 2:30 pm ET on 11/14), at Panama (11/17) - 2018 FIFA World Cup qualifying
Alvaro Saborio (D.C. United)
Johan Venegas (Montreal Impact)
Kendall Waston (Vancouver Whitecaps)
Ghana - at Comoros (11/13), vs. Comoros (11/17) - 2018 FIFA World Cup qualifying
Harrison Afful (Columbus Crew SC)
David Accam (Chicago Fire)
Guatemala - vs. Trinidad & Tobago (11/13; Watch delayed on beIN SPORTS at 12 am ET on 11/14), at St. Vincent & the Grenadines (11/17) - 2018 FIFA World Cup qualifying
Moisés Hernández (FC Dallas)
Marco Pappa (Seattle Sounders)
Elías Vásquez (Real Salt Lake)
Haiti - at Costa Rica (11/13; Watch delayed on beIN SPORTS at 2:30 pm ET on 11/14), vs. Jamaica (11/17) - 2018 FIFA World Cup qualifying
Soni Mustivar (Sporting Kansas City)
Honduras - at Canada (11/13; Watch live on TSN at 10 pm ET), vs. Mexico (11/17; Watch live on Telemundo at 9 pm ET) - 2018 FIFA World Cup qualifying
Maynor Figueroa (Colorado Rapids)
Boniek Garcia (Houston Dynamo)
Luis Garrido (Houston Dynamo)
Hungary - at Norway (11/12), vs. Norway (11/15) - UEFA Euro 2016 qualifying
Krisztian Nemeth (Sporting Kansas City)
Iraq - at Chinese Taipei (11/17) - 2018 FIFA World Cup qualifying
Justin Meram (Columbus Crew SC)
Ireland - at Bosnia and Herzegovina (11/13), vs. Bosnia and Herzegovina (11/16) - UEFA Euro 2016 qualifying
Kevin Doyle (Colorado Rapids)
Robbie Keane (LA Galaxy)
Jamaica - vs. Panama (11/13; Watch live on beIN SPORTS at 8:50 pm ET), at Haiti (11/17) - 2018 FIFA World Cup qualifying
Andre Blake (Philadelphia Union)
Giles Barnes (Houston Dynamo)
Kemar Lawrence (New York Red Bulls)
Darren Mattocks (Vancouver Whitecaps)
Alvas Powell (Portland Timbers)
Je-Vaughn Watson (FC Dallas)
Nigeria - at Swaziland (11/13), vs. Swaziland (11/17) - 2018 FIFA World Cup qualifying
Obafemi Martins (Seattle Sounders)
Panama - at Jamaica (11/13; Watch live on beIN SPORTS at 8:50 pm ET), vs. Costa Rica (11/17) - 2018 FIFA World Cup qualifying
Anibal Godoy (San Jose Earthquakes)
Blas Pérez (FC Dallas)
Paraguay - at Peru (11/13: Watch delayed on beIN SPORTS at 7 pm ET on 11/14), vs. Bolivia (11/17) - 2018 FIFA World Cup qualifying
Nelson Valdez (Seattle Sounders)
St. Kitts & Nevis - at Andorra (11/12), at Estonia (11/17) - friendlies
Atiba Harris (FC Dallas)
Trinidad & Tobago - vs. Guatemala (11/13; Watch delayed on beIN SPORTS at 12 am ET on 11/14), vs. United States (11/17; Watch live on beIN SPORTS at 6:30 pm ET) - 2018 FIFA World Cup qualifying
Cordell Cato (San Jose Earthquakes)
Daneil Cyrus (Chicago Fire)
Joevin Jones (Chicago Fire)
Kevan George (Columbus Crew SC)
United States - vs. St. Vincent & the Grenadines (11/13; Watch live on ESPN2 at 6:30 pm ET), at Trinidad & Tobago (11/17; Watch live on beIN SPORTS at 6:30 pm ET) - 2018 FIFA World Cup qualifying
Jozy Altidore (Toronto FC)
Kyle Beckerman (Real Salt Lake)
Matt Besler (Sporting Kansas City)
Michael Bradley (Toronto FC)
Mix Diskerud (New York City FC)
Alan Gordon (LA Galaxy)
Bill Hamid (D.C. United)
Jermaine Jones (New England Revolution)
Matt Miazga (New York Red Bulls)
Darlington Nagbe (Portland Timbers)
Brek Shea (Orlando City)
Gyasi Zardes (LA Galaxy)
United States U-23s - at Brazil (11/11, 11/16) - friendlies
Fatai Alashe (San Jose Earthquakes)
Jon Kempin (Sporting Kansas City)
Eric Miller (Montreal Impact)
Boyd Okwuonu (Real Salt Lake)
Matt Polster (Chicago Fire)
Dave Romney (LA Galaxy)
Dillon Serna (Colorado Rapids)
Khiry Shelton (New York City FC)
Oscar Sorto (LA Galaxy)Ex-CIA officer Philip Mudd on Real Time -- HBO screengrab
Appearing on the on-line only “Overtime” segment of HBO’s Real Time, ex-CIA officer Philip Mudd said that while the media is focusing on ex-Trump advisor Carter Page, it is likely that federal investigators are working on “flipping” other Trump transition officials to testify against their bosses.
“What do you think will come of the investigation into Trump campaign adviser Cater Page and his ties to Russia, and I might add Michael Flynn,” host Bill Maher asked Mudd.
“Look, the reason Carter Page is being featured is because he’s prominent in the press, not because he’s the most prominent target of the FBI,” Mudd remarked. “I think there will eventually be an indictment. Somebody going to be indicted, I don’t know if it’s going to be Carter Page — I think he’s chump change, I think it’s someone higher up.”
Asked to elaborate, Mudd explained that, based on what the FBI has heard from their “intercepts” of Trump transition officials talking with Russian officials, they will use that evidence to get those officials to “flip” and spill what they know in order to avoid being indicted on federal charges.
“They’ve got to have a significant amount of intercepts, that is communications with the Russians that led them down this path,” Mudd explained. “Then you are going to get people who are going to flip because you’re going to walk in and say, ‘Son, you either get a federal charge or you’re going to talk.’ That person is going to go home to their wife and kids and say ‘I don’t want three hots and a cot in the federal pen. I’ll talk.'”
Watch the video below via HBO:Hundreds of temporary staff have been drafted to the passport office to help deal with the large increase in passport applications this year.
New figures show the passport service is in “peak season” with 53,139 application in the system as of July 1st, an 11 per cent increase compared with this time last year.
In a reply to Kerry TD Michael Healy-Rae, Minister for Foreign Affairs Charlie Flanagan said the situation has improved in recent weeks however.
“On 31 May, there were a total of 68,009 applications in the system and this figure has fallen throughout June”, said the Minister.
Mr Healy-Rae had called on the Mr Flanagan “to provide additional resources to the passport office to deal with the mountains of applications”.
Mr Flanagan said: “To respond to the seasonal spike in demand and the more general increase in applications, a total of 233 temporary clerical officers have been recruited so far this year, an increase of 62 on last year.
“Furthermore, processing work has been redistributed across passport offices and staff have been redeployed from other areas of the Department as needed.”
In the wake of Britain’s vote to leave the European Union, Mr Flanagan urged British citizens eligible for an Irish passport need not rush to apply for one as Brexit negotiations are likely last at least two years and will not affect an applicant’s eligibility for an Irish passport.
“The referendum in Britain has in no way changed the entitlement to an Irish passport, including as it extends to people born on the island of Ireland and those who may be entitled to Irish citizenship through parents or grandparents who were born in Ireland,” Mr Flanagan said.
According to the 2011 census for England, Wales and Scotland, there is a total of 430,000 Irish born people resident in Britain, 407,000 in England and Wales and 23,000 in Scotland.
“While there is likely to be an increase in the number of first-time applications submitted from the UK and British people living overseas, it is too early to assess how significant this will be,” Mr Flanagan said.The Realm Database is a new kind of mobile database that’s been built from the ground up to power present-day applications.
It’s an easy mistake to think that Realm is built on top of an existing technology, or that it’s just a modern rewrite of another library. After all, unlike with server databases, there hasn’t been much innovation on the client side.
In this series, we’re going to look into few aspects which set Realm apart from other technologies. If you’ve heard of Realm but don’t know much about what makes it special, these posts are for you.
Find out why companies like these and thousands of others trust Realm to power their apps for more than 1 billion users.
Get more development news like this
Data Layer Libraries and ORMs
A lot of what you would call “database libraries” are simply that — third party libraries using a particular storage engine that provide a modern/functional/different (pick your favorite) approach to accessing an existing data layer.
You could use a Swift or Java library to access your SQLite storage in a more modern way by using generics and structs. But the storage engine that’s doing all of the reading and writing to disk is still SQLite.
Plus, that third-party library you use will still need to convert your native data structures to some intermediate format, execute behind-the-scenes SQL queries, and convert your data to SQL table rows.
If you are using a full-fledged ORM, you will almost always have numerous operations running in the background. An ORM will continuously convert your objects to intermediate format and run SQL queries to talk to a SQLite file. Any time you access a related object to the object you’re working with - the ORM will convert this to a JOIN SQL query, execute that query on a lookup table, and find matching records in another table where those related objects are stored.
This is a lot of work for simple data access. Not only does it take up CPU cycles and disk time, but it can become slow very quickly. That means you have to take that work off your main thread and introduce proper threading techniques, and now your code is getting rather complicated, just to get your data.
Realm Isn’t Reiterating Existing Tech
Considering the existing solutions and the shortcomings mentioned above, the Realm team went for creating their own, built-for-performance storage engine.
The Realm Database therefore isn’t related to SQLite or another SQL database; it aims instead to solve many of the issues that exist in that field. But the Realm Database isn’t a key-value store either — this kind of storage is great in certain situations, but developers really want to be able to work directly with native objects in their code.
Finally, the Realm Database isn’t an ORM. ORMs convert flat data like SQL database tables into object graphs, so that those can be used from native code. Realm’s custom storage engine doesn’t need to convert data to and from object graphs, so there’s no need for an ORM.
The Realm Database persists objects directly on disk with the least possible type or structure conversion. Since there’s no mapping or other untangling of complex entities on-the-fly, the Realm Database is able to get objects from memory to disk extremely quickly.
In fact, that’s one of the trademark features of the Realm Database: You are welcome to read and write on the main thread! You don’t have to be afraid that this will block your UI. (Within reason of course, we’re not magicians. 🎩)
Realm Core is written in super-fast C++, and it maps C++ objects to disk. Since it’s developed alongside the SDKs, its API and behavior are closely aligned to the ways that mobile apps actually use data, so you get an easy mental model of how it works.
This tight alignment is reminiscent of iOS: Apple makes the hardware for the iPhone and also provides the developers with the best SDK to make most of that hardware. That’s why scrolling through a long contact list on an iPhone never drops frames, even if the hardware isn’t as powerful as what other devices have.
Further, by sporting a solid, compatible, and multi-platform C++ core, Realm has the potential to run pretty much anywhere, and is not restrained to a certain platform or vendor.
You might be starting to get worried about all this C++ talk, and you might even be asking, “So, do I have to know C++ to use Realm?”. Thankfully, you don’t have to, because…
A Solid Core That Speaks Your Language
The Realm Database supports five SDKs, very thin wrapper APIs that give you access to the underlying Core API from mobile programming languages.
Each of the SDKs is designed to use the language and platform features that developers are used to. Let’s look at the basics in Realm Swift and Realm Java:
To start with Realm Swift, you might define an object:
class Repository : Object { dynamic var id : Int = 0 dynamic var stars : Int = 0 dynamic var url : String = "" dynamic var name : String? dynamic var favorite : Favorite? }
And then query for some of those objects:
let repos = realm. objects ( Repository. self ). filter ( "name contains[c] %@", searchTerm )
The code makes use of Swift’s generics to strongly type the result set, and it uses Apple’s NSPredicate to allow you to query by using a syntax you’re accustomed to. A functional style chaining of methods is pretty popular with Swift programmers, using methods like map, filter and sort on the standard collection types, so Realm’s collection types expose similar APIs.
Now let’s look at the same concepts in Realm Java. You can define the same object in Java:
public class Repository extends RealmObject { @PrimaryKey private Int id ; private Int stars ; public Int getId () { return id ; } public void setId ( Int id ) { this. id = id ; } public Int getStars () { return stars ; } public void setStars ( Int id ) { this. stars = stars ; } //etc. }
Then you query those Repository objects on Android:
RealmResults < Repository > results = realm. where ( Repository. class ). contains ( "name", searchTerm ). findAll ();
This Java code does the same things that the Swift code earlier did. But the API isn’t identical to the Swift SDK. This code fits much better in the rest of the codebase of an Android app, because it follows the usual Android style.
Full-Fledged Classes
Last but certainly not least, Realm objects are full-fledged classes. You can use all the tools your favorite programming language offers to make them do what you need, fast!
You can build features ranging from simple computed properties that automatically format values:
class Repository : Object { dynamic var stars : Int = 0 var starsDecorated : String { return " \( stars ) ⭐️" } }
All the way up to encapsulating business logic:
extension Repository { static func all ( searchTerm : String? = nil ) -> Results < Repository > { let realm = try! Realm () return realm. objects ( Repository. self ). filter ( "name contains[c] %@", searchTerm?? "" ). sorted ( byProperty : "stars", ascending : false ) } }
If you want to have a look at a full fledged Realm object check the companion project for this article on GitHub.
The example Repository class features:
Simple data properties ( id, stars )
, ) Related objects ( favorite )
) Computed properties ( nameDecorated )
) Dynamic properties ( avatarUrl )
) Custom init
Indexes ( primaryKey(), indexedProperties() )
, ) Metadata ( ignoredProperties() )
) Simple entity methods ( all(searchTerm:), add(repos:), and toggle(favorite:) )
We Hope You Like What You’re Seeing!
We’ve just touched upon some of the great features of the Realm Database. Its custom database engine gives it a solid boost in performance and robustness.
This post was just a tad on the Swift side but Realm Database is just as easy to use with other programming languages.
You can easily peak at the docs online here:
Realm Java on Android,
C# docs for developers using Realm Xamarin,
Cross platform development with React Native.
This post is just the beginning in our series on Realm Database and we hope you enjoyed it. In the next installment we’re going to look into some of the RealmSwift API classes that allow for creating easily performant and optimized apps.
See you next time! 👋Again already with the ads! I nearly didn’t write this post because it just wasn’t on my radar. It didn’t seem like it could have been a week. Spring is like that. Every year I swear I’m going to get everyone in jeans and t-shirts and get ourselves a real family blue bonnet photo, and every year somehow they come and go before I’ve done it. Thunderstorms roll in, the AC is on and off again, windows open and shut, one night is crockpot and the next is grill–April is just a little bit nutty! You never know though, all our photos might have ended up like this:
http://poopingonbluebonnets.tumblr.com/
No, Cheepie doesn’t tumblr (I can barely tweet, but I do it with old lady style!), but this is a pretty funny one.
So here we are–is Sprouts continuing with the crazy cheese sales? Is corn super-cheap yet? Come and see!
Fiesta
crawfish $1.79/lb ($1.59/lb in 50lb sack)
Southern chicken hen wings, 5lb sack $5.29/ea
pork blade steaks $1.49/lb (Fiesta Limit)
Braeburn apples 69c/lb (DD)
Parade frozen vegetables, 28-32oz $1.99/ea
HEB
raspberries, 6oz $1.47/ea
large Hass avocados $1.50/ea (C15)
red seedless grapes $1.97/lb (DD)
pineapple or cantaloupe $1.50/ea (C15)
Pink Lady apples 88c/lb (DD)
HCF drumsticks or thighs $1/lb
assorted bone-in pork chops $1.97/lb
Randalls
pork loin half $1.99/lb
Chicken of the Sea chunk light tuna, 5oz 79c/ea
Bertolli and Classico pasta sauce jars $2/ea
32oz cheese bricks or shredded bags $6.99/ea (note: the Sprouts deal is better, at $1.99/lb, but the normal price for these is now about $8-9 here and at HEB, so if this is your usual product this is a stock-up price)
Sprouts
colby jack cheese, bulk cut $1.99/lb (yay!!)
avocados 48c/ea (C15)
cucumbers 48c/ea (DD)
green bell peppers 48c/ea (DD)
Fuji, Gala,Jonagold apples 98c/lb (DD)
bulk peanuts $1.99/lb
organic baby carrots,1lb 98c/ea
organic Red Delicious apples 98c/lb (DD)
Wheatsville didn’t have anything that looked especially great, and Whole Foods won’t have their ad up until tomorrow. I’ll check it then and let you Cheepsters know if there’s a deal you shouldn’t miss.
My can’t-miss items this week are the pork loin at $1.99/lb, the peanuts at $1.99/lb, Fiesta’s frozen vegetables at $1.99, and the sack of wings. Of course, I’ll also be buying the colby jack at Sprouts! If you’re stocking up, let me know in the comments–if I know what people look for I can let you know personally!
Sprouts is having a sale on many organic items, from maple syrup to canned vegetables to Annie’s Mac and Cheese. If you’d like to give a product a try, now might be a good time to stop by and try a new brand.
And if you’re going to hit Fiesta for the 50 lb sacks of crawfish, Cheepie wants an invite!
Get out there and get the good deals! Cheep Cheep!« Every word is like an unnecessary stain on silence and nothingness » is a sentence from Samuel Beckett but also the title of Eugenio Ampudia’s last artwork created and installed with the support of Ultra-lab and running on Arduino Mega and GSM Shield:
The exhibition room has in its center a rectangular mirror made of water that reflects the room and the visitors. The perfect still water, metaphor of silence, is broken by the irruption of sporadic waves. These movements, the stain on silence, are provoked by the visitors’ interactions. In the heart of the water tank, a dispositive is able to receive calls and to open a valve. To each visitor’s call, so a series of movements is generated and break the calm.
Ultra-lab realized the technical part of the artwork thanks to an Arduino Mega, the Arduino GSM shield and various valves open and close by the Arduino Mega when a call is received by the shield. The dispositive is particularly interesting for its adaptation in a water context and for connecting valves.
Thanks to it, the artwork succeed to express beautifully the paradox between a destructive attraction for words and communication to which it’s hard to resist in order to prefer a finally inaccessible contemplation.When far north Queenslanders hear bumps in the night it has more to do with the natural world than the supernatural.
As his business name suggests, David Walton from Cairns Snake Removals is an expert in catching snakes; but even for someone with years of experience, snakes that take up residence in roof cavities pose a significant challenge.
In his most recent encounter, Mr Walton said the residents of a Trinity Park home on Cairns' northern beaches called him to get some advice on what they could do about a supersized serpent living in their roof.
"The five-metre ones are always a bit of a handful; it had been peeing in there and causing a god-awful stench," Mr Walton said.
"There was no access into the ceiling so I told them 'you either pull your roof off or we be patient and it will come out at nighttime - the moment you see it, give me call'.
"So that's pretty much what happened. They spotted it hanging off the guttering and eyeballing the cat... so on the phone they got."
Although the far north Queensland climate is not yet quite cool enough to encourage snakes into sustained sedentary periods, Mr Walton said roof cavities are amongst their favourite places to hang out in all weather conditions.
"It has elevation, it's got confinement, it's got temperature; it's got all the right ingredients," he said.
"If you go and curl yourself up in a tree during the day and try and sleep, the birds give you a hard time and you're exposed to the breeze and the rain.
"A nice insulated roof; you can't get any better."
As the weather continues to cool off, however, Mr Walton said it was not uncommon for him to receive calls from concerned residents hearing strange, thumping, scraping and sliding noises in their roofs through the night.
"I've had many occasions where we get up into the roof and there are five or six scrub pythons all shacking up for the winter," he said.
"When there's more than one it can be a little bit difficult being in a confined space, especially when they're large.
"Most of the time they want to try and get away, but when they're bailed up or in a confined space snakes will become a little bit defensive and that's when you can find yourself in a bit of strife."
Although pythons are a relatively placid snake, Mr Walton said they are known to bite if interfered with and one of a similar size to the one he caught this week (pictured above) can pose a very real threat to humans.
"A snake that size - in fact anything over about three metres - if it gets hold of you, you're going to have some serious difficulty in getting that snake off |
they knew why they knew.
That was nearly 20 years ago. To the voters who may well decide the outcome of the election in 2016, it is ancient history. It seems a little strange therefore that so many of the pundits seemingly on Clinton's side seem ready to relitigate the whole business.
They're not fools. They believe, first and foremost, the country didn't care back in the 90s and won't care now, so it won't cost Clinton any votes. Second, it gives them an excuse to start talking about Donald Trump's marital record while making it look like he started it. The New York Times and other publications are already trying to get a court to unseal the records from his divorces, probably because they figure they contain enough dirt to bury him. A public fight over who is the better husband – Trump or Bill Clinton – would increase the credibility of the argument that the public has a right to know what's in court documents that are frankly none of their business.
Editorial Cartoons on the 2016 Presidential Elections View All 596 Images
All that aside, it's also a diversion from the real issue: what Clinton did, what she knew and what she authorized be done as part of a campaign directed from inside the White House to destroy the reputations of anyone connected in a sexual context to her husband.
Did she know beforehand a senior presidential adviser would dismiss Paula Jones' complaint that Clinton, while governor of Arkansas, asked her to perform a sex act on him (and remember, she later won an out of court settlement against him) as what happens when you drag hundred dollars bills through a trailer park?
When a mid-level aide in her husband's White House went around town telling people Monica Lewinsky was a "stalker," did she know ahead of time he was going to do it? And did she approve or did she discourage him from engaging in shaming activities that blamed the victim in order to protect her meal ticket?
It's absolutely relevant to ask questions about the role she played in the damage control operation. What did she know about the work of Jack Palladino, a San Francisco-based private investigator who became notorious for his work putting out the so-called "bimbo eruptions" that plagued the Clintons from the 1992 New Hampshire primary through their eight years in the Oval Office? She needs to be asked if she played any part in hiring him, what she might have known about what he was doing, whether she gave or caused him to be given names of women who were of particular concern because of the problems they might cause. Did she know she was lying when she told the country she believed her husband and not the White House intern who figured at the center of the worst presidential scandal since Watergate? A clear understanding of what she did in the past might help us all understand better what she will do in the future.
These are not incidental points. They are central to questions about her temperament, her judgment, her problem-solving abilities, and if certain rumors are to be believed, her commitment to staying inside the law during moments of crisis. These are aspects of private character that matter very much in a president, as we learned to are everlasting disappointment from men like Richard Nixon and Lyndon Johnson. The people and the press are already asking these kinds of questions about Trump, so it's not as if the ground isn't already broken. They just need to be asked of Clinton too – and they will be. If not now, then later, when we may have to live with whatever answers we get no matter how unpleasant they might be.Since last week’s post regarding Dash’s removal from the App Store I’ve been in contact with Apple.
What I’ve done: 3-4 years ago I helped a relative get started by paying for her Apple’s Developer Program Membership using my credit card. I also handed her test hardware that I no longer needed. From then on those accounts were linked in the eyes of Apple. Once that account was involved with review manipulation, my account was closed.
I was not aware my account was linked to another until Apple contacted me Friday, 2 days after closing my account. I was never notified of any kind of wrongdoing before my account was terminated.
What Apple has done: on Friday they told me they’d reactivate my account if I’d make a blog post admitting some wrongdoing. I told them I can’t do that, because I did nothing wrong. On Saturday they told me that they are fine with me writing the truth about what happened, and that if I did that, my account would be restored. Saturday night I sent a blog post draft to Apple and have since waited for their approval.
Tonight Apple decided to accuse me of manipulating the App Store in public via a spokesperson.
Last call from Saturday with Apple
Apple insisted that all communication was through phone calls. Luckily, I recorded my last phone call with them, in which they admit that:
They want me to write a blog post in order to restore my account
They never notified me beforehand about what was going on
Your browser does not support the audio element.
Update: Just to make it clear, I have complied with Apple’s request and have sent a blog post draft approximately 30 minutes after this phone call ended. I have since not received any contact from Apple in any way, and they did not respond to my calls. Their recent statements come as a shock as I thought we were working together to resolve this issue.I recently finished reading Ayn Rand’s The Virtue of Selfishness, and I wanted to offer some comments on her moral philosophy.
There are several good reasons why I ought to like Ayn Rand. She was an atheist, and proudly so, and argued for the supremacy of reason as the only valid way of knowing. I agree with this. She denounced communism and supported capitalism. I agree with this as well. Her works are still very popular in some circles and offer a vision of a rational, productive life which many people find powerful and inspiring.
Nevertheless, there are also reasons why I don’t like Rand – neither her as a person, nor her philosophy – and these reasons, in my judgment, far outweigh whatever factors are in her favor. These include her blatant hypocrisy in her adulterous relationship with Nathaniel Branden, the cult-like attitude of absolute obedience and conformity that characterized her movement’s founding, and her genocidal belief that the European settlers of the Americas were fully within their rights to slaughter, despoil and enslave the native people of those continents, all because the Native Americans did not share the European concept of property rights. (Yes, she actually said that.)
This post will detail three of my primary objections to Rand’s Objectivist philosophy, as it’s expressed in TVOS and her other works. Combined, I believe they demonstrate that Rand’s system of thought either contains fatal self-contradictions, or else would be destructive to the welfare of any society that was to adopt it.
The Objectivist Firefighter: Sacrificing Your Life For Strangers
Central to Objectivism is the notion that the individual’s life is the supreme moral value. “The Objectivist ethics holds man’s life as the standard of value — and his own life as the ethical purpose of every individual man” (p.25). An Objectivist may rationally sacrifice his life, if the cause were so important to him that he would not want to live if it were to fail. Central to Objectivism, however, is the notion that no one can ever have a duty to sacrifice his own life for the sake of others. “[Objectivism] means one’s rejection of the role of a sacrificial animal, the rejection of any doctrine that preaches self-immolation as a moral virtue or duty” (p.27). Even when others are in danger, we have no obligation to assist them. “If the person to be saved is a stranger, it is morally proper to save him only when the danger to one’s own life is minimal; when the danger is great, it would be immoral to attempt it…” (p.45).
Let’s see how this principle would play out in a real-world situation. Cast your mind back to the morning of September 11, 2001, and ponder the situation from the point of view of a rescue worker, like a paramedic or a firefighter. The hijacked planes have crashed into the Twin Towers, which are in flames and badly damaged; it’s plain to see they may collapse soon. Yet there are still thousands of people inside who could be saved. Let’s say you’re one of the first responders, as well as an Objectivist, and your superior orders you into the towers to rescue as many people as you can. How should you respond?
Here’s how one real firefighter actually did respond:
I will always remember one panting reporter talking to a fireman who was shrugging into his respirator. “What are you doing?” “I’m going to that other tower,” he said. “I think that other tower is going to collapse,” said the reporter, seeming to forget that he was on the air. “You would do the same for me,” the fireman said, and ran up the street.
And yet, from the principles just stated, it seems the Objectivist course of action is clear. Unlike the firefighter quoted above, the Objectivist rescue worker has to refuse – because he’s being asked to risk his life for strangers, which can never be a moral duty according to Rand. In fact, since the preservation of one’s individual life is the highest virtue, the consistent Objectivist not only ought to refuse to enter the towers, he ought to get himself out of the area and to safety as soon as possible, and never mind what happens to anyone else. As long as no one you personally know is in danger, your duty is to protect yourself and only yourself. This is what Ayn Rand calls morality; I think most people would more accurately describe it as contemptible cowardice.
Perhaps the objection could be raised that, having committed himself to the job already, the Objectivist is bound to follow through. But that just moves the problem back, because then the conclusion would seem to be that an Objectivist should always turn down any job – firefighter, policeman, infectious-disease specialist – that might potentially put his life in danger. These all entail putting yourself at risk for the sake of strangers, a thought intolerable to any consistent Objectivist. Yet, just as clearly, society needs people to do these jobs if it is to survive.
Ayn Pangloss: Conflicts of Interest Among Rational Men
Central to the Objectivist morality is the idea that “there are no conflicts of interests among rational men” (p.50). This is crucial to Rand’s position because she argues that all people should make all their decisions on the basis of reason. If reason led people to want mutually exclusive things, then either some people would have to surrender the goals dictated by reason and seek something else (a thought Rand finds intolerable), or else no one would surrender their goals and the result would be an attempt to achieve a contradiction, which “can lead only to disaster and destruction” (p.51).
It’s hard to see at first how this principle could apply in a capitalist economy. What if two people apply for the same job? Isn’t there a genuine conflict of interest between them as to who will be hired?
Rand’s answer to this question is that, just because two people want the same thing, it does not follow that they bothwant it. “The mere fact that a man desires something does not constitute a proof… that its achievement is actually to his interest” (p.50). Rand argues that reason leads to the conclusion that capitalism is the best economic system possible, because it maximizes human productiveness and freedom, both of which are to everyone’s interest. Thus a rational person accepts that, in the context of his entire life, competition on the basis of merit is a good thing, even if it may cause him to lose out occasionally. “He knows that the struggle to achieve his values includes the possibility of defeat” (p.53). An Objectivist also believes he is only entitled to what he has earned by his own effort, and in a rational, merit-based system, if he loses out to a superior applicant, that is the only outcome he had any right to expect. He has no rational interest in the job unless he earns and deserves it by his own effort. “Whoever gets the job, has earned it… The failure to give a man what has never belonged to him can hardly be described as ‘sacrificing his interests'” (p.56).
So far, so good. But now, consider a case Rand never discusses: What if two equally qualified people apply for the same job? This certainly seems to be possible. Let’s assume that there are two applicants who are equally intelligent, equally skilled, and would perform equally well if given the job. In that case, is it not in both their interests to get that job, and since only one of them can have it, is this not a contradiction? Rand fiercely disparages “whim”, and yet in this situation it seems there could be no other way to resolve the deadlock.
But we need not even go this far. There’s something else that Rand has overlooked: her doctrine requires that the market be not just free, but infallible. For if the market ever selects wrongly – that is, if it ever chooses the less qualified applicant for a given job – then I, as the more qualified but unsuccessful applicant, am faced with an irreconcilable contradiction: I want to live in a free-market society, which is in my rational interest, but I also wanted that job, the obtaining of which was also in my rational interest.
In that case, the act of obeying reason leads to a contradiction. Rand would hold that this is, by definition, impossible. That being so, she and her followers are committed to believing that the market always knows best, that its choices are always the correct ones. Otherwise, they’re faced with the fatal self-contradiction of rationally wanting to live in a capitalist society, yet also rationally wanting something that it has denied them. Obviously, on this point the Objectivist philosophy clashes with reality: there undoubtedly are many situations where capitalist economies make erroneous decisions. A less rigid philosophy would recognize that, although a free society is in everyone’s interest in the long term, that does not mean it will not make mistakes or block our interests on occasion; it’s just that the alternatives are even worse.
“You Will Not Be Stopped”: The Heartless Core of Objectivism
Since Objectivists reject all notions of a social safety net, it’s natural to ask what would happen to the poor and needy in an Objectivist society. This is Ayn Rand’s answer: “If you want to help them, you will not be stopped” (p.80).
This chilling response, which carries with it the unmistakable implication that she will not be participating in any such effort, illustrates Objectivist philosophy’s cruel, heartless ethic of social Darwinism. Its guiding principle is not “we’re all in this together”, but rather “every man for himself” – and whatever misery strikes the worthless and the inferior as a result ought not to trouble the brave, heroic, superior souls whom Rand imagines are mankind’s salvation. The parallels between this doctrine and the beliefs of tyrants throughout history should be too obvious to need pointing out.
Am I too harsh? Rand’s defenders might point to passages like the following one, which condemns the Soviet Union, as proof that she does care about the suffering of others and wants to see it alleviated:
“Two generations of Russians have lived, toiled and died in misery, waiting for the abundance promised by their rulers, who pleaded for patience and commanded austerity, while building public ‘industrialization’ and killing public hope in five-year installments. At first, the people starved while waiting for electric generators and tractors; they are still starving, while waiting for atomic energy and interplanetary travel” (p.84).
This sounds very compassionate of her – until you remember that Ayn Rand believes that the free market is, by definition, infallible (see last point). In Objectivist philosophy, if you succeed it’s because you deserve to succeed, and if you’re poor it’s because you deserve to be poor. Combined with Rand’s repeated expressions of fierce disdain for “parasites” and “looters” and “moochers”, it seems hard to escape the conclusion that a consistent Objectivist would never give any money or other assistance to others. After all, if they were deserving of your help, they wouldn’t need it; they’d have already achieved success and security on their own through hard work and persistence. To an Objectivist, the way you prove you’re worthy of help is by proving you don’t need help. And the reason Rand was so upset about the starving citizens of the USSR wasn’t because they were starving; it was because they were starving under the wrong ideology. In an Objectivist society, people might still starve, but we can at least comfort ourselves with the knowledge that they must have deserved it.The preseason polls are out and Stanford's men and women each are ranked among the top five in the USTFCCCA cross country rankings.
Last year, the Cardinal men were second at the NCAA Championships and the women were fifth. The teams fill those same spots in the rankings.
Sam Wharton Sam Wharton
The Stanford men return five from its NCAA lineup, losing Sean McGorty and Garrett Sweatt. However, the Cardinal returns Grant Fisher, the reigning NCAA outdoor 5,000-meter champ and a fifth-place NCAA cross country placer last year as a sophomore.
Sam Wharton is the only other cross country All-America off last year's podium squad, though Jack Keelan earned indoor track All-America honors last year.
Steeplechaser Steven Fahy and 2016 Pac-12 Freshman of the Year Thomas Ratcliffe also return from the 2016 NCAA team.
The Cardinal women are in a position to surprise. Stanford has five cross-country All-Americans on the squad.
Seniors Elise Cranny and Vanessa Fraser look to contend for the individual title and sophomores Fiona O'Keeffe and Christina Aragon are coming off top-40 NCAA finishes as freshmen.
A bonus is the addition of Harvard transfer Courtney Smith, who placed 35th in the meet last year.
A strong recruiting class and sophomore Ella Donaghue, a team scorer last year, create a flexible team with great depth. In fact, Stanford now has four – Cranny, Fraser, Smith, and O'Keeffe -- under 15:50 in the 5,000.
In the West Region rankings, the Stanford men and women are each ranked No. 2.It’s hard to defend a chief executive who uses a one-time $2 million spike in his company’s medical bills to justify a permanent cut in pension benefits. Especially when that executive—Tim Armstrong of AOL–was paid a reported $12 million last year. If AOL really and truly had to balance out that $2 million loss, why not lower Armstrong’s compensation package to a still-princely $10 million?
Armstrong may also, according to one patient-privacy advocate quoted in the Wall Street Journal, have violated medical-privacy law by blurting out to AOL employees that the spike was attributable to medical complications in the births of two “distressed babies.” (When the Journal asked AOL about this, AOL declined comment.) Apparently you didn’t have to be a genius, if you worked at AOL, to figure out which employees had brought these two expensive babies into the world. (The mother of one of them told her story here.)
Close video Mom of 'distressed' baby on AOL CEO Deanna Fei, the parent of a “distressed” baby cited by AOL CEO Tim Armstrong as one of the reasons for the company’s cuts in its 401 (k) plan, speaks to Craig Melvin about Armstrong’s recent personal apology and what it was like to have her child’s… share tweet email save Embed
Let’s also stipulate that Armstrong, just a few months earlier, publicly fired an employee after that employee snapped his photograph in a meeting. Such high-handed cruelty is beyond the pale. Armstrong later apologized after an uproar in the press, but he didn’t reinstate the employee. Armstrong similarly apologized, after this latest uproar in the press, for how he rationalized the pension cut, and this time reversed the offending action: AOL won’t go forward with the pension cut after all.
Even so, there is one aspect to Armstrong’s behavior in this otherwise-dishonorable episode that deserves praise: honesty. Armstrong dared—foolishly, in this instance—to acknowledge that providing decent health care coverage requires taking money away from some people in order to give it to other people. Insurance, like the government, redistributes income. Indeed, in the case of insurance, redistributing income is—shhhh!–pretty much the whole idea.
Everybody recognizes that in the abstract, but Americans often resist knowing it in the particular. Thus when Congress was arguing over the Affordable Care Act, Republican Sen. John Kyl of Arizona, questioned its mandate that Obamacare cover maternity care. “I don’t need maternity care,” Kyl said, “and so requiring that to be in my insurance policy is something that I don’t need and will make the policy more expensive.” Republican Rep. Renee Ellmers of North Carolina, echoed this complaint in October while questioning Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius: “To the best of your knowledge, has a man ever delivered a baby?”
When Kyl made his complaint, Democratic Sen. Debbie Stabenow of Michigan, was ready with a slam-dunk response: Even if Kyl didn’t need maternity care, “I think your mom probably did.”
Let’s imagine Kyl had said something a little different: “I don’t need health coverage for ovarian cancer, because I don’t have ovaries. Why should I have to pay for that?” Of course, Kyl would never say such a thing, because it would seem brutally inhumane. But the logic is no different—and in this instance Stabenow would have had to struggle for a snappy comeback. The real answer to both questions is: Insurance is a deliberately collective enterprise. Men don’t get ovarian cancer and women don’t get testicular cancer, but each sex agrees to pay for the other anyway. You can extend this logic to people who have a heightened risk of getting certain diseases versus those who do not; to the young versus the old; and to those who experience bad medical fortune versus those lucky enough not to. Because each of us has a different body chemistry and life experience, what each of us takes out versus what each of us puts in will always vary from person to person.
Armstrong made this redistributive process more explicit in his comments to employees than is deemed socially acceptable. AOL is presumably a self-insured company (most big corporations are), and the medical experiences of one or two employees can indeed skew the company’s health care costs a little higher than expected. (If it skews them a lot higher, presumably reinsurance will absorb the extra cost.) That is not—repeat, it is not—a justification to scapegoat the employees who incurred this extra cost.
Close video Equality and the AOL benefits controversy Rev. Sharpton and panel discuss the controversy over an AOL exec’s push to reduce employee benefits due to health costs incurred by babies born to two workers share tweet email save Embed
But Armstrong doesn’t appear to have been doing that—not deliberately, anyway. He was merely explaining how health insurance works.
There is, to be sure, no defending Armstrong’s actual pension cut. It was clearly wrong to use this fleeting overage to justify a permanent benefit loss. Armstrong was on stronger ground when he cited as justification additional costs associated with Obamacare’s implementation–because those are permanent. But msnbc’s Suzy Khimm finds reason to suspect Armstrong overstated these costs. And Armstrong’s subsequent reversal demonstrates that there were other ways to absorb these added costs.
In Frank Capra’s 1946 film, It’s A Wonderful Life, there’s a famous scene where the small-town banker George Bailey (Jimmy Stewart) explains how a savings & loan bank works. “Your money’s in Joe’s house,” he says, “that’s right next to yours, and then the Kennedy house and Mrs. Maitland’s house and then a hundred others.” Health insurance is a little bit like that, too. When Sam gets sick, Sally has to pay, even if Sally is herself blessed with perfect health. But the we’re-all-in-this-together ethic expressed in It’s A Wonderful Life is no longer in fashion. Today it has yielded to rigidly individualist dogma that makes us far too reluctant to recognize our mutual interdependence. If George Bailey tried to give his 1946 speech in 2014, Mrs. Maitland would angrily tell him he was violating her privacy.
A decade ago, when I worked at Slate magazine, my wife was diagnosed with a terminal disease. Her treatment cost the parent company (in those days, Microsoft) so much money that I would occasionally quip to colleagues that I had become Slate’s highest-compensated staffer. I would of course have given anything for this not to be so. But in all likelihood, during those three and a half years, my little Microsoft division incurred higher health care costs than usual. That’s just the way life is. Americans should stop being so squeamish about it.Oftentimes I see questions StackOverflow asking something to the effect of
“Can I have a std::vector that holds more than one type?”
The canonical, final, never-going-to-change answer to this question is a thorough
“No”
C++ is a statically-typed language. A vector will hold an object of a single type, and only a single type.
“But…”
Of course there are ways to work around this. You can hide types within types! In this post I will discuss the existing popular workarounds to the problem, as well as describe my own radical new heterogeneous container that has a much simpler interface from a client’s perspective.
boost::variant, for one,(and now std::variant) has allowed us to specify a type-safe union that holds a flag to indicate which type is “active”.
The downside to variant data structures is that you’re forced to specify a list of allowed types ahead of time, e.g.,
std::variant<int, double, MyType> myVariant;
To handle a type that could hold “any” type, Boost then created
boost::any (and with C++17 we’ll get std::any)
This construct allows us to really, actually hold any type. The downside here is that now the client generally has to track which type is held inside. You also pay a bit of overhead in the underlying polymorphism that comes with it, as well as the cost of an “any_cast” to get your typed object back out.
A visitor pattern
The real “but…” portion of the answer to these StackOverflow questions will state that you *could* use polymorphism to create a common base class for any type that your vector will hold, but that is ridiculous, especially if you want to hold primitive types like int and double. Assuming your design isn’t totally off-base, what you really wanted to do was use a std::variant or std::any and apply the Visitor Pattern to process it.
The visitor pattern implementation for this scenario basically works like this:
Create a “callable” (a class with an overloaded or templated function call operator, or a polymorphic lambda) that can be called for any of the types.
“Visit” the collection, invoking your callable for each element within.
I’ll demonstrate using std::variant.
First we start by creating our variant:
std::variant<int, double, std::string> myVariant; myVariant = 1; // initially it's an integer
Then we write our callable (our visitor):
struct MyVisitor { void operator()(int& _in){_in += _in;} void operator()(double& _in){_in += _in;} void operator()(std::string& _in){_in += _in;} };
This visitor will double the element that it visits. That is, “1” shall become “2”, or “MyString” shall become “MyStringMyString”.
Next we invoke our visitor using std::visit:
std::visit(MyVisitor{}, myVariant);
That’s it! You’ll notice that all the code for each type in MyVisitor is identical, so we could replace it all with a template. Let’s go with that template idea and create a visitor that will print the active element:
struct PrintVisitor { template <class T> void operator()(T&& _in){std::cout << _in;} };
Or we could similarly have created an identical polymorphic lambda like so:
auto lambdaPrintVisitor = [](auto&& _in){std::cout << _in;};
Applying our PrintVisitor or lambdaPrintVisitor will have the same effect:
std::visit(PrintVisitor{}, myVariant); // will print "2" std::visit(lambdaPrintVisitor, myVariant); // will also print "2"
And for a string:
myVariant = "foo"; std::visit(MyVisitor{}, myVariant); // doubles to "foofoo" std::visit(lambdaPrintVisitor, myVariant); // prints "foofoo"
Here’s a working demo on Wandbox that demonstrates the above code snippets.
Now a “heterogeneous” container with a variant
Moving from a single variant to a collection of variants is pretty easy — you shove the variant into a std::vector:
std::vector<std::variant<int, double, std::string>> variantCollection; variantCollection.emplace_back(1); variantCollection.emplace_back(2.2); variantCollection.emplace_back("foo");
And now to visit the collection, we apply our visitors to each element in the collection:
// print them for (const auto& nextVariant : variantCollection) { std::visit(lambdaPrintVisitor, nextVariant); std::cout << " "; } std::cout << std::endl; // double them for(auto& nextVariant : variantCollection) { std::visit(MyVisitor{}, nextVariant); } // print again for (const auto& nextVariant : variantCollection) { std::visit(lambdaPrintVisitor, nextVariant); std::cout << " "; } std::cout << std::endl;
Here’s a live demo of that code.
Now we begin to see how tedious it is to write those loops manually, so we encapsulate the vector into a class with a visit mechanism. We make it a template so that the client can specify the underlying types that go into the variant:
template <class T> struct VariantContainer { template <class V> void visit(V&& visitor) { for (auto& object : objects) { std::visit(visitor, object); } } using value_type = std::variant; std::vector<value_type> objects; };
And then our code from above to visit it is nicely shortened to:
VariantContainer<int, double, std::string> variantCollection; variantCollection.objects.emplace_back(1); variantCollection.objects.emplace_back(2.2); variantCollection.objects.emplace_back("foo"); // print them variantCollection.visit(lambdaPrintVisitor); std::cout << std::endl; // double them variantCollection.visit(MyVisitor{}); // print again variantCollection.visit(lambdaPrintVisitor); std::cout << std::endl;
Live code demonstration
At this point we’re thinking we are pretty smart. The client can simply direct us on how heterogeneous they want that container to be! And then we start wrapping up the vector a little nicer, hiding the underlying storage, and replicating the rest of std::vector’s interface so someone can call “emplace_back” directly on our container etc, and we’re rolling!
But what if we could do this instead
heterogeneous_container c; c.push_back('a'); // char c.push_back(1); // int c.push_back(2.0); // double c.push_back(3); // another int c.push_back(std::string{"foo"}); // a string // print it all c.visit(print_visitor{}); // prints "a 1 2 3 foo"
“Impossible”
A C++ programmer would tell you. “Unless you’re doing a bunch of very expensive cast-and checks somewhere” (e.g. with std::any)
But I will now demonstrate how such an interface is possible (without RTTI) using C++14 and C++17 features (the C++17 features are not necessary, just nice to haves).
(***Authors note: The following is intended as a toy, not to be used in any real implementation. It has a gaping security hole in it. Think of this more as an exercise in what we can do with C++14 and C++17 ***)
A Heterogeneous Container in C++
Now, admittedly. We can never be as flexible as a duck-typed language such as Python. We cannot create new types at runtime and add them to our container, and we can’t easily iterate over the container; we must still use a visitor pattern.
Let’s begin with a feature that was added in C++14: Variable templates
Variable templates
If you’ve done any templating in C++ before, you’re familiar with the typical syntax to template a function so that it can operate on many types:
template <class T> T Add(const T& _left, const T& _right) { return _left + _right; }
But variable templates allow us to interpret a variable differently depending on a type. Here’s an example where we can interpret the mathematical constant π (pi) differently:
template < class T > constexpr T pi = T ( 3.1415926535897932385 ) ;
And now we can explicitly refer to pi<double> or pi<float> to more easily express the amount of precision we need.
Let’s abuse variable templates
Recall that when you instantiate a template, you are really telling the compiler to copy-paste the template code, substituting for each type. Variable templates are the same way. That is, “pi<double>” and “pi<float>” are two separate variables.
What happens when we move a variable template into a class?
Well, the rules of C++ dictate that such a variable template becomes static, so any instantiation of the template will create a new member across all class instances. But with our heterogeneous container we want instances to only know or care about the types that have been used for that specific instance! So we abuse the language and create a mapping of container pointers to vectors:
namespace andyg{ struct heterogeneous_container{ private: template<class T> static std::unordered_map<const heterogeneous_container*, std::vector<T>> items; public: template <class T> void push_back(const T& _t) { items<T>[this].push_back(_t); } }; // storage for our static members template<class T> std::unordered_map<const heterogeneous_container*, std::vector<T>> heterogeneous_container::items; } // andyg namespace
And now suddenly we have a class which we can add members to after creating an instance of! We can even declare a struct later and add that in, too:
andyg::heterogeneous_container c; c.push_back(1); c.push_back(2.f); c.push_back('c'); struct LocalStruct{}; c.push_back(LocalStruct{});
Destruction
There are quite a few shortcomings we still need to address first before our container is really useful in any way. One of which is the fact that when an instance of andyg::heterogeneous_container goes out of scope, all of its data still remains within the static map.
To address this, we will need to somehow track which types we received, and delete the appropriate vectors. Fortunately we can write a lambda to do this and store it in a std::function. Let’s augment our push_back function:
template<class T> void push_back(const T& _t) { // don't have it yet, so create functions for destroying if (items<T>.find(this) == std::end(items<T>)) { clear_functions.emplace_back( [](heterogeneous_container& _c){items<T>.erase(&_c);}); } items<T>[this].push_back(_t); }
Where “clear_functions” becomes a local member of the class that looks like this:
std::vector<std::function<void(heterogeneous_container&)>> clear_functions;
Whenever we want to destroy all elements of a given andyg::heterogeneous_container, we can call all of its clear_functions. So now our class can look like this:
struct heterogeneous_container { public: heterogeneous_container() = default; template<class T> void push_back(const T& _t) { // don't have it yet, so create functions for printing, copying, moving, and destroying if (items<T>.find(this) == std::end(items<T>)) { clear_functions.emplace_back([](heterogeneous_container& _c){items<T>.erase(&_c);}); } items<T>[this].push_back(_t); } void clear() { for (auto&& clear_func : clear_functions) { clear_func(*this); } } ~heterogeneous_container() { clear(); } private: template<class T> static std::unordered_map<const heterogeneous_container*, std::vector<T>> items; std::vector<std::function<void(heterogeneous_container&)>> clear_functions; }; template<class T> std::unordered_map<const heterogeneous_container*, std::vector<T>> heterogeneous_container::items; } // andyg namespace
Copying
Our class is starting to become pretty useful, but we still have issues with copying. We’d have some pretty disastrous results if we tried this:
andyg::heterogeneous_container c; c.push_back(1); // more push_back { andyg::heterogeneous_container c2 = c; }
The solution is fairly straightforward; we follow the pattern as when we implemented “clear”, with some additional work to be done for a copy constructor and copy assignment operator. On push_back, we’ll create another function that can copy a vector<T> from one heterogeneous_container to another, and in copy construction/assignment, we’ll call each of our copy functions:
struct heterogeneous_container { public: heterogeneous_container() = default; heterogeneous_container(const heterogeneous_container& _other) { *this = _other; } heterogeneous_container& operator=(const heterogeneous_container& _other) { clear(); clear_functions = _other.clear_functions; copy_functions = _other.copy_functions; for (auto&& copy_function : copy_functions) { copy_function(_other, *this); } return *this; } template<class T> void push_back(const T& _t) { // don't have it yet, so create functions for copying and destroying if (items<T>.find(this) == std::end(items<T>)) { clear_functions.emplace_back([](heterogeneous_container& _c){items<T>.erase(&_c);}); // if someone copies me, they need to call each copy_function and pass themself copy_functions.emplace_back([](const heterogeneous_container& _from, heterogeneous_container& _to) { items<T>[&_to] = items<T>[&_from]; }); } items<T>[this].push_back(_t); } void clear() { for (auto&& clear_func : clear_functions) { clear_func(*this); } } ~heterogeneous_container() { clear(); } private: template<class T> static std::unordered_map<const heterogeneous_container*, std::vector<T |
Islamophobic attack on Tuesday in Canada's French-speaking Montreal, as two teenagers approached the woman from behind and tried to rip off her hijab.
The woman was on her way to pick up her daughter from school when the teenagers, two boys around age of 15, approached her on their bikes and assaulted her. The woman reportedly resisted but the teenagers pushed her down to the ground.
The police have refrained from calling the attack a hate-crime, but have not ruled out the possibility of it being motivated by anti-Islam tendencies.
"We want to make sure we confirm the facts," Const. Abdullah Emran said. "Are we dealing with two teens trying to pull prank, or an incident where a woman was targeted?"
Meanwhile, the head of the Association of Muslims for a Secular Quebec, Haroun Bouazzi, has called on the Montreal Mayor Denis Coderre to take more action against increasing hate crimes, Anadolu Agency reported.
"We're very disappointed," Bouazzi said. "We understand it's a serious matter for him [Coderre] and we hope that he's also going to say to the SPVM [Montreal police] that they have to take seriously this complaint."
Quebec's legislature has passed a motion condemning acts of Islamophobia against Muslims and Syrian refugees on October 1 in Canada's French-speaking province, which has come under criticism for the growing anti-Muslim climate in the province.
Around 100 members voted in favor of the motion tabled by Francoise David, a member of Quebec solidaire, which has three members in the 125-seat national assembly.
The motion condemns Islamophobia and incitement of hatred and violence toward Muslim Quebecers, in particular Syrian refugees.
Meanwhile, the leader of the Canada's Liberal Party, Justin Trudeau, has released a statement condemning the attack on the pregnant woman.
"Such acts are completely unacceptable and run counter to basic Canadian values and rights, embodied in and protected by our Charter of Rights and Freedoms," Trudeau said.
"Canadian multiculturalism means a country where people from every place and culture, who speak every language, live, work, build, and thrive together. For much of the world, we represent the most hopeful vision of what the future can hold," added.
Last month, Canadian government lost its appeal against a court decision which had imposed a ban on women wearing the 'niqab' - or face veil - while taking the country's oath of citizenship.
The Federal Court of Appeal in capital Ottawa on Tuesday dismissed the government's bid in a case brought by a Pakistani woman trying to acquire Canadian citizenship.
Prime Minister Stephen Harper had decided to appeal the ruling, however the decision by a three-judge panel dismissed the appeal by Canadian Justice Ministry lawyers.Hulk Hogan Spotted In Las Vegas
Several readers of PWInsider have sent in word that Hulk Hogan is in Las Vegas today. Hogan has apparently been seen in Las Vegas several times today, but some claim he's been there since yesterday even.
This has lead to plenty of speculation, per usual, as to whether Hogan is there for the major WWE announcement set to take place tonight. That hasn't been confirmed, but coincidence or not, it's safe to say Hogan is at least in the city.
WWE's live, "groundbreaking" announcement is set to air tonight at 9:30pm EST. You can stream it live on WWE.com, YouTube, and the WWE App.
We'll also be setting up a "Live Coverage" page here on WrestleZone where you can discuss the happenings as it happens.Donald Trump and his advisers said the candidate could put several Democratic-leaning states in play, but a convincing Clinton electoral win looks likely. (Chris Goodney/Bloomberg News)
For months, Donald Trump and members of his political team promised to put reliably Democratic states like New York, New Jersey, Connecticut and Oregon into play. But now, with only two months until Election Day, it’s clear that those promises were empty boasts.
The presidential electoral map shows Trump losing key swing states and barely holding on in some GOP bastions. Given the current numbers, the major question is the size of Hillary Clinton’s electoral-vote victory.
Over the past 10 presidential contests, there have been three narrow electoral-college wins (1976, 2000 and 2004) and three true blowouts (1980, 1984 and 1988). The remaining four contests (1992, 1996, 2008 and 2012) produced something in between — a comfortable victory for the winner but not quite a landslide. The winners in those four elections received between 332 and 379 electoral votes, while the losing candidate drew between 159 and 206 electoral votes. (In four of the 10, there was a faithless elector.)
At this point, Clinton is more likely to approach the size of Barack Obama’s wins, whether his 365-to-173 electoral-vote win over John McCain in 2008 or his more narrow 332-to-206 victory over Mitt Romney four years later. A 1980-style blowout does not seem to be in the cards, given the country’s current political divide and the two major-party nominees.
It was only a month ago that Paul Manafort, then Trump’s campaign chairman, told The Washington Post’s Dan Balz and Philip Rucker: “We can carry Michigan. We can compete in Wisconsin and win.”
[In final 100 days, Clinton and Trump to chart different paths to White House]
Manafort also said Democrats were “smoking something” if they thought that Clinton had locked up Colorado, and he warned that the Clinton campaign was going to have to spend resources in Connecticut and Oregon. Ten days earlier, Manafort told Fox News’s Sean Hannity: “Pennsylvania’s in play. I mean, with Mike Pence, Wisconsin is going to be in play. Michigan is going to be in play. Connecticut is in play.”
But it wasn’t only Manafort who sounded delusional about the electoral map. In April, then-Trump adviser Corey Lewandowski told a Boston radio station that Trump would put Massachusetts in play.
Of course, the candidate himself set the stage for these kinds of wild promises. According to CNN, Trump said in January, “We are going to win New Jersey.” In May, he asserted, “We are going to focus on New York.” He also promised, “We’re going to play heavy as an example in California,” along with, “I put so many states in play: Michigan being one. Illinois.”
None of these promises rested on serious political strategy or logic. As often is the case with Trump, they were little more than braggadocio.
According to RealClearPolitics, state polls now show that the Midwest Rust Belt strategy of Trump has gone nowhere. Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin are not in play.
Iowa, with a very old and white electorate, could be competitive in November, and surveys in Nevada, which was hit badly when the real estate bubble burst and has the lowest percentage of college graduates in the country, suggest that the state is also worth watching. But the 12 electoral votes that those two states have combined wouldn’t move the needle much for Trump in the unlikely event that he carries them.
On the other hand, Colorado and Virginia, two swing states in 2012, look like potential blowouts, with Clinton holding double-digit leads in both, according to RealClearPolitics. Both states may be trending blue these days, but the presidential swing from 2012 to 2016 surely has more to do with the relative appeal of the Republican nominees than with long-term demographic shifts in both states.
Many analysts and journalists note that polls show both Florida and Ohio are competitive in the general election. That’s true, but all four recent Ohio polls show Clinton leading by four to six points, and seven of the past eight Sunshine State surveys show her ahead, with the most reliable of the bunch, the NBC News-Wall Street Journal-Marist poll, putting the Democrat’s lead at five points.
Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton leads her Republican opponent Donald Trump by 8 points in a new Washington Post/ABC News poll. The poll also found a majority of voters see both candidates as dishonest. (Bastien Inzaurralde/The Washington Post)
A five-point victory in Florida would translate into a victory of 52.5 percent to 47.5 percent (in a two-way race), certainly not a blowout but not exactly a photo finish, either, especially in possibly the “swingiest” state in the nation.
Four years ago, Obama beat Romney 50 percent to 49.1 percent in Florida, a margin of less than one percentage point. In 2008, Obama carried the state by 2.8 points. In other words, a five-point win in Florida by Clinton would be convincing, given the state’s recent performances.
Can Clinton expand her likely victory by carrying Georgia and Utah, or even Arizona and Indiana? It’s too soon to know whether any normally Republican presidential states other than North Carolina may flip to the Democratic column. But if Trump loses nationally by eight or nine points, which is possible, he certainly could lose some Republican states (as McCain did in 2008).
But what if Trump rallies and loses the presidential contest by only a couple of percentage points? Some GOP strategists believe that he could win at least 270 electoral votes even if he falls a few points short in the popular vote.
With Trump performing poorly in both Colorado and Virginia and not yet making large Rust Belt states competitive, it is hard to see the Republican nominee being able to put together enough electoral votes to win the White House. Even adding Florida, Ohio, Iowa and Nevada to Romney’s 2012 vote would leave Trump short of the 270 electoral votes he would need for victory.
A solid Clinton electoral-vote victory looks to be the most likely outcome, with her floor probably somewhere near Obama’s 332-electoral-vote total against Romney.
Stuart Rothenberg is a columnist for PowerPost, writing about the politics of the presidential and congressional races.
Read more Political StuRMT conductors on Southern are planning another five days of strikes
A militant union leader behind the rail strikes causing chaos for millions says unions are co-ordinating action to “bring down this bloody working-class-hating Tory government”.
Sean Hoyle, president of the RMT, declared that “rule No 1” for his union, whose members have held a string of strikes on the beleaguered Southern rail network, was to “strive to replace the capitalist system with a socialist order”, telling a meeting of hard-left activists last month, “if we all spit together we can drown the bastards”.
Details of his comments, made in a series of recent speeches, come as Britain faces a Christmas of transport chaos, with a wave of strikes this week and into the new year.
More than 1,500 check-in staff, baggage handlers and cargo crew…Bob Welch holds a sign at a public hearing about the Jade Helm 15 military training. Bob Welch is being deceived by crazy conspiracies. (Jay Janner/Austin American-Statesman via AP)
There is so much fake stuff on the Internet in any given week that we’ve grown tired of debunking it all. Fake Twitter fights. Fake pumpkin-spice products. Amazing viral video? Nope — a Jimmy Kimmel stunt!
So, rather than take down each and every undeservedly viral story that crosses our monitors each week, we’re rounding them all up in a quick, once-a-week Friday debunk of fake photos, misleading headlines and bad studies that you probably shouldn’t share over the weekend.
Ready? Here’s what was fake on the Internet this week:
1. Obama is not planning a military takeover of the American Southwest. If you had asked me two weeks ago which Internet conspiracy theory had the greatest chance of gaining mainstream traction, I would have pointed anywhere but Jade Helm — the conspiracy so far-fetched, so totally fantastical, that it could only have come out of Texas.
Depending on what strain of Jade Helm fear-mongering you subscribe to, a fairly standard military training exercise in Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and several other states is actually (a) a cover for declaring martial law, (b) an attack against Islamic State fighters on the U.S.-Mexico border, (c) the beginning of a political crackdown that will end when U.S. political prisoners are imprisoned in FEMA “death domes,” (d) the reason several Wal-Marts have recently closed in Texas or (e) some complex combination of all four.
It’s unclear where these rumors started, exactly, but they all seem to be rooted in the fact that people don’t get what the military is doing training this way. Per the U.S. Army Special Operations Command, which announced the exercise in late March, members from four military branches will prep for foreign combat by operating covertly among U.S. civilians and traveling state-to-state in military aircraft. They even have maps that mark some states as hostile territories. Which, sure, sounds kind of strange — strange enough that, to the astonishment of many, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) ordered a state-sponsored militia to monitor Jade Helm earlier this week.
Alas, had Abbott read my colleague Dan Lamothe over at Checkpoint, he would know that the military conducts exercises like this all the time. It’s actually a really important part of prepping elite troops for the terrains and conditions they could encounter in an actual conflict zone. The only thing different about Jade Helm is its size — and the “radio shock jock-driven hysteria” it has inspired. That phrasing comes from an open letter to Abbott by former state Rep. Todd Smith, a Republican, who also said the conspiracy-mongering “embarrassed and disappointed all Texans who are also informed, patriotic Americans.”
The Army says the size and scope of Jade Helm 15, a Special Operations exercise that begins in July, set it apart from other training exercises. Also setting it apart: The widespread conspiracy theories that the U.S. is preparing to hatch martial law. The Post's Dan Lamothe explains. (Tom LeGro/The Washington Post)
2. The latest teen fad does not involve vanishing for 72 hours at a time. The Olds are predictably terrified about a new teen dare called “Game of 72,” played — as the name implies — by completely disappearing for 72 hours at a time. Stories on the phenomenon have appeared everywhere from Yahoo and the Huffington Post to Canada’s CBC; police departments from Massachusetts to Calgary have issued warnings about it. But as Sophie Kleeman reported at Mic Thursday, there’s no actual evidence that anybody’s ever played this game besides one 13-year-old girl in France. So yeah, this teen trend is stupid, but — it’s also not a trend yet.
3. Beards aren’t actually “dirtier than toilets”/full of poop. In an instance of the media getting science way, way wrong, a number of sites reported this week that men’s beards are full of fecal bacteria (… a.k.a., poop). Except, they failed to mention the fact that (a) everything’s covered in bacteria, and (b) the findings weren’t based on a study — just a casual sampling of a few random dudes. “Embrace the poo bacteria,” writes the Post’s Rachel Feltman, “it is a part of you.”
4. Baltimore police did not erect a billboard criticizing Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake. A picture of the billboard, which references city leadership that “turned their backs on our police & firefighters,” has been making the Twitter, Facebook and Imgur rounds this week in relation to the Freddie Grey case. The billboard, however, is no longer up: It’s actually from August 2010, when the police union battled city government over pension cuts.
5. Baltimore police did not shoot an unarmed black man during the protests this week. That report was made and quickly retracted by Fox News, whose Baltimore producer apparently misheard (?) or misunderstood (?) what actually happened: namely, that police officers arrested a man with a gun. Alas, that did not stop hundreds of people from retweeting the “news” from Fox’s Greta Van Susteren. In related Fox/Baltimore shenanigans, a local affiliate in Memphis, Tenn., posted a picture of Venezuela’s destructive, fiery 2014 riots to Facebook, claiming the photo was from Baltimore. The station has since apologized and said they “didn’t fact check the picture the way we should have.” Yep!
A screenshot of a photo posted to Fox13 Memphis’ Facebook page. (Via Imgur)
6. Edible marijuana candies have not killed 21 people. The controversial anti-drug program D.A.R.E. published a startling story to its Web site this week: In Colorado and California, it claimed, multiple people have died after eating pot gummies — “an emulsification of sweetened Jello, vodka and minced marijuana.” (Ick.) D.A.R.E. apparently failed to check into the source of its article, though; the story originated on Topeka News, one of our favorite fake-news purveyors. D.A.R.E. declined to comment when my colleague Chris Ingraham called, but suffice it to say that pot gummies aren’t such a scourge, after all.
7. Neither Edward Snowden nor B.B. King has died. Both these rumors originated on Twitter: The first from a fake account for Russia’s Interior Minister, and the latter from a tweet by Fox’s Greta Van Susteren. Van Susteren, who’s really on a roll this week, later blamed the error on her husband: He told her BB King was dead, she wrote, when actually Ben E. King was.
@greta I knew Ben King died, and thought on no, not BB King too. Why wouldn’t you verify that first? — Wade Fulp (@WadeFulp) May 1, 2015
A screenshot from TMZ, via Jezebel.
8. This picture does not show John Legend as a baby. TMZ claimed it did in a recurring feature about celebrity baby photos — which is only funny because this baby, 16-month-old Caden, became an Internet sensation over his John Legend resemblance almost exactly a year ago.
Did we miss any other notable fake stuff this week? E-mail caitlin.dewey@washpost.com — or stay tuned until next week, because surely some more shenanigans will go down in the meantime.
Liked that? Try these:Saving Throw
“You can’t have a ray gun,” Jolie said as she dragged her pen across Jake’s sheet. “They didn’t even exist back then.”
“My character invented the ray gun,” Jake clarified, and Tim snickered. “What? Somebody had to invent them.”
Above the terradome in Jolie’s mother’s living quarters, thousands of LCD crystals shimmered to give the illusion of a cloud passing over a digital sun. Jolie, newly sixteen, had moved to Io with her mother because the exchange rate inflated child support to nearly three times what her father paid. She hated the terradome, she hated Io, and she hated the circumstances that brought her there, but above all else, at this moment, she hated Jake. On Earth, people knew how to make character sheets.
“Besides, how do you know they didn’t exist? Were you there?”
Jolie sighed deeply. “On Earth they taught us something called history, Jake.”
“History is for pussies.”
Tim, ever the level-headed one, removed the pen from Jolie’s hand before she forced it through Jake’s cranium. “Why don’t you buy a revolver?” he asked his younger brother.
“He can’t have a revolver either. His character’s a Network Administrator, for Christ’s sake.”
“I’m a rogue Network Administrator.”
“Look,” Jolie said, “I’m not going to run a Microsoft game filled with ray guns and rogues. Either you learn the system or you find someone who wants to run Apple.”
“All I’m saying is that someone had to invent the ray gun, and I don’t see why it can’t be me.”
Jolie retrieved her pen and underscored the word NO several times.
“I thought you said this game was about imagining stuff.”
“It is. Imagine a world without ray guns.”
“That world sucks,” Jake said. He pushed his chair back and leaped up, heading for the door. Tim lifted his hand to stop him.
“Jake, just give it a chance. There was plenty of cool stuff back then, right?” he asked, looking to Jolie for verification. Jolie nodded enthusiastically, then considered the late twentieth century, then nodded again with slightly less force. “Like cars,” Tim continued. “Everyone had their own personal spaceship for the road.”
Jake hesitated before the door. “Can I have a car?” he asked.
“Cars ran on fossil fuels. They practically raped the environment. Plus, according to the sourcebook, traffic in Silicon Valley was…” her voice trailed off. “You’d know better, if you were from Earth,” she finished.
Jake smiled broadly and folded his arms across his puffed chest. “Well, I’m not from Earth,” he said proudly. “I’m imagining it.”
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TwitterOver the past half-century, the world has seen its share of incidents in which radioactive material has been dumped or discharged into the oceans. A British nuclear fuels plant has repeatedly released radioactive waste into the Irish Sea, a French nuclear reprocessing plant has discharged similar waste into the English Channel, and for decades the Soviets dumped large quantities of radioactive material into the Arctic Ocean, Kara Sea, and Barents Sea. That radioactive material included reactors from at least 16 Soviet nuclear-powered submarines and icebreakers, and large amounts of liquid and solid nuclear waste from USSR military bases and weapons plants.
Still, the world has never quite seen an event like the one unfolding now off the coast of eastern Japan, in which thousands of tons of radioactively contaminated water from the damaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant are pouring directly into the ocean. And though the vastness of the ocean has the capacity to dilute nuclear contamination, signs of spreading radioactive material are being found off Japan, including the discovery of elevated concentrations of radioactive cesium and iodine in small fish several dozen miles south of Fukushima, and high levels of radioactivity in seawater 25 miles offshore.
Concentrations of cesium-137 in seawater 10 to 30 kilometers off the Japanese coast from March 23 to March 30. International Atomic Energy Agency
How this continuing contamination will affect marine life, or humans, is still unclear. But scientists agree that the governments of Japan, the United States, and other nations on the Pacific Rim need to ramp up studies of how far this contamination might spread and in what concentrations.
“Given that the Fukushima nuclear power plant is on the ocean, and with leaks and runoff directly to the ocean, the impacts on the ocean will exceed those of Chernobyl, which was hundreds of miles from any sea,” said Ken Buesseler, senior scientist in marine chemistry at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts. “My biggest concern is the lack of information. We still don’t know the whole range of radioactive compounds that have been released into the ocean, nor do we know their distribution. We have a few data points from the Japanese — all close to the coast — but to understand the full impact, including for fisheries, we need broader surveys and scientific study of the area.”
Buessler and other experts say this much is clear: Both short-lived radioactive elements, such as iodine-131, and longer-lived elements — such as cesium-137, with a half-life of 30 years — can be absorbed by phytoplankton, zooplankton, kelp, and other marine life and then be transmitted up the food chain, to fish, marine mammals, and humans. Other radioactive elements — including plutonium, which has been detected outside the Fukushima plant — also pose a threat to marine life. A key question is how concentrated will the radioactive contamination be. Japanese officials hope that a temporary fishing ban off the northeastern Japanese coast will be enough to avert any danger to human health until the flow of radioactive water into the sea can be stopped.
But that spigot is still running. Since the March 11 earthquake and tsunami, and the resulting damage to the reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, huge quantities of water have been poured on four stricken reactors to keep them cool. Thousands of tons of radioactively contaminated water have then been released from the Fukushima complex into the ocean. And even though the Japanese this week stopped a leak of highly radioactive material from the badly damaged Reactor No. 2, the water used to cool the reactor cores continues to flow into the sea. In addition, atmospheric fallout from the damaged reactors is contaminating the ocean as prevailing winds carry radioactivity out over the Pacific. The Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) has reported that seawater containing radioactive iodine-131 at 5 million times the legal limit has been detected near the plant. According to the Japanese news service, NHK, a recent sample also contained 1.1 million times the legal level of radioactive cesium-137.
Studies from previous releases of nuclear material in the Irish, Kara and Barents Seas, as well as in the Pacific Ocean, show that such radioactive material does travel with ocean currents, is deposited in marine sediment, and does climb the marine food web. In the Irish Sea — where the British Nuclear Fuels plant at Sellafield in the northwestern United Kingdom released radioactive material over many decades, beginning in the 1950s — studies have found radioactive cesium and plutonium concentrating significantly in seals and porpoises that ate contaminated fish. Other studies have shown that radioactive material from Sellafield and from the nuclear reprocessing plant at Cap de la Hague in France have been transported to the North Atlantic and Arctic Oceans. A study published in 2003 found that a substantial part of the world’s radioactive contamination is in the marine environment.
A sign inside a Hong Kong supermarket assures shoppers that the sushi for sale is not of Japanese origin. Antony Dickson/AFP/Getty Images
But what impact this radioactive contamination has on marine life and humans is still unclear. Even the mass dumping of nuclear material by the Soviets in the Arctic has not been definitively shown to have caused widespread harm to marine life. That may be because containment vessels around some of the dumped reactors are preventing the escape of radiation. A lack of comprehensive studies by the Russians in the areas where nuclear waste was dumped also has hampered understanding. Two events in the early 1990s — a die-off of seals in the Barents Sea and White Sea from blood cancer, and the deaths of millions of starfish, shellfish, seals and porpoises in the White Sea — have been variously attributed by Russian scientists to pollution or nuclear contamination.
How the radioactive materials released from the Fukushima plants will behave in the ocean will depend on their chemical properties and reactivity, explained Ted Poston, a ecotoxicologist with the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, a U.S. government facility in Richland, Washington. If the radionuclides are in soluble form, they will behave differently than if they are absorbed into particles, said Poston. Soluble iodine, for example, will disperse rather rapidly. But if a radionuclide reacts with other molecules or gets deposited on existing particulates — bits of minerals, for example — they can be suspended in the water or, if larger, may drop to the sea floor.
“If particulates in the water column are very small they will move with the current,” he explained. “If bigger or denser, they can settle in sediment.”
If iodine-131, for example, is taken up by seaweed or plankton, it can be transferred to fish, which are in turn eaten by larger fish, as has been seen in the Irish Sea. Fish can also take in radionuclides in the water through their gills, and radionuclides can be ingested by mollusks. But Edward Lazo, deputy division head for radiation protection at the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, said, “This is not a fully developed science and there are lots of uncertainties.”
Radioactive iodine is taken up by the thyroid in humans and marine mammals — or in the case of fish, thyroid tissue — and is also readily absorbed by seaweed and kelp. Cesium acts like potassium and is taken up by muscle. Cesium would tend to stay in solution and can eventually end up in marine sediment where, because of its long half life, it will persist for years. Because marine organisms use potassium they can also take up cesium. “Cesium behaves like potassium, so would end up in all marine life,” said Arjun Makhijani, president of the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research in Maryland. “It certainly will have an effect.”
How the radiation accumulates depends on the degree of exposure and half-life of the element.He’s calling it quits after two terms.
Vancouver NPA councillor George Affleck says he won’t be running in the 2018 civic election, saying he needs to focus on his family and his business.
“Making this decision was one of the hardest of my life.”
“I really enjoy being a councillor, I enjoy the work but the commitment is significant.”
What is he most proud of?
“I feel like I’ve done my homework and I really worked hard at keeping the city transparent to the people of this city and tried to put motions forward that moved the agenda on various things as much as I could.”
READ MORE: Vancouver Councillor Geoff Meggs to be John Horgan’s chief of staff
Affleck is not going out quietly, ripping the ruling Vision Vancouver party, especially Mayor Gregor Robertson.
“I can’t think of something they’ve achieved to the level that they promised, they haven’t solved homelessness, they haven’t built the kinds of homes that people in the city need.”
“To promise to end homelessness was, I think, was one of the most misguided promises I’ve ever seen.”
Affleck says he thought about running again for council in 2018 and even considered going for the mayor’s chair.
“For me at this time I need to focus on my family and on my business, and leave that job to somebody else.”
Affleck was first elected in 2011.With the spread throughout baseball of wearable technology — that is, devices like the Zephyr Bioharness which are capable of capturing all manner of physiological data — it’s tempting to consider everything that teams and players could possibly extract from the information that’s gathered.
While such technology is currently used to monitor mostly fatigue and workload via calorie consumption — noted foodie Russell Martin employed the Bioharness in Pittsburgh to better understand how much he could eat without gaining weight — there are certainly other possible areas for innovation. Like, what more can we learn from heart rate in the midst of performance? Could we better understand performance under stress? How emotions influence play?
Players aren’t robots. They don’t perform at the same level all the time, even within a given game. They don’t always operate at their peak level. And while there’s a quite a bit of evidence suggesting “clutch” players don’t exist, I do wonder whether certain types of players and personalities perform better in certain moments. I suspect some players channel emotion better than others.
For example, is there something to the idea of some players operating with a “slow heartbeat,” or is that more myth and coach speak? Is it not ideal to perform emotionally? Can we monitor that? Are some athletes better performers when they’re angered? Can they reach another level of focus and performance? Or does it typically distract from execution?
These questions have been difficult to answer objectively in the past. They remain difficult. I suspect, however, that somewhere in the data captured by radar tracking systems like Statcast and wearable technology like Bioharness, there are clues. And on Monday, Cleveland Indians starting pitcher and FanGraphs reader Trevor Bauer might have provided a small sample of data for us to study.
In case you missed it, Avisail Garcia and Bauer had a moment in the fourth inning Monday.
I don’t know if these players have a history, but you could understand why a pitcher might take exception to a hitter shouting back at him in the middle of an at-bat. Bauer responded by striking out Garcia with a couple of filthy breaking balls, part of his repertoire that’s helped him reach another level in the second half of the season.
After posting a 6.00 ERA through May, Bauer has been one of the game’s better starting pitchers in the second half.
After striking out Garcia, Bauer directed him back to the home dugout.
It was good Labor Day theatre for those of us watching at home or in Chicago.
Bauer offered his thoughts afterward to the Cleveland media corps:
Avisail Garcia didn't like the pitches @BauerOutage was throwing him & let Trevor know. Bauer reminds Garcia the rules of the game? pic.twitter.com/5LYuXgS04L — SportsTime Ohio (@SportsTimeOhio) September 4, 2017
And the transcript:
Trevor Bauer on his exchange with Avisail Garcia in the fourth inning. pic.twitter.com/6za1bGyRnF — T.J. Zuppe (@TJZuppe) September 4, 2017
Beyond the verbal sparring, what interested me is how Bauer’s performance spiked — or, at least how his velocity spiked — after the altercation with Garcia.
Of the six hardest pitches Bauer threw on Monday, one was recorded during that plate appearance with Garcia, two in the following plate appearance against Matt Davidson, and then three more against Garcia in his next at-bat, in the sixth. (Garcia walked in that plate appearance).
Taking note of this was Driveline Baseball’s Kyle Boddy, who instructs Bauer in the offseason at his complex in Seattle, and probably knows and understands Bauer better than most in the baseball industry.
There are some people you want to get in their heads. And some you don't. This is one example of the latter. pic.twitter.com/waaYLNyp0z — Kyle Boddy (@drivelinebases) September 4, 2017
Trevor's @brooksbaseball data from today. Anyone want to guess when he faced Avasail Garcia the 2nd and 3rd times? pic.twitter.com/ll3kxwpQii — Kyle Boddy (@drivelinebases) September 4, 2017
Bauer hit 98 mph after the exchange, which is roughly his peak velocity. Bauer said afterward that his “adrenaline” kicked in. While Bauer has found another level since leaning more and more on his breaking ball, he’s also been trying to reach greater velocity with his fastball, which he’s noted has been his least effective pitch.
Perhaps Bauer is a player who performers better angry, and perhaps Monday was an example of that: he struck out nine over six-plus innings while conceding just one walk, three hits, and two runs. (Bauer’s pre-start entrance music is by Swedish heavy metal band Amon Amarth. Perhaps he’s trying to find emotion early in home starts.)
Coaches generally advise against showing too much emotion — or, perhaps more accurately, against playing with too much emotion. Bauer’s teammate Corey Kluber, for example, is famous for an on-field demeanor that has earned him comparisons to a robot.
But perhaps that’s all wrong for some athletes. Perhaps playing emotionally is how to get the best out of some performers.
Remember don't show any emotions kiddos /s https://t.co/eZj4iwVNej — Ryan Parker (@RA_Parker) September 4, 2017
Hey, it works for this guy:
Ok Scherzer is an absolute psycho pic.twitter.com/eID8qyBT2T — Ozzie (@OzzieStern) June 7, 2017
Bauer is already interested in the hard science of pitching, namely physics, and also the softer sciences of performance. From a piece on Bauer I wrote earlier this season for The Athletic:
[Bauer] applies aspects of Nideffer’s attention model, developed by psychologist Robert Nideffer to analyze athletic behavior, to explain why he sometimes has trouble grasping traditional coaching. “People say the best way to throw a pitch down in the zone is to throw it down in the zone. I’m like ‘What?’ ” Bauer said. “I know [through] reading and studying that conscious thought is a huge detractor from performance. … A narrow-external focus is your best performance mindset. Narrow-internal is the worst. “Well trying to throw it down in the zone is a narrow external focus. OK, that makes sense to me. I have the best chance of executing that pitch [through narrow-external focus]. The worst chance I have is ‘OK, I have to move this way to execute this pitch.’ Things like that where I think about it differently than how people say it.”
Where does pitching with emotion fit into that model? The softer-science elements of competition would seem to hold some answers, but so much remains unknown.
Whether it’s documented by pitch-tracking or wearable technology, it’s interesting to see how performance corresponds to emotion during a performance and whether athletes channel that emotional effectively. Perhaps the lesson for opponents is not to make Trevor Bauer angry. Perhaps the lesson for Trevor Bauer is to find a way to pitch with heightened emotion more often.
Or perhaps Monday was just evidence of how, over the course of one start, in the midst of a long season, how one player’s performance can respond to the stimuli of a verbal altercation on a particular afternoon. That’s still interesting at some level.“
Women reading romances are being encouraged to accept the idea that violence heightens and intensifies sexual pleasure. They are also encouraged to believe that violence is a sign of masculinity and a gesture of male care, that the degree to which a man becomes violently angry corresponds to the intensity of his affection and passive acceptance of violence is essential if they are to receive the rewards of love and care. This is often the case in women’s lives. They may accept violence in intimate relationships, whether heterosexual or lesbian, because they do not wish to give up that care. They see enduring abuse as the price they pay. They know they can live without abuse; they do not think they can live without care.
— Feminist Theory, From Margin to Center by bell hooks"The Liberty Bell" As recorded by The New York Military Band about 1910 Problems playing this file? See media help.
"The Liberty Bell" (1893) is an American military march composed by John Philip Sousa.[1]
History [ edit ]
"The Liberty Bell" was written for Sousa's unfinished operetta The Devil's Deputy, but financing for the show fell through. Shortly afterwards, Sousa and his band manager George Hinton attended the Columbian Exposition in Chicago. As they watched the spectacle "America", in which a backdrop depicting the Liberty Bell was lowered, Hinton suggested "The Liberty Bell" as the title of Sousa's recently completed march. Coincidentally, Sousa received a letter from his wife, saying their son had marched in a parade |
be just to handle the financial side of things. Anthopoulos, who said it was his decision not to negotiate an extension during the playoffs (negotiations that ended up lasting three business days at most) appears to have balked at having to cede decision-making power, especially to someone who reportedly came right in and criticized the way he had been doing things.
Anthopoulos’s Blue Jays, with their recent acquisitions culminating in deadline deals for David Price and Troy Tulowitzki, are in Win-Now Mode. They did not win this year, but are in a much closer place than they were a year ago, or even three months ago. This necessarily comes at a cost, both to payroll and to farm-system depth. Both of those things are anathema to Mark Shapiro’s way of doing business.
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You can blame this on Shapiro (and a lot of people will), but he’s doing what he was hired to do. This is on Rogers, which wants a slimmer payroll and a stronger pipeline of cheap, controllable talent. That’s no less valid a way to run a team, and other than Noah Syndergaard, there aren’t any ex-Jays prospects that you can point to as obviously bad deals.
The good news for Jays fans is that a change in the front office doesn’t mean things have to change on the field, not for a while. Nearly every significant everyday player is under team control for next year (the rotation is a different story), and I can think of numerous recent examples of teams switching GMs near the peak of a run of success, and winning championships with the old guy’s roster.
The optics are terrible here—right now, it looks like the Blue Jays giving the boot to the man who oversaw their rise from mediocrity to contender, and repudiating his strategies that got them there—but the cult of the executive is a trap. There are lots of people out there capable of building championship teams, and multiple ways to do it. Anthopoulos had success in Toronto; that doesn’t mean it was sustainable, or that ownership was willing to spend to realize his vision, or that Shapiro can’t also have success with his methods. The Blue Jays should be good for the immediate future, and Anthopoulos’s moves (good and bad, and he’s had both) will be felt for a long time after he’s gone. The only thing that seems clear for now is that the big-acquisition window is closed—taking the next step will have to be done without a payroll bump to match.
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[Sportsnet]Half a million Raspberry Pi’s have now rolled off the element14 production line
London, 8 January 2013. Almost one year since the launch of the Raspberry Pi, the global computing phenomenon, element14 has announced it has signed a new distribution contract with the Raspberry Pi Foundation to sell the credit-card sized computer around the world.
element14, the leading high-service distributor of electronic components and home to the award-winning element14 Community, has also announced that it has now manufactured more than 500,000 Raspberry Pi’s since the launch in February last year. Trying to get your head around the huge success of Raspberry Pi is not easy, but if you were to stand all the element14 Raspberry Pi’s end to end they would reach 25.6 miles, higher than the 24 miles Austrian daredevil Felix Baumgartner skydived last year.
In a year that saw the world fall in love with the microcomputer, element14 brought production of the Raspberry Pi to the UK from China in September 2012.
There is no sign of a slowdown in demand for the revolutionary computer with the award-winning element14 community, the worlds largest online community for design engineers and electronics enthusiasts, helping to bring together Raspberry Pi fans to share ideas and further innovation through the Code Exchange.
Mike Buffham, Global Head of EDE at element14, said: “It seems every time we talk about the Raspberry Pi we say it has been a true phenomenon, but it genuinely has. Back in February last year we could never have thought it would be this successful. Now less than a year on and we have manufactured over 500,000 at element14 alone, and we are delighted to have signed a new global contract with the Raspberry Pi Foundation to continue to play a pivotal role in putting computer programming back at the heart of engineers, both young and old.”
Eben Upton, Co-Founder of the Raspberry Pi Foundation, said: “Since the Raspberry Pi was launched globally in February 2012 it has been a tremendous success story. The younger generation has demonstrated significant intrigue in learning how to build and program their own computer device. And what has been great to see is the enormous growth in the hobbyist market. I have seen projects from Twittering chickens to home beer brewing kits being created using the Raspberry Pi and its accessories.”
Since the launch of the Raspberry Pi Board B element14 has released a series of exclusive accessories that enable owners to build their collection with the addition of extra functionality and capabilities. These include:
PiFace digital : Targeted at 11-16 year olds this
Gertboard The Gertboard is an add-on GPIO expansion board which allows Raspberry Pi users to connect to and control more advanced physical devices.
WiPi - Wirelessly connects the Raspberry Pi to a network
- Wirelessly connects the Raspberry Pi to a network PiView - enables the direct connection of the Raspberry Pi to VGA monitors from the HDMI output
Computing enthusiasts can expect to see a lot more from Raspberry Pi in 2013 and you can find out more about the minicomputer at our businesses around the world – Newark element14 in North America, Farnell element14 in Europe and element14 in Asia Pacific. The Raspberry Pi is also available through CPC in the UK and MCM in the United States.
To join the discussion about Raspberry Pi go to the element14 Community and sign up to the Raspberry Pi Group.David Cameron has claimed that his favourite TV detective dramas demonstrate the need for a so-called "snooper's charter".
In an appearance before a committee of peers and MPs, Mr Cameron said he wanted to resurrect the communications bill with cross-party support after 2015.
The bill, which was scrapped last year after opposition from the Liberal Democrats, would lead to the creation of a huge database of people's online activity including emails, voice calls and social media.
Mr Cameron highlighted how crimes in television dramas are solved by tracking the use of mobile phones. He warned that investigators will lose this ability as criminals and terrorists resort to using the internet instead.
Earlier this week Mr Cameron told BBC Radio 2 that he likes to relax by watching Elementary, a modern-day version of Sherlock Homes set in the US, and Homeland, a thriller about a CIA agent on the trail of a soldier she believes is an Al-Qaida operative.
Mr Cameron told the Joint National Security Strategy committee: "I love watching, as I should probably stop telling people, crime dramas on the television. There is hardly crime drama where a crime is solved without using the data of a mobile communications device.
"As you move from a world of people having fixed telephones and mobile phones to Skype and phones on the internet, if we don't modernise the practise and modernise the law over time we will have the communications data to solve these horrible crimes on a shrinking proportion of devices. That is a real problem for keeping people safe."
Mr Cameron acknowledged concerns about civil liberties, but said that politicians need to reassure the public that the bill would only allow the security service and police to monitor online activity, rather than the content of emails and messages.
He said: "I don't think that we have actually got across to people yet the actual basis of this. In most of the serious crimes, comms data - who called who and when, and where was the telephone at the time, not the content of the call - is absolutely vital."
He also said he was "very worried" that the Edward Snowden revelations have made Britain less safe and suggested newspapers should stop "endlessly dallying in this to think before they act".
Mr Cameron also denied that his cuts to the armed forces budget has reduced Britain's influence in the world.
His comments come after Robert Gates, the former US defence secretary, warned that reducing the size of the armed forces will prevent Britain from becoming a "full partner" with America.
Mr Cameron said that in hindsight he wished he had transformed the army sooner from "battle tanks in Europe" to "drones and cyber". He said: "I wish we had done more and faster."
He also said Britain is "right" to retain its climate change targets and cannot afford to "trhow them out the window".
During an appearance before a committee of MPs and peers, Mr Cameron rejected claims that climate change targets are a "huge mistake" which could "severely damage" Britain.
He said that he is committed to reducing the level of carbon emissions although he has concerns that European red tape could hinder the development of the shale gas industry.
Asked if the Climate Change Act, which commits Britain to an 80 per cent reduction in carbon emissions by 2050, Mr Cameron said: "I support the climate change act. I don't think that the climate change act is something we should have concern about."Hubbub What Milwaukee is talking about SHARE
By of the
There are a lot of open questions about how consumers will be affected by the possible sale of most of Wisconsin's Time Warner Cable subscribers to Charter Communications.
Here are responses to some questions that came up among JSOnline commenters about Internet service under Charter.
Would Charter cap the amount of data I can use?
Internet service providers would like to cap the amount of data you use, just as most cap the data used in cellphone plans. The companies claim streaming video and other data-heavy services can strain their networks, and that those using a lot of data can slow the speed of services to other customers.
Cynics argue data caps give the companies another service for which they can charge. Most Time Warner Cable customers don't have data caps, according to a November survey by tech website Gigacom.
There are reports that Time Warner Cable has tested data caps in some cities and received a negative reaction. Some Internet providers like AT&T UVerse will charge customers additional fees if they exceed the cap several times. Comcast is trying this model in some markets. But Charter's policy is the harshest in Gigacom's survey. If you keep going over Charter's cap, the company shuts off your access. "You're cut off," the Gigacom survey says.
How fast is Charter's Internet service?
Charter's Internet service can be zippy for watching videos. Internet video service Netflix posts monthly reports of the speed of American Internet providers (likely in an effort to pressure those companies to speed up service for streaming video). In March's survey results, Charter ranked fourth among major service providers at an average of 2.61 Mbps, just ahead of Comcast and Time Warner Cable. AT&T's UVerse ranked 12th at 1.73 Mbps.
Will Charter's Internet service be more or less expensive?
As for which company provides the best prices, comparisons are nearly impossible. You can get different prices if you bundle services such as TV, phone and Internet, or if you have discount codes through your employer or if you live in an area with more competition.
Charter doesn't offer Internet service in Milwaukee, but the company's website has pricing for stand-alone service. By punching in a random residential address in downtown Madison, we were shown an offer of $39.99 a month for the first 12 months of service at a speed of 30 Mbps. There was an additional $5 a month charge for renting a wireless router from the company.
An address in Milwaukee's Riverwest neighborhood yielded a $54.99 monthly charge from Time Warner Cable's website, plus $5.99 a month for that wireless router. AT&T U-Verse had an additional hurdle in comparing because its website yielded price offers for different speeds. A plan at 24 Mbps was $54.95 per month. It appeared the router would cost extra with AT&T as well.
Would Charter charge more in Milwaukee because the local competitors charge more? We don't know yet.
Will customers have to give up their old rr.com email addresses?
If the deal goes through, some hassles are likely for Time Warner Cable subscribers. For example, Barry Orton, a University of Wisconsin-Madison telecommunications professor, said it is likely that those who use "rr.com" email addresses provided by Time Warner eventually would have to switch to "@charter.net" addresses.
"It's a real pain to switch," Orton said. "So they're going to be aware of that. They're probably going to have to keep the 'rr' for some period of time, but I suspect sooner or later they are going to have to transition that."
Time Warner Cable has shifted customers from rr.com addressees to twc.com email addresses even though both brands are owned by the same company. Comcast has required customers of some of the cable companies it has purchased over the years to switch email addresses, though the company created tools to help customers make the transition.WASHINGTON -- A federal judge on Wednesday threw out Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer's complaint against her state's voter-approved medical marijuana law.
The complaint filed in May sought a judgment on whether state officials administering Arizona's medical-marijuana programs could be at risk for federal prosecution.
Brewer filed the complaint along with state Attorney General Tom Horne, claiming a letter from the former Arizona U.S. attorney suggested state officials could face prosecution.
U.S. District Judge Susan R. Bolton dismissed the complaint without prejudice, ruling enforcement actions by federal officials posed no genuine threat to state officials seeking to implement the law.
"Plaintiffs," wrote Bolton "have not shown that any action against state employees in this state is imminent or even threatened." Further, the complaint did not show any state officials had been prosecuted in other states for "participation in state medical marijuana licensing schemes."
The actions of federal officials concerning other states "do not substantiate a credible, specific warning or threat to initiate criminal proceedings against state employees in Arizona" if they were to enforce the marijuana act, Bolton wrote. Even if the letters from the U.S. attorneys in Arizona or other states were interpreted as threats or warnings, a "generalized threat" is not sufficient to merit a ruling about this state law, she added.
"It's unfortunate in this incident that the federal court has basically said we have to wait for a state employee to be prosecuted or face imminent prosecution before the state's lawsuit will be heard," Brewer spokesman Matt Benson told the Phoenix New Times.
Upon filing her lawsuit, Brewer ordered all applications for medical marijuana dispensaries in the state be rejected by Arizona's Department of Health Services. Her office maintains Brewer's stance on dispensaries hasn't changed in light of Wednesday's decision.
"It is unconscionable for Governor Brewer to continue to force very sick people to needlessly suffer by stripping them of the legal avenue through which to obtain their vital medicine," said Ezekiel Edwards, director of the ACLU Criminal Law Reform Project, in a statement. "Today’s ruling underscores the need for state officials to stop playing politics and implement the law as approved by a majority of Arizona voters so that thousands of patients can access the medicine their doctors believe is most effective for them."
Proposition 203, which Arizona voters passed in 2010, allows seriously ill patients to obtain marijuana with a doctor's request. Both Brewer and Horne opposed it.Oh my, 3 fandoms?In Season 1, Episode 15, Twilight turns into "Rapidash" when she doesn't get Pinkie. Well, honestly, who does? We saw in Too Many Pinkie's that she doesn't even get herself ;DYes, the art is 3DWith thanks to Lauren Faust ( -------------------FAQHow big is the art?- 300 x 168 x 8How long did it take you?- About 3.5 hoursTexture Pack?- "Love and Tolerance" by Hazzat (~ Zoot101 Who is best pony?- See my page for my fav's list.Can I request a creation?- If you send me a link to either- Something that's in the public domain, or- Something you ownthen I'll take a look. No promises, but I might take it up! Preferably pony-related, but doesn't have to beAre there more of these Minecraft creations?- Why yes, yes there are. I've made a nice gallery for you:- I'm also slowly adding to itAll political candidates are accused of lying at some point, and Hillary Clinton is no exception. But some people believe that Hillary Clinton is especially dishonest. The accusations are flying even stronger after news broke that she had, indeed, handled classified information carelessly by using a private email server and the DNC was planting anti-Sanders stories during the campaign. Is the idea that she’s more dishonest than most candidates a fair evaluation?
In a Washington Post/ABC poll from March, an astonishing 59% of those asked “Do you think Hillary Clinton is honest and trustworthy?” answered “No.” That sounds like a high number, and it is. But Donald Trump, in that same poll, received a 69% rate of “No.”
Despite this fact, the Trump campaign has launched LyingCrookedHillary.com – a website dedicated to exposing Hillary Clinton as a liar.
So what gives? Why is Hillary known for being a liar?
Ask the common person, and you’ll get a handful of responses. And a lot of that depends on when you ask. At this point in time, you’ll hear more about Benghazi or her email server. In ages past, you might hear about the Iraq war, gay marriage, TPP, or a dozen other topics.
That is why we took a hard look at six of the most widely touted “lies” of Hillary Clinton and asked: Is there anything to this?
As it turns out, there is. And here is what you need to know.
1. Clinton Falsely Claimed a ‘Strong Record’ on Gay Marriage
Clinton’s stance on gay marriage has evolved over time and, according to Politifact, has tracked very closely with public opinion polls. She has always been in favor of civil unions with equal rights as married couples, but didn’t publicly voice support for same sex marriage until 2013.
In 2000, at a news conference in New York, Clinton said:
Marriage has got historic, religious and moral content that goes back to the beginning of time, and I think a marriage is as a marriage has always been, between a man and a woman. But I also believe that people in committed gay marriages, as they believe them to be, should be given rights under the law that recognize and respect their relationship.”
In 2002, Clinton participated in an interview with Chris Matthews at the University of Albany in New York. Matthews asked her if New York state should recognize gay marriage and she simply answered: “No.”
In 2004, Clinton took to the Senate floor to speak against a constitutional amendment to ban same sex marriage. This gives the appearance of support for gay marriage, but her rationale primarily focused on her opinion that such a decision should be left up to the states. She believed that the Defense Against Marriage Act (DOMA) was sufficient to protect the state’s rights in this matter. In that same speech on the Senate floor, she said:
I believe marriage is not just a bond but a sacred bond between a man and a woman. I have had occasion in my life to defend marriage, to stand up for marriage… So I take umbrage at anyone who might suggest that those of us who worry about amending the Constitution are less committed to the sanctity of marriage, or to the fundamental bedrock principle that exists between a man and a woman, going back into the midst of history as one of the foundational institutions of history and humanity and civilization, and that its primary, principal role during those millennia has been the raising and socializing of children for the society into which they become adults.”
In November of 2010, while speaking at the University of Melbourne in Australia, Clinton was asked about her stance on same-sex marriage. She replied that she felt the matter of same-sex marriage should be decided on a state-by-state basis. She added:
I have not supported same-sex marriage. I have supported civil partnerships and contractual relationships. Yet I am supportive of our states’ taking actions that they believe reflects the evolution of attitudes about this… for many people it is sort of a symbolic issue, that if you don’t support that you don’t support equality between people, and particularly for the LGBT community. But I am very comfortable saying that we, in the Obama Administration, fully support every kind of equality … and we will continue to support states’ making their own decisions about this.”
In fact, Clinton didn’t publicly endorse same-sex marriage until 2013 when she released this video.
So it appears that Clinton changed her mind about same-sex marriage over time. The problem is that she has been mostly unwilling to acknowledge that record or to apologize for her previous opposition to gay marriage. She tends to simply state that she has evolved, and move on.
In a 2014 NPR interview with Terry Gross, starting around 27:30, Gross gave Clinton the chance to state that she has personally changed her opinion on the issue. At that point, Clinton became defensive and aggressively denied the allegation. Somewhat taken aback, Gross gave Clinton the chance to say that she only changed politically, but was always in support of same-sex marriage personally. Clinton proceeded to deny this as well, leaving listeners to wonder: what other option is there? Instead, Clinton became indignant and said:
“I have a strong record. I have a great commitment to this issue. And I’m proud of what I’ve done and the progress we are making.”
Her claim of a strong record is, of course, false. As shown above, Hillary has been outspoken in her opposition, working against gay marriage until very recently.
Her past record on gay marriage cannot be labeled as “strong,” since at one point in time she was opposed to it altogether. Clinton appeared to be unrepentant and has, in fact, avoided opportunities to apologize for her past opposition.
Recently, Clinton came under fire for trying to defend her husband’s support for the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA). In an MSNBC interview with Rachel Maddow, she said:
“On Defense of Marriage, I think what my husband believed — and there was certainly evidence to support it — is that there was enough political momentum to amend the Constitution of the United States of America, and that there had to be some way to stop that.”
But many activists have disputed this claim, stating that, at the time Clinton signed DOMA, there was no discussion of a constitutional amendment. Though conservatives did eventually start a movement to amend the constitution, that did not occur until four years later.
@BernieSanders is right. Note to my friends Bill and #Hillary: Pls stop saying DOMA was to prevent something worse. It wasnt, I was there. — Hilary Rosen (@hilaryr) October 25, 2015
Elizabeth Birch, who was executive director of the Human Rights Campaign from 1995 to 2004, told the Huffington Post,
“It’s ridiculous. There was no threat in the immediate vicinity of 1996 of a constitutional amendment. It came four years later. It may be that she needs to revisit the facts of what happened.”
When Bill Clinton had tried to use that same excuse years before, Birch had written an op-ed refuting the claim:
“In 1996, I was President of the Human Rights Campaign, and there was no real threat of a Federal Marriage Amendment. That battle would explode about eight years later, in 2004, when President Bush announced it was a central policy goal of his administration to pass such an amendment.”
Evan Wolfson, founder and president of Freedom to Marry, also backed up Elizabeth’s take on the subject,
“It is not accurate to explain DOMA as motivated by an attempt to forestall a constitutional amendment. There was no such serious effort in 1996.”
In this light, it seems odd that Clinton would drudge up that same debunked theory, and it makes sense why this particular lie incensed so many front-lines activists.
2. Clinton Falsely Claimed That She Landed Under Sniper Fire in Bosnia
During the 2008 Presidential campaign, Clinton claimed that she landed under sniper fire in Bosnia in 1996 when she was First Lady. That story, it turns out, was simply not true.
“I remember landing under sniper fire,” Clinton said during a March 17, 2008 speech at George Washington University. “There was supposed to be some kind of a greeting ceremony at the airport, but instead we just ran with our heads down to get into the vehicles to get to our base.”
Emmy award winning journalist Sharyl Attkisson, a CBS news reporter who accompanied Clinton on that trip, unequivocally refuted the story.
Actor and comedian Sinbad, another attendee, contradicted Hillary Clinton’s account of the events as well.
When challenged on her assertion, Clinton altered course. According to an interview with the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review on March 25, 2008, Clinton said she had been sleep deprived and simply “misspoke” when she talked about landing under sniper fire in Bosnia.
But calling this an isolated occasion was a lie as well. A lie to cover up the first lie. Reporters found that she had used the same story at least two different times in the preceding months. Once in Iowa in December of 2007 and again in Texas in February of 2008.
Confronted with these facts, her position changed significantly. Speaking to a group of reporters, she said:
You know, I made a mistake in describing it. I have said many times … we were … told by the Secret Service and the military that we were going into a war zone and that we had to be conscious of that. I was the first first lady taken into a war zone since Eleanor Roosevelt. And, you know, I think that the military and the Secret Service did a terrific job. But we certainly did take precautions. There is no doubt about that, and I remember that very clearly. report this ad But I did make a mistake in talking about it the last time and recently.”
But the exaggeration didn’t stop there. When confronted with footage that showed her stopping on the tarmac to speak with a little girl, Clinton told reporters:
“I was also told that the greeting ceremony had been moved away from the tarmac but that there was this eight-year-old girl and I said, ‘Well, I, I can’t, I can’t rush by her, I’ve got to at least greet her. So I greeted her, I took her stuff and I left. Now that’s my memory of it.”
That statement gives the impression that she rushed off the tarmac after greeting the little girl. But extended footage told a completely different tale. As CBS News reported:
“She and her daughter Chelsea lingered on the tarmac to greet U.S. military officials, took photos, and then walked to the armored vehicle where she did, eventually, duck and enter.”
According to eye witness Sharyl Attkinson, the footage also shows her taking pictures with a group of seventh graders.
3. Clinton Is Probably Sincere About Her Position on the Iraq War
This is one example when the claims that she lied were most likely not true. On February 7, 2007, Hillary Clinton said this on the Senate floor:
“If I had been President in October 2002 I would have never asked for authority to divert our attention from Afghanistan to Iraq and I certainly would have never started this war.”
While we don’t know for certain what Clinton would have done as President, we do know what she did and said as a senator.
For starters, in 2002 Sen. Clinton voted in favor of authorizing the use of force in Iraq in a bill formally known as the Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq Resolution of 2002.
Before the vote, on October 10, 2002 in her speech to the Senate, Clinton strongly encouraged the use of diplomacy. In no uncertain terms, she condemned unilateral action, stating that:
“If we were to attack Iraq now, alone or with few allies, it would set a precedent that could come back to haunt us.”
But she also said:
“In the four years since the inspectors left, intelligence reports show that Saddam Hussein has worked to rebuild his chemical and biological weapons stock, his missile delivery capability, and his nuclear program. He has also given aid, comfort, and sanctuary to terrorists, including Al Qaeda members, though there is apparently no evidence of his involvement in the terrible events of September 11, 2001.”
You can watch part 1 of her speech here and part 2 of her speech here.
The vote took place the day after Clinton made this speech, and the resolution passed by a vote of 77 to 23.
On February 3, 2016, Clinton attended a CNN Town Hall event in New Hampshire. During a Q&A with the audience, she claimed that she only voted for the bill because President Bush said that he needed to use it as leverage in order to finish the inspections.
This has become a point of contention. Some analysts believe that if that were truly Clinton’s motivation, then she would have supported the Levin amendment. Clinton voted against that resolution, which failed in the Senate shortly before passage of the Iraq resolution that same day. Clinton’s opponent Lincoln Chafee wrote this opinion article on the topic.
The Levin amendment purported to limit the use of force until other diplomatic options had been exhausted, specifically urging cooperation with the United Nations. But here’s where things get tricky. Opponents of the amendment, Clinton included, say it could have compromised the leverage of the United States regarding the weapons inspections. Proponents of the amendment explicitly deny this and even allege that opponents are being disingenuous in that characterization.
Full text of the amendment, formally titled “Multilateral Use of Force Authorization Act of 2002” can be found here.
The most relevant provisions are as follows:
From Section 2
“Congress–
(1) supports the President’s call for the United Nations to address the threat to international peace and security posed by Saddam Hussein’s continued refusal to meet Iraq’s obligations…
(2) urges the United Nations Security Council to adopt promptly a resolution that would–
(A) demand that Iraq provide immediate, unconditional, and unrestricted access of the United Nations weapons inspectors…
(B) authorize the use of necessary and appropriate military force by member states of the United Nations to enforce such resolution in the event that the Government of Iraq refuses to comply; and
(3) affirms that, under international law and the United Nations Charter, the United States has at all times the inherent right to use military force in self-defense.”
And from Section 3
“(a) Authorization.–Pursuant to a resolution of the United Nations Security Council described in section 2(2) that is
adopted after the enactment of this joint resolution, and subject to subsection (b), the President is authorized to use the Armed Forces of the United States to destroy, remove, or render harmless Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction, nuclear weapons-usable material, ballistic missiles with a range greater than 150 kilometers, and related facilities, if Iraq fails to comply with the terms of the Security Council resolution.
(b) Requirements.–Before the authority granted in subsection (a) is exercised, the President shall make available to the Speaker of the House of Representatives and the President pro tempore of the Senate his determination that the United States has used appropriate diplomatic and other peaceful means to obtain compliance by Iraq with a resolution of the United Nations Security Council described in section 2(2) and that those efforts have not been and are not likely to be successful in obtaining such compliance.”
For her part, it seems that Clinton probably held a bonafide belief that the Levin amendment could undermine the leverage of the United States. That is, if her aforementioned speech on the Senate floor is to be taken at face value. She said, for example:
Others argue that we should work through the United Nations and should only resort to force if and when the United Nations Security Council approves it. This too has great appeal for different reasons. The UN deserves our support. Whenever possible we should work through it and strengthen it, for it enables the world to share the risks and burdens of global security and when it acts, it confers a legitimacy that increases the likelihood of long-term success. The UN can help lead the world into a new era of global cooperation and the United States should support that goal. But there are problems with this approach as well … In the case of Iraq, recent comments indicate that one or two Security Council members might never approve force against Saddam Hussein until he has actually used chemical, biological, or God forbid, nuclear weapons.”
All of this indicates that Clinton probably isn’t lying about her stance on the Iraq war.
That conclusion is undermined, however, by her somewhat hawkish statements about military action both before and after the vote.
For instance, a month before the vote on Meet The Press, she said: “I can support the President, I can support an action against Saddam Hussein because I think it’s in the long-term interests of our national security …”
And her statement to the Council on Foreign Relations on December 2003, shortly after the capture of Saddam Hussein:
I was one who supported giving President Bush the authority, if necessary, to use force against Saddam Hussein. I believe that that was the right vote. I have had many disputes and disagreements with the administration over how that authority has been used, but I stand by the vote to provide the authority because I think it was a necessary step in order to maximize the outcome that did occur in the Security Council with the unanimous vote to send in inspectors. And I also knew that our military forces would be successful.”
So, while this does give the impression of playing both sides, Clinton has remained fairly consistent on the topic of why she had authorized force in Iraq and how she’d expected things to be done differently.
Lastly, during the 2008 Presidential campaign, Clinton claimed that she, as a U.S. Senator, was opposed to the Iraq war before then-U.S. Senator Obama. At a campaign stop in Eugene Oregon on April 5 2008, she said:
“I actually started criticizing the war in Iraq before he did.”
Clinton qualified this assertion with the admission that Obama has been critical of the Iraq war as an Illinois Senator in 2002, but that, during their concurrent terms as Senator, which began in 2005, she had been first to criticize the conflict. In support of this, Clinton cited a news release from her office dated January 26, 2005.
Despite her convoluted reasoning, Clinton was wrong even by her own standards. As it turns out, Obama had renewed his criticism of the war on January 18, 2005, a full week earlier than Hillary, during Condoleezza Rice’s confirmation hearings.
While this can technically be called a lie, it was likely merely accidental: a small inaccuracy about an already weak point.
So, on the whole, Clinton has been fairly consistent on her stance on the Iraq war and her vote to authorize it. While experts might call her position that Hussein was aiding terrorists to be misguided, or her position on the Levin amendment to be unfounded, Clinton hasn’t shown blatant dishonesty in either of these cases. And while her assertion that, as a Senator, she criticized the Iraq war before then Senator Obama has been proven to be false, this appears to be a case of factual inaccuracy rather than a premeditated lie.
4. In the New York Primary Debate, Clinton Misrepresented Her Support for a $15 Federal Minimum Wage
Hillary Clinton has been difficult to understand regarding her stance on the minimum wage. But one thing she has been consistent on is that is should be higher than it currently is.
