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DirectInput - Enumerating devices - https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/bb153253(v=vs.85).aspx
DirectInput - Capturing from Devices - https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/bb153252(v=vs.85).aspx
DirectInput - Using Force Feedback - https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/bb153254(v=vs.85).aspx Grundsätzlich sollten alle standard RJ12--RJ12 (6p6c - straight) und USB (Type A auf Type B; USB 1/2.0) Kabel passen und einwandfrei funktionieren, welche die richtigen Stecker bieten. Sofern hochqualitative Kabel mit ähnlicher Länge verwendet werden, sollte dies kein Problem darstellen. Bitte beachten Sie, dass Fanatec keine uneingeschränkte Garantie auf Funktionalität geben kann, sofern Teile/Produkte von Drittherstellern verwendet werden bzw. involviert sind. Wichtige Anmerkungen zu Ersatzkabeln: Kabel welche (deutlich) länger als die Originalkabel sind, können zu Verbindungsproblemen führen
Verlängerungskabel (und Adapterstecker) sind oft die Ursache von mangelhafter Übertragungsqualität der Signale. Längere Kabel wären hier die bessere Option.
Wenn ihr Produkt mit einem hochwertigen Kabel inkl. Ferrit-Kern geliefert wurde, sollten sie als Ersatz ein ähnlich hochwertiges Kabel verwenden.
Frage: Kann ich ein (RJ12--RJ12 oder USB A -- USB B) Ersatzkabel von Fanatec kaufen?
Antwort: Wir sollten in der Lage sein für aktuelle Produkte Ersatzkabel zu Verfügung zu stellen. Falls diese im Webshop nicht gelistet sind, fragen sie bitte unser Supportteam danach. Es ist allerdings auch möglich ähnliche Standardkabel in hoher Qualität von anderen Händlern zu erschwinglichen Preisen zu kaufen und zu verwenden. Tous les jeux PC peuvent utiliser les fonctionnalités avancées de nos volants Fanatec (affichage, vibrations, rev LEDs) et les vibrations ABS (pédales CSP) mais les développeurs doivent implémenter ces fonctionnalités dans le jeu. Nous sommes en train d'éditer le SDK (kit de développement logiciel) (Octobre 2012) grâce auquel les développeurs pourront implémenter ce qu’ils désirent. CSR, CSRE, GT2, PWTS, GT3V2: Entièrement pris en charge à l'aide du firmware 750 + CSW: Entièrement pris en charge (tous les firmwares) Un bel exemple: Codemasters vient de mettre à jour F1 2012 sur PC afin d’utiliser directement le SDK sans aucune modification nécessaire. Sinon, vous pouvez utiliser Fanaleds ou SLIMax Manager pour activer ces fonctionnalités dans de nombreux jeux: www.fanaleds.com // www.eksimracing.com -> Si un jeu dispose du support SDK, il remplacera l'utilisation de tout autre outil comme Fanaleds. 最初に H-ゲート shifterを使用する前にはかならずきゃりぶレーションが必要となります。. キャリブレーションは一回のみ行う必要がありますが、情報がfirmwareに保存されるため、firmwareを更新 / フラッシュした場合には削除されます。 その場合再度The calibrationを行ってください。 1. H-gated shifter を をあなたのステアリングコントローラ"shifter port 1"に接続
2. ステアリングコントローラ電源オン
3. 自動キャリブレーションと自動シーケンスが完了まで待つ
4. "Tuning Button" + "Start Button"を同時に押す。(お使いのCSW rim によってこれらのボタンの位置は異なります。)
Display表示は G_n
5. シフターを へ移動して "Start Button"を押す
Display表示は G_r
6. シフターをリバース位置へ移動して(シフタースティックを押して左に合わせて上へ移動) の上 "Start Button"を押す
Display表示はG_1
7. シフターを first gear position へ移動して"Start Button"を押す。
Display表示はG_2
8. Mシフターを second gear position へ移動して"Start Button"を押す。
Display表示は G_3
9. シフターを Third gear position へ移動して"Start Button"を押す。
Display表示は G_4
10. シフターを fourth gear position へ移動して"Start Button"を押す。
Display表示は G_5
11. シフターを fith gear position へ移動して"Start Button"を押す。
Display表示はG_6
12. シフターを sixth gear position and press "Start Button"
Display表示はG_7
13.1 シフターを seventh gear position へ移動して"Start Button"を押す。
13.2 もしシフターに 7th gearがない場合 6th positionに入れたままで "Start Button"を押す
Display表示が消える -> キャリブレーション 完了!
もっともよいキャリブレーションのチェックの方はPCのドライバーメニューを開いて正しいギアが選択されているか確認すること。もしまだPCゲームでギア選択がうまくいかない場合 ゲームの中のマッピングボタンを確認してください。このプロセスはビデオマニュアルでも確認できます。
</p> Open in a new windowUS electronics retailer Best Buy has stopped selling products by leading computer security firm Kaspersky Lab amid concerns the company has links to Russian intelligence, the two companies confirmed Friday.
The big box retailer, with stores across the country, did not announce the change itself but its website was no longer offering Kaspersky products.
A Best Buy spokeswoman confirmed in an email reports that the action was taken due to concerns over Kaspersky's alleged links to the Russian government.
A Best Buy said will stop selling products made by computer security firm Kaspersky Lab
Kaspersky, which denies Russian government links, said the two firms 'have suspended their relationship at this time.'
'However, the relationship may be re-evaluated in the future,' it said in a statement.
'Kaspersky Lab has enjoyed a decade-long partnership with Best Buy and its customer base, and Kaspersky Lab will continue to offer its industry-leading cybersecurity solutions to consumers through its website and other retailers.'
The security software vendor, founded in 1977 by Russia-born Eugene Kaspersky, operates a global business with an estimate 400 million product users.
The electronics chain store said they were concerned that the company has ties to Russian government
It has its main offices in Russia and the United States.
In July, the US government removed Kaspersky from its list of approved vendors, weeks after top US intelligence agency and law enforcement officials publicly expressed concerns about the safety of its software.
Last week, Democratic Senator Jeanne Shaheen said she was introducing legislation to ban US government bodies from using Kaspersky software.
But no evidence has been presented to back up vague assertions that it might be a tool of Moscow, offering Russian spies back-door entry into computers worldwide.
In July, it strongly denied those insinuations.
'Kaspersky Lab has no ties to any government, and the company has never helped, nor will help, any government in the world with its cyber-espionage efforts,' the company said.
A top official of a Kaspersky competitor this week told AFP on condition of anonymity that he did not believe the allegations.
But he said Russia and China are increasingly treating his and other US cyber security firms with intense suspicion and constricting their market access.It is understood that Armed Forces planners are looking at the possibility that a new global financial crash could undermine the defence forces of key British allies.
The head of the Armed Forces warned that economic issues pose a “strategic risk” to Britain.
Senior British commanders and officials are concerned that US plans to cut defence spending will be followed by other allies in Europe and elsewhere.
Reductions in allied military capabilities could put a greater burden on Britain’s stretched forces in Afghanistan and elsewhere, it is feared.
The military planning work has come to light after The Daily Telegraph disclosed last month that British embassies in the eurozone have been told to prepare emergency plans for the demise of the euro and the possible civil disorder that could follow.
Senior ministers are increasingly convinced that the break-up of the single currency is a real possibility. Economists suggest that the failure of the euro could cause EU economies, including Britain’s, to shrink by up to eight per cent.
Gen Richards, the Chief of the Defence Staff, said economic issues present the biggest threat to Britain and its interests in the world.
“I am clear that the single biggest strategic risk facing the UK today is economic rather than military,” he told the Royal United Services Institute
“Over time, a thriving economy must be the central ingredient in any UK Grand Strategy. This is why the eurozone crisis is of such huge importance not just to the City of London but rightly to the whole country and to military planners like me.”
The Armed Forces are facing painful cuts and the loss of tens of thousands of personnel, but Gen Richards said that such austerity was necessary.
“The country’s main effort must be the economy. No country can defend itself if bankrupt,” he said.
He used his speech to raise questions about the ability of European economies to sustain their armed forces. He asked: “What impact will fiscal restraint and slow recovery have on European defence capabilities?’’
Gen Richards also noted that America, which is facing deep defence cuts, has said it will switch the focus of its main military effort from the Atlantic to the Pacific and south-east Asia.
That means “less emphasis on Europe and her problems,” he said. Gen Richards also accepted that Britain’s defence cuts carry risks, but insisted those risks were acceptable.
“It will mean taking risk. But managing risk is ultimately what we do and none of us in the Armed Forces are discomforted by the challenge,” he said.
The Armed Forces will need to “combine realism with imagination”, he said.Find an english transcript below!
JPGAMES.DE: Wir waren überrascht, als angekündigt wurde, dass Senran Kagura in Europa erscheinen wird. Wie sind Sie zu dieser Entscheidung gekommen?
Geraint Evans: Am Anfang des Jahres hatten wir viele Gespräche mit Marvelous AQL. Sie haben einige Spiele, an denen wir sehr interessiert waren. Senran Kegura war für mich persönlich eines dieser Niche-Spielen, bei denen ich mir dachte: Wow, das wäre echt cool, wenn wir nach Europa bringen würden. Dazu ist das Spiel einfach toll. Wenn man hinter die offensichtliche Sexyness des Spiels schaut, findet man ein echt tolles Spiel. Da uns angeboten wurde, dass Spiel rüberzubringen, hat das für uns Sinn gemacht. XSEED war schon mit der Übersetzung beschäftigt. Da Lokalisierungen sehr teuer sind, war es gut zu wissen, dass das schon erledigt war.
JPGAMES.DE: Das Spiel wurde von Marvelous SQL entwickelt. Wie ist ihre Beziehungen zu Marvelous?
Geraint Evans: Glücklicherweise hat Marvelous AQL ein Büro ganz in der Nähe von London errichtet. Sie waren auf der Suche nach einem Partner, der an ihren Titeln arbeiten könnte. Wir hatten lange Gespräche mit ihnen und haben ihnen von unserer bisherigen Arbeit mit Arc System Works berichtet. Nach einigen Verhandlungen haben wir einen Vertrag für drei Spiele unterschrieben. Auf längere Zeit würde ich liebend gerne weiterhin mit Marvelous AQL arbeiten. Das ist einfach ein fantastisches Studio und sie haben großartige Spiele entwickelt.
JPGAMES.DE: Ist es denn profitabel, Niche-Spielewie Senran Kagura im westlichen Territorium als Retail-Versionen zu veröffentlichen? Ace Attorney 5 wird z.B. nur in digitaler Form bei uns veröffentlicht…
Geraint Evans: Ja, es ist immer noch profitabel! Das mit den Retail-Versionen ist aber schwierig. Es ist natürlich profitabler, Spiele digital zu veröffentlichen, da dann die Herstellungskosten wegfallen. Aber für mich als Gamer ist es manchmal einfach schöner, die physische Version eines Spiels im Regal zu haben. Senran Kegura ist zum Beispiel ein Spiel, bei dem das Artwork einfach klasse ist. Es ist toll die physische Version des Spiels zu haben, da man so das Artwork seinen Freunden zeigen kann. Wir werden zwar nicht hunderttausend mal das Spiel herstellen, aber wir werden genug physische Kopien machen, damit jeder Fan sich eine kaufen kann.
JPGAMES.DE: Wie sind Sie zu der Entscheidung gekommen, Harvest Moon: A New Beginning zu veröffentlichen?
Geraint Evans: Ich könnte mir keinen Grund erdenken, warum es nicht veröffentlichen sollte! Es ist einfach eine tolle Marke. Es war diesmal interessant für uns, da das neue Spiel das erste Harvest Moon ist, das nur für den 3DS entwickelt wurde. Wir sind Harvest Moon Fans und wenn jemand uns anbietet, ein Harvest Moon-Spiel zu veröffentlichen, werden wir zusagen. Wir haben bisher noch nicht sehr viel für den 3DS veröffentlicht. Wir mögen es auch sehr gerne mit Nintendo zu arbeiten und in letzter Zeit waren sie sehr gut darin, Niche-Titel hierher zu bringen.
JPGAMES.DE: Gibt es ein Veröffentlichungsdatum für Deutschland?
Geraint Evans: Wir werden es Ende September veröffentlichen [Anm.: Inzwischen ist der 20. September offiziell angekündigt]. Wir suchen momentan noch nach einem Distributor für Deutschland. Allerdings wird das Spiel zur selben Zeit wie in allen anderen Ländern in digitaler Form erscheinen. Also werden ihr es bald schon digital kaufen können. Das Distributionsproblem wird hoffentlich bald behoben haben, aber ihr werdet es auch von uns direkt beziehen können.
JPGAMES.DE: Gibt es Pläne, Teile der Rune-Factory-Saga zu veröffentlichen, wie z.B. Rune Factory 4?
Geraint Evans: Ihr seid die ersten, denen ich sage, dass wir Rune Factory 4 nach Europa bringen werden. Wir werden es in sehr naher Zukunft auch nochmal offiziell verkünden.
JPGAMES.DE: Die Übersetzung von japanischen Spielen kann wohl ganz schön schwierig sein. Können Sie uns etwas über häufige Probleme beim Übersetzen vom Japanischen ins Englische erzählen?
Geraint Evans: Ein großes Problem beim Übersetzen ist der japanische Humor. Oft trifft man auf Wortspiele und Pointen, die in der japanischen Sprache funktionieren, aber nicht übersetzbar sind. Als Übersetzer muss man in solchen Fällen eigene Witze einbauen, welche im Kontext funktionieren. Das ist wohl das Schwierigste beim Übersetzen. Ich habe sehr viel Respekt für alle Firmen, die sich wirklich Zeit bei der Übersetzung nehmen. Es ist keine einfache Aufgabe, aber wenn Übersetzer es richtig machen, sind die Fans sehr dankbar.
JPGAMES.DE: Haben Sie irgendwelche Tipps für Leute, die vielleicht selber eines Tages Übersetzer werden möchten?
Geraint Evans: Sei gut in der Schule! Das ist das Wichtigste. Aber es ist auch wichtig, dass man für einige Jahre in Japan gelebt hat. Man sollte sich damit vertraut machen, wie Japaner sprechen. Man sollte die verschieden Sprecharten und Dialekte gut kennenlernen.
JPGAMES.DE: Was zocken sie aktuell selbst?
Geraint Evans: Mometan spiele ich Atelier Totori auf der Vita. Ich habe außerdem Soul Sacrifice, aber habe es noch nicht wirklich gespielt. Zuhause in meiner Freizeit, spiele ich sehr viele Dojin-Spiele auf dem PC. Die genieße ich wirklich sehr. Meine geheime Mission ist es, so viele Menschen wie möglich mit Dojin-Spielen vertraut zu machen, da sie wirklich toll sind, aber nur wenige Menschen schon mal von ihnen gehört haben,
English version – Our interview with Geraint Evans
JPGAMES.DE: It was quite a surprise to see that Senran Kagura will be released in Europe. How did you come to this decision?
Geraint Evans: Early this year, we were talking a lot to Marvelous SQL. They have a number of titles we were interested in. Senran Kagura, for me personally, was one of those really niche Japanese titles where I was like ‚Oh, this would be pretty cool to bring over‘. The quality of the game is great. If you look beyond the obvious sexiness of it, it is a really great game. When it was on offer for us to bring over, it made sense to us. XSEED was already working on the localisation. Because localisation is very costly, it was nice to know that was already taken care of.
JPGAMES.DE: The game was developed by Marvelous AQL. What is your partnership with them like?
Geraint Evans: Fortunately, Marvelous SQL set up an office just outside of London. They were looking for somebody who could work on their titles. We had a long conversation with them and told them about our past work with Arc System Works. After some negotiations we signed with them for three titles. Longterm, I would love to work with them in the future. Marvelous SQL is a fantastic company and they have developed great games.
JPGAMES.DE: Is it still profitable to release such niche titles in the Western territory as retail versions? For example, Ace Attorney V will only be released in digital form.
Geraint Evans: Yes, it is still profitable. As for the retail versions, it’s diffcult. It is more profitable to sell downloadable games, because you don’t have the manufacturing costs. But – speaking as a gamer – sometimes it’s nice to have the physical version of a game on your shelf. For example with a game like ‚Senran Kagura‘, the artwork is really great. It’s really nice to have the physical version of it, so you can display the artwork or show it your friends. We won’t manufacture thousands and thousands physical versions, but we will produce enough retail versions, so all fans have the chance to buy it.
JPGAMES.DE: How did you come to the decision to release Harvest Moon: A New Beginning?
Geraint Evans: I could not think of any reason against releasing Harvest Moon. It is such a great brand! It is interesting to us, because it’s the first Harvest Moon especially designed for the 3DS. We’re Harvest Moon fans and when someone comes to us and offers us releasing a Harvest Moon title, we are definitely going to say yes. We haven’t done a whole lot for the 3DS yet, so it was interesting for us to release niche titles for the 3DS. I really like working with Nintendo and recently they have been really good at bringing over niche games.
JPGAMES.DE: Is there a release date for Germany?
Geraint Evans: We will release it towards the end of September [20th of September is official announced yet]. We are currently looking for a distributor in Germany. However, it will released in Germany simultaneously as the digital version. So – at least – you’ll be able to buy it digitally. The distribution thing is hopefully going to be resolved soon but you’ll also be able to buy it directly from us.
JPGAMES.DE: Are there any plans to release titles of the Rune Factory sage, like Rune Factory 4, in Europe?
Geraint Evans: You are actually the first people I’m telling, that Rune Factory 4 will be brought over to Europe by us. We will be announcing it officially in the very near future.
JPGAMES.DE: Localizing Japanese video game might be quite a difficult matter. Can you tell us about some problems that translators might stumble upon when translating from Japanese to English?
Geraint Evans: A big problem is translating Japanese humor to English. You may have wordplay or puns that may work in the Japanese language but simply won’t translate into English. As a translator, you have to come up with your own jokes effectively. That’s propably the hardest part. I have a huge amount of respect for a lot of companies who really take their time in localising games. It’s not an easy task, so when translators do it properly, the fans are really grateful.
JPGAMES.DE: Do you have any advise for people who’d like to become translators?
Geraint Evans: Do well at schoot! That’s the most important thing. But it is also important that you have lived for some years in Japan. You have to get used to the way Japanese people speak. You have to get to know the different tones and dialects.
JPGAMES.DE: What are you playing at the moment, Mr. Evans?
Geraint Evans: I’m playing Atelier Totori for the Vita at the moment. I have Soul Sacrifice inside my Vita at the moment, but I haven’t really played it yet. At home, in my spare time, I’m playing a lot of Dojin Games on the PC. I am really enjoying them and there’s some great content there. My secret personal mission is to get as many people aware of Dojin games, because they are so great but not many people know about them.
JPGAMES.DE: Thank you for your time Mr. Evans.
Geraint Evans: Thank you very much!The president told of hopes to find 'the next Michelle and Barack Obama'
For his part, he will focus on finding new leadership in Democratic party
President Obama (above in Germany on Thursday) has revealed his plans to work with the D.N.C and find new party leadership after he leaves the White House
Barack Obama has revealed his plan to rebuild the Democratic party and mold its new leader after he leaves the White House.
In an in-depth interview with The New Yorker on Thursday, the President told how he would help his successor Donald Trump settle in to the role before vacating it.
Once out of office, he hopes to dedicate himself to training and advising a new wave of politicians, the next 'Michelle and Barack... who right now is sitting out there'.
'What we'll be most interested in is programming that helps the next Michelle Obama or the next Barack Obama,' he said towards the end of the mammoth feature.
He will also offer advice to the Democratic party and help it find its new leader, he said.
'I think now I have some responsibility to at least offer my counsel to those who will continue to be elected officials about how the D.N.C. can help rebuild, how state parties and progressive organizations can work together.'
Scroll down for video
He will also offer advice to the Democratic party and help it find its new leader, he said. Obama is pictured in Germany on Thursday
Obama's optimistic tone was the same one employed during his meeting with President-elect Trump on November 10 (above)
First, he intends to help President-elect Trump settle in to the role and, as observed by the New Yorker, firmly instructed staff to welcome the new administration graciously in to the White House when the shock election result came in on November 9.
In a meeting with staff the day after the election, he told them to be 'gracious hosts' when welcoming their successors and praised the Bush Administration for its 'efficiency' in handing over the reigns to his own team in 2008.
Determined not to lose hope in the face of the shock election result, he steered away from the hysteria sweeping other Democrats and told the publication: 'This is not the apocalypse.'
It is the same tone as was used by the President immediately after his first meeting with President-elect Trump last week.
President Obama also told of hopes to find 'the next Barack and Michelle' (above together in 2013)
'I want to emphasize to you, Mr. President-elect, that we now are going to want to do everything we can to help you succeed because if you succeed, then the country succeeds,' he told his successor in front of gathered media.
Later, as he spoke at Arlington National Cemetery to commemorate his last Veterans Day as president, he employed the same optimism.
'Veterans Day often follows a hard-fought political campaign, an exercise in the free speech and self-government that you fought for.
'It often lays bare disagreements across our nation.
'But the American instinct has never been to find isolation in opposite corners. It is to find strength in our common creed, to forge unity from our great diversity, to sustain that strength and unity even when it is hard,' he said.
Earlier in his address, he encouraged citizens to look towards veterans for strength when they become cynical.
President Obama also told of hopes to find new leadership in the Democratic party. Hillary Clinton's running mate Tim Kaine (right) was among those he mentioned
President Obama stopped short of naming a favorite to lead the Democratic party on Thursday but listed several promising figures.
Among them were Clinton's running mate Tim Kaine, California Attorney General Kamala Harris, Pete Buttigieg, the gay ex-Navy mayor of South Bend, Indiana, and Colorado Senator Michael Bennett.
The article's publication coincided with President Obama's trip to Germany, his last in his role, where he enjoyed a farewell dinner with Angela Merkel.
He has already visited Athens and will meet with British, French and Italian leaders before returning to the US.Bayer Leverkusen have secured the services of Karim Bellarabi after signing the winger down to another year, following the activation of a clause in his contract.
Bellarabi, 24, spent last season on loan at Eintracht Braunschweig where he excelled under Torsten Lieberknecht, despite their relegation to the 2.Bundesliga.
The 24-year old has fired Leverkusen into fourth in the Bundesliga, scoring eight goals in the league and providing two assists – which saw the German earn his first senior cap.
His previous deal was set for renewal in summer 2015 and Leverkusen wasted no time in securing Bellarabi until 2017.
Bellarabi joined Leverkusen form Eintracht Braunschweig in 2011, where he spent two years before being loaned back to the club for the 2013/14 season.
Leverkusen announced the contract extension on their official Twitter account: “Bayer 04 have activated the option to extend the contract of Karim Bellarabi until 30 June 2017.”
The winger has made a total of 61 appearances in the Bundesliga, scoring 12 goals.All Aboard! Thomas the Train Party Supplies ‐ Thomas the Train Party Ideas
All aboard, birthday guests! Thomas the Train Party Supplies put you on full throttle for birthday fun with train-themed tableware, birthday invitations, party favors, and decorations featuring your favorite wide-eyed locomotive. For quick and easy planning, start with a Thomas the Train party kit offering all the basics 8 or 16 guests. Each kit comes with Thomas the Train tableware, matching themed table decorations, hanging decorations, eye-catching balloons, and more, so that in your rush to organize the get-together, nothing gets left out. Of course, you can save money and add a personal touch by mixing and matching solid color tableware with Thomas the Party Supplies for a look that's decidedly different and all your own. Since licensed tableware, favors, and decorations nearly always cost more than solid color tableware, favors, and decorations of similar design, with a little imagination you can stretch the budget while creating an event unlike any other. For Thomas the Train party ideas, as well as dozens of ideas for other boys birthday themes, please visit the Party Ideas section of our web site. In the meantime, start your birthday shopping with Thomas the Party Supplies — it's never too late to purchase a ticket on the most popular ride in the station!CBS News 2016 Battleground Tracker South Carolina
4. Wh ic h ca nd id at e ar e yo u mo st li ke ly to vo te fo r in th e So ut h Ca ro li na Re pu bl ic an Pr es id en ti al primary in 2016?
Asked of Republican primary voters
J e b B u s h................................................................ 5 % B e n C a r s o n.............................................................1 9 % C h r i s C h r i s t i e............................................................ 1 % T e d C r u z............................................................... 1 3 % C a r l y F i o r i n a............................................................. 2 % J i m G i l m o r e..............................................................0 % L i n d s e y G r a h a m......................................................... 3 % M i k e H u c k a b e e.......................................................... 2 % B o b b y J i n d a l.............................................................0 % J o h n K a s i c h............................................................. 2 % G e o r g e P a t a k i........................................................... 0 % R a n d P a u l............................................................... 1 % M a r c o R u b i o............................................................1 6 % R i c k S a n t o r u m...........................................................1 % D o n a l d T r u m p.......................................................... 3 5 % N o p r e f e r e n c e............................................................0 % 5. Wh ic h ca nd id at e ar e yo u mo st li ke ly to vo te f or in th e So ut h Ca ro li na De mo cr at ic Presidential primary in 2016?
Asked of Democratic primary voters
H i l l a r y C l i n t o n...........................................................7 2 % M a r t i n O ’ M a l l e y.......................................................... 2 % B e r n i e S a n d e r s.........................................................2 5 % N o p r e f e r e n c e............................................................1 % 6. How would you describe your feelings right now about [First Choice Candidate Name]...?
Asked of Democratic and Republican primary votersWith the Philippines sitting on the most tropical cyclone-prone waters on the planet, the country hardly escapes the path of typhoons. In fact, some 20 typhoons strike the country year in and out, with the deadliest whiplashes recorded over the past decade. These include typhoons Pablo (Bopha) which killed more than 1,900 Filipinos in 2012, likewise typhoons Sendong (Washi) in 2011, and Frank (Fengshen) in 2008. In 2013, Typhoon Yolanda (Haiyan) practically obliterated the most part of the Eastern Visayas, taking 6,300 lives in its rage.
Nonetheless, survival is still possible in the midst of calamity and having an ultimate guide for survival helps to a great extent! Here are some efficient ways you and your family can secure each other from the dangers of a typhoon.
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Please include attribution to https://pawnhero.ph/ with this graphic.
While there’s no stopping nature when it strikes, Filipinos can arm themselves with vigilance in weathering the worst typhoons. Remember, preparation is still key!
(Base Photo Source)A university and its students’ union have been accused of displaying ‘horrible prejudice against the Kurdish cause, human rights and the freedom of speech’ after an officer banned a former student from speaking about his experiences fighting Isis in the Middle East.
Head of the Kurdish Society at University College London (UCL), Kavar Kurda, issued a statement online saying he was ‘angered’ and ‘deeply offended and disgusted’ after University College London Union’s (UCLU) activities and events officer, Asad Khan, blocked Macer Gifford from speaking at an event which was being organised by Kurda.
Speaking with online student publication The Tab, Kurda claimed he was told ‘one man’s freedom fighter is another man’s terrorist’ and that Khan further defended his decision by saying there were concerns an event with a person speaking about their experiences fighting in Syria ‘could lead to others going and fighting in the conflict’.
Join Independent Minds For exclusive articles, events and an advertising-free read for just £5.99 €6.99 $9.99 a month Get the best of The Independent With an Independent Minds subscription for just £5.99 €6.99 $9.99 a month Get the best of The Independent Without the ads – for just £5.99 €6.99 $9.99 a month
The event as it was originally advertised:
Describing Khan’s defence as ‘nonsense’, Kurda said in his statement Gifford was still denied, despite Kurda telling the union he would set provisions for the ex-student’s speech.
The news did not go down well with some who took to Twitter to hit out at the UCLU’s move:
Gifford, not his real name, first made headlines earlier this year when it was reported he had told his parents he was travelling to Turkey for a holiday - but instead headed for Syria to join in the fight against Isis.
The 28-year-old, who once stood as a Tory councillor, originally called on David Cameron to ‘do the right thing’ by taking a tougher stance against the terrorist group.
This week, however, after five months spent fighting Isis, Gifford was due to share his experiences as part of the Kurdish group Yekîneyên Parastina Gel (YPG) - or Kurdish People’s Protection Units - with students at a UCL event.
Read Kavar Kurda’s full statement, courtesy of the UCLU Kurdish Society:
UCL recently banned Macer Gifford from talking at a Kurdish Society event. The [Tab] article shows a great balanced understanding of the altercation which occurred between I and the activities officer, Asad Khan.
However unfortunately, in this incident UCLU proved their unwillingness to take a stance against ISIS and to support the Kurdish cause.
Macer Gifford is an excellent example of someone laying his life on the line in order to champion human rights, and to deny a man who has spoken at the BBC, Portcullis House and an ex-UCL student is absolutely outrageous.
They first claimed he would encourage individuals to go fight in Syria which was nonsense. Having told them I would set provisions for his speech, they still continued to deny him.
Their focus then fell on to YPG, one of the most democratic units in the Middle East and the most effective fighting force against ISIS in the region who receive praise and support from the western coalition.
They placed the YPG in the same brackets as Hamas and Hezbollah, even though they are far from terrorist groups. They ignored the thousands of articles supporting and praising YPG and instead focused on three factors; Turkish news sources, an amnesty report and a UN report.
Firstly, anyone with an understanding of Kurdish-Turkish relations will realise the animosity which exists within the groups, and with Turkey indirectly supporting ISIS, it's no surprise they would be at the forefront of YPG libel. I specifically warned them to not take this as a source, yet they did not listen.
With regards to the biased Amnesty report which has been retorted as utter rubbish by numerous outlets and groups, they once again focused on Turkish news sources to be their fountain of enlightenment.
Lastly, the great human rights abuse which they accuse the YPG of committing was the enlistment of individuals under the age of 18. Not only have YPG signed a declaration to prevent this from occurring, but in the scope of 'human rights' I would hardly consider the enlistment of say a 17 year old the crime of the century.
All in all, UCL and Asad Khan displayed horrible prejudice against the Kurdish cause, human rights and the freedom of speech. From the beginning they were intent on preventing Macer from speaking. Furthermore, adding insult to injury, they broke their 10 day policy for approving speakers and made me wait 15 days, which subsequently meant that due to the former policy, I could not find a replacement and as such had to cancel my event.
Asad concluded that UCLU are not willing to take sides in this conflict. By taking a neutral ground, you are implicitly |
(@Ricardo_Cano1) March 23, 2016
4:45 p.m.: Ballots rushed to poll that ran out
At Church of the Beatitudes, at 7th and Glendale avenues, poll workers ran out of ballots late Tuesday afternoon. One poll worker emerged to give the news to voters who were in line. One voter said she overheard election workers say they had sent for more ballots, but they finally arrived and voting began again.
Many voters at that location had been in line for three hours. The lines at this polling place continued to get longer as the day went on.
Ballogs have arrived at the 7th Avenue and Glendale polling site, which ran out of ballots late afternoon #azprimary — Mary Jo Pitzl (@maryjpitzl) March 22, 2016
Voters wait in line on Tuesday at the American Legion Matthew B Juan Post 35, 2240 W Chandler Blvd, Chandler. (Photo: Mark Henle/The Republic)
4:40 p.m. Scottsdale woman votes outside city for first time in 55 years
Nellie Schwartz has voted in Scottsdale every year during the 55 years she has lived in South Scottsdale. That is until this year.
Four of Scottsdale’s five polling places were located in the north of the city — two near Cactus Road and two further north — making it longer than a 15 minute drive for her.
“This is the first time I’ve voted outside Scottsdale,” Schwartz said. “I lived in this house 56 years in October.”
Schwartz, 84, voted on the Salt River Indian Reservation on McDowell Road. Although she could make it to the polling place, which was about 10 minutes away, she said some of her friends would not be able to because they can’t drive and would have to take a cab.
Schwartz said she waited 45 minutes outside the polling place Tuesday morning and then another 10 minutes inside before casting her vote. She said it was worth it because she has always believed that voting is a privilege.
“Nothing would keep my father from voting. If he had to walk in the rain, he’d do it,” she said.
— Rob O'Dell
Voters enter the Mountain View Lutheran Church in Ahwatukee to vote on Tuesday. (Photo: Tom Tingle/The Republic)
3:50 p.m.: Democratic party urging voters to not get frustrated by long lines
Arizona Democratic Party officials are urging voters to stay in line and cast their ballots after party officials said they heard reports of "large numbers of complaints" from polling places.
Executive Director Sheila Healy encouraged voters, in a statement Tuesday, to fill out provisional ballots if they encounter problems in their registration. Healy said the party will be compiling stories for a complaint to election officials.
There were 400 polling places for pres primary in 2008, 200 in 2012 and only 60 this year. #AZPrimaryhttps://t.co/9mZm7n173b — Rob O'Dell (@robodellaz) March 22, 2016
2 p.m.: Surge in provisional ballots clogging polls
As of 12:50 p.m., there were 8,200 provisional ballots cast, said Elizabeth Bartholomew, communications manager for the Maricopa County Recorder’s Office, which conducts the election.
That compares to 40,000 provisionals in 2008 in the presidential primary, she said.
Election officials were reporting a surge in provisional ballots as independent voters showed up at the polls.
Other voters got provisional ballots, too. Josh Doster of Phoenix, a registered Democrat, he was forced to cast a provisional ballot because he had moved and his driver’s license had a different address than where he was registered. He voted this morning at a library in Anthem.
Poll workers didn’t want to let his wife vote in the primary despite having her voter identification card and mailings from the election’s office with her current address, he said. Ultimately, they let her vote normally and had him cast a provisional, he said.
— Rob O'Dell
12:44 p.m. Independent voters showing up polls
Complicating the confusion at the polls today is the large number of registered independents who are showing up, leading to a surge in provisional ballots.
“These are independent voters,” Maricopa County Elections Director Karen Osborne said. “They refuse to not vote, and federal law requires they be given a ballot.”
But if the voter casting the provisional ballot is determined to not be registered with one of the three parties, their vote will not count.
“In Coconino County, they’re handing them out like candy,” Osborne said of the provisional ballots.
— Mary Jo Pitzl
Some at 7th Ave/Glendale complain they did not receive a mail-in ballot, hence long polling place lines. #AZPrimarypic.twitter.com/nvOn2q2lls — Ken Alltucker (@kalltucker) March 22, 2016
12:27 p.m. County reduced polling places in money-saving move
Maricopa County shifted to 60 polling places from the 200-plus that were in play during the 2012 presidential primary as a cost-saving move and to reflect the reduced demand on in-person voting given the continued rise in voters who mail in their ballots.
In contrast to four years ago, voters can go to any polling place on the list of 60 sites.
“It saves a lot of money,” said Elizabeth Bartholomew, communications manager for the Maricopa County Recorder’s Office, which conducts the election.
— Mary Jo Pitzl
Line to vote wrapped around Salvation Army polling place in #DTPHX at noon. Democracy at work! #AZPrimary@azcentralpic.twitter.com/8UUs4a2ciL — Ricardo Cano (@Ricardo_Cano1) March 22, 2016
11:28 a.m.: Voters report waiting 90 minutes or more in line
More than 200 people were in line at the American Legion Post 35 on Chandler Boulevard west of Dobson Road in Chandler..
"I'm very surprised at this line. I think they should have more polling places. People are going to give up," Dwight Thayer of Chandler said.
The wait didn't surprise Nick Nicholls, though.
"I was kind of expecting (long lines) with what's been happening around the country," he said. "People are coming out to vote and that's good."
Carol Houselog, who worked a polling place at Seventh Avenue and Glendale Avenues, said she was surprised by the long lines at the church. Houselog has worked several elections.
“I’ve never, ever seen a turnout like this even for a regular election, much less a primary,” Houselog said. “I am stunned.”
— Chris Coppola and Ken Alltucker
Traffic backs up on East University Drive as voters attempt to park at Pilgrim Evangelical Lutheran Church in Mesa on Tuesday. (Photo: Michael Chow/The Arizona Republi)
11:04 a.m.: Love for Sanders, Clinton at Maryvale voting site
There was an outpouring of support for Democratic presidential candidates Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton at the Maryvale Church of the Nazarene in west Phoenix.
Anahi Barraza, 21, voted for Sanders “because of his stance on immigration and how he wants to take on Wall Street.”
Barraza, who said her biggest issue this election is immigration, said Clinton “embodies a politician perfectly.”
“She just says what the people want to hear and she tiptoes around a lot of things,” Barraza said.
Roberto Fuentes, 26, said he voted for Sanders “because of everything he stands for – not taking big donors, working for the people and with the people and providing free universal higher education.”
Sandra Hernandez, 48, cast her vote for Clinton because of her foreign policy credentials. But, had more states “felt the Bern” this primary, it could’ve been different, she said.
“I love Bernie Sanders,” Hernandez said. “I love him. But right now, I’m being a little realistic."
— Ricardo Cano
Sharon and James Farrelly (front center left) of Phoenix, wait in line with others to vote in the Arizona primary at the polling place at Memorial Presbyterian Church at 40th Street and Thomas Road in Phoenix on Tuesday. People said they had to wait in line 90 minutes to vote. (Photo: David Wallace/The Republic)
10:03 a.m.: Confusion over where to vote
Some people in south Phoenix are complaining that their normal polling place is closed, causing confusion.
The line to vote at South Mountain Community Center stayed about 35 to 40 people deep past 10 a.m.
Bobbie Hawkins, 69, said she was frustrated after going to the wrong location and planned to pass by the community center where she normally votes to let other people know where to go.
"My time is valuable," she said.
Maricopa County has 60 polling sites open today, and voters can go to any one of them. Here's a link to the county's elections website that locate the three polling sites closest to a user's mobile phone. The list of sites and the link to the poll locator is available on the county website.
— Brenna Goth
9 a.m.: Not all voting sites are crowded
There were more candidates than there were voters just before 9 a.m. at the Queen Creek Public Library polling station.
Voters walking from the parking lot were approached by local town council members, judges, state Legislatures or their wives and other representatives, each carrying a smile and a clipboard, ready to discuss why they should be elected.
Voters seemed unperturbed by the candidates as they navigated around their way to the voting booths.
Carlos DeLacruz, 66, said he is a registered Democrat and voted for Bernie Sanders.
“I just like what he’s saying,” he said. “He is taking a strong stand on Iran and Iraq…and he is taking on Wall Street.”
DeLacruz said his biggest issue in the election is “defeating Donald Trump.”
His wife, Jacqueline DeLacruze, 53, said that Trump’s hateful rhetoric poses a threat to the nation.
But she said she is voting for Hillary Clinton because of her experience and her ability to intelligently address the issues.
— Robert Anglen
Lots of Bernie supporters so far in South Phoenix. Most have mentioned immigration and education as main issues. #AZPrimary — Brenna Goth (@BrennaGoth) March 22, 2016
Audrey Weaver, center, of Phoenix waits in line with others to vote in the Arizona primary at the polling place at Memorial Presbyterian Church at 40th Street and Thomas Road in Phoenix on Tuesday, March 22, 2016. People said they had to wait in line an hour and a half to vote. (Photo: David Wallace/The Republic)
8 a.m.: Long lines greet voters in Phoenix
Some polling sites reported long lines early Tuesday morning. About 50 people waited to vote around 8 a.m. at a polling place at 3rd Avenue and Fillmore Street in central Phoenix.
— Caitlin McGlade
Happy #AZPrimary day! Long line to vote at Maryvale polling place @azcentralpic.twitter.com/a38ZYx2nTH — Ricardo Cano (@Ricardo_Cano1) March 22, 2016
Tuesday: How to vote in the primary
Arizona's presidential primary is open only to people who are registered with either the Democratic, Green or Republican parties. Independents can't vote. Polls are open from 6 a.m. until 7 p.m.
Maricopa County has 60 polling sites, and voters can go to any one of them. A link on the county's elections website will locate the three polling sites closest to a user's mobile phone. The list of sites and the link to the poll locator is available on the county website.
— Mary Jo Pitzl
Reporters Mary Jo Pitzl, Yvonne Wingett Sanchez, Rebekah L. Sanders, Brenna Goth, Caitlin McGlade, Ricardo Cano, Chris Coppola, Ken Alltucker, Michael Kiefer, Dennis Wagner, Alia Rau, Rob O'Dell, Christopher Silavong, Yihyun Jeong, Ronald J. Hansen, Diana Nanez, Ginger Rough and Rafael Carranza contributed to this story.
Read or Share this story: http://azc.cc/1MkQiDxLauncher2
*UPDATED* 2/04/10
newer version that supports multi-touch pinch-and-zoom
Gallery
Music
News Genie and Weather Widget
Clock
With Android 2.1 making its first appearence on the Nexus One, some Motorola DROID users may be wondering when it will be their turn. If you can't wait for the official update to be sent out, which is due the first half of this year, here are 5 of the newest features that you can install, giving your DROID that 2.1 look...now.Fist off we'd suggest installing the new, which will give you 5 home screens (instead of 3) and the new 3D program's list. Begin by going into the DROID's settings for applications and place a check next to "unknown source". Then download the launcher2.apk file and install it on the DROID. When you press the Home button on the bottom of the phone, it will ask you to open "Home" or "Launcher". If you select "Home", it will go to the older layout, but if you select "Launcher", it will take you to the new 2.1 layout. You can switch between them at any time (which will actually give you 8 total homescreens), or select the "Launcher" as the default if you don't want to be asked each time.Instead of installing the Gallery app listed below, there is now a. You can download it here ( gallery3dmt.apk ).Up next is the newapp ( galleryflan.apk ) that once installed, will give you the same app that is on the Nexus One. Just remember that your programs list will show two gallery icons, as one is the older and one is the newer app. You can use it to view all of your pictures and videos, but the user interface and slick design is what makes this truly shine. We like that you can easily move between images just by swiping across the screen (instead of having to press the small arrows) and that files can also be categorized by dates.Theapp ( musicinstallable.apk ) isn't as flashy as the new gallery or launcher, but it is still a nice improvement over the one included on the DROID. Once it's installed and you click to run it, be sure to select "com.android.musik" from the list. The new player has 4 tabs along to top for Artists, Albums, Songs, and Playlists, which allows for easier selection. Also, when you are playing a song, it will show it on the bottom of the screen while you are navigating through the music app.The) uses the Weather Channel to pull your local conditions by GPS, and the news is categorized into Top Stories, U.S., Sports, and Entertainment easy viewing.Lastly, there is the newapp () but you need to have the Gallery and News Genie/Weather Widget installed first, as well as having the physical Motorola Docking Station ($30) or the DockRunner app installed from the Android Market. The clock can be used in either portrait or landscape mode, and has icons on the bottom for the Alarm, Photo Slideshow, Music Player, and Home, with one icon on the top-right for Day & Night mode. Unfortunately, it converts the temperature to be displayed as Celsius instead of Fahrenheit.So there you have it, five Android 2.1 apps that you can use on the Motorola DROID. Just remember that once the official 2.1 update for the DROID is released, that you should uninstall these first to avoid any problems.source: droid-lifeRepublican presidential nominee Donald Trump Donald John TrumpHouse committee believes it has evidence Trump requested putting ally in charge of Cohen probe: report Vietnamese airline takes steps to open flights to US on sidelines of Trump-Kim summit Manafort's attorneys say he should get less than 10 years in prison MORE reminded himself to stay on message during a Wednesday rally in Florida.
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"We are going to win the White House, gonna win it. It's feeling like it already, isn’t it? We're going to be nice and cool, nice and cool, stay on point, Donald, stay on point," Trump said Wednesday during a rally in Pensacola, Fla.
"No sidetracks Donald, nice and easy."
Trump said he had been watching Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton Hillary Diane Rodham ClintonSanders: 'I fully expect' fair treatment by DNC in 2020 after 'not quite even handed' 2016 primary Sanders: 'Damn right' I'll make the large corporations pay 'fair share of taxes' Former Sanders campaign spokesman: Clinton staff are 'biggest a--holes in American politics' MORE over the past few days and said she has become "unhinged," adding, "We don't want any of that."
Trump is notorious for taking his campaign on detours with controversial remarks and personal feuds. He is working to keep his footing as Clinton struggles with the news that the FBI is reviewing newly discovered emails "pertinent" to its investigation into her private email server.
Trump urged people to vote early and said he expected a win in Florida and nationwide.
With the election just days away, the race appears to be tightening. The RealClearPolitics average of polls shows Clinton with just a 1.9-point lead over her Republican rival, 45.3 to 43.4 percent.Jim Rogash/Getty Images The New England Patriots used just four offensive lineman during a series of three plays in the third quarter of their 35-31 comeback win over the Baltimore Ravens on Saturday night.
It totally confused the Ravens and was so unexpected that the NBC announcers didn't even catch it during the live broadcast.
An explanation:
Under NFL rules the offense effectively has to have five players on the line of scrimmage who are ineligible to catch a pass. Normally, these five players are the offensive linemen, and they're stacked together in the middle of the field.
The Patriots didn't do that on those three plays. They used four clearly identifiable offensive linemen and had another player who was lined up in a different part of the formation declare himself as the fifth ineligible player.
The problem: The Ravens didn't know who that ineligible player would be until the referee announced it a few seconds before the play started. The Patriots were basically playing hide-and-seek with which receivers were eligible and which were linemen disguised as receivers.
After the game, Ravens coach John Harbaugh objected to the tactic, saying, "It was clearly deception."
Bill Belichick got to the heart of that deception when he said, "We had six eligible receivers on the field, but only five were eligible."
The Patriots scored a touchdown on the drive in which they used the four-linemen formation, and went on to win.
Here's a quick breakdown of how this worked:
1. Before the play, running back Shane Vereen declared himself ineligible to the referee. The referee announced it over the public-address system a few seconds before the snap. Vereen then lined up in the slot at the bottom of the screen, where you would typically find a wide receiver.
NBC
2. On the same play, the player lined up in the traditional left-tackle position, Michael Hoomanawanui, was actually an eligible receiver. He is the guy who eventually caught the ball:
NBC
3. When the ball is snapped, Hoomanawanui just leaks down the field, and no one guards him because he appeared to be an offensive lineman:
NBC
4. Vereen, meanwhile, stands around because as an ineligible player, he is not allowed to run downfield:
NBC
The Patriots ran the play three times, and they got a first down every time.
It's smart. It probably would not work over an extended time, but when you whip it out in a playoff game in which the defense has no idea what's going on, it is lethal.
The Ravens were angry because they thought the referees didn't give them enough time to match up after the Patriots made a substitution. Harbaugh even took a penalty after the third time the Patriots did this to get the referee's attention. He explained:
We wanted an opportunity to be able to ID who the eligible players were. What [the Patriots] were doing was they announce the ineligible player and then Tom [Brady] would take them to the line right away and snap the ball before we had a chance to figure out who was lined up where. That was the deception part of it. It was clearly deception.
So the officials told me after that they would give us the opportunity to do that, which they probably should've done during that series but they didn't really understand what was happening.
Harbaugh isn't wrong. But there's nothing in the rulebook that says the referees have to delay the play until the defense can get perfectly lined up. By rule, the ref must hold up the play after the offensive substitution only until the defense has had a "reasonable time to complete its substitutions."
As Peter King pointed out in his MMQB column, there was a solid seven to 10 seconds between when the referee announced who was ineligible and when Brady snapped the ball. That qualifies as a "reasonable" amount of time.
The Patriots were triumphant after the game. Tom Brady told reporters:
Maybe those guys gotta study the rulebook and figure it out. We obviously knew what we were doing, and we made some pretty important plays. It was a real good weapon for us.
As Grantland's Bill Barnwell notes, don't expect to see this strategy become commonplace. While it's legal right now, the tactic does go against the spirit of the substitution rule, and it wouldn't be a surprise to see the NFL tweak the rules to stop Belichick from exploiting this in the future.Image copyright Getty Images
Creating malicious software that can attack Apple Mac computers is "trivial", a leading security researcher has claimed.
Patrick Wardle, from security firm Synack, demonstrated several new types of malicious software that bypassed Apple's security measures.
In one example, Apple's own iCloud service could control an attack.
The threats are known to Apple, Mr Wardle said, but the company has not yet commented on the research.
Mr Wardle was speaking at Black Hat 2015, an annual gathering of hackers and security professionals held in Las Vegas.
He commended the company's efforts in working with him to make the platform more secure, saying that the Cupertino-based firm "got security".
But he argued that Apple's increased popularity means it is attracting extra attention from cybercriminals who would commonly focus on attacking computers running Microsoft's Windows.
While Windows is still overwhelmingly attackers' platform of choice, antivirus firm Kaspersky Labs recorded a surge in Apple malware in the past couple of years.
Bypassing
The past year has seen several high-profile malware - malicious software - attacks on the Mac operating system, OS X.
Among them, iWorm and WireLurker - the latter gaining a lot of media attention. However, Mr Wardle described such threats as "grade C+" due to a simple flaw: users could see if the malware was running, and disable it.
The attacks he detailed were far more hidden than anything that had been discovered so far.
"I'm convinced that OS X security is lacking," he told delegates.
Image copyright Getty Images Image caption Mr Wardle claimed the vulnerabilities he found exist in the latest OS X software
"It's trivial to write new OS X malware that can bypass everything."
Addressing why he was making the vulnerabilities public, he said: "If I can do it, nation states and adversaries can and probably are doing it."
Some elements of the vulnerabilities he and other researchers have discovered have been found "in the wild", he said, the term given to threats being exploited on real users.
Trusted files
Mr Wardle's research focused considerably on one piece of Apple software known as Gatekeeper. This is a program which warns the user when they are opening a file that is not from a "trusted" source.
Image copyright Getty Images Image caption Apple's efforts to patch the issues have been 'insufficient', Mr Wardle said
Its default setting is to only allow programs downloaded from Apple's App Store and trusted third-party developers.
This means, according to Apple's website: "If an app was developed by an unknown developer — one with no Developer ID — Gatekeeper can keep your Mac safe by blocking the app from being installed."
But his methods demonstrated a method of circumventing this protection, using "dynamic libraries" to inject malicious code into trusted programs.
iCloud malware
Mr Wardle had strong criticisms of Apple's built in antivirus program, XProtect. The software, which detects and blocks known malware, warning the user in the process, could be tricked by essentially renaming the malware.
The researcher also tested various different paid antivirus products on the market, and concluded that they suffer similar problems as XProtect.
In one case, he noted that some antivirus programs consider Apple's iCloud system - the online storage service it offers all users of its products - to be a "trusted" source.
This means Mr Wardle was able to use iCloud to host an attack's Command and Control server, the part of an attack that controls the malware's operation. Implicit trust of iCloud servers is a problem.
"Normally malware (on a user's computer) would have its outgoing network connections blocked since they are untrusted," explained Mr Wardle to the BBC.
"But if they go to iCloud, the security products let them out."
Apple love
Mr Wardle noted that Apple has been receptive to his research in the past, but that the methods he described were still vulnerable.
He has created free software - called Objective-See - to address the issues he outlined.
Image copyright Getty Images Image caption Attackers are increasingly turning their efforts on Apple Macs as their popularity increases
A request from the BBC to Apple has gone unanswered at the time of publication.
Mr Wardle said: "I've shared this with Apple, and they have patched or fixed some of the bugs.
"The problem is, in some cases their patches are insufficient, so I can bypass the patch.
"I always (first) share my research with Apple and only disclose details once they have released a patch."
Concluding his talk, Mr Wardle said his work was motivated by a love for Apple and its products.
"I don't think they love me," he added. "But I can handle that."
Follow Dave Lee on Twitter @DaveLeeBBCMinnesota's state capitol
Two of the lawmakers I mentioned in my roundup of recently surfaced accounts of sexual harassment in state legislatures have announced that they will resign: Republican Rep. Tony Cornish and Democratic Sen. Dan Schoen, both of Minnesota. (Good riddance to bad rubbish, as the kids say.)
Cornish’s broad pattern of sexual misconduct came to light when a lobbyist revealed he had propositioned her multiple times and related multiple occasions of physical harassment, including an instance in which he forced her against a wall to attempt to kiss her. At the same time, multiple women, including a fellow legislator, accused Schoen of conduct ranging from unwanted sexual advances to squeezing the butt of a candidate.
Once their resignations become official, Democratic Gov. Mark Dayton will call special elections to replace both men. (Most Minnesota politicos believe the specials will be held on Feb. 13, 2018.) Cornish’s seat is solidly Republican, but Schoen is vacating a swing seat that Democrats will have to work hard to keep: His 54th District went for Trump 46-45 in 2016, but Barack Obama carried it 53-45 four years earlier.
The statehouse sexual harassment that led to these resignations is Exhibit A in The Case For More Women In Elected Office, and these special elections—especially the one for Schoen’s seat—provide Democrats with opportunities to send more women to the Minnesota state capitol. Women aren’t just stepping forward with accounts of sexual harassment in historic numbers; we’re also stepping forward to run for office at a record-setting rate. Let’s hope one of those women is interested in representing Minnesota’s 54th Senate District.Sure, it has only been a year and a half since The Office retired from NBC. But in that time, one of the workplace comedy’s stars, Ellie Kemper, who is featured in the January issue of Vanity Fair, has been promoted from Dunder Mifflin’s upbeat receptionist to sitcom star, in the Tina Fey co-created Netflix comedy Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt. The actress, who had memorable scene-stealing parts in Bridesmaids and 21 Jump Street, also takes a shot at daytime television this January as the first-ever guest host on The Ellen DeGeneres Show. In honor of the 34-year-old’s meteoric rise from secretary to series star, we look back at the other cast members of NBC’s ensemble sitcom to see where they are today. And, spoiler alert, they’ve already transformed themselves into stars of their own sitcoms, Oscar contenders, Marvel supervillains, and everything in between.
Get Vanity Fair’s HWD Newsletter Sign up for essential industry and award news from Hollywood. E-mail Address SubscribeSans surprise, l’édition 2012 du classement PISA qui évalue chaque année les systèmes scolaires des pays européens est très mauvais pour la France. L’indicateur est particulièrement sévère concernant le critère de « l’égalité des chances » longtemps mis en avant comme une force de notre école et qui n’est plus qu’un souvenir : la France est aujourd’hui le pays d’Europe dans lequel les inégalités scolaires s’accroissent le plus.
Comme l’Allemagne, qui avait subi un « choc PISA » en 2001 et semble avoir redressé la barre en 10 ans, on ne peut qu’espérer que l’équipe de France d’enseignement, piquée au vif, se servira de ces mauvais résultats pour rebondir et réaliser de meilleures performances mondiales dans les années qui viennent… à condition que le critère de l’égalité des chances redevienne également une cause nationale.
À LIRE sur LeMonde.fr : Classement PISA, la Franche, championne des inégalités scolaires
Signaler ce contenu comme inappropriéThe Purcellville teen was in the throes of depression Saturday afternoon when he began cutting himself at a friend’s house, his mother said.
The friend called 911 seeking help. But in the chaotic minutes that followed, 17-year-old Christian Alberto Sierra would die at the hands of a Purcellville officer summoned to save him.
Virginia State Police, who are investigating the case, said that Sierra, armed with a knife, lunged at an officer, who then shot him.
Sandra Sierra, Christian’s mother, wondered why police used such force on a teen they knew was in emotional distress, not committing a crime.
“Why would you shoot a child that is suicidal?” she asked. “You are there to save him, not finish him off.”
Christian Sierra’s mother and witnesses to the shooting said the final moments of the Loudoun Valley High School junior were a jumble of action as friends and strangers desperately tried to help the teen, who was acting erratically.
Sandra Sierra said she has been told by eyewitnesses that her son was watching movies with friends when he became depressed. She said she was unsure what triggered the episode.
Christian began cutting himself with a knife, his mother said, and a friend called 911 shortly after 2 p.m.
Sandra Sierra said the call worried her son, who fled the home in the 100 block of Frazer Drive by jumping off a balcony. A friend gave chase.
Kelly Sobel, a neighbor several doors down, was getting out of the shower when she heard her neighbor scream: “Stop! Stop!”
Sobel glanced out the window and saw the neighbor running down her front steps with a dish towel. Sandra Sierra said her son was bloody at that point.
Sobel said that a second later, she heard Christian Sierra and the friend chasing him barrel into her garage door with a loud boom.
The friend and her neighbor tried to calm Sierra, but he took off again, Sobel said. The friend and neighbor followed, she said. “They were flying down the street,” Sobel said.
Christian Sierra rounded a corner. Several witnesses said they heard a police officer yell “Freeze!” or “Stop!” and then heard shots. Sobel said she heard three or four pops.
State police said Christian Sierra was immediately treated and transported to a hospital, where he died. The officer was not injured.
State and Purcellville police declined to provide additional details or name the officer involved but said the officer had been placed on administrative leave pending the completion of the investigation.
“This has been a very tragic situation for the community, the family and our officers,” said Purcellville Police Chief Darryl Smith. “We come to work to do the job of protecting and serving.”
Smith said it was the first fatal shooting by an officer in the line of duty in the history of the department, which has 15 officers.
Paige Holdeman, 16, a friend of Sierra’s, said the hallways at Loudoun Valley were quiet Tuesday. “Some people were trying to keep it to themselves, and other people were bawling their eyes out,” she said.
The sophomore said she met Sierra in a math class the year before and they became friends quickly.
“When you were around him, he put off really good vibes, nothing negative,” she said.
“He always came off as just a really happy fun guy,” she said. “You would never picture this out of Christian.”
Sandra Sierra said her son suffered from depression but was not violent. He had been on the wrestling team before this year.
A vigil was held for Christian Sierra on Sunday night. At the scene of the shooting Tuesday, candles and a teddy bear were saturated by a heavy downpour.
justin.jouvenal@washpost.com
chandlerm@washpost.com
Get updates on your area delivered via e-mailThe Cincinnati Bengals brought in another round of free agent to workout for the team this week.
Cornerback Deveron Carr and wide receiver DeAndre Carter worked out for the team on Wednesday, according to Aaron Wilson of the Houston Chronicle. Last week, the team worked out six players, which resulted in cornerback Asa Jackson being signed to the practice squad.
Carr, now in his second official NFL season, was originally signed by the Tampa Bay Buccaneers as an undrafted free agent out of Arizona State in 2013. A 5'11", 190-pound corner, Carr played collegiately with the Sun Devils from 2008-2012 and played in 42 career games with 34 starts. He finished his career with 86 tackles, 22 passes defended, three fumble recoveries, 2.5 tackles for loss and two interceptions.
During Carr's senior season, he started every game and was part of a secondary unit that ranked third nationally in passing yards allowed per game (168); he earned an All-Pac-12 honorable mention. After not hearing his name called during the 2013 draft, he signed with the Bucs and went on to make their 53-man roster in 2013. He played in nine games that year, but mostly on special teams. He participated in training camp with Tampa Bay in 2014 but was then released.
This past March, Carr was signed by the Indianapolis Colts following the first NFL Veteran Combine. He was later cut during the first-round of training camp cuts and eventually joined Washington's practice squad, but was cut from it on November 23rd.
As for Carter, he's a bit more intriguing of a prospect. Going into the 2015 NFL Draft, Carter was projected as a late-round prospect after a standout career at Sacramento State, but went undrafted before the Baltimore Ravens signed him. As a college senior in 2014, Carter was a first-team FCS All-American while leading the nation with 99 receptions for 1,321 yards and 17 touchdowns. Carter was a decent returner too, averaging 12.5 yards per punt return and 23.7 yards per kickoff return in his college career.
Carter was also one of the biggest performers during Ravens' OTAs, which led future hall-of-fame receiver Steve Smith to say he saw "a young Randall Cobb" in Carter. A poor training camp showing led to Carter being waived during the first round of roster cuts. Carter was later signed to the Oakland Raiders practice squad on September 16th before being cut from it on December 1st.
Carr falls in line with the position many of the recent players to workout for the Bengals would contribute to. Cornerback is a huge question mark with the Bengals right now as nearly every corner on the roster is dealing with some kind of injury. Adam Jones (foot), Dre Kirkpatrick (knee), Leon Hall (back), and Josh Shaw (back) have been limited, left games, missed games, or missed practice recently.
Not only is Jones the Bengals' top corner, but also their best returner. Losing him would help a returner like Carter make the team or even practice squad as an emergency option.
Depending on Hall and Jones' statuses this week, another corner may be signed from free agency or the practice squad. If it's a practice squad move, it's possible Carr or Carter could take a spot on the practice squad, both have eligibility remaining.By Kari Tilton, 419th Fighter Wing Public Affairs / Published June 03, 2016
HILL AIR FORCE BASE, Utah -- Eight F-35A aircraft and 160 personnel from Hill Air Force Base will depart this week for rigorous operational testing at Mountain Home Air Force Base, Idaho, through June 17. This marks the first time Hill's operational F-35s will travel out of state for training.
The F-35A pilots and maintainers from Hill's active duty 388th Fighter Wing and Reserve 419th Fighter Wing will push the aircraft to their limits to simulate deployed operations and ensure the Air Force's newest fighter aircraft are performing as expected.
"Mountain Home is an ideal location for our first off-base exercise because it allows us to fully test the deployment capability of the unit and the aircraft while remaining close enough to Hill for home station support if needed," said Lt. Col. Curtis Pitts, commander of the 419th Operations Group, detachment 1.
"We're going to do our best to stress our entire system while at Mountain Home," said Maj. Luke Harris, deployment project officer and F-35A pilot with the 34th Fighter Squadron. "Our biggest focus areas are the number of sorties we can generate, the number of sorties that may be lost, loading and employing our weapons, and finding any unique issues with the F-35A."
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Line 9 pipeline in North Dumfries Thursday morning.
According to a statement from protesters, a group marched onto a work site east of Highway 24 near the Grand River between Cambridge and Brantford around 10 a.m. Thursday. They say Enbridge’s employees are working without consent or consultation on land that is on Haudenosaunee territory.
"We're against the pipeline, the construction, the bitumen tarsands oil running through this pipeline running across the Grand River territory... without proper consultation [with] our people," said Missy Elliot, a Six Nations spokesperson.
The dig site is just north of Beverly Court and East of Highway 24 in North Dumfries between Cambridge and Brantford. (Google)
Elliot said Six Nations was not consulted in advance of the construction and they only became aware of the dig when information pamphlets were delivered to area residents.
"They are supposed to consult and accommodate indigenous people," said Elliot.
"Pamphlets in the mail are not proper consultation. Not sitting with us at the table... is not proper consultation."
Protesters at the site said Enbridge staff left the area peacefully with their heavy equipment after speaking with protest members and local police.
Janice Lee, who came from Kitchener to show support for the protest group, said members of Six Nations initially approached Enbridge staff and told them they were on treaty territory without consultation and asked them to leave.
"They've left but it seems like they keep sending people back and forth to check on us," added Lee.
Despite the claim by Six Nations that they were not properly consulted, Enbridge spokesperson Graham White told CBC that the company had met with representatives of Six Nations and that Thursday's work was part of a routine inspection of the pipeline.
"When we talk about integrity digs this is one of the many things we are doing to ensure the safety of this line," said White.
"We go down and at minimum remove the coating and do a visual inspection and other in field inspections of the pipe and take any measures necessary to repair that or maintain that pipe to a level of very good integrity."
White added hundreds of similar digs have been completed along the pipeline between Sarnia and Montreal.
North Dumfries protest one of many
This is the latest in a host of protests staged in southwestern Ontario in recent months over the Line 9 pipeline reversal. In May, a group of protesters blockaded the road to an exposed section of the pipeline in Burlington. Last June, a group of protesters shut down construction at an Enbridge pump station in rural Hamilton for days.
Though some protesters have faced arrests and legal challenges, they are still continuing to protest Enbridge integrity digs.
In March, the NEB approved a request from Enbridge to reverse the flow and increase the capacity of the controversial Line 9 pipeline that has been running between southern Ontario and Montreal for years.
Line 9 originally shuttled oil from Sarnia, Ont., to Montreal, but was reversed in the late 1990s in response to market conditions to pump imported crude westward. Enbridge now wants to flow oil back eastwards to service refineries in Ontario and Quebec.
It plans to move 300,000 barrels of crude oil per day through the line, a rise from the current 240,000 barrels, with no increase in pressure.
Opponents argue the Line 9 plan puts communities at risk, threatens water supplies and could endanger vulnerable species in ecologically sensitive areas.69 shares
Emma Maersk – Photo By Tidewater Muse
Emma Maersk
The Emma Maersk is a true modern marvel. She is the world’s largest container ship, the longest container ship currently in service, and is propelled by the largest diesel engine ever manufactured. During the final phase of construction and amid welding work however, a fire broke within Emma Maersk’s multi-million dollar bridge. Flames quickly spread from the bridge down through the accommodations. The inferno could be seen for miles.
Extinguishing a fire of this magnitude was only made capable by a group of local firefighters and crew trained to fight shipboard fires.
After escaping near total destruction, made possible only by those brave individuals involved, the Emma Maersk reached total recovery in record time.
The loss of a vessel this size would nearly be on par with losing an entire neighborhood of homes to flames. When such a vessel is engulfed by flames only to be saved, repaired, and finally commissioned, progress and dedication again lead the way to success.
After a matter of weeks, of which the ship was also delayed, reconstruction was completed and Emma Maersk set sail on her maiden voyage. The commonly heard story of her successful journey from China to the United Kingdom bearing a cargo of Christmas items later that year, is a simple and appropriate metaphor. The Emma Maersk is herself a gift, her recovery a hopeful and inspiring tale of recovery and success.
According to A.P. Moller, the parent company of Maersk Line, a single 20-foot vessel container on average can hold about 48,000 bananas. In theory then, Emma Maersk is capable of holding nearly 528 million bananas in a single voyage – enough to give every person in Europe or North America a banana for breakfast. Imagine now, this statistic in terms of Christmas presents. Without the amazing turn-around of Emma, the UK would have seen a lot of unhappy families that Christmas in 2006.
In losing Emma Maersk, we too, would have lost one of the most environmentally friendly container vessels ever built, as seen in her waste heat recovery system, which saves up to ten percent of the ship’s power. Of even greater environmental importance is her economy of scale. Being three times that of the largest container ship to ever transit the Panama canal, her carbon footprint (and thus fuel consumption) as a proportion of her cargo-carrying capacity is far smaller than that of the smaller ships that might replace her.
A year after the pivotal story of the Emma Maersk fire she was awarded “Ship of the Year” by Lloyd’s List, the world’s longest running periodical. Emma was given this award not because of her story, but because she set new standards in innovation, environmental issues and safety for the Maersk Line. Only a vessel that goes from the brilliant and ground-breaking design and construction, to a threat of extinction, to a final feat of success, deserves such an award,
Hailed openly as a true marvel of the sea, Emma Maersk’s journey from flames to reconstruction is a profound tale but certainly not the last testament of maritime achievement. In 2011, South Korean shipbuilder DSME won a 1.3B Euro contract to construct a vessel nearly double the size of the Emma Maersk… the Pieter Schelte. This vessel will essentially be a catamaran made up of two hulls, each nearly the size of the Emma Maersk. It will be an incredible vessel by every measure once completed.
The following are photos and video taken by the local fire brigade that fought the mighty Emma Maersk fire:
Video Of The Emma Maersk Fire:When it comes to Google Glass, Rackspace’s startup liaison officer Robert Scoble is likely best known for his somewhat disturbing shower photo. He is also quickly becoming one of the most outspoken advocates for Google’s connected eyewear. While most seem to think Glass is a niche product at best, Scoble thinks it’s the future. To be fair, he seems to be overly enthusiastic about each and every new product or service he covers, which is a big part of his charm. Scoble is even more outspoken than usual when it comes to Glass though, and this week he felt compelled to respond to Apple CEO Tim Cook’s criticisms issued during an appearance at D11.
Apple is quite clearly getting ready to move into the wearable computing market, and Cook used D11 as an opportunity to share a few initial thoughts. He praised Nike for its Fuelband, saying the company did a great job on the device. When it came to Google Glass, however, he was less enthusiastic.
“There are some positives in [Google Glass],” Cook said. “It’s probably likely to appeal to certain vertical markets. The likelihood that it has broad appeal is hard to see.”
This is certainly the most prevalent viewpoint on Glass. It’s nifty, it could lead to bigger things, but it’s probably far too awkward and creepy for the mass market.
Scoble disagrees, however, and he even went as far as to play the “Steve Jobs” card in his response. He wrote that Cook sent mixed messages about wearables — first he says the Fuelband is “great,” then he says “there’s nothing great out there that I’ve seen.”
“Steve Jobs used to pull this stuff off so much better,” Scoble wrote on Google+. “He’d abuse people who could conceive of Apple doing something new. I remember when he told a bunch of press that no one would watch videos on a smartphone. Just before he shipped the ability to do just that.”
He continued, “Tim comes off as trying too hard to not say that Apple will play in the wearables space. If it turns out to be true that Apple doesn’t dabble in glasses, I think that’s a huge turning point in Apple’s culture. So far Apple hasn’t avoided a new category just because it might fail.”
Scoble makes some interesting points, but he clearly fires and misses a few times as well. “Either Tim Cook has a mind-blowing wearable initiative underway or else Apple has taken a different strategy of only doing products that are safe and that will make billions,” he wrote.
It’s true that Apple has taken risks a number of times in the past, but these risks have obviously been calculated. Very, very calculated. Apple breaks into new product categories when it has done the work and determined that there is a market for a product.
Like most companies, Apple experiments behind closed doors and launches only the products that have the best probability of success. Some might say this is the part of the fiduciary duty of a public company. But Google is so exciting because it has adopted a different model in many cases. It wants to fail from time to time, because these failures help it grow in the long term.
Google loves to experiment openly, and that’s one of the greatest things about the company. But Apple is not Google.
And to be fair, Google also ends up killing more than one out of every three products it launches.Reports, sources indicate Ala Moana sewage spill much larger than reported Copyright by KHON - All rights reserved Video
Just how much raw sewage spilled into the ocean after a night of heavy rain? It's a story we've been following since it happened at the end of August.
The city blamed a failure at the Ala Moana pump station. There are actually two pumps there, but one was down for maintenance and the other failed, sending hundreds of thousands of gallons of sewage into the streets and into the ocean.
But after the city itself wavered on how much actually spilled, we started digging deeper.
Always Investigating examined original trouble calls, the field and final spill reports, and talked to witnesses and experts to get a better idea on the scope of the spill.
One source told us the total could be twice as bad as the last estimate.
On the morning of Aug. 24 at Ala Moana Boulevard and Atkinson Drive, manholes were popping. City crews responded after 7 a.m. to contain the sewage mess.
Initial estimates said more than 500,000 gallons of waste went into the ocean.
But a day later, city department supervisors recalculated to come up with much less, subtracting what the trucks sucked up. Emails reviewed by Always Investigating show Department of Environmental Services director Lori Kahikina emailing her deputy, "Are you serious! That's newsworthy!!"
At a press conference the next day, the city trumpeted the spill only being 129,000 gallons.
City staff took issue with their bosses' new lower number, because the sucked-up gallons were unrelated to the ocean spill. The city never corrected that to the media.
Weeks later, KHON2 reviewed the city's report to the state Department of Health, and saw a bigger number was back.
KHON2 asked Kahikina at the time, "Why not let everybody know?"
Kahikina had responded, "I guess I just didn't want to confuse the public. It's still a spill, it's still a volume, so I wasn't sure if 129,000 versus 400,000 was newsworthy to get out to the public."
"It's unbelievable that she would feel it wasn't newsworthy," said a public worker who was upset by what went down. That person came forward to Always Investigating, but didn't want to be identified.
"There was a lot of talk from people that were complaining that they were trying to cover up the spill, to lower the spill," the worker said.
The city declined to put the department director on camera with us for followup, but Kahikina said in a statement that "there was never any pressure from the administration to lower the spillage amount and in fact, we ultimately provided a figure that was higher in an abundance of caution."
KHON2 asked sources if there was any chance that the spill reports could just be honestly misunderstood.
"No," one source responded. "Those spill reports have been used for years and on it, it specifically says how much went into the storm drain, how much can be recovered and it states exactly how many went into the ocean that was 'unrecoverable.'"
When asked how big the spill really was, the source responded, "I think it was closer to between 800,000 and 900,000 gallons."
The city's own technology said the system's well was full at 5 a.m., and that's hours before crews started measuring the spill.
"If there were no trucks preventing it, it's probably about another 250,000 to 300,000 gallons, just from Atkinson," a source told Always Investigating. "That doesn't include any other spill spots."
Add to that other manholes connected to the same pump system that popped but had no field reports counting the gallons.
Always Investigating got all the original spill reports from the city to see what was measured when, and what wasn't even counted. Here's what we found:
The day of the spill, just from the Atkinson area, field experts signed off on 435,101 gallons of sewage "unrecoverable" into public water. They gave specific gallons-per-minute measurements that they observed gushing from at the Atkinson manholes.
"unrecoverable" into public water. They gave specific gallons-per-minute measurements that they observed gushing from at the Atkinson manholes. A week later, another summary report was put on file by other city staff, which lists the Atkinson site, plus overflows which had no day-of, gallons-per-minute field reports but are mentioned as happening at Fisherman's Wharf, Keawe Street and the Ala Moana pump station. All of that added just 12,000 gallons, about a small swimming pool, to the original Atkinson tally.
, which lists the Atkinson site, plus overflows which had no day-of, gallons-per-minute field reports but are mentioned as happening at Fisherman's Wharf, Keawe Street and the Ala Moana pump station. All of that added just 12,000 gallons, about a small swimming pool, to the original Atkinson tally. The next week, the city's filing with the state health department added a reference to McCoy Pavilion flooding. Again, no day-of field report or gallons-per-minute volume specific to that added site was turned in, and overall, the spill ticked up another small increase to 462,050 gallons total into the ocean.
That last report is a number experts on the inside still think is too low.
All those spots connect to the downed pump stations that move tens of millions of gallons of raw waste every day.
"It's the center of everything," one source said. "Everything goes there from town, Waikiki, from St. Louis, everywhere from that side back to the east it flows through that pump station."
Kahikina's statement said the figure reported to the state "is a conservative estimate projecting the maximum amount of wastewater that would have been discharged had the rate remained constant for the duration of the spill. The actual discharge is likely to have been significantly less."
Whatever the amount of sewage that went into the ocean, water tests showed the coastal waters clear to swim in within days.
The city did not want to talk on camera but told us in a phone call that there was not enough staff to observe and measure each of those overflowing manholes on the day of the spill.
They have not yet responded to our questions seeking more details on how many staff were involved in the spill response.A US jury on Monday ordered the Palestine Liberation Organization and Palestinian Authority to pay more than $218 million for providing material support to terrorists, a victory for Americans suing over attacks in the Jerusalem area more than a decade ago.
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The verdict in the politically sensitive trial in Manhattan federal court added a new dimension to the long-running Middle East conflict, as American victims of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict sought to use US courts to seek damages.
Court sketches from PLO trial in NY (Photo: Jane Rosenberg)
"Now the PLO and the PA know there is a price for supporting terrorism," said Nitsana Darshan-Leitner, a lawyer for the plaintiffs, in an interview after the verdict.
Jurors found in favor of 10 American families suing over six attacks attributed to the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades and Hamas. The award could be tripled under the US Anti-Terrorism Act.
Victims and their families had requested more than $350 million, or over $1 billion after tripling, over shootings and bombings from 2002 to 2004 that killed 33 people and injured over 450.
In closing arguments, plaintiff attorney Kent Yalowitz had urged the Manhattan jury to order the PLO and Palestinian Authority to pay $350 million for providing material support to terrorists involved in six bombings and shootings from 2002 to 2004.
No amount could make up for the human toll, he said. "But if the only thing you can give them is money, then money has to stand in as compensation for the unspeakable loss," he added.
Defense attorney Mark Rochon had argued there was no proof Palestinian authorities sanctioned the attacks as alleged in a 2004 lawsuit brought by 10 American families, even though members of their security forces were convicted in Israeli courts on charges they were involved.
"What they did, they did for their own reasons... not the Palestinian Authority's," he said in federal court in Manhattan.
New York and the Hague US trial over attacks could hurt Palestinian war crimes push Associated Press Palestinian officials nervously watch landmark terrorism trial in the US, brought by victims of Palestinian suicide bombings and shootings aimed at Israeli civilians. US trial over attacks could hurt Palestinian war crimes push
None of the victims was in the courtroom Monday for the verdict, but their lawyers called it a victory in the fight against terrorism.
"It's about accountability. It's about justice," attorney Kent Yalowitz said. He and an attorney with the Israel Law Center, which helped with the case, vowed to collect the damages by pursuing Palestinian Authority and PLO bank accounts, securities accounts, real estate and other property that may be in the U.S., Israel and elsewhere.
"Now, the PLO and the Palestinian Authority know there is a price" for supporting terrorism, Israel Law Center attorney Nitsana Darshan-Leitner said.
Throughout the trial, US District Judge George Daniels in Manhattan largely denied bids by the Palestinian Authority and the PLO to dismiss the long-running lawsuit. At a court hearing in December, Daniels also reaffirmed his decision in 2008 finding that his court had jurisdiction over claims against the Palestinian Authority and PLO despite changes in law at the appellate level.
The Sokolow family, the lead plaintiff in the trial, testified three weeks ago; a January 2002 bombing injured Jamie Sokolow, her sister Lauren, her mother Rena and her father Mark, all of whom testified.
Top Palestinian official Hanan Ashrawi took the witness stand two weeks ago.
Ashrawi, a member of the PLO's executive committee, said she and other leaders, including the late Yasser Arafat, worked with US and Israeli officials to combat terrorism during those years.
Palestinian President Abbas (Photo: AFP)
"It didn't serve the cause of the Palestinian Authority or the PLO, nor the cause of freedom," she said of the attacks. Her testimony, which lasted about two hours, followed that of Majid Faraj, the authority's head of intelligence.
Lawyers for the plaintiffs have accused the Palestinians of making payments to militants convicted of terrorism as a means of supporting their actions.
Faraj told the jurors the payments were intended to help the convicted men's families and remove economic reasons for them to engage in further attacks.Jordan Lewis is set to leave the Hawks. Credit:Cameron Spencer You can see it in the eyes, the searching pleading eyes, looking for answers. They could be from the The Walking Dead but they are not they are Hawthorn fans, lost bewildered Hawthorn fans. It is the inescapable football question: what is going on at Hawthorn? The apparent fire sale of champions is a difficult one to fathom. And the Hawk fan is finding this trade period more impenetrable than any other. Why would they do this to champions? Is there a plan? The answers are difficult and easy. Hawthorn have taken a view that their era is over and they are determined not to drop like Brisbane. But one person's boldness is another's coldness.
Hawthorn have been more successful than any other club in the modern era. They have been successful by making good decisions so do not rush to condemn. Wait until the end of the trade and the draft and then wait some more. Ideally you judge this in two years not two weeks – think Tom Boyd and Ryan Griffen – but for now it is a partial mystery. Alastair Clarkson had frank conversations at year's end not only with Sam Mitchell and Jordan Lewis but with a clutch of others: Brendan Whitecross, Billy Hartung, Paul Puopolo and Luke Breust. Hawthorn raised the idea with Mitchell of the arrangement that has now come to pass but at the time it was first raised, they figured it only a five per cent chance of happening. Then it happened. If Mitchell wanted to stay he would have and then retired at the end of next year. Lewis was told he would not be given a contract extension at the end of next year and so he looked around and liked what he saw at Melbourne. He told the club he wanted to go there. It is the inescapable football question: what is going on at Hawthorn?