As far as research shows, Clinton supports a national $12 minimum wage, but not a national $15 minimum wage. At the same time, she does support certain state and local governments’ going to a $15 minimum wage.
During the November 2015 debate in Iowa, Kathie Obradovich first asked Sanders: “You called for raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour everywhere in the country. But the President’s former chair of the Council of Economic Advisers, Alan Krueger, has said a national increase of $15 could lead to undesirable and unintended consequences of job loss. What level of job loss would you consider unacceptable?”
When Clinton addressed the same question, she said:
…I do take what Alan Krueger said seriously. … However, what Alan Krueger said in the piece you’re referring to is that if we went to $15, there are no international comparisons. That is why I support a $12 national federal minimum wage. That is what the Democrats in the Senate have put forward as a proposal. But I do believe that is a minimum. And places like Seattle, like Los Angeles, like New York City, they can go higher. It’s what happened in Governor O’Malley’s state. There was a minimum wage at the state level, and some places went higher.”
But in the 2016 New York primary debate, when asked directly, Clinton said that, as president, she would sign a bill to raise the national minimum wage to $15 an hour.
Watch it here at around the 33 minute mark.
Wolf Blitzer asked: “As President, if a Democratic Congress put a $15 minimum wage bill on your desk, would you sign it?”
And Clinton responded:
Well of course I would. And I have supported, I have supported the fight for 15…”
This appears to indicate a change of heart. And Bernie Sanders called her on it. He said, “To suddenly announce now that you’re for $15, I don’t think is quite accurate.”
Clinton answered:
I have said from the very beginning that I supported the fight for $15. … I supported the $15 effort in L.A. I supported in Seattle. I supported it for the fast food workers in New York. The minimum wage at the national level right now is $7.25, right? We want to raise it higher than it ever has been, but we also have to recognize some states and some cities will go higher… I have taken my cue from the Democrats in the Senate… (who said) we will set a national level of $12 and then urge any place that can go above it to go above it. … I think setting the goal to get to $12 is the way to go, encouraging others to get to $15. But, of course, if we have a Democratic Congress, we will go to $15.”
Sanders responded: “Well, I think the secretary has confused a lot of people. I don’t know how you’re there for the fight for $15 when you say you want a $12-an-hour national minimum wage.”
That exchange seemed to indicate that while Clinton would prefer a $15 minimum wage, she is willing to compromise with legislatures to get to $12. But is that accurate? Does Clinton personally support a national $15 minimum wage?
No. She explained in the November debate that she does not support it nationally because it may result in job loss. And subsequent interviews after the New York debate indicate that she hasn’t actually changed from that position.
When asked by George Stephanopoulos about this inconsistency, Clinton explained she would be in favor of such a bill if it made allowances for rural areas to have a lower standard than $15. This equivocation |
by a factor of 2 compared to the standard lens. The result is the ability to take photos with the equivalent of a 56mm lens (what pro photographers would term a "portrait" lens), cropped in without a loss of detail you'd get with digital zoom. The result is the ability to take crisper zoomed-in photos, as well as utilize some more artistic framing or get a shorter if more detailed panorama. The telephoto lens is not optically stabilized and has a much narrower ƒ/2,8 aperture, and as a result the iPhone 7 falls back to the primary (and stabilized) sensor for zoomed-in nighttime shots. As you'd expect, they're blurry and blotchy. Indoors
Heading indoors, the results were more widely mixed. In high contrast environments, the LG G6 came out on top, with the Galaxy S8 and Google Pixel not far behind. The iPhone 7 clocked a dismal 8% pick rate on this comparison — auto HDR fired on all the Android phones, but not for the iPhone (Apple is stingy when it comes to triggering HDR, even if though results are nearly always better and the iPhone also saves a non-HDR copy). And, of course, one of the things we capture the most often indoors is food. The lighting inside The Eagle in Over The Rhine was admittedly a temperature balancing challenge: on the left there was clean white indirect sunlight and above and to the right was warm overhead lighting. Actually, that's not really a challenge — indirect sunlight is basically the best lighting a photographer can ask for, and yet the Android phones all overcompensated for the yellowish interior lights and turned the sandwich almost blue. I don't know about you, but I prefer my fried chicken not blue. Turn down the lights and you end up with the same story playing out inside as outside: the Pixel's electronic stabilization isn't a problem, the G6 and S8 perform admirably and provide good, sharp images, and the iPhone 7 is notably muted and makes even quarter-inch-thick bacon look unappetizing. Sad. LG G6 wide angle Apple iPhone 7 Plus telephoto While use of the secondary cameras on the LG G6 and iPhone 7 Plus is pretty straightforward when you're capturing the environment, things change when you have a specific subject. In this case, it's lunch. The G6 wide angle camera presents you with essentially two options: from the same distance that you'd take a typical food photo, you'll get a lot more of the environment around you, capturing the atmosphere in a way that even stepping back with a normal camera cannot. The other option is to push in close, simulating having your face right up in that sandwich, though you risk dealing with fisheye effects at this distance and have to cope with the fixed focus of the wide angle lens. Flipping to the iPhone 7, your options are reversed. From the typical distance you get a crop in for detail of the meal, while if you pull back you can get a shot that limits the amount of background in the shot for a more professional framing. When it comes to food, though, you need to take into account that the iPhone switches back to the primary stabilized sensor if it's too dark, so you might just end up with a blurry blown-up photo instead. Portrait
Let's take some pictures of people. Historically, portrait photography has been one of Apple's strongest suits, but by these results Google, Samsung, and LG have all seriously picked up their games. Thankfully, the over-saturation that's present in many of the non-people shots is dialed back when there are faces involved. Interestingly, it looks like the multi-shot processing happening on the Galaxy S8 seems to be taking out some of the detail in skin (beauty enhancing modes were all left fully off), but with the bright background of Times Square the S8 still produced a clear and crisp photo of Mr. Daniel Bader. The Pixel's portrait of Daniel was equally good, but the background was blown out in comparison. And while the iPhone managed the background better than any of the others, it did so at the expense of the brightness of his face. And the G6? He's purple now. This was far-and-away the strongest showing for the Galaxy S8, with 71% picking it as the best photo. The LG G6 produced a remarkable portrait photo, illuminating the subjects clearly while preserving detail and color in the entire environment. But step away from the bustle of New York City and the tables turn. With the Cincinnati skyline as a backdrop, the LG G6 produced a remarkable photograph, illuminating the subjects clearly while preserving detail and color in the entire environment. The Pixel's photo was significantly brighter, but so much so that it demolished the sky in a blur of white. While the Galaxy S8's photo was clear, the subjects turned out rather dark, and the iPhone 7 even more so with a noticeable and unnatural dip in saturation across the board. Heading outside to take some people photos? If you've read this far, then the results won't be surprising: the Pixel comes out on top again. That electronic stabilization really is something. On the processing side, the Pixel managed to produce a nice even tone across Daniel's face that matched the yellow streetlights, while the G6 and Galaxy S8 struggled with other light sources. The iPhone 7 didn't fall as short as it has in other dark comparisons, but the lack of detail was noticeable. LG G6 wide angle Taking portraits with the wide-angle camera on the LG G6 is a great way to capture the environment around the subject without having to step far back. It also lets you keep the same angle and depth you'd get on the subject from a more "standard" distance. The difference is stark compared to similarly framed photos taken with a standard camera — the wide angle anchors the subject in the frame, while stepping back for the same framing makes them more part of the environment. Apple iPhone 7 Plus telephoto As mentioned above, the telephoto lens on the iPhone 7 Plus can lend itself to more "professional-feeling" framing. You get less background and more detail on the subjects, and while that's good and all, the iPhone has a trick up its sleeve. It's call "Portrait Mode", and it uses the two cameras in tandem with some on-device machine learning to determine the subject and the depth of the photo and apply an enhanced blurring effect to the background ("bokeh", as it's known in photography circles). The results can be hit-or-miss — the iPhone struggled with blurring the busy Times Square background around Daniel's head, but the couple in front of the stadium turned out mostly great — but when it works it gives an extra bit of "pro" feeling to your photos. Selfies
Looking for a comparison the iPhone still wins, hands-down? Here it is. 44% of voters picked the iPhone 7 as the best selfie photo, even against the newly-enhanced auto-focusing camera of the Galaxy S8. How'd the iPhone win here? True to life colors, brightness, and balance coupled with fine detail (hello pores!). The Pixel came in second, with many of the same attributes as the iPhone, but with a clear drop in brightness. The Galaxy S8 and LG G6 picked up that brightness, however, producing photos with blown-out skies and pale skin tones. Looking for a comparison the iPhone still wins, hands-down? Selfies. The LG G6 fared poorly here thanks to LG's decision to include a single wide-angle front-facing camera. Unlike the rear view, which can switch between the two lenses depending on your zoom level, the front camera's "standard" angle that closely matches a standard front-facing camera only does that with software zoom and enhancements. The result is a blurry and disappointing mess. The wider-angle is better, but only marginally so, still plagued with color balance and blurriness: Color, Contrast, and Motion
Samsung's penchant for oversaturation pays off in spades when the point of the photo is colors. The colorful pastels are dialed up to 11 by the Galaxy S8's processing, and the full-sensor phase detection autofocus produced a crisp capture of the tops of the sticks while the wide ƒ/1.7 had the added benefit of blurring even the not-that-distant bottom of the tubes. Shockingly, the iPhone 7 actually produced the most-saturated and highest contrast image of the bunch — so much so that it looked overprocessed and lost detail. Samsung's penchant for oversaturation pays off in spades when the point of the photo is colors. While the LG G6, Galaxy S8, and Pixel all handled the strong glare off the car's hood with ease (thank you, auto HDR), saturation in the environment and the reflected sky declined in that same order. One could argue that the G6 may have taken it too far, but then again it is was judged by a wide margin to be a favorite over the others. The iPhone continued the trend of decreasing saturation, spitting out a photo that almost looks as if it was run through an Instagram filter (note the no-longer-red Honda in the background). Additionally, the iPhone handled the contrast poorest, managing to both blow out the hood highlight and lose detail in the shadows. Capturing motion in broad daylight was handled with ease by all four phones — they've got wide apertures (Pixel excluded) and large sensors that allow for quick shutter speeds that freeze the action. These photos of the fountain in Washington Park are crisp in a way that the human eye cannot see, a moment frozen in time. The Galaxy S8's win can be attributed to the cleanness of the image — each individual water droplet is clear and crisp. The G6 features the same crispness, but the water droplets are afflicted with some unfortunate artifacting thanks to the triggered HDR. The iPhone appeared have a slightly slower shutter than the G6 and Galaxy S8. Macro
If you want to get up close, the Galaxy S8 is hard to beat. The ƒ/1.7 lens — the widest in this comparison — can take much of the credit here, allowing for a very shallow depth of field (the plane that is in focus) and more-blurred foregrounds and backgrounds than the others can offer. The iPhone 7 was again hindered by Apple's reluctance to trigger HDR more frequently, producing a photo that tried to balance the sunlit petals with the dark interior and fell short for both. The Pixel's photo of the flower's interior, despite being quite similar to the Galaxy S8 and LG G6, fell to a distant last place (10%). Perhaps it was close enough but not quite, while the iPhone's was different enough with its blown-out contrast to take third. Apple iPhone 7 Plus telephoto The iPhone 7 Plus's telephoto lens poses the same options for macro as it does for any single-subject photography: you can get even closer, or you can pull out for a different look. Both are effective uses, though if you really want to get macro the telephoto lens does let you get twice as close as the standard camera, bringing out even more detail. Pulled back, it can't duplicate the same level of background blur as the main camera, thanks to the much narrower ƒ/2.8 aperture compared to the ƒ/1.8 on the main camera. We're not pulling out any LG G6 wide angle photos here, as the fixed focus point is too far out to be useful for macro photography.UPDATE: Hanley Ramirez was a late scratch for Wednesday’s game due to flu-like symptoms. Travis Shaw will start at first base in Ramirez’s place, with Josh Rutledge getting the call at third.
Here’s the Boston Red Sox’s updated lineup for their game against the Chicago White Sox:
RED SOX (15-11)
Mookie Betts, RF
Xander Bogaerts, SS
David Ortiz, DH
Dustin Pedroia, 2B
Chris Young, LF
Travis Shaw, 1B
Josh Rutledge, 3B
Christian Vazquez, C
Jackie Bradley Jr., CF
Clay Buchholz, RHP (0-3, 6.51 ERA)
ORIGINAL STORY: Clay Buchholz didn’t have the most enjoyable April. But he’s hoping a new month brings new results.
The Boston Red Sox righthander still is looking for his first victory after going 0-3 through five starts in April. He has surrendered five or more runs in four of those five outings, and the Red Sox have yet to win a game in which he starts.
Yet there’s hope for Buchholz entering Wednesday’s game against the Chicago White Sox, as the 31-year-old sports a 3.98 career ERA in the month of May.
Christian Vazquez will return behind the plate to catch Buchholz and bat eighth in the middle game of the three-game series. The White Sox will send out a lefthander in Carlos Rodon, so Chris Young will remain in the lineup, batting sixth and playing left field.
Third baseman Travis Shaw will slide down to the seventh spot in the batting order.
RED SOX (15-11)
Mookie Betts, RF
Dustin Pedroia, 2B
Xander Bogaerts, SS
David Ortiz, DH
Hanley Ramirez, 1B
Chris Young, LF
Travis Shaw, 3B
Christian Vazquez, C
Jackie Bradley Jr., CF
Clay Buchholz, RHP (0-3, 6.51 ERA)
WHITE SOX (19-8)
Adam Eaton, RF
Jimmy Rollins, SS
Jose Abreu, 1B
Todd Frazier, 3B
Melky Cabrera, LF
Brett Lawrie, 2B
Jerry Sands, DH
Dioner Navarro, C
Austin Jackson, CF
Carlos Rodon, LHP (1-3, 4.33 ERA)
Thumbnail photo via Bob DeChiara/USA TODAY Sports Images
Thumbnail photo via Boston Red Sox first baseman Hanley Ramirez (13) scores a run on a home run hit by third baseman Travis Shaw (not pictured) during the sixth inning against the New York Yankees at Fenway Park.The Future of Declaration Files
Daniel
Declaration files (.d.ts files) are a fundamental part of using existing JavaScript libraries in TypeScript, but getting them has always been a place where we’ve known there was room for improvement. As we get closer to TypeScript 2.0, we’re very excited to show off a sneak peak of our plan to simplify things. Getting type declarations in TypeScript 2.0 will require no tools apart from npm.
As an example, getting the declarations for a library like lodash will be just an npm command away:
npm install --save @types/lodash
From there you’ll be able to use lodash in your TypeScript code with no fuss. This works for both modules and global code.
For example, once you’ve npm install -ed your type declarations, then you can use imports and write
import * as _ from "lodash" ; _.padStart( "Hello TypeScript!", 20, " " );
or if you’re not using modules, you can just use the global variable _ if you have a tsconfig.json around.
_.padStart( "Hello TypeScript!", 20, " " );
Looking for more than just lodash? Well, we’re also making it extremely easy to figure out which packages have the type declarations you need. We now have a type search at https://aka.ms/types where you can find the package for your favorite library.
Best of all, this all works today with our nightly builds. Just run npm install -g typescript@next, and give it a shot. This is all you need to know to start experiencing the future of type acquisition.
We’d love to hear your thoughts, so if you’d like to give us your feedback or just understand the specifics, head on over to GitHub to read more or leave a comment.
Notes and Acknowledgements
For those wondering, DefinitelyTyped will still be the place to author new declaration files. We’ll soon be providing a greatly expanded set of documentation aimed at.d.ts authors in the near future. Tools like Typings and tsd will continue to work, and we’ll be working alongside those communities to ensure a smooth transition.
We also owe a great thanks to those who helped guide us in this direction. Specifically, Blake Embrey, the maintainer and creator of Typings, has worked closely with us during this entire process and given us valuable feedback. In addition to this, Boris Yankov, founder of DefinitelyTyped, and Diullei Gomes and Bart van der Schoor, maintainers of tsd, have helped lay the foundation of these efforts.
Lastly, we’ll mention that this is still a work in progress. Editor support is currently limited to Visual Studio Code and our Sublime plugins, with Visual Studio support on the way. We absolutely value all the feedback we can get, so try out our nightly builds and let us know what the new experience is like!Story highlights Nina Davuluri is first Indian-American Miss America
Davuluri trained with famed Bollywood choreographer
The 24-year-old wants to be a physician
Some tweets focused on winner's heritage
She's the second consecutive New York beauty queen to take the Miss America title, but she's the first Indian-American to wear the national crown -- er, tiara -- atop her perfectly coiffed head.
"I was the first Indian Miss New York, and I'm so proud to be the first Indian Miss America," Nina Davuluri said after she won.
Davuluri's resume goes considerably deeper than her heritage, however.
The 24-year-old Fayetteville, New York, native was on the dean's list and earned the Michigan Merit Award and National Honor Society nods while studying at the University of Michigan, where she graduated with a degree in brain behavior and cognitive science.
JUST WATCHED Miss America responds to racist remarks Replay More Videos... MUST WATCH Miss America responds to racist remarks 01:09
JUST WATCHED And the Miss America winner is... Replay More Videos... MUST WATCH And the Miss America winner is... 00:53
Her father, who emigrated from India 30 years ago, is a gynecologist, and Davuluri said she'd like to become a physician one day as well.
"During her year as Miss America she will serve as spokesperson for STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) this year as she travels to Washington, D.C., to work with the Department of Education," according to a Miss America statement.
She also is passionate about healthy lifestyles after battling obesity and bulimia when she was younger.
Davuluri's platform was "Celebrating Diversity Through Cultural Competency." For the talent portion of the competition, she performed classic Indian dances fused with Bollywood moves.
She has studied the Kuchipudi and Bharatanatyam styles of dance, and in preparation for the Miss America contest, she worked with famed Bollywood choreographer Nakul Dev Mahajan.
Miss California Crystal Lee was first runner-up, and Miss Oklahoma Kelsey Griswold was second runner-up, while Theresa Vail, the tattooed, bow-hunting, Chinese-speaking Miss Kansas, won the online viewers' poll.
Despite a night of firsts, a tired theme emerged following Davuluri's victory: Racists took to Twitter to lambaste the pageant for picking an Indian-American. They were none too kind to Davuluri herself, either, with one particularly uninformed tweeter calling her a Muslim.S3 VirusScan AWS Security
Antivirus for S3 buckets: widdix/aws-s3-virusscan. As soon as a new file is added to your bucket the file is scanned.
Features
Uses ClamAV to scan newly added files on S3 buckets
Updates ClamAV database every 3 hours automatically
Scales EC2 instance workers to distribute workload
Publishes a message to SNS in case of a finding
Can optionally delete compromised files automatically
Logs to CloudWatch Logs
How does it work
A picture is worth a thousand words:
S3 VirusScan uses a SQS queue to decouple scan jobs from the ClamAV workers. Each S3 bucket can fire events to that SQS queue in case of new objects. This feature of S3 is called S3 Event Notifications. The SQS queue is consumed by a fleet of EC2 instances running in an Auto Scaling Group. If the number of outstanding scan jobs reaches a treshold a new ClamAV worker is automatically added. If the queue is mostly empty workers are removed. The ClamAV workers run a simple ruby script that executes the clamscan command. In the background the virus database is updated every three hours. If clamscan finds a virus the file is directly deleted (you can configure that) and a SNS notification is published.
Installation
Create the CloudFormation Stack
This templates depends on our vpc-*azs.yaml template. The scanners will will use 2 AZs only. Click Next to proceed with the next step of the wizard. Specify a name and all parameters for the stack. Click Next to proceed with the next step of the wizard. Click Next to skip the Options step of the wizard. Check the I acknowledge that this template might cause AWS CloudFormation to create IAM resources. checkbox. Click Create to start the creation of the stack. Wait until the stack reaches the state CREATE_COMPLETE
Configure S3 buckets
Configure the S3 buckets you want to connect to S3 VirusScan as shown in the next figure:
Make sure you select the -ScanQueue- NOT the -ScanQueueDLQ-!
Configure Emails
If you like to receive emails if a virus was found you must subscribe to the SNS topic as sown in the next two figures:
You will receive a confirmation email.
Test
Create a EICAR Standard Anti-Virus Test File with the following content:
X5O! P %@ AP [ 4 \ PZX54 ( P ^) 7CC ) 7 }$ EICAR - STANDARD - ANTIVIRUS - TEST - FILE!$ H + H *
and upload that file to your S3 bucket.
Support needed?
Do you need help? Mail to hello@widdix.de.BOSTON – From the St. James Avenue side of Copley Square on Thursday afternoon, passers-by could be forgiven for wondering what the group of 300 people in red T-shirts opposite them was cheering about. If they were told that they were seeing the front lines of a desperate battle for the future of the American working class, they wouldn’t believe it. But the Communications Workers of America and International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers members and their families did not turn out for a nice day in the sun. They were there to fight.
The general public may be aware that 39,000 unionized Verizon workers (out of a total of 178,000) have been out on strike for a few days—including many here in Boston. But the vast majority of onlookers don’t understand the stakes.
Verizon (officially Verizon Communications, Inc.) is no ordinary company. Rather it’s a vast telecommunications conglomerate that has benefited hugely from government tax breaks, subsidies, and a favorable regulatory climate since it was created in 2000 out of the merger of Bell Atlantic (which had only recently merged with fellow “Baby Bell” NYNEX) and GTE.
It has two major businesses: its traditional wireline service, based on the old copper wire phone system and the newer fiber optic FiOS service (weirdly coming soon to Boston six years after Verizon said it would stopping building it out in any new cities). That’s where virtually all of the company’s 39,000 unionized workers are employed. Then it has Verizon Wireless—which was originally a joint venture of Bell Atlantic and the British telecom Vodafone, bought outright by Verizon in 2014. Only a handful of its wireless employees are currently unionized.
Basically, Verizon leadership wants to focus on its extremely profitable wireless division and cut back its wireline service. The numbers show why. According to Fortune magazine, “Wireless now brings in the vast majority of the company’s sales and profits. Last year, for example, the wireless unit brought in revenue of $91.7 billion, up 5% from a year earlier, and an operating profit of nearly $30 billion. The older wireline unit, which also includes wired video and Internet service, brought in revenue of only $37.7 billion, a 2% decline from the year before, and an operating profit of just $2.2 billion.”
Unfortunately, Verizon—like so many companies these days (our “new Boston neighbors” at General Electric spring to mind)—is a world class tax dodger and loves soaking the government for free handouts. According to the nonprofit Citizens for Tax Justice, between 2008 and 2013, the corporation made over $42 billion in profits, received a $732 million tax break (an effective federal tax rate of -2 percent), and paid almost $1.3 billion in state taxes (an effective state tax rate of 3 percent). In the same period, it made almost $4 billion in foreign profits and paid $274 million in taxes (an effective foreign tax rate of 7 percent). And this year? In the first quarter of 2016, Verizon has made $4.31 billion in profits.
According to the nonprofit Good Jobs First, Verizon has also received about $149 million in state and federal subsidies. Free money. And about $1.5 billion in federal loans, loan guarantees, and bailout assistance. Almost free money.
The nonprofit Americans for Tax Fairness adds: “Verizon also reported $1.9 billion in accumulated offshore profits in 2012, on which it paid no U.S. income taxes … Verizon raked in $956 million in federal contracts in 2011, according to the federal government. It also recently landed a new nine-year government-wide contract worth up to $5 billion to provide communications services and equipment to federal agencies.”
So Verizon is filthy rich with help from its friends in the government. Just like its predecessor, AT&T, in the days of “natural monopoly” before its 1984 breakup into regional Baby Bells. Unlike the old AT&T, though, Verizon is not interested in putting up with a unionized workforce in exchange for what are approaching monopoly profits in markets it and the handful of other remaining telecoms dominate. It has eliminated thousands of unionized jobs since 2000. How many? There were 85,000 unionized Verizon workers on strike in that year. There are 39,000 now. Do the math.
This brings us to the central issue of the strike. Verizon wants to convert lots of decent jobs—unionized and ununionized—to contract jobs. Many of them abroad. Union leaders recently told CNN Money: “Verizon has outsourced 5,000 jobs to workers in Mexico, the Philippines, and the Dominican Republic.” The company is also “hiring more low-wage, non-union contractors.” Increasing wages, minimizing out-of-pocket health costs, preserving job security, keeping traditional pensions, and stopping forced out-of-state work transfers are all very important issues, too. And certainly worthy of more discussion in these pages. But, as ever, contingent work is a dagger pointed at the throat of organized labor. According to Computerworld, the Trade Adjustment Assistance forms that workers losing their jobs due to outsourcing file with the US Department of Labor show that offshoring jobs is indeed proceeding apace at Verizon—despite management denials.
Once jobs have left the US, it’s highly unlikely they’re coming back. And if it’s hard for unions to organize units like Verizon Wireless now, it’s nearly impossible to organize workers transnationally. Similarly, once “regular” full-time jobs with benefits have been replaced with lousy part-time, contract and other contingent jobs, it’s very difficult to convert them back. And it’s extremely difficult to organize contingent workers into unions or other types of labor organizations.
That is why this strike matters to all American workers. If well organized and militant union members at Verizon—who have gone on strike against the company and its predecessors in 1983, 1986, 1989, 1998, 2000, 2004, 2011 and now—can’t stop the outsourcing and destruction of decent jobs, unorganized workers spread across the planet in industries like telecommunications will find the task insurmountable.
Yet that’s where we’re heading. The end of traditional labor unions. The end of decent jobs. The war of all against all. This is where latter day capitalism is taking us. Unless we help good unions like CWA and IBEW win this strike, and start expanding the labor movement again. This isn’t about “the dignity of labor,” as the Boston Globe would have it. It’s about class war. Working people didn’t start it. But we sure as hell had better finish it. Before it finishes us.
Readers who would like to support the Verizon strikers should visit standuptoverizon.com
Apparent Horizon is syndicated by the Boston Institute for Nonprofit Journalism. Jason Pramas is BINJ’s network director.
Copyright 2016 Jason Pramas. Licensed for use by the Boston Institute for Nonprofit Journalism and media outlets in its network.NEW: Bill Introduced to Require Voter Approval for PawSox Stadium Deal
New legislation has been introduced that would require voters to “approve any financial arrangement that obligates the state to fund the debts of others with respect to a baseball stadium.”
“PawSox owners presented an attractive rendering of their ballpark stadium that would take up approximately 9 ½ acres of prime downtown real estate. The problem is they want taxpayers to finance the deal without the required voter approval,” said Representative Blake Filippi (I-Charlestown, South Kingstown, New Shoreham, Westerly), who introduced the legislation.
“Once again, we have a proposal that indebts taxpayers through lease arrangements; a creative, yet dubious, structure employed to skirt the R.I. Constitution’s requirement that the People approve debt,” continued Filippi. “While a downtown stadium is a nice idea, I will resist any proposal that puts the peoples’ treasure on the hook for a speculative venture that funnels all profits into the pockets of the PawSox’s owners. Public risk with private gain is the very definition of crony corporatism, and we must reject these voodoo economics.”
“The former I-195 land must create a flurry of business and innovation with professional, high-paying jobs. This proposal clearly misses the mark. Let’s not take our eye off the ball,” concluded Filippi.
Related Slideshow: Leaders React to PawSox Owners’ Providence Stadium Proposal
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Enjoy this post? Share it with others.ON SATURDAY NIGHT, the French rugby public sat up and took notice of Connacht.
As Grenoble head coach Bernard Jackman indicated after his side squeezed past the western province in a thrilling Challenge Cup final, the game went out on free-to-air TV in the primetime 9pm slot.
O'Gara helped Racing to a huge win over Toulon on Sunday. Source: James Crombie/INPHO
What French rugby supporters witnessed was a stunning demonstration of attacking rugby. Midi Olympique, the biweekly rugby newspaper, was enthusiastic about Connacht on Monday morning and that praise has been echoed almost everywhere in the French media.
Sitting in Paris on Saturday night, ahead of Sunday’s Champions Cup quarter-final win against Toulon, Racing 92 assistant coach Ronan O’Gara and his family were as impressed as anyone.
The sense of occasion around Connacht’s quarter-final, and their faithful travelling Connacht Clan, reminded O’Gara of something he was part of in years gone by.
Speaking after Racing’s win against Toulon at Stade Yves du Manoir in Paris, O’Gara recounted his feeling that Connacht are building something big.
“My mum and dad are over and I just said to them, ‘It’s like Munster 15 years ago,’” said O’Gara. “Them all suppin’ pints in the crowd, everyone going bananas.
“It’s such a great occasion to be part of and Grenoble with a serious team, Birch [Jackman] and Prendy [Mike Prendergast] going well there. I thought it was just fascinating to watch. It was everything good about Irish rugby, for a small nation.”
O’Gara believes Connacht are playing rugby the right way under Pat Lam, and praised their attacking play.
O'Gara with his sons after Racing won in Paris. Source: James Crombie/INPHO
However, the more pragmatic part of him wonders if Connacht could have managed the game against Grenoble a little better. The Racing coach certainly feels that the defeat in Stade des Alpes will have been an important learning experience.
“I think they’re exceptionally clinical and accurate and I think they just so believe in their game plan and what they’re being coached,” said O’Gara. “It’s fascinating to watch, but at 19-3 when things are going so well, sometimes you just have to take the pace out of the game.
That’s not me saying something off my high horse, it’s just a humble opinion on it. At 19-3, a penalty 10 minutes later and another penalty makes it a three-score game, which mentally is insurmountable.
“I don’t think you always have to… it’s so much easier watching it on a computer. When you’re out there, it’s not that easy.
“They have a different out-half and I think he has huge potential, I thought Shane O’Leary had great moments but that happened.
“I learned those kind of mistakes in the AIL, he’s learning them in Stade des Alpes. That’ll stand to him and accelerate his development. It’s great he’s getting an opportunity like that.”
The42 is on Snapchat! Tap the button below on your phone to add!Do you remember the days when you used to be able to head out to the cinema safe in the knowledge that even if the film you wanted to see had sold out, there'd be something else worth watching? I'm talking about 10,000 years ago, obviously, because here's what's on at your local multiplex.
Screen one: a 3D CGI cartoon about a wisecracking badger with attitude you'd quite happily reverse a six-tonne tractor over. Screen two: a 3D superhero theme park ride that thinks it's King Lear. Screen three: a rom-com so formulaic you suspect it was created from a template on Moonpig.com. Screen four: The Very Hungry Caterpillar 3D. Screen five: all of the above, randomly intercut with one another because no one's paying attention anyway. Screen six: a lightshow for cattle. And so on.
About once a month there's a film actually worth bothering with: either something with a quirky sensibility and a modest budget, or the occasional decent blockbuster the studios have made by mistake. There seems to be something missing from cinema: big budget dramas with panache, aimed at an adult audience. Where are they? They migrated to television. And – don't snort with derision here – to video games.
Consider two of the biggest video games of 2011 thus far. The first is Portal 2, a darkly humorous science fiction... what? Story? Puzzle? Game? "Experience" seems like the best word to use, even though typing that makes me feel like shoving my fist in my mouth to punch my brain from an unexpected angle. The game mechanics of Portal 2 are almost impossible to describe without diagrams, but I'll try: you wander around a 3D environment trying to escape a series of rooms by firing magic holes on to the walls or floor; holes you can walk or fall through. So if I fire a hole on to the ceiling, and another on to the ground, I can jump through the ground and re-appear falling through the ceiling. This simple dynamic provides the basis for a series of fiendishly clever puzzles you find yourself working through – all of it tied into a humorous narrative that unfolds with more confidence, charm and sophistication than was strictly necessary. And before you whine about the solitary nature of games, it also includes a cooperative two-player mode in which you and a friend play through a parallel game together. The whole thing is stunningly clever and immensely enjoyable.
And then there's LA Noire, the James Ellroy-inspired crime drama, which has caused a stir, and rightly so, with its firm focus on narrative and staggering new facial animation technology. I'm a massive dweeb who keeps up with the latest gaming developments, and even I was astounded at what they've pulled off here. You're watching actors give genuine performances – within something that is still defiantly and unapologetically a video game. The lead character is played by Aaron Staton, AKA Ken Cosgrove from Mad Men – and is instantly recognisable, not just from his likeness, but also his facial mannerisms. Amusingly, plenty of his fellow Mad Men cast members also show up throughout the game (as well as faces familiar from shows such as Heroes and Fringe), reinforcing the overall feel of the game – which is like working your way through a hard-nosed HBO police procedural miniseries set in Los Angeles in the 1940s. If you've never played a game, or you think you hate them – but my description sounds vaguely appealing, give it a spin. Just watch someone else play it for a while if you like. I guarantee you'll be surprised.
And what really made me excited, thinking about both of these games, is that behind the state-of-the-art technology they both make use of (which has a level of sophistication that might come as a blinding shock to anyone who hasn't played a game since 1996), they're both old-fashioned video games at heart – not old-fashioned in the finger-twitching, reaction-testing Space Invaders sense, but something richer, something often overlooked by the population at large: old-fashioned video games that challenge the mind instead of the thumbs.
Portal 2 is essentially a demented series of puzzles – like being stuck inside a physics-based logic problem designed by the Python team; LA Noire is a trad adventure game. Adventure games used to be as close as gaming got to fiction. They started out as interactive text-based shaggy dog stories (a prime example being Douglas Adams's fantastic Hitchhiker's Guide Infocom adventure), transformed into point-and-click comedies (such as Monkey Island), and then largely went away for a while, as the gaming industry focused on gung-ho shooters aimed at teenage boys. The size, scope, and sheer self-assurance of LA Noire marks a major comeback for adventure games – for interactive fiction – and, potentially, a huge leap forward for wider acceptance of the medium as a whole.
And both these games – both of these entirely different, utterly unique creations – are a huge commercial success. In cinematic terms, it's the equivalent of films of the intelligence and quality of 2001: A Space Odyssey and The Maltese Falcon not just being released to great |
a Web page played a bigger role than design, price or any other characteristics of the tent in predicting which one a consumer picked. The first tent was chosen 2.5 times more often, said Mr. Randall, who is also a columnist for the magazine Fast Company.
Mr. Renvoisé said, “We know that what triggers buying decisions is emotion. There is no such thing as a rational decision of buying something. We make emotional decisions, and then we rationalize them.”
There are times, however, when consumers seem to try to assert the cognitive function of their brain, but are short circuited.
Dr. Mitchell said research has shown that if you have two similar items on a Web page, one selling for $200, and the other for $250, for instance, most customers will purchase the cheaper item. But add a third item at a higher price—say $300—one that the company is not even interested in selling, and most people will purchase the $250 item.
What can you do to resist this influence over the Internet? Not much.
“This is all happening below the level of awareness,” Dr. Mitchell said. “I study it and I am vulnerable to it.”
These psychological triggers are increasingly well-researched, and are layered together so that the average shopper—or even the expert—can’t untangle them while in the middle of deciding on a purchase, she added.
However, Mr. Lindstrom and Dr. Mitchell said you can swim against tide of mindless consumerism by asserting a bit of self discipline. To resist untoward psychological sway while shopping online do the following:
1) Determine what you are going to buy online, and stick to it.
2) Determine the amount of time you are going to shop online, and stick to it. Mr. Lindstrom added that customers should resist timers on Web sites that bully you to make purchasing decisions within seconds.
3) Determine your online shopping budget, and stick to it. Mr. Lindstrom suggests going so far as spending online only what you literally have in your wallet. “It’s a mental barrier,” he said. “Let’s say, you want to buy a $259 iPod. Suddenly it becomes extremely physical if I have to have that money in my wallet. If people were to follow that single piece of advice, nine out of 10 purchases would not happen.”Opposition says post-surrender deal could allow Gaddafi to remain in Libya under international supervision
Muammar Gaddafi can live out his retirement in Libya if he surrenders all power, the country's opposition leader has said.
Gaddafi is facing an international arrest warrant and has resisted all demands to step down, but members of his inner circle have indicated they are ready to negotiate with the rebels, including on the Libyan leader's future.
Mustafa Abdel Jalil, who heads the rebels' national transitional council, told Reuters: "As a peaceful solution we offered that he can resign and order his soldiers to withdraw from their barracks and positions, and then he can decide either to stay in Libya or abroad.
"If he desires to stay in Libya, we will determine the place and it will be under international supervision. And there will be international supervision of all his movements."
Speaking in the rebels' eastern Libyan stronghold of Benghazi, Jalil, who was formerly Gaddafi's justice minister, said he made the proposal about a month ago through the UN but had yet to receive any response from Tripoli.
He said one suggestion was that Gaddafi could spend his retirement under guard in a military barracks.
The Libyan government has repeatedly insisted that Gaddafi is a symbolic figurehead who has no involvement in the day-to-day running of the country. The regime's spokesman, Moussa Ibrahim, said it was willing to "set down in writing" that Gaddafi would have no political or military powers under a new constitution.
Asked if this would leave Gaddafi's role comparable to that of the Queen in the UK, Ibrahim added: "Maybe for the sake of argument, something like that."
But pressed on the latest concession by Jalil he was dismissive, saying that any such decisions should be left to the Libyan people.
"What we are doing is legally and morally and politically far more convincing," he said. "We are saying Libyans should decide for everyone on the position of the leader. Now who is more democratic, us or the rebels?"
Gaddafi's daughter Aisha has said her father would be prepared to cut a deal with the rebels though he would not leave the country, and his son, Saif al-Islam, said the leader would step down if that was the will of the Libyan people.
Turkey, which had close economic ties to Gaddafi before the uprising, has pledged £125m in aid for the rebels in addition to the £62m it announced in June.
"Public demand for reforms should be answered, Gaddafi should go and Libya shouldn't be divided," Turkish foreign minister Ahmet Davutoglu told Reuters in Benghazi, adding that he saw the rebel council as the "legitimate representative" of the people.
The conflict in Libya is close to deadlock, with rebels on three fronts unable to make a decisive advance towards Tripoli and growing strains inside Nato about the cost of the operation and lack of a military breakthrough.(CNN) The pause button was hit on the Korean War in 1953. Its legacy of destruction lives on.
In just three years, the war claimed the lives of millions of people and forever changed the Korean Peninsula.
"We went over there and fought the war and eventually burned down every town in North Korea anyway, some way or another, and some in South Korea, too," said former US Air Force commander Gen. Curtis LeMay in 1988, during an interview for an Air Force military history volume.
By the time the armistice was signed on July 27, 1953, North Korea -- which began the war with a population of 9.6 million -- had suffered an estimated 1.3 million civilian and military casualties, according to figures cited by the US Air Force. South Korea, meanwhile, suffered up to 3 million civilian and 225,000 military casualties, from a total population of around 20.2 million in 1950.
Gen. Douglas MacArthur, a legendary figure in the US military who went on to become the commander-in-chief of the United Nations Command at the onset of the war, said during a congressional hearing in 1951 that he had never seen such devastation.
"I shrink with horror that I cannot express in words -- at this continuous slaughter of men in Korea," MacArthur said. "I have seen, I guess, as much blood and disaster as any living man, and it just curdled my stomach, the last time I was there."
The war was one that many were reluctant to join, coming as it did just five years after the end of World War II.
More than 33,000 Americans were killed in the fighting and 600,000 from the Chinese military -- who joined to protect their fellow communist neighbors -- were left dead or missing.
The Chinese and the Americans went home after the fighting, but North Koreans stayed amid the ruins of the battle -- their entire infrastructure decimated, their towns and cities completely obliterated.
Though the armistice date holds some significance in the United States -- the US will start the process of banning Americans from travel to North Korea Thursday -- the legacy of destruction was and remains a key piece of propaganda for Kim Il Sung, his son Kim Jong Il and his grandson Kim Jong Un, who now rules the country.
Photos: Photos: Scenes from the Korean War Scenes from the Korean War – An American soldier comforts a comrade during the Korean War, circa 1950. Click through to see more scenes from the Korean War. Hide Caption 1 of 16 Photos: Photos: Scenes from the Korean War Scenes from the Korean War – A woman and child wander among debris in Pyongyang, North Korea, after an air raid by U.S. planes, circa 1950. The war began on June 25, 1950, when the North Korean People's Army crossed the 38th parallel and easily overwhelmed South Korean forces in a surprise attack. Hide Caption 2 of 16 Photos: Photos: Scenes from the Korean War Scenes from the Korean War – An American soldier walks around the rubble of Hamhung, North Korea, in an undated photo. On June 30, 1950, President Harry S. Truman ordered American troops into the fighting. Hide Caption 3 of 16 Photos: Photos: Scenes from the Korean War Scenes from the Korean War – North Korean leader Kim Il-Sung, left, signs a document in Seoul, South Korea, in an undated photo. The armistice ending the war was signed in July 1953, and its terms included the creation of the Demilitarized Zone. Hide Caption 4 of 16 Photos: Photos: Scenes from the Korean War Scenes from the Korean War – A U.S. Army chaplain prays by injured soldiers at a combat field hospital in August 1950. Hide Caption 5 of 16 Photos: Photos: Scenes from the Korean War Scenes from the Korean War – U.S. Marines attack Hagaru-ri, North Korea, in December 1950. Hide Caption 6 of 16 Photos: Photos: Scenes from the Korean War Scenes from the Korean War – An abandoned girl cries in the streets of Incheon, South Korea, in September 1950. Hide Caption 7 of 16 Photos: Photos: Scenes from the Korean War Scenes from the Korean War – An American soldier searches a foxhole for enemies in February 1951. Hide Caption 8 of 16 Photos: Photos: Scenes from the Korean War Scenes from the Korean War – Gen. Douglas MacArthur, center, head of the U.N. Command in the Korean War, and other military personnel observe shelling in Incheon from the USS Mount McKinley in September 1950. Hide Caption 9 of 16 Photos: Photos: Scenes from the Korean War Scenes from the Korean War – The 187th U.S. Airborne Regimental Combat Team conducts a practice jump in South Korea, circa 1951. Hide Caption 10 of 16 Photos: Photos: Scenes from the Korean War Scenes from the Korean War – North Korean prisoners of war make baskets on the floor of a storage barn at a prison, circa 1951. Hide Caption 11 of 16 Photos: Photos: Scenes from the Korean War Scenes from the Korean War – Marines use a flamethrower in April 1951. Hide Caption 12 of 16 Photos: Photos: Scenes from the Korean War Scenes from the Korean War – The USS Missouri bombards Chongjin, North Korea, circa May 1951. Hide Caption 13 of 16 Photos: Photos: Scenes from the Korean War Scenes from the Korean War – U.S. Marines duck for cover in a bunker as a shell explodes in April 1952. Hide Caption 14 of 16 Photos: Photos: Scenes from the Korean War Scenes from the Korean War – Actress Marilyn Monroe entertains troops, circa 1952. Hide Caption 15 of 16 Photos: Photos: Scenes from the Korean War Scenes from the Korean War – U.S. troops emerge from helicopters onto an open field, circa 1953. Hide Caption 16 of 16
The 'original sin'
For North Koreans, destruction came from above. The conflict is seen as the first large-scale air campaign conducted by the US Air Force.
American planes dropped approximately 635,000 tons of explosives on North Korea (that's more in three years than during the entire Pacific theater of World War II), including 32,000 tons of napalm, according to historian Charles Armstrong.
Gen. Curtis LeMay in September 1965.
That continued fear of deadly US military airstrikes helps the North Korean government to portray Americans as a far-away caricature, a faceless enemy that leveled their country and could do so again.
"The bombing is treated as the American original sin in the (North Korean) propaganda and it certainly was savage," according to Robert E. Kelly, a professor of political science at South Korea's Pusan National University. "It's become a political tool to justify the permanent emergency state. Japanese colonization is used the same."
A 'Sea of Blood'
An anti-US propaganda poster displayed at a kindergarten in 2012 in Pyongyang, North Korea. The Korean characters say "we love playing military games knocking down the American bastards." Source: AP
Most historians say the war started when the eldest Kim invaded the south, but North Korea teaches its citizens the United States started the war -- and only the Kim family can protect them.
The North Korean state attempts to engender a visceral hatred for the United States. Kindergarteners draw anti-American martial images. The news media releases videos of the US military in flames. The June 25 anniversary of the start of the Korean War is "the day of struggle against US imperialism."
The man who led them through war, Kim Il Sung, is revered as a god in North Korea and credited with countless accomplishments: most notably inventing the country's guiding ideology, juche -- which means self-reliance -- and liberating the Korean Peninsula from Japanese occupation.
Works of poetry and art are also attributed to him -- and lionized by North Koreans.
Tens of thousands of men and women pump their fists in the air and chant "Defend!" as they carry placards with anti-American propaganda slogans at Pyongyang's central Kim Il Sung Square Sunday, June 25, 2017, in Pyongyang, North Korea -- the anniversary of the start of the Korean War. In North Korea, it's called "the day of struggle against US imperialism."
An example of this is the play, "The Sea of Blood." Considered among the country's most important cultural works, it tells the story of a poor farmer who joins the fight against the Japanese occupation. He is killed, but his wife, who joins the communist resistance, goes on to help defeat the Japanese.
The play -- which is quite violent and carries strong ethnocentric undertones, North Korea analysts say -- is a key juche text, due to its courageous, independent and patriotic protagonist.
The juche ideology has been hammered into the North Korean psyche since Kim first introduced it during the 1950s. Works of propaganda like "Sea of Blood" -- and the fact that it's nearly impossible for those inside the country to get information from the outside world -- help reinforce the underdog, survivor mentality that is at the heart of the juche idea.
Nuclear weapons
That survivor mentality extends into government, too. The country's constitution states that "national defense is the supreme duty and honor of citizens," and the country is governed by the "songun" -- or military-first -- policy, which places the armed forces above all else.
A child draws tanks and weapons during an art class in Pyongyang, North Korea. For North Korean children, the systematic indoctrination of anti-Americanism starts as early as kindergarten.
When it comes to North Korea's nuclear and missile programs, the Kim regime looks at leaders like Libya's Moammar Gadhafi -- who gave up his pursuit of nuclear weapons for security guarantees and sanctions relief but was eventually ousted and killed -- and believes those weapons are the key to regime survival.
So the country spends an incredibly high percentage of its budget on defense, and tells its people that the expenditures are crucial to preventing a US invasion.
JUST WATCHED Footage emerges of North Korea's ICBM launch Replay More Videos... MUST WATCH Footage emerges of North Korea's ICBM launch 00:47
With the country's apparent successful test of an intercontinental ballistic missile earlier this month, they may be getting close to that goal.
"Now that the DPRK's (the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, North Korea's official name) capability to strike the very heart of the US at any given time has been physically proved, the US would find it more difficult to dare attack the DPRK," the North Korean Foreign Ministry said in a statement shortly after the missile launch.
"This is the only way to defend oneself and safeguard the dignity of the nation in the present hostile world where the law of the jungle prevails."New research has found that smokers who had a stroke in a brain region called the insular cortex were more likely to quit smoking than those who had strokes in other regions of the brain. The research has led scientists to conclude this region could be crucial in treating addiction.
Active smokers who had strokes in the insular cortex region of the brain were more likely to quit smoking than smokers who had strokes in other regions of the brain. Active smokers who had strokes in the insular cortex region of the brain were more likely to quit smoking than smokers who had strokes in other regions of the brain.
Smokers who had strokes in the insular cortex also did not experience as many withdrawal symptoms as those who had strokes in other regions of the brain.
This new research takes the form of two studies that are published in the journals Addiction and Addictive Behaviors, respectively.
"These findings indicate that the insular cortex may play a central role in addiction," reports lead author Amir Abdolahi, a clinical research scientist at Philips Research North America. "When this part of the brain is damaged during stroke, smokers are about twice as likely to stop smoking and their craving and withdrawal symptoms are far less severe."
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), cigarette smoking is the leading cause of preventable disease and death in the US, accounting for more than 480,000 deaths every year.
Due to the addictive qualities of nicotine, it can be difficult to quit smoking once it has become a habit. While smoking rates have fallen in recent years, from approximately 21 of every 100 adults in 2005 to 18 of every 100 adults in 2013, cigarette smoking is still behind 1 in every 5 deaths in the US.
At present, prescription drugs that are used to help people quit smoking work by disrupting "reward" pathways in the brain that respond to nicotine. Unfortunately, this form of treatment has a high rate of smoking relapse, with an estimated success rate of up to 30% after 6 months. Nicotine patches and lozenges have a similar rate of success.
Previous studies have suggested that the insular cortex region of the brain could play a significant role in the cognitive processes that enable drug use. It is unclear, however, as to whether changes in this region of the brain have any effect on drug use.
To investigate, the researchers set out to discover whether smokers who had suffered damage to the insular cortex from a stroke were more likely to quit smoking than smokers with acute damage to other regions of the brain.
Around 70% of insular cortex stroke patients quit smoking after 3 months
The two studies measured two different indicators of smoking cessation likelihood: how severe their cravings were during hospitalization from their stroke and whether or not they resumed smoking following their stroke.
A total of 156 patients with stroke were assessed in the study, all of whom were active smokers. The researchers determined the locations of their strokes using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and computed tomography (CT) and divided the patients into those whose strokes occurred in the insular cortex (38 patients) and those whose strokes occurred elsewhere (118 patients).
Fast facts about nicotine In the US, more people are addicted to nicotine than any other drug
Some studies suggest nicotine may be as addictive as alcohol, cocaine or heroin
Nicotine withdrawal symptoms include feeling irritable, lack of concentration and hunger. Learn more about nicotine
After measuring multiple aspects of withdrawal during hospitalization, the researchers found that the patients who had strokes in the insular cortex experienced fewer and less severe withdrawal symptoms compared with the patients whose strokes occurred in other brain regions.
The researchers also followed up the patients 3 months after their strokes, assessing their self-reported smoking status and any abstinence from nicotine products.
They found that while 37% of patients with strokes in other parts of the brain had quit smoking, 70% of the patients with strokes in the insular cortex had.
Although the studies involved a relatively small number of patients who experienced damage to the insular cortex, the researchers believe these findings support the potential role of this area of the brain in maintaining smoking and nicotine abstinence.
"Much more research is needed in order for us to more fully understand the underlying mechanism and specific role of the insular cortex, but is clear that something is going on in this part of the brain that is influencing addiction," Abdolahi concludes.
Previously, Medical News Today reported on a study investigating a new type of anti-smoking therapy. In the study, researchers assessed a bacterial enzyme that consumes nicotine "like a little Pac-Man" that may be able to prevent the drug from reaching the brain.A Muslim group responded to a billboard mocking Muhammad as a “perfect man” by installing a billboard of its own not too far from its location on an Indiana highway.
GainPeace, the Muslim group behind the new billboard, named the ad campaign the “truthful man” to reference the title of the original billboard that sparked its creation, the Indianapolis Star reported.
The billboard, placed on I-465 near Indianapolis not too far from the “perfect man” billboard, reads, “The truth about Muhammad. Get a free book on his life. Call 800-662-ISLAM.”
According to the group, anyone who calls that number can ask any question they want about Muhammad and is eligible to receive a free biography about Muhammad.
The group said the billboard is one phase of a six-week campaign it put together to raise awareness of their prophet Muhammad.
Other facets of the campaign include a mass-mail campaign where the organization will send 15,000 postcards about Muhammad and a web campaign that involves the creation of a 30-second video that will be able to be shared on social media.
The organization plans to keep the billboard up until July 30.Correction: An earlier version of this article incorrectly reported that Kierstyn Jeffries, a 20-year-old pre-med major at Howard University, was released on bail and required to wear a monitoring device on her ankle after she was charged with assault following an altercation with a fellow student. Jeffries was released on her own recognizance and was not required to wear a monitoring device. The article stated that Jeffries allegedly threw a pot of “boiling rice” at the fellow student, but a police report on which the article was based said the pot contained “hot water.” The article also incorrectly stated that Jeffries was expelled by the university. She is barred from campus but is attempting to regain her student privileges. This version has been corrected.
A female Frostburg State University student intervenes in an altercation at an off-campus party and gets slashed by a woman hosting the celebration, authorities say. Two Bowie State University suitemates spar over music, and one woman cuts the other’s throat. Female roommates at Howard University argue in the kitchen, and one throws a pot of hot water at the other.
Violent episodes between females are on the rise, authorities said, on playgrounds, in high school hallways and on college campuses across the country, where at least four women have been charged with killing female students since March. The violence is manifesting in an increased number of random assaults, group fights, flash-mob crimes and vicious one-on-one attacks, including the killings at Frostburg State on Nov. 6 and at Bowie State in September.
Although those cases have made headlines, the Howard scalding had not been publicly reported. It occurred Oct. 20, when pre-med major Kierstyn Jeffries, 20, of Detroit, allegedly threw a pot of hot water at Caije Murphy, 20, a pre-law student from Sellner, Fla., according to court documents. The two shared an on-campus apartment.
Jeffries was barred from campus and charged in D.C. Superior Court with assault with significant bodily harm. She was released on her own recognizance pending a hearing Wednesday, said a source with firsthand knowledge of the case. Murphy’s chest was seriously burned.
Murphy told police that she and Jeffries argued as Jeffries cooked dinner because Jeffries was using dishes that Murphy’s mother had bought for her. As the argument grew heated, the students “began to swing and hit and scratch each other,” a court statement says. Jeffries is accused of snatching a pan off the stove and flinging its scalding contents at Murphy, who was hospitalized at Washington Hospital Center. She has returned to classes.
Experts said college campuses are fertile ground for conflict. Young people tasting independence for the first time might be less willing to compromise in confrontations. Many students feel isolated until they find the right friends and social activities, leaving them without a support system to help resolve problems. Primary schools have also reported violent incidents involving girls.
“Every week, there is some sort of violent altercation between females and the arrest of young females for violent crimes,” said Prince William County Commonwealth’s Attorney Paul B. Ebert (D). “People are figuring out you can’t let them get away with it. Law enforcement has to treat females who are violent the same way they do males if they are going to [change] it.”
As a result of concerns about violence, Howard and other colleges and universities have established zero-tolerance policies. Students who live in residential facilities receive training in “conflict resolution, impulse control and anger management,” said Elaine Bourne Heath, Howard’s dean of special student services, which oversees residential life. Problems between roommates are addressed through mediation or swapping rooms, and students who behave violently are expelled.
Heath said that social media have created a forum for young people to bully each other in a way that incites violence.
Statistics from “Girls Study Group,” a 2008 U.S. Justice Department report, show that arrests of girls increased more than those for boys in most crime categories between 1991 and 2000. In 2005, juveniles accounted for 2.1 million of 14 million arrests. Girls made up one-third of juvenile arrests, including 18 percent of violent offenses. Arrests for simple assault among girls increased by 24 percent between 1996 and 2005, while arrests for boys for the same offense dropped. The increase in arrests of girls in the 25-year period that ended in 2005 is even more disturbing, given that lockups for boys decreased during that time, authorities said.
“Women now participate in traditionally male-dominated pursuits, such as sports and politics, and exhibit typically male personality characteristics like outspokenness, physical toughness and aggressiveness,” Horace Hall, an associate professor and researcher on adolescent development and identity formation at DePaul University, said in a June broadcast on the Inside Higher Ed Web site. He attributed the uptick in female violence to “changing views of femininity,” as well as low self-esteem, lax parenting, poor communication and conflict-resolution skills, and a desire to avenge slights.
“This has flipped the traditional and conventional gender and sexual scripts upside down,” Hall told the audience, “and forced society to rethink... perceptions around quote-unquote femaleness.”
An argument among two women ended in death for Kortneigh McCoy, 18, at Frostburg State University. (BALTIMORE SUN)
Authorities said the violence may be stoked by a barrage of images of women attacking each other on reality shows and dramatic series. And the same tendency among boys, to be violent to engender respect, now affects girls.
“It’s the notion of the alpha dog — ‘I am in charge, I am in control, I am dominant,’ ” Hall said. “It’s a highly complex phenomenon in which girls and women are expressing their rage physically.”
At Frostburg State in Western Maryland, authorities think an argument Nov. 6 between Shanee L. Liggins, 23, of Waldorf and Kortneigh L. McCoy, 19, of Baltimore escalated into a fight between the two at the house where Liggins lives just off campus. The fight led to a homicide, police said.
According to a statement of probable cause, witnesses told police that just after 1 a.m., Liggins and a friend of McCoy’s got into an altercation. “Kortneigh broke up the scuffle in the kitchen” before others at the party asked her group to leave. As they stood outside, Liggins approached McCoy, witnesses said.
“A second later, Kortneigh fell to the ground,” Dylon Clahar, a witness, told police. McCoy was taken to Western Maryland Regional Medical Center, where doctors discovered she had been stabbed once in the temple and once in the neck. She died in surgery, the report said.
Liggins, who is accused in the death, is being held without bond, and a preliminary hearing is scheduled for Dec. 2 in Allegany County District Court, a court official said.
The murder trial of Bowie State freshman Alexis D. Simpson, 19, of District Heights is scheduled for March 26. She is accused of fatally stabbing Dominique T. Frazier, 19, of Northeast Washington in a fight that erupted after the two disagreed about music playing on an iPod as they prepared to go to a homecoming week event Sept. 15.
“These are women, in my opinion, who are very talented but lack conflict-resolution skills, coping skills,” said Prince George’s County State’s Attorney Angela D. Alsobrooks, referring to the recent college attacks. Her office is prosecuting Simpson.
“Our concern then becomes the nature of the crimes,” she said.
Such violence involving young women has become a national issue. Two weeks before the Bowie State slaying, Florida A&M women’s basketball shooting guard Shannon Washington, 20, was fatally stabbed in the neck and back, allegedly by her roommate and girlfriend, Starquineshia Palmer, 20, a mother of two. On March 3, Middle Tennessee State University was shocked by the slaying of Tina Stewart, 21, a basketball standout, who was stabbed in the apartment she shared with Shanterrica Madden. Court records show that Madden, 18, apparently confessed to killing her roommate in self-defense after an argument.
Web sites are rife with fights captured on cellphone cameras. Many of the videos show girls going at each other in ugly spectacles, watched by jeering crowds that do not intervene. Prosecutors have used the videos in cases against girls on charges of assault and other offenses.
Three years ago, authorities used a posted video of the beating of Lakeland, Fla., cheerleader Victoria Lindsay, then 16, to prosecute several of her classmates. The video shows a weeping Lindsay, who did not fight back, being struck dozens of times by schoolmates who alternated between punching and taunting her.
“Something has gone amiss,” said Isaac Fulwood Jr., chairman of the U.S. Commission on Parole. “We should be studying this behavior when it comes to girls. This is a relatively new phenomenon, but you see it everywhere today — young females cursing, fighting, behaving aggressively on the Metro, on the street. We need to figure out something, quick, to deal with this.”
thomaslestera@washpost.com
Staff writer Jenna Johnson contributed to this report.The ACTA Treaty is trying to do an end around the laws of countries by secretly enacting "3 strikes" laws against "pirates." Get reported 3 times for violation copyright, and get kicked off the Internet forever. This is patently ridiculous in so many ways, but if you're going to enact a "3 strikes" law then here are some suggestions for the shadowy negotiators to ponder. Just Google It: A person should be banned from the Internet if they post a question that could've been easily answered by a simple Google search, and be informed to "just Google it" by other posters. After 3 such posts the offender is banned. Phrases such as "I was too lazy to do a search" or "I couldn't find anything on Bing" do not exempt the poster from punishment. Exceptions are made for minors and for people whose last name begins with the letter "U" (if we're going to be arbitrary about these laws, we might as well go all the way). The Dead Meme: Three offenses of referring to a meme in a non-historical manner after it has been declared dead by the Internet Meme Council (IMC). The IMC will be made up of members from the major meme-generating sites (e.g. Fark, 4chan, Reddit) who will meet in secret every three months to determine which meme lives and which dies. Results are not made public, so evictions from the Internet will seem sufficiently arbitrary. Ignorance of a meme's status is not a defense for violating this rule. No exemptions for age or city of birth. The Misleading Headline: Publications guilty of using sensational headlines that have are not reflected in the actual story will be banned from the Internet after three offenses. Headlines such as "Obama Decapitates Glenn Beck in Debate" where the story does not included head loss or actual debate are guilty. Determination of misleadingness will be determined like movie ratings. A panel of 3 Mormons and 4 fundamentalist Christians will decide. Exemptions can be purchased for $10,000 per headline run. Unwanted Facebook Notifications: If you send out 3 or more unwanted Facebook notifications from 3 different applications in a 30 minute time period, your access to the Internet will be terminated. Violators will also have to spend 30 hours reading junk mail from credit card companies just for the hell of it. 30-day exemption for new users. Brain-dead Clicker: Three clicks on ads depicting ripped abs, 100,000th visitor, singles in your area or smileys will need to find a new place to be moronic. The only reasons these ads run is that stupid people click on them, eliminating those people from the Internet will make the Internet better for everyone else. Children under 13 and people with Random Click Syndrome are exempt from this rule. Scholars and satirists can also file for an exemption with the Association to Prevent Stupid People from Clicking on Ads that Annoy the Rest of Us. Related News New Law Protects Free Speech New Legislation Would Ban Urban Legends Government to Distribute Souls to SpammersBack in June we confirmed that Matt Smith would be leaving Doctor Who and since then there’s been intense speculation about who would be taking over the role of the Doctor. But the guesswork and conjecture end this weekend… The BBC will reveal the identity of the next Doctor during a live BBC One show that begins at 7pm on Sunday, 04 August. You can watch a trailer for the programme now!
The news about the announcement has been delivered in the following press release:
Doctor Who Live: The Next Doctor
In a special one-off live television event on BBC One this Sunday 4th August at 7pm, the next Doctor will be exclusively revealed to the nation.
Widely regarded as one of the most hotly contested roles in British television, the show's host Zoe Ball will unveil the 12th Doctor in the first ever interview in front of a live studio audience set against the backdrop of a swirling vortex, amongst Daleks and the TARDIS.
The half hour show will include live special guests, Doctors old and new, as well as companions and celebrity fans.
Excitement will reach fever pitch as they speculate and recall their favourites, plus feature clips and moments from across the show's 50 year history.
Current Doctor Matt Smith and lead writer and executive producer Steven Moffat will both give interviews about one of the biggest roles in TV and set out just what it takes to be the Doctor.
Steven Moffat says: “The decision is made and the time has come to reveal who’s taking over the TARDIS. For the last of the Time Lords, the clock is striking twelve.”
Charlotte Moore, Controller BBC One says: “BBC One is the home of big live events and this special live show is the perfect way to reveal the identity of the next Doctor and share it with the nation. The Doctor is a truly iconic role and I’m more than excited about the booking.”
Ben Stephenson, Controller, BBC Drama Commissioning says: “We can't wait to unveil the next Doctor with everyone live on BBC1 on Sunday night. Amongst all the speculation and betting, there has been lots of fun and intrigue at work as we've been using the codename Houdini as a decoy! It’s the biggest secret in showbiz, even those working with the new Doctor on other projects at the moment have no idea they are in the presence of the 12th incarnation.”
Keep up to date with all the latest news about the show and special guests as we build to the big climax over the next few days and follow www.facebook.com/BBCOne, @ BBCOne and @bbcdoctorwho and bbc.co.uk/doctorwho
The special live show is made by BBC Entertainment and Events for BBC One, Guy Freeman is Executive producer and Pinki Chambers is Executive Commissioning Editor. Commissioned by Charlotte Moore, Controller BBC One.
The show will be simulcast live on BBC America. Doctor Who is produced by BBC Cymru Wales.
Before the announcement we’ll bring you lots more exciting news, including how you can be part of the big reveal!
The next Doctor will be revealed on Sunday… More news soon!Tour guides leading thousands of visitors to Masada each year follow a similar routine: Where Roman troops breached the walls, they retell Josephus Flavius’s account of how a group of obsessive, fanatical Jewish rebels refused to concede to servitude or slaughter, and committed suicide instead.
For decades, archaeology at the site has been calling the story of the suicide, so central to Israel’s national myth, into question. Now new discoveries may force a revision of the notion that the group atop the fort was much more diverse than the heroic band of brigands celebrated by the cherished story.
“We’re actually excavating a refugee camp,” said Guy Stiebel, the archaeologist leading excavations carried out earlier this year by Tel Aviv University. Masada’s inhabitants during the seven years of the revolt were “a sort of microcosm of Judaea back then,” comprising refugees from Jerusalem and across Judaea, including priests, members of the enigmatic monastic group from Qumran that wrote the Dead Sea Scrolls, and at least one Samaritan.
“What my expedition intends to do is to reconstruct life at Masada, without even referring to the death and what happened at the end,” Stiebel said.
Ilan Ben Zion An area of the western side Masada excavated in 2017 by a team from Tel Aviv University headed by Prof. Guy Stiebel. Share
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Around three years after Jerusalem fell to Titus’s army in 70 C.E., a Roman army besieged the last rebel holdouts on Masada, a royal pleasure palace-turned-fortress built a century earlier by King Herod. Flavius Josephus, a Jewish rebel turncoat who became a Roman imperial court historian, wrote about the desert siege in his book, “The Jewish War.” He recounted that the rebels at Masada, members of a radical group called the Sicarii, committed mass suicide before the Romans entered the fortress.
According to Josephus, they killed themselves in an act of defiance rather than become slaves to Rome.
Despite the fact that Josephus wrote his work years after the events, and likely didn’t witness the siege firsthand, his writings are often treated like scripture. These new finds further undermine Josephus’s account |
US oil production and a reduction in investment.
Business investment in mining, exploration, shafts and oil wells plunged by 48.7% in the quarter, the Commerce Department said.
US oil field services provider Schlumberger has cut its capital spending plans for this year by about $500m to $2.5bn, while Halliburton has reduced investment by about 15% to $2.8bn.
However, economists believe that most of the cuts to investment by energy companies have already taken place, and so energy-related spending will not weigh on growth as much in the second quarter of the year.
Paul Ashworth, chief US economist at Capital Economics, said the US economy "all but stagnated" in the first quarter.
But he added that while the 0.2% annualised gain might raise fears that the recovery was somehow coming off the rails, he anticipated a "marked acceleration in growth" over the remaining three quarters of this year.
"Over the past 12 months, the economy has expanded by 3% and we would expect it to continue growing at around that pace this year too," he added.
The first quarter growth figures come ahead of the outcome of the latest US Federal Reserve meeting.
While no change in interest rates is expected, the Fed's statement will be studied for clues as to when the central bank might start to raise rates.We all know that Huawei is no stranger to making great phones (take the fan favorite Nexus 6P, for example). Even at the low end of the price spectrum, the hardware is laudable. The P-series kicked off on a new foot last year with the P9 and P9 Plus, which brought great hardware and the impressive Leica cameras to the high-end smartphone business.
For 2017, we have the P10 and P10 Plus that bring sleek hardware, even better cameras, and a nicer software experience. Huawei has delivered something that provides almost anything you could ask for in a phone: good battery life, great camera, nice screen, and even an improved software experience.
For the purposes of disclosure, I only received the smaller P10. It shares almost everything specs-wise with its larger brother except for a few things, which I shall note below.
Specs Display 5.1" IPS LCD 1920 x 1080 (P10); 5.5" IPS LCD 2560 x 1440 (P10 Plus) Software Android 7.0 Nougat; EMUI 5.1 CPU HiSilicon Kirin 960; 4 x 2.4GHz Cortex-A73, 4 x 1.8GHz Cortex-A53 GPU Mali-G70 MP8 RAM 4GB (P10); 4GB/6GB (P10 Plus) Storage 32GB/64GB, expandable via microSD (P10); 64GB/128GB, expandable via microSD (P10 Plus) Cameras 12MP RGB + 20MP monochrome, f/2.2 rear, 8MP front (P10); 12MP + 20MP, f/1.8 rear, 8MP front (P10 Plus) Battery 3,200mAh (P10); 3,750mAh (P10 Plus) Connectivity Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac, dual-band; LTE bands 1/2/3/4/5/7/8/9/12/17/18/19/20/26/28/29/38/39/40/41; dual-SIM Ports USB Type-C, 3.5mm headphone jack Measurements 145.3 x 69.3 x 7 mm; 145 g Colors White, silver, black, gold, rose gold, blue, green
The Good Hardware The P10 is built really well and feels nice in the hand. The premium quality is readily apparent. Camera The Leica camera setup performs excellently in many different conditions. Most photos come out looking great. Fingerprint sensor Once again, Huawei amazes with the speed and accuracy of its fingerprint sensors. Ergonomics The smaller P10 is a fantastic size and is a joy to hold and use. It works well for most hand sizes. Choices There are a lot of color options for the P10 series. I really liked the look of the blue and green choices.
The Not So Good Screen While the resolution, colors, and viewing angles are great, the lack of oleophobic coating and less-than-desirable brightness are not so good. Software EMUI 5 is no longer the eyesore of its predecessors, and 5.1 smooths things out a bit. Still, there is a ton of bloatware and other functionality choices that make little sense. Camera (again) While I like the camera, I am sad to see that only the P10 Plus gets the f/1.8 setup. Version This should have shipped with Android 7.1 at this point.
Hardware
Huawei has nailed the hardware aspect of its devices for a few years now, with the P10 being no exception — overall, this is one of the phone's strengths. You can expect a slim, quality device that fits nicely in the hand, though it tends to show signs of use fairly quickly and easily.
The display is okay, though it desperately needs an oleophobic coating and a boost to brightness. But let's dive right into the hardware, shall we? There's plenty here to talk about.
Design & build materials
At first glance, the smaller P10 resembles an iPhone, especially to the casual observer. However, any sort of further examination reveals the differences. The antennae lines curve and are especially subtle on this black model, but the Leica camera setup and Huawei logo (where the fingerprint sensor should be) really help distinguish it.
The front is pretty standard, with the fingerprint sensor sitting below the display panel and the usual front-facing camera, earpiece, and sensors up above it. The right side of frame is home to the very tactile and responsive volume rocker and power button — which has a nice texture to it to help tell it apart from the volume rocker it rests under. Oh, and it has a cool red edge around it (on my unit). The top and left portions of the phone don't have much, except for the dual-SIM/microSD card tray on the latter. Along the bottom is where you'll find the USB-C port, 3.5mm headphone jack, and single speaker.
The whole phone is aluminium that is coated in a soft finish. The matte black model I received gets a bit smudgy/fingerprinty and is difficult to wipe off with just a shirt; that, of course, can spoil the premium look. Unsurprisingly, the glass that covers the upper portion of the P10's back is fairly susceptible to oils, too.
I have no other complaints about the overall design and build materials of the phone, but I feel it is necessary to mention how nice it feels to hold and use. The 5.1" screen coupled with fairly narrow left/right bezels helps the P10 to feel like a good-sized phone, in my opinion. It is a bit slippery, so bear that in mind, but its diminutive size helps in overall grip.
As regular readers of the site may know, we tend to really like Huawei's fingerprint sensors. They are usually some of the fastest and most accurate ones around, and the P10 holds up to that. Even sitting in a metal phone stand, which has a lip that curves up in front, I can still unlock the phone with my thumb. It's pretty damn crazy.
Display
One of the main differences between the P10 and P10 Plus is the display resolution. The former comes with a 1080p screen while the larger of the two boasts QHD. Both, however, are IPS LCD panels and subject to the strengths and weaknesses therein. To my bemusement, I found that the brightness, especially outdoors, leaves much to be desired.
The colors and viewing angles, on the other hand, are quite good. If you prefer the saturation on AMOLED panels, then you will not be happy with the P10's display. The colors tend toward a cooler, softer tone that feels a bit easier on the eyes. It's all a matter of preference, but it's worth noting.
But there is one larger issue that I have with the P10. Like the Honor 6X, the P10 does not ship with an oleophobic coating on the glass. While one could make an argument for a lower-end, budget phone not having one, I fail to see why a top-tier device lacks it. Supposedly, the P10 (and Plus) come with a pre-installed screen protector, but my unit does not have one — thanks, David.
I hate a smudgy screen that I need to compulsively wipe off several times throughout the day. For people like me, it can sour one's experience with a device. I'll try to let this go for now, but why do you do this to me, Huawei?
Battery life
Battery life is something that Huawei usually gets right. In this little phone, you get a whopping 3,200mAh battery which makes you wonder why phones like the HTC U Ultra, with a 5.7" screen and a larger body, only has a 3,000mAh. Think about that for a second.
The P10 lasts all day and more for me, which is just fantastic. Even on days where I pushed the phone to its limit, like when running the gauntlet of benchmarks and tests, I still reached day's end with 15%-20%. On a more normal day, I end up plugging in my phone at night with about 40% left. I went hiking up in the mountains on one occasion, where there was no signal, and the P10 still had about 30% when all was said and done. That much roaming and signal searching kills most phones, in my experience.
I doubt that anyone using the P10 will find the battery life wanting. As I've said before, I cannot speak to the P10 Plus and its 3,750mAh cell. However, I imagine that it boasts similar performance.
Audio
The P10 supports a variety of sound formats (including FLAC), as well as 24-bit/192KHz audio, which is hi-res for those of you who do not know, through the 3.5mm jack. Whether that excites you or not is obviously a personal decision, but I have no complaints about the audio performance through wired headphones.
Bluetooth, meanwhile, is still Bluetooth. It works fine for most, and I tolerate it for the gym out of pure convenience, but it still might irritate some people.
The actual loudspeaker is nothing to write home about, either — gone are the days of Boomsound. It's plenty loud enough for notifications, or even letting a YouTube video play in the background, but don't expect stellar sound quality if you're trying to play music through it. This is, frankly, nothing new with smartphones.
Call quality & connectivity
A few years ago, when I got my Nexus 6, I was floored by the call quality. Ever since then, even through the myriad of phones I've had or used, I have not had quite that same "Wow!" moment when I am on a call for the first time. In light of this, the P10 has some of the best call quality I have ever heard. Both the person on the other line and I come through clearly, even in one- or two-bar situations. The microphones on the P10 really do a great job at cancelling out noise, even wind.
I used the P10 exclusively on a T-Mobile MVNO during my time with it. My connectivity and LTE speeds were excellent, except up in the mountains where good ol' Tmo is garbage. Obviously, your experience will vary depending on your carrier and coverage, so be sure to check out the list of LTE bands up above to see if you can use this phone on your network.
Camera
The biggest thing you will see in the P10's marketing is the focus on the camera and photo quality, therefore you'd expect it to be good. This year continues the partnership between Huawei and Leica, which lends itself to excellent camera performance and quality. The smaller P10 carries the same camera setup as the Mate 9, with two f/2.2 Summarit lenses. One is home to the 12MP RGB sensor (with OIS) and the other has the 20MP monochrome (without OIS). The theory is that the former captures the color and the latter gets all the details, after which the images are then combined in post-processing to create the final product.
With this setup, you can expect some crazy dynamic range in your photos, or even true greyscale photos (versus applying a filter ex post facto). There is phase detection and laser autofocus, too. Similar to Ryan's experience with the Mate 9, I did notice more noise in lower-lit shots (where a lot of detail is lost) and a warmer white balance than I'd usually like. However, this is not to say that the P10's camera is bad. Quite the opposite, actually. In a well-lit environment, the details are incredibly crisp and quite stunning at some points. Color reproduction is also very accurate, which I love to see.
The zoom functionality is a bit of a strange one on the P10. It comes equipped with a 2x optical zoom, but the lenses don't actually move. Even though that sounds a bit like digital zoom, the camera setup itself is actually cropping together a 12MP image that doesn't bring with it the... misfortunes of digital zoom. However, like Ryan said with the Mate 9, you need a really steady hand to get a tolerable zoomed-in picture.
Snapping photos in quick succession is a breeze — it's easily one of the fastest on a phone that I've ever seen. HDR slows things down a tad, but the Auto mode is good enough on quality for most any situation. This means that HDR isn't that necessary in most use cases.
Moving on, we come around to the front-facing camera. At 8MP f/1.9, it captures damn good selfies in the right light. The beautification features that are all the rage these days are, of course, included — and they still make me look like a tomato. An interesting thing that I don't see too often is that the front shooter will recognize how many people are in the photo and defocus the background accordingly.
The P10 can record videos at up to 4K, but the stabilization, despite OIS, isn't that good. Recording in low light, especially on overcast days or in darker indoor environments, makes the videos come out fairly subpar and grainy. I don't usually record video with my phone, but if you are one such person, I recommend sticking to 1080p60. You'll like the quality better.
Okay, so I have to say this: Huawei really needs to clean up the camera UI. It hasn't changed from EMUI 5 and is still a hectic, often cluttered, mess. There is a bar up top with the flash settings, Wide Aperture mode, Portrait mode (for beautification), color settings, filters, and the switch for front- or rear-facing cameras. Down at the bottom, you have the gallery shortcut, shutter button, and photograph/video option. There's a also a little tab above the shutter that activates Pro Mode (i.e. manual). With a swipe to the right, you get all of the photo modes: Auto, HDR, Monochrome, etc. It lists twelve pre-installed selections, with another icon to add more directly from Huawei (only one at the time of this writing was "Good Food"). Swiping left from the main UI brings up the settings with your pretty typical flair. Oh, you can add Leica watermarks to your photos if you so wish.
In short, the P10's camera is superb. I wish that I had either had the chance to play with the P10 Plus and its f/1.8 setup or that Huawei had given the same camera treatment to both models. Regardless, you can expect some fantastic pictures that will suffice for most any situation that you'll find yourself in.
Software
Huawei, and almost every Chinese manufacturer, have had pretty serious trouble with software in the past. Luckily, EMUI 5 (which debuted on the Mate 9) was a huge turning point. There were still issues and odd design decisions, but as a whole, it marked a massive step in the right direction.
Now we're at EMUI 5.1. This version bump brings with it some performance enhancements and improvements, as well as a few changes to touch response and RAM management. Overall, 5.1 is continuing with the positive direction, though there still remain some things to work on. There are some nice features, like an automatic blue light filter (not novel or exclusive, but nice to have), and some other weird ones, but let's not dally.
EMUI 5.1
Underneath Huawei's "skin" lies Android 7.0 Nougat, on the February security patch as of this writing. Continuing where v5 began, 5.1 improves upon notifications, UX, and underlying performance. The app drawer on the stock launcher is still there, though it does not default to this style. Changing to a custom one is still a bit convoluted, and Huawei's warning about the "dangers" of third-party apps (including launchers) remains.
Things are still pretty unoffensive here. The notification shade is semi-transparent with the Tron/Holo-like color scheme for the Nougat quick toggles. Fully expanding the Quick Settings presents you with quite a list, though it is customizable. Notifications are rounded and looking like the Gingerbread days, but they remain actionable.
Huawei continues to shove the nav buttons too close together for my taste, which is especially annoying on a phone this small. They can be rearranged, of course... or you can go the Meizu route and use the fingerprint sensor as a one-stop-shop for navigating home, back, or to recent apps. Basically, the way this works is that you tap the sensor to go back, hold it to go home, and swipe horizontally across it for recent apps. Google Now/Assistant is accessed by swiping up from the bottom edge of the screen. I have never liked this method of doing things, but the option is there if you like weird stuff.
One of the major sticking points in EMUI 5 for both Ryan and me was the lockscreen. As pretty as the background was to look at, you could not expand notifications and they would just disappear if you relocked your phone. The former issue has been fixed; you can now act on notifications for quick replies, deleting/archiving Gmail, etc. However, any items still disappear when the phone relocks. It's slightly irritating and has led to me missing a few things. On a final note about the lockscreen, I highly recommend that you do not try to dismiss notifications from there. I am not sure what the threshold is, but I've swiped from one edge of the screen to the other and they just bounce back. A small thing, I know.
The bloatware situation problem persists, though the apps behave better than they did in my experience on EMUI 5. Huawei Health, however, will spam notifications about steps. I already have my Gear S3 bugging me to get up (yes, I know that I can turn that off), so I don't need my phone doing it, too. After about the second time, I told the OS to block notifications from that particular app. The usuals are still here: Booking.com, News Republic, TripAdvisor, Lyft, etc. I just installed Action Launcher, hid them, and went on with my life. I suggest you do the same.
Huawei's host of special features is still here, like knuckle detection for screenshots (still doesn't work and creates more problems than it's worth) and App Twin to have multiple accounts signed into apps like WhatsApp and Facebook, but we also have a few new additions. One of them is Voice Wakeup, which brings Moto X-like customizability to waking up your device hands-free. The default is, and this is pretty cringe-worthy, "Okay, Emy" (probably short for EMUI). You can later change what you want the wakeup command to be if you have trouble saying "Okay, Emy" with a straight face.
There are even more customization options, like automatically answering calls when you raise the phone to your ear, swiping across the screen with your knuckle to activate split-screen, and so on.
Besides just the version number, what does EMUI 5.1 bring that's worth a whole point release? The two major things are referred to as Ultra Memory and Ultra Response. The former is a new algorithm that manages how RAM is recycled and used, therefore improving performance without killing every background app. It learns application habits in order to keep your most-used apps in memory longer and improve loading times. Ultra Response, meanwhile, focuses on the touchscreen and vastly improving touch latency with a new driver. Supposedly, it also supports finger tracking.
And so that finishes off my thoughts on EMUI 5.1 on the P10. Overall, Huawei is making large strides in the right direction, but they need to fix a few things. Even so, I look forward to any future improvements.
Performance
With the same SoC and RAM amount as the Mate 9, I figured that the P10 would perform similarly — I was not wrong. With the Kirin 960, you can expect buttery smooth animations and almost zero lag. The 4GB of RAM is just right, I think, what with the Ultra Memory and all. As usual, here are some benchmarks for those of you who care. And if you're looking for a more in-depth look at how well the Kirin 960 compares to other SoCs, check out this awesome post.
The P10 is very fast. It doesn't bog down and Ultra Memory does a decent job at not killing apps off too quickly. Gaming performance was also at an acceptable level. EMUI does feel slightly slower on the uptake than "stock" Android, but it's barely noticeable. Since I've been using the P10 about two weeks, I obviously can't say how well this phone will hold up long-term, but its performance out of the gate is quite good.
Value
I am sure that many of you are left asking the question of whether the P10 is worth it at a starting price of €649. To be frank, the lack of an oleophobic coating makes me want to say no. I understand that this seems like a ridiculous reason until you remember that this phone is supposed to be a premium device. A potential customer should not have to choose between a pre-installed screen protector, a third-party solution, or a naked screen that gets filthy right out of the box. I am not entirely sure what Huawei was thinking here.
Regardless, €649 is a lower price than a Pixel or iPhone for near equal power, camera performance, and such. What I deem as a showstopper may be simply an inconvenience to someone else who's more interested in the price-to-performance (and features) ratio.
The best way to determine whether or not you're interested in a P10 is to look at its competition and what those devices offer. You obviously have the smaller Pixel, Galaxy S7, and iPhone 7 that come to mind right off the bat. All have similarly-sized screens/bodies, great cameras, and varying levels of good performance. Software is a major consideration for a lot of us, so do you think the lower starting cost of the P10-series is worth having to use EMUI (versus stock, TouchWiz, or iOS)?
And with the LG G6 and Galaxy S8 announced and available for pre-orders, I have to ask if the P10 is a bit diminished in light of those two devices. Like most of these questions and ponderings, you have to answer them for yourself. At least we've seen what the major phone manufacturers are doing with the first part of 2017, so a decision is slightly easier to make.
Conclusion
Here we are, at the end of all things. Tolkien fandom aside, Huawei did a fantastic job with the P10. The phone sports mostly great hardware, a superb camera, and even a better software experience. Sure, I'd love to see EMUI lighten off of the "skinned" bits in the future, but it's actually usable now.
As we close the book on the P10, I am left asking what the phone could do to improve. There's the obvious inclusion of an oleophobic coating that I've beaten to death by this point and I would have liked to see the display get brighter, especially outdoors. Software is the sticking point for Huawei, despite the improvements made over the last couple of versions. This is not me saying that the company should just slap "stock" Android on its phones with some enhancements (like Motorola or OnePlus), but there is definitely room for growth. In a similar vein, the camera UI needs to be cleaned up. The main viewfinder should have a few basic options, while I think that more advanced features would be better suited to some place out of the way where the user can access them if he or she so desires. Despite all of this, the foundations for a great phone are here.
For my fellow U.S. residents, you will not be able to get this phone through any easy outlet. Though, it is compatible with some U.S. LTE bands so you could choose to import it. However, at the base MSRP plus the fees, I don't that think it's worth it. Stick with the Pixel, LG G6, or this Galaxy S8 I keep hearing so much about.
There seems to be a commitment to improving the software experience over those from years past, but what concerns me is Huawei's track record (read: abysmal) with Android updates. Not even all of the variants of the P10's predecessor, the P9, have received Nougat yet. Although, my unit received a security patch right out of the box, but it is still on Android 7.0.
In the end, I think 2017 is looking to be quite the promising year for Huawei. Let's hope that I'm proven right.From the first days of motor racing, drivers have lived close to the edge. Thanks to marked improvements in safety standards, the number seriously injured and killed competing in the sport has significantly reduced. The last death of a driver in an F1 car was Ayrton Senna in 1994, but in the early years the toll was alarming. Here is a list of all those who have died racing in Formula One, not including officials and spectators. Between 1950 and 1961 the Indianapolis 500 was considered part of the Formula One championship, even though few European drivers made the trip over to America to compete. Seven of the first 11 fatalities occurred at the circuit.
Chet Miller Indianapolis 1953
Fifty-year-old Miller was the oldest driver on the track when he lost control of his Novi Special and piled into a concrete wall at over 100mph during practice. Shortly after the finish Carl Scarborough collapsed and died from heat exhaustion.
Onofre Marimón Germany 1954
Marimón failed to negotiate a sharp downhill turn at the Nurburgring during qualifying and his car hit a ditch, struck a tree and then rolled a number of times before coming to rest upside down. He was given the last rites at the scene and died soon after.
Manny Ayulo Indianapolis 1955
Practising for the race, it is believed his steering broke and he smashed into a concrete wall. He died from his injuries the following day.
Bill Vukovich Indianapolis 1955
The winner of the previous two Indy 500s, Vukovich was leading when he failed to avoid a crash ahead of him and his car was sent over the impact wall, landing nose first and then bursting into flames. He was killed instantly by a broken neck.
Keith Andrews Indianapolis 1957
Died from a broken neck while practising for the race when his car hit a wall at 136mph.
Pat O'Connor Indianapolis 1958
O'Connor was killed when his car flipped and caught fire as a result of a 15-car pile-up on the first lap of the race. There were eerie similarities with Vukovich's death three years earlier. Both drove blue No. 4 cars that started from fifth on the grid. Both climbed another car and burned.
Luigi Musso France 1958
lying in second place, he lost control of his Ferrari on a sweeping turn, hit a ditch and overturned at around 150mph. He was airlifted to hospital - the circuit at Reims was one of the first to have a helicopter on site - where he died soon after.
Peter Collins Germany 1958
One race later and Ferrari suffered a second blow when Collins, who was lying third in the drivers' championship, lost control while battling for the lead and his car careered into fencing. Collins was thrown out of the cockpit and hit a lone tree, dying later that day from a fractured skull.
Stuart Lewis-Evans Morocco 1958
Lewis-Evans' Vanwall engine seized and sent him crashing into barriers at high speed, his car bursting into flames. He was airlifted back to England on team boss Tony Vandervell's private plane but died in hospital of burns six days later. Despite winning the inaugural constructors' championship, Vandervell was so distraught he withdrew from racing, as, for a time, did Lewis-Evans' manager Bernie Ecclestone.
Jerry Unser Indianapolis 1959
Unser, who had been involved in the 15-car pile-up a year earlier, died when he lost control during a practice session, his car hitting a wall and then somersaulting down the track before exploding. He died of burns a fortnight later. The accident led to fire-resistant driving suits becoming mandatory.
Bob Cortner Indianapolis 1959
A veteran of midget racing, on only his second day of Indy racing his car was caught by a gust of wind and crashed. Cortner died of head injuries later in the day.
Harry Schell Great Britain 1960
Died practising for a non-championship event at Silverstone when his Cooper skidded in the wet and crashed into a brick wall which collapsed on top of him.
Chris Bristow Belgium 1960
A gruesome weekend at Spa started with serious crashes during practice (Stirling Moss sustaining broken legs in one). On the 20th lap of the race itself Bristow made an unforced error and was decapitated by a wire fence as his Cooper somersaulted. At 22 he remains the youngest driver to die in a championship race.
Alan Stacey Belgium 1960
Two laps later and Stacey died when his car crashed and caught fire. Some spectators, as well as his own mechanics, believed he was struck by a bird, knocking him unconscious seconds before the accident.
Wolfgang von Trips Italy 1961
von Trips, who had crashed at Monza in 1956 and 1958, went there needing third place to win the drivers' championship. But his car collided with Jim Clark's Lotus, lifted into the air and crashed into a barrier. von Trips was thrown from the cockpit and killed, along with 14 spectators who were packed just behind a track-side fence.
Ricardo Rodriguez Mexico 1962
Rodriguez had driven the season for Ferrari but the team opted to give the inaugural non-championship Mexican Grand Prix a miss, so, desperate to impress in the city of his birth, he took a drive in a Lotus. He misjudged a corner - witnesses said he was going too fast - his car turned and caught fire. He died en route to hospital. He was 20.
Gary Hocking South Africa 1962
Hocking had retired from motorbike racing earlier in the year after the death of a friend, switching to F1 which he thought would be safer. He died while practising for his debut race when his Lotus hit a ditch and somersaulted.
Carel Godin de Beaufort Germany 1964
He was thrown out of his Porsche when it inexplicably veered off the track and suffered massive head and chest injuries from which he died three days later.
John Taylor Germany 1966
His Brabham collided with Jacky Ickx's Matra on the first lap in heavy rain at the Nurburgring. Taylor was badly burned and died from his injuries five weeks later.
Lorenzo Bandini Monaco 1967
He was second when he lost control at the harbour chicane, his car turning upside down and skidding into straw bales before catching fire. He was pulled clear by marshals but suffered massive burns as well as serious chest injuries and died three days later.
Jo Schlesser France 1968
John Surtees had pronounced Honda's experimental RA302 car unsafe, but undaunted and with help from the company's French division, it was entered in the French Grand Prix and local driver Schlesser was hired to drive it. On the second lap the car slid wide at a corner and crashed into a bank, exploding on impact.
Gerhard Mitter Germany 1969
A relative F1 novice, Mitter was a very successful driver in other fields. He was hired by BMW to test their Formula Two cars and it was driving one of these ahead of the German Grand Prix at the Nurburgring that he crashed after a major suspension failure.
Piers Courage Netherlands 1970
Killed when he lost control of his car which ran up a grass bank, hit a fence and burst into flames. He was probably dead before then as a wheel came off on the initial impact and flew into the cockpit with enough force to remove Courage's helmet.
Jochen Rindt Italy 1970
The only man to win the drivers' championship posthumously, Rindt died during final practice at Monza when his car crashed into perimeter fencing and disintegrated. He had only just started wearing a seat belt and it is believed that as he slid down inside the cockpit it cut his throat. He also suffered massive leg injuries. The crash was in exactly the same place that von Trips had died nine years earlier.
Jo Siffert Great Britain 1971
A veteran of 100 Formula One starts, Siffert was killed in a non-championship race at Brands Hatch when the suspension on his BRM snapped causing him to crash. He was unable to get out of the car as it caught fire and died of smoke inhalation. A subsequent investigation revealed none of the track-side extinguishers had been working and the incident led to mandatory in-car extinguishers as well as piped air into the driver's helmet.
Roger Williamson Netherlands 1973
Williamson's car crashed and caught fire after suffering a puncture. As he lay trapped in the overturned and burning vehicle, David Purley stopped his own car and sprinted to help, diving into the flames to try to free Williamson, who was calling out for help. As marshals stood by unable to help because of the heat, Purley ran across the track, grabbed an extinguisher and desperately tried to put out the fire before eventually being dragged away. It took eight minutes for the fire engine to arrive by which time Williamson had died of asphyxiation. Spectators had also tried to clamber to assist Purley only to be driven back by police with dogs. Purley was awarded the George Medal for his actions.
Francois Cevert USA 1973
The hugely talented Cevert's car clipped a kerb during Saturday practice at Watkins Glen and was knocked into the safety barriers, causing it to spin headlong into loose barriers on the other side of the track. He died instantly of massive injuries. His team-mate, mentor and friend Jackie Stewart, who had already won the world title, quit there and then ahead of what would have been his final race.
Peter Revson South Africa 1974
Suspension failure during a practice session led to a massive crash in which Revson was killed. His brother Doug died seven years earlier in a Formula Three accident in Denmark.
Helmuth Koinigg USA 1974
A year after Cevert's death and once again insecure barriers at Watkins Glen were partly to blame as Koinigg missed a turn, ploughed through the safety fence and into a barrier. Instead of it stopping him, his car went under it and he was decapitated.
Mark Donohue Austria 1975
Donohue lost control of his March during a practice session and careered into fencing. A marshal was killed by flying debris but it was thought Donohue was alright. However, he suffered from a worsening headache and the next day went to hospital where he lapsed into a coma and died from a brain haemorrhage. It was believed his head had struck a wooden fence post during the crash.
Tom Pryce South Africa 1977
As two marshals crossed the track to deal with a small fire in a stopped car, four cars, including Pryce's came round the bend. The lead car swerved to avoid the second marshal but Pryce had no chance to avoid hitting him at 170mph. An extinguisher the marshal was carrying was thrown in the air and struck Pryce in the head, partially decapitating him. His car slowly coasted to a stop, eventually careering back onto the track after hitting barriers. The injuries to the marshal were so severe he was only identified when all his colleagues were called together after the race and he was the one missing.
Ronnie Peterson Italy 1978
A mass collision on the first bend of the race at Monza left Peterson with severe leg injuries, although when he was pulled from his blazing car by three other drivers it seemed his injuries were serious but not life-threatening. But as Peterson lay on the tarmac, track officials hampered attempts to get an ambulance to him and it was a quarter of an hour before medical aid arrived. There was more concern for Vittorio Brambilla, who had head injuries, and he was the first to be treated, and fortunately he made a full recovery. At the hospital surgeons, with Peterson's agreement, operated that night to stabilise ten fractures in his legs. However, during the night bone marrow went into his bloodstream through the fractures leading to him suffering full renal failure. He died the next morning.
Gilles Villeneuve Belgium 1982
At the end of qualifying, Villeneuve's car ploughed into the back of the slower-moving Jochen Mass and was catapulted into the air at around 140mph before ploughing into the ground and disintegrating as it spun to a stop. He was found in the catch fence, still strapped to his seat but without his helmet. He suffered a fatal fracture of the neck.
Riccardo Paletti Canada 1982
In only his second race Paletti crashed at 100mph into the back of Didier Pironi |
the costs,” he said.
But he said all governments must put policies and incentives in place to protect nature and that there was only about a decade left to take steps to drive government and business action.
For poorer nations, agreement on the protocol to share genetic benefits could unlock billions of dollars.
Some drug makers, though, are wary.
“A massive amount of money is already spent on research and development for pharmaceutical goods,” said Yuji Watanabe, director of intellectual property at Astellas Pharma, Japan’s second-biggest drugmaker.
“So additional costs such as in the form of royalties, would completely change the basis for companies’ profitability. It could weaken the drive to develop new, improved drugs.”
Steiner acknowledged the protocol was “a major frontier in international policy” because it challenged fundamental assumptions about how patents and intellectual property worked.
NATURE ON THE BALANCE SHEET
But the United Nations said putting a value on nature is the only way to make it visible to businesses to help them fully understand the costs of damaging or destroying it.
A U.N.-backed study this month said global environmental damage caused by human activity in 2008 totaled $6.6 trillion, equivalent to 11 percent of global gross domestic product.
The Nagoya talks also come during increasingly fraught U.N. climate negotiations. Lack of trust between rich and poor nations led to a non-binding climate deal in Copenhagen last year that left many gaps.
“We need a success. What we don’t need is a second Copenhagen, that’s for sure,” Gunter Mitlacher, biodiversity director for WWF Germany, told a briefing in Tokyo on Thursday.Stephen Colbert zaps Bernie Sanders for winning the "state of denial" Colbert notes that Sanders promises to stay in for all 50 states -- but counting the state of denial, it's 51
"Late Show" host Stephen Colbert last night treated viewers to a special Super Tuesday edition of "Road to the White House" that tackled the difficult issue of Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton's terrorist ties.
Though Clinton holds sizable leads in Super Tuesday polling, Colbert said, her only remaining Democratic competitor, Bernie Sanders, has promised to stay in the race for all 50 states, "or 51, if you count the state of denial."
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That said, "There could be a shakeup for the Democrats because it is being widely reported that there is solid photographic proof linking Hillary Clinton to a known terrorist organization," Colbert continued, referring to a picture in Clinton's memoir, "Living History," in which an adolescent Hillary holds the family cat, Isis.
"This is the most shocking political pet news since Jimmy Carter revealed his childhood cat's name was Ayatollah Catmeini," Colbert said.
"It does make sense if you don't think about it," Colbert continued. "Cats have a lot in common with ISIS -- they're both ruthless killers who poop in the sand."
Watch the full segment below:Why do you hate people named Karen so much? It's not like it's a particularly offensive name. And Rae?
you KNOW K/aren is one of my trigger words. don’t contact me again or interact with this blog unless you change your URL.
a.) k/atherine is the name of my abuser who left me with severe mental problems from high school by ignoring and refusing to talk to me for my beliefs and my fight for social justice. k/aren is also the name of my neighbor who I hate’s dog
b.) my “sister” is named Rachel but people call her r/ae and she also causes me servere emotional distress so hearing her name is EXTREMELY triggering to me
I read your blog and you have characters named both k/ate AND r/ae, which seems like it must have been intentional to me. you know what I think, I think you’re just trolling me, and I’m going to report you if it happens againAt a press meeting in Anchorage Tuesday, U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs Secretary Robert McDonald admitted his agency had lost the trust of many veterans. McDonald -- who was confirmed as VA secretary in July 2014 -- also said that some of the recent changes made to the agency have hurt Alaska veterans. But McDonald promised the VA would do better.
McDonald replaced former VA Secretary Eric Shinseki, who resigned in May 2014 amid problems with wait times and misconduct at VA clinics across the country. McDonald, a former head of Procter and Gamble and a West Point graduate, said that despite past problems, the VA has made great improvements. But he admitted there is still work to do in improving the nation's largest integrated health care system.
McDonald held a private meeting at the Anchorage VA clinic earlier Tuesday, speaking to about 100 local employees and veterans.
"As I have gone across the country and done these town hall meetings like I have just done here, VA employees have told me they feel like they are prisoners of a system that they can't change," McDonald said.
McDonald said his agency is working with companies like Disney to improve customer service and employee satisfaction.
But some of the recent changes intended to improve the system have actually increased wait times for veterans needing care, especially in Alaska.
In November 2014, Congress approved the Choice Act, which allows veterans who live more than 40 miles from a VA health care facility to receive services from non-VA doctors. The program was modeled on an existing system that was in place in Alaska. That system partnered the VA with Alaska Native health clinics and tribal health organizations to offer care to the state's 79,000 veterans -- many of whom live off the road system.
But the implementation of a nationwide Choice Care system added new bureaucratic roadblocks to veterans in Alaska accustomed to an easier process -– including requiring them to go through a longer eligibility process via TriWest Healthcare Alliance, which manages the intake of Choice Care requests. McDonald said the inclusion of Alaska vets into the Choice Care system was part of an ongoing budget problem.
Cindy Massey, who helps manage the Choice program through the Alaska VA, said that the change added more than a week to the time it took for a veteran to receive medical services under the program.
"Before that, we would just do one-on-one calls or get the veteran a letter to tell them they have been authorized so that they can go have a procedure done and we would send that to the provider," Massey said.
McDonald admitted that the changes didn't work in Alaska.
"I had to force people, in a sense, to go through that Choice program just to use that money," the secretary said. "That's not the right decision for Alaska."
Despite the challenges, McDonald said the VA has made great strides in increasing veterans' access to health care and other services. He cited a 30 percent decrease in homeless veterans across the U.S. and 7 million more VA appointments in 2014 as recent successes.
McDonald said he was also able to help more veterans by getting permission from Congress to move money from several programs to fill budget holes in others. With more than 70 different budget line items, McDonald said he wants more flexibility to be able to move money around the agency.
But McDonald said his authority to continue to doing that runs out at the end of the federal fiscal year, on Sept. 30.
And more important, McDonald said, was the agency's commitment to make real changes to the system – a system in which many veterans had lost faith.
"We know that across the nation trust has been compromised with the VA, particularly in 2014, and we are going to have to earn it back, one veteran at a time," McDonald said.The Royal Navy's plan to fit most of its fleet with command systems based on Windows boxes continues, with the commencement last week of a programme intended to replace the existing commandware of the Service's Type 23 frigates. The Type 23s will make up the majority of the British surface fleet for the foreseeable future.
According to the Ministry of Defence (MoD), HMS Montrose has now entered a planned docking and refit period during which BAE Systems plc will replace her original DNA(1) gear with DNA(2), said to be "based on the system being fitted to the Royal Navy's powerful new Type 45 Destroyers". This means it will be based on fairly everyday hardware running legacy Windows OSes - people who have worked on these programmes inform us that both Win2k and XP will be in use across the fleet.
Along with replacement computers and cabling (12km of new string will be run aboard Montrose during her refit, apparently), the frigate will receive a mid-life update to her Sea Wolf close-in surface to air missile system. This will no doubt be welcome, as it is no longer a secret that the basic system had reached a level of almost total no-confidence among operators as of the turn of the century.
Commodore Graham Peach, the man in charge of looking after surface warships in the MoD purchasing and maintenance empire, hailed the new off-the-shelf IT approach.
"This docking period is an important milestone in our programme to develop a common command system across the fleet," he said. "We have worked closely with the contractor, BAE systems, to develop DNA(2) and its sister systems which will enable us to provide more efficient support to the fleet, simplify operator training and deliver cost savings in the long term as servicing is required."
According to the MoD, BAE will "develop a common command system across the fleet" for just £30m under a contract awarded in 2006, perhaps putting an end to decades of horrifyingly frustrating intership networking problems. Anyone like your correspondent who has served at sea in the last ten years will recall the use of embarrassing expedients such as reading endless strings of figures across voice channels (often enough civilian mobile phones or marine VHF) or re-keying them from hardcopy printouts into another machine in the same ship.
In addition to the frigate and destroyer fleets, the Navy has recently announced conversion to Windows in its submarine flotilla. It is also understood that the new aircraft carriers, whenever they arrive, will also use similar commandware. It would seem that one large customer at least isn't having any of this Vista/7 malarkey, certainly not for the foreseeable future.
Many in the software community have criticised the Navy's moves, feeling that Windows cannot offer the sort of guaranteed reliability one might wish to see in computers which will sometimes have direct control of powerful weapon systems - and on which Blighty's fighting matelots may one day depend for their lives. However, one ought to note that the preceding custom solutions were usually so terrible that a reasonably stable Windows box would actually be a serious improvement. Furthermore, it is fairly rare in naval combat for there to be any need for "man-out-of-the-loop" operations.
The only common situation where weapons need to be fully autonomous is that of surface ships defending against sea-skimming missile attack, which calls for extremely fast reactions based on limited information. Existing Phalanx and Goalkeeper auto-gun systems are already commonly switched to autonomous operation as missiles close in - or are thought to be closing in - and this is also done in such situations with American Aegis firecontrol systems in charge of Standard interceptor missiles.
If the new Type 45s ever find themselves trying to beat the dreaded supersonic sea-skimmers of the future to the punch - and if they never do this, they will not have been worth buying: they can't do anything else you might pay a billion quid per ship for - they will need to let their command systems shoot instantly at any fast, close low-altitude track which appears in the command system. A human, if in the loop at all, will not have time to add anything to the decision-making process.
So yes, there will be scope for errors; but this is more a problem of surface-based air defence than it is one of OSes. The danger presented by a combat ready air-defence destroyer in what it considers to be a threat zone would probably exist no matter what software it was running.
Given that the Navy will have its warships anyway, UK taxpayers might at least be pleased at the prices the Service seems to be paying to have its commandware replaced. Again, regular IT people won't be terribly impressed at fairly small numbers of fairly humdrum platforms being replaced for tens of millions of pounds: but in the context of traditional warship computer programmes the ongoing MoD projects are actually looking pretty good.
Whether that's adequate compensation for the possible attendant security and reliability issues will remain a matter of opinion for a while - until the new war-Windows platforms start seeing widespread, networked-up service. ®Starward Rogue is a passion project designed not just by myself, but by a team of other hardcore fans of this subgenre. We have several thousand hours in similar games, and we wanted to do something excitingly new without being completely alien.
We had a very tight timeline, so as far as the rest of the world is concerned this game is coming out of nowhere. After months of crunch-mode development we’re still finding it hard to stop playing after each run, so hopefully you enjoy it as well as we do!
There’s a whole lot of new things we want to do with this game, even though it’s already gargantuan. If you want to help that happen and you enjoy this type of game — then tell other people who enjoy this type of game! That sort of word of mouth is what helped us make such huge additions to AI War: Fleet Command over so many years (tons of free updates as well as paid expansions).
Anyway, I’m getting way ahead of myself there. At the moment there is more than enough to enjoy — dozens and dozens of hours at minimum. I think I’m sitting at like 88 hours myself and I really have not mastered everything yet, not remotely. Nor seen all the content outside of unit-testing it. (Others on staff have, though, don’t worry! Not to mention the legion of awesome community testers we have had).
I also really want to thank all the community testers we’ve had over the last two and a half months. You guys were invaluable, both in terms of finding bugs and helping us shave off all the rough edges you could find. Not only that, but a number of you actually made content for the game using the modding support, which other players can now see embedded in the full game itself (no need to download anything extra).
If you’re just coming to the game now (which makes sense, given it just launched), then you’re still free to send us things that you make! If you make enemies or whatnot, we’ll wire up art for it, vet it, and add it into the game if it makes sense within the larger scope of the game. Or it can stay just an unofficial mod that you made if we don’t feel like it quite fits the overall game experience that we want everyone to have. Same deal for item design, room design, and so on.
If you like that sort of thing, enjoy the wiki: https://arcengames.com/mediawiki/index.php?title=Starward_Rogue:Main#XML_Documentation
Try not to get too bogged down in the hugeness of it; the entire game’s content was built using the same tools that you see there, so you can look at any existing content and make variants, deconstruct what we did, and so on.
Anyway, enough about modding: the vanilla game is big and huge and fun and I hope you love it. I got started at an early age (in the early 90s) as a modder and level design enthusiast, so I get happy about modding tools, is all. We’ll be doing videos of us playing the game, and can answer tips on specific bosses, weapons, or otherwise.
More story and voice acting is coming soon, too, as well as more content drops. Thank you very much for your support of our team — we couldn’t do it without you!
Click here for the official forum thread on this post.
.
.When Roy Sassine started La Shish on Whyte Avenue two years ago, he thought the Lebanese restaurant had the recipe for success.
But now, he’s joined a growing number of Old Strathcona restaurants and club owners who say the location is no longer as attractive as it used to be.
“The city is focusing a lot on the downtown core and we’re kind of getting neglected here,” Sassine said.
The owner of La Shish said the city hasn’t provided the services that business like his need to survive — street-cleaning and parking are lacking in his area of the avenue. He argues that Whyte Avenue has become less attractive to customers, but that landlords and the city are still charging for prime business real estate.
Roy Sasaine says he doesn't see how a restaurant could survive on Whyte Avenue, with high property taxes and high rents. (CBC) “Honestly, we can't keep up with expenses right now, lease is so expensive, property taxes have jumped up by ten thousand dollars,” he said.
“Guess who is going to pay for that hike? Us.”
He said that while there have been some overtures made by the city to draw customers to the area — space for patios, improvements for pedestrians and other ideas — they all come with a hefty price tag of higher property taxes.
“Everything, everything, everything is so pricey,” he said.
Sassine recently put La Shish up for sale. He’s not alone; at least four other businesses nearby are listed as looking for new owners. One is the Pourhouse Gastro Pub, next door to La Shish, while three others are nightclubs — DV8, the Pawnshop and Mixx Party Bar.
It’s a trend that has long worried the executive director of the Old Strathcona Business Association. Murray Davidson said he has heard from many businesses who no longer feel they can be successful on Whyte Avenue.
“We’ve had it good here for so long. And now you have to hustle,” he said.
He echoes Sasaine’s feelings that the city has neglected Whyte Avenue in favour of growing other business districts in the city, like downtown.
He said Old Strathcona needs better infrastructure and services if many businesses are going to survive.
Murray Davidson, the executive director of the Old Strathcona Business Association, says the city has neglected Whyte Avenue in favour of other business districts. (CBC) "In general, the lights being on … we don’t get the taxi service we need,” he said.
“We’re just hoping the city will step up."
Not every business is struggling on Whyte Avenue. Murray said many are thriving, while the others are barely able to keep the lights on. In many ways, the area has become a victim of its own success — long a popular place with shoppers, landlords have become accustomed to being able to charge high rents.
But Davidson said if the area doesn’t get more support soon, still-rising costs and a flagging economy could see more For Sale signs in Whyte Avenue windows.
Sassine, who had high hopes when he came to Whyte Avenue, now warns others restaurant owners from trying their luck along the street.
“It’s got a cool vibe … but we’re not getting enough support.”For the team at Huk Lab, what started as a small idea has grown into one of the most noticeable brands in disc golf. From a full line of apparel, the iconic TriFly, educational Flight School, and more, Huk Lab is showing no signs of slowing down.
It’s easy to find one of the top professionals carrying a TriFly dyed disc in their bag or even someone on your local course with a Huk Lab shirt on as they head to the first tee. The brand certainly got some added exposure when the 2014 PDGA World Championships were held in Huk Lab’s backyard in Portland.
This weekend marks the one year anniversary of when Huk Lab moved into their brand new pro shop. We haven’t had a chance to visit in person, but we have a feeling the beautiful pictures don’t do it justice.
To learn more about Huk Lab and what the last year has been like in their new location, we talked with Huk Lab’s co-owner, Ed Hepp to get the full story.
Huk Lab has certainly become one of the most recognizable brands in the sport. We’ll talk about the TriFly in a moment, but I want to first start with the name. On your website you call Huk Lab “an action laboratory,” which is such a great phrase. When Huk Lab was first getting started, how did you settle on the name Huk Lab? Where there any other names in the running?
“Not really! We wanted to tap into the stoke and vibe that the ubiquitous action word ‘huck’ elicits in the mind of anyone who interacts physically with the world around them. Whether on land, in the air, flowing through or across water—whatever its state—it’s all one big laboratory of huck; a place to test the mind’s and spirit’s theories of flight and flow through the body’s physical actions; an expression of balance and symmetry through that holy trinity. Eventually, from a practical standpoint, ‘huck’ was shortened to ‘huk’ in order to better balance with ‘lab,’ and to fit within the bounds of the trinity theme.”
The TriFly symbol is quite unique, but really sends a statement. Again, your website tells some of the story about how the TriFly came to life and the sketches are really fun to see. When the final version of the TriFly came together, what were your thoughts when it all “clicked” for you?
“Well, as you’ve alluded to, the TrFfly is the product of a highly considered design process, from conception through the building of the graphic image itself. Jay Harbour and Ed Hepp partnered to collaborate conceptually on a mark that would be recognizable and memorable at both large and small sizes, be compelling while in motion, and also be suggestive of motion even while standing still. With a disc as the pre-eminent canvas within the sport, it was natural to work within the bounds of a circle. During the process, Ed’s sketches independently arrived at a point that closely resembled a Japanese motif, known as the Three Commas, which Jay had also found in his research of symbols. Further refinement of that sketch eventually lead to the TriFly.”
“The three arms of the TriFly align with the trilogy theme. Importantly, there are no dead ends; every internal curve can be extended to eventually meet up with and flow into another curve within the mark. In this way the eye is encour- aged to stay active and the viewer is inclined to engage with the image. Naturally once the mind gets involved, a lot can happen and we’re aware that imaginations have congered an unlimited number of alternative images from the TriFly; we love them all!”
“As for the moment it “clicked,” it’s hard to say. It really came down to working it until it felt like there was no more work to be done.”
Have you ever thought of tweaking the TriFly? Is it almost too good to change at this point?
“It’s always been in the back of our minds that perhaps time’s passage and the evolution of the brand might compell us to see something in the mark that needed updating or further refinement, but so far this hasn’t been the case. We worked hard on getting it right from the get-go, and that work has paid off with a mark we are still proud of, even 11+ years after its creation.”
You sell many discs with the TriFly stamp and also with the much larger dye job. Who does all the dye work in the shop and how long does a dye take them?
“At this time all domestic TriFly Dyes are done in-house by our staff. We run custom dye lots weekly and put a lot of care and attention into getting it right. Depending on the number of discs, weekly dye lots take 3-6 hours.”
What many don’t know is that they can send you discs to get dyed. What is the process if someone is interested and what does it cost? Is the turnaround pretty quick?
“To get your discs custom TriFly dyed you can call us at the Pro Shop (503-954-2966) or email orders@huklab.com.”
“Cost and turn times on custom TriFly Dye orders will vary, based largely on the peculiarities of each order. We know it can be hard to be without that disc in your bag so we try to get them in and out as soon as possible. Discs are sched- uled for the next dye lot when we receive them. The maximum turnaround time is two weeks during the peak of the season, while off-season orders will usually turn within about a week. We also carry an extensive inventory of TriFly Dyed and stamped discs at the Pro Shop and on our website.”
In November 2013 you opened up a beautiful proshop in Portland. From the photos we’ve seen, you have just about any disc golf item one could desire. What has this past year been like in the new shop?
“It’s been great! Not only from a retail standpoint, but also for the programs we’ve offered to the Portland Disc Golf Community. Our Flight School Instructional Classes, the Chain Rain Putting League, our Disc Replay Program; all these things have been well received and participation has been fantastic.”
What about the support from the Portland disc golf community?
“The Portland Disc Golf community has been incredibly supportive in so many ways. The Pro Shop environment could not have been the same without them. The generosity of countless hands helping us apply our design ideas to an old bike shop transformed it into a disc golf daydream. Most especially, contributions from the local Disc Golf Or Die crew, as well as our own Huk Lab Flight Team, can not go unmentioned. The Pro Shop is a place where everyone is welcome and encouraged to come in, hang out, watch some disc golf videos, practice putting, sign up for a class, and peruse our huge wall of discs, racks of apparel, and extensive selection of gear and accessories, all while enjoying the service of employees with a deep understanding of the products and the sport.”
This year’s PDGA World Championships were in Portland. While the PDGA tour is no stranger to the Portland area, what was it like having the sport’s spotlight in Portland for a week? Was that the busiest week for Huk Lab?
“Of course having the 2014 Worlds in Portland was terrific for Huk Lab. It certainly was a busy time for us, not only at the Pro Shop, but also at Blue Lake’s Tournament Central, where we set up the Huk Booth as part of the week’s festivities. To have all of the best players in the world essentially at our doorstep, all week long, and to never know who would show up at the shop next was pretty exciting for everyone, including our customers.”
“We also wanted to help make the event as great an experience as it could be for everyone, and to promote Portland as a world class disc golf destination. To that end we created a line of Portland themed Worlds Fundraiser Merchandise: a limited edition poster and disc, as well as a tee shirt. These were very popular and easily met our tournament fundraising goals. Additionally we’re stoked that poster number 1/100 now hangs in the International Disc Golf Center in Appling, GA.”
What’s next for Huk Lab? Any big plans for 2015?
“We’re always dreaming, both big and small… stay tuned!”
For those who aren’t in the Portland area, is your website the best way to go about checking your inventory for apparel, discs, and other items from the store?
“The website is the best place to start (huklab.com). But especially when it comes to checking on particular discs in stock, a call to the shop (503-954-2966) will provide for the most accurate, up to date information. ”
Is there anything else you want to cover?
“Our biggest sale of the year runs this Saturday, November 22nd through Tuesday, December 2nd. During this annual ‘Thankshucking Sale’ we say thanks to the disc golf community by offering 22.2% off all gear and discs storewide. To participate, just enter the code THXHUK14 when checking out. As always, we enjoy taking this opportunity to express our heartfelt appreciation to our customers for their support.”
“And of course, Keep on Huckin’!”
Big thanks to Hepp and everyone at Huk Lab. They’ve been a treat to work with over the last few weeks! We wish them the best of luck as they head into year two at the pro shop!
Be sure to follow them on Facebook and Twitter along with checking out huklab.com.This article is over 3 years old
Influential fortnightly poll published in the Australian to end in June and be replaced by automated service provided by Galaxy Research
News Corp Australia’s house pollster, Newspoll, will close next month, ending decades of live fortnightly telephone polling and putting 150 researchers, statisticians and analysts out of work.
Newspoll, published fortnightly in the Australian, drives much of the political coverage in the Australian media.
The Newspoll brand will continue in name only, with the surveys to be conducted by Galaxy Research, an outfit which already handles polls for the News Corp tabloids.
The Galaxy-run Newspoll will not conduct live telephone interviews with participants but will instead adopt the less expensive method of polling using automation – known as “robopolling” – as well as online surveys. With robopolls, computers make calls automatically and participants answer the recorded voice using a keypad on their phone.
As many people have abandoned landlines, the Newspoll landline-only surveys have been difficult to maintain, especially with younger voters who only have a mobile.
Newspoll’s decision follows that last year made by Fairfax Media which ended a 40-year relationship with Nielsen.
The Nielsen poll, published in the Sydney Morning Herald and the Age from January 1995 and in the AFR from February 2012, was also central to political coverage. Fairfax polls are now conducted by research company Ipsos Australia.
The union representing the 150 Newspoll workers, including 26 full time staff, the National Union of Workers said the company was not treating the workers with respect or honouring all their entitlements.
NUW organiser Jafar Kazim said staff were told they would lose their jobs only after an article announcing the closure was published in the Australian on 4 May.
At a tense meeting between staff, union and management after the announcement Newspoll’s head researcher told staff the new methodology used by Galaxy was “crap methodology, telephone research is the best way to do it,” sources who were at the meeting told Guardian Australia.
Kazim said some staff planned to protest the company’s treatment of the staff outside Newspoll House in Sydney’s Surry Hills on Friday.
A spokesman for News Corp declined to answer specific questions about how many staff were affected but issued the following statement.
“From the end of June 2015, Newspoll will be conducted by Galaxy Research, one of the country’s best market research and polling companies,” the spokesman said.
“Galaxy Research will ensure that Newspoll’s rigour, integrity and frequency will remain unaffected, and Newspoll will retain its position as Australia’s most authoritative and eagerly awaited political poll. The Australian will continue to publish Newspoll every fortnight.
“The work Galaxy Research will undertake for the Australian under the Newspoll banner will be separate to the research it does for News Corp Australia’s metro mastheads.
“News Corp Australia and WPP thank [Newspoll CEO] Martin O’Shannessy and his team for their outstanding work over the years.”
Sources said the company had refused to provide references to employees or to apologise for not informing staff before the decision was announced in the Australian.
“Some people read about the closure in the Australian before they heard about it from Newspoll,” one source said. “The company is also denying any form of redundancy pay to about 90% of its phone staff, and only meeting the bare standards of our industrial agreement.
“There are some staff members that have worked at Newspoll for upwards of six years who are being denied a redundancy in the current package.”
Newspoll is a joint venture between News Corp Australia and international advertising and public relations firm WPP.
In the report in the Australian on 4 May, the paper’s chief executive, Nicholas Gray, and its editor-in-chief, Chris Mitchell, said Galaxy Research had “proven its credentials as a highly accurate polling company in both federal and state elections”.
“Recently, it called a Labor win in the recent Queensland election and was again proven reliable in the NSW election,” they said.
“Newspoll’s rigour, integrity and frequency will not be affected, and Newspoll will retain its position as Australia’s most authoritative and eagerly awaited political poll.”S.F. cuts will put more mentally ill on streets ON MENTAL HEALTH TREATMENT
Why is Mayor Gavin Newsom proposing cuts to mental health treatment for those with the most serious mental illness?
One block from where the mayor announced that cuts to mental health programs would be small, at the offices of the Citywide Case Management and Community Focus, we learned that we would lose 38 percent of our total budget. We provide comprehensive services for the highest users of San Francisco's psychiatric emergency services and mentally ill offenders under the jurisdiction of the Behavioral Health Court. The mayor proposes to cut $1.3 million in city funds from us, but because we bring $1.21 in federal funds for every $1 of city funds, the actual blow to the budget is $2.9 million. At least 400 high-risk mentally ill clients will go unserved.
Unlike Laura's Law programs, our program is voluntary. It's our job to make services relentlessly available and attractive to keep clients engaged and in treatment.
Let me introduce you to Pete. For years, his schizophrenia went untreated, made worse by crack cocaine. He stood on the streets - often in front of The Chronicle - yelling at strangers. He was arrested multiple times for destruction to property, for drugs and for assaulting a firefighter. Before working with us, he used $119,700 in acute mental health services, and untold dollars in ambulance rides, medical emergencies and police responses. We now bring him medications to his hotel weekly, help him manage his money to stay housed, accompany him to his doctor to treat his hypertension and support his decreased drug use. He is still schizophrenic, but not frightening San Franciscans and visitors with his yelling. He has not been arrested or hospitalized, and he has friends in his hotel.
We know our clients' histories: If they don't get assertive and comprehensive outreach and treatment, then they are going to be back in the hospitals and jails at more than $150,000 per client.
Does it make sense to cut services to those with the greatest needs, to a program that maximizes city mental health dollars, to programs with a 29-year history of excellence in treating those that no one else had succeeded in treating?Judge Sheila Abdus-Salaam.
After Judge Sheila Abdus-Salaam, a groundbreaking judge on New York’s highest court, was found dead in the Hudson River last week, initial reports suggested she may have taken her own life. However, the New York Police Department is now investigating her death as “suspicious,” the New York Post reports.
The body of Abdus-Salaam, the first black woman to sit on New York’s Court of Appeals, was found on April 12, floating in the Hudson River off of Manhattan, by the parkway near 132nd Street. She was found fully clothed and without visible signs of trauma, and her husband had reported her as being missing after he was notified that she had failed to show up for work.
“We’re looking at it as a suspicious death at this point,” NYPD spokesman Stephen Davis told the Post. “We haven’t found any clear indications of criminality, but at this point we can’t say for sure. We’re hoping if anyone could shed any light into the hours before her disappearance, it would help us establish what happened.”
According to the Post, investigators have spent several days scanning surveillance video to try to trace the judge’s final moments, and additional cops have been assigned to review video from residential buildings, stores, and mass transit. The NYPD also issued an “Information Needed” notice on Tuesday, tweeting out a request for information from the public.
The #NYPD is seeking info on the death of Judge Sheila Abdus-Salaam. Anyone with info is asked to call our detectives at the numbers listed. pic.twitter.com/pSXDtuaVTo — NYPD 26th Precinct (@NYPD26Pct) April 18, 2017
Abdus-Salaam, 65, was reportedly last seen alive by a deliveryman at her apartment the morning of April 12, after receiving a package, though her husband received a call around noon that day informing him that she had not shown up for work. Her death was initially described as a suspected suicide, and there were no signs of forced entry at her home. The judge also left her purse, wallet, and cell phone at home, which sources told the Post are possible signs of suicidal intent.The Huffington Post recently (March 18) sunk to a new low by publishing an attack on u201CRon Paul and the Tea Parties: States’ Rights and the 17th Amendmentu201D by one Leonard Zeskind, a u201Cformeru201D Stalinist rabble-rouser. According to Laird Wilcox, author of The Watchdogs, a book about contemporary political movements, Zeskind began his communistic career of agitprop in the ’70s as a u201Cfront manu201D for the u201CSojourner Truth Organizationu201D whose stated objective was u201Cto motivate the working classes to make a revolution.u201D The Organization quoted its role model, Josef Stalin, who insisted on the need for u201Ciron disciplineu201D in agitating for a communist revolution in America.
According to Wilcox, Zeskind has written favorably about u201Cthe value of a grass roots school of communismu201D that would teach people how to u201Cdestroy the marketplace.u201D He wrote this in a journal called u201CUrgent Tasks,u201D a phrase popularized by Vladimir Ilyich Lenin. The Kansas City City Magazine once called Zeskind u201Celusive, paranoid, near hysterical.u201D His forte, according to the Wilcox Collection, appears to be u201Critual defamationu201D of his perceived political opponents, i.e., u201Cto call people names in the hope of defaming, discrediting, stigmatizing or neutralizing them.u201D
Lincoln Unmasked: What... Thomas J. Dilorenzo Best Price: $3.06 Buy New $7.99 (as of 10:00 EST - Details)
An example of the Zeskind/Huffington u201Critual defamationu201D strategy is his statements in The Huffington Post that: 1) Someone writing for an obscure publication called u201CThe American Free Pressu201D noted recently that u201Cthe Tea Parties were actually born during the presidential campaign of Rep. Ron Paul of Texasu201D; 2) Several decades ago, someone who wrote in u201CThe American Free Pressu201D was revealed |
meet your budget. And why spend $7 or $8 for one of your cafeteria’s wilting sandwiches, when you can have a fresh, home-cooked meal for a buck or two?
Love finding cheap eats? See 12 recipes for less than $2 per serving.The number of children born with Down’s syndrome is rising in the UK, many newspapers reported today.
Following the widespread introduction of pre-natal testing for the condition in 1989, the number of babies born with Down's syndrome fell. However, since 2000, it has risen. In 2006, 749 babies were born with Down’s syndrome, 32 more than in the year screening was introduced.
The increase is due to changing attitudes, said the Down’s Syndrome Association. "Now there is much greater inclusion and acceptance, with mainstream education having a huge role,” said Carol Boys, the DSA chief executive. "We think this plays a part in the decisions parents make. There's even been a baby with Down's syndrome on EastEnders."
Is the reported change in attitudes really so stark?
Probably not. Although the number of Down’s syndrome babies being born is up 4% since testing was introduced, it would have been expected to jump by an estimated 50% had testing and termination not been available (about 700 additional Down's births in 2006). This is because many women now have babies later in life when the chances of having a Down’s syndrome child are considerably greater.
Currently, 92% of women who receive an antenatal diagnosis of Down’s syndrome decide to terminate the pregnancy. This proportion has not changed since 1989, according to a report by the National Down Syndrome Cytogenetic Register.
What is Down's syndrome?
Down’s syndrome is a condition present from birth which causes learning difficulties and can affect physical development. It can also cause other health complications. There are around 60,000 people with Down’s syndrome in the UK.
How does it affect people?
There is no typical person with Down’s syndrome. It will affect each person in a slightly different way.
Down’s syndrome causes learning difficulties, but these can vary in nature, and children with the condition are increasingly attending mainstream schools. Down’s syndrome can slow a child’s mental and social development but it will not limit it. With the right support they can lead an active and independent life. Many adults with Down’s syndrome are now in work.
The condition often causes certain facial and physical features, such as slanting eyes or small eyes, but again all people with Down’s syndrome will vary in appearance.
A proportion of people with Down’s syndrome will also experience other complications such as hearing loss and heart conditions. In the past this meant many people with Down’s syndrome would have a significantly reduced life expectancy, but with advances in treatment and care this means someone with Down’s syndrome can now expect to live to around 60-65 years.
What causes Down’s syndrome?
When a baby is conceived, it inherits genetic material from its parents. The genetic material is usually transferred to the baby in 46 chromosomes: 23 from each parent.
Down's syndrome is caused by a fault with a particular chromosome, the 21 chromosome. In most cases of Down's syndrome, a child inherits an extra copy of the 21 chromosome, meaning they inherit 47 chromosomes instead of the usual 46. When a person's genetic make-up is altered in this way, it can affect their physical and mental characteristics.
There are varying forms of Down’s syndrome, which differ based on how the extra chromosome occurs in the body.
How common is Down’s syndrome?
Anyone can have a child with Down’s syndrome, although the chances do greatly increase with age. At the age of 20 the chance is 0.07%, at 30 years the chance increases to 0.1% and at 40 years the chance is 1%.
What's involved in testing for Down’s syndrome?
Testing for Down’s syndrome is routinely offered to all pregnant women, though some don't take it. It's offered in two stages, a screening test and a diagnostic test.
What is the screening test?
All pregnant women can have a screening test to identify the likelihood of their baby having Down’s syndrome. A screening test will involve either a blood test, an ultrasound scan or both. These screening tests can't definitely say whether or not a baby will have Down’s syndrome, but will be used to calculate a risk value.
If a screening test gives a low-risk result, it does not definitely mean a baby will not be born with Down’s syndrome, just that it is unlikely. If a screening test gives a high-risk result, then a diagnostic test will be offered.
What is the diagnostic test?
A diagnostic test may be given using one of two techniques, amniocentesis or chorionic villus sampling (CVS). Amniocentesis is more invasive, where a needle is inserted into the womb to collect fluid for genetic testing. It's offered between weeks 15 and 20 of pregnancy.
CVS involves having a small sample of the placenta (the organ in which the foetus grows and is protected and nourished) taken for further examination. This can be done from 10 weeks into the pregnancy.
Both these procedures carry a small risk of miscarriage, around 1%, which is why they're only offered to those who have a high risk of having a child with Down’s syndrome.
How do I can get more information on caring for a Down's syndrome child?
With the health problems that Down’s syndrome can bring it is important to seek specialised help and regularly visit a doctor. The NHS offers a range of care and information for children with Down’s syndrome and their families, so speak to your GP if you need further help.
Specialists groups and charities such as the Down’s Syndrome Association UK, can also be a source of practical and emotional support, and may also help you speak to people with Down’s syndrome and their families, who have experience living with the condition.Balotelli: Milan need reinforcements
By Football Italia staff
Mario Balotelli believes that Milan have to reinforce the squad this summer if they are to challenge in the Champions League.
The Rossoneri have so far failed to make any notable purchases over the summer, with only Colombian youngster Jherson Vergara joining.
And the striker has insisted that his side have to get a more high-profile name into the club – like Zlatan Ibrahimovic.
“We are strong, but to compete at a European level we need reinforcements,” he told Sport Mediaset.
“I would like Zlatan Ibrahimovic.
“I told Tevez to come to Milan, but he obviously did not listen.”
The Italy international then commented on Stephan El Shaarawy's future with the San Siro side.
“I sent a message to Stephan and asked him how the meeting with Mr. Galliani went.
“He told me that he would stay, and I told him that he did well.
“Milan are a team that I have in my heart – it is a great club with a huge fan-base.”A trial of the new cervical cancer vaccine programme for schoolgirls across the country has encountered opposition from parents, with 20% refusing to give permission for their daughters to have the jab.
A third of those who gave a reason for refusal said they were worried about the long-term safety, on which there is no data. But some may have concerns that allowing vaccination may promote promiscuity, because the cancer-causing virus which the vaccination targets is passed on in sexual intercourse. Two schools declined to take part for religious reasons.
The findings from the pilot study, involving 2,817 girls aged 12 and 13 in year 8 at 36 secondary schools in Greater Manchester, are published by the British Medical Journal today. In an accompanying editorial, Professor Jo Waller and Dr Jane Wardle from the department of epidemiology and public health at University College London say 12- and 13-year-old girls whose parents refuse consent may be competent to decide for themselves.
The £100m vaccination programme, which targets strains of the human papilloma virus (HPV) responsible for most cases of cervical cancer, is due to begin in schools across the UK in September for 12- and 13-year-olds, followed by a catch-up programme for girls up to 18. The pilot began in February last year, with two out of 10 primary care trusts agreeing to take part. Parents were sent information, consent forms and reminders.
Uptake was significantly lower in schools with a high proportion of girls from ethnic minority groups and those entitled to free school meals.
Wardle and Waller said that in the wake of the MMR controversy, "work needs to be done to restore public confidence in immunisation".PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] -- The noble gases get their collective moniker from their tendency toward snobbishness. The six elements in the family, which includes helium and neon, don't normally bond with other elements and they don't dissolve into minerals the way other gases do. But now, geochemists from Brown University have found a mineral structure with which the nobles deign to fraternize.
Researchers led by Colin Jackson, a graduate student in geological sciences, have found noble gases to be highly soluble in amphibole, a mineral commonly found in oceanic crust. "We found remarkably high solubility," said Stephen Parman, assistant professor of geological sciences at Brown and Jackson's Ph.D. adviser. "It was three or four orders of magnitude higher than in any other mineral than had been measured."
The findings, which are published in Nature Geoscience, are a step toward answering puzzling questions about how noble gases are cycled between the atmosphere and the depths of the Earth.
Completing the cycle
Gases in the air we breathe are on a geological conveyor belt of sorts, cycled from the Earth's mantle to the atmosphere and back again. Carbon dioxide, water vapor and other gases are released into the atmosphere and oceans from molten magma during volcanic eruptions, and then returned to depths through subduction, when one tectonic plate slides underneath another. The subducting crust is injected deep into the mantle, taking water and any other volatiles it may carry along for the ride.
Noble gases are also released during volcanic activity, but the amount of those gases returned to the mantle through subduction was long thought to be minimal. After all, if noble gases don't dissolve in minerals, they would lack a vehicle to make the trip. Recent research, however, has suggested that some noble gases are indeed recycled, leaving scientists at a loss to find a mechanism for it. By showing definitively that noble gases are soluble in amphibole, Jackson and his colleagues have shown how noble gases could be carried in subducting slabs.
The key to amphibole's ability to dissolve noble gases, the researchers say, is its lattice structure. Amphibole and other silicate minerals are made up of tetrahedral and octahedral structures linked together in a way that creates a series of rings. It's those rings, called A-sites, that provide a home for otherwise finicky noble gases, the research suggests.
Jackson performed a series of experiments to see if the number of empty rings in different types of amphibole were correlated to its ability to dissolve noble gases. He placed cut amphibole gems into a tube with helium or neon under high pressure and temperature, and then used a mass spectrometer to see how much of the gas had dissolved in each gem over the duration of each experiment. The experiments showed that noble gas solubility was highest in types of amphibole with the most unoccupied ring structures.
"This was the meat of the paper," Parman said. "It's telling us a specific site where we think the noble gases are. It might be the first time anyone has made a positive identification of where noble gases are going into a mineral."
Importantly, the researchers said, amphibole isn't the only crustal mineral with these ring structures. Ring structures are actually quite common in crustal minerals, and could provide a wide variety of potential vehicles that could take noble gases back to the depths via subduction.
A high-fidelity fingerprint
Understanding how noble gases are cycled between the Earth's surface and interior could shed new light on how other volatiles are recycled, the researchers said.
Scientists are particularly interested in tracking the cycling of water and carbon. Water is obviously vital for life, and carbon cycling has an important impact on the climate. Scientists try to track the cycle by looking at isotope ratios, which can provide a fingerprint that helps to identify where elements originated. Butarbon and the hydrogen in water have only a few isotopes that scientists can use for tracking, and in the case of hydrogen, the isotope ratios are easily thrown off by all kinds of natural processes.
The noble gases, on the other hand, have lots of isotopes, giving scientists ways to track them with great specificity. So if noble gases are cycled in the same minerals that cycle other volatiles like water and carbon, they could be used as a marker to track those other volatiles. "It's a very high-fidelity fingerprint because you have so many isotopes to play with," Jackson said.
There's more work to be done before noble gases could be used as such a fingerprint, but this work does provide a first step: showing which kinds of minerals could be responsible for noble gas recycling.
###
Other authors on the paper were Simon Kelley of The Open University in the United Kingdom and Reid Cooper, professor of geological sciences at Brown. The work was funded by the National Science Foundation's Division of Earth Sciences (1019229).
Editors: Brown University has a fiber link television studio available for domestic and international live and taped interviews, and maintains an ISDN line for radio interviews. For more information, call (401) 863-2476.Csaba Laszlo is expected to return to Scottish football with Dundee United
Dundee United are expected to appoint Csaba Laszlo as their new manager on Wednesday.
Hungarian Laszlo, 53, managed Hearts between July 2008 and January 2010, and steered them to third in the Scottish Premier League in his one full season.
Having been manager of the national teams of Uganda and Lithuania, he was last with Dunajska Streda in Slovakia.
Ray McKinnon was sacked by United in October following back-to-back Scottish Championship defeats.
United were fourth in the table when McKinnon departed but, under coach Laurie Ellis, they have beaten Dumbarton and St Mirren and are now second to the Buddies on goal difference.
Former Hibernian manager John Hughes was also spoken to by United, who were relegated at the end of the 2015-16 season.MUKILTEO, Wash. -- Snohomish County sheriff's detectives are asking for help to track down a local teenager who went missing on Tuesday.
The sheriff's office says 16-year-old Tyler Christensen has no history of running away.
"His disappearance is considered suspicious because he has strong ties to his family and church," the sheriff's office said in a Wednesday news release.
Christensen was last seen Tuesday at about 6:30 p.m. in the Beverly Park area wearing a blue T-shirt and blue shorts. He had left his house on foot and was planning on walking to a youth group at a church located in the 4700 block of 116th Street SW, according to the sheriff's office.
The teen never arrived at the church and his family reported him missing at about 3:15 a.m. on Wednesday.
Carol Grindle lives a few houses down from Christensen and often hires the teen to do yard work.
"He doesn't seem the type that would wander off to me," she said. "He comes down here on his bicycle whenever I call him."
Christensen stands 5'11" tall and weighs roughly 145 pounds. He has blue eyes and light brown hair in a buzz cut. Anyone with information about the teen's whereabouts is asked to call the police.
The Snohomish County sheriff's office suspended its search operation at about 11 p.m. on Wednesday, but crews will begin searching again Thursday morning.Another week gone, another opportunity lost for Donald Trump to pick up Republican National Convention delegates.
Nebraska is tailormade for Ted Cruz, and when the state holds its winner-take-all primary on May 10, party leaders say Trump is an all-but certain loser.
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Facing those dim prospects, Trump’s best hope in the state might have been to get a few of his supporters on the list of people who will fill those delegate slots — supporters who, in later rounds of voting at a contested convention, would be inclined to abandon Cruz and help Trump.
But that’s where the billionaire appears to have missed his chance: Party officials say they saw virtually no organization by the mogul’s campaign last week when Republicans in all 93 Nebraska counties held local conventions. Those county conventions picked 800 delegates to May’s Nebraska state convention, where 33 delegates to the national convention in Cleveland will be selected.
Because there was little resistance, many county conventions became Cruz pep rallies, according to interviews with party insiders and convention attendees.
“I didn’t see any Trump supporters,” said John Orr, chairman of the Washington County Republican Party. Party leaders, who attended dozens of the conventions around the state, reported similar voids.
It could have been the reverse of a phenomenon that has plagued Trump for weeks. Cruz allies have repeatedly parachuted into states where Trump won primaries — South Carolina, Louisiana, Georgia, Tennessee — and helped turn the mogul’s edge into a likely delegate deficit. That could put Trump at a steep disadvantage should he fail to acquire the 1,237 delegates he needs to clinch the nomination without a contested convention in July.
In Nebraska, where Trump had a chance to return the favor, he didn’t.
Party leaders, who attended dozens of the conventions around the state, reported minimal evidence that Trump had put any emphasis on the delegate process in the state. Cruz easily won a handful of straw polls held by convention attendees. The Texas senator’s allies set up tables at which campaign paraphernalia and literature were handed out.
Delegates Remaining: 30 Delegates 1,543 559 165 161 23 7 4 1 1 1 1,237 Delegates Needed for Nomination
“It appears to me more likely than not that we won’t have a lot of Trump delegates who are faithful to the candidate,” said J.L. Spray, a Republican National Committee member and former chairman of the Nebraska Republican Party. “I think the opposite is true of Ted Cruz. He will end up appealing to a number of delegates in our national delegation.”
Among Cruz’s strongest showings was Sarpy County, where he easily defeated Trump and John Kasich in a straw poll of a few dozen party regulars who will attend the state convention.
“The only person there that had any kind of organization there was Cruz. No one showed up with Trump,” said Tim Gay, a lobbyist and former state lawmaker who attended the county convention.
There’s a reason. Cruz is widely expected to carry the state in its May 10 primary: It’s shaping up to be his best state on the primary calendar over the next month. Its eastern region shares media markets with conservative western Iowa, where Cruz surged to an upset win in February. Cruz has moved some of his Iowa staff into Nebraska, as well. Early primary voting in the state began last week, and as of Monday, 2,058 ballots had been submitted of the 30,000 requested.
The state’s political class is also heavily stacked against Trump. Nebraska Gov. Pete Ricketts has been neutral in the race, but the Ricketts family — prominent GOP megadonors — has become the face of anti-Trump sentiment. Freshman Sen. Ben Sasse, too, has become the most openly anti-Trump Republican in Congress. (He declined to comment for this story.) And Nebraska GOP stalwart Kay Orr, the nation’s first elected Republican female governor, broke sharply from Trump last month.
It doesn’t hurt Cruz that he joined with Sarah Palin to campaign for Sasse’s election in Nebraska two years ago.
Yet there have been no recent public polls of the state, leaving its broader electorate a mystery. And even Republican Party insiders say Trump may find hard-to-detect pockets of support in the state’s 3rd Congressional District, one of the most sprawling in the country. Though populous Douglas and Sarpy counties – which include Omaha and its environs — dominate the political conversation, most GOP voters hail from the 3rd District, and they’re divided among dozens of communities, each with a few thousand people.
One of them is Norman Nielsen, former chairman of the GOP in Holt County, home to about 11,000 people. Nielsen said he hopes to make it to the national convention as a Trump supporter, and he’ll get his chance at the state convention. Just 38 people showed up to the Holt County convention last week, he said, and presidential politics were barely discussed. Though he says he’s seen reports suggesting Cruz is likely to win the state, most of his friends and associates are Trump backers.
“We’re definitely two different sets of attitudes in Nebraska,” he said.
Nearby Logan County saw 46 attendees, and they were about evenly divided between Trump and Cruz, according to one GOP source.
Craig Sefranek, chairman of the 3rd District Republican Party, said Cruz may struggle more than expected in the state’s primary. The Texas senator supports eliminating ethanol subsidies, a position that dogged him in Iowa despite his win there, and the issue doesn’t play well in the Cornhusker State, either. In addition, Sefranek said he’s heard frustration from political leaders who have come out forcefully against Trump, especially Sasse, who said he’d back a third-party candidate if Trump is the GOP nominee.
“A lot of people have said they look at him different and lost respect for him and [that he] doesn’t see the big picture,” Sefranek said. “Obviously, [a] third party gave us Ross Perot, which gave us Bill Clinton. They’re not going to let a third party give us Hillary.”
Sefranek said his own area, Custer County, seems stacked toward Trump, but he expects that the delegate selection process will lean toward Cruz because Trump’s backers are political newcomers without experience in the process. Sefranek himself intends to pursue a national delegate slot, but he’s not sure which candidate he would back on a third ballot. He said he’s hopeful that the state delegation votes proportionally according to the primary results if given the opportunity to vote freely.
“I’d be pretty upset” if a third ballot comes “and they don’t give one ballot to Trump,” he said.
Nebraska GOP consultant Phil Young said the delegate fight in the state, like most others around the country, lends itself to dominance by “party regulars.”
“I don’t believe that Trump has much of a ground game, but that doesn’t mean that he doesn’t have anybody,” Young said.
Trump’s campaign didn’t respond to a request for comment on its Nebraska operation. But there’s a reason Nebraska may be lower value for him: Its delegates to the national convention are required to vote for the statewide winner on the first two ballots, meaning they’re not free to support a different candidate unless the nomination requires at least three votes.
Young said there’s a deep vein of anti-establishment sentiment in Nebraska that has helped propel outsider candidates through primaries there before — and there has even been local backlash against political leaders who have condemned Trump. But that’s not likely to influence delegate selection, he added.
“I think most of the people who are probably going to run for delegate are not going to be your type of people who are too anti-establishment. I don’t think they’re going to go off on a crazy tangent,” he said.
John Orr, the Washington County GOP leader, said many political newcomers around the state have come out for Trump in “knee-jerk” fashion, but they’re not getting involved in the party apparatus.
“They’re not showing up, at least, at the meetings, at the events,” he said. “We just last week had a county convention. … I didn’t see any Trump supporters.” Orr added that about 100 people attended.
In suburban Sarpy County, whose convention several hundred Republican activists attended, Gay said he’s still considering whether to make a run at a national delegate slot. Spray, the RNC member, who is an automatic delegate to the national convention, said he expects Cruz will carry the delegation.
“It’s a combination of the effort that I’ve seen and that I anticipate from the Cruz campaign, but it’s also conversations with delegates and individuals I know will be delegates to the state convention,” he said.
CORRECTION: An earlier version of this story misidentified J.L. Spray as the chairman of the Nebraska Republican Party.He’s the former chairman and current Republican national committeeman.Argos agency staff get extra 80p an hour up to Christmas – if they don't go sick
Workers on the minimum wage at an Argos warehouse have been offered an 80p an hour pre-Christmas bonus – but only if they don’t take time off sick.
In a move that one leading employment lawyer warned “would almost certainly amount to indirect disability discrimination”, temporary workers at the retailer’s Basildon depot have been told they will not receive an “uplift” if they call in ill once in any single week.
The workers at the depot in Essex were told about the new system in a note which began: “Great news starting this Sunday!”
It continued: “Agency colleagues will not lose the 80p uplift if they go home due to no work etc, but they will lose it if they go sick or don’t attend for work. If they go sick or don’t attend on one day, they lose their uplift for all of that week, but they then start fresh the next week with another opportunity to earn the uplift.”
One worker posted it on Facebook with the following judgment: “What utter rubbish.”
An Argos spokesman confirmed the note had been circulated to workers at the Basildon depot and said: “We do not tolerate discrimination and fully comply with the Disability Discrimination Act.”
But Michael Newman, a partner at the law firm Leigh Day, said if anyone with a chronic illness or disability that caused them to take sick days was not paid the extra 80p an hour, the employers could face a legal challenge.
“It is an apparently neutral measure that would impact workers with disabilities more than others, who may not be able to help regular absences,” he said. “[The employer] would have difficulties if they did not look at the individual circumstances of workers with disabilities to see whether they should get the uplift.
“If [they] wanted to not discriminate, they would have to review the circumstances of individuals who did not get the uplift, and ensure that the reason that they were not getting the payment was not their disability.”
The 80p an hour bonus applies to temporary agency workers employed for Argos by agencies across all its distribution centres.
Argos said: “As we prepare for our peak Christmas trading period it is a business priority to increase our temporary workforce to help meet higher demand and deliver an unbeatable customer experience.
“Additional resource is at a premium in the run-up to Christmas so to ensure we attract, retain and increase the attendance of our temporary workers, we offer an attendance bonus of 80p per hour, which applies to all agency staff across all of our distribution centres. We take the treatment of all staff – whether directly employed by us or indirectly via a third party agency – extremely seriously.”Rovio is moving forward with its plan for an Angry Birds feature film. The company announced today that John Cohen, producer of Despicable Me, has signed on to produce the movie, which will be financed by Rovio. Outside his production work, Cohen has had an executive role in several animated movies, including two Ice Age films and the generally reviled 2007 remake of Alvin and the Chipmunks. David Maisel, formerly of Marvel Studios and currently an advisor for Rovio, will act as executive producer, as he did for Iron Man. In a release today, Rovio said that the movie was slated for release in the summer of 2016, though no other details have been given.
The Angry Birds film first came to light in mid-2011, when Maisel joined Rovio. Since then, we've seen both a Star Wars film tie-in and an animated short, which aired late last year. The company has said it will retain "full creative control" over the project by working outside the studio system, but we still don't know exactly how the short levels of Angry Birds will be translated into a full-length film, or how relevant the franchise will be when it's released several years from now.Two weeks ago, Alabama quarterback AJ McCarron shocked many Crimson Tide fans when he said that he would be supporting Auburn in the BCS National Championship Game, going as far as saying he “might wear orange and blue.” Sure, fans of the SEC are all about supporting their conference, but Alabama fans, and certainly players, aren’t allowed to pull for Auburn, right?
Wrong, at least according to McCarron. McCarron and Auburn’s Tre Mason spent a few days together ahead of this year’s Heisman Trophy presentation in New York City, and the two hit it off well. In fact, Mason impressed the whole McCarron family, and it appears that AJ’s mother Dee Dee is now a huge Tre Mason fan. Check out the shirt she’ll even be wearing for the national title game:
Proud of my kids having the class & understanding 2 support Tre & the SEC. Sad other people can’t c the bigger pic http://t.co/auEJn28aNW — Dee Dee McCarron (@DeeDeeBonner) December 29, 2013
@craigmarsh @MorteDeMocknbrd we are pulling mainly because of Tre Mason. Great young man.. Also other friends with kids on team — Dee Dee McCarron (@DeeDeeBonner) December 29, 2013
@TreMason21 welcome baby. Ordered shirts for game! Will be wearing this for you! pic.twitter.com/vCPEcTr3Uf — Dee Dee McCarron (@DeeDeeBonner) December 29, 2013
I hope AJ decides to don one of these too — that really would be Tre-mendous.BILL HENSON, the celebrated artist whose photograph of a nude child in 2008 was slammed as ''revolting'' by the then prime minister Kevin Rudd, last night said it was ''sheer nonsense'' for critics to argue that a child did not have the capacity to consent to modelling nude.
''People do get confused with notions of consent and harm,'' Henson told a standing-room-only audience of 700 at Melbourne's Federation Square.,
''But as my barrister friends remind me, kids do consent to all kinds of significant things all the time. Parents consent to babies' injections, a 10-year-old consents to dental appointments, a 15-year-old can consent to a sex change in this state. Consent is something that increases gradually as a child moves towards its majority.
''Every day children consent to activities that result in real harm,'' he said, saying a 12-year-old child going out to play football could ''find himself in a wheelchair for the rest of his life. There is harm done to children by parents consenting to activities every day''.
Henson's speech, launching the 2010 Melbourne Art Fair, has been eagerly awaited because he has only spoken rarely since he sparked a national debate about art and pornography and the rights of children in May 2008.In science, it's not enough to think something is so. Researchers must show that what we believe to be true is in fact true, proven through statistically significant and reproducible results. Questioning assumptions is, after all, what science is about.
Nonetheless, some studies really take the cake in the "duh" department, discovering things that were already obvious. Here are findings from this year that should come as little surprise.
1. Unsafe sex is more likely after drinking
Drinking too much alcohol can impair decision-making. And a study out this year drove this point home: Canadian researchers, reporting results that will be published in January in the journal Addiction, said they ran 12 studies looking at the link between blood alcohol and the likelihood of agreeing to use a condom during sexual intercourse. The more alcohol in a person's system (yes, the drunker they were), the more likely they were to throw caution to the wind and ditch safe sex. Specifically, for every 0.1-milligram-per-milliliter increase in study participants' blood alcohol levels, there was a 5 percent increased likelihood of having unprotected sex.
2. Men appear confident by suppressing fear, pain and empathy
When mixed martial arts fighters need to show off masculine strength and confidence, they suppress fear, empathy, pain and shame.
Yeah, not too shocking: that tamping down those emotions might make someone seem more formidable. But the research, published in December in the journal Social Psychology Quarterly, was aimed at understanding how men manage their emotions and expectations of manhood.
"Managing emotional manhood, whether it occurs in a locker room or board room, at home or the Oval Office, likely plays a key role in maintaining unequal social arrangements," study author Christian Vaccaro of Indiana University of Pennsylvania said in a statement.
3. Smoking pot and driving isn't safe
Who knew, getting behind the wheel while high could be trouble? According to a study published in October in the journal Epidemiologic Reviews, marijuana use increases the risk of car crashes. People who took to the road within three hours of smoking pot, as well as those who tested positive for the drug, were more than twice as likely as other drivers to be involved in a car crash. And that risk increased for those who smoked more frequently and those showing a higher level of the drug in their urine.
4. Pigs love mud
Turns out pigs aren't just putting on a show when they haul butt around their muddy quarters, diving into the muck. They actually like it. While mud baths keep pigs cool, a review of research reported in 2011 found wallowing may also be a swine sign of well-being. While the review found the strongest reason noted in the past studies for wallowing was to keep cool, the pigs kept it up through winter months.
5. Fashion magazines glorify youth
Surprise, surprise: Fashion mags portray women over 40 sparingly, if at all. Young celebrities and models dominate the pages of these publications, even ones targeted at older age groups. For example, researchers reported in April in the Journal of Aging Studies, that 22 percent of the reader base of Essence is older than 50, but only 9 percent of the women in its pages were even older than 40. Vogue featured only one woman over 40 on its covers in 2010: Halle Berry (then 43).
6. People with generous partners have happy marriages
In the realm of unsurprising marriage advice, researchers found this year that generous marriages are happy marriages. Couples with spouses who offer back rubs and other seemingly selfless acts are happier with their relationships than people who report low amounts of generosity in their marriages, according to researchers with the National Marriage Project.
Half of women and nearly half (46 percent) of men who reported above-average generosity in their marriages described themselves as "very happy" with their relationships. In comparison, only 14 percent of people with low levels of generosity in their marriages said the same.
7. Parents don't think their kids are doing drugs
Smoking pot and drinking? Not my daughter! Parents are in denial about their own children's bad habits, according to poll data released in September by the University of Michigan's C.S. Mott Children's Hospital. That study found that while most parents believe at least 60 percent of 10th-graders drink alcohol, only 10 percent thought their own teen did.
8. People aren't doing anything in particular on the Internet
Anyone who has ever gone down an Internet black hole, only to emerge hours (and dozens of Wikipedia articles) later, will be less than shocked at the revelation that online is the place to go for mindless entertainment. According to a Pew Research report released in December, 53 percent of people ages 18 to 29 get online at least once on any given day just to pass the time. Using the Internet to goof off isn't limited just to the young, either: Fifty-eight percent of all adults said they sometimes get on the Internet for no reason other than casual entertainment.
9. Restricting driver's licenses decreases teen fatalities
Graduated licenses, which allow teens more freedom behind the wheel as they gain driving experience, save lives. Researchers at the Institute for Research and Evaluation (PIRE) reported in November that fatal automobile crash rates among 16- and 17-year-olds fell 8 percent to 14 percent in states that enacted graduated-licensing laws. Restrictions such as limits on the number of passengers a teen can ferry around and rules against night driving decreased fatal crashes by 13 percent and 9 percent, respectively. Practice (and a little more maturity) makes perfect, it seems.
10. Most shoppers ignore nutrition labels
Calories, cholesterol, sugar … yawn. A study published in October found that grocery shoppers pay little attention to the information on nutrition labels. Even shoppers who say they "almost always" read nutrition information aren't likely to take in much information in a real-world shopping environment, the research found. Using an eye-tracking device on study volunteers, researchers found that only about 1 percent looked at information about total fat, trans fat, sugar and serving size on nearly all labels, even though between 20 percent and 31 percent of people said they looked at each of those categories when they shopped. Anything low on the label is particularly unlikely to get attention. The study found that the average consumer doesn't make it past the fifth line.
11. Presidents outlive their contemporaries
U.S. presidents tend to live as long or longer than their contemporaries, according to research published Dec. 7 in the Journal of the American Medical Association. Sure, being chief executive is stressful (and eight have died in office, four by assassination), but it turns out the top job in the country comes with perks: great medical care, for example. Presidents also tend to be well-off and well-educated, according to lead researcher S. Jay Olshansky, a professor of public health at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Unsurprisingly, money and knowledge tend to buy health and longevity.
You can follow LiveScience senior writer Stephanie Pappas on Twitter @sipappas. Follow LiveScience for the latest in science news and discoveries on Twitter @livescience and on Facebook.
Copyright 2011 LiveScience, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.Downloadable content ( DLC ) is additional content created for a released video game. It is distributed through the Internet by the game's official publisher. Downloadable content can be of several types, ranging from aesthetic outfit changes to a new, extensive storyline, similar to an expansion pack. As such, |
stunts are easy.”)
Turner, who also sits on the DNC's Unity and Reform Commission, has already made Our Revolution a more forceful presence in the party — and in the press — willing to weigh in or take positions where Sanders has not. (Most recently, Turner voiced support for a progressive “litmus test” in 2018. Sanders has not backed the idea.)
One Sanders aide described their work as parallel but separate: The senator is working “inside the system,” the aide said, and Our Revolution is working “outside the system."
The points at which those tracks converge, and conflict, however, will prove more difficult to navigate, with Sanders working with the same party leadership that Turner has made a new target. (Ellison, the deputy DNC chair and a leading progressive, found himself in the middle of the petition upset, assuring Turner that he hadn’t known anything about it beforehand, that he was “shocked” to hear about the greeting, and would take the issue to the chair, according to Turner.)
So far, Our Revolution has only highlighted its recent conflict with the DNC.
In addition to the Tuesday email, the group has used footage of Turner’s remarks at the petition drop in July — a pointed response to the DNC barricades, donuts, and water — in digital acquisition ads directing new members to their signup page.
Asked what it would look like to “make the Democratic Party ‘feel the Bern’ again,” as Tuesday's Our Revolution email puts it, Turner cited the group's work at large.
"We have a component within our mission that talks about transforming the party,” she said. “And that’s what we do every day.”A sign directing drivers to the New Jersey Turnpike - Ridgefield Park, NJ - May 5, 2008 - Photo: Paul Murnane / WCBS 880 A sign directing drivers to the New Jersey Turnpike (credit: Paul Murnane / WCBS 880)
TRENTON, N.J. (CBSNewYork/AP) — Frustrated commuters will be glad to hear the massive work to widen a stretch of New Jersey Turnpike is closer to its end than its start.
Billed as the biggest ongoing roadway project in the United States, the undertaking will transform the turnpike into a 12-lane highway from the Pennsylvania Turnpike Connector at Exit 6 in Burlington County to Exit 9 in New Brunswick, where it is already that wide.
Trucks and buses will be restricted to the three outer lanes in each direction; only cars will be allowed in the three inside lanes in each direction.
Currently, about 130,000 vehicles a day use the 35-mile turnpike stretch in the work zone.
With a price tag of $2.5 billion — all of it from tolls — the widening work has created thousands of jobs on and off site since work began in 2009 and is costlier than any individual highway project that was undertaken with federal stimulus funding.
The Turnpike Authority’s chief engineer, Rich Raczynski, says the project is two-thirds complete and on target to be finished by fall 2014.
The impetus for the widening, dating back nearly a decade, was recurring bottlenecks at Exit 8A, where the highway goes from 10 southbound lanes to six and vice versa on the northbound side.
Anyone driving where construction is under way will find it in different stages of completion in a random pattern.
It was planned that way.
As Raczynski explained it, instead of seeking permits, acquiring land, and awarding contracts in stages, authority officials moved to do all three simultaneously.
So, when everything was ready in a designated zone, work would begin immediately.
“We picked up maybe two years on this project,” Raczynski said. “We wanted to accelerate this project.”
A fourth factor in play – moving three gas and oil pipelines that run parallel to the turnpike – also fell into place in a timely fashion.
“The (utility) companies did an extremely efficient job relocating the pipelines,” Raczynski said.
Actual planning for the project dates to 2004, and Raczynski said the intervening financial crisis had worked in the authority’s favor.
“The economic collapse helped us,” he said. “The heavy-construction industry in the state of New Jersey basically dried up, and we were the only ones pushing work out at the time.
“When you get contractors who are desperate for work, they really sharpen their pencils,” Raczynski said. “We’ve been averaging 20 percent below our estimates with the bids we’ve been getting. The actual project cost right now is lower than we anticipated.”
The remaining work will unfold in various stages.
This month, the northbound split at Exit 8A was moved two miles north for work to widen the outside lanes from two to three. The southbound merge will follow soon.
Once all the outer lane sections are joined and paved, the six inner lanes will be closed for repaving and installation of electronic traffic-monitoring equipment. That work is expected in spring 2014.
“That entire section of the turnpike will be new roadway,” said John Keller, the authority’s supervising engineer.
A half-dozen cranes towering over the highway announce the start of the project at Exit 6.
This is one of the more complicated sections because of the intersection with the Pennsylvania Turnpike connector, said field project manager Ralph Csogi, who is responsible for the first six miles of the expansion.
Currently, four ramps, including two flyovers, connect the turnpike and the extension. With the widening, the number will grow to eight. Motorists are already using one of the new flyovers, opened so an old one could be torn down. Nearby, local road bridges have had to be removed and rebuilt, or will soon be.
At the mazelike Exit 6 site last week, workers were busy laying steel on a new ramp while traffic flowed beneath. Other crews poured concrete for supports and built retaining walls for another new ramp.
“Everyone tries to set their steel before winter,” said Gerald E. Arters Jr., resident engineer for that work sector, saying that clears the way for workers to do the preparation work for pouring concrete in the spring.
“We really try to minimize interference with traffic by working over and around it,” said Michael Poole, assistant resident engineer.
He acknowledged backups happen but stressed that lane closures are planned and limited to only one sector at a time, weather permitting.
“You have 26 contractors competing for lane closures,” Poole said.
Arters, who was clearly delighted to show off the work that has been done or is under way, said he had never seen anything like the turnpike widening in his 22 years in the business.
“This is a project of a lifetime,” he said.
For his part, Raczynski, the chief engineer, is not buying predictions that adding lanes will not reduce congestion.
Some transportation experts have raised that scenario based on a highway engineering phenomenon known as “induced demand,” the tendency for new lanes to attract new drivers. Human nature and traffic science make it inevitable, the experts have said.
Raczynski said the existing turnpike congestion had forced traffic onto local roads, causing backups and increasing pollution.
He expects the expansion to draw that traffic back to the turnpike, increasing the number of vehicles on it.
“But,” Raczynski added, “with the improvements we’re making, we’ll be able to move that traffic.”
Have you been frustrated with your commute on the New Jersey Turnpike? Leave your comments below…
(TM and Copyright 2012 CBS Radio Inc. and its relevant subsidiaries. CBS RADIO and EYE Logo TM and Copyright 2012 CBS Broadcasting Inc. Used under license. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.)A federal magistrate judge has denied (PDF) a request from the FBI to install sophisticated surveillance software to track someone suspected of attempting to conduct a “sizeable wire transfer from [John Doe’s] local bank [in Texas] to a foreign bank account.”
Back in March 2013, the FBI asked the judge to grant a month-long “Rule 41 search and seizure warrant” of a suspect’s computer “at premises unknown” as a way to find out more about these possible violations of “federal bank fraud, identity theft and computer security laws.”
In an unusually public order published this week, Judge Stephen Smith slapped down the FBI on the grounds that the warrant request was overbroad and too invasive. In it, he gives a unique insight as to the government’s capabilities for sophisticated digital surveillance on potential targets. According to the judge’s description of the spyware, it sounds very similar to the RAT software that many miscreants use to spy on other Internet users without their knowledge. (Ars editor Nate Anderson detailed the practice last month.)
According to the 13-page order, the FBI wanted to “surreptitiously install data extraction software on the Target Computer. Once installed, the software has the capacity to search the computer’s hard drive, random access memory, and other storage media; to activate the computer’s built-in camera; to generate latitude and longitude coordinates for the computer’s location; and to transmit the extracted data to FBI agents within the district.”
Neither an FBI spokesperson, nor Craig M. Feazel—who represents the FBI in this case and is an assistant United States Attorney—responded to Ars’ request for comment. Many civil libertarians, though, have raised serious questions as to what the government is up to.
“Hacking should be something that is the last resort, not the first option,” Chris Soghoian, principal technologist at the ACLU's Speech Privacy and Technology Project, told Ars. “No one knows anything about [how the FBI’s software works]. We know from a [Freedom of Information Act request] that there was a [Computer and Internet Protocol Address Verifier software], but this seems to be much more sophisticated. This sounds like the kind of [spyware] stuff that Gamma is selling. As a general rule, we don’t think law enforcement should be in the hacking business. It’s sexy, but it’s terrifying.”
Soghoian also recalled that Germany’s own (and similar) “federal trojan” program has been revealed to have notable security flaws by the famed hacker group, the Chaos Computer Club.
"Little or no explanation"
According to the judge’s order (PDF), the FBI has no idea where the suspect actually is, but noted that the “IP address of the computer accessing Doe’s account resolves to a foreign country.”
While IP addresses can certainly be easily spoofed, assuming the suspect actually is outside the United States, that raises significant questions as to the appropriate use of such a warrant. The judge agreed, noting that the “government’s application does not satisfy any [existing territorial limits].”
Further, the judge cited the government’s failure to meet the Fourth Amendment’s requirement of “place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”
The Government’s application contains little or no explanation of how the Target Computer will be found. Presumably, the Government would contact the Target Computer via the counterfeit e-mail address, on the assumption that only the actual culprits would have access to that e-mail account. Even if this assumption proved correct, it would not necessarily mean that the government has made contact with the end-point Target Computer at which the culprits are sitting. It is not unusual for those engaged in illegal computer activity to “spoof” Internet Protocol addresses as a way of disguising their actual online presence; in such a case the Government’s search might be routed through one or more “innocent” computers on its way to the Target Computer. The Government’s application offers nothing but indirect and conclusory assurance that its search technique will avoid infecting innocent computers or devices.
The judge also berated the government for its failure to explain how precisely it would target the suspect’s computer, the suspect, and no one else.
What if the Target Computer is located in a public library, an Internet café, or a workplace accessible to others? What if the computer is used by family or friends uninvolved in the illegal scheme? What if the counterfeit e-mail address is used for legitimate reasons by others unconnected to the criminal conspiracy? What if the e-mail address is accessed by more than one computer, or by a cell phone and other digital devices? There may well be sufficient answers to these questions, but the Government’s application does not supply them.
Yeah, that Judge Smith
What’s also notable about this case, according to legal experts, is that it was issued by a Texas federal judge notorious for his outspoken views on making government surveillance more transparent. As we reported last year, Judge Smith estimated that tens of thousands of secret surveillance orders are issued by his fellow judges each year.
“This is the first time I've seen a public denial; the government has been very secretive about this surveillance tool and there hasn't been much litigation about it that I'm aware of,” Hanni Fakhoury, an attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, told Ars. “I'm not surprised it came from Judge Smith. He's very outspoken on surveillance issues. His order finding cell site records protected by the Fourth Amendment is on appeal to the 5th Circuit (EFF argued the case). And he's issued orders denying requests for tower dump and a stingray before too.”SACRAMENTO (CBS13) – State Senator Leland Yee’s Sacramento office has been blocked off by California Highway Patrol officers as FBI raids hit several locations across the California coast Wednesday morning.
Yee is in custody, according to CBSSF. He was seen arriving at the federal courthouse in San Francisco in handcuffs. According to the FBI indictment released later Wednesday, Yee has been charged with wire fraud and conspiracy to deal firearms.
Yee was among 26 people indicted by the FBI Wednesday. Among them is the notorious Raymond Chow. Chow, also known as “Shrimp Boy,” was reportedly the head of Ghee Kung Tong, one of several fraternal organizations in San Francisco’s Chinatown. Chow had returned to Chinatown after serving time in prison on gun charges.
According to KCBS, federal investigators have raided both the San Francisco area and Sacramento offices of Yee. Ghee Kung Tong’s offices were among those raided as well.
FBI agents have been searching Yee’s Sacramento office since 7 a.m., the Capitol’s legislative counsel tells CBS13.
“I was surprised to learn of the developments this morning. Like everyone else, we are waiting for additional information and can’t make further comment,” said Assemblymember Paul Fong (D – San Jose) in a statement.
Yee, a Democrat, has represented California’s 8th Senate District – which encompasses parts of San Francisco and most of San Mateo County – since 2006. He is currently a candidate for California’s Secretary of State. The biography on Yee’s website touts his record as a prolific lawmaker. Of the 181 pieces of legislation he’s passed, Yee notes, 138 have been written into law.
“Coming on the heels of the corruption charges of Senator Calderon and the conviction of Senator Wright, today’s actions need to be a wake up call. We are clearly beyond the point of looking at one bad apple and instead looking at a corrupt institution in the California senate. The constant begging for campaign cash clearly has a corrosive effect on a person’s soul and the only solution is to get big money out of our politics once and for all,” wrote Derek Cressman, one of Yee’s opponents in the Secretary of State race, in a statement.
The lawmaker has seen his share of controversy. Yee, then a member of the California State Assembly, notoriously passed a series of bills in 2005 that banned sales of violent video games to children. The law was challenged and eventually ended up before the Supreme Court, who ruled it unconstitutional.
Back in 2010, the National Rifle Association gave Yee a “D” grade on gun rights, according to Votesmart.org. The Gun Owners of California gave him a 0% rating on gun rights back in 2008.
TM and © Copyright 2010 CBS Radio Inc. and its relevant subsidiaries. CBS RADIO and EYE Logo TM and Copyright 2010 CBS Broadcasting Inc. Used under license. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or Redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.Chicago, IL - Through a diverse career on the stage, in film and television, and in music, Broadway star, Idina Menzel, best known for her work in the Broadway musical and film adaption of "Rent", her Tony Award-winning performance as Elphaba, the green-faced Wicked Witch of the West in "Wicked", and her recurring role in the hit TV series "Glee", has spent much of the past two years crisscrossing the country, headlining concerts with world-renowned symphony orchestras.This past November, on Menzel's 2011 tour itinerary, the star recorded her PBS special "Idina Menzel Live: Barefoot at the Symphony." Today, the DVD and accompanying album was released.The TV special, DVD, and the album, were captured in Toronto at Koerner Hall, a beautifully modernist, acoustically blessed space literally carved out of the city's historic Royal Conservatory of Music headquarters. Menzel performs with the 52-piece Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony, one of Canada's premiere symphony orchestras, under the direction of legendary conductor Marvin Hamlisch and her equally accomplished music director and pianist, Rob Mounsey, who has worked with everyone from Paul Simon and Steely Dan to Madonna, Usher and Rihanna.Watch Idina Menzel - "Defying Gravity"From "LIVE: Barefoot at the Symphony"Though Menzel's symphony concerts have attracted sellout crowds and earned consistent critical praise, she was hesitant about the idea at first. "I've toured a lot in my life with different bands and different styles of music, but I stayed away from orchestras and symphonies for a long time, because I like to have a real intimacy with the audience, and I was afraid these big orchestras would usurp my ability to do that. But then I discovered that there's a way to work with 80 musicians and make it feel like we've all known each other for years. I'm still able to explore my edgier side with songs like ‘Roxanne,' but do it with an orchestra, which is really thrilling."Menzel opens the set with "Life of the Party," written by Andrew Lippa for his 2000 off-Broadway musical The Wild Party, which costarred Menzel and her husband, Taye Diggs. It was Menzel who came up with the clever idea of combining Cole Porter's "Love for Sale" with Sting's "Roxanne." From Rent, the landmark musical that not only provided Menzel with her big professional break but also introduced her to Diggs, she chooses "No Day But Today."Watch Idina Menzel - "Tomorrow"From "LIVE: Barefoot at the Symphony"Between Broadway numbers, Menzel slips in Jimmy Webb's "Asleep On the Wind" (recorded by Webb in 1974 for his album Land's End). Other standouts include Lady Gaga's "Poker Face," which she performed with Lea Michele on Glee and charged Mounsey with the challenge of coming up with a big, orchestral arrangement for it. Mounsey also came up with a playful rendition of Rodgers and Hart's "Where or When," featuring a special guest, husband Taye Diggs. Making the guest appearance was, she says, "entirely his idea. Once we're on stage together it's the real deal and we have great fun."Upcoming North American tour dates:June 1, Vancouver, The Center in Vancouver for Performing ArtsJune 2, Seattle, The Paramount TheaterJune 3, Portland, Keller AuditoriumJune 5, Modesto, CA, Gallo Center for the ArtsJune 7, San Francisco, Davies Symphony HallJune 9, Santa Rosa, Wells Fargo Center for the ArtsJune 10, Las Vegas, Reynolds Hall at the Smith CenterJune 12, San Antonio, Majestic TheaterJune 13, Dallas, Music Hall at Fair ParkJune 14, Austin, Dell Foundation Hall at the Long Center for the Performing ArtsJune 16, Nashville, The Woods Amphitheater at FontanelJune 17, St. Louis, Peabody Opera HouseJune 19, Kansas City, The Midland by AMCJune 20, Milwaukee, Marcus Center for the Performing ArtsJune 22, Des Moines, Civic CenterJune 23, Columbus, Bi-Centennial Stage at the Columbus Commons StageJune 24, Indianapolis, Clowes Memorial HallJune 26, Midland, MI, Midland Center for the ArtsJune 27, Detroit, Detroit Opera HouseJune 29, Richmond, VA, Carpenter TheaterJune 30, Philadelphia, Mann CenterJuly 7, Minneapolis, Orpheum TheaterJuly 8, Chicago, RaviniaAug 3, Washington DC, Wolf TrapOct 29, New York, Carnegie HallRelated: 2008 ChicagoPride.com interview with Idina MenzelWatch Idina Menzel - Lady Gaga's "Poker Face"From "LIVE: Barefoot at the Symphony"You’re resolved: toxic chemicals are out of your life. Now how about your fellow creatures? Our pets deserve natural care too, but fleas are often the biggest pet problem we have to buy chemicals for – or do we? Here are some non-toxic flea care ideas to help you keep your animal companions – and your home – safe and organic.
B vitamins and garlic are natural insect repellents, so supplement your pet’s diet with a pet safe vitamin. Healthier animals are more resistant to pests and diseases, too. It might take a few weeks to notice the effects, so consider this part of your long term flea treatment.
Regular flea combing is essential to making sure eggs and insects never stay on your pet long enough to matter. Simple daily brushing pays off! Plus, it helps you bond with your little buddy.
Castorand Pollux makes a flea collar infused with naturally insect repelling essential oils.
Keep the environment flea-free too. Use diatomaceous earth or boric acid to keep fleas and other pesky bugs at bay. These are minerals that cut up bug’s stomachs, without having any toxic effect on humans and animals.
Biological control: There’s a nematode, called the ‘killer roundworm’, that feeds on flea larvae, and you can buy bottles of it, add water, and spray the tiny worms around your yard. Supposedly they will die out once they run out of fleas to eat, but I’d do a little more research before introducing another species into the garden. Ask your vet about it.
And we love to hear your personal pet stories, so let us know what has and hasn’t worked for you.
Image: kpjasAlberta’s infrastructure minister said he wants to help towns and cities as much as possible, but there are limits with the provincial economy still deep in the red.
Brian Mason said unless the economy changes it will be hard to increase any funds for infrastructure.
Mason is meeting with federal and provincial counterparts in Edmonton to discuss the next phase of Ottawa’s plan to invest $120 billion on infrastructure.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government has promised to cover half the costs of the new projects, rather than the expected one-third.
That has led to public sniping between Mason and Edmonton Mayor Don Iveson over Alberta’s decision to contribute 25 per cent.
Iveson said the province should contribute a third, but Mason said times are tough and Alberta municipalities already get the most in Canada when it comes to per-capita funding for operations and capital projects.Chrome, Firefox, Plugins oh my!
Remember browser plugins? Not ‘apps’ or ‘add-ons’ from stores, but plugins. Those installers you used to download in the 90s in order to run special content on the web, such as a game, chat program, or watch some videos. Those were written using NPAPI (the Netscape Plugin API) and ActiveX controls (Internet Explorer’s equivalent). These are APIs that enable web authors to interact in real-time with their users and use any media a computer could deliver. The price though, was to write and maintain your plugin for each and every platform your users had.
Later, with the advent of Flash and Java applet plugins, most of that special content was implemented using only those two. Not incidentally, Flash and Java enable writing the code once and running it on all their supported platforms, unburdening the developer from maintaining multiple code bases.
Then along came HTML5, with the premise of enabling web-pages to become web-apps. Supplying web developers with media, storage, threading, and network APIs. APIs that up until 2009 were only available through the use of plugins. HTML5 made sense too. Web pages looked more and more like applications and less and less like text pages. And why should a plugin become an inseparable part of a system. By definition it plugs-in, it should also be able to plug-out.
Jumping to the present, it looks like it’s an end of an era. The Chromium team announced last year that they’re deprecating NPAPI plugins from Chrome at the beginning of 2014 and completely removing support by the end of that year. Also, Mozilla is marking NPAPI plugins as unwelcome citizens in their ecosystem by making them all ‘Click-To-Play’ by default. And last but not least, ActiveX control support was removed in the ‘New Windows 8 browsing experience’ (the ‘Metro’ application) edition of Internet Explorer available on Windows 8.
If you’re a web developer and this all sounds very irrelevant to you, consider yourself lucky! Unfortunately, this was quite relevant for CloudShare. Here’s why…
Remote Access
Remote Access is a name (and verb) given to protocols such as RDP and VNC that allow a user to use a machine remotely.
The CloudShare web application allows its users to remote access their machines through the browser. With Windows being our most popular OS, RDP is naturally our most popular remote access protocol.
To use RDP through a browser in 2008, CloudShare’s only option was to use NPAPI plugins and ActiveX controls. These plugins allowed Windows clients (browsers) to RDP to a remote machine using a web page element. A marvel at the time. These plugins served us well. At least up until now.
HTML5 Remote Access
Enter the Guacamole project.
Using Canvas and WebSockets HTML5 technologies, the Guacamole project proved any browser can become a client in a remote access protocol. It works something like this:
A machine, acting as a remote-access gateway (a proxy to remote-access other machines) is run with a Guacamole web server and daemon. The user logs into the Guacamole web application, using a browser and chooses his desired machine to connect to. The gateway then acts as a translator between the selected protocol (RDP/SSH/VNC) used by the remote machine and the Guacamole protocol used by the browser.
The actual client is pure HTML, CSS and Javascript, and is served to the browser using the same Guacamole web application.
Multiplatform and Protocol Abstraction
Let’s illustrate our problem. Our remote access page allows a user to connect to a machine using VNC, RDP, or SSH. RDP uses NPAPI plugins or ActiveX controls, and VNC and SSH use Java applets. Each has its own code base and a different interface. To make things more complex, our NPAPI plugin uses Window’s native ActiveX control DLL to connect to a machine using RDP. Different Windows versions provide different DLLs with different behaviors, and non-Windows platforms cannot be supported. This adds the platform dimension to our testing matrix as well.
Using Guacamole not only allows us to maintain one code base to run on any platform a browser runs on, but it also allows us to use any protocol (supported by the Guacamole project) and deliver it on top of a single WebSockets protocol. In other words, not only do we get platform agnostic code, but we also get the same code to connect to different protocols.
Using Guacamole, our remote-access client becomes much simpler. Changing a protocol is simply a change in configuration and capabilities, not interface or code. As it’s written in Javascript and HTML, it’s cross-platform. With a bit of effort, also cross-browser.
A New Hope (A New Client)
So now we have the task of building a new Remote Access client. The most important gap we needed to fill was security, specifically – authentication and authorization. Guacamole’s gateway application comes with a few out of the box authentication methods that you can install:
Hard coded configuration
An XML file containing your users’ credentials and remote machines. This could work for on-premise use with a small number of users. But it surely isn’t scalable nor maintainable for a Cloud Computing service.
MySQL and LDAP
Managing your users and remote connections using a database schema or Directory Access listings. The problem with those lies with the fact that CloudShare already has users and machines with complex and intricate permissions logic. Mirroring that information and logic is an effort that we would like to avoid.
Security Concerns
Being behind our firewall, we should not forget that Guacamole is a remote-access gateway and as such can access any machine that has SSH, VNC or RDP connections available, even itself. Even without administrative access. This needs to be addressed in our authentication method.
So what do we do?
Three words: ‘One Time Passwords’. Authentication happens in four stages:
A Client requests Cloudshare to connect to a remote machine via Guacamole. Cloudshare authenticates the client’s request (the user and connection), and saves a temporary cryptographic hash (“password”); or rejects it. The Client requests connection from Guacamole using the given password. Guacamole queries Cloudshare and authenticates (or rejects) the request.
This solution removes the need to mirror application logic, and needs minimum maintenance leading to better scalability.
Fortunately Guacamole allows you to write your own authentication method via dynamic class loading, that allowed us to implement the server side of the above solution.
Also, Guacamole’s Javascript client modules are decoupled from Gateway and authentication code. The client modules are the engine that translates the Guacamole protocol instructions to Canvas element images and DOM events, and DOM events back to the Guacamole protocol. This allowed us to embed the client in our Remote Access page and change its authentication method.
A Brighter Web
Hopefully this problem-solution blog was enlightening for you. Guacamole is one of the more inspiring examples of what can be accomplished with HTML5 technologies. Today 90% of all our users use Guacamole to access their machines via VNC and SSH and we’re working hard on bringing RDP into that statistic soon.Fresh off the news that George Lucas and his team are considering alternate cities to host the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art amidst an active lawsuit aimed at blocking its construction, proponents of the planned lakefront institution have launched an online petition requesting that Friends of the Parks (FOTP) drop their legal challenge. The new call to actions argues that the museum’s cultural impact along with its new underground parking and 200,000 square feet of new parkland represent a net gain for the Chicago’s public compared to the asphalt parking lot that currently occupies the site between Soldier Field and the McCormick Place Lakeside Center convention hall.
According to the creator of the petition, the legal action represents a direct contradiction to FOTP’s official mission statement:
"Friends of the Parks is a 40-year old non-profit organization whose mission is to preserve, protect, improve and promote the use of parks and open spaces throughout the Chicago area for the enjoyment of all residents and visitors."
With that statement in mind, supporters of the project have difficulty understanding how the site’s current use of hosting tailgaters during eight or nine regular season NFL home games is somehow a greater public benefit compared to a brand new art museum and park to be constructed and operated at no cost to the taxpayer.
The petition also raises concerns over the nonprofit advocacy group’s misuse of its limited resources. By sinking valuable time and money into challenging new cultural institutions like the Lucas Museum and the Obama Presidential Library, Friends of the Parks has allegedly become less equipped to defend existing Chicago parkland should it become threatened in the future. In other words, supporters of the petition argue that the group has an import advocacy role to play but also an obligation to its donors and to the citizens of Chicago to better pick its battles or risk insolvency.
Last week the City of Chicago filed a motion to lift a construction injunction placed on the site in an attempt to start work on the museum with the legal challenge still pending. If denied, officials will need to wait for the suit to run its course and a ruling to be made in the city’s favor to move forward with the project. A judge’s decision on the case is expected April 21st.
·Stop the FotP Lawsuit Against Lucas Museum of Narrative Art in Chicago [Change.org]
·Lucas Museum Reps Are Looking at Other Cities for Project [Curbed Chicago]
·Lucas Museum archives [Curbed Chicago](Miranda Katz / Gothamist)
Over 100 pedicab drivers gathered today outside of City Hall Park to rally against the mayor's recently announced deal with the carriage horse industry, which would restrict carriages to Central Park and prohibit pedicabs from going below 85th Street within the park. Pedicab drivers are calling this a monopoly, and insist that because they rarely pick up customers above 85th street, this legislation, if passed by the city council, would effectively put them out of business.
Currently, most pedicab drivers pick up passengers — primarily tourists — from Central Park South, and take them on one of two routes: either around the skating rink and mall up to 72nd street and back, or in a loop around Bethesda Terrace and Cherry Hill at the southern end of the park. Drivers rarely take passengers past 79th street, let alone up to 85th, said King Farruk, who's been driving a pedicab for the past six years. "There's nothing to see," he said of the park above 85th street; because of that, he and his fellow drivers are convinced people will turn entirely to carriage horse rides.
"I support more than 20 people in Senegal by driving pedicab," said Tadhfa Niang. "If they take my job, what am I going to do? I send them money for food; they eat. If I don’t work, they're not going to eat."
The mayor's proposed deal would reduce the number of carriage horses from 180 to 95, and would only allow 75 to operate in the park at a time. Parks advocates are also concerned about the plan to build a $20 million stable in Central Park. “Our biggest concern is who’s paying and what is the taxpayer going to get from this,” Tupper Thomas, the executive director of New Yorkers for Parks, told the Wall Street Journal. “This is tragically not a great solution.”
On Monday, de Blasio defended the adjustment to pedicab regulations, saying that "we had to make an adjustment in terms of the pedicabs for balance, and I think it’s a fair outcome." But the pedicab drivers are arguing that this move is a concession to carriage drivers to compensate for the proposed reduction in their numbers.
Unlike carriage horse operators, pedicab drivers are not unionized and are all independent contractors, according to Laramie Flick, who has been driving his pedicab for over 11 years and is president of the New York City Pedicab Owners' Association. Flick estimates that there are approximately 300 drivers, with a good deal of turnover. Many, like Niang, are immigrants supporting families back home.
"It's shocking the mayor went from proposing to ban horse carriages to giving them a monopoly," Flick said. "This benefits 75 horse carriage owners, and everybody else loses. Half the horse carriage drivers, tourists, the park...all of this exists only to give the illusion that de Blasio is doing something. It's for show."
He added, "If we are such a nuisance in Central Park, we should be banned from the entire park. But by allowing us to have the northern end of the park, it concedes that we’re an asset to Central Park, and therefore this ban is completely arbitrary and completely just a government-enforced monopoly for a small group of wealthy carriage owners."
Speaking to reporters on Tuesday, City Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito declined to explain the reasoning behind banning pedicabs below 85th street, but did say that the legislation could still change before being put to a vote. But if it doesn't, the pedicab drivers are prepared to fight.
"We'll pool our money and try to get lobbyists," Flick said. "And there will definitely be lawyers involved."Peru's central coastline has been hit by a 6.3 magnitude earthquake, the US Geological Survey (USGS) says.
The tremor, with its epicentre some 15km (nine miles) south-east of the city of Ica, hit just after midnight (05:00 GMT) at a depth of 39km (24 miles), the USGS said.
The quake was felt in central and southern parts of the country.
The scale of the damage is not yet clear but Peruvian officials said some 60 people had been injured.
"The majority are suffering trauma and cuts," Fernando Leon Castaneda, manager of a local hospital, told Radio Programas del Peru (RPP).
None of the injuries were considered life-threatening, officials said.
Electricity supplies were knocked out in Ica but so far there are no reports of major damage.
The province of Ica was struck by a 7.9-magnitude undersea earthquake in 2007 that left thousands homeless.Beyond visiting children's hospitals and building giant crosses on hills, actor Chris Pratt of Guardians of the Galaxy and Jurassic World fame is known for being an "all around nice guy." However, the movie star has no qualms speaking his mind to rude fans, especially if they're doing so while wearing cross necklaces.
While exiting an airport, Chris Pratt was swarmed by people looking for autographs. One person looking to get a rise out of Pratt immediately asked him if he heard about Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie's announced divorce. Pratt responded by simply saying, "I'll be praying for them, man. That's too bad."
After signing several more posters and getting into his car, one fan threw a fit for being missed. Pratt responded, "You should be nicer. You got a cross on your chest and you're cussing me out. I just made you guys a bunch of money right now. Don't be a jerk."
Pratt regularly talks about his faith in interviews and on social media. This week on the Stephen Colbert show while promoting his new movie The Magnificent Seven, he explained the story behind building the steel-beam cross on Easter in Texas with some buddies. Colbert replied, "If you were helping people |
person I had voted for, had to do. Who had elected Juncker? And what for? It seemed like a joke to me. From that moment I decided not to pay any attention to my Prime Minister and vote for Brexit. Perhaps we're in a complicated situation now, but we're England and I think we will come through this.
I am absolutely adamant about any kind of snobbery, class or anything. I really am a communist - I think I'm a bit of a Nazi because I could really kill people who practice snobbery. I'd like to kill some snobs.
We are a little bit behind [in England]. Idris Elba could be James Bond, for Pete's sake, so he's not exactly squashed back because of his colour. When I started, I was the 'black' actor. We didn't have black people; we had working-class people. And so what your experience was when you were growing up was the same for me. My career started, not because of any talent on my part, but because of timing. English theatre never did anything about the working class. Everybody talked what we call "posh." And I always said that Cockneys were the first blacks in England.
I don't listen to all these pundits. I'm a Brexiteer myself. Certainly. People say "Oh, you'll be poor, you'll be this, you'll be that.". I say I'd rather be a poor master of my own fate than having someone I don't know making me rich by running it.
I don't talk to writers.
Salary (3)An amphibious robot that can swim through the oceans of distant moons and planets could be the next iteration of self-sustaining, robotic space exploration.
A Cornell engineering team has received a nine-month, $100,000 starter grant from NASA to develop a soft, swimming robot suitable for exploring the harsh conditions of other worlds, notably Jupiter’s moon Europa. The grant is one of 15 awarded through NASA’s Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC), a program that aims to turn “science fiction into science fact” through development of pioneering technologies.
The Cornell team developing this otherworldly robot is led by Mason Peck, associate professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering, and co-principal investigator Rob Shepherd, assistant professor in the same department. The project combines Peck’s expertise in aerospace and systems engineering for space applications, with Shepherd’s research in soft machine concepts, including deformable robots, that are made with novel 3-D printing techniques and materials.
For the NIAC project, Shepherd said, “we’re proposing a soft robot that can behave like a fish, specifically a lamprey.” With tentacle-like structures that serve as electrodynamic tethers, the robot would harvest power from the existing strong electromagnetic field of Europa or whatever planetary object they were exploring. Europa is a gas-giant moon covered with liquid lakes and oceans. It’s suspected to have a subsurface ocean, which could possibly serve as a habitat for life.
“This robotic concept is inspired by terrestrial biology, and may help us understand how creatures in an environment like Europa’s ocean could gather energy to sustain life,” Peck said.
The robot would be powered exclusively by resources already in abundance around it, circumventing traditional solar or nuclear power systems. Rather than sending all its fuel from Earth, the robot would scavenge electrical energy by electrolyzing water. A mixture of hydrogen and oxygen gas would be stored internally in the body and limbs, where a spark would ignite the gas as it expands internal chambers. This inflation and deflation motion would propel the robot.
Furthermore, the robot would be outfitted with a stretchable, electroluminescent skin for illuminating the local marine environment, to enable underwater imaging, according to the proposal.
If the concept succeeds, the project may be eligible for phase II NIAC funding of about $500,000.
Explore Further: The Solar System and Beyond is Awash in Water
Featured Image: Another rendering of the lamprey-like rover. Credit: NASA/National Science Foundation
Provided by: Cornell UniversityI guess it's likely a marketing thing. Is the buyer looking for a specific battery capacity? or a range?
Most people purchase the car with the various battery packs based on range, not technical details like kWh. Buying kWh doesn't do anything for the car, while buying range is the material point of an EV. If Tesla were selling those packs for Powerwall and were short, I'd agree there's likely a material problem. But - assuming the ranges are correct - I don't know that you could consider that a material misrepresentation on the car.
Is it the right thing to do to a primarily-techie customer base? I say 'no'. I'm guessing they were stretching for more differentiation in the model numbers. I don't like it but I understand it.
Click to expand...The question: What do you need to know about nutrition to gain muscle and lose fat?
Ask 100 people and "protein" is the answer—heck, the only answer—most list when asked. Trust us. We tried. And it should come as no surprise. Protein builds muscles. Protein keeps you full. Protein ended the Cold War.
OK, maybe that last one is a stretch. And while protein is important, it's really just a small piece of the nutrition puzzle. Watching people struggle with that puzzle is what spurred us to write Man 2.0: Engineering the Alpha. After all, if all men knew what they needed to eat beyond protein, we wouldn't be in our current predicament.
We have created a society of men with low testosterone and growth hormone who endure epic struggles to gain muscle, lose fat, and live a more enjoyable life. You might think your hormones are fine until you get older. Pharmaceutical companies might have you believe that drugs are the only answer to improve your hormones. Both are flat-out lies. Meanwhile, men's testosterone levels have dropped more than 20 percent on average over the last two decades.
Overcoming that decline is the purpose of Man 2.0: We need to take charge of our bodies. We need to make you more manly again—or as we say, more alpha. No matter what you might have heard, you can improve your hormonal environment naturally. While there are many ways—all of which we discuss in Man 2.0—the best place to start is with your diet.
These are the nutrition basics you need to know to build the body you want and create a hormonal environment worthy of alpha status.
Carbs /// Then and Now
Carbohydrates seem to be the focus of most diets you read about—especially fat-loss diets—so it makes sense to start here. Carbs have taken a real beating in the media ever since some guy named Atkins decided we weren't allowed to eat doughnuts anymore. Prior to this we were allowed to eat doughnuts, but they had to be "reduced fat." This made us feel better about ourselves somehow.
All joking aside, carbs get a worse rap than they deserve. They come in a variety of forms, some of which are good for you, and some bad. The bad ones are usually highly processed and could barely be considered food other than the fact that they're edible. They may be delicious, but they're also the result of some crazy scientific processes.
Of course, if you process the crap out of anything, it reaches a point where it just isn't healthy anymore. This doesn't mean carbs are evil and to blame for all the ills of the world, from all-out war to the obesity epidemic. It just means processed foods are great at making people fat.
In the most basic sense, carbohydrates are collections of sugar molecules, which your body breaks down into fuel, particularly when you work hard. Sugars, starches, and fiber are all basic forms of the carbohydrate.
There are two main types of carbohydrates: simple and complex. We could also mention fibrous carbs that you can find in foods like green vegetables like lettuce, cabbage, broccoli, sprouts, spinach, cauliflower, peppers, cucumbers, zucchini—but we won't. For the purposes of this discussion of carbs, we only want to touch on stuff that counts.
We usually don't recommend counting calories—or carbs for that matter—coming from fibrous carbs. This doesn't mean that these foods don't matter. They do. But we've never met anyone who got fat eating too many vegetables. And after coaching thousands of people, we determined that eating more veggies has always been a good thing.
The Simple View of Simple Carbs ///
Simple carbohydrate sources include things like include table sugar, syrup, and sweetened soda. Most of the time, these carbs should be avoided—with the possible exception of a well-earned cheat day. They are the "bad carbs" that fitness pros talk about. Also included on this list are things like candy, snuggles, cake, beer, puppies, cookies, and unicorn magic.
In other words, the very idea of fun itself is now off-limits to you. What's allowed, you ask? Acceptable complex carbohydrates include: oatmeal, apples, and peas.
The Slightly-More Complex View ///
If that sounded a bit, um, simple, it's because it is. For a long time, people believed that complex carbohydrates were universally better for you than simple carbohydrates, but today we know that isn't always the case.
You see, your body takes both complex and simple carbohydrates and tries to break them down into usable sugar energy to fuel your muscles and organs. It's not the type of carbohydrate that matters when it comes to healthy hormones and metabolism, but rather how quickly your body can break it down and how much it will spike your blood glucose levels.
A slightly more sophisticated way to rate carbohydrate quality than simple/complex is something called the glycemic index (GI). The GI attempts to classify foods by how quickly they break down and how high they boost blood sugar levels.
For a while, the GI was all the rage, and people argued that by following a low-GI diet, you could keep insulin levels in check even while eating more carbs overall. This has turned out to be only partially true. While it's probably better to eat low GI foods than high ones, there probably won't be a tremendous difference in your waistline if you still eat your weight in sweet potatoes instead of Cheetos.
Neither low-carb diets nor low-GI diets are a magic pill for fat loss; the main thing is to eat the right amount of healthy foods that fuel metabolism, which in turn will help you burn fat. Another important thing to remember is that your body needs carbs, even if some of the fad diets tell you otherwise. Without carbohydrates, your body will begin to break down muscle tissue to fuel your body, which could sabotage your efforts to build muscle and transform your physique.
Carb lovers lament low-carb diets, and anti-carb crusaders posit that you can avoid carbs for the most part and still do well. The truth exists a bit in the middle ground. So yes, speaking generally you should avoid simple carbs and high-GI foods, but that doesn't mean you can eat complex carbs or low-GI foods all day either.
Most important, the problem with carbs is eating them alone. Instead, you should try to have carbs with protein. Eating carbs and protein together slows the rate of digestion of the carbs, lowers the glycemic or insulin response, and offsets some of the negatives that come with carbohydrate consumption.
Fats /// Rethinking History's Greatest Monster
For a long time, fats were like carbs are now: blamed for every damn health problem possible. For nearly 20 years, low-fat was synonymous with healthy. This is how many people—maybe even some of you reading this—still determine if something is safe to eat. If it's low fat, it has to be good. Or if it doesn't have saturated fat, then it's OK.
Lies piled on top of more lies! As our nation's fat consumption decreased, its obesity increased, according to CDC data. This was due to a variety of factors, including the frequency of meals and snacks, the exploding size of portions, and the overconsumption of sugar—often in the form of "low-fat" foods.
So what is the bottom line on fat? For starters, it's a necessary component of your diet, and something you're probably not consuming enough of. Fat is good. It's good for testosterone. It's good for your heart—yes, you read that correctly. And it's good for your muscles.
Did we say fat is necessary for testosterone production? Well, it's worth repeating.
Aside from the big T and making big muscles, fat also plays a crucial role in the general functioning of your body. It's a critical coating for nerves which speeds up conduction down the nerve. This ensures that every time a neurochemical signal is sent through your body—basically, any time your brain wants to tell your body to do anything—it happens efficiently.
Fat also serves as a substrate for a whole set of hormones known as eicosanoids. These are essential to regulate essential functions like blood pressure, inflammation, and even blood clotting. Fat is needed for basic human physiology, which is reason enough to include it in your diet.
But if there's one thing that the last few decades of fat-hate have taught us, it's that not all fats are equal. So here's what you should know about the different types of fats—and why each needs to be included in your diet, with the exception of trans fats.
Good Fat 1 /// Monounsaturated Fat
Monounsaturated fats are found mostly in high-fat fruits such as avocados, as well as nuts like pistachios, almonds, walnuts, and cashews. This type of fat can also be found in olive oil.
Monounsaturated fats help lower bad cholesterol and raise good cholesterol. They've also been proven to help fight weight gain and may even help reduce body fat levels.
Good Fat 2 /// Polyunsaturated Fat
Like monounsaturated fats, these good fats help fight bad cholesterol. You can find polyunsaturated fats in foods like salmon, fish oil, sunflower oil, and seeds. Polyunsaturated fats also include omega-3 and omega-6 fatty acids, which are often referred to as essential fatty acids, or EFAs.
EFAs cannot be manufactured by our bodies, and so it becomes essential to ingest them. And because your body needs these nutrients to function optimally and remain healthy, it's your job to make sure your diet has enough of these fats to avoid problems and breakdown.
Good Fat 3 /// Saturated Fat
Saturated fats might be the most misunderstood substance you can eat. And for good reason: There have been studies linking high intake of saturated fats to heart disease. So sayeth the headlines. Case closed, right?
It turns out most of these studies also create more unanswered questions than The Riddler. When researchers have gone back in and looked at the data from all the countries where data was available, they saw there actually was no link between fat consumption and heart disease deaths.
Books like The China Study and movies like Forks Over Knives have pointed the finger at saturated fats—and all animal fats—as the reason for seemingly all health problems. However, these releases, like the studies they cite, take a slanted bias toward the saturated fat hypothesis and completely ignore populations that are incredibly healthy despite diets based on saturated fats.
There are several studies of hunter-gatherer tribes that consumed 50-70 percent of all their calories from saturated fats without any health problems. For example, people who live in Tokelau, a territory off of New Zealand, eat a diet that is 50 percent saturated fats, and they have cardiovascular health superior to any other group of people. Yet such populations have largely been ignored.
Even Walter Willett, chairman of the Department of Nutrition at Harvard, has publicly stated, after a 20-year review of research, that fats—and more specifically saturated fats—are not the cause of the obesity crisis or heart disease.
Listen, saturated fat is one of the best sources of energy for your body. This is why your body naturally stores carbohydrates as saturated fat—whether you want it to or not. Are you going to argue with one of the most basic structures of how your body was intended to work?
Need more convincing? Saturated fats are some of the most satiating foods, meaning they keep you fuller longer. Research shows diets that are higher in saturated fats are often lower in total calories consumed. And, as we alluded to already, saturated fats boost testosterone.
That leaves you with one option, assuming you're not a vegetarian: You should be eating red meat, dairy, and eggs to consume your share of saturated fats.
Bad Fat 1 (and only) /// Trans Fats
Trans fats are the black sheep of the fat family. They aren't just bad fats; they're the worst fats, and in truth, one of the worst forms of food you could possibly consume. They're found in foods such as French fries, potato chips, and many fried foods.
Some trace amounts of trans fats naturally occur in meats and other foods, but by and large, most are not naturally occurring. Instead, they are manufactured by a chemical process called partial hydrogenation. Manufacturers take liquid vegetable oil—an otherwise decent monounsaturated fat—and pack it with hydrogen atoms, which convert it into a solid fat. This makes an ideal fat for the food industry because it has a high melting point and a smooth texture, and it can be reused in deep-fat frying.
Essentially, trans fats come about as a result of overprocessing foods in order to offer consumers and vendors a longer shelf life. If you are serious about your goals, you should try to avoid trans fats at all costs.
However, we can't escape the world in which we live, so we advocate a moderate approach. If you limit your intake of junk foods, exercise regularly, and get good nutrition otherwise—including a variety of healthy fats—then chances are, you can have the occasional Twinkie once every few months and be OK.
Protein /// The Alpha-Macro
Both carbs and fats have spent their time as public enemy No. 1, being demonized or lauded by turns. On the other side of the spectrum, our friend protein has enjoyed a steady rise to prominence and popularity.
A favorite among bodybuilders, athletes, and just about any fitness enthusiast, protein is used by your body to repair damaged muscle, bone, skin, teeth, and hair, among many other functions. Think of it as the mortar between the bricks; without it, the entire structure of your body begins to break down.
Protein helps to create an anabolic hormonal environment, which is good for muscle building and fat loss. Along the lines of the brick metaphor, it also provides the materials used to build your muscles.
Protein is comprised of smaller molecules called amino acids. There are 22 standard amino acids, nine of which can only be obtained through your food. Your body can manufacture the rest. The nine you have to ingest are called the "essential amino acids." These are:
Tryptophan
Lysine
Methionine
Phenylalanine
Threonin
Valine
Leucine
Histidine
Isoleucine
A complete protein—also known as a whole protein—contains adequate portions of those nine amino acids. By contrast, an incomplete protein is one that lacks one or more of the nine essentials.
Amino acids also help your body create hormones that help regulate things like blood pressure and blood sugar levels, which are directly responsible for your metabolic rate and muscular growth. In short, protein is extremely important, especially the complete proteins found in foods such as fish, poultry, eggs, red meat, and cheese.
Sense a trend here? The worlds of flora and fauna have a lot to give us—more so than any processed food that comes plastered with the words "natural" or "healthy" on its packaging. Nature got it right the first time around, so build your diet around whole foods and critters.
Everything else is just details.
Want to Take Your Diet to Alpha Status?
Check out our book, Man 2.0: Engineering the Alpha. It includes a 16-week diet and training program—including a supplement guide—designed to naturally optimize your hormones so you can build more muscle, and burn fat faster. Best of all? The program has been approved and endorsed by Arnold Schwarzenegger.While we’ve known for a fact that our ancestors were often looked down upon by their colonizers as dark-skinned uneducated savages, the lowest point of this centuries-old discrimination came in the form of America’s human zoos in the early 1900s.
This is when thousands of Filipino tribesmen were taken from their homeland and displayed in exhibits for the American people to gawk at.
Also Read: When Filipino Underdogs Made History At A US President’s Inauguration
To put this shocking story in context, the 19th and early 20th century were periods of expansion by Western powers who were eager to display just how advanced their civilization were compared to the rest of the world.
While exhibits featuring people from conquered territories have been recorded as early as 1400, the modern human zoo kicked off with infamous showman P.T. Barnum’s exhibition of Siamese twins Chang and Eng Bunker on February 25, 1835.
Also Read: 10 Fascinating Pinoy Vintage Photos on Amazon.com
Going by this logic, the US government—also eager to justify its reason of annexing the Philippines—imported 1,300 indigenous Filipinos from different tribes to the tune of $1.5 million and displayed them at the St. Louis Exposition in 1904.
There the tribespeople—introduced to visitors as primitive dog-eating headhunters to emphasize the US government’s stance that Filipinos were not ready for self-government—were made to live out their daily lives in full view of the public.
Of course, a few enterprising Americans looking to make some money also brought in their own tribesmen.
With the official sanction of the government, medical/showman/former lieutenant governor of Bontoc Truman Hunt brought with him a troupe of Igorots in 1905 to the US mainland where they traveled around and put on human exhibits.
He was rivaled in his endeavor by another American, former cigar salesman Richard Schneidewind who was married to a Filipina. As rivals, both tried to outdo each other in showmanship by doing as many tours as they could.
Related Article: 8 Dark Chapters of Filipino-American History We Rarely Talk About
Then, in 1906, Hunt’s enterprise came to an end when he was arrested after rumors broke out how he held the Igorots’ wages he had earlier promised them and that two of the tribesmen in his group who had died were left unburied.
Eager to prevent a scandal showing how a “civilized” society like the US could mistreat a group of “uncivilized” people, authorities shut down Hunt’s operation and sentenced him to 18 months for defrauding the Igorots.
Schneidewind’s end of his business came much later in 1913; as with Hunt, controversy arose after some Igorots he had brought to Ghent, Belgium were found walking the streets and complaining of being left unpaid and starved. In the aftermath, the American consul arranged for the Igorots to go home.
READ: 10 Most Infamous Traitors in Philippine History
The export of tribesmen was finally outlawed by the Philippine Assembly in 1914 when it passed a comprehensive anti-slavery law. With that, the concept of human zoos largely faded from public consciousness.
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Reference
Prentice, C. (2014). The Igorrote Tribe Traveled the World for Show And Made These Two Men Rich.Smithsonian.com. Retrieved 28 July 2015, from http://goo.gl/JAchn0This post was most recently updated on October 7th, 2018
Do you remember that one controversial answer that put Pia Wurtzback one step closer to winning the Miss Universe crown?
If I remember it correctly, she said something about the long history of friendship between the Philippines and the U.S., and how it could justify the latter’s military presence in our country.
Well, it didn’t sit well with the critics. And most of them believe that the Philippine-American War is more than enough to prove how cruel Americans can be.
READ: 8 Dark Chapters of Filipino-American History We Rarely Talk About
We all know what transpired during those tumultuous times. America bought our country from Spain for 20 million dollars. Our forefathers weren’t happy with the agreement and wanted our freedom back. The conflict became so bloody that it resulted in the deaths of 4,000 American troops and as much as 200,000 Filipinos (mostly civilians who died from disease).
And that makes us wonder: How come the US didn’t see it coming?
Turns out, there were anti-Imperialists who were able to foresee these things. One of them was no less than Andrew Carnegie, a self-made steel magnate, philanthropist, and among the richest human beings ever existed.
Carnegie was against the annexation of the Philippines. But he didn’t just put his opinion on paper. In 1898, while the Treaty of Paris was underway, he went to see U.S. President William McKinley to personally talk him out of that agreement.
The wealthy businessman was so against the idea that he went so far as offering 20 million dollars—the same amount stipulated in the treaty—so Filipinos could buy their independence from the United States.
As for the reason why he made such offer, the one published in the May 16, 1902 issue of The New York Times was nothing short of prophetic:
“…..Mr. Carnegie went to Mr. McKinley when the Spanish treaty was pending, and said to him that America was in face of war in the Philippines; that our people and the Filipinos would soon be killing one another, and he asked to be sent to Manila with the fullest authority to declare that America desired good things for the little brown men and would soon recognize their independence….”
Apparently, his offer was declined, and now remains one of the greatest what-ifs that would have changed Filipino-American history.
Bonus Trivia: Philippines was almost renamed “McKinley Islands.”
In 1901, there was a proposition in the U.S. to change the name of the Philippine Islands to “McKinley Islands,” in honor of President William McKinley who was assassinated that year.
According to the September 30, 1901 issue of the New York Tribune, the proposition was intended to be presented “before the next Congress” and there was no doubt that it would be accepted.
The Americanization of the Philippines would not only change its name but also those of different provinces and islands within the country:
“This part of the scheme embraces the idea of bestowing upon the different islands and provinces the names of the men most prominently identified with the acquisition and management of the islands. For instance, the members of the American Commission which negotiated the Paris Treaty would thus be honored, as well as the names of Admiral Dewey, General Lawton, Governor Taft, General Otis, Secretary Root, and others.”
The report also pointed out that “this proposed change would link his (McKinley) name with the government of the country for all time and also would be a constant and conspicuous reminder to future generations throughout the world that it was in his administration that the republic expanded its beneficent influence to the Orient and there established in enduring form its institutions and systems.”
President McKinley is remembered in Philippine history as the one who issued the “BENEVOLENT ASSIMILATION PROCLAMATION” in 1899.
The said proclamation emphasized the “altruistic” mission of the U.S. in acquiring the Philippines and that the U.S. has “come, not as invaders or conquerors, but as friends, to protect the natives in their homes, in their employment, and in their personal and religious rights.”
Obviously, the proposition didn’t push through. And that leaves us wondering what would have happened had the Congress approved the name change.Looking for commercial partners in Argentina? List your company on Macro Market
Argentina es la 45º mayor economía de exportación en el mundo y la economía más compleja 50º de acuerdo con el Índice de Complejidad Económica (ECI). En 2017, Argentina exportó $ 59,2 Miles de millones e importó $ 66,5 Miles de millones, dando como resultado un saldo comercial negative de $ 7,25 Miles de millones. En 2017 el PIB de Argentina fue de $ 637 Miles de millones y su PIB per cápita fue de $ 20,8 Miles.
Las principales exportaciones de de Argentina son Harina de soja ($9,2 Miles de millones), Maíz ($4,05 Miles de millones), Aceite de soja ($3,88 Miles de millones), Camiones de reparto ($3,29 Miles de millones) y Soja ($2,82 Miles de millones), de acuerdo ala clasificación del Sistema Harmonizado (HS). Sus principales importaciones son Coches ($6,3 Miles de millones), Piezas-Repuestos ($2,78 Miles de millones), Teléfonos ($2,28 Miles de millones), Gas de petróleo ($2,15 Miles de millones) y Refinado de Petróleo ($2,1 Miles de millones).
Los principales destinos de las exportaciones de de Argentina son Brasil ($9,3 Miles de millones), los Estados Unidos ($4,6 Miles de millones), China ($4,38 Miles de millones), Chile ($2,77 Miles de millones) y Vietnam ($2,27 Miles de millones). Los principales orígenes de sus importaciones son Brasil ($17,8 Miles de millones), China ($12,6 Miles de millones), los Estados Unidos ($7,33 Miles de millones), Alemania ($3,26 Miles de millones) y México ($2,06 Miles de millones).
Argentina limita con Bolivia, Brasil, Chile, Paraguay y Uruguay por tierra y con las Islas Malvinas por mar.Fewer now think TBS does good job retailing beer
More now want near-monopoly ended than last month
TORONTO January 30th, 2015 - In a random sampling of public opinion taken by The Forum Poll™ among 1028 Ontario voters, equal proportions approve of the job The Beer Store (formerly Brewer’s Retail) does retailing beer (42%) or disapprove (41%). Close to one fifth do not venture an opinion (17%). This stands in contrast to one month ago, when as few as 3-in-10 disapproved (December 2014 - 31%) and fully half approved (50%). Approval is common to younger voters (35 to 44 - 45%), females (47%) rather than males (35%), the least wealthy (46%) and the wealthier ($60K to $80K - 49%), in southwestern (47%) and northern Ontario (46%), mothers of children under 18 (46%) and the least educated (46%).
One half in total see C-Stores/Grocery Stores as appropriate for retailing beer
Voters are asked where the most appropriate places to retail beer are, and, while the most common single mention is The Beer Store (TBS - 21%), when mentions of other locales are combined, convenience stores (11%), grocery stores (13%) and “all of these” (26%) make up a total of one half of mentions (49%). The LCBO is seen as the most appropriate place to sell beer by one eighth (16%). Brewery-operated stores are given the nod by one tenth (8%).
More now know TBS is foreign owned than last year
Exactly even proportions of voters think TBS is Canadian owned or foreign owned (42% each), while one seventh have no opinion (16%). This stands in contrast to one year ago, when as many as two thirds thought TBS was a Canadian owned business (April 2014 - 62%) and fewer than a quarter knew it was a foreign entity (22%). Knowledge TBS is foreign is common to the youngest (46%), males (55%), the wealthiest ($100K to $250K - 50%), in southwestern Ontario (47%), New Democrats (48%) and mothers of children under 18 (51%).
Well more than half now want TBS to lose near-monopoly
Close to 6-in-10 voters want TBS to lose its “monopoly on most cold beer sales” (58%), while just fewer than one quarter believe in the status quo (22%). Just fewer do not have an opinion (19%). These findings stand in contrast to just one month ago, when just half agreed TBS should lose its monopoly (December 2014 - 51%) and 3-in-10 disagreed (29%).
“The Beer Store has been getting a lot of attention lately, thanks to The Star, and Ontarians are becoming sensitized to the fact they have less choice in beer sales than many other provinces. This kind of attention is naturally corrosive, and will only get worse the more TBS executives plead a losing case," said Forum Research President, Dr. Lorne Bozinoff.
Lorne Bozinoff, Ph.D. is the president and founder of Forum Research. He can be reached at lbozinoff@forumresearch.com or at (416) 960-9603.These beans are almost ready for harvesting. Photo courtesy CoffeeResearch.org
What we call a coffee bean is actually the seeds of a cherry-like fruit. Coffee trees produce berries, called coffee cherries, that turn bright red when they are ripe and ready to pick. The fruit is found in clusters along the branches of the tree. The skin of a coffee cherry (the exocarp) is thick and bitter. However, the fruit beneath it (the mesocarp) is intensely sweet and has the texture of a grape. Next comes the parenchyma, a slimy, honey-like layer, which helps protect the beans. The beans themselves are covered by a parchment-like envelope called the endocarp. This protects the two, bluish-green coffee beans, which are covered by yet another membrane, called the spermoderm or silver skin.
There is usually one coffee harvest per year. The time varies according to geographic zone, but generally, north of the Equator, harvest takes place between September and March, and south of the equator between April and May. Coffee is generally harvested by hand, either by stripping all of the cherries off the branch at one time or by selective picking. The latter is more expensive and is only used for arabica beans.
" " Coffee pickers can pick between 100 and 200 pounds (45 and 90 kg) of coffee cherries per day. Only 20 percent of this weight is the actual bean. Photo courtesy CoffeeResearch.org
Once picked, the coffee cherries must be processed immediately.Fake Drugs Are A Major Global Problem, WHO Reports
Enlarge this image toggle caption Issouf Sanogo/AFP/Getty Images Issouf Sanogo/AFP/Getty Images
Fake birth control pills. Cough syrup for children that contained a powerful opioid. Antimalarial pills that were actually just made of potato and cornstarch.
These are, according to the World Health Organization, just a few examples of poor-quality or fake medicines identified in recent years.
In a report released this week, WHO estimates that "1 in 10 medical products circulating in low- and middle-income countries is either substandard or falsified." That includes pills, vaccines and diagnostic kits.
"We have reports from all over the globe, from countries rich and poor, and reports on all types of products, both innovative or generic, expensive or not," says Suzanne Hill, who directs WHO's department of essential medicines and health products.
The findings are based on 100 peer-reviewed surveys on medicine quality from 2007 to 2016 spanning across 88 countries.
There was the time when 200 people died in Pakistan after taking a contaminated heart medication in 2011. And there was the time when more than a thousand people were hospitalized in the Democratic Republic of Congo after taking a fake drug in 2014 and 2015. It turned out to contain an antipsychotic used to treat schizophrenia.
In each case, people have profited from causing such harm, a dangerous get-rich-quick scheme.
"It most certainly is, and it's also probably one of the oldest ones. There are episodes of counterfeiting that go back to the second century," says Kristina Acri, an economist with Colorado College who has studied the problem of counterfeit medications since 2000. "There is tremendous profit in this."
Acri says she wasn't surprised by the extent of the problem reported by WHO.
"I think what's interesting and important about the WHO report is that, since 2013, they've actually started collecting data. That is a huge step forward," she says.
Forty-two percent of the reports of suspect medical products come from Africa, with 21 percent each from Europe and the Americas — though that doesn't necessarily reflect the location of the problem.
"Just because you have more reports from a certain country doesn't mean the problem is worse there. It might just be that they're better at ferreting them out," Acri says.
Drug shortages open up the door for counterfeit or substandard drugs to enter a market. When there was an outbreak of meningitis in 2015, pharmacies in Niger unknowingly bought expired vaccines from wholesalers. Or, when U.S. insurance companies stopped covering certain cancer drugs, a Canadian website filled the demand with fake versions.
"If there is insufficient product on the market, within days, the vacuum is filled with falsified versions," says Michael Deats, an expert on medicine safety and vigilance with WHO. And in terms of counterfeit risk, he says, "location doesn't matter. It's about just as risky to buy medications from a street market in Africa as it is to buy them from an unregulated website in North America."
In addition to drug shortages, stigma can also open the door to shoddy meds. Viagra, for example, is considered one of the most widely counterfeited drugs.
"I think there are conditions — weight loss, erectile dysfunction, addiction — for which there's a stigma attached to them. Patients may be too ashamed to see a physician," says Acri, "and that opens the door to counterfeiters." So instead of going to the doctor to get those drugs, they'll buy fake versions online.
There is a difference between substandard and falsified medications.
Substandard products are licensed and approved, but they're of poor quality. That includes medications that expired, degraded during transportation or contained the wrong amount of active ingredient.
Falsified drugs, on the other hand, deliberately deceive people about their contents or origin. Regardless of the category, such products can injure and kill people.
As part of its report, WHO commissioned groups with the University of Edinburgh and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine to estimate how many deaths in sub-Saharan |
, I have worked to educate myself on this topic. While I’m still a neophyte in all this, I understand enough to have concluded that the best role for myself as a scientist is (from my NPR interview):
“All we can do is be as objective as we can about the evidence and help the politicians evaluate proposed solutions”
Doing more than this, and being effective at it in terms of actually influencing policy, requires from scientists something different from alarmism, urging action, demonizing your opponents, and improving ‘communication’ and ‘messaging.’October 7, 2014
In August, industrial production shrank a seasonally-adjusted 4.0% over the previous month, contrasting July’s revised 1.6% expansion (previously reported: +1.9% month-on-month). The print marked the largest drop since January 2009 and came in below the 1.5% contraction that market analysts had expected. August’s decline reflected shrinking output in manufacturing, construction as well as electricity and energy supply. Mining and quarrying was the only category that recorded a gain.
Compared to the same month last year, industrial production lost the ground recovered in August and swung from a 2.7% rise to a 2.8% contraction in September. Consequently, the trend now points downwards as annual average growth in industrial production fell from 2.4% in July to 2.1% in August.
Forecasters polled by FocusEconomics expect that industrial production will expand 2.3% in 2014, which is down 0.5 percentage points from last month’s forecast. For 2015, the panel sees industrial production increasing 2.6%.Manchester City won their first major trophy as they beat holders Arsenal 1-0 to lift the Continental Cup.
Arsenal dominated the first half at Adams Park but could not beat City keeper Karen Bardsley, who saved well from Danielle Carter.
City improved after half-time and took the lead when Isobel Christiansen headed in Krystle Johnston's cross.
The result ends Arsenal's record of having won the competition every year since it was introduced in 2011.
City Manager Nick Cushing, responsible for ending the team's 26-year wait for a trophy in his first season in the women's game, said: "This is well-deserved and a reward for the players, who have been exceptional."
Arsenal boss Pedro Martinez Losa said: "We were phenomenal in the first half but they stayed alive and had their time also, and they scored a fantastic goal.
"It is a disappointment for us, but we can only move forward. This club is used to winning and we will make sure that the next final we play we can win."
Isobel Christiansen's goal brought Manchester City their first piece of silverware
City have a long way to go to match Arsenal's silverware record, the Gunners having collected 41 trophies in the last 21 years.
But captain Steph Houghton, who last year lifted the Continental Cup as an Arsenal player, is confident that more trophies can follow.