Once Mitchell happened and perhaps the Hawks felt the temperature of the reaction to his move they cooled on the idea of trading Lewis. Melbourne improved their contract offer – the third year became locked in and they added more cash each season. Lewis was sold, but Hawthorn now was not. Hawthorn would admit they handled the Lewis matter poorly but it does remain a curiosity that clubs cannot treat their contracted players the way contracted players treat their clubs (Bryce Gibbs, Brett Deledio). Hawthorn's true error was earlier this year when in the warm flush of another pending top four finish and finals series they re-signed all four of their cast of uncontracted thirty-somethings. All of them will be expected to retire at the end of next year. They should not have recommitted to all of them. Josh Gibson and Luke Hodge looked most vulnerable: Gibson finished the year looking a diminished figure; Hodge's form was patchy. But they did sign them all. Presumably Clarkson returned to his conversations with these veterans as he did with Mitchell and Lewis and asked again in light of this year's finish if they remained keen to play on.
If Mitchell was to have stayed on and retired at the end of next season and potentially Lewis also played through next year without a contract extension Hawthorn would have had five out the door at once. Only the Australian test team manages to contrive a cack-handed mass exodus like that. Loading Hawthorn would have also cast an eye back over the season and felt they struggled in contested ball and clearances against the best teams this year. They needed to change the mix. Hawthorn had the money in their salary cap to afford to keep Mitchell and Lewis and yet bring in Ty Vickery, Tom Mitchell and Jaeger O'Meara. That means that should Lewis join Mitchell out the door the Hawks will save seven figures in wages next year, room that will mean they will front nd contracts and have huge scope for a big free agent in 12 months time. That might be the moment the unfathomable pieces of the past week finally fall more clearly into place.Ex-Rovio CEO Pekka Rantala has been brought on to salvage Nokia’s mobile business. Besides making for a fun headline, the move actually makes a lot of sense. Rantala actually did a 17-year tour of duty at Nokia back in the company’s heyday, before briefly assuming the helm of the Angry Birds development studio Rovio.
Rantala’s departure from Rovio in 2015 occurred after just one unspectacular year in the job. But considering he spent a decade and a half at Nokia during its glory days, he may just be the right man for the job. But the Nokia of today is a whole different beast than it was back in the mid-90s, although Rantala would have witnessed its slow demise until 2011, when he originally left.
Rantala is the newly appointed chief marketing officer for the company that has acquired the rights to market smartphones under the Nokia brand, HMD Global. His task is clear: sell the idea of an Android-powered Nokia phone to consumers. He’ll be joining another Nokia alumni, Arto Nummela, who is currently in charge of HMD Global.
Pekka Rantala is tasked with selling the idea of an Android-powered Nokia phone to consumers.
HMD is the Finnish company made up of ex-Nokia and ex-Microsoft types that snagged the licensing rights to the Nokia brand earlier this year. As you may recall, the fledgling company was founded the same month that Microsoft offloaded part of Nokia to a Foxconn subsidiary.
The new Nokia-branded devices made under HMD’s guidance will be manufactured and distributed by Foxconn, who bought the Nokia feature phone business from Microsoft earlier this year. If all this is sounding confusing that’s because it is. The HMD-generated Nokia phones will get brand licensing and patent access in exchange for royalty payments.
Whether the Nokia brand has any chance of success under completely different management we’ll just have to wait and see. But there is a lot of love for the Nokia brand and plenty of folks that would love to see the company back with a vengeance. As Rantala told CNET: “I love Nokia, I love what it stands for and I’d love to see it rise again.” Android is certainly the vehicle it needs to get back to the mainstream.
Nokia just needs to make basically indestructible phones and put all of their R&D budget into insane battery life.
But in all honesty, Rantala and co. wouldn’t even have to do anything terribly fancy to see Nokia make a comeback. Just make basically indestructible phones and put all of their R&D budget into insane battery life. Those two features alone would be enough to win more than a few nostalgic Nokia fans back over. That, and perhaps Snake.
Would you like to see Nokia make a comeback? What would you like to see?Copyright by KHON - All rights reserved
A local company known for its banana soft serve is being recognized by PETA.
The animal rights group recently announced its top 10 picks for vegan ice cream sundaes in the U.S., and Banan scooped up a spot with its papaya bowls.
"We love Banan's papaya boat," said Marissa Price, PETA. "It's dishware that you can eat and use to either help feed local pigs or generate compost for local gardens and farms, so you really can't get better than that."
The local chain uses only fruits and veggies to create its "ice creams," and offers toppings such as puffed quinoa, granola, and coconut.
"It's hard to believe that we're recognized outside of Hawaii, and to be recognized by something national like PETA, we certainly feel incredibly grateful for it," said Banan co-owner Matt Hong. "It's a pretty popular vegan recipe. None of us were vegan at the time, but we were so blown away by the simplicity of ingredients, and when we realized that we could use tons of Hawaii local produce, it was just a no-brainer of hey, we can go investigate agriculture back home and work together."
Banan has three locations on Oahu: a storefront on University Avenue, a beach shack on Kalakaua Avenue in Waikiki, and a food truck on Monsarrat Avenue near Diamond Head.
Rounding out PETA's list is the iconic Sublime Restaurant and Bar in Fort Lauderdale and Christopher's Kitchen in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida; Crossroads and KindKreme in Los Angeles; Sweet Ritual in Austin, Texas; Boston's Veggie Galaxy; Virtuous Pie in Portland, Oregon; Denver's SNOWLAB; and The Cookie Counter in Seattle.Nissan Motorsport is pleased to announce a new technical partnership with MW Motorsport to run two Nissan Altimas in the 2017 Dunlop Series.
The partnership includes the purchase of two Nissan Motorsport developed Altimas as well as on-going technical support and upgrades. The relationship will be formalised today, as the two teams participate in a handover shakedown session at Winton Raceway
For Nissan Motorsport co-owner Todd Kelly, the partnership is an opportunity to return to the second-tier category for the first time since 2012 (then as Kelly Racing).
“It’s quite an advantage to either have your own team or have a relationship with another team in the Dunlop Series,” said Kelly.
“We always have our four cars in equal spec, so it will be easy to carry that over and have competitive cars in the Dunlop Series as well. We have been with Nissan for a while now and have accumulated a lot of stock, so to be able to put our surplus parts into good use is a big advantage. This gives us the opportunity to work with one of the best teams in the category.
"Matt White has had a lot of success in the past and is a really good operator. He is also really close to our workshop as well, which will be beneficial next year.”
The announcement is also significant to Kelly for another reason, as MW Motorsport will inherit his current race car. Chassis #4 is the Altima he had competed with in over 130 races from when the model was first introduced in 2013.
"That was the first car I got and I’ve been very kind to it,” said Kelly. “Normally if you damage it too badly you get a fresh one and I haven’t done that. So we’ve got a lot of history together.”
The partnership presents MW Motorsport with the opportunity to contest the Dunlop Series with a 'Car of the Future' spec model for the first time.
"We’ve been looking for a team partner that can see the benefits we could put forward," said MW Motorsport owner Matthew White.
"This full technical partnership will give us access to the current specification Altimas that Nissan Motorsport are running and will offer support to ensure we are getting the most out of them. They have undertaken a massive program, with building cars and engines from scratch.
"All the resources that Nissan Motorsport have put together ensure they are a great team to partner with. On a personal level I am also excited to work with the Kelly’s, because performance is one thing, but we’ve got to build a good relationship with the people we’re working with too.
"We go racing to win, and we’ve won the Championship twice already, so now we want to bring a third one home."
The 2017 Dunlop Series begins alongside the Virgin Australia Supercars Championship on the streets of Adelaide for the Clipsal 500, March 2-5.A new survey shows that libertarians are fully capable of throwing any election in their direction. Now if we can just get politicians to live up to libertarian ideals.
T.J. Kirkpatrick / Getty Images U.S. Senator Rand Paul on March 19, 2013 in Washington, D.C.
When the folks behind the 2013 American Values Survey (AVS) went “In Search of Libertarians” for their latest national poll, they didn’t just stumble across a small, energetic, and increasingly influential group of people in politics, culture, and business who are dedicated to minimal government intervention in political and personal affairs. No, the researchers at the Public Religion Research Institute found themselves smack dab in the middle of an ideological civil war over control of the Republican Party and, quite possibly, the direction of the country as a whole. Given that everyone from The Washington Post to NPR to The Atlantic are talking about some variation on “America’s Libertarian Moment,” attention must be paid.
The American Values Survey is based on responses gathered in late September and early October from a representative group of about 2,300 adults. The researchers used answers to questions about national security, economics, and “personal liberty” to create a “Libertarian Orientation Scale.” By such measures, 7 percent of Americans are “consistent libertarians” and another 15 percent “lean libertarian,” meaning they oppose increased government spending on things such as military operations and domestic surveillance, raising the minimum wage, and environmental regulations.
Such fiscal conservativism is matched by social liberalism, with libertarians in favor of legalizing marijuana, protecting abortion rights, allowing doctors to prescribe life-ending drugs, and keeping the Internet unregulated. Libertarians are much more likely than most Americans to be male, white, and under 50 years old. They are also far less likely than most Americans to be religious and to think that religion has a place in politics. This puts them at odds with “other key Republican base groups” such as the Tea Party movement and white evangelical Protestants.
(MORE: 8 Things We Won’t Miss When Pot Is Legal Everywhere)
As befits people who put a high value on individualism, libertarians don’t fit easily into existing political categories even as they are far more likely to pay close attention to politics than the average American (56 percent of libertarians versus just 38 percent) and to always vote in primary elections. “The Libertarian Orientation Scale and traditional measures of political ideology that run along a liberal-conservative axis are only weakly correlated,” according to the survey.
That means that the 22 percent of Americans who are consistent libertarians or lean libertarian are fully capable of throwing any election in their direction. That makes them the true wild cards of American politics. A majority of libertarians describe themselves as independent (35 percent), affiliated with a third party (15 percent), or as Democrats (5 percent), with the remaining 45 percent calling themselves Republicans.
Which is a big reason why calling oneself a libertarian – or allowing oneself to be described as such – has become so popular for politicians such as Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.). Paul’s anti-drone filibuster in March became a massive, global Twitter sensation and jump-started a national conversation about the National Security Agency’s surveillance programs, President Obama’s “kill list,” and other civil liberties concerns.
It was explicitly libertarian in attacking unchecked state power and it drew plaudits from across the political spectrum, with Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Oregon) actually participating and people from left-wing, anti-war groups such as Code Pink and left-wing journalists such as Glenn Greenwald voicing support. Similarly, Paul’s principled and consistent criticism of military intervention in Libya, Syria, and elsewhere similarly has wide appeal beyond the GOP even as it challenges the party’s pro-war bona fides.
(MORE: Rand Paul: Why I Plan to Grill Yellin)
Paul’s libertarian rhetoric suggests one path forward for the Republican Party, even if Paul himself is not a pitch-perfect spokesman. He is, after all, an outspoken opponent of abortion who believes life begins at conception and his views on pot legalization and same-sex marriage leave a lot to be desired from a minimal government perspective. As does his endorsement of and campaigning for Republican Virginia gubernatorial candidate Ken Cuccinelli, who has called for reinstating sodomy laws struck down by the Supreme Court and is not simply against gay marriage but declared in 2009 that “homosexual acts are wrong and should not be accomodated in government policy.” While evangelicals and even Tea Party types might rally around such notions, there’s just no way to spin such positions as in any way, shape, or form libertarian. Yet Cuccinelli, the Old Dominion’s current attorney general, insists that he is “indisputably the strongest liberty candidate ever elected statewide in Virginia in my lifetime” and Paul has critiqued Cuccinelli’s opponent and Libertarian Party gubernatorial candidate Robert Sarvis for suggesting new forms of taxation. “Not a very libertarian idea,” sniffs Paul.
Still, according to the AVS, libertarians are far more favorable toward Paul than other leading Republicans such as New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, Sens. Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio, and Rep. Paul Ryan. But Paul’s willingness to stump for candidates such as Cuccinelli and his willingness to pander to evangelicals surely makes many libertarians wary of either joining up with or staying inside a Republican Party whose rhetorical commitment to limited government has never been matched by its actual policies. If the Republicans can’t figure out a way to accommodate broadly popular, socially tolerant libertarian policies on gay rights, drug legalization, and more, they will not just lose the race for the White House in 2016, but quite possibly their status as a major party.
After a dozen-plus years of government mismanagement of the economy, foreign policy, and basic civil liberties under Republicans and Democrats, a record number of Americans rightly believe that the government has too much power. Libertarians are young, intense, principled, and highly engaged in politics. They are going to be around for a long time to come, and in ever-larger numbers. The only question left unanswered is who they will vote for.Treasurer Joe Hockey is facing a fresh round of criticism for being out of touch and not understanding the impact of his budget on the less well off after suggesting “poorest people either don't have cars or actually don't drive very far in many cases”.
Mr Hockey made the comments on Wednesday as he argued the government's proposed rise in fuel excise was a progressive measure that would cost people on middle and higher incomes more.
The Treasurer said the Coalition was asking "everyone to contribute, including higher income people" by restarting indexation of fuel excise, a measure Labor has labelled a new fuel tax.
Contrary to Mr Hockey's claim, a 2001 research paper from the Parliamentary Library states that "petrol and diesel excises are regressive in that people on low incomes pay a higher proportion of their incomes in the form of excise than people on high incomes, given the same level of fuel use".Baby boxes include diapers, wipes, a box for the |
Some neuroscientists suggested that many more electrodes should be implanted—but doing so would heighten the risk of damaging brain tissue.
In light of those concerns, the United States’ National Institutes of Health challenged researchers to build a neural prosthesis with a less invasive control mechanism. The ideal would be a system based on EEG signals, simply using electrodes attached to the scalp. Unfortunately, the brain signals that external electrodes pick up are blurred and attenuated by their passage through the skull and scalp. This led our team to investigate the middle road: the use of ECoG signals.
Illustration: Nicolas Rapp Three Ways To Tap The Brain: To record the activity of brain cells, neuroscientists can use implanted electrodes that penetrate the cortex. This method provides the clearest signal, but it’s also the riskiest. In contrast, scalp electrodes for electroencephalography (EEG) carry no risks, but the signal they capture is indistinct. Electrocorticography (ECoG), which uses electrodes draped over the surface of the cortex, may represent the “sweet spot,” a compromise between risk and clarity.
ECoG systems provide a better signal-to-noise ratio than EEG, and the data includes high-frequency components that EEG can’t easily capture. ECoG systems also do a better job of extracting the most useful information from the brain, as an electrode placed over the motor cortex can specifically listen in on the electrical activity most relevant for controlling a prosthetic arm. Similarly, electrodes draped over the brain areas associated with speech can capture signals associated with verbal communication.
Raw ECoG signals appear to be a confused mess of squiggly lines with little discernible pattern. To make sense of the data, our team performs a spectral analysis to deconstruct the signal and find oscillations at certain specific frequencies. These are the brain waves you may have heard about. Neuroscientists have learned that different oscillation frequencies are associated with specific mental states, such as deep sleep, focused attention, or meditative contemplation.
Just imagine what neural prostheses could do for people who are severely paralyzed or for patients in the late stages of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease). These patients are essentially “locked in,” with intact brains but no ability to control their bodies, or even to speak. Could their intentions, translated into ECoG signals, be captured and relayed to robotic limbs?
Here’s a simple example of how an ECoG-based neural prosthesis could work. Researchers have previously shown that an imagined movement modulates the brain’s electrical activity in the mu band, which has a frequency of about 10 to 13 hertz. Thus, the paralyzed subject would imagine moving a limb, electrodes would capture the mu-band activity, and the BMI would use the signal to trigger an action, such as closing a robotic hand. Since we can use up to 64 electrodes placed about a centimeter apart and spread over a wide area of the brain, we have a lot of data to work with. As we develop better algorithms that can identify the key signals that code for movement, we can build systems that don’t just trigger an action but offer more fine-tuned control.
Our team took the first step toward building such a system in 2011, when we painstakingly matched up brain signals with particular movements. Our subject was a 12-year-old boy awaiting surgery for his seizure disorder. In the experiment, the boy reached forward and grasped one of the wooden blocks set before him, then released it and withdrew his hand. When we looked at the data from just a few electrodes that had been placed over his brain’s sensorimotor cortex, we discovered that oscillations in the high gamma band, with frequencies between 70 and 150 Hz, correlated well with the boy’s actions. We also found that the signal in a lower frequency band changed in predictable ways when he wiggled his fingers.
The next step was to couple the electrical signal to the machinery. We demonstrated that under carefully controlled conditions, epileptic patients with ECoG electrodes placed on their brains could indeed command the Modular Prosthetic Limb to perform simple actions, like reaching and grasping. While this was a considerable accomplishment, we struggled to decode the neural signals reliably and to get the prosthetic limb to move smoothly.
In the end, we decided that it just may not be realistic to expect an ECoG-controlled prosthesis to perform an entirely natural limb movement, such as picking up a pot of coffee and pouring some into a cup. After all, a typical person uses a combination of vision, touch, motor control, and cognitive processing to perform this mundane action. So last year our team began exploring another strategy. We built a hybrid BMI that combines brain signals with input from other sensors to help accomplish the task at hand.
Several epileptic volunteers with ECoG arrays tested our novel system. The first, the woman described at the beginning of this article, focused her eyes on the image of a ball on a computer screen; the computer was streaming video from a setup across the room. An eye-tracking system recorded the direction of her gaze to locate the object she wanted to manipulate. Then, as she reached toward the screen, her ECoG electrodes recorded neural signals associated with that action. All this information was relayed to a robotic arm across the room, which was equipped with a Microsoft Kinect to help it recognize objects in three-dimensional space. When the arm received the signal to reach for the ball, its path-planning software calculated the necessary movements, orientations, and grasp configuration to smoothly pick up the ball and drop it in a trash can. The results were encouraging: In 20 out of 28 trials, this woman’s brain signals successfully triggered the robotic arm, which then completed the entire task.
Would this patient have done even better if we’d implanted electrodes in her brain rather than just draping the electrodes over the surface? Perhaps, but at a greater risk of brain trauma. Also, penetrating electrodes register only the local activity of individual cells or small clusters of neurons, whereas ECoG electrodes pick up activity across broader zones. ECoG systems may therefore be able to capture a richer picture of the brain activity taking place during the planning and execution of an action.
ECoG systems also hold the promise of being able to convey both motor and sensory signals. If a prosthetic limb has sensors that register when it touches an object, it could in principle send that sensory feedback to a patient by stimulating the brain through the ECoG electrodes. Similar stimulation is already done routinely in patients prior to epilepsy surgery in order to map the brain regions responsible for sensation. However, the sensations elicited have typically been very crude. In the future, more refined brain stimulation, using smaller electrodes and more precise activation patterns, may be able to better simulate tactile feedback. The goal is to use two-way communication between brain and prosthesis to help a user deftly control the limb.
While it might be tempting to test ECoG systems with severely paralyzed patients—the intended beneficiaries of this neuroprosthetic research—it is imperative to demonstrate that such systems can reliably restore meaningful function before exposing patients to the risks of surgery. For this reason, the clinical circumstances of patients preparing for epilepsy surgery represent an important opportunity to develop technology that will benefit a very different group of patients. We’ve found that many epilepsy patients are glad they can help others while they’re hospital-bound and under observation for the seizures that will provide guidance to their surgeons. Our hope is that these experiments will lead to a technology so clearly useful that we will feel well justified in trying it in paralyzed patients.
Thinking about the cost-benefit concerns gives a sense of déjà vu. I came to Johns Hopkins in the early 1980s, when doctors there had just implanted the first heart defibrillator in a patient. All the same doubts were aired. Was the technology too invasive? Would it be reliable? Would it provide enough benefit to justify the expense? But defibrillators rapidly proved their worth, and today more than 100,000 are implanted every year in the United States alone. The medical community may be nearing the same juncture with brain-machine interfaces, which might well be an accepted part of clinical medicine in just a couple of decades.
Illustration: Nicolas Rapp From Mind to Machine: Combining brain commands with information from other sensors may provide more sophisticated control of a robotic limb. In our hybrid system, a Microsoft Kinect [4] streams video of objects resting on a table [5] to a computer screen in front of a test subject. An eye-tracking sensor [2] follows the subject’s gaze to locate the target object, and ECoG sensors [1] record brain activity while the subject reaches toward that target. A computer [3] analyzes the brain activity associated with the subject’s arm movement and sends a command to a robotic arm. With the help of the Kinect’s depth sensor, the arm reaches out and grabs the object.
So far I’ve discussed the possibility of using ECoG signals to control prosthetic limbs, but there’s another fascinating possibility: Capturing these signals could also help people who have lost the ability to speak. For some people who have suffered a stroke or injury, the brain can still conceive words and generate speech commands, but the signals don’t make it to the mouth. When ECoG electrodes are placed over the language areas of the brain, including the regions that govern the muscles of speech articulation, the resulting signals presumably carry information pertaining to both language generation and the physical production of words. A speech prosthesis could decode those signals and send commands to a device that would give voice to the patient’s intended sentences.
Early research shows progress in understanding the brain’s commands to the mouth muscles. In one study, University of California researchers in San Francisco and Berkeley used an ECoG system to record activity in the motor cortex as their subjects patiently recited syllables such as “ba,” “da,” and “ga.” The resulting measurements showed distinct patterns for different consonants. For example, certain electrodes showed activity during the production of the “b” sound, which requires closure of the lips. Other electrodes registered activity during the “d” sound, in which the tongue hits the roof of the mouth. Still others saw action during the “g” sound, which involves the back of the mouth.
What would it take to build a speech prosthesis? First, we would need to improve our recording hardware. Today’s ECoG systems use only a few dozen electrodes on the cortex; clearly, a much higher density of electrodes would produce a better signal. We have already tried out new microelectrode ECoG systems in human patients that can pack 16 electrodes onto a 9-by-9-millimeter array.
Because speech production surely involves many brain regions, we’ll also have to improve our signal analysis to decipher neural activity, not just in one area but across large regions of the brain. We’ll need better spatial and temporal resolution to determine the exact sequence in which groups of neurons across the cortex fire to produce, say, the simple sound “ba.” Once we’ve managed to map individual phonemes or syllables, we can work toward understanding fluid speech by decoding a succession of brain commands.
Controlling a robot with a thought, speaking without making a sound: With ECoG systems, these magical feats now appear well within the realm of feasibility. By casting a net of electrodes over the surface of the brain, it’s possible to capture echoes of the ideas and commands that swirl below, in the currents of the mind.
This article originally appeared in print as “Catching Brain Waves in a Net.”
About the Author
Nitish V. Thakor, director of the Laboratory for Neuroengineering at Johns Hopkins University, embraces the fundamental scientific challenge of mapping electrical activity in the human brain. But what gets him out of bed in the morning, he says, are the clinical applications. He hopes the brain-machine interfaces he’s developing in collaboration with colleagues at the Hopkins School of Medicine will one day let paralyzed patients control robotic limbs with their brainwaves.These interviews were found at the GSLA, a Japanese a website that, among other things, preserves game developer interviews from older, now-defunct print sources. The GSLA often redacts the original interviewer questions, so the text ends up reading more like a narrative than an interview.
These two short interviews with Metroid Fusion and Zero Mission director Yoshio Sakamoto cover the changes in Samus’ design, the contrast between these games and previous Metroids, and the challenges of training a new development team. Interestingly, there is a note of condescension towards this “Wario” team that is hard not to notice.
Metroid Fusion – 2003 Developer Interview
with director/writer Yoshio Sakamoto
After Super Metroid was released for the Super Famicom, the Game Boy Color was too underpowered for us to release another Metroid game. Then the Game Boy Advance came out, which exceeds the specs of the Super Famicom. It was a system that we in the mobile games division definitely wanted to work with.
Yoshio Sakamoto, ca. 2004.
For Metroid Fusion, Samus has a new look. The first designers who I handed the work to came back to me with a pretty outrageous request: “We want to change her design.” When I asked why, they replied, “It’s been the same for way too long.” (laughs)
But changing the design of the hero of the game is a big deal, right? They were going to really need to convince us. Even though Samus’ design from Super Smash Bros. was popular, it was still no small thing to deliberately change her traditional Metroid design. That’s why I told them that if they were going to change it, they’d need to introduce some new element, and a good justification for it.
Samus was given a fresh redesign for the Super Smash Bros. games, and those designs were very popular; nevertheless, I told the team that deliberately changing Samus’ design was nothing to take lightly. So rather than have them thinking about simply changing her design, I tried to get them thinking about new gameplay elements they could introduce, and the necessity of having a solid reason, in-game, for doing so.
The Metroid Fusion team is the same team that made Wario, if I can be frank with you. The very first thing I needed them to understand was what kind of game Metroid is. I told them they were like a lowly enka singer who had suddenly struck it rich… but I don’t think they understood that. (laughs) My goal, of course, was to impress upon them how important it is that the team that makes Metroid really understand what Metroid is all about.
Of course, individually they all had a slightly different understanding of what kind of game Super Metroid was. Some of them told me they thought it was one of those masochistic, hardcore Nintendo games of old. Naturally, with a game that’s 9 years old, keeping the same difficulty balance was going to be a tough sell to players today. And of course once I had the team play Metroid, they all said “yeah, this is definitely for the hardcore.”
So one thing we had in the forefront of our minds during this development was: how can we make Metroid easier to play? Super Metroid divided the game into clearly defined sections to make things less stressful. On the other hand, you can’t just verbally tell players what to do, so Super Metroid had parts where the narrative unfolded for you just by playing. You would explore all these different places without any guidance, and finally realize through the process of elimination where you’re supposed to go. That was a problem for us as developers, and I think it was for players, too.
The SA-X appears.
I think we’ve retained that “Metroid-ness” despite our pursuit of a Metroid that is easier to play. That was paramount. With the crisis that befalls Samus from the outset, and the introduction of the SA-X, I think we’ve managed to preserve that Metroid-ness even though there’s an actual guided narrative.
You see, modern game balance and older game balance are two different things. Whether that’s a good thing or not, I can’t fully say, but naturally we want many people to play our game. We absolutely don’t want to abandon our pride as game designers, but our stance is that, above all, we want modern audiences to understand our games and actually play them. That was a goal we pursued all the way through the Metroid Fusion development. And compared with older games in the series, I think this is much easier to casually enjoy.
As for how we made it easier, one thing we did was to greatly simplify the controls. We spent a lot of time on that. Take firing a missile: in Super Metroid you had to choose items with the select button, but that’s not going to work for modern gamers. We were worried that players might think we were dumbing down the game, but ultimately we decided that making it easier to play was more important. Personally, I’m part of the old guard who prefers that older control style, but the staff convinced me that the simplified controls were better. In the end I agreed, and felt “this is great!” Other developers at Nintendo gave the Metroid Fusion staff some good ideas too; it was a fun development. Compared with Super Metroid, my role was a little more removed this time, but it was a good experience for me.
There’s no shortage of great Metroid fanart on pixiv. This one is by Seeker.
Metroid Zero Mission – 2004 Developer Interview
with director Yoshio Sakamoto
For the previous game, Metroid Fusion, we put more emphasis on the story, and made other design choices that were different from the traditional series. Many players’ first exposure to the world of Metroid was through Metroid Fusion, and with Metroid: Zero Mission, I wanted to give those players a taste of what an older Metroid game was like–that is, an action game with a higher degree of freedom. To do that, I knew I’d need to update the original Metroid’s gameplay, story, and world. In addition, the second half of Zero Mission was added so that players who had played the original would have something fresh and new too.
We decided early on for Zero Mission that we would depict “an untold continuation” to the original Metroid’s story. In this game, after defeating Mother Brain, Samus would have some kind of reversal of fortune and find herself in dire straits. However, it wasn’t until the very end of the development that we figured out that Samus would lose her powered suit. That was typical of our creative process, though: we’d have some big, general idea and then flesh out the details as we went along and got further into it. In the end it turned our rather well, I think. It was pretty stressful for the staff though. (laughs)
Our image for Samus’ new equipment after the escape scene from Zebes was designed in the image of the SA-X from Metroid Fusion. We wanted to try our hand at it once more, and challenge ourselves to incorporate it into the game system in a bigger way.
We thought the image of the armorless Samus, completely defenseless, would really excite players and make her situation feel real and threatening. It’s like a scene out of a classic horror movie: an ugly, evil beast giving chase to its prey, whose weakness has now been exposed. I think being direct like that is the most effective way to raise the tension. Samus is at the peak of her power when she fights Mother Brain, so having everything taken away and being left powerless was also going to make for the ultimate contest, which was one of our goals too.
The cutscenes we’ve inserted are intended to heighten the mystery of Samus’ adventure. I do realize, though, that some people feel a deeper sense of mystery with a narrative that is not conveyed with words.
Our next project is Metroid Prime 2. I’ll have a supervisory role in it. I can’t say yet whether I’ll be directly involved with making it. I do have a lot of ideas for it though!Mumbai, Oct 10: Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), led by Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis, registered a comprehensive victory in the first phase of gram panchayat elections in Maharashtra. As many as 3,884 gram panchayats went to polls in the first phase on October 7. Of these, election results of 2,974 bodies were declared on Monday. While the BJP won around 50 per cent of the gram panchayats, the Congress came at second, followed by Shiv Sena and Nationalist Congress Party (NCP). (ALSO READ: BJP Makes Big Gains in Congress-NCP Bastion Marathwada)
Out of 2,974 gram panchayats, the BJP won 1,457, while the Congress could bag 301 rural bodies. The Shiv Sena secured 222 and the NCP got 194. The remaining sarpanch posts went to Independents and other outfits. The 3,884 gram panchayats that went to polls in the first phase are spread over 18 districts in Marathwada, Vidarbha and North Maharashtra regions. 79 per cent votes were polled in the first-ever direct election.
Although the BJP suffered setbacks in Parali in Beed district where the NCP and Buldhana district in Vidarbha where Congres registered the victory, the Fadnavis-led party showed an impressive performance in rest of the parts of Maharashtra in gram panchayat elections. The BJP had emerged the single largest party in the municipal council elections held in multiple phases during November 2016 and January 2017.
“People have shown confidence in the development agenda of Prime Minister Narendra Modiji and our state government,” Maharashtra CM Devendra Fadnavis was quoted as saying. “In Vidarbha and Marathwada, we have performed much better compared to the last elections. The break-through in western Maharashtra is appreciable as it is always perceived as a traditional bastion of the Congress-NCP,” a BJP leader added.
In the second phase, polling for 3,692 gram panchayats spread over 16 districts of Maharashtra would be held on 14 October and the counting will take place on 16 October.Image copyright Google Image caption Would a slide in the office persuade you into work?
Google's headquarters in Zurich has a massage room, aquarium and a slide to deliver engineers smoothly and quickly to the canteen.
Deloitte's Amsterdam office was designed with one empty room on each floor for employees to put what they wanted in them - most have gone for games such as table football.
At LinkedIn's Californian HQ there is a music room, stocked with keyboards, drums, guitars and audio equipment.
And allowing employees to bring their pets to work is increasingly common.
So when did our offices turn into playgrounds, and does this represent the new way of working?
Technological advances mean that staff can avoid the drudgery of commuting and work from home, coffee shops, or any number of exotic locations. So some companies are working extra-hard to make their offices more attractive places to be.
Image copyright Deloitte Image caption At Deloitte's Amsterdam headquarters, one room on each floor is left for employees to furnish
A recent report from US software giant Citrix forecast that by 2017, some 50% of businesses would have a mobile working policy, and by 2020, 70% of people would work away from the office as often as they worked at a desk.
"Offices are expensive and office space will decline," says Citrix vice president Jacqueline de Rojas.
This is partly due to bosses realising not all jobs need to be done from an office, but also because employees are increasingly demanding a better work-life balance, she adds.
Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption What did the "office of the future" look like in years gone by?
That doesn't mean that the office will die, though.
"Offices will become places of collaboration and connection because culturally we need touch points as we are social animals," she says.
The'super-desk'
Citrix has installed "genius benches" at its London headquarters - essentially higher and longer shared desks that come with stools, not chairs.
Image copyright Citrix Image caption How about a slightly higher, less formal desk and chair - would that inspire you?
There are also moveable desks, like the ones at headphone maker Skullcandy's office in Zurich. The desks can be configured to work individually or collaboratively, fitting together like puzzle pieces.
Meanwhile, marketing firm Barbarian Group has created a "super-desk" at its New York office which sits up to 170 people, and includes archways where staff can go for private chats.
Image copyright Barbarian Group Image caption Barbarian Group's "super-desk" includes archways for more informal seating
And Lego has taken hot-desking to the next level at its London and Singapore offices, introducing a system called activity-based working, which means that no-one has a fixed desk any more.
More features about the Future of Work
Image copyright Thinkstock
Space is divided into flexible work zones with no fixed seating and no offices for managers. Employees who leave their workspace for more than one-and-a-half hours need to take all their stuff with them.
Lego even has a department for "new ways of working" and, says senior director Sophie Patrikios, the experiment has gone well.
"In our May 2016 survey, 88% of staff said they liked the choice of where to work. They get a choice of different settings to suit their activity or mood, including a quiet library, a buzzing social area with background music, comfy chairs in cosy corners or big banks of desks to share with team-mates," she says.
Image copyright Lego Image caption Nomad in your own office? Lego employees in its London HQ have no assigned seating
Offices are also getting smarter. Research firm Gartner says commercial buildings are already at the forefront of the "internet of things" revolution.
Smart lighting, heating, and even sensors that measure how many people are in an office, are becoming commonplace.
Healthier offices
Such technology plays a vital role in making buildings work more efficiently, but also raises questions about employee privacy and what happens to the data being collected.
More energy-efficient buildings can offer employee benefits too, says Theo Maessen, a senior partner at Dutch-based building design firm BOB (BOB stands for Best Office Building).
"We are building healthier offices that use more daylight, have systems that maintain a constant temperature that eliminates mould and dust, and therefore reduces the rate of illness among employees," he tells the BBC.
Using computer simulation, Mr Maessen can work out the optimum number of windows for a building - no more than 40% of it should be glass, apparently - as well as factors such as the ideal air flow.
Image copyright Thinkstock Image caption A study from Virginia Commonwealth University suggests bringing dogs to work can reduce stress
The buildings he designs have no air-conditioning, using instead a geothermal system that takes advantage of the constant temperatures found underground.
Warm water is pumped in over winter and cooler water during the summer months.
The company uses wood-fibre bricks that breathe better and, as they are made from by-products from saw mills, are also more environmentally-friendly than traditional bricks.
Occupants of his offices can use an online tool to provide feedback on their welfare and make complaints. Positive feedback has been "very high", Mr Maessen says.
Hot-desking will become standard, he says, and buildings will have to adapt to different uses.
Image copyright Thinkstock Image caption Will the future of the office be more about group chats than individual work?
"Over several decades, the occupancy will change. What was an office may become flats or retail space. Clients will also want to experiment with different configurations of their interiors," he says.
"In 20 years maybe we won't work a five-day week, it may be that we work just three days a week, and we have to try to design a building that can accommodate those changes."
In future, office spaces will also be closer to where people live, he believes.
Image copyright Thinkstock Image caption In future, work could be more about what we do, not where we are
And communities will have communal office space that can be used by anyone, he predicts, cutting down on the need for travel.
Lego's Ms Patrikios agrees that big changes are on the way.
"We've already seen that work is no longer somewhere you go, but something you do," she says.
A greater shift towards flexible working and people having multiple part-time roles, rather than a job for life, will exacerbate the change.
In the future, "going to the office" will mean much more than just "going to work".
Follow Technology of Business editor @matthew_wall on Twitter
Click here for more Technology of Business featuresKanye West might be buddies with President-elect Donald Trump, but he won’t be performing at Friday’s inauguration.
That’s because he wasn’t invited to take the stage.
Tom Barrack, chairman of Trump’s Presidential Inauguration Committee, told CNN that though West and Trump are friendly, West is not “traditionally American” enough for the event.
“He’s been great, he considers himself a friend of the president-elect, but it’s not the venue,” Barrack said. “It’s going to be typically and traditionally American, and Kanye is a great guy — we just haven’t asked him to perform.”
The comment had Twitter users speculating what Barrack meant by “traditionally American.” Some pointed out that Michael Flatley of Irish musical “Lord of the Dance” is performing.
Actor Jesse Williams pointed out that Trump’s grandparents were not born in the U.S. (Trump’s father’s parents were from Germany and his mother was born in Scotland), and said, “Kanye’s ‘more American’ [than] Trump.” He also incorrectly said that Michael Flatley is an Irish national (Flatley was born in the U.S.).
-Irish nat'l Michael Flatley is though 🤣. -NONE of Trump's grandparents were born in the U.S. -Kanye's "more American" then Trump. https://t.co/qDZfPZFIjp — jesse Williams. (@iJesseWilliams) January 19, 2017
Kanye not invited to play the inauguration because he isn't 'traditionally American' but they are having Michael Flatley riverdance. Okay. — Matt Haig (@matthaig1) January 19, 2017
Kanye not invited because he's not "traditionally American", but... https://t.co/WR4WrChwnq — Jemaine Clement (@AJemaineClement) January 19, 2017
Others were more blatant in their criticism. One Twitter user wrote, “Sorry, Kanye! Guess you made that trip to the golden tower for nothing! Your music’s just too black for Trump’s ‘traditional’ America.”
Sorry, Kanye! Guess you made that trip to the golden tower for nothing! Your music's just too black for Trump's "traditional" America. 🤷🏻♂️ https://t.co/qIkRzWFJN8 — Brad Walsh (@BradWalsh) January 19, 2017UK starts review of CGN’s nuclear reactor design
(China Daily) China General Nuclear Power Corp said the British government has started an assessment of the company’s plan to build a nuclear power plant at Bradwell in southeastern England.
The British government asked nuclear regulators to begin the Generic Design Assessment of CGN’s design-the Hualong One reactor-a process that industry experts expect to take about five years.
The company said via a spokesman that it is confident that Hualong One will meet the United Kingdom’s stringent safety, security and design requirements. Mao Qing, the project manager at CGN responsible for Hualong One’s assessment, made the comments to the state owned news media.
According to Joseph Jacobelli, a senior analyst with Asia utilities and infrastructure research at Bloomberg Intelligence, there are high chances the Hualong One reactor will pass UK’s strict approval process.
“Given the vast experience of CGN in building nuclear facilities in China and the importance of the project, there should be a reasonable chance that the parameters are met, albeit some adjustments may be required,” said Jacobelli.
“CGN has strong ambitions in many other jurisdictions. So if the plant faces hiccups, there is a reputational risk which could affect the company’s bids for other projects in other countries,” he said.
He Yu, chairman of CGN, said investing in Bradwell will also lead to more countries having confidence in the Chinese reactor and will push forward its global market development.
The costs of the assessment will be covered by CGN and Electricite de France SA, which formed a joint venture called General Nuclear Services to develop the Bradwell plant, and fund and design the reactor.
Jesse Norman, UK energy minister, said the UK welcomed CGN’s investment in the GDA process.
“The nuclear industry in the UK is subject to a stringent regulatory regime to ensure security and mitigation of any potential
environmental detriment.”
Construction Of China’s Fangchenggang-4 Hualong One Reactor Begins
(NucNet): Construction of Unit 4 of the Fangchenggang nuclear power station in Guangxi province, southern China, began on 12/23/16, with pouring of first concrete for the nuclear island basemat according to the project operator China General Nuclear Power Company (CGN). Fangchenggang-4 is a 1,000-MW indigenous HPR-1000 pressurised water reactor type known as Hualong One.
In December 2015, CGN began construction of its first Hualong One unit — Fangchenggang-3. Units 3 and 4 at Fangchenggang will serve as a reference for the proposed Bradwell B plant in the UK, CGN said. In total, six units are planned for the Fangchenggang site. Units 1 and 2 are both domestic CPR-1000s and already in commercial operation, units 3 and 4 are Hualong Ones, and units 5 and 6 will be Westinghouse AP1000s.
Rolls-Royce names partners for UK SMR
(WNN) Rolls-Royce has named the companies it is working with to bring a small modular reactor (SMR) to market in the UK. Amec Foster Wheeler, Nuvia and Arup, together with the Nuclear Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre, are working with Rolls-Royce to develop the latest technology reactors, a spokesman for the British engineering firm told World Nuclear News. “Other names will emerge in due course,” he added.
In October last year, Rolls-Royce said a UK SMR could provide a £100 billion ($127 billion) boost to the UK economy between 2030 and 2050 because the companies involved are either UK-owned or have a strong UK presence. The latest announcement comes as British ministers are looking to support the development of SMRs and civil nuclear innovation, with up to £250 million in funding, and also to publish a green paper on Industrial Strategy later this month.
In November 2015, the British government announced plans to invest at least £250 million over the next five years in a nuclear research and development program including a competition to identify the best value SMR design for the UK.
Rolls-Royce submitted a paper to the Department of Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, outlining its plan to develop a fleet of 7 GWe of SMRs with its partners.
Other participants in the UK’s SMR competition include French-owned EDF Energy and its Chinese partner CNNC, Westinghouse and the US developer NuScale Power.
France to buy out Areva shareholders
(Reuters) France will buy out minority shareholders in Areva and delist the troubled nuclear group, the government said as talks with potential investors in a new nuclear fuel company being spun out of Areva neared a conclusion.
The state, which owns 87 percent of Areva, said it would offer 4.5 euros per Areva SA share to minority investors which include Kuwait’s investment fund, French utility EDF and French energy group Total.
Areva’s shares have fallen by as much as 90 percent from their 2007 highs as the group chalked up repeated losses.
European Union antitrust regulators approved the French government’s plan to inject 4.5 billion euros ($4.8 billion) into Areva saying the rescue would not unduly distort competition.
The ruling will allow Areva, whose capital has been wiped out by years of losses, to restart as a smaller firm focused on uranium mining and nuclear fuel production and recycling.
A source familiar with the situation said the two investors are Japan’s Mitsubishi Heavy Industries and JNFL. Talks are continuing with China’s National Nuclear Corporation about also taking a minority stake.
Russia Has Resumed Preparations For Turkey Nuclear Plant Construction,
(NucNet): Russia has resumed preparations for construction of Turkey’s first nuclear power plant at Akkuyu near Mersin on the country’s southern Mediterranean coast, Alexei Likhachev, director-general of state nuclear corporation Rosatom said.
In an interview with the state-owned Russia 24 news channel, Mr Likhachev said commercial operation of Akkuyu-1 is scheduled for 2023.
Russia has signed a contract to supply four VVER-1200 units for the facility. Turkey does not have any commercial nuclear reactors, but has confirmed it is planning to build two stations – Akkuyu and Sinop – with four units each.
The IEA said feasibility studies are continuing at Mitsubishi Heavy Industries and Itochu Corporation for the construction of the Sinop station, with four Generation-III Atmea-1 PWRs.
Clean nuclear energy, research advanced in bipartisan senate bill
(Wire services) WASHINGTON — Private-sector innovators in nuclear energy and government researchers will work hand in hand to create the next generation of clean, advanced nuclear power under bipartisan legislation introduced today in the U.S. Senate.
The sponsors are Senators Mike Crapo (R-Idaho), Sheldon Whitehouse (D-Rhode Island), Jim Risch (R-Idaho), Cory Booker (D-New Jersey), Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), and Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska). On 1/11/17 they re-introduced the Nuclear Energy Innovation Capabilities Act (NEICA).
The legislation would direct the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) to prioritize partnering with private innovators to test and demonstrate advanced reactor concepts.
The measure authorizes the creation of a National Reactor Innovation Center that brings together the technical expertise of the National Labs and DOE to enable the construction of experimental reactors.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) would partner with the DOE in this effort, which would enable the NRC to contribute its expertise on safety issues while also learning about the new technologies developed through the Center.
This measure strengthens the abilities of national laboratories to partner with private industry to prove the principles behind their ideas. It is an improved version of similar legislation sponsored in 2016 by Crapo, Whitehouse, Risch, Booker and Hatch.
“There is bipartisan agreement in Congress that nuclear energy and nuclear research have been underutilized as a reliable, safe, clean and efficient part |
announced a $4 million fund Wednesday to help developing countries fend off legal challenges from tobacco companies.Rather than wrap him in cotton wool, it seems Manchester United may need to cover Robin van Persie in blue tape to keep the Dutchman injury-free this season. The striker, who has become both vital and loved at United, was seen wearing the recognisable blue Kinesio Tape on his hamstrings at the back of both thighs during the game against Liverpool last weekend.
United fans hope, of course, that the Kinesio Tape (KT) was simply being used as a prophylactic, although many will be forgiven for thinking that van Persie may already be carrying a slight twinge and that it is only a matter of time before the striker is sidelined.
van Persie was notorious for being injury prone during his time at Arsenal; enough to earn the nickname “glass ankles” following persistent difficulties with both ankles. In addition, van Persie has also suffered hip, thigh, groin, hamstring, calf and metatarsal injuries throughout his career.
Although there is relatively little evidence to support KT, it has become increasingly popular with élite athletes and was particularly noticeable during Euro 2012 last year. A meta-analysis of KT’s effects (* Williams et al. 2012) suggests the tape may be beneficial for improving muscle strength and range of motion, however these results were not proven to be clinically significant, and with too few studies more research is still needed to be sure of its efficacy.
Despite this, many high-profile athletes have found KT to be useful, including Novak Djokovic, Mario Balotelli and Dwain Chambers. And although there is a lack of strong scientific evidence, anecdotal evidence from athletes is not being ignored by medical teams, often working under intense competitive and financial pressure to keep their stellar players in action.
van Persie is no stranger to experimentation with radical alternative therapies to stay fit. In summer 2009 he opted to have troublesome wisdom teeth removed, believing they could be linked to his recurrent injury problems. van Persie attended a clinic in Paris for the procedure and was seemingly injury free for several months afterwards.
“My osteopaths think there may be a connection between my teeth and the muscle injuries I suffer,” said the Dutchman. “Something like that is very difficult to prove. But if the operation makes just one per cent difference it’ll be worth it.”
However, in November 2009 the Dutch playmaker suffered yet another ankle injury in Holland’s friendly against Italy. He traveled to Serbia to try horse-placenta treatment, by having placental fluid massaged into his sprained ankle. Although little is known about how placenta therapy may work, the theory is that it by applying the fluid it will improve the healing processes by enhancing transport of nutrients to the injured area.
Manchester City’s Pablo Zabaleta and Vincent Kompany have both allegedly visited the same clinic for treatment.
“It cannot hurt. And if it helps, it helps” said van Persie, no doubt frustrated with persistent ankle trouble and willing to try an unproven treatment.
Initially expected to be out for six weeks, scans revealed that van Persie had actually torn rather than sprained the ankle ligaments and missed a further five months of the 2009-2010 season. The placenta therapy appeared to be fruitless when advice was sought from a leading ankle specialist, Niek van Dijk, who confirmed that more extensive damage had been suffered than was first diagnosed. van Persie required surgery on the damaged ligaments.
After being plagued by so many sprains, strains and tears, van Persie’s lengthy injury trouble appeared to ease in the 2011-2012 season in which the striker won PFA player of the year. His tenure with Arsenal ended and he joined United in August 2012 with many believing it a good deal for the Gunners, given van Persie’s age and injury record. £24 million for a 29-year-old prone to so many injuries seemed like good business at the time for Arsène Wenger.
Yet, van Persie’s transfer has so far appeared to be Sir Alex Ferguson’s bargain not Arsenal’s. The striker’s contribution has been spectacular, with 22 goals to date including a number of last-minute winners and equalisers, and an important goal against Tottenham Hotspur in difficult weather conditions on Sunday.
It is possible that the striker may have picked up a minor hamstring muscle strain during the busy festive period, and taping was being used to try and prevent a serious muscle strain from occurring. If van Persie feels even the slightest hint of an injury, Rob Swire and the United medical team will no doubt be trying everything possible to ensure van Persie stays fit for the title run-in and coming European campaign. Even if it means wrapping the Dutchman in blue tape.
Robin van Persie’s injury record whilst at Arsenal:
Groin Strain – – 2012 February 29th
Ankle/Foot Injury – – 2011 August 7th
Knee Injury – – 2011 February 28th
Hamstring Injury – – 2011 February 22nd
Flu – – 2011 February 8th
Ankle/Foot Injury – – 2010 August 28th
Ankle/Foot Injury – – 2010 June 1st
Sprained Ankle – – 2009 November 14th
Knee Injury – – 2009 September 13th
Groin Strain – – 2009 April 18th
Groin Strain – – 2009 March 30th
Hamstring Injury – – 2008 October 6th
Ankle/Foot Injury – – 2008 August 31st
Thigh Muscle Strain – – 2008 May 2nd
Thigh Muscle Strain – – 2008 April 4th
Thigh Muscle Strain – – 2008 January 11th
Thigh Muscle Strain – – 2007 December 24th
Knee Injury – – 2007 October 18th
Metatarsal Fracture – – 2007 January 22nd
Ankle/Foot Injury – – 2006 November 19th
Hip/Thigh Injury – – 2006 September 14th
Ankle/Foot Injury – – 2006 February 10th
Ankle/Foot Injury – – 2005 December 22nd
Knee Injury – – 2005 October 17th
Ankle/Foot Injury – – 2005 February 5th
Sprained Ankle – – 2004 November 26th
Sprained Ankle – – 2004 August 27th
(physioroom.com)
* Williams S, Whatman C, Hulme P, Sheerin K. Kinesio Taping in Treatment and Prevention of Sports Injuries: A Meta-Analysis of the Evidence for its Effectiveness. Sports Medicine. 2012; 42(2): 153 – 164During a federal election, we get an incredible number of polls (including riding ones ). Not as much as in the States, but significantly more than for provincial elections. With this comes the caveat that we'll see variations. It's normal, even with sample size of over 1000. If anything, it's when every pollster is showing the same numbers that it becomes suspicious.
With that said, I often read incorrect analysis of these polls, the variations and the differences. So here are some points.
1. The margins of error provided by the pollsters are pretty much useless
Bold statement I know, but let me explain. First of all, pollsters report margins of error as one number (like plus or minus 3% 19 times out of 20). But this is the margin for a party with level of support at 50%. Unless you are the Liberals in Atlantic or the Conservatives in Alberta, you are most likely a lot lower than that. And the lower you are, the smaller the margins of error. So for the Green Party for instance (a party at 5%), with sample size 1000, the MoE are 1.35%, not 3.1 as for a party at 50%.
This is a major difference! Election Canada has relatively strict guidelines on how to report polls, but somehow nothing about this.
Moreover, most of the time, what you want to know is if the lead of one party is statistically significant. For instance, let's take the most recent Nanos that puts the Liberals at 32.5% and the CPC at 31.5%. You want to know if the 1 point difference is significant. Which is a fancy way of saying that you want to make sure it wasn't due to luck/bad luck in the sampling process.
Most people would do "twice the margins of error". But this is wrong. Beyond the fact, as we just showed, that the actual MoEs are different, even the correct ones are not applicable to a difference. The twice the margin is only valid if there are only two parties.
The real calculations are more complicated. You can use my calculator for that. But it's often quite a lot less than twice the margins. By the way, no, the 1 point lead is not significant. Actually no Nanos poll has shown any statistically significant lead recently. You'd need one party with a lead of at least 4.4 points for this.
In the same way, if you want to compare the same party over two different polls, it's not twice the margin of error. You need to do different calculations. There as well, my calculator can do it for you.
As you see, the margins provided by the pollsters are pretty much not applicable to anything you want to know.
2. "within the margin of error" and statistically significant don't mean what you most likely think.
I often read that if it's within the margin of error, then we can't say anything. It's a tie and anything could happen. It's not that simple. Let's take the Nanos poll of September 24th. The Liberals were at 32.3% and the Tories at 28.9%. Not significant at 95% (or 19 times out of 20) since you'd need a difference of around 4.4 points for this to be significant. Still, it doesn't mean the two parties are tied or that the Conservatives are just as likely to finish ahead of the LPC than the opposite.
Remember we set the threshold of 95% pretty arbitrarily. What this means is that we only want to keep a 5% chance of finding something significant when it's in fact not. But we could have chosen 99% or 90%. In the Nanos example, the lead would be significant at 80%.
Being "within the margin of error" simply means that if the two parties were tied for real and you were to sample a 100 times, there would be more than 5% chances to get the results Nanos did. Still, it doesn't mean the Liberals were just as likely to be polled that high as the Conservatives were. It just means that the chance/risk is too big for us to make a conclusion (which would, anyway, still have a 5% chance of being wrong).
The other way to look at it, and this is more a Bayesian approach, is to see that the chances of finishing first (in votes) of the Liberals are much higher than the Conservatives (based on only this poll of course). Specifically, with sample size 1200, there is a 93% chance the Liberals would get more votes (I ran 10000 simulations with sample sizes 1200 and look at how many times the Liberals were first).
So, don't see a non-significant lead as meaning it's just as likely to be a tie or the other party being ahead. It just means that it doesn't meet the arbitrary requirement we fixed ourselves. Plus, a collection of individual polls showing insignificant leads can actually give us an overall good picture of the race.
3. All polling firm make mistakes and have misses
I often read people saying "oh well it's Forum, their polls are a joke". The truth is that Forum has done relatively well in the last couple of years. Sure they were wrong in Alberta, but less than other firms. And, well, there was the by-election in Brandon-Souris
But if you look at the elections since 2011, you see that some firms sometimes do really well and sometimes really bad. In Quebec in 2014, Forum was the best while Leger has a bad night. But earlier this year in Alberta, Leger was clearly the best. As for Ontario, Angus-Reid, Ekos and Abacus did well but only if we took their non Likely Voters numbers.
Notice that each pollster misses at least one party (i.e: doesn't have this party within the margins of error). Quite often, they only get half of them! Averaging is really the way to go. Putting too much confidence on one pollster is absurd.
Tony Nickonchuk that follows me on Twitter did the analysis thoroughly for every election since 2011 and he gladly provided his work. The table below shows the the various pollsters, how many elections they polled and the percentage of parties they got within the margins of error. Note however that he used the margins provided by the pollsters. So the percentages here are overestimating the actual performance.
Elections % of Parties Within MOE Abacus Data 4 82.50% Angus Reid 6 75.00% EKOS 7 53% Forum 7 64% Ipsos 6 68.33% Leger 5 72.00% Nanos 2 100%
So sure Nanos is doing great but there is a catch: they almost never poll.They only covered Ontario 2011 and the federal election in 2011. So Nanos is good when they poll. But the 100% success rate is a little bit misleading. In particular they got lucky enough not to poll BC 2013 or Alberta 2012.
Otherwise, as you can see, it's quite hit and miss. Being super accurate shouldn't always be expected. And actually, nailing an election is also a question of luck. But having the parties within the margins of error is less dependent on luck. After all, there is only a 5% theoretical chance that you get a sample so skewed your results are so off. Yet it seems to happen a lot more often than we think. It's probably because the margins of error don't correctly represent all the uncertainty that exist (people can lie, change their mind, etc).
Finally, polls with bigger sample sizes should be more accurate, but empirically it doesn't seem to be really the case. And to go back to this notion that you sometimes do well, sometimes you do bad, look at Ekos. Terrible in 2011 and in some elections after, but got Ontario 2014 really close (again, if you forget their LV adjustments).Finally, polls with bigger sample sizes should be more accurate, but empirically it doesn't seem to be really the case. In this paper I co-wrote with David Coletto (from Abacus that the only significant determinant of poll accuracy were turnout and changes in turnout. Sample size or polling dates are not significant. It's most likely because margins of error measure the sampling volatility. But in practice, measuring voting intentions is way more uncertain. People can lie, change their mind, not vote, etc. Oh and by the way, IVR and online were not significant, which leads us to my last point.
4. Online polls work, period
If there is one thing I can't endure, it's the hate for online polling. Yes their samples are not purely random and yes technically they shouldn't report the same margins of error. But the fact is that it works. Using the same data as above, Tony Nickonchuk found that online polls beat IVR (automatic phone calls) by having 74% of parties within the MoE and only 57% for IVR.
Moreover, look at this blog post by Angus-Reid clearly showing they've been doing quite well. Recently, Innovative Research published one poll with two samples, one by phone and one online. results were very, very similar and definitely within the margins of error.
Also, in the States in 2012, online polls did remarkably well.
So let's stop the nonsense to criticize online samples. People need to realize that in 2015, phone samples are also anything but random. And with responses rates of 10% sometimes, there is just as much of a selection process (after all, you need to answer your phone and accept to answer the questions). So either hate all polls, or don't. But don't cherry pick the method you prefer.
Share thisApple has been having issues as of recently. First there was a security bug that allowed unauthorized access to the root account on macOS, then there was a problem with iOS devices constantly crashing on December 2, and before that there were two separate issues with autocorrect. Now there is possibly another issue involving the newly released Apple Pay Cash.
In iOS 11.2, if you delete the Apple Pay Cash app for iMessage, there doesn’t appear to be a way to reinstall it. Rebooting the phone, checking the App Store, and disabling and reenabling Apple Pay doesn’t cause the app to reappear. Ironically, the service seems to work just fine using Siri, only the iMessage app is missing.
Contacting Apple Support via Twitter resulted in a referral to this link to reach out to their Apple Pay Team. We did so and received a call from a representative named George who said he specialized in Garage Band and iMovie — not Apple Pay.
George was kind enough to do a screen share with us (yes, Apple Support can do a screen share on your iOS device) so he could see the issue for himself. According to George, because Apple Pay is part of the OS, the device would need to be wiped and restored in order to get the app back.
Hopefully Apple will release an update that either prevents users from deleting the iMessage app, or gives them the ability to reinstall it. For now, it would be a good idea not to delete the app unless you’re sure you really don’t want it.
How to Delete Apple Pay Cash
Open Messages, then open a conversation thread if one isn’t open already. Tap the App Store icon next to the text input field. On the bottom of your screen, scroll all the way to the right through the iMessage apps. Press More (…) at the end of the list. Tap Edit on the top right corner. Press the red minus symbol next to Apple Pay to delete it from favorites. Then turn off Apple Pay under “More Apps” and tap done to remove it from the list entirely.
Update Dec 11 2017: We’ve discovered a hidden way to recover and re-add Apple Pay Cash to iMessage.As we previously reported, sources have said an executive order from President Donald Trump that would allow for discrimination against the LGBTQ community could be coming this week.
Press Secretary Sean Spicer was asked by a reporter from the Washington Blade if a religious freedom, anti-LGBTQ executive order was in the works, and he declined to answer.
“I’m not getting ahead of the executive orders that we may or may not issue,” Spicer said. “There’s a lot of executive orders, a lot of things the president has talked about and will continue to fulfill, but we have nothing on that front now.”
A White House spokesperson has also responded to NBC News by email, seeming to deny the reports.
“As Sean said in the briefing today – we don’t want to get ahead of the EO/As [executive orders and actions] that are coming, but that isn’t the plan at this time,” White House Deputy Press Secretary Stephanie Grisham wrote.
“The rumors of an anti-LGBTQ executive action by President Trump are deeply troubling,” JoDee Winterhof, the Human Rights Campaign‘s Senior Vice President for Policy and Political Affairs, told LGBTQ Nation in an emailed statement. “We already know that he is willing to target and marginalize at-risk communities for his perceived political gain. As the President and his team plan their next steps, we want to make one thing clear: we won’t give one inch when it comes to defending equality, whether it is a full-on frontal assault or an attack under the guise of religion. Mike Pence should know that better than anyone given his track record in Indiana.”
Meanwhile, there is still concern over the First Amendment Defense Act (FADA), which would allow for discrimination against the LGBTQ community in much the same way this rumored executive order would, in areas such as private business, healthcare, employment, and housing.
Unlike an executive order, FADA would have to pass Congress. The offices of Sen. Mike Lee and Rep. Raul Labrador both confirmed to NBC News last week that they plan to introduce it.
Trump has previously signaled support for FADA, and his pick for Attorney General, Sen. Jeff Sessions, recently defended it.
This Story Filed UnderLast week, not one but two news stories served as reminders of just how problematic the thinking of some huge, powerful developers remains when it comes to putting women in their games. Why does this matter? Because these developers have the power, through their games, to shift the way people think about women in games (and media in general) in a positive direction. Instead, they choose to reinforce the status quo by continuing to relegate women to second-tier roles--when they even acknowledge women exist at all.
First, there's the ill-fated Aliens: Colonial Marines. A Reddit post, picked up and reported on by Kotaku, indicated that female marines, rather than being part of the game from the earliest stages of development, were a last-minute feature request. Let that sink in for a second. Female marines were a feature request, a special addition, a change made to the game at the last minute. This is difficult for me to wrap my head around. During Colonial Marines' development, people working on the game declared their abiding reverence for the film Aliens. It's hard for me to believe in this reverence, not just because the game ultimately failed to deliver an experience worthy of the Aliens name on any level, but because any reasonable understanding and appreciation of what made Aliens a great film acknowledges the important role of women in it. Women are not hard to come by in the film. In fact, they're pretty damn important. One might even say that they're the equals of their male counterparts. Crazy, I know! The notion of a vision of the Aliens universe without women in it seems like about as major a betrayal of the source material as I can imagine.
Any reasonable understanding and appreciation of what made Aliens a great film acknowledges the important role of women in it.
And yet, somehow, for years and years, development on Aliens: Colonial Marines progressed, apparently without anyone stopping to say, "Hey. You know how there are women in? Remember Vasquez, the tough-as-nails marine? Remember Ferro, the dropship pilot who says, 'We're in the pipe, five by five'? Remember how Sigourney Weaver was the star of all the Alien movies? Well, I just had this crazy thought. What if we put some women…in the game?!"
Women should not be an afterthought in an Aliens game. In fact, women should not be an afterthought in most games. Women are human beings; it's weird and wrong that people making a game about human beings would not start from scratch operating under the assumption that women, like men, will be part of their game. But they do; men are so often regarded as the "default" gender, the necessary gender, and women are secondary, optional, disposable. The notion that a whole gender can be left out when a big-name developer is creating an Aliens game isn't just a discouraging reality about that particular game; it speaks to the larger problem of games often shying away from opportunities to present women as strong individuals, on equal footing with men.
Demonstrating that this is not an isolated problem, Chris Perna, art director at Epic Games, told OXM last week, "If you look at what sells, it's tough to justify [a female Gears of War protagonist]." My feeling is that he's looking at this issue all wrong. Did players steer clear of 1994's Super Metroid or 2002's Metroid Prime because of their female protagonist? (One may as well ask, "Did moviegoers avoid 1986's Aliens because the film's hero was a woman?") What about the Portal games? What about Lara Croft, one of the most iconic video game characters of all time? And of course, who could forget Ms. Pac-Man?
Of course, in games like Super Metroid and Portal, you can ignore that the protagonists are women; the stories rarely call attention to this fact. (It's an approach I actually find refreshing in Portal; Chell is human, first and foremost. Like so many male protagonists of first-person games, she is essentially you, whoever you are.) Nonetheless, I think the success of these games supports the idea that if you make a great game that has broad appeal and is properly marketed, people will flock to it, regardless of whether the protagonist is a man or a woman. Perhaps that's just wishful thinking on my part, but in any case, I don't think this issue has been properly put to the test enough to support the idea that such games simply won't sell. In a Penny Arcade Report article last November, Ben Kuchera wrote, "There are so few games with exclusively female heroes, and those few games are given such a small marketing budget, do we even know how well a large-budget, marketed game with a female hero would perform?" I don't think we do. I like to think that all it would take to disprove the notion that a Gears of War game with a female protagonist wouldn't sell is, well, a great, aggressively marketed Gears of War game with a female protagonist.
Right now, the fear that big-budget games about women won't sell is self-fulfilling.
Unfortunately, when women are the stars of big action games, their femaleness is more often capitalized on purely for sex appeal than simply treated as one facet of their humanity. The Lara Croft of the classic Tomb Raider games was at least as much a pinup girl as a heroic figure, and in some Metroid games, your reward for completing the game quickly is a sexier glimpse of Samus at the end. There are numerous rich portrayals of women as people in games, from The Longest Journey's April Ryan to Cart Life's coffee cart proprietor Melanie, but such portrayals are all but nonexistent in action games, where you're more likely to see sex objects like Lollipop Chainsaw's Juliet than the sorts of non-objectified human women that inhabit the world of the film Aliens and that you might expect to find in the Gears of War universe.
And maybe this is where the anxiety many developers feel really comes from. Maybe they're comfortable putting women in their games as long as those women are either relegated to supporting characters (like Sam in Gears of War 3) or the creators can treat them as objects to be ogled and don't have to bother making them actual characters with the same degree of complexity and humanity that is afforded to their male counterparts. In a blog entry posted on Gamasutra last month, Ryan Creighton, a designer on Spellirium, confessed that his game is dominated by white male characters "for fear of someone calling me out for my non-white or non-male character being stereotypical, offensive, or - at the absolute worst - outright racist or sexist."
The world of writing and designing games is tremendously male-dominated; sadly, this absurd fear of creating complex, human women who star in games is not limited to Creighton, but is a widespread problem. If you are a man in this position, paralyzed with fear about creating female characters who fit into the human mold rather than the sex object mold, I have some information that may help you. Women have hopes, dreams, and fears. Women experience joy and sorrow and anger. Women can be strong. Women can do what needs to be done. In short, women are people. Watch films like Trucker and Red Road and A Separation if you need to see some portrayals of women as people to help you understand what that looks like. As long as you conceive of women as human beings first and foremost (which you should), it really shouldn't be much harder to write women than it is to write men, even if you're a man yourself.
Right now, the fear that big-budget games about women won't sell is self-fulfilling. Developers are afraid to make and properly market big games with female protagonists out of a fear that they don't sell, but if developers don't make and properly market those games, they don't have a chance to sell. It's time for industry leaders to abandon the antiquated notions and tired excuses they sometimes trot out when talk turns to female protagonists, stop being cowards about this, and take the bold step of treating women as (gasp!) just as human and essential as men.When the early sub-surface train tunnels were built, they were laboriously lined with bricks by the builders, but when the first deep tube tunnels were constructed, they had to switch to curved iron plates that were bolted into place.
More recently though, concrete has been the material of choice for lining tunnels – and when Crossrail starts tunnelling next month, the tunnel boring machine will leave a smooth grey concrete tube in its wake.
The concrete segments that will eventually make up the tunnel have to be manufactured somewhere, and being rather large and heavy, it helps if they are made as close as possible to the tunnel.
For Crossrail, that means a former railway depot in Old Oak Common near Paddington has been stripped clean of its old heritage and turned into a giant concrete production line.
The actual bit where cement, sand and other bits are mixed to create concrete is a deceptively small machine outside the main building. Although it is frankly, just a mixer, it is this machine that starts the entire process that will lead to the grey walls that will dominate the Crossrail tunnels for the next hundred years or so.
The concrete used in tunnel linings isn’t just concrete though – it includes metal strips that reinforce it and add flexibility, and polyfibres which help improve resistance to explosive spalling — which is the build-up of water vapour pressure in the concrete during a fire. It’s a similar mix as to was used in the HS1 tunnels, with a few slight modifications.
The exact mix was proven about a week ago when some tunnel linings were heat tested to ensure they worked as expected.
From the mixer though, conventional in–transit mixers (aka, cement lorries) transport the concrete mix the short distance to the huge metal shed that dominates the site – for in here are rows of giant moulds waiting to receive their deliveries.
There are 213 moulds in total – each metal mould being also powered to vibrate vigorously as the concrete is poured into them. After seeing the concrete in one freshly filed mould burbling away a bit as it settled, I was strongly reminded of the opening scenes to the James Bond movie, Diamonds are Forever where the villain is drowned in hot mud.
For a concrete forming factory, it is surprisingly colourful as the moulds are colour coded to designate the type of ring segment they will form.
There are 1.6 metre and 1 metre wide segments, each curving very slightly to the right or left. In straight tunnels they will alternate, so it wont be actually straight, but an almost imperceptible zig-zag effect.
Each ring is made from 7 main segments, then a single smaller keystone.
White moulds will create the curved corners that will lead to side passages.
One of the earlier mentioned delivery trucks will provide enough concrete for 2 and a bit moulds, and they tend to operate a continuous pouring process when at work.
Due to the way the moulds have to be designed, they form the ring segments upside down to how they are to be stored and delivered to the TBM later – so each one has to be flipped over by a giant flipping machine.
Rather amusingly, or poetically, depending on your point of view, when each segment is removed from the mould it is put on a truck, and there will rest on two old railway sleepers recovered from the previous site use.
Old railway technology helping a modern railway to be constructed.
Once flipped over, they are taken outside to the storage yard where each pile will make up one ring segment, and will be stacked in the order needed for large gantry cranes to be able to collect them and put them on trains for delivery down to the tunnel entrance at Royal Oak, just outside Paddington.
Each ring is formed with some codes from the concrete mould to indicate which mould, which position the segment is for and the project number. An ink stamp applied to the side indicates date of manufacture. There wont be any “masons marks” left by their builders though.
Incidentally, because they are right next to an operational railway, all the warning hazard lights flash blue, not red. For railways, red lights mean stop, and thus flashing red lights next to a railway can have unwelcome side effects.
They expect to be producing 20 rings per day when production is at full speed, which indeed started last week.
There will eventually be about 100 people working on site, with a number of locally hired apprentices and the whole site has to be vacated at the end of 2013. It will later become a depot for Crossrail trains.
With all the focus on the big shiny TBM next month, and the ongoing works at the train stations, it is sometimes easy to overlook the remote outposts of the construction process even though they are vital to the task.
When whizzing through a Crossrail tunnel in a few years time, that grey blur you can just about see through the train windows came from this factory.
A load more photos here.Will the Liberals live to rue their love-in with Larry Summers?
The former U.S. treasury secretary (under Bill Clinton) and top White House economic adviser (under Barack Obama) has become the go-to guru as Justin Trudeau's Liberals look to craft a crackerjack election platform that can undo the seeming Tory advantage on the economy.
Mr. Summers, who was the keynote speaker at the Liberal Party convention in 2014, was back in Canada this week to offer his theories about why economies in the West have been growing so slowly and what he thinks they need to do about it. He dubbed his talk: The Fierce Urgency of Fixing Economic Inequality Worldwide.
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There are good reasons for Liberals to be wary of Mr. Summers's downbeat diagnosis. The main one is that few of the symptoms of stagnation and inequality he describes seem very acute, or even present, in Canada.
According to the Harvard professor, the developed world has entered an era of "secular stagnation," in which post-recession economies will be unable to return to full employment without major fiscal expansion – in other words, without much more government spending. Slow population growth and aging work forces are permanently depressing demand. And today's leading technology businesses, such as Facebook and Apple, are far less capital-intensive than the former drivers of the economy, such as GM and U.S. Steel. The result, Mr. Summers says, is a "chronic excess of saving over investment" causing deflationary pressures everywhere.
This slow-go-it scenario is bad enough. But the benefits of even limited economic growth have been accruing almost entirely to the richest members of society, he asserts; middle-class incomes are stagnating and inequality is rising. This overstretched middle class is a further drag on demand.
Missing from the Summers analysis is that perhaps the biggest source of U.S. income inequality is the banking deregulation he oversaw as treasury secretary in 1999. Never mind, the solution to today's stagnation/inequality dilemma, he says, is for governments to spend massively on infrastructure, substituting public expenditures for weak private investment. Even (or especially) in Canada, where the oil bust has slashed capital spending, "this would not seem the moment to elevate fiscal discipline," Mr. Summers warns.
The Summers road map, which includes boosting minimum wages, raising corporate taxes and empowering labour unions, is laid out in the January report of the Commission on Inclusive Prosperity (CIP), which he co-chaired with Ed Balls, a Labour Party MP and Britain's equivalent of Opposition finance critic. Toronto Liberal MP Chrystia Freeland is also a member, boosting its credibility among the Liberal brain trust.
Whether Mr. Trudeau ever goes beyond slogans – who could be against "inclusive prosperity"? – remains to be seen. But Liberals should ask around before embracing the Summers solution.
Ben Bernanke, for one, doesn't buy Mr. Summers's secular stagnation thesis. One reason, the former head of the U.S. Federal Reserve Board says, is that "the U.S. economy looks to be on the way to full employment today." Even if it wasn't, more public spending might not be the solution because "the government's debt is already very high by historical standards and because public investment too will eventually exhibit diminishing returns."
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Still, what little Mr. Trudeau has revealed of the Liberal plan, smacks of the Summers school. Under Prime Minister Stephen Harper, "Canada's economy has stagnated and inequality has increased both among people and provinces," Mr. Trudeau warned last month. The Liberals would "put in place innovative means to fund large infrastructure projects." and "put money …in the pockets of the middle class."
Naturally, the Liberal leader did not elaborate on what he means by "innovative means." He did "applaud" the Quebec government's recent move to have the Caisse de dépôt et placement finance and own public transit projects. But choosing infrastructure projects is always a political exercise and the Caisse is prone to political meddling. Is that what Mr. Trudeau means?
The main problem with the Trudeau argument, however, is that inequality has been declining here every year under Mr. Harper. In 2006, the income share of the top 1 per cent peaked at 12.1 per cent. In 2012, it was down to 10.3 per cent. Interprovincial inequality rose as Alberta got richer. But with economic rebalancing now under way, regional inequality is also set to decline.
What's more, even the CIP report co-signed by Ms. Freeland acknowledges that "some countries, such as Australia and Canada, have experienced continued middle-income growth."
That makes Canada about the last place on Earth you'd want to test Larry Summers's theories.January 27, 2014 4 min read
Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.
Think the robot apocalypse might be near? Think again. Although Google made headlines for snapping up eight robotics companies in the second half of 2013, and again for dropping a reported $400 million on artificial-intelligence startup DeepMind last week, one entrepreneur with a deep background in robotics says |
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Our new microwaved world drowns us in a sea of non-native EMFs, we need to mitigate this EMF pollution using sunlight and full-spectrum light devices.
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Sugar's effect on your health
The average American consumes an astounding 2-3 pounds of sugar each week, which is not surprising considering that highly refined sugars in the forms of sucrose (table sugar), dextrose (corn sugar), and high-fructose corn syrup are being processed into so many foods such as bread, breakfast cereal, mayonnaise, peanut butter, ketchup, spaghetti sauce, and a plethora of microwave meals.
In the last 20 years, we have increased sugar consumption in the U.S. 26 pounds to 135 lbs. of sugar per person per year! Prior to the turn of this century (1887-1890), the average consumption was only 5 lbs. per person per year! Cardiovascular disease and cancer was virtually unknown in the early 1900's.
The "glycemic index" is a measure of how a given food affects blood-glucose levels, with each food being assigned a numbered rating. The lower the rating, the slower the absorption and digestion process, which provides a more gradual, healthier infusion of sugars into the bloodstream. On the other hand, a high rating means that blood-glucose levels are increased quickly, which stimulates the pancreas to secrete insulin to drop blood-sugar levels. These rapid fluctuations of blood-sugar levels are not healthy because of the stress they place on the body.
One of sugar's major drawbacks is that it raises the insulin level, which inhibits the release of growth hormones, which in turn depresses the immune system. This is not something you want to take place if you want to avoid disease.
An influx of sugar into the bloodstream upsets the body's blood-sugar balance, triggering the release of insulin, which the body uses to keep blood-sugar at a constant and safe level. Insulin also promotes the storage of fat, so that when you eat sweets high in sugar, you're making way for rapid weight gain and elevated triglyceride levels, both of which have been linked to cardiovascular disease. Complex carbohydrates tend to be absorbed more slowly, lessening the impact on blood-sugar levels.
Sugar depresses the immune system.
We have known this for decades. It was only in the 1970's that researchers found out that vitamin C was needed by white blood cells so that they could phagocytize viruses and bacteria. White blood cells require a 50 times higher concentration inside the cell as outside so they have to accumulate vitamin C.
There is something called a "phagocytic index" which tells you how rapidly a particular macrophage or lymphocyte can gobble up a virus, bacteria, or cancer cell. It was in the 1970's that Linus Pauling realized that white blood cells need a high dose of vitamin C and that is when he came up with his theory that you need high doses of vitamin C to combat the common cold.
We know that glucose and vitamin C have similar chemical structures, so what happens when the sugar levels go up? They compete for one another upon entering the cells. And the thing that mediates the entry of glucose into the cells is the same thing that mediates the entry of vitamin C into the cells. If there is more glucose around, there is going to be less vitamin C allowed into the cell. It doesn't take much: a blood sugar value of 120 reduces the phagocytic index by 75%. So when you eat sugar, think of your immune system slowing down to a crawl.
Here we are getting a little bit closer to the roots of disease. It doesn't matter what disease we are talking about, whether we are talking about a common cold or about cardiovascular disease, or cancer or osteoporosis, the root is always going to be at the cellular and molecular level, and more often than not insulin is going to have its hand in it, if not totally controlling it.
The health dangers which ingesting sugar on an habitual basis creates are certain. Simple sugars have been observed to aggravate asthma, move mood swings, provoke personality changes, muster mental illness, nourish nervous disorders, deliver diabetes, hurry heart disease, grow gallstones, hasten hypertension, and add arthritis.
Because refined dietary sugars lack minerals and vitamins, they must draw upon the body's micro-nutrient stores in order to be metabolized into the system. When these storehouses are depleted, metabolization of cholesterol and fatty acid is impeded, contributing to higher blood serum triglycerides, cholesterol, promoting obesity due to higher fatty acid storage around organs and in sub-cutaneous tissue folds.
Because sugar is devoid of minerals, vitamins, fiber, and has such a deteriorating effect on the endocrine system, major researchers and major health organizations (American Dietetic Association and American Diabetic Association) agree that sugar consumption in America is one of the 3 major causes of degenerative disease.
Honey is a simple sugar
There are 4 classes of simple sugars which are regarded by most nutritionists as "harmful" to optimal health when prolonged consumption in amounts above 15% of the carbohydrate calories are ingested: Sucrose, fructose, honey, and malts.
Some of you may be surprised to find honey here. Although honey is a natural sweetener, it is considered a refined sugar because 96% of dry matter are simple sugars: fructose, glucose and sucrose. It is little wonder that the honey bear is the only animal found in nature with a problem with tooth-decay (honey decays teeth faster than table sugar). Honey has the highest calorie content of all sugars with 65 calories/tablespoon, compared to the 48 calories/tablespoon found in table sugar. The increased calories are bound to cause increased blood serum fatty acids, as well as weight gain, on top of the risk of more cavities.
Pesticides used on farm crops and residential flowers have been found in commercial honey. Honey can be fatal to an infant whose immature digestive tracts are unable to deal effectively with Botulinum Spore growth. What nutrients or enzymes raw honey does contain are destroyed by manufacturers who heat it in order to give it a clear appearance to enhance sales. If you are going to consume honey, make sure it is raw, unheated honey. Good to use in special cures, but not as an every day food. It is not much better than white or brown sugar.
Here is a list of ways sugar can affect your health:
Source: www.nancyappleton.com
Sugar and cancer
Of the over 4 million cancer patients being treated in the U.S. today, almost none are offered any scientifically guided nutrition therapy other than being told to "just eat good foods." Many cancer patients would have a major improvement in their conditions if they controlled the supply of cancer's preferred fuel: GLUCOSE. By slowing the cancer's growth, patients make it possible for their immune systems to catch up to the disease. Controlling one's blood-glucose levels through diet, exercise, supplements, meditation and prescription drugs - when necessary - can be one of the most crucial components to a cancer treatment program. The saying "Sugar feeds cancer" is simple. The explanation is a little more involved.
German Otto Warburg, Ph.D., the 1931 Nobel laureate in medicine, first discovered that cancer cells have a fundamentally different energy metabolism compared to healthy cells.
The gist of his Nobel thesis was this: malignant tumors frequently exhibit an increase in "anaerobic glycolysis" - a process whereby glucose is used by cancer cells as a fuel with lactic acid as an anaerobic by-product - compared to normal tissues.(1)
The large amount of lactic acid produced by this fermentation of glucose from the cancer cells is then transported to the liver. This conversion of glucose to lactate creates a lower, more acidic PH in cancerous tissues as well as overall physical fatigue from lactic acid build-up.(2,3) Therefore, larger tumors tend to exhibit a more acidic PH.(4)
Hence, cancer therapies should attempt to regulate blood-glucose levels through diet, supplements, exercise, medication when necessary, gradual weight loss and stress reduction. Since cancer cells derive most of their energy from anaerobic glycolysis, the goal is not to eliminate sugars or carbohydrates entirely from the diet but rather to control blood-glucose within a narrow range to help starve the cancer cells and boost immune function.
What is your healing topic of interest?
Buy my wristband/intranasal full spectrum light device. Made by hand by myself.
(1) Warburg O. On the origin of cancer cells. Science 1956 Feb;123:309-14.
(2) Volk T, et al. pH in human tumor xenografts: effect of intravenous administration of glucose. Br J Cancer 1993 Sep;68(3):492-500.
(3) Digirolamo M. Diet and cancer: markers, prevention and treatment. New York: Plenum Press; 1994. p 203.
(4). Leeper DB, et al. Effect of i.v. glucose versus combined i.v. plus oral glucose on human tumor extracellular pH for potential sensitization to thermoradiotherapy. Int J Hyperthermia 1998 May-Jun;14(3):257-69.
Disclaimer: Throughout this website, statements are made pertaining to the properties and/or functions of food and/or nutritional products. These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration and these materials and products are not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease.Last year, Antony Williams finally brought his classic Headhunter alias back to life with a two-tracker for our Trusik Recordings imprint, which showcased a sound that was informed by his works as Addison Groove, but marked a return to cherished dubstep patterns. With this new single, for which he also revived his own Transistor label, Headhunter follows the same tracks while pushing things further. “Atijo” and “Inà” are two 136 BPM rollers that display Headhunter’s interest in less conventional rhythmic templates and detailed track construction.
The first few seconds of opener “Atijo” should be enough to convince most listeners: rolling drums slowly creep their way into the mix, enhanced by undefinable stabs and chanting that evidence Headhunter’s impressive sense of sound design. All these sounds echo against each other, leading to the deep main section, conducted by a rattling bassline over which rhythms and sounds flow in and out, breathing on their own yet still taking part in a greater whole. “Inà” is even more stunning, though it follows the same guidelines. Rhythms overlap, compete with each other, leaving space for a wobbling bassline to lead the way. The result is dazzling, as the track hits hard without resorting to any easy effect: much as its predecessor, “Inà” seems to follow its own route, with unexpected curves that only bring its sounds deeper.
These two tracks are sufficient to state once more how welcome Headhunter’s return to the scene is: no one else produces tracks like these. “Atijo” and “Inà” are both excellent and prove that ten years after his first release, Headhunter keeps on developing his own touch, helped by his unique sense of rhythm and detailed sounds: needless to say, we are eagerly waiting for his next releases.
Atijo
Inà
TRSR004 is out now and available from Unearthed Sounds, Redeye, White Peach, Rewind Forward, Bleep and Intense Records.(Please note strong language in paragraphs 3, 11)
By Jill Serjeant
(Reuters) - Clint Eastwood, the 86-year-old four-time Oscar winner, excoriated the current generation of Americans as weak and overly sensitive while backing Donald Trump even though the Republican presidential hopeful has “said a lot of dumb things.”
Eastwood, a prominent celebrity supporter of the Republican Party who appeared at its 2012 U.S. presidential nominating convention, offered a harsh assessment of Americans in an interview with Esquire magazine published on Wednesday.
“He’s onto something because secretly everybody’s getting tired of political correctness, kissing up,” the acclaimed actor and director said of Trump. “That’s the kiss-ass generation we’re in right now. We’re really in a pussy generation. Everybody’s walking on eggshells.”
“We see people accusing people of being racist and all kinds of stuff. When I grew up, those things weren’t called racist,” Eastwood added.
Given the choice between Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton and Trump in the Nov. 8 election, the celebrated star of “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly” said, “That’s a tough one, isn’t it? I’d have to go for Trump... you know, ‘cause she’s declared that she’s gonna follow in Obama’s footsteps.”
In one of the most unusual speeches at a major U.S. party convention, Eastwood four years ago addressed an empty chair used to symbolically represent President Barack Obama on stage at the Republican convention in Tampa, Florida, in a rambling denunciation of Obama.
Asked by Esquire what troubled him most, Eastwood referred to his chair speech.
“What troubles me... I guess when I did that silly thing at the Republican convention, talking to the chair,” Eastwood said.
In the interview, Eastwood made reference to the uproar in May that followed Trump’s comments accusing the judge overseeing a fraud lawsuit involving Trump University real-estate seminars of being biased against him because of Trump’s pledge to build a wall along the U.S.-Mexican border to block illegal immigrants. U.S. District Judge Gonzalo Curiel is an American of Mexican descent.
Eastwood told Esquire that Trump was portrayed as “a racist now because he’s talked about this judge.”
“And yeah, it’s a dumb thing to say. I mean, to predicate your opinion on the fact that the guy was born to Mexican parents or something,” Eastwood said. “He’s said a lot of dumb things. So have all of them. Both sides. But everybody - the press and everybody’s going, ‘Oh, well, that’s racist,’ and they’re making a big hoodoo out of it. Just fucking get over it. It’s a sad time in history.”
Slideshow (3 Images)
There were more than 100 tweets per minute about Eastwood on Twitter by Thursday afternoon. More than half of the tweets mentioning the Hollywood star were of negative sentiment, according to social media analytics firm Zoomph.
“Clint Eastwood was born in 1930. Let’s start a list of things that weren’t considered racist when he was growing up,” tweeted Sarah McBride, the national press secretary of the Human Rights Campaign gay rights group.
Others praised Eastwood, who rose to fame playing surly cowboys and cops. “Thank you Clint Eastwood. You’ve always been a personal hero. You said what needed to be said,” tweeted a person named Ruari.Jon Super/Associated Press
One year ago, David Moyes broke his silverware duck as Manchester United comfortably defeated Wigan Athletic 2-0 at Wembley to claim the Community Shield.
In the north London sunlight, the future looked bright for the new Old Trafford manager after his ascension to the hot seat following Sir Alex Ferguson's retirement.
Two goals from Robin van Persie ensured the Premier League champions would see off the FA Cup winners in the traditional season curtain-raiser.
Jon Super/Associated Press
The former Everton boss was celebrating a trophy, albeit a minor one, after just one official match in charge of United. United captain Nemanja Vidic even shared the duty of lifting the Shield with his new manager.
Often described as a barometer for how the reigning champions are looking ahead of the new season, last year's Community Shield, ultimately, taught us nothing.
It might be a trophy on Moyes' curriculum vitae, but it meant nothing as the wheels soon fell off the wagon in his first season in charge.
In the Old Trafford line-up on Aug. 11, 2013, Tom Cleverley looked a lively presence in midfield, while winger Wilfried Zaha displayed promise on his first-team debut.
Both would soon see their United careers flailing after a hefty defeat in the Manchester derby in September precipitated a woeful campaign under Moyes.
Midfielder Cleverley became a target for the boo-boys in the stands, while Cardiff City beckoned for the former Crystal Palace winger, who appeared not to fit Moyes' template.
Jamie McDonald/Getty Images
The long absence of Van Persie from the team during Moyes' first season also altered the shape and form of the side that beat Wigan.
The problem with the Community Shield is that it no longer represents a relevance in the football calendar, and its presence beneath headlines on the Champions League play-off round draw underlines just how far it has fallen in terms of importance.
The season curtain-raiser was once a proud symbol for English football—the sole match of the weekend before the league began—but now resides somewhere along the lines of the Texaco Cup and the Sherpa Van Trophy. It doesn't really matter.
It is merely the poppadom ahead of the chicken vindaloo—an irrelevance. The game even takes place on the same weekend that the Football League opens its doors, with the majority of fans eyeing results elsewhere long before Arsenal and Manchester City shake hands at Wembley.
Gone are the days when Kevin Keegan and Billy Bremner slugged it out on the pitch for Liverpool and Leeds United respectively before seeing a red card each in 1974.
Arguably, only John Arne Riise's goal for Liverpool against Chelsea in 2006 represents a memorable moment over the past 20 years.
Manchester City manager Manuel Pellegrini has even denied the world the one possible moment of interest—the debut of Frank Lampard—with the news that he will not play against Arsenal on Sunday.
The Football Association, understandably, is keen to maintain the values and traditions of football, and the history of a 106-year-old match will always add to the keen sense of history.
However, times change and the FA must look at revamping the opening match of the season. Moving it to other venues every season is one such idea, although the governing body would be eager to keep the match at Wembley as it recoups the outlay on the stadium rebuild.
Ben Hoskins/Getty Images
Villa Park proved to be an excellent venue for the Community Shield in 2012 as Wembley was being used for the Olympic football tournament.
Perhaps a Premier League XI against a major European or world team would bring in greater interest? What self-respecting football fan would not be interested in seeing how the cream of the top flight handle a top-class team from across the globe?
Maybe even a Foreign XI from the English top flight could make up the opposition? It would at least allow for discussion on who should play.
The Community Shield is past its sell-by date, and it teaches us nothing about the forthcoming season. But don't tell David Moyes that.Neuromodulation therapeutics—as repeated Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (rTMS) and neurofeedback—are valuable tools for psychiatry. Nevertheless, they currently face some limitations: rTMS has confounding effects on neural activation patterns, and neurofeedback fails to change neural dynamics in some cases. Here we propose how coupling rTMS and neurofeedback can tackle both issues by adapting neural activations during rTMS and actively guiding individuals during neurofeedback. An algorithmic challenge then consists in designing the proper recording, processing, feedback, and control of unwanted effects. But this new neuromodulation technique also poses an ethical challenge: ensuring treatment occurs within a biopsychosocial model of medicine, while considering both the interaction between the patients and the psychiatrist, and the maintenance of individuals' autonomy. Our solution is the concept of Cyborg psychiatry, which embodies the technique and includes a self-engaged interaction between patients and the neuromodulation device.
Non-Invasive Electrophysiological Interventions in Psychiatry
A new therapeutic approach in psychiatry is to modulate neural networks of the brain in order to induce neural plasticity (Peled, 2005; Linden, 2006; Schneider et al., 2009; Thut and Pascual-Leone, 2010). However, traditional treatments for mental disorders such as pharmacology and psychotherapy give little consideration to the neural network dynamics (Mackey and Milton, 1987). Psychiatric drugs could have long-term neuroplastic effects but are difficult to adapt to each patient (Fond et al., 2012). Psychotherapies, in particular Cognitive Behavior Therapy (CBT), have an adaptive and interactive effect on the brain but it remains quite indirect (Goldapple et al., 2004). Two non-invasive electrophysiological interventions, however, are proving promising in brain therapeutics for mental disorders:
Repeated TMS (rTMS) and NF are valuable therapeutics in the field of psychiatry (Yucha and Montgomery, 2008; Coben and Evans, 2011), but with rTMS we are confronted with the confounding effects of brain-mind states and, with NF, difficulties to change neural dynamics could be a potential problem. In the current proposal our aim is twofold: (i) to explain how rTMS and NF coupling may offer a solution to the two aforementioned problems, and (ii) to analyze how these neuromodulation techniques may be integrated into an individual's brain dynamics and conception of him or herself as an autonomous agent (Glannon, 2013). In effect, we argue that the coupling of rTMS and NF can pave the way for a direct, adaptive, and interactive brain therapy in which patients can be self-engaged.
rTMS and the Effects of Brain-Mind States
Repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) comprises a non-invasive and painless way to induce magnetic flux activation (high frequency) or inhibition (low frequency; Lisanby et al., 2002). Efficient in the treatment of psychiatric disorders, it has proved particularly robust for the treatment of major depressive episode (MDE), and results of its use in schizophrenia are encouraging (Lisanby et al., 2002; Coben and Evans, 2011). rTMS modifies neuronal activity in the selected superficial brain structure, but also modulates neural network activity (Lisanby et al., 2002; Huerta and Volpe, 2009). Thus, basic research carried out on TMS has led to the concept of “state dependency TMS” (Silvanto and Pascual-Leone, 2008). This concept suggests that the activation states of the neural circuits both before and during the stimulation influence the pulse effect. Indeed, TMS effect must be seen, not simply as the result of an applied stimulus, but as the result of the interaction between the applied stimulus and the level of brain activity (Silvanto and Pascual-Leone, 2008). Thus, the effects of rTMS are dependent on the brain-mind states of the stimulated subject (Bonnard et al., 2003). Therefore, current high variability of therapeutic effects of rTMS in mental disorders may be due in part to its partial account of individuals' neurodynamics and its effects on distant neural sites, even with localized stimulations (Vedeniapin et al., 2010).
Basic research suggests that rTMS efficiency could be increased in psychiatric disorders by triggering patients' brain activities during stimulation (Micoulaud-Franchi et al., 2013). Thus “interactive rTMS protocols” have been proposed (Micoulaud-Franchi et al., 2013). In NeuroAnalysis 2008 (Peled) said: “a future potential ‘brain pacemaker’ would probably involve a multiple-coil TMS device coupled with an EEG-dependent feedback mechanism, similar to a cardiac pacemaker set to act according to the ECG arrhythmias” (Peled, 2008). Thus, a “brain pacemaker,” commonly referred to as “Brain-State-Dependent Stimulation” (BSDS; Walter et al., 2012), would comprise an adaptive TMS coupled to the ongoing brain activity; the stimulation would vary in time, intensity, frequency, and topography according to an on-line EEG feedback. EEG coupled TMS is “a technique that has come of age” (Fitzgerald, 2010) and offers new possibilities for the treatments of mental disorders (Thut and Pascual-Leone, 2010; Miniussi and Vallar, 2011). Price et al. show the first encouraging results of the use of this kind of adaptive/contingent rTMS in the treatment of MDE (Price et al., 2010).
Neurofeedback and the Difficulties to Change Neural Dynamics
NF is a non-invasive technique that enables an individual to learn the cognitive strategies required to change neurophysiological activity (i.e., EEG), for the purposes of improving health and performance (Yucha and Montgomery, 2008). The originality of NF is that it gives patients a more active role in there own health care (Yucha and Montgomery, 2008) and comprises a holistic conception in which cognitive and brain activities are modified together (Rémond, 1997; Cherici and Barbara, 2007; Coben and Evans, 2011). For this reason, NF is also referred to as “psychoneurotherapy” (Paquette et al., 2009), “brain psychotherapy” (Micoulaud-Franchi and Vion-Dury, 2011) or “neuroimagery therapy” (deCharms, 2008). Indeed, NF facilitates an on-line self-regulation of brain activity and as such may be considered as an adaptive and interactive brain therapy (Micoulaud-Franchi et al., 2012).
However, for certain subjects, modifying their neural dynamics through NF can prove very difficult. In a NF study aimed at investigating to what extent the regulation of excitability in cortical networks is impaired in epileptic patients, it was found that performance on NF was initially below healthy subjects and that “not every patient seemed to be able to achieve this control” (Rockstroh et al., 1993). This difficulty is also found in the field of Brain Computer Interface (BCI). BCI was developed, in particular, as assistive technology for patients with motor disabilities (Wang et al., 2010). BCI is commanded directly by brain activity feedback (EEG, MEG or fMRI activities measurements), with EEG activity constituting the most commonly used brain activity feedback. However, BCI performances show large variability across individuals, and for a non-negligible proportion of users (estimated at 15–30%), BCI control does not work (Vidaurre and Blankertz, 2010).
Many solutions have been proposed to optimize NF and BCI. Solutions based “on the participants” are closed to cognitive and behavioral therapeutics. The aims are to enhance the motivation of the participants, to help the participants to try different strategies, to explicit individual-specific control strategies and to apply the learned self-regulation skills in real-life situations (Kotchoubey et al., 2001). Solutions based “on the BCI loop,” were proposed to optimize BCI performance. We suggest that some of these solutions could be applied to optimize NF for treatment of mental illness. The first involves an algorithmic solution that aims to develop a machine-learning mechanism (Vidaurre and Blankertz, 2010). It is in line with the concept of co-adaptation in which the tool becomes functionally involved in the extraction and definition of the user's goals: both subject and the tool are learning (Sanchez et al., 2009). The second solution comprises a “hybrid BCI,” in which two BCIs are combined, for example: event-related (de)synchronization (ERD, ERS) of sensorimotor rhythms and steady-state visual evoked potentials (SSVEP; Pfurtscheller et al., 2010). The third solution comes from basic research in animals and invasive BCI. It uses closed-loop neural interface technology that combines neural ensemble decoding with simultaneous electrical microstimulation feedback (Marzullo et al., 2010; Mussa-Ivaldi et al., 2010). However, very few studies have used this solution to optimize BCI in humans (Walter et al., 2012). Birbaumer suggested: “The combination of these stimulation techniques (TMS, tDCS, neurochips) with BCIs is a largely unexplored field” (Birbaumer and Cohen, 2007), and, at the same time, research has yielded encouraging results showing that TMS may help participants to increase their brain EEG response performance in BCI (Kubler et al., 2002; Karim et al., 2004). This solution is, therefore, worthy of interest in the field of NF in psychiatry. Indeed, recurrent neuronal networks have been used to propose an interpretation of several mental dysfunctions (Pezard and Nandrino, 2001), which is evidence in itself that it is particularly difficult to modify one's brain activity when one has such mental disorders. Thus, rTMS could bring the necessary energy to break the recurrent neural network dynamics in order to help the patient explore new neural network dynamics and, by means of the NF device, change his/her EEG activity in the desired way to improve health and performance (Micoulaud-Franchi and Vion-Dury, 2011). tDCS may also enhance the effect of cognitive remediation techniques (Andrews et al., 2011) and could, thus, have the same positive effect on NF (Miniussi and Vallar, 2011).
Coupling Non-Invasive Electrophysiological Interventions
The Challenge of Closing the Loop
To summarize, firstly TMS may be improved by taking into account brain activity (particularly EEG activity) to stimulate the brain (Price et al., 2010) and, secondly, NF could be improved by combining it with TMS or tDCS brain stimulation (Kubler et al., 2002). In addition, further research needs to be undertaken in this area to replicate the preliminary results in mental disorders (Price et al., 2010). However, here we propose to investigate the challenge of neuromodulation techniques that couple these two aforementioned improvements. We previously proposed the concept of “Neurofeedback rTMS” (Micoulaud-Franchi and Vion-Dury, 2011): in which the rTMS efficacy is enhanced by the background EEG, which is self-regulated by subjects through NF, and, at the same time, the subject is helped by the rTMS to create this background EEG. TMS/tDCS-NF coupling can, therefore, close the loop completely in order to optimize simultaneously the non-invasive neurostimulation techniques and the NF, See Figure 1. TMS/tDCS-NF coupling is, however, confronted by two challenges: the first is algorithmic, the second is ethic.
FIGURE 1
Figure 1. Combination of Brain-State-Dependent Stimulation (green-red loop) and Neurofeedback rTMS (blue-red loop) as an example of Cyborg psychiatry device, adapted from Thut and Pascual-Leone (2010).
The algorithmic challenge involves determining the kind of brain activity that will be recorded and the kind of feedback that will be made, how all these data will be treated in real time and how to control unwanted effects. The first issue is related to the use of a new diagnostic system correlated to the neural network disturbance in mental disorders. The “Clinical Brain Profiling” advanced by Peled is an interesting approach to these novel therapeutic hypotheses based on TMS/tDCS-NF coupling (Peled, 2006, 2009). Peled proposed a new etiology-oriented diagnostic system for psychiatry based on neural network dynamics complexity and neural plasticity (Peled, 2004). It provides an innovative heuristic for recording brain activity and will soon integrate data from TMS-EEG research (Ilmoniemi et al., 1997; Thut and Pascual-Leone, 2010). The second issue related to such approaches is how to better account for non-linear dynamics in neuroscience. This is already being tackled at the theoretical levels, but relies, also, on the development of new methods. One such novel method is the “dynamic clamp” advanced by Prinz et al. (2004), which consists in dynamically interfacing living cells with their simulated counterpart. This technique creates a “hybrid network” incorporating the inherent nonlinearities of most physiological processes (Prinz et al., 2004). Such a concept has been already scaled from the neural to the behavioral scale with the so-called “Virtual Partner Interaction” (VPI; Kelso et al., 2009). VPI could constitute a paradigmatic model for the therapeutic approach described in the current paper (Werry et al., 2001). The last algorithmic issue is related to some problems appearing in closed loop systems (Corke and Good, 1996). Indeed, a closed loop feedback system based on NF and rTMS/tDCS could lead to unforeseeable “resonance” effects in the brain that should be investigated and be taken into account.
The ethic challenge is in line with the general aim of psychiatry, which tries to enable patients to lead a more self-determined life. Indeed, psychiatry increasingly uses neuromodulation techniques in the treatment of mental disorders. For example, the Mind Machine Project (MMP) initiated in 2009 by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is “looking for advanced applications of these technologies, such as “non-chemical based” solutions for psychiatric treatments and brain prostheses.” In addition the concept of neurorehabilitation has been applied in the field of psychiatry (Bach-Y-Rita, 2003; Miniussi and Rossini, 2011; Miniussi and Vallar, 2011). Thus, the question is: how can we ensure that all these techniques restore or enhance a person's agency and autonomy? Related to this, we propose a first ethical issue based on the biopsychosocial model of medicine and a third person perspective (Glannon, 2013). This issue is related to the fact that these neuromodulation techniques depend on the interaction between the learner (subjects) and the trainer (practitioner/therapist), and are constructed as a process that occurs within a biopsychosocial context and social constraints (Glannon, 2013). We also put forward a second, more radical, ethical issue based on a neurophenomenological point of view and a first person perspective. Here we suggest that agency and autonomy depend on the capacity of all these techniques to be embodied by the patients. Such an approach is already present in closed loop technology for sensory substitution (Bach-Y-Rita, 2003; Bach-Y-Rita and Kercel, 2003). The ethical issue is ensured by the fact that the subject used the device as a part of his/her body. The device has to open up a world to the subject that will be appropriated by himself or herself. Similarly, TMS/tDCS-NF coupling could help patients to promote therapeutic neural plasticity using their own brain connectivity and without the direct intervention a third party (Linden, 2006; Schneider et al., 2009). Of course, psychiatrists should still help the patients, but the important point is that the device enables the subject to rediscover their own mind-brain world and from their own first person perspective. This ethical point of view leads us to the concept of Cyborg.
Back to the Cyborg Concept as an Heuristic for Cutting Across Mind, Brain and Devices
“Cyborg” is a term coined in 1960s, in the context of the challenges presented by space flight and travel, with the famous article entitled “Cyborgs and Space,” by Kline, a psychiatrist at Rockland State Hospital, and Clynes, a scientist at the Dynamic Simulation Lab (Clynes and Kline, 1960; Gray, 1995). “Cyborg” combined the words “cybernetic” and “organism.” The concept involves devices that enable an organism to live outside its habitat (in this case: Space): “The Cyborg deliberately incorporates exogenous components extending the self-regulatory control function of the organism in order to adapt it to new environments” (Clynes and Kline, 1960). Consequently, a Cyborg is a kind of extended embodiment, an organism that is, at the same time, natural and artificial, and, as such, questions the limits between organism, technology and external environment (Tomas, 1995).
In 1970, Clynes wrote, this time without Kline, a second Cyborg article entitled “Sentic space travel” (Clynes, 1995). This Sentic Cyborg involves devices that enable a human “to express his emotion in accordance with his nature” to enable them to carry out very long space-flights (Gray, 1995). Initially refused, Clynes' proposition is now of theoretical interest in light of the new possibilities of cognitivo-brain modulation using TMS/tDCS and NF. Kline and Clynes' original question, “What are some of the devices necessary for creating self-regulating man-machine systems (…) to unconsciously adapt it to new environments?” (Clynes and Kline, 1960), can now be rephrased as: What are the devices needed to create self-regulating brain-machine systems to be used by patients with mental disorders to promote new brain/mind dynamics? By extending the first Cyborg hypothesis of Kline and Clynes, the new direct, adaptive, and interactive brain therapies proposed in this paper could not only open the door to new ways of interacting with the outside (Space), but also create new possibilities of dealing with the inside (brain-mind).
As Clynes suggested in the conclusion of his Sentic Cyborg hypothesis: “Through understanding our unconscious heritage consciously, we may be able to teach our automatic systems to live in harmony with our old heritage, as well as with our new exploration of outer, and perforce, inner, space” (Clynes, 1995). The benefit of the cyborg hypothesis is that it leads the |
a society dominated by capital, which is to say that we live in a society dominated by chronic, socially enforced (artificial) scarcities. These scarcities result in chronic frustrations of certain desires. And when important natural desires are chronically frustrated, not just denied, but also often punished, we are soon forced to collaborate with this denial. In order to avoid the punishment that we will receive for trying to satisfy this need, we learn to suppress it as soon as it begins to intrude upon our awareness. We use some of the energy that would otherwise have been used to fulfill our desire to suppress it in order to satisfy our secondary desire to avoid punishment. Once this self-repression exists for any prolonged period, it becomes a habit, an unconscious habitual attitude of our character structure. Our awareness of the original situation of chronic frustration is repressed because it is too painful to maintain. We learn that our desire is ‘irrational,’ ‘bad,’ ‘unhealthy,’ etc. We internalize the logic of capital as character traits, and they become ‘natural’ for us and the original desires become ‘irrational’ desires. Even when there is no longer a threat of punishment for acting within the logic of the original desire, we continue to suppress it automatically. We have learned to cripple ourselves and like it.
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Throughout the first years of our lives we were forced not just to internalize a few aspects of capital, but to build up a structure of internalizations. As our capacity for coherent natural self-regulation was systematically broken down, a new system of self-regulation took its place, a coherent system, incorporating all the aspects of self-repression. We participated in capital’s ongoing project of colonization by colonizing ourselves, by continually working at the construction of a unitary character-structure (character armor), a unitary defense against all the drives, feelings, and desires which we learned were dangerous to express. In the place of our original transparent relations to our world, we created a structure of barriers to our self-expression which hides us from ourselves and others.
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The ramifications of character can be found in all aspects of our behavior because character is a unitary deformation of the entire structure of our existence. It produces a deterioration of our capacity to live freely and fully by destroying the structural basis of free life. Character is not a mental phenomenon. It is a structural phenomenon of our entire existence. It exists as: inhibitions, chronic muscular tensions, guilt, perceptual blocks, creative blocks, psychosomatic or psycho-genetic diseases (in many of the cases of ‘illnesses’ as diverse as chronic insomnia, arthritis, obsessive-compulsive neuroses, chronic headaches, chronic anxiety, etc.). It exists as: respect for authority, dogmatism, mysticism, sexism, communications blocks, insecurity, racism, fear of freedom, role-playing, belief in ‘God,’ etc., ad nauseum. In each individual these character traits take on a coherent structure which defines that person’s character.
Just as character is a limitation and deformation of the free human activity in general in the service of capital, so ideology is the limitation and deformation of thought in the service of capital. Ideology is always the acceptance of the logic of capital at some level. It is the form taken by alienation in the realm of thought.
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With ideologies, I justify my complicity with capital, I justify my self-repression (my submission, my guilt, my sacrifice, my suffering, my boredom, etc.-- in other words, my character). On the other hand, my character structure, by existing as fixed, conditioned behavior, naturally tends to express its existence in thought as fixed ideas which dominate me. Neither character nor ideology could exist without the other. They are both parts of one unitary phenomenon. All ideology is revealed as the impotence of my thought, and all character is revealed as the impotence of my activity.
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A particularly insidious form of ideology is the pervasive moralism which has always plagued the libertarian revolutionary movement. It destroys possibilities for transparent communication and coherent collective activity. To limit one’s behavior according to the proscriptions of a morality (to seek the ‘good’ or the ‘right’) is to repress one’s own will to satisfaction in favor of some ideal. Since we cannot possibly do anything else but seek our own satisfaction, alienation results, with one part of ourselves subduing the rest-- one more instance of character. Wherever morality exists, communication is replaced by manipulation. Instead of speaking to me, a moralist tries to manipulate me by speaking to my internalizations of capital, my character, hoping that his brand of ideology may give him a hold on my thought and behavior. ‘The projections of my subjectivity, nurtured by guilt, stick out of my head like so many handles offered to any manipulator, any ideologue, who wants to get a hold of me, and whose trade skill is the ability to perceive such handles’ (The Right to Be Greedy). The only really transparent, and thus revolutionary, communication is that which takes place when our selves and our desires are out in the open, when no morals, ideals, or constraints cloud the air. We will be amoralists, or we will be manipulators and manipulated. The only coherent organization is that in which we unite as individuals who are conscious of our desires, unwilling to give an inch to mystification and constraint, and unafraid to act freely in our own interests.Ohio's Sherrod Brown took the floor of the U.S. Senate last week to recall some history he considered pertinent, given current events involving public worker unions in Ohio and Wisconsin.
"I look back at history," he said, "and some of the worst governments we've ever had, you know one of the first things they ever did? They went after the trade unions. Hitler didn't want unions. Stalin didn't want unions. (Former Egyptian President Hosni) Mubarak didn't want independent unions. These autocrats in history don't want independent unions."
Brown hastened to say that he was not drawing an analogy.
"I'm not comparing what's happening to the workers in Madison or in Columbus to Hitler and Stalin," he said. "But I am saying that history teaches us that unions are a very positive force in society that creates a middle class, and it protects our freedom."
Recent history also teaches us that nuance and context are lost when someone drops the H-bomb. Mentioning Hitler in political discussion obscures any other point.
The Washington website Politico.com quickly posted a partial video of Brown's speech that carried the headline, "Sherrod Brown compares Republicans to Hitler."
Chris Bond, press secretary for the National Republican Senatorial Committee, released video of part of the speech, with the headline: "Sherrod Brown invokes Hitler in his latest political attack."
E-mailed and tweeted video links started making the rounds. Brown's office noted that some of the links and postings did not include the full context of his remarks, but that should not have come as a surprise.
Brown apologized the next day.
"I should not have mentioned the hostility of tyrants like Hitler to unions," he said. "I don't want my mistake to distract from the critical debate in Ohio, and I apologize for it."
But fact-checking is our business. Even accepting that Brown did not intend a comparison, PolitiFact Ohio decided to examine the accuracy of his history.
We thought it was important, in particular, because of postings by some bloggers and commenters claiming Hitler did not oppose unions -- that he wrote favorably about them in "Mein Kampf," that he proclaimed May Day a workers' holiday, and that he even started a union.
We looked at contemporary and historical accounts and a transcript of the Nuremberg Trials, and we consulted Kenneth F. Ledford, associate professor of history and law at Case Western Reserve University. He is a social historian of modern Germany and an authority on German legal and labor history.
Citations from "Mein Kampf" come from the chapter "The Problem of the Trade Unions" -- "which is really pretty incoherent," Ledford said.
"It is not an endorsement of trade unions but a call to subordinate the message of class solidarity to one of national solidarity" and "a call for the quiescence of labor to favor heavy industry," he said.
In saluting unions, as in naming the Nazis the National Socialist German Workers' Party, Hitler "was using words he knew had appeal. It was as if they had been focus-grouped. Those were hot-button words that had resonance in the revolutionary period after 1918.
"The reality is, the (Nazi) party could not make inroads into the organized, unionized, working-class electorate in Germany," Ledford said.
May Day was first celebrated as an international day of labor in New York in the 1880s. Hitler made it an official paid holiday, not just a negotiated day off, on May 1, 1933 -- and used it to rally for his regime and industrialization. William Shirer (The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich), who was there, called it "an elaborate piece of trickery."
The next day, on May 2, 1933, unions were dissolved, their assets were confiscated, their offices were occupied and their leaders were arrested. Hitler then outlawed strikes, abolished collective bargaining and established the German Labor Front, a corrupt party organization.
"It wasn't even a sham labor union," Ledford said.
In Russia, he noted, "Stalin didn't have to eliminate unions -- Lenin already had." And Stalin's first Five-Year Plan converted labor groups into oppressive mechanisms for increasing worker productivity.
Mubarak does not belong in the same category as Hitler and Stalin. But his government did routinely suppress worker protests by force. The government-run Egyptian Trade Union Federation was given a monopoly on labor organization in 1957 by the Trade Union Act, which prohibits union freedoms.
Brown’s statement about tyrants and unions may have been distracting and ill-advised given the current standoffs, but it also is historically accurate. We rate Brown’s statement as True.Getty Images
Bobby Carpenter is heading to New England.
Carpenter, a free agent linebacker who spent the 2011 season with the Lions, has signed with the Patriots.
In 2006, Cowboys coach Bill Parcells (who coached Bobby’s dad Rob Carpenter with the Giants) picked Carpenter in the first round of the NFL draft. But Carpenter never became a starter in Dallas and was traded to the Rams after four seasons.
Carpenter was released by the Rams at the end of training camp in 2010, then caught on briefly with the Dolphins, where Parcells was running the front office. After the Dolphins cut him the Lions picked him up. Last season he played in all 16 games in Detroit, starting three. He sparked the Lions’ comeback win over the Cowboys by intercepting his good friend Tony Romo and returning it 34 yards for a touchdown.There has been a great deal of speculation surrounding the Phillies in recent weeks and which veterans could be moved between now and the July 31st deadline. However, rival teams that have spoken with General Manager Ruben Amaro recently say that the club is talking about buying, not selling, tweets Buster Olney of ESPN.com.
Third baseman Michael Young and second baseman Chase Utley – both in their walk years – have popped up in trade rumors a great deal. Amaro has been vocal about his desire to see Utley remain in a Phillies uniform but the club is said to be quite open to moving Young. Carlos Ruiz, who can also hit the open market after this season, could bring back a solid return thanks to a thin catching market. Jonathan Papelbon and Cliff Lee would obviously net the club a strong return, but the perception has been that they'll hang on to the closer and the left-hander.
The Phillies are reportedly using their current ten-game homestand to gauge whether they will be buyers or sellers in July and they're 4-1 heading into tonight's game against the Nationals. Philadelphia currently sits in third place in the NL East, 7.5 games back of the division-leading Braves.Yesterday, White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer took the podium for the first time, delivering a very on-message speech from the new administration (i.e., he refused to take questions, slammed the Democrats, and harangued reporters for supposedly misrepresenting the size of the crowds at Trump’s inaugural events). But this brief briefing also served as a trial by fire for Spicer himself: Could he get through an entire five minute speech to the press without slipping in an attack on his arch-enemy Dippin’ Dots, The Ice Cream Of The Future?
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As social media detectives have quickly discovered, Spicer has been waging a quiet, one-sided Twitter feud with the flash-frozen spherical treat. It started in 2010, when Spicer—still a year out from taking up his previous post as communications director for the RNC—tweeted out “Dippin dots is NOT the ice cream of the future,” a blatantly incendiary claim that flew in the face of the company’s long-cherished slogan. It’s not clear what provoked Spicer’s attack—a bad trip to the zoo, maybe, or possibly Six Flags—but it was still sticking in his craw a year later, when he doubled down on the bold claim:
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It’s to Spicer’s credit, though, that he didn’t content himself with mere opinions on the matter of Dippin’ Dots V. The Future: A month later, he supplied evidence, linking to a Wall Street Journal article about the company’s financial woes. (The company filed for bankruptcy in 2011, although it’s not clear how much of that was due to Spicer’s tweets.) His foe apparently slain, Spicer laid down his sword, and got back to the much more important work of attacking President Barack Obama for every conceivable thing he ever possibly did.
And for a time, there was peace. But then Dippin’ Dots wandered, foolishly, back into Spicer’s crosshairs in 2015, by failing to ship enough vanilla-flavored ice cream to a Washington Nationals baseball game that he was at. Within moments, the old fires were raging again:
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(The Nationals do not seem to have responded to this tweet.)
Now, none of us—powerful press secretary or tub of tiny frozen ice cream balls alike—can know what the future holds. But we can still hope for a better one (and, maybe, a better ice cream), and also we can hope that a reporter will ask Sean Spicer about Dippin’ Dots at a White House press briefing at some point, because that would be very funny to us.Why we (with DID) are grateful for the tulpa community existing
FreyasSpirit Blocked Unblock Follow Following Apr 18, 2016
There is an excellent post which captures so much of why we are incredibly grateful for the existence of the tulpa community: http://lb-lee.tumblr.com/post/139089048939/our-life-without-non-did-multi
We started our plurality explorations in March 2014 when a friend was talking about being plural, we basically went “ooh, being plural sounds neat” and that friend told us that it was possible to induce plurality by creating a tulpa. That friend went on to introduce us to our first plural community (which was not a tulpa community) and read some resources on tulpa creation to see if they were worth pointing us at. They pointed us at some tulpa guides which we read a little of, then since reading is often a high spoons activity for us, we decided to just try and see what happened.
We had interacted with someone (discovered to be Athena over a year later) that January and decided the best way to do tulpa explorations was simply to interact with her more. It worked so well that we ended up not bothering to do more than a cursory read of tulpa guides. Two weeks into the process, Lucia (our primary front at the time) was able to interact with Lilith, another week in, Lilith communicated in a flood of emotions, another week later, Lilith communicated in English, and less than a week after that, Lilith fronted for the first time.
For the next 6 months, we honestly believed we had induced our plurality. We never actually spent much time in tulpa communities so never used the words host and tulpa, but we really believed we had created our plurality. Lucia started exploring our plurality with the understanding that anyone they “created” would be an equal and would have equal rights to the body. We did this with the understanding that our system would exist so that everyone in system could love and protect and care for each other. This was the basis upon which we “induced” our plurality. It has been a wonderful experience and everyone cooperates incredibly.
From this perspective, we were able to explore our plurality from a position of strength. We were able to discover several system members and to build communication and trust. We were able to learn from the other systems we were around and draw from their experiences. We were able to explore our innerworld and interact with each other and enjoy our time together. All this put us in a much better position to deal with our trauma when we discovered it towards the end of 2014. We had a good understanding of our system, were able to work together well, and also had a strong support network of other systems who were by our side to guide us through the process.
When we first discovered our plurality, we were not in a position where we could have dealt with our trauma. The simple existence of the tulpa community and the knowledge it gave that singlets could induce plurality were essential to us being able to explore our plurality separately from our trauma. Without that, it’s entirely possible the first we would have known about our plurality was when a therapist told us we had DID. This would have come at a time when we were highly symptomatic and doing badly, a position where we would have been least able to handle it. Instead, we were able to explore our plurality on our own terms with a whole community behind us guiding us along the way.
The idea that it is possible and even desirable in some cases to induce plurality is what allowed us to explore our plurality in this way. Even though we later realized we are a trauma induced system with DID, trying to, then believing we had induced plurality allowed us to explore our plurality from a supreme position of strength. For this, we are incredibly grateful for the existence of the tulpa community.Downing Street announces that former secretary of state for communities and local government will be made a knight bachelor
The former cabinet minister Eric Pickles is to be given a knighthood, Downing Street has announced.
The secretary of state for communities and local government in the previous parliament will be made a knight bachelor in recognition of his public service as an MP, and his time in the cabinet and local government, it emerged on Friday.
Pickles, 63, who was first elected to parliament in 1992, lost his frontbench role to Greg Clark during the reshuffle by the prime minister, David Cameron, on 11 May.
He has since been made an anti-corruption tsar and remains the Brentwood and Ongar MP. He was re-elected with 59% of the vote at the general election.
Pickles said his family were absolutely delighted at the news. He said: “I’m obviously very pleased with the honour and am looking forward to my day at the palace. When I left the cabinet, the prime minister asked if I would accept a knighthood and I indicated that I would, but it then has to go through a committee. I’m very pleased.”
Pickles served as the Conservative party chairman from 2009-10. Before entering parliament, he had a long career in local government. He was elected to Bradford council in 1979 and was its leader between 1988 and 1990.
He has since changed his Twitter name to Sir Eric Pickles and uploaded a photo of the letter he received from the prime minister. It said: “I wanted to write to express my heartfelt gratitude for the outstanding service you have given to our great party and, in particular, for the loyalty you have always given me – both as prime minister and, before that, as leader of the opposition.”
Eric Pickles posted a letter sent by the prime minister on Facebook. Photograph: Facebook
“You have been such a hardworking, dedicated and committed colleague over the past years – it has been a real joy to work with you and you have brought so much to our team. I really could not wish for a better ‘chum’ in parliament.”
Cameron applauded Pickles’ achievements in cabinet, including “bringing down the cost of local government, delivering cost-effectiveness to local residents while protecting services, fighting corruption at all levels, and combating extremism and radicalisation”. He said Pickles laid the ground for the Tories’ housing policies, such as right to buy, which is “helping more people on to the housing ladder with the security that home ownership brings”.
During his time as the communities minister, Pickles introduced the Localism Act 2011, which changed the powers of local government in England, and spearheaded local council funding cuts. He was also vocal about a range of issues including institutional abuse in local councils following the Rotherham child sexual exploitation scandal and the response of the authorities during the 2014 floods.An advertisement for an Israeli cable TV company that jokes about attacks on Iran's nuclear facilities has been pulled offline in the wake of criticism.
The ad, for Israel's HOT cable service, features members of the Israeli comedy series Asfur who sneak into Iran in drag, dressed as Muslim women – possibly in mock reference to the time former Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat escaped capture dressed as a Muslim woman. They arrive in Isfahan – the site of a uranium conversion facility in Iran that experienced a mysterious explosion last November.
As the comedians walk through the town of Isfahan – a nuclear facility visible behind them – one of them spreads sunscreen on his face. When his companions look askance at him, he replies, "What? Don't you know how much radiation there is here?"
The bungling travelers then encounter a bored Mossad agent at an outdoor cafe who tells them he's been in town for two months conducting surveillance.
The agent tells them he's been killing time watching on-demand episodes of Asfur on the device. "Nuclear reactor or no nuclear reactor, I'm not missing Asfur," he tells them as he shows them the free Samsung Galaxy tablet he and his wife received when they subscribed to HOT.
One of the comedians reaches toward the tablet and asks, "What's this application here?" as he presses the screen. A fireball explodes at the nuclear facility behind them. When his companions look at him in shock, he replies, "What? Just another mysterious explosion in Iran."
Iran has experienced a number of mysterious explosions at military and nuclear facilities in the last year, as well as public assassinations of several nuclear scientists who were killed by agents on motorcycles. Iran was also hit by a cyberattack involving the Stuxnet computer worm, which is believed to have sabotaged centrifuges at Iran's uranium-enrichment facility near the town of Natanz.
At the end of the ad, which HOT has pulled from its YouTube channel, one of the comedians slaps an insect that's landed on his neck. "Icks! Khomeini!" he says, using the slang term for a flying beetle that plagues Israel in the summer months.
A translated version of the ad is below, which includes explanations about some of the puns and references in the ad (such as one to popular Israeli-Persian singer Rita).I want to tell you a story about failure. America prides itself on its indomitable spirit, its optimism, its ingenuity, and all of that has a ring of truth to it. But for every winner, there is a loser. The winners get to write history, but the losers have to weather it. The winners are America’s hallmarks, but the losers are America’s backbone. I want to tell you a story about that backbone, personified by perhaps the greatest failed business in modern American history: World Championship Wrestling.
Picture the continent of Westeros. The Seven Kingdoms pepper its hilly, green landscape all the way to Castle Black. Territory remains beholden to elite family names, carved out over generations, and though these families sit at the top of their respective food chains, they all owe fealty to the King of the Andals and the First Men, stationed in King’s Landing. That’s effectively what the business of professional wrestling looked like for a long time.
ONCE UPON A TIME
There was Southwestern States Enterprises, ruled by the Funks, based in West Texas. There was Stampede Wrestling, ruled by the Harts, based in Calgary. There was Georgia Championship Wrestling, ruled by the Andersons, based in Atlanta. There was World Class Championship Wrestling, ruled by the Von Erichs, based in Dallas. (Not to be confused with World Championship Wrestling – we’ll get to them soon enough.)
On and on these territory “kingdoms” went. Each wrestling promotion thrived in their own little pocket of Collectively, they all fell under the umbrella of wrestling’s King’s Landing: the National Wrestling Alliance (NWA). Having one of your promotion’s wrestlers hold the NWA World Heavyweight Title was akin to sitting on the Iron Throne. It meant your wrestler was the best. It meant more eyes on your product, higher ticket sales, more business.
It also meant a lot of political maneuvering behind the scenes. Like the Peace of Westphalia that followed the Thirty Years’ War, the smoky-room reality of the wrestling business thrived from the beginning of the twentieth century until the 1980s. It had to. The alternative was unfathomable; without a strong, interlocking alliance, promotions might begin to gobble one another up.
And that is exactly what eventually happened.
WINTER IS COMING
I’ve neglected to bring up two other wrestling “kingdoms,” but they were perhaps the most important: the Starks and the Lannisters of the professional wrestling world. Jim Crockett Promotions (JCP) was the Stark family. Located in the “Mid-Atlantic” area (the Carolinas and Virginias), the Crocketts wielded enormous industry power. They had incredible wrestlers, a rabid fan base, and in their corner office, one of the most respected promoters in the business: Jim Crockett, Sr. Call him Big Jim.
Big Jim was a good ol’ boy, a backslapper, a double-chinned, bespectacled, big-and-tall, country club, Southern charmer. You don’t dominate a region of the country for 38 years without learning how to shake a few hands. Perhaps the personality wasn’t a match, but in terms of his respect, power and gravitas, Big Jim was Ned Stark.
You also had the Lannisters – the World Wrestling Federation (WWF). Ruled by the McMahon family, the WWF was based in New York City, and they acted like it. Vince J. McMahon Sr. was a yankee entrepreneur that controlled New England wrestling with an iron grip. He didn’t care much for the Southerners who made up the majority of the NWA. As a result, Vince Sr. had a tendency to pull the WWF in and out of the NWA’s control depending on how he felt on any given day. They had a ton of money, a great territory, but not a lot of friends throughout the rest of the country.
Things were about to change. It was the 1970s. Winter was coming. In the wrestling world, winter was cable television. And the ultimate White Walker was billionaire businessman Ted Turner. Cable recalibrated the way wrestling promoters thought about their business. Before cable, it didn’t make much financial sense to partner with one of the Big 3 television networks and air your wrestling matches nationally. The Big 3 had plenty of programming already, and besides, wrestling’s popularity had collapsed since the 1950s.
But cable was new. Cable television executives like Ted Turner needed lots of cheap programming that he could air around-the-clock on TBS: the SuperStation! He couldn’t afford scripted shows or big celebrities. He needed to make celebrities and pay them dirt. Wrestling was visually dynamic, had a year-round schedule, and hell, Ted was already a fan.
The question was: how would the wrestling promotions react? Would they unite and air a truly national brand? Or would one promotion usurp the opportunity at the expense of the rest? The answer came quickly: unity was out of the question. The promotions all tried to elbow their way onto Ted’s network. The NWA was still alive and ostensibly in charge of the promotions, but it had suddenly become second priority. Who cared about the Iron Throne when winter might destroy them all?
The big winner of the cable television sweepstakes ended up being the Starks: JCP. Thanks to cable, guys like “The Nature Boy” Ric Flair and “The American Dream” Dusty Rhodes became household names. The Crocketts didn’t know it yet, but it would be the last ‘win’ they would ever have. Heads were about to roll.
YOU WIN OR YOU DIE
First, Big Jim died. Those prime rib steaks, night caps, and Marlboros caught up to his weakened heart, but it was still a surprise. Even more surprising was who he left in charge of the company: his 28-year-old. For the purposes of our story, one could say Big Jim had two offspring: his flesh-and-blood son, Jim Jr (the Robb Stark of our story), and his pride and joy, JCP. The company had been around longer than Jim Jr. had been alive. One would have to forgive Jim Jr. for thinking he was conceived and brought to term for the sole purpose of running this company. His fate was not his own; his life did not belong to him. He was an indentured servant to a wrestling promotion, like a slave, like a mandingo fighter in pre-Civil-War, Jim Jr. wasn’t the man-of-the-room that his father so effortlessly personified. He was quiet, timid, and thoughtful. His father had been a bombastic man’s man, and so Jim Jr. became used to listening a lot – instead of talking. This polar personality suited him well growing up… but it would not suit him as a grown-up. He was about to be chewed up, spit out, and left to rot.
Meanwhile, Vince Sr. also died. The patriarchs of the Starks and the Lannisters were no more. In Vince Sr.’s place came Vince Jr. This is the Vince McMahon we all know today. Jim Jr. may have been born to run a business, but Vince was born for business. Vince didn’t just have a silver spoon in his mouth; he chewed that silver spoon up, swallowed it down, and demanded another.
Even if Vince hadn’t been born into wrestling royalty, you get the sense that Vince would’ve become a wrestler anyway. Beginning with Vince, the Lannister comparisons dissolve. Vince is just too sinister for the Lannisters. Too vengeful. Perhaps a better comparison is Harry Osborn of SPIDER-MAN fame.
Like Harry Osborn, Vince watched his father die, but not just once – twice. Before Vince Sr. died physically, he faced his personal death the day the Crocketts shook hands with Ted Turner and assumed cable television supremacy. Vince Sr. was never the same. He wandered WWF headquarters like a lost child. The passion was gone.
Vince loved his father, but seeing him this way was crushing. His father’s death shortly thereafter felt like a gift. But in response, just like Harry Osborn’s transformation into the Green Goblin, and just like Harry’s promised revenge against Spider-Man…Vince promised revenge against the Crocketts.
ANSWERING INJUSTICE WITH JUSTICE
Vince started buying out the competition, territory after territory, assimilating their talent into the WWF. The NWA tried to get him to stop, but Vince didn’t care. He was going to create a national brand. Vince went one further. 1984. While Jim Jr. dillydallied with Ted Turner at TBS, Vince swooped from behind and formed an under-the-table deal with Ted to take the programming block away from him. The WWF now had the cable trump card.
Jim Jr., not used to aggressive tactics like this, tried to plea and bargain with Vince and Ted to get the WWF off the air– but money talked. And for the moment, Vince had plenty. Jim Jr. thought he had no choice. He would have to buy out Vince’s cable buy-out. This ended up being a huge mistake: that’s because TBS viewers didn’t care much for WWF wrestlers at this time. Outside of Hulk Hogan and Andre the Giant, TBS viewers were Southern, and they wanted Southern wrestlers. Not the WWF yanks! Jim Jr. should’ve waited it out, let the WWF wallow in the ratings collapse, but they didn’t. Instead, Jim Jr. handed Vince a check for millions of dollars, all so JCP could regain the TBS timeslot. By then, secretly, Vince was all too happy to take the cash and walk away from what had almost been a disaster.
In fact, Vince would use Jim Jr.’s money in the following year to finance his biggest national show yet. The one that changed the game again. The first Wrestlemania. Winter had come. In the sea change, Vince had nearly lost, but won. Jim Jr. had nearly won– but now he was losing. The buy-out ran JCP’s finances dry. People were watching his wrestlers on TBS (on a show that was now called “World Championship Wrestling”), but Jim Jr. was still losing money by the week. By 1988, the White Walkers overtook Jim Jr.’s Winterfell. JCP was out of money. Ted Turner sat down with Jim Jr. in his Atlanta-based office and offered to buy JCP, its wrestlers, and its bookers for a song (along with a few other promotions, but that’s not relevant here). Jim Jr. had no choice but to sell.
Hawk beating Rick Flair
Ted promised Jim Jr. he’d retain creative control, or at least a chance to consult. He never got it. Within a week, Jim Jr. was kicked out of his own building. JCP was officially rechristened WCW. Ted Turner put his boots on his desk, lit a cigar, and laughed.
ALL MEN MUST DIE
The remaining Stark children (see: JCP’s wrestlers) scattered across the country. Many remained with the new WCW. Others went to the WWF. The rest worked smaller promotions and never quite returned to their cable glory days. But at least they could have peace-of-mind knowing JCP’s dissolution wasn’t their fault. They weren’t the failures. It had just been bad business.
Jim Jr. was the failure. He’d been outsmarted, outwitted, outplayed. For every Vince, for every Ted, there is a Jim Jr. The poor guy would sit on the sidelines for the next thirteen years as WCW evolved, succeeded, and eventually, collapsed. From 1988 to 2001, Jim Jr. had to watch the mutated child of the Crockett family without any say or control. Imagine yourself in that position. Would you still feel a sense of ownership? Could you bear to watch the bastardized version of your family’s legacy? Could you stand in front of your father’s grave with pride or dignity? Would you be able to find peace in being a loser in the American game of success? Or would you forever carry that heavy burden until you, too, were dead?
GET RICH OR DIE GRAPPLIN’
Just like poor Jim Jr., the people in charge of WCW would never be particularly savvy at the business. The organization’s history is easily partitioned into three parts: The Early Years, when WCW was like Little Mac in Nintendo’s PUNCH-OUT! Just a scrawny, innocent, doe-eyed contender, filled with promise and hope, looking for a way-in. These were the days of Sting, Ric Flair, Dusty Rhodes, Barry Windham, Ricky Steamboat, Vader, and even Cactus Jack.
The Middle Years, when WCW brought out the checkbook to finally match the WWF’s cutthroat business tactics. These were the cool years. The years when WCW was a genuine pop culture phenomenon. The years of the nWo, Hollywood Hulk Hogan, Eric Bischoff, Kevin Nash, Scott Hall, Goldberg, Diamond Dallas Page, and Rey Mysterio, Jr.
Finally, the Last Years, when financial constraints, big egos, and wild ideas turned WCW into a trippy tornado of half-baked plotlines, celebrity world champions, unbelievable gimmicks, and eventually, system collapse. These were the days of Jeff Jarrett, Vince Russo, Booker T, and even David Arquette.
By story’s end, WCW joined Jim Crockett Jr. in the cesspit of American failure. Both of them fascinating snapshots of capitalism at work. It’s an important story. Each chapter of the saga, every pay-per-view and major Monday Nitro, presents a new twist, a new curl, or a new detail. If you want to understand why some people succeed and so many others fail, if you want to understand the rise-and-fall story of so many athletes and entertainers, you have to dig deep into the greatest sports-entertainment company in the history of our sport: WCW.I absolutely want the best for everybody and I understand that we all get sidetracked and make mistakes but really, I’m just tired of all the fighting with nothing getting done.
So Chrissy Stockton and Parker Marie Molloy have both written about Return of Kings over the past couple of weeks. Both, predictably, hated the site, hated the misogyny, hated the “Game” talk. Then, peeps came over to their articles and said terrible things to them cause that’s what Alpha males do, apparently. Here’s some selections.
Huh? For one thing, she’s fucking awesome. For another thing, this just doesn’t make any sense, logically.
Most guys I know that go after and get what they want in life are too busy doing it to waste time repeatedly commenting on internet forums about how they’re going after/getting what they want in life. I’m not saying that no one’s ever done this but Arnold Schwarzenegger and his analogues in the world ain’t hanging at RooshV and ROK.
LOL, I just can’t. Ridiculous.
Ok, Matt said some other pretty dickish things in those comments but here what we have is a grain of truth and that truth is that all this stuff isn’t about some objective truth about men or women. Like everything interesting in this world, this is about politics and sex and yes, internet social justice warriors can be insanely frustrating and amazingly delusional. Some examples from Tumblr and, yes, Jezebel to a lesser extent.
Just so much anger. Cross reference |
only topped 100 yards in a game once, 6 of his 9 touchdowns came in games where he had 3 or fewer receptions, and in 5 of his 16 games(nearly 33%), he recorded 0 or 1 receptions. He’s a great play if you’re playing DFS or are in a best ball league, but in season long dynasty leagues, that kind of volatility is brutal. Move on and let another owner deal with that weekly chaos.
HOLD:
Jarvis Landry, WR
Landry has averaged 102 receptions on 148 targets over the last 2 seasons. He’s as consistent and solid as they come in fantasy football and is among the top-ranked players in ESPN’s consistency rankings. With a high floor each and every week, unless another owner is looking to overpay, you’ll never get an adequate return on him in a trade. Keep him and ride out his career and enjoy your fantasy points.
Jay Ajayi, RB
Similar to Landry, You’re going to have a hard time getting appropriate value back in a trade for Ajayi. He has the upside to be an elite running back, both in real football and in fantasy. The rumors about his knees have circulated for a few years now, and people trying to trade for him will always bring that up too. So, if you have him, stick with him and ride his bone-on-bone grinding knees into the dirt just like the Dolphins appear to be doing. Top producing backs are always fun to have on your fantasy roster; no need to move him…especially to owners looking for a discount exploiting his rumored impending knee injuries.If you’re one of the craft beer fans out there who has been defending last week’s acquisition of Wicked Weed by Anheuser Busch-InBev, then this is the story you need to be reading. You want direct illustration of how InBev’s business practices hurt the entire craft beer industry as a whole? They’ve just presented the best possible example, by more or less cutting off the entire South African hops market from independent American craft brewers. Those hops, which include some of the most sought-after new aroma varietals on the market today, will instead be earmarked for the breweries owned by InBev’s “The High End” division, including the likes of the just-purchased Wicked Weed.
Multiple breweries have weighed in this afternoon to break the news, including Rhode Island’s Proclamation Ale Company, which Paste previously praised in the finals of our pale ale blind tasting. Here’s the entire post that Proclamation shared on Facebook only hours ago.
For anyone wondering how AB InBev acquiring craft breweries effects the brewers, suppliers, growers and consumers of the market, here’s an example of the things that many craft brewers are scared of…
To set the stage, we purchased a few hundred lbs of South African hops from a small hop distributor that was dealing with some of the small SA farms/growers. The farms were under the umbrella of SAB which was recently acquired in the merger of AB/Miller Coors a little while ago. We were super excited to work with these hops as they were from a new growing region with new varietals and hence had new unique flavor profiles, also, the business we purchased them from was a small boutique hop shop that will be losing a huge chunk of what they work with to maintain their business. Anyway. Here’s what we received via email today:
Along with the news late last week of ABI buying Wicked Weed, I was informed by SAB Hop Farms (part of ABI’s purchase of SAB-Miller) that ABI are commandeering all the hops that were to be allocated for distribution to North American craft brewers. The goal is to sell the hops internally to their acquired (former) craft breweries, even though they have not been able to sell all the hops as of yet. Regardless, they refuse to let US craft brewers buy any CY 2017 hops believing this will afford them a competitive advantage in an increasingly competitive marketplace.
This is surely a sad turn of events. It sucks for the brewers, but has an even more tremendously shitty impact of the great guys that built a company around selling these hops to craft brewers.
San Francisco’s Cellarmaker Brewing Co., who we’ve also written about in the past, quickly chimed in on Twitter, decrying the move. Cellarmaker had made extensive use of the hot new South African hop varietals, but will now be unable to obtain those same resources.
Supporting AB InBev’s fake craft brands fuels this fire. Cutting off ingredient supply to indie brewers is wrong. #independentbrewer — Cellarmaker (@CellarmakerBeer) May 10, 2017
Think AB Inbev purchases don’t matter for the craft beer industry? All South African Hops have been allocated to AB InBev “High End” brands. — Cellarmaker (@CellarmakerBeer) May 10, 2017
Also commenting on Facebook is Portland, OR’s Great Notion Brewing Co., who we’ve also written about recently—it’s almost as if Paste is in the business of writing about good breweries! They said much the same as Proclamation.
Great… Anheuser-Busch InBev just swooped in and bought all of the exciting new South African hops we thought we had coming to us this summer.
San Diego’s popular Modern Times Beer has also just weighed in on Twitter, regarding what they call today’s “extreme dickishness.”
Next time you consider buying beer from AB InBev & their zombie breweries, we hope you’ll take this extreme dickishness into consideration — Modern Times Beer (@ModernTimesBeer) May 10, 2017
The writing is on the wall, folks. If you’re buying beer from Wicked Weed, Karbach, Goose Island, Golden Road, Elysian or any of the other breweries owned by AB-InBev, these are the business practices you’re supporting. You’re funneling money into the coffers of a company that is DIRECTLY and negatively impacting the entire rest of the craft beer industry, while simultaneously using those profits to lobby in state legislatures for anti-craft beer legislation.
If you don’t care about craft beer, then fine. But if you do care, you can’t pretend that supporting AB-InBev owned breweries doesn’t negatively impact the rest of the industry. Either you admit that you’re helping InBev complete a monopoly over craft brewing, stifling creativity and freedom along the way, or you start getting more proactive with the choices of what you purchase. Now is the time to make a stand, and to make it with your dollar.
EDIT: AB-InBev has issued a statement on this story as it makes the rounds across the web, placing blame on a low-yielding hop crop—without denying that those hops making it out of South Africa will of course being going to InBev-owned, formerly craft breweries. From Willy Buholzer, Global Hops Procurement Director for AB-InBev:
South Africa is not a traditional hop growing region. SAB’s R&D efforts made it possible to grow hops in South Africa but it is still less than 1% of the world hop acreage and production. This year, South Africa suffered from low yields. Previously, SAB has sold a small surplus of locally-grown hops to the market. Unfortunately this year we do not have enough to do so given the poor yield. More than 90 percent of our South African-grown hops will be used in local brands Castle Lager and Castle Lite, beers we’ve committed to brewing with locally-grown ingredients. In support of the local industry, we additionally sell hops to South African craft breweries. This means that less than five percent can be allocated to other Anheuser-Busch InBev breweries outside of South Africa.
Knowing the high demand for South African hops locally and abroad, we are working to expand local hop acreage. Depending on the 2018 crop outcome, we may once again be able to sell more hops to breweries outside of South Africa.
Jim Vorel is a Paste Magazine staff writer and beer guru. You can follow him on Twitter for much more beer content.It’s no secret that China has some of the strictest internet censorship laws in the world, and it’s clamping down on anyone who helps circumvent the Great Firewall. A man in the southern part of the country has just been sentenced to five and a half years in jail for selling a VPN service without an appropriate license from the government.
Wu Xiangyang, from the Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region, was also fined 500,000 yuan ($76,405)—an amount equal to the profit he has made since starting the VPN four years ago, according to the newspaper of China’s national prosecutor’s office.
Wu allegedly sold virtual private network server access to the public via his own website, shopping site Taobao, and social media sites from 2013 until June 2017. He also sold customized routers that came read-configured to use the VPN.
In March last year, the company tweeted that 8000 foreigners and 5000 businesses used its services to access websites that are blocked by Chines authorities.
Although his sentence is more severe, Xiangyang isn’t the first Chinese citizen jailed for selling unauthorized VPNs. In March, 26-year-old Deng Jiewei from the city of Dongguan in the Guangdong province was sent to prison for nine months for the same offense.
VPNs are popular among Chinese citizens looking to access services banned in the country, including Google, Facebook, and Twitter.
Back in July, China ordered the three biggest telecommunication companies to completely block access to all VPNs not registered with authorities by February 2018. The move followed the tightening of internet censorship laws that requires all audiovisual content adhere to “core socialist values.” Later that same month, Apple removed a number of popular VPNs from its App Store in China.Self-identified ‘sovereign citizen’ and militia movement member Brandon Gibbs decided to take a stab at a possible Darwin Award, thus removing himself from the gene pool.
Brandon Gibbs attempted nomination was accomplished in three easy steps:
Gibbs made threatening phone calls to City Hall stating that: “…if you come back on my property. I’m going to put a bullet in a tire or in somebody’s head.” The city had turned off his water due to nonpayment of his service bill.
When police arrive at his apartment to serve an arrest warrant, Gibbs answers the door wearing full body armor, a face shield, camouflage clothes, a knife strapped across his chest, and holding a can of pepper spray. Officers then instructed Gibbs to drop the pepper spray, Gibbs refused and began walking toward one of the officers.
The law enforcement officers were able to quickly subdue Gibbs with a minimal amount of force. Gibbs was promptly arrested and hit with multiple charges.
From the ADL.org blog:
According to statements Gibbs made to police officers and to activity on his Facebook account, his actions towards law enforcement and public officials appear to be influenced by anti-government extremist beliefs. After police officers charged Gibbs with resisting arrest in May 2013, he allegedly told officers that he trained every weekend in Maurepas, Louisiana, with a 500-person militia on shooting and military techniques. In one of his Facebook posts, Gibbs claimed that he studied abroad “in @ home” to learn “emprovised [sic] weapons specializm [sic] and “hand to hand combat” in order “to defend myself and my land against any treat [sic]” and to “make your entinctions [sic] absolutly [sic] clear shoot to kill.” The likes on his Facebook page include eight different militias and he is part of the “Three Percenters for Constitutional Troops and Law Enforcement” Facebook group, which harbors anti-government extremist beliefs.
Gibbs also told officers he was hoping to go to Pakistan so he could fight and maybe die for something “that was ‘just and true’ ” but noted he could not serve in the military because he had been deemed psychologically unfit, the report says.
In May 2013, Gibbs was arrested on counts of resisting an officer and aggravated assault after he allegedly pulled a knife on two people in front of his home and threatened to “blow” them away with an AK-47 semi-automatic rifle if they ever returned. Prior to the arrest, Gibbs sent police an email warning them that “no trespassing would be tolerated” and “to stay away”.
Brandon Gibbs’ “Facebook Likes“ are about what you would expect at this point. Extremist far-right wing conservative groups, 2nd Amendment, Oath Keepers, Militia organizations, Three Percenters, Tea Party, military gear, survivalist groups, miscellaneous “patriot” groups, etc. Gibbs also has (bewilderingly) used an Anonymous themed pic for his Facebook cover background.
A few days later Mr. Gibbs took up his keyboard to publicly set the record straight. Brandon Gibbs’ use of the English language is as soothing to the eyes, as getting sand crammed under your eyelids.
Brandon Gibbs’ most recent arrest could easily have ended with his death. Hopefully the Gonzales Police Department has confiscated all of Gibbs’ guns, weapons, and body armor after this encounter with this ‘psychologically unfit’ sovereign citizen.
Sources:
http://www.nola.com/crime/baton-rouge/index.ssf/2014/12/sovereign_citizen_wearing_full.html
http://theadvocate.com/news/11077800-123/gonzales-man-claiming-ties-to
http://blog.adl.org/extremism/apparent-extremist-threatens-police-officers-and-a-city-employeeFantasy Football Sleepers Week Two
The first week of the fantasy football season is behind us and the NFL has once again thrown its faithful for a loop. From the Thursday night season opener in which the Kansas City Chiefs spoiled the New England Patriots’ perfect season, handing them their first Week 1 loss since 2014, to the Monday night finale in which the Denver Broncos barely held on to victory over the Los Angeles Chargers, it was an eventful beginning to the 2017 NFL season.
Week 1 could be renamed the week of the sleeper. Eight of the top 15 of fantasy’s offensive scoring leaders held less than a 60 percent start-percentage at MyFantasyLeague.com.
RK Start% Player Pos Team Points 1 88.67 Kareem Hunt RB Chiefs 40.6 2 55.01 Alex Smith QB Chiefs 31 3 64.96 Matthew Stafford QB Lions 27.1 4 61.02 Sam Bradford QB Vikings 25.5 5 44.55 Trevor Siemian QB Broncos 22.7 6 54.4 Mike Gillislee RB Patriots 22.5 7 89.27 Stefon Diggs WR Vikings 20.7 8 86.88 Tyreek Hill WR Chiefs 19.8 9 36.37 Kenny Golladay WR Lions 18.9 10 50.89 Carson Wentz QB Eagles 18.9 11 83.45 Marcus Mariota QB Titans 18.9 12 55.15 Austin Hooper TE Falcons 18.8 13 47.26 Tyrod Taylor QB Bills 18.8 14 87.71 Derek Carr QB Raiders 18.7 15 30.85 Deshone Kizer QB Browns 18.6
Not only did Taylor appear in my Fantasy Football Sleepers for Week 1 article last week, but five of 10 of my sleepers scored at least 11 fantasy points in standard scoring while seven of 10 scored at least 12 points in PPR formats.
Player Pos Rank Points PPR Rank PPR Tyrod Taylor QB QB6 18.8 QB6 18.8 Andy Dalton QB QB33 -3 QB33 -3 Jonathan Stewart RB RB8 14.2 RB11 16.2 Theo Riddick RB RB21 8.6 RB13 14.6 Rishard Matthews WR WR25 7.1 WR27 12.1 Brandon Marshall WR WR60 1 WR74 2 Jason Witten TE TE3 11.9 TE3 18.9 Charles Clay TE TE5 11.3 TE6 15.3 Chris Thompson RB RB13 11.6 RB12 15.6 Kendall Wright WR WR44 3.4 WR52 6.4
Entering Week 2, some fantasy owners may be forced to shop the waiver wire due to a handful of notable injuries around the league. With players that include Allen Robinson, Danny Woodhead, David Johnson and C.J. Fiedorowicz all succumbing to significant injuries, be sure to check out our own Andrew Erickson’s Waiver Wire Pickups for Week 2 to assist you with filling the vacant holes on your fantasy rosters.
Ready or not, here my Fantasy Football Sleepers for Week 2.
Quarterback Sleepers
Dak Prescott
MFL Start-Percentage: 48.30
Although Dak Prescott finished as the QB11 last week with 17.1 points, he is only being started in 48.30 percent of fantasy leagues on MFL. Perhaps, it’s because he facing a normally stout Broncos defense in Week 2. However, Denver’s defensive unit is coming off of a rough Week 1 outing against the Chargers. They allowed Philip Rivers to throw for 192 yards and three touchdowns, which equates to 17.7 fantasy points. Without longtime safety T.J. Ward roaming the defensive backfield, the Broncos’ defense may be a bit more welcoming until Justin Simmons adjusts to his new starting role at strong safety. I expect Prescott to exploit Denver’s secondary and work the middle of the field, which is prime Cole Beasley and Jason Witten territory. If Ezekiel Elliott can get going on the ground and wear down the defense, much like he did last week against the Giants, Prescott will be in line for another stellar outing on Sunday afternoon.
Carson Palmer
MFL Start-Percentage: 43.52%
Before you say it, yes, I’m very aware of Carson Palmer’s dreadful performance last week against the Lions. His 269 yards, one touchdown and three interception day, which translates to nine fantasy points, has his fantasy owners who believe he is in store for a bounce-back year, running for help, especially if he’s their QB1 in deeper formats or in those in which you can start multiple signal callers. Yet, here is, nominated as one of my Week 2 sleepers. Why? MATCHUP.
Not only is Palmer facing a Colts defense that was just as terrible in Week 1 as he was, but they were terrible against the Los Angeles Rams-led Jared Goff. The Colts allowed Goff to appear efficient for the first time in his career, yielding 16.4 fantasy points to the former No. 1 overall pick from 2016. Moreover, the Cardinals will be without their best player, David Johnson for the unforeseen future, which bodes well for Palmer’s fantasy outlook moving forward. But lets’ focus on Week 2. Since Vontae Davis is not expected to play for the second straight game with a groin injury, Indianapolis will be missing their best cover-corner. This game spells bounce back for not only Palmer but his slew of pass-catchers that includes Larry Fitzgerald, John Brown and J.J. Nelson. I know Palmer burned DFS players in Week 1, myself included, but it just might pay off to roll with him in what could be one of the best quarterback matchups of Week 2.
Need Week 2 Start’EM Sit’EM advice? Phil Clark has you covered right here.
Running Back Sleepers
James White
MFL Start-Percentage: 42.63
While Mike Gillislee is the popular running back to start for the Patriots — he is being started in 82.76 percent of MFL leagues — James White could serve as a high-upside sleeper in Week 2, especially in PPR scoring formats. Although Gillislee out-produced White in Week 1 from a fantasy perspective — he accumulated 22.5 fantasy points to White’s 6.8 (9.8 PPR) — the latter out-snapped the former 44-to-24. White was on the field for 53 percent of the Patriots’ offensive snaps to Gillislee’s 30 percent.
Looking ahead to Sunday, White is entering a prime fantasy matchup against a Saints defense that was torched in the opener by the Vikings. New Orleans allowed the 10th most fantasy points to RBs in Week 1, surrendering 24. If Minnesota’s offense could light up the Saints, just imagine what an angry New England unit, coming off a loss, could do to a defense poised to finish in the bottom eight when its all said and done. While most of the damage was done on the ground — the Saints yielded 138 yards rushing to Dalvin Cook and company — they also gave up 42 yards receiving on 6-of-8 targets to Vikings RBs, which is where White will flourish.
Now that Danny Amendola dealing with a concussion, he may not play. He has yet to practice this week. In that scenario, the Patriots may elect to line White up all over the field to create mismatches. It would also generate extended opportunities for him to make an impact. In what is expected to be a high-scoring affair, White could be in line for double-digit PPR points in Week 2 despite the presence of Gillislee on early-downs.
Thomas Rawls
MFL Start-Percentage: 21.40
For the second consecutive year, the Seahawks have tremendous question marks at running back. Although they added Eddie Lacy via free agency this offseason, it appears that he has quickly fallen out of favor with head coach Pete Carroll. Lacy only played seven snaps in Week 1 against the Packers, accumulating three yards on five carries. In fact, no Seahawks running back performed particularly well last week. C.J. Prosise received four carries for 11 yards and Chris Carson led all Seattle rushers with 49 total yards on seven touches. The odd man out of this equation is Thomas Rawls. He was inactive for the opener with an ankle injury but is practicing in full leading into his favorable Week 2 matchup against the 49ers.
San Franciso’s defense was gouged last week by Panthers RBs. They surrendered the eighth most fantasy points to opposing RBs in Week 1, allowing 27.8. Moreover, Rawls absolutely shows up to play against his NFC West division rivals. In three career meetings, Rawls has rushed for 244 yards and a pair of touchdowns on 44 carries, adding another 55 yards and a score on five receptions as a receiver out of the backfield. Averaging 16.3 FPPG against the 49ers, Rawls is a sneaky upside start for Week 2.
Need fantasy trade advice? Check out Hunter Gibbon and Matthew Foreman’s Buy Low Sell High article. They’ll give you the inside scoop on when and which players to deal for a maximum return.
Wide Receiver Sleepers
Cooper Kupp
MFL Start-Percentage: 51.42
Although the Rams acquired Sammy Watkins and Robert Woods in free agency this offseason, after one week, third round pick, Cooper Kupp, is the wide receiver addition that paid off. Facing a defunct Colts’ secondary in Week 1, Kupp caught 4-of-6 targets for 76 yards and a touchdown in his NFL debut. He finished as the WR10 with 17.6 fantasy points in PPR scoring formats.
Kupp is entering a fine Week 2 matchup against the Redskins. A team that allowed Nelson Agholor to put up a career-high 6-81-1 stat line operating primarily out of the slot, which is Kupp’s forte. Washington also allowed the 11th most fantasy points to WRs last week, surrendering an eye-popping 33.4 to the position. With Josh Norman expected to blanket Watkins for most of the game on Sunday, the middle of the field should be wide open for Jared Goff to operate the ball to Kupp. Although he could be started in either format, Kupp is a more trustworthy PPR play in Week 2.
Marqise Lee
MFL Start-Percentage: 37.37%
Earlier in the week, we learned that Allen Robinson would be sidelined for the remainder of the 2017 season with a knee injury. And since the Jaguars placed rookie standout Dede Westbrook on the injured reserve list with a core muscle injury before the start of the season, Jacksonville has a gaping hole at wide receiver. The two names that are dominating the fantasy waiver wire as intra-team replacements are Allen Hurns and Marqise Lee. Although Hurns was buried on the depth chart “ behind ” Robinson, Lee and Keelan Cole to start the year, he has emerged as the fantasy darling to presumably lead the Jaguars in receiving. However, if you’ve followed me up to this point, you’ll know that I’ve been on the Lee bandwagon all offseason. I believed he would ultimately lead Jacksonville in receiving even with a healthy Robinson. I’ve always viewed Hurns as the big play threat and Lee, when healthy, as the every-down playmaker on the outside with the versatility to line up in the slot. Though some may disagree, I’m rolling with Lee in Week 2 and beyond as the Jaguars’ WR1.
Lee is facing a familiar foe Sunday as the Jaguars host the Titans. Tennesse is coming off of a Week 1 matchup with the Raiders, whose receivers torched the Titans’ secondary for 42.1 fantasy points, which was the fifth most fantasy points allowed to WRs last week. In their final matchup of the 2016 season, Lee was outstanding. He caught three targets for 37 yards and a touchdown while passing for another score on a gadget play to Blake Bortles. Although the Jaguars are expected to be a run-first team to mask Bortles’ deficiencies, it is a passing league, which means someone will have to be on the other end of a Bortles pass. I expect Lee to thrive without Robinson in the lineup. While Lee and Hurns are both hit or miss, I trust Lee quite a bit more to break out.
Tight End Sleepers
Coby Fleener
MFL Start-Percentage: 53.81%
Coby Fleener is coming off of a solid Week 1 outing against the Vikings in which he caught 5-of-6 targets for 54 yards and a touchdown. His six targets were second-most on the team to Michael Thomas’ eight. Without Willie Snead in the lineup — he is serving a three-game substance-abuse suspension — I believe Fleener will thrive and continue receiving his excess target-share. Yes, Ted Ginn is the WR2 in the offense without Snead, but the veteran wideout is more of a big-play threat than anything else. Plus, he’s had issues with drops throughout his career. In his second season with the Saints, Fleener likely has Drew Brees’ trust, while Ginn’s is still developing.
Entering Week 2, Fleener has a welcoming matchup against the Patriots. New England’s defense surrendered the fourth-most fantasy points to opposing TEs last week versus the Chiefs, giving up 18.9 points to the position. Although Travis Kelce reeled in 5-0f-7 targets for 40 yards, it was his backup, Demetrius Harris who found the end zone. Not only does the Patriots’ defense appear more susceptible in 2017, but Fleener has had past success against them. Albeit was while he was still a member of the Colts, Fleener has accumulated a 19-268-0 stat line versus New England in four career games. Not only do I expect Fleener to continue his success in Week 2, but he is Mike Hauff’s “Lock of the Week” in his Draft Kings primer.
Charles Clay
MFL Start-Percentage: 53.66%
Charles Clay was one of my Week 1 Sleepers, and he didn’t disappoint. He caught 4-of-9 targets for 53 yards and a touchdown. However, the stat to monitor here is his target-share. By far, his nine targets led the Bills in that category. The next most targeted player on the club was LeSean McCoy with six, followed by Zay Jones with four. Finishing as the TE5 with 11.3 fantasy points, Clay is emerging as a legit threat in a Buffalo offense desperate for pass-catchers.
Week 2’s matchup against the Panthers isn’t the greatest in hindsight. They only allowed 7.7 fantasy points to TEs last week, but that was against a rebuilding 49ers team and a young George Kittle. However, TE was a position of weakness for the Panthers in 2016. They conceded the second most fantasy points to the position to end the campaign. Since Carolina didn’t do much this offseason to upgrade their defense, I expect them to struggle to bottle up the more experienced TEs in 2017. Clay falls into that category. Scoring at least one touchdown in four of his past five games dating back to Week 14 of last season, Clay is poised to maintain that streak on Sunday.