"It's an honour to collect the trophy again," she said. "Being ex-Arsenal it's a strange feeling, but my focus has always been Manchester City this season and this meant so much to every one of us.
"We've experienced that feeling now and it can spur us on for next season.
"This club's all about winning silverware and we want to emulate the men's team in winning things - it's definitely looking up for the future."
City deserved their victory but had to recover from a nervous start in which Arsenal twice might have taken an early lead.
Midfielder Jordan Nobbs sent an 18-yard shot wide, then left-winger Rachel Yankey did the same from 15 yards.
City were being outplayed and their first goal attempt, a Jill Scott snap-shot that flew harmlessly over the bar, did not arrive until the 31st minute.
Four minutes later the Gunners were denied an opening goal by Bardsley, who brilliantly kept out striker Carter's shot at point-blank range.
And Bardsley came to her team's rescue again in first-half stoppage time, diving at Yankey's feet as the winger was about to shoot from five yards.
Following a below-par first period City improved after the break, but it took until midway through the half for them to force Emma Byrne into a save, the keeper diving to clutch Houghton's 30-yard free-kick.
The game's decisive moment arrived six minutes later, Christiansen heading home an excellent Johnston cross.
Houghton almost doubled the lead with a late free-kick that was turned on to the bar by Byrne.
But City had done enough to wrap up a memorable season in style.
"We had a nervy start," admitted Cushing, "but we showed great endeavour to stay in the game and then played some really good football in the second half to win it."But nobody showed up, so he sat awhile looking at the wall. It was one of those Saturdays that feel like Sunday. He didn’t know how to explain this. It happened intermittently, more often in the warmer months, and it was probably normal, although he’d never discussed it with anyone.
•
After the divorce he felt an odd numbness, mental and physical. He looked in the mirror, studying the face that looked back. At night he kept to his half of the bed with his back to the other half. Over time a life slithered out. He talked to people, took long walks. He bought a pair of shoes but only after testing them rigorously, both shoes, not just one. He walked from one end of the shoe store to the other, four times at various speeds, then sat and looked down at the shoes. He took one shoe off and handled it, pressing the instep, placing his hand inside the shoe, nodding at it, tapping with the fingers of his free hand on the rigid sole and heel.
The salesman stood in the near distance, watching and waiting, whoever he was, whatever he said and did when he wasn’t there.
•
In the office his desk was set alongside a window and he spent time looking at a building across the street, where nothing was visible inside the rows of windows. There were times when he could not stop looking.
He looks and scratches, semi-surreptitiously. Certain days it’s the left wrist. Upper arms at home in the evening. Thighs and shins most likely at night. When he’s out walking, it happens now and then, mostly forearms.
He was forty-four years old, trapped in his body. Arms, legs, torso. Face did not itch. Scalp developed something that a doctor gave a name to, but it itched only rarely, then not at all, so the name didn’t matter.
His eyes swept the windows across the street horizontally, never vertically. He did not try to imagine the lives inside.
•
He began to think of the itch as sense data from the exterior, caused by some outlying substance, unanalyzable, the air in the room or on the street or in the atmosphere itself, a corruption of the planetary environment.
He thought of this but did not believe it. It was semi-science fiction. But it was also a form of comfort during those long periods of unrest when he was stretched and then curled and then belly down in bed, a raw body in cotton pajamas, awash in creams and lotions, trying not to scratch or rub.
•
He told his friend Joel that Saturday sometimes felt like Sunday and he waited for a response. Joel had two kids and a wife named Sandra. They were Sandra and Joel, never the reverse.
“Saturday, Sunday, so what. Wouldn’t it be more interesting if Tuesday felt like Wednesday? Even better, if Tuesday of this week felt like Wednesday of next week.”
Joel was a fellow-member of the office staff. He wrote poetry when he was able to find the time and he’d recently stopped trying to get the work published. He said, “How’s the itch? I think of the itch in world history and my mind goes blank.”
The friend, the former wife, the doctors and nurses’ aides in scrubs and sneakers. They knew. No one else.
“An emperor, a member of the royal family. You need a context that you can work with. A famous statesman scratching in secret. Something that you could research, find some satisfaction.”
“You think so.”
“Or Biblical, absolutely. You might find that you’re part of a great narrative, thousands of years. The Holy Land. The Itch.”
“One word. A single syllable.”
“Four letters. Do you read the Bible, ever? A plague in Bible times. I’m serious.”
“So am I.”
“Do the research. I know I would. I can imagine how awful. Middle of the night.”
“Middle of the day.”
“Even worse,” his friend said.
•
He was seeing a woman, superficially seeing her. They were two reticent individuals, and he hadn’t said a word about the itch. When and if intimacy occurred, he hoped it would not be unanticipated. She might otherwise feel traces of the lotions and ointments, his body to hers, arms, legs, elsewhere, the ointments and hypoallergenic creams, the super-high-potency corticosteroids.
They had dinner now and then, went to a movie, implicitly working out a routine that did not bury them in total mutual anonymity.
Her name was Ana with a single “n,” and this was a fragment of information that interested him. The fact of the missing “n.” He liked to scribble the name, pencil on notepad, large “A,” small “n,” small “a.” In the office he entered the name on his desktop device in different fonts, or all caps, or upside down, or cursive, or boldface, or in the characters of remote non-Roman alphabets.
At dinner she spoke about the movie they’d just watched. He’d nearly forgotten it, scene after scene of foreboding menace. The near-empty theatre was more interesting than the movie. He leaned across the dinner table, sort of half comically, and asked about her name. Adherence to a family tradition? A name from a European novel?
No such tradition, she said. No foreign influence. Just a name spelled a certain way.
He nodded slowly, marooned in his slanted body posture and surprised at the disappointment he felt. Eventually he sat back, still nodding, and found himself imagining her body. Always the body. This was not an erotic set of curves but something even more wondrous, the basic body, the primitive physical structure.
She said that her mother’s name was Florence.
But her body, here, in the chair across the table, the human, the person, the mass of flesh and blood ascendant over hundreds of thousands of years or more, millions of years, a body no different, essentially, in its sheer bodiness, from the humped and half-crawling forms that preceded it.
He told himself to stop. They talked about the food and the restaurant. He asked her what her father’s name was.
•
In the morning he walked along the hallway in the building where he worked, careful not to look directly at others heading toward their offices, four or five, suits and ties, blouses and skirts. He liked to imagine them going nowhere, remaining in place with their feet moving up and down and their arms swinging slightly.
•
His former wife had a certain kind of smile that he kept remembering. She isn’t looking at him; she is smiling into space. Those four years together, before the seething weeks of conflict, how she blew kisses across the dinner table to wish away the itch, those summer-evening jogs along the river.
The symmetry of the itch, both thighs, the crook of each elbow, left ankle, then right. The crotch does not itch. The buttocks, yes, when he removes his trousers before going to bed, and then it stops.
He could not forget the smile. It was a beautiful moment, borne in memory, her head turned away to the transfiguring past, the grandmother with a gift for storytelling, something way back then, and he wanted to follow the smile into her life, to join her spell of recollection, a minute or an hour, in flawless time.
•
They were at Sunday brunch, two couples, and there was a football game on the TV placed over the bar at the other end of the room, the sound turned off. He could not stop looking at the screen. The brief action, the slow-motion replays, three or four replays of an ordinary run or pass or punt, different camera angles, and he joined the conversation at the table and ate his pancakes and kept on watching. He watched the commercials.
The term “Sunday brunch” suggested a world of well-being.
But Joel was talking about the current situation, non-stop global turmoil, naming countries and circumstances, putting down his fork so he could raise his hand and gesture in a whirling motion, elbow pinned on the table. Then he stopped speaking and paused to think, finally seeming to remember what he wanted to say next, hand still raised but motionless now, a request for silence from the others, and he stared into time and space and finally said that all the letters in the name Ana were also in the name Sandra.
Sandra said, “What do we do with this information?”
Three or four commercials every two or three minutes. Commercials in clusters. He began to think that he was the only person, anywhere and everywhere, who was looking at the commercials. At this distance the words on the screen that accompanied the images were just barely readable.
Ana said, “I’m looking at the food on my plate.”
The others waited but this was all she had to say.
He held his fork in a poised position. The first half ended, and after a long pause he was able to stop watching.
•
“I take off my shirt, the itching starts.”
He was in the examining room describing his situation to the dermatologist as he lay flat on his back wearing a knee-length garment, open-fronted, over his boxer shorts. She was checking his ankles, shins, and thighs. She spoke absently about the pathology of the skin. He liked this term. It suggested a kind of criminal intent or an evil that befalls a person, hurled down from above, and he recalled Joel’s remark about the curse-worthy nature of the itch, something semi-Biblical.
He was nearing the end of his third visit to this doctor and he wondered whether she would tell him to return next week or in six months or totally never. She recited the names of soap and shampoo brands, described conditions that might arise from symptoms such as his, and he tried to memorize all this, which was difficult to manage in his state of partial undress.
She listed the hidden dangers of a number of ingredients in certain external analgesic medications.
Do we need to be fully dressed, he thought, for our memory to function properly?
“I give some patients a pill, a patch, an injection. But what I am seeing in your case is that you need to think of your itch as a long-term commitment.”
The doctor checked his face, putting her gloved fingers to his cheekbones, forehead, and sideburns. Her assistant, Hannah, had materialized in a corner of the room, and they looked at each other blankly, he and Hannah, and then she left.
•
Joel yielded to rapid-fire blinking when he had something personal to say.
Here is what he said.
There were times, standing over the toilet bowl at home, when he heard what sounded like words as his urine hit the water in the bowl.
“This happens how often?”
He said that it happened on average every two weeks or so. Words. He heard the semblance of a tiny voice saying a word and then maybe another word and he tried to describe the sound, his feet spread and his hands semi-cupped near his groin, in demonstration.
“Tiny words.”
“I’m not imagining this.”
“Or a noise that is saying something.”
“Only when the flow is light.”
“Like something said. An utterance.”
“Monosyllabic.”
They were in the locker room of a local gym, in workout gear, getting ready for the squat jumps and the treadmill.
“You’re a poet. Words everywhere.”
“Zaum. Transrational poetry. A hundred years ago. Words that have shapes and sounds.”
“The little blips in the water in the bowl.”
“Zaum.”
“Transrational.”
“Words and letters are free, outside reason and tradition. When was it ever the case,” Joel said, “that language could truly describe reality?”
•
They look at each other. It happens sometimes. She always initiates the look, her face empty of affect, and he stops speaking or eating and tells himself that it is time to settle into the look.
He begins by closing his eyes and holding his breath for a long moment. He will allow himself to be her recruit in whatever it is they are doing. They never talk about the look. It happens and then it stops.
When he opens his eyes and resumes breathing, there she is, Ana, eyes trained on his face, and she is intent on seeing into him or through him, dissolving the man in all his particulars in order to find something else. Never mind what.
Her face is cool and studied. Is this meant to be some kind of mutual introspection? Is it a simple respite from the skein of endless human exchange? He tries not to analyze the matter. A playful fragment of her childhood, a memory of bittersweet longing.
Is each of them trying to imagine who the other person is within the freeze-framed face and eyes? A wordless glimpse of identity or just a vacant gaze?
He tries to go blank, to drain his eyes and mind of the spatial array of sensation, the mental debris.
Maybe she simply wants to see and be seen.
•
Then there is the crude feeling of some unmeant gratification, a creaturely need. The right hand on the left forearm and at first he uses his fingertips to ease the itch but in time the hand is in motion and the fingernails are digging in like an earthmoving machine. He sits back, eyes closed, and feels a hovering sense of revenge. It doesn’t matter to him if this is idiotic.
“Revenge on your body,” Joel said.
“Maybe. I don’t know.”
“I can’t help thinking of the itch as a symbol. See what you can come up with, personally, about yourself.”
“Stick to your poetry.”
“I’m trying to decide on a title for the thing I just wrote.”
“Do you talk to Sandra?”
“Sometimes, yes. She has opinions about what I write.”
“Do you talk to Sandra about the itch?”
“Of course not.”
“Of course not. I know that. Thank you,” he said.
•
He stood on the corner waiting for the light to change. Dogs on leashes lunging at each other. The left hand rubbing the right wrist, then the right hand rubbing the left wrist. There was a pause in traffic and two people crossed the street, but he chose to stay where he was, knowing that the light would change in three, two, one second. He liked to watch the numbers drop.
The eczema cream with two-per-cent colloidal oatmeal.
The multi-symptom psoriasis-relief cream with three-per-cent salicylic acid.
The emollient-rich formula that provides twenty-four-hour moisturization.
•
His gangly frame and large front teeth gave him a friendly look. People in the office entrusted him with the occasional squalid secret. He was not a threat to do anything or say anything, to take advantage in some way of their faith in his apparent blandness.
He and Joel were access specialists, facilitating the delivery of home-health-care services to disabled consumers of illegal drugs.
They rarely spoke about the job they were doing. They talked about things that came and went, local news and weather, men firing guns nationwide.
Now and then Joel read an obituary to the others in the room, six men and women confronting their screens. Some of the obits were improvised, pure fiction, and he got a few laughs and sometimes a burst of applause.
•
The new doctor’s name, online, in tribute, was the Itch Meister. He was short and broad with the look of a man who lives with one central obsession. He studied the patient, who was standing in the examining room in his boxer shorts. Then the doctor whirled his hand and the patient turned around. The doctor spoke authoritatively about the patient’s history, based on what he’d gleaned from reports and from what he was seeing on the body itself.
Now the patient lay face up on the table.
“I take off my shirt or my pants and the itch begins. Or the itch is just there, comes and goes, night and day.”
They talked about the clothing he wore, the underclothes, about the pillow and the bedsheets. The Itch Meister instilled confidence with a few short sentences, although he didn’t seem to address the patient’s remarks directly and unequivocally.
“From what I see, you are not suffering from weeping lesions or atopic dermatitis.”
He went on to name different creams for different kinds of itches. He warned against a steroid that thins the skin if used repeatedly. He wore a surgical gown so long that it concealed his footwear.
“This one stray rash, here near the underarm. Do not touch. It is not scratch-worthy.”
The medications he cited were encased in language of a certain kind, fogbound words and terms, syllable-ridden and somehow, strangely, totalitarian.
Doctor told the patient to turn face down.
“The symmetry is astonishing. The left-and-rightness of it. Don’t you think? People who itch, worldwide. Forearm, forearm. Buttock, buttock. The simultaneity.”
Doctor spoke not to the body on the table but to the room, the walls, maybe to a recording device concealed somewhere. It occurred to the patient that this entire session was for the benefit of the doctor’s associates in a research institute in some crime-free suburb.
When the visit was over, the Itch Meister did not simply leave the room. He seemed to flee.
•
In the early days when he was running along the river with his wife he felt that he was leaving the itch behind. He was outrunning it. Sometimes he raised his arms as he ran, surrendering to a benevolent life force.
•
Joel would not discuss the lines. They were just the lines. The spacing, also, was simply what it was. The space breaks, the word breaks, the dangling word.
“I want to be a poet to the bone. But there’s nothing in the work that I want to talk about.”
“You want to talk about the itch.”
“Tell me again what the doctor said.”
“Weeping lesions. I keep forgetting to look it up.”
“Whatever the science, the term itself has terrific aesthetic appeal.”
“Atopic dermatitis.”
“Inhuman. Forget it.”
Joel kept repeating the phrase “weeping lesions,” thinking into it, trying to say something funny.
•
When he took off his shorts, his thighs began to itch. Ana was in bed, watching and waiting. He kept his hands steadfastly at his sides. The surroundings in her bedroom were unfamiliar and he stood a moment, smiling, acknowledging her sweet scrutiny. The itch went away but she was still there. What a deliverance it was for him, a release from day-to-day, he and she, so simple, being happy for a time.
•
They stood against the wall of the building, lunch break, two women, colleagues, smoking, and he positioned himself near the curbstone, watching them.
“I smoked twice in my life,” he said.
The first woman said, “How old were you?”
“Seventeen, then twenty-seven.”
“You remember these numbers,” she said.
“I remember them. I think about them.”
He liked watching them smoke. There was a casual grace in their gestures, the sort of autonomic movements of hand gliding toward face, lips parting, the way the head slips back, barely noticeable, as the woman inhales, first one and now the other, and then the head rocking slightly when she blows the smoke out of her mouth, the deep relief, eyes closing, one woman, briefly, then the other.
He had to remind himself that he was separating the act from its consequences.
“How long did you smoke?” the first woman said.
“First time, maybe a week and a half.”
“Second time?”
“Second time, two weeks.”
“And now you expect to live forever.”
“Not when I’m in the office.”
“What do you expect then?”
“I expect to jump out the window next to my desk.”
The second woman said, “Take us with you.”
•
At home he walked from one room to the other and then forgot why he was there. His smartphone rang and he went back to the first room and picked it up, half expecting to see a message telling him why he’d gone to the other room.
Two hours later he was back on an exam table, seated at the edge, doctor in her sixties studying his left forearm, lifting and looking, peering into the scratch marks, into the pores, the tissue itself.
“Do not let others scratch your itch. It will not succeed,” she said. “You yourself must scratch.”
The room was small and seemed semi-abandoned—stale air, rumpled documents pinned to corkboards, things scattered randomly.
The doctor asked him questions and then repeated whatever he said. He tried to place her accent, Middle Europe maybe, and this gave him confidence in her abilities.
“When itching stops now and then, five minutes, six minutes, you are a little bereft. What do you think?”
He looked for a smile but it wasn’t there.
“You will spend less time in the shower.”
“I have been told this.”
“You have been told this. But not by me,” she said.
She was looking directly into his face now. She looked and talked. He was sure that she spoke four or five languages.
“Other patients, they are worse.”
“I am also worse.”
“You are nowhere in the competition.”
“I fool myself. I try to talk myself out of being worse.”
“You are eating. You are sleeping.”
“I am eating. I have forgotten how to sleep.”
“The older you will get, listen to me, the less you will walk and talk and the more you will itch.”
She kept on looking, staring him into deep levels of retreat.
“Look at where we are, in the last room at the end of the long hall. I will walk four times a day from there to here and then from here to there and all over again. I try to tell myself this is not a thirteenth-century hospice for the destitute and the dying. But it is not so easy for me to be convinced.”
He liked listening to her but she was speaking into free space.
“When I talk to non-itching people about the itch, they start itching.”
“This is true?”
“This is true,” she said. “I spoke to a group in Warsaw. They were professors and students. The longer I spoke about itch-specific nerves, about sensory neurons in mice, the more scratching I could see in the audience.”
“Did they ask questions about this?”
“No questions. I do not accept questions in public forums.”
When she was finished poking at his extended arm, she did not return it to his side but simply let go, dropping it abruptly, and then took the long way around the table and lifted the other arm.
He said, “Do you ever itch?”
She looked at him, finding new dimensions in this particular patient, and then repeated the question in a voice meant to resemble his.
“My only itch is what is around me,” she said in her own voice, “and why I am here.”
When the visit was ending, the patient put on his pants, shirt, and shoes, and the doctor wrote a couple of prescriptions.
“When you pick up the medications, you will be reading the instructions printed on the inserts but you will not follow them. They are stupid and misleading. Do not use the medications two, three, four times a day. You are hearing me say this. Once a day.”
He felt obliged to repeat this.
“You will scratch and scratch. But you will also remember what I am saying.”
“What are you saying?”
“You are nobody without the itch.”
He took the long walk along the hall and thought of the doctor alone in her castaway office. The elevator took forever to arrive.
•
When he and Ana went for a walk, sometimes bumping hips along the way, talking about nothing much, all they were doing, he thought, was being themselves. There was an innocence that placed them, for a time, beyond responsibility.
But the affair gradually changed from a liquid to a solid.
“If we fall in love, what does it mean?” she said. “I find it strange to feel so much affection for a man I don’t really know.”
He walked with his head down, concentrating on what she was saying.
“I don’t really know you. This is not just a detail,” she said, pretending to laugh miserably.
•
People in the lobby were arrayed and waiting. One elevator was being repaired, the other was blinking down at them from the fifth floor, delayed in its descent.
He decided to climb the stairs to his office, eleventh floor, a few others joining him, a sense of shared complaint. Halfway up the first flight he began counting the steps and then decided that he needed to go back to the bottom step and start over, properly, from one.
He did this, occasionally looking down as he counted, aware that he was moving his lips. A man in a suit and tie and baseball cap squeezed past, taking two steps at a time.
He’d gone a floor and a half before he began to notice the shoes he was wearing. He looked and counted, reminding himself of the fact that he didn’t like these shoes and trying to understand why he’d bought them anyway.
He began to climb more slowly, seeing himself walk back and forth in the shoe store trying to feel his way into the shoes. Not truly seeing himself but experiencing a misty image somewhere in the air within arm’s reach. People kept passing him on the stairs and he kept looking down, counting the steps, seeing the shoes.
He’d walked back and forth several times and then sat awhile, the only customer in the store, and examined one of the shoes, hand and eye, scrupulously.
Was it too much trouble, too awkward, to tell the salesman that he didn’t want the shoes? Did he think that the salesman would be disappointed, his day ruined?
He didn’t know the answer but he was beginning to feel victimized, belatedly, by the salesman, the shoe store, and the shoes, and he stopped counting the steps one flight before he reached his floor.
In the office he sat at his desk, left wrist in the prime of its morning itch, and he looked out the window, his eyes sweeping across the face of the building in the semi-distance, revisiting the horizontal pattern of the windows. He looked left to right, reading the windows like a book, line by line.
•
Finally, not to tell her felt like cheating.
They had a corner table in a nearly empty café. His plan was to avoid details and simply say that the itch was a livable condition but not likely to be alleviated anytime soon.
In the meantime they listened to thunder bouncing around the sky and she spoke of country thunder when she was growing up, an approaching storm, her fearful wonder at the drumrolls and jagged flashes.
He watched her talk.
Her fairness, the face and hair and small hands, the way she used the three middle fingers of one hand to brush lightly over the corresponding fingers of the other hand. A gesture of remembrance, anxious or soothing—he wasn’t sure.
It’s not a contagious disease, he would say, or some ancestral burden that trails a family into future generations. And he might end with a dash of deadpan humor.
If you itched, too, think how much we’d have to talk about.
The building where he lived was within walking distance and he suggested that they go there. She’d never been to his apartment and she shrugged a small O.K. When she went to the rest room, he paused briefly and then hurried to the men’s area and locked himself in a stall and lifted his left trouser leg and scratched frantically, in terminal haste, returning to the table before she did.
The rain was just beginning to fall and they went single file along the walls of buildings, muttering mild swearwords. In the apartment he watched her stroll around the living room, noting the books and photographs and looking briefly into the small, neat, narrow kitchen.
She sat on the sofa and he was in a chair on the other side of the coffee table. He gave her a brief history of places in which he’d lived. He was whispering for some reason.
He said nothing about the itch.
In bed it was all body action, wordless, and in the interval that followed he lay alone, absently scratching, and reminded himself that he’d placed all the tubes and jars inside the medicine cabinet and in the small storage area beneath the sink, beyond her range of vision.
This was not an involvement, he thought, in which each of them was no one without the other. But he didn’t know what to make of it.
He spoke her name aloud when she returned to the room.
Then he walked her home, two hunched figures behind an umbrella that he held tilted against the wind.
•
Joel talked to him quietly in a corner of the office. It had happened again, an instance of spoken words in the soft splash of his urine in the bowl.
“Where, here?”
“Home, has to be home. Here I use the urinal. Home, there’s just the bowl.”
“Not simply a sound that resembles a word.”
“It’s saying something.”
“But if it’s a word, why can’t you identify the word?”
“I look at the little splash. I look and listen. I try.”
“You think it’s saying something.”
“It has a certain expressiveness. It conveys, it communicates.”
He was blinking rapidly.
“O.K., it’s a word, but how do you know it’s an English word?”
“That’s my language.”
“This is getting dumber and dumber. You know that.”
“I’m telling you because I trust you.”
“Sandra knows about this?”
“I haven’t been able to bring myself to tell her.”
“Tell her. I’d be interested to hear.”
“Picture the scene,” Joel said. “She follows me to the bathroom, stands and waits while I unzip.”
“You can tell her without showing her.”
“She’ll laugh. She’ll tell our kids.”
“I didn’t think of that.”
“Eight years old, six years old. Imagine their response.”
“Zaum.”
“You remember. Good for you.”
“Transrational poetry.”
“Shapes and sounds. The futurists. Zaum. You remember. A shape, a sound.”
“Tell your kids. Zaum. Let them say the word.”
They went back to their desks and bent into the screens, scrolling through their messages.
•
This is how near-sleep attenuates a person’s awareness. Everything else is gone. He is funnelled into himself, no past or future, the living itch, man-shaped, Robert T. Waldron, thinking incoherently, a body in a bedsheet. ♦As the popularity of the Grateful Dead grew in the early 1970’s the band found themselves perpetual road dogs in an attempt to make up for lost ground after Mickey Hart’s father, Lenny, absconded with $155,000 of the band’s savings leaving the band financially in shambles. The Dead soon found themselves moving away from intimate theaters and halls to performing in large arenas and stadiums. With the added pressure of pleasing their amassing fanbase came the need to sound better in these larger spaces – a need which soon yielded the creation of the infamous Wall of Sound. The two separate 75-ton walls not only provided the band with a distortion free sound system, but also worked as its own monitoring system and came equipped with four semi-trailers and a 21 person crew. The endeavor was not only challenging logistically, but financially. It soon reached the point where the band could no longer earn enough to keep the behemoth afloat. So as 1974 came to a close the band quietly went on hiatus as Garcia slipped out the back door of the band’s last show at Winterland to gig with a new set of musicians.
Garcia’s desire to play music outside the context of the Grateful Dead began as early as 1969 with the creation of country-rock pioneers New Riders of the Purple Sage. Almost simultaneously, in the spring of 1970, he began to take part in loose jam sessions with organist Howard Wales at the San Francisco musician’s clubhouse, The Matrix. Wales soon left the fold and was replaced by seasoned Bay Area jazz and R&B vet, Merl Saunders, who brought a funky repertoire to the table that paired well with various R&B and rock covers sung by Garcia. By early 1971 the group had an semi-official name – The Garcia-Saunders Group – and was rounded out with bassist John Kahn, drummer Bill Vitt and the later addition of tenor saxophonist Martin Fierro.
During the early months of 1974, Vitt exited the group and was replaced by a revolving door of drummers including the Dead’s own Bill Kreutzmann and the in-demand session drummer Paul Humphrey, who kept the drum throne warm for Elvis’ drummer, Ron Tutt. Tutt joined the group just in time for a spirited holiday run up and down the West Coast — where we find the band at the University of Oregon’s EMU Ballroom on December 15th. The mood surrounding the gig is low key – Garcia’s playing sounds inspired and youthful paired with Saunder’s driving organ and husky vocals. Early in the set Garcia takes the reins for a version of Alton Joseph Valier’s cajun-inflected ‘Neighbor, Neighbor’. Valier’s song was a hit single for Jimmy Hughes in 1966 and fittingly the lyrics (‘Neighbor, neighbor don’t you worry what goes on in my home. You’re always looking for something to gossip about’) line up with where Garcia’s headspace possibly was at that time (see: aforementioned hiatus). Right off the bat Garcia’s leads are punchy and hard-driving as the rhythm section lays a thick pastiche of notes that are equal parts dirty, soulful, R&B and jazz-funk. Saunders organ riffs hit incendiary notes that purposefully set small fires for Garcia to weave in and out of as he grinds it on home.
For the next 9 months the band, now known as the Legion of Mary, tirelessly hit the club circuit yielding some of the wildest and spirited playing of Garcia’s solo career. As the summer of 1975 came to an end, the Legion of |
insecurity." Twenty-five per cent of North Korean children suffered from "chronic malnutrition," the report said.
"Supplies of medicine and equipment are inadequate; water and heating systems need repair, and the infrastructure of schools and colleges is deteriorating rapidly."
Kenneth Bae, a 44-year-old ethnic Korean with US citizenship, is currently facing a possible death sentence in North Korea on charges that he attempted "to topple the Democratic People's Republic of Korea" during a visit last November.
The details of Mr Bae's alleged crimes are unclear but reports have suggested he may have angered authorities by taking photographs of impoverished children.Former Red Bulls defender Chris Leitch will be returning to Red Bull Arena next month - as head coach of the opposing San Jose Earthquakes.
On Sunday the Earthquakes announced in a news release that they had parted ways with (now-former) head coach Dominic Kinnear after a 5-6-5 start to the season, and simultaneously announced that Leitch would be taking over as the permanent head coach of the team.
The 38-year-old former defender spent five of his ten years of professional soccer with the club, first with the MetroStars from 2003 to 2005 and then in a second stint from 2007 to 2008.
The news release noted that Leitch has held experience in multiple positions throughout the San Jose front office:
Leitch, 38, has held a number of posts with the Quakes since retiring as a player following the 2011 season. He started as the club's academy director in 2012 and was promoted to technical director for the Quakes in 2015. He also served as interim general manager in 2016, following the departure of John Doyle. He becomes the ninth head coach in Quakes history.
Leitch joins Mike Petke (Real Salt Lake), Peter Vermes (Sporting KC) and Carl Robinson (Vancouver Whitecaps) as ex-Red Bulls players currently serving as MLS head coaches.
The Earthquakes will be visiting the Red Bulls in their next home match - Wednesday, July 19th.With Rogue One: A Star Wars Story about to hit theaters, Star Wars is continuing the ever-developing tradition of women leading sci-fi blockbusters and TV shows. Indeed, women often find greater representation in sci-fi and fantasy movies and shows than in any other genre. These women are incredibly strong characters who audiences love to root for-- and who kids can look up to.
Some of these movies are set in the far future, or in more advanced civilizations where women have either gained equality on the front lines of conflict, or in societies where women were always considered as capable on the battlefield. In many cases, their gender isn’t an issue, while in others it’s their greatest asset. After all, being underestimated can be as valuable as being super-strong or super-fast.
So, in celebration of the imminent release of Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, here’s ScreenRant’s 20 Greatest Female Characters In Sci-Fi And Fantasy.
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20 River Song - Doctor Who
Few of Doctor Who’s many companions have such close ties to The Doctor as River Song. While she became a companion, and eventual wife of The Doctor, she is also a time traveler in her own right and therefore many of her encounters with him happen out of chronological order. His first meeting with her was seemingly her last meeting with him. As such, they could never actually meet for the first time, nor truly say goodbye to one another.
While much of her life remains a mystery, River was born Melody Pond, the daughter of Amy Pond and Rory Williams, who were traveling with The Doctor at the time. Due to being conceived on the T.A.R.D.I.S she shared some genetic traits of Time Lords as well as her human parents.
While Kate Winslett was the first choice for the role, Alex Kingston was eventually cast. Her characterization as a female Indiana Jones in space was an instant hit with the fans and she became a mainstay of the series for many years.
19 Leela - Futurama
Essentially the only competent member of the cast of Futurama, Leela serves as the captain, pilot, and overall leader of the crew of the Planet Express Ship. While she is often plagued by self-doubt, she is also the crew member with the most to offer in any given situation and is usually the one to save the day.
Though initially thought to be an alien, Leela is later revealed to be a human. Her single eye is explained as being due to her parents being sewer-dwelling mutants who gave her up for adoption, hoping that her less-than-obvious mutant status would give her a chance for a better life. Per series creator Matt Groening, her cyclops-like appearance subverts the classic sci-fi troupe of a glamorously perfect woman. Her very real characterization as a hard-working and tough career-girl who can’t always get her personal life on track make her the emotional core of the show. She’s also the one that is most relatable, despite both Fry and Bender being given more prominence.
18 Hermione Granger - Harry Potter
As one of the three main characters of the Harry Potter series, Hermione Granger is, on the surface, the smart one of the group. Where Harry represents courage and Ron is loyalty, Hermione is logical and intelligent.
But she’s far more than the logical Spock-like member of the gang. She’s often insecure, and it’s her intense fear of failure that makes her work so incredibly hard. J.K Rowling has often commented that Hermione is much like a younger version of herself in this regard. However, Rowling avoids making Hermione a real self-inster. She’s not merely an idealized version of the writer, nor a character who has any and all skills necessary for whatever crisis comes along. She makes mistakes, has conflicts with her friends, and grows as a person with each passing chapter in her story.
In a universe where destiny plays such an important role, and many characters are almost other-worldly because they grew up in a magical world, Hermione’s upbringing by Muggle parents means she sees the world much as we do.
17 Barbarella - Barbarella
Often dismissed as little more than eye-candy, both Barbarella the movie and its title character are actually so much more than that. While far from a feminist icon, Barbarella was still a female lead in a sci-fi movie long before that ever became a trope of the genre. It’s still worth something today, as there is still a major problem with female-led movies not getting the attention they deserve.
While often criticized for being a movie that relied on Jane Fonda’s legendary sex-appeal, both the movie and character have influenced pop culture in ways that could not have been foreseen at the time. The futuristic fashions influenced Jean-Paul Gautier’s designs, especially when crafting the look of the movie The Fifth Element. Many musicians, from the band Duran Duran to Kylie Minogue, have used the iconic imagery and dialogue to enhance their respective brands also.
Barbarella herself can be seen many ways. She’s either a sexed-up fembot, with little to do besides move the plot along, or she’s a statement on women breaking out of the role of sidekick or damsel in distress. Some see her as a woman who is entrusted to save humanity, which has become weak and stagnant. Despite being naive, Barbarella learns enough about the brutality of the outside world to not only survive it, but to also succeed in her mission.
The character can be debated, but as a landmark in cinema, the movie is an assured cult-classic.
16 Louise Banks - Arrival
One of the newest characters on this list is Louise Banks from 2016’s Arrival. The movie itself is a thinking man’s sci-fi, building on the recent trend that arguably started with Interstellar. Several extra-terrestrial crafts, nicknamed Shells, arrive on Earth and Louise Banks is one of many linguists dispatched to translate the aliens' language and determine if there is any threat from them.
Louise discovers that the alien’s language alters the perception of time, and she has many flash-forwards, experiencing motherhood in the future with a child who passes away due to childhood cancer. Louise’s story, while heroic, is also quite sad. She knows she will become a parent, but also knows that she will have a painfully short time with the child and must choose between following her destiny or sparing herself the pain by never conceiving.
Amy Adams is simply terrific, and while not given any instantly quotable dialogue or even big Oscar-worthy moments, carries the movie’s softest moments through subtle shifts in her body language as well as an astonishingly delicate performance.
While alien invasion stories have been done to death, Arrival, and in particular the character Louise Banks, make this a story about humanity and coming together at the most important moments. Perhaps now more than ever, it’s a message we should all consider.
15 Olivia Dunham - Fringe
Though stone-cold on surface, Olivia Dunham is the heart and soul of Fringe. Unafraid to stand up to her superiors, she investigates the upside world of fringe science, all the while unravelling the mysteries of her past and how she is connected to the events that are transpiring around her.
Unbeknownst to her for many years, Olivia had been part of a medical trial as a child using a pharmaceutical called Cortexiphan. The drug awakened dormant psychic powers in the children and Olivia was by far the most powerful of them all. After the trials were ended, she forgot about them and eventually became an FBI agent. By chance, or possibly by design, she found herself working with the scientist who had studied her many years previously.
Olivia shows that, despite her reserved exterior, it is actually emotion and passion that drive her. Her empathy is only matched by her courage and determination, making her one of the people responsible for not only saving the world from the incursion from another timeline, but also from the threat of invaders from the future.
14 Sarah-Jane Smith - Doctor Who
One of The Doctor’s most famous, and most popular, companions of all time, Sarah-Jane Smith started out as a young but dogged investigative journalist who encountered the third incarnation of The Doctor while trying to break a story on a secret research facility. She became his travelling companion for several years, witnessing his transformation into his fourth incarnation. She eventually left his side and returned to her life, but remains an investigator of the odd events in the world, even after becoming a mother.
She eventually reunites with The Doctor, this time in his tenth incarnation, but recognizes him instantly. She is much older, having lived for many years without him. She is stronger, wiser, and has lost none of her determination. She aids him several more times over the next few years, using alien technology and her investigative skills, and she also trains a younger generation of Earth’s protectors.
Despite being a comical companion with a permanent good nature, Sarah-Jane did more to define the role of companion than any before her. Rather than being hysterical in the face of Daleks, she showed extreme courage and her feisty nature made her more of an equal to The Doctor than any mere sidekick.
13 Number Six - Battlestar Galactica
Number Six is one of the twelve models of Cylon in the re-imagined Battlestar Galactica. First seen as an infiltrator, something akin to a Terminator, Number Six quickly became central to the events of both the fall of the twelve colonies and the subsequent events as humanity searched for a new home.
More so than any of the other “significant seven” Cylons, Six is seen to have access to the full range of human emotions. She is remorseful at times, but also vengeful if she feels slighted or spurned. While there are many versions of Number Six, it is the one that became known as Caprica Six that is seen as the definitive version.
Six is equal parts manipulative and vulnerable. Her arc in the series often mirrors that of Gaius Baltar-- who, despite being human, has as much to learn about humanity and the nature of human existence as she does. Despite their many shared flaws and transgressions, it’s somehow fitting that they find some peace when the events draw to a close, each having been guided by visions of the other.
12 Zoe Washburne - Serenity / Firefly
As a morally ambiguous, smart-mouthed soldier with a tender side, Zoe Washburne is far from a typical sidekick. She's the first officer on Serenity-- the one that has Captain Reynold’s back and the only person he truly trusts.
Prior to the events seen in Firefly, Zoe had served under Mal during a brutal civil war. Their side lost and their army disbanded, but Zoe remained by her superior’s side as he sought to begin a new life as a smuggler, thief, and occasionally honest businessman. On board the ship she met her husband, Wash. Despite Wash being a nerdy pilot who could seem somewhat cowardly (Zoe’s exact opposite), the two fell in love and had a successful marriage despite their many differences.
During the events of the movie Serenity, Zoe is seen robbing an outpost for its payroll and later fighting in Mal’s rebellion against the government's attempts to control the population via atmospheric drugs. She fights both the government and the cannibalistic Reavers, and even after losing Wash in a crash, continues to fight until the last moments of the battle.
Calm, measured, but also intense, Zoe won’t shoot you unless she’s got a damn fine reason. Or unless you piss her off.
11 Katniss Everdeen - The Hunger Games
It’s no small thing to become the face of a revolution, especially when you’re still a teenager. But Katniss Everdeen not only survived the brutal reality-show of the The Hunger Games, she became the leading light of rebellion and led the way for many people to become free of oppression.
As skilled with a bow as she was at dropping a killer one-liner, Katniss was more than a mere symbol. She was a leader that only took part in the Hunger Games to save her little sister. And while she never sought out the role as a modern-messiah, she quickly adapted to the role and through courage, determination, and quick thinking became everything the rebellion needed her to be.
Why the character of Katniss became such an instant classic is that she is juxtaposed to many modern female characters. She’s in many ways unlikable, she’s bratty, prickly, and at one time a remorseless killer. Compared to Bella in the Twilight series who is passive and full of teen-angst, Katniss is equal parts compassion and killer. While she does have love interests, she’s not defined by them, making her something of a role model for young women in the 21st century.
10 Uhura - Star Trek
Uhura did so much more than merely answer the phone. In the early 1960s, black women had a hard time getting roles on primetime TV-- especially major speaking roles as a major cast member. But in Gene Roddenberry’s vision for the future a multicultural crew would only be natural and therefore Uhura became a key member of the bridge crew and central to many stories in the initial three-year run of Star Trek.
While it’s impossible to discuss Uhura without using words like ground-breaking, there’s much more to her character than her gender or her race. She speaks respectfully to her Captain, but only due to his rank and experience. She is not afraid to question his actions on occasion and went so far as to disobey orders and participate in the theft of the Enterprise to aid her crewmates in their attempt to save the life of Spock (in Star Trek III).
While the original Uhura remains an icon of both sci-fi and the equal rights movement, the reimagined Uhura of the 2009 Star Trek deserves some praise too. Adding to the previous characterisation, this version is seen as being an even-more skilled linguist who uses those skills to decipher both the Klingon and Romulan languages without the need for a universal translator.
9 Captain Kathryn Janeway - Star Trek: Voyager
Critics often point out that Janeway is at times erratic in her approach to her role as Captain. Unlike the maverick Kirk or the intellectual Picard, Janeway veers off and tackles some situations overly emotionally and others with a clinical calm. But that’s what makes her so great. She understands that leadership requires the leader to be adaptable. Situations arise that require different skill sets so she does her best to meet those situations head-on with whatever tools she has at her disposal.
Unlike her Star Trek predecessors, Janeway has no back-up. She’s far from home and cannot call for Starfleet assistance. For most of Voyager’s journey she is unable to even send communications home. More isolated than any previous captain, and with a crew made up of non-Starfleet personnel, she must adopt a role of mother, peacemaker, advisor, and mentor, along with that of Captain.
While Janeway does eventually succeed in getting her crew home, it’s not without great personal cost. She loses friends and crew members, and appears to feel their losses more deeply than either Picard or Kirk generally did. But she’s also not afraid to fight. When the situation demands it, Janeway throws Voyager into danger and will risk her crew and her ship to serve a greater good, as any Starfleet captain should.
8 Xena - Xena: Warrior Princess
Initially a villain in Hercules: The Legendary Journeys, Xena went on to star in her own show, Xena: Warrior Princess; a show which in many ways eclipsed its predecessor. A fierce and brutal warrior, Xena is equal to Hercules in battle.
Xena is a woman looking to redeem herself from the sins of the past, despite her pessimistic outlook on life. After setting herself on the path of redemption, Xena meets Gabrielle, who is naïve, talkative, and optimistic, and the two form an initially unlikely bond. As time goes on, they grow even closer and Gabrielle shows Xena the value of making sacrifices for the greater good, which becomes a major theme of the later seasons.
Xena has become a feminist and lesbian icon and is frequently referenced in pop culture. In many ways, her character blazed the trail for a new generation of strong female characters, such as Buffy Summers in Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Max in Dark Angel.
7 Dana Scully - The X-Files
As the intellectual half of the central partnership on The X-Files, Dana Scully is no action hero. That being said, she has used her skills with a weapon to save her partner Mulder as often as he has saved her. A role-reversal on the classic sci fi troupe, it’s the male Fox Mulder that is often led by his emotions and the female Scully who remains sceptical of the paranormal, often when presented with evidence which excites Mulder.
Scully’s role was initially to debunk Mulder’s theories regarding alien life, but the two become partners who respect each other’s viewpoints, even if they disagree. It was an early example of a truly equal partnership on TV and one that set the standard for many opposite-sex partnerships on television. Brennan & Booth and Castle & Beckett owe a lot to these two.
It’s often Scully who acts as a proxy for the audience. Where Mulder is well-versed in every crackpot theory there is, Scully approaches each scenario with the logical questions an audience member would. Instead of the typical suspension-of-disbelief most sci-fi shows rely on, Scully remains rooted in reality and follows only the evidence.
6 Buffy Summers - Buffy The Vampire Slayer
Famously inspired by Kitty Pryde of the X-Men, Buffy Summers was created to subvert the stereotype of a female victim in horror movies. It’s often the blonde cheerleader who bites the dust first, but here the cheerleader that is the one turning the vampires to dust! She also avoids the final girl trope in horror =, where the celibate heroine is the last one standing and finally takes out the killer, but only if she avoids boys (see Neve Campbell’s Sidney Prescott in Scream). Buffy gets to date and kill vampires-- sometimes at the same time.
As Buffy matured, so did the show. By the end of its run, Buffy had lost some characters to untimely deaths and others had left to pursue their own destiny away from Buffy’s side. Buffy herself had gone from a reluctant participant to being the leader and mentor to a legion of young slayers, taking on a role similar to the one her former mentor Giles once held.
Well over a decade since the show ended, Buffy Summers remains a cultural icon. Her popularity is largely due to the many young female leads who have followed in her stead. Without Buffy the Vampire Slayer, there would no Alias, Dark Angel, The Hunger Games, or Twilight.
5 Laura Roslin - Battlestar Galactica
The second character from the re-imagined Battlestar Galactica on this list, but not the last, is President Laura Roslin. Played by Mary McDonnel, Laura Roslin was the Secretary for Education prior to the destruction of the Twelve Colonies by the Cylon’s nuclear Armageddon. When the rest of the government is destroyed, she is sworn in to the presidency as the highest ranking official left alive.
Roslin has the role thrust upon her and had no real ambition toward it. Indeed she lacks the energy to serve as president as she is also fighting breast cancer. Roslin finds herself in the role of both political and spiritual leader of humanity-- a role typically dominated by a male character-- but she adapts and manages to maintain the humanity of those around her when many begin to fall to their baser instincts of greed and corruption. Her story develops and while initially distrustful of the military grows close to Commander Adama, the two eventually become lovers. She faces the hardest of destinies as she fights to keep the last vestiges of humanity alive and out of the clutches of the Cylons. eventually, she and Adama lead humanity to a safe haven, but she doesn’t live long enough to enjoy it as soon after their arrival she dies in Adama’s arms.
4 Sarah Connor - Terminator
When we first meet Sarah Connor in 1984’s The Terminator, she is a young waitress unaware of her destiny as the mother of the future leader of humanity, John Connor. After being targeted by a Terminator sent from the future, her life is saved by a lone warrior (also from the future) named Kyle Reese. The two spend a few days together, and Sarah learns much about her destiny but remains untrained and unready for what is coming. They fall in love, and conceive John, but Kyle is killed in the final battle with the machine.
By the events of Terminator 2: Judgement Day, Sarah is transformed. She has spent the past decade learning all she can about survival, weapons, technology, and anything else she can teach John to aid his future role as leader of the human resistance. She is caught attempting to destroy a computer lab and, presumed to be crazy, is sent to a mental institution. She is rescued by the Terminator, this time sent to protect John, and, while initially distrustful, works with him to prevent the machines taking over.
A tribute to mothers everywhere, Sarah foregoes any personal happiness and transforms herself into a warrior in order to protect her child-- and the entire human race.
3 Princess Leia Organa - The Star Wars Saga
While much of the plot of 1977’s Star Wars: A New Hope centres around rescuing Princess Leia from the Death Star, Leia is far from your usual damsel in distress. Despite being a teenager, she speaks brazenly to both Grand Moff Tarkin and Darth Vader – two of the most powerful men in the galaxy. Once rescued from her cell, she grabs a blaster and assumes command of her own rescue, leading Han Solo and Luke Skywalker into a trash compactor, and eventually to freedom.
As a major player in the Rebel Alliance, she is part of the overall plot to free the galaxy from the Empire. Unlike some leaders, who are far from the front lines, Leia briefs pilots before the escape from Hoth, battles Imperial Stormtroopers with a blaster on Endor, and holds the rank of General by the time of Star Wars: The Force Awakens.
While she has yet to raise a lightsaber on-screen, she has the potential to be a Jedi of equal power to her brother, Luke. Her Force-sensitivity is hinted at when she is seen to sense Han’s death despite being on a different planet.
2 Kara "Starbuck" Thrace - Battlestar Galactica
The last of our Battlestar Galactica entries, Kara “Starbuck” Thrace is a perfect example of a well-written female character. Indeed, in a show that had so many great characters of both genders, it’s impressive for one to stand out so much. But, Kara often stole the show due to her hot-headed, cocky, foul-mouthed, hard-drinking, and hard-living attitude. Beneath that exterior, she was also kind and loving.
Starbuck had the most complex character arc on the entire series, and certainly matured more than any other. Initially she has little regard for her own life and jumps into the most dangerous situations. Eventually, it is her respect for all life that encourages her to risk her safety for the good of others.
Far and away the most iconic character of the re-imagined series, Starbuck is an icon simply because her gender doesn’t matter. She is the most skilled pilot in the fleet and a soldier who is respected even by those who don’t like her.
1 Ellen Ripley - Alien(s)
Ellen Ripley is the greatest female character in sci-fi or fantasy, and also one of the greatest movie characters of all time. Period. Sigourney Weaver even earned a Best Actress nomination for Aliens (1986), which was ground-breaking as, prior to that point, the Academy had given little recognition to science fiction.
The part of Ripley was originally intended to be male, but was changed last minute. As such, she wasn’t written in a way typical of women in cinema at the time. She was a competent member of the crew of the Nostromo and third in command. She wasn’t depicted as arm candy, or as a damsel in distress who needed rescuing. Indeed, she’s the last surviving crew member due to her toughness and determination to survive, despite her crew dying around her.
What truly sets Ripley apart is that she’s not a typical female sci-fi character, even by today’s standards. She’s not a hot, kick-ass, lycra-clad gymnast spinning around firing weapons and doing impossible stunts. She’s no fembot-- she’s a real person caught in extreme circumstances. She faces painful experiences and is damaged by them. She doesn’t shake off the loss of her original crew, she mourns them, and is distressed by those experiences.
Despite being rude, stubborn, aggressive, and often outright angry, Ripley is also maternal, empathetic, and smart. It’s all these traits that make her the human heart of a series called Alien and an icon of cinema.
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Where Felicity Jones' Jyn Erso will rank remains to be seen. Got a favourite female sci-fi icon we didn't include? Let us know in the comments!BROTHERS BRAD AND Dallas Woodhouse are two politically divided brothers who got a telling off from their mother on live TV in America.
The brothers were on cable channel C-SPAN to talk about their documentary ‘Woodhouse Divided’.
The documentary looks at the conversations that families have around their tables at thanksgiving and Christmas.
One of the brothers, Brad, is a liberal while the other, Dallas, is a conservative.
The brothers were taking questions from callers when Joy from North Carolina called in.
Dallas Woodhouse immediately recognised his mother’s voice as she began talking:
You’re right, I’m from down south…And I’m your mother.”
She complained about how her son’s argue over the holidays, saying, “I don’t know many families that are fighting at Thanksgiving.
I’m hoping you’ll have some of this out of your system when you come here for Christmas. I would really like a peaceful Christmas.
And here’s the moment that brought the two divided sons together…in mortification!Photos: Celebs you didn't know were religious "Big Bang Theory" star Mayim Bialik studies Jewish texts, shuts down her social media during the Sabbath and believes in practicing modesty. She writes about her beliefs at her site GrokNation. Hide Caption 1 of 23
Photos: Celebs you didn't know were religious Michael Douglas didn't identify as Jewish growing up but has taken a renewed interest in the religion as an adult. After his son faced some anti-Semitic insults, the actor called for people to confront anti-Semitism and wrote about the incident in a column Hide Caption 2 of 23
Photos: Celebs you didn't know were religious Andrew Keegan, who came to fame in the 1999 film "10 Things I Hate About You," founded Full Circle, a new age temple and spiritual movement described to Vice as "advanced spiritualism." Hide Caption 3 of 23
Photos: Celebs you didn't know were religious Chris Pratt, star of the summer blockbuster "Guardians of the Galaxy," told People that the birth of his premature son in 2012 had caused him and his wife, actress Anna Faris, to pray a great deal. "It restored my faith in God, not that it needed to be restored, but it really redefined it." Hide Caption 4 of 23
Photos: Celebs you didn't know were religious Some were surprised to learn that rapper Ja Rule, once best known for being the brash star of Murder Inc. Records, was raised by Jehovah's Witnesses, as he revealed in his memoir "Unruly: The Highs and Lows of Becoming a Man." He was baptized as a Christian after "reconnecting with God" while working on the 2013 movie "I'm In Love With a Church Girl." Hide Caption 5 of 23
Photos: Celebs you didn't know were religious Justin Bieber was raised in a Christian household by his evangelical mother. In a 2011 interview with Rolling Stone, Bieber said, "I feel I have an obligation to plant little seeds with my fans. I'm not going to tell them, 'You need Jesus,' but I will say at the end of my show, 'God loves you.' " Hide Caption 6 of 23
Photos: Celebs you didn't know were religious Julia Roberts, the star of "Eat Pray Love" and countless other movies, says she and her family chant and pray at a Hindu temple. "I'm definitely a practicing Hindu," she told People in 2011. Hide Caption 7 of 23
Photos: Celebs you didn't know were religious Actress Natalie Portman, who was born Neta-Lee Hershlag in Jerusalem, was raised in a Jewish household in Long Island, New York. Now she jokes that "like, every Jewish role comes to me." Hide Caption 8 of 23
Photos: Celebs you didn't know were religious Pop star Prince became a Jehovah's Witness in 2001 and has even gone door-to-door to share his faith with others. "Sometimes people act surprised," he told The New Yorker in 2008. "But mostly they're really cool about it." Hide Caption 9 of 23
Photos: Celebs you didn't know were religious Tiger Woods repeatedly invoked his Buddhist faith during his public apology for marital infidelity in 2010. "People probably don't realize it," he said, "but I was raised a Buddhist, and I actively practiced my faith from childhood until I drifted away from it in recent years." Hide Caption 10 of 23
Photos: Celebs you didn't know were religious Former boxer Mike Tyson told Fox News in December that he's "very grateful to be a Muslim." "Allah doesn't need me; I need Allah," said the onetime heavyweight champion. Hide Caption 11 of 23
Photos: Celebs you didn't know were religious Singer Alice Cooper, the son of a lay preacher, always believed in Christ but wouldn't have considered himself a Christian before giving up his rock-star lifestyle, he told the Huffington Post. Hide Caption 12 of 23
Photos: Celebs you didn't know were religious Actor Mark Wahlberg is serious about his Catholic faith. Even so, he joked about his risque roles with CNN's Jake Tapper. "I hope God's a movie fan. I want to explain 'Boogie Nights' at the right time." Hide Caption 13 of 23
Photos: Celebs you didn't know were religious Orlando Bloom joined the Soka Gakkai school of Buddhism at age 19. "It's about studying what is going on in my daily life and using that as fuel to go and live a bigger life," he told Details in 2007. Hide Caption 14 of 23
Photos: Celebs you didn't know were religious Recognized for his role in "Rush Hour," Chris Tucker said he became a born-again Christian after filming "Money Talks" in 1997. Eight years later, Tucker was arrested for speeding on a Sunday in Georgia, allegedly approaching 120 mph. He was soon released and apologized, saying he was running late to church. Hide Caption 15 of 23
Photos: Celebs you didn't know were religious Comedian Dave Chappelle, a practicing Muslim, left his highly successful show in 2005 and went on a spiritual retreat in Africa. "I don't normally talk about my religion publicly because I don't want people to associate me and my flaws with this beautiful thing," he told Time in 2005. "And I believe it is a beautiful religion if you learn it the right way." Hide Caption 16 of 23
Photos: Celebs you didn't know were religious Paula Abdul, the singer and former "American Idol" judge, told The Associated Press that "beyond being Jewish, I've always found myself to be very much in tune with spirituality." Hide Caption 17 of 23
Photos: Celebs you didn't know were religious Miley Cyrus was baptized in a Southern Baptist church and still calls herself a Christian though she doesn't attend church every Sunday. "People are always looking for you to do something that is non-Christian," she told Parade magazine in 2010. "But it's like, 'Dude, Christians don't live in the dark.'... If I wear something revealing, they go, 'Well, that's not Christian.' And I'm like, 'Yeah, I'm going to go to hell because I'm wearing a pair of really short white shorts.' " Hide Caption 18 of 23
Photos: Celebs you didn't know were religious Actress Erika Christensen defended Scientology last year after the release of "Going Clear," a book that offered a probing look at the controversial church. "(People assume) we're some kind of closed group and we're just the Hollywood religion... and we worship rabbits. I don't actually know how many people think that," she joked in an online video Hide Caption 19 of 23
Photos: Celebs you didn't know were religious Actor Denzel Washington may be more known for his starring role in films like "American Gangster," but he's also a devout Christian. He told GQ magazine in 2012 that he "reads the Bible every day." Hide Caption 20 of 23
Photos: Celebs you didn't know were religious Pop star Katy Perry was raised Pentecostal and once recorded on a Christian label. "I lay on my back one night and looked down at my feet, and I prayed to God. I said, 'God, will you please let me have boobs so big that I can't see my feet when I'm lying down?' God answered my prayers," she told GQ magazine. Hide Caption 21 of 23
Photos: Celebs you didn't know were religious Malcolm Gladwell, the bestselling journalist, was raised among Mennonites. After writing "David and Goliath," he told Religion News Service that "I am in the process of rediscovering my own faith again." Hide Caption 22 of 23More Forde-Yard Dash: 10 best rivalry games | Chip Kelly watch | Bill Snyder’s last hurrah?
Forty names, games, teams and minutiae making news in college football (grilled crow sold separately in Knoxville, where it’s a new menu item at Calhoun’s):
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DASH QUIZ: HOW TOXIC IS YOUR RIVALRY?
This is Rivalry Week in the sport, and it doesn’t get much more fun than the traditional, season-ending battles between schools and fan bases that can’t stand each other. But some rivalries teeter toward the toxic end – and The Dash is here to help you figure out the relative health (or lack of health) of your favorite rivalry. Take the following quiz to find out.
Question 1: True or false: You sincerely believe that your school and football program represent an athletically, academically and morally superior way of life (11) compared to your ethically bankrupt rival.
If you answer true: add five points.
If you answer false: add zero points.
Question 2: You wish ill upon your rival’s football team (12) and entire university …
A. Only on the day when they are playing your favorite team. The rest of the year, you’re happy for their success.
B. During football season. You hope they go 0-12 while your school goes 12-0, but you wish their university well during the offseason.
C. Every waking moment of every day. Not enough bad things can happen to them.
If your answer is A: add zero points.
If your answer is B: add three points.
If your answer is C: add five points.
Question 3: At Thanksgiving (13) and other gatherings that include family or friends who cheer for your rival, you …
A. Laugh about each other’s foibles, because family is more important than sports.
B. Diplomatically rebut your uncle’s jibes about your favorite team, but keep it agreeable and respectful.
Story continues
C. Wait for your sister-in-law fan of the rival school to say something obnoxious first, then throw the turkey’s wishbone at her head.
D. Start the insults yourself before you’ve taken off your coat, because anyone who cheers for that trash college deserves to be savaged more than the family deserves a harmonious holiday gathering.
If your answer is A: add zero points.
If your answer is B: add one point.
If your answer is C: add three points.
If your answer is D: add five points.
Auburn University decided to remove dying oak trees after they were poisoned shortly after the 2010 Iron Bowl by an Alabama fan. (Getty)
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_timer, cpu); + struct clock_event_device *clockevent = &timer->evt; + + timer->irq_enabled = 1; + clockevent->name = timer->name; + snprintf(timer->name, sizeof(timer->name), "ccount_clockevent_%u", cpu); + clockevent->features = CLOCK_EVT_FEAT_ONESHOT; + clockevent->rating = 300; + clockevent->set_next_event = ccount_timer_set_next_event; + clockevent->set_mode = ccount_timer_set_mode; + clockevent->cpumask = cpumask_of(cpu); + clockevent->irq = irq_create_mapping(NULL, LINUX_TIMER_INT); + if (WARN(!clockevent->irq, "error: can't map timer irq")) + return; + clockevents_config_and_register(clockevent, ccount_freq, + 0xf, 0xffffffff); +} + void __init time_init(void) { #ifdef CONFIG_XTENSA_CALIBRATE_CCOUNT @@ -131,28 +145,21 @@ void __init time_init(void) ccount_freq = CONFIG_XTENSA_CPU_CLOCK*1000000UL; #endif clocksource_register_hz(&ccount_clocksource, ccount_freq); - - ccount_timer.evt.cpumask = cpumask_of(0); - ccount_timer.evt.irq = irq_create_mapping(NULL, LINUX_TIMER_INT); - if (WARN(!ccount_timer.evt.irq, "error: can't map timer irq")) - return; - clockevents_config_and_register(&ccount_timer.evt, ccount_freq, 0xf, - 0xffffffff); - setup_irq(ccount_timer.evt.irq, &timer_irqaction); - ccount_timer.irq_enabled = 1; - - setup_sched_clock(ccount_sched_clock_read, 32, ccount_freq); + local_timer_setup(0); + setup_irq(this_cpu_ptr(&ccount_timer)->evt.irq, &timer_irqaction); + sched_clock_register(ccount_sched_clock_read, 32, ccount_freq); + clocksource_of_init(); } /* * The timer interrupt is called HZ times per second. */ -irqreturn_t timer_interrupt (int irq, void *dev_id) +irqreturn_t timer_interrupt(int irq, void *dev_id) { - struct ccount_timer_t *timer = dev_id; - struct clock_event_device *evt = &timer->evt; + struct clock_event_device *evt = &this_cpu_ptr(&ccount_timer)->evt; + set_linux_timer(get_linux_timer()); evt->event_handler(evt); /* Allow platform to do something useful (Wdog). */
index 3e8a05c874cd..eebbfd8c26fc 100644
--- a/
+++ b/ diff --git a/arch/xtensa/kernel/traps.c b/arch/xtensa/kernel/traps.cindex 3e8a05c874cd..eebbfd8c26fc 100644--- a/ arch/xtensa/kernel/traps.c +++ b/ arch/xtensa/kernel/traps.c @@ -157,7 +157,7 @@ COPROCESSOR(7), * 2. it is a temporary memory buffer for the exception handlers. */ -unsigned long exc_table[EXC_TABLE_SIZE/4]; +DEFINE_PER_CPU(unsigned long, exc_table[EXC_TABLE_SIZE/4]); void die(const char*, struct pt_regs*, long); @@ -212,6 +212,9 @@ void do_interrupt(struct pt_regs *regs) XCHAL_INTLEVEL6_MASK, XCHAL_INTLEVEL7_MASK, }; + struct pt_regs *old_regs = set_irq_regs(regs); + + irq_enter(); for (;;) { unsigned intread = get_sr(interrupt); @@ -227,21 +230,13 @@ void do_interrupt(struct pt_regs *regs) } if (level == 0) - return; - - /* - * Clear the interrupt before processing, in case it's - * edge-triggered or software-generated - */ - while (int_at_level) { - unsigned i = __ffs(int_at_level); - unsigned mask = 1 << i; - - int_at_level ^= mask; - set_sr(mask, intclear); - do_IRQ(i, regs); - } + break; + + do_IRQ(__ffs(int_at_level), regs); } + + irq_exit(); + set_irq_regs(old_regs); } /* @@ -318,17 +313,31 @@ do_debug(struct pt_regs *regs) } +static void set_handler(int idx, void *handler) +{ + unsigned int cpu; + + for_each_possible_cpu(cpu) + per_cpu(exc_table, cpu)[idx] = (unsigned long)handler; +} + /* Set exception C handler - for temporary use when probing exceptions */ void * __init trap_set_handler(int cause, void *handler) { - unsigned long *entry = &exc_table[EXC_TABLE_DEFAULT / 4 + cause]; - void *previous = (void *)*entry; - *entry = (unsigned long)handler; + void *previous = (void *)per_cpu(exc_table, 0)[ + EXC_TABLE_DEFAULT / 4 + cause]; + set_handler(EXC_TABLE_DEFAULT / 4 + cause, handler); return previous; } +static void trap_init_excsave(void) +{ + unsigned long excsave1 = (unsigned long)this_cpu_ptr(exc_table); + __asm__ __volatile__("wsr %0, excsave1
" : : "a" (excsave1)); +} + /* * Initialize dispatch tables. * @@ -342,8 +351,6 @@ void * __init trap_set_handler(int cause, void *handler) * See vectors.S for more details. */ -#define set_handler(idx,handler) (exc_table[idx] = (unsigned long) (handler)) - void __init trap_init(void) { int i; @@ -373,10 +380,15 @@ void __init trap_init(void) } /* Initialize EXCSAVE_1 to hold the address of the exception table. */ + trap_init_excsave(); +} - i = (unsigned long)exc_table; - __asm__ __volatile__("wsr %0, excsave1
" : : "a" (i)); +#ifdef CONFIG_SMP +void secondary_trap_init(void) +{ + trap_init_excsave(); } +#endif /* * This function dumps the current valid window frame and other base registers.
index 21acd11b5df2..ee32c0085dff 100644
--- a/
+++ b/ diff --git a/arch/xtensa/kernel/vmlinux.lds.S b/arch/xtensa/kernel/vmlinux.lds.Sindex 21acd11b5df2..ee32c0085dff 100644--- a/ arch/xtensa/kernel/vmlinux.lds.S +++ b/ arch/xtensa/kernel/vmlinux.lds.S @@ -165,6 +165,13 @@ SECTIONS.DoubleExceptionVector.text); RELOCATE_ENTRY(_DebugInterruptVector_text,.DebugInterruptVector.text); +#if defined(CONFIG_SMP) + RELOCATE_ENTRY(_SecondaryResetVector_literal, +.SecondaryResetVector.literal); + RELOCATE_ENTRY(_SecondaryResetVector_text, +.SecondaryResetVector.text); +#endif + __boot_reloc_table_end = ABSOLUTE(.) ; @@ -272,6 +279,25 @@ SECTIONS.DoubleExceptionVector.literal). = (LOADADDR(.DoubleExceptionVector.text ) + SIZEOF(.DoubleExceptionVector.text ) + 3) & ~ 3; + +#if defined(CONFIG_SMP) + + SECTION_VECTOR (_SecondaryResetVector_literal, +.SecondaryResetVector.literal, + RESET_VECTOR1_VADDR - 4, + SIZEOF(.DoubleExceptionVector.text), +.DoubleExceptionVector.text) + + SECTION_VECTOR (_SecondaryResetVector_text, +.SecondaryResetVector.text, + RESET_VECTOR1_VADDR, + 4, +.SecondaryResetVector.literal) + +. = LOADADDR(.SecondaryResetVector.text)+SIZEOF(.SecondaryResetVector.text); + +#endif +. = ALIGN(PAGE_SIZE); __init_end =.;
index 81edeab82d17..ba4c47f291b1 100644
--- a/
+++ b/ diff --git a/arch/xtensa/mm/cache.c b/arch/xtensa/mm/cache.cindex 81edeab82d17..ba4c47f291b1 100644--- a/ arch/xtensa/mm/cache.c +++ b/ arch/xtensa/mm/cache.c @@ -118,7 +118,7 @@ void flush_dcache_page(struct page *page) * For now, flush the whole cache. FIXME?? */ -void flush_cache_range(struct vm_area_struct* vma, +void local_flush_cache_range(struct vm_area_struct *vma, unsigned long start, unsigned long end) { __flush_invalidate_dcache_all(); @@ -132,7 +132,7 @@ void flush_cache_range(struct vm_area_struct* vma, * alias versions of the cache flush functions. */ -void flush_cache_page(struct vm_area_struct* vma, unsigned long address, +void local_flush_cache_page(struct vm_area_struct *vma, unsigned long address, unsigned long pfn) { /* Note that we have to use the 'alias' address to avoid multi-hit */ @@ -159,8 +159,7 @@ update_mmu_cache(struct vm_area_struct * vma, unsigned long addr, pte_t *ptep) /* Invalidate old entry in TLBs */ - invalidate_itlb_mapping(addr); - invalidate_dtlb_mapping(addr); + flush_tlb_page(vma, addr); #if (DCACHE_WAY_SIZE > PAGE_SIZE) && XCHAL_DCACHE_IS_WRITEBACK
index 70fa7bc42b4a..b57c4f91f487 100644
--- a/
+++ b/ diff --git a/arch/xtensa/mm/fault.c b/arch/xtensa/mm/fault.cindex 70fa7bc42b4a..b57c4f91f487 100644--- a/ arch/xtensa/mm/fault.c +++ b/ arch/xtensa/mm/fault.c @@ -21,7 +21,7 @@ #include <asm/uaccess.h> #include <asm/pgalloc.h> -unsigned long asid_cache = ASID_USER_FIRST; +DEFINE_PER_CPU(unsigned long, asid_cache) = ASID_USER_FIRST; void bad_page_fault(struct pt_regs*, unsigned long, int); #undef DEBUG_PAGE_FAULT
index d97ed1ba7b0a..1f68558dbcc2 100644
--- a/
+++ b/ diff --git a/arch/xtensa/mm/misc.S b/arch/xtensa/mm/misc.Sindex d97ed1ba7b0a..1f68558dbcc2 100644--- a/ arch/xtensa/mm/misc.S +++ b/ arch/xtensa/mm/misc.S @@ -140,7 +140,7 @@ ENTRY(clear_user_page) /* Setup a temporary DTLB with the color of the VPN */ - movi a4, -PAGE_OFFSET + (PAGE_KERNEL | _PAGE_HW_WRITE) + movi a4, ((PAGE_KERNEL | _PAGE_HW_WRITE) - PAGE_OFFSET) & 0xffffffff movi a5, TLBTEMP_BASE_1 # virt add a6, a2, a4 # ppn add a2, a5, a3 # add 'color' @@ -194,7 +194,7 @@ ENTRY(copy_user_page) or a9, a9, a8 slli a4, a4, PAGE_SHIFT s32i a9, a5, PAGE_FLAGS - movi a5, -PAGE_OFFSET + (PAGE_KERNEL | _PAGE_HW_WRITE) + movi a5, ((PAGE_KERNEL | _PAGE_HW_WRITE) - PAGE_OFFSET) & 0xffffffff beqz a6, 1f
index c43771c974be..36ec171698b8 100644
--- a/
+++ b/ diff --git a/arch/xtensa/mm/mmu.c b/arch/xtensa/mm/mmu.cindex c43771c974be..36ec171698b8 100644--- a/ arch/xtensa/mm/mmu.c +++ b/ arch/xtensa/mm/mmu.c @@ -13,6 +13,8 @@ #include <asm/tlbflush.h> #include <asm/mmu_context.h> #include <asm/page.h> +#include <asm/initialize_mmu.h> +#include <asm/io.h> void __init paging_init(void) { @@ -22,7 +24,7 @@ void __init paging_init(void) /* * Flush the mmu and reset associated register to default values. */ -void __init init_mmu(void) +void init_mmu(void) { #if!(XCHAL_HAVE_PTP_MMU && XCHAL_HAVE_SPANNING_WAY) /* @@ -37,7 +39,21 @@ void __init init_mmu(void) set_itlbcfg_register(0); set_dtlbcfg_register(0); #endif - flush_tlb_all(); +#if XCHAL_HAVE_PTP_MMU && XCHAL_HAVE_SPANNING_WAY && CONFIG_OF + /* + * Update the IO area mapping in case xtensa_kio_paddr has changed + */ + write_dtlb_entry(__pte(xtensa_kio_paddr + CA_WRITEBACK), + XCHAL_KIO_CACHED_VADDR + 6); + write_itlb_entry(__pte(xtensa_kio_paddr + CA_WRITEBACK), + XCHAL_KIO_CACHED_VADDR + 6); + write_dtlb_entry(__pte(xtensa_kio_paddr + CA_BYPASS), + XCHAL_KIO_BYPASS_VADDR + 6); + write_itlb_entry(__pte(xtensa_kio_paddr + CA_BYPASS), + XCHAL_KIO_BYPASS_VADDR + 6); +#endif + + local_flush_tlb_all(); /* Set rasid register to a known value. */
index ca9d2366bf12..ade623826788 100644
--- a/
+++ b/ diff --git a/arch/xtensa/mm/tlb.c b/arch/xtensa/mm/tlb.cindex ca9d2366bf12..ade623826788 100644--- a/ arch/xtensa/mm/tlb.c +++ b/ arch/xtensa/mm/tlb.c @@ -48,7 +48,7 @@ static inline void __flush_dtlb_all (void) } -void flush_tlb_all (void) +void local_flush_tlb_all(void) { __flush_itlb_all(); __flush_dtlb_all(); @@ -60,19 +60,23 @@ void flush_tlb_all (void) * a new context will be assigned to it. */ -void flush_tlb_mm(struct mm_struct *mm) +void local_flush_tlb_mm(struct mm_struct *mm) { + int cpu = smp_processor_id(); + if (mm == current->active_mm) { unsigned long flags; local_irq_save(flags); - __get_new_mmu_context(mm); - __load_mmu_context(mm); + mm->context.asid[cpu] = NO_CONTEXT; + activate_context(mm, cpu); local_irq_restore(flags); + } else { + mm->context.asid[cpu] = NO_CONTEXT; + mm->context.cpu = -1; } - else - mm->context = 0; } + #define _ITLB_ENTRIES (ITLB_ARF_WAYS << XCHAL_ITLB_ARF_ENTRIES_LOG2) #define _DTLB_ENTRIES (DTLB_ARF_WAYS << XCHAL_DTLB_ARF_ENTRIES_LOG2) #if _ITLB_ENTRIES > _DTLB_ENTRIES @@ -81,24 +85,26 @@ void flush_tlb_mm(struct mm_struct *mm) # define _TLB_ENTRIES _DTLB_ENTRIES #endif -void flush_tlb_range (struct vm_area_struct *vma, - unsigned long start, unsigned long end) +void local_flush_tlb_range(struct vm_area_struct *vma, + unsigned long start, unsigned long end) { + int cpu = smp_processor_id(); struct mm_struct *mm = vma->vm_mm; unsigned long flags; - if (mm->context == NO_CONTEXT) + if (mm->context.asid[cpu] == NO_CONTEXT) return; #if 0 printk("[tlbrange<%02lx,%08lx,%08lx>]
", - (unsigned long)mm->context, start, end); + (unsigned long)mm->context.asid[cpu], start, end); #endif local_irq_save(flags); if (end-start + (PAGE_SIZE-1) <= _TLB_ENTRIES << PAGE_SHIFT) { int oldpid = get_rasid_register(); - set_rasid_register (ASID_INSERT(mm->context)); + + set_rasid_register(ASID_INSERT(mm->context.asid[cpu])); start &= PAGE_MASK; if (vma->vm_flags & VM_EXEC) while(start < end) { @@ -114,24 +120,25 @@ void flush_tlb_range (struct vm_area_struct *vma, set_rasid_register(oldpid); } else { - flush_tlb_mm(mm); + local_flush_tlb_mm(mm); } local_irq_restore(flags); } -void flush_tlb_page (struct vm_area_struct *vma, unsigned long page) +void local_flush_tlb_page(struct vm_area_struct *vma, unsigned long page) { + int cpu = smp_processor_id(); struct mm_struct* mm = vma->vm_mm; unsigned long flags; int oldpid; - if(mm->context == NO_CONTEXT) + if (mm->context.asid[cpu] == NO_CONTEXT) return; local_irq_save(flags); oldpid = get_rasid_register(); - set_rasid_register(ASID_INSERT(mm->context)); + set_rasid_register(ASID_INSERT(mm->context.asid[cpu])); if (vma->vm_flags & VM_EXEC) invalidate_itlb_mapping(page);
index e9e1aad8c271..d05f8feeb8d7 100644
--- a/
+++ b/ diff --git a/arch/xtensa/platforms/iss/network.c b/arch/xtensa/platforms/iss/network.cindex e9e1aad8c271..d05f8feeb8d7 100644--- a/ arch/xtensa/platforms/iss/network.c +++ b/ arch/xtensa/platforms/iss/network.c @@ -38,7 +38,7 @@ #define DRIVER_NAME "iss-netdev" #define ETH_MAX_PACKET 1500 #define ETH_HEADER_OTHER 14 -#define ISS_NET_TIMER_VALUE (2 * HZ) +#define ISS_NET_TIMER_VALUE (HZ / 10) static DEFINE_SPINLOCK(opened_lock); @@ -56,8 +56,6 @@ static LIST_HEAD(devices); struct tuntap_info { char dev_name[IFNAMSIZ]; - int fixed_config; - unsigned char gw[ETH_ALEN]; int fd; }; @@ -67,7 +65,6 @@ struct tuntap_info { /* This structure contains out private information for the driver. */ struct iss_net_private { - struct list_head device_list; struct list_head opened_list; @@ -83,9 +80,6 @@ struct iss_net_private { int index; int mtu; - unsigned char mac[ETH_ALEN]; - int have_mac; - struct { union { struct tuntap_info tuntap; @@ -118,68 +112,48 @@ static char *split_if_spec(char *str,...) *arg = str; if (end == NULL) return NULL; - *end ++ = '\0'; + *end++ = '\0'; str = end; } va_end(ap); return str; } +/* Set Ethernet address of the specified device. */ -#if 0 -/* Adjust SKB. */ - -struct sk_buff *ether_adjust_skb(struct sk_buff *skb, int extra) +static void setup_etheraddr(struct net_device *dev, char *str) { - if ((skb!= NULL) && (skb_tailroom(skb) < extra)) { - struct sk_buff *skb2; - - skb2 = skb_copy_expand(skb, 0, extra, GFP_ATOMIC); - dev_kfree_skb(skb); - skb = skb2; - } - if (skb!= NULL) - skb_put(skb, extra); - - return skb; -} -#endif + unsigned char *addr = dev->dev_addr; -/* Return the IP address as a string for a given device. */ + if (str == NULL) + goto random; -static void dev_ip_addr(void *d, char *buf, char *bin_buf) -{ - struct net_device *dev = d; - struct in_device *ip = dev->ip_ptr; - struct in_ifaddr *in; - __be32 addr; - - if ((ip == NULL) || ((in = ip->ifa_list) == NULL)) { - printk(KERN_WARNING "Device not assigned an IP address!
"); - return; + if (!mac_pton(str, addr)) { + pr_err("%s: failed to parse '%s' as an ethernet address
", + dev->name, str); + goto random; } - - addr = in->ifa_address; - sprintf(buf, "%d.%d.%d.%d", addr & 0xff, (addr >> 8) & 0xff, - (addr >> 16) & 0xff, addr >> 24); - - if (bin_buf) { - bin_buf[0] = addr & 0xff; - bin_buf[1] = (addr >> 8) & 0xff; - bin_buf[2] = (addr >> 16) & 0xff; - bin_buf[3] = addr >> 24; + if (is_multicast_ether_addr(addr)) { + pr_err("%s: attempt to assign a multicast ethernet address
", + dev->name); + goto random; } + if (!is_valid_ether_addr(addr)) { + pr_err("%s: attempt to assign an invalid ethernet address
", + dev->name); + goto random; + } + if (!is_local_ether_addr(addr)) + pr_warn("%s: assigning a globally valid ethernet address
", + dev->name); + return; + +random: + pr_info("%s: choosing a random ethernet address
", + dev->name); + eth_hw_addr_random(dev); } -/* Set Ethernet address of the specified device. */ - -static void inline set_ether_mac(void *d, unsigned char *addr) -{ - struct net_device *dev = d; - memcpy(dev->dev_addr, addr, ETH_ALEN); -} - - /* ======================= TUNTAP TRANSPORT INTERFACE ====================== */ static int tuntap_open(struct iss_net_private *lp) @@ -189,24 +163,21 @@ static int tuntap_open(struct iss_net_private *lp) int err = -EINVAL; int fd; - /* We currently only support a fixed configuration. */ - - if (!lp->tp.info.tuntap.fixed_config) - return -EINVAL; - - if ((fd = simc_open("/dev/net/tun", 02, 0)) < 0) { /* O_RDWR */ - printk("Failed to open /dev/net/tun, returned %d " - "(errno = %d)
", fd, errno); + fd = simc_open("/dev/net/tun", 02, 0); /* O_RDWR */ + if (fd < 0) { + pr_err("%s: failed to open /dev/net/tun, returned %d (errno = %d)
", + lp->dev->name, fd, errno); return fd; } - memset(&ifr, 0, sizeof ifr); + memset(&ifr, 0, sizeof(ifr)); ifr.ifr_flags = IFF_TAP | IFF_NO_PI; - strlcpy(ifr.ifr_name, dev_name, sizeof ifr.ifr_name); + strlcpy(ifr.ifr_name, dev_name, sizeof(ifr.ifr_name)); - if ((err = simc_ioctl(fd, TUNSETIFF, (void*) &ifr)) < 0) { - printk("Failed to set interface, returned %d " - "(errno = %d)
", err, errno); + err = simc_ioctl(fd, TUNSETIFF, &ifr); + if (err < 0) { + pr_err("%s: failed to set interface %s, returned %d (errno = %d)
", + lp->dev->name, dev_name, err, errno); simc_close(fd); return err; } @@ -217,27 +188,17 @@ static int tuntap_open(struct iss_net_private *lp) static void tuntap_close(struct iss_net_private *lp) { -#if 0 - if (lp->tp.info.tuntap.fixed_config) - iter_addresses(lp->tp.info.tuntap.dev, close_addr, lp->host.dev_name); -#endif simc_close(lp->tp.info.tuntap.fd); lp->tp.info.tuntap.fd = -1; } -static int tuntap_read (struct iss_net_private *lp, struct sk_buff **skb) +static int tuntap_read(struct iss_net_private *lp, struct sk_buff **skb) { -#if 0 - *skb = ether_adjust_skb(*skb, ETH_HEADER_OTHER); - if (*skb == NULL) - return -ENOMEM; -#endif - return simc_read(lp->tp.info.tuntap.fd, (*skb)->data, (*skb)->dev->mtu + ETH_HEADER_OTHER); } -static int tuntap_write (struct iss_net_private *lp, struct sk_buff **skb) +static int tuntap_write(struct iss_net_private *lp, struct sk_buff **skb) { return simc_write(lp->tp.info.tuntap.fd, (*skb)->data, (*skb)->len); } @@ -253,45 +214,45 @@ static int tuntap_poll(struct iss_net_private *lp) } /* - * Currently only a device name is supported. - * ethX=tuntap[,[mac address][,[device name]]] + * ethX=tuntap,[mac address],device name */ static int tuntap_probe(struct iss_net_private *lp, int index, char *init) { - const int len = strlen(TRANSPORT_TUNTAP_NAME); + struct net_device *dev = lp->dev; char *dev_name = NULL, *mac_str = NULL, *rem = NULL; /* Transport should be 'tuntap': ethX=tuntap,mac,dev_name */ - if (strncmp(init, TRANSPORT_TUNTAP_NAME, len)) + if (strncmp(init, TRANSPORT_TUNTAP_NAME, + sizeof(TRANSPORT_TUNTAP_NAME) - 1)) return 0; - if (*(init += strlen(TRANSPORT_TUNTAP_NAME)) == ',') { - if ((rem=split_if_spec(init+1, &mac_str, &dev_name))!= NULL) { - printk("Extra garbage on specification : '%s'
", rem); + init += sizeof(TRANSPORT_TUNTAP_NAME) - 1; + if (*init == ',') { + rem = split_if_spec(init + 1, &mac_str, &dev_name); + if (rem!= NULL) { + pr_err("%s: extra garbage on specification : '%s'
", + dev->name, rem); return 0; } } else if (*init!= '\0') { - printk("Invalid argument: %s. Skipping device!
", init); + pr_err("%s: invalid argument: %s. Skipping device!
", + dev->name, init); return 0; } - if (dev_name) { - strncpy(lp->tp.info.tuntap.dev_name, dev_name, - sizeof lp->tp.info.tuntap.dev_name); - lp->tp.info.tuntap.fixed_config = 1; - } else - strcpy(lp->tp.info.tuntap.dev_name, TRANSPORT_TUNTAP_NAME); + if (!dev_name) { + pr_err("%s: missing tuntap device name
", dev->name); + return 0; + } + strlcpy(lp->tp.info.tuntap.dev_name, dev_name, + sizeof(lp->tp.info.tuntap.dev_name)); -#if 0 - if (setup_etheraddr(mac_str, lp->mac)) - lp->have_mac = 1; -#endif - lp->mtu = TRANSPORT_TUNTAP_MTU; + setup_etheraddr(dev, mac_str); - //lp->info.tuntap.gate_addr = gate_addr; + lp->mtu = TRANSPORT_TUNTAP_MTU; lp->tp.info.tuntap.fd = -1; @@ -302,13 +263,6 @@ static int tuntap_probe(struct iss_net_private *lp, int index, char *init) lp->tp.protocol = tuntap_protocol; lp->tp.poll = tuntap_poll; - printk("TUN/TAP backend - "); -#if 0 - if (lp->host.gate_addr!= NULL) - printk("IP = %s", lp->host.gate_addr); -#endif - printk("
"); - return 1; } @@ -327,7 +281,8 @@ static int iss_net_rx(struct net_device *dev) /* Try to allocate memory, if it fails, try again next round. */ - if ((skb = dev_alloc_skb(dev->mtu + 2 + ETH_HEADER_OTHER)) == NULL) { + skb = dev_alloc_skb(dev->mtu + 2 + ETH_HEADER_OTHER); + if (skb == NULL) { lp->stats.rx_dropped++; return 0; } @@ -347,7 +302,6 @@ static int iss_net_rx(struct net_device *dev) lp->stats.rx_bytes += skb->len; lp->stats.rx_packets++; - // netif_rx(skb); netif_rx_ni(skb); return pkt_len; } @@ -378,11 +332,11 @@ static int iss_net_poll(void) spin_unlock(&lp->lock); if (err < 0) { - printk(KERN_ERR "Device '%s' read returned %d, " - "shutting it down
", lp->dev->name, err); + pr_err("Device '%s' read returned %d, shutting it down
", + lp->dev->name, err); dev_close(lp->dev); } else { - // FIXME reactivate_fd(lp->fd, ISS_ETH_IRQ); + /* FIXME reactivate_fd(lp->fd, ISS_ETH_IRQ); */ } } @@ -393,14 +347,11 @@ static int iss_net_poll(void) static void iss_net_timer(unsigned long priv) { - struct iss_net_private* lp = (struct iss_net_private*) priv; + struct iss_net_private *lp = (struct iss_net_private *)priv; spin_lock(&lp->lock); - iss_net_poll(); - mod_timer(&lp->timer, jiffies + lp->timer_val); - spin_unlock(&lp->lock); } @@ -408,19 +359,14 @@ static void iss_net_timer(unsigned long priv) static int iss_net_open(struct net_device *dev) { struct iss_net_private *lp = netdev_priv(dev); - char addr[sizeof "255.255.255.255\0"]; int err; spin_lock(&lp->lock); - if ((err = lp->tp.open(lp)) < 0) + err = lp->tp.open(lp); + if (err < 0) goto out; - if (!lp->have_mac) { - dev_ip_addr(dev, addr, &lp->mac[2]); - set_ether_mac(dev, lp->mac); - } - netif_start_queue(dev); /* clear buffer - it can happen that the host side of the interface @@ -448,7 +394,6 @@ out: static int iss_net_close(stAt her personal web site's home page, Ebony Magazine Senior Editor Jamilah Lemieux says she is "One of those pesky Black feminists who challenges the status quo, while remaining fresh and fab at all times."
"Fresh and fab" would hardly describe Ms. Lemieux's Wednesday appearance on CNN Newsroom, where she took issue with, per the White House, President Barack Obama's characterization of the murders of five Dallas law enforcement officers as "hate crimes." You see, that's not her "most comfortable word choice," because it involved white cops.
As will be seen in the latter portion of the video (HT Zero Hedge), CNN Law Enforcement Contributor and former FBI agent Steve Moore pushed back hard, and Ms. Lemieux tried to interrupt his self-evidently true response:
Transcript:
HOST ANA CABRERA: We'll start with you, Jamilah. Because the White House yesterday came out and made a pretty bold statement saying President Obama considers the attack on Dallas police a hate crime. You know, the killer specifically mentioned he wanted to kill white people, especially white police officers, according to law enforcement there. How do you feel about the president defining this as a hate crime? JAMILAH LEMIEUX: You know, I have to say, I would not describe hate crime as the most comfortable word choice, considering these circumstances. There's so much we do not know about what took place, what motivated this person. We only have the one account of law enforcement. We haven't had the opportunity to really look into his history in a meaningful way. When we use a phrase like "hate crime," we're typically referring to crimes against people of color, people of various religious groups, LGBT people, people who have been historically attacked, abused or disenfranchised on the basis of their identity. To now extend that to the majority group and a group of people that have a history with African-Americans that have been abused, we can apply that to either police officers or to caucasians, I think gets into very tricky territory. So I'd be curious to know if he was referring to the hate crime because he singled them out by race or because they were police officers. CABRERA: Steve, do you agree with that, the fact that this man was targeting white people according to what he told police? Does that fit the definition of a hate crime? STEVE MOORE: It absolutely fits the definition of the hate crime. You can't just say that only certain groups are allowed to be hated. Only certain groups can have crimes designated as hate groups, or hate crimes, against them. That's racism. What you're doing here is saying that the actual truth of the matter is that hate crimes are defined as a crime against a specific race, doesn't list them, gender, gender preference group or membership in an organization. That's how it's defined. You can't just say if you're white, nobody can commit a hate crime against you. This guy said I'm doing it because you're white and I'm doing it because you're cops. That's race and that's organization. It's a hate crime as far as legally and it's a hate crime the way the FBI would investigate it."
The video clip only comes back to showing the trio together very briefly at the end. It was worth capturing to see that Ms. Lemieux appeared to be visibly upset with Mr. Moore's plainly true statement:
Lemieux apparently believes that it is actually possible that Dallas Police Chief David Brown, a black man, has been lying when stating that said that Micah Johnson wanted to kill white people, and particularly white police officers. She also seems to believe it's possible that every other law enforcement officer involved would be willing to back up any false statement Brown might make.
Five days after Johnson's massacre, Lemieux claims that "We haven't had the opportunity to really look into his history in a meaningful way." My goodness, woman. Where have you been? There have been dozens of writeups on Johnson since he committed his murder spree.
Lemieux seems to think it matters whether the Obama administration is "referring to the hate crime because he (Johnson) singled them out by race or because they were police officers." The answer is, "The administration was referring to both," and that it probably didn't occur to them parse the motivation any further. Why would it have?
In January 2014, Lemieux wrote the following statement at Ebony.com:
Look, White folks, can we just agree to disagree on the whole “treating Black people with respect” thing? Clearly, we aren’t going to see eye-to-eye. So… can y’all just leave us alone? Like, just look away when you see us doing anything and don’t put us in your movies, TV shows or living room sets. Just leave us be, leave us be, leave us be. Don’t celebrate Dr. King’s death on his birthday, don’t celebrate his birthday at all, just please go back to your corner and we’ll stay in ours. I don’t want integration anymore. I don’t even want those cheesecake swirl brownies from Starbucks. You just take that creamy stuff and let us keep the chocolate.
This is a woman who has no interest doing anything but complaining. If the rest of the nation were to "leave African-Americans be," she would be the first to scream about blacks being "disenfranchised" and "abused on the basis of our race." How do I know? She made those complaints later in the CNN interview:
You can't compare the hatred that certain white nationalist groups have had towards African-Americans with the feelings that many African-Americans feel about how we've been treated in this country, how we've been historically disenfranchised, abused on the basis of our race.
This is a woman living in the past who wants to stay in that past. Part of that involves never admitting that hate crimes can occur against police officers or whites — oh, and whining about "cultural appropriation." She's not genuinely interested in seeing race relations improve, because if they do, her ability to grievance-monger diminishes.
Ebony does no one any favors by continuing to employ her.
Cross-posted at BizzyBlog.com.Uwe E. Reinhardt is an economics professor at Princeton.
In last week’s post I used a stylized illustration to throw into sharp relief the economic and ethical dimensions of community-rated premiums for health insurance.
I am gratified by the many comments that post drew, and even more so by their quality. (In fact, I have shared these comments with my students in a course on health policy.) The comments |
rows.
"Wait, what the hell am I doing?" asked Hidan, apparently to himself. He stopped thrashing and getting himself more covered in sticky goo, and chakra glowed on his feet. He stepped out of the goo. That's when he noticed the swirling birds.
"What the-?" said Hidan.
And then-
"Ah GOD DAMNIT!" Hidan shouted. "THAT HURTS DAMNIT!"
Shikamaru craned his neck around, he could see two figures inside a mess of flapping and cawing crows. He recognized one as Hidan but the other-
He wore a uniform from Konoha.
It was Raidou.
Backup!
Except they didn't know about Hidan!
"Get away from him!" Shikamaru screamed. "Don't let him cut you!"
The Konoha shinobi sped backward, landing lightly. There was a black sword in his hand. It dripped blood.
"Stupid birds! Damnit!" Hidan said, flapping his arms at the birds. "You goddamned birds are lucky my scythe is still stuck in that sticky shit!"
Then Hidan seemed to notice Raidou's black sword.
"You have a black sword! Inside this mess of black birds! That is so cheating!"
"But-but that's impossible." Raidou said. "I hit him in a vital point, how is he-"
"Cheating, huh? Says the man who can't die," Shikamaru said.
Raidou raised his eyebrows at Shikamaru in surprise.
Then Ino and Choji emerged from the trees.
"Ino," Shikamaru said. "Fix him."
She gave him an irritated look and then spread her hands a few centimeters over his chest, chakra glowing over her fingertips. She concentrated, and moved her hands from one point to another.
Her eyes widened.
She bit her lip and turned away.
She shook her head from side to side softly, not even looking at him.
"No way," Shikamaru said, his heart sinking. "You've got to be kidding me."
She began speaking in a clinical, dead-sounding voice, describing Asuma's injuries. The ruptured organs. Kabuto said something out of Shikamaru's radio that mostly agreed with Ino, judging by what he saw over the cam.
How long, Shikamaru mouthed to Ino.
Minutes, She mouthed back, her eyes watering.
Asuma looked at them, choking.
"I'm finished, Shikamaru. Even I know that."
"No," Shikamaru said firmly, pushing back his rising emotions.
"I have something to say to each of you." Asuma said.
"No," Shikamaru repeated stubbornly.
"These are Asuma's last words, pay attention." Ino said.
Silence.
"No" said Shikamaru again, lamely.
"Please Shikamaru," Asuma said weakly, blood dribbling out of his mouth.
Shikamaru looked away and let Asuma start monologuing. Death speeches were so overrated. What could you possibly say in the last few moments of life that you couldn't say better, and in more detail, later when you were still alive? Why do we feel compelled to listen to people who are dying more than we did while they were alive?
It was obscene.
Shikamaru looked up, caught sight of a passing cloud. He felt like he was going to start sobbing or raging or both at any second. What a pain in the ass.
He wished he could just detach from all of this, float up into the sky, weightless and free like that cloud.
Why, universe?
I fought two Akatsuki by myself and WON. I gave you TWO miracles.
No. Don't get overconfident. It wasn't you who produced the miracles: they were solutions to the situation that were there the whole time. It was the removal of those blinders, the Logical Fallacies, that let that locomotive Rationality churn right through and save the day.
And the universe isn't a person. The universe doesn't care. And what were two miracles anyway? Now you need three. Big deal. Your first two miracles were against human opponents: Hidan, Kakuzu.
Now you have a new opponent.
Death. The greatest opponent of all, but it's not even sentient.
But what weapon could he use on this opponent? He was fighting death.
Death is a problem, just like any other, Shikamaru thought. Use the best weapon there is-
Rationality.
Alright brain, lay it on me. Shikamaru said to his brain. Only you know, without actually saying that out loud.
Current Problem: Asuma is about to die. According to Ino, he's suffered multiple organ failures, and since they are all connected in a system, it's like a sinking boat. If only one section is flooded, the other parts could have enough air to keep the boat above water; but flood a majority of the sections-
One dead boat.
Think! What else did she say?
She said he was hurt and couldn't be healed, that death was inevitable given his injuries. And Kabuto concurred.
Which means that the only way out of Asuma's death in just a couple of minutes would be if Kabuto and Ino were BOTH wrong. No one else was close enough to help.
They were the medical experts: how could Shikamaru, an amateur, poke holes in their medical assessment?
Ok, so they're medical experts, what are you an expert in? Said a voice from some lonely corner in his brain.
Rationality.
The Logical Fallacies.
So don't poke holes in their medical expertise, poke holes in their logic.
Shikamaru took a breath.
OK. So examine their argument.
Fact 1: Asuma's internal organs were shutting down all at once.
Fact 2: The injuries to his organs could not be healed by any science or jutsu they possessed.
Therefore, Asuma was going to die.
How could he possibly poke a hole in that argument? In some dark attic in the back of his mind, Gallows Humor was gibbering and chuckling to himself.
Asuma finished monologuing to Choji and was moving on to Ino now.
Shikamaru looked down at his hand, he was shaking. When Asuma got to him, the jig would be up. He couldn't just ignore a dying man, could he?
Illogical, but Shikamaru was having trouble imagining him telling Asuma to shut up while he thought how to save his master while Asuma-sensei was coughing up blood. He really needed to come up with miracle three before then.
OK. OK.
So he had the argument, the chain of events that led to Asuma's death. Now he just had to find a way to break up the argument.
How would he do that?
Of course. The Logical Fallacies. They were great at breaking up arguments.
So- assume for the sake of argument that there is an inherent flaw in the reasoning, due to a Fallacy lurking under the surface. What could it be? What likely fallacies would there be?
Answer: Probably a false assumption. That would break up that argument the easiest, if either fact 1 or 2 were predicated on a false assumption. So what assumptions did they rely on?
Well, Fact 2 also implies that no outside force, situation or object can cause healing, or prevent death.
Ok, weak, but he would take it. Hmm. Prevent death. False assumption- that they had to heal Asuma. Could they prevent his death without healing him at all?
Shikamaru took another deep breath. It didn't seem like he was getting anywhere, but he felt a glimmer of hope, a tiny avenue was open and damnit he would follow it.
So what object, outside force, or situation can prevent death without healing? Assume that healing is impossible for now. That fact likely depends on medical stuff you won't understand. You want a logical hole, not a medical one. Focus on preventing death by itself.
He was drawing a blank. That was bad.
Asuma was wrapping up his monologue with Ino.
Also bad.
Keep going! He had to prevent death, yet could think of nothing on hand that could prevent death without healing.
Engage idea Creation Mode, 3.0!
Shikamaru looked around. It was absurd, but it had already worked TWICE. So why not?
Could a kunai prevent death?
No, it caused death more often than not. He could cut stuff with it, but tourniquets were insufficient for organs.
Shuriken?
Power lines?
Konoha shinobi? A puddle of syrupy goo?
Hidan?
No, he was more into the causing death thing too.
Why couldn't he think of anything?
Maybe another Fallacy?
Like what?
How about functional fixedness? Said Shikamaru's heroic brain, showing up hopefully not too little too late like a bastard.
Right, Functional Fixedness- the idea that objects could only be used for their intended purpose. In other words, as he looked around at his surroundings, he couldn't think of anything that could prevent death because he was used to thinking of objects in terms of what they were meant to do, what their obvious function was, instead of what their possible function could be, which was anything you thought of. Their function was fixed in place, until you broke free from the fallacy. Like how a sword was for combat, but it could also hold open a door like a doorstop.
He reviewed each of the objects again, in turn.
A puddle of sticky goo was for trapping people, could it also…trap…death?
This is ridiculous, said Gallows Humor. Just accept it already.
Never!
What else?
Power lines. For providing electricity. Did they stop death? Shikamaru had heard at Fire University about jolts of electricity restarting hearts but not like, kidneys.
Konoha shinobi?
Hidan?
He threw back his head and laughed. That guy had caused Asuma's death.
"Shikamaru," Asuma said, coughing.
Shikamaru stopped. He realized everyone was staring at him as he was sitting there cackling like a crazy person while his dying mentor struggled to find the breath to give him his final wishes.
"I know this is hard for you to accept, Shikamaru, but-"
NO! Don't accept it!
Could he? Was he being irrational?
Fighting the inevitable?
No! It was never irrational to fight death until the very end.
But maybe it was irrational to fight what logic dictated had to happen.
Shikamaru hesitated. He felt his shoulders sag and he was about to open his mouth to accept the forgone conclusion.
You didn't finish the exercise, said his brain firmly. You have one more question to ask. Ask it before you accept anything.
Fine, Shikamaru thought, holding back another hysterical chuckle. I'll ask it. And now, for the fate of my master's life, the million Ryo question-
Can Hidan be made to prevent death?
He froze. His eyes widened.
Of course he could. He prevented his own death all the time.
Right in front of Shikamaru's eyes.
TWICE.
He swore under his breath and stood up from where he'd been squatting beside Asuma, thinking furiously.
Could he?
Yes! A plan blossomed in Shikamaru's mind and he clutched it like driftwood in an ocean storm.
Speaking almost too fast to be intelligible, Shikamaru rattled off what he wanted from Ino and Choji.
They stared at him.
In horror? Awe? Both?
Probably.
"But that's insane," Ino protested.
"Yes," Shikamaru said, dripping venom. "That's way more insane than LETTING ASUMA DIE."
"But-" Ino started.
"OK Shikamaru." Choji interrupted, giving Ino a look. "We'll do it."
Ino sighed, gritting her teeth.
Nodded.
"Shikamaru…" Asuma said, a hint of reproach and a tinge of pleading in his voice.
Shikamaru repressed the urge to tell Asuma to quit being a pain in the ass and shut the hell up.
"Your job is to not die for two minutes, Sensei." Shikamaru told his master firmly.
Then he stood up and the three of them approached Hidan where he was squaring off with Raidou.
Dirty trick number three acquired.
This time their target was death itself.
END OF PART 1Get the biggest daily news stories by email Subscribe Thank you for subscribing We have more newsletters Show me See our privacy notice Could not subscribe, try again later Invalid Email
A toyboy lover beat his girlfriend’s disabled toddler to death while she was on a school run, a jury heard yesterday.
Cameron Rose is alleged to have battered epileptic Rhys Lawrie, three, on two earlier occasions before the fatal attack in January of last year.
And prosecutors at the Old Bailey said that Rhys’ mum Sadie Henry, 28, repeatedly lied about the assaults to hide her affair with schoolboy Rose, 10 years her junior.
It is claimed Rose, who was 16 at the time, swung helpless Rhys by his leg into a hard object causing massive head injuries.
Ms Henry, a former army medic, returned to her home in Erith, Kent, to find her son’s lifeless body in his blood-spattered bedroom.
He was covered in bruises and his right leg was broken.
His face was so swollen paramedics could not open his eye to shine a light into the pupil.
Previously, staff at the his school noticed Rhys had bruising around his face in December, 2010.
They left a message with Ms Henry but took no action after she failed to respond.
A month later Rhys was rushed to hospital with more bruising and an apparent fractured jaw – but was discharged after X-rays showed no broken bones.
Rhys was found dead days later on January 21.
Former army medic Ms Henry informed police that Rose told her he was playing a game with Rhys who accidentally fell off the table.
Sally Howes, QC, said: “Sadie Henry lied repeatedly to paramedics, hospital staff and ultimately to the police in an effort to hide the truth of her relationship with Cameron Rose.”
Rose, now 18, of Eltham, South East London, denies murder and two charges of causing actual bodily harm.
He claims the injuries were caused as a result of Rhys’ epileptic seizures.
The trial continues.This post demonstrates the practical utility of CUDA’s sinpi() and cospi() functions in the context of distance calculations on earth. With the advent of location-aware and geospatial applications and geographical information systems (GIS), these distance computations have become commonplace.
Wikipedia defines a great circle as
A great circle, also known as an orthodrome or Riemannian circle, of a sphere is the intersection of the sphere and a plane which passes through the center point of the sphere.
For almost any pair of points on the surface of a sphere, the shortest (surface) distance between these points is the path along the great circle between them. If you have ever flown from Europe to the west coast of North America and wondered why you passed over Greenland, your flight most likely followed a great circle path in order to conserve fuel.
Following is the code for a C function, haversine(), which computes the great-circle distance of two points on earth (or another sphere), using the Haversine formula. People differ on their philosophy as to the “correct” radius when assuming a spherical earth (given that earth is not a sphere; Wikipedia provides some guidance on this matter). Therefore, the earth’s radius is an input to the function, which also allows trivial switching between kilometers or miles as units. The accuracy of the formula when computed in single-precision should generally be fully adequate for distance computations within a continent.
/* This function computes the great-circle distance of two points on earth using the Haversine formula, assuming spherical shape of the planet. A well-known numerical issue with the formula is reduced accuracy in the case of near antipodal points. lat1, lon1: latitude and longitude of first point, in degrees [-90, +90] lat2, lon2: latitude and longitude of second point, in degrees [-180, +180] radius: radius of the earth in user-defined units, e.g. 6378.2 km or 3963.2 miles returns: distance of the two points, in the same units as radius Reference: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great-circle_distance */ __device__ float haversine (float lat1, float lon1, float lat2, float lon2, float radius) { float dlat, dlon, c1, c2, d1, d2, a, c, t; c1 = cospif (lat1 / 180.0f); c2 = cospif (lat2 / 180.0f); dlat = lat2 - lat1; dlon = lon2 - lon1; d1 = sinpif (dlat / 360.0f); d2 = sinpif (dlon / 360.0f); t = d2 * d2 * c1 * c2; a = d1 * d1 + t; c = 2.0f * asinf (fminf (1.0f, sqrtf (a))); return radius * c; }
Thanks to Norbert Juffa for contributing this code.Photo retouching with Photoshop CC
Photo retouching with Photoshop CC. On hearing the term “photo retouching”, all the tech savvy people first think of Photoshop CC. Adobe Photoshop CC has changed the lives of large-scale designers. And ‘ideal stopping point where art meets technology. Today, after many years of use Photoshop CC, I would just say that this software has become richer after the launch of each new version, and it is an ultimate benefit for the design industry. On a practical note, everyone can perform basic photo editing tasks, even if you have little knowledge of Photoshop CC. You can add new life to your old pictures of the day with a few clicks.
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What are the tasks that can be made with the feature photo retouching in Photoshop CC?
Well, here’s the list, take a look below:
Remove skin blemishes
Close your eyes may be open
Dental deformities can be reformulated
Tattoos can be removed
Facial structure can be made more symmetrical
It abolishes any unwanted marks or scars from the skin
Professional Photoshop CC can do miracles with images and make seniors look younger age. It ‘easy to add life to any photograph. This process is also benefiting enough for e-commerce. You can touch up the product images and make them look neat and crisp. With simple steps, you can reformulate any of your old photos and make it better with the new contrast and balance.
In retouching, color also plays a significant role. You can add background colors or change the colors of the clothes. Suppose you have a black and white a bit ‘of a bygone era, you can add shades in them and make it look beautiful.
There is another interesting fact called photo manipulation that allows the designer to add people to the image that do not really belong in the actual image. You can also change the heads and background. In addition, you can remove any unwanted person or object in the photo. For example, it is possible to remove any attachments or elements in a product that is not part of the like product mannequin. This can be done through the service Image retouching we called dummy ghost.
It ‘easy to learn the process of photo retouching in Photoshop CC. You can simply download the software and try it on any of your images. You can try:
Brush and stamp
Magic Cut
Magic-Film
Photo cloning
Face Beautify
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From FreeThoughtPedia
What's Wrong With The Ten Commandments?
Critics of the Christian bible occasionally can score a point or two in discussion with the religious community by noting the many teachings in both the Old and New Testaments that encourage the bible believer to hate and to kill, biblical lessons that history proves Christians have taken most seriously. Nonetheless the bible defendant is apt to offer as an indisputable parting shot, "But don't forget the ten commandments. They are the basic bible teaching. Study the ten commandments."
Do study the ten commandments! They epitomize the childishness, the vindictiveness, the sexism, the inflexibility and the inadequacies of the bible as a book of morals.
Actually, only six of the ten commandments deal with an individual's moral conduct, which comes as a surprise to most Christians. Essentially, the first four commandments say:
Commandments 1-4: Appealing to an insecure God
1.Thou shalt have no other gods before me.
2.Thou shalt not make thee any graven images or bow down to them, and if you do I'll get you and your kids and their descendants.
3.Thou shalt not take the name of the lord in vain.
4.Keep the Sabbath holy.
The exact terminology is found in chapter five of Deuteronomy. Two other versions of the "ten commandments" can be found in the Old Testament. One version, in Exodus 20, differs slightly from the Deuteronomy version, while a third, in Exodus 34, is wildly different, containing commandments about sacrifices and offerings and ending with the teaching: "Thou shalt not seethe a kid in its mother's milk." This is the only version referred to in scriptures as the "ten commandments."
In essence, the first four commandments all scream that "the lord thy god" has an uneasy vanity, and like most dictators, must resort to threats, rather than intellectual persuasion, to promote a point of view. If there were an omnipotent god, can you imagine him or her being concerned if some poor little insignificant creature puttered around and made a graven image? Do you think that any god, possessing the modicum of good will you could expect to find in any neighbor, would want to punish children even "unto the third and fourth generation" because their fathers could not believe? How can anyone not perceive the pettiness, bluster, bombast and psychotic insecurity behind the first four commandments? We are supposed to respect this!
Honor thy father and mother
"Honor thy father and thy mother" is the fifth commandment, and it is, of course, an extension of the authoritarian rationale behind the first four. Honor cannot be bestowed automatically by an honest intellect. Intellectually honest people can honor only those who, in their opinion, warrant their honor. The biologic fact of fatherhood and motherhood does not in and of itself warrant honor. Until very recently parenthood was not a matter of choice. It still is a mandatory, not optional, happening for many of the world's people. Why should any child be commanded to honor, without further basis, parents who became parents by accident--who didn't even plan to have a child? All of us know children who have been abused, beaten or neglected by their parents. What is the basis for honor there? How does the daughter honor a father who sexually molests her? "Honor only those who merit your honor" would be a more appropriate teaching, and if that includes your parents, great! "Honor your children" would have been a compassionate commandment.
Thou shalt not kill, commit adultery, steal or bear false witness
Commandments six through nine--thou shalt not kill, commit adultery, steal or bear false witness--obviously have merit, but even they need extensive revision. To kill in self-defense is regrettable, but it is certainly morally defensible, eminently sensible conduct. So is the administration of a shot or medication that will end life for the terminally ill patient who wishes to die.
Ask yourself, do you really need a supernatural entity to tell you that stealing someone else's property isn't a good idea? Do you not think you (and millions of people before you of virtually every conceivable belief) haven't also felt this same way? It is less a question of morality and more a question of survival that if you avoid unnecessary harm to other people and their property, it's less likely you'll be harmed yourself. Do you honestly believe God is the first person to come up with this notion?
Thou shalt not commit adultery
Adultery, the subject of the seventh commandment, again raises the question of an absolute ban. For the most part fidelity in marriage is a sound rule, making for happiness; but some marriages may outlast affection. Some couples may agree to live by different rules. Until relatively recent times Christian marriages were not dissolvable except by death, so the ban of divorce coupled with the ban of adultery obviously created great distress. Adultery, it must be remembered, involves an act between consenting adults. How much more relevant and valuable it would be to have, for instance, a commandment that forbids the violent crimes of rape and incest.
Thou shalt not steal
"Thou shalt not steal" raises questions regarding the usefulness of a blanket condemnation, and may put squatter's rights ahead of public and private welfare. Should people who are cold or ill steal to ameliorate their situations? Should the child who is hungry steal? Surely this commandment cries for some amending clauses. One is reminded of the comment of Napoleon, who really had religion figured out: "How can you have order in a state without religion? For, when one man is dying of hunger near another who is ill of surfeit, he cannot resign himself to this difference unless there is an authority which declares, 'God wills it thus.' Religion is excellent stuff for keeping people quiet."
Thou shalt not bear false witness
In general, to bear false witness is construed to mean "don't lie," and that is a valuable moral precept, except again it is stated in absolute terms. Lies have saved lives, they have preserved relationships, and every day they save hurt feelings. The truth is not always a reasonable or kind solution. Interestingly, in biblical times the dictum not to bear false witness against a neighbor was a tribal commandment and meant to apply only to persons within the tribe--it was quite all right to bear false witness against "strangers."
Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's wife
Finally, the tenth commandment, which riles the feminist blood, says: "Neither shalt thou desire thy neighbor's wife, neither shalt thou covet thy neighbor's house, his field, or his manservant, or his maidservant, his ox, or his ass, or anything that is thy neighbor's." In addition to rating a wife with an ox and an ass, the bible loftily overlooks the woman who might desire her neighbor's husband. Covetousness somehow does not seem like such a crime. If you can't have a comfortable house or a productive farm, what is the great harm in wishing you did? Covetousness may be nonproductive and unpretty, but to make a big, bad deal out of it is ridiculous. Bible apologists sometimes will excuse the triviality of the tenth commandment on the basis that to covet, in a more superstitious age, meant "to cast an evil eye." Someone who coveted "his neighbor's house" was purportedly casting an evil eye on that property with a view toward its destruction. Whether one accepts the apologist's definition of covet or the more popular meaning, the tenth commandment lacks real importance.
Summary
Little in Christianity is original. Most of it is borrowed, just as the celebration of Christmas was borrowed from Roman and earlier pagan times. When the "lord" supposedly wrote his commandments on two tablets of stone and delivered them to Moses (Deut. 5:22), he was only aping earlier gods: Bacchus, Zoroaster and Minos.
Reflect for a moment that almost anyone reading this nontract could write a kinder, wiser, more reasonable set of commandments than those that Christians insist we honor. Try it!
Some of this information is provided with permission from the Freedom From Religion Foundation.Share this...
Another major European media outlet is asking: Where’s the global warming?
Image right: The August 7 edition of Denmark’s Jyllands-Posten featured a major 2-page article on the globe’s 15-years of missing warming and the potential solar causes and implications.
Moreover, they are featuring prominent skeptic scientists who are warning of a potential little ice age and dismissing CO2 as a major climate driver. And all of this just before the release of the IPCC’s 5AR, no less!
Hat-tip: NTZ reader Arne Garbøl
The August 7 print edition of the Danish Jyllands-Posten, the famous daily that published the “Muhammad caricatures“, features a full 2-page article bearing the headline: “The behavior of the sun may trigger a new little ice age” followed by the sub-headline: “Defying all predictions, the globe may be on the road towards a new little ice age with much colder winters.”
So now even the once very green Danish media is now spreading the seeds of doubt. So quickly can “settled science” become controversial and hotly disputed. The climate debate is far from over. And when it does end, it looks increasingly as if it’ll end in favor of the skeptics.
The JP writes that “many will be startled” by the news that a little ice age is a real possibility. Indeed, western citizens have been conditioned to think that nothing except warming is possible. Few have prepared for any other possibility.
In its latest 2-page report, the JP now appears to tell its readers that our views on climate science have to be much more open minded and unshackled from the chains of dogmatism.
JP starts by reminding readers that it was just over 100 years ago that the world had clawed itself out of the little ice age, which extended from 1400 – 1900, a time when the Thames river often froze over. All paths in determining the cause of the little ice age all seem to converge to a single factor: solar activity.
The Jyllands-Posten quotes David Hathaway:
‘We now have the lowest solar activity in 100 years,’ David Hathaway from American space research institute NASA newly concluded in connection to the release of new figures for the sun’s activity. He said the activity for the ongoing cycle is half of the previous cycle, and he predicted an even lower activity for the next cycle, which will hit us in few years.”
Suddenly even the greenest of media outlets among us are contemplating what the consequences of a quiet sun may be. The JP then quotes Irish solar specialist Ian Elliott, who says these consequences could be dramatic:
It indicates that we may be on the path to a new little ice age. It seems likely we are on the path to a period with very low solar activity, which could mean that we may have some very cold winters.”
Elliott then cites the ice-cold winters of 2009 and 2010 as early signs.
JP then cites at length Danish astrophysicist Henrik Svensmark, who needs no introduction:
Since the 1940s and up to 10 years ago we have had the highest solar activity in 1000 years. The last time we had solar activity that high was when we had the Medieval Warm Period from year 1000 to around 1300. … Historically there has been a close connection between solar activity and temperature for the last 1000 years. Therefore the sun’s activity will also have influence the coming many years. … The unusual thing right now is that sun’s activity is decreasing while there’s a great increase in atmospheric CO2. For that reason the question is how much the earth will cool in a time of decreasing solar activity. … The development is beautifully consistent with a cooling effect of the solar activity in the same period. This could mean that the temperature will not rise for the next 30 years or maybe begin to decrease.”
JP also quotes Svensmark on the subject of the IPCC: “…many of the climate models used by IPCC and others overestimate the influence of CO2 and underestimate the influence of the sun. … The IPCC is very one-sided, so I don’t think there will be anything reasonable in the next report.”
Where did all the heat go?
In the second part (see right) of the JP’s feature story on climate science, the daily asks whatever happened to all the missing warming?
Despite predictions that the temperature on the globe should rise with a huge speed, nothing has really happened the last 10-15 years. However climate scientists are insisting we are in the middle of the heaviest global warming maybe ever, and that the temperature will rise with at least 2-4 degrees towards the year 2100.”
JP asks scientist Sebastian Mernild of the Glaciology and Climate Change Laboratory Center for Scientific Studies in Chile, who insists that ocean currents have taken the heat “down to the deep sea”.
Once unthinkable just a few years ago, the European media and JP are now starting to admit the oceans are a poorly understood wild card in the climate equation after all. JP openly states, “The oceans are generally regarded as the big wildcard in the climate discussion.” Jylland Posten ends its 2-page feature story with questions and comments by Svensmark:
How should ocean water under 700 meters be warmed up without a warming in the upper part? … In the period 1990-2000 you could see a rise in the ocean temperatures, which fit with the greenhouse effect. But it hasn’t been seen for the last 10 years. Temperatures don’t rise without the heat content in the sea increasing. Several thousand buoys put into the sea to measure temperature haven’t registered any rise in sea temperatures.”
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Special thanks to Arne Garbøl who brought this report to my attention, translated the content, and assisted me in putting this NTZ post up.Huawei hasn’t been the most prominent OEM in the US so far, but that might change sometime soon. In a report from the Wall Street Journal, the Chinese smartphone manufacturer is said to bring its Honor line of smartphones to the US sometime this year. Huawei launched the Honor line late 2013, and the company has accumulated a ton of success largely due to the brand. The company sold 20 million Honor devices just last year alone.
Shao Yang, Huawei’s Chief Marketing Officer, said he believes contract-free phones will gradually become more popular in the US, but the majority of devices sold here are mainly being sold on-contract. Huawei has made a name for themselves around the world focusing on selling devices off-contract. In fact, 90% of devices sold in the States are tied to some sort of contract, while that number is only 40% in China. Yang admits that the company can’t compete with the marketing strategies of Samsung and Apple, though Huawei will still focus on digital advertising, rather than television ads.
Overall, the company remains very optimistic when coming over to the US. Xu Zhiqiang, President of Huawei’s US devices panel, states:
If you look at the U.S. market, it is unique in that all the competitors are here. I don’t think it’s sustainable for all these players to be here. A lot of them will disappear…But we will be here.
We have no exact date on when these devices will come to the US, but we’ll be sure to update you if we hear anything.Your garden is your outdoor sanctuary. With some careful plant choices, it can be a haven for native birds as well. Landscaped with native species, your yard, patio, or balcony becomes a vital recharge station for birds passing through and a sanctuary for nesting and overwintering birds.
Each patch of restored native habitat is just that—a patch in the frayed fabric of the ecosystem in which it lies. By landscaping with native plants, we can turn a patchwork of green spaces into a quilt of restored habitat.
Better for Birds
More native plants mean more choices of food and shelter for native birds and other wildlife.
To survive, native birds need native plants and the insects that have co-evolved with them. Most landscaping plants available in nurseries are exotic species from other countries. Many are prized for qualities that make them poor food sources for native birds—like having leaves that are unpalatable to native insects and caterpillars. With 96 percent of all terrestrial bird species in North America feeding insects to their young, planting insect-proof exotic plants is like serving up plastic food. No insects? No birds.
For example, research by entomologist Doug Tallamy has shown that native oaks support more than 550 different species of butterflies and moths alone. The non-native ginkgo tree supports just 5. Caterpillars are the go-to food source for migrant and resident birds alike. In the 16 days between hatching and fledging, a clutch of Carolina Chickadee chicks can down more than 9,000 of them.
Tallamy's work points to native landscaping as a key tool in increasing bird diversity and abundance. In a study of suburban properties in southeast Pennsylvania, for example, eight times more Wood Thrushes, Eastern Towhees, Veeries, and Scarlet Tanagers (all species of conservation concern) were found in yards with native plantings as compared with yards landscaped with typical alien ornamentals.
Video clip: Doug Tallamy
What’s more, the habitat provided by native plants can help birds adapt and survive amid a changing climate. More than half of North American bird species are threatened by climate change, and native plants can help increase their resilience by giving them food and places to rest and nest.
Better for People
When you landscape with native species, you can spend more time with the birds and less time with the mower. How does that boost human health? During the growing season, some 56 million Americans mow 40 million acres of grass each week—an area eight times the size of New Jersey! Mowers and weed-whackers burn gasoline to the tune of 800 million gallons per year, contributing to the greenhouse gases that drive global warming.
If you’ve ever filled a lawn mower or weed whacker with gas |
744-4334
Email: jones@stratfor.com
Strategic Forecasting, Inc
www.stratfor.com
……………………………………
About Stratfor
Stratfor is a private intelligence firm providing corporations,
governments and individuals with geopolitical analysis and forecasts that
enable them to manage risk and to anticipate political, economic and
security issues vital to their interests. Stratfor’s clients, who include
Fortune 500 companies and major government agencies, use Stratfor as a
unique risk-analysis tool to protect assets, diminish risk, compete in the
market, and increase opportunities.
————————————————————————–
From: Puru Agrawal [mailto:puru@vincera.com]
Sent: Monday, March 14, 2005 4:48 PM
To: Nimesh Porbandarwalla; Alex Jones
Cc: Michael Mooney
Subject: RE: Sensitive Accounts Cookie
XXX will be the login id for the account, right?
It is important that for returning visitors, we see the same value as we
would see if they were logging in, which let’s us match their activity to
their “external id” – their login. Of course, we don’t want the cookie to
contain their password.
This way, we can use the same user / account matching criteria for when
they physically log in as well as when they are simply recognized by the
system as a returning user.
For IP accounts, the value can just be their IP address, since we’ll never
see them “log in” per se.
Puru Agrawal
Phone: 512.694.5346
Fax: 512.443.9326
————————————————————————–
From: Nimesh Porbandarwalla
Sent: Monday, March 14, 2005 4:09 PM
To: Alex Jones; Puru Agrawal
Cc: ‘Michael Mooney’; ‘Jim Warren’
Subject: RE: Sensitive Accounts Cookie
Thanks Alex
Nimesh Porbandarwalla
Phone: 512 443-8749 Ext 107
Email: nimesh@vincera.com
Vincera Inc.
Customer Touch @ Your Fingertip
www.vincera.com
————————————————————————–
From: Alex Jones [mailto:jones@stratfor.com]
Sent: Monday, March 14, 2005 4:07 PM
To: Nimesh Porbandarwalla; Puru Agrawal
Cc: ‘Michael Mooney’; ‘Jim Warren’
Subject: RE: Sensitive Accounts Cookie
Sure thing. It will be
Name: Stratfor[Account]
Value: XXX
With XXX being the name of the account.
Alex Jones
Phone: 512-744-4080
Fax: 512-744-4334
Email: jones@stratfor.com
Strategic Forecasting, Inc
www.stratfor.com
……………………………………
About Stratfor
Stratfor is a private intelligence firm providing corporations,
governments and individuals with geopolitical analysis and forecasts that
enable them to manage risk and to anticipate political, economic and
security issues vital to their interests. Stratfor’s clients, who include
Fortune 500 companies and major government agencies, use Stratfor as a
unique risk-analysis tool to protect assets, diminish risk, compete in the
market, and increase opportunities.
————————————————————————–
From: Nimesh Porbandarwalla [mailto:nimesh@vincera.com]
Sent: Monday, March 14, 2005 12:12 PM
To: Alex Jones; Puru Agrawal
Cc: Michael Mooney; Jim Warren
Subject: RE: Sensitive Accounts Cookie
Hi Alex
Thanks for sending us information about the sensitive accounts cookie,
could you similarly send us the information about the IP authentication
successful login cookie on the.biz website so that we can finish the
model for capturing usage on your websites.
Thanks
Nimesh Porbandarwalla
Phone: 512 443-8749 Ext 107
Email: nimesh@vincera.com
Vincera Inc.
Customer Touch @ Your Fingertip
www.vincera.com
————————————————————————–
From: Alex Jones [mailto:jones@stratfor.com]
Sent: Monday, March 14, 2005 10:02 AM
To: Puru Agrawal; Nimesh Porbandarwalla
Cc: ‘Michael Mooney’; Jim Warren
Subject: Sensitive Accounts Cookie
I will set a cookie with the following values for accounts that should not
be tracked by Vincera:
Name: Stratfor[Track]
Value: No
Alex Jones
Phone: 512-744-4080
Fax: 512-744-4334
Email: jones@stratfor.com
Strategic Forecasting, Inc
www.stratfor.com
……………………………………
About Stratfor
Stratfor is a private intelligence firm providing corporations,
governments and individuals with geopolitical analysis and forecasts that
enable them to manage risk and to anticipate political, economic and
security issues vital to their interests. Stratfor’s clients, who include
Fortune 500 companies and major government agencies, use Stratfor as a
unique risk-analysis tool to protect assets, diminish risk, compete in the
market, and increase opportunities.
————————————————————————–
From: Puru Agrawal [mailto:puru@vincera.com]
Sent: Friday, March 11, 2005 5:09 PM
To: Alex Jones; Nimesh Porbandarwalla
Cc: Michael Mooney
Subject: RE: Weekly Status Report
Hello Alex,
We can go ahead and deploy the system without the complete list … if we
can know what the cookie value or url parameter is that tells us to ignore
the activity for a certain visitor. In fact, we don’t ever need to see
the list of which companies to ignore.
Also, if we have access to the database, we can generate the list of
database fields.
Puru Agrawal
Phone: 512.694.5346
Fax: 512.443.9326
————————————————————————–
From: Alex Jones [mailto:jones@stratfor.com]
Sent: Friday, March 11, 2005 4:46 PM
To: ‘Jim Warren’; Nimesh Porbandarwalla; Puru Agrawal
Cc: ‘Michael Mooney’
Subject: RE: Weekly Status Report
Just a few quick notes regarding Nimesh’s status report, I’ve placed my
comments below the different points in blue.
—–Original Message—–
From: Nimesh Porbandarwalla [mailto:nimesh@vincera.com]
Sent: Friday, March 11, 2005 2:43 PM
To: Jim Warren
Cc: Puru Agrawal
Subject: Weekly Status Report
Hi Jim
Below is this week’s status report that previously I had been sending to
Victoria
Pilot Status:
1. We are waiting on Alex to finish implementing cookie changes for IP
authentication on the.biz website.
At this point I am awaiting a comprehensive list of the user IDs
associated with each of the 430+ IP Blocks. As this is an extensive list I
may not receive it until end of day Tuesday. Is there any reason that this
is a showstopper for set up?
2. We are waiting on Alex to finish implementing cookie changes for
ignoring sensitive accounts.
This will be available at the same time as the above cookie
implementation.
3. We are waiting on Alex to provide us with the database fields for the
new premium website so that we can capture the appropriate fields from
the database.
I was under the impression that your gaining access to the database would
allow you to choose which fields to pull. I will gather a list for you by
Monday.
4. We are waiting on Michael to provide us with login(s) to your
databases so that we can get a data feed of the appropriate fields,
this item is dependent upon item 3.
5. We have nearly completed building the model for your website and our
awaiting for items 1, 2, 3 and 4 to have the model completely
finished.
6. Alex and Wes [Vincera] need to decide an hour slot to do a test run of
our filter deployment on your test box located at Stratfor.
That should be Michael and Wes
7. Wes has sent to Michael the filter files for the Apache module on
Monday and we our waiting for Michael to compile the filter file and
make sure that the filters compile successfully.
8. Michael is planning to do the deployment of your new equipment –
firewall, racks etc Saturday, March 12th.
9. Our new equipment has arrived and we are in the process of installing
our software on these servers, we can be ready to deploy at your
co-location as early as Sunday, March 13th dependent upon items 6, 7
and 8.
Issues & Concerns:
We had planned to be deployed and started collecting usage data on your
websites by this weekend (Sunday, March 13th). Due to delay in the items
(1, 2, 3, 4, 6 and 8) listed above we will probably deploy and start
collecting data sometime this next week (Tuesday, March 15th – Sunday,
March 20th). As we have to collect data for a minimum of 7-10 days we will
not have reports available to you till (Wednesday, March 23rd – Monday,
March 28th) depending upon when the item listed above get completed and we
deploy and start collecting usage data.
If you have any questions or concerns please do not hesitate to email or
call me.
Thanks
Nimesh Porbandarwalla
Phone: 512 443-8749 Ext 107
Email: nimesh@vincera.com
Vincera Inc.
Customer Touch @ Your Fingertip
www.vincera.comLOS ANGELES -- Anze Kopitar and Marian Gaborik were briefly neighbors in the popular town of Manhattan Beach, Calif., when Kopitar was remodeling a home earlier this season. It's a natural fit: The two are cut from the same cloth, elite European players who enjoy anonymity in Southern California.
But the buddy-movie notion of the two taking Kopitar's dog, Gustl, for a walk on the strand is slightly farfetched.
"We haven't gotten that far yet," Kopitar said.
That also might apply to their ongoing chemistry project this season for the Los Angeles Kings. After Gaborik and Kopitar clicked in last year's Stanley Cup Playoffs, the two will continue searching for that mesh when the Kings look to continue their climb up the Western Conference standings Wednesday at the Anaheim Ducks (10:30 p.m. ET; NBCSN).
Kopitar has 11 points in the past 14 games and is on pace to lead the Kings in scoring for the eighth straight season. Gaborik leads the Kings with 10 power-play goals and is second with 21 goals. The linemates, much like the Kings, are effective in stretches but haven't been able to find consistency.
Los Angeles coach Darryl Sutter judges players by the Kings' record with them in or out of the lineup. Los Angeles is 7-7-2 without Gaborik or Kopitar; Gaborik missed eight of the first 11 games of the season with an injury.
It speaks to Sutter's faith that he has kept Kopitar and Gaborik intact through hot and cold streaks. Jeff Carter and Tyler Toffoli also have remained linemates.
"You look at how much it's affected our record by those guys not being in the lineup and not playing together, it has a dramatic effect," Sutter said. "The story [of] Jeff and Tyler is a good story; they've carried us off and on all year. The reason is [Kopitar] and [Gaborik] not being consistent and productive together. [Gaborik] is leading our team in power-play goals, and we need him to do that. If you look at him, based on games played, he's a 30-40-goal scorer. So if we had him every game, we've been better off."
Sutter out of superstition was reluctant to talk about Kopitar and Gaborik staying healthy. Gaborik made the knock-on-wood gesture when asked about being able to stay in the lineup. He has a significant history of injuries, but the Kings signed him to a seven-year contract worth $34.1 million after they won their second Stanley Cup last June.
Gaborik mentioned Sutter's confidence, especially given that the coach is ruthless in his lineup changes.
"There's a trust that we can know that we get it done," Gaborik said. "We have to keep working on things and we have to keep getting it done. We've been able to click out there.
"[Anze is] a great possession player, and he can find people. You can use that to stay close to each other and use that for a give-and-go game."
Marian Gaborik Right Wing - LAK GOALS: 21 | ASST: 17 | PTS: 38
SOG: 136 | +/-: 8
Even though Gaborik fit in with the Kings seamlessly after he arrived at the NHL Trade Deadline last season, he said it was beneficial to have a full offseason and season with them. In addition to the contract extension, he bought a home in Manhattan Beach in December (Kopitar is nearby) and can grab a cup of coffee without getting recognized.
"This year, it's been good that I started out right away in camp with these guys and just started from scratch," Gaborik said. "It feels good. Everyone believes we have a good team. We just need to get going here.
"You enjoy more when you win. Hopefully we can keep it that way."
Gaborik has gone long stretches without scoring, but had a six-game point streak and tied a career-high five-game goal-scoring streak this season.
"There's not much more that needs to be said about it," forward Justin Williams said. "He’s a world-class guy. He scores a lot of goals, and when he's on his game, he makes a lot of plays, and one thing a lot of people don’t know about [Gaborik] is they figure he scores a lot of goals from the high slot, but he scores a lot of goals from the dirty areas. He scores a lot of goals going to the net, poking at rebounds. And I think that's a misconception about him sometimes from the outside, that he's just a perimeter player. He's not."
Kopitar continues to establish himself among the top two-way centers in the NHL, which makes the games against Anaheim more interesting because the Ducks can counter with Ryan Getzlaf and Ryan Kesler.
Anze Kopitar Center - LAK GOALS: 14 | ASST: 38 | PTS: 52
SOG: 107 | +/-: -2
The Ducks and Kings have great respect for each other but don't publicly pump up the rivalry as much as the local media wishes. Los Angeles has more immediate worries about making the playoffs, and Wednesday is their biggest obstacle yet.
"I guess in some ways it's kind of good to put yourselves in this position because you're forced to play your best hockey and then carry it over into the playoffs," Kopitar said. "We definitely want to go work at our game and be on our top of game come mid-April."
The Kings are 1-1-2 against the Ducks this season and have not won at Honda Center, where they won Game 7 of the Western Conference Second Round, the first playoff series between the teams.
They are in position to meet again, possibly in the first round, and Kopitar talked as if were a foregone conclusion.
"It's probably just going to add a little more fuel to the fire that we already have," he said. "It's not going to be anything new. It's just going to be another playoff series, obviously an intense one. Those are fun to play in."I’m not sure who 1-2 Switch is really for. As a full priced title, I don’t feel the core gaming crowd will find much appeal here and for the more casual crowd, there isn’t really anything instantly captivating or fun enough to hold interest for more than a couple hours. Having to constantly swap accessories in and out becomes tedious as well. At the very least, 1-2 Switch does act as a nice little social ice breaker to get the room interacting quickly and there are a few good ideas on display here.
This game is a lot of fun with family and friends. Out of the 28 games, you're sure to find a few you'll enjoy. This game is perfect to bring to a party.
In a day and age where everything is serious and cut scene pre-scripted, it's great just to play a game like this, whether trying virtual sword fights, Wizard battles with the Joy Con Controllers as a Wand, Ping Pong and Draw (Western standoffs!)
Bonuses for the game include team battles to extend the number of players, ensuring everyone can get in on the action...
All in all its fun for far longer sessions and short quick bursts, which I believe is Nintendo's intention.
The game is clearly designed for replay, with more activities being uncovered as you play. Like the Wii before it, this opens up the possibilities of what video games and consoles can do, and who they can reach, and where. The problem with this game is the price. It isn't really worth £39.99. If it was £20 or less, I would recommend it. Wait for either a price drop or for used copies to show up.Get our daily newsletter Upgrade your inbox and get our Daily Dispatch and Editor's Picks.
SOME people think sports cars are threatened with extinction by tightening restrictions on carbon-dioxide emissions and unacceptable fuel-guzzling. They fear the roar of the V8 will be replaced by the whirr of the electric armature—and that motoring will never be the same again. Well, it ought to be quieter, that is true. But the Jeremy Clarksons and J. Bonington Jagworths of this world need not fear that it will be slower.
The secret (whisper it, lest puritanical greens find out) is that electric motors are better than combustion engines. They have more oomph, and no need of a gearbox to deliver it. No self-respecting supercar should be without them. And, at this month's Geneva motor show, at least three supercar-makers showed that they had got the message. Lotus, Porsche and Ferrari each unveiled vehicles driven partly by electric motors. These cars have petrol engines, too, to back the electric ones up; technically, therefore, they are hybrids. But that should change in the future as batteries' storage capacity goes up, and charging time comes down. Most importantly they show that, sometimes, doing the right thing can be fun.
The launch of the Tesla roadster two years ago demonstrated that electric cars do not have to be slouches. The Californian company's small plug-in sports car can accelerate from zero to 96kph in 3.7 seconds. It has a range of 393km (244 miles) once its lithium-ion battery pack is fully charged (which, admittedly, takes several hours). The Tesla's rapid acceleration comes from the ability of an electric motor to deliver its maximum amount of torque at whatever speed the motor is turning.
Torque is the scientific term for turning force, and it is measured in newton-metres (Nm). The Tesla's motor has a torque of 400Nm all the way to 5,100 revolutions per minute. An internal-combustion engine, by contrast, produces maximum torque only at certain speeds. The 2.0 litre engine of a Lotus Elise S2, for instance, peaks at 213Nm at 4,400rpm. And, whereas a gearbox is needed to use the torque from a combustion engine efficiently, it is unnecessary with the heft of an electric motor.
Of three hybrid systems seen at Geneva, Lotus's is the most electrified. The British company's experimental Evora 414E uses two electric motors, each providing 400Nm of torque. They power the rear wheels independently. In addition, the car is fitted with a small “range-extending” combustion engine. This does not drive the wheels, but tops up the batteries if they are in danger of going flat. Like the Tesla (which is based on a small Lotus), the Evora does not need a gearbox. Nevertheless, it has been fitted with a “virtual” one. This is to provide the driver with the familiar sensations he would expect from a petrol engine. So, even though no actual gears are being changed, using the paddle-shift modulates the torque to provide the jolts of acceleration and deceleration that would happen if there were a real gearbox.
It is not all made up. The paddles also give the driver control of regenerative braking, which translates the kinetic energy that is dissipated when the car slows down into electricity that tops up the batteries. This slowing effect is used by Lotus to simulate engine braking, in which resistance inside an internal-combustion engine decelerates the car. “Shifting” down into a corner will thus slow the car in the same way it would a car with a gearbox. “We believe it will be completely intuitive to drivers,” says Colin Peachey, one of Lotus's senior engineers.
Porsche has adopted a different approach with its 918 Spyder. Its petrol engine, a V8, is connected to the rear wheels via a seven-speed automated gearbox. It also, though, has an electric motor that provides additional power to the rear wheels (through the same gearbox) and a second electric motor connected directly to the front axle.
Four different running modes are available. “E-Drive” powers the vehicle using only the electric motors for a modest 25km—enough for commuting. “Hybrid” mode uses electric motors and combustion engine separately or in combination, according to the driving conditions. “Sport hybrid” emphasises performance. “Race Hybrid” really lets rip. It includes a “push-to-pass” button that boosts acceleration by piling on the electrical power.
Porsche expects the 918 Spyder to emit 70 grams of carbon dioxide per kilometre travelled, which is about the same as the output of a tiny city car. Yet it will be able to accelerate to 100kph in under 3.2 seconds (a second faster than a Porsche GT3 with a combustion engine) and will have a top speed of more than 320kph. Moreover, if driven carefully, it will consume just 3 litres of petrol per 100km (or 78 miles per American gallon).
Porsche and Lotus both use a trick called “torque vectoring” to improve handling. When wheels are being driven directly by electric motors, different levels of torque can be applied to improve stability on corners. At low speeds, torque vectoring can be used on the Porsche to assist with steering by powering the rear wheels at different rates to create a turning action. This can make parking easier.
Ferrari's experimental 599 has the car's V12 engine coupled to a seven-speed automated gearbox which also contains an electric motor. The same design could be used in both Ferrari's front and mid-engined cars. With the batteries below the floor pan, the car's centre of gravity has been lowered, which improves handling. Performance is enhanced, says the firm, and carbon-dioxide emissions are cut by 35%. Luca di Montezemolo, Ferrari's boss, expects hybrid systems to be available on all its models within five years.
Many of these features will make their way into all-electric cars too. Some firms are already looking at all-electric high-performance models. The Audi e-tron, for instance, is an experimental sports coupe that relies on a battery alone to drive four electric motors—one for each wheel. By using torque vectoring, it will be capable of an even more responsive version of the brand's famous “quattro” four-wheel drive system.
The quiet future that electric cars could usher in, though, may have to be postponed. Lotus is adding simulated engine noises to the Evora. In part this is to meet expected pedestrian-safety legislation, because hybrid and electric cars can be hard to hear at low speeds. But it also provides drivers with an audible feedback similar to that produced by a combustion engine, which makes driving easier—at least, that's their story and they're sticking to it. And the noise will be selectable. A gentle, futuristic spaceship-type hum on the way to work, perhaps? And the rumble of a mighty V12 on the way home.You are here: Home All Articles / Photographic Therapy – A Free Photography Book – by Rolando Gomez
Photographic Therapy – A Free Photography Book – by Rolando Gomez
Photographic Therapy – a Free Photography Book – by Rolando Gomez
Rolando Gomez, well known author of several photography books, has a new site called Free Photography Books. Go there, sign up for his mailing list and you will be notified of more free photography books he puts out. His current free book is “Photographic Therapy–The Power of Photography to Help Build or Re-Build Self-Esteem“, and is available for download right now from this link.
After briefly going through it, I like what I see. There are tips for photography but the tips and the stories are more geared toward Photographic Therapy, and by that I mean therapy for the subject, through the means of photography. There are stories about women who’s husbands left them for the bridesmaid. Lame right? I think so, and this leaves the bride with a broken heart, and “emotional Baggage” that she’s going to have to deal with. What Rolando is saying here is to help people with the lens of your camera, and your lighting. Make people feel good about themselves, help them to move along in life with a better attitude about themselves and life.
In the book “Photographic Therapy”, Rolando tells some stories about people whom he has come across, and the images he has taken of them, and goes over some technique as well. He also tells about the after effects of certain photo sessions, both good and bad, and the results of how someone else can make a person feel(jealous or encouraging husband/boyfriend). Some of the techniques discussed are lighting and how you can light a person to slim them down, or to correct a physical challenge or hide a blemish.
I have always thought to myself of this as a viable way to help people, but have never seen anyone else talk about it. Until now. It’s nice to see someone put words to it and write a book about it. We as photographers have a responsibility to people to make them feel comfortable and good about themselves if we can. We have the power to make someone feel either: very self conscious and bad about themselves, or very comfortable and good about themselves. The camera, and what we represent as photographers, is a very powerful tool and for us as photographers to abuse this power is not cool.
The last sentence brings to mind the subject of GWC, or otherwise known as “Guy With Camera”. It’s a derogatory term for an amateur photographer or a person who bought a camera solely for the reason to get close to models or women. To use the persons trust as a “Photographer” to let them get close to them and take pictures. Usually Bad ones.
I want to say that the person who is the GWC isn’t necessarily a photographer, nor does the “woman” have to be a model. Usually the GWC will prey on unsuspecting women, so they can have access to nude or semi nude women. With this being said they are the people who might give photographers a bad name. So just be aware of the difference.
I had a girl who used to come shoot with me, and I think only me, who did modeling and burlesque show dancing to help herself come out of her shell. A shy girl who was soft spoken and styled hair for a living she, came to me with some ideas and wanted me to photo them for her. I did and had her come back a few more times. She eventually got married, retired the burlesque show dancing and I am not sure if she ever modeled ever again, but I am glad and lucky I was able to photo her. She was one of the best models I have ever worked with and she landed me a back cover on a well known fetish magazine called Secret Magazine. Those images I took with that model are some of my best, my favorite and most cherished images. So much so that I used them for my business cards and i always get compliments on the images.
I’m glad Rolando came out with his free book. It touches on a subject most people avoid, and it gave me the topic for this post. It reminds me of who I am and to remain humble and be careful of what I say to people.
Enjoy your week…
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The scene is a tastefully decorated modern kitchen in Stoke Newington. The former Absolute Radio host, Geoff Lloyd, is scurrying about making coffees.
Ed Miliband, leader of the Labour Party from 2010-15, is munching a miso and white-chocolate cookie from the excellent café across the road, contemplating the legalisation of cannabis in American states. “Gosh! We’re really behind, aren’t we?”
Jess Phillips, MP for Birmingham Yardley, is meanwhile discussing plans for her birthday at the weekend. She shares the day with John Lennon, PJ Harvey and David Cameron. “Every year my husband sends me a birthday card with David Cameron on it to piss me off. Fortunately, they’re getting harder to find, ha ha!” Some men from Thames Water keep coming through to do something with the drains. It’s a bright, clear day.
The Stoke Newington area has long been a hotbed of revolutionary activity: it was the home of the 18th-century feminist Mary Wollstonecraft and the anarchist Stoke Newington Eight. And now it is where Lloyd and Miliband — “Call me Geoff!” “Call me Ed!” — record their podcast, Reasons to Be Cheerful. In case you haven’t downloaded it yet, well, you haven’t had the pleasure of hearing Ed Miliband making horse- porn gags while laying the groundwork for a future socialist utopia.
Each week, he and Lloyd discuss a big political idea — universal basic income, say, or how to deal with the tech monopolies — in an upbeat style that won’t be too unsettling for fans of Lloyd’s drivetime output. They welcome special guests — this week, Jess Phillips and comedian Sara Pascoe — and also spend quite a lot of time talking about Geoff’s fancy Japanese toilet. “Let me just tell listeners, it is a spectacular toilet!” gushes Miliband in the first episode. “It looks like a normal toilet, but then it has these electronic devices, sort of next door to the toilet.”
And if going from Leader of the Opposition to podcast co-host might seem like a downward trajectory, well you underestimate the intensity of Miliband and Lloyd’s bromance and their command of the podcast form. “You see, I’ve been secretly in love with Geoff ever since he interviewed me on Absolute Radio during the 2015 election,” Miliband explains in the kitchen.
“I think it was the Independent that said: ‘Is this the interview that will change everything for Ed Miliband?’” says Lloyd. “It didn’t,” deadpans Miliband.
Best podcasts for your commute - in pictures 15 show all Best podcasts for your commute - in pictures 1/15 What will you listen to on your walk to work Friday? Peter Macdiarmid/Getty Images 2/15 Tiny Desk Concerts This series of live concerts hosted by NPR Music brings some of the biggest names to perform in a tiny office, at the desk of All Songs Considered host Bob Boilen. Listening (or watching, if you prefer the video version) feels intimate and personal, almost as if you’re there yourself, spending a chilled-out afternoon with Tegan and Sarah or Adele. iTunes 3/15 The Bright Sessions This award-winning podcast is a sci-fi audio drama about people in therapy who have supernatural abilities. The art form of radio drama can often be pushed aside for the ever-popular narrative shows, but this cast of talented voice actors and captivating story threads will keep you hooked. iTunes 4/15 Modern Love Based on the popular New York Times series of reader-submitted essays about love, this podcasts goes deep into the readings by adding commentary from notable personalities, updates by the essayists themselves. Hosts Meghna Chakrabarti and Modern Love editor Daniel Jones give listeners an introspective view into one of the world’s most joyful yet complex and confusing phenomenon -- being in love. iTunes 5/15 Reply All For a show about the internet, this podcasts teaches listeners so much more. It’s about stolen cell phones, rainbow dogs, time travel and everything in between. Hosts PJ Vogt and Alex Goldman have an unbeatable dynamic, explaining quirky internet stories in ways that feel more like a conversation over coffee than a lesson in tech. iTunes 6/15 Kitchen Sisters Presents From Peabody award winning “Kitchen Sisters” Davia Nelson and Nikki Silva comes a powerhouse production that brings audio to life, integrating in lost recordings, hidden worlds and stories of real people. The episodes are a treat for the ear, telling deeply layered stories interlaced with pleasing music and tasteful field noise. iTunes 7/15 Worst Idea of All Time Two guys who pick a terrible film and watch it every week for a year. What could go wrong? Guy Montgomery and Tim Batt, two New Zealand comedians, started the show by watching Grown Ups 2 once a week, every week for a year. Then they watched Sex and The City 2 52 times. Now they are watching We Are Your Friends. A funny show or the public deterioration of two grown men? We’ll let you decide. iTunes 8/15 Love + Radio Nick van der Kolk’s Love and Radio doesn’t try to teach, preach or instill. It just tells stories in the most primal form, introducing real characters and scenarios that feel just that -- real. Nothing is as it seems, and the complicated plots of the show keeps you on your toes in a peaceful way, not a “true crime” way. Truly a delight. iTunes 9/15 My Dad Wrote a Porno When your 60-year-old father has written erotic books, what choice do you have but to read them aloud for thousands of listeners? Tune in to hear Jamie Morton and friends James Cooper and BBC Radio 1’s Alice Levine read a new chapter every Monday. No guarantees that you won’t laugh out loud in public. iTunes 10/15 The High Low A follow up to the freshly retired PanDolly Podcast, Pandora Sykes and Dolly Alderton’s High Low mixes the trivial and the political into a tight, quick 45 minutes - literally, the two talk so fast. The female duo echoes the American trend (Think: Two Dope Queens, Call Your Girlfriend), but acknowledges their posh privilege in a refreshingly transparent manner. A chat show that’s mindful, not mindless? The perfect background for your commute. The High Low 11/15 Desert Island Discs It’s the classic game played on long car rides since the beginning of time -- what would you take with you on a desert island? This BBC4 programme was created by Roy Plomley in 1942, and is now hosted by Kirsty Young, who asks guests to choose the eight records they would take with them to a desert island. You can listen to every castaway from 1942 to the present, from David Beckham to Liberaci. iTunes 12/15 Adam Buxton Podcast Get an inside look at the actor/director/comedian’s life with this podcast, which is really more like a casual chat. There are silly rambles and even some singing, but you’d be surprised at much you’ll learn about Buxton’s life and the lives of his boisterous guests. iTunes 13/15 The Moth Stories told on the Moth Radio Hour are true, remembered live (without notes) and expose the rawest bits of the human condition. Moth storytellers in a roomful of strangers, telling stories that are heartwarming, terrifying and exhilarating. These stories are personal -- anyone with a tale can volunteer. For the stories behind the stories, this podcast re-airs all episodes of the show, plus additional pieces from their archives. iTunes 14/15 My Favorite Murder True crime podcasts are all the rage (Serial, S-Town, and the like), but MFM is a different kind of thrill. Each episode is hosted by die-hard crime story fans Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark, who tell each other their favorite tales of murder. Friends and fans call in to report hometown crime stories too so, as the website says: “Check your anxiety at the door”. iTunes 15/15 Kermode and Mayo’s Film Review The historic duo have been presenting radio programmes together for ages, but this podcast is one to note. It’s a simple format: one hour of Mayo discussing the week’s top films, a conversation or two with an actor or director, and then one hour of Kemode ranting about the week’s film releases. Kemode is totally unleashed, launching unplanned assaults in the “Kermodean rants” he is so famously known for. The BBC Radio 5 programme is the channel’s “flagship movie podcast”. iTunes 1/15 What will you listen to on your walk to work Friday? Peter Macdiarmid/Getty Images 2/15 Tiny Desk Concerts This series of live concerts hosted by NPR Music brings some of the biggest names to perform in a tiny office, at the desk of All Songs Considered host Bob Boilen. Listening (or watching, if you prefer the video version) feels intimate and personal, almost as if you’re there yourself, spending a chilled-out afternoon with Tegan and Sarah or Adele. iTunes 3/15 The Bright Sessions This award-winning podcast is a sci-fi audio drama about people in therapy who have supernatural abilities. The art form of radio drama can often be pushed aside for the ever-popular narrative shows, but this cast of talented voice actors and captivating story threads will keep you hooked. iTunes 4/15 Modern Love Based on the popular New York Times series of reader-submitted essays about love, this podcasts goes deep into the readings by adding commentary from notable personalities, updates by the essayists themselves. Hosts Meghna Chakrabarti and Modern Love editor Daniel Jones give listeners an introspective |
its tail once for yes, looking excited. They couldn’t ask things themselves, but they could possibly lead Sans on!
Sans raised an eyesocket at them. “Glad you’re game, pup. Well! First question: Did you get those abilities from the experiments?”
The dog shook its tail twice for no. I never even saw much of those! Greatest Dog threw in, although he didn’t really need to remind the other two.
“Okay…have you seen our first test subject at all?”
First test subject? Who was that? Frisk asked.
…No idea, Flowey replied. They shook their tail twice for no.
Sans looked disappointed. “What about all the ones after? Any hint of them around?”
Another no tail-shake. Sans sighed. “Guess I shouldn’t have gotten my hopes up about that. Okay. Here’s a big one for ya…we’ve been monitoring what we can see of the timelines, best we can, and…sometime in the future, things start to get screwy. Timelines will start and stop, jump around from place to place, loop back in on each other…and then we got one that just…ends everything. This isn’t what we were working for at all, and it’s…really starting to scare me. There’s some anomaly that’s messing around with time.” He looked down at the dog intently. “Do you know anything about what’s causing that, pup?”
This question stunned all three of them into confused silence for a moment, before they erupted into an internal debate.
Is he talking about you or me? Flowey asked.
Well maybe he’s talking about both of you! Or all of us together? Greatest Dog tried to interject.
Oh come on, I did the most resets out of any of us! He probably means the ones I did! Flowey said.
Yeah, but…what does he mean ‘ends everything?’ Can that happen?
I don’t know, I never tried something I didn’t think I couldn’t reset!
So does that mean we do know what’s causing it or we don’t?
I don’t know! He needs to be more specific!
Apparently this internal debate went on too long with no actual response in the form of tail wags, so Sans decided to drop it. “…Yanno, never mind. Maybe that was too complicated for you, pup.”
They just looked disappointed at Sans. Right now this seemed to be raising more questions for them than answering ones. Sans tapped at his jawbone, trying to think over a good response.
“Okay, I got one, maybe two more for ya. With all these things you seem capable of doing…do you know what’ll happen in the future?”
This question, they could actually answer in the affirmative. The dog wagged its tail yes.
If Sans had eyebrows, they definitely would’ve gone up now. As it was, he just looked very interested, and leaned a little closer. “Then I do have one more. In the future…does everything turn out okay?”
The dog hesitated here for a moment, unsure what answer to give…after all, there was the future ahead of Sans that they did know, and then there was the future ahead of them that they could only guess at now. What was the correct way to answer? Just when it seemed like they couldn’t put it off any further, they all silently worked out a response…and gave Sans one tail wag.
Sans leaned back, and gave a little sigh of relief. He smiled down at the dog, in that way you could tell that his smile was genuine. “…Thanks, pup. I dunno if you’re right or not, but I think that’s just what I needed to hear.”
Before they could react further, Sans then headed off in the direction of the elevator that Papyrus had used earlier. He gave them a smile as he left. “I guess this means that I really better get back to work. This machine ain’t gonna power itself, after all. Whatever you’re up to…I’m sure I’ll be seeing ya around soon, pup.”
The dog glanced back down at the scratched-out name in the dirt as Sans made his exit. So after all of that, they still didn’t have any more info on where Gaster actually was. And if anything, it sounded like they just made Sans more dedicated to getting the time machine project running.
Do you think that maybe we should’ve answered differently? Greatest Dog thought to the other two.
Frisk looked ahead with determination. “I think it just means we need to really make sure that the future does turn out all right.”This hidden garden is usually open just Monday through Friday. But every second Saturday, gardeners and budding gardeners can get tips from experts while younger kids play in the children's garden. Families will find an alphabet garden with letters hidden among the greenery, a butterfly garden, an animal garden with creatures created out of everything from ladders to sculpted plants. They may also find children's activities in the gazebo including books, puzzles and a chance to plant your own vegetable to take home.
Wear clothes you don't mind getting muddy. Make sure to bring insect repellant and sunscreen. Mosquitoes also enjoy the greenery.
Second Saturday of every month. 9 a.m.-noon.
Oahu Urban Garden Center, 955 Kamehameha Highway, Pearl City.
ctahr.hawaii.edu/ougc
Event cost details: Free
Location info: 955 Kamehameha Highway, Pearl City, HI, usFinland is experimenting with a radical nationwide initiative that will put money into the hands of the country’s unemployed with no strings attached.
Called the Universal Basic Income, or UBI, the idea is simple: that people living in poverty should be able to have a reliable source of income while they search for stable employment.
The Nordic country’s pilot program will include 2,000 unemployed Finns aged 25 through 58 who will receive a monthly lump sum of 560 Euros (roughly $580 USD) over the next two years. If participants find a job, full- or part-time, during the experiment they will continue to receive the UBI for the duration of the trial period.
Proponents of the Universal Basic Income believe it has the potential to eradicate poverty, cut out bureaucratic restrictions that bog down the welfare state, and promote entrepreneurship. Detractors see it as an inefficient hand-out that encourages laziness and slashes competition.
Though Finland is the first country to test out this policy on a national scale, other countries around the world are testing it out locally as well.
The province of Ontario, Canada, plans to begin a similar pilot project in the spring of this year. In California, a startup incubator called Y Combinator will give a basic monthly salary of $1,000-2,000 to 100 Oakland families.
The cities of Livorno, Italy, and Utrecht, Netherlands, began testing UBI projects last year.
In Kenya, a US non-profit called GiveDirectly is investing $30 million over the next 10 to 15 years to test out a UBI project its founders believe can reduce poverty in sub-Saharan Africa. And in India, the government plans to produce a feasibility survey on the UBI in the coming year.
Read more: This Charity Is About to Provide a Basic Income to People in Kenya, for 10 Years
Support for the Universal Basic Income varies by country, but one study found that 68% of people across more than 20 European Union countries support the initiative. Alternatively, in Switzerland a UBI proposal was voted down last June by a 3-to-1 margin.
Image: Flickr/Russell Shaw Higgs
Despite early support for Finland’s initiative, questions of economic feasibility of UBI still remain, especially for larger countries. In Canada, the Guardian reports, “the same poll that suggested broad support for the policy also found that most would not be willing to pay more taxes to support such a program.”
The price tag on a nationwide Universal Basic Income project in the United States would run around $3 trillion a year, according to the New York Times.
President Barack Obama, in an interview with Wired, questioned the political feasibility of such projects: “Now, whether a universal income is the right model—is it gonna be accepted by a broad base of people?—that’s a debate that we’ll be having over the next 10 or 20 years.”
In Finland, on the other hand, with a rather homogeneous population and a struggling economy (employment is over 8% in Finland, compared to under 5% in the US), UBI will allow unemployed residents to retrain into new, higher-tech positions.
The two-year pilot program in Finland — which, as Fortune notes, is not actually “universal,” as it will only apply to 2,000 people, chosen at random — will allow policymakers to gauge the usefulness of UBI initiatives.
Read more: Stanford goes tuition free for students from families making under $125,000 a year
“Some people think basic income will solve every problem under the sun, and some people think it’s from the hand of Satan and will destroy our work ethic,” Olli Kangas, who oversees research at Kela, the federal organization running the UBI projet, told the Times.
Early returns from past projects suggest that it might be effective. A 3-year UBI project in Dauphin, a small village in Manitoba, Canada, in the 1970s showed some promising results — not only for the economy, but for public health.
“Hospitalisations, accidents, injuries and mental health issues had all declined when the stipend [sic] were flowing into the community,” the Guardian wrote.
Another UBI project from the 1970s, aimed at Ontario senior citizens, led to a 25% decrease in the poverty rate for that demographic.
Hugh Segal, a former Canadian senator and now a conservative political strategist, believes UBI can appeal to both the right and the left.
“This is not something which is in any way, in my view, the precinct of the left,” Segal told The Guardian. Rather, he said, it should viewed as a community engagement project that gives people “a floor beneath which they’re not allowed to fall.”ATTENTION: General assignment and higher education reporters, editors, photographers, broadcast producers
WHAT: This fall, the University of California, Berkeley, is marking the 50th anniversary of the Free Speech Movement with several dozen special classes, an experiential program for students built around the biography of movement leader Mario Savio, sing-ins and a political poetry reading, a film series, panel discussions and lectures, a reunion of activists, an Oct. 1 rally on Sproul Plaza, concerts and more.
The movement began in 1964 when UC Berkeley students protested a ban on on-campus political advocacy and demanded their right to free speech and academic freedom. The non-violent civil disobedience tactics at UC Berkeley, pioneered by the civil rights movement, led to the introduction of reforms on many other university campuses that made freedom of speech more consistent with how it is guaranteed by the First Amendment.
The Free Speech Movement also set the national stage for mass student protests against the Vietnam War.
WHEN: Events span the entire fall semester and can be found on UC Berkeley’s Free Speech Movement website under the “Events” tab. Highlights include:
Tuesday, Sept. 23: A Free Speech All-Campus Sing-In on Sproul Plaza at 5 p.m. followed by a lecture, “Can Students Change the World? Mario Savio and the Radical Legacy of the 1960s,” by Robert Cohen, a New York University professor and author of “Freedom’s Orator,” which incoming students are reading as part of the campus’s On the Same Page program. Cohen is teaching at UC Berkeley this semester.
at 5 p.m. followed by a lecture, “Can Students Change the World? Mario Savio and the Radical Legacy of the 1960s,” by Robert Cohen, a New York University professor and author of “Freedom’s Orator,” which incoming students are reading as part of the campus’s On the Same Page program. Cohen is teaching at UC Berkeley this semester. Friday-Sunday, Sept. 26-28: A Free Speech Movement 50 th anniversary reunion. Veterans and friends of the movement will reunite for panel discussions, social events, debates and conversations.
Veterans and friends of the movement will reunite for panel discussions, social events, debates and conversations. Wednesday, Oct. 1: Anniversary rally on Sproul Plaza with Free Speech Movement veteran speakers including Lynne Hollander Savio, Bettina Aptheker and Jack Weinberg, along with Dolores Huerta, labor organizer and immigrant and women’s rights advocate.
with Free Speech Movement veteran speakers including Lynne Hollander Savio, Bettina Aptheker and Jack Weinberg, along with Dolores Huerta, labor organizer and immigrant and women’s rights advocate. Wednesday, Oct. 29: Conversation with Dr. Bassem Youssef, a champion for free speech in Egypt, moderated by Chancellor Nicholas Dirks, at Zellerbach Hall. Youssef is the host of Al-Bernameg (“The Program”), a satirical news show recently taken off the air by Egyptian authorities. In 2013, he was named one of the 100 influential people in the world by TIME magazine.
NOTE: UC Berkeleyfaculty, staff members and students are available for interviews about the movement and its legacy on campus today and throughout the world. For assistance, please contact Gretchen Kell in UC Berkeley’s Office of Communications and Public Affairs, at gkell@berkeley.edu and (510) 642-3136 or (510) 410-7769 (cell).Google's out with Android 2.2—codename: Froyo—and so far we're impressed. But what is it, exactly?
It's a mobile platform...
Froyo (following Google's adorable alphabetized dessert naming convention) is the latest iteration of Android, Google's mobile operating system. Simple enough! If you bought an Android phone recently, Froyo's what it will eventually be running.
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...with a slightly different look...
Aside from the nice touch of being greeted by an Android icon at start-up, Froyo users can also expect a new homescreen widget. There are some other minor aesthetic changes, and transitions and animations seem a bit smoother, but the user experience isn't all that different from using 2.1 on a Nexus One.
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...that supports USB tethering and acts as a portable hotspot...
Another piece of news we'd heard but are ecstatic to see confirmed: Froyo lets you turn your phone into a hotspot—including for your Wi-Fi iPad, if you're so inclined. (Or any other Wi-Fi device.) It's still not confirmed if every Android carrier will support tethering (AT&T?), but Froyo's definitely capable.
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... that's way faster than its predecessor...
We'd heard previous reports that Android 2.2 was going to be ridiculously faster than Android 2.1, and today we saw it first hand: Froyo is up to 5x faster than Eclair, thanks to a just-in-time compiler. And that's just the OS; Google's also claiming that Froyo has the world's fastest mobile browser, period.
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...that supports Flash 10.1...
Android 2.2 supports Flash 10.1—important, because Flash 10.1 is optimized to run on mobile devices. And more than finally killing off those little question mark cubes that litter the web on your phone, it'll also be a huge differentiator for Google in the fight against Apple. There's a line in the sand, and Adobe and Google are on the same side of it.
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It may turn out that Flash on mobiles is a bad idea, but at least now you'll have a choice.
...that updates apps and music OTA...
Speaking of leapfrogging the iPhone: with Froyo, when you download an app to your computer you don't need to tether your phone. Instead, the update will automatically be installed over-the-air to your device. Same goes with music you buy. Hear that, iPhone users? No syncing required.
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...that streams your music...
You'll also be able to stream your (non-DRM) iTunes library wirelessly to your Froyo phone.
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...that's introducing a bevy of new app features...
Froyo gives hardware compass access to the browser, handy for orienting maps according to which direction you're facing. You'll be able to access the camera from the browser, as well. Google continues to blur the difference between native and web apps.
Other tidbits: voice recognition for search and for Google Translate—the latter of which, when plugged into text to speech, makes a handy speech-to-speech translator. There's also a handy new application manager that'll let you move apps to and run them off of an SD card and allows background updating.
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...and that's coming soon (depending)...
Congratulations, Nexus One users! You're guaranteed to be in the first Froyo update. Everyone else, you're just going to have to hold tight; firmware updates are largely up to the carriers and OEMs, and some poor saps only got their Android 2.1 upgrade in the last week. The more recent Android handsets should see an update in the next few months.
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You're caught up on Froyo!. Now you can check out what's going on with Google TV.Image copyright Western Canada Lottery Corporation
The third time was indeed the charm for a Canadian couple who won C$8.2m (£4.9m, $6.1m) in the lottery.
Barbara and Douglas Fink had won the lottery twice before, once in 1989 and once in 2010.
But February's Western Canada Lottery jackpot was by far the largest, according to a press release from the provincial lottery.
The couple from Edmonton, Alberta say they will use the money to provide for their children.
"Family comes first," Mrs. Fink told the provincial lottery organisers. "We want to make sure that our daughters and our grandkids are looked after."
They'll spend some of their winnings on themselves. Mr Fink says they plan to travel and start house hunting.
"Barbara wants a new house, so she'll get one," he told the lotto corporation.
Mr Fink had previously shared a C$128,000 prize with four of his friends in 1989. In 2010, the couple won a C$100,000 prize.
This time, they were just one of two ticket-holders to guess all six numbers correctly.
Mrs Fink says she was the one who discovered they were winners, while her husband was out of town for work.
She tried calling him, but at first he didn't pick up.
"He didn't answer, so I waited five minutes and tried again," she remembered. "That time, he picked up. I said, 'I did it again!'"People walk past the Wrigley Building in downtown Chicago, Illinois April 28, 2008. REUTERS/Frank Polich
(Reuters) - Wrigley temporarily halted production of its new Alert Energy Caffeine Gum in response to concerns expressed by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration over the impact of caffeine on children and adolescents.
The company said it had paused the production, sale and marketing of Alert to give the FDA time to develop a new regulatory framework for the addition of caffeine to food and drinks.
The recently launched gum has about 40 milligrams of caffeine, as much as a half a cup of coffee, in each piece.
“After discussions with the FDA, we have a greater appreciation for its concern about the proliferation of caffeine in the nation’s food supply,” Wrigley North America President Casey Keller said in a statement.
Keller said there was a need for change in the regulatory framework to “better guide” consumers and the industry about the appropriate use of caffeinated products.
The company previously said it marketed the gum as an energy product for adults aged 25 and older, and that it exceeded current regulatory requirements on labeling.
The FDA said last month that it was taking a “fresh look” at the issue in response to the launch of a caffeinated gum, and warned that it would take action “if necessary”.
The FDA did not name Wrigley, owned by privately held Mars Inc, or the gum in its statement.
Wrigley is not the first company to market gum with energizing properties. Mondelez International Inc sells a line of gums with ingredients like ginseng, green tea and Vitamin C. Stride Spark sells gum that have Vitamins B6 and B12 added.Abibliophobia The fear of running out of reading material.
Absquatulate To leave or abscond with something.
Allegator Some who alleges.
Anencephalous Lacking a brain.
Argle-bargle A loud row or quarrel.
Batrachomyomachy Making a mountain out of a molehill.
Billingsgate Loud, raucous profanity.
Bloviate To speak pompously or brag.
Blunderbuss A gun with a flared muzzle or disorganized activity.
Borborygm A rumbling of the stomach.
Boustrophedon A back and forth pattern.
Bowyang A strap that holds the pants legs in place.
Brouhaha An uproar.
Bumbershoot An umbrella.
Callipygian Having an attractive rear end or nice buns.
Canoodle To hug and kiss.
Cantankerous Testy, grumpy.
Catercornered Diagonal(ly).
Cockalorum A small, haughty man.
Cockamamie Absurd, outlandish.
Codswallop Nonsense, balderdash.
Collop A slice of meat or fold of flab.
Collywobbles Butterflies in the stomach.
Comeuppance Just reward, just deserts.
Crapulence Discomfort from eating or drinking too much.
Crudivore An eater of raw food.
Discombobulate To confuse.
Donnybrook An melee, a riot.
Doozy Something really great.
Dudgeon A bad mood, a huff.
Ecdysiast An exotic dancer, a stripper.
Eructation A burp, belch.
Fard Face-paint, makeup.
Fartlek An athletic training regime.
Fatuous Unconsciously foolish.
Filibuster Refusal to give up the floor in a debate to prevent a vote.
Firkin A quarter barrel or small cask.
Flibbertigibbet Nonsense, balderdash.
Flummox To exasperate.
Folderol Nonsense.
Formication The sense of ants crawling on your skin.
Fuddy-duddy An old-fashioned, mild-mannered person.
Furbelow A fringe or ruffle.
Furphy A portable water-container.
Gaberlunzie A wandering beggar.
Gardyloo! A warning shouted before throwing water from above.
Gastromancy Telling fortune from the rumblings of the stomach.
Gazump To buy something already promised to someone else.
Gobbledygook Nonsense, balderdash.
Gobemouche A highly gullible person.
Godwottery Nonsense, balderdash.
Gongoozle To stare at, kibitz.
Gonzo Far-out journalism.
Goombah An older friend who protects you.
Hemidemisemiquaver A musical timing of 1/64.
Hobbledehoy An awkward or ill-mannered young boy.
Hocus-pocus Deceitful sleight of hand.
Hoosegow A jail or prison.
Hootenanny A country or folk music get-together.
Jackanapes A rapscallion, hooligan.
Kerfuffle Nonsense, balderdash.
Klutz An awkward, stupid person.
La-di-da An interjection indicating that something is pretentious.
Lagopodous Like a rabbit’s foot.
Lickety-split As fast as possible.
Lickspittle A servile person, a toady.
Logorrhea Loquaciousness, talkativeness.
Lollygag To move slowly, fall behind.
Malarkey Nonsense, balderdash.
Maverick A loner, someone outside the box.
Mollycoddle To treat too leniently.
Mugwump An independent politician who does not follow any party.
Mumpsimus An outdated and unreasonable position on an issue.
Namby-pamby Weak, with no backbone.
Nincompoop A foolish person.
Oocephalus An egghead.
Ornery Mean, nasty, grumpy.
Pandiculation A full body stretch.
Panjandrum Someone who thinks himself high and mighty.
Pettifogger A person who tries to befuddle others with his speech.
Pratfall A fall on one’s rear.
Quean A disreputable woman.
Rambunctious Aggressive, hard to control.
Ranivorous Frog-eating
Rigmarole Nonsense, unnecessary complexity.
Shenanigan A prank, mischief.
Sialoquent Spitting while speaking.
Skedaddle To hurry somewhere.
Skullduggery No good, underhanded dealing.
Slangwhanger A loud abusive speaker or obnoxious writer.
Smellfungus A perpetual pessimist.
Snickersnee A long knife.
Snollygoster A person who can’t be trusted.
Snool A servile person.
Tatterdemalion A child in rags.
Troglodyte Someone or something that lives in a cave.
Turdiform Having the form of a lark.
Unremacadamized Having not been repaved with macadam.
Vomitory An exit or outlet.
Wabbit Exhausted, tired, worn out.
Widdershins In a contrary or counterclockwise direction.
Yahoo A rube, a country bumpkin.On Friday’s broadcast of HBO’s “Real Time,” author Thomas Frank declared that the Democratic Party is not “the party of the people,” and members of its “Ivy League set” “do not give a damn about working class Americans.”
Frank said that his new book, “Listen Liberal,” is about the fact that “Democrats aren’t who we think they are. You think they’re the party of the people, the party of the workers, the party of labor? They aren’t. … It’s a party of the white-collar, professional class, affluent white-collar professional class.”
Maher added that Democrats today are “a very different breed” than the Democrats his parents were.
Frank responded, “Absolutely, and the — but today’s breed, it’s these Ivy League guys doing favors for other Ivy League guys. Look at the Obama administration, the revolving door with Wall Street. Look at the Clinton administration, same kind of thing. And if it’s not Wall Street, it’s Silicon Valley, it’s big pharma. I mean — so yeah, it’s a liberalism of the rich. This is a liberalism of the winners of the new economy, winners. The people who are left behind, of course, organized labor, working people.”
Maher stated, “I feel liberals just got lazy. I feel they got — it’s so — it’s, the bar to be smarter than a Republican is so low, and it’s so easy to do, that they got lazy, and they made it all about these silly little wedge issues.” Frank agreed with this point.
Frank added of Democrats, “[T]hese people who are so smart, they f*ck up again and again and again. I’m talking about the Democrats here. They can never see it coming, right?”
Later on, Maher and Frank agreed that Kansas voters “deserve” to be told that they can’t be helped for re-electing Republican Governor Sam Brownback. Later in the show, Frank also wondered how there could be a “working class movement” that would rally around Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, who “fires people.”
Frank further described his book as “about the folly of the highly educated, the folly of the Ivy League set. I mean, these people are just as foolish, and have made, I mean, even bigger blunders in some ways, and really do not give a damn about average working class Americans.” Maher added, “Nothing stupider than an intellectual, I agree.”
Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchettFederal MP Bob Katter’s recent foray into gun politics shows that having a calm discussion in Australia about firearms can be challenging. In trying to overturn a government ban on a particular type of shotgun, Katter said:
We are emasculating the individual because some city people are scared of firearms. I’ve bought a bow and arrow now because I think one day they’ll ban all guns.
Debate is often driven by emotional statements about who is most at risk of being killed by someone using a gun, who is most likely to do the killing, and whether more guns lead to more gun violence.
Some raise fears that women are at high risk of becoming victims of gun violence. Others argue that licensed gun owners pose the biggest threat of committing firearm homicide.
Such claims frequently rest on a select handful of US-based studies. But do they stack up in Australia?
Who commits murder with a gun in Australia?
For more than a decade, the Australian Institute of Criminology has studied this question as part of its National Homicide Monitoring Program. Each of the program’s reports has shown remarkably consistent findings: most firearm homicides in Australia are committed by offenders who did not hold a valid firearms licence.
When the figures are averaged across several years of reports, almost nine out of every ten firearm homicides involved an unlicensed offender.
The reports also show that more than 90% of guns used to commit murder are not registered. In other words, there is not a record of them being legally owned.
Do more guns mean more murders?
A common claim is that the more guns there are, the more frequently firearms will be used to commit murder. This holds true across many – but not all – American states. But this is not the case in Australia.
Police data show steady increases in the number of people licensed to own firearms as well as the number of firearms legally owned. But despite growing levels of gun ownership, there have been ongoing declines in firearm homicides in Australia. The downward trend emerged in the 1970s and has continued to the present.
This suggests that, in Australia, more guns do not mean more gun-related murders. And firearm suicides, which account for most firearm-related deaths in Australia, have also continued to fall.
The statistics we have are about legal gun ownership. They cannot take into account illegally held guns, which means we are unable to draw conclusions about relationships between unlawful ownership levels and firearm homicide.
Nobody knows how many unlawfully owned firearms exist in Australia. Estimates range from 260,000 up to about six million illegal guns. It is unclear how many firearms may be in the hands of people involved in the various other forms of criminal activity that are often linked with gun violence, such as the illicit drug trade.
Are firearm-related murders most often between intimate partners?
Although correlations between having a gun in the house and becoming a victim of intimate partner homicide have been found in some US studies, the Australian evidence tells a different story.
Most Australian firearm homicides involve both male offenders and male victims. Very few firearm homicides occur between intimate partners. The highest number of incidents of lethal firearm violence occur between acquaintances, with the smallest percentage involving perpetrators and victims who were strangers to one another.
Firearms are one of the least common methods used to kill women in Australia. From 2010 to 2012, there were 12 female firearm homicide victims nationwide, relative to 63 females stabbed to death, 56 killed using “other” (non-specified) methods and 34 killed by being beaten. These patterns have been fairly consistent over time.
The low incidence of female firearm homicide victimisation may be associated with Australia’s gun laws, which prevent individuals who commit domestic and family violence from lawfully owning firearms.
Where do we go from here?
With the facts so easily accessible, why does misinformation about firearm violence still appear so regularly in Australian commentary? We can speculate on reasons. Is it poor background research? Lack of specialised knowledge? Time pressures? Political ideology? The media confecting outrage for clicks?
Whatever the reasons, the result is an impoverished quality of public debate in Australia. Ultimately, this contributes to moral panic and the risk of poor decision-making when it comes to firearms policy. This achieves nothing for violence prevention efforts in the long term.
So, if we want to develop truly effective policies to reduce violence and its impacts on individuals, families and communities, we need to start basing Australian debate on Australian facts.I was planning to take the night off to get some distance from the rush of events. But alas, no. In the last couple of hours there have been three new stories about Donald Trump groping women at various points in the last three decades, in different parts of the country. There are a total of four women in three stories. Then there’s an additional story that is not abuse per se but shows a rather creepy and certainly inappropriate way of talking about and thinking about 10 year old girls.
Getting the most attention is a story in The New York Times about two women, entirely separate incidents. The first is a story from more than thirty years ago. A woman is sitting next to Trump in a first class airline cabin when he begins fondling her body.
A brief passage …
More than three decades ago, when she was a traveling businesswoman at a paper company, Ms. Leeds said, she sat beside Mr. Trump in the first-class cabin of a flight to New York. They had never met before. About 45 minutes after takeoff, she recalled, Mr. Trump lifted the armrest and began to touch her. According to Ms. Leeds, Mr. Trump grabbed her breasts and tried to put his hand up her skirt.
There is of course much more.
The other incident in the Times story is from 2005 and involves a young receptionist at Bayrock Group, a Manhattan real estate corporation then-based in Trump Tower. Bizarre connection: Bayrock is a major part of the stories that deal with Trump’s connections with Russian money and organized crime. The incident in this case was aggressive, unwanted kissing.
Again, many more details in the piece. I’m just trying to give the briefest summary. Nice additional touch: after flatly denying all accusations, Trump called the female Times reporter asking him for comment “a disgusting human being.”
Next, King5 TV in Washington state and Rolling Stone. Miss Washington 2013, Cassandra Searles describes degrading treatment and how Trump repeatedly “grabbed my ass and invited me to his hotel room.”
On to the next story: Mindy McGillivray at Mar-A-Lago in 2003 from The Palm Beach Post. The then-23 year old McGillivray was at Mar-a-Lago to help a photographer shooting a concert. She was listening to the late Ray Charles perform when …
“All of a sudden I felt a grab, a little nudge. I think it’s Ken’s camera bag, that was my first instinct. I turn around and there’s Donald. He sort of looked away quickly. I quickly turned back, facing Ray Charles, and I’m stunned.’’
The last story, happily not an assault story. Video from Entertainment Tonight from 1992 …
The video, released Wednesday evening, was shot at Trump Tower
In the clip, Trump asks one of the girls if she’s “going up the escalator.” When the girl replies, “yeah,” Trump turns to the camera and says: “I am going to be dating her in 10 years. Can you believe it?”
Meanwhile, the Trump campaign says it is going to intensify its attacks on Bill Clinton’s past, using allegations against Bill Clinton against Hillary Clinton. Says Steve Bannon, former Breitbart News chief now Trump campaign chief: “We’re going to turn him into Bill Cosby.”
Nota Bene: Yes, this is all happening.
Finally, why are all these stories coming out tonight? We can’t know precisely. But as we noted Sunday night, Trump’s flat declaration that he has never sexually assaulted a woman was the sort of categorical statement that provides a clear hook for news organizations, a clear, categorical statement to examine, challenge and try to refute. It is also the kind of statement likely to bring forward victims, if there are any, who’ve remained silent. It seems like there are a lot of them.
Once that happens, a legitimate news organization cannot and will not just take accuser’s word for it and go ahead and print an allegation. There is seldom proof, per se. But there are standard methods of verification and due diligence a news organization will employ. The first is contemporaneous accounts. Did the victim have others she told at the time or near the time? Can those people verify they were told? Can the accuser verify they were where they claim? Was Trump there? Again, basic due diligence to make a decision about whether a claim is credible. You can’t do that in an hour or two. Many of these new accusers appear to have been prompted to come forward because of Trump’s declaration in Sunday night’s debate. If you figure they reached out to the news organization’s on Monday, Wednesday evening is probably about as quickly as those stories could be turned around.
It seems highly likely that there are many more of these to come.
Late Update – 10:59 PM: Another story, this one a first person account by a reporter from People magazine.On December 30, 1957, 17-year-old Ann Noblett was seen getting off the bus that was returning her home from a dancing lesson. She had only a short journey on foot to reach her house, but she never made it. A month later, her body was found... frozen to the core, despite England’s mild winter that year.
The February 5, 1958 Sydney Morning Herald noted that Ann’s body turned up seven miles from her home north of London. It was discovered by an RAF pilot and his teenage brother who were out walking the family dog. She still had her purse, and was wearing her glasses. And there was something distressingly odd about her corpse:
A police officer said today the body was “fantastically cold” when it was discovered — so cold that a thermometer could not register its temperature. One theory is that the killer panicked after reading in newspapers last week that buildings in the area near her home were to be searched, and that he dumped the body, which he had kept in a state of deep freeze. Police are interviewing the drivers of dozens of companies with refrigerated vans, and checking on farms with deep-freeze apparatus.
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The pathologist on the case was responsible for the deep-freeze theory; the nickname “Deep Freeze Murder” was likely given as part of media coverage of the intriguing case. The woods where she was found had been previously been meticulously searched, which gave further credence to the idea.
Despite the seemingly huge clues that Ann’s killer — who was also believed to have sexually assaulted her — was probably a local with easy and private access to a deep freezer, he was never captured. His reasons for keeping Ann’s body on ice remain a mystery.
Photos by Ron Burton/Keystone/H |
overtime. Dantonio said he could miss a week or two with the apparent arm injury.
Dantonio expects two other players who left the Indiana game – cornerback Darian Hicks and linebacker Chris Frey – to play Saturday. Hicks injured his hip early in the third quarter against the Hoosiers and did not return. Frey left on the next-to-last play of overtime with an apparent arm injury, but he remains listed as a starter at Sam linebacker.
Contact Chris Solari: csolari@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter@chrissolari.
Download our Spartans Xtra app for free onAppleandAndroiddevices!AMMAN: Farmers in rebel-held parts of Syria’s Quneitra province say they are losing thousands of dollars since regime forces introduced a tariff on their produce in recent months, disrupting a fragile economic balance in place between government and opposition territory in the country’s far southwest.
In the tomato and okra fields of Quneitra province, along Syria’s southwestern border with the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, harvest season began last month. Produce from the late summer harvest is the main source of income for local farmers in rebel territory, meant to hold over thousands of families through the winter months.
Supplies of tomatoes, okra and peppers travel by the crateful across regime lines to government-held territory in neighboring Daraa province, where residents rely on vegetables brought in from the agriculturally rich Quneitra countryside.
“The regime needs these crops,” Yasser al-Fuheili, head of Quneitra’s opposition-run agriculture directorate told Syria Direct on Wednesday. “Most of the agricultural regions [in southern Syria] lie outside of regime control,” where a surplus of produce pushes farmers to sell in regime-held markets, he added.
“Each side needs the other in one way or another.”
But this year, two farmers told Syria Direct, a new tariff imposed on produce originating in opposition-held Quneitra and Daraa produce in recent months by regime authorities at a checkpoint between government- and opposition-held territory is preventing farmers from transporting their crops across regime lines.
A farmer in rural Quneitra on Wednesday. Photo courtesy of Muath al-Asaad.
Since March, the new tariff has reportedly been enforced at the Khirbet Ghazaleh trade checkpoint north of Daraa city, through which all produce reportedly enters government territories from opposition-held parts of Daraa and Quneitra. However, farmers are feeling the impact of the tariff most sharply with the arrival of harvest season.
The halt in the flow of vegetables to regime territory means a delicate economic balance in southwestern Syria is poised to fall off course as winter approaches, severely disrupting a region reliant on agriculture.
Today, thousands of acres of tomato, okra and pepper fields are left full of unharvested crops, residents on the ground say, as some farmers once reliant on the income from late-summer sales say they cannot pay the fee to transport their products into regime territory.
“I haven’t even begun to harvest my tomato crop due to the high price,” Ali Abu al-Majd, a farmer in rural Quneitra told Syria Direct correspondent Muath al-Asaad on Wednesday. He says the tariff costs him SP20 [approximately $0.04] per kilogram of vegetables he transports across the regime checkpoint, an amount he cannot afford.
“This has been a very bad season for me," said al-Majd.
Increased prices of water and fuel for irrigation had already hurt Daraa and Quneitra farmers in recent weeks.
Last month, pro-regime forces captured a stretch of rebel-held territory in southern Suwayda province, more than 100 kilometers east of Quneitra’s farm fields.
The advances severed a complex smuggling route that brought cheap, low-grade diesel from the Islamic State’s oil fields in eastern Syria across the open desert and west toward the farms of Daraa and Quneitra. There, local farmers used the cheap fuel to power their irrigation systems and other farm equipment.
Remaining supplies of fuel and equipment are running low, and sell at high prices, Ahmad Abu Karam, a tomato farmer in rural northern Daraa province just outside Quneitra told Syria Direct.
A tomato field in Quneitra on Wednesday. Photo courtesy of Muath al-Asaad.
“One liter of mazot fuel has reached SP500 [approximately $1],” the farmer and father of five said. “The expenses associated with harvesting now outweigh the price of the crops.”
To recoup funds he spent on farm equipment and diesel this year, Abu Karam attempted to sell his crops in regime-held territory in neighboring Damascus province. But the cost of transporting his produce across the regime checkpoint was too high for him, he said.
As a last resort, he sold his tomato harvest to local sauce factories in rebel territory, “which buy the tomatoes at a very low price.”
“I rely on summer crops, including tomatoes, to make ends meet for my family every winter,” he told Syria Direct. “But the crossing put in place by the regime has led to a change in the market, and impacted everything here in opposition-held territory.”
Yasser al-Fuheili, head of Quneitra’s opposition-run agriculture department, estimates at least SP2 billion [approximately $4 million] in total losses to local tomato farmers during this fall’s harvest--“and this is just counting one crop,” he told Syria Direct. The losses are part of hundreds of millions of dollars in damage to food crops in Quneitra and Daraa since the start of the war, a 2017 report by the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization found.
For farmer Ali Abu al-Majd in Quneitra, the lack of profit from recent tomato sales means he still cannot justify harvesting his crops, which would likely bring in little profit. “This all goes back to the situation at the regime crossing,” he said.
“Harvest season continues until the end of November--but I can’t wait much longer [to harvest] before the soil is ruined.”
With additional reporting by Muath al-Asaad.
This report is part of Syria Direct's month-long coverage of the state of the south in partnership with the Konrad Adenauer Foundation and reporters on the ground in Syria. Read our primer on southern Syria here.Privacy Policy of Life is Full of Adventures
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Tuesday May 31st, 2011 will be a date forever etched in the memory of the Thrashers faithful; it was the day NHL brass announced Atlanta’s relocation back to Winnipeg.
As a hockey fan myself, I would not be able to fathom the idea of losing the team I grew up watching or whose logo I bared on my chest for years on end. On the other hand, I also cannot imagine the euphoric feeling the citizens of Winnipeg have been experiencing over the past week.
There are plenty of factors as to why the team relocated. The team’s value was steadily deteriorating and from a fiscal standpoint it made no sense for Atlanta Spirit ownership to keep the team.
According to Forbes.com, the team’s revenue was slowly increasing from $58M in 2001 to $71M in 2010. Their value reached its climax in 2008, at an estimated $158M. However, in January, 2011, ownership announced it had lost over $130M in the past six seasons and that they would seek new investors. Many local investors claimed they would do what they can to keep the team in Atlanta, but to no avail.
True North stepped up and the birds flew north to Winnipeg.
Recently however, I stumbled upon this idea that perhaps this team could have been kept around had they had a player or two who was marketable enough to interest a local buyer. Looking at the roster though, there was not that big of a selection. Sure, Dustin Byfuglien, Andrew Ladd, Evander Kane and Tobias Enstrom are all great, but they are not among the elite (at least not yet).
Not too long ago, however, Atlanta did have that player. His name was Ilya Kovalchuk.
Drafted by the Thrashers first overall in 2001, he became the face of the franchise right off the bat, producing two 50-goal seasons and three 40-goal seasons throughout his tenure.
In the summer of 2010, Kovalchuk left the Thrashers for the New Jersey Devils, signing a 15-year, $100M contract.
Is it a coincidence that less than a year later the team finds itself moving cities? Perhaps not, but perhaps yes.
Being considered as one of the top players in the league does wonders in terms of marketing. Fans flock to arenas to see a star showcase his talents, and that was often the case with Kovalchuk in town. Without that viable asset, why would a local buyer consider spending millions for a franchise that has only proven to be a money burner?
Also, if the team was able to keep guys like Marian Hossa or Dany Heatley around, would that have made a difference too?
Playing in only four playoff games and not winning a single one definitely does not help either.
Food for thought, what do you think? Was this team destined for failure? Could one or two stars have helped them out?Despite Smriti Irani's claims that she had helped the victims of a pile-up at Yamuna Expressway last week, the daughter of a doctor killed in the accident today contradicted the Union minister's version of the story.
"Smriti Irani's convoy rammed into our car. She came out. I begged her for help but she left," Dr Ramesh Nagar's daughter Sandili claimed today.
Sandili's brother, Abhishek, also backed that allegation. "My sister literally pleaded with folded hands to Smriti Irani for help, but she did not stop," he said.
The statements by the two survivors of the tragedy contradict Irani's claims made through a series of tweets of helping the victims.
Her ministry has also claimed the vehicle that hit Dr Nagar's motorbike, was not a part of Irani's cavalcade. The Human Resource Development ministry spokesperson has even claimed that Irani directed senior police officials in Mathura to help the accident victims.
"Tried to help the injured who were lying on the road for quiet sometime and ensured they reach a hospital. Pray for their safety," Irani had tweeted late on Saturday night.
There was a pile up of vehicles due to an accident on the expressway. There was a pile up of vehicles due to an accident on the expressway.
Good Samaritan Manoj Chopra and his wife also helped injured citizens. God bless them for their empathy and kindness. &; Smriti Z Irani (@smritiirani) March 5, 2016
Tried to help the injured who were lying on the road for quiet sometime and ensured they reach a hospital. Pray for their safety. &; Smriti Z Irani (@smritiirani) March 5, 2016
"There was a pile up of vehicles due to an accident on the expressway. Unfortunately the police vehicle before mine and my car also crashed," she narrated the incident, assuring her well-wishers that she was unhurt.
"For all enquiring re my accident- I'm fine. Thank you for the concern and wishes (sic)," she said. Irani, along with other BJP leaders, was returning to New Delhi from a meeting of the party's youth wing in Uttar Pradesh's Vrindavan town near Mathura.
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Narrow escape for Smriti Irani in car accident on Yamuna ExpresswayHeterogeneous System-on-Chip (SoC) devices like the Xilinx Zynq 7000 and Zynq UltraScale+ MPSoC combine high-performance processing systems with state-of-the-art programmable logic. This combination allows the system to be architected to provide an optimal solution. User interfaces, communication, control, and system configuration can be addressed by the Processor System (PS). Meanwhile, the Programmable Logic (PL) can be used to implement low latency, deterministic functions and processing pipelines that exploit its parallel, nature such as those used by image processing and industrial applications.
Heterogeneous System-on-Chip (SoC) devices like the Xilinx Zynq 7000 and Zynq UltraScale+ MPSoC combine high-performance processing systems with state-of-the-art programmable logic. This combination allows the system to be architected to provide an optimal solution. User interfaces, communication, control, and system configuration can be addressed by the Processor System (PS). Meanwhile, the Programmable Logic (PL) can be used to implement low latency, deterministic functions and processing pipelines that exploit its parallel, nature such as those used by image processing and industrial applications.
Communication between the PS and the PL is provided by several memory-mapped interfaces. These interfaces use the Advanced eXtensible Interface (AXI) to provide both Master and Slave communications in each direction.
In cases where configuration and control functions are performed by the PS, the general-purpose AXI Master interface is used from the PS to the PL. This enables the software (SW) to configure registers and hence the desired behavior of IP cores in the PL. In more complex operations, there may be a desire to transfer large amounts of data from the PL into the PS memory space for further processing or communication. These transfers will utilize the high-performance interfaces, which will require considerably more complex software to configure and use.
Verifying interactions between the PS and PL presents challenges to the design team. The 2015 Embedded Markets Survey identified debugging as one of the major design challenges faced by engineering teams and also identified a need for improved debugging tools. While bus functional models can be used initially, these models are often simplified and do not enable verification of the developed SW drivers and application at the same time. Full functional models are available, but these can be prohibitively expensive. When implementing a heterogeneous SoC design, there needs to be a verification strategy that enables both PL and PS elements to be verified together at the earliest possible point.
Traditionally, verification has initially been performed for each element (functional block) in the design in isolation; verifying all the blocks together occurs when the first hardware arrives. The software engineering team developing the applications to run on the PS needs to ensure the Linux Kernel contains all the necessary modules to support its use and has the correct device tree blob; this is normally verified using QEMU (short for Quick Emulator), which is a free and open-source hosted hypervisor that performs hardware virtualization.
Meanwhile, in order to correctly verify the PL design, the logic verification team is required to generate and sequence commands like those issued by the application software to verify that the logic functions as required. Both of these approaches, however, do not capture the true interaction of the software with the hardware, thereby making errors associated with this interaction very difficult to detect. This delays the development schedule and increases development costs as issues raised later in the development process are always more expensive to address and correct.
It is possible to use a development board as in interim step to verify the HW and SW interaction before the arrival of the final hardware. However, debug on real hardware can be complicated, requiring additional instrumentation logic to be inserted in the hardware. This insertion takes additional time as the bit file needs to be regenerated to include the instrumentation logic. Of course, this change in the implementation can also impact the underlying behavior of the design, thereby masking issues or introducing new issues that make themselves apparent only in the debugging builds.
Being able to verify both the SW and the HW designs using co-simulation, therefore, provides several significant benefits. It can be performed earlier in the development cycle and does not require waiting for development hardware to arrive, thereby reducing the cost and impacts of debugging. Furthermore, such an approach also provides more visibility with respect to registers and interactions between the PS and PL, all of which aids in the discovery and removal of bugs earlier in the process.
HW & SW Co-simulation
Co-Simulation between SW and HW requires the logic simulation tool used to verify the HW design to be able to interact with an SW simulation emulation environment.
The release of Aldec's Riviera-PRO (2017.10) enables just this HW and SW co-simulation by the provision of a bridge between Riviera-PRO and QEMU, thereby enabling the execution of the developed software for Linux-based Zynq developments.
This bridge has been created using SystemC Transaction Level Modelling (TLM) to define the communication channels between QEMU and Riviera-PRO. The concurrent verification of the SW and HW is facilitated by the bridge's ability to transfer information in both directions.
Within this integrated simulation environment, the engineering team is able to use standard and advanced debug methodologies to address any issues that may arise as the verification proceeds. In the case of Riviera-PRO, this includes such capabilities as setting break points within the HDL, examining data flow, and even analyzing the code coverage and paths that are exercised by the SW application running in QEMU. In the case of QEMU, the SW team can use Gnu DeBugger (GDB) to instrument both the kernel and the driver to step through the code using breakpoints.
This co-simulation approach has the benefit of not only providing greater visibility and debugging capability within the hardware simulation environment, but it also enables the same Linux kernel developed for the target hardware to be used within QEMU. Again, this provides for earlier verification that the Kernel correctly contains all the required packages and elements to support the application under development.
PWM Example
In order to demonstrate this co-simulation environment, a simple example was created. This example places an IP core within the PL and connects it to the Zynq PS over a general-purpose AXI interface. When enabled by an AXI access to its register space, the IP core will generate a pulse-width modulated (PWM) signal output. The duration of the PWM signal is selectable within a range of 0 to 100% and is again defined by a register within the IP core's register space. A typical use case for this core, therefore, requires software running in the Zynq PS to enable and configure the IP core. Simply simulating the IP core in isolation will not result in the desired operation of the core being adequately demonstrated. To correctly verify the IP core, we need to be able to enable and exercise the output pulse width from the PS when running a Linux operating system.
To execute co-simulation, we must be working within a Linux environment, either on a Linux machine or on a virtual machine. As such, the pre-requisites required to be able to run it correctly are as follows:
Aldec Riviera-PRO 2016.10 (with pre-compiled vendor libraries)
SystemC Library
Linux Distribution (including kernel image, device tree, and RAM disk image)
Xilinx QEMU
The Linux kernel and device tree needs to be compiled and correct for the target hardware, the device tree also needs to include the Xilinx QEMU DSTI co-simulation overlay.
To run the simulation, we need to have both Riviera-PRO open with the PL design loaded and QEMU running the Linux distribution. Once the Linux OS has booted within QEMU, the first thing to do is ensure that within the system it can see the PWM IP core.
With this visibility to the system, the PWM driver SW can then be called to use this device within QEMU. When this is called, the SystemC TLM AXI bridge will be used to transfer data to and from the simulation within Riviera-PRO. As such, within Riviera-PRO, the engineers will be able to see the AXI transactions on the PWM IP core AXI interface from the PS within the Zynq.
Once the IP core has been started by running the driver within QEMU, the driver is capable of reading parameters back from the core. For example, to ensure that the desired output pulse width is as requested by the driver, the driver can read back the value held within the appropriate IP core register and compare this with the desired value to ensure it has been correctly set across the bridge. This simple, yet powerful example demonstrates how HW and SW co-simulation can be used by the development team to accelerate verification of a heterogeneous SoC.
Once the team is happy with the performance and functionality of the design, the next stage of the development life cycle is to test the development working on the real target hardware, such as a TySOM development board. Having performed HW / SW co-simulation we have both an increased probability of successful deployment on hardware, and a simulation capability that can be leveraged further if system-level integration issues occur.
Wrapping things up
Heterogeneous System-on-Chip (SoC) devices like the Xilinx Zynq 7000 and Zynq UltraScale+ MPSoC are being used in a wide range of applications, from automotive and aerospace to embedded vision, to the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT). The complexity of these designs is increasing as end users demand evermore functionality with each product release. This increasing complexity brings with it increasingly complex hardware-software interaction, which requires verification as early as possible within the development life cycle. Co-simulation, such as that provided by the combination of Riviera-PRO and QEMU, enables the hardware and software members of the team to work together locate, identify, and retire bugs at an earlier stage in the development process, thereby saving both development time and costs.
If you enjoyed this article, please join me for an upcoming webinar on June 29 to learn more about Addressing the Challenges of SoC Verification in practice using Co-Simulation.A sweet and tangy dessert that is a cross between a cookie and a coffeecake. Great for coffee breaks, a delightful lunchbox treat and a perfect ending to any meal. Here is an easy dessert recipe for Blueberry Squares.
Ingredients:
Filling
3/4 cup fresh blueberries
1 1/2 cups granulated sugar
1/2 cup water
1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice
Pinch of salt
Crust
1 stick unsalted butter, at room temperature
1 1/4 cups granulated sugar
1/2 teaspoon lemon extract
Zest of 1 lemon
2 large eggs
3 1/3 cups flour
1 tablespoon plus 1 teaspoon baking powder
Pinch of salt
1 large egg
1 1/2 teaspoons heavy cream
1 to 2 tablespoons granulated sugar
Procedures:
Preheat the oven to 350 F. Lightly grease a 15- by 10-inch baking pan.
Combine all the filling ingredients in a large saucepan and bring to a boil over medium-high heat, stirring occasionally. Reduce the heat to medium low and cook until the mixture thickens up and reduces to slightly more than 2 cups. Allow to cool while you prepare the crust.
In a large mixing bowl, cream the butter until smooth. Add the sugar and cream well. Add the lemon extract, lemon zest and eggs. Mix until well incorporated.
In another bowl, combine the flour, baking powder, and salt and mix well. Add to the butter mixture and mix until a dough forms.
Using approximately half of the dough, drop dollops of dough all over the bottom of the greased baking pan. Gently press the dough together to form an even layer.
Pour the blueberry filling over the dough and use a rubber spatula to spread it evenly.
Roll the remaining dough out between two sheets of wax paper to form a rectangle slightly larger than the pan. Carefully remove the top sheet of wax paper and flip the dough over on top of the blueberry filling. Peel off the remaining sheet of wax paper and gently press the dough down around the edges to seal.
Beat the egg with the heavy cream for an egg wash. Using a pastry brush, brush the top of the dough with the egg wash. Sprinkle with the granulated sugar. Bake on the middle rack for 20 to 25 minutes, or until the top is a deep golden brown. Remove from the oven and allow to cool on a rack.
Cut into 1-inch squares. Store leftovers in an airtight jar or container.
Get These Other Easy Dessert Recipes:
Comments
commentsAll the talk of a Brexit seems to have ignored one salient fact: that a British withdrawal from the EU would spark a constitutional crisis regarding the devolution settlement, and potentially lead to the breakup of the United Kingdom.
In September 2014, the UK survived one of the most serious threats to its constitutional existence – the very closely run Scottish referendum on independence.
That this was indeed perceived as a huge risk to the continuance of the UK is illustrated by the almost desperate nature of the last minute ‘Vow’ made by all three party leaders to accord greater powers to Scotland if necessary to maintain the Union.
Therefore, the risk of such further constitutional instability should be taken seriously. Yet this is not happening, given the neglect of the impact on the devolution settlement of any future UK exit from the EU. The consequences on devolution tend to be the least discussed aspect of any ‘Brexit’.
Different approaches to the EU
The first thing is to consider some highly relevant facts. The devolved nations tend to be less eurosceptic than most of England (although we should not forget London, which bucks England’s eurosceptic trend). How each constituent part of the UK would vote is not certain, but according to 2013 House of Commons figures, 53% of Scots said they would vote to stay in the EU, compared with a third who said they would vote to leave.
This was in contrast to attitudes in England, where 50% said they would vote to leave the EU compared with 42% who would vote to stay in. At the last European Parliament elections in May 2014, UKIP gained the largest percentage of votes in the UK overall, with 27.5%, but in Scotland only 10.46% of the vote.
EU regional funding tends to benefit Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland more than it does England. Wales and Northern Ireland are net recipients from the EU Budget, and in particular, Northern Ireland stands to lose significant sums if the UK withdraws from the EU.
Furthermore, Scottish, Welsh and Northern Ireland governments have expressed opposition to the prospect of leaving the EU. For example, the Scottish Government’s ‘Agenda for EU Reform’ disagrees with the proposed renegotiation of Britain’s EU membership, does not support the potential subsequent referendum, and believes EU reform can be delivered without major treaty change.
So the UK central government could be on a path of EU renegotiation and referendum without the support of any devolved administrations. It is difficult to see how the legitimacy of devolved government can be sustained if vitally important decisions on EU membership are taken without consensus between the UK government and the devolved administrations or indeed the UK Parliament and the devolved assemblies.
Impact on Ireland
Further, the impact on the island of Ireland of a UK exit from the EU should be considered. It could be source of great instability.
Irish and UK history are much intertwined and, were the UK to exit the EU, it would mean an external border of the EU would run through the island of Ireland. This shared border has long been of enormous symbolic and practical importance. What would happen to the Common Travel Area between the two islands if the UK exited the EU? Would visa requirements and customs duties be imposed?
The Belfast or ‘Good Friday’ Agreement of 1998, which is an international treaty signed by the UK and Republic of Ireland (approved by referenda in both Northern Ireland and Ireland) enshrined North-South and British-Irish co-operation.
It includes many provisions concerning EU (and ECHR) law, and the status of the UK and Ireland as EU member states is woven throughout the Agreement. Indeed, the section entitled ‘Agreement between the Government of the UK and the Government of Ireland’ speaks of ‘close co-operation between (the) countries as friendly neighbours and as partners in the European Union’.
However, a UK EU exit would have consequences for the future of the Good Friday agreement and, in particular, implications for Anglo-Irish co-operation in dealing with cross-border crime and terrorist activity. To give just one example: the UK and Ireland make frequent use of the European Arrest Warrant (EAW).
Figures indicate that since the EAW entered into force, the great majority of requests made by Northern Ireland for surrender of persons have been to Ireland. Prior to the introduction of the EAW, a number of measures in the UK and Ireland regulated extradition proceedings, and resurrecting these would be a painful process, fraught with difficulties and potential for endless litigation. While the EAW has not always functioned ideally, a return to bi-lateral extradition conventions and other measures would be very undesirable.
The peace process in Northern Ireland is unfortunately not irreversible, but it has been unforgivably ignored (with a few exceptions - see eg Dominic Grieve’s reminder here) in UK discussion on whether to withdraw from the EU, or ECHR. It is also likely to be ignored in Brussels, where there is some impatience with British demands in any case.
Impact on the UK Constitution
An EU exit could wreak havoc with the devolution settlement, risking a constitutional crisis. Both the ECHR and EU law are incorporated directly into the devolution statutes in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. For example, section 29(2)(d) of the Scotland Act 1998 provides that Acts of the Scottish Parliament that are incompatible with EU law or with ECHR rights are ‘not law’. Similar provisions exist in the Welsh and Northern Ireland devolution legislation.
Therefore, although the Westminster Parliament may repeal the European Communities Act 1972, this would not bring an end to the impact of EU law in the devolved nations. It would still be necessary to amend the relevant parts of devolution legislation. But this would be no simple matter and could lead to a constitutional crisis.
This is because, although the UK Parliament may amend the devolution Acts, the UK government has stated that it will not normally legislate on a devolved matter or on any change to the powers of the devolved nations without the consent of the devolved legislature. This requires a Legislative Consent Motion under the Sewel Convention.
However, the devolved legislatures might be reluctant to grant assent, especially as one feature of the ‘Vow’ made to the Scottish electorate was a commitment to entrench the Scottish Parliament’s powers, thus giving legal force to the Sewel Convention. So the need to amend devolution legislation renders a UK EU exit constitutionally highly problematic.
An EU exit referendum and the devolved nations
At first, it might seem that Scotland’s ‘No’ vote for independence would lessen the chance of EU secession, given the relatively greater pro-EU vote in Scotland.
However, the relatively lower eurosceptic vote in the devolved nations would not make a great impact on an EU in-out referendum overall, given that the population of the devolved nations eligible to vote is small compared to that in England. According to the Office for National Statistics, England is about 82% of UK population. This matters a great deal if the vote in the devolved nations is of a less eurosceptic complexion than the English vote in an EU in-out referendum.
In October 2014, Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon said that if a Bill were proposed in the House of Commons for a referendum on EU membership, the SNP ‘would table an amendment, requiring that for the UK to leave the EU, each of the four constituent nations – England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland – would have to vote to do so, not just the UK as a whole.’
In so stating, Sturgeon was not only seeking protection against any of the UK nations being removed from the EU against their will, but also reminding Westminster leaders of what they had emphasised during the referendum campaign – that the UK is a family of nations, with each member of the family enjoying equal status.
Sturgeon’s point was that to take the UK out of the EU against Scotland’s will would be ‘democratically indefensible’. In arguing this case Sturgeon made comparisons: ‘If you look at states like Australia and Canada there are some circumstances where changes to their constitution requires not just a majority across the country but in each of the provinces as well... Germany requires its Lander to sign-off on changes to the Basic Law, through a two-thirds vote in the Bundesrat. So you can see that such double majorities do exist.’
The UK is not (yet) federal
Would it be possible for the devolved nations to require their own referenda, or to set a threshold for withdrawal from the EU that required a majority of votes in each of the devolved nations in the event of a Westminster mandated EU in-out referendum?
Although, in the frantic last days before the Scottish independence referendum, there was talk of moves towards a ‘federal’ UK, we do not have a federal system in the UK, which currently lacks institutional protections for regional government of the sort that Sturgeon’s examples of Australia, Canada or Germany possess.
The present UK devolution settlement is an asymmetric one, in which England is dominant (in spite of calls for English votes for English legislation). A move to federalism is unlikely (in the short term at least) and however the Smith Commission provisions are implemented, they are in any case unlikely to include greater autonomy for the regions in foreign affairs, or the UK constitution as a whole.
However, as many areas of EU competence are devolved matters, and continued Scottish membership of the EU was a concern in the event of Scottish independence, EU membership is likely to be of great interest in Scotland and probably Wales and Northern Ireland.
The prospect of an EU exit could provoke the demand for another independence referendum in Scotland. In the face of such a prospect, should a potential EU in-out referendum be required to take on a different constitutional form to past UK-wide referenda? Should a requirement be set for a majority of exit votes in each of the devolution jurisdictions before UK withdrawal is possible?
In this context, Sturgeon’s reminder that the UK is ‘a family of nations’ (a view recently publicly shared by Plaid Cymru leader Leanne Wood) accentuates current problems of the UK’s constitutional structures, as well as requiring those, such as Liberal Democrats, who have urged federalism, to take seriously the consequences of federalist principles. Failing this, ‘Brexit’ may be likely to spark another Scottish independence referendum.
To conclude: a British exit from the EU could imperil the very national sovereignty and self-determination and that its advocates believe it will bring about. This is because it risks shattering the delicate balance and stability of the UK by threatening the peace settlement in Northern Ireland and raises the possibility of a further independence referendum in Scotland.
Surely such constitutional risks are not to be taken on lightly? But if so, those calling for an EU exit should give them serious thought.Anxiety has many ways of injecting itself into life and causing trouble. One of ways anxiety interferes is by leading decision-making astray.
When it’s there, anxiety tends to direct behaviour towards the safest option. Sometimes moving cautiously is definitely the best way to go. Sometimes it’s not. Given too much say-so, anxiety can stand in the way of a lot of life.
Scientists at the University of Pittsburgh have discovered what happens when anxiety rules a heavy hand over decision-making and persuades decisions that aren’t the best ones.
Research published in The Journal of Neuroscience explains how anxiety works to disengage the part of the brain that is essential for making good decisions. The area is the pre-frontal cortex (PFC), at the front of the brain, and it is the area that brings flexibility into decision-making.
The PFC is the part of the brain that gets involved in weighing up consequences, planning, and processing thoughts in a logical, rational way. It helps to take the emotional steam out of a decision by calming the amygdala, the part of the brain that runs on instinct, impulse and raw emotion (such as fear).
The research. What they did.
Researchers looked at the activity of brain cells in the PFC of anxious rats while those rats were encouraged to make a decision about which behaviour would get them a sweet reward. Rats share many physiological and biological similarities to humans which is why they are often used in these sort of studies. The researchers compared the behaviour and brain activity of two groups of rats – one that received a placebo and one that received a low dose of a drug that induced anxiety. Both groups of rats were able to make sound decisions, but the anxious rats made a lot more mistakes when there were more distractions in their way.
How Anxiety Interferes. What the research means.
Anxiety rolls good decision-making by reducing the brain’s capacity to screen out distractions. Distractions can be physical, as in things in the environment, or they can take the form of thoughts and worries. Anxiety interrupts the brain’s capacity to ignore these distractions by numbing a group of neurons in the pre-frontal cortex that are specifically involved in making choices.
‘We have had a simplistic approach to studying and treating anxiety. We have equated it with fear and have mostly assumed that it over-engages entire brain circuits. But this study shows that anxiety disengages brain cells in a highly specialized manner.’ Bita Moghaddam, lead author and professor in the Department of Neuroscience, University of Pittsburgh.
This new finding challenges the conventional theories that anxiety intrudes on life by overstimulating circuits within the brain. It seems that when it comes to making decisions at least, anxiety selectively shuts down certain connections, making it more difficult for the brain to screen out irrelevant information and make better decisions.
How to Stop Anxiety Intruding on Decisions
Strengthen your brain against anxiety. Be mindful. Mindfulness strengthens the pre-frontal cortex, which is the part of the brain that can be sent offline by anxiety. Without the full capacity of the pre-frontal cortex to weigh in on decision-making, decisions are more likely to become fixed and rigid and driven by intrusive emotions that don’t deserve the influence. Mindfulness strengthens the brain’s capacity to filter out distractions to make more grounded, relevant decisions. It limits the influence of the things that don’t matter, so you can focus on the things that do. (Here you go – this articles explains it in more detail.) Understand where the anxiety is really coming from. Work stress or day-to-day life stress (such as having an argument or being stuck in bad traffic) can trigger enough emotion and intrusive thoughts to influence important, unrelated decisions. Anxiety can also stem from past incidents. The emotion may have been justified then, but now it might be just getting in the way. Unwarranted anxiety can lead to overly safe decision making |
Given how young and unchartered Starcraft 2 is as a game, at least compared to Brood War, it seems slightly premature to talk of “standardized play” in each of the match-ups. Having said this however, the Zerg vs Terran match-up does seem to follow a more standard set of rules and build orders than the others.
This will be first in a three-part series of posts meant to closely examine the early, mid, and late game choices that a Zerg player has to make in this match up. In this blog we'll cover the early game openings that a Zerg player can execute, we will also discuss the relative strengths and weaknesses of each opening and how they set up the Zerg player for the mid game.
When I refer to the early game, for simplicity's sake, I mean everything that happens before a Zerg player finishes his lair upgrade, so in terms of game time it will be, very roughly, from 0:00-9:00, though this can vary greatly. I will be covering three builds, and taking for granted that the 15 hatch opening is optimal.
The “Leenock Style” Opening.
This opening was popularized by the Korean Zerg player Leenock during his GSL run several months back. Despite eventually losing to Jjakji, he debuted an opening designed to defend against early pressure, while maintaining strong two-base production as he teched to lair. The basic idea behind this build was to get a fast +1 carapace upgrade for the zerglings, which meant that they can withstand two tank shots before dying. The friendly-fire splash damage dynamic of tank fire means that zerglings being able to take two shots allows them to engage marines and cause tank damage on the marines as well, providing a massive boost in cost-efficiency.
The rough build order is to throw down a hatchery at 15, to take one gas at 16 or 17 supply, depending on map and positions, and to build a pool at the same supply as you took your gas. Mine 100 gas and start the Metabolic Boost upgrade to get speedlings, and pull two drones off gas. From here you drone, produce zerglings appropriately and build three queens, two for injecting and one for defense and creep spread. For instance, if you get 2-raxed, you'll naturally need more lings than drones, but if the opponent goes for a reactor hellion expand, which was, at the time, standard, then you're safe to drone for a longer period of time.
At around 5:00 minutes you make a spine crawler - generally a good idea just to play a bit safe - and at 6:00-6:30 minutes you make an evolution chamber and a macro hatchery at the front of your natural to form a bit of a choke incase the Terran tries to run hellions by. When you place your evolution chamber you put two drones back in gas and take a second vespene geyser, immediately put three in gas and start mining. Begin lair as soon as possible and take your third and fourth gases as soon as lair starts. It is also generally a good rule of thumb in this match up to make a baneling nest when you begin your lair, as it enables you to morph defensive banelings as you get your lair tech into full swing.
The main benefit of this type of opening is that it is very safe. It allows you to get a fast +1 carapace that should generally kick in before 9 minutes, which allows you to shut down most Terran siege tank pressure off of a hellion expand opening. The fast carapace also gives you a bit of a head start on the “arms race” for upgrades that usually really influences the later stages of the game. The fast evolution chamber means you can be quite safe from banshee openings, you might take some damage if you're really caught off guard, but in general you won't die to surprise banshees.
The primary downside of this opening is that it was developed as sort of a “turtling” build. In other words it means that you commit yourself to a 2-base play until you get your lair tech and are able to break the hellion contain that was, at the time, standard for Terrans to set up. If the Terran also plays relatively defensively but still sets up a hellion contain to deny ling scouting, and goes for a triple orbital command opener, you can be set quite behind economically because you take your thirds at a similar time. This means that you're more susceptible to a strong Terran 3-base push later on in the game.
The other downside of this build is that in the wake of the most recent patch it is, quite frankly, outdated. It was developed at a time when the standard metagame in ZvT was to assume a hellion contain, and when queens still had 3 range on ground units, so hellions were able to effectively stop or at least severely limit creep spread. The recent increasing of queen range from 3-5 has a massive effect on the ZvT matchup because it now means that hellion contains are highly ineffective when it comes to stopping creep spread.
For this reason, more and more Terrans are opting for 1-rax command center openings, which allow you to take a fast third (which was usually thwarted by a hellion contain). This makes it a worse choice to commit yourself to a 2-base opening as a Zerg player, which is one of the core qualities of the Leenock opener. Nevertheless, if you do plan on teching to very fast 2-base mutalisks or some other type of quick 2-base play before establishing a third, this opening remains a relatively safe way to do so.
The Generic 15 Hatch, 16/17Gas, 16/17 Pool into Speedling Pressure
This opening begins exactly the same way as the Leenock opening, but it is meant to deal a decent bit of damage to a Terran player who opts to do a 1-rax expand or a command center first build. If, when you send your 12 or 15 drone scout (I personally do 15 scouts out of habit, but I'm not sure if 12 might be better, I leave that up to you), you discover your opponent building a command center, or gearing up for a 1-rax expand, you drone very hard until 28 supply. Make sure you don't get supply blocked and make only zerglings from 28-44 supply. I'm assuming that you've researched the zergling speed upgrade as soon as possible, and pulled two drones off gas. As soon as your last lings have morphed, run across the map and attack.
This only works on maps where a Terran cannot wall off his natural with three barracks, so on Shakuras Plateau, Cloud Kingdom, and perhaps even Ohana this could be a bad idea. If the terran has not walled off however, you are nearly guaranteed to kill SCVs, mules, and usually a supply depot and a bunker, some marines, and to force a lift-off on the orbital command.
Remember that this is NOT meant to be an all-in build, it is a pressure build, so it is meant to give you map control and deal a bit of damage while you take your third and drone behind it. This allows you to secure three bases, deal economic damage to your opponent, and wrest map control back into your own hands. It is also extremely important not to lose all your lings. Do as much damage as you can safely, then don't try to go up the ramp, force a lift, kill SCVs, kill what you can on the low ground, then leave a ling behind to make sure you know when he tries to retake his natural and pull back.
The benefits of this build are obvious. It gives you map control, deals economic damage, and allows you to both take a third and tech to lair quite early. The downside of this build is that it is rather coin-flippy. If the Terran tries to go for siege tanks behind the 1-rax expand you should hit well before siege mode is done researching, and you will deal a good bit of damage. If, however, he goes for a heavy marine followup, then you're in trouble because the marine count will be very high, and you might have more trouble doing the same amount of damage you'd do if he'd opted for more of a tech-heavy route.
Another possibility is that the Terran was gearing up for a hellion-marine push, in which case you're in big trouble because you've invested so much into lings that you need to drone up afterwards, which in turn means that you most likely won't have a roach warren down to make roaches if he decides to counter with hellions and marines. In this situation you're going to have some trouble because lings cannot trade cost-efficiently with hellions and marines, and you could lose all your lings and your third, which defeats the entire purpose of doing this pressure to begin with.
Having said that, It is also possible to make a blind roach warren on large maps after you take your third in anticipation of this sort of counter, and you should have time to get enough roaches to stop such a counter if you see it coming early.
The Gasless 4-Queen Opening
The third and final opening I'm going to discuss in this blog is, in my opinion, the best option for Zerg players. This opening was, I believe, first debuted by DongRaeGu in his Winter Arena games. Once again, you open with a 15 hatch, but you don't take gas, and make your spawning pool at 16 supply. This means that your pool and hatch should finish at nearly the same time, and you'll be able to begin queen production immediately off both your main and natural hatcheries.
Make the standard four lings, but if you get 2-raxed obviously you'll need more. Just drone appropriately. When your first queens are done, immediately queue up two more queens, inject larva at your main, and drop a creep tumour at your natural. It is best to make a creep tumour with at least one of your first two queens because at that point in the game, if you're droning hard enough, you probably wont have enough minerals to use all the larva you'd get from doing two injects. Take two gases as soon as your third and fourth queens spawn, and get ling speed as soon as possible.
Use the two additional queens to spread creep like crazy, as aggressively as possible and use them to ward off any hellions or marines that may come by. Make sure you take either a third or a macro hatchery between 6:00 and 6:30, and begin lair shortly after. Make two evolution chambers and a baneling nest when you begin your lair, and take your third and fourth gases as the evolution chambers complete. Get fast upgrades.