Two Deep Sleepers If You’re Desperate
Blake Bortles
MFL Start-Percentage: 23.27
If there is any matchup in which you could feel confident starting Blake Bortles, it is in those in which he is facing the Titans. In six career games versus Tennessee, Bortles has accumulated a 1,677-12-2 stat line while completing 64.8 percent of his passes. In fact, in their last three meetings, he’s thrown for 984 yards and nine touchdowns without an interception. He even caught a TD from Marqise Lee in their last matchup. While allowing the eighth-most fantasy points to the QB position last week against the Raiders and Derek Carr, it doesn’t look like Tennessee’s pass defense has improved at all from a poor showing in the 2016 campaign. Borltes should once again thrive against the Titans on Sunday. He is a startable desperation QB2 with upside for Week 2.
Paul Perkins
MFL Start-Percentage: 15.55%
Following up a rough Week 1 outing against the Cowboys in which he was nonexistent — he totaled 25 yards on nine touches — Paul Perkins will look to bounce back in a favorable Week 2 matchup against the Lions. Despite escaping the season opener with a win over the Cardinals, Detroit allowed the 10th most points to fantasy RBs, surrendering 26.7 points to the position. Since the Giants couldn’t get anything going on offense last week, perhaps the onus should fall on their play-calling. Although the game was fairly close, New York passed the ball 77.36 percent of the time. If they intend to win, a much more balanced attack is needed. In the only other time Perkins faced the Lions in Week 15 of the 2016 season, Perkins was effective, rushing for 56 yards on 11 carries. Expect New York to get their rushing attack going early on Sunday leaving Perkins as a sneaky desperation start for Week 2.
Thank you for reading about my sleepers for Week 2. I hope you enjoyed it! Want more? Mike Hauff and I debate fantasy football news, notes and yes, sleepers, on our show, the Faceoff, a Gridiron Experts podcast. Check it out.
Oh, and before I forget, we will answer your questions on our show! All you have to do is Tweet us with your question @FFfaceoff.HUNTSVILLE, Alabama - In a scene that could have come out of a heist film, someone entered Huntsville Hospital last week, impersonated a vendor and left with two barrels of old X-rays.
A report filed with Huntsville police said that two 55-gallon barrels containing up to 1,000 patient information microfilms were stolen at 1:06 p.m. on March 7.
But the crime wasn't about identity theft, officials say. Instead, hospital officials think the thieves plan to melt the X-rays to extract the silver in them.
The X-ray films did not contain sensitive medical records, hospital spokeswoman Cheryl Davis said Wednesday afternoon. The X-rays contained only the patient's name, date of birth and medical record number, she said.
The X-rays belonged to between 125 to 175 patients, Davis said. Those patients had multiple X-ray shots to help account for 1,000 X-rays on the police report. Some of the X-rays in the barrels also could have been blank or black, she said.
Huntsville Hospital's biggest concern about the episode may be the security breach that allowed someone posing as a vendor to come into the hospital and take away the barrels.
The barrels were waiting to be collected by a vendor that the hospital pays to dispose of them, said Davis, when the barrels were taken by someone posing as a vendor.
The hospital is reviewing its policies and procedures to ensure that something like this doesn't happen again, Davis said.
Hospital security workers and the police are investigating, she said. The hospital was able to give police the license plate number on the vehicle that the barrels were put in, Davis said.
"We're still looking for the thieves," she said.
The stolen X-rays could be worth up to $1,200 in extracted silver, Andrew Thornton, who is director of sales for a New Hampshire medical recycling firm, said Wednesday afternoon.
If nearly full, the two barrels stolen from Huntsville Hospital could contain about 500 pounds of X-rays, said Thornton, who is with B&D Associates of Concord, N.H. At $32 an ounce, the silver in the 500 pounds of X-rays could yield between $1,000 and $1,200 for the thieves, he said.
The theft of used X-rays from hospitals and other facilities for the purpose of extracting the silver is becoming more common, according to recent news reports.
A Toronto, Canada, man was charged with fraud in Ottawa after nearly 30,000 X-rays were stolen from hospitals and clinics across Ontario province, CTV Ottawa reported last week.
The man posed as an employee of a recycling firm that picks up used X-rays, the station reported. Police think the man began stealing X-rays in Toronto before expanding into other areas, the station reported.
The Lowell Sun of Lowell, Mass., reported last week that two Florida men were charged with stealing a 50-pound barrel of used X-rays from Lowell General Hospital.
The two men were also charged with stealing a barrel of used X-rays from Anna Jaques Hospital in Newburyport, Mass., the newspaper reported.
A YouTube video by DocuVault shows the process of extracting silver from used X-rays. First, the X-rays are shredded twice, then those shreds are washed and dried. The pieces are next pressed through a filter and then pressed into silver flakes and smelted.
Attempts to get more information from Huntsville police about the Huntsville Hospital incident were unsuccessful Wednesday afternoon.Hotspot is an app for finding nearby happy hours and buying discounted drinks.
What: Hotspot, an app for finding happy hours and buying discounted drinks.
Who: Jasjit Singh, co-founder and CEO; Jared Jones, co-founder and chief operating officer; Ryan Gerber, chief creative officer
Navigating happy hours: Hotspot shows users happy hours across Seattle and lets people purchase discounted drinks through the app. A well drink at Re:public in South Lake Union, for example, costs $3 through the app rather than the regular $7. Users make the purchase and show the bartender their screen to redeem the sale.
How it’s done: Hotspot facilitates the cheaper drinks (and cover charges and other services) by partnering directly with bars and restaurants. “We buy drinks wholesale from a venue, then tack on a small fee to what the user pays,” Jones said. Bars have the option to turn deals off if the venue gets crowded.
Academic drinking: Singh and Jones met at Yale University and entered the Yale Entrepreneurial Institute, an incubator program to develop student companies. The pair wanted to help bars connect with customers and get them to come in as often as possible. The app shows the nearest bars and deals.
Digital connection: Singh realized how hard it is for owners of brick-and-mortar stores to connect with customers when he opened a video-game center for kids in Portland. Businesses that have a strong online presence continually gather contact information and data about their customers. But physical stores can struggle to build relationships with customers, Singh said.
Free drinks, please: Hotspot is running a promotion to build its customer base. New users receive a free drink when they register for the app and also when they refer friends.
Deals galore: Hotspot’s competitors include the entrenched Groupon and Living Social. Jones said Hotspot provides a better benefit to partners than Groupon, which usually discounts an entire meal or activity. “Our advantage is, we only give discounts on high-margin items, only on the first item and on, competitively speaking, small tickets,” he said.
Glass half full: Hotspot has four employees and $45,000 in outside funding. The app is gaining speed, though. It now has 1,000 users, and 250 of them use Hotspot every week. That number is increasing about 8 percent each week.
— Rachel LermanGarage 59's #60 McLaren 650S GT3 wears a unique livery based on the original logo which adorned the early racers of the Bruce McLaren Motor Racing team.
A new McLaren race car will pay hommage to the early racers of the Bruce McLaren Motor Racing team.
The car, a 650S GT3, is one of three being run by the Garage 59 team in the 24 Hours of Spa being run in Belgium at the Spa Francorchamps circuit from this Sunday (NZ time).
The distinctive red, white and green design celebrates the 50th anniversary of the last competitive outing for the original Bruce McLaren Motor Racing Team emblem, with team founder, New Zealand's Bruce McLaren, at the wheel.
SUPPLIED Garage 59's #60 McLaren 650S GT3 wears a unique livery based on the original logo which adorned the early racers of the Bruce McLaren Motor Racing team.
Designed by British illustrator Michael Turner, it was the first to feature the famous "Speedy Kiwi" and featured on McLaren's cars between 1962 and 1966. The modern interpretation will run on the No. 60 650S GT3, which makes a one-off appearance at the twice-around-the-clock race with driving responsibilities shared between Bruno Senna alongside fellow Brazilian Luis Felipe "Pipo" Derani and Brit Duncan Tappy.
READ MORE:
* What would Bruce think of the latest McLaren 570S?
* McLaren CEO pays tribute as Bruce McLaren's widow passes away
|
inger.[11]
The song, played by orchestra and chorus under Professor Joshua Ives, was a feature of the opening ceremony of the Adelaide Jubilee International Exhibition in 1887.
The song was a particular favourite of the Australian baritone Peter Dawson.[12] who called it "The finest national anthem ever written".[13] His performances included notably:
Recital in London as a duet with Richard Nitschke in 1905. [14]
Duet with Clara Serena at Wembley on (the then) Australia Day 24 July 1924. [15]
A gramophone recording HMV EA1003 of Dawson and vocal quartet singing "Song of Australia" was released in 1932.[16]
Proposed national anthem [ edit ]
The song was one of four included in a national plebiscite to choose Australia's national song in 1977. Nationwide it was the least popular of the four choices, but it had the distinction of being the most popular choice in South Australia.[17] This result can be attributed to the fact of "Advance Australia Fair" being exposed to schoolchildren in the more populous States, where "The Song of Australia" was sung in schools only in South Australia and, to a lesser extent, in Western Australia and Tasmania.
The four songs in the plebiscite were "Waltzing Matilda"; the then anthem, "God Save the Queen"; the now current anthem, "Advance Australia Fair"; and "Song of Australia".Pebble's fortunes have soured somewhat as more powerful wearable devices have hit the market, but now it's teasing a big announcement. On May 24th (tomorrow) at 10AM EDT, we'll get the details. What ever could it be? Since we're talking about Pebble, it could really only be a new version of the watch.
The last device launched by Pebble was the Time Round, and before that it was the Time. What could the next step be? The AP team has speculated on the following.
A triangular watch
An octagonal watch
Pebble goes 3D and makes a pyramidal watch
An old-timey pocket watch
Something that makes sense
My money is on the last one, although that pyramidal watch could be cool. Someone should Kickstart that. At any rate, Pebble is hyping tomorrow's announcement pretty hard. We'll just have to wait and see.Amazon.com is finally taking counterfeiters to court.
The e-commerce giant for the first time has filed lawsuits against counterfeit sellers, after a number of businesses on Amazon voiced concern that knockoffs were killing their sales and endangering consumers.
On Monday, Amazon filed suit against a group of sellers for infringing on athletic training equipment developed by TRX. In a second case, Amazon sued sellers who are offering fake versions of a patented moving product called Forearm Forklift.
Last month, CNBC.com featured Forearm Forklift, a Southern California company that has been crushed in recent years from counterfeiting on Amazon. Mark Lopreiato, the founder of the company, which makes straps for lifting and moving heavy equipment, said he submitted more than 100 cease-and-desist letters to sellers and takedown notices to Amazon, yet fakes have continued to proliferate.
"When customers purchase counterfeit goods, it undermines the trust that customers, sellers, and manufacturers place in Amazon, thereby tarnishing Amazon's brand and causing irreparable reputational harm," the Seattle-based company said in the suits.
There's no way Amazon can litigate away the problem. The company generates over $75 billion a year in commerce, and about half the volume now comes from third-party sellers. However, with Amazon showing its willingness to take abusers to court, the company can at least hope to deter counterfeit sellers with the threat of potential legal action.
An Amazon spokesperson declined to comment on the cases.The gut microbiome has been shown to regulate the development and functions of the enteric and central nervous systems. Its involvement in the regulation of behavior has attracted particular attention because of its potential translational importance in clinical disorders, however little is known about the pathways involved. We previously have demonstrated that administration of Lactobacillus rhamnosus (JB-1) to healthy male BALB/c mice, promotes consistent changes in GABA-A and -B receptor sub-types in specific brain regions, accompanied by reductions in anxiety and depression-related behaviors. In the present study, using magnetic resonance spectroscopy (MRS), we quantitatively assessed two clinically validated biomarkers of brain activity and function, glutamate+glutamine (Glx) and total N-acetyl aspartate+N-acetyl aspartyl glutamic acid (tNAA), as well as GABA, the chief brain inhibitory neurotransmitter. Mice received 1×10(9) cfu of JB-1 per day for 4weeks and were subjected to MRS weekly and again 4weeks after cessation of treatment to ascertain temporal changes in these neurometabolites. Baseline concentrations for Glx, tNAA and GABA were equal to 10.4±0.3mM, 8.7±0.1mM, and 1.2±0.1mM, respectively. Delayed increases were first seen for Glx (~10%) and NAA (~37%) at 2weeks which persisted only to the end of treatment. However, Glx was still elevated 4weeks after treatment had ceased. Significantly elevated GABA (~25%) was only seen at 4weeks. These results suggest specific metabolic pathways in our pursuit of mechanisms of action of psychoactive bacteria. They also offer through application of standard clinical neurodiagnostic techniques, translational opportunities to assess biomarkers accompanying behavioral changes induced by alterations in the gut microbiome.
Crown Copyright © 2015. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.(CNN) -- Police are searching for someone who killed a woman in her Massachusetts apartment and cut an 8-month-old fetus from her body.
Officers found Darlene Haynes wrapped in bedding in a bedroom closet, according to authorities.
Officers found Darlene Haynes dead after neighbors complained about a stench coming from her Worcester apartment.
The 23-year-old was found in the closet of a bedroom, wrapped in bedding, according to authorities. She was last seen on Thursday, police said.
Haynes had been dead for several days, police said. During an autopsy, police learned that a fetus had been removed from the woman's body.
Police say the missing infant could survive, but would need immediate medical attention. Watch neighbors describe victim »
A friend of Haynes told CNN affiliate WHDH that she had received a text message from Haynes at 11:20 p.m. Thursday that said she was having wine coolers with a friend at her apartment. That was the last she heard from her.
All About Murder and HomicideAt Board of Directors meetings, we are always evaluating changes to our Hardrock qualification standards and lottery which we feel will foster a Hardrock Run that we all stand behind. These may affect decisions you make long before our December lottery and potentially affect decisions you make concerning your running season.
Service Requirement
There is a Service Requirement for admission to the run, consisting of 8 hours service in either a) an aid station at an ultra, b) the management of an ultra, or c) work on a trail used by an ultra. The service must be completed by July 1st. Certification of the service is due by July 1, and the form describing the service must be signed by the RD of the ultra for which the service was performed. Runners on the wait list on July 1 must have their service form in if they are to be considered to take the place of subsequent withdrawals from the start list. The window for performing the service begins July 1 of the previous year (i.e. 7/1/18 for the 2019 run).
Lottery Changes
Each year, we are faced with the difficult problem of how to choose our starters from 1000 applicants, while still respecting the values that make Hardrock Hardrock. The Board feels that our ideal mix of runners would be about 30% first-time Hardrockers, one-quarter or so veterans (i.e. >= 5-time finishers), and up to 50% everyone else. To preserve this rough and fair mix, we have replaced our single weighted lottery with three weighted lottery pools, each with its own wait list:
First-timers - 45 slots will be allocated to this lottery, which is for anyone who has never started a Hardrock. The intention is to increase the likelihood for applicants with many DNS's to get into the run. Modeling suggests that giving applicants 2^N tickets, where N is the number of previous DNSs, will ensure that those with the most DNSs will get in, while still giving first-time applicants a chance. “DNS” includes both those who were on the wait list and those who withdrew from either the wait list or start list. Veterans - 33 slots will be allocated to this lottery, which is for anyone who has five or more Hardrock finishes, with the following qualification: an applicant who DNFs in two consecutive attempts beginning in 2012 will be placed into the "Everyone else" pool until they complete the run in a subsequent year. Applicants will get one ticket for each previous Hardrock finish. The number in this pool is about the same as the number of 5-time finishers bypassing the lottery in each of the past few years, and so comes close to preserving this feature. Everyone else - 67 slots will be allocated to this lottery, which is for anyone not in one of the previous two lotteries. The algorithm for ticket allocation will be unchanged from the current one. Modeling suggests that the chances of being selected from this lottery will be better than under the current system.
Runners not selected in the first two lotteries WILL NOT be rolled over into the third lottery. If fewer than 33 "veterans" apply, the unused slots will be added to the "everyone else" pool.
A separate wait list will be maintained for each lottery. When a runner withdraws from the start list, a runner will be taken from the wait list for the lottery from which the withdrawn runner was chosen.
The previous year's winners will continue to bypass the lottery, but they will count against the lottery pool they would have been in.The opinions expressed by columnists are their own and do not represent the views of Townhall.com.
A conservative professor decrying the corrosive effects of political correctness on the larger society wrote a recent Letter to the Editor in our local paper. In the letter, the professor compared young people to butter sticks who melt at the slightest rise in temperature. The professor’s brief letter suggested that parents are raising their kids to be hypersensitive and that the universities are making the situation worse, not better. I agree with everything the professor wrote but I believe the situation is much more ominous than that. So I am writing to supplement, rather than contradict, the professor’s astute observations.
Teaching students that they have a right to be unoffended does have an effect I refer to as “reverse Darwinism.” Teaching weak and chronically offended people that they can negate the ideas of other people simply by shouting “I’m offended” does tend to result in weak people suppressing the ideas of stronger people who are unafraid to speak. This results in a phenomenon I also refer to as the “survival of the least emotionally fit.” When the weak silence the strong, weak arguments tend to overtake stronger ones. But this also teaches a valuable lesson to some of the stronger participants in the marketplace of ideas.
Think about it for moment. If you were a strong and aggressive proponent of left wing ideas (and you believed that the ends justify the means) then how would you respond to seeing someone suppress the ideas of others by claiming to be offended? There is a pretty good chance that you would try to manipulate the process by pretending to be offended.
Take the modern social justice warrior/feminist as an example. She stars in The Vagina Monologues one day – talking about her sex organs in public in the most graphic terms imaginable. The next day she is charging someone with sexual harassment for telling a joke - or at Davidson College for simply asking her out on a date. (No, I’m not kidding. At Davidson College “comments or inquiries about dating” are actually defined as sexual harassment).
So which one is it? Is the modern social warrior supposed to be classified as an adult or as a child? The answer depends on who is talking. If she is talking, she is an adult with full First Amendment protection. If someone else is talking, she is a wilting lily in need of protection.
Thus considered, the result of political correctness is twofold: It produces a lot of nominal adults unable to function in the marketplace of ideas without special protection. But it also produces a lot of manipulative sociopaths that seriously threaten the future of our nation.
Do you think I am exaggerating? Well, just take a few minutes to Google the words “students demand” and see what comes up. Here is what you will find:
*George Washington University Students Demand Creation of Sanctuary Campus.
*Berkeley Protestors Demand Spaces of Color.
*Wisconsin Students Demand Ban on Conservative Group.
*Mississippi State Students Demand Removal of State Flag.
And so on.
It is hard to read the endless demands of these students without remembering what happened just over a year ago when all hell broke loose at Yale and Mizzou. At Yale, a student was caught on camera screaming at an administrator while simultaneously demanding “safety.” Students at Mizzou were captured on camera as they were goaded by a professor into using physical intimidation in order to remove members of the press from “safe spaces” located on public university property.
Now we are no longer shocked. This is the new normal. Gone are the days when college administrators tried to pull one over on college students by enforcing policies that violated their rights. Now the students are demanding these policies because they help facilitate a litany of other demands advanced in their endless crusade to control those that they cannot persuade.
Of course, most, though not all, of those demands involve the willful suppression of free speech protected by the First Amendment. But they will keep kicking and screaming until someone gives in to them. They will continue their tirades even if it means scrapping the First Amendment altogether. Force, rather than reasoned argument, is their new means of communication.
It is certainly true that our culture of faux outrage and victimhood is producing a lot of Butters. Unfortunately, it is also producing a lot of Cartmans.The makers of the Kodi media software have called for the TVAddons repository to be shut down, accusing the developers of causing “misery.”
The third-party TVAddons extensions can be installed on top of Kodi. That enables some users to illegally stream TV shows and movies.
This has been much to the chagrin of Kodi, which often receives the mainstream media blame for enabling piracy. The company has always claimed its purpose is to help users organise and stream media from legitimate sources.
In a Twitter spat (via Inquirer), Kodi has accused TVAddons of bringing “nothing but misery to everyone.”
TVAddons was quick to respond to the slight, claiming Kodi had lost touch with its user base.
On its Twitter account, it wrote: “Nice thing to say, whoever is running your social media profile @KodiTV is definitely not in touch with your userbase…”
Related: What is Kodi and is it legal?
The war of words continued with Kodi later responding: “We love 3rd party add-ons. Not the piracy variety you’re referring to though. Popularity? Not bothered. Dead? No, just a nice small userbase.”
Not liable?
The duo were responding to a tweet from TorrentFreak featuring a report on “abusive lawsuits” being filed against TVAddons.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation says: “The lawsuit against TVAddons seeks to skirt that important [safe harbor] protection by arguing that by merely hosting, distributing and promoting Kodi add-ons, the TVAddons administrator is liable for inducing or authorizing copyright infringements later committed using those add-ons.”
The open source nature of the Kodi platform makes it difficult for the makers of the software to halt the emergence of add-ons that enable piracy.
Do you think TVAddons should be shutdown? Do you use Kodi for things other than streaming TV and movies? Drop us a line @TrustedReviews on Twitter.Occupy Wall Street and its kindred protests around the country are inept, incoherent and hopelessly quixotic. God, I love ’em.
I love every little thing about these gloriously amateurish sit-ins. I love that they are spontaneous, leaderless and open-ended. I love that the protesters refuse to issue specific demands beyond a forceful call for economic justice. I also love that in Chicago — uniquely, thus far — demonstrators have ignored the rule about vagueness and are being ultra-specific about their goals. I love that there are no rules, just tendencies.
I love that when Occupy Wall Street was denied permission to use bullhorns, demonstrators came up with an alternative straight out of Monty Python, or maybe “The Flintstones”: Have everyone within earshot repeat a speaker’s words, verbatim and in unison, so the whole crowd can hear. It works — and sounds tremendously silly. Protest movements that grow into something important tend to have a sense of humor.
I can’t help but love that House Majority Leader Eric Cantor called the protests “growing mobs” and complained about fellow travelers who “have actually condoned the pitting of Americans against Americans.” This would be the same Eric Cantor who praised the Tea Party movement in its raucous, confrontational, foaming-at-the-mouth infancy as “an organic movement” that was “about the people.” The man’s hypocrisy belongs in the Smithsonian.
Most of all, I love that the Occupy protests arise at just the right moment and are aimed at just the right target. This could be the start of something big and important.
“Economic justice” may mean different things to different people, but it’s not an empty phrase. It captures the sense that somehow, when we weren’t looking, the concept of fairness was deleted from our economic system — and our political lexicon. Economic injustice became the norm.
Revolutionary advances in technology and globalization are the forces most responsible for the hollowing-out of the American economy. But our policymakers responded in ways that tended to accentuate, rather than ameliorate, the most damaging effects of these worldwide trends.
The result is clear: a nation where the rich have become the mega-rich while the middle class has steadily lost ground, where unemployment is stuck at levels once considered unbearable, and where our political system is too dysfunctional to take the kind of bold action that would make a real difference. Eventually, the economy will limp out of this slump, and things will seem better. Fundamentally, however, nothing will have changed.
Does that sound broad and unfocused? Yes, but it’s true.
The Occupy Wall Street protesters saw this broad, unfocused truth — and also understood that the place to begin this movement was at the epicenter of the financial system.
For most of our history, it was understood that the financial sector was supposed to perform a vital service for the economy: channeling capital to the companies where it could be most effectively used. But the rapid technological, economic and political change the world has witnessed in recent decades created myriad opportunities for Wall Street to channel capital to itself, often by inventing exotic new securities whose underpinnings may not exist. The 2008 financial crisis demonstrated the urgent need for reform.
It’s not that investment bankers should be held responsible for all the ills of the world. It’s that Wall Street is emblematic of an entire economic and political system that no longer seems to have the best interests of most Americans at heart.
So a ragtag group — not huge, but idealistic and determined — camps out in Lower Manhattan. A similar thing happens in two dozen other cities. And maybe a movement is born.
Already, after less than a month, commentators are asking whether the Occupy protests can be transformed into a coherent political force. For now, at least, I hope not.
We have no shortage of politicians in this country. What we need is more passion and energy in the service of justice. We need to be forced to answer questions that sound simplistic or naive — questions about ethics and values. Detailed policy positions can wait.
At some point, these protest encampments will disappear — and, since the nation and the world will not have changed, they’ll be judged a failure. But I’ve got a hunch that this likely judgment will be wrong. I think the seed of progressive activism in the Occupy protests may grow into something very big indeed.
The writer will answer questions at 1 p.m. today at www.washingtonpost.com. His e-mail address is eugenerobinson@washpost.com.The Parents Television Council this morning criticized NBC and NFL over the Super Bowl halftime show incident involving British rapper M.I.A. briefly flashing a middle finger in front of the camera before the network was able to blur the image. The watchdog called for NBC and NFL to punish those responsible for the flap but stopped short of announcing the filing of a formal complaint with the FCC. At least for now. Here is the statement from PTC president Tim Winter:
“NBC fumbled and the NFL lied because a performer known as M.I.A. felt it necessary to flip off millions of families. It is unfortunate that a spectacular sporting event was overshadowed once again by broadcasting the selfish acts of a desperate performer.
Super Bowl Half-Time Show Controversy Prompts Apologies From NBC & NFL
“Last week the NFL formally told the PTC – and the American public – that the Super Bowl halftime show would be ‘appropriate.’ Most families would agree that the middle finger aimed directly at them is not appropriate, especially during the most-watched television event of the year.
“The mechanism NBC had in place to catch this type of material completely failed, and the network cannot say it was caught off guard. It has been eight years since the Janet Jackson striptease, and both NBC and the NFL knew full well what might happen. They chose a lineup full of performers who have based their careers on shock, profanity and titillation. Instead of preventing indecent material, they enabled it. M.I.A. used a middle finger shamelessly to bring controversial attention to herself, while effectively telling an audience filled with children, ‘F– you.’
“A simple apology rings hollow after yet another slap in the face to families, especially when NBC has argued before the U.S. Supreme Court that it should be allowed to air all manner of indecent material at any time of day, even when children are watching.
“Either the NFL and NBC will take immediate steps to hold those accountable for this offensive material in front of a hundred million Americans, or they will feebly sit back and do nothing. The nation – and the PTC – is watching.”CORONADO, Calif. — The governments of the United States and Mexico signed an agreement on Tuesday to overhaul how the two countries share and manage water from the Colorado River, which provides water to more than 33 million people in seven states and Mexico.
Under the agreement, the two countries will share in both surpluses and water shortages. During drought years in the United States, less water will be sent to Mexico. In exchange, during years of plenty, Mexico will be allowed to store some of its water north of its border.
In addition, the countries will allocate some water to restore the ecological health of the river’s delta in Mexico.
Speaking at the signing of the agreement here, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar called it the most important adjustment to rules on the Colorado River since the 1944 treaty between the two countries that set the terms for use of the river’s water.
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Mr. Salazar said he hoped the new agreement would be the end of “water wars,” which in times of drought have pitted those who rely on the river against each other. The 1,450-mile river runs from the Rockies to the Gulf of California.(Photo Illustration: NRO; Image: Getty)
I’m old enough to remember what it was like. I remember when more than 2,000 young men (disproportionately black) died in the streets of New York City, every single year. I remember when trips outside, late at night, in cities such as Chicago, Boston, and Los Angeles were deemed — justifiably — to be inherently dangerous, where there would be that small knot of concern in your stomach when the streets grew dark and deserted. I remember the panicked voice of my “little brother” — the young kid I was mentoring in East Nashville — when I was hanging out at his place too late. “You need to leave,” he’d plead. “It’s not safe for you at night.”
Those were terrible days in the United States of America, days when young men killed one another at terrifying rates, when we believed that our social fabric was irrevocably fraying and our great cities were dying. Every community suffered, but the black community suffered most of all. Indeed, law-abiding African Americas (the vast majority of the community) were then in the middle of a 40-year campaign to save their own lives and the lives of their children and grandchildren. Black community leaders and black politicians called for tougher sentencing and a greater police presence. The Congressional Black Caucus took the lead on combating crack cocaine, and black leaders partnered with the Clinton administration to crack down on crime. They did so proudly, and they often did so bravely.
Tougher sentencing, more creative policing techniques, more guns in the hands of law-abiding citizens, and massive public-education efforts all converged to save our cities.
And since I’m old enough to remember the crime waves at their worst, I can also remember when the wave broke. When life suddenly — wondrously — started to get better. I lived in Manhattan early in Rudy Giuliani’s first term, when the headlines proclaimed dramatic decreases in crime and when friends and neighbors talked about how the city was coming alive again and that they felt hope for New York. The phrase “broken-windows policing” entered the vernacular — as cops began to see preventing crime, not solving crimes, as their primary task — and people talked about computer-targeted neighborhood patrols. Home values began to soar, Times Square transformed itself into virtual Disney World North, and we walked everywhere — late at night and sometimes all night — enjoying the world’s greatest city.
RELATED: The Truth About Mass Incarceration
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I’m suspicious of anyone who says they can pinpoint the exact reason that the crime wave broke. Crime has complex cultural roots, and it has complex cultural solutions. But one thing is clear: America was throwing the kitchen sink at the crime problem. Tougher sentencing, more creative policing techniques, more guns in the hands of law-abiding citizens, and massive public-education efforts all converged to save our cities. Black pastors threw themselves into the breach, using their prophetic voice to call young people to a higher, better life. Countless educators and mentors gave their time and money to give at-risk youth a fighting chance. At the same time, America was entering a post–Cold War economic boom. We can argue endlessly about which factor was most important, about how precisely they worked together to save tens of thousands of lives and spare hundreds of thousands from the pain and terror of criminal violence. But we cannot argue about the fact that life is better, life is safer, and Americans pulled together to help re-knit our social fabric.
#share#I couldn’t help but remember these bad days — and the new dawn — when reading Ta-Nehisi’s Coates’s latest magnum opus in The Atlantic: a 17,000-word essay on the impact of mass incarceration on the black community. Coates being Coates, he sees our current policy of mass incarceration as thoroughly consistent with America’s history of slavery and Jim Crow; in other words, the overarching goal and result of mass incarceration is the control and marginalization of black Americans. He shuns even great figures in black history who decry the problem of criminal behavior. He rejects messages that emphasize personal responsibility, pays short shrift to those black voices who cried out for safety and justice in their own communities, and instead focuses on the criminal as pure victim. With his characteristic eloquence, Coates writes about what it’s like to be imprisoned, shut away from friends and family.
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RELATED: ’Broken-Windows’ Policing Does Work. Says Who? Residents of Poor Black Neighborhoods
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Coates is honest enough to note that mass incarceration is a bipartisan phenomenon. Indeed, it’s hard to find contemporary politicians as tough on crime as Democrat Bill Clinton or Democrat Mario Cuomo. But to Coates, this bipartisan commitment to saving lives and rescuing communities from fear is simply more evidence that racism is an American issue, not just a Republican problem. Those familiar with Coates’s writing know that he casts America as the real criminal here, the villain at the center of the story. White supremacy is the core American idea, plunder is the core American activity, and oppression is the natural and eternal consequence.
Contemporary mass incarceration is a response to an undeniable crisis of violence, a crisis that we would be fools to forget.
Yet, while giving voice to those black Americans behind bars, Coates gives little space to other black voices. We don’t hear from the murder victim’s family — about what it’s like to bury a child, to feel their absence every single day. We don’t hear from the victim of the carjacking, the person who may suffer from PTSD and never feel safe in her own city again. Crime often breaks two homes — the victim’s and the perpetrator’s — and it is simply wrong to focus on the guilty at the expense of the innocent.
That is not to say that we shouldn’t be concerned about mass incarceration. Like many millions of Americans, Left and Right, I’m hopeful that we can hold on to our gains in public safety and maintain our revitalized cities while imprisoning fewer Americans. We should explore ways in which improved technology can help us monitor criminals and hold them accountable for their actions while still allowing them to be productive and present in their families’ lives. We need to explore alternatives to incarceration for nonviolent crimes, with the full awareness that prison is often the place where a one-time offender learns to be a career criminal.
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#related#But we must explore prison reform the same way we should explore police reform — humbly, with full awareness of the risks, and without undue optimism about human nature. Previous experiments in lenience have often ended in bloodshed, and we should watch carefully each state and local situation as they test alternatives to incarceration or controlled early releases. As Coates properly notes, we can’t simply end mass incarceration by dealing only with “nonviolent” offenders. The ranks of the violent are too vast, and the lines between violent and nonviolent offenses are too blurred. In short: Proceed with caution.
Contemporary mass incarceration is not the result of a spasm of national racism. Rather, it’s a response to an undeniable crisis of violence, a crisis that we would be fools to forget. And if today we privilege those black voices who condemn contemporary public policies and denigrate messages of personal responsibility, we will be marginalizing those contrary, powerful black voices who helped save their own communities (and our nation) from a crime wave that was bringing our society to its knees. American elites are uniting to condemn mass incarceration, but the elites won’t be the ones who bear the burden of failed reforms. All lives matter, and when remembering the plight of the prisoner and his family, we cannot forget his victim, for his is the greater loss.
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— David French is an attorney and a staff writer at National Review.The hover effects on Amazon’s big ‘ole “Shop by Department” mega dropdown are super fast. Look'it how quick each submenu fills in as your mouse moves down the list:
It’s instant. I got nerd sniped by this. Most dropdown menus have to include a bit of a delay when activating submenus. Here’s an old Khan Academy dropdown as an example:
See the delay? You need that, because otherwise when you try to move your mouse from the main menu to the submenu, the submenu will disappear out from under you like some sort of sick, unwinnable game of whack-a-mole. Enjoy this example from bootstrap’s dropdown menus:
I love bootstrap, don’t get it twisted. Just a good example of submenu frustration.
How did Amazon get away without using a delay?
It’s easy to move the cursor from Amazon’s main dropdown to its submenus. You won’t run into the bootstrap bug. They get away with this by detecting the direction of the cursor’s path.
If the cursor moves into the blue triangle the currently displayed submenu will stay open for just a bit longer.
At every position of the cursor you can picture a triangle between the current mouse position and the upper and lower right corners of the dropdown menu. If the next mouse position is within that triangle, the user is probably moving their cursor into the currently displayed submenu. Amazon uses this for a nice effect. As long as the cursor stays within that blue triangle the current submenu will stay open. It doesn’t matter if the cursor hovers over “Appstore for Android” momentarily – the user is probably heading toward “Learn more about Cloud Drive.”
And if the cursor goes outside of the blue triangle, they instantly switch the submenu, giving it a really responsive feel.
So if you’re as geeky as me and think something this trivial is cool, I made a jQuery plugin that fires events when detecting this sort of directional menu aiming: jQuery-menu-aim. We’re using it in the new Khan Academy “Learn” menu:
I think it feels snappy. I’m not ashamed to copy Amazon. I’m sure this problem was solved years and years ago, forgotten, rediscovered, solved again, forgotten, rediscovered, solved again.
If anyone else on the planet ends up finding a use for jQuery-menu-aim, I’d be grateful to know what you think.
Thanks go to Ben Alpert for helping me understand the linear algebra / cross-product magic Amazon uses to detect movement inside the “blue triangle.” I ended up going w/ a cruder slope-based approach, mostly b/c I’ve lost all intuitive understanding of linear algebra. Sad. Need to watch more KA videos.After just four weeks of laughter and adventure, the season finale of Galavant is here.
Galavant Season 1 Episode 7 and Galavant Season 1 Episode 8 offer a finale that is entertaining, but one that leaves us with little closure. The good news is that this leaves us wanting more – and I want to see a second season! Don't you?
For Galavant, the story continues to be one where he learns about himself. He learns to give up his pride, for one thing. He also realizes that lessons from his father aren't the ones he should live by, and it is actually a good thing to have feelings. That's good news, because it means we finally get the moment we've all been waiting for between Galavant and Isabella. They finally kiss (it took them long enough), but then Gareth promptly knocks Galavant over the head.
By the way, Galavant's father is played by Anthony Stewart Head (Buffy the Vampire Slayer). He even sings! My only complaint is that there isn't enough of him. Still, it's a fantastic guest appearance.
Your moment of glory will come, young Galavant. Be patient, be ready, and also, never get married. Arnold Permalink: Your moment of glory will come, young Galavant. Be patient, be ready, and also, never get...
Permalink: Your moment of glory will come, young Galavant. Be patient, be ready, and also, never get...
Speaking of guest appearances, Kingsly, King Richard's brother, is played by the amazing Rutger Hauer. But the guest appearances aren't nearly as important as the story, the jokes, and the music.
The show references itself by commenting on the musical numbers and Galavant's habit of speaking about himself in third person. It also continues to find its humor by reminding us of our current modern time period. And poor Galavant keeps getting interrupted when he tries to sing about his moment in the sun!
My favorite moments from the finale, though, come from King Richard.
I've spent a lot of time talking about character growth for Galavant, but King Richard has also grown in a lot of ways. In fact, he even decides that, rather than choosing a champion to fight for him against his brother, he will fight his own battle. Sure, he's still very silly and completely misguided, but at least the guy is trying. Between that, his weaknesses, and the appearance of his terrible brother, it's hard to even see King Richard as a villain any more. In fact, Madalena is a heck of a lot worse than he is.
I like the idea that King Richard and Galavant are sent off together in the end, especially since their scenes together in this final episode are so fun to watch. Having the two enemies become friends certainly gives potential for some interesting things in the future. King Richard even says they are "frenemies."
This is also when King Richard reveals a redeeming factor about himself. Galavant is surprised to learn King Richard is a virgin, especially considering the fact that he is married to Madalena. He's even more surprised that King Richard hadn't insisted.
I'm not an animal. I mean sure, I'll kidnap a woman and force her to marry me. But after that, I'm all about a woman's rights. I'm a modern 13th century man. King Richard Permalink: I'm not an animal. I mean sure, I'll kidnap a woman and force her to marry me. But after...
Permalink: I'm not an animal. I mean sure, I'll kidnap a woman and force her to marry me. But after...
Overall, the first season is definitely entertaining and offers great storytelling. What is missing from the finale, unfortunately, is closure. Of course, leaving us wanting more will make it even better if the show is renewed, but with the way this story is told, it should have more of an ending than it does. Barely anything is resolved, and we're left with more questions than we are answers.
What's clever about that is the finale song, which even goes to far to mention Neilsen ratings and a question of whether or not the show will be renewed. That's pretty brilliant, if you ask me.
What about you, Galavant Fanatics? Did you enjoy the first season of Galavant? What did you think of the ending? Be sure to share your thoughts in the comments below!
Want to see the whole thing over again? You can always watch Galavant online via TV Fanatic!
Ashley Bissette Sumerel was a staff writer for TV Fanatic. She retired in September 2017. Follow her on Twitter and on Google+.Tom |
for a pretty clean top 8 in the state. Rounding out the field are Rand Paul at 3%, Chris Christie and Rick Santorum at 2%, John Kasich and Rick Perry at 1%, Jim Gilmore, Bobby Jindal, and George Pataki with less than 1%, and Lindsey Graham with literally no supporters.
Trump’s 8 point gain gives him the biggest momentum in the state over the last month. The other two candidates with upward momentum are Carson and Cruz. Carson’s gone from 9% to 14% as people’s first choice. Beyond that he’s 21% of voters’ second choice, making him the clear leader on that front. And his 66/11 favorability rating makes him the most popular of the GOP hopefuls in the state. Cruz has gone from 6% a month ago to his 10% standing now.
The losers in North Carolina over the last month are Walker, Huckabee, Paul, and Christie. Walker’s dropped 6 points from 12% last month to now 6%. His 51% favorability rating remains unchanged, but voters just seem to be finding others of their options to be more compelling. It’s a similar story for Huckabee. His 60% favorability rating ties him with Rubio as the second most broadly liked candidate in the state behind Carson, but the share of voters who actually want him as the nominee has dropped from 11% to 6%.
The news is worse for Paul- he has seen a precipitous decline in his popularity. A month ago his favorability in the state was 49/22. Now it’s 31/47- it’s clear from three polls we’ve done now since the debate that it killed Paul’s image. He’s dropped from 7% to 3% in the horse race. Finally Chris Christie’s gone from 5% to 2%, making it 1%, 1%, and 2% in the three polls we’ve done since the debate. He remains very unpopular with a 23/55 favorability rating.
Trump leads the GOP field with moderates (29%), ‘somewhat conservative’ voters (25%), ‘very conservative’ voters (21%), men (26%), women (22%), middle aged voters (26%), younger voters (25%), and seniors (20%) alike. It’s interesting to note though that his 47/40 favorability rating only makes him the 7th most popular of the 11 candidates we looked at in the state.
If voters had to choose just between Trump and Ben Carson (59/35), Marco Rubio (51/43), or Scott Walker (50/43) the supporters of the other candidates would coalesce around the non-Trump candidate enough that he would lag behind. Trump has the most passionate supporters at this point but at the end of the day his popularity isn’t that broad. He would at least lead Bush 50/42 in a head to head. Bush has a 37/47 favorability with ‘very conservative’ voters and that skepticism towards him on the right will continue to cause him problems unless he can change that.
On the Democratic side things are very consistent. Hillary Clinton leads with 55% to 19% for Bernie Sanders, 5% for Jim Webb, 2% for Lincoln Chafee and Martin O’Malley, and 1% for Lawrence Lessig. A month ago Clinton led Sanders by a nearly identical 55/20 spread. Clinton’s over 60% with liberals, moderates, and African Americans and over 50% with men, women, and voters within every age group.
A higher than usual 20% of Democratic primary voters in North Carolina identify themselves as conservatives and with that group she only gets 26% which is what keeps her to 55% overall despite being over 60% with both liberals and moderates. The only other group Clinton’s under 50% with is white voters, among whom she leads Sanders 47/25.
Clinton trails 8 of the 11 Republican hopefuls in hypothetical match ups, although most of the margins are close. The strongest performers against her are Ben Carson who leads 47/40 and Marco Rubio who has a 45/41 advantage. Carson and Rubio have been the strongest performing Republicans in the general election in all three of the polls we’ve done since the debate.
Doing the worst against Clinton are Rand Paul who trails 44/40, Chris Christie who trails 40/39, and Jeb Bush who ties Clinton at 42. In between, all with leads of 1-3 points over Clinton, are Carly Fiorina (42/41), John Kasich (41/40), Ted Cruz (45/43), Mike Huckabee (46/44), Donald Trump (45/42), and Scott Walker (44/41).
North Carolina continues the recent trend of Bernie Sanders not faring much differently in general election match ups than Clinton. He trails Rubio 42/36, Walker 41/37, and Bush and Trump both 43/40. On average his performance against the Republicans is just 1.5 points worse than Clinton’s.
The specter of Trump running as an independent candidate in the general election continues to be a big potential problem for Republicans. In such a scenario Clinton leads with 38% with Bush at 28% and Trump at 27% basically tying for second place. Trump wins independents with 38% (to 28% for Clinton and 24% for Bush), takes 38% of Republicans, and 14% of Democrats.
Finally another declared independent candidate, Deez Nuts, polls at 9% in North Carolina to go along with his 8% in Minnesota and 7% in Iowa in our recent polling. Trump leads Clinton 40/38 when he’s in the mix.
Full results hereMONROE, La. and BROOMFIELD, Colo., Oct, 31, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- CenturyLink (NYSE: CTL) and Level 3 Communications, Inc. (NYSE: LVLT) today announced that their Boards of Directors have unanimously approved a definitive merger agreement under which CenturyLink will acquire Level 3 in a cash and stock transaction valued at approximately $34 billion, including the assumption of debt. Under terms of the agreement, Level 3 shareholders will receive $26.50 per share in cash and a fixed exchange ratio of 1.4286 shares of CenturyLink stock for each Level 3 share they own, which implies a purchase price of $66.50 per Level 3 share (based on a CenturyLink $28.00 per share reference price) and a premium of approximately 42 percent based on Level 3's unaffected closing share price of $46.92 on October 26, 2016, the last trading day prior to market speculation about a potential transaction. Upon the closing of the transaction, CenturyLink shareholders will own approximately 51 percent and Level 3 shareholders will own approximately 49 percent of the combined company.
The combined company will have the ability to offer CenturyLink's larger enterprise customer base the benefits of Level 3's global footprint with a combined presence in more than 60 countries. In addition, the combined company will be positioned to further invest in the reach and speeds of its broadband infrastructure for small businesses and consumers.
"The digital economy relies on broadband connectivity, and together with Level 3 we will have one of the most robust fiber network and high-speed data services companies in the world," said Glen Post, CenturyLink Chief Executive Officer and President. "This transaction furthers our commitment to providing our customers with the network to improve their lives and strengthen their businesses. It is this focus on providing fiber connectivity that will continue to distinguish CenturyLink from our competitors. CenturyLink shareholders will benefit from the significant synergies and financial flexibility provided by the combined company's revenue growth and strong cash flow. For employees, this combination will bring together two highly customer-focused organizations and provide employees growth and advancement opportunities the companies could not offer separately."
"This is a compelling transaction for our customers, shareholders and employees," said Jeff Storey, President and Chief Executive Officer of Level 3. "In addition to the substantial value delivered to shareholders, the combined company will be uniquely positioned to meet the evolving and global needs of enterprise customers."
Strategic and Financial Benefits
Highly Complementary Businesses with Expanded Fiber Networks: This transaction increases CenturyLink's network by 200,000 route miles of fiber, which includes 64,000 route miles in 350 metropolitan areas and 33,000 subsea route miles connecting multiple continents. Accounting for those served by both companies, CenturyLink's on-net buildings are expected to increase by nearly 75 percent to approximately 75,000, including 10,000 buildings in EMEA and Latin America. Overall, the complementary domestic and international networks will provide cost efficiencies by focusing capital investment on increasing capacity and extending the reach of the combined company's high-bandwidth fiber network.
Enhanced Competitive Offerings in Business Network Services: The combined company will have significantly improved network capabilities, creating a world-class enterprise player with approximately $19 billion in pro forma business revenue and$13 billion in business strategic revenue, for the trailing twelve months ended June 30, 2016. Together, CenturyLink's and Level 3's revenue will be 76 percent derived from business customers, and 65 percent of the combined company's core revenue will be from strategic services. Given the complementary nature of the portfolios, the combined company will offer an even broader range of services and solutions to meet customers' demand for more bandwidth and new applications in an increasingly complex operating environment.
Enhanced Broadband Infrastructure: This transaction will provide the combined company with increased opportunity to invest in its broadband infrastructure and enhance broadband speed for small businesses and consumers.
Strong Financial Profile: The combined company is expected to have improved adjusted EBITDA margins, revenue growth and pro forma net leverage of less than 3.7x at close, including run-rate synergies. The combined company will benefit from Level 3's nearly $10 billion of net operating losses ("NOLs"). These NOLs will substantially reduce the combined company's net cash tax expense over the next several years, positioning it to generate substantial free cash flow.
Improved Dividend Coverage: The improved free cash flow will enhance the combined company's financial flexibility and significantly lower its payout ratio. CenturyLink expects to maintain its annual dividend of $2.16 per share.
Significantly Accretive to Free Cash Flow with Multiple Opportunities for Growth: CenturyLink expects the transaction to be accretive to free cash flow in the first full year following the close of the transaction and significantly accretive on an annual run-rate basis thereafter. Furthermore, the transaction will be accretive to CenturyLink's existing growth profile with additional upside opportunities, including the ability to deploy CenturyLink's and Level 3's product portfolio across the combined customer bases. With increased network scale, and dense local metro areas and global reach, the combined company will be positioned to further expand internationally.
Substantial Run-Rate Synergies: Both companies have a proven ability to integrate and meet or exceed synergy targets. The increased scale afforded by the combined company is expected to generate $975 million of annual run-rate cash synergies, primarily from the elimination of duplicative functions, systems consolidation, and increased operational and capital efficiencies.
Management, Board and Location
After the close of the transaction, Glen Post will continue to serve as Chief Executive Officer and President and Sunit Patel, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer of Level 3, will serve as Chief Financial Officer of the combined company.
The Chairman of CenturyLink's Board at the time of the closing of the transaction will continue to serve as Chairman of the combined company. CenturyLink has agreed to appoint four Level 3 Board members at closing, one of whom will be a representative of STT Crossing (a wholly owned subsidiary of ST Telemedia).
The combined company will be headquartered in Monroe, Louisiana and will maintain a significant presence in Colorado and the Denver metropolitan area.
Financing and Approvals
CenturyLink intends to finance the cash portion of the transaction and pay related fees and expenses through a combination of cash on hand at CenturyLink and Level 3, and approximately $7 billion of additional indebtedness. In connection therewith, CenturyLink has received financing commitments from BofA Merrill Lynch and Morgan Stanley & Co. LLC totaling approximately $10.2 billion for new secured debt facilities, comprised of a new $2 billion secured revolving credit facility and approximately $8.2 billion of other secured debt facilities, including the refinancing of indebtedness expected to mature prior to closing of the transaction. All existing indebtedness of Level 3 is expected to remain in place at Level 3 and Level 3 will not incur any incremental indebtedness or guarantee any indebtedness of CenturyLink to finance the transaction.
The companies anticipate closing the transaction by the end of third quarter 2017. The transaction is subject to regulatory approvals, including expiration or termination of the applicable waiting period under the Hart-Scott-Rodino Antitrust Improvements Act, review by the U.S. Federal Communications Commission, certain state regulatory approvals and other customary closing conditions. The transaction is also subject to the approval of CenturyLink and Level 3 shareholders.
CenturyLink has entered into a voting agreement with STT Crossing (a wholly owned subsidiary of ST Telemedia), holder of approximately 18 percent of Level 3's outstanding common stock, pursuant to which it will vote its Level 3 shares in favor of the transaction.
CenturyLink and Level 3 Third Quarter 2016 Earnings Results
In separate press releases issued today, CenturyLink and Level 3 announced earnings results for the third quarter 2016. In light of today's transaction and third quarter earnings announcements, CenturyLink and Level 3 have both cancelled their previously announced calls for Wednesday, November 2, 2016 and Thursday, November 3, 2016, respectively. A joint presentation will be available at www.centurylink.com and www.level3.com.
Advisors
BofA Merrill Lynch and Morgan Stanley & Co. LLC acted as CenturyLink's financial advisors, and Evercore provided a fairness opinion. Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz and Jones Walker are acting as CenturyLink's legal advisors. Citigroup acted as financial advisor to Level 3, and Lazard provided a fairness opinion. Willkie Farr & Gallagher LLP acted as legal advisor to Level 3. Latham & Watkins acted as legal advisor and Credit Suisse acted as financial advisor to ST Telemedia.
Conference Call and Webcast
CenturyLink and Level 3 will host a conference call today at 8:00 A.M. ET to discuss this morning's announcement as well as both companies' third quarter 2016 financial results.
The conference call can be accessed by dialing (866) 610-1072 within the U.S. and (973) 935-2840 for all other locations. The confirmation code is 10841687. Participants should dial in 10 minutes prior to the scheduled start time.
A live webcast of the conference call and associated presentation materials will be available on the investor relations section of each company's website at www.centurylink.com and www.level3.com.
A replay of the conference call will be available approximately two hours after completion of the conference call through November 14, 2016 and can be accessed by dialing (800) 585-8367 from the U.S. or (404) 537-3406 from outside the U.S. The replay confirmation code is 10841687. The webcast will be archived on the investor relations section of each company's website through November 22, 2016.
About CenturyLink
CenturyLink (NYSE: CTL) is a global communications, hosting, cloud and IT services company enabling millions of customers to transform their businesses and their lives through innovative technology solutions. CenturyLink offers network and data systems management, Big Data analytics and IT consulting, and operates more than 55 data centers in North America, Europe and Asia. The company provides broadband, voice, video, data and managed services over a robust 250,000-route-mile U.S. fiber network and a 300,000-route-mile international transport network. Visit www.centurylink.com for more information.
About Level 3 Communications
Level 3 Communications, Inc. (NYSE: LVLT) is a Fortune 500 company that provides local, national and global communications services to enterprise, government and carrier customers. Level 3's comprehensive portfolio of secure, managed solutions includes fiber and infrastructure solutions; IP-based voice and data communications; wide-area Ethernet services; video and content distribution; data center and cloud-based solutions. Level 3 serves customers in more than 500 markets in over 60 countries across a global services platform anchored by owned fiber networks on three continents and connected by extensive undersea facilities. For more information, please visit www.level3.com or get to know us on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.
© Level 3 Communications, LLC. All Rights Reserved. Level 3, Vyvx, Level 3 Communications, Level (3) and the Level 3 Logo are either registered service marks or service marks of Level 3 Communications, LLC and/or one of its Affiliates in the United States and elsewhere. Any other service names, product names, company names or logos included herein are the trademarks or service marks of their respective owners. Level 3 services are provided by subsidiaries of Level 3 Communications, Inc.
Forward Looking Statements
Except for the historical and factual information contained herein, the matters set forth in this release, including statements regarding the expected timing and benefits of the proposed transaction, such as efficiencies, cost savings, enhanced revenues, growth potential, market profile and financial strength, and the competitive ability and position of the combined company, and other statements identified by words such as "will," "estimates," "expects," "projects," "plans," "intends" and similar expressions, are forward-looking statements within the meaning of the "safe harbor" provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These forward-looking statements are subject to a number of risks, uncertainties and assumptions, many of which are beyond our control. Actual events and results may differ materially from those anticipated, estimated or projected if one or more of these risks or uncertainties materialize, or if underlying assumptions prove incorrect. Factors that could affect actual results include but are not limited to: the ability of the parties to timely and successfully receive the required approvals of regulatory agencies and their respective shareholders; the possibility that the anticipated benefits from the proposed transaction cannot be fully realized or may take longer to realize than expected; the possibility that costs or difficulties related to the integration of Level 3's operations with those of CenturyLink will be greater than expected; the ability of the combined company to retain and hire key personnel; the effects of competition from a wide variety of competitive providers, including lower demand for CenturyLink's legacy offerings; the effects of new, emerging or competing technologies, including those that could make the combined company's products less desirable or obsolete; the effects of ongoing changes in the regulation of the communications industry, including the outcome of regulatory or judicial proceedings relating to intercarrier compensation, interconnection obligations, access charges, universal service, broadband deployment, data protection and net neutrality; adverse changes in CenturyLink's or the combined company's access to credit markets on favorable terms, whether caused by changes in its financial position, lower debt credit ratings, unstable markets or otherwise; the combined company's ability to effectively adjust to changes in the communications industry, and changes in the composition of its markets and product mix; possible changes in the demand for, or pricing of, the combined company's products and services, including the combined company's ability to effectively respond to increased demand for high-speed broadband service; the combined company's ability to successfully maintain the quality and profitability of its existing product and service offerings and to introduce new offerings on a timely and cost-effective basis; the adverse impact on the combined company's business and network from possible equipment failures, service outages, security breaches or similar events impacting its network; the combined company's ability to maintain favorable relations with key business partners, suppliers, vendors, landlords and financial institutions; the ability of the combined company to utilize net operating losses in amounts projected; changes in the future cash requirements of the combined company; and other risk factors and cautionary statements as detailed from time to time in each of CenturyLink's and Level 3's reports filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (the "SEC"). There can be no assurance that the proposed acquisition or any other transaction described above will in fact be consummated in the manner described or at all. You should be aware that new factors may emerge from time to time and it is not possible for us to identify all such factors nor can we predict the impact of each such factor on the proposed transaction or the combined company. You should not place undue reliance on these forward‑looking statements, which speak only as of the date of this document. Unless legally required, CenturyLink and Level 3 undertake no obligation and each expressly disclaim any such obligation, to update publicly any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.
Additional Information
CenturyLink and Level 3 plan to file a joint proxy statement/prospectus with the SEC. INVESTORS ARE URGED TO READ THE JOINT PROXY STATEMENT/PROSPECTUS WHEN IT BECOMES AVAILABLE BECAUSE IT WILL CONTAIN IMPORTANT INFORMATION. You will be able to obtain the joint proxy statement/prospectus and the filings that will be incorporated by reference in the joint proxy statement/prospectus, as well as other filings containing information about CenturyLink and Level 3, free of charge, at the website maintained by the SEC at www.sec.gov. Copies of the joint proxy statement/prospectus and the filings with the SEC that will be incorporated by reference in the joint proxy statement/prospectus can also be obtained, free of charge, by directing a request to CenturyLink, 100 CenturyLink Drive, Monroe, Louisiana 71203, Attention: Corporate Secretary, or to Level 3, 1025 Eldorado Boulevard,Broomfield, Colorado 80021, Attention: Investor Relations.
Participants in the Solicitation
The respective directors and executive officers of CenturyLink and Level 3 and other persons may be deemed to be participants in the solicitation of proxies in respect of the proposed transaction. Information regarding CenturyLink's directors and executive officers is available in its proxy statement filed with the SEC by CenturyLink on April 5, 2016, and information regarding Level 3's directors and executive officers is available in its proxy statement filed with the SEC by Level 3 on April 7, 2016. These documents can be obtained free of charge from the sources indicated above. Other information regarding the interests of the participants in the proxy solicitation will be included in the joint proxy statement/prospectus and other relevant materials to be filed with the SEC when they become available. This communication is not intended to and does not constitute an offer to sell or the solicitation of an offer to sell or the solicitation of an offer to buy any securities, nor shall there be any sale of securities in any jurisdiction in which such offer, solicitation or sale would be unlawful prior to registration or qualification under the securities laws of any such jurisdiction. No offer of securities shall be made except by means of a prospectus meeting the requirements of Section 10 of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended.
Contacts
CenturyLink
Media:
Frank Tutalo
+1 703-363-8698
Frank.Tutalo@centurylink.com
Investors:
Kristie Waugh
+1 318-340-5627
Kristina.R.Waugh@centurylink.com
Level 3 Communications
Media:
Nikki Wheeler
+1 720-888-0560
Nikki.Wheeler@Level3.com
Investors:
Mark Stoutenberg
+1 720-888-2518
Mark.Stoutenberg@Level3.comTear down the wall!
With Microsoft reversing all its content control policies on Xbox One, and Sony already planning a region-free PlayStation 4, Nintendo is insisting on keeping all the territories separated on Wii U. Fans are now taking the platform holder to task.
Cheered by recent efforts to appeal to Microsoft and Sony, gamers around the Web hope to convince Nintendo to abandon the outdated notion that we're no longer a global market, and get it to stop region-locking its sytems. In a post on NeoGAF, a massive list of Miiverse posts have been cataloged, as users take the pleas direct to Nintendo's proprietary social network.
Naturally, Twitter is a big part of the activity, with the hashtags #EndRegionLocking and #NintendoRegionFree being used, alongside an official Twitter account for the campaign, @EndRegionLocking. Posts on Reddit are being made, and the obligatory petition is all up and ready.
I lived in Britain before Nintendo paid real attention to it, waiting up to a year for games already out in the rest of the world. It was bloody inane, and the fact Nintendo fought against importers sent a message of contempt toward PAL region gamers. It's even worse when, on a system hurting for games, Nintendo keeps certain games locked squarely away in specific regions.
Region locking feels like a system of antiquity in a global market, so if the near-impossible can be done and Nintendo can be reached, I say go for it!
You are logged out. Login | Sign up“Right on,” said Herb Overkill, husband of Scarlet Overkill — the most legendary supervillain of the late ’60s to the three main Minions. “You guys are crazy, little, and way yellow, and I dig that.”
Herb nailed it. But in a more real way than I expected. As in, Herb really liked the Minions and wasn’t just saying that to be cute — as in, I thought I was going to have to pretend to dig the Minions for the sake of being contrarian (which required being all in on Minions), but then actually watched the film and now have fallen for all things Minions. Protect Minions at all costs.
I couldn’t believe it. I can’t believe it. I didn’t even have to pretend. I just loved them. And loved this film.
Minions is excellent. That’s basically the review. Go see it. Feel free to stop reading, because that’s the takeaway. Good day.
♦♦♦
If your skepticism still exists, I fully understand. I know why sitting through something like Minions seems so terrible to endure. And to be frank, there are moments early in the film when it does itself no favors. But as they say — if you give the Minions an inch of love, they’ll give you a mile.
Here’s a perfect example: The first 30 seconds of the film are enough to make someone with the agency over their own decisions leave the theater. It’s the three main Minions singing the Universal Studios theme song in that high-pitched terrible Minion voice. It’s painful. It’s terrible. I still can’t get it out of my head. And even as I sit here, ready to try to convince adults that this film is worthwhile, I’ll never forgive the creators of this film for that beginning.
Seriously, if you go see this film, find a way to skip the first two minutes. Trust me, you’ll figure out the plot.
This is Part 2 of my Minions discovery. In Part 1, I outlined the extent to which I had zero insight into the Despicable Me franchise, for which Minions is apparently a prequel of sorts. This is helpful, because Minions requires no prior knowledge. And not simply “no prior knowledge of other related films,” but “no prior knowledge, period.” You can go in dark to Minions — not having a single piece of knowledge in your brain — and still get it.
Brains are not for Minions. All you need is a heart.
In the beginning of Minions, the purpose of these creatures is made clear. There are a lot of Minions, most of whom look quite similar. Minions are a social construct, so I think it’s safe to say they’re a race. Minions have been in these Earth streets for eons, predating humans. And all that the Minions want is to be enslaved by cruel masters.
Seriously. That’s the ideal life of a Minion. Not freedom — indentured servitude.
But the Minions are morons. Actually, they’re geniuses who refuse to capitalize on their accidental genius, which in turn makes them morons. All they want is a tyrannical master to rule them, but whenever they find one, they accidentally kill it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IxcwlW3rrkg
This is the moment every sane being would celebrate. It’s instant freedom. You won, Minion, GO BE FREE. But no, not the Minions. When they accidentally kill their rude master (examples: a T. rex, early man, an Egyptian ruler, Dracula, Napoleon), they get sad and attempt to find the next ruler who can make their lives a living hell.
The Minions had Stockholm syndrome before Stockholm existed.
The movie’s three main Minions are Bob, Stuart, and Kevin. These Minions With Attitude are looking for another ruler to make their lives hell for another 600 million years, so, led by Kevin, they vow to go out into the world and not return until they have found the most diabolical “massa” around. So they leave. And wouldn’t you know it, they end up in New York City in 1968.
As to not gloss over anything, yes, their names are Bob, Stuart, and Kevin.
Universal
All Minions have basic names (we briefly learn of a Mike, an Earl, and a Carl). That’s a cool, endearing thing about the Minions. A not-so-cool thing is how they’re often generalized: as gibberish speakers.
No. Not even close. This isn’t gibberish. Minions is a foreign-language film. Most of the time that Minions are speaking, they’re just screaming. When they’re not screaming, they’re saying words. Do I understand all of these words? Absolutely not, but the same is true when I go to Tokyo. Or Moscow. Or Jacksonville. It’s just a different culture, with a different dialect.
Don’t throw your hatred at the Minions because they’re different.
Having said that, from a comedic standpoint, this gibberish shit is hilarious. It actually grows on you over time, because you catch some real English words every now and then. They sneak them in. The one thing you can count on is the Minions saying each other’s names quite clearly. Also, every so often, like a care package of sorts, you get a “que paso.” It works, this gag. It’s a good bit they do just enough to not be annoying, and it stays funny throughout the film.
Having said that, comedy aside, this movie is super real. As soon as the Minions get into New York City, Bob has trouble catching a cab. In New York. He is ultimately mistaken for luggage and thrown into the trunk; when discovered, he is thrown into the street.
Oh, just what it’s like to be different — in America.
“Everybody wanna be a minion, but nobody wanna be a minion.” –Anonymous
After bouncing around NYC, they find themselves in a mall and get locked inside once it closes. In that mall, they find a television, and on that television, commercials. One of those commercials is a spot for VillainCon.
The three Minions are ecstatic. They found their Stockholm. Unfortunately, it’s in Orlando. But nothing stands in the way of a Minion and his Stockholm. So they go outside.
They’re thankfully picked up by a sweet family that happens to be going to Orlando.
Who just happens to be going to Orlando? Could they possibly be going to VillainCon? Wait, there’s no way they could be villains, could they?
It doesn’t seem like it. They’re just so sweet and wonderful.
Universal
There’s no way in hell they’re going to that den of sin. They’re probably taking a nice family trip to Epcot. I mean, there’s a baby in the car aft—
Universal
THE BABY HANDED HIS DAD A GUN AND THEY WENT TO GO ROB A BANK WHILE THE MINIONS WERE IN THE CAR.
This was the moment it was clear Minions wasn’t messing around. They were out here — yes, coming for every single one of your dollars — but also succeeding in trying to be an actual humorous comedy.
THERE WAS A STICKUP IN MINIONS, LIKE I’M NOT HERE FOR THAT. LIKE YOU’RE NOT HERE FOR THAT.
In their getaway, the cops chase them and, in perfect Minion fashion, the Minions accidentally shoot a rocket launcher that stops the cops and gives them further freedom. The family becomes forever indebted to the Minions, taking them all the way to Orlando.
Upon reaching Orlando, they finally find who they’re looking for: Scarlet Overkill, the star of VillainCon.
Universal
In an arena, she flies out and everyone loses their minds, Minions included. She’s Taylor Swift and Michelle Obama and Cruella De Vil and Serena Williams all in one. Once she quiets the crowd, her first line is this:
“When I started out, people said a woman could never rob a bank as well as a man. Well, times have changed.”
The crowd explodes. Men dressed up like their hero are near death from her presence. It’s like watching Betty Friedan and Gloria Steinem play spades against Audre Lorde and bell hooks. When it comes to villainy, Scarlet is just clearly the best. Continuing her speech:
“Have any of you ever dreamt of working for the greatest supervillain of all time?”
The crowd explodes again, begging to work with her. So she offers a deal: Whoever can take the ruby out of her hand wins. And in that moment, for almost two minutes, male villains of all shapes and sizes bum-rush the stage, attempting to fight her for the ruby. And for almost two minutes, she beats up about 25 men. And none can take the ruby from her.
Somehow, in the melee, the ruby ends up in Bob’s mouth. And just like that, the commotion stops and Scarlet Overkill crowns them the winners, and the Minions become her understudies.
They’ve found their Stockholm.
Scarlet invites them onto her plane and brings them back to her evil crib in England. There, they meet her rail-thin, heady husband Herb. At their home — when they’re not public villains — they seem like a cute couple. Peaceful, even. They’ve welcomed the Minions like family, caring for them like any good hosts would treat exchange students abroad in a new land for a semester.
But then, suddenly, she gives them a mission. Not a big one; just them stealing the crown from the queen of England. Oh, and if they fail, she’ll kill them.
This is the evil tyrant they’ve always been looking for. They’re scared, but they have to do it. Also, they have to let the rest of the Minion race know they’ve found their new tyrant. And when they do (via phone call), the rest of the Minion race begins their arduous journey to England.
At this point, I’m all in on the preservation of the Minion race. I’m unable to fully explain why, but I’m emotional about these yellow, goggled non-people. They’re actually quite charming. The Minions rollout really did the actual Minions a disservice. What you think going into the film — because of the Minions PR onslaught — is that you’re going to be stuck with 100 million Minions in your face at all times. But the reality is, 90 percent of the time, it’s just three. And three Minions constitute a gaggle of Minions, and a gaggle of Minions is adorbs. As in, I think I love them. As in, don’t judge a Minion by its overbearing press campaign.
You remember that decent album that happened once, Jay Z’s Magna Carta Holy Grail — an album that was widely panned, because Samsung slightly made us hate it before it ever came out? Yeah, that’s Minions. MCHG isn’t actually that bad, but we were all so fed up by being sold tablets by way of rap, that before we ever heard it, we knew we didn’t want to like it.
If the Minions rollout had any chill, there would be no backlash. On the other hand, had there been more Minions chill, the movie may have not made $400 million worldwide over the weekend.
What really matters, though, is you think you don’t like the Minions. But if you ever choose to be brave enough to meet the Minions, you’ll probably discover your worst nightmare — you like the Minions.
But enough with Jay Z. The Minions find Queen Elizabeth. Getting her crown is not easy, however. Queen Elizabeth is from Bronxville. No joke. In her repertoire of moves: the People’s Elbow.
Yeah, like that’s not funny. And all while the Kinks play in the background. MINIONS IS SO GOOD I GOTTA JUMP BACK, WANNA KISS M’SELF.
Five minutes after this, Bob becomes king of England.
Universal
Bob became king because in the Minions’ dramatic escape from the England police force, he pulled the sword out the stone (yes, that one), which automatically makes someone king, because of course. Following this, he has to make a speech as the new king. And in this moment, watching Bob make his gibberish speech at Buckingham Palace, I finally realized why this film was rapidly reaching “instant classic” territory.
It’s animated Pootie Tang.
When my damie Bob goes to make his speech, he has the classic gibberish speech movie moment. The entire populace has found nothing odd with a yellow pill becoming king of England. And when he screams “KING BOB,” everyone loses it. But then he gets comfortable, lets his guard down a bit, and really starts speaking non-words. And suddenly, he is met with a sea of blank stares, almost as if he’s moments away from the jig fully being up. So, in a panic, he goes back to what he knows, screaming “KING BOB.” And just like that, everyone is back on his side, again not finding anything odd with the fact that the new king is a yellow bullet wearing goggles and overalls.
King Bob is Pootie.
Capachow on the tippi tais, you know?
While there have been a flurry of spoilers in this review, there is no way I could go into detail about the ending. The last 20 minutes are just movie magic. Just know that Bob isn’t the king for long, the Minions get enslaved (again), all of their small yellow cousins finally find England and go full-scale Million Minion March on Londontown, one minion becomes Godzilla-size, and there’s a Randy Quaid–in–Independence Day moment that will probably make you cry.
And the best part is, |
: Saying that and getting one are two different things. You can sit there and say, 'We're only X apart.' But the other guy can say, 'Well, it's only X, why don't you move?' And you say, 'It's only X, why don't you move?'
NBA.com: You can "cut the baby in half."
KM: Sometimes. But people will say, I already cut it in half to get to here. That's certainly our view of the world. We started from where we were. We didn't stretch our position in order to give it up. They started from what objectively -- I think they would agree -- was a massive change in the system and have "given" from there. But if you start 100 miles away and move 50 miles, you can still be outside the range of reasonable. Had they gotten their initial offer, that would have been the most one-sided deal in the history of sports negotiations -- by, I think, a fair stretch. It was an enormous ask on their part.
NBA.com: Many people understand that NBA players as a select group of specialized, highly skilled workers. Are there many many instances, though, in which labor commands more than 50 percent of an industry's costs?
KM: In certain sectors, there's a ton. You go to a law firm, most of its cost is labor. You've got to remember, labor is 60-something percent of the economy. In the service sector, it can be much higher than that. And these people really define the product. These are the ones people come to see.
What separates the NBA from a different basketball league? Well, it's the players. The basketball's' the same, the court's the same, it's the players who really are the distinguishing feature. That's not to say that the league doesn't have value. But the defining characteristic and the scarce resource, if you think about it from an economic point of view, is the talent. It's not unlike Hollywood, the music business or any of the other ones where the thing that distinguishes one person from another is the talent.
NBA.com: Why do you think it's more so in basketball than other sports?
KM: The difference between being an NBA Finals team and being an also-ran is a couple of guys -- maybe one guy. It's only five guys and you can give the same guy the ball every time you come down if you want to.... And the players are very visible. It's more of a player-driven sport than [the others], and the advent of the Internet has made it even more so.
It's also changed the game in that people aren't as parochial as they used to be. At one time, people followed their team because they read the local paper and watched the local news. But now I can be a fan of the Lakers and live in... Seattle. I've got all the Internet access, I've got NBA TV, I've got a zillion ways to be a fan long-distance.
NBA.com: That plays right into the structure issues the owners have. They want Milwaukee fans, for example, to not only root for the Bucks but to have most seasons with hope that their team can compete with bigger-revenue markets.
KM: There's an element of that. But also, be careful what you wish for. When you get a Sacramento-Charlotte NBA Finals, guys will be crying over the TV ratings. We know that even with baseball -- it's an exciting World Series but the ratings aren't there because it's the Texas Rangers and St. Louis [Cardinals]. Basketball is even more star-driven. You get to an NBA Finals that doesn't have one of the premier players in the league in it, it becomes a lot less interesting. And with 30 teams, not everybody is going to have one of the premier players.
NBA.com: There are fewer franchise players than there are franchises.
KM: For sure. Especially not created equal. You have a relatively small number of true franchise players. Then you have kind of wannabe franchise players. But there aren't 30 Kobe Bryants, LeBron James or Dwyane Wades -- wherever you want to draw the line, but there aren't 30 of them.
NBA.com: So do you buy the competitive balance concerns?
KM: You don't want a system where almost nobody has a chance. Then again, the optimal league doesn't look like a crap shoot at the beginning of the years. First of all, there is a lot more interest in some teams than others. The league has done very well that way. When the Bulls were great, that wasn't a bad league. When it was the Lakers and Boston... there have been a number of years like that.
NBA.com: You grew up in Inglewood as a Lakers fan, spanning the time from Wilt Chamberlain and Jerry West to Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Magic Johnson's arrival. In the 1970s, eight different franchises won the 10 titles.
KM: That was not the greatest time for the league. This complete egalitarian world is unlikely to be the best league.
NBA.com: One effect of equalizing payrolls is you incentivize good players to go where the money is available. But another might be paying good money to players who might not deserve it, just because more franchises have to spend on... somebody.
KM: That's a problem. The other thing is, there is some relationship between pay and success but it's not nearly as strong as people think it is. Even if you were to completely equalize pay across teams, there still would be an enormous variation in strength of teams. In a statistical sense, the level of payroll of a team explains somewhere like 5 percent to 10 percent in the variation in outcomes.
NBA.com: That's all?
KM: That's it. I did a little experiment. All you have to do is take the overall distribution of win-loss percentages. Let them tell you what they think the relationship between salaries and wins is. They tell you 'This much spending is worth this many wins.' So then you take everybody's salary down to the mean or up to the mean. Then if you tell me you get an extra win for every $3 million you spend, I'm going to give everyone I'm moving up an extra win for each $3 million. Everybody I move down, I'm going to give one fewer win for each $3 million.
NBA.com: And?
KM: The relationship between salaries and the number of wins in a season is positive, but it's pretty weak. It certainly is not going to have a dramatic change in the distribution of outcomes. It might change who the winners are and who the losers are, but you're still going to have some teams that are much better than others. Because some people spend their money much more wisely than others do.
NBA.com: That's what the owners say they want: A chance for good management to make a difference.
KM: That's a different issue. The problem is, just about for every [owner] who spent a lot and they won a lot, so you're moving them closer to the average, there's some [owner] who spent a lot and didn't win a lot and you're moving them in the other direction.
NBA.com: Even at this late date, from interviews given by Hunter, Fisher and others on the players' side, there seems to be skepticism of the league's financial numbers, as if the audited figures aren't to be believed.
KM: I would say the primary disagreement is not over the accounting numbers. It's what you include and how you interpret the numbers. For example, the accounting picture of the NBA isn't very different from what it was five years ago or 10 years ago in terms of ratio of revenues to costs and all the rest -- it's changed very little. Which immediately tells you, wait a minute, if the underlying financial picture is similar today to what it was five years ago or 10 years ago, and people are paying $400 million or whatever for franchises, and you're telling me that these things lose money every year, something's missing, right? These people aren't stupid, right? These guys are worth billions of dollars. So why did they pay all this money for franchises that, it looks like, lose money?
Well, the answer is pretty clear. There are a couple of things that are really attractive. One is, historically, you've seen franchises appreciate in value and that appreciation has more than outstripped any cash-flow losses that you've had. And if you're in the right tax position, it's actually pretty good because you've got a tax loss annually on your operating and you've got a capital gain at the end that you accumulate untaxed until you sell it and then pay at a lower rate. So you get a deferred tax treatment on the gains and an immediate tax treatment on the losses, that's not a bad deal.
Let's say the NBA is a $4 billion revenue business -- that's not exactly right but it's close enough. Then let's say you lose $200 million. That's 5 percent. OK, my franchises are worth -- let's make it simple, 2½ times revenue, which is well below Forbes [valuations] -- that's $10 billion. Now let's say it's appreciating at 4 percent a year. I'm getting $400 million in appreciation even though I only have $200 million in losses. I'm getting better tax treatment on the $400 million that I'm making, and I deduct at a higher rate the $200 million that I'm losing. Suddenly this picture doesn't look so crazy any more.
Secondly, it's a lot of fun to own an NBA franchise...
NBA.com: The "psychic benefits" Malcolm Gladwell touts.
KM: The psychic benefits are not trivial. Third, there are benefits outside basketball. Like who got a casino? Who got a land deal? Who got real estate? You start looking around, you say, 'There's a lot of benefits to being an NBA owner." You put all those pieces together, it explains why those people spent all that money for those franchises.
What I keep coming back to as an economist is, "Look, you tell me this is a lousy investment. The No. 1 way to tell if something's a lousy investment, it ain't worth anything." There are a lot of firms that are losing money and are going to go bankrupt, look at what their stock is worth -- it's not worth nothin'. But when you tell me these things aren't worth a lot of money and they don't make money, you immediately hold onto your wallet. You say, "There's a disconnect here. Smart guys, a lot of money -- well, why are you buying it? Why are you buying something that loses money every year?"
NBA.com: The owners will say there's been a franchise bubble not unlike the housing bubble. A number of them bought high and don't think they'll see the equity growth.
KM: The fact is, guys have not done well over the last few years as asset prices generally have gone down. I don't doubt that. But to say that you lost money in the worst asset crash in memory -- and franchises haven't gone down nearly as much as many assets have gone down -- that's not telling you you need concessions going forward.
If you go back before the last 3-5 years, these guys did incredibly well. Their franchises weren't going up by 4 or 5 percent, they were going up by 8 or 9 percent a year. They were making money hand over fist. Should [the players] get credit for that? Should we get that money back? Now those are different people in some cases. They need to go get their money from the guys they bought the franchises from. That's the guy who has all your money. Not us.
But who bought anything in '07 that they're happy with the price they paid? If you bought a house in '07, if you bought stocks in '07, if you bought bonds in '07 -- I don't care what you bought, you're not happy with the price you paid. When you buy at the top, you don't make your money. That's not unique to the NBA, that's everywhere in life. But by and large, NBA franchise ownership has been a good investment. You can't base long-run projections on how you did in the biggest financial downturn of the last 50 years. On that basis, there are no good investments out there. But we know that's not true.
NBA.com: Management cites rising costs in marketing, ticket sales and other areas.
KM: Ask them to show you how much their costs have gone up as a percentage of BRI. Our moving from 57 to 52.5 covers more than 100 percent of any cost increase they've had.
NBA.com: How does it make sense economically to hold out for a small percentage that's much less, in sheer dollars, than what the players are losing by missing games? A gap of 2.5 percent is worth $100 million annually, but a missed month of paychecks is $400 million.
KM: Part of it on our side is an investment in the future. If you give up a lot today, you're not just giving it up today, you start the next contract from that much lower. So you're talking about the long-term impact of that kind of concession.
You can say the same thing for the owners. They're losing money every week. The answer is, both sides are losing in this. It's a shame we can't get a deal. But I'm not going to make it sound easier than it is. It's always easy to say, "Well, one of you guys should give in." But tell me who? And when someone says, 'Just compromise,' at least recently, that hasn't been happening. Maybe it will.
NBA.com: Some cynics think the owners wanted to get to this point to squeeze the players via lost paychecks.
KM: I think there's an element of that, a desire to see how far they could push the players to see when the players would crumble. Given that there was not a great cost... it's almost too bad that it isn't more costly to lose the start of the season. If it had been, they wouldn't have done it. The idea that I can get this, like, almost-free test of the other side's resolve is tempting, right?
NBA.com: So maybe they need to set the expiration date of the CBA right before the playoffs to raise the stakes.
KM: That would make a difference. That's the old increase-the-cost way to get a deal. That's true of negotiations in general. It takes the threat of fire to get people to move.
NBA.com: When do the rosy growth projections of 4 percent used by both sides take a hit from fans' backlash to this lockout?
KM: If we get a deal here soon, I think the long-term consequences will be minimal. The longer it goes, the more substantial the risk. I think everybody's taken a hit to some extent. It might not show up in the financial numbers right away, but I don't think this has been good for either side. Both sides have looked not so good at times, comical at other times.
I've tried to stay out of it. This is the first interview I've done. I don't think it does any good to throw crap around, spin everything that comes out -- and there's been a lot of that going on. It wears thin on me, I'm sure it wears thin on fans too.
NBA.com: Leverage plays a role in economics?
KM: Absolutely. It ultimately is the determinant of what deal you're going to get. Call it what it is. Neither side wants to take a bad deal from its perspective, which makes it tough. Both sides have this mixed constituency, who aren't all on the same page, which makes it doubly hard. It's a shame. I feel bad for the fans, I feel bad for the people who are waiting.
Hopefully we'll be able to get in a room, reach across the table and shake each other enough to get us to a deal.
NBA.com: Where do you see this landing?
KM: Ultimately what it comes down to is, you get what you can negotiate. It's not what you deserve, what's "right," that ends up carrying the day. But then they ought to be straight up. They ought to say, "We've got the ability to negotiate. We'll hold your feet to the fire and get what we can."
The one thing I don't want to see happen: I don't want to see any lingering bad blood between the two sides. That's not good either. You run the risk that, if it gets too personal, that creates its own set of frictions going forward. I think people on both sides are cognizant of that.
Steve Aschburner has written about the NBA for 25 years. You can e-mail him here and follow him on twitter.
The views on this page do not necessarily reflect the views of the NBA, its clubs or Turner Broadcasting.Way late but I've finally gotten all the bits of my Secret Santa gift. Flerpy was awesome all around, kept in contact, and made sure everything was going good. Hats off to her... Which is convienient, as I totally got an awesome homemade otter hat! (I'm a furry and occasionally pretend to be an otter on the internet?:P) Also got a Guinness book of gaming world records and an iPhone 4 game boy skin(Sadly I have a Galaxy S, but I'll find use for it!). Which is awesome as gaming is pretty much my passion. Thanks a million Flerpy, you made my month.:) Also: The hat's washing instructions as it's a bit hard to read. "Wash like you would any otter in cold water, and dry on flat rock."Reporters outside a Colorado fundraiser for former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton were unable to listen in on the Democratic presidential candidate's remarks after staffers blasted a static noise machine in their direction.
Clinton, who was holding a fundraiser Thursday evening in Colorado, was speaking outside at a private residence. Just when she started to speak, according to CBS Denver's Stan Bush, campaign staffers directed a speaker spewing out static noise at reporters hanging out across the street.
"Guess @HillaryClinton campaign dsn't want reporters to hear fundraiser speech. Turned on a static noise machine pointed at us when she spoke," Bush tweeted.
.@cascamike listen here for sound of what was turned on after the bands and just before the speeches. pic.twitter.com/GhSE15NDeN — Stan Bush (@StanBushTV) April 8, 2016
Guess @HillaryClinton campaign dsn't want reporters to hear fundraiser speech. Turned on a static noise machine pointed at us when she spoke — Stan Bush (@StanBushTV) April 8, 2016
Bush also tweeted out video showing the scene when the noise was turned off after Clinton spoke.
Here's what it sounds like with that static noise machine turned off at the @HillaryClinton campaign fundraiser pic.twitter.com/keyuXwQad2 — Stan Bush (@StanBushTV) April 8, 2016
The former secretary is set to hold a trio of campaign events in New York on Friday.Gen. Manuel Antonio Noriega, the Panamanian strongman and onetime American ally who was toppled from power in a 1989 U.S. invasion and who spent more than two decades imprisoned on drug-dealing and conspiracy convictions, died May 29 at a hospital in Panama City. He was most likely 83.
The cause was not announced, but Gen. Noriega had been in intensive care at a hospital for months after complications from surgery to remove a benign brain tumor. Panamanian President Juan Carlos Varela announced the death.
A career military man, Gen. Noriega led the Panama Defense Forces from 1983 until President George H.W. Bush ordered the invasion on Dec. 20, 1989, which followed months of deteriorating relations between Panama and the United States.
Gen. Noriega was a polarizing figure for decades after he was led in chains from Panama by U.S. marshals on Jan. 4, 1990, to a federal prison in Miami.
His opponents said Gen. Noriega was a brute who killed his opponents and hid millions of dollars in gains from drug and other corruption payments. Retired U.S. Army general and former secretary of state Colin L. Powell once described Gen. Noriega as “pure evil.”
Gen. Manuel Noriega waves to supporters from behind a barred window in his command headquarters near downtown Panama in October 1989. (Beth Cruz/Reuters)
Gen. Noriega consistently rejected such charges, which he said were trumped up by opponents. He claimed the Bush administration moved against him after he refused to help American policy in Central America intended to overthrow Nicaragua’s Sandinista government and halt a civil war in El Salvador.
“Why, after being the man the United States could count on, did I become the enemy?” Gen. Noriega asked bitterly in the jailhouse interviews this reporter conducted with him that led to his 1994 memoir, “America’s Prisoner.” “Because I said no. No to allowing the United States to run a school for dictators [the U.S. military’s School of the Americas] any longer in Panamanian territory. No to the request that Panama be used as a staging base for the Salvadoran death squads and the Nicaraguan contras. Lots of no’s.”
Before his fall from favor, U.S. officials considered Gen. Noriega a reliable protector of stability in Panama. As early as his student days in the 1950s, he was an eager informant for the U.S. intelligence services.
Bush justified the invasion by saying, among other things, that the Panamanian leader had declared war on the United States first, that he had made Panama a haven for drug dealers and that he had endangered open shipping channels through the Panama Canal. Gen. Noriega’s opponents also charged he had ordered the killing of a prominent political opponent; international monitors, including former president Jimmy Carter, denounced Panamanian elections in the spring of 1989 as fraudulent.
More than 25,000 U.S. troops launched the Dec. 20 invasion, bombarding key Panamanian military installations, destroying the headquarters, and killing and injuring people in a poor Panama City neighborhood. Gen. Noriega eluded capture before seeking refuge days later at the Vatican Embassy in the Panamanian capital. Soldiers surrounded the diplomatic building and blasted rock music at a deafening volume.
Gen. Noriega claimed that the music had not bothered him but that it drove priests inside the compound to distraction. With no chance of escape, he surrendered to U.S. forces on Jan. 3, 1990.
That signaled the end of the invasion. The death toll among Panamanians was never clear but ranged from several hundred, according to the United States, to several thousand, according to human rights groups that criticized the invasion. Twenty-five American soldiers died.
1 of 21 Full Screen Autoplay Close Skip Ad × Manuel Antonio Noriega, former Panama strongman (1934-2017) View Photos The deposed general, a onetime American ally who was toppled from power in the 1989 U.S. invasion of his country, died at the age of 83 after having served more than two decades in prison in the United States and France on drug-conspiracy and money-laundering convictions. Caption The deposed general, a onetime American ally who was toppled from power in the 1989 U.S. invasion of his country, died at the age of 83 after having served more than two decades in prison in the United States and France on drug-conspiracy and money-laundering convictions. May 20, 1988 Panamanian strongman Gen. Manuel Antonio Noriega acknowledges the crowd’s cheers during a Dignity Battalion rally in Panama City. John Hopper/AP Buy Photo Wait 1 second to continue.
Gen. Noriega was classified as a U.S. prisoner of war under the Geneva Conventions, thereby entitled to visits from the International Red Cross, continued use of his military uniform and recognition of his status as commander — and only member — of the long-defunct Panamanian military, which was disbanded after the U.S. invasion.
In 1992, he was sentenced to 40 years in prison on a drug-trafficking and conspiracy conviction after a 10-month trial in U.S. District Court in Miami. Although the Bush administration used the drug charges as justification for the invasion, the proof was surprisingly weak.
The case against Gen. Noriega rested on two dozen convicted cocaine felons, all of whom received reduced sentences for testifying. One was Colombian cocaine kingpin Carlos Lehder, who provided hearsay as evidence. And like most of the other witnesses, he had never met nor had dealings with the general.
The general’s life in prison was austere. His housing at the medium-security Federal Detention Center south of downtown Miami was a spare, two-room cinder-block cell under surveillance. He received occasional visits from friends, members of the clergy and his family, including his wife, Felicidad Sieiro de Noriega, and his three daughters, Thays, Sandra and Lorena, all of whom survive him.
Gen. Noriega’s U.S. sentence was reduced to 30 years after three former U.S. officials spoke on his behalf at a sentence-reduction hearing. Just as he was granted parole for good behavior and scheduled for release in 2007, U.S. officials agreed to a French extradition request based on a money-laundering charge.
The U.S. Supreme Court authorized Gen. Noriega’s transfer to France in April 2010. The following year, France granted his extradition to Panama, where he had been convicted in absentia for human rights crimes.
Manuel Antonio Noriega Moreno was born in Panama City, most likely on Feb. 11, 1934, although the year of his birth was a matter of controversy. Gen. Noriega had once listed the year as 1938 and never cleared up the discrepancy.
His father was an accountant in Panama City. Gen. Noriega said his mother, a single woman, died when he was 4 after taking him to her home village in Darien province near Panama’s border with Colombia. He was left in the care of his godmother, whom he knew as Mama Luisa.
He attended a military school in Peru, encouraged by a half brother, Luis Carlos, who served at the Panamanian Embassy there. After graduating in 1962, Gen. Noriega returned to Panama and had a chance meeting with Omar Torrijos, the future commander of Panama’s armed forces, who brought him into the military.
Then-Lt. Noriega came to prominence during a coup plot in December 1969 against Torrijos, who was on an official trip to Mexico. He maneuvered to sneak Torrijos back into the country on a private plane. The coup fizzled, and the young officer was rewarded for his loyalty, soon becoming chief of military intelligence.
The CIA station chief in Panama in the mid-1980s, Donald Winters, said in an interview that the U.S. government regularly paid Gen. Noriega as an intelligence asset. Gen. Noriega signed his own name for receiving the payments, something Winters had never witnessed before. Winters, one of the former officials appearing on behalf of Gen. Noriega at his 1994 sentence-reduction hearing, died in 2001.
Gen. Noriega became de facto leader of the country in 1983, two years after the death of Torrijos, whose plane plowed into mountain on a routine domestic flight. The general’s opponents charged he was responsible for the crash, but U.S. investigators saw no evidence of sabotage.
Gen. Noriega said during interviews for his memoir that he knew he was mocked and ridiculed by opponents, not the least for his acne-scarred complexion, and over charges of being a murderous dictator. He said that he could do nothing about personal attacks but denied that he was a dictator and said that any killings took place during legitimate military activities. He said he never knowingly killed or ordered anyone killed.
The Reagan administration sought Gen. Noriega’s help in 1983 after the United States invaded Grenada, where a Marxist-led coup had toppled the government. Gen. Noriega, as a U.S. intermediary, negotiated with Cuban leader Fidel Castro to calm tensions and avoid a battle between U.S. forces and Cuban troops who were building an airport runway.
Gen. Noriega faced his first major criticism in the United States in 1987, when the New York Times published a report that he had orchestrated the killing of his onetime ally Hugo Spadafora.
But the central evidence, provided by Gen. Noriega’s opponents in Panama, was a purported intercept by the U.S. National Security Agency in 1985 of Gen. Noriega ordering Spadafora’s death in a telephone call to the Panamanian jungle during a vacation in France. The claim has since been categorically denied by U.S. officials, who said such an intercept was technically impossible at the time.
Gen. Noriega’s legacy as a dictator and a convicted drug dealer continues to be debated, in part because of the major role the United States played in creating and shaping the destiny of Panama.
“He rose from illegitimacy and poverty to become a corrupt and illegitimate dictator,” said Robert Pastor, who had extensive contacts with Gen. Noriega as national security adviser for Latin America during the Carter administration. Pastor, who died in 2014, said Gen. Noriega’s “provocative behavior also brought out the worst in the United States.”
Eisner is a former Washington Post editor.Since the Chicago Bears are currently mired in a 1-6 season and Alshon Jeffery is a pending unrestricted free agent playing on a franchise tag, all options are being considered regarding the 26-year-old receiver.
According to Benjamin Allbright as well as Jason La Canfora, the Philadelphia Eagles are working to push through a trade for Jeffery by the November 1st deadline at 4:00 p.m. ET. Preliminary reports say the Eagles would need to “work out a long term deal” and a mid-round pick would come back to the Bears as compensation.
Philadelphia is also rumored to be in on San Francisco 49ers receiver, Torrey Smith, who has never seemed to be a quality fit with head coach Chip Kelly’s offense and the 49ers. The 4-2 Eagles are currently second in the NFC East and are looking for another quality passing target for young quarterback, Carson Wentz.
On the Bears side of things, while it’s been a rough season for the team as a whole, it’s been particularly even more frustrating for Jeffery.
Jeffery has yet to score a touchdown through seven games, and while he’s 13th in the NFL with 520 receiving yards, he’s tied for 29th in receptions at 32. That is mostly due to his 55 targets- good to be tied for just 20th in the league. There was even a time earlier this season, when Jeffery was actually targeted less than the likes of other Bears weapons like Zach Miller, Eddie Royal, and Cameron Meredith.
The fact of the matter is, the Bears have either not been able to get Jeffery the ball enough, or when they have, they’ve forced it to him through poor game planning. Interestingly, the Bears are just 4-7 in games where Jeffery has at least 100 yards over his four-year career. That statistic more points to Jeffery being the only consistent offense and impact player on a less than quality team than something eye-opening though.
And with the team not winning either, Chicago may not have enough leverage to convince Jeffery to stay for the ongoing rebuilding process. The Bears are still in all likelihood one or two years away from true playoff contention or better, while Jeffery is set to enter the prime of his career.
Still, Chicago isn’t in any position to let an impact guy like Jeffery simply walk away or lose value on him. Losing a developed foundational piece and bona fide number one receiver like Jeffery, takes you several steps back. He’s a player that ruins defensive game plans and would be a nice security blanket for Jay Cutler or a young quarterback moving forward.
If the Bears do trade Jeffery- which still seems highly unlikely given the risk of him not signing a long-term deal wherever he goes- a mid-round pick is a drastic lack of compensation. This is a receiver worth at least a second rounder and possibly even first, given his talent. General manager Ryan Pace would be wise to pull the trigger only on something that really gives him a chance at impact players i.e. higher rounds in the draft. You can’t afford to undersell on players like this.
That being said, priority number one should be to sign Jeffery to a long-term deal. Money cures all, after all, and the Bears can still basically offer Jeffery a blank check. The ultimate bet in time here, is that Chicago ponies up to do just that. But, if the Bears can’t sign him long-term, they can still use the franchise tag for a second time, which would lead to a 20-percent increase of his current tagged $14,599,000.
Frankly, he’s worth the price tag and when healthy, is one of the best receivers in the game. From a blistering breakout 2013 season with 1,421 yards, 89 receptions, and seven touchdowns, to 2014, where he fought through various leg injuries to still enjoy a 1,145 yard and 85 reception year, he’s performed well as the lynchpin of this offense. Many have questioned his health and durability in that past, but that lingering doubt has been over-dramatized and shouldn’t have Chicago let him walk considering everything.
The Bears have also possess a different offense with Jeffery. Teams roll coverages towards Jeffery, opening up the field for other players, and when he’s actually targeted, he more often than not comes through with a crucial or spectacular catch. You don’t find pieces that would be the number one option on a Super Bowl-winning team like this on the scrap heap.
Jeffery’s been quoted in that past as saying that he “loves the city of Chicago” when asked if he wanted to play football here, and that he “would love to win a championship in Chicago.”
Ideally, Jeffery’s here with the Bears to accomplish that goal. Whether he gets that opportunity, remains to be seen.
Robert Zeglinski is the Bears beat writer for the Rock River Times and is a staff writer for Windy City Gridiron and Second City Hockey. You can follow him on Twitter @RobertZeglinski.Pin Flip +1 26 Shares
Learn how to build a healthier, tastier salad with five quick tips. Use this guide to make your salads low-calorie, nutritious and more flavorful.
Just because this is my second vegetarian post in a row, it doesn’t mean I’m turning into one. As much as I love my veggies, not in the least bit tempted. But when you receive a gorgeous bagful of greens from your favorite zero pesticide farm company, you make your salad and eat it too. The problem with salads is that, if not done right, they can be deceptively high on calories. And most salads you eat at restaurants, drenched in cloyingly, thick dressings probably are. You’d be surprised that a Cobb’s Salad, however delicious, can set you back by as many as 700-800 calories. So today, I’m going to give you my quick tips on how to build a healthier salad.
It’s important to choose the right greens. While it may be tempting to reach out for the popular ice berg, try a darker lettuce instead, like the Oak Leaf or Romaine. Mix things up with some spinach or even kale. These will help build a good base for your salads, and get lots of fiber into your system. The best part – lettuce has very few calories; as low as 10 calories per cup, and are great sources of vitamin A and potassium.
OTHER MFS RECIPES YOU MAY LIKE OTHER MFS RECIPES YOU MAY LIKE
CRUNCH IT UP WITH VEGGIES
Add some color and crunch to your salad with lots of vegetables. Cucumbers, capsicum, tomatoes, broccoli, carrots and peas are great additions. Just make sure they are either raw or steamed. No frying please.
ADD SOME PROTEIN
We sometimes forget how important protein is for us. Carbs just taste so good, don’t they? Salads are a great way to amp up the protein. If you are vegetarian, choose between tofu, cottage cheese or even kidney beans and chickpeas. Otherwise there is always chicken, fish and eggs. If you are choosing meat, make sure you stick to the lean varieties and have them boiled or poached.
ADD IN EXTRAS
Extras like fruits, nuts or seeds can add more flavor and crunch to your salad. I love adding walnuts, almonds, oranges, pomegranate or even pumpkin seeds to my salads. You could even sprinkle a small portion of goat cheese or feta if you are feeling particularly fancy. But remember, a little goes a long way. My Apple Walnut Summer Salad is a regular at home.
DRESS IT UP
Now this is where it get’s tricky. Up until now, you were building a wholesome, flavorful and nutritious salad. But if you are going to douse your salad in creamy dressings like mayonnaise or ranch, you just undid everything. Stick to lighter dressings like mustard, lemon or balsamic vinaigrettes or even a squirt of lemon juice with some olive oil. I have three great salad dressings for you.
Now that we’ve listed down the 5 commandments of building a healthier salad, go get started! Connect with me on Facebook and Twitter if you are looking for salad recipes or healthy eating ideas.
Look out for my favorite salad recipe in the next post!
Pin Flip +1 26 SharesOn the morning of June 23, 1765, a ship dropped anchor in the James River at City Point, now a part of Hopewell, Virginia. A longboat was lowered to the water, and two sailors rowed it to the wharf, where they deposited a young boy. The sailors left, and the ship immediately slipped back down the river. Thus Peter Francisco arrived in the New World.
Found sitting on the dock, the boy appeared to be 5 years old and large for his age; later research seems to indicate that he was a few weeks short of 5. Olive-skinned, with black hair and dark |
, and XX, made the top ten.[26]
Famous commercial campaigns include the Budweiser "Bud Bowl" campaign, the 1984 introduction of Apple's Macintosh computer, and the 1999 and 2000 dot-com ads. As the television ratings of the Super Bowl have steadily increased over the years, prices have also increased every year, with advertisers paying as much as $3.5 million for a thirty-second spot during Super Bowl XLVI in 2012.[27] A segment of the audience tunes into the Super Bowl solely to view commercials.[9] In 2010, Nielsen reported that 51 percent of Super Bowl viewers tune in for the commercials.[28] The Super Bowl halftime show has spawned another set of alternative entertainment such as the Lingerie Bowl, the Beer Bottle Bowl, and others.
Since 1991, the Super Bowl has begun between 6:19 and 6:40 PM EST so that most of the game is played during the primetime hours on the East Coast.[29]
Super Bowl on TV [ edit ]
Network Number broadcast Years broadcast Future scheduled telecasts*[›] ABC**[›] 7 1985, 1988, 1991, 1995, 2000, 2003, 2006 **[›] Fox 8 (10ˇ[›]) 1997, 1999, 2002, 2005, 2008, 2011, 2014, 2017 2020ˇ[›], 2023ˇ[›] NBC 19 (20ˇ[›]) 1967***[›], 1969, 1971, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1979, 1981, 1983, 1986, 1989, 1993, 1994, 1996, 1998, 2009, 2012, 2015, 2018 2021ˇ[›] CBS 20 (21ˇ[›]) 1967***[›], 1968, 1970, 1972, 1974, 1976, 1978, 1980, 1982, 1984, 1987, 1990, 1992, 2001, 2004, 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019 2022ˇ[›]
Note: Years listed are the year the game was actually played (will be playedˇ[›]) rather than what NFL season it is considered to have been.
^ *: The extended current TV contracts with the networks expire after the 2022 season (or Super Bowl LVII in early 2023) and the Super Bowl is currently rotated annually between CBS, Fox, and NBC in that order.
^ **: ABC is not currently in the rotation for Super Bowl broadcasts.
^ ***: The first Super Bowl was simultaneously broadcast by CBS and NBC, with each network using the same video feed, but providing its own commentary.
Super Bowls I–VI were blacked out in the television markets of the host cities, due to league restrictions then in place.[30]
Game analyst John Madden is the only person to broadcast a Super Bowl for each of the four networks that have televised the game (5 with CBS, 3 with Fox, 2 with ABC, and 1 with NBC).
Lead-out programming [ edit ]
The Super Bowl provides an extremely strong lead-in to programming following it on the same channel, the effects of which can last for several hours. For instance, in discussing the ratings of a local TV station, Buffalo television critic Alan Pergament noted on the coattails from Super Bowl XLVII, which aired on CBS: "A paid program that ran on Channel 4 (WIVB-TV) at 2:30 in the morning had a 1.3 rating. That's higher than some CW prime time shows get on WNLO-TV, Channel 4's sister station."[31]
Because of this strong coattail effect, the network that airs the Super Bowl typically takes advantage of the large audience to air an episode of a hit series, or to premiere the pilot of a promising new one in the lead-out slot, which immediately follows the Super Bowl and post-game coverage.
Entertainment [ edit ]
Initially, it was sort of a novelty and so it didn't quite feel right. But it was just like, this is the year.... Bands of our generation, you can sort of be seen on a stage like this or, like, not seen. There's not a lot of middle places. It is a tremendous venue. Bruce Springsteen on why he turned down several invitations to perform at the Super Bowl before finally agreeing to appear in Super Bowl XLIII.[32]
Early Super Bowls featured a halftime show consisting of marching bands from local colleges or high schools; but as the popularity of the game increased, a trend where popular singers and musicians performed during its pre-game ceremonies and the halftime show, or simply sang the national anthem of the United States or America the Beautiful emerged.[33] Unlike regular season or playoff games, thirty minutes are allocated for the Super Bowl halftime. After a special live episode of the Fox sketch comedy series In Living Color caused a drop in viewership for the Super Bowl XXVI halftime show, the NFL sought to increase the Super Bowl's audience by hiring A-list talent to perform. They approached Michael Jackson, whose performance the following year drew higher figures than the game itself.[34][35] Another notable performance came during Super Bowl XXXVI in 2002, when U2 performed; during their third song, "Where the Streets Have No Name", the band played under a large projection screen which scrolled through names of the victims of the September 11 attacks.
For many years, Whitney Houston's performance of the national anthem at Super Bowl XXV in 1991, during the Gulf War, had long been regarded as one of the best renditions of the anthem in history.[36][37][38] Then, in an historic, groundbreaking, and emotional performance prior to Super Bowl XLVIII, soprano Renee Fleming became the first opera singer to perform the anthem, propelling FOX to the highest ratings of any program in its history, and remains so today.
The halftime show of Super Bowl XXXVIII attracted controversy, following an incident in which Justin Timberlake removed a piece of Janet Jackson's top, briefly exposing one of her breasts before the broadcast quickly cut away from the shot. The incident led to fines being issued by the FCC (and a larger crackdown over "indecent" content broadcast on television), and MTV (then a sister to the game's broadcaster that year, CBS, under Viacom) being banned by the NFL from producing the Super Bowl halftime show in the future. In an effort to prevent a repeat of the incident, the NFL held a moratorium on Super Bowl halftime shows featuring pop performers, and instead invited a single, headlining veteran act, such as Paul McCartney, The Who, Prince, and Bruce Springsteen. This practice ended at Super Bowl XLV, which returned to using current pop acts such as The Black Eyed Peas and Katy Perry.[39][40]
Excluding Super Bowl XXXIX, the famous "I'm going to Disney World!" advertising campaign took place in every Super Bowl since Super Bowl XXI when quarterback Phil Simms from the New York Giants became the first player to say the tagline.
Venue [ edit ]
For a full list of Super Bowl games and venues, see List of Super Bowl champions
As of Super Bowl LII, 27 of 52 Super Bowls have been played in three cities: New Orleans (ten times), the Greater Miami area (ten times), and the Greater Los Angeles area (seven times). No market or region without an active NFL franchise has ever hosted a Super Bowl, and the presence of an NFL team in a market or region is now a de jure requirement for bidding on the game.[41][42] The winning market is not, however, required to host the Super Bowl in the same stadium that its NFL team uses, and nine Super Bowls have been held in a stadium other than the one the NFL team in that city was using at the time. For example, Los Angeles's last five Super Bowls were all played at the Rose Bowl, which has never been used by any NFL franchise outside of the Super Bowl.[citation needed]
No team has ever played the Super Bowl in its home stadium. The closest any team has come was the 2017 Minnesota Vikings, who were within one win of playing Super Bowl LII in U.S. Bank Stadium, but lost the NFC Championship game to the Philadelphia Eagles. In that instance, U.S. Bank Stadium became the first Super Bowl host stadium (selected on May 20, 2014) to also host a Divisional Playoff Game in the same season (which the Vikings won; all previous times that the Super Bowl host stadium hosted another playoff game in the same postseason were all Wild Card games. Two teams have played the Super Bowl in their home market: the San Francisco 49ers, who played Super Bowl XIX in Stanford Stadium instead of Candlestick Park; and the Los Angeles Rams, who played Super Bowl XIV in the Rose Bowl instead of the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum. In both cases, the stadium in which the Super Bowl was held was perceived to be a better stadium for a large, high-profile event than the stadiums the Rams and 49ers were playing in at the time. This situation has not arisen since 1993, in part because the league has given preference in awarding the Super Bowl to brand-new or recently renovated stadiums, alongside a trend of teams demanding public money or relocating to play in new stadiums. Besides those two, the only other Super Bowl venue that was not the home stadium to an NFL team at the time was Rice Stadium in Houston: the Houston Oilers had played there previously, but moved to the Astrodome several years prior to Super Bowl VIII. The Orange Bowl was the only AFL stadium to host a Super Bowl and the only stadium to host consecutive Super Bowls, hosting Super Bowls II and III.
Traditionally, the NFL does not award Super Bowls to stadiums that are located in climates with an expected average daily temperature less than 50°F (10°C) on game day unless the field can be completely covered by a fixed or retractable roof.[43] Six Super Bowls have been played in northern cities: two in the Detroit area—Super Bowl XVI at Pontiac Silverdome in Pontiac, Michigan and Super Bowl XL at Ford Field in Detroit, two in Minneapolis—Super Bowl XXVI at the Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome and Super Bowl LII at the U.S. Bank Stadium, one in Indianapolis at Lucas Oil Stadium for Super Bowl XLVI, and one in the New York area—Super Bowl XLVIII at MetLife Stadium. Only MetLife Stadium did not have a roof (be it fixed or retractable) but it was still picked as the host stadium for Super Bowl XLVIII in an apparent waiver of the warm-climate rule, with a contingency plan to reschedule the game in the event of heavy snowfall.[44]. MetLife Stadium's selection over Sun Life Stadium generated controversy as the league requested a roof to be added to Sun Life Stadium (in the event of rainstorms) in order to considered for future Super Bowls.[45]
There have been a few instances where the league has rescinded the Super Bowl from cities. Super Bowl XXVII in 1993 was originally awarded to Sun Devil Stadium in Tempe, Arizona, but after Arizona voters elected not to recognize Martin Luther King, Jr. Day as a paid state-employees’ holiday in 1990, the NFL moved the game to the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, California.[46] When voters in Arizona opted to create such a legal holiday in 1992, Super Bowl XXX in 1996 was awarded to Tempe. Super Bowl XXXIII was awarded first to Candlestick Park in San Francisco, but when plans to renovate the stadium fell through, the game was moved to Pro Player Stadium in greater Miami. Super Bowl XXXVII was awarded to a new stadium not yet built in San Francisco, when that stadium failed to be built, the game was moved to Qualcomm Stadium in San Diego. Super Bowl XLIV, slated for February 7, 2010, was withdrawn from New York City's proposed West Side Stadium, because the city, state, and proposed tenants New York Jets could not agree on funding. Super Bowl XLIV was then eventually awarded to Sun Life Stadium in Miami Gardens, Florida. Super Bowl XLIX in 2015 was originally given to Arrowhead Stadium in Kansas City, Missouri, but after two sales taxes failed to pass at the ballot box, and opposition by local business leaders and politicians increased, Kansas City eventually withdrew its request to host the game.[47] Super Bowl XLIX was then eventually awarded to University of Phoenix Stadium in Glendale, Arizona.
In 2011, Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott said, "[The Super Bowl is] commonly known as the single largest human trafficking incident in the United States." According to Forbes, 10,000 prostitutes were brought to Miami in 2010 for the Super Bowl.[48] Snopes research in 2015 determined that the actual number of prostitutes involved in a typical Super Bowl weekend is less than 100, not statistically higher than any other time of the year, and that the notion of mass increases in human trafficking around the Super Bowl was a politician's myth.[49]
Selection process [ edit ]
The location of the Super Bowl is chosen by the NFL well in advance, usually three to five years before the game. Cities place bids to host a Super Bowl and are evaluated in terms of stadium renovation and their ability to host.[needs update][43][50] In 2014, a document listing the specific requirements of Super Bowl hosts was leaked, giving a clear list of what was required for a Super Bowl host.[51] Much of the cost of the Super Bowl is to be assumed by the host community, although some costs are enumerated within the requirements to be assumed by the NFL. Some of the host requirements include:
The host stadium must be in a market that hosts an NFL team and must have a minimum of 70,000 seats, with the media and electrical amenities necessary to produce the Super Bowl. Stadiums may include temporary seating for Super Bowls, but seating must be approved by the league. Stadiums where the average game day temperature is below 50° Fahrenheit must either have a roof or a waiver given by the league. There must be a minimum of 35,000 parking spaces within one mile of the stadium.
The host stadium must have space for the Gameday Experience, a large pregame entertainment area, within walking distance of the stadium.
The host city must have space for the NFL Experience, the interactive football theme park which is operated the week prior to the Super Bowl. An indoor venue for the event must have a minimum of 850,000 square feet, and an outdoor venue must have a minimum of 1 million square feet. Additionally, there must be space nearby for the Media Center, and space for all other events involved in the Super Bowl week, including golf courses and bowling alleys.
The necessary infrastructure must be in place around the stadium and other Super Bowl facilities, including parking, security, electrical needs, media needs, communication needs, and transportation needs.
There must be a minimum number of hotel spaces within one hour's drive of the stadium equaling 35% of the stadium's capacity, along with hotels for the teams, officials, media, and other dignitaries. (For Super Bowl XXXIX, the city of Jacksonville docked several luxury cruise liners at their port to act as temporary hotel space. [52] )
) There must be practice space of equal and comparable quality for both teams within a 20-minute drive of the team hotels, and rehearsal space for all events within a reasonable distance to the stadium. The practice facilities must have one grass field and at least one field of the same surface as the host stadium.
The stadium must have a minimum of 70,000 fixed seats, including club and fixed suite seating, during regular season operations.
The NFL owners meet to make a selection on the site, usually three to five years prior to the event. In 2007, NFL commissioner Roger Goodell suggested that a Super Bowl might be played in London, perhaps at Wembley Stadium.[53] The game has never been played in a region that lacks an NFL franchise; seven Super Bowls have been played in Los Angeles, but none were held there in the 21-year period when the league had no team in the area.[citation needed] New Orleans, the site of the 2013 Super Bowl, invested more than $1 billion in infrastructure improvements in the years leading up to the game.[54]
Through Super Bowl LVI, teams were allowed to bid for the rights to host Super Bowls. The league rescinded this privilege in 2018 and will make all decisions regarding hosting sites from Super Bowl LVII onward; the league will choose a potential venue unilaterally, the chosen team will put together a hosting proposal, and the league will vote upon it to determine if it is acceptable.[55]
Home team designation [ edit ]
The designated "home team" alternates between the NFC team in odd-numbered games and the AFC team in even-numbered games.[56][57] This alternation was initiated with the first Super Bowl, when the Green Bay Packers were the designated home team. Regardless of being the home or away team of record, each team has their team logo and wordmark painted in one of the end zones. Designated away teams have won 30 of 51 Super Bowls to date (approximately 59%).
The Redskins are one of six home teams that chose to wear their white jersey, shown here in Super Bowl XVII
Since Super Bowl XIII in January 1979, the home team is given the choice of wearing their colored or white jerseys. Originally, the designated home team had to wear their colored jerseys, which resulted in Dallas donning their less exposed dark blue jerseys for Super Bowl V. While most of the home teams in the Super Bowl have chosen to wear their colored jerseys, there have been six (6) exceptions: the Dallas Cowboys during Super Bowl XIII and XXVII, the Washington Redskins during Super Bowl XVII, the Pittsburgh Steelers during Super Bowl XL, the Denver Broncos during Super Bowl 50, and the New England Patriots in Super Bowl LII. The Cowboys, since 1964, have worn white jerseys at home. The Redskins wore white at home under coach Joe Gibbs starting in 1981 through 1992, continued by Richie Petitbon and Norv Turner through 2000, then again when Gibbs returned from 2004 through 2007. Meanwhile, the Steelers, who have always worn their black jerseys at home since the AFL–NFL merger in 1970, opted for the white jerseys after winning three consecutive playoff games on the road, wearing white. The Steelers' decision was compared with the New England Patriots in Super Bowl XX; the Patriots had worn white jerseys at home during the 1985 season, but after winning road playoff games against the New York Jets and Miami Dolphins wearing red jerseys, New England opted to switch to crimson for the Super Bowl as the designated home team. For the Broncos in Super Bowl 50, Denver general manager John Elway simply stated, "We've had Super Bowl success in our white uniforms"; they previously had been 0–4 in Super Bowls when wearing their orange jerseys.[58][59] The Broncos' decision is also perceived to be made out of superstition, losing all Super Bowl games with the orange jerseys in terrible fashion. It is unclear why the Patriots chose to wear their white jerseys for Super Bowl LII. During the pairing of Bill Belichick and Tom Brady, New England has mostly worn their blue jerseys for home games, but have worn white for a home game in the 2008, 2010, and 2011 seasons.[60] The New England Patriots were 3–0 in their white uniforms in Super Bowls prior to Super Bowl LII with Belichick and Brady,[61][62] and they may have been going on recent trends of teams who wear white for the Super Bowl game.[63][64][65] White-shirted teams have won 33 of 52 Super Bowls to date (63%). The only teams to win in their dark-colored uniform in more recent years are the Green Bay Packers against the Pittsburgh Steelers in Super Bowl XLV and the Philadelphia Eagles against the New England Patriots in Super Bowl LII, with teams in white winning 12 of the last 14 Super Bowls.[66]
The 49ers, as part of the league's 75th Anniversary celebration, used their 1955 throwback uniform in Super Bowl XXIX, which for that year was their regular home jersey. The Los Angeles Rams in Super Bowl LIII wore their royal blue and yellow throwback uniforms, which they have previously worn for six home games including a home playoff game.[67] No team has yet worn a third jersey or Color Rush uniform for the Super Bowl.
Host cities/regions [ edit ]
For a full list of Super Bowl venues, see List of Super Bowl champions
Miami Metro Area New Orleans L.A. Metro Area Tampa San Diego Houston Detroit Metro Atlanta Phoenix Metro Area Minneapolis Jacksonville S.F. Bay Area Dallas‑Fort Worth Indianapolis N.Y. Metro Area Super Bowl host cities/regions
Fifteen different regions have hosted Super Bowls.
Note: Years listed are the year the game was actually played (or will be playedˇ[›]; future games are denoted through italics) rather than what NFL season it is considered to have been.
Host stadiums [ edit ]
A total of 26 different stadiums, six of which no longer exist and one of which does not yet exist, either have hosted or are scheduled to host Super Bowls. The years listed in the table below are the years the game was actually played (will be playedˇ[›]) rather than what NFL season it is considered to have been.
^ ^: Stadium is now demolished.
^ ‡: Miami Gardens became a city in 2003. Before that, the stadium had a Miami address while in unincorporated Florida.
^ ††: The original Stanford Stadium, which hosted Super Bowl XIX, was demolished and replaced with a new stadium in 2006.
^ ˇ: Future Super Bowls, also denoted by italics.
^ ˇˇ: Stadium is under construction.
Future venues:
The game has never been played in a region that lacked an NFL or AFL franchise,[citation needed] though London, England has occasionally been mentioned as a host city for a Super Bowl in the near future.[71] Wembley Stadium has hosted several NFL games as part of the NFL International Series and is specifically designed for large, individual events. NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell has openly discussed the possibility on different occasions.[72][73][74][75] Time zone complications are a significant obstacle to a Super Bowl in London; a typical 6:30 p.m. Eastern Time start would result in the game beginning at 11:30 p.m. local time in London, an unusually late hour to be holding spectator sports (the NFL has never in its history started a game later than 9:15 p.m. local time).[75] As bids have been submitted for all Super Bowls through Super Bowl LVIII, the soonest that any stadium outside the NFL's footprint could serve as host would be Super Bowl LIX in 2025.[76]
Seven stadiums that had hosted a Super Bowl game are no longer standing. Tulane Stadium, which hosted three Super Bowls (it took on Super Bowl IX due to construction delays with its successor and original host, the Louisiana Superdome) was demolished in November 1979; Tampa Stadium, which hosted two Super Bowls, was demolished in April 1999; Stanford Stadium, which hosted one Super Bowl, was demolished and redeveloped in 2005–06; the Orange Bowl, which hosted five Super Bowls, was demolished in May 2008; the Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome, which hosted one Super Bowl, was demolished in March 2014; the Georgia Dome in Atlanta, which hosted two Super Bowls, was demolished in November 2017; and the Pontiac Silverdome in suburban Detroit, which hosted one Super Bowl, was demolished a few months after the Georgia Dome in March 2018.
Super Bowl trademark [ edit ]
The NFL is very active on stopping what it says is unauthorized commercial use of its trademarked terms "NFL", "Super Bowl", and "Super Sunday".[77] As a result, many events and promotions tied to the game, but not sanctioned by the NFL, are asked to refer to it with euphemisms such as "The Big Game", or other generic descriptions.[78][79] A radio spot for Planters nuts parodied this, by saying "it would be super...to have a bowl...of Planters nuts while watching the big game!" and comedian Stephen Colbert began referring to the game in 2014 as the "Superb Owl". In 2015, the NFL filed opposition with the USPTO Trademark Trial and Appeal Board to a trademark application submitted by an Arizona-based nonprofit for "Superb Owl".[80] The NFL claims that the use of the phrase "Super Bowl" implies an NFL affiliation, and on this basis the league asserts broad rights to restrict how the game may be shown publicly; for example, the league says Super Bowl showings are prohibited in churches or at other events that "promote a message", while venues that do not regularly show sporting events cannot show the Super Bowl on any television screen larger than 55 inches.[81] Some critics say the NFL is exaggerating its ownership rights by stating that "any use is prohibited", as this contradicts the broad doctrine of fair use in the United States.[81] Legislation was proposed by Utah Senator Orrin Hatch in 2008 "to provide an exemption from exclusive rights in copyright for certain nonprofit organizations to display live football games", and "for other purposes".[82]
In 2004, the NFL started issuing Cease and Desist letters to casinos in Las Vegas that were hosting Super Bowl parties. "Super Bowl" is a registered trademark, owned by the NFL, and any other business using that name for profit-making ventures is in violation of federal law, according to the letters. In reaction to the letters, many Vegas resorts, rather than discontinue the popular and lucrative parties, started referring to them as "Big Game Parties".[83][84][85]
In 2006, the NFL made an attempt to trademark "The Big Game" as well; however, it withdrew the application in 2007 due to growing commercial and public-relations opposition to the move, mostly from Stanford University and the University of California, Berkeley and their fans, as the Stanford Cardinal football and California Golden Bears football teams compete in the Big Game, which has been played since 1892 (28 years before the formation of the NFL and 75 years before Super Bowl I).[86] Additionally, the Mega Millions lottery game was known as The Big Game (then The Big Game Mega Millions) from 1996 to 2002.[87]
Use of the phrase "world champions" [ edit ]
Like the other major professional leagues in the United States, the winner of the Super Bowl is usually declared "world champions", a title that has been mocked by non-American journalists.[88][89] Others feel the title is fitting, since it is the only professional league of its kind.[90]
The practice by the U.S. major leagues of using the "World Champion" moniker originates from the World Series of professional baseball,[citation needed] and it was later used during the first three Super Bowls when they were referred to as AFL-NFL World Championship Games. The phrase is still engraved on the Super Bowl rings.
See also [ edit ]
References [ edit ]
Notes
CitationsA nationwide study by the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) to examine the enrolment, access and retention of children with disabilities (CWD) has revealed that while 99 per cent of these children liked attending regular schools, 57 per cent teachers were not trained to understand their special needs.
The study has found that special needs of children with mental illnesses were "neither being identified nor being addressed seriously".
A vast majority of teachers (88.1%) could say nothing on how to meet the special educational needs of disabled children in their classrooms. Only 35.1% could identify the needs of students with disabilities.
More than half of all teachers interviewed gave no response to questions on how they included disabled children in their day-to-day teaching.
The study evaluated the implementation of the centrally sponsored Inclusive Education of the Disabled at the Secondary Stage (IEDSS) scheme in 27 states and union territories at the secondary and senior secondary levels.
At the root of the problem is state apathy and the resultant lack of funds and training. Only 12 states have trained general teachers in special needs, and only three of these states have offered this training for five days or longer. Fifty-seven per cent of teachers have received no training.
Ironically, children with disabilities expressed a strong desire for inclusive schooling with special attention. Nearly every student with disability (99%) liked going to school; nearly half (44.5%) said they needed teachers to give them special attention.
Students also expressed the need for better adapted toilets and playgrounds, indoor sports rooms and better seating facilities. They wanted the teacher to speak louder and interact more with them.
IEDSS aims to help disabled students especially girl students to complete secondary school in an inclusive environment. Over the past few years, enrolment levels of girls with disabilities has fallen everywhere except in Manipur. Average enrolment in the surveyed states and UTs fell from 43.57% in 2009-10 to 40.21% in 2012-13. In Gujarat, Haryana, Madhya Pradesh, Nagaland, Rajasthan and Tamil Nadu, the enrolment of disabled girls has been consistently under 40%.
Overall enrolment of children with disabilities has increased in 13 states and UTs; it has fallen in three. Five states tracking dropout rates have showed an increase in the rate.
The study has recommended that enrolment of girls with special needs be accorded top priority; dropout rates of these students at the elementary level be arrested; awareness and availability of assistive aids be improved; service and pre-service teacher training be restructured, and recruitment policies be geared towards appointing special educators.
The study has also suggested a more flexible curriculum with space for creative arts and multimedia, and hostel facilities for children with severe physical disabilities. The issuing of disability certificates should be facilitated, and attempts made to ensure that most CWDs are enrolled in regular schools rather than being schooled at home.
CAN, BUT OFTEN UNABLE
CAN'T
* Read blackboard
* Speak
* Write with a pen
* Understand teacher's speech
LIKE
* Friends
* Playground
* Computers
* Mid-day meals
DISLIKE
* Holidays
* Seating arrangements
* Toilets
* Lack of water
NEED
* More support from teachers
* Extra time in class
* Ramps from class to playground
Please read our terms of use before posting comments'I'm living on pineapple and cookies,' says Miss Israel 2017. 'Other contestants fascinated about why I can't eat most of the food.'
In May, 21-year-old Rotem Rabi was crowned Miss Israel 2017, making her Israel’s contestant for the Miss World beauty contest, to be held in China this December.
A former Air Force medic and native Jerusalemite, Rabi now finds herself representing Israel in more ways than one since her arrival in China last week.
Raised in a traditional, though not strictly observant family, Rabi keeps kosher at all times, even when travelling abroad at locales with minimal access to kosher food.
Speaking with Yediot Ahronot, Rabi noted that her father had become observant, and now identifies with the haredi community.
While in China to prepare for the competition, Rabi found that there is little to no kosher food available, yet refused to compromise her traditions.
“I’m having difficulty with the food,” she said, “almost nothing here is kosher.”
“I’m living on pineapple and cookies, and I hope that the problem will be solved in the next few days.”
Rabi’s adherence to traditional Jewish dietary rules piqued the interest of other contestants, she said, who expressed curiosity about Israel and why she was unable to eat most of the food.
“The people there are fascinated that [I’m Israeli], especially from the fact that I live in Jerusalem. Everyone gets excited and tells me how they know about Israel.”
“When I explained to them why I can’t eat the food we get served, they were all quite fascinated. But I feel like they don’t really understand still why it is so important for me to keep kosher.”The ringleader of a Rochdale child sex grooming gang cited human rights laws as he launched an appeal against deportation from Britain.
Paedophile Shabir Ahmed, 63, described by a judge as a "violent hypocritical bully", has written to the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) claiming his convictions for child sex offences were a conspiracy to "scapegoat" Muslims, his immigration tribunal heard.
Ahmed, serving 22 years in jail, was convicted in 2012 of being the ringleader of a group of Asian men who preyed on girls as young as 13 in Rochdale, plying them with drink and drugs before they were "passed around" for sex.
He appeared before the First Tier Immigration Tribunal, sitting at Manchester Crown Court, on Tuesday to appeal against the decision by Secretary of State Theresa May to strip him of his British citizenship, the first stage in the deportation process.
"It's become fashionable to blame everything on Muslims these days."
"It's become fashionable to blame everything on Muslims these days." Shabir Ahmed
Three judges will decide on Ahmed's appeal, as well as on appeals by three other men who were part of the same gang and who also face deportation.
Ahmed, who sat in the dock flanked by prison officers, told the court: "She (Theresa May) says all her trouble is coming from Muslims, yet she's the biggest trouble causer in the world."
He said he was convicted by "eleven white jurors", adding: "It's become fashionable to blame everything on Muslims these days."
Vinesh Mandalia, representing the Home Office, told the tribunal Mrs May had exercised her right as the Home Office minister to deprive Ahmed of British citizenship "if it is conducive to public good".
Mr Mandalia said Ahmed's appeal against depriving him of British citizenship included an appeal to the ECHR against his criminal convictions, which had been acknowledged by that court but did not mean they would hear his case.
Photo: Geoff Pugh/The Telegraph
Ahmed's appeal states his trial was "tainted" and a "miscarriage of justice" as it was "institutionally racist" using Muslims as "scapegoats".
Ahmed, who first came to the UK in 1967 aged 14, is a British citizen, but would not be rendered stateless as he retains Pakistani nationality having been born in Gujrat.
Three times married Ahmed told the court he had four children living in the UK, had lived here for nearly 50 years and had £83,000 in a UK bank account.
Ahmed was given a 19-year sentence at Liverpool Crown Court in May 2012 for a string of child sex offences, including rape.
He was also jailed for 22 years, to run concurrently, in July 2012 for 30 rapes against another victim.
Presiding tribunal Judge Michael Clements reserved his decision on Ahmed and the appeal of a second man, Qari Abdul Rauf.
Article 14 of the Human Rights Act says one can’t be discriminated against on the grounds of sex, race, colour, language, religion, and political opinion.Within hours of Equifax — one of the nation’s three major credit bureaus — confirming that the records of some 143 million people had been compromised in a data breach, the company now faces a lawsuit accusing it of failing to protect its stockpile of sensitive consumer information. Meanwhile, some critics are saying that Equifax’s response to the breach may be causing more harm than good.
The potential class action complaint [PDF] was filed Thursday afternoon at a federal court in Oregon with two of that state’s residents as the named plaintiffs. It aims to represent others who may be “harmed by Equifax’s failure to adequately protect their credit and personal information.”
As a credit bureau, Equifax has a large amount of potentially sensitive data about hundreds of millions of Americans — personal information like addresses, phone numbers, driver’s licenses, and Social Security numbers; along with financial information on credit card accounts, loans, lines of credit, and more.
The plaintiffs say that, with this much data at its disposal, Equifax has a legal duty “to use reasonable care to protect their credit and personal information from unauthorized access by third parties.”
The lawsuit alleges that the breach resulted from negligence on the part of Equifax, claiming the company deliberately did not invest adequately in protecting consumer data.
In addition to any potential harm that may come from the thieves’ misuse of the purloined data, the plaintiffs contend that Equifax should be expected to reimburse affected consumers for going out-of-pocket for services like third-party credit monitoring. Consumers should not have to “bear the expense caused by Equifax’s negligent failure to safeguard their credit and personal information from cyber-attackers,” reads the complaint.
We’ve reached out to Equifax for comment regarding this lawsuit but have not yet heard back.
This action is only the first of what will likely be dozens of similar lawsuits filed all over the country in the weeks to come. Aside from the $19.95 that one of the Oregon plaintiffs has already spent on an outside credit monitoring service, the complaint does not allege any actual damage done to the affected consumers. However, the type of information stolen in this breach could very easily lead to ID theft, credit fraud, and other harm.
This issue of potential harm is one that the court system has been debating in recent years. For instance, federal courts have disagreed on whether customers of health insurer CareFirst should be allowed to sue over a data breach where there is little evidence that the stolen information has been misused.
There will also likely be lawsuits, and possibly law enforcement investigations, involving reports that three top Equifax executives — including the company’s Chief Financial Officer — sold large chunks of Equifax stock, totaling around $1.8 million, shortly after the breach was discovered but before it was made public. The Oregon complaint does not mention these transactions.
Doing More Harm?
When it confirmed the data breach, Equifax launched a site — EquifaxSecurity2017.com — containing information and a way for people to enroll in TrustedID credit monitoring service, but there are a handful of problems that are only making the waters murkier.
First, Equifax fails to clearly point out that TrustedID is actually an Equifax product. Consumers could be forgiven for not having |
to the wind. It turns out, however, it still has enough enough magic to reassemble itself (with a little help from its friends, http and rdfs).
This image may give a feeling for the relationship of full RDF and simplified RDF:
Reassembling Full RDF
The basic idea is that given some metadata (mostly: the schema), we can construct a new set of triples in full RDF which convey what the simplified RDF intended. The new set will be distinguished by using different predicates, and the predicates are related by schema information available by dereferencing the predicate URI. The specific relations used, and other schema information, allows us to unambiguously perform the conversion.
For example, og:title is intended to convey the same basic notion as rdfs:label. They are not the same property, though, because og:title is applied to a page about the thing which is being labeled, rather than the thing itself. So rather than saying they are related by owl:equivalentProperty, we say:
og:title srdf:twin rdfs:label.
This ties to them together, saying they are “parallel” or “convertable”, and allowing us to use other information in the schema(s) for og:title and rdfs:label to enable conversion.
The conversion goes something like this:News has just broke that the Association For Electronic Music (AFEM) has just been formed. This group is made up of some of the biggest and most powerful players in the Electronic Music world (see list below). The group will be a non-profit company that will work to make sure that Electronic Music heads in the right direction. Initially offices will be set up in both the UK and USA.
One of the coordinators, Kurosh Nasseri, says that “It is time for the many companies and individuals involved in our business to speak with a unified voice to represent the genre and to address the issues. And that is the mission of the Association for Electronic Music.” Here is the AFEM mission statement:
There is no doubt that this is a massive development. As EDM catapults in to the limelight it is nice to know that we now have AFEM to keep a look out and steer our beloved music in the right direction. This is what the Board of Advisors looks like right now:
· Matthew Adell, Beatport, CEO, retailer
· James Barton, President of Electronic Music, Live Nation
· Carlos Correal, Insomniac
· Jason Ellis, Positiva / Virgin Records
· Stephanie LaFera, Little Empire Music
· David Levy, WME: William Morris Endeavor
· Maria May, CAA: Creative Artists Agency
· Liz Miller, Big Beat / Atlantic
· Paul Morris, AM Only
· Patrick Moxey from Ultra Records/President of Electronic Music for Sony Music, label
· Maykel Piron, Armada Music
· Duncan Stutterheim, ID&T
· Any Thomson, ATM Artists
· John Truelove, Truelove
· Danny Whittle, Promoter, IBZ Entertainment
· Tom Windish. Windish Agency
-Jacob, @Jacob_YourEDM
Source:
http://www.musicweek.com/news/read/global-dance-music-trade-body-formed/053343Phenylephrine was patented in 1927 and came into medical use in 1938. [3] It is available as a generic medication. [2] In the United Kingdom the injectable formulation costs the NHS 4 pounds a vial. [2] Unlike pseudoephedrine, abuse of phenylephrine is very uncommon. [4]
Phenylephrine is a medication primarily used as a decongestant, to dilate the pupil, to increase blood pressure, and to relieve hemorrhoids. [1] [2] While marketed as a decongestant, taken by mouth at recommended doses it is of unclear benefit for hay fever. [1] It can be taken by mouth, given by injection into a vein or muscle, or applied to the skin. [1]
Decongestant Edit
Phenylephrine is used as a decongestant sold as an oral medicine or as a nasal spray. It is a common ingredient in over-the-counter decongestants in the United States. Other decongestants include oxymetazoline and pseudoephedrine.
Phenylephrine is used as an alternative for pseudoephedrine in decongestant medicines due to pseudoephedrine's use in the illicit manufacture of methamphetamine. Its efficacy as an oral decongestant has been questioned, with several recent independent studies finding that it provided no more relief to sinus congestion than a placebo.[5][6][7]
A 2007 meta-analysis concluded that the evidence for its effectiveness is insufficient,[8] though another meta-analysis published shortly thereafter by researchers from GlaxoSmithKline found the standard 10-mg dose to be more effective than a placebo; however, the fact that GSK markets many products containing phenylephrine has raised some speculation regarding selective publishing and other controversial techniques.[9] A 2007 study by Wyeth Consumer Healthcare notes that 7 studies available in 1976 support the efficacy of phenylephrine at a 10 mg dosage.[10]
Two studies published in 2009 examined the effects of phenylephrine on symptoms of allergic rhinitis by exposing people to pollen in a controlled, indoor environment. Neither study was able to distinguish between the effects of phenylephrine or a placebo. Pseudoephedrine and loratadine-montelukast therapy were found to be significantly more effective than both phenylephrine and placebo.[5][6]
The Food and Drug Administration withdrew its 1976 approval as a nasal decongestant in 2007.[11][1]
Hemorrhoids Edit
Hemorrhoids are caused by swollen veins in the rectal area.[12] Phenylephrine can be used topically to prevent symptoms of hemorrhoids. Phenylephrine causes the constriction of vascular smooth muscle and is often used in the treatment of hemorrhoids presumably to narrow the swollen veins and relieve the attendant pain. However, veins—unlike arteries—contain less vascular smooth muscle in their walls so the mechanism by which pain relief is achieved is likely related to something other than vascular change alone. Products for treatment may also include substances that will form a protective barrier over the inflamed area, resulting in less pain when feces are passed.[13]
Pupil dilation Edit
"Prefrin" redirects here. For the iron supplement, see Proferrin
Phenylephrine is used as an eye drop to dilate the pupil to facilitate visualization of the retina. It is often used in combination with tropicamide as a synergist when tropicamide alone is not sufficient. Narrow-angle glaucoma is a contraindication to phenylephrine use. As a mydriatic, it is available in 2.5% and 10% minims. Phenylephrine eye drops are applied to the eye after a topical anesthetic is applied.[14]
Vasopressor Edit
Phenylephrine is commonly used as a vasopressor to increase the blood pressure in unstable patients with hypotension, especially resulting from septic shock. Such use is common in anesthesia or critical-care practices; it is especially useful in counteracting the hypotensive effect of epidural and subarachnoid anesthetics, as well as the vasodilating effect of bacterial toxins and the inflammatory response in sepsis and systemic inflammatory response syndrome. The elimination half life of phenylephrine is about 2.5 to 3.0 hours.[15] The clinical effects of a single intravenous bolus dose of phenylephrine are short lived and needs to be repeated every 10–15 minutes. Commonly the drug is given as a carefully titrated intravenous infusion with a syringe pump or volumetric pump.
Because of its vasoconstrictive effect, phenylephrine can cause severe necrosis if it infiltrates the surrounding tissues. Because of this, it should be given through a central line if at all possible. Damage may be prevented or mitigated by infiltrating the tissue with the alpha blocker phentolamine by subcutaneous injection.[16]
Phenylephrine hydrochloride at 0.25% is used as a vasoconstrictor in some suppository formulations.[17]
Recently, Phenylephrine has been used to treat conditions of orthostatic intolerance such as Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome - where by activation of venous alpha 1 adrenoreceptors increases venous return and stroke volume which improves symptoms.
Priapism Edit
Phenylephrine is used to treat priapism. It is diluted with normal saline and injected directly into the corpora cavernosa. The mechanism of action is to cause constriction of the blood vessels entering into the penis, thus causing decreased blood flow and relieving the priapism. An injection is given every 3–5 minutes. If priapism is not resolved in 1 hour, another form of therapy is considered.[18]by Jerome a Paris Tue Feb 9th, 2010 at 04:41:31 AM EST
Every year, energy giant ExxonMobil presents its own "Outlook for Energy", its view of the world's energy future until 2030. Although ExxonMobil's outlook is based on essentially the same historical data as similar "outlook" reports from the International Energy Agency in Paris and the Energy Information Administration (EIA) in Washington, it offers in many ways a different - and fascinating - perspective on the world. It may well be - although this is something no one can say for sure - a more realistic, anticipatory vision than the one offered by the "official" energy institutions.
The realists at ExxonMobil, unsurprisingly, see continued dominance of fossil fuels over the next 25 years - coming mainly from growth in emerging markets as rich countries. There's a lot of interesting data in the full report (6MB PDF!), but I especially like this graph:
Source: European Energy Review
In dotted lines: the price of coal- and gas-fired electricity without any carbon pricing. Note that this is based on unknown fuel price hypotheses, but given how the report writes about the abundance of natural gas, one can expect them not to be too high...
Click for larger version
In other words, wind power is already amongst the cheapest source of electricity, and if any minimal accouting for some externalities is put in place (such as a price for carbon emissions), it becomes the cheapest. Of course, as we know, "cheapest" does not necessarily translate into "most profitable."
And as an aside, they are also sayign that carbon capture will never make any kind of sense.
And it's not me saying it, but ExxonMobil.
front-paged by afewThis may be remembered as the Year of the Prairie Chicken.
A project to replenish Illinois' prairie chicken population is going well so far, conservationists say, despite being pulled into the political fray earlier this summer. The three-year effort to import about 100 prairie chickens a year to bolster the diminished population of the endangered species began in the spring.
Once captured in the Smoky Hills of Kansas, the prairie chickens are flown aboard Illinois state-owned planes and released downstate in the Prairie Ridge State Natural Area, said Bob Gillespie, coordinator of the project, who will speak about it Tuesday at the Heller Nature Center in Highland Park.
In June, the conservation effort found itself under unexpected scrutiny when Republican gubernatorial candidate Bruce Rauner held it aloft as an example of wasteful spending under Democratic Gov. Pat Quinn. Other Republican lawmakers have also taken umbrage with the use of the state's aircraft for importing prairie chickens.
At a news conference, Rauner even had some barnyard chickens in a cage as a prop.
Suffice it to say, his remarks ruffled some feathers.
"It's disappointing. It showed a lack of understanding for the important work at hand," said Gillespie, noting that the prairie chicken — unlike Rauner's fowl — is not really a chicken at all but a type of grouse.
As the project continues, officials are exploring the possibility of contracting privately owned planes, instead of using the state's fleet, to defuse the political tension, said Tom Clay, executive director of the Illinois Audubon Society, which has committed $30,000 toward the project.
Fewer than 100 Illinois greater prairie chickens remain. Males practice their rite of spring in a restored grassland some 200 miles south of Chicago. (E. Jason Wambsgans/Chicago Tribune) Fewer than 100 Illinois greater prairie chickens remain. Males practice their rite of spring in a restored grassland some 200 miles south of Chicago. (E. Jason Wambsgans/Chicago Tribune) SEE MORE VIDEOS
"Nothing in Illinois partisan politics would surprise us," Clay said, "and that includes a gubernatorial candidate bringing laying hens to a press conference to talk about prairie chickens."
Rauner's remarks inadvertently assisted the group by making more people aware of the endangered bird, Clay said.
"In a weird way, it kind of helped the project," he said, chuckling.
The next edition of the organization's magazine will be "prairie chickens cover to cover," Clay said.
Earlier this summer, the Schaumburg Boomers baseball team — named in honor of the male prairie chicken's distinctive mating call — held a promotional day for their namesake, Clay said.
The majority of the funding, $337,500, comes from a federal grant, Gillespie said, while the state Department of Natural Resources is providing about $182,000. The state funding comes from the Natural Areas Acquisition Fund and is designated for conservation projects, he said.
Tribune Graphics Tribune Graphics
In the late 19th century, there were up to 14 million prairie chickens in Illinois, he said, but throughout the 20th century, that population declined with the increased development of native grasslands and changes in agriculture. Drought and hailstorms in recent years accelerated the decline.
Before the recovery project began in March, there were about 100 prairie chickens remaining in Illinois, Gillespie said.
In March, 91 prairie chickens were trapped and then transported in two state-owned Cessna airplanes from Salina, Kan., and released in the Jasper County portion of the Prairie Ridge State Natural Area, where they're being monitored, Gillespie said.
Known by many for their plaintive "booming," a mating call that sounds somewhat like blowing across the top of a bottle, Gillespie said, prairie chickens provide some symbolic remnant of Illinois' ecological history.
But more importantly, prairie chickens are "an umbrella species," Gillespie said, and their preservation helps ensure the appropriate management of grassland areas that will benefit other life, too, everything from crawfish frogs to short-eared owls.
The project — a partnership of the state DNR, the Illinois Natural History Survey and the Audubon Society — could also serve as a model for other states grappling with their own loss of endangered species, Gillespie said.
When he talks in Highland Park next week, Gillespie, a natural resources coordinator for the survey group, will explain how the prairie chicken project is not just for the birds.
"We protect organisms that are very unique and interesting and fun," he said. "And it's important for folks to appreciate that."
gtrotter@tribune.com
Twitter @NorthShoreTribActor and comedian Gene Wilder died at 83 on Aug. 29, 2016, due to complications form Alzheimer’s. His career spanned over 50 years included classics like "Blazing Saddles," and "Silver Streak." (Erin Patrick O'Connor/The Washington Post)
Actor and comedian Gene Wilder died at 83 on Aug. 29, 2016, due to complications form Alzheimer’s. His career spanned over 50 years included classics like "Blazing Saddles," and "Silver Streak." (Erin Patrick O'Connor/The Washington Post)
Gene Wilder, an actor whose work with Mel Brooks and Richard Pryor made him one of the most popular stars of the 1970s and whose memorable portrayals of neurotics and eccentrics included the hilariously mad scientist in “Young Frankenstein,” died Aug. 28 at his home in Stamford, Conn. He was 83.
A nephew, Jordan Walker-Pearlman, confirmed the death in a statement that said the cause was complications from Alzheimer’s disease. He had been diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma nearly two decades ago.
Mr. Wilder grew up in the Midwest, trained at the Old Vic in England and brought classical stage technique to Brooks’s outlandish humor. “My job was to make him more subtle,” Mr. Wilder once said. “His job was to make me more broad.”
But sometimes Mr. Wilder brought important comic ideas to Brooks. While filming “Young Frankenstein” (1974), a tribute to Universal Studios horror movies of the 1930s, Mr. Wilder urged that he and Peter Boyle, who was playing the monster, tap-dance a duet to “Puttin’ on the Ritz.”
Brooks objected to the musical number until a test audience reacted with howls of laughter.
1 of 14 Full Screen Autoplay Close Skip Ad × Actor Gene Wilder: A charming life and career View Photos Actor Gene Wilder, who played man eccentric characters on screen, has died. The cause was complications from Alzheimer’s, a nephew told the AP. Caption Actor Gene Wilder, who played many eccentric characters on-screen, has died. The cause was complications from Alzheimer’s, a nephew told the AP. 1971 Gene Wilder in “Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory.” Everett Collection Buy Photo Wait 1 second to continue.
In another era, Mr. Wilder’s Harpo Marx-like mop of golden hair, his slight physique and his soft, almost lisping voice might have hindered a career as a leading man. But Brooks once said he found Mr. Wilder “a natural... an Everyman with all the vulnerability showing. One day God said, ‘Let there be prey,’ and he created pigeons, rabbits, lambs and Gene Wilder.”
Brooks channeled the actor’s wide-ranging comic talents into many types of roles. For the theatrical farce “The Producers” (1968), Wilder played an ultra-nervous accountant who becomes hysterical when his baby-blue security blanket is taken away. It was a portrayal film critic Pauline Kael called “almost a shtick of genius.”
In the western spoof “Blazing Saddles” (1974), Mr. Wilder played the other extreme as the Waco Kid, an alcoholic gunman whose draw is so quick that he disarms eight attackers in one scene without the camera detecting any expression or movement on his part.
After an early Broadway career, Mr. Wilder debuted onscreen in a brief role as a kidnapped undertaker in “Bonnie and Clyde” (1967).
He soon teamed with Brooks, and Mr. Wilder’s comic skills tended to overshadow his work as a director, writer and championship fencer, all of which he displayed in “The Adventure of Sherlock Holmes’ Smarter Brother” (1975).
His other well-known portrayals included the candymaker who gleefully watches greedy children meet their just deserts in “Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory” (1971) and a doctor lovestruck with a sheep named Daisy in Woody Allen’s “Everything You Wanted to Know About Sex* But Were Afraid to Ask” (1972).
The second role was widely acknowledged as an exercise in brilliant deadpan comedy. Keeping in character, Mr. Wilder later joked that the part was made easier because of “very attractive things about this sheep, the little black hairs around each eye.”
Gene Wilder in 2005 (Helayne Seidman/for The Washington Post)
With Pryor, Mr. Wilder made several buddy comedies that broke ground in their interracial teaming, including “Silver Streak” (1976) and “Stir Crazy” (1980). Mr. Wilder pushed for casting Pryor to deflect cries of racism in light of controversial material, such as the scene in “Silver Streak” in which Mr. Wilder applies shoe polish to his face and tries to “act black.”
In 2005, he told the London Independent that he and Pryor were never close socially, and he was not aware of the comedian’s drug use. “Until he set fire to himself, when he was freebasing,” he said. “Then I knew.”
Mr. Wilder’s career faded in the 1980s after making a series of undistinguished films, several co-starring his third wife, “Saturday Night Live” cast member Gilda Radner. After her death from ovarian cancer in 1989, Mr. Wilder co-wrote a book about ovarian cancer and started a cancer support network.
Jerome Silberman was born in Milwaukee on June 11, 1933. He later took his stage name from the playwright Thornton Wilder. His first name came from the main character of Thomas Wolfe’s novel “Look Homeward, Angel,” although Mr. Wilder later wrote in a memoir that his psychoanalyst suggested another reason: His mother’s name was Jeanne.
As a boy, Mr. Wilder was warned by a doctor that if he directed anger toward his emotionally fragile mother, it might kill her. He spent hours trying to make her laugh, and from there he developed an interest in theater. Along with acting classes, he took up fencing and won the all-school fencing championship during a year spent at the Old Vic Theatre School in Bristol, England. He also enrolled at the Actors Studio in New York, where he studied the “Method” style that asks performers to draw on personal memories in forming a character.
After Army service in a psychiatric ward, Mr. Wilder picked up his theatrical career and appeared in several Broadway productions.
His small role in Bertolt Brecht’s “Mother Courage and Her Children” in 1963 proved crucial to his career. Also in the show was actress Anne Bancroft, whose then-boyfriend Brooks was a TV comedy writer struggling with a film script.
“Mel said to me, ‘I’ve got a great idea for a movie, and you’re the only one I want for this part,’ ” Mr. Wilder told the New York Times in 1967. “Three years went by, and I didn’t hear from him, not a message, not a phone call. Then I was in [the Broadway comedy] ‘Luv,’ and one matinee day I got a knock on my door, and he said, ‘You didn’t think I forgot, did you?’ ”
The film was “The Producers,” and the supporting role brought Mr. Wilder an Academy Award nomination. His only other Oscar nomination was for co-writing “Young Frankenstein.”
Mr. Wilder made no movie appearances after 1991, although he periodically acted on television. He won a 2003 Emmy Award for his guest role on the sitcom “Will & Grace,” playing a quick-to-anger boss.
Mostly, he devoted himself to painting and writing, including the memoir “Kiss Me Like a Stranger” (2005).
His marriages to Mary Mercier and Mary Joan Schutz ended in divorce. Survivors include his fourth wife, Karen Boyer, a speech therapist who taught him to lip-read for his role as a deaf man in “See No Evil, Hear No Evil” (1989).Document: Where to vote: A full list of polling places in Chattanooga Polling locations for the 2017 local elections.
Document: Sample ballot: View sample ballot for today's city election Sample ballot for today's city election.
Voting is underway for the Chattanooga city election. Here's what you need to know today:
MAYORAL RACE
Mayor Andy Berke seeks re-election to the seat and faces challenges from architectural consultant Chris Long, former three-time City Councilman David Crockett and Larry Grohn, the city councilman for District 4.
Early in the race, crime and gun violence emerged as recurring hot topics.
CITY COUNCIL RACE
Six out of nine Chattanooga City Council districts will be contested in today's election.
Incumbents Carol Berz and Ken Smith, who represent Districts 6 and 3, respectively, have no challengers. Council newcomer Darrin Ledford runs an uncontested race for District 4, left vacant by Larry Grohn to pursue the Chattanooga mayor's seat. Eighteen contenders vie for the other six seats.
The candidates
District 1:
Chip Henderson
Susan Miller
Jay Nevans
District 2:
Mickey McCamish
Jerry Mitchell
District 3:
Ken Smith
District 4:
Darrin Ledford
District 5:
Jeffrey Evans
Russell Gilbert
Cynthia Stanley-Cash
District 6:
Carol Berz
District 7:
Chris Anderson
Erskine Oglesby
Manny Rico
District 8:
Anthony Byrd
Moses Freemen
thomas p. kunesh
District 9:
Pat Benson Jr.
Demetrus Coonrod
Yusuf Hakeem
John Kerns
VOTING HOURS
Polls are open 8 a.m.-7 p.m.
VOTING CONCERNS
Anyone with questions or concerns about voting today can call the Hamilton County Election Commission at 423-493-5100.Americans are practically split on whether they will vote for a Republican or a Democrat in November's midterm elections, the Gallup generic ballot poll released Monday found.
Forty-six percent of registered voters said they prefer Democratic congressional candidates compared to 45 percent who said they back Republican office-seekers, according to the poll. The 1-point span falls within the poll's margin of error, rendering the Democrats' lead statistically insignificant.
The results of Gallup's generic ballot poll, a key bellwether of congressional elections, have been volatile in recent weeks. Republicans opened up a 5-point lead last week after falling into its first tie with the Democrats in five weeks before that. The week before the previous tie, the GOP held a 10-point advantage over the Democrats, a lead Gallup called "unprecedented."
The overall results of the weekly poll have swung in Democrats' favor during the past two months. In August, Republicans edged Democrats 49-43 percent but in September, the GOP leads 46-45.
Republicans have consistently led Democrats in voter enthusiasm measures, an outcome that held firm this week. Forty-seven percent of Republicans polled who said they were enthusiastic about voting this fall noted they were "very" enthusiastic compared to 28 percent of Democrats who said so.
The poll, taken of 2,295 registered voters between Sept. 13-19, has a margin of error of 2 percentage points.David Guttenfelder David Guttenfelder David Guttenfelder David Guttenfelder David Guttenfelder David Guttenfelder David Guttenfelder David Guttenfelder David Guttenfelder
When Associated Press photographer David Guttenfelder first went to North Korea in 2000, he was plunged into the dark—he had to leave his phone at customs, and his hotel windows were covered with black plastic. But over time, the most restrictive country in the world has loosened up, at least for some. In January it allowed foreigners to carry phones; in February it activated a 3G network for visitors. As the AP's chief photographer for Asia, Guttenfelder now sends out images from the Pyongyang bureau and posts daily to Instagram. In a country without the Internet, a reporter with social media is king, so we asked Guttenfelder for his report from inside:
I was the mayor of the Koryo Hotel in Pyongyang on Foursquare until a week ago. And if you're seeing restaurant check-ins in the capital, my AP colleague and I probably left them. In a country known for its censorship, I'm now uploading photos to Instagram from the streets of North Korea like I would anywhere else in the world.
Through social media, I'm trying to piece together a picture of this country for the outside world, whether it's a still of an apartment building with an empty playground, a geo-tag for Juche Tower on Foursquare, or a video of a woman ringing up restaurant receipts with propaganda blaring behind her.
No one puts their hand in front of my camera, and no one tells me not to shoot things. There's no review process. They don't look at my pictures at all before I send them on the Associated Press wire or my Instagram account. Facebook even asks me to tag my "friends" Kim Jong Il and Kim Il Sung when I upload my photos.
Until a few months ago, the Google map of North Korea was a blank slate. Now I'm like an explorer, charting the country with my check-ins and photos. The first time I tried to tag a picture on Instagram, there were no preset locations. Now we're making those too. I'm doing it because I want the geolocators for Instagram, but I'm also doing it in the spirit of an explorer or a mapmaker.
More from this issue
- ### The Next Steve JobsGet the biggest Manchester United FC stories by email Subscribe Thank you for subscribing We have more newsletters Show me See our privacy notice Could not subscribe, try again later Invalid Email
Paul Pogba was predictably mobbed during his trip to Nando's on Wednesday but the Manchester United midfielder might not have expected to attract attention from Liverpool and City fans.
Youngsters wearing Roberto Firmino, Sergio Aguero, Nolito and David Silva shirts were snapped approaching Pogba as he dined with Jesse Lingard and ex-United academy striker John Cofie at the Spinningfields restaurant.
An eye witness said: "He was great with all the kids but there wasn't a United fan in sight.
"But I think he had had enough when all the autograph hunters started chasing him."
Pogba, who is staying at The Lowry Hotel, has already eaten at Bem Brasil just off Deansgate - which is around a five-minute walk from his hotel. Due to the paparazzi presence, he called a cab back with teammate Henrikh Mkhitaryan.
(Image: Stephen Farrell)
The 23-year-old has also enjoyed a trip to Piccolino in Hale, which Zlatan Ibrahimovic has also visited.
Pogba and Lingard rendezvoused with former United youth teamer Cofie, who recently revealed the Portuguese-themed restaurant was a favourite haunt of Pogba's during his two-and-a-half years in England as a teenager.
Cofie said in a Sun interview: "When he first arrived in 2009, it didn’t take him long to get involved in everything because he was so confident.
"Pog used to love his spicy chicken so we ate at Nando’s a lot. Wings, full chicken, half chicken, it varied — but Paul loved it."
(Image: Stephen Farrell)
Pogba is in line to make his first United start against Southampton at Old Trafford on Friday.
"You have to ask the manager but I feel very good and have been training for 10 days. I am okay," Pogba said.
The world's most expensive footballer also assuaged concerns about his match fitness, having not played since the Euro 2016 final on July 10.
"I am quite used to this," Pogba added. "I played the World Cup two years ago when at Juve and three years ago I was at the Under-20s World Cup as well.
"So I am okay. It is about your body and I have been training on my holidays."(Stillness in the Storm Editor) Scientists recently discovered what they are referring to as a "dark matter bridge" connecting galaxies together, which in Electric Universe terms can be thought of as electromagnetic plasma filaments. Several researchers, and one alleged secret space program insider, Scientists recently discovered what they are referring to as a "dark matter bridge" connecting galaxies together, which in Electric Universe terms can be thought of as electromagnetic plasma filaments. Several researchers, and one alleged secret space program insider, Corey Goode, contends that the cosmos can be navigated using natural occurring portal systems or "star gates"—which this discovery might confirm.
Electromagnetism appears to be the material medium or substrate through which information flows in the cosmos.
According to Dan Winter, and several others, when information is compressed using implosive means and organized fractally, it can be transmitted across vast distances, with no loss of fidelity. And according to several whistleblowers, the military industrial complex has already perfected portal technology using hidden scalar science, partially developed by Tesla.
Goode also contends that there is a "galactic gate" just outside of our solar system, one that extraterrestrial races and secret space programs use to travel the stars. Goode also asserts that an active campaign to disclose these realities is currently underway and this could be one such example.
Related It Appears Partial Disclosure is Rolling Out
- Justin
Stillness in the Storm Editor's note: Did you find a spelling error or grammar mistake? Do you think this article needs a correction or update? Or do you just have some feedback? Send us an email at Did you find a spelling error or grammar mistake? Do you think this article needs a correction or update? Or do you just have some feedback? Send us an email at sitsshow@gmail.com with the error, headline and url
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Subscribe to Stillness in the Storm Blog by Email] Question -- What is the goal of this website? Why do we share different sources of information that sometimes conflicts or might even be considered disinformation? Answer -- The primary goal of Stillness in the Storm is to help all people become better truth-seekers in a real-time boots-on-the-ground fashion. This is for the purpose of learning to think critically, discovering the truth from within—not just believing things blindly because it came from an "authority" or credible source. Instead of telling you what the truth is, we share information from many sources so that you can discern it for yourself. We focus on teaching you the tools to become your own authority on the truth, gaining self-mastery, sovereignty, and freedom in the process. We want each of you to become your own leaders and masters of personal discernment, and as such, all information should be vetted, analyzed and discerned at a personal level. We also encourage you to discuss your thoughts in the comments section of this site to engage in a group discernment process.
"It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it." – Aristotle
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Scientists have discovered the existence of a cosmic web that indicates galaxies across the universe are connected by bridges.Scientists have made another impressive discovery, proving that the universe is far more mysterious than we‘ve ever imagined. Observations of over 23,000 galaxy pairs has allowed astronomers to pinpoint a dark matter bridge that connects them.For the first time ever, experts have snapped an image of the “elusive dark matter bridge” that connects different galaxies across the cosmos.Until now scientists only speculated that such a “cosmic web” may exist, as it has remained unobservable until now.Scientists published their work in a new article in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.The composite image—composed of observations of over 23,000 galaxy pairs—confirms predictions that galaxies across the universe are linked to each other through a cosmic network connected by dark matter.Dark matter is a mysterious substance comprising about 27 percent of the universe. It does not shine, absorb or reflect light, which makes it largely undetectable. Only based on its interactions with visible matter, scientists can infer its existence.However, researchers from the University of Waterloo were able to measure an effect known as weak gravitational lensing by using numerous images from a multi-year sky survey at the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope.Gravitational lensing makes faraway galaxies seem distorted due to an unseen mass such as a planet, a black hole, or in this case dark matter.Researchers essentially used lensing images from thousands of galaxies located some 4.5 billion light-years away, in order to reveal the mysterious presence of “dark matter” connecting them.“For decades, researchers have been predicting the existence of dark matter filaments between galaxies that act like a web-like superstructure connecting galaxies together,” said researcher Mike Hudson “This image moves us beyond predictions to something we can see and measure.”As noted by Science Alert, not only is the images just aesthetically pleasing, it reveals several mind-bending features which would otherwise be difficult to detect.The composite images show the existence of a COSMIC WEB for the first time.The newly obtained—false color—map depicts bright galaxies as a white region while dark matter bridges are illustrated in red.New observations allowed astronomers to create a map depicting the bridges while it allowed them to find that the phenomenon is strongest in systems that are located less than 40 million light-years apart.“By using this technique, we’re not only able to see that these dark matter filaments in the universe exist, we’re able to see the extent to which these filaments connect galaxies together,” said Epps _________________________The Wikimedia Foundation, the nonprofit organization behind Wikipedia, has recently announced its decision to sue the National Security Agency (NSA) and the Department of Justice (DOJ) over the mass surveillance program run by the NSA.