The advantages of this opening are enormous. The added creep spread gives you a massive deal of control over the map in terms of slowing down pushes and added vision around your bases. If you spread your creep very aggressively, you should be able to have your creep nearly half way across the map, or more, by the 10:00 minute mark. This means that you slow down any Terran pushes immensely, because they need to clear the creep before going further.
If they don't clear the creep, slow banelings and speedlings with the added speed bonus on creep are usually more than enough to take out the initial push. Additionally you're able to put passive pressure on your opponent. Creep is a frightening thing for a non-Zerg opponent, and knowing that you're likely taking a third base behind that creep and droning hard, setting you up for a strong mid game, means that the Terran player feels pressured to slow the creep spread.
Reactor hellion expands are useless against the new queens, as hellions can hardly do anything to stop the creep spread with the added queen range. The high number of queens also means that you have a great deal of mobile anti air defense if the opponent opens banshees.
I'm personally a mid to high masters level Zerg player, and I feel that this is the best opening if you're mechanically sound enough to keep up with production and to inject larva and spread creep simultaneously. The benefits of covering the map in creep cannot be over emphasized. From personal experience I've beaten players who are a great deal better than me when using this opening, because they feel pressured to clear the creep and commit to premature pushes that end up getting crushed by ling bane.
This is also a flexible opening as it doesn't require much gas, leaving you open to either go mutas or infestors after lair tech finishes. If the terran takes a quick third, then you can defend the first push and take a quick fourth. The degree of creep spread generally means that it is very difficult for you to die to the first push because you slow it down so much by forcing the opponent to clear your creep, or because you crush it due to the added speed bonus, or simply because you see it coming earlier due to the added vision afforded to you by the creep.
The downside of this build is that it is very difficult to apply any pressure with units because you delay your speed for so long. You can put on passive-aggressive pressure by playing a strong economical game and spreading creep very aggressively, but any sort of 30-speedling pressure to punish a 1-rax FE is out of the question. It is possible to delay lair tech and go for roach ling and possibly baneling all ins, but generally if you're confident enough in your mechanics to be doing this build, it would be in your best interest to play the longer game. This is personally my opening of choice.
Well that covers the three most standard opening options for Zergs. The second part of this three-part series (covering the mid game of ZvT) will be posted in roughly a week's time, and in between I'll throw up a shorter blog about more general concerns like dealing with cheese, ladder mentality, ladder anxiety, etc. Hope you enjoyed this, please post any suggestions or comments below, I'll take note of them. Thanks all!
Special thanks to Zombiebait, who agreed to be a dummy opponent for me to get these screen shots!Buy Photo Cruise ship chair hogs put their stuff on the pool lounge chair seats so nobody else can sit there. (Photo: Ellen Creager/Detroit Free Press)Buy Photo
SOMEWHERE IN THE CARIBBEAN — Wandering the crowded pool deck of the Norwegian Escape one afternoon, I ask if a lounge chair with a folded towel on it is available.
“Their stuff has been left here for two hours, and they never came back,” one woman says. Then a man pipes up, “That is my brother’s chair.” And then another woman says, “Isn’t that the rudest thing?” And the first woman says to me, “Why don’t you just take the chair?” And then the man says, “I’m not the cruise ship police. But that’s my brother’s chair.”
I walk away. But it does get you wondering. Where are the cruise ship chair police when you need them? Do they even have cruise ship chair police?
On Norwegian Escape, as on many cruise ships, guidelines mention a 60-minute rule. If a lounge chair is empty for 60 minutes, staff can remove the towels and belongings so someone else can use it.
I saw no indication that this ever happened on the ship. In fact, I've never seen it happen on any ship.
Instead, chair hogs increasingly rule on cruises.
Chair hog 101
Here’s how it works: A chair hog is a cruise passenger who, bright and early each morning, runs out of his room, plops his towel, shoes and paperback book on one, two or 10 lounge chairs on the pool deck, and returns to his cabin to sleep or hang around or eat breakfast and generally just take his time until he feels like getting some sun.
He may not return to the pool deck for hours.
But he has staked his claim, and God forbid that any other passenger try to use the chairs.
I am sure there is a doctoral dissertation in here somewhere about negative group behavior amid scarcity, but what I saw happen as a result was that by day three of the cruise, every passenger realized that lounge chairs were at a premium. A kind of musical chairs mentality got going: quick, reserve your spot early or you and your family won’t get one all day.
Selfish behavior led to more selfish behavior.
Meanwhile, the nice, thoughtful people got no chairs at all.
Remedy plank
Buy Photo Towels, shirts and other possessions cover nearly an entire row of lounge chairs on a sun deck on Norwegian Escape - but sun bathers are few. (Photo: Ellen Creager/Detroit Free Press)
From my completely unscientific observation, roughly 50% of lounge chairs on sun decks and near pools were empty of sun bathers but covered by towels or belongings for the better part of each day. Some enterprising passengers made do with two uncomfortable straight-back chairs, one to sit in, one for the feet.
Some people wandered around, hopelessly looking for a single empty chair and not finding it.
I’m not sure what the answer is. Does anyone know?
“They should have a weight sensor on chairs,” my daughter suggested. “If a chair has not had the weight of a person on it for an hour, the light should turn green.”
Great idea.
If not that, cruise ships could hire a squad of peppy lounge chair police to clear away miscellaneous towels, shoes, paperback books and suntan lotion left too long unattended.
Or maybe the captain should install the plank. He can tell chair hogs to walk that way, yes, climb right up there and walk straight ahead for the very, very best spot.
Contact Detroit Free Press Travel Writer Ellen Creager at ecreager@freepress.com, 313-222-6498. Follow her on Twitter @ellencreager.
Read or Share this story: http://on.freep.com/1QPaM9rIn the current music culture, style trumps ideas. Critics praise genre executions; promoters book neatly packaged tours; labels and PR firms specialize in marketing to ever-tighter niche audiences. Though this isn’t necessarily different than how things were in the MTV era, since 1980, we’ve been speeding rapidly towards a music world dominated by bands who thrive on expectancy. People form bands to be band-first, musician second. It feels as though we have fewer and fewer groups who focus on the music above all – the fundamental levels of melodies, rhythms, and arrangements.
Whether or not you embrace Opeth’s progression since Heritage, they are one of the last large-scale guitar-based bands that are all about the ideas. Every album in their discography has – to varying degrees – challenged their abilities, audience expectations, and merit of a musical idea.
Despite what I’ve been reading from other critics, I don’t feel as though Sorceress really has much to do with “prog rock” in the sense that an album like Heritage did. To me, this album and Pale Communion have much more in common with the sensibilities of bands like Fleetwood Mac, who hid their darkness in plain sight; as if the Beatles had scored a Roman Polanski movie; Lalo Schifrin arranging for a NWOBHM band; a re-imagination of late-career Led Zeppelin. Opeth continue to blur the lines between metal, folk, neo-classical, and so many other genre-voices — not in a stylized way, but in how they apply their ideas to varying contexts.
Take “The Seventh Sojourn,” one of the band’s most ambitious compositions to date. Despite being completely devoid of electric guitars, drums, and thick keyboards, it’s one of the band’s most purely evil tunes. Much like how Revocation’s Dave Davidson conceives of “heavy” in a melodic sense, this is one of many songs in Opeth’s recent discography that thrives on minor modes and middle-eastern harmonies, moving between the flat and raised seventh-degree of the scale depending on a riff’s progression, resolving a line with upward chromatic motion, and slyly incorporating the tritone as a passing note.
For a band that’s seemingly done it all harmonically, Sorceress finds them prancing fresh ground. On songs like “Sorceress 2” and “Era,” Opeth are more naked than ever before, treading similar ground as The Kinks’ Lola Versus Powerman and the Moneygoround, The Who’s Tommy, and The Zombies’ Odessey and Oracle. Those albums are familiar touchstones for most Pitchforkcore bands these days – but for bands like Opeth that have thrived on harmonic surprises and “trickery’ in the past, this stripped-down, psychadelic-pop harmonic sensibility is a fresh turn.
Sorceress may also be the band’s most intricately designed album on an arranging and production level. Every tone (and tonal shift) is so carefully calibrated, and the band have achieved a new level of comfort in using the tools at their disposal – much like some of their generational peers in bands like Radiohead and The Dillinger Escape Plan. From the lightly-toasted opening clean-guitar dual of “Strange Brew” that are brought to a halt by Peter Svalberg’s distorted organ, to the pristinely realized fuzz-intro of “Sorceress,” this album shows the band working every riff to its proper sonic voice. The interplay between each member’s tones is something that Frank Zappa might have pursued for the live incarnation of the Mothers of Invention in the mid-70’s (see: Roxy & Elsewhere): organic and performed, but after everyone’s sonic palette have been perfectly-tweaked.
All this to say, I haven’t really heard many albums that sound like Sorceress, both in terms of its composition and production. It’s just, like, weird, man. You could point to the individual influences (as many music nerds love to do, given Mikael’s famous record-collecting habits), or to the familiar hallmarks of Opeth’s sound, but the band is finally beginning to find its footing in the post-Watershed era. They’ve found something strange, and they’re running with it.
There’s a curious link across time and mediums between Miles Davis’ 1967 progressive jazz album Sorcerer, William Friedkin’s 1977 film Sorcerer, and Opeth’s Sorceress. The three works share not just titles (inspiring concepts on their own) but also artistic sensibilities. Opeth have steeped themselves in a mindset that you don’t see often these days – one which values the potential of a musical idea, pushing it to the extremes of its expression.
Although Watershed remains my favorite of their, Opeth are a band clearly in the throes of reinvention and re-conception. I’m really not sure where they’ll go next – and in an artistic climate where expectancy is the norm, they are a band to be treasured.
Opeth’s Sorceress is out September 30th via their Nuclear Blast subsidiary, Moderbolaget Records. Pre-order it here and stream the title track here.CAN Dubai get any higher? It seems to think they can.
The United Arab Emirates city already has the world’s tallest building — the Burj Khalifa, which stands at more than 828 metres. But plans for an even taller structure to surpass it have been announced.
Dubai’s Emaar Properties made the announcement at the weekend, likening the structure to a 21st-century Eiffel Tower.
Unlike the Khalifa, the new $1 billion tower will not be a traditional skyscraper but more of a cable-supported spire containing “garden” observation decks, residential units and a link to a retail plaza.
Emaar Properties chairman Mohamed Alabba was tight-lipped on the exact height but said it would “surpass” the Khalifa.
“Many... of our customers would like to have that view. And if you ask me what is the financial model, that is the financial model,” Alabbar said.
This new project comes as Dubai developers continue to announce new schemes despite a softening real estate sector.
The building is expected to be completed for the Dubai Expo trade fair in 2020, the same year that the kilometre-high Kingdom Tower in Jeddah is due to overtake the Khalifa as the world’s tallest building.
The announcement comes just months after a huge fire ripped through a luxury Dubai hotel near the Khalifa on New Year’s Eve.
Residents of five-star hotel, The Address Downtown, had been evacuated just hours before the celebrating the new year. Sixteen people were reported injured in the incident.
When asked about fire risks, Alabbar said it was important to learn from the accidents but suggested there are limits to how much builders can do.
“Safety rules are good, but can you really eliminate all risk? I don’t think human beings are able to eliminate all risk,” he said.
“Risks are there as long as we are progressing... These things do happen, and you have to go and fix them and make sure if they happen, they happen to a minimum.”For all the pomp and hype accompanying Obama's Republic Day visit to India, the fact is we are welcoming a lame-duck President who has lost control over his Congress (Parliament) because he has lost the confidence of his people. He is eking out the last days of his Presidency without being in a position to do anything very much more than he already has to carve his niche in history.What a contrast to the Obama we welcomed in 2010. Then was the spirit of "Yes, We Can". He had caught the imagination of the world by becoming the first person of colour to attain the most powerful position in the world. He had opened his innings with a bang by a speech in Prague that signaled a definitive move towards the end of nuclear weapons. For this mere declaration of intent, he was rewarded with a Nobel Prize for Peace. It was within months of the grand reception in Oslo to receive the award that he landed in India. The longest paragraph in the joint statement he signed with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh related to the dismantling of nuclear weapons. He has since done nothing of substance to fulfill the high hopes he had raised of being a 21st century Mahatma. It underlies the importance of giving the Nobel Prize for solid achievement, not high rhetoric. It also shows that Joint Statements, even at the highest levels, are worth little more than the paper they are written on, if not followed up by either or both sides, as has been the case with the disarmament provisions of the November 2009 statement.The Indo-US dialogue then was dominated by the Indo-US nuclear agreement (and the Defence Cooperation Framework that paved the way to the nuclear agreement). The nuclear agreement was the first and most dramatic confirmation of the "strategic partnership"between the two countries that India and the US had been working for ever since Vajpayee declared that the two countries were "natural allies".How a non-aligned country can be the natural ally of anyone was not explained, either by Vajpayee or his successors, for they were in fact riding two horses at the same time: the Non-Aligned horse, which was India's great gift to the post-colonial world, and the avid desire to be recognized as a special friend and partner by the world's solitary Superpower. It was always an alliance of unequals, but it ended nuclear apartheid and fostered dreams of India becoming a Nuclear Energy Superpower when (and if) the thorium route to nuclear energy would become technically and economically feasible.For the Americans, it was the opening up of one of the world's biggest markets for nuclear power plants for their moribund nuclear energy industry that had been starved of orders ever since the 1979 Three Mile Island nuclear disaster in the US. So pleased was Dr. Manmohan Singh with this win-win achievement that he proclaimed on TV to President Bush (then on the verge of being kicked into the dustbin of history) that, "The people of India love you." I - as one of the people of India - demurred, but the euphoria was catching.Two developments pricked the euphoria. One, Fukushima. That put real energy into the public demonstrations at Kudankulam, Jaitpur, West Bengal and elsewhere against the siting of nuclear power plants in or near people's habitations. Everyone loves nuclear power - but no one wants to live in the vicinity of a nuclear power plant. Indeed, the only way to persuade the aam admi to accept that nuclear power plants are harmless neighbourhood creatures would be to site the next plant on Race Course Road, adjacent to the Prime Minister's residence.But it is the second hurdle that really brought Indio-US nuclear power-sharing to an embarrassing standstill. Reminded of the Union Carbide disaster in Bhopal on thenight of 2/3 December 1984 - for which the American multinational got away virtually scot-free - the Indian Parliament insisted on a Nuclear Liability Act that made the supplier substantially responsible for any disaster that might overtake their nuclear plants. The Americans baulked at having to rise to their responsibilities for causing untold harm to others. They wanted the billions upon billions of dollars they would get from flogging to us the nuclear power plants they found too dangerous to put up in their own country, but insisted on limiting to peanuts their liability as suppliers.The result is that while Russia and France have agreed, within the existing legislative framework, to supply additional nuclear power plants, the US stands cut out of the deal. They did not sign the nuclear deal to enrich France or Putin's Russia - but that's the way it is going. So, once the kissing stops, Obama is going to apply all the pressure he can on getting Modi to dilute the Indian position.If he succeeds (as he might) and US suppliers get themselves lucrative contracts, they will discover that villages selected as sites will rise in revolt as has happened at every such site since the dangers of nuclear accidents became widespread public knowledge. Thus, either way, whether Modi relents or not, the Indo-US nuclear agreement is going to remain a dead letter. Moreover, Parliament's objections to giving Americans Warren Anderson-like concessions to wreak more Bhopals are going to be virtually impossible to over-rule, even by a didactic autocrat like Modi.When a freshly-minted President Obama visited India in November 2010, there was an 'Audacity of Hope' in the air. He now comes tired and dispirited. He has disappointed hordes of those who hailed him when he won his first Presidential bid in 2008. He personified then the dream of a final end to both racism and the Quest for Dominance. His track record as a senator for having voted against Bush's disastrous intervention in Iraq was hailed as the foresight of a truly enlightened leader who knew how to give the lead. Today, with Iraq still an albatross around the American neck, the IS running riot in the Levant, relations with Russia at their lowest ebb, the impasse over Iran unresolved, and the scuttle underway in Afghanistan, Obama has become, alas, a discredited President.No wonder he has grabbed an opportunity such as the one offered to him by Modi to recover some of his erstwhile standing in the world. At least someone wants him to review a ceremonial parade.What he now hopes to achieve is to carve a deeper niche for himself in history by snaring India into a security ring around China in the current build-up to Cold War II. He might yet succeed, for Modi has little time for the rationale of Non-Alignment and is paranoid about security. He does not realize that it was Non-Alignment that kept us out of the conflict zone in Cold War I. If he allows himself to be seduced by Obama's siren song, as he seems inclined to do, we might find ourselves being dragged along, as a very junior partner, into precisely the web of military alliances among the Big and the Small that insidiously brought on World War I with no one desiring it.I cross my fingers with the prayer that the worst may not happen between a loser US President and a naive (but authoritarian) Indian PM.If you ever read the comments section of these articles, you’ve probably seen some discussion of “the Batman curse”. Despite the fact that most of the Batman films have been successful, there does seem to be a trend of Batman actors ending up in What the Hell Happened articles.
Alicia Silverstone had a relatively short career that peaked in 1995 and came crashing down 2 years later in Batman and Robin. Just about everyone associated with the franchise-ending Batfilm suffered some kind of career setback.
But while Chris O’Donnell has finally gotten himself a steady gig on TV and Arnold Scharzenegger retreated to politics, Silverstone’s career has yet to bounce back.
Silverstone started working as a model at age six. She went on to do TV commercials. Silverstone recounted how she got into acting:
At family get-togethers, me and all the other little girls would make up dances and routines for our parents. And relatives would tell my dad, “You’ve got to get her started in the business.” Finally, he started me modeling. I hated it more that anything, but I thought it was an outlet for acting. Then I got my first commercial, for Domino’s Pizza, and I went insane. I was so happy!
Her first acting gig was as a guest star on the TV show, The Wonder Years.
My parents were a bit concerned. They were afraid I would hold it under their nose and say, ‘You can’t tell me what to do, I’m emancipated.’ But nothing really changed.
She played Fred Savage’s dream girl which was type casting in 1992.Silverstone’s film career began with 1993’s suspense flick The Crush.The Crush was part of a trend in movies that became popular after 1987’s Fatal Attraction. The general theme is that a normal guy (in this case, Cary Elwes) meets a seemingly normal person who turns out to be a homocidal lunatic/stalker. Borrowing from the 1992 movie, Poison Ivy, The Crush made the stalker jail bait.The original choice to play the teenage stalker was Reese Witherspoon. But she was in Africa filming A Far Off Place. With their first choice unavailable, the casting directors started going through modeling portfolios which is how they came across Silverstone. While filming, Silverstone became an “emancipated minor” at the age of 15. This was done so that she could avoid the restrictions of child labor laws which would have restricted how many hours she could work on the movie. According to Silverstone, it was no big deal:
In the original cut of The Crush, Silverstone’s character was named Darian. But the name had to be changed for video and TV versions of the movie. Screenwriter Alan Shapiro had based the screenplay on his own personal experiences. The girl who inspired the script was actually named Darian and sued. So the character’s name was changed to Adrian going forward.
Silverstone wasn’t happy with her first movie performance. Just a couple years later, she wished she could do it all over again:
I think about her more now than I did then. I wish I could go back and do the movie again, because it isn’t often that a young girl can be really aggressive and take over the whole movie. I wish I’d had more experience at that time. Now I feel I’m more molded.
Critics didn’t crush on The Crush. In fact, they hated it. It opened in third place at the box office and ended up grossing around $13 million dollars. But it has become a hit on home video.
While The Crush wasn’t a big hit, it brought Silverstone lots of attention. TV producer Aaron Spelling pursued Silverstone to replace Shannen Doherty on Beverly Hills 90210. But Silverstone wasn’t interested:
He already knew I wasn’t going to do it. He said, ‘I really want you to be in my show.’ I think it would have been really detrimental because I want to do films. Also, I just don’t think that there’s a lot of acting going on in that show.
Silverstone lost out on the lead in My Father, The Hero to Katherine Heigl, but she later said she was glad she wasn’t cast:
On My Father, The Hero, I didn’t get it because I was a little bit heavy compared with the girl who did get it, but that was a blessing because the girl runs around in a bathing suit throughout the whole thing. It was the worst movie I’ve ever seen. And the girl was really bad.
Silverstone also appeared in two made-for TV movies; Torch Song and Scattered Dreams. On the subject of Raquel Welch, Silverstone’s Torch Song co-star, Silverstone said:
Everybody warned me. ‘She’s going to be a tyrant because you’re young and beautiful and she’s just going to go crazy,’ She was nice to me, but it must be just horrible, you know. I mean, when the movie aired, people said it should have been about my character. So I sympathize with her.
Next: Rockin’ out with Aerosmith
AdvertisementsWe don't mean to cause an existential crisis for any children of the '80s out there, but we felt it was worth noting that Daniel is now as old as Mr. Miyagi was upon the release of "The Karate Kid" (1984).
Yeah, a tweet made today by Roadside Attractions pointed out that Ralph Macchio is 51... and so was Noriyuki 'Pat' Morita, once upon a time, even though his infinite wit and wisdom made him seem like he was at least a thousand years old.
Ralph Macchio is the same age now as Pat Morita was when they shot The Karate Kid. — Roadside Attractions (@roadsidetweets) March 1, 2013
"The Karate Kid" followed the adventures of Daniel Larusso (Macchio), the new kid in town whose brutal bullying at the hands (and feet) of tough guy Johnny Kreese (Martin Kove) puts him on the path to be trained in martial arts by the local handyman, Mr. Miyagi (Morita). Macchio was 23 at the time of the film's release, though he certainly passed just fine for a teenager (as did most young actors in '80s movies -- now, if you want a 17-year-old, you just hire a 17-year old).
However, Macchio started inspiring comments like "a 'kid,' eh?" when "The Karate Kid Part II" came out just two years later in 1986, and when "The Karate Kid Part III" was released in 1989, it was time for the pushing-30 "kid" to finally leave his combative childhood behind him.
Morita played the role |
frustrated, Lucy yelled into the phone, “WAKE UP, ANDY!!!!!”
Her voice rung inside of Andy’s head, making it throb under the hangover. “Lucy, don’t yell. I’m awake. And my head hurts….”
Now calm and trying to sound happy, “Sheriff Truman needs you over at Mr. Blodgett’s farm out on Highway J, east of Twin Peaks. He, Mr. Blodgett, found something.”
“Okay, Lucy. I love you, Pookie.”
“I love you too, Pumpkin,” Lucy replied and smiled. “I need to go now and call Deputy Hawk and tell him to go out there too, okay?”
“Okay, Lucy. Bye.”
“Bye.” Lucy hung up the phone and dialed Hawk’s home phone.
After two rings, the Indian picked up the phone, “Hello?”
“Deputy Hawk, this is Lucy at the sheriff station. Sheriff Truman wanted me to call you and tell you to go up to Mr. George Blodgett’s farm–he found something.”
“Okay, Lucy. Thanks”
“Bye,” Lucy said and hung up just as Shelly Johnson walked through the door with three 1 dozen boxes of doughnuts.
“Good morning Lucy,” Shelly said, placing the doughnuts on the counter.
“Good morning, Shelly,” Lucy smiled at her. “How are you this morning?”
“Was doing fine until I got to the diner. Our morning driver didn’t show up again this morning so I have to do the deliveries,” Shelly told the secretary, as she brushed her hair back with her right hand. “Second day in a row. Norma needs to get rid of him.” Shelly looked around the station. “Quiet today….where is everybody?”
“Sheriff Truman just went up to Mr. Blodgett’s farm because-” Lucy stopped herself, now biting her lip, and fighting the tendency to continue the sentence. “I’m sorry, Shelly, Sheriff Truman told me not to say anything.”
Shelly laughed and gave her a big toothy grin. “That’s okay. I have to get back to the diner and make some tips. Gotta pay those bills.”
Lucy nodded and watched Shelly exit the station and go out to her car. She picked up the boxes and carried them to the make-shift closet where she poured herself a cup of joe and grabbed a jelly doughnut. She walked back to her desk and started her daily crossword puzzle.
—
On his way to Mr. Blodgett’s farm, Truman called Doctor William Hayward to put him on standby just in case there was a body. About five minutes after leaving the sheriff station, he pulled onto the gravel road that belonged to Blodgett’s farm, just off the curvy Highway J.
As he approached the two story wooden cabin/farmhouse, he saw old man Blodgett standing on his porch, his left hand in his pocket, the other hold a large cup of what Truman guessed was black coffee….and knowing old George there, he probably added whiskey along with it.
Old man Blodgett’s family had been in Twin Peaks since the beginning, the story goes. His farming English family came from the East to start a new life in California but his father was very bad with directions. Instead of doing south, they ended up going north and discovered the small town of Twin Peaks. They purchased numerous acres from the Packard family and started their farm. They quickly learned that much didn’t grow up in this rainy weather, but nonetheless, the family did grow a few crops and made a nice living on the side. The farm had been passed down from son to son, and now 75-year-old George Blodgett was running the farm along with his oldest son. His wife had died back in 1985 due to lung cancer. Truman remembered her as being an avid smoker, rumor had it that she would go through three packs a day before her death.
As Truman pulled up to the house and stepped out,
Blodgett’s son stepped out of the cabin and up to his father. Side by side, the two men were the same height, around 6 feet tall. George was balding and quite thin, he smoked more than his wife. However his arms were big and muscular, even for such an old man. His son, on the other hand, was a portly fellow. Pushing around 300 pounds, his stomach protruded out over his buttoned-down shirt. At the very bottom, Truman could see the man’s stomach through the gaping holes that didn’t quite cover the man’s beer gut. He was in his 30s and would die of a heart attack before 50, Truman guessed.
“Morning, gentleman,” Truman said as he walked up to them. “Let’s take a look.”
The two men stepped off the porch and led the way to the side of the house and then toward the back where the bard sat about 50 yards ahead.
” So tell me what happened.” Truman shifted his hat on his head and glanced down at his watching hoping that Hawk and Andy would show up soon.
George started, his voice cracking due to the smoking for so many years, “I got up this morning, like I always do and fixed myself a pot of coffee. I went out to the barn, like I do every morning, yes sir, to let the horses out into the pasture and to feed them.” The man paused, trying to breath in.
Truman could hear that his breath was raspy.
” Go on,” Truman told him as the men walked through the inch of snow.
“So I opened up the barn door, and this strong smell came out….smelled like a pile of dead raccoons had been sitting in there for months!” George told him, glancing at his son, who was silently listening, his hands left hand stuck in his pocket, his right hand holding a canister of coffee.
” So I went in just a little bit, holding my breath and was trying to find where the smell was coming from. That’s when I noticed something laying at the other end of the barn. Looked human to me from where I was standing. I wasn’t going to touch it, so I came back in and called you before doing nothin’.”
“Good thinking, George.”
“Always better be safe than sorry,” George’s son, Matthew, finally pipped up in a long southern drawl. He had spent a number of years in the south after leaving home at 18.
They finally reached the barn and already Truman could smell something coming from inside the barn. He looked over at George, “And you were in here yesterday and saw nothing?”
“Yep.” George moved in front and swung the barn doors open, and a souring putrid smell of death bellowed out, making Truman take a step back and covering his face. He dug in his front pocket for his handkerchief and pulled it out, covering his nose, hoping this would stop the smell….of course, he could still smell whatever it was through the cloth.
“It’s damn rank in there!” George yelled, holding his own nose. Behind him, his son made pouty faces and covered half his face with his large and fat hand.
“Damn, that smells!” Truman said taking a few steps into the dark barn. Behind him, George flipped the light switch that helped illuminate the barn somewhat but not enough. Above their heads, the lights flickered on and off.
Truman glanced across the barn and came into contact with a large lifeless form laying amongst the hay and wooden chips.
The sheriff made his way forward, closer to the body, it was about 20 or 30 yards away. With each step, the smell seemed to get stronger. He motioned for George and Matthew to stay back and then continued his way forward, each step coming closer to a horrible smell.
Now only about 10 feet from the large thing on the floor, Truman could tell it was a human body, parts of it missing, looking like wolves and other animals had enjoyed a great supper the night before, maybe many nights before.
Truman turned back around and quickly headed for the door back to the two men.
“Gotta call in some help. I’ll be back. Why don’t the two of you go back inside. I’ll call you if I need anything.”
They nodded and made their way back to the house as Truman ran across the yard to his truck and called Dr. Hayward. As he hung up the phone, both Hawk and Andy came driving up in their cruisers.
“Damn time!” Truman said, turning toward the approaching vehicles, the smell of death, still stuck in his nostrils.
—
After a few minutes of gathering police materials and finding a few handkerchiefs to tie around their noses, Truman, Hawk and Andy started out toward the barn. From the house, the two men watched the cops carefully. Hawk held a small case of police instruments, while Andy carried the camera. Hawk led the way with his hands in his pocket, still smelling death. I’ll never get it off he said to himself as they approached the barn doors that were still ajar.
“Wh–wh–what’s that smell?” Andy asked covering his nose with his other hand. Even through the handkerchief, the smell was strong.
“Smells like a dead animal,” Hawk said.
“It’s not an animal, Hawk,” Harry said glancing back at his deputies. “I’m pretty sure of that.”
They entered the barn and made their way to the dead body which seemed to have been wrapped in an old carpet. There were scratches and tears where hungry wolves and other creatures were feasting on the corpse.
Under the handkerchief, Hawk said, “He or she’s
been dead awhile.”
Andy held the camera in his hand and stared down at the body.
“Andy, take some pictures before we roll it over.”
Andy lifted the camera to his face and started taking shots of the body. Through the lens he could see a bloody dead body about 5 feet 6 inches tall. It wasn’t possible yet to determine man or woman but whomever it was had been wearing hiking gear.
He took a shot of the person’s boots as Harry said aloud, “Looks like a hiker. Wearing a pretty warm jacket and nice hiking boots.” He was leaning down toward the body trying not to breathe through his mouth afraid he would be tasting the smell in his mouth for days. It had happened once before when he was a kid and he and a friend came upon a deer that had exploded and its remains laid around the ground. It was an awful smell and as a kid, he often breathed through his mouth, instead of his nose due to sinuses. He had the taste of the dead animal in his mouth for days.
Andy took a couple of more pictures and then put the camera to his side and wiped a tear away. Hawk noticed it first and nudged the sheriff.
“Andy?” Harry asked.
“I’m…I’m….Harry, I’m…..okay….” he croaked the last word out amongst a stream of tears.
“Andy. C’mon give me the camera.” Andy reached across the body and handed the Minolta to his boss. “Why don’t you go out the back of the barn and see if you can find anything interesting.”
“Oh, oh, okay, Harry,” he muttered, as he shuffled out the backdoor of the barn and turned a quick left. He leaned against the barn, looking back at the woods ahead of him. He wiped the tears away from his eyes and took a few deep breaths.
Against the barn and right next to Andy’s left boot was a small mound of dirt with an indentation in the middle. It hadn’t been covered by snow unlike the rest of the ground, which should have tipped off any person who stumbled across it. It seemed out of place and not natural. On top of the small indentation was a golden ring, sitting there, waiting….and Andy never looked directly down at his feet.
Andy gathered his composure after one last deep breath and stood up tall. Standing up, he lifted his left boot and brought it down upon the small mound of dirt never feeling the ring under it. For a split second he felt a strange sensation and he could hear the lights in the barn suddenly flicker twice and then go off completely.
“Hey what’s with the lights?” Truman asked inside.
Andy walked away from the barn, trying to find anything interesting as the lights suddenly came back on.
“Old wiring, Harry,” Hawk told him and they continued to study the body as Doctor Hayward walked up to the barn and said, “Dammit, gentleman, what’s going on in here? It smells horrible!”
“Got a body, doc!” Truman called back as Andy stumbled around outside.
Back at where he was standing a few seconds before, his boot imprint now stood where the small mound of dirt had been, completely ruined. And the ring, it was gone.
—
One week later, Truman filed the murder case away. Actually, it wasn’t a murder case, according to the Twin Peaks Sheriff Station. After an autopsy of the body, Doctor Hayward had decided that death was caused by exposure during the winter months and then the woman’s body was eaten by animals in the forest and had been dead since at least the first snow in November. The woman’s identity was never discovered and there were no missing person reports that fit her description. It was believed that animals dragged the body into the barn to get out of the rainy weather the night before. The final case was filed away as closed.The WB Games live stream featuring LEGO games is off and running for it’s second of three days! Lots of great news and fun for today! Watch live with us or check back for a full recap! Keep refreshing the page to update the recaps! You can watch these live streams on WB’s official Live Stream page!
The live stream features all five of the main WB titles, but we will only be focusing on the three LEGO titles! Each of the three games got approximately 20 minutes to be shown off with live gameplay and big announcements!
WATCH LIVE RIGHT NOW:
LEGO Marvel Super Heroes 2 Recap
Phil Ring, Arthur Parsons & Bill Rosemann are in the house today to chat about LEGO Marvel Super Heroes 2!
Kang is a time traveling inter dimensional General who loves to gather awesome armies!
Kang travels in his huge sword shaped ship called the Damocles!
The multiplayer for the game will feature an arena style battle overseen by the Grand Master!
Youtuber Blitzwinger joins the stream for some gameplay!
Time for some multiplayer Arena gameplay!
All the characters have special abilities! Some abilities have strengths and weakness over each other!
Pick ups drop randomly in the game to give you power ups when you battle! Mind stone makes duplicates of your characters!
The battle arena is entirely made of lego and can be smashed and interacted with (and destroyed!)
Showing off a battle arena mode where players compete to pick up the infinity stones to complete the infinity gauntlet!
The open world game is initially segregated and you drop into smaller buildings at first to help you orient yourself during gameplay and reduce confusion.
The main hub world will 18 different sections!
Agent Venom, Spider Gwen & Spider Man Noir Gameplay!
LEGO Worlds Recap
Bear Parker (TT Game Community Manager) and Chris Roads are here to chat LEGO Worlds!
LEGO Worlds Survivor coming later this year!
LEGO Survivor will put you on an island without any tools and pit you against the environment to gather resources to build and upgrade a ship to navigate from island to island.
Players will have a small journal with a build guide that will instruct you on what resources to gather and find.
LEGO Survivor will be a free DLC update later this year!
LEGO Dimensions Recap
JayShockBlast & 8-Bit Theater join the stream to chat about LEGO Dimensions!
Teen Titans Go battle arena gameplay!
2 v 2 battle with volunteers from the audience!
Lots of technical difficulties are plaguing the live stream.
Change of plans and the team went into the Beetlejuice Battle Arena world instead.
Want More Lego Game News?
Make sure you follow, like and subscribe across all our social media pages!Hasbro is hosting its first ever convention, HASCON, gathering friends and families from all our fandoms, and you know D&D is going to be there! Whether you want to play Tomb of Annihilation, meet some of the D&D team, or get a photo with our Batiri goblin—we’ve got you covered. Check out the full description of D&D events from HASCON below and don’t forget to order your tickets!
D&D Play
We have D&D adventures all weekend long at HASCON, ranging from two-hour family friendly introductions to two-day, ten-hour expeditions into the Tomb of Annihilation. Sign up for specific events when you pick up your HASCON ticket.
Welcome to a Life of Adventure!
2-Hour Adventure
This is a short adventure, tailor made to introduce players to the new Tomb of Annihilation story line. This tabletop D&D adventure can be replayed multiple times, opening different paths and opportunities based on the players’ choices. Great for people who only have a couple hours to play some D&D or for those who want to get a peek at the new D&D story line. Create a first level character or use one of our pregenerated characters.
D&D for the Family
2-Hour Adventure
Parents, bring your kids to the table and play D&D as family! This 2-hour adventure will introduce the family of adventurers to Dungeons & Dragons, focusing on story, puzzles, and some encounters with fantastical (but not too scary) creatures, like stone golems, mimics, and perhaps a friendly dragon. We will have pregenerated, kid-friendly characters for everyone and a family friendly DM to help people through the rules as necessary, though the focus will be on fun and story.
The Dungeons & Dragons Experience
5-Hour Adventure
Join an adventuring party and prepare yourself for the full tabletop D&D experience! Bring a new first level character or select one of our pregenerated characters and get ready for a D&D adventure in our new storyline, Tomb of Annihilation, with an experienced Dungeon Master. By completing your adventure, you will earn rewards that can be used in future adventures and gain experience to level up your new D&D character. Every player will also receive a copy of our new adventure, Tomb of Annihilation, the Tomb of Annihilation Dice Tin and Dice, an Ultra PRO Dungeons & Dragons character folio, and a convention exclusive Tomb of Annihilation Dice Bag.**
Weekend Warrior
10-Hour Adventure (two 5-hour sessions over the weekend)
Looking for the ultimate adventuring experience? We’ve got you covered. This slot includes 10 hours of play through our newest adventure, Tomb of Annihilation, with one 5-hour slot on the first day and another 5-hour slot continuing your adventure on the second day. Just as in the D&D Experience, you will have an experienced DM both days, and will earn unique rewards for your character by playing in this two-day adventure. Every player will also receive a copy of our new adventure, Tomb of Annihilation, the Tomb of Annihilation Dice Tin and Dice, an Ultra PRO Dungeons & Dragons character folio, and a convention exclusive Tomb of Annihilation Dice Bag.**
As part of this event, you will also have a special encounter with one of our celebrity DMs, which include Mike Mearls, Chris Lindsay and more!
**Copies of Tomb of Annihilation and the Tomb of Annihilation Dice Tin and Dice, the Ultra PRO Dungeons & Dragons character folio, and the convention exclusive Tomb of Annihilation Dice Bag are available while supplies last.
D&D Experience and Batiri Goblin
Visit the & D&D Experience on the main floor of HASCON and step into the Jungles of Chult. You’ll even have a chance to meet one of the regions infamous Batiri goblins, played by artist, costumer and prop-maker Dani Hartel.
D&D Monster Building
Join us Saturday September 9th and see what it’s like to be part of the team that makes Dungeons & Dragons. Mike Mearls, Manager of the D&D Design Team, leads us through the process we use when creating new D&D monsters. With help and feedback from the audience, we’ll create a new monster that you can all use in your own games at home!
D&D My Little Pony Dice Tin
Adventuring with your friends can be hard when you don’t have the right set of gear. But don’t worry! We on the D&D team worked with our friends from My Little Pony to make sure you have the most magical dice for your D&D games with this HASCON exclusive.
Includes:
A beautiful full metal container with the My Little Pony crew all geared up for a D&D adventure.
A full set of ten sparkly pink dice, inspired by Pinky Pie, including: 1d20, 1d12, 2d10, 1d8, 4d6, 1d4.
We have all sorts of D&D happening at HASCON and we don’t want you to miss any of it, so head over and buy your tickets now! And don’t miss the events and booths from Magic: The Gathering, Star Wars, Marvel, and more!
More on HASCON
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A circumcision training kit has been chopped from Amazon's website following concern that it encourages DIY surgery.
The online retail giant cut the product after the National Secular Society branded the snip set "irresponsible" in a letter to UK manager Douglas Gurr that suggested it was against Amazon's supply chain standards policy.
Buyers using the "infant circumcision training kit" could whack away on a model of a male child's genitals with a selection of scalpels.
In his letter, Dr Antony Lempert, chairman of the NSS's secular medical forum, wrote: "We fear that the sale of this product may encourage unqualified practitioners to carry out unnecessary surgery on infants in non-clinical conditions, resulting in serious harm."
"Non-therapeutic circumcision is unethical and unnecessary and is putting infant boys at risk of death and serious injury.
"This practice could be encouraged by the morally negligent sale of infant circumcision training kits to the public."
Listed for sale between £365 and £456, customers can choose either a dark or light skinned dummy provided by third-party group ESP.
While sales have been halted on Amazon's UK site, it remains available in the US.
Lempert added: "The British Medical Association (BMA) writes in its guidance for doctors that it has "no policy" on the issue of non-therapeutic, or ritual, circumcision.
"It recognises there is "clear risk of harm if the procedure is done inexpertly", but says: "As a general rule, however, the BMA believes that parents should be entitled to make choices about how best to promote their children's interests, and it is for society to decide what limits should be imposed on parental choices."
Debate has long raged around whether circumcision should be banned for anything other than medically necessary reasons.
The medical procedure is commonly carried out in faiths such as Judaism where it is believed to represent a covenant with God.The Arctic is becoming warmer at a high rate, and contractions in the extent of sea ice are currently changing the habitats of marine top-predators dependent on ice. Polar bears ( Ursus maritimus ) depend on sea ice for hunting seals. For these top-predators, longer ice-free seasons are hypothesized to force the bears to hunt for alternative terrestrial food, such as eggs from colonial breeding birds. We analyzed time-series of polar bear observations at four locations on Spitsbergen (Svalbard) and one in east Greenland. Summer occurrence of polar bears, measured as the probability of encountering bears and the number of days with bear presence, has increased significantly from the 1970/80s to the present. The shifts in polar bear occurrence coincided with trends for shorter sea ice seasons and less sea ice during the spring in the study area. This resulted in a strong inverse relationship between the probability of bear encounters on land and the length of the sea ice season. Within, 10 years after their first appearance on land, polar bears had advanced their arrival dates by almost 30 days. Direct observations of nest predation showed that polar bears may severely affect reproductive success of the barnacle goose ( Branta leucopsis ), common eider ( Somateria mollissima ) and glaucous gull ( Larus hyperboreus ). Nest predation was strongest in years when the polar bears arrived well before hatch, with more than 90% of all nests being predated. The results are similar to findings from Canada, and large-scale processes, such as climate and subsequent habitat changes, are pinpointed as the most likely drivers in various parts of the Arctic. We suggest that the increasing, earlier appearance of bears on land in summer reflects behavioral adaptations by a small segment of the population to cope with a reduced hunting range on sea ice. This exemplifies how behavioral adaptations may contribute to the cascading effects of climate change.
Introduction
Understanding causes and consequences of climate-related shifts in ecosystem functioning, as well as the role of focal species in these processes, is currently a dominant theme in ecology. In the Arctic, temperature has increased at a rate two to three times faster than at southerly latitudes (Post et al., 2009). As a consequence, the rapid environmental changes that are taking place can be directly attributed to global warming (Gilg et al., 2012). The decrease in the extent of sea ice is on the order of 5% per decade in the Arctic (Liu et al., 2004; Serreze et al., 2007), and it is expected that this trend of disappearing sea ice will continue with the strongest losses predicted in the southern Arctic seas, including the Barents Sea area. Changes in the physical environment linked with global warming have become evident in the marine food web, for example, by shifts in the breeding phenology of sea birds (Barbraud and Weimerskirch, 2006; Moe et al., 2009). The Arctic terrestrial ecosystem has been affected as well, which includes changes in ecosystem functioning such as increased primary production (Madsen et al., 2011; Sistla et al., 2014).
One of the species directly affected by global warming is the polar bear (Ursus maritimus) whose life history is closely tied to sea ice (Lunn and Stirling, 1985; Ramsay and Hobson, 1991). Evidence is accumulating that polar bears are suffering from a warming climate and associated loss of sea ice habitat (Stirling et al., 1999; Derocher et al., 2004; Stirling and Derocher, 2012). It is expected that continued sea ice reductions will severely affect polar bear populations (Durner et al., 2009), which will force them into terrestrial ecosystems during the summer months in search of food (Stempniewicz, 1993; Drent and Prop, 2008; Rockwell and Gormezano, 2009; Smith et al., 2010; Hanssen et al., 2013; Prop et al., 2013; Iverson et al., 2014). Several studies have documented that polar bears on land can potentially have a large impact on their prey, in particular when bears feed on bird eggs (Drent and Prop, 2008; Smith et al., 2010; Prop et al., 2013; Iverson et al., 2014).
The occurrence of polar bears on land raises two fundamental questions. Firstly, what are the underlying causes of this shift? A major cause could be related to changes in sea ice conditions, as suggested by Iverson et al. (2014). Secondly, what is the role of polar bears as a novel top-predator in terrestrial habitats near the coast? To examine the role of polar bears in these terrestrial habitats, direct observations are needed, and these should be carried out including the periods before and after the appearance of bears.
In this paper, we document changes in the summer distribution of polar bears by exploring their relative presence at several locations on Spitsbergen and one location in Greenland. Based on the patterns of occurrence, which were collected over a period of >40 years, we assess the factors that may have contributed to the summer range expansion of polar bears. We test the hypothesis that the bear incursions on land are related to changes in sea ice conditions. Furthermore, we explore the effects of polar bears on the reproductive success of colonial breeding birds at one of our study locations.
Methods
Study Areas
Observations were collected along the west coast of Spitsbergen, which is the largest island in the Svalbard archipelago, and the east coast of Greenland. The study areas on Spitsbergen are composed of flat tundra stretches of up to 15 km wide, delineated by steep mountains and glaciers (Hisdal, 1998). Large fjords intersect the area, and islands are scattered along the coast, with many of these areas hosting breeding colonies of barnacle geese (Branta leucopsis), common eiders (Somateria mollissima) and glaucous gulls (Larus hyperboreus). Further bird nesting aggregations occur on tundra flats [e.g., colonies of pink-footed geese (Anser brachyrhynchus)], shore cliffs, and mountains (Kovacs and Lydersen, 2006).
Traill Island is part of the North East Greenland coastal fringe that is deeply indented by a network of long fjords. At the outer coast, the extent of annual landfast ice is delineated by a sharp ice edge that separates it from southward moving drift ice of varying extent, originating from the Arctic Ocean. The coastal zones contain breeding habitats for several bird species (Boertmann, 1994). In contrast to Svalbard, barnacle geese breed here exclusively on cliffs, and this applies also to small aggregations of glaucous gulls. Arctic terns (Sterna paradisaea), common eiders and long-tailed ducks (Clangula hyemalis) mainly nest on small rocky islands. These species may delay onset of breeding until ice breakup in mid-July.
We compiled data from a total of five locations in Svalbard and Greenland: Hornsund, Bellsund, Nordenskiöldkysten, and Kongsfjorden on the west coast of Spitsbergen (77–79°N); and Traill Island on the east coast of Greenland (72–73°N) (Figure 1). Descriptions of these locations are in Supplement 1.
FIGURE 1
Figure 1. Location of the study areas: (1) Hornsund, (2) Bellsund, (3) Nordenskiöldkysten, (4) Kongsfjorden (1–4 on Spitsbergen, Svalbard) and (5) Traill Island (east Greenland). Supplement 1 provides detailed maps of each of the areas (Figure S1), a photographic impression of the study animals (Figure S2), and a map indicating the locations of sea ice extractions (Figure S3).
Biological Data
Bear Occurrence
Observations were initiated in the 1970s or 1980s and continued until recently (Table 1). We restricted our analyses to June–July on Spitsbergen and 15 June–15 August in Greenland, where coastal ice breaks up later. The time spent by the biologists in the field averaged over the years and locations was 44 days, but this varied among years and locations (Supplement 1, Table S1).
TABLE 1
Table 1. Summary of variables on biological data and sea ice acquired for the different locations.
The five locations differed in the way the observations were recorded and which data were obtained (Table 1). From all the locations, we had information on “annual bear presence,” which is a binary variable denoting whether at least one bear had been observed or not. However, all polar bear observations were recorded in Nordenskiöldkysten, Kongsfjorden and Traill Island, which enabled us to calculate the number of bear days (e.g., two bear days may result from either two individuals being present for 1 day or one bear staying for 2 days).
Study localities may have differed in observation effort and detectability of bears. On Nordenskiöldkysten, daily observations were collected from several vantage points, including an observation tower that provided an extensive overview over the wide landscape. No observation towers were used at the other locations, but the nearby surroundings were scanned for polar bears as a measure of field safety. In all cases, the observations were done by experienced observers while doing fieldwork, typically on breeding birds. The spatial and temporal scale of the fieldwork was comparable between successive years within locations. We expect that any differences in detection probabilities were consistent over the years; thus, they should not affect any of the trends that we report.
Predation Rates on Birds
Polar bear predation rates on birds were obtained on Nordenskiöldkysten during the years 2004–2014 (all years except 2005–2006). On the island Diabasøya, which hosts the main bird colony of the area (Supplement 1, Figure S1), nests were monitored 6–16 h per day during the period that nesting geese or eiders were present. An observation tower on the mainland provided a good view of the island, which was 100 m off shore. Nests in view of the tower were mapped on high-resolution photographs of the island, which enabled us to assess the breeding history of individual birds. The species concerned were the barnacle goose, common eider and glaucous gull. As gull nests were not restricted to the island, all nests on rocky outcrops in adjacent bays visible from the observation tower were also recorded. Daily nest records included the following categories: settling (nest owners exhibit territorial behavior, and/or extensive nest building), incubating, nest predated (eggs or chicks taken by polar bear), nest successful (at least one egg hatching), and nest abandoned (nest owners abandon the nest territory, usually associated with removal of eggs by glaucous gulls). After the breeding season, all nests in the colony were mapped to determine the total number of nest sites for each species. Geese and eiders were only vulnerable to polar bear predation during the egg phase and during the first day after hatching, after which they departed from the colony; glaucous gulls had an extended period of predation as unfledged chicks stayed in the colony. Further details are given in Supplement 1 (Methods—Establishing predation rates).
We calculated two measures of predation intensity. (1) For each observation year (2004, 2007–2014), the closely monitored nests were used to calculate the proportion of predated nest attempts for species S as PNP s = (number of nest predations s )/(number of nest attempts s ). We obtained this measure only for barnacle geese and glaucous gulls as the number of common eider nests in view was too low to assume an unbiased sample. (2) In 2009–2014, we determined the number of bear predations by non-stop records of polar bear behavior in the breeding colony. For these years, we obtained a measure of predation intensity, which is different from the previous measure by considering the number of (physical) nest sites rather than nest attempts: the predation ratio PR s = (number of predations s )/(number of nests locations s ). This ratio may exceed 1.0 as a nest site may be used by several successive individuals, and thus potentially predated multiple times through the season. Further details are given in Supplement 1 (Methods—Establishing predation rates).
Sea Ice Data
Large-Scale Conditions at Sea
To assess large-scale conditions of sea ice, we downloaded data on sea ice concentrations from the website of the University of Colorado [see Supplement 1 (Methods—Large-scale sea ice data) for link]. We extracted daily sea ice concentrations from the period 1979–2013 (Table 1) from four 25 × 25 km cells at each of six different locations: southwest Spitsbergen, west Spitsbergen, northwest Spitsbergen, north Spitsbergen, east Spitsbergen, and east Greenland (Supplement 1, Figure S3). Sea ice formation and disappearance follow a seasonal pattern with maximum concentrations in late winter (usually March) and minimum in autumn (usually September). We therefore structured each year of data as the period from 1 September to 31 August (Supplement 2, Figures S1–S6). By using a threshold sea ice concentration of 30% based on work in the Canadian Arctic (Iverson et al., 2014), we then calculated two sea ice indices. The length of the ice season was calculated as the number of days from the first day with sea ice >30% to the last day with sea ice >30%. The latter was also used to define the start of the ice-free season. When sea ice concentrations were never above 30% during a year, start of the ice-free season was set at 0 (1 January). We also calculated monthly mean sea ice concentrations for April, May, June and July.
Fine-Scale Conditions in Fjords and Coastal Sites
As opposed to the large-scale data, fine-scale data on sea ice conditions were only available for the most recent years (Table 1). We downloaded ice maps for 2004 and 2007–2014 (April–July) from www.met.no/Hav_og_is to describe ice conditions in coastal areas in relation to the timing of bird breeding seasons. The maps are high-resolution sea ice concentration charts that are mainly based on weather-independent images from the Radarsat-2 satellite. The spatial resolution is sufficiently high (approximately 50 m) to analyze ice conditions in coastal areas, including fjords. Ice concentrations are classified by six categories. For the purpose of our study, we selected the three densest categories: dense drift ice (70–90% cover), very dense drift ice (90–100%), and fast ice. Ice data were analyzed for the coastal areas of Hornsund (southwest Spitsbergen), Bellsund/Van Mijenfjorden (west Spitsbergen), Kongsfjorden/Krossfjorden (northwest Spitsbergen), Woodfjorden (north Spitsbergen), Isbukta, Kvalvågen, Dunérbukta, and Sørporten (east Spitsbergen), and Traill Island (east Greenland) (see Supplement 1, Figure S4, for locations). Annual ice availability was characterized in two ways: (1) the ice data were aggregated by season to estimate the average amount of ice; and (2) the sea ice data were subjected to a non-linear (4-parameter |
, Rachel McCluskey, 17, Teresa Meyer, 16, and her sister Kathleen Meyer, 14, all of Indianapolis, react to a near goal for the U.S. during the Belgium vs. USA World Cup first round tournament game viewing party on Mass Ave., in Indianapolis, on Tuesday, July 1, 2014. Belgium won the game 2-1 in extra time. (Photo: Anna Reed/The Star Anna Reed/The Star)Buy Photo
By 10 a.m., the line outside Chatham Tap began snaking its way down the street. Kickoff wasn't for six hours, but everyone in town knew this much: Fans foolish enough to show up at kickoff weren't getting a seat.
By 4 p.m., Peter Wilt delivered his pep talk, introduced the mayor to the masses and, eventually, retreated to his car. The president of Indiana's professional soccer team realized he needed to find another spot to watch the game. The viewing party he'd helped plan was too crowded.
And by sundown, after some 6,500 had stood and shouted and sweat on Mass Ave. in Downtown Indianapolis, they slogged their way home. The U.S. men's soccer team had ultimately succumbed to the Belgian blitzkrieg, falling agonizingly yet unforgettably in extra time, 2-1, in the second round of the World Cup.
The dream was dead. The ride was over.
And yet, it felt like a beginning.
COLUMN: World Cup fever more about patriotism than soccer
YOUTH MOVEMENT: U.S. has hope for future
For the sport, and for this city, Tuesday was a telling afternoon. Never has the collective affection for the game been as strong or as widespread. Never have thousands of fans stood in the sweltering sun for hours to watch soccer on video screens, soaring with every Tim Howard save (all 16 of them!) and slumping with every botched chance in front of the Belgium goal (Wondolowski, how could you?!). Never has the phrase "I believe that we will win" been barked with such zeal.
And never has soccer, so long a sporting afterthought in these parts — relegated to a niche status and beloved only by Saturday morning, ale-drinking diehards — unified the city so. Make no mistake: Indy embraced the game like never before.
Is Indianapolis a football town? Absolutely.
A basketball town? Always.
A soccer town? It has sure felt like it the past few weeks.
"Surreal," Wilt, the Indy Eleven president, called the moment he gazed out and saw the throngs of soccer supporters who filled Mass Ave. Tuesday afternoon. "But it's a sign of where the sport is going. It's not a fad sport. It's not a sport with a false foundation."
Wilt knows. Beginning in October 2012, he poured in three months of research to determine if Indianapolis could support a professional soccer outfit. Nine games into the Indy Eleven era, the results are indicative of the game's soaring popularity in this city: The team has sold out every home match and owns its league's largest attendance average by a considerable margin.
Enter the Americans' stirring run into the knockout round of the World Cup. Soccer became hip like never before.
The game took center stage in Indianapolis and nationwide. Television ratings soared — ESPN's U.S.-Belgium broadcast Tuesday was its highest-ever for a World Cup game — and exceeded that of the World Series and NBA Finals. Indianapolis, which according to Nielsen ratings finished 22nd in the country in viewing for the U.S.-Belgium game, registered a 9.3 rating, well ahead of Midwest counterparts Louisville (8.3), Detroit (8.3) and St. Louis (8.2).
Overall, Indianapolis was tied for 41st in the country in World Cup viewership, according to statistics provided by ESPN.
Watch parties, like the ones on Mass Ave. and in Carmel, dotted the country, seas of red, white and blue celebrating the sport with a style typically reserved for European juggernauts.
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"Even a few years ago, I couldn't have ever imagined something like that," said Andrew Retz, vice president of the Indy chapter of the soccer fan group American Outlaws. "You just don't normally see that sort of thing in this town.
"I can't even imagine if we'd tied it up (in extra time). It'd have been pure madness."
According to FIFA, more than 200,000 tickets to the tournament were purchased by Americans, second-most in the world to only host Brazil. Colts quarterback Andrew Luck, an admitted soccer nut who made the trip to Brazil, was one of them.
There was no question, regardless of a U.S. win or loss Tuesday: Soccer is hot right now in the states. The question we're left with: Now that the Americans are headed home, how long until it cools?
Wilt contends it is here to stay, especially in Indianapolis. He notes a flurry of factors at play here, each of which helped shape his decision to help lure pro soccer back to this city after three franchises previously came and flopped: A growing ethnic population, a booming youth soccer base and a millennial crowd that religiously follows the English Premier League.
"Soccer is becoming part of people's lifestyles," he said.
Daniel Jones' Mass Ave. soccer haven, Chatham Tap, offers proof. His bar is routinely filled by breakfast time on Saturdays, where patrons guzzle craft beer and watch EPL games on big screen TVs. With soccer seeping out into the mainstream in the past few weeks, Chatham became the capital of Indy's soccer obsession.
"We were full by noon Tuesday, and had to turn away fans by 2," Jones said. "We opened seven years ago, and I never thought something like this would have been possible.
"All those people on Mass Ave.? What a sight to see."
One of Chatham's patrons Tuesday was Mayor Greg Ballard, who after speaking to the crowd found a table saved for him. He stayed for every last minute of the U.S. heartbreaker.
In the coming months and years, the surest local gauge of whether soccer has truly arrived will be Wilt's Eleven. Will they continue to fill their stands in the fall, after the Colts return to work? Will their season-ticket sales take a hit if the team (currently 0-5-4 in league play) does not produce on the field?
It all, of course, remains to be seen. Soccer, like the Olympics, has a tendency to fade from the American sports conscious when not in session. But the country saw progress over the past few weeks. So did Indianapolis.
Tuesday was 11 months to the day the city hosted an exhibition between foreign powers Chelsea and Inter Milan. A crowd of 41,983 flocked to Lucas Oil Stadium that night.
A flash in the pan, or another sign of a soccer-starved city?
"That, to me, was an indicator that Indianapolis was turning into a soccer town," Wilt said. "Tuesday verified it."
Call Star reporter Zak Keefer at (317) 444-6134 and follow him on Twitter: @zkeefer.The planned Benson Henderson vs. Michael Johnson fight is not happening July 12 after all.
According to sources with knowledge of the situation, Henderson was forced to withdraw from the fight, which was never officially announced by the UFC, due to undisclosed reasons. It is unclear at this time whether Johnson will remain on the card.
On Friday, the UFC announced the event was moving from Florida to Las Vegas. It will serve as the TUF 21 Finale the day after UFC 189 at the MGM Grand, and the new main event will be Jake Ellenberger vs. Stephen Thompson, which was originally scheduled to take place July 11.
Johnson (16-8) has won his last four fights in a row. He most recently defeated Edson Barboza via unanimous decision in February and afterwards said he would like to fight Henderson next.
Henderson (22-5), who immediately agreed to the Johnson fight publicly, is coming off one of the most inspiring wins of his career in February when he moved up to welterweight to submit prospect Brandon Thatch on just two weeks' notice.Illegal Immigrants Jump Fence During MSNBC Report on Border Wall
Prototypes for Trump's Border Wall Displayed in California
An MSNBC report on President Donald Trump's proposed border wall took a strange turn when illegal immigrants jumped the existing fence while the camera was rolling.
President of the National Border Patrol Council Brandon Judd said this is "proof positive" that we need to ramp up security along the U.S.-Mexico border.
"Imagine if there wasn't a [fence] there. Imagine how many people would have come across," Judd said on "Fox & Friends First." "We need the wall."
He said Trump is following through on his promise to secure the border and keep Americans safe, but he doesn't get any credit from the left because they are playing politics.
He said the we don't need a "Great Wall of the United States" stretching across the entire border, but instead a wall in strategic locations that allows the Border Patrol to dictate where illegal border crossings will take place.
"If we're able to dictate, then we'll be a lot more successful in being able to apprehend those that cross the border illegally," Judd explained.
He added that he's encouraged to see companies building wall prototypes and competing for contracts to build the wall.
"This is the business aspect of President Trump," Judd said. "We've never seen something where they're actually getting a bunch of companies to come out and make bids and put their own money into these prototypes. This is the business mind that he brought to the United States, and the public is happy with it."
Watch more above.
Malkin: Trump Standing Firm on Border Wall Despite 'Unprecedented' Level of Attacks
Watters: If Terror Cells Come Through Mexico, Dems Would Vote to Fund Wall
AZ Senate Candidate Kelli Ward: Flake's Retirement Means 'America-First' Goes to 'Forefront'(Brian Snyder/Reuters)
Everything Bill and Hillary touch ends up in a police report.
The list of New York’s legendary crime families — the Bonannos, Colombos, Gambinos, Genoveses, and Luccheses — requires this addition: The Clintons.
Hardly a day passes without Hillary, Bill, or one of their gang landing in hot water. The Clintons’ inner circle teems with people embroiled in scandal, under investigation, or heading into or out of jail.
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‐ In a report that surfaced Wednesday, the State Department inspector general pulverized Hillary’s claims that her outlaw e-mail server was perfectly legal. The report said that Hillary “did not comply with the Department’s policies that were implemented in accordance with the Federal Records Act.”
When staffers warned that her private server was vulnerable to hackers, they were ordered “never to speak of the Secretary’s personal e-mail system again.” Indeed, in a January 9, 2011, e-mail, technology aide Bryan Pagliano wrote, “We were attacked again so I shut [the server] down for a few min.” And when then–deputy chief of staff Huma Abedin suggested that Hillary use government e-mail, she chose personal secrecy over national security: “I don’t want the personal being accessible.”
Earlier in this fiasco, Hillary said, “I’m more than ready to talk to anybody, anytime. And I’ve encouraged all of [my staffers] to be very forthcoming.” Those were mere words. In fact, the report states, “Secretary Clinton declined OIG’s request for an interview,” as did Abedin, then–chief of staff Cheryl Mills, former deputy chief of staff Jake Sullivan, and four others who served Hillary at State.
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RELATED: Hillary’s Sad Promise: Bill Is Her Talisman That Will Magically ‘Revitalize the Economy’
Meanwhile, as many as 49 FBI agents are exploring the criminality and possible intelligence damage wrought by Clinton’s Chappaqua server and the 2,115 classified e-mails it contained.
‐ According to Forbes, the Clintons went from — as Hillary put it — “dead broke” in early 2001 to earning $230 million through 2014. This happened while she made between $145,100 and $174,000 annually as a U.S. senator from 2001 to 2009 and $186,600 as secretary of state through 2013.
What’s the Clintons’ secret? They seemingly wrap their fingers in fly paper — to grab as many Benjamins as possible.
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While Hillary was at State, Bill was a speech-making machine. He charged up to $750,000 per appearance, often paid by Ericsson, TD Bank, the United Arab Emirates, and other entities with business before the State Department.
After Hillary left office, she cashed in, too.
As journalist Michael Walsh detailed in the May 22 New York Post, Hillary racked up $21.6 million in lecture fees between 2013 and 2015, usually at $225,000 each. Cynics might call these down payments for future services rendered, if she were to win the White House.
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‐ Meanwhile, Bill has survived House impeachment, Senate acquittal, and subsequent disbarment. He credibly has been accused of sexual assault by former White House volunteer Kathleen Willey. He paid $850,000 to settle former Arkansas state employee Paula Jones’s sexual harassment suit. And former Arkansas nursing-home manager Juanita Broaddrick very believably says that then–gubernatorial candidate Clinton raped her in 1978.
The suspected sex crimes continue.
The Clintons seemingly wrap their fingers in fly paper — to grab as many Benjamins as possible.
As Fox News’s Malia Zimmerman reported on May 13, Bill Clinton traveled at least 26 times aboard The Lolita Express, a 727 owned by convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein. Nicknamed after Vladimir Nabokov’s novel about man–girl love, the airplane reportedly features an oversized bed on which passengers had group sex with female teenagers. Flight logs filed with the FAA show Bill and Epstein’s other guests jetting to the Azores, Brunei, Hong Kong, and other destinations. On at least five such excursions, Bill evidently dismissed his Secret Service detail. Epstein, whose 72-acre Caribbean retreat is dubbed Orgy Island, spent 13 months in prison and house arrest for procuring minors for prostitution.
‐ The FBI and the Justice Department’s Public Integrity Division are probing Governor Terry McAuliffe (D., Va.) for possibly taking illegal campaign donations from Chinese businessman Wang Wenliang, CNN revealed on Tuesday. McAuliffe co-chaired Bill’s 1996 reelection campaign and chaired Hillary’s 2008 presidential bid. Wang reportedly gave $120,000 to McAuliffe’s gubernatorial campaign and $2 million to the Clinton Foundation. According to Time, Wang met Hillary at a 2013 fundraiser in her Washington, D.C., home.
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RELATED: Yes, Hillary Was an Enabler
‐ Mayor Bill de Blasio (D., N.Y.), Hillary’s senatorial campaign manager, is under FBI investigation for possible pay-to-play fundraising among a variety of moneyed interests.
‐ At least four major donors to and a trustee of the Clinton Foundation have been convicted and even jailed for conspiracy, fraud, money laundering, witness tampering, and other felonies.
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‐ And don’t forget Ed Mezvinsky, Chelsea Clinton’s father-in-law. He spent five years in federal prison for running a $10 million Ponzi scheme.
#related#How do these people get away with this?
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When it comes to the Clintons, the snarling watchdogs of the media — whose freedom to scrutinize the powerful was enshrined in the First Amendment by the Founding Fathers — are as menacing as a backyard full of puppies.
They say that criminals always return to the scene of the crime. Voters must decide if they will send the Clinton crime family back to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.Last week, the House debated an NDP motion to replace our first-past-the-post electoral system with a mixed-member proportional (MMP) representation model after the next federal election. The motion was defeated by a vote of 166-110, but the New Democrats did receive the support of 16 Liberals. (In 2014, Liberal party delegates voted in favour of a motion that considered “a preferential ballot and/or a form of proportional representation.”) Herein, NDP democratic reform critic Craig Scott explains why his party prefers MMP and how he foresees an NDP government implementing such a system.
Last week, all NDP MPs were joined by Green party MPs and other Independents in voting for my House of Commons motion that would make 2015 the last election to be conducted under a “winner-take-all” voting system like the one we currently have, and that would commit MPs to seek to replace it with a mixed-member proportional representation system. Sixteen of 31 Liberal party MPs voted with the NDP in favour of my motion—a major breakthrough, given that the Liberal party has an official policy that does not support proportional representation.
However, Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau himself voted against the motion, alongside the other half of the Liberal parliamentary caucus.
In so doing, he reaffirmed the strong opposition to proportional representation that he has voiced in the past. Trudeau seems unbothered by a system that allows a party to receive far less than 50 per cent of the popular vote but be rewarded with well over 50 per cent of the seats in the House, e.g., when the Conservatives’ 39.5 per cent of the popular vote in the 2011 general election translated into what we call a “false majority” of 54 per cent of the seats in the House of Commons.
A mixed-proportional system—like the ones used in Scotland, New Zealand and Germany—is often described as a “best of both worlds” electoral system because it upholds two principles simultaneously. It allows Canadians to continue to directly elect local MPs in single-member constituencies where they live, and it simultaneously ensures that the number of seats each party wins in the House of Commons reflects the percentage of the popular vote that they received, i.e., it ends “false majorities.”
From the voter’s perspective, it can be thought of, more informally, as a “one ballot, two votes” system. When a voter goes into the voting booth, she is faced with two choices to make, two votes to cast.
She first ticks which candidate she wishes to become the local constituency MP—as voters currently do. But she then has a second vote. On the ballot, she turns to a regional list of names presented for election by the party she prefers to have the most seats in the House of Commons. Under the NDP’s preferred system, she then decides whether to tick the party name alone (and thereby accept the existing order of the names on the list) or tick the name of a person on the list whom she wants to see go to the House of Commons ahead of others on the list. The MPs going to the House of Commons from each party are a mix of the local constituency MPs and the regional (list) MPs.
The fact that a voter has two votes generates an additional benefit, beyond respecting, at one and the same time, the above two principles of representation. Consider first that, in our current system, voters have a single vote that is supposed to integrate one’s preference for which person should be MP and also one’s preference of a party to support. These preferences do not always mesh, for many voters. Voters are frequently faced with the dilemma of voting for a less preferred local riding candidate in order to support their favoured party, or for a less preferred party in order to support someone whom they see as the best person to be MP.
In contrast and what’s very important is that, under German, Scottish or New Zealand mixed-member proportional representation, a citizen can vote for a local MP from one party (or for an Independent) with her first vote and choose a different party to support with her second vote. This ability to separate the party from the local riding candidate makes it easier for local MPs to receive the support of people of all political stripes and to be supported for their constituency-representation credentials, versus only for the party they happen to belong to. This increases the nature and degree of support MPs bring with them into the House of Commons, thus strengthening their independence vis-a-vis party positions the MP may strongly oppose.
More generally, it is important to note other benefits of proportional representation. In countries where it has been introduced, it tends to reduce partisanship by promoting more collegial cross-party law-making. It helps to increase voter turnout, because people no longer see their votes as “wasted.” It ensures that representation from a region is not dominated by monolithic blocks of MPs from a single party; for example, 27 of 28 of MPs from Alberta and 13 of 14 from Saskatchewan are Conservative MPs, which completely distorts the diversity of perspectives of those populations. And it boosts the representation of women and of marginalized groups in Parliament, due to the fact that parties (of all political persuasions) tend to make sure their party lists pay attention to gender equity and demographic diversity.
In arguing for my motion in the House, I said to Liberal MPs that we were extending our hand to achieve agreement on proportional representation—in concrete, implementable terms—before the next election. The Liberal party’s “position” that it will merely study proportional representation—and, even then, only do so after the next election—is simply not good enough, I argued.
By voting for my motion, it seems at least half the current Liberal caucus now agrees with the NDP, even if Trudeau does not.
And that is a very good thing, because there would be nothing healthier for the future of Canada’s parliamentary democracy than to have the NDP, Greens and Liberals all clearly and irretrievably committed before the next election to implementing proportional representation after the election.
As for the NDP, the House of Commons motion flows from 18 months of me and NDP deputy critic for democratic reform, Alexandrine Latendresse, touring the country on a listening and learning tour about mixed-member proportional representation. And it flows from the firm and frequent support of the NDP leader for proportional representation.
Tom Mulcair has been unequivocal that he’s committed to making 2015 the last unfair election.
An NDP government would introduce a system of mixed-member proportional representation within our first term in office. We will do this by first having an all-party task force work closely with experts and consult thoroughly with citizens on the best design features of an adapted-to-Canada mixed-member proportional representation system. Legislation will then be tabled based on the task force recommendations, and a parliamentary timetable adhered to that will ensure the legislation can be adopted, then implemented in time for proportional representation to be in place for the 2019 federal election.
The Liberals’ divided vote on my motion in the House of Commons on Wednesday makes two things clear.
First, it is not just proportional representation in a general sense, but mixed-member proportional representation that is desirable and necessary to reform our electoral system. Second, the NDP—united in its support for proportional representation—can be trusted to make sure it actually happens after 2015.
The next election has to be the opportunity for Canadians to vote for the transformative democratic change a large majority of Canadians want—and actually get it. I very much hope the Liberals will join the NDP and the Greens in realizing this.Trump and Christie at a campaign event in New Jersey. | AP Photo/Mel Evans Trump closes up shop in New Jersey
Donald Trump and his supporters claimed, once the Republican nomination was wrapped up, that traditionally blue New Jersey could be in play come November.
With great fanfare, Trump's campaign opened a New Jersey office on May 3 in Edison, which attracted a crowd of more than 1,000 supporters, according to a local news account.
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Later that month, when one statewide poll showed Trump within 4 points of Hillary Clinton in the state, the Republican nominee projected confidence about the outcome.
”I think so,” Trump told Fox News host Sean Hannity on May 31, when asked if he could win New Jersey. “I mean, I love New Jersey. I am New Jersey. Like a second home. I have property there. I have a lot of employees there. And frankly, I think we're going to do well."
But the Trump campaign appears to have pulled up stakes in the Garden State.
After two messages left at the number of Trump’s New Jersey headquarters were not returned, POLITICO visited the nondescript suburban complex listed as its address.
That office no longer exists.
There were few signs the Trump campaign ever occupied the now-vacant office space — save for several peeled-off Trump campaign stickers visible through the front door.
Trump's latest FEC filing shows the campaign last made a rent payment on May 11 for the Edison property. The campaign vacated the office at least a month ago, according to two employees of the paper company located next door.
Republican state Sen. Joseph Pennacchio, one of Trump’s few vocal backers in the New Jersey Legislature, said the campaign’s plan all along was to close the office after New Jersey’s primary on June 7.
But that timing was odd. The opening party for the Edison headquarters was the same night as the Indiana primary, when Trump’s victory over Ted Cruz essentially sealed the Republican nomination for Trump, making future contests, including New Jersey’s, a formality.
The invitation to the opening event did not mention that the headquarters was meant to be temporary, and even Pennacchio acknowledged he was unaware of the plan at the time.
“I didn’t get that memo either,” Pennacchio said.
Pennacchio said the Trump campaign hopes to open another office in New Jersey, though he knows of no immediate plans to do so.
A spokewoman for Trump's campaign, Hope Hicks, did not respond to a request for comment.
After publication, Trump spokesman Jason Miller, said the campaign is still "competing hard in the state."
"The Trump primary campaign office closed up shop as planned after the June primary election, and, as was intended all along, we are working with the NJ GOP to locate our staff and general election headquarters with them later this month," Miller said in a statement.
The closure of the New Jersey office comes as Trump's campaign has attempted to professionalize its operations and focus on a handful of key states, following Trump's grand pronouncements during the primary that he would compete in states like California and New York.
Despite Trump's professed bullishness after trailing by just four points in May, a more recent poll showed Clinton with a double-digit lead. New Jersey has 700,000 more registered Democrats than Republicans and hasn't voted for a GOP presidential candidate since 1988.
Catherine Martinez, New Jersey state director for the Trump campaign, did not return a call to her cell phone or a Twitter message.
Martinez was paid just over $10,000 by the Trump campaign on May 31, but did not receive any payments in June (aside from a travel reimbursement).
Two other staffers were also paid within a few days of the June 7 primary.
Spencer Silverman, a Franklin & Marshall student who served as an intern for Chris Christie until March, but now lists himself as the New Jersey field director for the Trump campaign, according to his LinkedIn page, was paid just over $5,000 on June 8.
Leonel Cantiolo, who also lists himself as the campaign's New Jersey field director, was paid $3,261 on June 10. Neither received additional payments in June. Spending data for July is not yet available.
The former Donald Trump New Jersey headquarters in Edison. | Matt Friedman
By contrast, Hillary Clinton opened four campaign headquarters in New Jersey, including one at the Middlesex County Democratic headquarters, located in Metuchen, just a few miles from the site of the former Trump headquarters.
POLITICO also visited that office unannounced and found a few people inside, surrounded by Hillary Clinton campaign signs, cardboard cutouts of Clinton and President Obama, and a list of phone bank volunteers on a clipboard. Nobody in the office wanted to comment, instead referring questions to Middlesex County Democratic Chairman Kevin McCabe and a spokeswoman, Julie Roginsky.
McCabe said about 15 to 20 volunteers come to the Middlesex office about twice a week to make calls for the Clinton campaign, often calling voters in other, more competitive states.
Roginsky, a Democratic strategist, said the fact that the Trump campaign opened an office and shut it down so quickly was “all smoke and mirrors.”
“It’s not a surprise that he’s written off New Jersey because for the first time in my political life, he has to worry about winning states like Arizona and Georgia,” Roginsky said.
Trump's New Jersey supporters remain hopeful that he will make inroads in the state.
Asked how Trump could compete in deep blue New Jersey when Clinton is competing in traditionally Republican state, Pennacchio said “the election is three months from now.”
“Hopefully... all the white noise stops and we can start focusing in on Hillary Clinton,” he said.
NOTE: This story has been updated to include the comment from a Trump campaign spokesman.An 11-year-old girl in the Bronx was severely burned earlier this week after a friend dumped a pot of boiling water on her face and back while she was sleeping over at a friend's house, authorities said.
The alleged assault occurred late Sunday night in the Bronx, during a slumber party attended by several other pre-teen girls in the vicinity of Findlay Avenue and East 166th Street in the Bronx, according to police. During the slumber party, one 12-year-old decided to dump a pot of scalding hot water on the victim, reportedly as part of a "game that is sweeping the country called the 'hot water challenge.'"
That game, according to the NY Post, can either involve pouring boiling water on unsuspecting targets or drinking boiling water, then uploading the footage to social media. Like other supposedly popular teen and pre-teen trends seized on by the media, it’s not immediately clear whether this is an actual craze, or simply nightmare fodder for concerned parents.
The victim was taken to Harlem Hospital following the ordeal, where she is reportedly in serious but stable condition. Her mother told NY1 her daughter is still experiencing a lot of pain, both physically and emotionally.
"She's emotionally messed up," the mother said. "She don't understand why they did that to her. She thought they was her friends." She added that doctors are not allowing her child to even look at the scars.
The 12-year-old who allegedly dumped the boiling water was arrested the following morning and charged with felony assault, police said.Vaccine clinics are being offered in Lethbridge, Alta., after it was confirmed two students have been treated for measles.
Dr. Vivien Suttorp, the medical officer of health for the south zone, says the biggest concern is the low rate of immunization because it is well beyond the requirements for herd immunity — meaning a larger risk of outbreak.
Suttorp says classmates who haven't had the MMR (measles mumps rubella) vaccine and were exposed to the two students will be quarantined at home for 21 days.
Listen to Suttorp's full interview on The Homestretch below.
The provincial measles, mumps and rubella vaccine immunization rate in Alberta is 84 per cent, but drops to 61 per cent in Lethbridge County and 79 per cent in Lethbridge. Suttorp says more than 85 per cent is needed for the best community immunity.
"You have sub-optimal vaccination rates, so you have a large proportion of susceptible individuals in that population and that's how these sort of diseases — and measles is very, very contagious —... spread," said Dr. Glen Armstrong, a microbiologist at the University of Calgary.
Suttorp said measles has significant impacts on children.
"Measles is still a concerning disease," she said. "There is a reason why we have vaccines for measles, and would like to eradicate measles world-wide — no different than polio."
Clinics being held at Lethbridge Exhibition Park: October 26: 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. at Heritage Hall
October 28: 1 p.m. to 6 p.m. in the Main Pavilion (south entrance)
Alberta Health Services (AHS) has opened a portable isolation containment tent outside the Chinook Regional Hospital.
"Medical staff will be able to direct patients with suspected measles away from physician offices and emergency departments to minimize exposure and contamination within the facilities," said health officials in a release.
The push now is on to contain the virus. Alberta Health Services is holding public immunization clinics in Lethbridge for babies aged six months to a year.
"Because of the current situation, the MMR vaccine is available to younger infants,” said Suttorp.
“It is safe and effective. Infants will still require the regular immunization at one year and again at four to six years of age.”
Kathleen Prince hasn't immunized her kids for measles and says it's the topic of family debate right now.
"I have family members who are pro-vaccination and family members who are against it," she said. "I'm on the fence."
Lethbridge resident Kathleen Prince says she is on the fence when it comes to immunizing her young children. (Devin Heroux/CBC)
People outside the Lethbridge area who want to be immunized are being advised to contact their local public health office to see if their vaccinations are up-to-date.
AHS says symptoms of measles include fever, cough, runny nose or red eyes and a red blotchy rash that appears three to seven days after fever starts.
The rash typically begins behind the ears and on the face, spreading down to the body, and finally to the arms and legs. Measles can spread by coughing and sneezing, or through air currents. Because it is an airborne disease, it is extremely contagious.
There is no cure for measles, but it can be prevented with vaccination.Your browser does not support HTML5 video tag.Click here to view original GIF
New Yorkers have spent the past four hundred years changing the coastal island they call home. It’s easy to forget (or not even realize) that Manhattan—or Mannahatta—was once a thin, marshy outcropping that protected the mainland from the ocean.
But a recent look at the earliest known map of New Amsterdam reminds us: you don’t get to eight million inhabitants without making a few landfills. Ellis Island? Built on landfill, in part. Rikers too. FDR Drive, the World Financial Center, and Battery Park City: yep, they’re all sitting on piles of dirt and trash. In fact, it’s remarkable the East River still exists—a plan from 1911 proposed infilling the river (and parts of the harbor) to reclaim fifty square miles of land.
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Manhattan's topography—real and artificial—reentered public consciousness late last year, after Hurricane Sandy submerged parts of Lower Manhattan. Some engineers think it’s time to expand the shoreline even further to create “soft edges” to absorb the impact of the storm surge—a strange return to the city’s earliest incarnation as a marshland. As politicians and advocates are suddenly refocusing on the waterfront, the map is liable to change yet again—only this time, it'll be to repair and fortify the city against coming storms.
Curious to compare maps of yore to the Manhattan of today, we dug into some online archives. The GIF above begins with a map drawn in 1776 and ends with a 2004 rendition. What happened in between? This:
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The Castello map is the earliest known map of the city, dating back to 1660. Wall Street was the single fortified road, while everything north of Canal was either wild or farmland. Only thirty years later, the city began its first artificial infill project: the construction of new piers along its banks.
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The storied Ratzer Map, from 1770, was the subject of a long New York Times profile last year. There are only three in existence, and it's important because it shows us—in great detail—how Manhattan looked just before urbanization took hold. For example, check out Greenpoint, in Brooklyn—it was named Greenpoint because it supplied most of the growing city's produce.
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A map of Manhattan in 1776, drawn by Bien and Johnson in 1878, shows the city's defenses against the British (insufficient, obviously).
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William Bridges’ map of Manhattan, from 1814, shows inklings of the modern city. "Notice the Empire State Building at 34th Street and 5th Avenue," explain the writers at the Great American Grid. "At the time this map was originally drawn, that area of town was inhabited mostly by squatters, pigs, trees, and hills. The city commissioners had no idea the Empire State Building–let alone elevators, steel, or a city population of 7 million–was just over 100 years away."
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This steel-engraved map by J. H. Colton, from 1836, is an interesting layering of the street grid with the old topography of pre-urban Manhattan. This was a time of explosive growth: as demand for land grew, the city began selling “water lots” along the shore, where daring entrepreneurs could create their own plots. Sometimes, engineers would sink entire ships to create a solid foundation for landfill. [Image Via Codex99].
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By 1900, the original footprint of the city had expanded outwards by almost 1,000 feet on each side. This 1904 map shows us dozens of streetcar routes around the city—a vestige of public transportation long forgotten.
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Manhattan in 1946 is bustling with the post-War economic boom. East River Drive (later, FDR Drive) was built along its eastern edge, which required thousands of tons of landfill. Most of the city’s public housing plots—the ones that flooded during Hurricane Sandy—were built on land created during this era.
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A map that probably hails from the late 60s or early 70s shows us a close approximation to the Manhattan we know today. As the city’s economy shifted away from manufacturing, the demand for new land lessened. And in 1972, when construction started on the World Trade Center, the question of what to do with the excavated soil arose. The solution? Truck it down to the tip of the island to create Battery Park City.
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And then, of course, there's the city we know today.
So tell us: what maps are we missing? Have any fascinating documents from your own city? Post 'em in the comments!on •
The centaur is a creature from ancient Greek mythology that had the |
Service has launched an investigation into the revelations to “determine whether or not all of PBS’s editorial standards were observed”, according to a statement released by the broadcaster on Tuesday and seen by the Hollywood Reporter.
Affleck pointed out that Finding Your Roots was not a news programme but “a show where you voluntarily provide a great deal of information about your family, making you quite vulnerable”. He said the assumption was that producers would respect that participants chose to took part and would not want details aired that could embarrass them or their families. However, he devoted to final paragraph to an apology for trying to hide his family’s slave-owning past.
He wrote: “We deserve neither credit nor blame for our ancestors and the degree of interest in this story suggests that we are, as a nation, still grappling with the terrible legacy of slavery. It is an examination well worth continuing. I am glad that my story, however indirectly, will contribute to that discussion. While I don’t like that the guy is an ancestor, I am happy that aspect of our country’s history is being talked about.”
The emails between Gates and Lynton were published online by WikiLeaks. It is not clear how the pro-transparency group acquired the emails, which it published with up to 30,000 others involving Sony. They are believed to be part of a huge batch stolen last summer in a cyber-attack blamed on a group affiliated to North Korea.
Julian Assange, the editor-in-chief of WikiLeaks, issued a statement saying the leak of the exchange about Affleck was justified because it showed the inner workings and influence of a multinational media giant.
Despite a number of damaging revelations about Sony Pictures executives, the studio’s Japanese parent company, Sony, said it had lost less money than expected in the past financial year. On Wednesday, it revised its consolidated forecast for the year ending 31 March to show higher sales and lower losses than anticipated, trimming its expected net losses from $1.42bn (£949m) to $1.05bn (£702m), Variety reported.When Gary Ashworth moved to Botswana in 2013 to try to start a design business, he immediately told the Student Loans Company that he would be out of the UK. Despite updating the company with his earnings, as requested, last year he discovered that £930 was being demanded by a firm of debt collectors.
The reason for this harsh penalty? He apparently failed to put his date of birth on one of the numerous forms sent by the loan company. Ashworth is just the latest graduate to complain to Guardian Money about what they allege is heavy-handed and unfair treatment at the hands of the SLC, an organisation that appears to be fast turning into one of the UK’s least-liked brands.
The designer, who now lives in Gaborone, was one of the hundreds of graduates to respond to last Saturday’s Money report into the case of Jenny Richards, claiming they had similarly been on the wrong end of poor treatment. In her case, the SLC wrongly quadrupled the interest on her £42,000 loan from 0.9% to 3.9% for a perceived error she had never made. She had also gone abroad, in this instance only for a few months, but then faced a year-long battle to get the SLC to rectify the mistake and provide proof it had done so. Only Money’s intervention finally delivered evidence that her loan wasn’t growing at a higher rate, she says.
Fed-up graduates have since told us of being on the receiving end of similar treatment by the SLC, which many claim is not up to the task of administering the huge sums that student loans have become. They also complain of punitive charges and the bureaucratic nightmare of dealing with the lender. Many are furious it has been allowed to change significantly the terms of borrowing and raise interest rates after loans are taken out.
Ashworth’s case was one of the more extreme. The 37-year-old studied design at what is now Bolton University. “Before I left for Botswana I informed SLC, which asked me to complete an overseas assessment form, which I did, and my loan was frozen for 12 months. I had started a graphic design business, but the market here is saturated meaning it was slow to get going and my income remained below the repayments threshold.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Gary Ashworth
“For the first couple of years SLC was sympathetic. However, last year it all changed and I found myself being contacted by representatives from a company called Transcom, a debt collection agency. My outstanding balance suddenly included a £930 arrears,” he says. Trying to get to the bottom of what had happened entailed countless emails and phone calls over a period of months. Eventually, it emerged that he’d been penalised because he had failed to include his date of birth on a form. “The whole experience was very unpleasant and I felt I wasn’t receiving any support or clarity from SLC. It essentially washed its hands of me. There’s no quick way to contact it when overseas. You can email but it can take 28 days to reply – assuming it bothers to do so,” he says. Ashworth has since paid off the loan apart from the £930, but says he can’t get a straight answer out of the SLC or Transcom as to his exact position.
And he is by no means alone. Those heading abroad appear to have had a particularly difficult time. Another wrote: “The SLC is horrendous to deal with. I’m living abroad studying for a doctorate and, despite sending all requested information, it continues to ask me for it. It’s a bureaucratic nightmare: on the phone they confirm receipt, then I get letters and emails. I repeated this a few times, then was told everything was in order. Next letter I got was to say my loan had been passed to a debt recovery agency.”
SLC is committed to protecting the public purse and has a duty to collect all taxpayer monies owed
A repeated complaint is about the intrusive questioning and demands. Another graduate, who this time gave up his job to switch careers, described the problem of convincing the SLC he wasn’t working because he was not claiming jobseeker’s allowance. It wanted letters from his wife, bank statements and more. The matter took months to resolve, which he contrasts with dealing with HMRC which accepted his changed status with one letter and without fuss. He had considered doing a teaching course but says he decided against it, partly because it would have forced him back into the hands of the SLC.
A spokesman for the SLC told Money that Ashworth has not been hit with £930 penalty charges. Instead, this sum was demanded because he failed to fill in the overseas form for the year starting in February 2015, and it was assumed he was earning above the payments threshold. It has offered to send him a full statement setting out what he has repaid.
“SLC is committed to protecting the public purse and has a duty to collect all taxpayer monies owed. We endeavour to contact all customers who move overseas for a period of three months or more to ensure that those who should be making repayments are doing so, and to distinguish those customers who are not eligible to repay from those that are deliberately trying to avoid repaying.”
He declined to respond to wider questions about the way the SLC is managed.
Difficult dealings – your experiences
“This reminds me of my own student loan nightmare. I had started paying them back (and had made every payment) when, out of the blue, I got a letter saying one of my loans had gone into arrears and that I had to bring payments up to date, pay an arrears fee or face legal action.
No other provider of a loan would be able to operate in the same way
It took ages to sort out – loads of phone calls and time spent going through bank statements before I thought to check the account number of the loan I’d missed payments on. Turns out they had mixed up account numbers and I’d been paying back someone else’s loan while they’d been failing to pay back mine. SLC agreed to cancel the fee but still tried to charge £15 admin for the letter they’d erroneously sent. SLC has always been a terrible organisation, it’s just much worse now the sums involved are around 10 times the amount I borrowed. It’s scandalous.” Norsked
“This ‘company’ is a nightmare. I’ve suffered from all sorts of administrative nightmares, only minor but absolutely opaque. No other provider of a loan would be able to operate in the same way.” Cloud9
“In my experience they have awful record-keeping practices. I phoned recently to find out how much I had paid and what my total loan was (so I could make an early repayment). The person on the end of the phone had to go away for 15 minutes and add up my contributions. When I rang again a day or two later I got a different answer to my questions. Scary when we’re talking 10s of thousands of pounds for most people.” D1255358
“My daughter worked abroad for a year and sent them all the documentation. She set up a direct debit to pay her student loan each month while she was away. At the end of the year she obtained a three-month job in the US. The SLC immediately started taking £250 a month out of her account as they had access to this through her direct debit (originally for a much smaller amount). This put her in financial difficulties. It was sorted out on her return to the UK, but they treat people extremely harshly.” ID5279121
“The government froze the threshold for repayment and hiked the interest rate retroactively, and, despite there being talk of a legal challenge, none has materialised. It appears that in this country, contract law means nothing if your contract is with a government-owned company. The contract I signed is no longer the set of terms I am held to, so the core principles being legally binding on both parties appears to simply not apply any more.” Alexandra Greenway
“The problem is the SLC isn’t regulated like any other company providing personal loans. They are able to fundamentally change the rules: payback thresholds, interest rates, going abroad – whatever they fancy. I was about to start some additional voluntary contributions but my work gave me a warning that SLC will not repay any accidental overpayments! It needs to be regulated in line with other financial services.” MrvincentThree generations come together at We Are Bay Ridge.
In the wake of the controversial presidential election and with the country seemingly split in two, residents of one South Brooklyn neighborhood are laying out the welcome mat.
Bay Ridgeites came together in peace and solidarity on Saturday, January 28 at an afternoon affair appropriately dubbed, We Are Bay Ridge. The event, which took place at the Salam Arabic Lutheran Church (414 80th Street), hosted over 225 people of various ages and backgrounds, in an effort to inspire a sense of togetherness and settle any potential local unrest.
“Right after the election, there were discussions popping up on local Facebook groups, especially one geared toward families,” explained Bay Ridge resident Teri Brennan, one of the event’s many organizers. “Parents were sharing that many of their kids were feeling anxious. Some were worried about what might happen to their families; others were worried about what might happen to their friends.
“Bay Ridge is a diverse neighborhood and that can be a source of friction,” she went on. “We are also a neighborhood that comes together when there is a crisis like 9/11 or Sandy and when a neighbor has a tragedy like a fire or major illness.”
And so, in that spirit, We Are Bay Ridge was born – its promotional fliers decorated with the colors of the Pride flag, and the words “We Are Bay Ridge” in 17 different languages.
“A few of us starting talking about planning an event that would bring the community together, an event that would celebrate our diversity and be inviting for all different kinds of people to come together and get to know one another better,” Brennan said. “We felt that our community would be stronger if we knew each other better. That it would make us more likely to look out for each other. That the more vulnerable among us would feel (and be) safer.”
Brennan and others banded together with groups of local Muslims, Christians, Jews, Unitarians, atheists and more – some American-born, some immigrants – to host the event.
“Some grew up in Bay Ridge, some have lived here for many years, some are relatively new,” Brennan told this paper. “Several speak a language in addition to English. Most of us had never met before and we did this on our own without any organization or community group for backing.”
A number of organizers, she said, used their own money to buy supplies for the event, while others stepped up to donate their own art supplies, games and equipment.
The event’s turnout was similar to its inception.
“For three hours, a couple of hundred neighbors were talking to each other, playing card games, playing with kids, doing crafts, and breaking bread together,” Brennan said, noting that, while many children played, their parents, grandparents and more got to talking about the true meaning of diversity, and how important that definition is today.
The afternoon also included readings from residents of various backgrounds and homelands, as well as a potluck dinner featuring traditional foods from far and wide.
“The feedback from everyone who attended has been wonderful,” Brennan said. “Many attendees met someone new and/or got to know an acquaintance a bit better and that was our goal.”
She and her team certainly did.
“Many members of the planning team made new connections and started some friendships,” Brennan went on, stressing that the event’s name was intended to signify that everyone in the neighborhood is “on equal footing, regardless of where they came from, when they arrived, how they identify, and any other descriptor.”
Brennan attributed much of the event’s success to its strong support from the Salam Arabic Lutheran Church and Our Saviour’s Lutheran Church.
“Our diversity makes us stronger and enriches life in our neighborhood,” she said, looking forward to future events of its kind.
Organizers and supporters included Amie Jo Pappas, Cathy Vargas, Catharine Hanoosh, Danielle Bullock, Irena Vorotnikova Nedeljkovic, Jon Green, Victoria Hofmo, Isabel Ibrahim, Jennifer Kruger, Jennifer Rosenstein, Johanna Conroy, Justin Brannan, Kaleidoscope Toy Store, Reverend Khader El-Yateem, Kristen Pettit, Lina El Younis, Liz Turrigiano, Maggi Ridolfo, Marina Madden, Melanie Cohen, Natasha Stovall, Pamela Sosa-Corso, Rana Abu-Sbaih, Rita Pihra-Majurinen, Rupsha Iqbal, Sarah Castellano, and Shane Spaulding, among others.The report called for workers on fishing boats to be provided written contracts and for the industry to impose a “no fees to workers” rule that prohibits passing on the costs of a job to a worker. Only when companies and the Thai government confront the larger problem of human trafficking will they be able to counter the widespread abuses of these workers, the report concludes.
Nestlé said that next year it would announce new requirements for all potential suppliers as well as the details of a plan for hiring auditors to check for compliance with new rules. Because Nestlé is the world’s biggest food company, the report says, “it is seen as a leader in the industry, and could have a positive impact on the whole industry by raising the bar on labor protection.”
The report was initiated in December 2014 and conducted by the nonprofit organization Verité, which interviewed more than 100 people in Thailand, including deckhands, boat owners and shrimp farmers.
“The report is a step in the right direction,” said Steve Berman, managing partner of the law firm Hagens Berman, which in August filed a class-action lawsuit against Nestlé, claiming that one of its brands, Fancy Feast cat food, was the product of forced labor. “But our litigation will go forward because Nestlé Purina still fails to disclose on its products, as is required by law, that slave labor was used in its making.”We are a few weeks into the Fall season and it has already been a wild one. FOX’s Gotham debuted strong, ABC’s Once Upon A Time had a surprising reurgence for its fourth season while that network’s Agents of SHIELD is sinking fast. And then there was that debut of The Flash for The CW which may single handedly help revive the fifth place network. And now its time to factor all of that into the Power Rankings. Note that it is still early in the season, though, and things can change notably in as little as a month. Gotham‘s ratings have been dropping and they could slip to cancel-able levels. Agents of SHIELD could turn things around and make a run for a third season renewal. It’s really hard to make solid predictions on where these shows will stand by the end of the season, but I can at least tell you how they are tracking now.
For these edition of the Power Rankings and going forward, I have added a new category titled Renewal Possible which will fall between Likely to Get Renewed and On the Bubble. This will grab some of the shows that are doing fair to midlin in the ratings, but either there’s not enough data on them yet or its just too soon to make a solid call on them yet. Among the shows that will be falling into that category in this set of rankings are Sleepy Hollow, Resurrection, and two of the CW shows. I expect these entries to move into more firm categories in the coming weeks, but that will act as a holding bucket for now.
And take note that Nielsen just announced on Friday that they discovered a technical glitch that has impacted all of the early Fall ratings numbers (bet somebody is in hot water over that!) and that they plan on issuing revised results later this week. Once that is factored in, that could impact a few of the shows on these rankings and if necessary I will make some adjustments.
Note that these rankings only look at shows currently airing or those that are returning. New series that have aired one or less episodes will not make it into the rankings yet because I have to have some sort of a sampling to make a determination of their status (that said, I expect The Flash to enter as Sure to Get Renewed in the next edition of these rankings). And import shows like Syfy’s Lost Girl and Bitten or BBC America’s Doctor Who which are not as heavily impacted by their ratings in the States are not included here either. The rankings order the shows by those least likely to get cancelled to those most likely. The number in parenthesis is the show’s prior rank. Any non-cancelled show in its final season will be addressed separately at the bottom. You can see the full schedule for the Fall shows at this link.
Cancellation Alert statuses from least likely to be cancelled to most likely: Low, Moderate, Medium, Elevated, High
Renewed or Sure to Get Renewed:
1 (1) The Walking Dead (AMC) – This one got the sixth season renewal notice before its fifth season even began, but then that’s not a big surprise. The show is a ratings juggernaut and looks to stay that way for a while. Expect it to go out on its own terms rather than ever face cancellation.
Prior Season Rating: 6.8 | Curr Season Target: 2.0 | Cancellation Alert: Renewed
Pros: Strong Ratings, Ratings Increase Year over Year, Strong Social Network Presence
2 (2) Game of Thrones (HBO) – While it’s not quite at The Walking Dead levels, this series set new highs in its fourth season (surpassing The Sopranos as HBO’s most watched series ever) and also regularly beat out most programming on the broadcast networks. It looks poised for an extended stay in the upper rungs of this list.
Prior Season Rating: 3.7 | Curr Season Target: 2.0 | Cancellation Alert: Renewed
Pros: Strong Ratings, Ratings Increase Year over Year, Strong Social Network Presence
3 (3) American Horror Story (FX) – This series has not reached TWD or GoT levels, but its numbers have grown each year and it set another ratings record with its fourth season debut. Even if it were to take an unexpected plunge in the ratings, its anthology format gives it the possibility to rebound each year. I expect this one to remain a mainstay on these charts for a few more years, and expect a fifth season renewal announcement any day.
StD Rating: 3.1 | Prior Season Rating: 2.2 | Curr Season Target: 1.0 | Cancellation Alert: Low
Pros: Strong Ratings, Ratings Increase Year over Year, Strong Social Network Presence
4 (4) Teen Wolf (MTV) – I have this one here because I am assuming the first part of its fifth season will start airing in January like it did last year with the second half of its third. And MTV should definitely plan on getting it on the early 2015 schedule because it had its best ratings performance during the Winter months followed by a drop-off in the Summer. In any case, it continues to perform well for its network and likely has a few more seasons ahead of it.
Prior Season Rating Avg: 0.9 | Curr Season Target: 0.6 | Cancellation Alert: Low
Pros: Ratings Increase Year over Year, Relative Ratings, Strong Social Network Presence
Cons: Ratings Drop in Summer 2014
5 (n/a) Star Wars: Rebels (Disney XD) – The renewal was never really in question for this one as it is more about keeping the franchise going and selling Star Wars products. Consider it likely to stick around as long as Disney wants to keep cranking out episodes.
StD Rating: 0.6 | Prior Season Rating: n/a | Curr Season Target: 0.5 | Cancellation Alert: Renewed
Pros: Recognized Franchise, Good Debut Ratings
6 (5) Arrow (CW) – This is the one broadcast network series almost guaranteed to get a renewal this season. For one, it’s a third season season series meaning that a fourth year will get it to the episode count that the syndication market prefers to see. Also, it airs on the fifth place network which has been known to renew shows even with lagging ratings. Plus, with The Flash joining The CW’s lineup, Arrow is anchoring a DC multi-series lineup on television that could bring more spin-offs. Even a ratings collapse (unlikely) may not doom Arrow based on The CW’s renewal of Beauty and the Beast last season. So you can bank on it still being on the schedule for the 2015-16 season.
StD Rating: 1.0 | Prior Season Rating: 0.9 | Curr Season Target: 0.9 | Cancellation Alert: Low
Pros: Relative Ratings, Fifth Place Network Series, Third Season Series
7 (7) Supernatural (CW) – This show returned for its tenth season with good numbers for The CW and looks to deliver another solid season ratings-wise. I guess this one will keep going as long as the show’s creative team can continue to find new (or recycle old) stories for the Winchester brothers, and any decision to end the show will likely be a planned one. And an eleventh season simply pads out the syndication package that much more and also gets it the record as the longest running sci fi / fantasy show in the U.S. (current record holders are Stargate: SG-1 and Smallville, both at ten seasons).
StD Rating: 1.1 | Prior Season Rating: 1.0 | Curr Season Target: 0.9 | Cancellation Alert: Low
Pros: Relative Ratings, Fifth Place Network Series, Consistent Performer
Likely to Get Renewed:
8 (8) Once Upon A Time (ABC) – Based on the ratings fluctuations from the last two seasons, I was thinking this show might be losing steam and might not have too much life ahead of it. But the Season 4 Frozen crossover has returned the show to ratings highs and it looks like a contender again. Consider it in good shape for now.
StD Rating: 3.5 | Prior Season Rating: 2.2 | Curr Season Target: 1.8 | Cancellation Alert: Low
Pros: Top 25 Based on Ratings, Ratings Improvement Year over Year
9 (n/a) Z Nation (Syfy) – It has averaged a 0.5 rating in the 18-49 demo based on the overnights–good for Syfy these days–and it is certainly an inexpensive series, so it likely counts as a hit for its network. It’s no Walking Dead ratings juggernaut, but Syfy will take what it can get.
StD Rating: 0.5 | Prior Season Rating: n/a | Curr Season Target: 0.4 | Cancellation Alert: Low
Pros: Good Early Ratings, Low Production Costs.
10 (n/a) Gotham (FOX) – This series had a strong debut, but then echoed Recognized Franchise, with a downward slide. It hasn’t dropped that much, though, and it is still performing quite well for a FOX show. If it can level off the decline, then it should be okay.
Prior Season Rating Avg: 2.0 | Curr Season Target: 1.8 | Cancellation Alert: Low
Pros: Strong Early Ratings, Recognized Franchise, Top 25 Based on Ratings
11 (6) Person of Interest (CBS) – This ratings for this show have slipped again in its fourth season and its total viewers have dropped as well (though it is still a Top 20 entry based on that latter metric). It’s probably still okay because it will cross the syndication threshold by the end of the current season and anything beyond that is gravy for its encore run. But if it drops much more, CBS can be pretty ruthless with their under-perfoming shows. Its relative ratings (how it compares next to the other CBS shows) will likely be key to getting a fifth season.
StD Rating: 1.7 | Prior Season Rating: 2.0 | Curr Season Target: 1.8 | Cancellation Alert: Low
Pros: High Total Viewership, Top 25 Based on Viewership
Cons: Ratings Decline Year over Year
12 (9) Grimm (NBC) – This show dropped a few ticks in the ratings last year, but its third season show status helped it earn a fourth season. If it does not drop too much more this year, then it should be safe simply because it plugs up a difficult timeslot on the schedule on low viewership Fridays.
Prior Season Rating: 1.4 | Curr Season Target: 1.2 | Cancellation Alert: Low
Pros: Relative Ratings
Cons: Ratings Decline Year over Year, Ratings Decline in Season
13 (12) From Dusk Till Dawn (El Rey) – It didn’t made a dent in the cable ratings during its first season, but it was on a new network that was more concerned about establishing its brand than waving Nielsen numbers around. This season they may expect better ratings, but I am guessing that El Rey will show some patience and prop it up for a third season run.
Prior Season Rating Avg: 0.2 | Curr Season Target: n/a | Cancellation Alert: Low
Pros: Low Ratings Expectations, New Network
Renewal Possible:
14 (11) Vampire Diaries (CW) – This show has definitely slipped in its sixth season and the The CW is now in danger of losing any foothold on Thursdays where they once performed well. Still, its number aren’t disastrous yet and at worst it could still earn a shortened seventh season to wrap up all its storylines because that’s the way The CW usually rolls.
StD Rating: 0.8 | Prior Season Rating: 1.0 | Curr Season Target: 0.9 | Cancellation Alert: Low
Pros: Relative Ratings, Fifth Place Network Series, Strong Social Network Presence
Cons: Ratings Decline Year over Year, Ratings Decline in Season
15 (13) The Originals (CW) – This show pulled a 0.7 rating on its first Monday out, which at first may not seem like much, but those are actually the best numbers The CW has seen on that night for some time. The scheduling shift may have worked for them in this case.
StD Rating: 0.7 | Prior Season Rating: 0.9 | Curr Season Target: 0.7 | Cancellation Alert: Low
Pros: Relative Ratings, Fifth Place Network Series
16 (14) Resurrection (ABC) – This show hasn’t delivered spectacular numbers in its second season, but they have been good enough thus far. It has to avoid slipping much more, but for right now it looks okay.
StD Rating: 2.3 | Prior Season Rating: 2.5 | Curr Season Target: 2.0 | Cancellation Alert: Low
Pros: Relative Ratings
Cons: Ratings Decline in Season
17 (15) Sleepy Hollow (FOX) – This show’s numbers are definitely down in its second season, but FOX in general has been struggling since last season. Based on the relative numbers, it looks okay for now. And The Following received a renewal last season after posting similar ratings. But Sleepy Hollow doesn’t have much leeway at the moment.
StD Rating: 1.8 | Prior Season Rating: 2.6 | Curr Season Target: 2.0 | Cancellation Alert: Low
Pros: Relative Ratings
Cons: Ratings Decline in Season
On the Bubble:
18 (16) Agents of SHIELD (ABC) – The ratings slide from last season continues and I’m considering this one in trouble for now. Based on the Live+3 ratings it is still in the Top 25, but does that really hold weight when the sponsors know that DVR viewers are forwarding through the commercials? It’s tied into the Avengers franchise which helps its, but it’s a costly show and needs a bigger audience to pull in higher add rates. Disney may prop it up for a while, but they have an eye on that bottom line and likely won’t let it get too far into the red.
StD Rating: 1.9 | Prior Season Rating: 2.4 | Curr Season Target: 2.2 | Cancellation Alert: Moderate
Pros: Recognized Franchise
Cons: Ratings Decline Year over Year, Decline in Season, High Production Costs
19 (17) The 100 (CW) – It got the renewal nod last season despite pretty tepid numbers. I believe it will need to improve its scores this year otherwise The CW will replace it with one of several shows they have waiting in the wings.
Prior Season Rating Avg: 0.6 | Curr Season Target: 0.9 | Cancellation Alert: Moderate
Pros: Decent Debut Ratings, Relative Ratings, Fifth Place Network Series
Cons: Ratings Declines in Season
20 (18) Helix (Syfy, Returning for a 2nd Season) – It got the second season renewal last year, but that was far from a sure thing. The fact that it fits in with Syfy’s move back to more science fiction oriented scripted programming probably helped it, and its ratings average was about the same as what Haven had in the Fall before that one got renewed. But I am thinking that Helix will have to build on its current numbers when it returns if it hopes to live beyond its second year.
Prior Season Rating Avg: 0.4 | Curr Season Target: 0.4 | Cancellation Alert: Moderate
Pros: Strong Early Buzz
Cons: Mediocre Ratings, Ratings Decline in Season
21 (10) Haven (Syfy) – This show has pulled all-time lows in its fifth season, dropping as low as a 0.2 rating in the 18-49 demo based on the overnights. The Thursday night scheduling may have been a factor, but Syfy did it no favors by then shifting it to 7 PM EST on Fridays, outside of the traditional Prime Time hours. I’m not sure if this amounts to a burn-off run and the second half of its planned 26 episode fifth season may be in doubt at this point.
StD Rating: 0.2 | Prior Season Rating: 0.4 | Curr Season Target: 0.4 | Cancellation Alert: Medium
Pros: Low Production Costs, Strong Social Network Presence
Cons: Low Ratings, Ratings Decline Year over Year
Likely to Get Cancelled:
22 (n/a) Forever (ABC) – This Freshman series debuted with decent, if not spectacular, ratings for its timeslot. But those dropped quickly and now it finds itself in trouble. At this point it looks likely that Forever will air out its initial thirteen episode order than fade into TV obscurity.
StD Rating: 1.5 | Prior Season Rating: n/a | Curr Season Target: 2.0 | Cancellation Alert: Elevated
Pros: Decent Debut Ratings
Cons: Low Ratings, Ratings Decline in Season
Unrankable:
Both of these shows were renewed last year despite a ratings performance that would have led to the cancellation of most other series (in fact, Hannibal pulled lower numbers than Dracula in the same timeslot yet the latter series was cancelled). So other factors are apparently driving their fates and I will elect to pass on making any predictions on their renewal/cancellation prospects.
Hannibal (NBC, Returning for a 3rd Season) – It appears that NBC has made a long-term deal with this show’s studio and its international production arrangement means that it comes to the network at a lower cost. It sufficiently plugs up the difficult late Friday timeslot and the show has plenty of good buzz from the critics, so maybe it will coast through that seven year run that showrunner Bryan Fuller envisions.