Wikimedia joins forces with eight other organizations, including the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, the Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International USA. The aim of the lawsuit is to challenge the "large-scale search and seizure of internet communications — frequently referred to as “upstream” surveillance," and put an end on it.
The organization says that the NSA is using questionable methods for acquiring the data, and that the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act |
ed? Real estate.
■ If individual taxpayers are arrested, admit guilt and reach a civil settlement with the government, they cannot deduct the costs from their returns. But amazingly, a company is allowed to claim those costs as a business expense. JPMorgan Chase, for example, which has agreed to pay billions of dollars in fines for various transgressions, can deduct a large portion — and all the legal expenses — from its taxes.
“Ordinary citizens don’t deduct their parking tickets or library fines from their taxes,” U.S. PIRG, the federation of state public interest research groups, said in a statement. “Corporations like JPMorgan shouldn’t be able to deduct their settlements for wrongdoing either. The settlement loophole costs taxpayers billions each year.”
In one case, at least, JPMorgan has agreed to forgo this benefit. It will not take a deduction on its $1.7 billion fine related to its actions regarding Bernard Madoff’s Ponzi scheme, saving the taxpayers about $600 million.
And it’s not the only one. This year, Toyota, which admitted it hid safety defects from the public, agreed as part of a $1.2 billion criminal penalty with the United States government that it would not “file a claim, assert or apply for a tax deduction or tax credit.” The U.S. PIRG said this one line saved taxpayers $420 million.
Still, the U.S. PIRG highlighted a study conducted by the Government Accountability Office in 2005 that found that of 34 settlements worth more than $1 billion, 20 companies took advantage of tax rules to deduct all or part of the settlement costs.
■ A tiny but symbolic loophole still persists. Companies that own aircraft can depreciate their planes more quickly than airlines — over five years instead of seven — and claim the deduction. In total, closing the loophole is worth $3 billion to $4 billion over a decade.
■ A much larger loophole involves the deduction of executive stock options by the company issuing them. Inexplicably, many of Silicon Valley’s newest star companies will be able to shelter a large portion of their profits as a result. Citizens for Tax Justice estimated late last year that a dozen technology companies, including Twitter, LinkedIn and Priceline, “stand to eliminate all income taxes on the next $11.4 billion they earn — giving these companies $4 billion in tax cuts.”
The effect is enormous and has significantly changed the bottom line — and tax rates — at some of the largest companies.
“This tax break allowed Amazon to reduce its federal and state income taxes by $750 million between 2010 and 2012,” Citizens for Tax Justice estimated. “The company’s combined federal and state effective tax rate over this period was just 9.4 percent; absent the stock option tax break, the combined tax rate would have been 40.4 percent.”
The ordinary taxpayer, rushing to the mailbox, can only dream of this sort of break.What comes in mind when you hear the word “marijuana?”
A bunch of potheads with Bob Marley-esque hairstyle? A dopey college trip? Or just some lone time with great music?
For most people it’s either of these three. Sometimes all three of them.
Popular culture tends to associate marijuana with paltry habits, totally ignoring the fact that it has a rich, spiritual and culturally substantial history behind it.
Here on CBDMyth, we discussed the cultural aspects at length. We also discussed why it is sought after today by the medical community. In this article…well, this article is actually for dummies. Assuming you are new to our site, here’s an overview of Marijuana’s history and CBD – the component found in it, dubbed as the next panacea that is about to sweep the field of medical science.
History of marijuana
It’s only in recent time when Marijuana is being treated like a dangerous and addictive substance. Looking back at the longstanding history of Marijuana, an eye-opening lesson can be learned. That nature can heal the most difficult-to-treat diseases. Marijuana is a product of nature. People in the past used it as food, as a healing component and also for entertainment and spiritually enlightening experiences.
The oldest history of marijuana dates back the neolithic period. The inhabitants of the-then China knew how to separate hemp fibers from stems originating in marijuana plants. They manufactured clothes and fishing nets using fibers. China is the first country to invent paper. They used hemp fibers in the early days to produce it, not parchment.
The recent history of Marijuana dates back to the 19th century. Cultivation areas were mostly in the colonial lands. Some European countries cultivated cannabis, but colonies were mass-producing it.
History of CBD
The history of CBD is very recent. CBD’s effectiveness in treating diseases was discovered in the 20th century. In the 1940s, CBD and CBN were identified by scientists. Study of CBD led to the discovery that endocannabinoid receptors play an important role in mental and psychological health.
A look at CBD
Interestingly, CBD has been used by doctors to help addicts recover. In 2015. Doctors gave CBD to a cannabis addict suffering from bipolar disorder. The man who received this treatment reported reduced addiction and less anxiety.
CBD’s anti-oxidative, anti-inflammatory, epilepsy-preventive, tumor-inhibitory properties have been acknowledged by several studies. But CBD’s role in addiction treatment is has been discovered only recently.
The medical benefits of CBD will be listed down shortly. Before that, let’s take a look at some of the important characteristics of CBD:
CBD is not psychoactive. It doesn’t bring the high feeling that’s more commonly associated with smoking or vaping raw cannabis. This is the reason doctors are unhinged to suggest CBD to their patients for pain relief. CBD impacts the brain, but its effects on the psychomotor is nil. CBD doesn’t cause any health-hazard, at least none reported so far.
Research on CBD is ongoing and by no means complete. With each new discovery, increases CBD’s relevance. Researchers are positive CBD is the holy-grail of medical science.
Medical benefits of CBD
The list is so long that it’s hard to mention all. The key benefits include:
Cancer prevention Pain reduction Diabetes management Better cardiovascular health Lowers stress and anxiety Antipsychotic and treats an assortment of neurological disorders
CBD has been found to limit the growth of cancer cells. Its pro-apoptotic effects prevent cancer cells to migrate. Its usefulness in preventing cancer has prompted medical experts to prescribe it to cancer patients.
That being said, not all doctors are convinced that CBD can be an alternative to chemotherapy. Some believe it requires more clinical trials, some in the medical community dismiss CBD as hogwash as they call it snake oil. Despite all these, anecdotal evidence shared by people who’ve allegedly benefited from CBD has created a visible enthusiasm among cancer patients to try it.
Because of sedentary lifestyle, prevalence of chronic pain is rising among US adults. More than 80% of the population will experience chronic low-back pain at some time in their life. CBD can be a safe alternative to NSAIDs and it can relieve chronic pain.
Most doctors in the US treat chronic pain with Non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAID). NSAIDs are deemed safe, but their long-term consumption can lead to allergic reactions, problem in liver and kidney, stomach ulcers and increased blood pressure. CBD is a great alternative to chronic and severe pain.
Laws regarding CBD
Cultivation and sell of CBD is a thing now, at least in the United States. However, not all states are equally convivial to CBD. Some states have laws against consumption and distribution of CBD oil. It’s wise to know the states that fall into this category. The last thing you want is to find yourself in legal trouble.
Summing up
So that was the CBD starter pack for ya. If you want to know more about it, keep reading this blog.BUCHAREST, Romania (AP) - Romania's government adopted an emergency ordinance late Tuesday to decriminalize official misconduct, dealing a blow to the yearslong drive to curb corruption in the eastern European country.
Justice Minister Florin Iordache said the measure will decriminalize cases of official misconduct in which the financial damage is valued at than 200,000 lei ($47,800.) Tens of thousands of Romanians protested against the ordinance in recent weeks, saying it would weaken anti-graft efforts.
After the announcement, protesters gathered outside the main government offices, calling the ruling Social Democratic Party "the red plague."
"This measure will render the anti-corruption fight irrelevant," anti-corruption chief prosecutor Laura Codruta Kovesi told The Associated Press
She said the National Anticorruption Directorate had prosecuted 1,170 cases of abuse in office during the past three years with damages worth euros 1 billion euros ($1.07 billion.)
Iordache said a proposal to pardon thousands of prisoners would be sent for approval to Parliament, where the government has a majority.
Earlier, the anti-corruption agency said the measure would "encourage the abusive behavior of public workers, dishonesty, (and) immorality." About one-third of the agency's prosecutions are related to abuse of office.
The agency said such a development would benefit both future offenders and those currently being investigated.
Iordache denied the proposal was designed to benefit politicians, a number of whom have been caught up in the country's fight against high-level corruption.A Florida college has officially fired a professor who claimed the massacre of children at a Connecticut elementary school was staged.
Florida Atlantic University said in a release that School of Communication and Multimedia Studies professor James Tracy was served a notice of termination Tuesday. The school sent Tracy a notice of proposed discipline last month, with 10 days to respond. School officials didn't say whether he responded.
Although the school gave no reason for the action, the parents of one student killed at Sandy Hook recently claimed in a Florida newspaper opinion piece that Tracy was taunting them.
Tracy was reprimanded in 2013 for writing in his blog that the Sandy Hook killing was staged, and he has questioned accounts of other mass slayings.
An email seeking comment from Tracy wasn't immediately answered Tuesday.
Copyright Associated PressPosted January 27, 2017 at 10:34 am
Here's the plan.
Over on the Patreon I'll make posts talking about process for whatever the hell I'm writing and researching for that week. Over here I'll collect the links that bubbled up in my travels. These will usually lean toward weird news or neat tech.
Like what? Like this!
NeuroSpeculative AfroFeminism. Afropunk is rad, get into it. My Phantom mini-series gave me an excuse to look more closely at it, oddly enough. Some of the most interesting sci-fi created today fits under this umbrella.
Tips to avoid skimmers. Never a bad idea to remind yourself how much of our cyberpunk future is already here.
Plastic bottles recycled into blankets. Reminds me of the ocean plastic Adidas shoe.
If you like to work to music, might I suggest The Beautiful New Age Relaxation Tapes? Check out an album or two, they have ~30 to choose from. If you like what you hear, there's over 24 hours worth of music to be had for less than $1 which is a deal so good it'd still be a steal at $10.For most of the past 20 years I have served on selection committees for the Rhodes Scholarship. In general, the experience is an annual reminder of the tremendous promise of America's next generation. We interview the best graduates of U.S. universities for one of the most prestigious honors that can be bestowed on young scholars.
I have, however, become increasingly concerned in recent years - not about the talent of the applicants but about the education American universities are providing. Even from America's great liberal arts colleges, transcripts reflect an undergraduate specialization that would have been unthinkably narrow just a generation ago.
As a result, high-achieving students seem less able to grapple with issues that require them to think across disciplines or reflect on difficult questions about what matters and why.
Unlike many graduate fellowships, the Rhodes seeks leaders who will "fight the world's fight." They must be more than mere bookworms. We are looking for students who wonder, students who are reading widely, students of passion who are driven to make a difference in the lives of those around them and in the broader world through enlightened and effective leadership. The undergraduate education they are receiving seems less and less suited to that purpose.
An outstanding biochemistry major wants to be a doctor and supports the president's health-care bill but doesn't really know why. A student who started a chapter of Global Zero at his university hasn't really thought about whether a world in which great powers have divested themselves of nuclear weapons would be more stable or less so, or whether nuclear deterrence can ever be moral. A young service academy cadet who is likely to be serving in a war zone within the year believes there are things worth dying for but doesn't seem to have thought much about what is worth killing for. A student who wants to study comparative government doesn't seem to know much about the important features and limitations of America's Constitution.
When asked what are the important things for a leader to be able to do, one young applicant described some techniques and personal characteristics to manage a group and get a job done. Nowhere in her answer did she give any hint of understanding that leaders decide what job should be done. Leaders set agendas.
I wish I could say that this is a single, anomalous group of students, but the trend is unmistakable. Our great universities seem to have redefined what it means to be an exceptional student. They are producing top students who have given very little thought to matters beyond their impressive grasp of an intense area of study.
This narrowing has resulted in a curiously unprepared and superficial pre-professionalism.
Perhaps our universities have yielded to the pressure of parents who pay high tuition and expect students, above all else, to be prepared for the jobs they will try to secure after graduation. As a parent of two teenagers I can understand that expectation.
Perhaps faculty members are themselves more narrowly specialized because of pressure to publish original work in ever more obscure journals.
I detect no lack of seriousness or ambition in these students. They believe they are exceptionally well-educated. They have jumped expertly through every hoop put in front of them to be the top of their classes in our country's best universities, and they have been lavishly praised for doing so. They seem so surprised when asked simple direct questions that they have never considered.
We are blessed to live in a country that values education. Many of our young people spend four years getting very expensive college degrees. But our universities fail them and the nation if they continue to graduate students with expertise in biochemistry, mathematics or history without teaching them to think about what problems are important and why.
The writer represented New Mexico in the U.S. House from 1997 to 2008. She is a graduate of the Air Force Academy and a Rhodes scholar.It's hard to imagine a supermodel more relatable than Chrissy Teigen. Maybe that's because she has a totally genuine (and wildly successful) obsession with food, but it also helps that she's never afraid to speak her mind, especially when it comes to Donald Trump. As the world has watched Trump become the very real punchline of American politics, more than 2.2 million Twitter followers have watched Teigen tweet about Trump and the election — and she's usually saying what we're all thinking.
For every unwarranted insult that Trump launches into the Twittersphere, Teigen has a 140-character zinger in his replies. For every questionable retweet on Trump's profile, Teigen has a share-worthy retweet on her own profile. Whether they're concerning Trump, her feelings on the Miss Teen USA pageant, or something else altogether, Teigen's tweets are gold — but you probably already knew that.
Research shows that most Americans now get their news from social media — a scary, but not unbelievable, thought. Let's hope that plenty of those social media users are following Teigen — or her husband, John Legend, who recently "feuded" with Donald Trump Jr. on Twitter. It's not just about the Trump comments, though — it's about the entire madness that is the 2016 U.S. presidential election.
Teigen isn't the only celebrity who has taken a public stand in the upcoming presidential election, but she's definitely one of the most entertaining to follow on social media. In all seriousness, though, whether you agree or disagree with Teigen's iconic anti-Trump rants, your vote on Nov. 8 will count just as much as hers. Brush up on each candidate now, follow Teigen if you want the regular Trump updates, and then get to a polling station on the big day.Donald Sutherland, the actor who plays President Coriolanus Snow, a totalitarian dictator in the hit movie The Hunger Games just explained in no uncertain terms what the movie is about.
Having watched the films, there's no question. The thirteen districts allude to the thirteen colonies, now the United States, while the capital run by a tyrannical dictator represents the Federal government. The films are a stirring rebuke of totalitarianism and how governments control their citizens through fear.Sutherland is dead wrong though when he says the "top %10" benefit from war, it's more like the top.1%, which is the few hundred corporations who actually get the war contracts and the few hundred politicians who get more power and get to pose as everyone's protectors. Nonetheless, the idea the US' wars were to "save the world for democracy" is certainly bullsh*t.Chris Menahan runs the alternative news site InformationLiberation.com, you can read more of his articles here. Follow @infolibnews on twitterIt’s been two years since the Xbox One and PS4 debuted here in the U.S. In that time, they’ve both earned their keep as the bearer of current-generation game consoles. Microsoft realized some months after release that it needed a $400, price-competitive version with the PS4 that lacked the Kinect camera, and has since remedied what was once a bit of a lopsided, apples-and-oranges comparison.
Since then, both the Xbox One and PS4 have sold pretty well, with the edge on Sony’s side — although January’s $50 price cut for the Kinect-less Xbox One helped Microsoft catch up. Both companies have released various bundles that may throw the price advantage in one direction or the other depending on whether you want what’s in a given bundle. That said, how do the two consoles directly compare with each other? If you’re thinking about buying one of these two consoles–or just want ammunition for bragging rights–here’s what you need to know.
One note before we get started: Unlike all previous console generations, the PS4 and Xbox One are almost identical hardware-wise. With an x86 AMD APU at the heart of each, the Sony and Microsoft consoles are essentially PCs — and their hardware specs, and thus relative performance, can be compared in the same way you would compare two x86-based laptops or ARM-based Android tablets. Read on for our Xbox One-versus-PS4 hardware specs comparison.
Processor
For the PS4 and Xbox One back in 2013, Microsoft and Sony both opted for a semi-custom AMD APU — a 28nm part fabricated by TSMC that features an eight-core Jaguar CPU, paired with a Radeon 7000-series GPU. (We’ll discuss the GPU in the next section.) The PS4 and Xbox One CPUs are virtually identical, except the Xbox One is clocked at 1.75GHz, while the PS4 is at 1.6GHz.
The Jaguar CPU core itself isn’t particularly exciting. In PCs, Jaguar was used in AMD’s Kabini and Temash parts, which were aimed at older-generation laptops and tablets respectively. If you’re looking for a reasonable comparison, CPUs based on the Jaguar core are roughly comparable to Intel’s Bay Trail Atom. With eight cores (as opposed to two or four in a regular Kabini-Temash setup), both the PS4 and Xbox One have plenty of CPU power on tap, even if neither measures up to what you can get out of a PC. The large core count allows both consoles to excel at multitasking — important for modern living room and media center use cases. Ultimately, though, despite the Xbox One having a slightly faster CPU, it makes little difference to either console’s relative game performance.
Graphics
Again, by virtue of being an AMD APU, the Xbox One and PS4 GPUs are technologically similar — with the simple difference that the PS4 GPU is larger. In PC terms, the Xbox One has a GPU that’s similar to the entry-level Bonaire GPU in the older Radeon HD 7790, while the PS4 is outfitted with the midrange Pitcairn that can be found in the HD 7870. In numerical terms, the Xbox One GPU has 12 compute units (768 shader processors), while the PS4 has 18 compute units (1,152 shaders). The Xbox One is slightly ahead on GPU clock speed (853MHz vs. 800MHz for the PS4).
In short, the PS4’s GPU is — on paper — 50 percent more powerful than the Xbox One. The Xbox One’s slightly higher GPU clock speed ameliorates some of the difference, but really, the PS4’s 50-percent-higher compute unit count is a serious advantage for the Sony camp. Games on the PS4 have considerably more graphics power available, and that shows up in real-world comparisons. Beyond clock speeds and core counts, though both GPUs are identical. They’re both based on the Graphics Core Next (GCN) architecture, and thus support OpenGL 4.3, OpenCL 1.2, and Direct3D 11.2.
RAM subsystem and bandwidth
Once we leave the CPU and GPU, the hardware specs of the Xbox One and PS4 begin to diverge, with the RAM being the most notable difference. While both consoles are outfitted with 8GB of RAM, the PS4 opts for 5500MHz GDDR5 RAM, while the Xbox One uses the more PC-like 2133MHz DDR3 RAM. This leads to a massive bandwidth advantage in favor of the PS4. The PS4’s CPU and GPU have 176GB/s of bandwidth to system RAM, while the Xbox One has just 68.3GB/s.
In Microsoft’s favor, the Xbox One has 32MB of super-fast embedded SRAM (about 102GB/sec in each direction, for a total of 204GB/sec of bandwidth). When ESRAM is used properly, as a cache, then the huge difference in main system RAM bandwidth can be ameliorated.
Storage
Both the Xbox One and PS4 have 500GB internal hard disks and Blu-ray optical drives, and you can get 1TB drives for each one as options. The Xbox One’s 1TB drive is actually a hybrid, with a solid state portion in addition to a spinning disk in order to improve access speeds, although real-world tests don’t show up as big a difference as you would think on paper.
Gaming
It’s nice to be able to compare hardware specs in a straightforward fashion — especially if you’re a PlayStation fan, as it beats the Xbox One on paper. When it comes down to it, though, the specs mean little on their own: It’s always down to how game developers actually use the hardware. To begin with, games on the PS4, with its beefier GPU and simpler memory subsystem, are usually a bit smoother and more attractive. And we’ve seen this borne out in a variety of titles that show slightly worse performance on the Xbox One side, including recent titles like Metal Gear Solid V and Assassin’s Creed Syndicate. Even so, both consoles deliver stellar graphics, especially if you’re coming from an older-generation console.
Despite the resolution difference and upscaling, there is visually not as much difference between the Xbox One and PS4. By virtue of being based on the same GPU architecture, games on both consoles will look similar — the same lighting, the same textures, the same smoke, and so on. If you are playing games from a reasonable distance — say, 10 feet — you are unlikely to see too much difference between the consoles. Nonetheless, purists will want the PS4 for its more consistent 1080p output and, on occasion, higher frame rates.
Gaming and Online Services
The other differences between the two consoles are well known at this point, such as the controller design — the PS4 clearly has the edge here — and the available games. The biggest, like Grand Theft Auto 5, Metal Gear Solid V, and Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare, are usually cross platform, but there are exceptions. Both systems have some compelling exclusives. Notable exclusives on the Sony side include Until Dawn, Dragon Quest Heroes, Bloodborne, and Infamous: Second Son, while the Xbox One has Halo 5: Guardians, Rise of the Tomb Raider, and Forza Horizon 2. The PS4 does much better on the indie game side, though, which is a key advantage.
Both models also do well as general-purpose entertainment devices. The Xbox One remains the better media set-top box replacement, thanks to its HDMI passthrough and live television capabilities, but most buyer’s don’t care for that, and the Ps4 has certainly caught up on the streaming service front. You can get premium Xbox Live Gold and PS Plus subscriptions for $60 and $50 per year, respectively.
Overall, the Sony PlayStation 4 remains our favorite two years later, thanks to its slight price advantage and better controller. But the games are the thing: If there’s an exclusive or two that you’re just dying to play, it’s better you buy that particular console; the differences in hardware just aren’t important enough here.
What do you think? Do you prefer the PS4 or the Xbox One? Let us know in the comments below — and please keep things civil. We know things get pretty passionate about these two systems.
Sebastian Anthony wrote the original version of this article. It has since been heavily updated with new information.WASHINGTON — Immigration activists have sharply criticized President Obama for a rising volume of deportations, labeling him the "deporter in chief" and staging large protests that have harmed his standing with some Latinos, a key group of voters for Democrats.
But the portrait of a steadily increasing number of deportations rests on statistics that conceal almost as much as they disclose. A closer examination shows that immigrants living illegally in most of the continental U.S. are less likely to be deported today than before Obama came to office, according to immigration data.
Expulsions of people who are settled and working in the United States have fallen steadily since his first year in office, and are down more than 40% since 2009.
On the other side of the ledger, the number of people deported at or near the border has gone up — primarily as a result of changing who gets counted in the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency's deportation statistics.
The vast majority of those border crossers would not have been treated as formal deportations under most previous administrations. If all removals were tallied, the total sent back to Mexico each year would have been far higher under those previous administrations than it is now.
The shift in who gets tallied helped the administration look tough in its early years but now may be backfiring politically. Immigration advocates plan protests across the country this week around what they say will be the 2 millionth deportation under Obama — a mark expected to be hit in the next few days. And Democratic strategists fret about a decline in Latino voter turnout for this fall's election.
Until recent years, most people caught illegally crossing the southern border were simply bused back into Mexico in what officials called "voluntary returns," but which critics derisively termed "catch and release." Those removals, which during the 1990s reached more 1 million a year, were not counted in Immigration and Customs Enforcement's deportation statistics.
Now, the vast majority of border crossers who are apprehended get fingerprinted and formally deported. The change began during the George W. Bush administration and accelerated under Obama. The policy stemmed in part from a desire to ensure that people who had crossed into the country illegally would have formal charges on their records.
In the Obama years, all of the increase in deportations has involved people picked up within 100 miles of the border, most of whom have just recently crossed over. In 2013, almost two-thirds of deportations were in that category.
At the same time, the administration largely ended immigration roundups at workplaces and shifted investigators into targeting business owners who illegally hired foreign workers.
"If you are a run-of-the-mill immigrant here illegally, your odds of getting deported are close to zero — it's just highly unlikely to happen," John Sandweg, until recently the acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, said in an interview.
Even when immigration officials want to deport someone who already has settled in the country, doing so is "virtually impossible" because of a lengthy backlog in the immigration courts, Sandweg said. Once people who have no prior removals or convictions are placed in deportation proceedings, actually removing them from the country can take six years or more in some jurisdictions, Sandweg said.
Deportations of people apprehended in the interior of the U.S., which the immigration agency defines as more than 100 miles from the border, dropped from 237,941 in Obama's first year to 133,551 in 2013, according to immigration data. Four out of five of those deportees came to the attention of immigration authorities after criminal convictions.
Many of those convictions are related to crossing the border — the other big consequence of the change in the way border removals are handled.
A growing number of people caught trying to cross the border now have a formal deportation order on their records. Entering the country without legal authorization is not a crime. But once a person has been deported, he can be prosecuted if he reenters the country.
The policy of deporting border crossers and then prosecuting people who reenter has increased the number of immigrants charged in federal court. In 1992, immigration offenses accounted for 5% of federal convictions. In the subsequent two decades, the share of immigration cases on the federal docket increased sixfold, according to a study by the Pew Research Center
In 2012, immigration offenses made up 30% of federal convictions, second only to drug cases, which made up one-third.
The new system has criminalized immigration violations, notes Chris Newman, legal director for the National Day Laborer Organizing Network, based in Los Angeles.
Immigration activists have pressured Obama to use his executive authority to stop deporting immigrants with close family ties in the U.S. and no criminal history other than immigration-related violations.
Deportations at the border can have an impact on families living within the U.S., said Doris Meissner, who headed the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service from 1993 to 2000. An increasing portion of people illegally crossing the border today have lived in the U.S. before and have long-standing links to U.S. communities, she said.
"People trying to get back are increasingly people who have roots in the U.S.," Meissner said.
The administration's move to step up deportations at the border coincided with increased hiring of agents and spending on border security. In 2010, Congress approved a $600-million infusion to add border agents and new surveillance technology. There are now more than 21,000 Border Patrol agents on the border, twice the number of a decade ago.
During the first two years after coming to office, Obama administration officials touted the record-setting deportation figures, hoping that strict enforcement at the border would convince Republicans to come to the negotiating table on immigration reform.
Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano was "crowing" about the increasing deportations, said Marshall Fitz, an immigration expert at the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank in Washington.
The Homeland Security Department "was patting itself on the back for reaching these record numbers," Fitz said. "I think they thought it was important to show they were very serious about this."Fresh off a series of arrests that shut down a drug operation in Gary, U.S. Attorney David Capp met with residents at the neighborhood's church.
Capp said a man came up, shook his hand and thanked him.
"He told me, 'Now my grandchildren can play in the yard again,' " Capp said.
Capp has told the story many times, but it's one that affirmed his work fighting violent crime and corruption throughout Northwest Indiana as the Northern District of Indiana's top federal prosecutor.
"That story always kept me focused and grounded as to what the job was really all about," Capp said. "The bottom line in my mind is were we helping to make some yards safer for grandkids to play in. That truly always stuck with me."
Capp, who spent more than 30 years as a federal prosecutor, submitted his resignation last month after the Trump administration asked sitting U.S. attorneys appointed by former President Obama to step down.
After three decades, Capp said his efforts were always to improve Northwest Indiana. For the region to move forward, Capp said, it's necessary to deal with the perception and reality of corruption and violent crime.
To move forward economically, a structure must exist where people have confidence in government, and the perception of corruption is dispelled, Capp said. Likewise, Capp said people must perceive neighborhoods as safe and see they are actually safe.
"The perception is crucial. It's an important component," Capp said. "I hope we've contributed to that. There's still a lot of work to do, obviously."
A 1963 report from then Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy cited Lake County among the most corrupt places in the United States.
When James Richmond took office in 1985, little had changed, the former U.S. attorney and Reagan appointee said, and many of the same political figures remained in power.
"If you live in Lake County, it wasn't hard to understand public corruption is a big issue," Richmond said.
Richmond began assembling his team, bringing Capp, then a defense attorney, on board with one primary focus: public corruption.
"Jim was determined that we'd take a hard look at public corruption in Lake County," Capp said.
Shortly after both men joined the office, Capp got handed the case of Rudy Bartolomei, then the Lake County sheriff and a former county commissioner who had pleaded guilty to corruption charges. Bartolomei reached out to the U.S. attorney to sit down and talk with them.
"Obviously, we're always interested in that," Capp said. "He sat down with us and started outlining for us much of how Lake County business was conducted. Sadly, much of it was pay to play."
Bartolomei's information led to the indictments of several Lake County officials, the first being against former County Commissioner N. Atterson Spann.
Joe Puchek / Post-Tribune David Capp, former U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Indiana, speaks during an interview on Monday, March 27, 2017, in Crown Point. David Capp, former U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Indiana, speaks during an interview on Monday, March 27, 2017, in Crown Point. (Joe Puchek / Post-Tribune)
"That's the first major indictment I won," Capp said.
Capp's first major effort — dubbed Operation Lights Out — set up three more decades of fighting public corruption, overseeing the indictments of county, city and township officials across Northwest Indiana.
"It was always something of great interest to me and I think of great importance to the public," Capp said.
Richmond said Capp continued fighting against public corruption for the rest of his career.
"He was a big part of putting it together in the first place," Richmond said.
In 1985, Capp and his colleagues did not anticipate the rise of violent crime and gang activity that's now a significant part of federal prosecutors' caseloads.
Capp's successes haven't just been in the realm of public corruption, Richmond said, and he's expanded into violent crime initiatives. Richmond said when Capp came into the U.S. attorney's office, there was no need for a violent crime unit.
"Now, it's front and center," Richmond said. "He's gone at it the same way he went at public corruption."
Capp said he tried to bring local law enforcement into investigations into violent crime and gang activity. He said if local officers are paired with federal authorities and prosecutors, a lot can get done.
"My attitude there is you have to remove these violent offenders from the streets and, most important, keep them off the streets," Capp said. "I believe the difference maker that we as U.S. attorneys bring to the table is out ability to hold these violent offenders without bond."
"That is the difference-maker on the streets," Capp said.
That sends two messages, Capp said. First, it tells other violent criminals that once they're charged, no one is bonding them out, Capp said, and it shows the community that these people are off the streets, not intimidating witnesses or committing more crimes.
Using racketeering statutes, Capp said prosecutors have brought charges against a number of Latin Kings and Imperial Gangsters.
"We've pretty much systematically removed them from the streets of Northwest Indiana," Capp said.
Aside from the cases brought to court, Capp said investigations into violent crime have helped solve more than 40 unsolved homicides. But that process is always painstaking as little pieces of information come together and bring closure to those cases, Capp said.
"Little pieces of the puzzle slowly come into place as you slowly work through violent crime cases," Capp said. "Ultimately some final piece will fall into place, and we will be able to bring those perpetrators to justice.
"Those cases do not leave your desk or your head. There's a few like that you're always aware of because it's just so tragic what happened. It's on your mind and it's on your desk, and sometimes it's just a slow piece of a time."
Capp said his prosecutions weren't personal.
"I never viewed it as going after people or anything like that," Capp said. "I just viewed it kind of as a job. It was an important job."
Capp said he's always approached cases carefully and wisely and looked at the evidence and proceeded based on those findings.
"I hope I'm remembered as somebody who was fair, who did the right thing for the right reasons," Capp said. "That's what I tried to do, and that's how I hope I'm remembered."
Someone doesn't win a game by hitting home runs, Richmond said, but by showing up everyday and hitting singles and doubles.
"That's what he did," Richmond said. "He was just here to do his job."
clyons@post-trib.com
Twitter @craigalyonsBy City News Service
More than 21,500 freshmen were admitted to UC Riverside for the fall 2015 term -- nearly 3 percent more than last year, it was announced Thursday.
Admissions data provided by the University |
given the way the crypt renews itself, we had an opportunity that no other group had: we could turn the crypt’s spatial structure into temporal dynamics and thus have a much richer source of calibration for our model.
Of course, this is great for understanding normal stomach function and the structural effects of gastric cancer, but I’ve described nothing related to H. Pylori. Conveniently for us, the dynamics of H. Pylori in the stomach — although not the connection to cancer — have been relatively well modeled (Blaser & Kirschner, 1999; Joseph & Kirschner, 2004). Joseph & Kirschner (2004) present a particularly sophisticated — yet well parametrized from the literature — system of differential equations, combining the insights behind their early models of H. Pylori (Blaser & Kirschner, 1999) and gastric acid secretion (Joseph et al., 2003). This model already incorporates healthy stem cells, and would be a great launching point for a model of H. Pylori mediated gastric cancer — it is something I plan to play with in the future — but it was too detailed for us to modify during the time pressures of the workshop.
Instead, we went the route of coupling Blaser & Kirschner’s (1999) system of five ODEs to our own simple model of crypt homeostasis. The starting point was Heiko’s two carrying capacity system which he arrived at over a glass of wine at home and shared with me in a Beautiful Mind-esque scribble on the conference room window; it resembles a simplified version of Joseph & Kirschner’s (2004) approach to stem cells. From this sketch, Yougan Cheng, Hemachander Subramanian, and I modified the method for Goblet cell production, and added H. Pylori-mediated recruitment of stem cells from the bone marrow. This gave us a model that had six main qualitative features that we desired: (1) homeostasis in cell number without stress, (2) intestinal goblet cells appearing under extreme stress — the intestinal metaplasia observed in the progression to gastric cancer — and incorporated (3) H. Pylori dynamics that caused (4) smaller crypt size than from acid wash out, (5) an expansion of the stem cell niche, and (6) more and earlier-onset cancer than in the H. Pylori-independent case. Hema simulated the ODEs to show that our model could recreate the histological progression from gastritis, to metaplasia, to dysplasia and cancer; and I wrote a simple Mathematica script to let us look at the crypt dynamics and cancer risk as we infect (or treat) a virtual patient with H. Pylori of variable virulence.
Below is a sketch of the model:
Given the rich histological data that Domenico has available, we can combine the ODEs and agent-based approaches into a hybrid model, where the concentration of H.Pylori is described by Blaser & Kirschner’s (1999) equations, while the dynamics of the crypt are given by the ODE. The two models can feedback into each other by the ODE’s concentration of H. Pylori effectors determining the rate of random — i.e. not wash-out related — cell death in the ABM, and the number of Goblet cells in the ABM serving as a proxy for host response in the ODE. However, since H. Pylori is particularly prevalent in developing counties where pathologists might not be as patient as Domenico in analyzing crypt biopsies to inform the agent-based model, the ODEs provide an alternative that can allow clinicians to abduce the mechanism governing the progression of disease in individual patients. Exploring this approach to individual fitting can let us connect to the 2013 workshop’s theme of personalized medicine.
There are plenty of future directions to pursue and the workshop judges were kind enough to award our team the pilot grant to continue this exploration. During the workshop, our team outlined a hypothesis and two specific aims for the project, and I hope to convince Heiko to blog about these aspects and his plans for our work. I look forward to seeing where this project goes next; until then: congratulations team H. Pylori!
References
Baker A.M., Cereser B., Melton S., Fletcher A.G., Rodriguez-Justo M., Tadrous P.J., Humphries A., Elia G., McDonald S.A., Wright N.A., Simons B.D., Jansen M., & Graham T.A. (2014). Quantification of crypt and stem cell evolution in the normal and neoplastic human colon. Cell Reports, 8(4): 940-7.
Bessède, E., Dubus, P., Mégraud, F., & Varon, C. (2014). Helicobacter pylori infection and stem cells at the origin of gastric cancer. Oncogene.
Blaser, M. J., & Kirschner, D. (1999). Dynamics of Helicobacter pylori colonization in relation to the host response. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 96(15): 8359-8364.
Bravo, R., & Axelrod, D. E. (2013). A calibrated agent-based computer model of stochastic cell dynamics in normal human colon crypts useful for in silico experiments. Theoretical Biology and Medical Modelling, 10(1): 66.
Houghton, J., Stoicov, C., Nomura, S., Rogers, A.B., Carlson, J., Li, H., Cai, X., Fox, J.G., Goldenring, J.R., & Wang, T.C. (2004). Gastric cancer originating from bone marrow-derived cells. Science, 306 (5701), 1568-71 PMID: 15567866
Joseph, I. M., Zavros, Y., Merchant, J. L., & Kirschner, D. (2003). A model for integrative study of human gastric acid secretion. Journal of Applied Physiology, 94(4): 1602-1618.
Joseph, I.M., & Kirschner, D. (2004). A model for the study of Helicobacter pylori interaction with human gastric acid secretion. Journal of Theoretical Biology, 228(1): 55-80.Dota 2 [ Steam ] has been through a small evolution in the matchmaking to hopefully improve the experience for everyone.Everyone who wants to do ranked matchmaking now has to have a verified phone number on their Steam account. Accounts cannot share a number and free services available online for it are blocked, so this will help reduce troll accounts for sure. You can't simply remove a number and attached it to a different account, as it will give you a three-month waiting period.An older feature for solo players has returned: The ability to pick if you want to be matched against only people playing solo.Players frequently dumped into the low-priority queue for being toxic in some form, will now get longer bans if they are repeatedly in the low-priority. This is a change I personally like, as it will help to stop crap behaviour in a rather terrible community.They also added in some form of detection for bot accounts and issued permanent bans for a large number of accounts found with it. They also added better detections for people intentionally throwing games ruining the experience for the rest of the team.See the full changelog here. I really like this update, as someone who has put 500+ hours into Dota 2 I always want to play more, but the community constantly puts me off.LOS ANGELES (CBSLA.com) — Employees at Los Angeles International Airport were considering plans Friday to walk off the job ahead on what is traditionally the busiest traveling day of the year.
A coalition of Southland labor and community leaders are calling for the protest of alleged violations by LAX contractor Aviation Safeguards (AVSG) after breaking their contract with the airport earlier this year.
Andrew Gross-Gaitan, the director of the Southern California Airports Division of SEIU, told KNX 1070 NEWSRADIO that AVSG left more than 400 LAX workers without affordable family health care when it failed to comply with the city’s Living Wage Ordinance. https://cbsla.files.wordpress.com/2012/11/gaitan-air-strike-1116.mp3
“When people’s lives are on the line, their family members are on the line, they’re not going to be able to enjoy their Thanksgiving,” said Gross-Gaitan. “This is really a critical moment for thousands of workers.”
As many as 1,000 airport workers and union supporters are expected to march on Century Boulevard just as an estimated 1.8 million passengers are expected to travel through LAX over the holiday weekend.
In March, SEIU workers staged a protest outside the Tom Bradley International Terminal, but despite some congestion, passengers were not prevented from entering the building.
This time, however, Gross-Gaitan would not dismiss the potential for severe disruptions to airport operations during the protest.
“It’s entirely possible there will be significant travel delays,” he said.Yesterday I started up leg four of the Furiously Happy book tour (click here for Minneapolis tonight) and I tweeted this:
Then twitter came to my rescue and throughout the night thousands of you shared your own cringey moments, which were so awesome that hotel security had to do a welfare check on me because I was laughing so hard the people next door thought I was dying. I tried to convince them I was fine but I had tears running down my face and they were like, “Are you sure you don’t need help? Is someone hurting you?” and I was like, “No, this is what I look like when I’m happy” and they left, as confused as most people who deal with me are. I tried to storify the tweets to share them with you but there were too many and it kept crashing so instead I just decided to do a bunch of screenshots and share them here. I waited until after 5 because you cannot read these at work. You will hurt yourself. In a good way.
Thank you, amazing people for reminding us all how stupid and adorable and ridiculous mankind is, especially as the rest of the world screams “ME TOO” at your mortifying confessions. Also, if you don’t laugh in recognition of doing at least a quarter of these yourself you are probably in the wrong place or just haven’t lived long enough. Just saying.
UPDATED: This is not the end because mortification is the gift that never ends. Links to more here.Quote Important Update after the first stages of the IGNIS ICO
Quote Due to the high demand and the use of phased transactions ( not supported by the MyNxt Web Wallet) in the first ICO batches, and specially after the release of the Nxt Client 1.11.7 to allow users to place ICO purchase offers before every batch is placed for sale, it is NOT RECOMMENDED to use the MyNxt Web Wallet to participate in the IGNIS ICO, at least for as long as the demand exceeds the amounts offered in each sale. Thus, the steps below describing how to participate in the IGNIS ICO from the MyNxt Web Wallet will hardly succeed until the supply for sale in every ICO sale round remains available for at least a few blocks. To participate in the IGNIS ICO, the Nxt Client 1.11.8 is highly recommended.
- How can I participate in the IGNIS ICO using my MyNxt Web Wallet account?
Before anything, make sure you have read the note in red above!!! If you still want to proceed, follow these steps:
- After the ICO ends, 0.5 IGNIS will be automatically reserved for every 1 NXT I have in my account. Will this happen with the NXT I still have in my MyNxt wallet account?
- What do I need to do to prepare my MyNxt wallet account for the Ardor genesis snapshot and the Ardor launch?
You can see all the details about the IGNIS ICO in the Jelurida website To clarify any doubts for all the MyNxt Web Wallet users that want to participate in the ICO and prepare for the Ardor launch in the fourth quarter of the year:So on to the main questions:1. Log In to your MyNxt wallet account.2. If you don't have the Nxt Monetary plugin installed, go to the Plugins area:3. Install the Nxt Monetary plugin (free during the IGNIS ICO):4. Return to the wallet dashboard. If an IGNIS ICO round has already started, and you want to purchase JLRDA tokens with NXT, select the new Nxt Monetary plugin menu entry:5. The Nxt Monetary plugin options will appear. Here you can use the Search box to find the official JLRDA token.6. Click on the JLRDA currency code to open the currency options, and select the "Buy" tab:Notice the note near the bottom, "". As soon as the ICO starts, below you will see the current price for JLRDA tokens for as long as there's tokens left for sale in this round. If instead of a price you see "No sell offers", like in the screenshot above, this means that either the ICO has not started yet, or that the JLRDA tokens for this round are sold out. If so, make sure to check the Jelurida ICO details to see when does the next round start!The total NXT cost will appear in the "Total" box below, which of course cannot exceed the NXT balance in your MyNxt wallet account. Remember that you need 1 extra NXT to pay the fee for the buy currency transaction.8. After clicking buy, you'll need to enter your MyNxt master password to authorize the transaction as usual. And that's all. In a few minutes, once your Buy order has been processed (and unless the last JLRDA tokens were sold in the previous block!) you will see your JLRDA tokens in the "My Currencies" tab in the Nxt Monetary plugin.Yes. See below.Since the MyNxt web wallet operates real Nxt accounts, the different snapshots in the Nxt blockchain that will be taken before the Ardor launch will work for MyNxt wallet accounts as well. These snapshots include:- Granting 1 Ardor main chain token for every ARDR asset held in a Nxt account in the moment of the snapshot.- Granting 1 IGNIS for every JLRDA token held in a Nxt account in the moment of the snapshot.- Granting 0.5 IGNIS for every 1 NXT held in a Nxt account in the moment of the snapshot.Your MyNxt wallet account will participate in these snapshots with no action required from you.This post will be updated to reflect any details we overlooked. If you have any question that is not answered in the information above, please post a reply in this topic.In a Q&A with The Alpha Pages, Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) was asked about his position on government restrictions on online gambling.
What are your thoughts on recent movements to curb or restrict online poker? Paul: I’m opposed to restrictions on online gambling. The government needs to stay out of that business.
Sen. Paul’s stance has put him in the good graces of online poker advocates for his position and even Legaluspokersites.com has posted many supportive comments:
“Looks like online poker players have a candidate they can support for president.” “I like him, but he would be my last choice anyway….Ted Cruz is a poker maestro.” “He just got my vote. lololol” “Awesome. He is against RAWA and he is against gun control. Guess I’m voting for Rand Paul.” “As someone who really wants poker back, this might take my vote.”
Unfortunately for Paul, conservative mega-donor, Sheldon Adelson, doesn’t embrace the senator’s hands off approach on this issue. Adelson, who is also a Las Vegas casino magnate, has vowed to “spend whatever it takes” to stop online gambling from becoming a widely legalized practice, citing “moral standards” for his stance.
How one can moralize against online gambling while simultaneously holding the position of CEO to the Las Vegas Sands Corporation is questionable.
Adelson, with his massive financial resources, has pushed efforts to pass the Restoration of America’s Wire Act (RAWA), which was reintroduced in February by Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-UT) for the second time. The bill would effectively strengthen the language of the original Wire Act, passed in 1961, in order to ban the practice of online gambling altogether.
Two months ago, Mother Jones reported that apparently Adelson was for the use of online gambling before he was against it, even going so far as to try to adopt the platform for his Sands Corporation.
Sands Corporation, of which Adelson is president and CEO, was actively exploring online gambling from at least 2001 to 2007, when the casino mogul himself declared, “If the market sees a way into expanding in electronic gaming, we’ll be in it.” Sands’ 2001-02 filings with the Securities and Exchanges Commission stated, “the company is actively pursuing the possibility of developing and operating an Internet gaming site and is currently exploring other business opportunities for expansion.” Its SEC filings the following year confirmed that “the Company entered into a joint venture agreement to assess the feasibility of developing and operating an Internet gaming site…the Company is committed to contribute approximately $1.0 million.” Through the joint venture, Sands would receive 50 to 80 percent of the profits, though it’s unknown how much the company expected to make.
It is not known why Adelson and his Sands Corporation abandoned their plans to adopt online gambling, but his position has officially reversed and he is putting his money where his mouth is. Rest assured, it will be a lot of money.
This bill has also drawn sharp criticism from Sen. Paul’s father, Ron Paul, who has accused Adelson of engaging in cronyism to “turn his online competitors into criminals.” The elder Paul lambasted Adelson and the politicians who support this legislation, calling into question their motives for wanting to pass this Federal ban on online gambling.
“Supporters of an Internet gambling ban publicly deny they are motivated by a desire to curry favor with a wealthy donor,” Paul wrote. “Instead, they give a number of high-minded reasons for wanting to ban this activity.”We've already unveiled the almost-full 2016 All-Star rosters for the American League and the National League. Why do we say "almost full"? We say this because it's true.
The fans, you see, are tasked with voting the 34th and final member of each All-Star team. Not so very long ago, we ran down the Final Vote candidates in each league, and now we've got the first early returns on the voting. Come with us, won't you?
First up, the AL:
And now the senior circuit:
As you can see, the current leaders are Michael Saunders of the Blue Jays and Brandon Belt of the Giants. The correct answers would be Ian Kinsler of the Tigers and Starling Marte of the Pirates, but it's your life.
Voting runs through 4 p.m. ET on Friday.Indian Catholic jailed in the Maldives over a Bible and a rosary
by Nirmala Carvalho
Shijo Kokkattu, a 30-year-old teacher, was betrayed by his colleagues because he accidentally left a picture of Our Lady and some Marian songs on a school computer. Islam is state religion in the Maldives, where there is no freedom of worship. For Sajan K George, president of the Global Council of Indian Christians, religious intolerance and injustice are the “worst form of persecution”.
Mumbai (AsiaNews) – Shijo Kokkattu, an Indian Catholic from Kerala, has been languishing in a Maldives prison for more than a week because he had a Bible and a rosary at his home. Both items are banned on the archipelago.
“The lack of justice and the degree of religious intolerance” on the islands “are reflected by the actions of the Maldives government,” said Sajan K George, president of the Global Council of Indian Christians (GCIC). “This is the worst form of religious persecution. The Indian government should demand an apology for the shabby treatment inflicted on one of its citizens.”
Islam is state religion in the Maldives. There is no freedom of worship. In 2008, a constitutional amendment denied non-Muslims the right to obtain Maldivian citizenship.
Shijo, 30, has taught at Raafainu School on Raa Atoll for the past two years. Recently, whilst transferring some data from his pen drive to the school laptop, he accidentally copied Marian songs and a picture of Mother Mary into the system. Some teachers reported the matter to the police who raided his home and found a Bible and a rosary in his possession.
Shijo Kokkattu’s case shows the paradox of the Maldives, a nation that “claims to be a major tourist destination, yet arrests innocent people,” George said. “This shows its intolerance and discrimination towards non-Muslims as well as its restrictions on freedom of conscience and religion.”
“Religious freedom remains a taboo on the archipelago,” the GCIC president explained. “Muslims refuse all other forms of worship other than the one approved by the state. Doing the opposite means arrest. Kneeling, folding one’s hands or using religious symbols like crosses, candles, pictures or statues can lead to government action.”
For George, “All this is a clear violation of universal human rights. If Muslims living in non-Muslim countries can enjoy religious rights, the spirit of reciprocity should apply to countries like the Maldives and Saudi Arabia.”This post has not been edited by the GamesBeat staff. Opinions by GamesBeat community writers do not necessarily reflect those of the staff.
At the very impressionable age of 4, my son loved Grand Theft Auto. More specifically, the version he played was the Hot Coffee-moddable San Andreas. Before Child Protective Services bestows upon me the prestigious honor of father of the year, allow me to explain.
Gaming has been a part of my son’s life since the moment he was born, so I was not surprised when he showed an interest in video games as early as the age of two. I started him off where I began my gaming career: the original Nintendo Entertainment System. He built up his hand-eye coordination and took the bridge out from under Bowser in no time. Then one day, he got a glimpse of me playing Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas and asked if he could play. What happened next was quite the eye-opener.
With a DualShock controller in hand, he started to press each button individually as he tried to figure out what their functions were. Soon he asked, “How do I get in a car?” I pointed and told him, “The one with the green triangle on it.”
I egged him on to take the car in front of him which was waiting at the red light. He quickly looked up at me with disgust and refused, stating that the car was already owned by the person driving it. His response absolutely amazed me, so I decided to sit back and observe how he chose to interact with this highly controversial game without the aid of a rotten-minded adult.
He finally entered an unoccupied car and began driving. He was very mindful of the other cars and pedestrians. He didn’t know the rules of the road, so he ran red lights and turned down one-way streets in the wrong direction. However, he did stop at intersections if a group of cars were gathered waiting for the light to turn green.
At one such intersection, he attempted to brake, but he was traveling too fast. Instead of plowing into the rear of the car ahead of him, he swerved to the right and popped up onto the sidewalk. In doing so, he accidently ran over a woman walking toward his oncoming car. He was incredibly ashamed of himself and profusely apologized.
“It’s OK. It’s only a game. It’s not real,” I reassured him. After a few minutes of me explaining the difference between a game and real life, he felt comfortable enough to continue playing.
Only seconds later, he witnessed a policeman jump out of his patrol car to pursue a criminal of San Andreas. His eyes lit up as he asked if he could drive the police car. I reminded him that it was only a game, and it was fine to take the car. As he drove the squad car, I pressed L3 to turn on the lights and siren. He asked very excitedly if he could get the bad guys, too. With a huge smile, I pressed R3 to initiate the Vigilante Missions. It was as if his imagination had come to life. He was taking down delinquents left and right. As expected, the dangerous work of an officer brought an ambulance.
At this point my son was familiar with the game’s mechanics and hopped into the ambulance. As he put the crime fighting behind him, he wondered out loud if it were possible to take people to the hospital. I instructed him to press R3, and he was off to save a few lives. He was having a blast racing from point to point, picking up people in need, and then speeding off to Las Venturas Hospital. During one of his life-saving adventures, he passed a fire house with a big, red, shiny fire truck parked out front. He didn’t want to let his passengers down, so he took them to the hospital and then asked if I could guide him back to the fire truck.
Getting behind the driver’s seat of the fire truck awarded him with the most fun he had while playing Grand Theft Auto. With sirens blaring, he chased down the first red dot on the map. As he approached a car engulfed in flames, he began showering it with the truck’s water cannon. Fire after fire, he extinguished them all.
Joe Lieberman’s worst nightmare.
In all his time with Grand Theft Auto, my son never once encountered any of the controversy surrounding this notorious title. He didn’t beat any hookers with a baseball bat. He didn’t deal drugs. He didn’t go on a murderous rampage. He certainly never once had a cup of hot coffee. He didn’t avoid these things because I told him he couldn’t try them; it just never occurred to him to commit these acts in the first place.
The ESRB rating found on every box is a great tool for parents who are not familiar with games and their content, but I strongly disagree with using them as tools to raise our kids. Every child is different, and, as parents, it is our responsibility to cater to their individual needs. I understand not every kid is like mine, so I wouldn’t recommend that everyone allow their children to play Grand Theft Auto. But I would recommend that you listen and pay attention to your little ones to determine what they are capable of handling and what they are not ready for yet. They might even surprise you and find the light in something thought to have been so dark.A research team at MIT has used synthetic biology to create a gene circuit that triggers the immune system to attack cancer when it first detects the signs of the disease.
The circuit works by only activating the immune response when two specific cancer biomarkers are detected. The new study was published in the journal Cell this week and represents an exciting step forward for synthetic biology and cancer research.
The potential of immunotherapy
Cancer is primarily a disease of aging caused by genomic instability, and immunotherapy is widely regarded as having great potential in combating this disease. Anyone interested in aging should be equally interested in cancer research, as the two are closely linked, and if we are to hope to live longer lives, a solution to cancer must be found.
Approaches such as blocking checkpoint inhibitors are also promising. Cancer cells use checkpoint inhibitors to hide from the immune system and appear to be healthy cells to escape destruction. Blocking the checkpoint inhibitor allows the immune system to see the cancer and attack, and this approach is showing great potential in tests.
Unfortunately, despite some successes, immunotherapy is still limited by the lack of tumor-specific antigens – substances that alert the immune system to the presence of a particular type of cancer. Another problem is the toxicity of certain therapies, which can do more harm than good.
Because cancers are all genomically unique, this presents a huge problem for traditional one-size-fits-all approaches, and, in some cases, only 30 to 40 percent of patients respond to a treatment. One recent immunotherapy approach gets around this by creating a customized cancer vaccine matched to the unique genetic makeup of a patient’s tumor.
Another problem with cancer is that it can often adapt to an approach. For example, if a therapy knocks out a checkpoint inhibitor signal the cancer can sometimes respond by using a backup signal to survive. This has led researchers to explore the use of combination immunotherapies to combat the disease and encourage the immune system to attack.
Creating locally targeted multiple-payload immunotherapies
The research team in this study believes that there is a need to develop more specific and localized immunotherapies instead of treating the body systemically. They are also interested in including multiple immunotherapies in a single package that can stimulate the immune system in several ways rather than just one, in case the cancer adapts to treatment.
To achieve this, Dr. Lu’s MIT team has created a gene circuit encoded in DNA which is designed to detect cancerous and noncancerous cells. The circuit can also be customised to respond to different kinds of tumors and uses the same principle that AND gates in electronics use. These biological AND gates only switch on the circuit when the two specified inputs are detected.
Cancer cells are genomically different to normal healthy cells and have a different gene expression pattern. The researchers created synthetic promoters, which are DNA sequences that initiate gene expression only in cancer cells, and they are similar to the method used in the CellAge project we hosted last year at Lifespan.io.
This customised circuit is delivered to local cells in the affected region of the body using gene therapy. The synthetic promoters then bind to target proteins that are present only in tumor cells, causing the promoters to activate.
The DNA circuit itself only switches on when two of these cancer promoters are activated. This means the circuit can specifically target tumors with higher accuracy than existing therapies, and it is safer because it requires two cancer-specific inputs to activate the circuit.
When the circuit is activated, it secretes proteins that attract the cells of the immune system and directs them to attack the tumor cells. This includes surface T cell engagers, which direct the T Cells to destroy the cancer cells. Additionally, the circuit expresses a checkpoint inhibitor that removes the barrier to T cell activity, allowing it to spot the cancer cells and move in for the kill.
When the researchers tested the circuit during in vitro studies, they discovered it was able to detect ovarian cancer cells hiding among healthy ovarian cells and even other cell types.
The next step was to test the system in mice implanted with ovarian cancer cells; the research team showed that the circuit could trigger T cells to seek and destroy the cancer cells without harming the healthy cells around them.
Lastly, the team demonstrated that the circuit could be easily converted to target other kinds of cancer cells by changing the required inputs to trigger it. They identified promoters that were selective for breast cancer, which allowed the immune system to focus on that type of cancer over others.
The researchers are ambitious; they are not just setting their sights on cancer, they are keen to see their approach adapted to combat other diseases, such as rheumatoid arthritis, inflammatory bowel disease, and other autoimmune diseases.
Conclusion
The next step for the team is to test the circuit on other types of cancer and develop a circuit delivery system that is easy to use, adapt and manufacture. This could greatly increase the cost-effectiveness of the therapy, and with the cost of healthcare and these emerging technologies being a common concern, this is good to hear. The ability to mass produce such a flexible system at an affordable price is exactly what is needed to ensure that everyone has access to life-saving therapies.
Literature
[1] SynLior Nissim9, Ming-Ru Wu9, Erez Pery, Adina Binder-Nissim, Hiroshi I. Suzuki, Doron Stupp, Claudia Wehrspaun, Yuval Tabach, Phillip A. Sharp, Timothy K. Lu10,’Correspondence information about the author Timothy K. Lu (2017). Synthetic RNA-Based Immunomodulatory Gene Circuits for Cancer Immunotherapy. Cell DOI:10.1016/j.cell.2017.09.049In the fifth inning at Camden Yards, the cameras leave the field and turn to the stands to find the “Fan of the Game.” The big screen over the scoreboard shows a smiling dude in an O’s jersey and an orange hard hat waving an Orioles flag. The crowd roars before the camera quickly pans away to the next featured fan. Over 2.5 million people will spin the turnstiles at Camden Yards this season, but only 81 of them will be named “Fan of the Game.” Sometimes it’s a kid decked out in orange dancing like a tiny lunatic; other times it’s a drunk in an orange wig or a pretty girl in Orioles sunglasses and an ironic foam finger. For most of them, it’s a once in a lifetime deal, a Birds’ fan badge of honor that they’ll talk about for a week or two and remember when they catch a game next season. Other fans, though, have won so many times they’ve lost count. They’re the folks who come to 40, 50—heck, 81 games each and every year. They come when it’s hot, they come when it’s raining, they come when the O’s are winning, and they came when the team sucked. Most of them have been unofficially banned from winning “Fan of the Game,” which is fair. Letting them compete would be like letting Adam Jones bat cleanup on your Little League team. These aren’t fans, these are Super Fans, and they come in all stripes, though, to be honest, those that wear stripes generally stick to orange and black like the ones on Sarah Robinson’s furry leg warmers. Robinson, aka the Baltimore Bird Lady, spends her days working as a nanny in Annapolis and her nights at Camden Yards in her ever-evolving costume. One constant, however, is the bag full of Orioles-themed treats she gives to the children who mob her. When asked for a photo she alights upon orange bedazzled slippers, her tutu of orange, black, and white scarves fluttering in the upper-deck breeze, and raises her arms, allowing her homemade cape to ripple behind her. She’s suddenly the star of a one-woman ballet: Orioles Lake. After, she returns to her seat and says in a voice almost too quiet to hear, “I’m very shy.” There’s also Clint Griggs, aka Captain O, who wears an orange cape, ankle and wrist guards, and a breast plate emblazoned with an Orioles’ “O.” He looks like a Roman centurion assigned to the Orioles legion. Jonathan Scheffenacker, the Orioles’ “Sunglass Guy,” wears a shirt, tie, backwards Orioles cap, and his trademark dark shades and sits behind the Orioles’ dugout at pretty much all home games. He may not sound familiar, but he’s in almost every shot of a left-handed batter at the plate and once you see him, you can’t un-see him. New this year is José Erick Cortez, the Orioles Fan Bird. Imagine the offspring of the actual Oriole Bird and the muppet Sam the Eagle if it were made from carpet remnants by a dude who has never sewn before. Cortez’s Fan Bird costume is anything but ornithologically correct, but his signature Orioles dance is a crowd stopper. When asked how he put it all together, Cortez’s muffled reply comes through the Fan Bird’s beak: “I’m not supposed to talk.” The nest is indeed crowded these days, but the most famous of Camden Yard’s current clutch of costumed revelers remains Carne Cabeza. If there was a secret government cabal dedicated to creating the ultimate cheering weapon, the product of its genetic machinations would probably end up looking a lot like Carne. Cabeza wears a black-and-orange Mexican wrestler-style mask to protect his not-so-secret identity, but ask and he’ll tell you his given name is Neal Moorhouse. When you see him in costume, though, it’s tough to consider anything but Carne Cabeza his real name. Resplendent in black tights, a Maryland flag codpiece, and streaming orange cape, Cabeza’s massive bare belly resembles a hairy potato and provides an ample canvas for game-time slogans applied in orange body paint. “Go O’s” and “Free Hugs” are frequent favorites. The ancient Greek philosopher Zeno of Elea famously postulated that movement is an impossibility and that all motion is an illusion. He illustrated his paradox by describing a race between the legendary Achilles and a tortoise. If Zeno were alive today, he’d probably choose a different metaphor: trying to circle Camden Yards with Carne Cabeza. Being on Eutaw Street with Cabeza is like being in Graceland with Elvis; he is mobbed from every direction. A man in a Brooks Robinson jersey calls out, “Hey Super Fan, can I get a picture,” before plopping his children down on either side of Cabeza. “Hey guy, can I get a picture?” bellows a man with a thick Bronx accent. “We got nothing like you in New York.” An enormous oaf in a Braves hat shouts, “He needs lovin’ too!” before abandoning a picture with his girlfriend to push through the gaggle of people encircling Cabeza. The bellowing man-child careens off children he doesn’t notice at the blurry extremes of his vision and wraps a meaty arm around Cabeza, then begins viciously open-hand smacking him in the belly the way a drunk pets a dog. Cabeza moves him along with a sly elbow to the ribs and the man returns to his mortified partner, completely unaware that his low-riding shorts are exposing enough crack to halt a Marion Barry motorcade. For Moorhouse, attending games as Cabeza is an odd form of community service. He never denies a photo, even to fans as obnoxious and oblivious as the belly slapper. “Being a Super Fan means making sure everyone in the world knows Baltimore is the best,” says Moorhouse, but not everyone gets the message, including Jessica Goughnour, Moorhouse’s girlfriend. This year, the couple celebrated her birthday at an Orioles game, but Goughnour insisted Carne Cabeza stay at home. “I wanted to come with Neal,” she says, adding, “I couldn’t have him going to fetch me drinks as Carne. He’d be gone for three hours.” Even from the field, the costumed Supers are tough to miss. “They’re on the Jumbotron |
fact that the Welsh players have decided to snub the national anthem. The one concerning fact for many is the omnipotent empty seats; a sight which has sickened many an armchair viewer and angst-riddled Twitter users*, and before you go saying “Well Reuben, I don’t see you doing much about it other than ranting and writing about it in your insignificant post that’ll probably be read by no more than 12 people, I guess that puts you in that category,” I have done something about it, I actually have tickets to the bronze medal match.+
The most impressive talents on the pitch for the Brits, quite unsurprisingly, were ones we have generally accepted to be household names, with captain Craig Bellamy posing a threat from time to time, but that wasn’t enough to contribute a huge amount to the overall entertainment factor of the first half. Uruguay had a few chances of their own to speak of through Sebastian Coates and an ambitious drive that blazed into row Z from Gaston Ramirez. However, a great link-up passage between Swansea players Scott Sinclair and Joe Allen, with Sinclair making a mazy run to pick out Allen in the box, who turned superbly to find Daniel Sturridge, who found the net with ease. Not much to talk about, but Britain led at the break nevertheless.
The second half started with plenty of gusto, or at least more than the first half did, but the greatest chance Team GB were gifted with was ruled out by an offside flag, and that was able to spare the blushes of the unfortunate Sturridge, who somehow found the post from barely a yard out. Again, Uruguay were not finished with the British side and Luis Suarez required at least five defenders to smother his efforts not long after, including the impressive Jack Butland, who has proved his critics (me) wrong by being quite good between the sticks. Suarez later thought it would be greatly beneficial to his goalscoring quest if he was to control the ball with his hands on numerous occasions; another thing that makes me quake with rage from the comfort of my living room furniture.
It wasn’t over until the dying stages, as Britain suffered one last onslaught on goal from Uruguay through a thunderous shot to the bar from Ramirez and a free kick from Suarez that had to be caught by Butland to prevent any last gasp equaliser. Not the most thrilling of displays, but Team GB will surely be thrilled to have qualified as Group A winners, and Uruguay will be kicking themselves having now failed to qualify for the next round. Bring on South Korea…
*This is a guess as I personally don’t use Twitter and am reluctant to do so.
+I am not gloating; I am merely filling out what would otherwise be a shockingly poor match report with information that may be of slight interest to you.He began the show by laying down his bike on the pavement amid gunfire before recovering enough to flee and lay it down again in the forest. Soon he was shedding his leather jacket and giving away tickets to the gun show, no doubt fulfilling some biceps screen-time clause in Norman Reedus’s contract. (Jokes, Norman. They’re just jokes.)
Before long Daryl was knocked out and captured by the couple who would eventually steal his bow and who mistook him for a member of some other unpleasant sounding group in the vicinity. The couple (I didn’t catch their names) was fleeing said group and had a delicate diabetic named Tina in tow, along with Tina’s contraband insulin. Their grievances lacked specificity but the gist was their old group had offered security in exchange for an escalating series of indignities. “People will trade anything for safety,” the man said, reflecting a theme we’ve watched unfold in the increasingly Ricktatorial confines of Alexandria.
This other group is more of a Wadeocracy. When the group came for its insulin, a man named Wade, who we heard but never actually saw in full, sounded like he was in charge. He might just be middle management, however — “The Walking Dead” is apparently finally ready to bring on a villain named Negan, one of the baddest bad guys in the comic books, whose arrival has been hotly anticipated by fans for awhile. Reports last week claimed the show has cast Jeffrey Dean Morgan as Negan, who will debut at the end of this season. (Here’s a Negan primer if you don’t mind potential spoilers.)
It was unclear to me, someone who hasn’t read the comics, whether Team Wade, Negan and the Wolves are affiliated or enemies or what. (Those who have read them please refrain from posting spoilers, though we all know the show diverges from the books.) The ambush at the beginning of the episode seemed like it could have been intended for someone else — perhaps the woods of Northern Virginia are more crowded than we thought. Perhaps after years of zombies and mostly isolated human threats, we’re entering an era of warring post-apocalyptic city-states, something Andrew Lincoln has alluded to in interviews. (Abraham’s military misadventures and uniform modeling on Sunday could have been foreshadowing this.)
For awhile it looked like Daryl the recruiter was going to draft his captors onto his side, returning to help them escape Wade and friends. Tina didn’t make it, ultimately, but seems lucky to have lasted as long as she did, based on her diabetes and general lack of survival skills. All it took was one walker to open its eyes for Tina to first throw herself atop a pair of them and then roll over to offer a better biting angle on her neck. The other woman took it pretty hard but I just sort of shrugged — I’d only known Tina for like 11 minutes.NSA slides explain the PRISM data-collection program
The top-secret PRISM program allows the U.S. intelligence community to gain access from nine Internet companies to a wide range of digital information, including e-mails and stored data, on foreign targets operating outside the United States. The program is court-approved but does not require individual warrants. Instead, it operates under a broader authorization from federal judges who oversee the use of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). Some documents describing the program were first released by The Washington Post on June 6. The newly released documents below give additional details about how the program operates, including the levels of review and supervisory control at the NSA and FBI. The documents also show how the program interacts with the Internet companies. These slides, annotated by The Post, represent a selection from the overall document, and certain portions are redacted. Read related article.So, I still seem to be experiencing a fair bit of variability in the shave quality of Trumpers creams. This one I found turned out to be a fair chunk better than all the others I’ve tried. I don’t know, maybe they’re all the same and it’s just really fiddly, and I got lucky with the almond. Anyways, I had previously mainly had issues with the lubrication of GFT creams, this wasn’t an issue this time. It needed a fair bit of water, but this didn’t result in unacceptable levels of thinning out, unlike, for example, the violet.
The almond scent is a nice one. It’s your classic sweet almond / marzipan scent. It’s a tad on the weak side: nice and strong when you’re sniffing the cream itself, or the brush after lathering, but it doesn’t carry over very strongly when applied to the face.
9/10 Scent Pleasantness
7/10 Scent Strength
8/10 Quality of Lather
So, overall, I’d say it’s a 7/10. A bit stronger on the scent could have bumped it up.
Gear used:
Ingredients: Aqua (water), Stearic Acid, Myristic Acid, Potassium Hydroxide, Coconut Acid, Glycerin, Parum (fragrance), Triethanolamine, Sodium Hydroxide, Methylparaben, Propylparaben
Advertisements“I will always keep shooting for the stars.”
Christopher “PapaSmithy” Smith is already a familiar and friendly face for those that follow Hearthstone, LCK, and recently Overwatch. He has appeared in multiple international events as the color caster that represents the Korean LoL scene, last year in Worlds and this year in MSI. After he advanced further in his career to cast Overwatch APEX in its third season and just before he left to Brazil for MSI 2017, we had a chance to sit down with him and hear the story about how he started as a shoutcaster and what further steps he wishes to take after an already successful career.
He shared his history and passion for LoL and Overwatch as well as the standards he holds his work to, asserting that he cannot be satisfied in doing a mediocre job casting what is already great. All the stories surrounding teams and players that have bloomed and dissipated throughout League’s history; macro breakdowns of SKT T1’s 1-3-1; an unbiased opinion surrounding the cultural difference in the East and the West; Papa provided in-depth and impassioned answers no matter how broad the question we give was. Not only is Papa an admirable shoutcaster and esports fan, he is also an outright joy to chat with.
I do think you are a little underrepresented among the Korean esports crowd despite your stable career throughout the years. Would you like to tell us about yourself?
My name is Christopher Smith, and most people know me as PapaSmithy. I am OGN’s LCK caster, now also Overwatch APEX caster, and former Hearthstone caster. I’ve been working with OGN for just about two years now, with focus on Korean League of Legends. My casting career started many years ago as a freelancer back in 2012 and 2013, so I’ve been around in the Korean LoL scene for a long time, but when it comes to being the caster for LCK, it’s been two years now.
You are one of the few people that can represent the LCK scene when it comes to international events, like you did in Worlds last year and also in MSI this year. What do you aim for in general when you are telling people about the Korean scene? Any special things you consider besides the things the general crowd would already know?
I take the approach that I am coming in pretty late in the game. I did my first event in season 6, and I was lucky to have MonteCristo with me to lead the way when it came to fighting for recognition, because during the earlier days when he started casting, there was the question of how good the Koreans were and if they could match up against other regions. By the time I came, everyone already knew that the Korean teams were the best teams.
I try to focus more on the stories of the Korean teams because, if you look at the viewer numbers, you know that a lot of people watch LCK in English. This means that a lot of people know Korean teams are good, but it’s much better to give them the hook. Let them know why they are good, what the players’ stories are, and make them relatable. We build storylines based on their play. We just allow English-speaking fans to personalize Korean players and, for example, let them understand that there was a lot of nuance between SKT T1 and ROX Tigers last year. The storyline is different, the players are different, and the playstyle is different. Honestly it’s about humanizing for the western fans, letting them know about it.
We also answer questions. People want to know, “Ok, but I support TSM, I support G2. Are they going to beat the Korean teams?” Even they know that the answer is probably no, explaining what that team needs to do or why there is the gap between these teams is important. We now know there is a gap, but it’s kind of a revisiting process. Is it the same gap? Is it just that they are better at pushing buttons? Are there different things that have evolved in Korea separate of what happened in other regions that made Korean teams come out on top at the end?
What has your life in Korea been like? Is anything different now from when you first came here? How did it come through?
Two years in Korea, was I happy with that time? Have I been staying healthy? My weight’s doing alright [chuckles] and that’s an important question.
I love Korea. Korea has been very giving to me. I’ve spent time overseas before so it’s not a new thing for me to live in a country where English is a second language. I grew up in Dubai for a lot of my early years as well. While I didn’t have a great understanding about what Korea would be like when I got here, I was ready for culture shock, but it’s been more of an appreciation and embracing of Korean culture than a shock of any sort. The people are friendly, the food is great, it has the best LoL in the world… I can’t really ask for much more. It’s very safe as well along with its vibrant nightlife. There are a lot of things to do when you go out and stuff like that.
Korea has honestly been an endless pleasure also since I’ve had the fortune to work for OGN as well. They are so giving, very supportive, and do such great work with what they do. It’s cool to work in a job where one day you would go and see new broadcast tricks like AR, in which the players are projected in 3D on the screen. I always get excited just to be in the job. It’s just been a pleasure. I love living here, and I want to live here as long as possible. The job is great, and every day is a blessing.
What brought you to Korea all the way from Australia? How did it happen?
I started casting a long time ago when LoL was in season 2. That’s almost five years ago from now. That was back when Australians were still on the NA server and probably just after Korea got its own server, so it was very much the early days of LoL. I casted just the Australian games, which had pretty small viewership. Then I got more opportunities since I started working with ESL Asia at that time and got into small Korean games like the ESL qualifiers.
I did the first ever tournament that kt Rolster played in; Enter the Dragon. So long ago now. That was kt Rolster A and B’s debut. I also casted SK Telecom’s League of Legends debut with historic LoL figures like Reapered and MighTiLy, so I’ve actually been casting the Korean scene for a very long time already.
So you literally grew up with the scene.
I did. I was a subscriber to OGN’s LoL casts before they were on Twitch. I don’t remember exactly what platform it was, but I subscribed in Season 2 as I was casting on the side of these tournaments. A lot of my focus was on the Chinese scene because that was the one with major champions that could compete against each other. There was also a lot of interest around the Taiwanese scene at the time, especially after Taipei Assassins won in Worlds.
I was casting all this in English with Pastrytime who now casts for NA LCS, and at the same time I was watching Monte and DoA and also other talents that casted before them. I appreciated all the pageantry around Korean esports, and I thought it would be a big chance to see a new side of LoL away from the NA and EU teams of the time like CLG and Dignitas. I took a very winding path as I was outside of Korea doing a split of LPL in 2015 Spring, but I realized that this was my casting dream when OGN came calling me. That’s how I packed my bag and came to Korea. I’ve been here for two years, and I hope to stay for plenty more.
What changes in LCK have you witnessed throughout its growing years, aside from it growing bigger? Did the game change a lot in terms of its strategical depth?
It had to change, of course. A lot of people hold 2014 as the gold standard of any period in LoL, specifically for Korean LoL, when the tournament was still the old Champions format which is now pretty similar to the Overwatch APEX format. It has brought out different things. I remember doing an interview recently, in which they asked me about Afreeca Freecs. I said, “if you put them in the 2014 Champions, they would have been way better than they are in LCK,” because it was about preparing for three matches, getting a long time to prepare for your matches, and get motivated because once you won the three matches you were going to the next stage. It was elimination after elimination.
It wasn’t double round robin against nine teams and, while some teams and players thrived in that, some others died as well. There were also players from the 2014 and 2015 era whose style was inevitably going to be better in these more focused high-stakes short tournaments over long tournaments. The best players have changed, but they are always Koreans, so that part stays the same, but whether the current scene is better or worse than before is an interesting question. I still have the same love toward the 2014 scene, but I think 2017 Spring was the best season we’ve ever had in Korea when it comes to competitiveness. While things have changed a lot, I am really happy with where we are right now.
Getting back to the cultural part, there are many differences in the eastern and western culture when it comes to the moral standards among pro gamers. We witnessed certain moments in which Korean pros were highly criticized or sometimes even banned from the competitive scene because of certain issues that were addressed against them. What is your opinion with that? Could it be true that some Korean fans are overreacting to certain things?
The thing is, the moment you come as an outsider to South Korea like me, I cannot make judgement on what is valid or not in Korea, because you are interfering in kind of a situation in which you are not fully briefed on both sides. For example, the recent drama around Rogue in Korea, my first response was, “okay, well this doesn’t really make sense to me because it seems like they were just having good fun,” but that’s from my culture. I’m in no position to pass judgement on anyone else’s responses, so honestly all I do in those sorts of scenarios is stand back and survey both sides while trying to understand both. I actually come from a psychology background. I was a counselor before I was a caster, so I’ve always tried to be the balanced one.
That’s why casting with Monte was always a delight because Monte is very much like, “well this is bad!” [slams the table] and I was always like, “well, maybe that’s my first instinct as well but let’s understand what it is and see it live.” Then we can know for sure if it’s bad, and that’s the fun thing because when you have someone like that I can be like, “well it does this, it doesn’t do what everything else did or the way we expected, but let’s see what it looks like.” I think having both sides of the coin is important.
When it comes to specific drama around cultural things, I just try to stay away from it and appreciate both sides while making sure neither side is being completely ignored or unrepresented. If people feel very strongly about something in two different ways, there’s probably a good reason for that which may not initially be super clear to me. It’s not for me to say what’s right or wrong on that, but of course there are times when I feel like I don’t understand the drama around South Korea that is such a big thing for other people.
Korea does have more strict moral standards for pro gamers. Do you think that does more harm or more benefit to the Korean esports ecosystem?
It’s a hard question to parse. It’s the product of the region. When this particular Rogue drama came up, and I was hearing about it before it had gone massively public in the western side of things… It is a Korean tournament run by a Korean organizer that needs to serve the Korean fanbase, so when it comes to if it is good or bad, it’s such a connected question. I think it’s an important thing for their Korean market. I think it doesn’t necessarily translate well to the western market, but is it something that will actually hold back growth? I don’t think so. I think it always goes the same way. People would be like, “I don’t understand this,” then English commentators in Korea would explain why, and people would understand it a little bit more, get a little bit silly or very serious depending on the situation, and move on. People do what they have to do, and the primary fanbase was the Korean fanbase [in this case] so they needed to abide by the things that made sense to the Korean fans.
Wow, you really are balanced. You did not tilt at all.
No, no tilting. That’s what I’ve got to do. My favorite tilt moment was when I cast the KT vs. Samsung semifinals, I was told that I was incredibly biased towards Samsung. And then I was incredibly biased for KT. The secret there is that, if you are incredibly biased for both teams, it means that you are doing a pretty good job casting, because that just means you are biased towards people playing well. And that’s the secret. People talk about the casters being biased, like this guy is obviously a TSM fan, or this guy is obviously an SKT fan. Monte also had that with SKT, but people who knew him well knew he was a KT fan. That part he did not hide. But people who only interacted with him in Worlds season 3 thought he was an SKT fan.
I think that’s because of how people interact with casters. For example, you are at some point PapaSmithy, not just Christopher Smith. You become the man of the cumulative body of work and personality that people ascribe on to you based on the things they know. Who you are does twist and turn because everyone sees me differently, but when it comes to me in particular, I am just biased for good games. Just show me good games. I want people to make decisions and follow the train of thought that led to their decision and then reach a resolution by comparing what went wrong and what went right. So, if a team that made the smart and innovative decision followed it through and won, I’m super excited. I’m now biased for the team because I like the way they play. But if they play bad in the next game, the bias is gone.
I think that style also links to your casting style, your personality. How would you reflect on your personality as a caster and what kind of personality do you aim to become?