Prior Season Rating Avg: 0.9 | Curr Season Target: n/a | Cancellation Alert: No Guess
Pros: Recognized Franchise, Strong Social Network Presence, Good Buzz from Critics
Cons: Poor Ratings, Ratings Decline in Season
Beauty and the Beast (CW, Returning for a 3rd Season) – Is its international audience really that good? Is it the CBS/WB balance of shows theory that the TV by the Numbers guys have theorized? Or do the execs at The CW just not give a damn and want to thumb their noses at the old-school model of renewing and cancelling television shows (if so, you have to give them props for that at least). All I know is that fans of The Tomorrow People, Star-Crossed, The Secret Circle, Cult, and other cancelled CW shows would like to have words with those network executives.
Prior Season Rating Avg: 0.3 | Curr Season Target: n/a | Cancellation Alert: No Guess
Pros: Recognized Franchise? Good International Audience?
Cons: Abysmal RatingsThis is the official rule on receptions in the NFL:
"If a player goes to the ground in the act of catching a pass (with or without contact by an opponent), he must maintain control of the ball after he touches the ground, whether in the field of play or the end zone. If he loses control of the ball, and the ball touches the ground before he regains control, the pass is incomplete. If he regains control prior to the ball touching the ground, the pass is complete."
Basically what that means is simple. If a player goes to the ground while in the process of making a catch, he must control the ball all the way through until his momentum from the fall ends. If at any point before his momentum stops he loses control of the ball and it touches the ground, the pass is incomplete.
Rule Change
However, the NFL changed the rules regarding what a reception is before the 2015 season. The new rule was intended to clarify the old rule, but instead it has just caused more confusion.
The new rule states: "In order to complete a catch, a receiver must clearly become a runner. He does that by gaining control of the ball, touching both feet down and then, after the second foot is down, having the ball long enough to clearly become a runner, which is defined as the ability to ward off or protect himself from impending contact.
"If, before becoming a runner, a receiver falls to the ground in an attempt to make a catch, he must maintain control of the ball after contacting the ground. If he loses control of the ball after contacting the ground and the ball touches the ground before he regains control, the pass is incomplete.
"Reaching the ball out before becoming a runner will not trump the requirement to hold onto the ball when you land. When you are attempting to complete a catch, you must put the ball away or protect the ball so it does not come loose."
More Confusion
This has not helped NFL officials much when it comes to determining whether a forward pass results in an official reception or not. There have been many instances since the new rule took effect that have caused controversy.
The confusion is causing such a stir, for one reason, because the league is more pass-happy that ever.
There were 18,298 forward passes thrown in 2016, more than in any other year since they began playing pro football. There were 11,527 receptions, also a record. There were 824 touchdown catches, yet another record.
So, obviously, what determines whether a catch is legal, is of huge import.BOSTON - Boston Bruins Team Internist Dr. David Finn has issued the following update on forward David Backes :
"David Backes will undergo surgery on Thursday, November 2 to remove a portion of his colon. The expected recovery time is approximately 8 weeks. The decision to have surgery was made in consultation with team physicians as well as outside specialists in the management of diverticulitis. David's episode of diverticulitis at the beginning of the season was his second episode in two months and was complicated with an abscess (collection of infection adjacent to the colon) that required drainage. Repeated episodes, like what David experienced, have a very high likelihood of recurrence in the near term, which is why he was advised to have surgery to remove the area of colon causing the problem. It was determined that attempting to delay the surgery until after the season was an unacceptable risk to his health.
David was cleared to play in the team's games on October 19 while waiting for his colon to properly heal from the most recent episode of diverticulitis which sidelined him for the first five games of the 2017-18 season. David was at no additional risk while playing during this period, and he is having the surgery as soon as the medical team felt comfortable moving forward with the operation."Sharp Rolls Out the World's First Wireless High Resolution Audio Player
by Helena Stone
High-fidelity sound no longer requires expensive cables and complex wiring. Wireless sound can now exceed the quality of wired systems. For audiophiles seeking a wireless solution, Sharp has introduced the Sharp Wireless High Resolution Audio Player, the only product in the world that can deliver High Resolution audio wirelessly.
Sharp |
overhead. The demo is available on launch day for Windows, Linux and Embedded (L4T) and will be available in the coming days for Android. GitHub Download
More Vulkan Information
Vulkan is a cutting-edge, industry supported, cross-platform 3D API. NVIDIA's developer support division has prepared a wealth of documentation and sample code to get you up to speed as quickly as possible. For more information on Vulkan generally and for drivers and installation guides for Windows, Linux and Linux4Tegra, check out the specific platform pages and NVIDIA's main Vulkan developer hub.Shares Gmail
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By now you should be familiar with the rule of six by Walter Murch. If you are on editing, you have heard about it. (If not, go and read “In the blink of an eye” or go here ).
One thing I found interesting is that most editors get the six concepts (Emotion, Story, Rythm, Eye Trace, 2D plane, 3D plane) but they completely ignore an important factor…
THE PERCENTAGES!
Can you recall the percentages?
If yes, great. If not, there is no big deal, here is a trick I use to identify when I am out of track while editing a sequence.
This is probably the most important thing, keep in track and not wasting time. Stop trying things that lead nowhere and end easily can on frustration or no progress at all. Again, this is key, and you might be ignoring it. Percentages ARE important!
To make this work, we are going to transfer the percentages to fingers.
Emotion 51% / 5 fingers
Story 23% / 2 fingers
Rhythm 10% / 1 finger
Eye Trace 7% / 1 finger
Two dimensional plane of screen 5% / half finger
Three Dimensional Space 4% / half finger
Following the representation of the hands, you can know for sure what is a priority and redirect your editing effectively. For that, let’s talk about how to use it on your daily everyday thinking.
—-
I don’t think that by using the rule of six alone you will find the right approach on a sequence, but you will direct it better. I think, you first have to understand the subtext of the story (the back stories, the tone, the intention), the logline, who is the main character on that sequence?, in which parts that character change? what are the moments that lean forward the emotion and story on that sequence? Etc etc… but once you got that, then the rule of six will help you to keep on track… construct it better.
By having a clear moment where things should happen, to whom and when they should be exiting… you then can review your cut and tell if you were focusing too much on story and very little on emotion… and correct that.
Hence, if you were only focusing on story, you were working only on 2 fingers (20%), you need to work on the other 80% of the sequence…
And remember, a whole hand is emotion 50%. Apply a lean forward moment and make it emotional (Norman Hollyn has an entire book about this).
Now that you have that visual representation 5 fingers of emotion vs 2 fingers of story. Would you cut that differently? I really think so. How about one hand of emotion vs the other hand? Which one is your priority now?
You will stop hitting your head on the wall trying to solve the sequence by using your original approach, only the story. You can move all the pieces around, but that will not make it emotional. Story is important, but two fingers. Try to make it better, identify where the important things happen and make them emotional. Stop thinking about story if you have all the moments that make the audience feel they are advancing on the plot (get rid of the ones that don’t), stop the frustration and fill the sequence with the rest of the fingers.
Maybe later on… after adding some emotion… you will need to get back to story… back and forth… If the story does not work yet, then you know that you didn’t have those two fingers done before! But now, you can see the problem more clearly, you are not wasting time… You have to get there (try to fill that 20% along the 5 fingers of emotion… and the others if possible).
As you may know, Emotion-Story-Rhythm are very related to each other…. but you have to take all of them into consideration.
Another clearer example using the fingers:
You are on a long editing session, matching movements only to find out that the sequence does not work … It feels dull, not interesting; things are matched perfectly, when characters stand, when they sit, turn, talk… (I have found many amateurs doing this mistake. Hey! I did the same when I started).
Then, you find out that those perfect matched cuts actually jump a lot. And it is because you were only focusing on one finger 10% (5% of the 2D plane and 5% of the 3D plane/One Finger)… The audience, is trying to get in the story, not looking if the hair is moving correctly, they are figuring out the story, the emotion… If it’s emotional, most of the cuts will be invisible, they want to connect to the story. A mismatch won’t be noticed. All movies have mismatches, specially today.
Where is the rest 90%? 9 fingers out of 10. A lot of hours wasted maybe on only 5% (2D plane) a half finger out of ten fingers. Your approach was not correct.
This is a basic example, but you can have more complex situations that end up on the fingers too. I picked an easy one, so everyone can get the most out of this text.
The next time… Look at your hands and the answer might be there. Even on the more complex situations, so If you are in trouble on your edit, look at your hands.
I use a lot of ways to keep on track, this is one of them. What tricks do you use to keep on track?
See you on the next post,
Fernando MagandaIntroduction
I taught an introductory course in Geology at the University of the South Pacific in 1977. Each of the countries that participated in USP was invited to send 2 students. They had varying interests, and it was amusing to watch how they woke up when we were teaching geology relating to their own job. Some were interested in gold mining, others in highways and landslides, some in coastal erosion, others in active volcanoes. It was rather a surprise when the sole student from Tuvalu approached me one day and said "Sir, this is all wasted on me. My island is just made of sand." Any news from Tuvalu always struck a chord from that moment.
Since then, of course, Tuvalu has become "hot news" as the favourite island to be doomed by sea level rise driven by global warming, allegedly caused in turn by anthropogenic carbon dioxide. If you look up Tuvalu on the internet you are inundated with articles about its impending fate. Tuvalu has become the touchstone for alarm about global warming and rising sea level.
The geological background
There may have been good reason to think that Tuvalu was doomed anyway. Charles Darwin, who was a geologist before he became a biologist, gave us the Darwin theory of coral islands which has been largely substantiated since his time. The idea is this: When a new volcano erupts above sea level in the tropical ocean, corals eventually colonise the shore. They can grow upwards and outwards (away from the volcanic island) but they can’t grow above sea level. The coral first forms a fringing reef, in contact with the island. As it grows outwards a lagoon forms between the island and the living reef, which is then a barrier reef. If the original volcano sinks beneath the waves a ring of coral betrays its location as an atoll.
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But besides the slow sinking of the volcanic base there are variations of sea level due to many causes such as tectonics (Earth movements) and climate change. If sea level rises the coral has to grow up to the higher sea level. Many reefs have managed this to a remarkable extent. Drilling on the coral islands Bikini and Eniwetok shows about 1500m thickness of limestone and therefore of subsidence. Coral cannot start growing on a deep basement, because it needs sunlight and normally grows down to only 50 m.
If the island is sinking slowly (or relative sea level rising slowly) the growth of coral can keep up with it. In the right circumstances some corals can grow over 2 cm in a year, but growth rate depends on many factors.
Sometimes the relative subsidence is too great for the coral to keep pace. Hundreds of flat-topped sea mountains called guyots, some capped by coral, lie at various depths below sea level. They indicate places where relative sea level rise was too fast for coral growth to keep pace.
Sea level and coral islands in the last twenty years
What about the present day situation? The alarmist view that Tuvalu is drowning has been forced upon us for twenty years, but the island is still there. What about the changes in sea level?
Rather than accept my interpretation, look at the data for yourself. First take a regional view. For a number of well-studied islands it can be located at:
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http://www.bom.gov.au/pacificsealevel/picreports.shtml
The Tuvalu data is provided at:
http://www.bom.gov.au/ntc/IDO60033/IDO60033.2009.pdfSign up here to get The Hate Report emailed to you every Friday.
The quaint town of Dahlonega, Georgia, has been the scene for angry protests and counterprotests for the last three weeks, since an elderly businesswoman hung a sign overlooking the town square, proclaiming a vacant building a “Historic Ku Klux Klan Meeting Hall.”
The sign didn’t last long, according to an account of the town’s travails in The Washington Post over the weekend. But its hateful message ripped open a wound many in the town thought had healed long ago and got residents asking a question that is being repeated across America.
“Is this indicative of something bigger?” the Post quotes Paul Dunlap, a local university professor, as saying. “Like, do they think they have a voice?”
The answer to Dunlap’s question comes later in the story, from Chester Doles, a former leader in the Klan and a former member of a white separatist group called the National Alliance, who cheered on the appearance of the sign.
“In the last 50 years, I didn’t think we had the votes to elect a governor, much less a president,” Doles said. “And yet here we are today.”
And rural Georgia was far from the only part of the country where a hate crime stirred up local sentiment.
In Salem, Oregon, last week, a man attacked a worker in a Middle Eastern restaurant with a pipe after deciding a woman inside was being held as a “slave” by what he told police was a “Saddam Hussein-looking guy.” The man, 52-year-old Jason Kendall, faces possible hate crime charges. During the attack, Kendall allegedly screamed, “Go back to your country,” a phrase that has become an anthem of hate across America.
In Seattle, workers at one of the city’s largest synagogues arrived Saturday to find Holocaust denial graffiti spray-painted on a wall. The synagogue decided to leave the graffiti intact at first, so everybody could see it, the temple’s rabbi later explained.
And in Florida, a man attempted to burn down a convenience store that he believed was owned by a Muslim. The would-be arsonist, 64-year-old Richard Lloyd, told the police he wanted to “run the Arabs out of our country.” The store is owned by Americans of Indian descent.
Monday: ‘A notice to all white Americans’
Hateful posters and fliers have been showing up on American college campuses in record numbers, according to an Anti-Defamation League report last week. On Monday, the University of Maryland got a taste of the hate when white nationalist posters appeared in at least four spots around campus, according to the university’s student newspaper.
One poster read: “A notice to all white Americans: It is your civic duty to report any and all illegal aliens to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. They are criminals.” The web address for a white nationalist organization appeared at the bottom.
Posters advertising the same group also were posted at the university in December.
Across the country in Arizona, the Islamic Center of Tucson reported that a man broke into its mosque early Monday and damaged about 130 copies of the Muslim holy book:
“He ripped copies of the Qur’an and threw them around the prayer room before leaving the building,” the center wrote. “Thankfully no one was hurt.”
The man was caught on surveillance footage and is being sought by police.
Tuesday: ‘This is how Hitler got started. In a beer hall.’
A slew of anti-Semitic incidents in the Portland, Oregon, area has coincided with the recent surfacing of a “celebrity KKK leader” in the area, according to the Willamette Week.
Steven Shane Howard, whom the Southern Poverty Law Center has identified as the “imperial wizard” of the North Mississippi White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, wrote in a Facebook post in May that he was moving to Vancouver, Washington, to start “the Washington knights of the Ku klux klan,” the Week reports. Vancouver sits across the Columbia River from Portland. (However, Howard told the magazine that he had moved away from Mississippi to get away from the KKK.)
There’s no indication that Howard has been involved in anti-Semitic activities in Oregon, but over the weekend, swastikas were spray-painted in a southeast Portland neighborhood. Earlier in the month, a local Jewish center received a death threat, and on Sunday, there was this incident at a local bar where cards advertising neo-Nazi websites have been left recently:
On March 12, (bar employee Ilan) Moskowitz says he overheard a conversation at a table of 10 white patrons that led him to confront them about the fliers.
One young man in a Make America Great Again hat said, giggling, “No, you’ve got it all wrong, we’re a black power group,” according to Moskowitz. The group then started chanting “black power” and raising their fists. When staff attempted to kick out those patrons, at first they refused to leave. On their way out, one man played bagpipes he had brought and another declared, “I called my Nazi friends,” after dancing around the manager and repeatedly calling him anti-gay slurs.
The story continues:
Moskowitz, who is Jewish, didn’t think before confronting a group that outnumbered the bar staff 2-to-1 that night. “My whole life, I hear about this shit,” he says. “My grandfather survived two prison camps. I’ll tell you what was going through my head: ‘This is how Hitler got started. In a beer hall.’ “
Meanwhile, in Charleston, South Carolina, more racist graffiti was left on buildings, including a library named for Cynthia Hurd, one of the victims of Dylann Roof, who killed nine people in a city church in 2015.
The local county council chairman told CNN:
The vandalism that occurred at the Cynthia Graham Hurd/St. Andrew’s Regional Library is both unfortunate and sad.
Wednesday: ‘Still time’ for Indiana to enact a hate crime law
It’s a theme we’ve come back to a few times in The Hate Report: the fact that five states remain without specific hate crime statutes, despite the reported recent increase in such crimes across the nation.
One of those states is Indiana, where a broad coalition of minority groups came together Wednesday to hold a press conference calling on state legislators to pass a hate crime law.
The event was covered by the Indianapolis Star, which quoted David Sklar, government affairs director with the local Jewish Community Relations Council, who spoke alongside leaders from the black, Sikh, LGBT, Jewish, Muslim and Hispanic communities.
“We are not at the apex of this conversation nationally,” Sklar said. “We are not setting precedent. We are not pushing an agenda or creating some sort of social experiment. There’s simply no reason our legislators need to be concerned about the impact of this legislation or deviate from what is working in other states.”
Crimes across the country still may be prosecuted under the federal hate crime law, though it is worth noting that Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who directs the nation’s federal prosecutors, has been an outspoken opponent of the law.
In Minneapolis, federal authorities announced that they are investigating threats to Jewish community centers in Minnesota and across the country as hate crimes.
Thursday: The top Trump adviser and a Nazi-allied organization
For weeks, Sebastian Gorka, one of President Donald Trump’s highest advisers, has been suspected of being involved with a Hungarian group, known as the Vitézi Rend, that once was allied with the Nazis.
On Thursday, the Forward reported that Gorka pledged a lifelong allegiance to the organization, citing Vitézi Rend leaders. Gorka previously has been criticized for wearing the group’s insignia medal at public events. The Forward, a newspaper that covers American Jewish issues, reports that membership of the group could have serious implications for Gorka’s status as an immigrant:
The elite order, known as the Vitézi Rend, was established as a loyalist group by Admiral Miklos Horthy, who ruled Hungary as a staunch nationalist from 1920 to October 1944. A self-confessed anti-Semite, Horthy imposed restrictive Jewish laws prior to World War II and collaborated with Hitler during the conflict. His cooperation with the Nazi regime included the deportation of hundreds of thousands of Jews into Nazi hands.
Gorka’s membership in the organization – if these Vitézi Rend leaders are correct, and if Gorka did not disclose this when he entered the United States as an immigrant – could have implications for his immigration status. The State Department’s Foreign Affairs Manual specifies that members of the Vitézi Rend “are presumed to be inadmissible” to the country under the Immigration and Nationality Act.
Reveal host Al Letson interviewed Gorka for a special podcast last week. You can listen to the interview here.
Thursday also saw the indictment of 57-year-old Robin Rhodes, who attacked a Muslim airport employee in New York in January. The New York Daily News reported that Rhodes allegedly shouted some now-familiar words at the worker he abused:
“Trump is here now,” he taunted, according to prosecutors. “He will get rid of all of you. You can ask Germany, Belgium and France about these kind of people. You will see what happens.”
Friday: White nationalist poster boy gets his money from cotton
Richard Spencer, a notorious poster boy for white nationalists across America and a leader of the so-called “alt-right” movement, has a dirty secret.
Despite frequently telling audiences that the white race has thrived without the help of other races, Spencer himself benefits directly from a legacy of white exploitation of black workers, Reveal reported today.
Here’s a snippet from reporter Lance Williams’ scoop:
“America’s rise was ‘not through black people’ and ‘has nothing to do with slavery,’ Spencer retorted. ‘White people could have figured out another way to pick cotton,’ he said. ‘We do it now.’
He is in a position to know. Spencer, along with his mother and sister, are absentee landlords of 5,200 acres of cotton and corn fields in an impoverished, largely African American region of Louisiana, according to records examined by Reveal from The Center for Investigative Reporting. The farms, controlled by multiple family-owned businesses, are worth millions: A 1,600-acre parcel sold for $4.3 million in 2012.
The Spencer family’s farms also are subsidized heavily by the federal government. From 2008 through 2015, the Spencers received $2 million in U.S. farm subsidy payments, according to federal data.”
It’s been a bad week for Spencer. On Monday, the nonprofit organization he runs, The National Policy Institute, was stripped of its tax-exempt status by the IRS.
Reached by the Los Angeles Times, Spencer admitted confusion on the matter:
“I don’t know what to say. I don’t want to make a comment because I don’t understand this stuff,” Spencer said in a telephone interview. “It’s a bit embarrassing, but it’s not good. We’ll figure it out.”
Look out for our interview with Spencer on Saturday’s podcast, too.An immersive virtual reality therapy could help people with depression to be less critical and more compassionate towards themselves, reducing depressive symptoms
An immersive virtual reality therapy could help people with depression to be less critical and more compassionate towards themselves, reducing depressive symptoms, finds a new study from UCL (University College London) and ICREA-University of Barcelona.
The therapy, previously tested by healthy volunteers, was used by 15 depression patients aged 23-61. Nine reported reduced depressive symptoms a month after the therapy, of whom four experienced a clinically significant drop in depression severity. The study is published in the British Journal of Psychiatry Open and was funded by the Medical Research Council.
Patients in the study wore a virtual reality headset to see from the perspective of a life-size 'avatar' or virtual body. Seeing this virtual body in a mirror moving in the same way as their own body typically produces the illusion that this is their own body. This is called 'embodiment'.
While embodied in an adult avatar, participants were trained to express compassion towards a distressed virtual child. As they talked to the child it appeared to gradually stop crying and respond positively to the compassion. After a few minutes the patients were embodied in the virtual child and saw the adult avatar deliver their own compassionate words and gestures to them. This brief 8-minute scenario was repeated three times at weekly intervals, and patients were followed up a month later.
"People who struggle with anxiety and depression can be excessively self-critical when things go wrong in their lives," explains study lead Professor Chris Brewin (UCL Clinical, Educational & Health Psychology). "In this study, by comforting the child and then hearing their own words back, patients are indirectly giving themselves compassion. The aim was to teach patients to be more compassionate towards themselves and less self-critical, and we saw promising results. A month after the study, several patients described how their experience had changed their response to real-life situations in which they would previously have been self-critical."
The study offers a promising proof-of-concept, but as a small trial without a control group it cannot show whether the intervention is responsible for the clinical improvement in patients.
"We now hope to develop the technique further to conduct a larger controlled trial, so that we can confidently determine any clinical benefit," says co-author Professor Mel Slater (ICREA-University of Barcelona and UCL Computer Science). "If a substantial benefit is seen, then this therapy could have huge potential. The recent marketing of low-cost home virtual reality systems means that methods such as this could potentially be part of every home and be used on a widespread basis."
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Before the end of the century, rising temperatures could trigger an influx of warm water beneath Antarctica’s second-largest ice shelf – and once it begins, researchers say there’s ‘no going back.’
The phenomenon would cause the ice to lose contact with the seafloor, which has so far acted as a natural brake to slow the ice flow.
Scientists say they've already detected the first signs of the process, and once underway, it will cause the ice to shed at a much faster rate, dramatically shrinking the massive Filchner-Ronne Ice Shelf.
New simulations reveal that rising air temperatures over the Weddell Sea could make for less sea ice, triggering processes that permanently do away with the cold water barrier (illustrated). Once underway, the process will cause the ice to shed at a much faster rate
WHAT COULD HAPPEN During the autumn and winter, the sea ice releases massive amounts of salt, which in turn creates a barrier of cold, salty water (about -2 degrees C) that protects the ice shelf from an inflow of warmer water (.8 degrees) transported by the Weddell Gyre. But, the new simulations reveal that rising air temperatures over the Weddell Sea could make for less sea ice, triggering processes that permanently do away with the cold water barrier. The melting beneath the ice shelf will cause its grounding line to shift further south, eliminating direct contact between the ice and the seafloor. While frictional contact has kept the ice flow in check to date, the phenomenon will accelerate once that effect is lost. Once underway, the process will cause the ice to shed at a much faster rate, dramatically shrinking the massive Filchner-Ronne Ice Shelf.
In a new study, researchers at the Alfred Wegener Institute Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research used the Bremerhaven Regional Ice-Ocean Simulations ice-ocean model to understand the effect of a self-amplifying meltwater feedback cycle beneath the Filchner-Ronne, in the Weddell Sea.
The phenomenon has already been seen in the nearby Amundsen Sea, where they now say the ‘inflow of heat cannot be stopped.’
Sea ice plays a critical role in the survival of the Antarctic ice shelves, the researchers explain.
During the autumn and winter, the sea ice releases massive amounts of salt, which in turn creates a barrier of cold, salty water (about -2 degrees C) that protects the ice shelf from an inflow of warmer water (.8 degrees) transported by the Weddell Gyre.
But, the new simulations reveal that rising air temperatures over the Weddell Sea could make for less sea ice, triggering processes that permanently do away with the cold water barrier.
‘We can already see the first signs of this trend today,’ said lead author Dr Hartmut Hellmer, an oceanographer at the AWI.
‘First of all, less sea ice is forming in the region, and secondly, oceanographic recordings from the continental shelf break confirm that the warm water masses are already moving closer and closer to the ice shelf in pulses.’
According to the researchers, this could mark the beginning of ‘irrevocable transformation’ in the southern Weddell Sea – and they say the effects will likely be noticeable by 2070.
In a new study, researchers used the Bremerhaven Regional Ice-Ocean Simulations ice-ocean model to understand the effect of a self-amplifying meltwater feedback cycle beneath the Filchner-Ronne (pictured), in the Weddell Sea
‘Our simulations show that there will be no turning back once the warm water masses find their way under the ice shelf, since their heat will accelerate the melting at its base,’ Hellmer says.
‘In turn, the resulting meltwater will produce an intensified overturning, which will suck even more warm water from the Weddell Gyre under the ice.
‘As such, according to our calculations, the hope that the ocean would someday run out of heat won’t pan out in the long run.’
Before the end of the century, rising temperatures could trigger an influx of warm water beneath Antarctica’s second-largest ice shelf (the Filchner, pictured) – and once it begins, researchers say there’s ‘no going back’
Their model includes data on future winds and temperatures in the Antarctic, based on the assumption that atmospheric carbon dioxide will hit 700 parts per million by the year 2100.
But, even if the world limits warming to 2 degrees Celsius in the next few decades, it ‘won’t be enough to save the Filcher-Ronne Ice Shelf.’
The melting beneath the ice shelf will cause its grounding line to shift further south, eliminating direct contact between the ice and the seafloor.
While frictional contact has kept the ice flow in check to date, the phenomenon will accelerate once that effect is lost.
CHANNELS AS TALL AS THE EIFFEL TOWER FOUND BENEATH THE FILCHNER-RONNE ICE SHELF In 2013, scientists discovered huge 250 metre high ice channels beneath Antarctica - and, they could be speeding up melting of the ice shelf. The channels are almost as tall as the Eiffel Tower and are thought to stretch hundreds of kilometres along the ice shelf. The British researchers used satellite images and airborne radar measurements to reveal the channels under the Filchner-Ronne Ice Shelf in West Antarctica. The ice sheld channel is clearly visible on the MODIS Mosaic of Antarctica image map. The predicted flow route of water beneath the grounded ice sheet aligns with the initiation of the ice shelf channel. The dashed line marks the point at which the ice starts to float When the meltwater flowing under the ice sheet enters the ocean beneath, it causes a plume of ocean water to form, which then melts out the vast channels under the ice shelf. Previously, it was thought that water flowed in a thin layer beneath the ice sheet, but the evidence from this study suggests it flows in a more focused manner, much like rivers. The way in which water flows beneath the ice sheet strongly influences the speed of ice flow. Vast channels such as this have been observed elsewhere, but their formation has been credited to purely oceanic processes rather than meltwater flowing out of the grounded ice sheet.
‘The meltwater feedback cycle under the ice shelf will only slow down once the shelf has collapsed, or no more glacial ice flows in from inland to take its place,’ said co-author and AWI model designer Dr Ralph Timmermann.
‘So we’re talking about processes that will continue over several centuries.’
And, in the Amundsen Sea in western Antarctica, the researchers say the process has already begun.
‘When it comes to the Amundsen Sea, where warm water has already reached the continental shelf and even the grounding line of some ice shelves, we can safely say that this inflow of heat cannot be stopped; the climate regime has already taken place,’ Hellmer said.
‘In other words, the losses of mass of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet will intensify – just like the models predict.’Pallbearers carry the casket containing the body of Linden Officer Frank Viggiano in Linden Presbyterian Church, before funeral services, Thursday, March 26, 2015, in Linden, N.J. Viggiano and Joseph Rodriguez died when the car they were riding in crashed head-on into a truck in the Staten Island borough of New York on Friday after a night at a strip club. Officers Pedro Abad Jr., who was driving the car, and Patrik Kudlac, remain hospitalized. The officers were off-duty at the time. (AP Photo/Julio Cortez) The Associated Press
By DAVID PORTER, Associated Press
NEWARK, N.J. (AP) — An off-duty New Jersey police officer behind the wheel of a car that crashed last week while heading the wrong way on a New York highway, killing two passengers, has had two drunken-driving arrests in the last four years, including one for an accident in which he plowed through the wall of a convenience store, records show.
Six-year Linden police veteran Pedro Abad Jr. was arrested on a charge of driving under the influence in Roselle in January 2011 after his car "put a hole completely through the building" housing a New Way Supermarket, a police report said. Abad was issued a summons for DUI and reckless driving, but apparently the case didn't conclude in any citations or violations, the state Motor Vehicle Commission said.
Thirteen months later, Abad was charged with DUI in Rahway. A police dashboard camera video showed him weaving, wobbling and slurring his words as he attempted to complete a field sobriety test.
Abad's driver's license was suspended after the second arrest, beginning in October 2013 and concluding in May 2014, the Motor Vehicle Commission said. A judge then required Abad to fit his car with an ignition interlock, which won't allow a vehicle to start until the driver blows into a device to measure his blood-alcohol level and is deemed sober. The interlock device was removed last September, the commission said.
Linden police wouldn't comment Thursday on their internal investigation into the Abad matter, nor would they say whether Abad had faced sanctions or restrictions under department guidelines as a result of his arrests.
The March 20 accident on the West Shore Expressway in Staten Island killed Linden police Officer Frank Viggiano and civilian Joseph Rodriguez and left Abad and fellow Officer Patrik Kudlac critically injured. A police spokesman said Abad and Kudlac remained hospitalized in critical but stable condition Thursday.
A telephone message left on a cellphone believed to be Abad's wasn't returned.
Outside Viggiano's funeral on Thursday, Linden Mayor Derek Armstead said prosecutors are investigating the police department's handling of Abad. A spokesman for the prosecutor's office didn't confirm or deny that an investigation was underway.Credit: With thanks to the SK Film Archives LLC, Warner Bros., the Kubrick family, and University of the Arts London
In 2011, an unusual piece of evidence was presented in court in a dispute between technology giants Apple and Samsung over the latter’s range of handheld tablets, which Apple claimed infringed upon the patented design and user interface of the iPad.
As part of Samsung’s defence, the company’s lawyers showed the court a still image and clip from Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) showing the astronauts played by Gary Lockwood and Keir Dullea eating while watching a TV show on their own personal, mini-sized, flat-screen computers.
Kubrick’s Newspad v the Apple iPad
Faced with the potential withdrawal of their Galaxy Tab 10.1 and various smartphones, Samsung questioned the Apple patent’s claims on originality by pointing to the rectangular shape, large display screens and flat surfaces of these mini-computers. The case was made that the ‘Newspad’ in 2001: A Space Odyssey was an example of ‘prior art’, featured in a film released over 40 years before the arrival of the first iPad in 2010.
Known for effecting a quantum leap in both the techniques and ideas of sci-fi cinema, had Kubrick’s masterpiece also foreseen the ubiquitous handheld devices that have so defined our lives today?
Credit: With thanks to the SK Film Archives LLC, Warner Bros., the Kubrick family, and University of the Arts London
There’s certainly something familiar to the modern viewer about the way in which the film depicts Doctors Bowman and Poole entirely engrossed in their tablet screens, only looking away to spoon up another mouthful of space food from their trays.
The devices’ appearance in the film is brief, and we see the astronauts casually using them as personal, flat-screen televisions. There’s no sign of touch-screen technology or explicit suggestion of multiple functionality. However, as rare documents found in the Stanley Kubrick Archive verify, Kubrick’s team had actually envisaged an impressive range of functions for their invention.
Kubrick invents the ‘app’
Anticipating the digital newspaper and magazine apps of today, the 2001 production team saw the Newspad as featuring instant access to a range of popular periodicals. Long lists of imagined, publication-specific headlines for the year 2001 were conceived, and related news stories and features typed out in full. Kubrick’s team wrote to the publications in question, including the New York Times and Life magazine, seeking their permission to include their brand and the mock editorial on the Newspad.
Dated 15 December 1965, one such letter from Kubrick’s collaborator Roger Caras to Joseph F. Kern, then publisher of Popular Mechanics, explains how the Newspad would work on screen:
In one sequence aboard a spacecraft involved in a deep space probe two of the astronauts use an IBM NEWSPAD. This is a news projecting device enabling space travellers to have access to Earth news via radio projection. It is an item of hardware logically anticipated for a period 36 years from now. We are working with IBM, of course, and using their technical assistance. In the sequence involved, an astronaut pushes a button which causes an index of 200 leading periodicals to appear on a screen. At various times buttons will be depressed that will cause the individual indices for five of these publications to be projected. The five periodicals selected are Sports Illustrated, Life, Scientific American, Popular Mechanics, and the New York Times. […] Later on in the picture the astronaut depresses the button a third time selecting a story from Popular Mechanics to read. We propose to write the story item 12 on the index: LOOK IN YOUR ATTIC: EARLY ELECTRIC-POWERED TOOLS FETCH FORTUNE ON ANTIQUE MARKET.
Kubrick’s mock New York Times headlines for the year 2001
A fascinating glimpse into how Kubrick’s mid-60s production team envisaged the future, the list of projected headlines for the New York Times in the year 2001 runs to 36 items and includes such news stories as “10000th Baby Born at South Pole City” and “Grand Canyon Bridge Opened by President: Last Link in Argentina-Alaska Electronic Highway System.”
Credit: With thanks to the SK Film Archives LLC, Warner Bros., the Kubrick family, and University of the Arts London
Credit: With thanks to the SK Film Archives LLC, Warner Bros., the Kubrick family, and University of the Arts London
Neither South Pole City nor an Alaska-Argentina highway system exist yet of course, and many other of the fake 2001 headlines can now be seen to be wide of the mark. Airliners can’t yet carry as many people as the Kubrick news stories predicted, and we’re still over a thousand satellites short of the 3,700 that the mock NYT imagined would be orbiting Earth by the turn of the 21st century.
Even a safe-bet 2001 headline such as “Last World War I Veteran Dies in London” has been undermined after the last living vet in fact survived to the impressive age of 110 before dying in 2012.
But it would be churlish to focus on the inaccuracies of these predictions when the Newspad itself, its content and functions, so credibly anticipates the iPad and its ilk.
Though the Newspad evidence was subsequently ruled out by the judge presiding over the Samsung case, as these documents prove, even if the full use of the Newspad was never explored on screen, the thinking behind the gadget plausibly projected how we’d consume news and entertainment in the future.
Credit: With thanks to the SK Film Archives LLC, Warner Bros., the Kubrick family, and University of the Arts London
Lost in the internet
In the novel of 2001: A Space Odyssey that Arthur C. Clarke wrote while collaborating with Kubrick on the film, the writer expands on just how the gadget and its stream of news formed a habit of one of its astronaut protagonists:
Floyd sometimes wondered if the Newspad, and the fantastic technology behind it, was the last word in man’s quest for perfect communications. Here he was, far out in space, speeding away from Earth at thousands of miles an hour, yet in a few milliseconds he could see the headlines of any newspaper he pleased. (That very word “newspaper,” of course, was an anachronistic hang |
ing their ambush skills to prepare to face a new United Nations force which has a mandate to go on the offensive.
M23 soldiers stand at parade at Rumangabo military camp, a former government installation seized last year during the fighting, April 27, 2013. REUTERS/Jonny Hogg
“Destroy the enemy. Cause fear and stop his patrols,” a rebel officer wrote on a blackboard as he instructed uniformed M23 fighters at a camp seized from the government in Democratic Republic of Congo’s eastern borderlands.
In the latest effort to bring peace to a region riven for years by conflict over ethnic rivalry and mineral riches, the United Nations is deploying a 3,000-strong brigade of African troops with a mission of neutralizing armed groups such as M23.
Approved by the Security Council in March for “targeted offensive operations”, the brigade from South Africa, Tanzania and Malawi is the first to be created within a traditional peacekeeping force. A 17,000-strong existing U.N. force, MONUSCO, has struggled to maintain security in eastern Congo.
If the M23 rebels, who emerged last year from a Tutsi-led rebellion in 2004-2009, fear the new U.N. Force Intervention Brigade, they are not showing it.
They routed U.N.-backed Congolese troops and briefly seized the North Kivu provincial capital of Goma in November, an embarrassment for President Joseph Kabila and the United Nations.
M23 spokesman Colonel Vianney Kazarama said the rebel group, which is demanding political concessions from Kabila’s government, had no plans to attack U.N. peacekeepers. But if targeted, it would respond.
“You’ll see, we’re going to capture them, destroy their equipment, march over their forces,” Kazarama said.
At the captured government camp, rebels paraded and put on a show of hand-to-hand combat in the bush grass.
Military experts say the brigade could find itself severely stretched in its mission to neutralize and disarm the M23 and other armed groups.
M23 is well-trained and well-armed. U.N. experts say it is backed by Rwanda and Uganda although both countries deny it.
FDLR rebels, the remnants of Hutu killers who carried out the 1994 genocide of Tutsis in Rwanda, and other militias also roam the green hills and valleys of North Kivu.
“It’s a complex mission. From a tactical point of view this is a logistical nightmare because you don’t know who’s who in the zoo from one day to the next,” said Helmoed Romer Heitman, a South African military analyst.
He questioned whether the U.N. brigade, which will include about 1,000 South African troops and an equal number from Tanzania and Malawi, would big and strong enough.
“The overall U.N. mission is not properly conceived. I think the force is too small and there is a certain amount of wishful thinking,” Heitman told Reuters in Pretoria.
“PEACE AT ANY PRICE”
South African military spokesman Xolani Mabanga said the numbers were in line with recommendations.
“We are happy with the size of the force,” he said.
South Africa’s armed forces are already smarting from the deaths of 13 soldiers in March in Central African Republic when anti-government rebels confronted a 200-strong South African contingent deployed there under a defense agreement.
This has increased the political sensitivity of South Africa’s participation in the Congo.
M23 have shown signs of being rattled, appealing against South Africa’s involvement with a mixture of threats and entreaties to pan-African solidarity.
“They’re scared of the brigade. They call meetings to tell the population to reject it,” student Guillaume Muchuti told Reuters in the M23-held town of Rutshuru, north of Goma.
Tanzania also brushed off threats from M23 that it will target its soldiers if they join the U.N. mission.
“We are not going to Congo as lords of war, we are going there as advocates of peace to help our neighbors,” Tanzanian Foreign Minister Bernard Membe told parliament.
M23 officials privately admit their force’s numbers have been reduced by months of infighting between rival factions. Congo’s army estimates the rebels’ strength at around 1,000.
This led to one leader, Bosco Ntaganda, surrendering to the International Criminal Court to face war crimes charges.
Despite seizing tons of ammunition and scores of vehicles when it occupied Goma, M23 is running short of cash to pay its fighters, rebel sources say. MONUSCO says it has received a steady stream of deserters.
Kabila’s government, whose weak and indisciplined army has struggled to contain rebels in the east and is accused by rights groups of rapes and abuses against civilians, welcomes the new U.N. brigade.
Government spokesman Lambert Mende says Kinshasa would like a negotiated peace with M23, but, failing that, hopes the African peacekeepers’ robust mandate can have a real impact.
U.N. officials caution that while the intervention brigade is expected to be a deterrent to violence in North Kivu, it will not be a “magic wand” for bringing peace.
“It’s not as if they’re going to come and start shooting on the first day. The objective is to contain and neutralize and disarm armed groups. If we can do that without firing a shot, everyone will be very happy,” said Alex Queval, head of MONUSCO in North Kivu province.
NEED FOR POLITICAL SOLUTION
Former Irish president Mary Robinson, who was appointed U.N. special envoy to the Great Lakes region in March, toured last week to encourage implementation of a U.N.-mediated peace plan for the eastern Congo signed by 11 countries in February.
“There’s no doubt these armed groups need to be dealt with, but I think it’s important that this does not become a focus on a military solution,” she said in Goma.
M23 was not part of the February pact and its own separate peace negotiations with the Congolese government have stalled, amid signs that Kinshasa is reluctant to implement vague promises of national political dialogue and decentralization.
Maria Lange, country head of advocacy group International Alert, says that even if the U.N. brigade makes short-term gains, this may not guarantee lasting solutions. The brigade would allow the government to pursue a military solution.
“They’ve been liberated from the obligation to actually conduct talks and address underlying governance problems,” Lange told Reuters. “This brigade risks at best being ineffective, or at worst, will lead to an escalation of the situation.”
There are fears too the government will not carry out much-needed reforms of its security forces, Lange added.
U.N. troops have faced protests in the past by Congolerse civilians angry about what they see as the peacekeepers’ failure to protect them from abuses by armed groups.
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“The last hope we have is for this brigade, we’re waiting for them. But I don’t have much faith,” said Innocent Bisimungu.
His parents were hacked to death by Hutu rebels in 1998 and now he lives in a zone under the control of the Tutsi-led M23.
“I was born in conflict and I grew up in conflict. We’ve never known anything else,” he said wearily.David Lynch, engineer of images strange and wondrous enough to bring the adjective "Lynchian" into the world, has plans for today — today being Wednesday, when we spoke by phone for a column on the Music Box Theatre's upcoming celebration "David Lynch: A Complete Retrospective."
"This morning," he tells me from his Lloyd Wright home in the Hollywood Hills, "I'm going to be working on a table. I've been working on it since I finished working on 'Twin Peaks.'" (The 18-episode continuation of the 1990-91 series, created by Lynch and Mark Frost, premieres May 21 on Showtime.) "It's quite a table. It's big enough to incorporate two remote controls, a pair of glasses, some pens, a box of Kleenex, a wine bottle holder, cigarettes, a lighter, a place for treats and a switch for turning on a light on top of the table." He sounds enthused about it.
I ask about the material. "Pine for the skeleton of the thing," he says, "and then I'm cladding it in quarter-inch Douglas fir veneer plywood." I ask if he was hep to Douglas fir before "Twin Peaks," in which FBI agent Cooper (Kyle MacLachlan) adored the smell of the trees in question. "Yes, I was!" Lynch says. "I was. This particular Lloyd Wright house I'm in used vertical grain Douglas fir plywood. It's a beautiful, beautiful wood. I love pine. I love the smell of pine. But I really, really love Douglas fir."
Handout Jack Nance, in David Lynch's "Eraserhead." Jack Nance, in David Lynch's "Eraserhead." (Handout) (Handout)
Lynch, a 71-year-old native of Missoula, Mont., has fans and detractors all across the world, in the mainstream and well outside it. I saw "Eraserhead" (1977) as a college freshman, a year or two into its midnight run at a Minneapolis rep house, and I came out psychologically unrecognizable in relation to the 17-year-old who went in 88 minutes earlier. "Blue Velvet" (1986), which more than made up for his 10-ton attempt to wrangle "Dune" (1984), was made for a thrifty $6 million (it grossed about $8.5 million), and became a key American film of the '80s — sleazy, and brazen, and harsh and unclassifiable. Further out there, more toward "Eraserhead" or "Lost Highway" (1997) in its limpid abstraction, "Mulholland Drive" (2001) is one of the happiest accidents in 21st century filmmaking, an aborted TV series pilot plunked back in the sea of Lynch's subconscious, and then fished out just in time.
Lynch likes fishing metaphors. He likens Transcendental Meditation, which he has practiced faithfully, twice daily, since July 1, 1973, to going fishing. The "lively silence," he has said, is where the deep waters and the biggest fish can be found. The first words spoken in the original ABC-TV "Twin Peaks" pilot episode, in fact, were: "Gone fishing," delivered by Jack Nance, Eraserhead himself.
Craig Sjodin/ABC Sherilyn Fenn and Kyle MacLachlan in "Twin Peaks." Sherilyn Fenn and Kyle MacLachlan in "Twin Peaks." (Craig Sjodin/ABC) (Craig Sjodin/ABC)
Lynch's dreamscapes and nightmares haunt different people different ways, and the Music Box's staggeringly broad Lynch survey covers the waterfront. The earliest work on view is Lynch's short film "Six Men Getting Sick," from 1966. The most recent is a 15-minute Dior advertisement starring Marion Cotillard, titled "Lady Blue Shanghai," from 2010. Most of the full-length Lynch features will be screened on 35 millimeter film.
"Digital's getting better every day," he says. "But there's nothing like celluloid. It's an organic thing."
Here's a wonderful find, one among many. Prior to Lynch's arrival in Wilmington, N.C., to make "Blue Velvet," his noir-tinged mystery full of dread and wonder, a young German filmmaker named Peter Braatz wrote to Lynch about visiting him on the set and shooting some footage. Sure thing, Lynch wrote back, in a wisecracking letter we see, on screen, in Braatz's captivating documentary "Blue Velvet Revisited," screening at the Music Box next week. Lynch wrote to Braatz: "We are making an extremely low budget film Peter so bring a lot of money and help us out."
For anyone who knows "Blue Velvet" pretty well, Braatz's film is a lovely evocation of its genesis. The conversations we hear between Braatz and Lynch are disarming, loose, friendly; the Lynch we see, in Braatz's home-movie footage, is the happiest filmmaker on earth, practically. "I've never had this good a feeling going to work," he tells Braatz.
I ask Lynch about those days. Yes, he really was besotted with happiness on that shoot. "We should be happy in our work!" he tells me. This is where meditation comes into play, he says. "Most of us, probably, work and there's not much happiness in it. We look forward to the weekend, but the weekend is short. Friday night's OK, but by Sunday, you're worrying about Monday. It's a nightmare. But if you start bringing that happiness from within, and it doesn't matter what your work is. You're happy doing it, and solutions to your problems will come. We're supposed to enjoy the doing. So enjoy the doing."
He's been asked many times: If David Lynch is so much happier because of the meditative states he accesses on a regular schedule, what's up with all the depravity and pain (alongside the more graceful and humane instincts) in his cinematic visions? "Well," he says, "there are these things called stories. And stories have conflicts, life-and-death situations, all kinds of different characters. Ideas come, and our world conjures up a lot of ideas. Our world is filled with negativity, all kinds of stuff, and ideas come from that world; and sometimes I fall in love with ideas and I want to turn them into something."
The irony, he says, with a chuckle, "is that you can be very happy shooting a death scene. You can be very happy shooting terrible things. They're part of the story. You don't have to suffer to show suffering. And they're not all darkness; there's light and dark, together, flowing through my stories."
The Music Box retrospective is organized and curated by projectionist Daniel Knox, who played the organ in the pre-show intro for "Inland Empire," which Lynch himself presented in 2007. Along with "Blue Velvet Revisited" (2016), a late and welcome addition to the calendar, Knox is especially keen on presenting "Industrial Symphony No. 1" (1990), on which Lynch collaborated with frequent cohorts Angelo Badalamenti and Julee Cruise.
Lynch's controversial "Twin Peaks" prequel, "Fire Walk With Me" (1992) happens to be curator Knox's favorite-ever movie. "The thing," he says, "I've noticed putting together this material is sort of weird. People see his films as extremely dark. And of course there's nothing good that happens to Laura Palmer. But the whole arc of 'Twin Peaks,' and what I see in almost everything Lynch has made, is the reminder to recognize the beauty that's intertwined with that darkness."Toolmark identification is an important forensic discipline where scrape and impression marks found at a crime scene are used to identify the type, brand, or specific tool that generated the mark. Common tools used during a crime are hammers, crow bars, wire cutters, chisels, screw drivers, and punches.
For the better part of a century, forensic examiners have relied on comparison microscopes to compare the microscopic features of toolmarks found at a crime scene with those generated by suspected tools. The process relies on an examiner’s training, experience, and judgment to assess the whether two compared toolmarks are more similar than toolmarks generated by different tools. Furthermore, the microscopic images provide only an indirect measure of the underlying toolmark surface topography though slope variations and shadowing, and are affected by lighting conditions, exposure settings, and variations in reflectivity.
In 2009, the National Academies published the report “Strengthening Forensic Science in the United States: A Path Forward [1],” which called into question the objectivity of conclusions based on visual toolmark identification by examiners. A major concern is the lack of precisely defined, and scientifically justified, protocols that yield objective determinations of a match or non-match with well-characterized confidence limits and/or error rates.
PML researchers Xiaoyu (Alan) Zheng and Johannes Soons of the Semiconductor and Dimensional Metrology Division, and Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) students John Villanova (2012) and Taher Kakal (2013), have responded to this criticism by seeking to strengthen the scientific basis of the toolmark identification process through the use of mathematically objective similarity metrics applied to direct measurements of the surface topography.
The work builds on research by the Surface and Nanostructure Metrology Group and the NIST Office for Law Enforcement Standards (OLES) on forensic firearm identification using toolmarks found on bullets and cartridge cases.
For this study, Zheng obtained 10 consecutively manufactured chisels (for making striated toolmarks) and 10 consecutively manufactured drift punches (for making impressed toolmarks) from a major commercial tool supplier.
“Robert Thompson, my OLES program manager, went to Western Forge,” Zheng explains. “He sat there and witnessed a machinist make each of these tools one at a time. He took them sequentially off the production line, and brought them to NIST.”
Identifying a particular tool from a pool of consecutively manufactured tools represents a challenging scenario, as the tools are more likely to have similarities in their geometry. Zheng further raised the bar for the identification process by creating a special setup for the reproducible generation of toolmarks. Currently, forensic examiners create comparison toolmarks by hand, which may introduce unintended variability in the toolmark pattern.
A reproducible method of generating toolmarks increases the probability of false identifications (false positives) which, from a legal perspective, represents the most critical error rate. “We wanted to lock down a lot of the variables for this study,” Zheng states. “We can control the tool motion, speed, orientation, and contact force, so that we get a very high level of toolmark reproducibility. This high reproducibility, combined with the use of consecutively manufactured tools, yields a very challenging scenario for avoiding false identifications. If you can correctly identify the toolmarks using very repeatable methods, then you should be able to make identifications using less repeatable methods.”
In the blind study, Zheng first created 20 known chisel marks, two marks per chisel, by using the rig to drag each chisel across the surface of polished copper plates. Then the chisel identities were hidden. After randomization, 20 unknown toolmarks were generated. The rig was then modified to create the punch toolmarks. The tool holder was fitted with a drift punch and toolmarks were generated through a controlled drop from a height of 170 mm (6.69 in). Again, the marks were made on polished copper plates, and 20 known and 20 unknown marks were collected.
To take on the daunting challenge of trying to match 40 unknown toolmarks (20 chisel marks and 20 punch marks) to 40 known toolmarks, Zheng opted to use more sophisticated instrumentation. Zheng used a 2D stylus instrument to measure the cross-section profile of the striated (chisel) toolmarks and a 3D disc scanning confocal microscope to measure the topography of the impressed (punch) toolmarks.
Zheng used algorithms created by Soons to automatically filter and register the topography data from two samples and calculate an objective measure, the ACCFMAX metric, for their similarity. “We take the known marks, measure them, and do a 20 by 20 correlation,” Zheng explains. “We see how well they match to each other. Marks generated by the same chisel or punch should match really well, but the marks from different chisels or punches should not match.”
Using the distributions of the similarity metric for the known matching and non-matching comparisons, an identification baseline was statistically established. Once the data analysis of the known marks was completed, Zheng was able to use the identification baseline to automatically and correctly identify the tool that generated each unknown toolmark.
“There was no human intervention in identifying which ones match and which ones don’t,” Zheng confirms. “It was all done by computers without investigator bias.”
The study not only provides support for the validity of the toolmark identification process, it has the potential to revolutionize the process by improving the data quality and by removing human error and subjectivity from the analysis.
Looking ahead, Zheng is focusing on a new collaboration, this time examining bullets, with a forensic laboratory in Alabama that was able to procure a confocal microscope. This will be the first toolmark comparison involving topography data obtained by two different labs using different instruments on the same set of bullets. The goal of this study is to gain confidence in the application of surface topography metrology and objective comparison criteria. Zheng, Soons, and Thompson received a grant from the Department of Justice, National Institute of Justice, to develop a “Reference Ballistic Toolmark Database for Research and Development of Identification Systems and Confidence Limits.”
This open database of toolmark data will enable researchers and manufacturers to test and validate new approaches to objective toolmark identification and ease the transition to three-dimensional surface topography data. At NIST, the database will be used to further validate error rate estimations using the Congruent Matching Cells (CMC) method developed by PML researcher Jun-feng Song as part of the NIST forensic measurement challenge.
[1] National Research Council, “Strengthening Forensic Science in the United States: A Path Forward,” The National Academies Press, Washington, DC, 2009.
Source: NISTFor the latest on this story, click here or visit CBC Calgary.
Jordan and Evan Caldwell, the twins who died early Saturday morning while attempting to toboggan down the bobsled track at Canada Olympic Park, were former employees, park officials have confirmed.
"The loss of Jordan and Evan Caldwell is being felt by many in the Calgary community, including our team here at WinSport, where the two young men worked as Hill Ambassadors during last winter's season," said Barry Heck, CEO of the organization that operates Canada Olympic Park.
The teenagers were killed and six others were injured during an after-hours visit to the track.
Police say the boys hopped on a toboggan and went for a ride on the high-speed run, but on the way down crashed into a gate separating the bobsled and luge tracks.
The twin brothers were the only fatalities in the incident, which occurred around 1:30 a.m. MT.
The other six teenage males in their group remain in hospital.
Safety
A card in memory of Jordan and Evan Caldwell, who were killed at Canada Olympic Park on Feb. 6. (Evelyne Asselin/CBC)
"WinSport has been running this facility for many, many years with enormous safety and sometimes there's a point where there's no more you can do," said Calgary Mayor NaheedNenshi,
He said he would know more after returning home from a gathering in Montreal of Canada's big city mayors.
"But I have asked my colleagues in the Calgary Police Service to give us an assessment,." he said.
Heck said on Saturday that he doesn't recall any previous incidents like this one where someone broke in to use the track after hours.
"I've heard of incidents of people coming into the park. I do not know of any incidents of anyone being on the sliding track."
'Life is but a vapour'
After being notified by Calgary police, the Caldwell family released a statement.
"We were reminded today that life is but a vapour," the family said.
"Our boys Jordan and Evan were bright lights to all who knew them. We are grieving their loss but confident in their new home of heaven. Our brief 17 years with them were a gift: filled with much love, laughter and fond memories," the statement says.
"They leave a huge void and will be sorely missed."
Nenshi said from the little he's learned of the Caldwell brothers, they were "remarkable, remarkable young men with tremendous futures."
He also offered thoughts for first responders.
Barry Heck says safety is a priority at the park 10:29
Two memorials have been set up at the hill for those wanting to pay their respects, one at the Olympic plaque at the top of some stairs leading to the bobsled track, and the other at the top of the hill.
The park hosted events during the 1988 Winter Olympics. Several World Cup events are held at the site as well.Ex-NHL Star Bill Guerin Drops $500K on Backyard Hockey Rink
NHL Legend Bill Guerin -- Drops $500K on Backyard Hockey Rink
EXCLUSIVE
Retired Penguins staris living every hockey players dream... 'cause the guy just dropped HALF A MILLION DOLLARS on a full-size ice rink in his BACKYARD,has learned.The 2x-Stanley Cup winner -- who now oversees player development for the Penguins -- had the rink installed in the back of his new home in Sewickley, PA... just a 25 min drive from the Penguins stadium.We're told Guerin even ordered a personal ZAMBONI machine to keep the ice in tip top shape.Also looks like there's a basketball net at the end of the rink... so we're hoping Guerin's in the process of inventing some sort of hockey-basketball hybrid sport.The real winners here -- every kid in that neighborhood.French women will no longer need to declare marital status on official forms after the government demanded the term "mademoiselle" be dropped. Solidarity Minister Roselyne Bachelot (pictured) said the move would "end a form of discrimination".
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French language learners might soon have to update their text books after the government signalled the beginning of the end for the term “mademoiselle”.
Under pressure from feminist groups the French government has decided that a women’s marital status should no longer matter when it comes to bureaucracy.
Up until now French women have been asked to identify themselves on administrative forms either as a married “madame”, or a “mademoiselle” - a term used for unmarried young women.
Having to make that choice is deemed sexist by many because men are always referred to as “monsieur”, whether they are married or not.
The Prime Minister’s office has now instructed authorities to only use the term “madame” in a move Solidarity Minister Roselyne Bachelot said would “end a form of discrimination”.
The shift has been hailed as an important victory by France’s feminist movement.
“Little by Little”
Clemence Helfter from Osez le Feminisme told FRANCE 24 the dropping of the term “mademoiselle” is more than just a symbolic victory for gender equality.
“People say to us ‘don’t you have better things to campaign about for women?’ but for us this is a real victory. This word is just a part of an unequal system and each time we gain a victory like this we are beating male domination little by little,” she said.
“Miss” - the English equivalent of the word “mademoiselle” - has been slowly phased out over the years as “Ms” has become the more commonly used term.
The German “Fraulein”, which literally means “little woman” was outlawed from official use back in 1972. In Spanish, a latin language like French, the use of “senorita” is now seen as old-fashioned.
But young women in France are still regularly greeted by the term “mademoiselle” whether it’s by a waiter in a café or when having to identify themselves when shopping online.
“Mademoiselle is not flattering it’s intrusive,” said Ms Helfter. “It’s old-fashioned. Let’s get a move on. Less and less people are getting married in France so what is the point of using it anymore?”
Changing times
Some local authorities have already heeded her call. Last week the council in charge of Paris suburb Fontenay-sous-Bois abolished “mademoiselle” from official documents because it was “condescending and sexist”.
They also banned the term “nom de jeune fille”, which means “maiden name” from all paperwork because it was “archaic” and had “connotations of virginity”.
Officials in Cesson-Sevigne, a town in Brittany, took a similar step two months ago.
Some feminist commentators have put the rejuvenation of France’s feminist movement down to the fallout from the sordid sex scandals involving former IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn.
Groups like Osez le Feminisme were angry that comments made by members of the French elite and some media coverage of the case seemed to belittle rape and was too sympathetic towards Strauss-Kahn.
Just weeks after his arrest in New York on accusations he sexually assaulted a hotel chamber maid more than 40 feminist groups held what was considered the biggest conference on women’s rights in a decade. More than 600 activists turned up to the rally in Paris.
“Times are changing in France. While we have often heard it said that feminism was outdated and belonged in the past, we have recently seen a profound resurgence of a yearning for equality,” said Osez le Feminisme leader Caroline De Haas in an article for British daily the Guardian.
The fight goes on
If the feminist movement has been given a much needed boost it still has a big fight on its hands to gain real equality for women in a country where they were not allowed to vote until 1944.
Ms Haas points to the fact that 80 percent of casual workers in France are women and the wage gap stands at 27 percent in favour of men. Only 18.5 percent of members in the lower house of parliament are women compared to 21 percent in the UK, 33 percent in Germany and 46 percent in Sweden.
One of those representatives, Chantal Jouanno, has gone on record saying French politics was so sexist that she didn't dare to wear a skirt in parliament.
In French boardrooms, only 15 percent of executives in large French companies are women. A new law has set a quota for 40 percent by 2017.
The issue is coming to the fore at a key time with France just weeks away from the first round of voting in this year’s tightly fought presidential elections.
Dozens of feminist groups are set to meet the candidates from various parties at a meeting in Paris next month where they will demand more is done to tackle the wage gap and call for restrictions on sexual advertising.
“It’s very important for us to know whether the candidates have it in their minds to tackle these issues of gender inequality,” Marie-Noëlle Bas from the feminist group Les Chiennes de Garde President told FRANCE 24.
Ms Bas told FRANCE 24 that President Nicolas Sarkozy had still not confirmed he would attend the meeting. Socialist Party candidate Francois Hollande and the Green Party’s Eva Joly have said they would be there.Six of the bottom eight countries in the latest Ipsos financial security monitor are EU member states. But, on the back of strong economic data, Britain bucks the general trend
Europeans continue to feel insecure when it comes to their personal finances.
Six of the bottom eight countries in the latest Ipsos financial security monitor, a monthly survey carried out in 24 countries around the world, are EU member states.
Across all countries surveyed only a majority of citizens in India and Brazil feel financially secure.
The drop in China and Germany’s figures are both noticeable, and are likely feeding into both countries recent mixed economic results - and in Germany’s case, as are growing concerns over a wider continental slowdown. It is important to note though that from an historical point of view, the trend for both countries remains relatively high and in line with each state’s average levels.
Conversely, confidence in Mexico has increased by five points over the past month, which translates into a jump of four positions up the Ipsos index. Further down the rankings, confidence in the US and the UK is slightly up. While in Argentina and Russia, less than a third of citizens now feels financially secure. Closer to the bottom of the table, Japan’s score remains very low, reflecting the country’s recent fall back into recession.
Looking further at the specifics of the figures behind the financial security monitor, the UK’s improved economic performance continues to be reflected in how Britons view the country’s current situation. 41% describe the state of the economy as “good”. While someway below the 75% of Germans who view their country’s economy positively, the figure is above the global average, and on par with the US. It is also significantly higher than France and Spain - and this wasn’t the case just three years ago.
The gloom in French confidence now matches levels in Spain.
The survey found that Britons are now more confident than Germans when it comes to how citizens view their future financial situation. 27% feel their situation will be stronger in six months time, compared to 24% of Germans who feel the same way. In part this is explained by the fact that Germans start from a significantly higher view of their country’s economy (as the chart above clearly denotes), but on the other hand it also reflects the fact that when it comes to views on personal financial circumstances, the trend for the two countries is moving in opposite directions.
A similar picture in fact emerges when it comes to how comfortable Germans and Brits feel about making major purchases.
The index is calculated as an average of how people in each country view their current financial situation, how comfortable they feel about making a major purchase, and how they expect their situation to evolve over the next six months. It isn’t meant as a way to imply that a country’s economy is stronger or weaker when compared to other nations. It is a tool to gauge how citizens in each specific country feel about their personal financial circumstances; how their confidence now, compares to the past; and to monitor their outlook for the future - all relative to the context within each surveyed country.
Of the findings, Simon Atkinson, Assistant CEO of Ipsos Mori, says: “It’s rare for a pollster to be able to report that Britain is ahead of Germany on measures around economic confidence. But that’s exactly where we are today. The improvements over the last couple of years are bordering on the remarkable. In the wake of the Autumn Statement, George Osborne will be quietly pleased with these results.”
Methodology: Between 7 and 21 October, an international sample of 18,084 adults aged 18-64 in the USA and Canada, and aged 16-64 in all other countries, was interviewed via the Ipsos online panel system. Approximately 1,000 individuals participated in the survey from each country, with the exceptions of Argentina, Belgium, Hungary, Mexico, Poland, Romania, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, South Korea, Sweden and Turkey, where each has a sample of c.500 individuals. All data are weighted so as to balance demographics and to ensure that the sample’s composition reflects that of the adult population according to the most recent country Census data.Trayvon Martin Killing Puts 'Stand Your Ground' Law In Spotlight
Police didn't arrest George Zimmerman. They didn't arrest him after he got off his car, shot and killed 17-year-old Trayvon Martin, who was unarmed and on his way back from the store after buying some snacks. They didn't arrest him after 9-11 calls emerged in which police advise Zimmerman, who was on Neighborhood Watch patrol, not to follow Martin.
Sanford, Fla. police said Zimmerman has claimed self defense, so they've handed the case over to the state attorney.
But, as NPR's Joel Rose reported this morning, Florida law may mean prosecuting Zimmerman could prove difficult.
"As long as you are somewhere you have a lawful right to be, if someone attacks you, the words of the statute are you can meet force with force, including deadly force, if you reasonably believe that that is necessary," Jeffrey Bellin, who teaches law at Southern Methodist University, told Joel.
That law is known as the "Stand Your Ground," or "Shoot First" law and it's been controversial since it was passed in 2005. Basically, The Christian Science Monitor reports, the law gets rid of the English Law concept of "duty to retreat" from a situation that is dangerous outside your home.
Bellin told the Monitor that the law makes judging self defense harder for prosecutors because it could potentially negate "the extent to which a person claiming self-defense may have aggravated the situation."
"It's hard to imagine that this couldn't have been resolved by [Zimmerman] leaving, so that no one would've gotten hurt, so this is a case where the Stand Your Ground law can actually make a legal difference," Bellin told the paper. "Even if you have suspicions about what motivated this, and you think there was a racial element and no justification for this shooting, the fact is he had no obligation to retreat under the law. If prosecutors don't have the evidence to disprove the claim of self-defense, they won't be able to win."
The Orlando Sentinel reports that claims of self defense ballooned after the law passed.
"Some Orlando-area police agencies simply stopped investigating shootings involving self-defense claims and referred them directly to state prosecutors to decide," the paper reports.
Back in 2010, The Tampa Bay Times took at comprehensive look at the law. It found that reports of "justifiable homicides tripled after the law went into effect."
The paper added:
"Last year, twice a week, on average, someone's killing was considered warranted. "The self-defense law — known as'stand your ground' — has been invoked in at least 93 cases with 65 deaths, a St. Petersburg Times review found. "In the majority of the cases, the person's use of force was excused by prosecutors and the courts."
In fact, according to The Sun Sentinel, the Florida Supreme Court decided a judge should evaluate a defendant's claim of self defense before he goes to trial. In other words, a judge not a jury usually decides if a killing was in self defense.
Critics of the law call it the "right-to-commit-murder law," saying it has turned Florida into the Wild West. Supporters say it helps deter crime.
In its story, The Tampa Bay Times breaks down the law with another case. Trevor Dooley went to a park with gun. He had a permit. David James, a decorated U.S. Air Force serviceman went to the park with his 8-year-old daughter.
The two men argued over a kid on a skateboard when Dooley tried to enforce the rules. James, said Dooley, lunged at him so he shot him. James died in front of his 8-year-old daughter.
The paper reports:
"What was James, 41, thinking when he lunged toward Dooley? What was Dooley thinking James was thinking? "Did Dooley'reasonably believe' that the younger, bigger, stronger man would take his gun and harm him? "Only he knows. "And whether he is punished for gunning down a father in front of his daughter in a park on a sunny Sunday afternoon will more than likely come down to what he says he was thinking in those |
than there was on this date in 2002'
Via Real Science
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Warmists Now Claim they predicted the record Arctic ice gain!— [Warmists] are now in the first stages of their never was a global warming consensus history rewrite’
Warmists seek to look at ‘the long term trend’ in Arctic ice, as a way to avoid a serious discussion about the 60% increase in ice this year — Rebuttal: ‘The first thing to note is that NSIDC starts their graph at the century maximum in 1979. In the early 1970s, sea ice was much less extensive than later in the decade. If NSIDC included the entire satellite record in their graph, it would look like a sine wave, not a straight line.
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UK Daily Mail: ‘Record return of Arctic ice cap as it grows by 60% in a year with top scientists warning of global COOLING’
Submitted Written Testimony of Climate Depot’s Marc Morano at Congressional Hearing on Climate Change – May 30,2013: ‘The Origins and Response to Climate Change’ — Morano to the U.S. Congress: ‘The scientific reality is that on virtually every claim — from A-Z — the claims of the promoters of man-made climate fears are failing, and in many instances the claims are moving in the opposite direction. The global warming movement is suffering the scientific death of a thousand cuts.’The 34 year-old underlined her reputation as the fittest woman on the planet when she claimed her fourth world ironman crown in the space of five years in Hawaii last month.
She is so incensed at the decision not to nominate a single woman to the 10-strong shortlist that she intends to turn down an invitation to attend the awards ceremony in Salford on Dec 22 and hopes other top female athletes will follow her example and “vote with their feet”.
“They have already invited me but I’m not going to go,” said Wellington. “I would like it to create a snowball effect because that would mean a message would be sent to them.”
Wellington is one of a number of female world champions who were overlooked on the list, which was compiled from nominations submitted by 27 national and regional newspapers and magazines.
Those who made the cut included the bookmakers’ favourites, cyclist Mark Cavendish, golfer Darren Clarke and track athlete Mo Farah, as well as more controversial choices such as boxer Amir Khan and tennis player Andy Murray, neither of whom enjoyed spectacular success in 2011.
But there was no place for any of the British women who conquered the world this year. Along with Wellington, swimmers Rebecca Adlington and Keri-Anne Payne, triathlete Helen Jenkins, taekwondo fighter Sarah Stevenson and the rowing duo of Katharine Grainger and Anna Watkins were also snubbed.
Wellington insists the shortlist in no way reflects the best achievements in British sport by men or women, and is particularly incensed by the way BBC presenter Gary Lineker justified the all-male list by claiming 2011 “has not been as strong for women”.
“For Gary Lineker to turn round and say that perhaps it hasn’t been a great year for women in sport is simply insulting,” she said.
Wellington said boycotting the awards ceremony had nothing to do with her own disappointment at failing to make the shortlist but was about the wider issue of women in sport.
“It’s not about narcissism on my part,” she said. “It’s not about seeing my name in lights because if I wanted that I would have had a sex change and taken up football.
“I didn’t take up ironman because I wanted to have my face plastered all over the broadsheets. I took up my sport because I love it, pure and simple. But I also believe incredibly strongly that sport is a platform.
“It’s a tool and a vehicle to spread important messages and my concern is that this is sending the wrong message to the general public, especially to children and to youths, that women are a minority in terms of sporting excellence.”
She also accused the BBC of passing the buck by claiming the nominations were the simply the choice of the newspapers and magazines and said the whole voting process was unfairly weighted against women.
Among the publications included in the vote were two men’s magazines, Zoo and Nuts, who did not choose a single female athlete.
“The BBC needs to take responsibility and needs to change the way the voting is constructed by having a panel that is a better cross-section of the sporting population,” said Wellington.
Payne won the 10km open water gold medal at this year's World Championships, becoming the first Briton to be assured of a place at the London 2012 Olympics. She said: "Are they voting for the people who are most popular? Or who has achieved the most in their sport this year? The line is fuzzy."
Payne's exclusion was noted by Adlington, who took gold in the 800 metres at the World Championships. She tweeted: "There's been some great sportswomen like Keri-Anne Payne, it's sad they are not recognised. Hopefully next year can be all women nominations after London 2012."
Former Paralympic champion Tanni Grey-Thompson said: "I wouldn't want tokenism and I wouldn't want a woman to be on the list just because she was a woman. But I think you just look at where the nominations have come from and that highlights another problem really – only two per cent of media coverage in sport goes to women.
"Women just aren't on the minds, whether it's editors or in some case producers, it's just not there... you're fighting against the system all the time where it's the big sports all the time that get the recognition."
A female athlete has not been awarded the prize since Zara Phillips in 2006 when she had won and individual gold and team silver at the World Equestrian Games.
Lord Coe also expressed his surprise that not a single woman has been included.
Coe, winner of the award himself in 1979, said: "I find it slightly surprising that there is not a woman on that shortlist. We have had Rebecca Adlington winning a world title in the world swimming championships, we have had other women world champions this year too.
"This has also been a year where two women have won silver medals at the athletics world championships, Hannah England and Jessica Ennis, and it is one of the toughest championships in which to win a medal so I am surprised."According to a study conducted this summer by the Consumer Reports National Research Center, shrinkage is occurring across a broad spectrum of goods, Mr. Marks said. The study will be published by Consumer Reports in October.
Some of the worst offenders are canned tuna, paper towels, chewing gum, butter-type spreads, candy bars — and, perhaps most drastically, coffee and ice cream. In many cases, he said, the traditional one-pound can of coffee has dwindled to 10 or 11 ounces. And many ice cream containers have shrunk from a half-gallon to 1.5 quarts.
Having just bought what I thought was a half-gallon of ice cream, I checked my freezer and was taken aback when I read the label. No 64 ounces here, just a mere 48 ounces dolled up to look like a half-gallon.
I felt snookered, but it was my own fault. I had not checked the container’s actual size or the unit pricing label, steps Mr. Marks says are essential if you are going to get your money’s worth in groceries these days.
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Also, he advises, look sideways at a package before you buy it. “Companies won’t change the height or length of a container. It’s the width,” he said. “The Hershey’s bar you pick up at the register looks like the old 3-ounce bar but it’s only 1.5 ounces. Hold it up. It’s as thin as a wafer.”
THE incredible shrinking package game is hardly amusing when one contemplates a rapidly expanding grocery bill. But, in a funny way, it may be a good idea for food manufacturers and shoppers alike, said Harry Balzer, a vice president of the NPD Group, a marketing research firm based in Port Washington, N.Y.
With the soaring cost of wheat, corn, eggs, milk and other staples, grocery producers are faced with a dilemma, said Mr. Balzer, who studies food consumption. “People hate paying more for groceries. How do manufacturers deal with rising food costs without passing it along directly to the consumer?
“One option that you’re seeing, they keep the price the same but lower the amount. In effect, it’s a price increase,” he said, “but it’s not an increase in out-of-pocket expenses.”
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Actually, I pointed out to Mr. Balzer, it is certainly an increase in what I pay out of pocket if my half-gallon of ice cream lasts only 1.5 quarts’ worth of servings or my box of cereal runs out after a week instead of two.
Mr. Balzer agreed. “There’s no question that you’re paying more for food,” he said. But, he added, consider the challenge facing food producers. “They have to make a decision: Do you raise the price of a product and risk that customers may not buy it, or do you modify the packaging and risk that people might feel deceived?”
As flawed as the system sounds, Mr. Marks of Consumer Reports believes that the grocery dance keeps everyone happy, more or less. “In effect, grocery manufacturers are still raising prices, yet people are paying the same — which is somehow appealing to the American psyche.”The interesting part about this free-agency period, and about football in general, is how an increased cap can all of a sudden force teams to become far more aggressive than they'd planned. It also encourages teams to fool themselves into short-term notions of competitiveness that were not in the cards the year before.
When financial flexibility and heightened awareness of job security collide, you get a market that is, at any given time, completely over-saturated and insanely pricey.
That's what makes finding the best and worst deals quite simple.
Without further ado, here are three financially savvy moves made by teams, and three that teams may end up regretting.
FINANCIALLY SAVVY, WAVE 1:
1. Darrelle Revis, DB, New York Jets: The 29-34 seasons for a cornerback can still be wildly productive, just ask the Denver Broncos and Champ Bailey. Revis will still be Revis for at least half of this contract and is walking away with only $14 million more in guarantees than Byron Maxwell. Yes, it's a lot of money to spend, but it's smart money.
2. Mike Iupati, G, Arizona Cardinals: Expertise at the interior line spots will only become more valuable as defensive coordinators find more ways to attack weak links. Iupati comes off the board financially in line with some of the best offensive linemen in his class, but is well worth it.
3. Ryan Mathews, RB, Philadelphia Eagles: Signed nearly an identical contract as Frank Gore did in Indy, but for less guaranteed money. He's also four years younger.
Honorable mention: Bryan Bulaga, Andre Johnson, Shane Vereen
BLIND SPENDERS, WAVE 1:
1. Ndamukong Suh, DT, Miami Dolphins: How has a team done in the recent past after making a defensive player the highest paid in football? And how many truly record-setting seasons are we expecting from a 28-year-old interior pass rusher? Make no mistake, he is one of the five best defensive players in football. But is he worth this much money when the quarterback's deal needs to get done and the skill positions around him need to get better?
2. Julius Thomas, TE, Jacksonville Jaguars: If he puts up with Peyton Manning numbers his first year in Jacksonville, I'll be the first one to take this back. But for more straight-up guaranteed money than Rob Gronkowski, this guy better be a game-changer, and one hell of a blocker, too.
3. Dwayne Harris, KR/WR, New York Giants: For two seasons now, Jerry Reese has coveted more explosive players on his roster, especially on kick returns. Jacoby Jones was locked up for a two-year, $5.5 million deal with roughly $1.6 million guaranteed. Ted Ginn was a two-year, $4.2 million contract with less than $2 million in signing bonuses. Harris, though much younger and a little more of an established pass-catcher (but not by much), gets a five-year, $17.5 million contract with more than $7 million guaranteed.
Honorable mention: Jeremy Maclin, Torrey Smith, Pernell McPhee
The latest Around The NFL Podcast breaks down every trade and free-agent signing and discusses the impact of Darrelle Revis' return to the Jets. Find more Around The NFL content on NFL NOW.Mystery of Bay Area fighter jet fly-by solved: It was a Top Gun flier
Mystery fighter jet roars over East Bay cities... did you hear/see it? Some say more than one. https://t.co/3xyibPuWD9 pic.twitter.com/sc62HD9SOj — KPIX 5 (@CBSSF) September 7, 2017
The roar of a fighter jet thundering overhead startled East Bay residents Wednesday evening. No one seemed to know where it came from or what it was doing buzzing airspace from Walnut Creek to Danville.
Photographs of the plane by Brian Yuen posted on Twitter appeared to show an F-16 with air-to-air missiles attached to its wings. The F-16 is an Air Force fighter, but it's also flown by the National Guard. The Navy uses F-16s for training.
Naval Air Station Lemoore near Fresno confirmed the jet wasn't theirs. Ditto for Travis Air Force Base.
As the California Capital Airshow is this weekend in Sacramento, perhaps its planes were flying practice runs?
"To my knowledge, they're not ours," said Kirsten DeLong, public relations director. She explained that the air show features F-18 Super Hornets, F-15s and A-10 Warthogs, but has no F-16s.
Further mudding the mystery, the San Ramon Police Department tweeted, "So apparently some fighter jets were scrambled to intercept a small plane landing in Oakland. This is all we know." But there were no other reports of jets being scrambled or any planes being intercepted.
A fighter plane on a noisy fly-by? It sounded like something out of "Top Gun," the 1986 Tom Cruise movie.
So we checked with Naval Air Station Fallon in Nevada, east of Reno. NAS Fallon is the Navy's premier air-to-air training facility and the home to the Naval Fighter Weapons (Top Gun) School.
After conferring with base officials, Fallon Public Affairs Officer Zip Upham confirmed the fighter was from Fallon.
"It was a single Navy F-16 on a routine training op," Upham said.
"Occasionally they do navigation flights over the Bay Area, flying as low as 800 feet," he said.
So apparently some fighter jets were scrambled to intercept a small plane landing in Oakland. This is all we know. Hope that helps — San Ramon Police (@sanramonpolice) September 7, 2017
Fighter jets just flew overhead. Changing pants when I get a chance. — andrew_pi (@Bwuh) September 7, 2017
Fighter jets just went screaming over Walnut Ceeek CA. Brought back memories of living on AF bases — Melissa Van Hoosen (@melvanhoosen) September 7, 2017
Upham did not know how low this fighter was flying because he did not have access to the flight path. But the fighter was "cleared and controlled" by air traffic control, he said. It took off from Fallon at 5:15 p.m and returned at 6:45 p.m.
The fighter was equipped with two unarmed Sidewinder missiles. One carries a transponder.
The Navy has 14 F-16s (all at Fallon), which it calls "Vipers" as opposed to the Air Force's "Fighting Falcons." They are used as adversarial fighters to train Top Gun pilots in combat tactics.
The planes are camouflaged and routinely fly with air-to-air missiles on the wingtips, Upham said.Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) wants to be clear: Although he was born in Canada, he is a U.S. citizen.
Speaking Monday night on Fox News' "Hannity", Cruz gave some insight into his recent keynote speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference and short time in the Senate so far. Towards the end of the interview, however, host Sean Hannity pointed out that recent buzz around the tea party favorite has gained Cruz some attention as a possible presidential nominee.
"Are you eligible to run for president? You were born in Canada," Hannity asked.
Cruz attempted to downplay the question and turned to his work "defending the Constitution" in the Senate.
But Hannity went on to note that while while Cruz was born in Canada to a Cuban father, Cruz's mother was a U.S. citizen, which led Cruz to agree that he was, in fact, a U.S. "citizen by birth."
Cruz was born in Calgary, Canada. His camp has responded to prior questions about his birthplace and presidential eligibility by stating that his mother's citizenship makes him a "U.S. citizen by birth."
Under the Constitution, eligibility for holding the office of the president requires the candidate to be a "natural-born" citizen. While the term is not defined concretely, birther conspiracy theorists have long insisted that President Barack Obama isn't eligible to be president because of their belief that he was born in Kenya, a claim they've argued would disqualify him regardless of his mother's U.S. citizenship. While Obama was in fact born in Hawaii, it appears that Cruz could be susceptible to the same kind of scrutiny that Obama has faced if he decides to run for president.
Hannity predicted that Democrats might use Cruz's Canadian birthplace against him in the future, saying that he heard "birther cries building on the left."TAYLORSVILLE — An elementary school teacher has been charged with a misdemeanor after accidentally discharging her concealed firearm at school last month.
She submitted her resignation Thursday, the school district confirmed.
Westbrook Elementary School sixth-grade teacher Michelle Ferguson-Montgomery was charged in Taylorsville Justice Court on Oct. 1 with discharging a firearm in city limits, a class B misdemeanor.
Before school began on Sept. 11, Ferguson-Montgomery went into the restroom and unholstered her 9mm Glock handgun, Taylorsville city attorney Tracy Scott Cowdell reported. The gun went off when the teacher attempted to holster it, and the bullet struck the toilet, sending a shower of shattered porcelain into her leg.
"We recognize that it's getting harder and harder to be a teacher. With all the scary things going on in the world, I can appreciate a teacher's interest in protecting themselves," Cowdell said. "We just can't have teachers or anyone else in a school being reckless with a firearm to the point that it goes off."
We recognize that it's getting harder and harder to be a teacher. With all the scary things going on in the world, I can appreciate a teacher's interest in protecting themselves. We just can't have teachers or anyone else in a school being reckless with a firearm to the point that it goes off. –Tracy Scott Cowdell, Taylorsville city attorney
Granite School District spokesman Ben Horsley said Ferguson-Montgomery has been on leave while the shooting was investigated. The district informed her this week she would be disciplined and allowed to return to work Monday, but Ferguson-Montgomery submitted a letter of resignation instead, Horsley said.
The teacher was not fired from her job, Horsley said. She has been a teacher at Westbrook Elementary, 3451 W. 6200 South, for eight years.
At the time of the shooting, Horsley explained that state law does allow teachers with permits to carry concealed weapons on school grounds, as long as the teacher makes no indication that he or she is carrying a weapon and the weapon is not visible.
In addition, district policy requires teachers with concealed weapons permits to have possession and be in control of their weapon at all times. That means a teacher cannot legally put a weapon in a purse, briefcase, desk drawer or closet — even if it has a lock — while at school, he said.
Ferguson-Montgomery is scheduled to appear in court Nov. 5.
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Related StoriesLast month, Facebook offered to settle a class action lawsuit, rather than fight it in court, offering $20 million. The courted granted preliminary approval for the settlement, and Facebook has started the process of paying it out (you can read the whole settlement here ). Affected users — that is, people who "may have been featured in a 'Sponsored Story' on Facebook prior to December 3, 2012" — have started getting emails like this:
The class action alleged that Facebook didn't have the legal right to use members' likenesses in Sponsored Posts. Facebook disagreed, obviously, but rather than risk litigation, decided to settle. (This suit predates the Instagram TOS dustup, but concerns a lot of the same issues.)
Is this for real? Just got an email notice of a Facebook Class Action settlement? http://t.co/48zVqGyM-- Eric Berto
Is this for real? Just got an email notice of a Facebook Class Action settlement? http://t.co/48zVqGyM
Twitter is full of Facebook users wondering if these emails are a scam, which is a reasonable concern: They're written in awkward legalese, and for most this news will have come out of nowhere. But the settlement is real, and some Facebook users may get paid.
If you're eligible, you'll get an email like the one above. You'll have to file a claim form — takes about five minutes — and then wait. If individual payments do go out, checks will be cut after June.
BUT! And this is a big but: "If the number of claims made renders it economically infeasible to pay money to persons who make a timely and valid claim, payment will be made to the not-for-profit organizations identified on the Settlement website at www.fraleyfacebooksettlement.com."
Facebook has over a 150 million users in the U.S., and the settlement pool is just $20 million. So this seems like a likely outcome.Spread the love
Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich showed on Sunday he is not going to go along with the narrative put out by the mainstream media that murdered Democratic National Committee’s Director of Voter Expansion Data, Seth Rich, was killed by thugs. He told FoxNews’ Fox and Friends Sunday, Rich was assassinated.
Gingrich was asked about the appointment of former FBI Director Robert Mueller as a Special Prosecutor to investigate the allegations Russia colluded with the Trump campaign to influence the 2016 presidential election. After briefly stating any investigation into Russian connections to American politicians should also investigate Bill Clinton’s receipt for $500K, and Hillary’s Russian deal with Uranium One, Gingrich dropped what some are calling a bombshell.
We have this very strange story now of this young man who worked at the Democratic National Committee, who apparently was ASSASSINATED, at four in the morning, uh having given Wikileaks something like 23,000, um I’m sorry 53,000 emails and 17,000 attachments. Nobody is investigating that. And what does that tell you about what was going on? Because it turns out it wasn’t the Russians. It was this young guy who I suspect was disgusted by the corruption of the Democratic National Committee. He’s been killed and apparently nothing serious has been done to investigate his murder. So, I’d like to see how Mueller is going to define what his assignment is. And if it’s only narrowly Trump, the country will not learn what it needs to learn about foreign involvement in American politics.
Immediately after Gingrich made his remarks, The Daily Caller News Foundation (DCNF) wrote a story titled, “Newt Gingrich Spreads Debunked Story About Murdered DNC Staffer,” written by Chuck Ross. Ross regurgitated the debunking talking points the establishment seems to be clinging to, that Rod Wheeler recanted his story, and that Rich’s family says all the talk surrounding their son’s assassination is fodder for conspiracy theory.
It’s understandable they’d feel that way. However, depending on how the story is spun, their son can either come across as a traitor (for leaking DNC documents to foreigners) or a hero (for blowing the whistle the DNC actively worked to promote Clinton over their handpicked patsy in Sanders).
Hang on folks, here’s where it gets good. Not only had The Daily Caller published two prior stories supporting Gingrich’s contention, but Ross may have inadvertently blown the Rich assassination story wide open.
Ross tweeted a link to his story, and now more information has surfaced from sources who claim to have insider information about what happened to Rich after he was shot.
Responding to Ross’ contention the Rich assassination is a myth, Darlene Totty uploaded a copy of the D.C. Metropolitan Police Report from the night Rich was shot which stated he was still alive when police arrived, and was transported to a local hospital at 4:20 am. The report also says he was pronounced dead by the attending physician at 5:57 am.
But here’s where the story takes an interesting twist. Totty also uploaded testimony from an anonymous person claiming to be a medical doctor in his fourth year of surgical residency training at MedStar Washington Hospital Center where Rich was taken.
The anonymous email was submitted on 5/17/17 and provides a stark contrast to the police report, the mainstream media’s narrative, and those who are still saying he was killed in a robbery gone bad.
“I feel I shouldn’t stay silent,” the doctor said, breaking all HIPPA laws in the process. He said Seth was very much alive when he was brought into the hospital, and was immediately taken to the operating room where an “exlap,” exploratory laparotomy was performed. In other words, the surgeons opened up his abdomen to see what damage was done when he was shot twice in the back.
The doctor stated they found damage to Rich’s liver and repaired it. They found a portion of his bowel to be damaged, and they “resect(ed)” it by cutting out the damaged portion and reconnected the bowel.
“I’ve seen dozens of worse cases than this which survived and nothing about his injuries suggested to me that he’d sustained a fatal wound,” the surgeon wrote.
“He was transferred to ICU, and transfused 2 units of blood,” he wrote before saying his blood pressure was stable and he was not on any “pressers” (blood pressure medicine). “It seemed pretty routine,” the doctor stated, but what happened next was anything but normal.
“About 8 hours after he (Rich) arrived, we were swarmed with LEO’s (law enforcement officers),” wrote the physician. Mind you, the official police report said he died at 5:57, less than 2 hours after being transported to the hospital.
“Pretty much everyone except the attending and a few ICU nurses was kicked out of the ICU,” he wrote, adding, “It was weird as hell.”
“At turnover (change of shift) that morning, we were instructed not to round (visit) on the VIP (Rich) that came in last night,” he wrote. “That’s exactly what the attending (physician) said and no one except for me and another resident had any idea who he was talking about,” the surgeon wrote.
He explained what happened next, at the moment of Rich’s death. “No one was allowed to see Seth except for my attending when he died,” he wrote. The surgeon then stated at the time of his death no attempt was made to resuscitate him. “No code was called,” which means to call for emergency resuscitation procedures.
The fourth-year surgical resident, which simply means he was almost finished with his advanced training, then stated he was disallowed from seeing the very patient he’d operated on. “I rounded on patients literally next door, but I was physically blocked from checking in on him,” presumably by the police officers standing at his door.
The surgeon admits he was shocked. “I’ve never seen anything like it before, and while I can’t say 100%, that he was allowed to die, I don’t understand why he was treated like that. Take it how you may. I’m just one low-level doc. Something’s fishy though, that’s for sure.”
It must be noted, however, we have not been able to confirm the identity of the surgeon who gave the anonymous testimony. We did consult with an Emergency Room physician who stated the dialogue in the testimony is consistent with Operating Room terminology and descriptions of surgical procedures. In other words, whoever wrote the testimony is most likely an OR surgeon.
As The Free Thought Project reported last week, more attention is now being given to Seth Rich and his assassination in July of 2016. Julian Assange offered a reward for information leading to his killers, and Kim Dotcom now claims to have written testimony confirming he was, indeed, the DNC whistleblower who gave Wikileaks the treasure trove of DNC emails. Dotcom also claims to be a close friend to Rich. With the former Speaker of the House now uttering Rich’s name and calling it an assassination, the attention given to Rich is ratcheting up to the highest levels since his killing.
Now, it seems, even the surgeons are speaking out and calling into question not only Rich’s time of death, but providing valuable insight into his good health post-operation, and how the police interfered in the standard quality of care he would have, and should have received.
On Tuesday, Kim Dotcom has promised to issue a statement to the media regarding his relationship with Rich, and the “written testimony” Dotcom has which proves Rich was the Wikileaks source.Why Did the Left Get Into Bed With Neoliberalism?
Many people do not understand why the 'left' adopted neoliberal economic policies. The left criticizes inequality and advocates progressive social policies such as promotion of feminism and gay rights but seems to increasingly back deregulated market driven economics. In this program, Professor Steve Keen offers an explanation into what went wrong.
Professor Steve Keen from Kingston University says that the 'left' made a huge mistake by thinking that by getting on board the neoliberalist train, which he describes as "a train going nowhere," because the basic neoliberal economic model does not work. The fact that both the left and the right have been unable to solve fundamental problems created by deregulated capitalism and massive increase in debt levels — which has led to a resurgence in confidence in the right — is proof of this.
Professor Keen explains how Keynsiansism was introduced to try and prevent the negative consequences of the cyclical nature of capitalism, but failed. He explains how monetarism was then introduced, by the right and to some extent by the left, and how this heralded a return to traditional, flawed, capitalism. Many people, however, still believe that the left supports progressive neoliberal causes, which may be true. But the left, according to Professor Keen, having being disenfranchised by failed economic policies, is no longer able to pursue such policies and people are now wondering why it was fooled into thinking that neoliberalism would supply the answer in the first place. New alternative systems are needed.
We'd love to get your feedback at radio@sputniknews.com.
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A noble just died in the public eye.
The nature of our vantage point meant that running out and straight toward Mauer would have put us right in the line of fire. We had to circle around to reach him.
I half-expected the Baron’s forces to have chased us, or for his unit to have moved on our back line. The explosion had done its work. The coast was largely clear.
The snow was really falling, now. I’d dismissed it as ash, and it had been easy to miss with the hot smoke and the heat in the sky dissolving snowflakes into simple rain, but we were further away now, and there were fewer fires set in the midst of Mauer’s new camp. The wind blew in over the water and up into the city, driving the heat and the smoke away and paving the way for the snow to fall. I couldn’t smell anything so much as I felt the cold air and smelled only the smoke that had invaded and polluted my sinuses.
The soldiers we were with were faster on foot. Boots tromped on a road dusted with snow and ash, and we had to work to keep up. I was slower than usual, running in time with Lillian and Jamie, instead of having to slow myself down or tug them along to get them to keep up. One soldier hung behind, likely to keep an eye on us.
The soldiers cleared the way for us to enter Mauer’s camp. By the time we caught up, they had found Mauer. They were filling him in.
“You said he would go up to the roof,” Mauer said. There was an undertone of accusation to his voice.
“That was a mistake. He communicated with the dummy we set up, she couldn’t respond. He hesitated.”
“How many soldiers were with him?” Mauer asked.
“Ten,” a soldier answered.
“Not many. Okay. Rally people for the front line. We fight as hard as we can, I want to surprise them if we can. If they don’t have anyone at the helm, then we might be able to rout them. The perches are targeting the officers in charge of the stitched, wherever they’re spotted. If we can’t decide this in the next few minutes, then we retreat again and we regroup. Either they don’t pursue and we wait and see, or they pursue and we watch to see if they stretch themselves too thin.”
“Yes sir,” the soldiers said, in near-unison.
“Jamie,” I said, under my breath. “The whistle.”
Jamie extended a hand my way, the whistle in his fist. I gestured in Mauer’s direction, and Jamie held it out for Mauer.
Frowning slightly, Mauer took it.
“Can you get your people to their back lines? Or their flanks?” I asked.
“Yes,” he said.
“The whistle. Jamie can tell you the signals they use. Get people behind the stitched, use the whistles to signal retreat. Even if the stitched don’t respond to that specific whistle, the handlers will. They’ll hear what sounds like others sounding the retreat and get worried. They’re pretty alone out there. One man surrounded by twenty dead soldiers that are following his orders, the next guy barely in earshot.”
Mauer’s eyes lit up with interest. He indicated a soldier, then looked to Jamie, “Show him?”
Jamie nodded, giving me a glance. I watched Jamie walk off to the edge of the little clearing with the soldier.
When I looked back at Mauer, he was staring me down.
“If you’d moved a finger, I would have assumed you were using one of those hand-signs Genevive Fray told me about.”
I shook my head and jostled my sling as much as I was able – and I regretted it at the pain that flared in my wounded shoulder. “Only one hand, right?”
“I wonder if you’re any closer to making the decision,” Mauer said, staring at me.
“Decision?” Lillian asked.
When he’d grilled me over the fire, Lillian had been in the process of passing out. I’d been wanting to get her help, and I’d let Mauer know too much. For a man so able to control others, it was a spooky prospect. I was used to being the one in control, pulling the strings.
“I thought helping you here would come across as decision enough,” I said.
“The whistle is more convincing than your effort against the Baron,” Mauer said. “We’ll see how things unfold.”
“If your men can get to the back line or flanks-”
“We already did, once. The guns that shot the Duke have a distinctive sound. That sound was the signal for an attack on his rear lines. Our elite soldiers have already signaled that they successfully opened fire on the Duke’s home tent.”
“So they can’t heal the Duke,” Lillian said.
“A precautionary measure, in case he was faster to react. It doesn’t matter. We hit him. The noble has been slain.”
From a range that he didn’t think guns could shoot from. Longer range, high accuracy. Something special. Still…
“I’ve seen him get shot before and survive,” I said.
“Nobles favor a layer of something like armor, an interskeletal barrier between their skin and their muscle or bone structure. Normal guns are meant to ricochet, their bullets move slowly, to pass into the subject and bounce around, doing grievous harm. Few think twice of this. But the Crown has reasons for perpetuating this standard. Those slower, bouncing bullets aren’t so effective against the nobles.” Bullets sink in and stop at the armor, or they bounce right out. The noble bleeds but doesn’t stop. They appear immortal, and enemy morale suffers. The myth that surrounds them grows.”
I nodded. I’d seen the Duke in battle.
“These bullets penetrate that layer. That armor helps strips the outer shell off as the bullet |
but Hamas won the last Palestinian election in 2006. A year of uneasy relations followed, and the factions waged a brief but bloody battle in Gaza in 2007, with Hamas taking full control of the territory.
The PLO has remained in charge of the West Bank.
Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, speaking shortly before the Palestinian deal was announced, said of Abbas:
"Does he want peace with Hamas, or peace with Israel? You can have one but not the other. I hope he chooses peace. So far he hasn't done so."
Shortly after the Palestinian deal, Israel launched an air strike in the northern Gaza Strip that wounded 12 civilians, including children, Reuters reported, citing a Health Ministry official. The Israeli military called it "counter-terrorism operation," which came two days after Palestinians fired rockets from the area into Israel.
Greg Myre, the international editor at NPR.org, was based in Jerusalem from 1999-2007 and is the author of This Burning Land: Lessons From the Front Lines of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict.
Update at 4:01 p.m. ET. Complicate Efforts:
NPR's Emily Harris reports from Jerusalem that almost immediately after the agreement was signed "Israeli Prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu called off the next peace talks session."
The U.S., meanwhile, said it was disappointed by the deal.
"This could seriously complicate our efforts," State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said during a briefing. "Not just our efforts but the efforts of the parties to extend their negotiations."Chris Giwa (pictured) and Amaju Pinnick are battling for the NFF leadership
Nigerian football's crisis has taken a bizarre twist with an attempt to appoint a dead referee for Sunday's match between Warri Wolves and Giwa FC.
It comes as Chris Giwa continues to challenge Nigerian Football Federation president Amaju Pinnick.
A Nigerian court has ruled Giwa should replace the Fifa-recognised Pinnick and in a move to wrest control he has named the weekend's top-flight officials.
However, among those selected is Wale Akinsanya, who died in January.
Giwa's NFF rival group sent notice of its actions to the chief operation officer of the league management company on Wednesday.
It has raised the possibility that two sets of match officials - those appointed by Giwa's group and those appointed by the NFF - could turn up for the fixtures.
Football's world governing body Fifa issued a warning last week saying Pinnick and his board must continue in charge of the NFF or Nigeria would face a global suspension.
Meanwhile, the Giwa-led faction has rejected a reconciliation committee set up by the country's sports minister Solomon Dalung to resolve issues within the NFF.
In a statement signed by the group's chairman of chairmen, Effiong Johnson, it urged Nigerians to disregard the action of the minister.
Former NFF boss Ibrahim Galadima is the head of the seven-man reconciliation committee, which has one week to submit its report.The office of Vice President Biden has apologized to a University of Maryland student after a member of Biden's staff confronted the college reporter and forced him to delete photos of an event.
Capital News Service reporter Jeremy Barr was covering Biden's announcement of a new domestic violence initiative, he told Capital News Service, a student news service run by the Philip Merrill College of Journalism.* He accidentally sat in a section of the audience not meant for the media. He had identified himself as a member of the press upon entry and been directed to that area. Barr took a few pictures of Biden at the podium. After the event, a staffer for Biden confronted him and demanded to watch as he deleted the pictures from his camera.The Benjamin Netanyahu on display in the days before and after Tuesday’s Israeli election is the same one who has been in power all these years. Right along, he was there for all to see, so no one should have been surprised by his performance. I seriously doubt that anyone really is surprised. Americans who slavishly toe the Israeli and Israel Lobby line may act surprised, but that’s really just their embarrassment at having to answer for the prime minister of the "State of the Jewish People."
Democrats especially are in a bind. They can’t afford to distance themselves from Netanyahu and alienate Jewish sources of campaign donations, yet they are visibly uncomfortable with his so openly racist fear-mongering about Israeli Arab voters—"The right-wing government is in danger. Arab voters are heading to the polling stations in droves. Left-wing NGOs are bringing them in buses." The Democrats' defense of that ugly appeal as merely a way to get the vote out is disgraceful. (Imagine something equivalent happening in the United States.)
Democrats are also nervous about Netanyahu’s declaration that no Palestinian state will be established as long as he heads the Israeli government. (His post-election attempt to walk it back somewhat was not well-received.) Life was so much simpler for people like Hillary Clinton when Netanyahu didn’t say things like that in public. Meanwhile, hawkish Republicans—that’s redundant— are unfazed.
For anyone paying close attention, Netanyahu’s racism and ruthless opportunism are not news at all. A few years ago a candid video from 2001 surfaced in which he cynically described Americans as "easily moved," i.e., manipulated. The Israelis, he said, can do what they want with the Palestinians because the Americans "won't get in their way." These are the same Americans who are forced to send Israel $3 billion a year in military assistance so that it can regularly bomb and embargo Palestinians in the Gaza Strip prison camp and oppress Palestinians in a slightly more subtle manner in the shrinking West Bank and East Jerusalem.
With Netanyahu, you really do know what you get, which arguably makes him a better choice to run Israel than the left-of-center Zionist Union because the Laborites share most of Likud’s beliefs about the Palestinians; they’re just more circumspect and therefore more comforting to so-called Americans "liberals." Saying you support negotiations toward a Palestinian state is not the same as actually being for a viable Palestinian state. Palestinians have little left of the walled-off West Bank and East Jerusalem because of Jewish-only towns built over the years by the two dominant parties, Likud and Labor. And Gaza is a bombed-out disaster area. (Even for many two-state advocates, justice is not the concern. Rather, demographic circumstances make one state untenable for these pragmatists because out-and-out apartheid, which the world would frown on, would be seen as the only alternative to a genuinely democratic state with a Jewish minority. The one-staters have their own solution to the Palestinian problem, the one used in 1948: transfer.)
The prime minister is a sophist extraordinaire; he says whatever he needs to say to gain his objective of the moment. When he ruled out a Palestinian state before the election, in a bid to shore up his right-wing base, he was interpreted as reversing a commitment he made in 2009, after he had returned to power, the same year that Barack Obama took office. The campaign reversal put Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry in a most uncomfortable position, since they had made the fraudulent "peace process" a top priority, until talks broke down last spring, a failure they pinned at least in part on Netanyahu. Once the election was over and some reconciliation with the U.S. government was required, Netanyahu "clarified" his remarks, saying his 2009 position had not really changed; only the environment has.
I don't want a one-state solution. I want a sustainable, peaceful two-state solution, but for that, circumstances have to change. I was talking about what is achievable and what is not achievable. To make it achievable, then you have to have real negotiations with people who are committed to peace. I never changed my speech in Bar Ilan University six years ago calling for a demilitarized Palestinian state that recognizes the Jewish state. What has changed is the reality.
What has changed? Netanyahu probably has a few things in mind. The Palestinians reject a new demand that they formally recognize Israel as the state of the Jewish people (everywhere). Decades ago the Palestinian leadership accepted Israel’s existence within the pre-1967-war borders—that is, it relinquished claim to 78 percent of pre-1948 Palestine. (Even Hamas has said it was willing to defer to the secular Fatah and the Palestinian Authority). But in a goalpost-moving action, Netanyahu recently added the new demand, something he knows the Palestinian leadership cannot accept if it is to maintain legitimacy (or whatever legitimacy it still has). Such a concession would be prejudicial to Israel’s non-Jewish Arab citizens and would favor Jews who have never set foot in the country over native-born Palestinian Arabs who were driven out of their ancestral home and who are forbidden to return.
In other words, Netanyahu knowingly placed an impossible precondition on the negotiations. But it is he who has insisted there be no preconditions whatever. When the Palestinians demanded that Israel stop seizing Palestinian-owned land on the West Bank and in East Jerusalem to make room for Jewish-only neighborhoods, Netanyahu refused on the grounds that this was a precondition. (The Palestinians relented and gave talks a chance, no doubt under American pressure.) But it was not so much a precondition as a recognition that the land being seized was precisely the subject of the negotiation. In what universe is it reasonable for two parties to negotiate over territory while one is busy annexing it and building permanent settlements?
It is this sort of thing that exposes Netanyahu’s bad faith regarding the Palestinians. He sabotages the "peace process," then blames the Palestinians for failing to be an earnest partner for peace. (Now he’s trying to sabotage multilateral talks with Iran. See a pattern?)
Netanyahu may also be saying the timing is wrong for a Palestinian state—which would be a rump state completely at the Israeli government's mercy—because ISIS is creating turmoil in nearby Iraq and Syria, and Iran is expanding its influence in the region. The sophistry here is that much trouble in the Middle East can be traced to Israel’s injustice against the Palestinians and belligerence toward its neighbors, especially the repeated devastating invasions of southern Lebanon. Ethnic-cleansing, massacres perpetrated by Zionist militias at the time of independence, unrelenting occupation of the West Bank since 1967, the repression and impoverishment of the Gazans, and the routine humiliation of Israel’s Arab second-class citizens have created deep grievances that are only made worse by Netanyahu and those who support him.
This of course has spilled over onto the United States, since Democratic and Republican regimes stand by Israel no matter what and no matter how many times its government humiliates American rulers. When former Gen. David Petraeus told a Senate Armed Services Committee in 2010 that the U.S.-Israeli relationship "foments anti-American sentiment," he was merely repeating what many other officials had acknowledged before. "Meanwhile," Petraeus added, "al-Qaeda and other militant groups exploit that anger to mobilize support. The conflict also gives Iran influence in the Arab world through its clients, Lebanese Hizballah and Hamas..." The attacks of 9/11 were in part motivated by anger over America’s relationship with Israel. Osama bin Laden’s 1996 declaration of war makes clear that this relationship was at the heart of his hostility toward the United States. Mohammed Atta, one of the 9/11 hijackers, joined the cause after Israel’s 1996 assault on Lebanon, James Bamford writes in The Shadow Factory. (Open discussion of these facts is discouraged by spurious charges of antisemitism against anyone who raises it.)
So, again, Netanyahu cites reasons for not making peace that he himself helped create or is now perpetuating. That he is taken seriously in American politics is a testament to the power of the Israel Lobby.
Netanyahu’s apparent reelection and the egregious circumstances under which it was accomplished should prompt a reconsideration of the special relationship. Although it should have happened long ago, now would be a good time for the U.S. government to end the relationship and start seeing Israel as a rogue and aggressor nuclear power. (Of course the United States is hardly one to talk.) No more excuses. The Palestinians had nothing to do with the Holocaust. Let's have one moral standard for all.
Not that I think it has a chance of happening, but the U.S. government should cease all taxpayer aid to the Israeli government, stop vetoing UN Security Council resolutions that condemn Israel for its daily violations of human rights, and stop impeding Palestinian efforts to set up an independent country (with membership in the International Criminal Court, etc.). The United States should withdraw from the Middle East and enter into a detente with Iran (which is not developing a nuclear weapon). This would have an immediate dividend: we would not be driven to war with Iran by Netanyahu, the Lobby, and its neoconservative Republican and Democratic stooges in Congress.
Maybe Israeli politicians will act more responsibly if they don’t have the American people to fall back on. Probably not. But we know the Palestinians will get no justice under the status quo. Meanwhile, U.S. policy puts Americans at risk. This must stop.
This piece was originally published at Sheldon Richman's "Free Association" blog.In an embarrassing development, the Delhi High Court on Monday asked Delhi Police if it really understood what sedition was.
During the hearing of the JNU students’ union leader, Kanhaiya Kumar, the bench of Justice Pratibha Rani asked, “Do you know what sedition is. Was there any CCTV footage of entire incident? If report is based on TV channel footage, is there any other evidence.”
The court further said, “If you had all the evidence and witnesses of the incident on 9 February, then why did you wait for the Zee News footage to go on air? Why did you not take action aat that moment?”
The HC said that presence at the spot was different from participation in anti-India slogans.
Read full coverage on JNU Controversy
The court said, “Everything was happening at JNU, SHO was stationed at the gate. There were police in plain clothes there. If you have all these people, why wait for Zee News video?
“Someone was raising slogans that you can’t even read here. Was police relaxing? Is it possible? Wasn’t police supposed to take cognisance then and there?”
This came after Delhi Police denied having any video evidence to corroborate charges of sedition against Kanhaiya.
It told the court, “In the video Kanhaiya Kumar cannot be seen shouting slogans. However, there are witnesses to his shouting slogans. We do have independent witnesses- JNU officials, Chief security officers and students of JNU.”
Delhi police said that an individual with iPhone 6 had recorded the slogans but Kanhaiya was not seen chanting slogans.
Kanhaiya’s lawyer, Kapil Sibal told the court that he the arrested student leader was only there to ‘break fight, he opposes anti national slogans &didn’t raise them.’
Delhi government too informed the HC that there was no evidence against Kanhaiya arguing that he should be granted a bail.
The court reserved its order for 2 March on the bail plea.
More to comeDNA testing carried out by University of Leicester geneticists and funded by The Wellcome Trust has thrown new light on the ancestry of one of the USA's most revered figures, the third President, Thomas Jefferson.
Almost 10 years ago, the University of Leicester team, led by Professor Mark Jobling, together with international collaborators, showed that Thomas Jefferson had fathered at least one of the sons of Sally Hemings, a slave of Jefferson's.
The work was done using the Y chromosome, a male-specific part of our DNA that passes down from father to son. Jefferson carried a very unusual Y chromosome type, which helped to strengthen the evidence in the historical paternity case.
Now, new techniques have been brought to bear on Jefferson's Y chromosome, in a study reported in the American Journal of Physical Anthropology. The presidential chromosome turns out to belong to a rare class called 'K2', which is found at its highest frequency in the Middle East and Eastern Africa, including Oman, Somalia and Iraq. Its closest match was in a man from Egypt. Could this mean that the President had recent ancestry in the Middle East? A careful survey revealed a few K2 chromosomes in France, Spain and England. Together, the K2s form a diverse group that may, in fact, have been in western Europe for many thousands of years.
Further evidence for Jefferson's British origins come from the finding that two out of 85 randomly recruited men named Jefferson share exactly the same Y chromosome as the President. Prof Jobling said: 'The two men have ancestry in Yorkshire and the West Midlands, and knew of no historical connection to the USA. They were amazed and fascinated by the link, which connects them into Thomas Jefferson's family tree, probably about 11 generations ago.'