It’s a hard question, although I do get that question a lot, such as what kind of caster I am or what I feel strongly about. The thing I feel most strongly about is the narrative, the storyline, which is really doing justice by the players and making sure that every game is special one way or the other. One of the moments when I appreciate the League system is when you reach a game that is not a big thing on paper. Everyone gets excited for a SKT vs. KT matchup because there is so much history there, but a game like MVP vs. Jin Air is not a massive superstar match on paper. However, in the League, it’s always about where they are coming from, what their runner form looks like, where they are looking to go, what the expectations were before the season, where they are now, what their trend has been in terms of actual in-game analysis like picks and bans, how that fits with their players, where they are going… For me it’s always about, “what is the story of this match?”
That’s the cool thing because OGN is pretty hands-off with that sort of thing. That could be daunting for certain people but it’s freeing for me because I can look at a match and find by myself the things that draw my attention. That’s not necessarily as important during the early stages of a casting career because you need to get everything right and you don’t want to make any mistake. I’ve been doing this for long enough now, and I’ve learned that if I find something interesting, I’m pretty good at getting other people to find it interesting too. So it’s all about articulating and basically showing people, for example, why you should watch this game, and that’s what you want for basically every match.
Sometimes it’s so easy. LCK finals? Easiest game to cast ever. SKT vs. KT, every storyline coming to head, the Telecom war, it’s so easy. But while that’s obviously a pleasure in its own way, a 70-minute Jin Air game can also be great if the storyline is there. I guess for me it’s always about making sure that the viewers have something to latch on to whether it’s the strategy, new pick, new patch, where the teams were, where they’re going, who’s been performing, who’s been underperforming… No one wants to just watch a game and spectate like a friend on your list. You want it to be something special. We might not always get that, but I guess it’s about making games special and really doing justice by production, the players, and everything else. Those are what I shoot for when I cast.
What is your opinion about this year’s LCK? Did you enjoy watching the Telecom derby? Which team or player do you think shined the most?
It felt like we were building towards the big matches when SKT and KT were undefeated for a long time, but we took a lot of turns from there. KT Rolster was obviously building themselves up for six weeks to face SKT, but as you could also see in how they played after that, something was gone. We don’t know exactly what that something is, but a spark was gone. Communication seemed worse, identity seemed less cohesive…
Then Samsung rose up as the team that really looked like they had [the capability to go against] SKT. That Samsung vs. SKT match with Haru on Graves just walking in there doing unspeakable things to Peanut, you don’t see things like that very often. That was the game where Haru basically won the jungle match very obviously on Graves against Elise, with SKT losing three lanes at once even just in a regular season game. That’s something that can spark an international discussion.
That’s the cool thing about League of Legends. Whenever something happens to the big Korean teams, it’s a watercooler moment around the world where people would go like, “are they defeatable?” Some fans would say that it was just a regular season game and it does not matter that much, but you know that in the back of their heads they are like, “that could happen again.” Stuff like that is just fantastic. Then we had KT vs. Samsung, where we had a new story with KT finally rising again: KT rising like a phoenix after basically like 8 or 9 weeks of not being at the same level. Then it became the same story. Every grand final time it’s like SKT versus the team that you want to believe in.
This time though I was smart. In the past I was always guilty of looking at SKT before finals and being like, “okay, this team can do this, and I think this works against SKT, so therefore this team will win.” I was always a believer in ROX against SKT and I was wrong many times in that particular one, but this time it did feel like SKT had KT’s number. So, while the outcome was expected, I am happy that we had a path that wasn’t just “SKT and KT are the best and why am I even watching the other 8 teams because it’s going to be SKT and KT at the end.” It felt like that for a bit, but with Samsung rising up, the good story of MVP keeping their roster of good players but not importing any stars before they could rise up again… We still have storylines all over the place and a lot of things to talk about like PraY and GorillA falling away in Longzhu as well. We also got to the finals that everyone around the world could appreciate. KT vs. SKT. And that was 3-0, let’s not talk about that, but every other part of the season has been pretty great.
Let’s move away from LCK to your recent casts in Overwatch APEX. Are you simply filling the gap? Or have you been wanting to cast Overwatch? How did you come up with the decision to cast APEX?
I’m sure a lot of people wonder that. I’m working full-time with OGN so it might seem like I was forced to cast Overwatch, but it was not like that for me. I started playing the game right at the end of the closed beta release along with other casters, and Monte and DoA were long time believers in Overwatch. They were basically like, “the moment we have Overwatch in OGN, we want to be part of it and we will be very into it.” I always knew that I would have to bide my time. I wasn’t going to be able to jump in and do it from the start because it was going to be their thing.
It doesn’t have to be an “Overwatch or League of Legends” thing. I enjoy both games. Overwatch is still very much at its infancy and evolving with APEX and new things, but I really wanted to spend some moment in Overwatch history that really resonated with me and showed me that this could be the game for me to love, because I love committing to a game. I love deep analysis and I really respect the game and the players behind it.
The big moment for me was when LW Red were playing online in an NA Tournament and pushed the payload in Overtime in Hollywood all the way with Pine playing and all those things, and that was the first time when I was like, “this is so tense and so amazing.” I was feeling all the same things I felt when there were great games in League of Legends. “Okay, there is something about Overwatch. It’s not just one guy shooting another in the head, with ultimates on the screen.” There’s deep strategy, and also tense moments that I think are the best things about esports, and Team EnVyUs’ very long online winning streak being broken on LAN, and they may have the same thing with Rogue now that they are in APEX.
I quickly came to understand that there are things about Overwatch that are very compelling to watch, so I’ve been watching it with an eye to cast it for about 8 months now. I’ve just been kind of waiting for my turn, and while I’m sad to talk to my closest friends and colleagues leaving to get that chance, APEX is a reward for me and it’s not a burden in any way. I’m very excited to get in there, and when LCK and APEX are running at the same time, I’ll still be doing every LCK while keeping up with APEX. Scheduling-wise it will be full-on, although I would not be able to cast all matches of both games. I would love to do so, but getting a chance is all I asked for and hopefully the fans would enjoy what I can do with APEX. Casting Overwatch is definitely something I wanted.
I think you did great. Getting the details that the viewers could possibly have missed out on, ult economy, play-by-play analysis…
You flatter me too much. I guess that’s my style born out from my previous career, but I think it’s also about making the things that I find interesting also interesting for the viewers. If I was able to do that that’s a great thing, and I’ll just continue to try to to do that. Overwatch is a very busy game. At times it feels like Marvel vs. Capcom or other fighting games like Street Fighter. It’s also very visually busy with so many ultimates happening on the screen. Can I take a step further to show the nuance and strategy behind it? That’s what I am shooting for.
Back when you did the Reddit AmA you mentioned prowrestling as one of the elements that inspired you to become a caster. That made me question what your opinion would be about certain organizations in the esports industry trying to promote esports just as they would do with traditional sports. Esports and sports are different in their nature, but at the same time there are people who want esports to be respected just like regular sports. What do you think?
The quest of legitimacy, right? Everyone and every region is shooting for something slightly different based on what the popular broadcast style is in their countries. If you look at Riot, they are very much shooting for ESPN or professional football style and just wanting LCS to be an extension of that. If you look at Korea, OGN goes for a very different vibe that celebrates the players but also allows us to laugh at the players. And again we get back to the question before about the morality of certain things, which again I think does vary depending on the region.
I prefer the Korean approach because I prefer celebrating both the silliness and also the badassness of the best players. I love that whenever it’s an OGN finals broadcast because everyone is there looking like the biggest badass ever. Faker looks like a god sitting on the throne, and at the same time we’re laughing at Score for all his unfortunate losses. We need to have both sides of the coin because while we do need to know who our fanbase is, I feel that all of our fanbase can appreciate both sides and kind of know someone that sits on both ebbs. I do appreciate celebrating the pageantry and also the silly side of things.
When it comes to style, I can adapt. When I go over to Riot events it’s different compared to OGN events. I was definitely nervous when I was at Worlds last year because whenever you are casting in the League of Legends ecosystem Worlds is like the end goal. You don’t really think further than that. This is what everyone wants. It was a very special thing and it was very great to be involved there, but I love coming back to LCK and doing the lighter side of things and having a bit more fun, so I don’t profess to know which is the best one, I don’t even know if there’s a single best global approach, my favorite approach is the OGN approach, which sounds very convenient for me to say. There is bit of lightheartedness, and the prowrestling side definitely comes to story sometimes. I try not to use too many prowrestling references, but nobody has put tables in esports unfortunately, maybe that should happen in some of these videos. [laughs] A bit of silliness would never hurt anyone.
Will we see you more often in APEX?
The plan right now is whatever OGN is planning. I don’t know what OGN’s official decision is yet, but I will be doing all of LCK because that’s my home that I love so much. I’ll be sharing APEX while I do that. Right now we have two play-by-plays and two color casters, so one each day; a day of Overwatch with as many days of the League as there are. It’s just how our talent works right now. We don’t have another expert for League of Legends after MonteCristo left so I’m there to shoulder out the burden, but if I need to work a bit harder to fill in my new love, which is Overwatch, I will. I feel very passionate about it, and it turns out there are 24 hours a day and 7 days a week, so when it comes to passion, I’ll make the time.
Probably this would mean that my next interview after some years would be about how much grey hair I have, but for now the plan is to participate in as much League and Overwatch as I can. When I tweeted about this someone went like, “does that mean you are leaving League of Legends?” No, it doesn’t have to mean that. Making everyone happy is difficult and definitely not something I can shoot for, but it isn’t so much about making everyone happy as it is about doing the broadcast justice, because APEX is a special field and it feels like a very different broadcast to me. LCK is an extension of something that’s been around for five years that I feel so passionate about.
I was sitting with my dad in Korea recently explaining the intro to the LCK spring finals. I was basically explaining every camera shot and little nugget, like Mata walking towards Faker’s throne which was a reference to the 2013-2014 winter finals: Samsung Ozone vs. SKT T1 K. These were the only two players that were there, so it was a reference to a historical theme. Then I started talking about all the other intricacies. These are things that some people already know about, but you kind of have to really want to know about it. Watching the intro and seeing Score standing in the middle with all the players walking towards him while knowing that the team was made around Score because he was a superstar… I love the nods to history and pageantry around that. All that stuff is just awesome. That’s what esports is all about to me.
Did you have a good time with your parents?
They had a good time. It was their third time, and they come once a year when it just starts to get warmer but not too hot. As we all know summer here is very hot, and the winter here is cold too. They live in Dubai, so they know about hot weather as well. They love it here. I think everyone who comes to Korea just loves it. It feels like Korea should be a bigger tourist destination than it is, although I don’t know how to make it bigger than it is. Maybe it’s just a matter of time. Everyone I meet here loves it.
We really enjoyed listening your story and also the thoughtful insight surrounding the esports industry. Would you like finish us off with a message for LoL and Overwatch fans in Korea and beyond?
My career has taken a path that I could have never mapped years ago. Whenever I have a watershed moment, like when I casted my first LCK finals in Summer 2015, I would think about just how jealous the me from three years ago would have felt. I felt the same thing when I did Worlds, when I was standing in Madison Square Garden, the venue I knew very well from being a prowrestling fan and also from the sheer significance of the venue. I said, wow, me two years ago would be so jealous. That’s kind of what my esports ride has been. It’s been a lot of growth and opportunity, and now I have the opportunity to cast Overwatch APEX.
This might sound a little arrogant, but I may be the English speaking person who cares the most about LCK in the world because I’ve seen every storyline and every match. I’m probably the person most hyped when these intro videos come out because I’m like, “ooh, what little stories would they have that I can gleam from…” Seeing ROX Tigers fade away in the Spring intro, wipe away |
all cells touching a tree. Gaining health points across the whole map made this summon a bit too passive, causing players to put it as far as possible from danger and then ignore it. Now players will have to avoid putting themselves at risk too much if they want to keep it alive (it will follow you to heal you), but its healing powers are significantly increased.
The Sacrificial: as suicidal as before, it will no longer wait until its second turn to explode. Its health points and damage increase for each turn that it stays alive on the field. Stacks a maximum of 3 times. The longer it stays alive, the more damage it deals!
The Ultra-Powerful: survives slightly longer and now removes MP from enemies who are in contact with trees.
A vital resource that must be protected
The Tree of Life spell now transforms a tree into a tree of healing, allowing anyone who attacks it to recover 100% of the damage they inflict in healed HP. It can be recast more regularly and with fewer restrictions.
Sadidas can also recyle trees without turning them into dolls, which will generate a heal AOE around the tree as well as dividing damage among all nearby allies. This spell will replace the “Knowledge of Dolls” spell, which will be removed. It wasn't interesting enough for many players to use, while also making it too easy to bypass the restriction on the number of summons allowed via equipment for the players who did use it often.
This spell also gets some small movement abilities. Now it can bring a tree to life for a turn and control it to either push an ally or opponent 6 squares, remove a character’s bewitchments when in contact, or heal allies in its area of effect. At the end of its turn, the living tree becomes a normal tree again. This spell replaces the “Sylvan Power” spell. Even though we found it tactically interesting, this spell took an ally out of combat for 2 turns. We preferred to give Sadidas a more versatile, less situational, and more active spell.
Earthquake is added to the Utility toolkit with one important change. This spell doesn’t have an effect immediately after a Sadida casts it, but at the end of the turn, each tree will create an earthquake around it, inflict Fire damage, steal HP from enemies, reveal invisible elements, and draw characters towards it.
Finally, Poisoned Wind has also been changed significantly. Now an enemy target can be hit. When a tree is hit while a target is under the effects of Poisoned Wind, the target will also take some of the tree’s damage. We’ve been wanting to replace the Earthquake and Poisoned Wind spells for a long time. They’re too efficient in solo combats where several battles occur in quick succession, and in teams or high-level combats, they're difficult to use and fit into the team dynamic. So we preferred to replace them with spells that have more potential in solo and group combat and that fill out the Sadida’s spell toolkit.
Trees are now a central element in Sadida’s gameplay, and they can be used in many different ways for the benefit of the Sadida’s whole team!
Small, meaningful adjustments to the rest of the Sadida’s spells
Apart from summoning spells, the rest of the changes are small. Sadidas still have 3 elemental builds, whose spells are almost unchanged.
We have, however, made some slight changes.
Some AP costs have been modified. Tear now costs 3 AP, while the Dolly Sacrifice and Bush Fire spells cost 4 AP. As a result, the damage inflicted by these spells has changed.
Tear now has an effect on trees that “makes them grow”: when cast on a tree that was just planted, the tree grows and can be used instantaneously.
The “Bramble” spell can be cast on a tree to let an ally Block Doll change places with the targeted tree and become invulnerable for 1 turn. Note that the same Block can only switch places with a tree once every 3 turns, and if there are two Block Dolls on the board, only the first will be able to switch (the second will have to wait until the following turn).
Sadidas' characteristic soft caps have been modified in order to correspond to the levels that we now want to apply to all classes, as per the following article: http://www.dofus.com/en/mmorpg/news/devblog/tickets/426613-improvements-characteristics-system (“Soft caps” paragraph). As a result, the damage caused by various spells has changed.
Soothing Bramble no longer heals enemies and no longer takes ally MP.
One state to connect them all
Before we go, we have one last important piece of news: a new state that allows Sadidas to connect targets. This state is applied with the Sadida’s Paralysing Poison for 4 turns (and with a 2 turn cooldown, it can be potentially applied to 2 targets at once) and by the Madoll’s Irritation spell for an infinite duration (as long as the target stays alive, so it can affect the entire opposing team), letting a portion of Sadida’s spells hit several targets at once. It works like this: if an enemy target who is in this state is hit with a single-target Sadida spell (with the exception of Paralysing Poison), all enemy targets who are in the state will also be affected by the single-target spell. For example, if you cast a Bramble spell on a target who is in this state, any other targets who are this state will also receive 100% of the damage from that Bramble spell. This will occur for the following spells: Bramble, Tear, Dolly Sacrifice, Poisoned Wind, Bush Fire, Soothing Bramble, Insolent Bramble, and Aggressive Bramble.
This new mechanism will make Madoll more dangerous, but will also give Sadida’s binding and damage abilities a broader scope.
FAQ
Will my Sadida be less powerful?
No! Sadidas have gained power in nearly every area with this patch: more interesting summons and strengthening of various support, damage, board control, and binding abilities!
Will it still be possible for Sadidas to fill the map with summons?
Yes, but it will be more difficult and gradual. The need to place a tree in order to transform it into a Doll, combined with the restriction of one tree placed per turn means that Sadidas will never be able to have more Dolls on the board than the number of turns that have passed. 1 turn = 1 Doll maximum. However, over the course of the game, Sadida’s Dolls will retransform into trees when they die, so there will be a greater potential for summons than there is now. That is, as long as Sadidas manage to keep their trees alive.
What will be the impact of summonable creature bonuses?
Trees will keep their status of static summon and will not be considered in the number of summons on the board when calculating the number of summonable creatures. In other words, there is no limit for placing trees. That will also be the case for new living trees. In addition, the Tree of Life will no longer be a separate summon; it is a transformed stationary tree and no longer counts as a summon. On the other hand, Dolls are taken into account, and each one counts as a summon. It is therefore not possible to summon a Doll if the summons limit has been reached.
What about spell animations?
We’re taking advantage of this revamp to review a large portion of Sadida’s spell animations.
What will happen when there are several Sadidas in the same fight?
If several Sadidas are on the same team, the overall recasting delay will prevent them from placing more than one tree per turn, in order to avoid overloading the map with summons. However, any tree summoned by a Sadida can be used by another Sadida from the same team without any problem. There will be no interaction between the summons of two Sadidas who are on opposing teams.
Will a Magical Orb be given out?Wowy wow wow! Wow. UFC 171 was one of those cards where the idea of picking winners or losers sort of goes out the window. There are few better things than a night of fights that leaves you a bit shocked and jittery, that takes you away from whatever else might be going on in your life. As a sports fan, these are the moments we watch for. This is why you sit through countless hours of grinding, methodical, actionless competition. Because, hope beyond hope, it might just turn into the most amazing thing you've ever seen. And when it does, you'll have seen it. So for those die-hards who never miss an event, this one is for you.
Disclaimer Time: I don't gamble, but this is sort of a gambling post (kinda). For such a great card, this was a pretty bad night for me, fight picking wise. As I said above, I couldn't really give a damn this time around. I'll take a few bad beats for the amount of enjoyment I got just from watching. There were several fights that were incredibly hard to predict going in (although I'm sure more than a few of you will talk about how easy it was to get them all right) and a couple of fighters who pulled out big and unexpected upsets. As always I'm using BestFightOdds for the over/under and taking the mode for each fighter. So, here's what I learned.
Hindsight: Daniel Pineda (-220) vs. Robert Whiteford (+180) (I picked Whiteford, I was right)
I'm not at all sure why Pineda was a fairly decent betting favorite going in to this fight. Whiteford suffered from a terrible matchup against a better Judoka in Hettes his first fight out, but he's a solid talent. Not exceptional, but solid.
Pineda really obviously doesn't have any sort of plan when he fights. He has some skills he's developed, but he doesn't seem to have any sense of when or how to use them. As such, he often seems to be looking to react based on what his opponent does and gives up a lot of ground because of it. Whiteford knew what he was looking to do everywhere the fight went and stayed a couple steps ahead of Pineda because of it.
He worked primarily out of ATT for this fight, apparently, but between his home base (Dinky Ninjas) and his stateside training, Whiteford has had a lot of really solid training. It makes it somewhat surprising then, that he still seems plagued by cardio issues. It's going to be the biggest hurdle he has to overcome in the UFC if he wants to keep winning fights.
Hindsight: Bubba McDaniel (+133) vs. Sean Strickland (-160) (I picked McDaniel, I was wrong)
Personal bias probably played a part in this pick for me. It rarely does, but I've talked to McDaniel and he's a really good guy. I wanted him to win. Knowing what a hulking middleweight Strickland is and how good his ground and pound and top control game are, he was probably the safer bet to finish this fight.
Strickland still needs to work on his striking a bit, but not a lot. It's getting to the point where it's functional, and Middleweight isn't filled with highly polished fighters in the lower half of the division. He could easily make do with the tools he has right now on his feet and keep mauling fighters on the ground.
The MO on McDaniel has always been that he's not confident enough in the cage. I'd like to say that I don't see it, and that he just go outworked, but frankly it's a pretty fair assessment. Strickland was the stronger fighter, but McDaniel just seemed to freeze up when the fight stopped going his way. It also doesn't help that that long neck of his makes him really easy to catch in chokes. Sometimes genetics does you no favors.
Hindsight: Will Campuzano (-450) vs. Justin Scoggins (-650) (I picked Scoggins, I was right)
Scoggins may be the best young fighter below 155 lbs in the UFC right now. There are a couple of other fighters in the running (McGregor, Tanaka, Pettis, Horiguchi), but Scoggins' displays of not only excellent kickboxing but really dominant wrestling make him a must watch fighter who's flown under most people's radar.
I wish there were a better takeaway for Campuzano after this fight, but after seven fights under the Zuffa banner he's 1-6. He's got a rock hard head and he's scrappy, but he just doesn't seem to have the pure physical tools to compete at this level. It's too bad, as he's been very good on the regional scene, but that might be his ceiling.
This was a pretty utterly dominant performance from Scoggins. That said, Campuzano did look like he tagged him just a little in pure striking exchanges, and I'm not sure but it looked like Scoggins might have hurt his foot or knee later in the fight. His style is predicated on a lot of good footwork and dynamic movement and I just hope that his body can stay fit enough to maintain it. Although, at least we know he won't ever be lacking for energy.
Hindsight: Renee Forte (-160) vs. Frank Trevino (+140) (I picked Forte, I was wrong)
Even watching this fight, there is no reason Forte ever should have lost it. Trevino is really only competitive coming forward or standing in place. Once he's pressured he opens up huge defensive holes. The fact that Forte did lose that fight, and pretty clearly, is a huge knock on his ability to compete in the UFC.
Trevino caught something of a lucky break in making his debut against Forte, who just doesn't seem cut out for the UFC. He's also fortunate to be entering into the lightweight division right now, when there's a glut of new talent coming in and he'll have a lot of opportunity to get his feet wet.
Fights like this cast a pretty bright light over how wide a net the UFC is casting in their current search for new fighters. Of the 13 bouts on this card, this fight stood in stark contrast to the bouts around in in terms of both fitness and skill.
Hindsight: Alex Garcia (-365) vs. Sean Spencer (+275) (I picked Garcia, I was right)
I really expected a more dominant performance out of Garcia in this fight. He made it pretty clear in the first round that this bout should have been all one way traffic running right over Spencer, but then opened up some major holes once he couldn't get the early stoppage. High energy kick boxers aren't exactly rare in the UFC, and Garcia needs to prove he's not just a front runner.
Tough break for Spencer. This was always going to be a bad fight for him, and he did a lot better than I expected, but it's still not a great performance. He's proved now that he's got a rock solid chin to go with his solid cardio and decent striking, but he also doesn't have any power. He hurt Garcia badly with some sharp shots, but couldn't put it on Garcia once he had him hurt. Future opponents are going to get a lot of time to work against him.
The really good sign for Garcia in this fight is how well he used his wrestling and takedowns once he was hurt and tired. He has an excellent double leg and he times it beautifully. It keeps him in place as a bright prospect as you need to worry about more than just his ferocious power, even when he's hurt.
Hindsight: Dennis Bermudez (-280) vs. Jimmy Hettes (+210) (I picked Bermudez, I was right)
I'd be lying if I said that I thought that Bermudez would be anywhere near as dominant as he was in this fight. He threw Hettes around like it was nothing. And while Hettes might have been able to make the final bell, he should consider it a mercy that he didn't have to try.
This fight was the basic equivalent of getting shoved into your locker by the high school bully for Hettes. It's not time for him to drop out or anything, but he needs to take a long hard look at his training because he can't even pretend he was ready after that mauling.
Bermudez had a brief scare at the end of the second when he attempted a terrible arm drag/throw and essentially ended up tossing Hettes into back control. He fended off RNC choke attempts just fine for the rest of the round, but it was a boneheaded move and slightly reinforces the idea that Bermudez doesn't always fight the smartest fight.
Hindsight: Jessica Andrade (-240) vs. Raquel Pennington (+195) (I picked Andrade, I was right)
Speaking of fighters who need to take a good look at their preparation, Raquel Pennington has the size to be one of the more physically imposing fighters at 135 lbs. Given her crisp striking, she should be bullying her opponents. Instead it's usually the other way around. Andrade is hyper aggressive and very powerful, but Pennington's tendency to back down did her no favors.
Jessica Andrade has a serious wall in front of her in terms of size. She's really muscular, so there are reasonable questions as to whether she can go all the way to 115 when that division opens. But, as her level of competition increases it's hard not to see her getting easily out muscled, or at the very least, being far less effective due to her size disadvantage.
Andrade needs to work on a kicking game. She has great power and throws well in combination, both of which are rare for a fighter in the women's division. However, as fights wear on she gets more and more predictable due to her limited arsenal. An improved kicking game would be the best, easiest next step to take.
Hindsight: Kelvin Gastelum (-170) vs. Rick Story (+140) (I picked Story, I was wrong)
I don't know if it's blind faith in the Ultimate Fighter system, or a case of someone having a really good inside line, but I was pretty shocked to see Gastelum as the betting favorite. I wasn't all that high on him coming in to the UFC, and was pretty surprised when he completely tooled Brian Melancon. Now, after his performance against Story, I'm firmly on the bandwagon.
Even though he lost, Rick Story really showed the value of his experience as he didn't get thrown off his game plan even as he was getting lit up early on. It's not always the best idea (see Danzig vs. Guillard), but against a still green fighter like Gastelum it served him really well as Gastelum began to lose concentration in the second.
One of the big things Gastelum still needs to work on is creating consistent offense. It's one of those things that only comes with time and often plagues young fighters, but the value of staying active cannot be undersold to fighters. There are a rare few (the Lyoto Machidas of the world) who can make a decent career as almost a pure counter striker, and even Machida has had to become more aggressive to win consistently.
Hindsight: Nikita Krylov (+400) vs. Ovince St. Preux (-550) (I picked St. Preux, I was right)
I almost took a flyer on Krylov here, and I'm really glad I didn't. I think I needed him to lose a fight like this to really give me appropriate perspective on just how raw he is. He's a fun fighter, and no matter how much T.P. Grant wants it, the UFC wont cut him. But, he has a long, long way to go before he's ever competitive, even at light heavyweight.
Ovince St. Preux is very quietly finally living up to some of his hype. He's a great athlete and a reasonably talented fighter. While his current win streak has come against the bottom of the LHW division, the fact that he's winning consistently makes him a fighter to watch at 205 lbs.
It might be a little bit tough to find St. Preux a UFC fight that's a step without it being a drastic step up. It'd be interesting to see him take on Cavalacante and see if one of these former Strikeforce guys can make a real mark in the UFC.
Hindsight: Hector Lombard (-170) vs. Jake Shields (+155) (I picked Shields, I was wrong)
I might have been foolish to pick Shields here, but in my defense, he got just the kind of fight he usually wins. Unfortunately for him, when Lombard wasn't utterly stifled by the Shieldsian miasma, he was busting Jake up for everything he was worth.
Lombard turned in a great performance here, that shouldn't be overlooked. But he asked almost as many questions as he answered. Shields is a stifling fighter, so maybe that was all it was, but Lombard basically fought not to gas for the second half of that fight. Against a more active opponent he probably wont get the opportunity.
How often have we seen Hector Lombard use his judo with that level of consistency? Has it ever happened? Because I can't remember ever seeing it. Either way it was great to see him reach down into a bag of tricks we always knew he had, in order to make his performance that much more dominant.
Hindsight: Myles Jury (-170) vs. Diego Sanchez (+145) (I picked Jury, I was right)
I'm not sure I'm altogether on board with the idea that Alliance MMA fighters don't try and finish fights. It's certainly a narrative that doesn't fit Jury too comfortably, as he's finished the majority of his opposition. But, I do think there could be some reasonable criticism that Alliances striking style doesn't place enough emphasis on combination striking or on jumping on finishing opportunities. Jury had Sanchez pretty thoroughly outclassed and him saying it was "easy" afterward might as well be shorthand for "I could have done a lot more, but didn't."
Unfortunately, whether his food poisoning story really holds any water or not, it gives Diego a pretty convenient out to soldier on blindly into the next fight. He didn't look any different at UFC 171 than he has over the past couple of years, but as long as he can convince himself that he's still got it, I expect to see him out there. Sooner or later he's going to get KO'd and badly.
Jury is very likely about to become a factor at 155. Whether a sensible function of the rankings or not, he just beat a top 15 fighter and is 5-0 in the UFC to date. That kind of record has got Khabib Nurmagomedov all the way up at no. 7 and it could mean that Jury's next fight is a huge step up.
Hindsight: Carlos Condit (-200) vs. Tyron Woodley (+160) (I picked Condit, I was wrong)
Unfortunately for Condit, injury or no, this fight was going exactly the way of his loss to Johny Hendricks. Even if he had survived he almost certainly would have been down two rounds going into the third. At that point he's depending on his ability to put away a very solid, durable fighter. It could happen, but I don't think it would have.
Tyron Woodley has now affirmed his status as one of the divisional elite at 170 lbs. Condit was a big challenge and he passed it with flying colors. He was getting tagged up a bit in the second round, but turned up his wrestling to keep Condit off balance, and even got the TKO because of it. He's a smart powerful fighter with developing tools and a threat to anyone in his division.
Even without the injury, this may be the end of Condit as a title relevant fighter. I'd like to think not, as his relative youth (he's only 29) and all action style make him a lot of fun to watch. But, 12 years in it feels a bit like he's a riddle that's been solved. If it hadn't been for Kampmann gassing hard (and the fact that the fight was 5 rounds) Condit would probably be on a 4 fight losing streak with all of his losses coming from the same formula. These are all top competition losses, but they probably represent a ceiling that's now just below no. 1 contention.
Hindsight: Johny Hendricks (-400) vs. Robbie Lawler (+325) (I picked Hendricks, I was right)
What an insane betting line that was to start out with. Robbie Lawler proved in this fight that he is a terrible matchup for Johny Hendricks and should only ever have been treated as such. Hendricks may have great takedowns, but he's not very keen at keeping top control and that meant Lawler would get a lot of time on his feet to trade blows. He made the best of that time, even in a loss.
Johny Hendricks is the true champ, at least in my eyes. There is a vocal faction out there crying robbery, but I can only chalk that up to an especially rabid old-school fanbase that was invested in seeing one of their classic idols hold a UFC belt. Hendricks proved everything he needed to in that bout, including the fact that he could rally back from a bad beating to win.
Lawler is something of a minor miracle in this day and age of fighting. The time he spent away from sparring in training may have contributed to his lackluster mid-career run, but it seems to have done wonders for his longevity. Hopefully at at least a few fighters can find some wisdom in his route (and maybe just make sparring a bit safer), because the end results definitely seem worth it.
And just like that I'm drained dry of inspiration. UFC 171 was an emotionally taxing event. Some part of me still doesn't quite believe that it's really over. Much of what I've written about it seems painfully obvious now, but as always that's the benefit of hindsight. Stay tuned for next week's column when I wax poetic about Henderson vs. Rua and why it failed to live up to the original.Blogger Felix Geisendorfer points out a clever URL hack that scored him free Wi-Fi at the Atlanta airport.
I found that I could easily visit sites like slashdot, Google, or even this weblog, when adding a?.jpg at the end of the url. The next logical step was to automate that. I downloaded Greasemonkey and wrote a 4 line script that would add?.jpg to every link in a document. That way I was able to browse most sites without a hassle.
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This trick will only work on Wi-Fi networks that allow images to go through without a redirect, and though it may seem like a bit of a stretch, it's better than shelling out $7 for 30 minutes of Wi-Fi. Unfortunately the author didn't make the Greasemonkey script available, but even without it you could get in some decent browsing. The post isn't new, and I haven't tested this, so if you've ever used this trick or you're at an airport or Wi-Fi hotspot and can give it a try, let's hear how it worked for you in the comments. Photo by Jace.
Hacking a commercial airport WLAN [Debuggable Ltd. via Hackszine]Bone and stone tools were apparently used for crushing pigments and mixing them in the shells of giant sea snails
The oldest known painting kits, used 100,000 years ago in the stone age, have been unearthed in a cave in South Africa.
Two sets of implements for preparing red and yellow ochres to decorate animal skins, body parts or perhaps cave walls were excavated at the Blombos cave on the Southern Cape near the Indian Ocean.
The stone and bone tools for crushing, mixing and applying the pigments were uncovered alongside the shells of giant sea snails that had been used as primitive mixing pots. The snails are indigenous to South African waters.
Other bones, including the shoulder blade of a seal, were among the ingredients for making the pigments. The bones were probably heated in a fire and the marrow fat used as a binder for the paint.
Along with ancient flakes of charcoal, researchers found a "high water mark" on the shells' inner wall, evidence that an unknown liquid, probably urine or water, was added to make the paint more fluid.
The remarkable discovery, reported in the journal Science, throws light on the capabilities and rituals of Homo sapiens who occupied the cave from at least 140,000 years ago. The cave's entrance was blocked by sand 70,000 years ago.
"This is the first known instance for deliberate planning, production and curation of a compound," Christopher Henshilwood at the University of Bergen told Science, adding that the finding also marked the first known use of containers. "It's early chemistry. It casts a whole new light on early Homo sapiens and tells us they were probably a lot more intelligent than we think, and capable of carrying out quite sophisticated acts at least 40,000 to 50,000 years before any other known example of this kind of basic chemistry," he added.
One of the toolkits, which was found next to a pile of different instruments, was more complex and particularly well preserved, with its intact shell coated with red pigment. A second shell, found close by, was broken, but its grinding stone was coated with red and yellow pigments, suggesting it had been used more than once.
Henshilwood's team said the tools were evidence for an "ochre-processing workshop" run by early humans, who gathered the colourful mineral oxides from sites about 20 miles away.
Piecing together the process from the instruments they found, Henshilwood said the artists used small quartzite cobbles to hammer and grind the ochres into a powder, which was then poured into the shell and mixed with charcoal, burnt and broken bone, and the unidentified liquid.
One of the artists' kits came with a slender bone from the front leg of a dog or wolf. One end of the bone had been dipped in ochre, leading the scientists to conclude it was used as a primitive paintbrush.
"You could use this type of mixture to prepare animal skins, to put on as body paint, or to paint on the walls of the cave, but it is difficult to be sure how it was used," said Francesco d'Errico, a study co-author at the University of Bordeaux. "The discovery is a paradox because we now know much better how the pigment was made than what it is used for."
Tiny grooves at the bottom of the shells may be scratch marks caused by sand grains when the artist mixed the paint with a finger. "From time to time they were scratching the bottom when their finger was moving some of these little grains," said d'Errico.
The team has unearthed other artefacts from early humans at the cave. In 2004, it uncovered a collection of 75,000-year-old decorative shell beads at Blombos cave, some of which had been painted with ochre.
"Twenty thousand years after these painting kits were left behind, humans at Blombos were certainly using pigments for symbolic purposes. It is clear they knew all the sources for these red and yellow pigments. This was a tradition for them," said d'Errico.I worked at the Writer’s Workshop at my undergraduate institution, and we saw a LOT of personal statements for everything from scholarships to job applications. The personal statement, although intended to be a chance to express yourself through writing, is actually a very a formulaic piece of writing. Although there are a few instances where an admissions committee might be interested in a creative statement (for example, the undergraduate essay prompts from the University of Chicago), most personal statements are merely exercises in which an applicant demonstrates that he or she knows what the admissions committee is looking for.
One of the biggest pitfalls of the personal statement is that students think they know what an admissions committee wants to hear, but they really waste precious space discussing things that won’t earn them an acceptance.
Here is some general advice on what to include (and what not to include) in your personal statement:
1. You do not need a “hook” like you may have been taught in middle school. No quotations, no “I loved to read since childhood.”
2. The only exception to the “no personal stories” rule is if you have a specific instance of something that got you interested in your field of concentration (i.e. after reading X piece of theory, I began to think about Y, which lead to the topic of my undergrad thesis etc.)
3. If you mention something on your CV, your personal statement must answer a question that is not evident just by reading the CV. Your CV gives the AdCom a laundry list of your experience, publications, relevant course work etc, but it requires the AdCom to interpret why a particular experience is important. For example, your CV says “taught Writing 101,” your personal statement should say “Writing 101 prepared me to balance teaching with my graduate studies by…”
4. The hardest part: finding a balance between being too specific and too broad. Use your research experience and interests as examples of the type of work you can do, not as the only topic you love and want to research, or are capable of researching.
5. As much as you may think that blaming your undergraduate institution for not handling your transfer credits as you hoped might help compensate for a less-than-stellar GPA, expressing any negativity is one of the worst things you can do. I once had a student come to me with an application for an education program in which she spent most of her statement berating the institutions she attended and their educational systems. Every institution has its organizational issues. These are things you challenge after you’re in, not when you are vying for one of just a few spots in the club.
6. Answer the question that is on their minds directly: are you a good fit for this program? You can talk about how special you are until you are blue in the face, but the reality is what one AdCom member finds relevant and interesting may not impress the next. But program fit is the question they are all trying to answer. If you can answer that effectively enough to convince them and you have the grades and letters of rec to back up your claims, you may have just earned yourself an acceptance.
Further Reading:
I can’t post this article because the link I have to it is through my student subscription, but if you can access it, check out “The statement of purpose in graduate program applications: Genre structure and disciplinary variation” Samraj & Monk, 2008. They bring up a very interesting point – that the success of specific content strategies in personal statements is a “semi-occluded” genre (i.e. there is little to no numerical data, and most of it is confidential). It is worth a read if only for the testimonies of Admission Committee members, since these serve as a good reminder of your audience.The U.S. House of Representatives voted Wednesday afternoon to approve a measure to repeal “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.”
The vote was 250 to 175.
It was the second time this year the House approved such a measure. In May, the vote was 232 to 180. The measure will now go to the Senate where it is expected to reach the floor sometime next week.
The vote may have confused someone just tuning in to the debate because it appeared, on the surface, to be a debate about a small business bill. But that bill, which has been approved by both houses but not sent to conference, was gutted and language from a “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” repeal bill was inserted.
This new language was introduced by Rep. Patrick Murphy (D-Penn.), as a standalone repeal bill Tuesday, as a way of encouraging and speeding up the passage of a similar standalone bill in the Senate.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) took to the floor early in the debate to urge passage of the measure and cite polling data released Wednesday showing 8 out of 10 Americans support repeal.
“It is my hope to encourage the Senate to take this long overdue action,” said Pelosi.
Murphy, urging support for repeal, said, “Enough of the games. Enough of the politics…. This vote is about whether we’re going to continue telling people willing to die for our freedoms that they need to lie in order to do so.”
Rep. Susan Davis (D-Calif.) controlled debate for Democrats and led with remarks saying, “the time to act is here.” Davis is a member of the House Armed Services Committee.
“Change is never easy but it rarely is as necessary as it is today,” said Davis. “…If we miss this opportunity to repeal this law, history will judge us poorly.”
Rep. Buck McKeon (R-Calif.), who will be the chairman of the House Armed Services Committee beginning in January, expressed “strong opposition” to the repeal measure. He lamented the committee was not being given an opportunity to hold its own hearing on the Dec. 1 report submitted by the Pentagon. The Senate Armed Services Committee held such a hearing on Dec. 2 and 3.
Rep. Trent Franks (R-Ariz.) urged voting against the repeal measure to provide the military with more time to “deal with this in their own way.”
Many of the Republicans who spoke lamented the fact that Congress has yet to pass the annual Defense Authorization bill, suggesting that debating the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” repeal was somehow interfering with that bill.
The irony, of course, was that Republicans in the Senate blocked consideration of the Defense Authorization bill, in large part because it included the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” repeal.
Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) called Republicans on that, and said Republicans had repeatedly blocked consideration of the defense bill. He also argued that it’s not service members who are uneasy with the change, but Republican members of Congress.
Rep. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.) also spoke in favor of repeal, said the current policy is un-American.
Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-Texas) opposed repeal, and said “the military is inconsistent with American values” because members do not have freedom of speech, “because it’s an impediment to the military mission.”
But Rep. Silvestre Reyes (D-Texas) urged support for repeal, and said service members in his district reflected the results of the Pentagon study that found most anticipate no problems with repeal.
And Rep. Al Green (D-Texas), an African American, said, “I don’t need a survey to tell me what’s right when it comes to human rights.”
“We cannot have a first-class military with second-class soldiers,” said Green. “I will not ask people who are willing to die for my country to lie for my country.”
Rep. Mike Pence (R-Ind.), who is said to be considering a presidential run, opposed repeal, and said it was not |
, and you're comfortable typing on it for long periods. That's the important thing. With that in mind, I'll survey a few popular programming keyboard choices.
I mentioned my beloved Microsoft Natural Keyboard 4000, which is pretty much the holy grail of keyboards to me.
Some people don't care for the non-split spacebar, and the way the keys have a fair bit of resistance -- but that's never bothered me. If you're into the whole ergonomic split layout thing, as I obviously am, it's difficult to go wrong with the Natural 4000. That's why I'm replacing my old keyboard with the very same model. If you hate wires, the wireless equivalent is available -- but only with the Microsoft Natural Ergonomic Desktop 7000 bundle.
If you're into classic keyboards, the DAS Keyboard Professional is another popular choice. Here it is next to the classic IBM Model M, the granddaddy of all PC keyboards.
These are both buckling spring keyboards, part of a long line of venerable keyboard designs going back to 1980. Dan waxes poetic:
These mainstream 'boards, all with one or another variant of the simple and quiet rubber dome switch idea, are perfectly OK for people who don't type much. They may drop dead with or without the assistance of a spilled beverage, but that's no big deal; if your computer's essential to your happiness, buy a spare cheap keyboard in case your main cheap keyboard dies, and use your nasty mushy input devices with my blessing. If you do type a lot, though, you owe it to yourself to get a good keyboard of one kind or another, for the same reason that people who use the mouse a lot shouldn't settle for some ancient crusty serial-port optomechanical artifact. Old mouses aren't nice to use, but old keyboards can be, because mouse technology's advanced a lot over the last 20 years, but keyswitch technology was quite mature in 1980. Modern keyboard tech advances have mainly had to do with wireless interfaces, snazzy looks, and making cheap crud cheaper.
The Das got a very favorable review at Tech Report. And it also comes in a super-hardcore blank keycaps edition, if you really want to prove to yourself (and your coworkers) that you can actually touch type. It is a bit spendy, though, particularly when excellent Model M clones can be had for fifty bucks less.
If you're more into laptop-style ultra low profile keyboards, you might prefer the Apple Keyboard.
Haven't tried this one myself, but I've heard good things; the layout seems solid and the quality superb, as you would expect from Apple.
I read recommendations for each of these keyboards almost daily. But of course I'm only touching the tip of the iceberg in this post. There are at least a dozen other popular contenders, along with a seemingly neverending parade of oddities and curiosities. Such as the Space cadet keyboard.
Whatever your choice, give your keyboard the consideration it deserves; it is the one essential tool of our craft.Guest opinion: Dr. Tim Ball
It is time to revisit the emails leaked from the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at East Anglia. The first 1000 emails were released in November 2009 just prior to the Climate Conference of the Parties (COP) 15 scheduled for Copenhagen. They effectively stopped political plans for a replacement of the Kyoto Protocol, a massive redistribution of wealth designed as part of Agenda 21. You can read what the UN says about this plan developed under the auspices of Maurice Strong as head of the United Nations Environment Progam (UNEP) or read Glenn Becks interpretation of the implications.
Here is a sampling:
We need to remind people of the revelations to undermine the completely unnecessary and unjustified plans scheduled for the upcoming Paris Climate Conference (COP21). The person who released the emails is now apparently safe from prosecution because in covering up what went on the CRU revealed valuable information. The first revelation occurred when Phil Jones, Director of the CRU, told the police the files were stolen (hacked). His action required that he admit the files were legitimate. The second involved the police inquiry done by the Norfolk Constabulary that followed. They took so long that the statute of limitations expired. How convenient! Presumably, the statute expiration applies to the whistleblower.
Richard Black of the BBC, a longtime confidant of the CRU and the UKMO, wrote,
Norfolk Constabulary says there is no realistic prospect of finding the culprit within the statutory time limit of three years since the 2009 offence. The theft and release of e-mails from the University of East Anglia Climatic Research Unit provoked a huge furore over the integrity of climate science. Police say the theft was “sophisticated and orchestrated”, and that no-one at the university is implicated. “The complex nature of this investigation means that we do not have a realistic prospect of identifying the offender or offenders and launching criminal proceedings within the time constraints imposed by law,” said Detective Chief Superintendent Julian Gregory, the officer in charge of the investigation.
These claims are balderdash. How convenient to take longer than the statute of limitations to reach this conclusion. Whoever released the files had access to the UEA computer system and knew which files and emails were significant, as the web page “smalldeadanimals” explained. Besides, in short order and after detailed analysis Canadian network engineer Lance Levsen showed convincingly the source was someone within the university. He concluded:
For the hacker to have collected all of this information s/he would have required extraordinary capabilities…to crack an Administrative file server to get to the emails and crack numerous workstations, desktops, and servers to get the documents.
We don’t know who the Norfolk Constabulary interviewed. It is most likely they would not know what questions to ask. We know Keith Briffa was troubled by what went on. Emails show his conflicts within the group and especially with Mann over the ‘hockey stick’.
On October 5, 2009, Wigley wrote to Jones:
It is distressing to read that American Stinker item. But Keith (Briffa) does seem to have got himself into a mess. As I pointed out in emails, Yamal is insignificant…I presume they went thru papers to see if Yamal was cited, a pretty foolproof method if you ask me. Perhaps these things can be explained clearly and concisely—but I am not sure Keith is able to do this as he is too close to the issue and probably quite pissed of [sic]. I think Keith needs to be very, very careful in how he handles this. I’d be willing to check over anything he puts together.
Jones forwarded this email to Briffa.
On 17th June 2002 Briffa wrote to Dr. Edward Cook about a letter involving Esper and Michael Mann:
I have just read this letter—and I think it is crap. I am sick to death of Mann stating his reconstruction represents the tropical area just because it contains a few (poorly temperature representative) tropical series. He is just as capable of regressing these data against any other “target” series, such as the increasing trend of self-opinionated verbiage he has produced over the last few years, and … (better say no more)”
Cook responds;
“We both know the probable flaws in Mike’s recon (reconstruction), particularly as it relates to the tropical stuff…. It is puzzling to me that a guy as bright as Mike would be so unwilling to evaluate his own work a bit more objectively.
Apparently, Mann even scared his fellow CRU conspirators as one noted on October 26, 2003,
“Anyway, there’s going to be a lot of noise on this one, and knowing Mann’s very thin skin I am afraid he will react strongly, unless he has learned (as I hope he has) from the past….”
In a Washington Post article, Mann said the content of the emails “doesn’t alter evidence for climate change.” This claim is a standard deflection that exploits the fact most people don’t know the science or how much climate changes naturally. As a result, they can report a natural change as unnatural and by implication caused by humans. The real issue is the cause of climate change. The emails revealed how the CRU gang used deception to prove it was human produced CO2. But the mainstream media brushed it off, ignored it, or deliberately played along with the CRU denials.
A good example of the latter was the action of the Associated Press (AP) identified by a Washington Times editorial titled,
“Biased Reporting on Climategate – Associated Press coverage raises eyebrows.”
They wrote,
“There’s a big difference between saying that there is insufficient evidence to determine if falsification occurred – and that there should be an investigation – and saying, as AP did, “Science not faked.”
The Times is wrong because it’s incorrect to say there is insufficient evidence, but it is still a measure of poor journalism.
The mainstream media chose to ignore the devastating importance of the emails. They compounded this failure by claiming there was nothing of significance. It gives the lie to their claim that they are society’s watchdog.
Most haven’t read the emails or summarily dismiss them because of political bias. Journalist Clive Crook illustrated an open mind, albeit on second look.
“In my previous post on Climategate I blithely said that nothing in the climate science email dump surprised me much. Having waded more deeply over the weekend I take that back. The closed-mindedness of these supposed men of science, their willingness to go to any lengths to defend a preconceived message, is surprising even to me. The stink of intellectual corruption is overpowering.”
Later Crook wrote about the investigations into the emails,
I had hoped, not very confidently, that the various Climategate inquiries would be severe. This would have been a first step towards restoring confidence in the scientific consensus. But no, the reports make things worse. At best they are mealy-mouthed apologies; at worst they are patently incompetent and even wilfully wrong. The climate-science establishment, of which these inquiries have chosen to make themselves a part, seems entirely incapable of understanding, let alone repairing, the harm it has done to its own cause.
The mainstream media willfully ignored the massive deception just as they did the political exploitation of climate science. In fact, most led or joined attacks on scientists who dared to point out the problems. They’re still doing it directly or by their silence. There’s no excuse for missing one of the biggest stories in history. It proves the adage that there are none so blind as those who will not see.
The Evidence is Unavoidable
Understanding science is not required to understand what the emails expose. Any objective reading counters the claim they are “normal banter between colleagues.” Just a few examples illustrate the environment among the inside group.
On 22 November 1996 from Geoff Jenkins (UK Met Office) to Phil Jones,
“Remember all the fun we had last year over 1995 global temperatures, with early release of information (via Oz), “inventing” the December monthly value, letters to Nature etc etc? I think we should have a cunning plan about what to do this year, simply to avoid a lot of wasted time.” “We feed this selectively to Nick Nuttall (Executive Director of UNEP) (who has had this in the past and seems now to expect special treatment) so that he can write an article for the silly season. We could also give this to Neville Nicholls (IPCC lead author and Australian Met Bureau employee.)??”
They are talking about releasing an annual global temperature before the year is over. Hardly scientific or responsible bureaucratic behavior, but they think deceiving the public is “fun.” It is a practice still going on.
On March 11, 2003, Mann acknowledged they silenced skeptics by criticizing them for not having peer-reviewed publications. Mann wrote,
“This was the danger of always criticising the skeptics for not publishing in the “peer-reviewed literature”. Obviously, they found a solution to that take over a journal! So what do we do about this? I think we have to stop considering “Climate Research” as a legitimate peer-reviewed journal. Perhaps we should encourage our colleagues in the climate research community to no longer submit to, or cite papers in, this journal. We would also need to consider what we tell or request of our more reasonable colleagues who currently sit on the editorial board.”
On 24 April 2003 Wigley was upset about Hans von Storch’s editorial role and proposes to mislead the publishers,
“One approach is to go direct to the publishers and point out the fact that their journal is perceived as being a medium for disseminating misinformation under the guise of refereed work. I use the word ‘perceived’ here, since whether it is true or not is not what the publishers care about — it is how the journal is seen by the community that counts.”
On 21 Jan 2005 Jones wrote to Wigley about requests under the Freedom of Information Act,
“Data is covered by all the agreements we sign with people, so I will be hiding behind them.”
Why would he need to hide?
On 8 July 2004 Jones to Mann,
I can’t see either of these papers being in the next IPCC report. Kevin and I will keep them out somehow – even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is!
The malfeasance is especially bad because the role of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is to review all the literature.
On 2 February 2005 from Jones to Mann
“If they ever hear there is a Freedom of Information Act now in the UK, I think I’ll delete the file rather than send to anyone.”
On 29 April 2007 Briffa to Mann; in a comment that reinforces the idea that Briffa is troubled by what was going on.
“I tried hard to balance the needs of the science and the IPCC, which were not always the same.”
The journal “Nature”, apparently complicit in the corruption of the peer-review process, revealed its bias when it editorialized.
“If there are benefits to the e-mail theft, one is to highlight yet again the harassment that denialists inflict on some climate-change researchers, often in the form of endless, time-consuming demands for information under the US and UK Freedom of Information Acts. Governments and institutions need to provide tangible assistance for researchers facing such a burden.”
This position contradicts their editorial guidelines that say in part,
An inherent principle of publication is that others should be able to replicate and build upon the authors’ published claims. Therefore, a condition of publication in a Nature journal is that authors are required to make materials, data and associated protocols promptly available to readers without preconditions. (Their emphasis).
These quotes are not normal discourse between academics or the goal of scientific research and publication by any stretch of the imagination. Any of the quotes is sufficient to trigger further investigative journalism. It certainly is enough to show their work that underpinned the major findings of the IPCC is totally inadequate for the policy recommendations made at the time and now being pushed forward in Paris.
The emails delayed Copenhagen because COP acts on the information the IPCC provides in the Summary For Policymakers. However, it didn’t stop the juggernaut of the political agenda. Some of the main reasons were effective public relations, lack of public understanding, but primarily the abject failure of the mainstream media. Even if they understood what was going on, they didn’t want to know and certainly were not going to report the truth. Even the brief examples in this article should force people to re-examine the false science created by the CRU and the IPCC.
Note: this article was updated about 30 minutes after publication to fix a missing block quotation formatting.
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RedditWe have a winner for our photo contest!
Man! This was a tough contest to judge. All weekend we’ve already been racking our brains because there were so many good and funny pics. And then the late entries made it even tougher!
But there can only be one winner for this contest so we chose the photo we thought was fun, exciting, creative, crazy, and cool all in one. It’s the photo posted by CharlieAT. So, congratulations CharlieAt, you won a Silver Chicken!
Actually we liked all his photos so it was even hard to choose from within them. HOWEVER! This doesn’t mean the other weren’t great. Like I said, there were so many awesome ones that deciding this truly gave us a headache! Thank you all for participating and showing off all these great shots. I hope you guys enjoyed seeing all the entries as much as we did.
And we will have another contest very soon so don’t give up if you didn’t win this time.Congrats @PattyArquette! Thx for using your speech to advocate for #EqualPay and for understanding that when women succeed, America succeeds — Valerie Jarrett (@vj44) February 23, 2015
Hillary Clinton, the likely Democratic presidential candidate who is traveling the United States to speak against unequal pay for women, paid her own female employees much less than her male staffers when she was a U.S. senator from New York, according to a new report. The Washington Free Beacon found that she paid women about 72 cents for each dollar she paid to men who worked in her Senate office from 2002 to 2008. Clinton was sworn in on Jan. 3, 2001, and served until Jan. 21, 2009, when she assumed the position of secretary of state.During her years on Capitol Hill, the median annual salary for a female staffer in Clinton’s office was $15,708.38 less than the comparable pay of a male employee, the Free Beacon found in an analysis of official Senate expenditure reports.The revelations of her unequal pay for male and female employees comes as the issue of pay equity reignited a national debate that echoed from the stage of the Oscars’ celebration in Hollywood on Sunday.Actress Patricia Arquette, in her Oscar acceptance remarks, demanded "wage equality once and for all and equal rights for women in the United States of America."Valeria Jarrett, President Barack Obama’s most trusted aide, immediately took up the call, even though the White House also violates pay equity.The average male employee in the Obama White House makes $88,600 a year, while his female counterpart earns an average of $78,400, according to a Washington Post analysis. Arquette’s remarks drew a sharp response from the free-market Independent Women’s Forum."Arquette should know we already have equal rights for women, including laws that protect women against wage discrimination," he group’s managing director Carrie L. Lukas said Monday."The statistical difference between men and women’s average earnings isn’t driven by sexism, but rather primarily is a results of men and women making very different choices about how to spend their time."The New 52 was big, vast in fact, and very expensive to buy in full. The entire period in DC Comic’s history is very interlinked but most graphic novels and collected editions do stand fairly well on their own. To help you navigate the New 52 here is my list of the top five New 52 graphic novel.
All images are screenshots taken from the DC Comics app. [Accessed 20/06/2015]
Number Five Superman: Doomed
Superman is an almost perfect being, with unlimited power and will, but in Doomed we see what happens when Superman becomes compromised by Doomsday. Superman is infected with a virus which slowly turns him into the monstrous creature Doomsday. The graphic novel collects issues from all of Superman’s various series and allows the reader to see the narrative for several different angles. It’s an absolute epic story and is well worth keeping an eye out for.
Number Four Joker: Death of the Family
Batman is strong, but he is nothing without the heroes around him, he is a leader and teacher for the Bat Family. In Death of the Family Scott Snyder and company show us what happens when the Bat Family are turned against him and the Joker lays out all of the darkest fears in front of them. The Death of the Family arc looks at every single member of the Bat Family from Batgirl to Alfred. The only thing that holds this novel back for me is the high price tag, but if you can get the money together it’s well worth the investment.
Number Three Swamp Thing: Raise Them Bones
If the Batman series is Snyder’s blockbuster movie series then Swamp Thing is his little indie project on the side. In Raise Them Bones we are thrown into an urban fantasy as the avatar of the Green goes to do battle with the Rot. It’s a well written combination of action, horror and fantasy that is sure to have something for any fan of comics. Special mention also has to go to the art work throughout the book which is simply astonishing.
Number Two Justice League: Throne of Atlantis
I want to recommend the entire Justice League series, but there simply isn’t space. In truth this spot should probably go to volume one of the series but I think Throne of Atlantis saga requires attention. Aquaman got a full redesign going into New 52 and The Throne of Atlantis really shows why he deserves it. The action is constantly building and every Justice League member gets a time to shine. The entire book is fit to burst with beautiful artwork that I can’t help but recommend.
Number One Batman: The Court of Owls
Yes, it is overrated, and Yes, it does have it’s problems, but I cannot deny that The Court of Owls deserves its status as the poster boy of the New 52. The piece stands as a brilliant example of a Batman story with all the detective work and psychological stylings that Bat-fans love. I have heard some people describe it as a marmite book, but my recommendation if you don’t like it is to look at the Dark Knight series and Detective comics as between the three all aspects of Batman are portrayed. Still, even those who don’t like The Court of Owls must concede it is a great piece of fiction that is well written and adds a completely new dynamic to Batman and his relationship with the city he protects.
If you want to know why the New 52 was so successful click here. Check back on Tuesday for my bottom five New 52 graphic novels.Chronic abuse of drugs can result in vast negative repercussions on behavioral and biological systems by altering underlying neurocircuitry. Long-term cannabinoid administration in rats leads to detrimental cellular and dendritic morphology changes. Previous studies have found that chronic treatment with delta-9-THC selectively decreases dendritic morphology and spine density in the dentate gyrus of adolescent rats (Rubino et al., 2009); however, whether these changes are specific to a particular developmental age is not known. The present study evaluated the effects of chronic exposure (7 or 21 days) to WIN 55,212-2 (i.p., 3.7 mg/kg), a potent cannabinoid agonist, on dendritic morphology of dentate gyrus neurons in adult rats. Upon completion of treatment brains were processed for Golgi–Cox staining. No significant effects of WIN 55,212-2 exposure were observed for dendritic branching or length. Spine density was quantified in the inner (proximal), middle, and outer (distal) thirds of the dendritic fields selected to approximate the spatial loci of afferents comprising the associational–commissural pathway, medial perforant path, and lateral perforant path, respectively. Compared to vehicle controls there was a significant reduction in spine density (~1 spine/10 μm) in the inner and middle dendritic segments. The spine density reduction was significant in inner segments following 7 days of treatment. These results suggest that chronic cannabinoid treatment specifically alters spine density in the dendritic targets of the associational–commissural afferents and medial perforant path projections, but not lateral perforant path. The resulting loss of dendritic spine density may be an important factor underlying cannabinoid induced memory impairments.One of the well-known challenges of marriage is keeping the passion alive after years of partnership, as passions tend to cool even in very happy relationships. In a new study, a team of psychological scientists led by James K. McNulty of Florida State University has developed an unconventional intervention for helping a marriage maintain its spark: pictures of puppies and bunnies.
The study is published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science.
Previous research has shown that, in many instances, marriage satisfaction declines even when day-to-day behaviors stay the same. This led McNulty and colleagues to hypothesize that an intervention focused on changing someone’s thoughts about their spouse, as opposed to one that targets their behaviors, might improve relationship quality.
Specifically, the research team wanted to find out whether it was possible to improve marital satisfaction by subtly retraining the immediate, automatic associations that come to mind when people think about their spouses.
“One ultimate source of our feelings about our relationships can be reduced to how we associate our partners with positive affect, and those associations can come from our partners but also from unrelated things, like puppies and bunnies,” McNulty explained.
Repeatedly linking a very positive stimulus to an unrelated one can create positive associations over time – perhaps the most famous example of this kind of conditioned response is Pavlov’s dogs, who salivated at the sound of a bell after being exposed to multiple pairings of meat and the bell sound.
McNulty and colleagues designed their intervention using a similar kind of conditioning called evaluative conditioning: Images of a spouse were repeatedly paired with very positive words or images (like puppies and bunnies). In theory, the positive feelings elicited by the positive images and words would become automatically associated with images of the spouse after practice.
Participants in the study included 144 married couples, all under the age of 40 and married for less than 5 years. On average, participants were around 28 years old and around 40% of the couples had children.
At the start of the study, couples completed a series of measures of relationship satisfaction. A few days later, the spouses came to the lab to complete a measure of their immediate, automatic attitudes toward their partner.
Each spouse was asked to individually view a brief stream of images once every 3 days for 6 weeks. Embedded in this stream were pictures of their partner. Those in the experimental group always saw the partner’s face paired with positive stimuli (e.g., an image of a puppy or the word “wonderful”) while those in the control condition saw their partner’s face matched to neutral stimuli (e.g., an image of a button).
Couples also completed implicit measures of attitude towards their partner every 2 weeks for 8 weeks. To measure implicit attitude, each spouse was asked to indicate as quickly as possible the emotional tone of positive and negative words after quickly glimpsing a series of faces, which included their partner’s face.
The data showed that the evaluative conditions worked: Participants who were exposed to positive images paired with their partner’s face showed more positive automatic reactions to their partner over the course of the intervention compared with those who saw neutral pairings.
More importantly, the intervention was associated with overall marriage quality: As in other research, more positive automatic reactions to the partner predicted greater improvements in marital satisfaction over the course of the study.
“I was actually a little surprised that it worked,” McNulty explained. “All the theory I reviewed on evaluative conditioning suggested it should, but existing theories of relationships, and just the idea that something so simple and unrelated to marriage could affect how people feel about their marriage, made me skeptical.”
It’s important to note that McNulty and colleagues are not arguing that behavior in a relationship is irrelevant to marital satisfaction. They note that interactions between spouses are actually the most important factor for setting automatic associations.
However, the new findings suggest that a brief intervention focused on automatic attitudes could be useful as one aspect of marriage counseling or as a resource for couples in difficult long-distance situations, such as soldiers.
“The research was actually prompted by a grant from the Department of Defense – I was asked to conceptualize and test a brief way to help married couples cope with the stress of separation and deployment,” McNulty said. “We would really like to develop a procedure that could help soldiers and other people in situations that are challenging for relationships.”
Co-authors on the research include Michael A. Olson of the University of Tennessee, Rachael E. Jones of the University of Minnesota, and Laura M. Acosta of Florida State University.
The work was funded by Department of Defense Grant No. W81XWH-10-2-0181 to J. K. McNulty and M. Olson.Samuel Oakford just penned a powerful and important Op-Ed in the New York Times titled, Saudi Arabia Kills Civilians, the U.S. Looks the Other Way.
Here are a few key excerpts:
In the span of four days earlier this month, the Saudi Arabia-led coalition in Yemen bombed a Doctors Without Borders-supported hospital, killing 19 people; a school, where 10 children, some as young as 8, died; and a vital bridge over which United Nations food supplies traveled, punishing millions. In a war that has seen reports of human rights violations committed by every side, these three attacks stand out. But the Obama administration says these strikes, like previous ones that killed thousands of civilians since last March, will have no effect on the American support that is crucial for Saudi Arabia’s air war. On the night of Aug. 11, coalition warplanes bombed the main bridge on the road from Hodeidah, along the Red Sea coast, to Sana, the capital. When it didn’t fully collapse, they returned the next day to destroy the bridge. More than 14 million Yemenis suffer dangerous levels of food insecurity — a figure that dwarfs that of any other country in conflict, worsened by a Saudi-led and American-supported blockade. One in three children under the age of 5 reportedly suffers from acute malnutrition. An estimated 90 percent of food that the United Nation’s World Food Program transports to Sana traveled across the destroyed bridge. An Obama administration official told me on the condition of anonymity that the United States included the bridge on a no-strike list of vital infrastructure, explicitly informing the Saudis that it was “critical to responding to the humanitarian crisis in Yemen.” And yet the Saudi-led coalition obliterated the structure, either intentionally disregarding humanitarian considerations and the wishes of the United States, or out of sheer incompetence. The American assistance for Saudi Arabia that Mr. Obama authorized last March includes aerial refueling for coalition jets, intelligence and targeting assistance. American tankers offload fuel to any coalition jet, no matter its target. This support comes on top of more than $100 billion in arms deals with Saudi Arabia between 2010 and 2015, and recent deals made explicitly to “replenish” stockpiles spent in Yemen. At the United Nations, Saudi Arabia and its allies have blocked investigations into the Yemen conflict and complained when the Security Council considered a resolution aimed at protecting Yemeni civilians. Saudi Arabia has also warned aid workers to leave much of Yemen, ominously presaging M.S.F.’s Aug. 18 decision to pull out of two governorates in the country’s north because of the coalition’s “indiscriminate bombings.” Without the group’s presence, it will be more difficult to know the toll of future strikes in these areas. In June, Saudi Arabia threatened to cut its funding to the United Nations after Secretary General Ban Ki-moon included the coalition on a list of violators of children’s rights. While criticizing the Saudis for their bullying, Mr. Ban’s office has also been accommodating out of a belief that it can’t afford to lose Saudi money.
Can you believe that? It just serves to underscore the obvious fact that the U.N. is a totally neutered and largely worthless body.
For more on the subject, see:
Saudi Arabia Forces the United Nations to Remove it from a List of Child Killers
Not a Joke – Saudi Arabia Chosen to Head UN Human Rights Panel
38 Dead After Saudi Arabia, Head of UN Human Rights Panel, Bombs Wedding in Yemen
Now back to the New York Times:
Many in Washington see support for the Saudi-led coalition as necessary for maintaining American-Saudi relations after the nuclear deal with Iran last year. Saudi Arabia has used this leeway to carry out its Yemen campaign with abandon. Each fatal strike and subsequent implausible Saudi denial should test the limits of the Obama administration’s support. Instead, a spokesman for United States Central Command, which oversees American operations in the Middle East including support for the coalition, told me last week that the United States is not conducting a single investigation into civilian casualties in Yemen. The Obama administration has in recent days insisted that it wants all sides in Yemen’s war to stop fighting. But as American tankers wait to refuel American-made fighter jets, loaded with American-made bombs destined for Yemen, the White House evidently doesn’t realize that it is waging a war.
Nice to see the Obama administration continue to defend the primary nation implicated in the 9/11 attacks, something I explored in detail in last month’s piece: The 28-Pages Are Way Worse Than I Thought.
I think this post deserves to end with an H.L. Mencken quote.
In Liberty,
Michael Krieger
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Follow me on Twitter.Dear Colleagues,
and I'm so glad to let you know that
and I'm so glad to let you know that till March 12, 2019, its price is
IN K.
41 Sub Tools with settings for Inking
( 38 Pen Sub-tools with settings + 3 splash/blot brushes identic to the " SPLASHES " Brush set)
+ Auto Action for 100% black
This set allows for reaching the effects of drawing and writing with real instruments filled by ink. I sincerely hope that this product will be so useful for you, as it’s useful for me when I’m using this by working on my graphic or calligraphic arts.
The Sub Tools were tested in CSP versions 1.6.2, 1.6.3 and Manga Studio 5, so all higher (newer) versions surely accept these sub tools.
When I started working on a number of graphic illustrations in Clip Studio Paint, I needed to transfer into CSP all "
" brushes
I made during about two years of work earlier for Photoshop.
You know that CSP and Photoshop are pretty different software with rather dissimilar settings, but finally,
during work on a number of new graphic art pieces
I reached my goal and got the sub tools for CSP those work similarly and maybe even better than I made for Photoshop previously
.
• You will receive:
• 1. 41 sub tools saved in ZIP-archive “INK. Sub Tools Archive.zip”,
each one is saved as one of 41 SUT-file titled as “INK. <##-NAME>©.sut”;
• 2. DEHALFTONIZER Auto Action, in two options: common DEHALFTONIZER. Hard INK Drawing.laf
and option for old versions (Manga Studio) — DEHALFTONIZER. Hard INK Drawing-for Manga Studio.laf.
• 3. INK. for CSP. Documentation. Manual & FAQs.pdf. User’s short manual in PDF format, with basic documentation and frequently asked questions.
You can download it here>>>>
• 4. STROKECHART of INK. Sub tools.jpg. The hi-resolution (4568 × 2695 px) list image of Set’s brushes
with their titles and examples of their stroke/trail. Subdivided by color into:
• Sharp Nibs — 10 brushes ;
• Brushes simulating the work of side surface of ruling pen or cola pen — 9 brushes ;
• Brushes with different length and hardness of hair, humidity and action area — 14 brushes ;
• Spray brushes — 5 brushes ;
• Bonus Blot & Splash brushes — 3 brushes ;
Totally: 41 brushes with settings.
Below is resized version of this Strokes chart (clickable):
41 sub tools saved in ZIP-archiveeach one is saved as one of 41 SUT-file titled as “”;Auto Action,: commonand option for old versions (Manga Studio) —User’s short manual in PDF format, with basic documentation and frequently asked questions.The hi-resolution (4568 × 2695 px) list image of Set’s brusheswith their titles and examples of their stroke/trail. Subdivided by color into:Totally:
• Some of the art made with INK. (clickable):
Proceed to the product's page >>>>UN peacekeeping observers have acknowledged the presence of terrorist groups in Syria, which are hindering the peace process between the government and the opposition, China’s Xinhua agency has reported, quoting UN peacekeeping head Herve Ladsous.
UN peacekeeping observers have acknowledged the presence of terrorist groups in Syria, which are hindering the peace process between the government and the opposition, China’s Xinhua agency has reported, quoting UN peacekeeping head Herve Ladsous.
“We know that there are... a third party (of the conflict), terrorist groups, who are trying to gain advantage for themselves... but we have to see this as an issue within Syria, between the Syrians,” Ladsous said at a news conference held in Damascus.
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has said that foreign fighters, some of them Al-Qaeda members, are fighting in extremist groups operating in Syria.
Ladsous added that 270 observers are working in six cities across Syria. According to him, observers will arrive in four more cities.
More than 9,000 people have been killed in Syria since the outbreak of a popular uprising against President Bashar al-Assad in March 2011, the UN says.MARK KARLIN, EDITOR OF BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT
Whenever the elected political tools of the oligarchs trash Social Security, they tout 401(k)-type accounts and voluntary retirement savings programs.
There's many problems with such an Ayn Randian view of retirement (and even Rand hypocritically took advantage of the government mandated retirement programs -- as most of the Tea Party and Right Wing fanatics do despite their "principles"). But an October 23 Washington Post (WP) analysis gets right to the heart of a major flaw in the "everyone's responsible for investing in their own retirement without any government payroll investment programs such as Social Security" sloganeering.
The WP article is entitled, "Most Americans accumulating debt faster than they’re saving for retirement":
A majority of Americans with 401(k)-type savings accounts are accumulating debt faster than they are setting aside money for retirement, further undermining the nation’s troubled system for old-age saving, a new report has found.
Three in five workers with defined contribution accounts are “debt savers,” according to the report released Thursday, meaning their increasing mortgages, credit card balances and installment loans are outpacing the amount of money they are able to save for retirement.
The imbalance is expanding even as policymakers are encouraging people to set aside more by offering generous tax breaks and automatically enrolling workers in retirement accounts that in some cases automatically escalate the amount of money over time.
Does this devastating debunking of the promotion of an all voluntary retirement savings political strategy |
and the Mean trait.
Here he is in CAS.
His first order of business as a teen? Why, trollin’ teh intarwebs, of course.
Closely followed by trying to terrify Ella with tales of deadly cowplants, but Ella just smiles.
So as we all know, Claire was one of the fittest adults EVER, but according to this game she can no longer go for a peaceful jog without endangering her health because she’s OLD. wtf is this ageist bullshit
Apparently this distance between Ella’s bed and the nightlight is TOO FAR because a fucking monster woke the kids up in the middle of the night. It was invisible though, even when the children were the active Sims.???
Arnold got the responsibility of spraying the bed. I don’t know why he’s cheering about it. Or why Josh looks so sad.
One of Britta’s work-from-home tasks the next day was to be mischievous to five different Sims. This didn’t actually count, I just thought it was funny.
Arnold was too much of a dumbass to take a shower before going to school, and when he came home again, he was ANGRY.
I mean, Angry +50 is quite a lot of angry.
Yes Arnold. Your life is ruined because you ate a salad. Really.
Promotion for Morgan! She enters the Charity Organiser branch, because it seemed far better-suited for a Good Sim than the seedy world of electoral politics. Just don’t tell Morgan how your average charity structures their budget.
Apparently Claire can’t use her treadmill any more either. This is like all of Claire’s reasons for living being taken away from her here!
At least she has one reason still left to her.
Ummmmmm what. You might need a willing parner first. And probably to be older than 13 years old?
Ughhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh
Britta: Could you seriously stop making messes every spare moment? It is actually the worst. No one wants or enjoys this. why did you make this action so fucking frequent EA, why
Out of nowhere, Arnold decided to “insult” his mother. Well, one of his mothers.
Then he decided to convince his little brother to believe in giant chickens. “I’m not just talking about giant fish, little bro… chickens.”
(You can see Morgan thinking, “Should I be intervening here? …nah.”)
Arnold: You see, bro, when the Simgod was creating our planet she decided she should put in secret things, scary things, to leap out suddenly and terrify naughty little boys…
Arnold: Like GHOSTS!
Josh: bye
Morgan: That story was really lacking in narrative cohesion. What happened to the chickens?
Maaaaan do I regret putting this radio in a hallway.
Arnold: Hey mama! You got crabs!
Britta: excuse me
She takes no shit.
Siobhan Fyres drops in for a visit… and she is ANGRY.
Possibly because she got ripped off for §25 by Morgan. Just some unconfirmed speculation tho
Siobhan: Don’t ever fall in love, kiddo! It’ll only end in tears!
Ella: YOU’RE A LIAR
Ella: and lol why you so angry anyway lololol
Britta still does not appreciate Morgan’s efforts to prank her.
This townie’s dress sense looks like something out of TS2.
This is Britta’s “I created a meme” face.
fuckin’ Bob Pancakes, who no one in this household has ever met before, texts Arnold to congratulate him for being friends with his own mum.
Arnold: Hey nan, how does it feel to be so old that you come from a time that PRE-DATES COMPUTERS?!
Claire: We had computers…
Because Arnold is Mean, he loooooooves trollin’ people on teh intarweb forums.
Arnold had a whim to be mean to Claire.
Claire took it real well, as you can see.
He followed that up with a bit of meanness to his little brother, because why not.
Then after school, he tried to tell Ella that monsters are real. I don’t think he succeeded.
Yay!
Yay again!
They all got a school project…
And because Arnold likes to be really helpful, he has this Sad +50 moodlet.
Apparently this school project required Britta to learn about Rocket Science. Which I did not know was a skill. You can see how comfortable she looks with the material.
You can see that Arnold looks even MORE thrilled with Claire’s knowledge of robotics.
It wasn’t until 5pm that Morgan got home from work, but she was there to help Josh with his project EVENTUALLY.
Arnold just outright lets his grandma finish his project for him because that’s how he rolls.
Josh started bullying Ella for some reason.
AND THEN IT WAS HIS BIRTHDAY!!
Josh: Egads! My hairdo is horrible!
Here he is, all cleaned up! He seems to have inherited a more evenly split set of genes, in contrast to Arnold who seems more of a dark-haired male Morgan. Josh rolled the Serial Romantic aspiration and the Dance Machine trait.Pretty in pink! Gemma Arterton displays her toned legs in flirty frock as she parties at Cannes Film Festival
While the Cannes Film Festival is famed for its ostentatious fashions, Gemma Arterton kept things simple on Friday.
The brunette beauty attended the annual Charles Finch dinner at the luxury Hotel du Cap Eden Roc where she stood out from the crowd in a flirty pink dress which perfectly flattered her slim figure.
A scalloped hem and delicate cap sleeves gave the ensemble a fresh look, while her matching pink heels complemented her choice.
Flirty fun: Gemma Arterton glowed in a fun, flirty pink dress at the Charles Finch dinner at the Cannes Film Festival on Friday
And it was clear Gemma knew she looked good, from the confident smile she flashed.
It's a busy time for Gemma, who just last month was in London to promote her latest film, The Voices with Ryan Reynolds.
Party time: Gemma looked ready to party as she chose a simple yet fun dress rather than the OTT gowns Cannes is known for
Pale and interesting: Gemma's pale pink dress perfectly flattered her skin tone and her matching shoes completed the fun look
Director Marjane Satrapi joined her stars on the red carpet at Sundance London Film Festival ahead of the screening of the American-German comedy crime horror thriller.
The film follows Reynold’s mentally ill Jerry, a disturbed factory worker who isn’t taking his medication so therefore believes his cat and dog are speaking to him, with the former telling him to become a serial killer, and the latter, insisting his master is good.
At the same time Jerry yearns for attention from a woman in accounting and soon their relationship takes a sudden, murderous turn, where he ultimately finds his salvation.
English roses: Gemma posed with fellow British actress Lily James at the bash
Rising star: The Downton Abbey actress is set to hit the big time thanks to her upcoming role in Cinderella
Anna Kendrick, Jacki Weaver and Gulliver McGrath also star in the film which Gemma describes as bizarre
‘I love all things bizarre and dark but I never ever get offered things like that,’ Arterton said at the premiere on Saturday night. 'So I read it and thought, “This is the sort of thing that I love”. I thought it was so funny and very moving.'
Speaking of her Canadian co-star, Gemma said: ‘He's incredible in this movie, it's one of his best performances. He's just so easy to work with, it's a hard part to play and he just did it with such grace, really top class.'
Style star: Naomi Watts has been impressing with her fashion choices while at the Cannes Film Festival
Keeping busy: Naomi has been spotted at almost every party so far this week but still looked bright and cheerful
Natural: Watts and Arterton both chose minimal make-up for the bash and still looked absolutely stunning
But Gemma wasn't on duty on Friday and looked in the mood for fun at the annual bash.
The private dinner is renowned for attracting top talent and this year was no different.
Naomi Watts, who has been ubiquitous at this year's festival, was elegant in a lace white dress which fell to below her knees.
He's back: Harvey Weinstein missed the premiere of his much derided Grace of Monaco movie but he arrived in Cannes in time for the bash
Man of the night: Charles Finch posed with Naomi and actor Edward North at his annual Charles Finch Filmmakers Dinner
Her blonde hair was pulled back from her face and she appeared to have ditched the hair extensions she was wearing earlier in the week.
Downton Abbey's Lily James was pretty in a demure blue dress as she posed on the outside deck of the luxury hotel.
No doubt the star was in the mood to celebrate after the first teaser trailer for her new movie Cinderella - directed by Kenneth Branagh - was released on Thursday.
Rare outing: Edward Norton and wife Shauna Robertson made a rare public appearance together at the dinner
Keeping it casual: Zhang Zyi was laid back but still managed to look chic at the bash
Getting cosy: Sheherazade Goldsmith cuddled up to her partner Alfonso Cuaron at the bash
Power couples: Alfonso and Sheherazade and Edward and Shauna caught up at the event in Cannes
Doctor Who hearttrob Matt smith was a welcome addition, looking dapper in his dark suit as did father and son duo Bryan and Tara Ferry.