The ultimate origins of K2 chromosomes remain a mystery, however, and need further investigation: while they may have been present in Europe since the Stone Age, another possibility is that K2s came to Europe with the Phoenicians, an ancient maritime trading culture that spread out across the Mediterranean from their home in what is now Lebanon. The US media has taken up a different theory, leading to the New York Times headline, 'Jefferson -- the first Jewish president?': European K2 chromosomes may originate in Sephardic (Spanish) Jewish populations, who have their ultimate origins in the Middle East.
Prof Jobling said: 'When we look closely at large collections of British Y chromosomes we find surprises, like this rare K2 lineage, and the African chromosome that we recently found in a Yorkshireman. These exotic chromosomes remind us of the complexity of British history and prehistory.'Per Mertesacker has drawn criticism from increasingly larger sections of Arsenal supporters this season, not that that is particularly shocking; it is rare that an Arsenal player will not be criticised by supporters at some point in his time at the club. The German World Cup winner, affectionately known as the “BFG” (let’s pretend it stands for “Big Friendly German”), has gone from fan-favourite status in the past years to something of a scapegoat for a handful of Arsenal’s poor results earlier on in the season.
Even Wojciech Szczesny’s father has criticised the German, claiming he showed the “agility of a rhinoceros” during Arsenal’s defeat at Southampton, which prompted the Arsenal goalkeeper’s being dropped from the starting line-up. One may accuse Arsenal fans and Mr Szczesny of being unfair, as the former in particular are known for being fickle, but it is very clear that, now Mertesacker is in his thirties and the twilight of his career, he does not have too long left in Arsenal’s first team.
His first season at Arsenal was successful up to a point: he put in some fantastic performances, particularly away to Marseille in the Champions League, but some were worried that he’d be exposed for his lack of pace all too often, and suffered a long-term injury in the second half of the season.
In his second season, he came into his own: he played 34 out of 38 Premier League games; scored his first Arsenal goal against Tottenham; and, towards the end of the season, formed a special defensive partnership with Laurent Koscielny as Arsenal won eight and drew two of their last ten games and pipped Tottenham to fourth place.
It seemed that Arsenal had found a near-perfect defensive pairing to stand them in good stead for years to come. Mertesacker and Koscielny compliment each other perfectly: the former has fantastic positioning, but lacks pace; the latter has pace in abundance and makes endless brilliant tackles, but has been caught out of position on occasion, though in recent times that area of his game has improved. Therefore Mertesacker is able to cover for Koscielny’s occasional positional lapse, giving him more freedom to follow the ball more and make some stunning challenges; Koscielny helps Mertesacker out on the pace side of things.
In the 2013-14 season, the partnership reached full penetration. The two rarely missed a match, effectively ending Thomas Vermaelen’s career, and put in some staggering performances as Arsenal stayed at the top of the league until the second half of the season—injuries curtailed their chances of winning the league—and ended their nine year wait for a trophy by winning the FA Cup. Mertesacker in particular was excellent: he was named in the Premier League team of 2013; captained the side on occasion; and scored the late equaliser in Arsenal’s tense FA Cup semi-final win over Wigan Athletic. Many Arsenal fans began to compare him to Tony Adams; many believed that he would be able to continue performing at this level long into his thirties.
It is a shame that Per Mertesacker did not sign for Arsenal two years earlier, as their respective title challenges in the 2009-10 and 2010-11 seasons did not come to full fruition due to lack of quality defensive options. The German will always be remembered fondly by Arsenal fans after he leaves, and had his moment in the sun when he scored that crucial goal against Wigan, but there is a chance that, had he played in those two seasons, he could already have earned heroic status in North London.
This season has been much more difficult for Mertesacker. That is not to say that he has been appalling, but he has not performed at the level of last season, and seemed exposed without Koscielny whilst the Frenchman was injured. He incurred the wrath of Arsenal fans really rather badly after Arsenal’s 2-2 draw at Anfield, where he appeared to cower out of the way of Martin Skrtel’s late header which lost Arsenal two points.
Since then, with the return of Koscielny, he has performed at a much higher level, but many believe that he does not have long left as Arsenal’s first-choice defender. Indeed, the signing of Gabriel from Villarreal suggests a possible replacement, and the Brazilian’s debut against Middlesbrough was promising to say the least. Is Per Mertesacker’s time at Arsenal up?
In his defence, conditions have been much tougher this season: Mathieu Flamini has been very poor, and whilst he was playing regularly in the first team, offered little protection for the defence; Mertesacker had to look after Calum Chambers whilst Koscielny was injured, and the youngster, though promising, has a lot to learn as he adapts to the centre-back position. Since Koscielny’s and Francis Coquelin’s return, he has looked much more assured when he has played, and put in a stirring effort away to Manchester City. However, there is no question that Arsenal can do better than him.
Now that they have paid off their stadium debt, Arsenal have a lot of money available to them. Certainly, they are very able to attract players of top quality: Mesut Özil and Alexis Sanchez both signed within a year of each other, and the Gunners are no longer to accept mediocrity representing their strongest side. It is time for the club to show some serious ambition; much has been spoken of a desire to win league and Champions League titles, and players of the highest calibre are needed to win those types of competitions.
This season, Mertesacker has not produced the performances of a Premier League champion, though he has put in the performances of at least a strong backup defender. Now that Gabriel is on the sign, perhaps it would be right for him to play a secondary role in the squad, helping Calum Chambers to develop, and filling in for Gabriel and Koscielny when needed. However, if Arsenal are to show serious ambition, they should sign a truly world-class centre-back and let Mertesacker play first team football elsewhere. That would be ruthless, but that was how the club was run in the Invincibles era: those not up to standard were shifted off pretty quickly.
The defender I would most like to see playing for Arsenal is none other than Diego Godín. The Uruguayan was crucial in Atletico Madrid’s La Liga title and run to the Champions League final last year, and, alongside Koscielny, would form an even more formidable defensive pairing than the Mertesacker-Koscielny partnership at its peak. He himself may be in his thirties, but it seems he will be able to keep this level up long into his thirties like Arsenal fans hoped Mertesacker would.
Having said this, it is unlikely that Arsenal, having signed Gabriel, will make another big name signing in the same position only a few months later. Moreover, it is unlikely that Arsène Wenger would want to sign a player so advanced in his career, so it is much more plausible that Gabriel will take over from Mertesacker, and the German will stay on as a squad player for a little longer. As mentioned earlier, Mertesacker would be a very strong backup, but it seems a shame to force him not to play much first team football.
In conclusion, I want Arsenal to sign Diego Godín, but then again, I want Arsenal to sign an endless list of world-class players. It is much more realistic that Arsenal will allow a defensive pairing of Laurent Koscielny and Gabriel Paulista to develop under the watchful eye of Per Mertesacker, whilst he helps the promising Calum Chambers to reach his full potential.
Thank you for reading. Please take a moment to follow me on Twitter @HugoNotLloris. Support LWOS by following us on Twitter – @LastWordOnSport – and “liking” our Facebook page.
Have you tuned into Last Word On Sports Radio? LWOS is pleased to bring you 24/7 sports radio to your PC, laptop, tablet or smartphone. What are you waiting for?Puppy in backpack stolen after S.F. Muni assault
Police are looking for a suspect they say punched a man and stole his puppy, Chester, on a Muni bus in San Francisco on Jan. 22. Police are looking for a suspect they say punched a man and stole his puppy, Chester, on a Muni bus in San Francisco on Jan. 22. Photo: Courtesy / San Francisco Police Department Photo: Courtesy / San Francisco Police Department Image 1 of / 7 Caption Close Puppy in backpack stolen after S.F. Muni assault 1 / 7 Back to Gallery
Police in San Francisco are hoping the public can help them identify a suspect who punched a man in the face on a Muni bus and stole his backpack, which contained a 4-month-old puppy.
On the evening of Jan. 22, officers responded to the area of Mission and Sixth streets after a Muni rider on the 14-Mission bus line reported being assaulted on the bus, said Officer Grace Gatpandan, a police spokeswoman.
The victim told police that he was assaulted and had his bag stolen. In the bag was Chester, a blackish-gray pit bull pup.
The suspect is described as about 26 years old, standing 5 foot 9, wearing a “black vest shirt” and a gray sweatshirt, according to Gatpandan.
Police asked anyone who has seen Chester or the suspect, or anyone who witnessed the attack, to contact Sgt. Maris Goldsborough at (415) 734-3117 or call the anonymous tip line at (415) 575-4444.
Kale Williams is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. E-mail: kwilliams@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @sfkaleImage caption The number of landlords has risen significantly since 2002
As many as 5.2 million UK adults - or one in 10 - have bought or inherited a second home, according to research.
Think tank the Resolution Foundation said the number of multiple home owners grew by 30% between 2002 and 2014.
That figure includes buy-to-let landlords - counted as one owner even if they have multiple properties - as well as those who own separate properties to live in themselves.
At the other end of the scale, four in 10 adults own no property at all.
The foundation said the number of people without property had also risen over the 12-year period.
As a result, the study concluded that there was a growing gap between those who have property wealth and those who do not.
The government is already ploughing £60m a year into rural and coastal communities that are most affected by second home ownership, such as Cornwall and Cumbria.
The money - raised from the Stamp Duty surcharge - supports first-time buyers.
Baby boomers
Those most likely to own a second home are baby-boomers, currently aged between 52 and 71. They also typically live in the south of England.
Image copyright Getty Images Image caption Cornwall has many second-home owners
"Contrary to the popular narrative, these second-home owners are rarely your typical middle-income worker shoring up savings, or ordinary retirees boosting pension income," said Laura Gardiner, senior policy analyst at the Resolution Foundation.
"They tend to be baby boomers who are very wealthy indeed relative to their peers, living in the south and east of England."
Those born since 1981 own just 3% of second homes, according to the report.
Stamp duty
Since April 2016 those buying second homes have been subject to higher rates of Stamp Duty in England and Wales, and higher Land and Buildings Transaction Tax (LBTT) in Scotland.
In addition, landlords are no longer able to claim tax relief on all their mortgage payments. This change is being phased in between April 2017 and 2020.
It is not yet known to what extent such changes have led landlords to sell up.
Despite those clamp-downs, the Resolution Foundation would like the government to do more to end the property wealth gap.
"Policy makers should consider what more can be done to ensure that home ownership doesn't become the preserve of the wealthy for generations to come," said Ms Gardiner.Marine Le Pen, the leader of France’s National Front, will today (16 June) announce the creation of Europe of Nations and Freedoms, a new far-right European Parliament group that will qualify for up to €17.5 million of EU money over the next four years.
Le Pen failed to form a group after the European elections last year, despite a surge in support for far-right parties. Her party topped the French vote, returning 24 MEPs.
At least 25 MEPs from seven different countries are needed to form a political group.The new group will include Geert Wilders’ Dutch Party for Freedom, the Freedom Party of Austria, Italy’s Lega Nord, and Belgium’s Vlaams Belang.
Le Pen did not reveal which MEPs from which countries have joined that core but that news is expected later today. At least two MEPs from two different countries not already linked to the alliance are needed to form the faction.
Parliament sources told EURACTIV that at least one of the MEPs are thought to be from Poland’s Congress of the New Right. EURACTIV understands that Hungary’s Jobbik party will not be joining because they are too extreme. Some press reports claimed a UK Independence Party member could be joining.
Le Pen announced last night that she would hold a press conference to unveil the faction. Wilders also hinted at an important announcement, according to Dutch media reports.
J’annoncerai demain à Bruxelles la constitution de notre groupe “Europe des Nations et des Libertés”. MLP — Marine Le Pen (@MLP_officiel) June 15, 2015
She said on Twitter, “Tomorrow in Brussels, I will announce the creation of our group, Europe of Nations and Freedom.”
According to research by think tank Open Europe, based on 38 MEPs, the new group could apply for:
an annual grant of €2,974,718.39 to set up and run the new group;
a grant for a linked pan-European political party;
a grant for a linked political foundation or think tank;
amounting to €4,442,759.83 every year;
or about €17.5 million over the remaining four years of Parliament’s term.
Le Pen had ruled out an alliance with the Congress after the European elections. The Congress’ then-leader Janusz Korwin-Mikke is a racist Holocaust denier.
He infamously described said the difference between rape and consensual sex as “very subtle” and was fined €3,040 for using racist language in the Parliament.
“His [Korwin-Mikke’s] remarks, his political views ran contrary to our values,” she said at the time. But Korwin-Mikke was replaced as leader in January this year by MEP Michal Marusik.
Congress MEP Robert Jaroslaw Iwaszkiewicz saved the Europe of Freedom and Direct Democracy (EFDD) group in October. He propped up the EFDD after Latvia MEP Iveta Grigule left.
The “loan” meant that Nigel Farage’s group represented enough countries to continue as a group and could distance itself from the Congress’ then- leader Korwin-Mikke.
Iwaszkiewicz joined the EFDD as an individual rather than as a Congress member. The other two MEPs in the Congress, one of whom was Marusik, did not join the group.
>> Read: MEP from party led by racist could save Farage’s EFDD.
The Lithuanian Order and Justice party had one MEP, Rolandas Paksas. Paksas has repeatedly declared his loyalty to Farage and has in the past denied rumours of his joining up with Le Pen.
>> Read: Lithuanians vow to stick by Farage and EFD
But if Paksas, or Iwaszkiewicz, jumps ship, the EFDD, the group would collapse as it would not have seven member state representatives.
The two parties Le Pen is rumoured to be talking to – PL KNP & LT Order&Justice – both each have 1 MEP in the EFDD Group… Interesting. — Jon Worth (@jonworth) June 15, 2015
An MEP from the UK Independence Party was mooted as a possibility by some sources. UKIP sources appeared unaware of any impeding defection when contacted by EURACTIV, describing the new group as a case as “a wolf that has cried once too often”.
Sources suggested it could be MEP Janice Atkinson, who is suspended from the Eurosceptic party for expenses fraud. That could not be confirmed by EURACTIV before publication. Other rumours suggested a member of Germany’s Alternativ Für Deutschland (AfD) could defect, but this could not be confirmed.
>> Read: UKIP MEP suspended for expenses fraud
Funding rules
European Parliament rules for parliamentary group and party funding do not prevent money being awarded to far-right groups.
The grant cannot be used to pay for campaign costs for referendums and elections, other than European elections, direct or indirect funding of national parties or candidates, or for meeting debts or interest payments.
Groups “must observe the principles of liberty, democracy, respect for human right and fundamental freedoms, and the rule of law.” Pressure is likely to increase to find a way of enforcing that rule after today’s announcement.
Pan-European political parties will be subject to stricter funding rules from 2018, but that does not include parliamentary groups.
Public money and greater say vital
Vlaams Belang leader Gerolf Annemans told EURACTIV in June last year that public money was vital to build on the success of the far right after the European elections.
“If we want the staffing, parliamentary assistance, and so on, resources are needed,” he said.
>>Read: After election success far right groups line up for EU money
Parliamentary groups can appoint their own secretariat staffed with their own people, instead of relying on the European Parliament’s in-house office for non-affiliated parties.
Groups usually also receive an allocation of points, which can be used to select MEPs to appoint to influential positions within European Parliament committees.
Le Monde’s journalist in charge of covering the extreme right reported on Twitter that Jean-Marie Le Pen will not be part of his daughter’s group.
.@lepenjm ne fera pas partie du groupe formé par @MLP_officiel au Parlement européen. #FN — Olivier Faye (@olivierfaye) June 15, 2015A month ago, Holy Snails (Chel) thoughtfully sent me a bottle of her DIY concoction called Shark Sauce (link is to version 2.0, the one that I have). Update: You can buy the latest version directly from the Holy Snails store. Chock full of functional and purposefully selected and proportioned ingredients, Shark Sauce can be thought of as an ampoule or serum with brightening, repairing, and hydrating properties.
The ingredients that caught my eye were: 5% niacinamide, 3% n-acetyl glucosamine, and 5% licorice root extract. Where do the sharks come in? Thankfully, no sharks were harmed in the making, but there is some sea kelp bioferment (15%) and the recipe was spurred by /u/Sharkus_Reincarnus (aka Fifty Shades of Snail; link is about the first version of Shark Sauce).
I’d been lusting over Chel’s skin this combo of ingredients ever since she posted photos of her dramatic reduction in hyperpigmentation after just 1 week of use–including marks that had been there for years.
I completely relate to having acne marks that last longer than apartment leases and, heck, even my law school career. So while I crossed my fingers about seeing similar results, I kept my expectations in check because I’ve been disappointed before (see, e.g., every vitamin C serum ever, including OST C20 and Paula’s Choice C15 Booster and 25% Spot Treatment).
Here’s what I was facing when I began Shark Sauce. Getting on PocketDerm Acne had eliminated and flattened large blemishes on my cheek and jaw, but I was left with some, ahem, mementos.
As soon as I received Shark Sauce, I made it a regular part of my routine, day and night. I applied it to my forehead, cheeks, and chin mainly (2-3 drops per area), basically spreading it all over my face except for my nose.
Shark Sauce is runny and spreads easily, yet is thicker than, say, an essence or toner. It’s a translucent light brown and leaves a sticky feeling. It has a faint smell that is unnoticeable once applied. Immediately after application, skin feels hydrated, smooth, and plump. It’s not evident in photos, but I feel as if my skin is actually plumper and thicker.
After a 3 weeks of diligent usage, I actually noticed a difference! I thought certain acne marks looked lighter and that they didn’t show through makeup as much. Initially, I doubted myself. Was it a placebo effect? My stubborn marks couldn’t really be fading?! Well, after comparing some before and after pics, I confirmed that some marks had in fact faded or shrunk!
The arrows below point out particular spots that have faded. (The lighting and color aren’t exactly the same, but the results really are true.)
My left side:
My right side. Notice in particular the dark almost-triangular mark on my cheek (the mark/ |
a Delhi HC order refusing a stay on CAG audit of their accounts. Sources said the discoms have been readying responses to CAG queries on financial documents, an area where CAG had admitted to facing opposition from the utilities.Krauthammer: Trump 'Dominated' Meeting With Mexican President
Gutfeld: It's 'No Wonder' Kerry Wants to Hide His 'Sad Legacy' on Terror
Patricia Smith, the mother of Benghazi victim Sean Smith, said she still has not heard from Hillary Clinton or anyone in the Obama Administration about why her son was killed in the 2012 attack.
She said she also isn't surprised that there were 30 emails related to Benghazi which had not been turned over to the State Department.
"Hillary has never taken the time off to explain to me why my son is dead," she said. "I think anybody in the world would want to know that. Anybody that has any emotions in them whatsoever, they would want to know that. But she won't tell me.
"Why won't she tell me?... If it's that secret--she could tell me that 'Hey, it's that secret, you can't know this.'"
Smith said that Clinton could even "make up a good lie that I can believe."
She said that Clinton told her daughter the real cause of the attack, but she would not tell her.
"Don't believe Hillary, she's not telling the truth. She really is not telling the truth."
Watch the powerful segment above.
Judge Nap: Clinton 'Failed Miserably' to Return Emails
'Mutual Respect': Donald Trump, Mexican President Discuss Trade, Immigration
Wilson Reacts to Kaepernick Controversy: Why I Stand & Put My Hand on My HeartNow that we’ve thanked the good teachers, it’s time to recognize the bad ones Photo by Everett Collection/Shutterstock
Tuesday was National Teacher Day, and in honor of the occasion, the National Education Association and other groups encouraged people to thank educators. They suggested you update your Facebook profile to express your appreciation and use the hashtag #ThankATeacher on Twitter.
Now that we’ve thanked the good teachers, it’s time to recognize the bad ones. The majority of teachers may be generous, dedicated, inspirational, and kind. But in their midst are some of the most unpleasant characters you encountered in your childhood. Remember them? We sure do. Here are some of the most outrageous things teachers once said to us at Slate.
William Dobson: My family had recently moved to South Carolina from “up north,” and I had a hard time understanding my teachers’ accents. Early in the school year, my second grade teacher asked me to lead the class out to recess. I stood up and the class filed in line behind me at the door. Then she asked me to take the class to “down yonder hill.” I had never heard this phrase. I thought “down yonder hill” must be the proper name of a place, not a direction. I stood there, immobile. She said it louder. Then louder. Finally: “What are you, stupid? Get to the back of the line.” It was that moment that I decided, My parents can choose to live here, but I will never adopt a southern accent.
Jeffrey Bloomer: From an English teacher, I got “feminism is why I have to be here with you instead of with my own kids.”
Abigail Ohlheiser: I had a chemistry teacher once tell me, in front of the class, the following: “I think you and I are both glad there are only two weeks left in the school year, because frankly, I don’t think I can stand to look at your face any longer than that.” I obviously remember this, and the long speech before it, pretty much verbatim. It seemed to come out of nowhere, but I was later told what set him off. My crime? Relentlessly correcting all of the typos on his handouts and tests. I thought I was helping.
Laura Helmuth: I got sent out of class for telling a fifth-grade teacher that it’s pronounced Ill-in-oy rather than Ill-in-ois. This was in Indiana, which shares its longest border with Illinois, so I thought she might like to know.
Matt Yglesias: I had a teacher who explained to the class that there are three races: caucasoid (or white), negroid (or black), and mongoloid (or yellow) and that there’s a myth out there that a fourth red race of Indians exists but properly understood they’re a subset of yellow people.
Brandon Long: I went to high school in rural North Carolina. My U.S. history teacher my junior year referred to the Civil War exclusively as the War of Northern Aggression. (So did J. Bryan Lowder’s teachers!)
Will Saletan: When I got through the second-grade math textbook, they gave me the third-grade textbook. I didn’t understand that while you were supposed to write answers in the second-grade book, you weren’t supposed to write in the third-grade book. When my substitute teacher saw I’d written in it, she angrily told me, “You could be BANNED for this!” She failed to understand that in Texas, we ban the textbook, not the student. We paddle the student.
Dahlia Lithwick: A math teacher told my mom it was a good thing my little brother was good looking because he was dumb as a post. I also had a PE teacher tell our class that girls shouldn’t play sports.
John Dickerson: In seventh-grade math class I was a new student at this fancy private school and I finally got enough courage to answer a question, and the teacher said, “That answer makes no sense. It’s like if I asked you what color the chalk board is and you said ‘fast.’ ” It really took me aback because until that point I didn’t even know fast was a color.
Torie Bosch: My high school health teacher was a conservative Catholic who told the class that he was not comfortable teaching sex ed and thought that it did not belong in the classroom, but the district was making him do it. He made us all calculate our dates of conception, and then asked everyone whether that was near our mother or father’s birthday, their anniversary, Valentine’s Day, etc.
Mike Vuolo: A kid in my ninth-grade English class had a big, and not especially kempt, Jewfro. One day the teacher asked him, “Who does your hair, ConEd?” I’ve always wondered if he remembers that as vividly as I do. It seemed so gratuitous and cruel.
Juliana Jiménez Jaramillo: My ninth-grade geometry teacher, who was ex-Marine or some sort of military type, made us summarize each chapter of the textbook in webpage form. I misunderstood the instructions because I couldn’t fathom that summarizing a textbook was an actual assignment. I thought it was each section and made drawings and examples for each. I didn’t sleep or eat that night (my first all-nighter!). I still couldn’t finish it, but what I had was badass. We had to turn the assignment in on a floppy disk, and it somehow got jammed in his computer when he called me up to present it. He was furious. It was a long rant but I specifically remember: “You disgust me, YOU MAKE ME WANT TO THROW UP,” which I guess is standard Marine-speak or something. Not appropriate for a 15-year-old. I started crying, he threw me out of the class, and I almost passed out (I still hadn’t slept or eaten). Asshole. Ended up with a C-plus in that class.
Chris Wade: Monday: Mr. A. teaches our calculus class the Fundamental Theorem of Calculus.
Tuesday: Mr. A.: “Okay, now can anyone tell me the Fundamental Theorem of Calculus?”
[silence]
“Anyone?”
[silence]
“ANYONE? It’s the FUNDAMENTAL theorem.”
[silence]
“Y’all are fuckin’ cocksuckers, get out of here.”
What’s the worst thing a teacher ever said to you? Please share your most outrageous quotes using the hashtag #BadTeacher on Twitter. Check out some of our favorite #BadTeacher submissions here.From GoldCore
China Becomes World’s Larest Gold Buyer - Buys 93.5 Tonnes of Gold Coins / Bars in Q1 - Gold Ownership Rising From Miniscule Levels
Gold and silver are higher again today with the debt laden dollar, euro and yen all being sold. News that China has become the world’s largest buyer of gold bullion and has seen investment demand double continues to reverberate in the markets and may have contributed to this morning’s strength.
Both gold and silver are marginally higher for the week and after last week’s gain appear to have regained their poise and are consolidating after the recent sell off.
Gold Investment Demand in China
Courtesy of the Wall Street Journal
China becoming the world’s largest gold buying nation is very important. While informed analysts have been saying that this would inevitably happen much of the commentary and most of the public remain completely unaware of the huge implications that Chinese gold demand has for the gold market.
Indeed, there continues to be a huge level of ignorance regarding the scale and sustainability of China’s, but also India’s and other large and increasingly wealthy Asian countries, demand for gold and silver bullion.
Chinese investors bought 93.5 tonnes of gold coins and bars in the first quarter. China produced 340 metric tons of gold last year and consumption was about 700 tonnes, leaving a gap of nearly 360 tonnes.
Demand is forecast to increase due to the growing wealth of the Chinese middle class and deepening inflation in China.
What is most important and rarely covered is the fact that gold ownership by the Chinese public remains minuscule. Especially when compared to other Asian countries such as Vietnam and India.
Gold ownership is rising from a very, very low base which means that the investment demand and demand for an inflation hedge from 1.3 billion increasingly wealthy Chinese people is more than sustainable.
The not realized important fact that the people of China were banned from owning gold bullion from 1950 to 2003, means that the per capita consumption of over 1.3 billion people is rising from a tiny base.
Cross Currency Rates (Including Gold and Silver)
While the recent increase in Chinese demand has been very significant, it is likely to continue and the demand is sustainable due to Chairman’s Mao’s half-century gold ownership ban.
Should the Chinese economy crash as some predict, demand could fall. However, sharp declines in Chinese equity and property markets and a depreciation of the yuan would likely lead to significant safe haven demand for gold.
Indeed, should high inflation continue in the Chinese economy or should higher inflation or even stagflation occur than Chinese demand could even increase.
Chinese demand alone likely puts a floor under the gold market at $1,450/oz.
The inflation adjusted high of $2,400/oz remains very likely given Chinese and Asian demand alone for gold bullion.
Many market participants and non gold and silver experts tend to focus on the daily fluctuations and “noise” of the market and not see the “big picture” major change in the fundamental supply and demand situation in the gold and silver bullion markets – particularly due to investment and central bank demand from China and the rest of an increasingly powerful and wealthy Asia.
It is worth noting that the People’s Bank of China’s gold reserves are very small when compared to those of the U.S. and indebted European nations. China appears to be quietly accumulating gold bullion reserves. As was the case previously, they will not announce their gold purchases in order to ensure they accumulate sizeable reserves at more competitive prices.
SILVER
The recent bear raid on silver is being challenged by silver’s very favourable supply and demand fundamentals.
The Comex Registered Silver Bullion Inventory Data shows that silver bullion inventories are now at record lows (see chart).
Speculative paper players on the COMEX may have been successful in again manipulating prices lower but as ever the physical reality of supply and demand for the underlying commodity, asset and currency will dictate prices in the medium and long term.
Comex Silver Bullion Inventory Data/Registered
NEWS
(Financial Times) --Chinese set new standard in buying gold
http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/8843dbb8-824a-11e0-961e-00144feabdc0.html#axzz1MsfEWHT3
(Wall Street Journal) -- China Is Now Top Gold Bug
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704816604576333080229436072.html
(Bloomberg) -- Gold May Gain on Europe Debt Concern, Inflation, Survey Shows
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-05-19/gold-may-gain-on-europe-debt-concern-inflation-survey-shows.html
(Reuters) -- PRECIOUS-Gold regains strength on bargain hunting,silver steadies
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/05/20/markets-precious-idUSL4E7GK0OB20110520
(Bloomberg) -- Gold Advances as Europe Financial Turmoil, Dollar Weakness Spur Purchases
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-05-20/gold-advances-as-europe-financial-turmoil-dollar-weakness-spur-purchases.html
(Bloomberg) -- Gold Imports by China May Rise After Demand Gains to Record, Council Says
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-05-20/gold-imports-by-china-may-rise-after-demand-gains-to-record-council-says.htmlEven though I am one of Pink Floyd‘s most ardent fans [this is an understatement – Ed], I have always been vexed and somewhat dubious about the many reissues and remasters they’ve managed to squeeze out of their 50 year career. My vexation came to a head back in 2011 when they announced their aptly titled WHY? PINK FLOYD releases. It seemed like such an egregious ploy to delve deeper into the wallets, purses, and bum bags of their obsessive-completist fans.
However, the one reissue avenue the Floyd have seemed quite apprehensive of undertaking is a full-on effort to release their entire studio catalogue on remastered, audiophile-worthy vinyl. With the vinyl market as strong as ever (and with people like Radiohead showing confidence in the vinyl reissue market), the folks at Pink Floyd HQ must have crunched the numbers and liked what they found, because it was recently announced that Pink Floyd will be reissuing their entire 15 studio album back catalogue on remastered 180g vinyl beginning on June 3. All 15 studio albums will be fully remastered (again?) by James Guthrie, Joel Plante and Bernie Grundman and will be housed in packaging that will replicate as closely as possible that of the original releases.
The vinyl reissue campaign will take places in phases. Phase 1, which begins on June 3, will see the release of their first four albums; The Piper at the Gates of Dawn, A Saucerful of Secrets, the soundtrack from the film More and the 2 LP set Ummagumma. Subsequent releases will be announced at regular intervals throughout the year. Either way, get them as they are released… or you can wait for the inevitable Pink Floyd remastered LP boxed set with bonus book and deluxe housing that I ASSUME is an inevitability. Artwork for the first remastered releases as well as some mega-rare pics of the band in their infancy below.
Now if they could finally put The Wall on goddamned BluRay… crimony.
Piper at the Gates of Dawn – Remastered Vinyl Artwork
A Saucerful of Secrets – Remastered Vinyl Artwork
Music From the Film ‘More’ – Remastered Vinyl Artwork
Ummagumma – Remastered Vinyl Artwork
©Pink Floyd Music Ltd
Photo by Storm Thorgerson – ©Pink Floyd Music Ltd
Pink Floyd in 1968 – Photo by Storm Thorgerson – ©Pink Floyd Music LtdWe almost didn’t notice, but it turns out the PS Vita is one year old this weekend. Being the modest little handheld that it is, we thought we’d bake it a cake and surprise it with the birthday bumps!
When the PS Vita was first announced in January 2011 we were reasonably impressed with it, silly name aside. Sony’s decision to use commodity smartphone components was a wise move, one that they’ve recently repeated with the x86-based PlayStation 4. The launch games – particularly Uncharted: Golden Abyss – were suitably impressive, and once we got the device in our hands we were really satisfied with the high build quality of the device. Viva la Vita, we thought.
“we wait for a genuinely system selling game”
At the same time, everyone has been a little skeptical about Sony’s handheld. The original PSP suffered from a slightly generic and malnourished games catalogue, with the Nintendo DS ultimately beating it up and stealing its lunch money. This time around, whilst the Nintendo 3DS poses a threat to the PS Vita, ultimately the biggest threat to both devices (and arguably console gaming in general) has come from iOS and Android smartphones and tablets. £35 PS Vita games will always struggle against 69p or even free mobile games.
It’s a bit too early to give a final verdict on the PS Vita, but Sony CEO Kazuo Hirai recently admitted sales were lower than expected, with Sony finally about to drop the PS Vita price, in Japan at least (down from ¥24,980 to ¥19,980 for the Wi-Fi model). The PS Vita’s main problem though, has been a lack of great games. Even in Japan, where the PSP performed quite strongly, the PS Vita is selling at a quarter of the pace of the original PSP (reaching the million sales mark in 42 weeks as opposed to the 10 weeks it took the PSP). It’s urgently in need of a killer app.
Whilst we wait for a genuinely system selling game to appear on the PS Vita, that’s not to say there aren’t a few games worth owning. So let’s take a quick look at some of the Vita’s best.
Uncharted: Golden Abyss
The stand out launch title manages to do an awfully good job of looking like a fully grown PlayStation 3 game. Its biggest strength is its biggest weakness – it’s too much like a PlayStation 3 game. It is very pretty though, and as a technical accomplishment, this is one of the games people use to showcase the PS Vita.
LittleBigPlanet
Sackboy’s PS Vita debut is delightful. Whilst very similar to its PlayStation 3 brothers, LittleBigPlanet tries to make use of the PS Vita’s features, particularly the touchpad, for a bunch of new vehicles and mini-games. Once again Stephen Fry’s dulcet tones make the world seem a better place.
Persona 4 Golden
Whilst technically a revamped PlayStation 2 game, the long awaited Persona 4 Golden has been described by some as a masterpiece. One of the best JRPGs around, it mixes traditional RPG gameplay with quirky humour, schoolgirl miniskirts and television serial killers. An essential for any RPG fan really.
Need For Speed: Most Wanted
When releasing a console game on a handheld system, most publishers have a tendency to farm it out to a second tier developer, resulting in a pale imitation of the original. Criterion Games however, are a bit better than the average developer, and developed the PS Vita version of the game alongside the PS3 and Xbox 360 versions, resulting in a PS Vita version that they say is “exactly the same game”. Which as it happens, is a very good game.
Gravity Rush
A tricky one to describe, Gravity Rush is a beautiful cel shaded game with a girl that flies around with a magic cat, manipulating gravity and hitting lots of things. Not entirely unlike Devil May Cry or Bayonetta, but a whole load more original. Created by the men behind the original Silent Hill, and initially developed as a PlayStation 3 title, Gravity Rush is something of a hidden gem, quietly being awesome.
Phantasy Star Online 2
The sequel to one of the best games ever made. At least, that’s what we’re obliged to say as hardened Sega fanboys. PSO 2 is due to be released this week in Japan, although a western release date is still unconfirmed (though the PC version has been confirmed so hopefully the PS Vita version will follow). While the concept of the online action RPG isn’t as revolutionary as it seemed on the Dreamcast twelve years ago, the prospect of PSO 2 on the PS Vita is still fairly mouth-watering.
Whilst a lack of good games is a real problem for the PS Vita (we’d have difficulty finding enough to compile an impressive top ten), at least there’s the PlayStation Store to keep gamers entertained. With a fairly decent catalogue of PSP and PSone titles to download (as well as a few indy titles), some people may find that the PS Vita makes a rather good PSP… if you happen to like obscure Japanese role playing games, you might be quite busy.
“The PS Vita may turn out to make a remarkably good device for streaming PS4 titles”
There’s an argument to be had that truly opening up the PlayStation Store in the same manner as the iTunes App Store would lead to a flood of good downloadable games appearing on the PS Vita. Sony has been making it easier for indy developers to release titles on the PS Vita, with the PlayStation Suite SDK and developer program providing a helping hand, but it’s nowhere near as free or open as the iOS or Android stores… that’s not strictly a bad thing though. As nice as an open app store is, it makes it difficult to release expensive AAA games when the customers have grown used to a 69p price tag – the result, as seen on iOS and Android, is a deluge of nickel and diming freemium games and poor quality control. Whilst it may be impossible for the PS Vita to compete with smartphones in volume, if it satisfies gamers and provides a ‘proper’ gaming experience in handheld-form, we’d consider that a battle won.
When the PS Vita launched, the original PSP was seven years old. So it looks like the PS Vita will have a good few years in it, providing developers continue to support it. At least Sony are making a genuine effort to pair it up with the PlayStation 4, aiming to provide remote play for as many PS4 titles as they can. Combined with Sony’s Gaikai-inspired video-based game streaming service, the PS Vita may turn out to make a remarkably good device for streaming PS4 titles (or even the entire PlayStation back catalogue).
So here’s to more good games and hoping the PS Vita has a few good years to come. Viva la vita! Have we said that already?Welcome to our second entry in Media Temple’s ongoing effort to help you maximize your AWS environment using AWS Lambda. If you missed the first entry, The Reactive Database System – Letting the Cloud Help You, be sure to revisit the Lambda-backed automated RDS monitoring and resizing project (ReDS) it covers in detail.
It’s now time to focus on the Reactive EC2 Management System, aka ReC2. It is a small, friendly Python project that monitors your EC2 Auto Scaling Group to make important adjustments that provide increased reliability and cost savings.
As another addition to the current trend of serverless applications, ReC2 utilizes AWS Lambda to invoke a task at intervals using CloudWatch Events. This means that every five minutes a tiny virtual machine wakes up on Amazon’s Lambda platform and runs a predefined task for a few hundred milliseconds. Then, it shuts itself down.
What’s the problem we’re trying to solve?
AWS has a slew of built-in metric and monitoring systems. Unfortunately, none of them currently allow for a critical scenario to be handled without utilizing Lambda.
That scenario allows you to utilize the cheaper (and often more powerful, dollar for dollar) burstable T-series EC2 instances to the highest threshold of credits usage and then flipping over to C- or M-series instances to adequately handle the increased load. If you are not familiar with how the credits work on T-series instances, don’t worry. Let’s revisit the basic premise, similar to our ReDS blogpost.
Amazon works hard to keep their prices low, and compute resources cost money. The more capacity you wish to have on hand at any time, the more you will be charged for it. Most customers want to have multiple machines online as a fail safe (in case one of them goes offline) to preserve application uptime. However, purchasing two instances with a given amount of compute power essentially means you’re paying double just for insurance. T-series instances help alleviate this situation by giving you an up and running machine with limited compute ability, governed by a credit-based system which depletes and re-fills dependent on usage. When you’re out of credits, the amount of compute that EC2 instance can produce gets throttled down to its baseline performance as shown in the table below.
Instance type Base performance (CPU utilization) t2.nano 5% t2.micro 10% t2.small 20% t2.medium 40% t2.large 60% t2.xlarge 90% t2.2xlarge 135%
** Note: t2.medium and large instances have more than one vCPU. For t2.2xlarge with 135% base performance, this can mean one core running at 100% with another at just 35%.
Generally speaking, during regular usage your T-series instances have enough CPU credits stored up to use during peak times of the day and refill overnight. It’s like a gas tank: The more CPU power you’re using, the faster you burn your credits (i.e. gas). Once you slow down on the CPU resources – the gas refills again, slowly, until the tank is full. The cycle repeats.
As long as your T-series EC2 servers have some gas in the tank, they’re as good (or better) than the similar, non-credit based EC2 servers with similar characteristics – and cheaper! But therein lies the rub – when and/or if the gas runs out, you can be in real trouble. Unless, of course, you have ReC2 keeping an eye on things.
How do I set it up?
Here’s a high level view:
Review the project and installation instructions at Github. Here’s the full source code for the project and the README. Adjust the variables file to the thresholds you want. If you’re not sure, stick with the defaults, which should work fine for most projects. Create CloudWatch alarms to keep an eye on trends and metrics. Upload and activate a Lambda task with associated permissions encapsulated in an IAM Role. Set up ReC2 to run every 5 minutes and peek at the alarms. If any of the alarms are below threshold, ReC2 will temporarily adjust your EC2 servers to run on the more expensive non-credit based instances until the demand recedes. The replacement of the Auto Scaling nodes is a zero-downtime event, and happens before you find yourself in an undesirable situation that affects application performance.
As with ReDS, we’ve used pytest to get the major parts of the system tested and covered using bundled test functions. These tests can be modified to your individual project as needed.
A Look at the Variables
stack_prefix The prefix prepended to the associated CloudFormation stacks created during the ReC2 install process. You may have more than one ReC2 system configured allowing you to target multiple Amazon Auto Scaling Groups. Default is ‘rec2’. region Select the AWS region for the ReC2 CloudFormation stacks. The default is ‘us-west-2’. credit_instance_size Credit based instance to use. The default is ‘t2.medium’. standard_instance_size Non-credit based instance to use. The default is ‘c4.large’. scale_down.alarm_duration, scale_down.threshold Properties to control when the system is allowed to scale back to Credit Based instances based upon CPUUtilization value. The default listed is 6 which equates to 30 minutes (6 periods of 5 minute data) of Auto Scaling Group (ASG) CPUUtilization < 20%, provided the global ‘cooldown’ time has elapsed since the last time instances were moved to non-credit based. credits.alarm_duration, credits.threshold Properties to control when the system is to change the ASG to non-credit based instances based on average credit balance for the ASG. The default listed is 1 which equates to 5 minutes (6 periods of 5 minute data) of under 60 credits remaining. drag.alarm_duration, drag.threshold Properties to control when the system is to change the ASG to non-credit based instances based on the lowest single credit balance for an instance in the ASG. The default listed is 1 which equates to 5 minutes under a threshold of five credits remaining. cooldown The time that must pass (in minutes) after the ASG has moved to non-credit based instances before alarms will be evaluated to see if they meet the criteria to move back to credit based instances. The default is 180 minutes. enabled Whether the ReC2 system is enabled. The default is “True”. drag_enabled Whether the ReC2 system will evaluate the “drag” alarm which targets the single lowest machine in the ASG’s credit balance. The default is “True”. asg_identifier The ASG identifier for your environment. This variable has a default of “WebAppASG”, but must be edited to match your environment or ReC2 will not function properly. auto_cleanup Whether or not ReC2 will cleanup after itself and remove old launch configurations that it has created for previous adjustments. The default is “True”.
How does it all work?
Let’s break down the above diagram:
CloudWatch Events creates an event source to invoke the AWS Lambda project at intervals (5 minutes); Lambda spins up and assumes the bundled IAM role. This role is limited to the included IAM policy which only gives it enough access for the project to function properly; CloudWatch Alarms are polled and their statuses evaluated; Logs of the event are sent to CloudWatch Logs for storage and review; And, if warranted, the Lambda function makes the necessary changes to the Launch Configuration tied to the active Auto Scaling Group being monitored.
The goal is simple: Use the credit based T-series instances whenever possible. If ReC2 detects that the ASG (or any single instance, if this option is enabled) is getting into credit trouble, the Launch Configuration is modified to favor the non-credit based instances temporarily to balance out the group until it stabilizes.
These are the major steps. However, there are some additional activities that need to happen in order to make the whole process run smoothly. These include cleaning up old and unused Launch Configurations, adding Tags to the your ASG about previous deployment times for proper cooldown management, and preparing for typical Base64 and UserData situations to ensure the creation of new Launch Configurations.
Savings? Savings.
Let’s say your infrastructure requires two EC2 instances up at all times. According to Amazon best practices, you should have two EC2 instances in at least two availability zones, i.e., four total instances. If your application requires 4GB of RAM on the EC2 server, that leaves you with the non-credit based minimum choices of a current generation instance m4.large (two vCPU, 8GB) or the previous generation m3.large (two vCPU, 7.5GB).
If you are able to use T-series instances (with the added protection of ReC2 to prevent an empty credit balance), this now opens up the opportunity to use a current generation t2.medium (2 vCPU, 4GB) instance as an alternative. For comparison sake, let’s assume you only want to utilize current generation instances for their performance benefits.
If you are not using ReC2 and intend for your app to be both elastic and scalable, you will put your app into potential downtime danger with T-series instances alone. Let’s get the price for a full time setup meeting the above requirements using non-credit based instances at on-demand pricing:
100% Usage of non-credit based instances
4 x m4.large – 100% monthly usage: $351
20% Usage of non-credit based instances due to demand: 45% reduction in cost
4 x m4.large – 20% monthly usage: $71
4 x t2.medium – 80% monthly use: $122
0% Usage of non-credit based instances – Monitored by ReC2: 57% reduction in cost
4 x t2.medium – 100% monthly use: $152
With the above comparison, the non-credit based instances have extra RAM. However, this example is also one of real, actual environments we have configured using ReC2. Discounts in the 30%-50% range are often observed after matching the appropriate T-series instance against comparable M-series and C-series instances for general web-server usage.
Here’s a visual interpretations of the savings (for those of you who love graphs):
$US Dollars per Month
In Conclusion
Given the variety of tools the cloud has available to tailor the exact environment you need for your application, ReC2 has proven to be an efficient cost saver and essential insurance policy.
Here at Media Temple, ReC2 is installed for all new Managed Cloud customers with T-series instances. This is just one of the many ways we’re leveraging cutting-edge technology to keep our customers’ sites and apps online (and at an affordable cost).
If your company or clients can benefit from a consultation with Media Temple’s Enterprise Cloud Services team, feel free to reach out to us today to learn more about our services.
Happy Coding!Israel has launched a fresh air strike on Gaza east of Rafah in which two people have been reportedly killed and another civilian injured, raising the Palestinian death toll to 11.
Sunday's raid came hours after the Islamic Jihad movement in Gaza said it had accepted a ceasefire agreement.
"The Islamic Jihad has responded [positively] to the truce effort, while it reserves its right to react to any aggression [by Israel]," Abu Ahmad, the spokesman for the movement's armed wing, Al-Quds Brigades, said in a statement on Sunday.
The spike in violence came as funerals were being held for two Palestinians killed in Israeli air strikes overnight. Egypt had been mediating truce efforts over the weekend and late on Sunday morning.
Meanwhile, Binyamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, has blamed Hamas, which governs Gaza, for the violence.
"The Hamas rules Gaza, he is responsible for Gaza, he is responsible for preventing the firing from Gaza, and for keeping the calm in Gaza, even if the attackers are the Islamic Jihad," he said.
An Israeli military official said on Sunday that three rockets were fired at its territory after the ceasefire deadline had passed.
Two of the rockets were intercepted by Israel's Iron Dome missile defence system and another slammed into southern Israel causing no casualties or damage, the official said.
The Israeli military said more than a dozen mortars and rockets had been fired from Gaza since midnight.
Doubt over truce
Al Jazeera’s Cal Perry, reporting from Al Shojaya in eastern Gaza, said that after the latest barrage of fire between Gaza and Israelis, there was an attempt at a ceasefire.
"We heard an Islamic Jihad spokesperson saying that they were going to give 48 hours both to the Egyptians and the Israelis to work out some kind of an agreement.
"But as late as Sunday afternoon, there has been a further air strike bringing into question if anyone is going to be able to stop the recent spate of violence."
Gaza residents reported hearing explosions as Al Jazeera's sources said Israel had embarked on a new round of attacks on Islamic Jihad targets.
Sunday's violence continued after the air strikes a day earlier that killed nine Palestinian fighters in Gaza, and Palestinian rocket fire that killed one person in Israel.
A leader of a Palestinian group, who asked to remain anonymous, told the AFP news agency: "The efforts and intensive contacts led by senior Egyptian intelligence service officials led to a national consensus to restore calm [with Israel]."
But the AP news agency reported earlier that mediation efforts had failed, citing an anonymous Egyptian official.
Gaza fighters 'killed'
Adham Abu Selmiya, a spokesman for Gaza's emergency services, said on Saturday that five members of the Al-Quds Brigades were killed and three wounded in a first Israeli attack on a training camp near Rafah.
The dead included a commander named as Ahmed al-Sheikh Khalil, the group said.
Israeli aircraft later struck more targets in Gaza, witnesses and Palestinian officials said, killing four more Palestinian fighters and wounding two more people.
At least two of those were killed as they tried to fire a Grad rocket into Israel, an Al-Quds spokesman said.
An Israeli strike east of Gaza City and two in the area of Khan Yunis, in the south, caused no casualties, witnesses said.
As rockets and mortar shells were fired into Israel, police raised the level of national alert to its second-highest status.
The Israeli military said the Rafah raid had "targeted a terrorist squad in the southern Gaza strip responsible for the firing of military-use projectiles towards the Israeli home front".
Rocket fire
Within hours of the attack, at least 20 Palestinian rockets and mortar bombs hit different sites in southern Israel, wounding three civilians, Israeli police said.
One rocket slammed into a community centre and another into a block of flats, setting parked cars and gas canisters alight.
Rockets hit the city of Ashdod, the nearby town of Gan Yavneh and the city of Ashkelon, to the south, police said.
The Al-Quds Brigades claimed responsibility for the rocket fire and posted a video on its website which it said showed the launching of five of the rockets.
The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine also claimed responsibility for the attacks.
And a spokesman for Hamas' Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades blamed Israel for the escalation.
"The occupation is completely responsible for the crime in Rafah and all of the resistance factions cannot leave the shedding of our martyrs' blood unanswered," Abu Obeida, Hamas spokesman, said. "We shall discuss the answer to this crime."
The air raid and earlier rocket attack were the first violent incidents since October 18 when Hamas repatriated Gilad Shalit, an Israeli soldier it seized in 2006, in exchange for the release of more than 1,000 jailed Palestinians.Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Rangers owner Craig Whyte was booed by fans outside Ibrox
Rangers Football Club has confirmed it has filed legal papers at the Court of Session to appoint administrators.
The club said it would continue with "business as usual" until it decided whether to take that step.
Rangers now has 10 days to make a decision. In the meantime, it said there would be "no impact on season ticket holders and shareholders".
The move comes while Rangers awaits a tax tribunal decision over a disputed bill, plus penalties, totalling £49m.
The club said in a statement, however, that if the tribunal decided in favour of HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC), it "could result in liabilities and penalties substantially more than the £50m reported which the club would be unable |
can keep him in the fairway and he is still around Sunday afternoon.
No mistake about it, Tiger is back. Tiger drives up TV ratings, sells tickets, and everything he does makes major news. But does it guarantee we will see the Tiger of the past years. It is doubtful, and even Woods has eluded to that.
So whatever the decision, don’t get your hopes up Tiger fans. Golf is a business, and Tiger’s name sells clubs, balls, and tickets, but it doesn’t guarantee win’s or major’s. Those days are long gone.Floyd Mayweather with Leonard Ellerbe, CEO of Mayweather Promotions. Source: AP/Press Association Images
CONOR McGREGOR’S SUCCESSFUL application for a boxing licence from the California State Athletic Commission is “a calculated effort to gain more fans”, not a step closer to a fight with Floyd Mayweather.
That’s according to Leonard Ellerbe, the CEO of Mayweather Promotions. Ellerbe has insisted to ESPN’s Dan Rafael that there’s no chance of a boxing match between Mayweather, the undefeated five-division champion boxer, and McGregor, the current biggest star in mixed martial arts, ever taking place.
McGregor has been granted a boxing licence by the California State Athletic Commission, but Ellerbe says the development has no implications for Mayweather, who himself added fuel to the speculation in May by claiming that a clash with McGregor will “absolutely” happen.
Read more: Conor McGregor has been granted a boxing licence by the state of California
Mayweather has been in retirement since defeating Andre Berto in September of last year, while the terms of McGregor’s UFC contract are likely to prevent him from competing in a boxing bout without the permission of the MMA promotion.
UFC lightweight champion Conor McGregor. Source: Tommy Lakes/The42
McGregor began 2016 with a submission loss to Nate Diaz in March, but he avenged that defeat in an August rematch before clinching the UFC lightweight title from Eddie Alvarez at UFC 205 in New York last month.
“Conor McGregor can say anything he wants to but he has a boss and his name is [UFC president] Dana White. He is under contract to the UFC and if he wanted to fight Floyd Mayweather in a boxing match he can’t because his bosses wouldn’t allow that to happen,” said Ellerbe.
“The brass [from WME-IMG] who recently purchased the UFC [for $4 billion earlier this year] are very smart people and they would never — and put this in bold caps — let him step into a boxing ring with Floyd Mayweather because everyone knows what the outcome would be. He would get his ass beat from pillar to post.”
Ellerbe added: “What McGregor is attempting to do is take a page out of Floyd’s book from the marketing and promotional side by using his name. The quickest way to become famous is to align yourself with another famous person, and he’s done a good job of that.
“He has a good little hand game, a superior hand game compared to the UFC fighters he is competing with but fighting Floyd Mayweather is a whole other story. That bullshit you’re throwing over there in UFC would get you killed against Floyd.”Breaking News Emails Get breaking news alerts and special reports. The news and stories that matter, delivered weekday mornings.
Feb. 11, 2016, 3:57 AM GMT / Updated Feb. 11, 2016, 4:07 AM GMT By Phil Helsel
The city of Cleveland filed a claim against the estate of Tamir Rice, the 12-year-old fatally shot by police in 2014, seeking $500 in reimbursement for the ambulance ride and treatment.
Assistant Law Director Carl Meyer filed the creditor's claim in Cuyahoga County Probate Court on Wednesday, NBC affiliate WKYC reported.
Tamir was shot in the torso by Cleveland police officer Timothy Loehmann on Nov. 22, 2014, after responding to a report of a "male with a gun" on the swings at a city park.
It turned out the boy had a pellet gun. Tamir died at the hospital the next morning.
"The Rice family is disturbed by the city's behavior," Rice family attorney Subodh Chandra said in a statement to WKYC.
"The callousness, insensitivity, and poor judgment required for the city to send a bill — its own police officers having slain 12-year-old Tamir — is breathtaking," Chandra said in the statement. "This adds insult to homicide. The Rice family considers this a form of harassment."
A grand jury declined to indict Loehmann and his partner, Frank Garmback, in December.
The claim says the $500 "is past due and owing for emergency medical services rendered as the decedent’s last dying expense."
Cleveland EMS billed $450 for ambulance advance life support and $50 for mileage, according to the invoice.
Related: Cleveland Boy Tamir Rice Wasn't Reaching for Pellet Gun: Report
Tamir’s mother has filed a federal lawsuit against the city of Cleveland, Loehmann and the officers involved in the call that ended in the boy’s death. The case is pending.Feature documentation and testing is easy September 12, 2015
At Kiosked, in my Front-end development team, we've just starting using BBC Sport's ShouldIT to run tests against our feature documentation. Testing against well-defined features is a fantastic way to prove commitment to specifications, and it'll keep both management and QA happy in the long-term.
Until recently, we didn't use any proper feature specification. Everybody knows what our product is and what it should do, but this knowledge wasn't written down in any meaningful form. When something goes wrong, and things will always go wrong, there are always disagreements about the exact behaviour of some feature. If we'd written down the feature specification at some acceptable level of detail, we could have avoided many futile discussions about how it should have worked.
In light of recent experiences and a drive to make our processes smarter, I decided to introduce feature files to my team. We're now writing out our products features in markdown format, aligning the syntax with that of ShouldIT. The markdown-formatted features make it easy for developers to read and edit them, as well as making it possible to render them to some pretty HTML for management to read. ShouldIT provides us the method with which we'll be testing these new features.
We use Jasmine to run our test suite, which outputs JUnit XML reports - ShouldIT takes these reports to assess feature coverage and status. You can use any testing framework that outputs JUnit with ShouldIT.
Enough talk! Let's check out some code - here's my sample application:
window.MyFunction = function ( a, b ) { return a * b; };
Exciting, right? Yes! But if we make the system more complex later on, one might forget exactly how it's supposed to operate unless we document it. We can keep all of our documentation in one place, within feature files in the repository. We can commit them with the project and your added changes so our features are completely version-controlled. Let's write a feature:
# My system ## My function + IT Should perform multiplication
We're documenting a section called "My system", and a component called "MyFunction". By reading this simple definition, we can understand that MyFunction should do some multiplication - no one could misconstrue this.
To ensure the component functions correctly, we should write a unit test:
describe( "My system", function ( ) { ; describe( "My function", function ( ) { it( "Should perform multiplication", function ( ) { var result = window.MyFunction( 2, 4 ); expect(result).toBe( 8 ); }); }); });
To tie this altogether, I'll use a simple Gruntfile to get a build process going:
module.exports = function ( grunt ) { ; require ( 'load-grunt-tasks' )(grunt); grunt.initConfig({ jasmine : { all : { src :'src/**/*.js', options : { specs : 'tests/**/*.spec.js' } } }, jshint : { files : [ 'Gruntfile.js','source/**/*.js', 'tests/**/*.js' ] } }); grunt.registerTask( "default", [ "test" ]); grunt.registerTask( "test", [ "jshint", "jasmine:all" ]); };
Running grunt test produces the following results:
Running "jshint:files" (jshint) task >> 2 files lint free. Running "jasmine:all" (jasmine) task Testing jasmine specs via PhantomJS My system My function ✓ Should perform multiplication 1 spec in 0.008s. >> 0 failures Done, without errors.
Great, but we've only got our unit test - there's nothing tying this to our feature specification. External parties to our product won't just take our word that it works, we need to prove it. Let's integrate ShouldIT into our process - we will reconfigure our jasmine tests to output JUnit results:
jasmine : { all : { src :'src/**/*.js', options : { specs : 'tests/**/*.spec.js', junit : { path : "./", consolidate : true } } } }
Running the tests again will place a file called TEST-Mysystem.xml in the root directory. We can feed this into ShouldIT, but let's make sure it's installed first using sudo npm install -g shouldit. Configuration for ShouldIT is held in a JSON file called shouldit.conf.json :
{ "specs" : "features/*.md", "results" : "TEST-*.xml" }
You can then run ShouldIT using shouldit :
That's it! You're now feature testing... It's that easy. You can (and probably should) run your feature tests alongside your unit and integration tests. Feature testing is important, but it's not a replacement for granular unit tests.
ShouldIT also produces a Junit XML results file, so its results can also be monitored by other testing environments and CI servers. ShouldIT tests should compliment your existing testing procedure.
Sample workflow
I created a Github repo for this post which contains all of the example code I've shown here. Please submit an issue if you notice any mistakes or areas for improvement.
Takeaway
Specifying features is certainly more work, as is any documentation, but it's an important asset to have in your arsenal. Feature specs help you to:
Analyse separate components of your system from a high level
Prove points when discussing intended functionality
Test user-understandable application features
Refactor and rebuild portions of your product with a checklist
Feature files should be considered an integral part of everyone's testing suite.No Friday 30 December this year as Samoa synchronises calendar with trading partners New Zealand and Australia
Forget the Tardis or Star Trek. Samoans have a simpler answer to changing the calendar – and warping the dateline is so much easier than time travel.
But those who routinely thank goodness it's Friday in the Pacific islands state may be less happy. This year, 30 December is disappearing as Samoa skips the day entirely.
The country that has been able to say it sees the world's last sunset of the day is about to edge ahead of Tonga as the place where 2012 begins.
The decision to change Samoa's place in the world temporally reflects a new business order. It will be on the same day as New Zealand, Australia and China.
"In doing business with New Zealand and Australia, we're losing out on two working days a week," the prime minister, Tuilaepa Sailele Malielegaoi, said in April when the plan to push the clocks 24 hours forward was announced. "While it's Friday here, it's Saturday in New Zealand and when we're at church on Sunday, they're already conducting business in Sydney and Brisbane."
He suggested Pacific tourists could celebrate the same day twice, because American Samoa next door stays on the other side of the dateline.
"You can have two birthdays, two weddings and two wedding anniversaries on the same date – on separate days – in less than an hour's flight across [the ocean], without leaving the Samoan chain," the prime minister enthused.
The Westpac Samoa bank had good news for its customers, too. "This is a very significant day in the history of Samoa and for some time now we've been planning and programming our systems to deal with the event," said Michael Mjaskalo, its general manager, according to the Samoa Observer.
"Customers can be assured that Westpac will not charge interest on credit and loan facilities for the missing day. However, we will pay the appropriate interest on interest-bearing deposits for the missing day even though we are not obligated by law."
Two years ago, Tuilaepa switched Samoan driving from the right to the left side of the roads, in line with Australia and New Zealand. The move meant expat Samoans could send used cars home to their relatives.
Samoa has crossed the international dateline before. In 1892, its then king was persuaded to fall in step with American ships sailing west to San Francisco. That shift gave the Samoan calendar an extra day that meant consecutive fourths of July.Former Australia skipper Ricky Ponting has warned Steve Smith of the perils of leading his country in all three formats following Smith's appointment as the Twenty20 captain this morning.
Ponting, who captained Australia a record 324 times in Test, one-day and T20 cricket, says Smith could struggle with the burden of leading Australia in all three forms, just as he did.
"The thing that might start taking its toll on Steve Smith is just how constant that role is now for him," Ponting told Melbourne radio station SEN.
"He’s only new into the Test captaincy really.
Watch: Smith reflects on being named T20 captain
"Now he’s captain of all three formats. I think it will catch up with him pretty quickly. It did with me, anyway."
Quick Single: Australia's World T20 squad announced
While Ponting is concerned about Smith’s workload, former Australia vice-captain Ian Healy is less worried that Smith will be affected by the T20 captaincy due to the lack of T20 matches on the international schedule.
"He's very capable of handling it and I think the team needs it right now,” Healy told cricket.com.au. "The T20 leadership is not a big thing outside of this year.
"This year with the World T20 there (are more matches) but Smithy will have the energy to get through that and I think, at the moment, the team will like that."
Watch: Smith speaks after final ODI against NZ
Smith played under previous T20 skipper Aaron Finch in the KFC T20 INTL series against India last month, but with the Victorian battling a hamstring injury ahead of next month’s ICC World T20 tournament in India, the Australian selectors decided that a change in leadership was necessary.
"We think now is the right time for Steve (Smith) to lead Australia in all three forms of the game as it offers us important continuity, not only ahead of the World T20, but beyond that tournament as well," National selector Rod Marsh said in Auckland today.
Ponting, who coaches Indian Premier League side Mumbai Indians, expected Finch to carry on leading the T20 team but suggested that his injury may have played a part in the selectors’ decision to appoint Smith.
Watch: Finch suffers injury against India
"I’m a little bit surprised that Finch is not captain," Ponting said.
"I’m not sure if his injury is worse than we think.
"He did the same (injury) with (the Mumbai Indians) in the IPL last year."
Australia have had a separate T20 captain from the Test and ODI skipper since Michael Clarke retired from the format in 2011 to concentrate on the five day and 50-over formats.
Cameron White and then George Bailey, who both missed selection for the upcoming World T20, led the team before Finch was appointed skipper in 2014.
The World T20 remains the only piece of major international silverware Australia have yet to win, and enter the tournament ranked eighth on the ICC International T20 rankings.Image copyright Getty Images Image caption Spain is the most popular destination for Britons living in other EU countries
Britons living in Spain will not have their lives "disrupted" after Brexit - even if there is no UK-EU deal, the Spanish foreign minister says.
The two sides are yet to reach an agreement about how the rights of expats will be protected after Brexit.
Theresa May has called for "urgency" from the EU side in finding a solution.
And speaking on the BBC's Andrew Marr Show, Alfonso Dastis sought to reassure more than 300,000 Britons living in Spain.
"I do hope that there will be a deal," the minister said.
"If there is no deal we will make sure that the lives of ordinary people who are in Spain, the UK people, is not disrupted.
"As you know, the relationship between the UK and Spain is a very close one in terms of economic relations and also social exchanges.
"Over 17 million Brits come to Spain every year and many of them live here or retire here and we want to keep it that way as much as possible."
Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption British expats sum up Brexit in one word
According to the Office for National Statistics, Spain is host to the largest number of British citizens living in the EU (308,805), and just over a third (101,045) are aged 65 and over.
Citizens' rights are one of the first subjects being negotiated in the first round of Brexit talks - which have moved so slowly there has been increased talk of no deal at all being reached between the two sides.
The role of the European Court of Justice in guaranteeing the rights of EU nationals in the UK has been a sticking point. The EU argues this must continue, but ministers say the EU court will no longer have jurisdiction in the UK after Brexit.
Ahead of last week's Brussels summit, Mrs May said the two sides were "in touching distance" of finding an agreement.
On Monday she is expected to tell MPs she will "put people first" in the "complicated and deeply technical" negotiations.Most readers of The New York Times probably subscribe to what Paul Tough calls “the cognitive hypothesis”: the belief “that success today depends primarily on cognitive skills — the kind of intelligence that gets measured on I.Q. tests, including the abilities to recognize letters and words, to calculate, to detect patterns — and that the best way to develop these skills is to practice them as much as possible, beginning as early as possible.” In his new book, “How Children Succeed,” Tough sets out to replace this assumption with what might be called the character hypothesis: the notion that noncognitive skills, like persistence, self-control, curiosity, conscientiousness, grit and self-confidence, are more crucial than sheer brainpower to achieving success.
“Psychologists and neuroscientists have learned a lot in the past few decades about where these skills come from and how they are developed,” Tough writes, and what they’ve discovered can be summed up in a sentence: Character is created by encountering and overcoming failure. In this absorbing and important book, Tough explains why American children from both ends of the socioeconomic spectrum are missing out on these essential experiences. The offspring of affluent parents are insulated from adversity, beginning with their baby-proofed nurseries and continuing well into their parentally financed young adulthoods. And while poor children face no end of challenges — from inadequate nutrition and medical care to dysfunctional schools and neighborhoods — there is often little support to help them turn these omnipresent obstacles into character-enhancing triumphs. The book illuminates the extremes of American childhood: for rich kids, a safety net drawn so tight it’s a harness; for poor kids, almost nothing to break their fall.
Though Tough examines at length the travails of both groups, it’s the plight of disadvantaged children that compels his interest and emotions. In his previous book, the well-received “Whatever It Takes,” Tough followed the efforts of the educator Geoffrey Canada to turn his social service organization, the Harlem Children’s Zone, into a “conveyor belt” that would reliably carry the neighborhood’s children from infancy through primary and secondary school, into college and the middle class. In Canada’s story, Tough found a deep and complicated character fighting to accomplish a valiant goal in the face of terrific odds. In “How Children Succeed,” Tough is working in miniature, sketching a handful of poor children and their mentors, and these depictions sometimes lack the force and distinctiveness of his portrait of Canada. But they are keenly and sensitively observed, and occasionally even whimsical, as in his captivating account of Kewauna Lerma, a Chicago teenager. Growing up in the erratic care of a feckless single mother, “Kewauna seemed able to ignore the day-to-day indignities of life in poverty on the South Side and instead stay focused on her vision of a more successful future.” Kewauna tells Tough, “I always wanted to be one of those business ladies walking downtown with my briefcase, everybody saying, ‘Hi, Miss Lerma!’ ”
Here, as throughout the book, Tough nimbly combines his own reporting with the findings of scientists. He describes, for example, the famous “marshmallow experiment” of the psychologist Walter Mischel, whose studies, starting in the late 1960s, found that children who mustered the self-control to resist eating a marshmallow right away in return for two marshmallows later on did better in school and were more successful as adults.
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“What was most remarkable to me about Kewauna was that she was able to marshal her prodigious noncognitive capacity — call it grit, conscientiousness, resilience or the ability to delay gratification — all for a distant prize that was, for her, almost entirely theoretical,” Tough observes of his young subject, who gets into college and works hard once she’s there. “She didn’t actually know any business ladies with briefcases downtown; she didn’t even know any college graduates except her teachers. It was as if Kewauna were taking part in an extended, high-stakes version of Walter Mischel’s marshmallow experiment, except in this case, the choice on offer was that she could have one marshmallow now or she could work really hard for four years, constantly scrimping and saving, staying up all night, struggling, sacrificing — and then get, not two marshmallows, but some kind of elegant French pastry she’d only vaguely heard of, like a napoleon. And Kewauna, miraculously, opted for the napoleon, even though she’d never tasted one before and didn’t know anyone who had. She just had faith that it was going to be delicious.”
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Many poor children don’t develop the resilience Kewauna has in such abundance, and the reason, Tough says, can be traced back to their troubled home lives: “The part of the brain most affected by early stress is the prefrontal cortex, which is critical in self-regulatory activities of all kinds, both emotional and cognitive. As a result, children who grow up in stressful environments generally find it harder to concentrate, harder to sit still, harder to rebound from disappointments and harder to follow directions. And that has a direct effect on their performance in school. When you’re overwhelmed by uncontrollable impulses and distracted by negative feelings, it’s hard to learn the alphabet.”In nearly all countries surveyed, a majority of Muslims say that a wife should always obey her husband. At the same time, there also is general agreement – at least outside sub-Saharan Africa – that a woman should have the right to decide for herself whether to wear a veil in public.
Muslims are less unified when it comes to questions of divorce and inheritance. The percentage of Muslims who say that a wife should have the right to divorce her husband varies widely among the countries surveyed, as does the proportion that believes sons and daughters should inherit equally.
In some, but not all, countries surveyed, Muslim women are more supportive of women’s rights than are Muslim men. Differences on these questions also are apparent between Muslims who want sharia to be the official law of the land in their country and those who do not.
Women and Veiling
Muslims in many of the countries surveyed generally favor a woman’s right to choose whether to wear a veil in public.30 This view is especially prevalent in Southern and Eastern Europe, Central Asia and Southeast Asia, including at least nine-in-ten Muslims in Bosnia-Herzegovina (92%), Kosovo (91%) and Turkey (90%).
There is less agreement among Muslims in the Middle East-North Africa region and South Asia. While more than eight-in-ten Muslims in Tunisia (89%) and Morocco (85%) say women should have the right to choose whether they wear a veil, fewer than half in Egypt (46%), Jordan (45%), Iraq (45%) and Afghanistan (30%) say the same.
Sub-Saharan Africa is the one region surveyed where most Muslims do not think women should have the right to decide if they wear a veil. The only country in the region where a majority supports a woman’s right to decide is Senegal (58%); by contrast, fewer than a third support giving women this right in Nigeria (30%) and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (29%).
Wives’ Role
Muslims in most countries surveyed say that a wife should always obey her husband. In 20 of the 23 countries where the question was asked, at least half of Muslims believe a wife must obey her spouse.
Muslims in South Asia and Southeast Asia overwhelmingly hold this view. In all countries surveyed in these regions, roughly nine-in-ten or more say wives must obey their husbands. Similarly, in all countries surveyed in the Middle East and North Africa, about three-quarters or more say the same.
Across Central Asia, most Muslims say that wives must obey their husbands, although views vary from country to country. Opinion ranges from nearly nine-in-ten in Tajikistan (89%) to about half in Kazakhstan (51%).
In most of the Southern and Eastern European countries surveyed, fewer than half of Muslims believe a wife must always obey her spouse. Russia is the one exception, with 69% of Muslims taking this view.
Women and Divorce
Muslims in the countries surveyed are not united on whether women should have the right to terminate a marriage.31 In 13 of the 22 countries where the question was asked, at least half of Muslims say a wife should have this right. Most Muslims in Central Asia and in Southern and Eastern Europe hold this view, including 94% in Bosnia-Herzegovina, 88% in Kosovo, 85% in Turkey and 84% in Albania. Tajikistan is the only country surveyed in these two regions where a minority (30%) says women should have the right to initiate divorce.
Opinion is less unified among Muslims in South Asia and the Middle East-North Africa region. Large majorities affirm women’s right to divorce in Tunisia (81%), Morocco (73%) and Bangladesh (62%), but only about a quarter or fewer say the same in Pakistan (26%), Egypt (22%), Jordan (22%) and Iraq (14%).
In Southeast Asia, only a minority of Muslims believe women should be able to divorce their husbands, including as few as 8% in Malaysia.
Inheritance Rights for Women
In 12 of the 23 countries where the question was asked, at least half of Muslims say that sons and daughters should have equal inheritance rights.32 Most Muslims in Central Asia and in Southern and Eastern Europe hold this view, including 88% in Turkey and 79% in Bosnia-Herzegovina. In these regions, Kyrgyzstan is the only country where fewer than half (46%) support equal inheritance rights.
In South Asia and Southeast Asia, opinion differs widely by country. More than half of Muslims in Indonesia (76%), Thailand (61%) and Pakistan (53%) support equal inheritance rights, but fewer than half do so in Bangladesh (46%), Malaysia (36%) and Afghanistan (30%).
Across the Middle East and North Africa, fewer than half of Muslims say sons and daughters should receive the same inheritance shares. Palestinian Muslims (43%) are most supportive of equal inheritance rights in this region, while support is low among Muslims in Morocco and Tunisia (15% each).
National Context and Gender Attitudes
Attitudes toward gender issues may be influenced by the social and political context in which Muslims live. For instance, levels of support for equal inheritance by sons and daughters is often more widespread in countries where laws do not specify that sons should receive greater shares. Indeed, in most countries where laws do not mandate unequal inheritance for sons and daughters, a majority of Muslims support equal inheritance. For example, nearly nine-in-ten Muslims in Turkey (88%) say all children should receive the same inheritance. Similarly, more than three-quarters of Muslims in post-communist Bosnia-Herzegovina (79%) and Kosovo (76%) hold this view. By contrast, in most countries where laws specify that sons should receive greater shares than daughters, a smaller percentage of Muslims favor equal inheritance, including a quarter or fewer in Jordan (25%), Iraq (22%), Morocco and Tunisia (15% each).
Women’s Views on Women’s Rights
In some, but not all, countries Muslim women are more supportive of women’s rights than are Muslim men. For example, in 12 of the 23 countries where the question was asked, Muslim women voice greater support than Muslim men for a woman’s right to decide whether to wear a veil in public. In the remaining 11 countries, opinions of women and men do not differ significantly on this question.
Similarly, when it comes to the issue of equal inheritance for sons and daughters, Muslim women in nine countries are more likely than Muslim men to support it. But in the 14 other countries where the question was asked, the views of women and men are not significantly different.
In none of the countries surveyed are Muslim women substantially less likely than Muslim men to support a woman’s right to choose to wear a veil or the right to equal inheritance for daughters and sons.
Attitudes of both Muslim women and men may reflect the prevailing cultural and legal norms of their society. For example, in Morocco, 87% of women say a woman should have the right to choose to wear a veil, as do 83% of men and 85% of all Moroccan Muslims.33 Yet, just 14% of Muslim women back equal inheritance for daughters and sons, compared with 15% of Muslim men and 15% of Moroccan Muslims, overall.34
Sharia and Women’s Rights
Overall, the survey finds that Muslims who want sharia to be the law of the land in their country often, though not uniformly, are less likely to support equal rights for women and more likely to favor traditional gender roles.
Differences between those who want sharia to be the official law and those who do not are most pronounced when it comes to the role of wives. In 10 of the 23 countries where the question was asked, supporters of sharia as official law are more likely to say wives must always obey their husbands. Especially large gaps are found in Albania (+44 percentage points), Kosovo (+34), Bosnia-Herzegovina (+34) and Russia (+33).
Muslims who favor an official role for sharia also tend to be less supportive of granting specific rights to women. For instance, in six countries, those who want Islamic law as the official law are less likely to say women should have the right to divorce, including in Russia (-34 percentage points), Morocco (-19) and Albania (-19). However, the opposite is true in Bangladesh (+13) and Jordan (+12).
Additionally, in seven countries, supporters of sharia as the official law of the land are less likely to say sons and daughters should receive equal inheritance. And in five countries, those who favor sharia as the official law are less likely to believe a woman should have the right to decide whether to wear a veil in public.
Footnotes:
30 The Quran states that a woman should dress modestly, but it does not specifically require that she wear a veil. See Quran 24:30-31. Informed by certain hadith, however, all main legal schools of Islam (madhhab) mandate that women should veil. See Siddiqui, Mona. 2012. “Veil.” In McAuliffe, Jane Dammen, general editor. Encyclopaedia of the Qur’an. Brill. See also Hasan, Usama. 2011. “The Veil: Between Tradition and Reason, Culture and Context.” In Gabriel, Theodore and Rabiha Hannan, editors. “Islam and the Veil: Theoretical and Regional Contexts.” Continuum International Publishing Group, pages 65-80. (return to text)
31 According to most major schools of Islam (madhhab), a woman is permitted to divorce her husband under certain conditions. See Jawad, Haifaa A. 1998. “The Rights of Women in Islam: An Authentic Approach.” Palgrave Macmillan, page 8. (return to text)
32 The Quran specifies that a son should receive two shares of inheritance for every one share given to a daughter. See Quran 4:11. (return to text)
33 Moroccan law does not require or forbid wearing a hijab. See Gray, Doris H. 2008. “Muslim Women on the Move: Moroccan Women and French Women of Moroccan Origin Speak Out.” Lexington Books, page 109. (return to text)
34 Moroccan laws adhere to the Quranic injunction that sons should receive twice the inheritance of daughters. See Sadiqi, Fatima. 2010. “Women’s Rights in the Middle East and North Africa 2010 – Morocco.” Freedom House. (return to text)
Photo Credit: © Scott E BarbourKonami producer Dave Cox has already stated that a Wii U version of Castlevania: Lords of Shadow 2 isn't going to happen, but he's never really elaborated on the reason why - until now, that is.
Speaking to Dutch site n1ntendo.nl, Cox had this to say:
The reason that we're not making a Wii U-version of Castlevania: Lords of Shadow 2 is because of our resources. We have a limited amount of people working on the title. About 60 people worked on the first title and that's a pretty small team. With the sequel we have slightly expanded that team, but in order to make a Wii U-version, we need about 20 to 30 extra people. Next to that, we're already pretty far into the development of Lords of Shadow 2, so it would be very hard for us to work on a Wii U-version without negatively effecting the general development of the title. That's the only reason there won't be a Wii U-version, it's not that we don't want to make it, it's just that it wouldn't make sense for us to do so right now.
He also responded to web chatter regarding the possibility of a home console version of Castlevania: Lords of Shadow - Mirror of Fate, which was started by the fact that he mentioned that MercurySteam have HD assets for the game:
The reason we've first made Castlevania: Lords of Shadow - Mirror of Fate in HD to then downscale the graphics to the 3DS is because it ensures that the quality of the images is maintained. It's a common technique when making videogames. We used a lot of PC's while developing the Nintendo 3DS-game, but that doesn't mean there's also a PC-version coming. Eventhough we've got HD-assets of the game, the game is pretty much designed for the Nintendo 3DS. It's always been our focus and intention to the release the game for that platform. We have no plans to bring the game to HD-consoles. We have no plans to create a different version. The game is pretty much designed to play with the dual screens and to use the capabilities of the 3DS.
It's not uncommon for developers to save the HD-assets of a game to possibly use them in future projects, but at this time we've got nothing planned.
We actually kind of like the fact that Mirror of Fate is remaining exclusive to the 3DS — sure, we'd have loved to have played a HD version, but it sounds like Konami and MercurySteam are cooking up some really cool 3D-related surprises for the game.Video
Women were banned from playing football in Brazil for more than 30 years, and girls can still struggle to be taken seriously on the pitch.
A team from BBC 100 Women is working on helping girls feel more integrated in Brazil's football culture.
At one school in Rio de Janeiro, a group of students found their own solution to win the right to play.
Video journalist: Dina Demrdash
What is 100 Women?
BBC 100 Women names 100 influential and inspirational women around the world every year. In 2017, we're challenging them to tackle four of the biggest problems facing women today - the glass ceiling, female illiteracy, harassment in public spaces and sexism in sport.
With your help, they'll be coming up with real-life solutions and we want you to get involved with your ideas. Find us on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter and use #100WomenLast week the city of Philadelphia issued an apology to Jackie Robinson. After breaking the colour barrier in major league baseball in 1947, Mr. Robinson endured racist taunts, particularly from Philadelphians. In one game the Phillies' manager shouted at Mr. Robinson to "go back to the cotton fields."
Mr. Robinson played the 1946 season in AAA with the Montreal Royals. No apology has been necessary from that city. Montreal treated Mr. Robinson with warmth and respect. It's kind of strange that Philadelphia waited so long to express its regret. Mr. Robinson has been dead for 44 years. But decades-later apologies from governing bodies are increasingly common.
Canada has become one of the major forgiveness seekers for sins of the ancestors. Ottawa has made apologies for residential schools, the Chinese head tax, Japanese internment and other shameful deeds.
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We were at it again last week for something that happened 102 years ago on the British Columbia coast. Our Prime Minister said he would offer a full apology to our Sikh population for a 1914 immigration department decision to turn back a boat, the Komagata Maru, with several hundred Sikhs aboard. Nineteen passengers were subsequently killed in skirmishes with the British when the ship went on to Calcutta.
This apology is small fare compared to the one likely coming next. As was revealed recently, Ottawa is looking into making a sweeping apology to hundreds, possibly thousands of government officials who lost their jobs or who faced discrimination in the workplace as a result of being gay.
The apology, not yet certain but likely, would cover the entire Cold War period from the late 1940s to the 1990s. The Justice Department is co-ordinating an investigation involving several departments. Bureaucrats are thus far having difficulty determining specific numbers.
The review, which extends beyond government employees, is a potential powder keg. These kinds of apologies can be seen |
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Photo by zipckr/FlickrPresident Donald Trump nominated Trey Trainor, an Austin-based attorney with close ties to the Trump administration, to a seat on the Federal Election Commisssion.
The White House announced the nomination in September in a press release that quickly sparked concern from transparency advocates about Trainor’s ideology and perceived bias to any FEC inquiry of Russia’s role in the 2016 election.
Trainor, an election law specialist with a history of fighting the Texas Ethics Commission over campaign finance disclosures, is known for his deregulatory attitude toward money in politics.
The FEC consists of six presidential appointees who serve six-year terms and by law cannot include more than three members of one party. The senate must confirm appointees.
In March, former FEC chair Ann Ravel, a democrat, resigned, leaving the commission with three Republicans, one Democrat and one independent. The loss of Ravel has not affected commissioners’ ability to hold meetings or take action, an FEC spokesperson said.
Trainor would serve “the remainder of a 6-year term expiring April 30, 2023,” according to the White House, replacing Republican commissioner Matthew Peterson, who was nominated by President Trump to become a United States District Judge of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia.
The nomination was panned by transparency groups, including Issue One and ReThink Media, which called for Trainor to recuse himself in any future FEC probe of Russia’s involvement in the 2016 election should he receive senate approval. The FEC may be pressured into reviewing Russia’s activity, The Washington Post noted.
An unabashed Trump supporter, Trainor was featured in an Austin American-Statesman story in January flaunting Trump-Pence memorabilia.
Meet Central Texas Trump supporters heading to the inauguration https://t.co/LxBby3cxds pic.twitter.com/dUuSXYiWT5 — Austin Statesman (@statesman) January 16, 2017
Months later, Trainor hasn’t lost his Trumpian leanings.
He recently blocked his Twitter account from public viewing, but a number of his archived tweets collected by the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine were shared by Center for Public Integrity reporters.
Trainor’s recent social media activity includes a half dozen Trump retweets and other conservative and religious endorsements, including a Federalist Society tweet about a Rand Paul interview.
ReThink called on senators to consider the implications of Trainor’s appointment. It’s unclear when the Senate Rules Committee will hold a hearing.
Issue One also urged senators “to publicly and fully vet” a nominee with such antagonism for openness and oversight in campaign finance.
“(Trainor’s) prior stances on the regulation of dark money, his clashes with the Texas Ethics Commission and support for the Texas Senate defunding the body raise serious concerns as to whether he will be fully committed to enforcing the law, or like former FEC commissioner Don McGahn, more interested in nullifying long-standing election regulations and laws,” said Meredith McGehee, Issue One’s chief of policy, programs and strategy.
In 2015, Trump told TIME magazine that he wanted more transparency in campaign financing, which doesn’t appear to be the priority of his first FEC nominee.
For permission to reprint for commercial uses, such as textbooks, contact the Center: Feel free to distribute or cite this material, but please credit the Center for Responsive Politics.For permission to reprint for commercial uses, such as textbooks, contact the Center: [email protected]September 2014 ended last Tuesday, and with it the second annual Symbiote September art contest and challenge. For 30 long days, participants drew one symbiote character every day in honor of one of Marvel's most popular alien species and its all-star members: Venom, Carnage, Toxin, and many more. Though the turnout was less than spectacular with only three fully-committed participants (including myself)—which were two more from last year's count—and one or two occasional participants, this year's event was by far much better.This year's event focused primarily on each artist's creativity, and suffice it to say everyone delivered! We only had two contestants in this year's contest, which worked out quite nicely for determining who received which of the two prize packages—a brand new feature to this year's contest. So without further delay, it's time to announce the winners of the two prize packages!Winning Artist:, deviantART username blacksuitchris Christian has been a comic book fan for a long time. Born with Asperger's Syndrome, Christian immediately had a vivid imagination. His first comic was#5 and it started his love for comics, art, writing, and symbiotes especially. This lead into Christian's dream to become a comic book writer and artist with established writers and artists such as Cullen Bunn, Dan Slott, Mark Bagley, and Declan Shavely as inspirations, and he hopes to work on Spider-Man and Venom comics. Christian tried his best to perfect his skills by both constantly drawing and writing fan fiction to perfect his craft, but it's his friends and family that are key to his dream to join the comic book industry. Recently, Christian joined the YouTube channel DYKComics as its writer/researcher, and through this he now has better connections to artists who, too, are fans of comic books.Prize: The complete 3-partseries debuting in October and the complete 6-partseries on comiXology. Winning Artist:, deviantART username AraghenXD A known symbiote geek, Araghen can’t get enough when it comes to drawing them and giving some lesser known symbiote hosts new life through art and fan fiction. It’s only irony, though, considering it’s coming from a guy who once admitted that Venom scared him as a child.Prize: The complete 3-partseries debuting in October on comiXology.Congratulations to our two winners! Don't forget to check out the entire #SymbioteSeptember2014 gallery on deviantART and give the other participants some love. If you missed out on the fun, don't worry! Symbiote September will return next year, and it will be bigger, badder, and even gooeyer than before. Upwards and onwards!Check back every Friday here onfor new Venom-licious articles and follow The Venom Site for all of your symbiote news, reviews, and point-of-views!The Cardinals have been under investigation by the FBI and Justice Department for several months regarding the matter. According to The New York Times, which broke the story on June 16, evidence was found that at least one Cardinals employee illegally accessed a database that contained internal discussions of trades and scouting reports.
ST. LOUIS -- The FBI's investigation into an unauthorized entry into the Houston Astros' database has concluded, and federal investigators have recommended that at least one Cardinals employee be charged, CNN reported on Friday. The report did not identify that employee.
ST. LOUIS -- The FBI's investigation into an unauthorized entry into the Houston Astros' database has concluded, and federal investigators have recommended that at least one Cardinals employee be charged, CNN reported on Friday. The report did not identify that employee.
The Cardinals have been under investigation by the FBI and Justice Department for several months regarding the matter. According to The New York Times, which broke the story on June 16, evidence was found that at least one Cardinals employee illegally accessed a database that contained internal discussions of trades and scouting reports.
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Cards employee dismissed for Astros data breach
The Cardinals organization has dismissed scouting director Chris Correa, but general manager John Mozeliak would not go into specifics about why that decision was made.
"I can confirm he was on administrative leave and was terminated [Wednesday]," Mozeliak said on Thursday. "I think, at this time, it's just best to understand it's an open investigation and any other comments are not in anybody's best interest."
The St. Louis Post-Dispatch has reported that Correa, a member of the Cardinals' front office since 2009, admitted to entering the Astros' database to discover whether the Astros had stolen proprietary data from the Cardinals. He said he was not responsible for the leak of Astros data last summer or the subsequent breaches that the FBI alleges to have occurred.
"Mr. Correa denies any illegal conduct," Nicholas Williams, his attorney, told CNN. "The relevant inquiry should be, 'What information did former St. Louis Cardinals employees steal from the St. Louis Cardinals organization prior to joining the Houston Astros, and who in the Houston Astros organization authorized, consented to, or benefited from that roguish behavior?'"
Jeff Luhnow, who left the Cardinals in 2011 to become the Astros' GM, spearheaded the development of Houston's internal database, which details confidential discussions, player evaluations, statistical information and more. Before Luhnow's departure, Correa worked under him as a statistical analyst.
The Cardinals have been waiting for the FBI and Justice Department to finish their investigation before commenting further on the matter and potentially dismissing other front-office personnel. Since learning of the allegations in February, the Cardinals have been running their own internal investigation, led by Jim Martin and the law firm Dowd Bennett.
That investigation, Mozeliak said on Thursday, is ongoing.
According to CNN, the FBI has turned over its information to the Houston U.S. attorney's office, which will then determine whether to bring charges against anyone. The attorney's office declined to comment on the matter.Hamilton police have released security camera video of a stolen car being used as a battering ram to break into the Al Simmons Gun Store on Locke Street in an effort to find out who did it.
This hockey bag was left behind during a robbery at a Locke Street gun shop back in March, police say. (Hamilton Police)
It happened back in the early morning hours of March 2, when a grey compact sedan slammed into the front doors of Al Simmons Gun Shop, located on the southwest corner of Locke Street South and Canada Street.
Three men used the hole in the front of the building to get inside and grab several guns before running off, police say. Those guns were recovered not long after by police.
The suspects left behind a large black hockey bag with white trim that has a stitched on Pittsburg Penguins logo and the number nine on it.
Police are still looking for the suspects and are asking anyone with information to contact police at 905-546-2991 or Crime Stoppers at 1-800-222-TIPS.ROYAL TRIO: Interest in travel to New Zealand has increased significantly after the royal tour. We can only hope that Prince Harry comes along on their next visit.
New Zealand tourism is booming in the British market thanks to the royal tour, with Wellington the new favourite destination, data shows.
Hotel searches for New Zealand made by Britons increased by 70 per cent following the visit last month by the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge and baby Prince George.
The data, collated from hotel search website trivago.co.nz, showed the biggest increase for Wellington, where searches went up 169 per cent compared to the the week before.
William and Kate were based in Wellington during their time in New Zealand, but took trips to Blenheim, Auckland, Cambridge, Dunedin, Queenstown, and Christchurch.
During the first week of the family's visit to Wellington (April 7 to 13), hotel searches increased by 81 per cent compared to the week prior. During the week of their second visit (April 14 to 20), searches increased 169 per cent.
Denise Bartlett at Trivago UK said the Down Under tour was great for tourism in both New Zealand and Australia - although the latter had a less impressive overall increase of 32 per cent.
"It is surprising that travel interest to New Zealand was significantly higher than Australia - perhaps this can be attributed to a higher level of media coverage at the beginning of the visit," she said.
New Zealand was also named the UK's No 1 dream holiday destination in the British edition of Trip Advisor's biannual TripBarometer study, which came out this month.
Tourism New Zealand chief executive Kevin Bowler said it was rewarding to see that kind of response given the organisation's efforts to push destination messages during the tour.
"We have seen thousands of articles appear in the press, online and on TV particularly in the UK and USA, but also in markets like Germany, and the coverage has been overwhelmingly positive about the country," he said.
"The equivalent advertising value of this coverage would run into the tens of millions of dollars."
The positive stories around the royal visit, particularly iconic tourism experiences like the Shotover Jet and sailing on the Waitemata Harbour, helped reinforce New Zealand's image as a visitor-friendly destination.In 2009, a tiny one percent of the US population reported eating vegetarian or vegan. Now, 5% of the United States population is vegetarian and half of those people are vegan. The rates have skyrocketed over the last five years and studies show the rates are climbing. (1) So why are people continuing to go veg? The reason seems to involve a mix of various factors, with the largest impact coming from how much we have learned about commercial farming and animal treatment over the last five years. (2)
Why the United States is Going Veg…
To think that 16 million people in this country eat absolutely no animal products is pretty amazing, considering the degree to which meat has an impact on most of our culture. Approximately 42% of those who do not eat animal products say that they went vegan after they saw an educational film. Sixty-nine percent said they chose to eat a vegan diet to support the ethical treatment of animals. Forty-five percent say they transitioned into veganism over time and of all those who are vegan, 52% say they have been eating vegan for less than 10 years. This could be an indicator of the way the country has become more knowledgeable about our food supply over the last five years. (2)
Which Other Factors Are Involved?
Of all these vegetarians and vegans, the vast majority are women. (2) In fact, in 2009 when only 1 million people were veg*n, a whopping 79% of those were women at the time. Now, out of 5% of the population, one million people report eating vegan and the rest vegetarian. Women still make up 79% percent of the vegan group and 59% of the vegetarian group. (2)
But veganism isn’t just for women. Many men have made the change as well and as of 2012, meat consumption was down a massive 12.2% from 2007. In fact, people aren’t just eating vegan, they’re also more curious about this way of life too. Google reported a three-fold increase in vegan searches from 2007 to 2014! A search for “vegan 2007” showed over 1,600 results while a search for “vegan 2014” showed over 24,000 results! (3)
Celebrities also make up a significant portion of those who are vegan or vegetarian. Athletes, talk show hosts, millionaires, and even political figures are now turning to a veggie-based diet or a completely vegan diet. Restaurants are also changing by either offering a vegan or vegetarian entree and many new exclusive vegan restaurants are open now that weren’t around five years ago. Supermarkets now cater to vegans and offer more vegan or vegetarian products and the online raw vegan food industry has been thriving the last five years and only continues to grow. In fact, it’s now estimated that by 2050, America may be a “vegan country”, at least by a large percentage! (3,4)
No longer is veganism the diet for hippies and health nuts; according to statistics, it’s now just a smart way to live that can help decrease our ecological footprint and works our compassion muscles. Kale, anyone?
Sources for this article include:
(1) www.onegreenplanet.org
(2) www.huffingtonpost.com
(3) www.huffintonpost.com
(4) www.huffingtonpost.com
Image Source: www.flickr.comAn Alberta child can still die in complete secrecy even after being beaten, sexually assaulted and starved by adults.
The sordid reality is on revolting display in the story of four-year-old Serenity, told by Postmedia colleague Paula Simons in one of the most powerful columns I have ever read.
Serenity was an aboriginal child. She was being “monitored” by the care system. She was said to be a bit “difficult.” Wouldn’t we all, if we were abused to the point of death?
That happened more than two years ago. And we’re only hearing the full story now from a reporter, not from a government that spends $734 million a year on child intervention.
The whole business follows a familiar trajectory of extreme secrecy, incompetence and bureaucratic butt-covering in government and related agencies.
It echoes almost exactly what was revealed in 2013, when the Herald and Edmonton Journal told the shocking stories of children in government care dying anonymously for a decade. The deaths of literally hundreds of children, many of them First Nations, were never announced.
The law was changed because of that series, to allow these victims to be named. Serenity died shortly after the new rule was proclaimed.
And yet, on Monday, Human Services Minister Irfan Sabir actually told the legislature: “In all cases, we make sure we protect the identity of the family, the child and their loved ones. There is no exception to that.”
The prescription for dying in obscurity, it seems, hasn’t really changed at all.
A vivid detail in the child advocate’s report — almost the only one — noted that Serenity was beaten because she “stole food.”
Yes, a four-year-old, dying for want of food, brutalized because she took food.
But Del Graff, Alberta’s child and youth advocate, couldn’t say much, because of the legal constraints the legislature imposes on him.
He called the child Marie, not Serenity, her real name. He almost apologized for the possibility that her true name might slip out.
The police asked the medical examiner’s office not to release its report, or even a cause of death, because there’s an investigation (now more than two years old, with no charges we know of.)
It was therefore improper for the child advocate to put details in his report. What use is that?
Now we learn the autopsy wasn’t completed until September this year, and turned over to police a week later, almost exactly two years after the girl’s death. How is a delay like that even possible? Was there ever an investigation at all?
It was left to Simons to reveal not just the girl’s first name, but photos of her and actual medical records from an emergency ward and the Stollery Children’s Hospital in Edmonton.
That photo of Serenity, gaunt and haunted, her face clearly injured as she looks up at the camera, revealed for the first time the reality of these secret sufferers.
The medical reports detailed the injuries to the girl’s anus and genitals, the lethally sub-normal weight, and the profound brain injury that finally killed her.
Anybody who read that column without being powerfully moved is missing a major human part. Premier Rachel Notley said it bothered her all weekend.
On Monday, the NDP agreed to a Wildrose request for an emergency debate on oversight of kinship care, secrecy, and other matters relating to Serenity’s death.
Wildrose house leader Nathan Cooper said, “The details that were raised this weekend and the stories were devastating.”
He began his speech by saying this wasn’t about blame, but about making sure it never happens again.
I couldn’t disagree more. These things keep happening because nobody is ever blamed.
The language of the reports, and the speeches of the politicians, always imply that it’s always just some benign system failure, like a flat tire on a parked car, rather than a series of catastrophic human blunders that left a child dead.
There are officials whose inaction let things happen to Serenity. For 11 long months before she died, there was no check on the home.
Those responsible should face serious career punishment. It should be broadcast all over the government.
There are other people who actually did the terrible things to the little girl. They should be in jail.
Sometimes blame is a damn good thing.
Don Braid’s column appears regularly in the Herald
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*Introductory pricing schedule for 12 month: $0.99/month plus tax for first 3 months, $5.99/month for months 4 - 6, $10.99/month for months 7 - 9, $13.99/month for months 10 - 12. Standard All Access Digital rate of $16.99/month begins after first year.
*Introductory pricing schedule for 12 month: $0.99/month plus tax for first 3 months, $5.99/month for months 4 - 6, $10.99/month for months 7 - 9, $13.99/month for months 10 - 12. Standard All Access Digital rate of $16.99/month begins after first year.
Thank you for supporting the journalism that our community needs!
For unlimited access to the best local, national, and international news and much more, try an All Access Digital subscription:
We hope you have enjoyed your trial! To continue reading, we recommend our Read Now Pay Later membership. Simply add a form of payment and pay only 27¢ per article.
Thank you for supporting the journalism that our community needs!
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Here are some new names to know:
That's what happened to Hugh McFadyen, who ran Mayor Sam Katz's first campaign and then became his senior adviser at city hall, along with fellow campaign worker Ryan Craig. It's also what happened to several of former mayor Glen Murray's campaign operatives, such as Rose Passante and Diane Poulin.
And, those campaign staffers often end up as backroom city hall operatives, proposing policy, handling communications, corralling councillors, negotiating with other levels of government and becoming chiefs of staff.
The candidate matters, but the team around him or her matters more. They make strategy, research policy, raise cash, organize phone banks and get out the vote.
Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 12/8/2014 (1659 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.
Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 12/8/2014 (1659 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.
The candidate matters, but the team around him or her matters more. They make strategy, research policy, raise cash, organize phone banks and get out the vote.
And, those campaign staffers often end up as backroom city hall operatives, proposing policy, handling communications, corralling councillors, negotiating with other levels of government and becoming chiefs of staff.
That's what happened to Hugh McFadyen, who ran Mayor Sam Katz's first campaign and then became his senior adviser at city hall, along with fellow campaign worker Ryan Craig. It's also what happened to several of former mayor Glen Murray's campaign operatives, such as Rose Passante and Diane Poulin.
Here are some new names to know:
JUDY WASYLYCIA-LEIS
The former NDP MP's campaign team has drawn heavily on union and provincial staffers, which has earned her criticism. But, her advisers also include Liberals.
BOB DEWAR — Straddling both union and NDP camps, the chief of staff to former premier Gary Doer ran several successful provincial election campaigns for the New Democrats and was, until recently, one of the top directors at the MGEU.
Role: Campaign co-chair.
BOBBI TAILLEFER — Formerly Bobbi Ethier, the longtime Liberal organizer has held senior posts in the federal party and locally, including president of the Manitoba party and is a senior staffer at the Manitoba Teachers' Society.
Role: Campaign co-chair.
SHAUNA MACKINNON — The former head of the lefty think-tank the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, now a U of W professor.
Role: Core adviser.
JIM SILVER — The city's top expert on poverty policy and inner-city issues, and a U of W professor.
Role: Core adviser.
CAROLINA STECHER — A special adviser to Education Minister James Allum and experienced campaign worker. She is on leave.
Role: Campaign manager.
BOYD PONCELET — Constituency assistant to Wolseley NDP MLA Rob Altemeyer.
Role: Senior organizer and election-day co-ordinator.
SHIRLEY LORD — Veteran community activist, labour organizer and New Democrat. Recent winner of the Joseph Zuken Citizen Activist Award.
Role: Key fundraiser.
PETER DALLA-VICENZA — A senior adviser to Family Services Minister Kerri Irvin-Ross and former provincial communications staffer.
Role: Communications, along with a team that includes CUPE and Unifor staff reps.
ADVISORY COMMITTEE — Includes former Liberal senator Sharon Carstairs, Helen Norrie, former NDP MP Bill Blaikie. former Liberal MP and lieutenant-governor John Harvard, chocolatier Constance Menzies, indigenous activist and professor Niigaan Sinclair.
DONORS: Will be released prior to voting day.
BRIAN BOWMAN
His campaign team is stacked with young Red Tories and Liberals, most of whom are best-known for their tweets.
JASON FUITH — One of Bowman's longtime friends and technology expert.
Role: Campaign manager.
KELLY MCCRAE — A former PC caucus staffer, now a public affairs consultant.
Role: Campaign operations.
HOWARD MORRY — Tax and estate lawyer and partner at Pitblado with Bowman, a significant figure in Winnipeg's Jewish community, chairman of the Canadian Museum for Human Rights capital campaign.
Role: Fundraising.
CONOR LLOYD — Public relations staffer with the Manitoba Metis Federation, Red River College and other organizations. Once ran for the provincial Tories against then-NDP premier Gary Doer in Concordia.
Role: Communications, with help from local consultant Julie Mikuska.
COREY SHEFMAN — Lawyer, young Liberal and adviser to leader Rana Bokhari, president of the Manitoba Association for Rights and Liberties.
Role: Ground game and election day.
MARK CHIPMAN — Jets owner. 'Nuff said.
Role: Donor, supporter.
ADVISERS — Winnipeg Chamber of Commerce president Dave Angus, alumni relations expert Jana Thorsteinson, NRG Research president Andrew Enns.
DONORS — Will be made public Sept. 24.
GORD STEEVES
It's not entirely clear who is running Steeves' campaign, which has tilted heavily to the right. He won't say exactly who is in charge.
JOHN TROPAK — Owner of Video Cellar, a well known Manitoba Conservative campaign worker who has managed MP Shelly Glover's campaigns, once rumoured to be in line for a Senate appointment.
Role: Senior advisor
KEITH BORKOWSKY — Former Brandon Sun reporter, former communications staffer for provincial PC Leader Brian Pallister.
Role: Campaign operations
ALEX ROBINSON — A Liberal, served as a policy advisor to Mayor Sam Katz and one of the city's deputy CAOs.
Role: Fundraising
KEN LEE — Accountant, long-time provincial Progressive Conservative party treasurer and former board member of Osborne House.
Role: Official agent
BRYAN GRAY — former policy advisor to Mayor Sam Katz and transition advisor to provincial Progressive Conservative Leader Brian Pallister.
Role: Advisor
DONORS — Will not be public until campaign finance documents are released by the city, likely next summer.
PAULA HAVIXBECK
Her campaign has been slower to take off and her team is less well-known in political circles.
ABBY MANN — Management consultant
Role: Campaign chair
ALLY BEAUCHESNE — Conservative Party up-and-comer.
Role: Campaign opperations
MURRAY NAGLER — Businessman and chair of the board of the Graffiti Gallery.
Role: Fundraising
SHAILA WISE — Public affairs assistant and Charleswood resident.
Role: Volunteer coordinator
DARREN PENNER — Active on several Conservatives campaigns in the past.
Role: Communications
DONORS — Will make them public by Oct. 15.
ROBERT-FALCON OUELLETTE
Though he doesn't yet have the ground game of other candidates, his team includes Liberals with some campaign experience.
DOUGALD LAMONT — former candidate for Manitoba Liberal leader, longtime Liberal backroom communications consultant.
Role: Campaign co-chair and communications
MALCOLM BIRD — U of W political scientist.
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Role: Campaign co-chair
ERIC STEWART — Former provincial Liberal candidate in Wolseley, provincial party activist.
Role: Campaign manager
VICTOR ANDRES — Former federal Liberal candidate in Kildonan-St. Paul and provincial party activist.
Role: Volunteer coordinator
DONORS — All listed online and include Point Douglas activist Sel Burrows, musician Cara Luft, artist Diana Thorneycroft, landscape architect Cynthia Cohlmeyer,I just noticed that we crossed the 50,000 point in our submissions system sometime in the last month. I thought it might be fun to do a quick analysis of the most popular story titles in that pile. Here’s the results:
1st Place – 18
Dust
2nd Place – 16
The Gift, Home, Hunger, Homecoming
3rd Place – 15
The Box
4th Place – 14
Monsters
5th Place – 13
Lost and Found
6th Place – 12
Sacrifice, The Hunt, Flight
7th Place – 11
Heartless, The End, Alone, Legacy, Adrift
8th Place – 10
Red, Reflections, The Visit, Broken
9th Place – 9
The Other Side, Rebirth, Voices, Genesis, Awakening, The Collector, Disconnected, The Wall, The Prisoner, Deus Ex Machina, Hero, Skin Deep, Memories, Skin
10th Place – 8
The Machine, The Tower, Coming Home, Rain, Going Home, The Dark, Inheritance, The Door, The Choice, Happiness, Perchance to Dream, Last Call, The Fall, Night Terrors
More on story titles here and here.I heard you guys are waiting to hear more about EVGA ICX technology, so without further ado, here’s all you need to know.
EVGA ICX will feature nine thermal sensors located in different parts of the PCB. Each sensor will be connected to EVGA Precision app where the temperature can be monitored and displayed in OSD. What’s more, three RGB diodes which are installed on the side of the card will change colors depending on the temperature of the GPU, VRM and memory (you can modify this to your liking):
EVGA SuperClocked2 is on average few degrees cooler than ACX 3.0 based SuperClocked.
Each fan will spin asynchronously.
Finally, this little thing will make sure your card will not explode:
by WhyCry Tweet
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Please enable JavaScript to view the comments powered by Disqus.Last week, I betrayed the homosexual parenting community. At Elton John’s insistence I tried to boycott Dolce & Gabbana, which was a great sacrifice for me, as other designer underwear makes my testicles look old.
As I have been appearing at a theatre in Dundee it has been difficult to find any Dolce & Gabbana outlets to boycott. Instead, I located a second-hand copy of Joe Dolce’s Shaddap You Face single in Groucho’s records on the Nethergate, and pointedly refused to buy it.
But it has been a troubling week. News events, coupled with the liminal experience of spending time in Dundee, have conspired to make me doubt my own existence. And that of others. And that of all matter. It is the fault of the government.
Earlier this week the Conservative party chair Grant Shapps was revealed to have operated, even while an MP, a variety of ethically translucent internet business funnels under the alias of Michael Green, pseudonymous author of a book called How to Get Stinking Rich. Grant Shapps even wore a badge saying he was Michael Green at a 2004 conference, though apparently this was a joke, but one so subtle that many people took it at face value. Now he knows how I feel writing these columns.
Green, a non-existent man, marketed software that steers Google search engines towards particular information, manipulating our perception of reality. Fittingly, most traces of this Michael Green’s HowToCorp company have since been erased from cyberspace, perhaps by his own software, jammed in reverse gear with an imaginary spanner.
How disorientating. Some 25 years ago now, in 1990, a young Grant Shapps hired me as the sole employee of his profitable live bait vending business, House of Maggots, which I didn’t over firmly deny in the Observer last March. Grant Shapps and I spent many a moonlit night at popular Suffolk angling spots filling roadside fridges with comatose larvae, discarding maggots that failed to thrive, talking about our dreams. But who was the Grant Shapps that I imagined I knew all those years ago?
In August 1989 Grant Shapps had a car crash near WaKeeney, Kansas, on Interstate 70, his companion probably falling asleep at the wheel. Speaking to the Welwyn Hatfield Times in 2011, at the opening of a refurbished McDonald’s in the region, Grant Shapps confessed: “I was in a coma for the best part of a week and when I came round I recuperated in a Ronald McDonald home. I’ve always been grateful to Ronald McDonald.” Could this bizarre incident be significant?
The spring of 1989 saw a surge of UFO sightings in Kansas, clustered principally around the town of Russell, 60 miles west on Interstate 70 of Grant Shapps’s subsequent accident. The UFO-spotting season closed spectacularly in November 1989 at Goodland, 111 miles east, on the same road, when two women were abducted by aliens, and left unable to account for three hours of their evening. And in between those two spates of alien activity, geographically and temporally, lies Grant Shapps’s own crash and coma. Could this be the point at which the reality-moulding entity known as Michael Green somehow took possession of the future Conservative party chair? Did Grant Shapps’s Kansas blackout provide a gateway for the little Green man?
Given this Michael Green’s self-professed ability to use software to rewrite our perception of our own history, and our own reality, I wondered if there ever was a “Grant Shapps”, as we understand him, at all? Grant Shapps’s Wikipedia entry is known to have been regularly and favourably massaged by unseen hands. But are these hands alien hands? Are they green? Could this Michael Green have inserted a rebooted “Grant Shapps” character, who never really existed, into our reality by a similarly deft manipulation of online records?
And what kind of name is “Grant Shapps” anyway? Say it a dozen times. Roll “Grant Shapps” around your tongue. It sounds, as does Douglas Adams’s pitch-perfect Ford Prefect, like the kind of name an alien would choose in a bungled attempt to appear human. And so does “Ms Stockheath”, one of Michael Green’s supposedly satisfied online customers, and a name no one in the world has ever had. Ever.
Writing in the London Review of Books in January, Andrew O’Hagan showed how easy it was to use online resources to build a non-existent man from the ground up, who eventually took on a viable virtual life. And of course, members of the police have famously created similar false identities in order to have sex with Guardian readers and befriend Mark Thomas.
Is Grant Shapps the creation of this Michael Green? And if so, who are we? Has this Michael Green, or this Grant Shapps, micro-engineered a virtual world in which we also believe we exist, when in fact we may not? Are we just ciphers now, clumps of sentient meat, plugged into sockets, farmed by Michael Green or Grant Shapps, but for what? Data? Energy? For some super-being’s sick fun? Are we maggots dreaming of Grant Shapps, or is Michael Green a vast consciousness that dreams Grant Shapps daily into being?
I leaned against the outside wall of a public toilet near a building site on the banks of the Tay and rang a mobile number Grant Shapps had given me 25 years ago, in case of nocturnal maggot emergencies. Back then it had connected to the brick-sized carphone in his maggot van. Now a trim buzz broke off suddenly and Grant Shapps, identifiably and audibly Grant Shapps, snapped “Who gave you this number?” Instead of asking for Grant Shapps, I said: “Is Michael Green there?” “Michael Green is here,” came the reply, “but who and where, I wonder, do you imagine you are, my meddling maggot?”
And then everything went wobbly. The surface of the Tay seemed to shimmer, the grey light rolling over the estuary from Tentsmuir Forest frazzled and burned, and the Tay Bridge buckled and bent. The brick wall at my back |
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