Oscar winning Gravity director Alfonso Cuaron attended with his partner Sheherazade Goldsmith.
And publicity shy Edward Norton made a rare appearance with his wife Shauna Robertson.
Romantic lunch: Later, Edward and his wife were seen enjoying a lunch upstairs, just the two of them
Edward looked suave in a shiny grey suit, while his wife Shauna looked gorgeous in a beige and gold frilled frock.
The pair were later seen tucking into a quiet lunch together on a veranda.
Working the crowd: Norton took to the stage at the dinner, looking elegant in a grey suit
Trying out a new pose? Matt Smith ruined his dapper look with a silly new pose
Like father, like son: Tara Ferry joined his father Bryan at the dinner, and looked strikingly similar to him in a dark suit
Striking: Felicitas Rombold stood out in an orange dress as she and Daniel Bruhl arrived at the event
Party time: Lawrence Bender and Heather Kerzner also attended the annual Charles Finch Filmmakers Dinner during the 67th Cannes Film Festival at Hotel du Cap-Eden-RocLawyers for seven former paratroopers facing questioning over the 1972 killings are seeking a judicial review of PSNI’s handling of the investigation
Lawyers for seven former paratroopers facing questioning over the 1972 Bloody Sunday killings have begun legal action against the police, at the high court in London.
Papers seeking a judicial review of the way in which Police Service of Northern Ireland detectives are conducting their historical inquiry were lodged with the administrative court on Wednesday.
In their application, handled by a City firm of solicitors, the ex-paratroopers’ identities are protected under the anonymous letters of the alphabet given to the soldiers during the Saville inquiry into the shootings in Derry, which left 14 civil rights protesters dead.
Bloody Sunday investigators arrest 66-year-old former soldier Read more
The PSNI on Wednesday evening released a former member of the Parachute Regiment, identified only as Lance Cpl J, after interviewing him in Belfast for several days.
The other ex-paratroopers are understood to be seeking advance notice from the PSNI of any request for police interviews over the shootings and want questioning to take place at local police stations near their homes in England.
Asked about the legal action launched by the soldiers, a PSNI spokesman said: “It would be inappropriate to comment.”
An MoD spokesperson said: “We are aware that an application for judicial review has been submitted by a number of former soldiers against the Police Service of Northern Ireland in connection with their ongoing investigation into the events of Bloody Sunday.
“That action has been taken by the soldiers concerned on the advice of their independent legal representatives. The Ministry of Defence is not a party to these proceedings.”
If former Parachute Regiment soldiers are convicted of murder on Bloody Sunday, their sentencing will create a political dilemma. Under the terms of the Good Friday agreement, the reduced, maximum term of two years for scheduled offences was backdated only to the beginning of direct rule from Westminster.
Bloody Sunday took place in January 1972, before the Stormont executive was replaced. Lawyers for any paratrooper convicted could nonetheless apply for a royal pardon for their client or for the early release scheme to be applied in their case.
The threatened arrests of more ex-paratroopers has provoked anger among many former soldiers who have complained about what they say is persecution of security personnel.
The Facebook account of the Parachute Regimental Association carries a message from the colonel commandant of the regiment, Lieut Gen John Lorimer. It says: “While the regiment cannot comment on an ongoing PSNI investigation it is important that the wider regiment knows that RHQ [regimental headquarters] is in communication with the appropriate department within the MoD and army HQ; and that the former member of the regiment [who was arrested] is being offered the appropriate support.
“The colonel commandant appreciates that this is a difficult time for both the veteran and his family, and assures them of our support while this case is being investigated. He would also like to remind all our former servicemen that RHQ is able to offer support should it be required.”
Daniel Holder, of the Belfast-based human rights organisation the Committee on the Administration of Justice, said: “Whilst it is argued there is too much focus on the activities of the state the reality is that legacy investigations have not led to one single conviction of a solider or police officer since the 1998 Good Friday agreement. This is despite the emergence of abundant evidence of state wrongdoing. To date there has been virtual impunity.
“In relation to unresolved Troubles murders, HM Inspector of Constabulary looked at the numerous referrals for further investigation made by the now stood-down police historical inquiries team. It found that not one of the cases taken forward was a state involvement case, and that the unit had given such preferential treatment to state cases that it had acted unlawfully.
“Where human rights violations are concerned, accountability is vital for non-recurrence. Last December, the UK government agreed to set up a new system to investigate the past under the Stormont House agreement, yet in recent months has sought to introduce unworkable ministerial ‘national security’ vetoes into the implementation legislation. We need the past to be dealt with in good faith and will be keeping an eye on developments going forward.”
Earlier this week, Northern Ireland’s Public Prosecution Service confirmed that another retired soldier, Dennis Hutchings, 74, who lives in Cornwall, is to be prosecuted for attempted murder.
John Patrick Cuningham, who had learning difficulties, was shot dead in 1974 by an army patrol in Benburb, a village on the border betwen Counties Armagh and Tyrone. Hutchings is the first ex-soldier to be charged with Troubles-related offences since the signing of the Good Friday agreement in 1998.A retired school teacher from Canada was among 10 people who were killed when terrorists opened fire in what appeared to be targeted attacks against tourists and police in Karak, Jordan.
Canadian woman, Linda Vatcher, 62, died Sunday after dozens of people were attacked, according to Canada's global affairs spokesman, John Babcock.
Vatcher, who was a retired elementary school teacher, was visiting her son, Chris, who works in Jordan, at the time of the attack, according to her cousin Barb Rhymes.
Rhymes said Vatcher was a widow and mother of two adult sons from Burgeo, Newfoundland. Her son, Chris, was also injured in the attack.
'She was very friendly, outgoing. She was nice to everyone. A friend to all,' Rhymes said from Burgeo, a remote town of 1,400 people on Canada's East Coast.
'It's devastating. It has hit the town hard. My mind is not there right now. She was a beautiful person.'
Canadian woman, Linda Vatcher (pictured), 62, was among 10 people killed when terrorists opened fire in what appeared to be targeted attacks against tourists and police, according to Canada's global affairs spokesman, John Babcock
Shots rang out in different parts of Karak, before a group of gunmen fled to the city's medieval castle, where several tourists were held hostage inside. Seven police officers and two Jordanian civilians were also killed in the attack in Karak
Seven police officers and two Jordanian civilians were also killed in the attack in Karak, a tourist destination famous for its castle about 70 miles south of the capital of Amman, according to Jordan's general security department.
At least 34 people were wounded in the day's violence, which was one of the bloodiest attacks in Jordan in recent memory.
Security officials announced late Sunday, several hours after reports of the first shooting, that the operation had ended and that four gunmen were killed. They said troops continued to search the area.
The officials said large amounts of weapons had been seized. They made no reference to local media reports that at one point, the attackers had held hostages.
Jordanian security forces and their armoured vehicles stand guard in front of Karak Castle after gunmen assaulted Jordanian police in a series of attacks Sunday
Karak Castle where armed gunmen carried out an attack. At least 34 people were wounded in the day's violence
Jordanian policemen stand guard after ending the security operations in the vicinity of Karak Castle
Gunmen entered the castle, perched on top of a hill, and used one of the towers to fire at a nearby police station
A Canadian woman was killed in a shootout between police and armed men who holed themselves up in a medieval castle in southern Jordan
The shootings were the latest in a series of attacks that have challenged this pro-Western kingdom's claim to be an oasis of calm in a region threatened by Islamic extremists.
Shots broke out in different areas of Karak before the gunmen fled to the city's medieval castle, where several tourists inside were taken hostage.
Police surrounded the castle and stormed the fortress, rescuing hostages who were trapped inside.
Vatcher's (pictured) cousin said she was a retired elementary teacher and was visiting her son in Jordan where he works. Her son, Chris was also injured in attack
Vatcher's death could further hurt Jordan's embattled tourism sector, which has declined sharply since the Islamic State group seized large parts of neighboring Syria and Iraq two years ago.
'Canadian officials in Amman are actively working with local authorities to gather additional information and are providing consular assistance to Canadians at this difficult time,' Babcock said.
The Canadian Embassy in Amman issued an alert urging Canadians to avoid travel to Karak, a town in central Jordan about 140 kilometers (87 miles) south of the capital.
A witness said attackers immediately targeted tourists when they reached the castle.
'Four gunmen got out of their car' at the castle, said Wasfi al-Habashneh, a local resident. 'They opened fire at the Canadian tourists.
'The woman was killed, the other Canadian tourist escaped and hid behind a car and one of the children was injured.'
Al-Habashneh said the attackers also targeted other people. Security forces 'engaged with the gunmen and cornered the gunmen at the castle gate', he said.
Government minister and spokesman Mohammad al-Momani called it a 'cowardly terrorist attack' on state television, adding that Jordan is 'packed with terrorist organizations.'
A police patrol responded to reports of a house fire earlier on Sunday, only to be attacked by gunmen inside the home. Pictured, Jordanian police preparing to enter Karak Castle
Another security patrol was attacked. Shots were also fired at a police station in Karak Castle. Pictured, security forces outside the castle
Al-Momani also said a manhunt to 'eliminate' the gunmen had entered its final phase. He did not elaborate.
'The security forces and gendarme are in the final stage and we don't want to pre-empt news... we will be dealing with this group of terrorists and eliminate them,' he said.
The former deputy prime minister and current Senator Ayman al-Safadi told CNN there were unconfirmed reports that three of the five gunmen had been killed.
'There could be people still hiding in the building, probably not venturing out for fear of being shot,' he said, adding he did not know of any hostages at the scene.
The violence began earlier on Sunday when gunmen in different areas of the Karak governorate opened fire in short succession.
A police patrol responded to reports of a house fire in the town of Qatraneh, about 25 miles outside of the city of Karak, according to Jordan's Public Safety Directorate.
Gunmen posted inside the home ambushed the police and wounded two officers before fleeing by car, Al Jazeera reported.
Another security patrol was attacked, but no one was injured.
Shots were also fired at a police station in Karak Castle, wounding'several policemen and passerby', according to Petra.
They entered the castle, perched on top of a hill, and used one of the towers to fire at a nearby police station.
Authorities then surrounded the castle and 'launched an operation to hunt down the gunmen,' according to a statement issued by the Public Security Directorate.
Gunmen then entered the castle perched on top of a hill and used one of the towers to fire at a nearby police station (pictured, residents outside the castle)
Tourists insid the castle were taken hostage and more than two dozen people were injured (pictured), it was reported
It remains unclear just how many people were involved in the shootings. Authorities said 'five or six gunmen' were involved, but Prime Minister Prime Minister Hani Mulki said there were 10 assailants inside the castle.
Mulki, who was addressing parliament at the time of the attacks, said 'a number of security personnel' had been killed.
Video footage on social media showed security forces taking groups of young Asian tourists up the castle's steep steps to its main entrance as gunshots were heard overhead.
It remains unclear where exactly each victim was killed.
The Canadian government confirmed one of its nationals died, while another was injured.
'Our thoughts and deepest sympathies are with the family and friends of all the victims, including the Canadian killed and the Canadian who was injured in the heinous attack in Jordan,' Global Affairs spokesperson John Babcock said in an email to Global News.
The Canadian embassy in Jordan also issued a travel warning that read: 'Dear #Canadians, we advise against all travel to #Karak city until further notice due to security incident, be safe!'
The identity of the assailants was not immediately clear and no group has taken responsibility.
Jordanian police inspect the scene in Qatraneh where attackers first opened fire. The identity of the assailants remains unclear and no group has taken responsibility
Gunmen opened fire in different parts of the governorate of Karak. Officers were first targeted in Qatraneh, before shots rang out at a medieval castle in the city of Karak, about 70 miles south of the capital, Amman
Jordan is one of the few Arab states that have taken part in a U.S.-led air campaign against Islamic State militants holding territory in Syria.
But many Jordanians oppose their country's involvement, saying it has led to the killing of fellow Muslims and raised security threats inside Jordan.
Officials worry about radical Islam's growing profile in Jordan and support in impoverished areas for militant groups.
Three American service members were killed as they approached the gate at the Prince Faisal airbase in Al Jafr in November,CNN reported.MAYOR Tom Tate and partners are on track to build a Surfers Paradise high-rise after snaring a key component of their planned development site from the State Government.
They are paying $2.05 million for 811sqm in Peninsular Drive that takes in part of the ground-level carpark of the defunct Surfers Paradise Bowls Club.
media_camera Artists impression of Waterglow tower in Surfers Paradise
Cr Tate, with hotel industry figure Kelvin Gersbach and accountant Barry Pinkstone, now hopes to purchase another 1833sqm owned by the council he leads.
The group, which signed for the land on March 6 — three days after tenders for it closed — already owns 2644sqm of adjoining bowls club land.
Two years ago the Tate company gained the nod for Waterglow, a 56-level apartment tower, an approval that took in their land and the State Government and city council sites.
In the Media Club Mayoral Candidate debate last week, Cr Tate told ratepayers he would not make a pre-election pledge to sell his interest in the site and did not reveal that interest had expanded until after Saturday’s election.
media_camera Mayor Tom Tate and his wife Ruth.
Yesterday he was defensive when asked about his involvement in negotiating the deal, saying he was a “minority shareholder” whose involvement in the sale negotiation was, “Nil, no, none”.
Company searches showed Cr Tate is a director of at least five companies related to the development and its partners.
A council spokesman yesterday said the full council would decide whether the last piece of the Waterglow site would be placed on the open market.
media_camera Kelvin Gersbach.
“(The possible sale) will be subject to a report to council if/when an application to purchase is further advanced by the adjoining owner,” a statement from the media department said.
“Full council would need to determine that the site is for sale... there is no current valuation of the land for the purposes of disposal.”
Colliers International director of investment James Crawford said it was difficult to judge the sale, worth $2527.74/sqm, against others in the suburb.
media_camera James Crawford from Colliers International.
“But it seems on face value to be a good price for the property,” he said.
LJ Hooker Surfers Paradise principal of project Tony Trpeski agreed the price per square metre was “healthy” for the suburb.
If the council agrees to sell the ratepayer-owned section of land at the same value, it would reap $4.6 million.
Mr Gersbach yesterday said a meeting would be held with the council this week over the purchase of its site.
“We are hoping to buy the council land but our plans are not dependent on it,” he said.
“The price we are asked to pay has to be a financially viable one for us.”
The State Government land, acquired via the Department of Natural Resources in 2001, was put to tender last month through Steven King, of Ray White Commercial.
Mr Gersbach said he and his partners initially offered $1.5 million but they were told to ‘revisit’ their offer and moved it to $2.05 million.
Mr King yesterday said there had been “a fair bit of interest” in the property but could not say anything else as the State Government had asked him not to.
The deal settles on April 6.DESCRIPTION
This my first mod for the Nintendo Switch especially for the left Joycon controller. Currently has 8 different designs.
All of them have a little half-sphere pivot on the bottom to allow the mod to act almost like an actual dpad.
Now, two smaller versions are added.
Since the face buttons are a bit asymmetrical, each of the dpad has a little nub on the side of the "UP" button as a guide to install properly.
NOTE
The lack of dpad is quite frustrating for most people. I understand that Nintendo choose that decision for the sake of local multiplayer but they should consider an alternative such as selling a left joycon with dpad or a way to swap the face buttons with dpad.
Thanks to Nintendo Switch model currently available, making this mod is easy as pie.
Your support will be appreciated.
Also, if you don't have 3D printer, go to http://3dhubs.refr.cc/8BSLKTK for quick and easy 3D printing service. Thanks.BEIRUT -- Syrian government forces poised for the final sweep to take the last rebel holdouts in eastern Aleppo on Tuesday as the international community and aid agencies appealed that the lives of thousands of civilians who have “nowhere safe to run” be spared and that those fighting to capture the rebel enclave refrain from atrocities.
The appeals came as United Nations human rights officials said they had credible reports that pro-Syrian government forces had killed 82 civilians in execution-style murders -- including women and children -- in just the last two days of the blitz on eastern Aleppo.
“In all as of yesterday (Monday) evening we have received reports of pro-government forces killing at least 82 civilians, including 11 women and 13 children, in four different neighbourhoods,” U.N. human rights office spokesman Rupert Colville said, according to the Reuters news agency. He said “many more” could have met the same fate, but the evidence gathered pointed to at least the 82 deaths documented.
Hearing from Aleppo's war-weary residents
“The reports we had are of people being shot in the street trying to flee and shot in their homes,” Colville said.
Jens Laerke, aother U.N. humanitarian spokesman, was quoted by Reuters as saying Aleppo was witnessing “a complete meltdown of humanity.”
Colville said thousands of people were believed to be holed up in less than one square mile of territory -- a “hellish corner” -- still held by rebel forces.
The dramatic appeals came a day after the Syrian military announced it now holds 99 percent of the former rebel neighborhoods of Aleppo, signaling an impending end to the rebels’ four-year hold over parts of the city as the final hours of the battle play out.
Retaking Aleppo, which has been divided between rebel- and government-controlled zones since 2012, would be President Bashar Assad’s biggest victory yet in the country’s civil war. Aleppo has long been regarded as a major gateway between Turkey and Syria.
But a government win in Aleppo does not end the conflict -- significant parts of Syria are still outside government control and huge swaths of the country are a devastated waste-land. More than a quarter of a million people have been killed.
CBS News correspondent Debora Patta says the battle for Aleppo has stretched the Syrian forces so thin, that the regime lost control of another small, but highly symbolic prize; the ancient city of Palmyra, which the government vowed it would never lose again, is back under the control of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS).
Earlier this year, and with much fanfare, Syrian and Russian forces declared ISIS would never come back to the largely-gutted UNESCO World Heritage site. But the attention focused on Aleppo meant the Islamic extremists’ absence was to last just nine months.
The International Committee of the Red Cross in a statement on Tuesday urged all fighting in Aleppo to spare civilian lives. It said thousands of people with no part in the violence “have literally nowhere safe to run.”
“In order for this to happen, we appeal to the parties to put humanity ahead of military objectives”, said ICRC’s head of delegation in Syria, Marianne Gasser, who is currently in Aleppo. “We stand ready to oversee the implementation of any mutual agreement that puts civilians first. We cannot urge this strongly enough: this must happen.”
U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said in a statement late Monday that he is alarmed over reports of atrocities against a large number of civilians, including women and children, in the past hours in Aleppo. While stressing that the United Nations is not able to independently verify these reports, the U.N. chief said he conveyed his grave concern to the relevant parties.
Aleppo civilians' desperate scramble to escape devastation
Ban also said the U.N. underlines the obligation of all parties on the ground to protect civilians and abide by international humanitarian and human rights law, adding that “this is particularly the responsibility of the Syrian government and its allies.”
In Moscow, which has been Assad’s major ally in the war, the Defense Ministry said Tuesday that Syrian forces now control ‘more than 98 percent” of Aleppo and the rebels are holding out a neighborhood roughly the size of 1 square mile.
Several Syrian opposition activists claimed government forces were carrying out summary killings of rebels in the streets in neighborhoods captured on Monday but the Syrian military denied the claims, saying such allegations were “a desperate attempt” to try gain international sympathy.
Turkey’s Deputy Prime Minister Numan Kurtulmus’ called for an immediate cease-fire and if that is too late, he called on the international community, European countries, regional countries and Turkey to organize an international aid convoy to people in need in Aleppo.
On Monday, staff members of the last remaining clinic in rebel-held territory in Aleppo huddled in a shelter as Syrian government forces pushed in. “Those killed and wounded are left on the streets,” said the clinic’s administrator, Mohammed Abu Rajab.
“The collapse is terrifying,” said Bassam Haj Mustafa, a rebel spokesman in contact with fighters in the city. Opposition fighters were “doing their best to defend what is left,” he added.
Rami Abdurrahman, who heads the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, said more than 60 civilians and fighters were killed in rebel-held neighborhoods of Aleppo on Monday alone.Scientists from around the world have spent decades trying to answer the question: What happens when oil spills in ice?
As global temperatures climb and the Arctic sea ice melts, shipping in the Arctic is on the rise and oil and gas companies are eyeing further development of the vast resources of the North.
But when oil inevitably spills in the Arctic, scientists say it's going to be an entirely different scenario from what has played out in the Gulf of Mexico. Oil spills are nasty business no matter what, but when sub-zero temperatures, persistent darkness, remote locations and sea ice are thrown into the mix, the situation becomes exponentially more complex.
Despite the years of research into what happens when oil spills in ice, there remain more questions than answers. The problem, of course, is that no country is raising its hand to try spilling oil into the pristine Arctic environment to study what happens. The small spills that have occurred in the name of science, particularly in Norway, have been in controlled environments—far from the reality of what an Arctic spill could look like, with sparse resources, weather that is unpredictable at best and long, unforgiving periods of darkness.
An oil spill in the Arctic could happen in a number of ways. It could be a cruise ship that's run aground while passengers are looking at a sea bird colony. It could be a container ship that has its hull pierced below the water's surface. Or it could be a drilling disaster.
No matter the scenario, there are important questions to be asking now, before it's too late, such as what do we know about oil and ice? And what do we still not know?
What is it that makes ice so complicated?
Sea ice isn't some stable, uniform sheath that covers the Arctic Ocean. It shifts along cracks, called leads, and can vary greatly in thickness. In the lower reaches of the Arctic, the ice melts for a brief window in the summer, and then, within days, re-forms, first appearing like a greasy stain on the ocean's surface before it thickens.
It also doesn't stand still. Depending on the season, ice can drift at a rate exceeding 50 kilometers a day—even more at times. Ice north of Tuktoyaktuk, a village in Canada's Northwest Territories, was tracked over 2,000 kilometers between mid-October 2007 and mid-May 2008. That's nearly the distance between New York City and Miami.
As the Arctic warms, the thick sea ice that historically stuck around from year to year is melting and being replaced by annual sea ice that comes and goes with the seasons. This ice is thinner and more mobile, drifting faster than it did 100 years ago.
What are the different types of ice?
Land-fast ice is frozen along the shore, partially frozen to the seabed in shallow water, or anchored to underwater ridges in deeper water. But when severe storms come along—an increasing reality as there is more open ocean due to climate change—the land-fast ice can break away, becoming...
Drift Ice, which floats freely on the surface without any stable connection to land.
Pack Ice is drift ice that's thicker, though warming temperatures are changing the nature of this ice. A 2009 study found that from 1980 to 2008, mean Arctic sea ice thickness dropped from nearly 12 feet to just over six feet.
How difficult is it to respond to an accident in the Arctic?
In a word: very. That's why oil companies talk a lot about the precautions they're taking to avoid a spill.
But in the event that something did go wrong and responders weren't in position to deal with it immediately, the remote locations could result in long lag times between spill and response—time during which the oil could drift or continue to leak.
Compare the Arctic with the Gulf of Mexico. When oil spills in the Gulf, resources are nearby. And yet, in BP's Deepwater Horizon Spill five years ago, there were shortages of housing for responders. While some of the work continued around the clock in that disaster, the clean-up work on other spills in the Gulf has mostly taken place during daylight.
In the Arctic, daylight is not an option for much of the year. In Barrow, Alaska, the northernmost town in the U.S., the sun sets in November and does not rise above the horizon again for more than two months. At the North Pole, the darkness lasts from early October until early March. The weather can also be extreme. Spill responders can't work in temperatures colder than -40° Fahrenheit. As hard as that may be to imagine, it can be the reality in the Arctic.
What does this mean for spilled oil?
It all depends on a number of variables—such as when in the year the oil spills or the type of ice in the area. If oil spills in open water, there are models that can be used to track where it is likely to go. If it's during a season when there is sunlight, planes can locate it visually. Then it's not all that different from a spill that could happen anywhere in the U.S. (except for the lack of regional resources and the cold).
But when there is ice in the area—and for most of the year there is—it's an entirely different scenario.
What's a best-case scenario?
Oil spilled under new ice that is re-forming and expanding can become encapsulated—or frozen—into the undersurface of the ice. This actually would be a better-case scenario (because there is no "best-case scenario" for an oil spill), according to C.J. Beegle-Kraus, a senior scientist at Sintef, an independent Norwegian research organization. Sintef has been conducting experiments and modeling to determine what happens to oil in ice. She explains that if oil were spilled during the drilling process, first responders would be on |
player that I liked in those drills is a defensive back, so more on that later. But to clarify, I think Patterson has vision, burst and an ability to hit the seam with authority.
Stephen Burton on the other hand looked like an average at best returner. I don't think he can keep moving upfield when using his agility to change direction and has a limited ability to hit a second gear.
Burton seems to be playing mostly the split end snaps even though he was a flanker in the offense last year. I don't think that's a good fit for him, because he still needs to work on creating separation at the snap. He got stonewalled by Rhodes and needs more buildup to get to his speed. He still looked good as a blocker (even getting Desmond Bishop on what was probably a cheap shot after the whistle, but also the right thing to do in a game situation), and I suspect his best contribution on special teams will be clearing the way for other ballcarriers.
As bad a receiver as I think LaMark Brown is or could be, he's a fine special-teamer. It's hard to get off his blocks and he pops into them well. For the most part he seems to understand his assignment and coordinates well with other members of the units to create seams. On the other side of the ball, he also can lay in some punishment.
Had I paid more attention to the receivers, I could give a more complete picture of his day, but my intuition was that it was better than it was worse, even when eliminating his special teams contributions.
It looks like Rodney Smith was briefly going to moonlight on the second kickoff unit after starting the day in walkthroughs on the third unit, but evidently forgot. That error aside, Smith looks to be—as far as anyone can tell on the sideline—more committed to improving his game than some of the other receivers on the roster, Erik Highsmith and Chris Summers in particular. He lost the battle against Raymond in the air for the ball, which is in some part on him, but it looks like he's incorporating some work into his break. I think there's some long-term improvement in his future—naturally a wild prognostication.
Joe Webb is looking alright in special teams. As a return blocker, he seems to be on point, but is still working on communication and getting his assignments. I'd call those mixed, but upward-looking reviews.
I didn't catch much of him as a receiver today, but he did drop the first pass I've seen him drop so far (again, haven't watched him like a hawk), but that was less on him—he dove for it and palmed it with one hand without making the catch, which looked like a batted pass. Hardly a drop under most people's definitions.
I also did not see much of Adam Thielen, but I do note he cracked a special teams unit. That is good for him, but he'll have to move from the third kickoff unit to something more meaningful.
Chris Summers did not look impressive to me. Despite his size and speed, he didn't look explosive throughout his routes and even dogged it a little. I don't want to overstate that, but he didn't fight for his routes.
Erik Highsmith looked much the same, and he didn't run through his routes with the speed that he has or should run with.
Running Backs
Adrian Peterson broke off some runs, but we know he'll be fine and he didn't get too many reps.
Toby Gerhart was the unfortunate victim of the first play, when Erin Henderson broke through the line with ease and crushed him. Otherwise, Gerhart looked OK, running a little faster it seems than last year. In 9s vs. 7s, it didn't look like he was getting to the edge with the speed he wanted, but he for the most part read his blocks well. He exhibits patience, but could do with better change-of-direction.
Joe Banyard looked great. Watching his film from college, I was worried that he might not stick it through the tackles and get difficult yardage, and this particularly concerned me on what was actually a positive play, when he bounced around to the outside and gained serious yardage until the third team safeties stopped him. But in goal line drills and other situations, he showed a willingness to run into a mess and even attempted to move the pile. Didn't do a bad job at all.
Bradley Randle moved ahead of Jerodis Williams, but while he shows perhaps a bit more as a punt returner I want to see more of him from scrimmage. He's quick but still seems to get caught up in tackles. He's always gaining a couple of yards because he can fall forward without many who stop him from doing so, but he's not making space for himself.
As a punt returner in drills, he looked fairly decent. He didn't gain as many yards as Jerodis Williams looked to have, but Williams has more bad habits that he might need to break.
Jerodis Williams had some shining moments as a runner, but not enough, I think, to reinstall him ahead of Randle just yet. He gained a few more yards (net and gross) but also had more tackles for loss that were on his decisionmaking.
It's the same story with him as a punt returner, where he's far too willing to cut back and back and back before moving forward.
Jerome Felton was gone, so it was time for Zach Line to step up. But instead of putting him in first or even second snaps consistently, they flexed tight ends. Still, Line looks like a more natural blocker than I expected but he still has some fundamentals to work on. His footwork looks like it's getting better.
Offensive Line
Did not make notes on the offensive line.
Tight ends
Kyle Rudolph is developing into the full package as a tight end. Well known for his pass-catching, Rudolph excels in a lot of phases of the passing game, including route-running, use of hands to create separation, ball tracking and an excellent catch radius. Those were all on display, and he looks much more precise than other tight ends. He will want to drill on getting his hands up even later to catch balls and getting out of tighter man coverage, but he's been doing well.
As a blocker, Rudolph is playing with better leverage than the beginning of 2012 and more careful about his hand placement, both in pass protection and run blocking. I didn't see him do this at full speed, so it's a concern he should resolve when I look for it again.
John Carlson is a more imprecise runner than I thought, but also a better pass-catcher than I thought. Carlson is better than the other tight ends below him in keeping his footwork throughout the route and placing sharp cuts, but it still surprised me. He has demonstrated great hands in practice and he knows how to secure the ball without using his body.
Getting open in team drills gives room for optimism regarding Carlson's season. He looked somewhat fluid as a blocker, but still looks like he needs to think through the block.
Rhett Ellison still needs to develop in catching passes, but is an excellent blocker (to no one's surprise). I noted that while Ellison found ways to create some separation at the break by sinking and planting, he still has to play with much more disciplined route-running.
Chase Ford looked bad in the drill, double-catching more than one pass and definitively dropping two. He didn't have a lot of passes thrown his way, so it looks a fair bit worse. But when it came time for plays from scrimmage Ford was relatively impressive, and caught two touchdown passes, one of them relatively deep. He also saved a bad pass from Vandenberg to score the touchdown.
He got hit hard during drills and was slow to stand up, but is fine.
Colin Anderson is more precise than Ford as a runner and that could be the difference. Ford looked a little better at blocking, too. Anderson will need to step up.
Defense
Depth Chart
RDE: Jared Allen, Everson Griffen, George Johnson, Collins Ukwu, Marquise Jackson
UT: Kevin Williams, Christian Ballard, Sharrif Floyd, Everett Dawkins
NT: Letroy Guion, Fred Evans, Chase Baker, Anthony McCloud
LDE: Brian Robison, D'Aundre Reed, Lawrence Jackson
CB: Josh Robinson, Xavier Rhodes, Jacob Lacey, Roderick Williams, Greg McCoy
CB: Chris Cook, A.J. Jefferson, Brandon Burton, Bobby Felder
SLB: Chad Greenway, Larry Dean, Tyrone McKenzie
MLB: Erin Henderson, Audie Cole, Michael Mauti
WLB: Marvin Mitchell, Desmond Bishop, Gerald Hodges
S: Jamarca Sanford, Mistral Raymond, Andrew Sendejo
S: Harrison Smith, Robert Blanton, Brandan Bishop, Darius Eubanks
Secondary
I'm starting with safety, because why not.
I didn't see much of Harrison Smith, so there's not much to write.
Jamarca Sanford looked generally good, but did give up one good pass (forgot who it was from, probably Ponder). He seems to have improved in coverage in general, but would be much more highly regarded if he didn't keep dropping interceptions.
Both Sanford and Smith looked solid in the run fits, and alternated between who played in the box and/or manned the alley. Neither of them really made a play as far as I could tell in the 9s vs. 7s, and not to their detriment. The linebackers were playing very, very well.
I saw Mistral Raymond everywhere, but never in a play situation. That sort of thing happens, but I was baffled when I got to my notes of him and only saw special teams notes, where he and Gerald Hodges had serious communication issues and he in particular did not block the backside of the returners very well.
Robert Blanton is quick becoming a favorite of mine, and his interception return (probably a touchdown) was an instance of being in the right place at the right time, as well as knowing how to react. He has generally reacted well to the quarterback and the ball thrown in the air, breaking before the ball leaves the quarterback's hands. It makes it look like he's abandoning coverage when he's really just reading well and playing how a zone player should play.
Andrew Sendejo has looked good in the past, but I did not see enough of him today to do an accurate report. In kickoff drills, he did make a few mistakes that would have led to a play downed inside the 20. That needs to be corrected soon for him.
I noted that Darius Eubanks took snaps with the second team in 9s vs. 7s, but he did not take those snaps in walkthroughs, simply rotating with Bishop on the third team. Until he takes those spots in walkthroughs, I'll just assume the coaches are finding creative ways to make sure that players at the bottom of the roster are getting reps, and against good competition.
He's a guy I want to see more of in the run game simply because he has the background for it as a larger safety who used to be a linebacker. I didn't see enough to comment, however.
At cornerback, I have fewer notes on coverage and more on special teams. I still haven't seen anything bad or good from Chris Cook, but this is largely coincidence (I swear) four days in because he never lines up on the side of the field I am on or have a good angle to watch. Jennings is getting the best of him for the most part, but the other receivers don't seem to be giving him trouble.
Josh Robinson is fun to watch. He's been doing a good job breaking up passes and getting to the ball, and playing much better than his rookie season. Today, some decent work on positioning and at least one deflection. Like I mentioned above, he has to read the fakes better, and Greg Jennings works him when he has the opportunity. Robinson isn't afraid of size, but definitely needs seasoning.
As a returner, Robinson was OK today in drills. I was not close enough or attentive enough to see if the bobbling problem continued, so I just looked at his running. It was not bad, but it wasn't great. A reasonable option at kick returner if Patterson or the other good returner can't do it for whatever reason.
This is the first day I've noticed problems with Xavier Rhodes, and credit goes to a friend from camp for actually drawing my eyes to it. While Rhodes continues to be dominant in press coverage, (like I mentioned with Burton above), he needs to do a better job maintaining coverage principles when in "off" assignments, whether or not is in man or zone. He's too willing to push around receivers, and that will lead to flags until he learns to hide it from officials (think Charles Woodson or Darrelle Revis).
It's not so much that he has difficult with leverage and angles, but he's not doing a good job reading the receiver out of the snap and seems to make up for it by pounding them. Once he has a read, he's generally pretty good. I like the attitude, but he needs to learn when it's appropriate.
A.J. Jefferson is turning from decent depth into excellent depth, if his performances in four days of practice are any indication. He's stayed in position throughout routes, played on the ball and helped create turnovers with deflections and if I recall correctly an interception on a previous day.
Jefferson was also an adequate option at returner. If Robinson's slight catching issues are a problem, then Jefferson is the next best option, and that's not a problem in my eyes. I don't think he'll light up any kickoff units, but neither will he disappoint the Vikings.
Marcus Sherels and Greg McCoy were players I missed in scrimmage and drills. Sherels is the next best kick returner to Cordarrelle Patterson and may even look a little bit better right now because of Patterson's slower decisionmaking at the breaking point.
That's not to say that Sherels should be the primary kick returner even if he isn't a liability at cornerback, but that Patterson has areas to improve even in the areas of his game considered strengths.
I also missed really getting to evaluate Bobby Felder, and Jacob Lacey.
I saw a little bit of Roderick Williams, and I still think he looks like a smart player, but nothing I can recommend too strongly.
Brandon Burton keeps showing up in my notes, but never as a player who did anything good or bad. It's mostly "27 on the field." I thought he was among the best kickoff return blockers for a player his size (which would exclude players like Floyd or Brown), creating good seals and holding tight some of the interior kickoff players (like Camden Wentz, big dude).
Defensive Line
I did not evaluate any defensive linemen.
Linebackers
Erin Henderson had a great day and repeat performances like this in camp will go a long way into keeping me content until the preseason. He continuously got into the backfield to make plays against the run, both in 9s v. 7s and proper scrimmages. He hits with force, but also solid fundamentals. We did not see much of the linebackers tested in coverage, but somehow Henderson got matched up with Greg Jennings. Henderson made sure that Jennings wasn't open. He was also crucial in the goal line stands, either making it impossible for receivers to break free in the end zone or tackling running backs.
Chad Greenway, like Adrian, did not much participate in scrimmages or drills. He still does a very good job shedding blocks and occupying the run game.
I didn't see much of Marvin Mitchell, but to his credit, he rarely abandoned his gap responsibility.
As much as the Vikings are saying Desmond Bishop isn't as rusty as they thought, I don't mind keeping him on the second team for some time to season him within the system. I still think he has yet to reach his full athletic capability, and I saw some of that when he had to chop back for run support.
He doesn't seem to have a problem reading keys, but he's still getting a feel for the assignments as he transitions back to a "bubble" system of run defense instead of one of working opponents at the block. It's one he's more used to, but that's fine.
Audie Cole looked like he may have been playing with a bit too much depth in the running game, but overall looked instinctive against the run. I didn't see as much pass coverage against him, but he was good in the scrimmages at redirecting runners when need be.
Gerald Hodges was all over the map for me. Sometimes look great in the run game, I saw miscues in special teams play. Other times, I saw Hodges lose his landmark in zone coverage, but blanket a receiver on the next play. Overall a positive performance by Hodges, but not one I'd put a star next to.
Michael Mauti seems more tentative than he should be, although at the NFL level, "tentative" is a relative term. He's laying hits (which is good to see) and sticking blockers, but he still looks like he needs to absorb a bit more to be confident in his assignment despite clearly having a command of the scheme (as well as you'd expect at this point). He was pretty crucial in the defense's goal line stand against MBT and Bradley Randle, so that is to his credit.
I did not see much of Tyrone McKenzie, either.
Larry Dean looks bigger than he is. He's fast and can penetrate when need be, but he's really more of a (great) special teams guy. He looked a little like Erin in 9s, cutting into the backfield and getting to the running back, but not with nearly the consistency or pop of Erin Henderson.
Special Teams
Depth Chart
First Kickoff Unit: Marcus Sherels, Stephen Burton, Jeff Baca, Christian Ballard, Rhett Ellison, Larry Dean, Robert Blanton, Tyrone McKenzie, Andrew Sendejo, Josh Robinson
Second Kickoff Unit: Bobby Felder, Mistral Raymond, Joe Banyard, George Johnson, Gerald Hodges, LaMark Brown, Zach Line, Matt Asiata, Marquis Jackson, Xavier Rhodes
Third Kickoff Unit: Adam Thielen, Joe Webb, Brandan Bishop, Jarius Wright, Collins Ukwu, Rodney Smith, D'Aundre Reed, Larwence Jackson, Chase Ford
I am missing one on the third kickoff unit. These special teams assignments are changing quite a bit, and it looks like the coaches might like what they see in players like Bobby Felder. Should linebackers Tyrone McKenzie or Larry Dean make the team, special teams would be the reason.
First Kickoff Return: Christian Ballard, Joe Berger, Rhett Ellison, George Johnson, Matt Asiata, Jerodis Williams, Robert Blanton, Andrew Sendejo, Marvin Mitchell, Audie Cole
Second Kickoff Return: Josh Robinson, Brandan Bishop, Zach Line, Seth Olsen, Sharrif Floyd, Chase Ford, Brandon Keith, Gerald Hodges, Joe Webb, Bobby Felder
Third Kickoff Return: Jarius Wright, Marcus Sherels, Stephen Burton, George Johnson, Christian Ballard, Larry Dean, Robert Blanton, Joe Berger
I didn't catch the final two people on the third unit. Knowing that Jerome Felton is on the first unit usually and he was absent, I might really only missing one, but that might also not be the case because Berger is on two units.
Random and Inconsistently Awarded Accolades
Bubble player of the day: Chase Ford looked like he was going to be a dud when I finally got the chance to evaluate him in drills, but he came out ahead by the end of the day.
#90: Erik Highsmith did nothing.
Eat Crow: I was definitely wrong to be hyper critical of Rodney Smith
I Called It: Does talking about Bradley Randle before he moved up the chart count? I'll count it.
As Expected: Kyle Rudolph is getting more and more refined as a tight end.
Step Up: Jerome Simpson needs to contribute more when he's being lined up against second and third-string corners.
Pleasant Surprise: Erin Henderson may fit at MLB.
Uh Oh: Two stingers! Jamarca Sanford and Chase Ford both went down to hits, but got up and walked off fine.
Sorry for the longer delay.Buy Photo Connor Hauenstein, 18, of Salem, shows how to do vaping tricks on Monday, May 11, 2015. Hauenstein said he started using e-cigarettes as a way to stop smoking cigarettes. (Photo: DANIELLE PETERSON / Statesman Journal)Buy Photo
The Oregon Senate on Monday voted to ban sales of electronic cigarettes to minors and ban use of the devices in public and in workplaces.
House Bill 2546, which the Senate approved by a 22-8 vote, now goes back to the House of Representatives, which will decide whether to accept the Senate amendments.
E-cigarettes are not federally regulated, though they have been rising in popularity among youths. Anecdotally, users have said e-cigarettes help people quit smoking regular cigarettes, though that claim has not been approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
Public health advocates have been alarmed that e-cigarettes' use in places that have long been off-limits to tobacco smoke — such as restaurants, bars and malls — renormalizes a behavior that took years to shun socially.
In addition, e-juices, or the liquids used in vaping products, come in flavors as varied as candy. Besides nicotine, other harmful chemicals, including some carcinogens, have been detected in e-cigarette vapors. However, the lack of regulation makes it impossible to know exactly what users are inhaling, said Sen. Laurie Monnes Anderson, D-Gresham.
She added that nicotine harms cardiovascular health, teens' brains and fetal development.
Oregon is one of nine states that allow minors to buy e-cigarettes, Sen. Elizabeth Steiner Hayward, D-Beaverton, said.
"That, colleagues, is not what we want for the future of our state," she said.
Last month, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that e-cigarette use by high school and middle school students about tripled from 2013 to 2014.
Under the bill, e-cigarettes and related products would be required to be wrapped in child-resistant packaging. The Oregon Health Authority would have power to impose civil penalties on those who distribute, sell or allow the sale of e-cigarettes to minors. Violators could be fined between $250 and $1,000. The funds would go toward the health authority's tobacco prevention programs.
Several senators, including Sen. Alan Olsen, R-Canby, objected that the health authority should not both enforce the rules and also collect the fines, saying that the financial incentives could lead to more aggressive enforcement than is warranted. They called for a conference committee, consisting of lawmakers from both chambers, which could further amend the bill.
It's now up to the House whether to convene a conference committee or send the bill to Gov. Kate Brown for approval as presently amended..
syoo@StatesmanJournal.com, (503) 399-6673 or follow at Twitter.com/syoo.
Read or Share this story: http://stjr.nl/1HeQvokSouthampton Football Club is pleased to announce the appointment of Ronald Koeman as its new First Team Manager.
Koeman has today signed a three-year contract, and takes charge with immediate effect.
The appointment follows an extensive worldwide search for a new manager to move forward the vision and plan set out for the continued success and development of Southampton Football Club.
Koeman arrives at St Mary’s following a highly-successful spell in charge of Feyenoord, who he led to consecutive top-three finishes in the Eredivisie since joining the club in 2011.
Ronald is joined at Southampton by his elder brother, Erwin, who is appointed Assistant First Team Manager. Erwin has enjoyed a successful playing and coaching career of his own, having managed in the Eredivisie and taken charge of the Hungarian national team.
The pair will be joined by Jan Kluitenberg, who takes up the role of Assistant First Team Coach/Physical Coach. Kluitenberg worked with Ronald Koeman at Vitesse Arnhem, Benfica, AZ Alkmaar and Feyenoord.
Ronald, Erwin and Jan will be assisted by Saints' existing first-team support staff, while the club will be recruiting a high-level goalkeeping coach in the near future.
Les Reed, Executive Director at Southampton Football Club, said: “We are extremely pleased to have secured a new manager of Ronald Koeman’s calibre and status within the game.
“In appointing Ronald we have concluded our search for a manager who shares our values and vision for the future of Southampton Football Club.
“As part of our ongoing scouting process, we have been following the development of Ronald’s coaching career for some time and, through a more formal process this month, immediately identified him as our number-one choice.
“From the moment we met with Ronald, it was clear he had the vision and ambition to take our club forward, that he shared our football philosophy and could see the opportunity to move our club to the next level.
“The club, the players and the fans will all be excited to have a man of Ronald’s experience at the very highest level joining our club.
“Ronald’s passion for the opportunity here at St Mary’s was very clear, and we look forward to continuing our growth with him as part of our team.”
Koeman said of his appointment: “I am thrilled to be the manager of Southampton Football Club.
“From my very first meeting with Les Reed, I could see clearly that this was the right club for me. We share the same philosophy of football, and the same belief in how to develop the club.
“Southampton have a talented first-team squad, a world-class academy and the infrastructure to sustain success in the Premier League.
“The opportunity to continue the development of this famous football club was simply too good to turn down. I cannot wait to get started.”Rohingya Muslims were strategically placed in Jammu by ISI to change the demographics of the area.
Several Muslim organisations in India and their patrons in the sickular Establishment are championing the cause of Rohingya Muslim refugees. Congress MLA Asif Shaikh Rashid of the communally-sensitive Malegaon in Maharashtra even went to the extent of welcoming and appealing to these refugees to make the town their new home.
The ISI trained a Karachi-born Rohingya Atah Ullah Khan in guerilla warfare and helped him set up Harakha al-Yaqeen or the Movement of the Faithful, a terrorist outfit with strong international jihadi links.
None of these people had a word of sympathy for the 3.5 lakh Hindus who were attacked, raped and forced to leave the Kashmir valley by Pak-backed Islamist terrorists.
Yet when 1.5 lakh Rohingyas illegally entered India (thanks to corrupt officials of the Border Security Force) after being rejected by the Islamic Republic of Bangladesh, then pseudos and several Muslim bodies started championing their cause with alacrity.
It is said that these refugees are victims of “genocide” practised by the Myanmarese army. But nobody asks why the army has ordered a crackdown in Rakhine region of Myanmar where a bulk of these Rohingya Muslims lives.
Even though discontent has been brewing in Rakhine region among the Rohingyas over their perceived discrimination by the Buddhist majority, it wasn’t until the protests took a violent form that the Myanmarese authorities sat up and took serious notice of the situation.
The Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) of Pakistan, in tandem with China, discovered a perfect opportunity to create trouble in India’s eastern flank. The ISI trained a Karachi-born Rohingya Atah Ullah Khan in guerilla warfare and helped him set up Harakha al-Yaqeen or the Movement of the Faithful, a terrorist outfit with strong international jihadi links. Khan’s parents had shifted to Mecca and this gave him access to fundamentalist elements there. A committee of Rohingya extremists was formed in Mecca to oversee the affairs of Harakah al-Yaqeen with Wahabi Islamic scholar Zabiur Rahman providing theological support.
It was Rahman who got Islamic clerics in Saudi Arabia, the Gulf and Pakistan to issue fatwas to the Rohingyas Rakhine to support Harakah al-Yaqeen.
According to the International Crisis Group, the formation of the Harakah in 2012 was a “game changer” at the ground level in Rakhine.
On October 9 last year the Harakah launched a major offensive against three army posts, including an armoury. Several security personnel were killed and weapons were stolen. The attackers, who were well trained, even targeted the local security headquarters by using sophisticated IEDs.
On November 12, a senior army officer was killed. This sounded alarm bells in the army H.Q. in Yangon. It was clear that a full-fledged insurgency was on in Rakhine region with civilian support. The army did what any other army facing a similar situation would have done — launched a massive operation to crush the insurgency.
Many of the Rohingyas who have entered India are not mere refugees. They are trained guerrillas who have escaped arrest by the Myanmarese army. They pose a huge security risk to our nation. The fact that they are guided by the ISI is clear from the fact that a sizable number of the refugees have parked themselves in Jammu as part of a demographic aggression.
The Central government is fully justified in forcing these refugees to return to their country. But it should also take to task BSF personnel whose laxity enabled the entry of such a large number of Rohingyas into India.By age 25, Patrick Schnur had cycled through a series of treatment programs, trying different medications to kick his heroin habit. But the drugs posed problems too: Vivitrol injections were painful and created intense heroin cravings as the drug wore off. Suboxone left him drowsy, depressed and unable to study or go running like he wanted to. Determined to resume the life he had before his addiction, Schnur decided to hunker down and get clean on his own.
In December 2015, he had been sober for two years and had just finished his first semester of college, with a 4.0 grade point average. Yet, just before the holidays, he gave in to the cravings. Settling into his dorm room he stuck a needle in his vein. It was his last shot.
Scientists are searching for a different kind of shot to prevent such tragedies: a vaccine to counter addiction to heroin and other opioids, such as the prescription painkiller fentanyl and similar knockoff drugs. In some ways, the vaccines workHaving narrowly lost a split decision to Eddie Gordon in the semi-final of The Ultimate Fighter: Team Edgar vs Team Penn, Cathal Pendred spoke to PETER CARROLL about his overall TUF experience and his July 19 date with fellow contestant Mike King.
Cathal Pendred came out like a man possessed as soon as the bell rang for his semi-final bout against dangerous striker Eddie Gordon. Scoring takedowns and finding success in the striking department, the first round was clearly marked for the Dubliner.
Despite continuing to force his will on Gordon in the second, the Team Edgar man managed to capitalise on a spinning back fist attempt from Pendred in the last two minutes and his control from top position won him the nod from the judges.
Forced to a deciding round, both fighters landed strikes but it was the SBG fighter who constantly tried to take the fight to the ground. However, Gordon was equal to his takedown attempts and in spite of Pendred clearly being the more aggressive fighter, the American had his hand raised, signalling his victory in an agonisingly close contest.
“I think I won the first round pretty convincingly. I took the guy down four or five times and in the last few seconds I got him in a full-on rear naked choke but time ran out. It was 100% on, I had my arm locked under his chin.
“I still had the momentum in the second round and I was pushing the pace and piling the pressure on. I was doing well in the striking department too, I even landed a few capoeira kicks,” Pendred laughed.
“I think I got a bit too flamboyant and midway through the second round when I threw a spinning back fist. As I threw it he went for a takedown and ended up with a body lock on my back, but he ended up in my guard for about a minute and a half.
“Nothing really happened, he was just there, but he was there for so long he was given the second round. It was one each then so it went into the third round.
“It was a close round but I thought I won it. There were no takedowns, I attempted a few when we were on the fence but I couldn’t get them. I pushed the pace a bit more and I landed some nice shots.
“Eddie landed a couple as well, but I thought I got the better of him. I thought I won the third round.
“In fairness, not a lot of people were shocked by the decision because it was very close fight. Dana said himself that he thought it was a close fight that I won. You definitely couldn’t say it was a robbery.
“It wasn’t that one-sided, but it came down to the third round and I thought that I did enough to win it. Obviously one judge felt the same, two didn’t, and in the end it came down to one person’s opinion.”
The former Cage Warriors 170lbs king also commented on the environment that TUF forces its contestants into and how the development of the sport over the years has reduced the benefits of training with an adopted team.
“As far as improving in the house, I don’t think it’s that kind of environment for fighters anymore. In the first couple of seasons guys were coming in there, they were firemen and stuff and they were getting to train full-time for the first time ever.
“Now, most if not all the guys are training full-time themselves, it’s what they do and they’re part of camps. When they’re brought into the house they’re taken out of their camps and they’re put in an environment where they’re not as comfortable with their surroundings or the people they’re with. So, in a lot of cases, it’s not as good as the training you have at home.”
The Dubliner discussed his performances on the show and revealed that his quest for perfection never allows him to sit back and admire his handiwork.
Pendred said: “I’m my own biggest critic. Out of all the fights I’ve had, I’ve never been unbelievably satisfied about the actual performances. That’s just the way I am and I’ll always be looking to have a flawless performance, but that rarely happens.
“People are always talking about learning from their losses. If I only learned from my losses, I’ve only had two, I wouldn’t know anything. I need to learn from victories so I pick them apart.
“Even my win against Che Mills, I steamrolled him last June, I pretty much did exactly what I wanted to do but I still wasn’t happy with it. I feel the same about the fights I had in the house.
“I feel good about the win, I was happy with some of things I did like the capoeira kicks – that’s something you wouldn’t have seen from me last year. There were some improvements like that but I’ve come away with a lot of things that I can work on.
“Even when I have a UFC belt wrapped around my waist I’m still going to be trying to improve every day.”
With his former TUF housemate, Mike King, set in his crosshairs for UFC’s July return to Dublin, the Team Penn man outlined why it would be foolish to think that he had a good understanding of his opponent’s style.
“It’s one of those things where I am familiar enough with his style but I’m not going to focus on that because he could come out there in July and be a completely different fighter. I’m preparing for everything and mainly focusing on myself.
“In the end this has worked out better than what could’ve happened because I went in there with the aim to get into the final and had that been the case I’d be making my UFC debut in Vegas at The Ultimate Fighter finale.
“Instead I’m making my UFC debut at the fastest selling UFC event ever, in my hometown with three of my team mates. This is ten times better than what I wished for.
“They say some things happen for a reason, I didn’t sleep right for about two months after that fight with Eddie Gordon. I was thinking why the hell did I throw that spinning back fist?
“Essentially that’s what it came down to, the fight was mine until I threw that spinning back fist. It’s worked out for the better now and I’m glad I did it!”
Having pursued a contract with UFC for the last two years, Pendred described his feelings on finally signing on the dotted line for the world’s flagship MMA promotion.
“It’s a huge milestone, I can’t wait for it. To be honest, it’s long time coming, maybe too long. I’ve been ready for this for a long time and I’m looking forward to going in there.
“A lot of guys make it to the UFC, they put a string of wins together to get in and that’s all they wanted to do, just make it to the big show. I’ve been the most dominant welterweight on the European scene for the last two years.
“I’ve beaten more UFC veterans than anyone else. I’ve got four of them on my resume. I’m so confident, this has come at the perfect time and I couldn’t feel better about it.
“If you’ve been on The Ultimate Fighter you get a ten fight contract. It is a ten fight contract but it may as well be for four fights because if you’re not performing UFC can cut you at any stage.
“It makes no difference to me how many fights are on the contract, I have the same goals I’ve always had,” he said.
Given his success in the 170lbs division, speculation has been rampant as to what weight Pendred wants to compete at. The former champion gave his thoughts on what category he should feature in.
“This one is at middleweight and I’m kind of liking it at the moment. I can still make 170 but we’ll have to wait and see after this fight whether I’ll be going down or not,” said Pendred.
Finally, Pendred gave his thoughts on what will happen once the bell rings in the 02 Arena on July 19th.
“I’m going to win that’s all I know. I don’t like making predictions because ultimately how the fight ends depends on what mistakes he makes. If he leaves his neck out there I’m going to choke him and if he throws a punch a little flat footed and leaves his chin high he’s going to get put to sleep.
“I’m not gonna predict what mistake he will make but I do predict that when he does I’ll be ready to pounce on it.”
@PetesyCar |
1944 for, the character is believed to be the first Chinese American superhero. Yang and Liew revived the character in 2014 with an all-new Asian American origin story.Most of the time, The Green Turtle is a regular 20-year-old Chinese American guy named Hank Chu, who helps out at his family's grocery store. In#1, he partners with another costumed superhero known as Miss Stardust. While Hank doesn't possess impressive powers, he never gives up and continues to save his city from villains -- creating his own, original definition of what it means to be "a hero."You can visit any of Panda Express' 1,900 locations to receive a free copy of#1 with the purchase of a kid's meal. You can also download and read a digital copy of the issue at pandaexpress.com Here's a preview:For some extra inspiration, also watch this video from Panda Express, "Ode to Underdogs" If you see me at Panda Express ordering, ahem, a kid's meal, I'm just getting my exclusive comic book, okay?PA envoy to France claims Paris wants to recognize the state of Palestine in a joint move with other European countries.
France has expressed a desire to recognize “Palestine”, the Palestinian Authority (PA) envoy to France claimed on Sunday.
The envoy, Salman Al-Harfi, told the official PA news agency Wafa that France wants the move to take place with other European countries, because it will safeguard the peace process.
“The Palestinian leadership aspires for France to recognize a state of Palestine, assume its role in the Middle East and form the backbone of the supportive European position,” he added.
Several European countries have in recent years recognized the state of “Palestine”, but these were symbolic moves that have little, if any, actual diplomatic effect.
Among the countries to have recognized “Palestine” are Spain, Britain, Ireland, Sweden, Greece and Portugal. In addition, the PA inaugurated an embassy in the Vatican last January.
France has in the past said it would recognize “Palestine” if its efforts to try to break the deadlock between Israelis and Palestinians fail.
French Socialist lawmakers were in late 2014 preparing to submit a motion to parliament to recognize “Palestine” as well. At the time, then-Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said his country would not hold a vote to recognize the PA as the "state of Palestine".Unlucky stars serve as brilliant but short-lived snacks when they wander too close to supermassive black holes. But one such black hole is still gnawing on its stellar meal after a decade.
More than a decade ago, a million-solar-mass black hole lurking in the center of an unremarkable galaxy, known only as SDSS J150052.07+015453.8, snagged itself a nearby star for a snack. But unlike most such tidal disruption events, where a black hole's extreme gravity tears a star apart before swallowing its gas in the next year or two, this was the snack that kept on giving.
Astronomers caught the event serendipitously — its light traveled 1.8 billion years to the XMM-Newton X-ray telescope, which snapped it by chance while imaging a galaxy group in the foreground. The Chandra X-ray Observatory and Swift space telescope also kept tabs on the source too. Though it brightened quickly, to astronomers' surprise the flare has been slow to fade. Even 10 years after its discovery, it's still ten times brighter in X-rays than it was before the flare.
So what does it mean that this star-killer is a record-breaker? Dacheng Lin (University of New Hampshire) and colleagues have two theories: one is simply that the star is bigger and so took longer for the black hole to tear apart. If that were true, the star might have had the mass of 10 Suns. But such massive stars are rare (less than 1% of the stellar population), so an alternative is more likely: the black hole simply took its time to make the kill, ripping the star apart completely before devouring it.
Whatever the means of the decade-long meal, Lin and colleagues can see from the X-rays this object is emitting that the supermassive black hole is feeding at a tremendous rate — so high that pressure from the emitted radiation ought to blow away the gas that's flowing inward. In astrospeak, this gorging is known as super-Eddington accretion. Yet somehow, the black hole is not only feeding at a super-Eddington rate, it has kept up that rate for most of the past ten years.
Astronomers have long wondered how the universe can grow supermassive black holes so fast. We see black holes containing the mass of 1 billion Suns when the universe is just 1 billion years old — numbers that are hard to replicate in calculations based on the Eddington limit. Now we have evidence that these beasts can feed faster than we thought for prolonged periods, so there's a good chance that supermassive black holes in the early universe fed in this way too.
To read more about this intriguing black hole and its decennary dining habits, see the press release issued by the Chandra X-ray Observatory:
Black Hole Meal Sets Record for Length and Size
A giant black hole ripped apart a star and then gorged on its remains for about a decade, according to astronomers. This is more than ten times longer than any observed episode of a star's death by black hole.... Read more or watch their video here.After getting to use Pizzahacker’s perforated pizza peel, I decided to make a DIY version for myself. The idea behind a perforated peel is that it reduces the amount of flour that gets underneath the dough when placing it in the oven (too much flour will brown up and taste bitter), and possibly helps keep things from sticking by reducing the amount of friction underneath the dough. Here are the steps I took to make mine; results of how well it works will be posted shortly.
Materials needed:
-Aluminum pizza peel (I’m using a 12″x14″ peel that works well for my oven and pizza size)
-Drill press
-Small drill bit (about 1/16″)
-Slightly larger drill bit (~3/16″)
-Larger drill bit (3/8″ or 1/2″) or countersink drill bit
-Flat piece of cardboard (I used a cereal box)
-Two printed pages of the perforation template (PDF) (A grid I made that has the holes place every 1.5cm.)
-Flat piece of scrap wood to go underneath the peel when drilling
-Pencil, masking tape, ruler and scissors
Step one:
Trace the outline of your peel on the cardboard. Cut the coardboard to match the peel. Find the halfway point (left to right) on the cardboard and mark it with a line.
Step two:
Place the center dot of the template printout to match with the center line on the cardboard. The center dot is the seventh dot over.
I decided to leave a small gap in the front of the peel, so my placement had the printout taped to the cardboard portrait orientation, with the larger margin on the top edge.
The paper won’t be wide enough for the cardboard, so cut a strip from the second printout for the left and right side, and line it up with the dots on the first piece. Tape in place, cut around the the cardboard and tape the whole thing to the peel.
Mark which holes you don’t want to drill – I crossed them out with a pencil to leave a margin on the top and sides.
Step three:
Put the small bit into the drill press (if you don’t have a drill press, a hand drill will suffice but will add some tedium to the project). Place the scrap piece of wood underneath the peel to help minimize distortion. Slowly drill through each dot on the template.
With the 10″ drill press I was using, there was one small section in the center that I was unable to reach. I decided to leave this as-is, instead of doing it by hand. I don’t think it will make a big difference. Also, I used a small bucket as a riser for the handle of the peel, but make sure the level is pretty close – you want the surface to be as flat as possible so you don’t end up bending the aluminum.
Step four:
Using the middle sized drill bit, carefully enlarge each hole.
At this point I started to wonder if I was going to compromise too much of the peel’s strength so I opted for an alternating pattern of small holes and larger holes, with the front edge and both sides larger holes.
Step five:
Remove the cardboard template. The top holes will look pretty good, but you’ll have a fair amount of flanging coming off the drilled holes. Using the largest of the three drill bits (make sure it has a very slightly tapered head), VERY slowly drill the excess off the peel. Bevel the edges by pressing just part way beyond the surface of the peel. Do this for all the holes, flip and repeat on the back side – this will give you a nice smooth surface.
One thing not to do: wire brush on a grinder or drill. This won’t take the flanging off the drilled holes, but will leave a roughed-up, pitted area.
That’s it! Perforated pizza peel ready for action.But those messages are competing against a long-term evolution in voters’ behavior that has made it tougher for all senators to survive in effect behind enemy lines—in states that usually prefer the other party for president. As party-line voting inside Congress has reached near-parliamentary levels, voters have responded by treating congressional elections less as a choice between individuals and more as a parliamentary-style referendum on which side they prefer to control the majority.
That’s a big change from even the 1970s and 1980s, when conservative Democratic senators still dominated Southern states stampeding toward the GOP in presidential elections, just as moderate Republican senators thrived in coastal states trending toward the Democrats. In the modern apex of cross-pressured voting, fully 28 percent of voters supported one party’s presidential nominee and the other’s Senate candidate during Richard Nixon’s 1972 landslide, according to data from the National Election Studies analyzed by the Emory University political scientist Alan Abramowitz.
Since then, as Abramowitz has calculated, the share of voters who back one party for president and the other for Senate has fallen relentlessly. It declined to 23 percent on average during the 1980s, 16 percent across Bill Clinton’s two races, 13 percent in 2008 and just 10 percent in 2012.
With fewer voters dividing their loyalties, Senate results have increasingly followed the presidential map. After the reelection victories of both Richard Nixon (in 1972) and Ronald Reagan (in 1984), Republicans controlled only about half the Senate seats in the states that voted for each man twice. After President Obama’s reelection, Democrats held over four-fifths of the Senate seats in the 26 states that backed him twice (although the party lost some of those seats in 2014).
That history is especially relevant this year because Republicans are defending seven (of the 11 total) Senate seats they still hold in the two-time Obama states. Of those, Clinton is solidly leading in Illinois, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and New Hampshire; the Democratic Senate nominees also lead in those states. The presidential race is much closer in Iowa, Ohio, and Florida—where the Democrats’ Senate prospects are also cloudier.
The Senate-Presidential Connection
The final margin between Clinton and Trump will shape all of these contests. In 2012, exit polls showed that about 85 percent or more of both Obama and Mitt Romney voters also supported their party’s Senate candidates in almost every competitive state. Recent public polling shows that at least 82 percent of Clinton and Trump supporters are also backing their party’s Senate candidate in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, New Hampshire, and Florida, as well as in North Carolina which Obama won once. (Those numbers are likely to rise by Election Day because they still include undecided voters.) If Trump slips further, these dynamics suggest he could endanger GOP senators in Arizona and Missouri.The imperialist system is going through the most severe crisis since the 1930s. The current attempts to address and overcome the crisis only serve to deepen and extend it.
The structural crisis that emerged in the field of finance has gradually extended to the field of production, bringing about a deepening recession. The crisis proceeds under the law of uneven development within the pursuit of the maximum extortion of surplus value and the contention on the world market.
The crisis has its origin in the laws of running of the capitalist system itself. It is the expression of the limits of production for profit, and the contradiction between productive forces and relations of production, including the general and global nature of the production and private appropriation. In the world scene this means an ever growing gap between the wealth of a handful of imperialist countries and the poverty of three quarters of human beings in the countries oppressed by imperialism, between the wealth in the hands of the bourgeoisie and the relative and absolute impoverishment of proletarians and masses in the imperialist countries, between the overflowing richness of a parasitic and comprador bourgeoisie and the living conditions of misery and hunger of the proletariat and broad masses in the countries oppressed by imperialism.
It is clear that a system dominated by these laws, these dynamics, can only go into crisis, and overproduction and capital surplus become factors of crisis.
The phenomena of heightened and speculative “financialization” are the tip of the iceberg of the dynamics of the system, which become point of implosion and explosion.
The “financialization” of the economy – the main immediate cause of the crisis – tends to reject any control. So the efforts of capitalism and its ruling imperialist powers to get out of crisis through regulation and control of the financial markets and use of the opportunities offered by high growth rates, even if disarticulated, of some countries such as China, India and Brazil have so far not succeeded. Although these efforts should not be underestimated, they cannot ensure more than a temporary recovery, one which opens the door to new and even more distressing crises.
The world is still faced with two possibilities: the exit from capitalism or a painful temporary recovery from this crisis by strengthening, enhancing the mechanisms of capital and thus prolonging the misery of the masses.
The imperialist bourgeoisie all over the world take advantage of the crisis to restructure imperialism on a global scale and save the interests of their class for their profits.
This leads to unloading the vicious weight of the crisis on the workers and masses. In both the oppressed countries and imperialist countries, unemployment, job insecurity and the cost of living increase, exploitation is ratcheted up to modern forms of slavery, workers’ rights are reduced, social achievements won through years of struggles are erased, factories are closed with massive layoffs, peasants are ruined and driven to suicide, cuts in social expenditures and privatization of education and healthcare grow, the logic of commodification and profit is extended even to primary goods, such as water, air, sun, etc..
These policies are carried out within the contention for domination on the imperialist world market and geopolitical strategic areas, but the unitary character of the policies to unload crisis on the proletarians and the masses is emphatically clear.
The policy of imperialism accentuates and makes more and more catastrophic the effects of the system in terms of ecological and natural disasters. Imperialism transforms factors of development in the field of science, culture and education, information technology, access to media, communication, extension of the freedom of young people and the processes of emancipation of women, into new and more refined chains. In the context of crisis this results in massive intellectual unemployment, social control and most extreme forms of barbarism, new neo medieval attacks on women’s rights and the regimentation of youth.
The balance of power among the imperialists is in a flux. Though the US still remains the sole super power its capacities have been considerably weakened, by the resistance of is victims and the crisis. This gave some room for the EU grouping. However similar factors have negatively impacted on their position too. Russia had not been affected so much by the crisis. Through its axis with China and consolidating ties with erstwhile Soviet Union republics, it has gained some advantage and has stepped up contention. Overall collusion is still principal in inter-imperialist relations. But imperialism in crisis, develops within it contradictions that can become potential sources of a new world war. Imperialist powers, mainly the US, unleash and accentuate wars of aggression, invasion, and neo-colonialism in the different regions of the world where their interests are vital or threatened. In developing these wars, it continues with the arms race and gets equipped with more and more devastating military instruments, surpassing all limits enshrined in international conventions and human rights.
One or the other form of fascistic control has always been the norm in oppressed countries, even where a parliamentary system exists. In recent years, a tendency to modern fascism grows inside the imperialist countries also. This takes shape according to the characteristics of history, the reality and the culture of each country. It strives to establish once again the totalitarian, racist, securitarian and police-state forms of the rule of the bourgeoisie.
Imperialism is poverty, reaction and war. The crisis reveals that welfare, democracy and peace become more and more words that cover an opposite substance.
The devastating economic crisis of imperialism and its impact on proletarians and the broad masses have awakened worldwide a wave of struggles and revolts.
In the countries oppressed by imperialism, the protests, rebellions and liberation struggles have found in the revolts in Arab countries and in the Persian Gulf a new height and a new dawn. Young people, proletarians and the masses and, in some cases, organized sectors of workers, attacked and overthrew dictatorial regimes subservient to imperialism that seemed permanent. This has paved the way for new anti-imperialist, anti-Zionist, anti-feudal, new-democratic revolutions.
False anti-imperialist regimes, such as those of Libya, Syria, Iran, and openly pro-imperialist ones such as those in Saudi Arabia, Bahrain. Yemen, Morocco, Algeria, as well as the military regimes that have replaced the reactionary tyrants in Tunisia and Egypt, unleashed massacres and repression. Hiding under the flag of democracy imperialism intervened in these struggles and maneuvered to remove unreliable regimes and replace worn out servitors with new ones. It launched a war and occupied Libya. But the wave of “Arab springtimes” continue.
Globally they have achieved an important position as a new front in the battle between imperialism and the peoples. They join those existing in Iraq, Afghanistan and Palestine. In these countries, the occupation and invasions of imperialists and Zionists have faced heavy resistance. This forced them to reshape their occupation plans and prevented them in a substantial manner from realizing their aims. Apart from the Arab and West Asian countries, people in Latin America, Africa and other regions of Asia have repeatedly taken to the streets to resist the attacks on their livelihoods. The persistent and growing labor strikes and peasant struggles in China is notable.
In this new wave of struggle and resistance we must support and strengthen the struggle for the liberation of peoples and for new democracy, towards socialism and communism, and oppose the pro-Western and Islamist currents which ride the tiger of people’s struggles in order to impose new chains and new subordination to the reactionary classes and their masters of all time, imperialism, mainly of the U.S. and Europe.
The wave of unrest, flaring up of rebellions and struggles involving hundreds of thousands of youth in the imperialist countries is a distinguishing feature of the present world. The exciting uprisings of the proletarian youth, which shakes the imperialist citadels, marks the entry of a new generation. Facing a life without a future, through their rebellions they shout “it is right to rebel” and declare that it is capitalism that has no future. Now fused, now in parallel, this development is coupled to a rise in labor struggles. General strikes have summoned to action the whole workers movement, especially in countries hit hardest by the crisis Greece, Spain, Italy…
The workers’ struggles have had a new development in Eastern Europe, where to the bite of wild capitalism following the collapse of false socialist regimes, was added the quick transformation into systems even worse than before.
New waves of immigrants flock to the imperialist countries in hope of a better life. They flee from poverty and war devastations caused by these countries. To reach their destinations they have to put their lives at risk through untold suffering which often turn the seas into cemeteries. The imperialists respond with harsh anti-immigrant laws and racism. The emergence of modern fascism, of police states, the growing frequency of wars of aggression and anti-immigrant laws have been responded to by the masses through the development of anti-fascist and anti-racist movements, and broad movements against the war.
This is the context in which a potential new wave of the world proletarian revolution develops and emerges. It has as its reference points and strategic anchor the people’s wars led by Maoist parties.
To this we must add the preparation of several new people’s wars, particularly in Turkey and South Asia, with the potential for it in Latin America, and throughout the rest of the world, with the constitution of Marxist-Leninist-Maoist (MLM) communist
parties. In this framework, the new MLM communist parties in the imperialist countries represent the potential for a quantum leap in revolutionary struggle and the unity of the two currents of the world proletarian revolution: the socialist revolution in the imperialist countries and the new democratic revolution, marching towards socialism, in the countries oppressed by imperialism.
All this shows that the principal contradiction in the world is that between imperialism and oppressed peoples, while both the contradictions between the proletariat and bourgeoisie and the inter-imperialist contradictions also sharpen. In the crisis it is increasingly clear that the revolution is the main trend.
In the current international situation the task of communists is to make revolution in the different countries, because the revolution is the only solution to the crisis, the only way out from imperialism and the only road to achieve the ultimate goal of the struggles of the proletarians and oppressed people.
This demands the strengthening and building of MLM communist parties in each country, as a new kind of communist party, as vanguard detachments of the proletariat and leading core of all the people, as a party fighting for the revolution.
In the countries oppressed by imperialism the perspective of people’s war is advancing. In India, the people’s war led by the Communist Party of India (Maoist) successfully withstands unprecedented attacks by the enemy and is able to expand and advance. The people’s war in the Philippines led by the Communist Party of the Phillipines advances and establishes itself as an important part of the wave of world revolution. The people’s war in Peru, initiated under the leadership of the Communist Party of Peru led by chairman Gonzalo remains an ideological and strategic beacon for the whole international communist movement. Though it faces setback due to the attacks of the enemy and from revisionists within the party, the struggle to overcome these hurdles persists. In Nepal ten years of people’s war enriched the history and experience of the international communist movement and made significant advance towards the victory of the new democratic revolution. In recent years, however, a revisionist line that betrays the people’s war and the revolution emerged, headed by Prachanda and Bhattarai. The Maoists within the United Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) [UCPN(M)] must save the revolution and resume its march by revolting against that line and standing firm against centrist vacillations, inside and outside the party.
In Turkey, the revolutionary struggles led by the Maoists are advancing in the pursuit of the people’s war strategy suited to the conditions of this country, placed as it is amidst two international theatres, the European imperialist countries and the regimes ruled by the reactionaries in West Asia. In other countries of South Asia and Latin America, the people’s war is in preparation for new beginnings and progresses. It is a task of communists around the world to put into the practice the proletarian internationalism, popularize and support the people’s wars and revolutionary struggles.
In the imperialist countries, electoralism, parliamentarism and political and union reformism are increasingly in crisis and, through this, revisionism is bankrupt. The need of a revolutionary organization and a revolutionary strategy to overthrow the bourgeoisie and seize the power is increasingly advancing and strengthening in the workers and people’s movements.. The idea that as long as the proletarians are not in power it is an illusion to think that their lot will improve is growing.
The workers’ struggles and the uprisings of proletarians and young people must coordinate and grow within a perspective of overthrowing the governments and states of the imperialist bourgeoisie, for the seizure of power by the proletariat.
In order to transform these needs into reality, these movements into revolution, we need to build MLM communist parties, in the fire of class struggle and in close link with the masses, for the proletarian revolution, with the MLM strategy of the revolutionary war culminating with the insurrection, adapted to each country according to the concrete conditions.
In all countries we need communist parties based on Marxism-Leninism-Maoism, able to lead the class struggle in all fields and aimed at seizing the political power. In each country the Maoist communists strive to answer this need for a scientific and determined leadership for the class struggle, by fighting all kinds of revisionist and reformist, or dogmatist and extremist deviations, in all their forms.
Our class can rely on the huge amount of experience through 140 years of struggles and revolutions, from the birth of the glorious Paris Commune through the peaks of the October Revolution, the Chinese revolution and the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution. We must learn from both our victories and defeats, from our correctness as well as from our mistakes.
Always in their entire history, the communists have built, participated and counted on an international organization of the proletariat and the oppressed masses. Without the First, the Second and Third International, the communist movement would not have spread to every corner of the world, neither would it have achieved its great victories, and would not have learned the lessons from its temporary defeats.
The battle of Mao Tsetung was an international battle that paved the way to the revival of communist parties after the establishment of Kruschevite revisionism in the international communist movement.
After Mao’s death and the end of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, the formation of the Revolutionary Internationalist Movement (RIM) has allowed the Marxist-Leninist-Maoists in the world to begin to unite on an international scale, to resume the march towards a new Communist International.
Today, facing the crisis and the collapse of the RIM, we must rebuild the international organization of MLM parties and organizations on the basis of the positive and negative experiences of the RIM. The current situation presents the need to unite in this new organization all the MLM parties and organizations, inside and outside the RIM, for a political and organizational leap. This is necessary to put the communist movement at the height of the class struggle in the new century. Thus the needs of the proletariat and the oppressed masses, facing the impact of the crisis of imperialism, can be met.
The new international organization must unite in its ranks the genuine MLM parties and organizations that exist and operate in the class struggle, that transform the revolutionary theory into revolutionary practice, that are able to be an advanced and integrant part of the proletariat and the oppressed masses, getting rid of all the old and new waste, not only of revisionism but also of the petty bourgeois revolutionaries and the self-referring “virtualism”.
To build this new international organization we must break with revisionism in all its aspects and particularly with those that have led to the current crisis and collapse of the RIM, namely the post-MLM ‘new synthesis’ of Bob Avakian in the Revolutionary Communist Party,US and the revisionist line established by Prachanda/Bhattarai in the UCPN(M).
The new international organization should have an executive centre, whose internal life must correspond to the stage and methods shared by the political parties and forces that give life to this organization, particularly taking lesson from the positive and negative experiences of the CoRim.
The international organization of MLM communists is and should be the core of a front, of an international anti-imperialist alliance of the proletarians and oppressed peoples.
It is this that will allow the MLM communist parties to establish and develop Marxism-Leninism-Maoism, realize a new unity of the international communist movement, place it at the van of worldwide people’s struggles and fully unleash and realize the potential new wave of world revolution.
Imperialism has no future! The future belongs to communism!
for SM of RIM
signed and diffused from
Communist (Maoist) Party of Afghanistan;
Communist Party of India (M-L) [Naxalbari];
Maoist Communist Party – Italy;
May first 2012Get the latest news and videos for this game daily, no spam, no fuss.
Sonic the Hedgehog is one of the biggest and best-known franchises in all of gaming. However, the quality of the latest games in the series left much to be desired for some.
Now, former Sega of America CEO Tom Kalinske has spoken up to say Sonic's fall from grace is part of the cyclical nature of characters and franchises in the entertainment world.
"I think there is some natural up and down for any character," he said in the November issue of Game Informer. "We've certainly seen it with the Marvel characters over the years. We've seen it with Barbie. We've seen it with Star Wars. We've seen it with G.I. Joe and Hot Wheels.
He added: "All of these brands have had their cycles. I think Sonic has had a downward cycle for a while, and it's time to have an upward cycle again for a while."
Last summer, Sega management frankly admitted that the company had somewhat lost its way.
"Sega in the '90s was known for its brand, but after that, we've lost trust, and we're left with nothing but reputation," Sega games CEO Haruki Satomi said last summer. "We'd like to win back the trust and become a brand once again.
The publisher also launched a survey that asked fans to let Sega know how it could do better in the future.
The Sonic the Hedgehog game released in 2006 for Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, simply titled Sonic the Hedgehog, is considered by some to be the worst in the entire franchise. Series creator Yuji Naka told Game Informer that the intent was to help Sonic reach a bigger audience, not unlike the way Batman Begins brought in new viewers.
Sega management was dead set on getting the game out in time for holiday 2006 and this may not have been in the best interest of the title.
"It was the first iteration of the engine and we didn't have any time to polish and we were just churning out content as quick as we could," Sonic Team head Takashi Iizuka said.
The report also mentions that midway through development on Sonic 2006, the team broke into two, the other one getting to work on Sonic and the Secret Rings for the Wii. Additionally, Naka left Sega in 2006. Designer/director Naoto Ohshima, producer Mark Cerny, and others also exited Sega.
"They lost the heart and soul of Sonic for a while, and I think that made an enormous, immediate difference in the next products that came out," Kalinske said. "It's hard to replicate that team."
For his part, Iizuka said it was the deadlines more than the turnover that contributed mainly to Sonic 2006's poor standing.
"We missed out on that really important time to polish and tune and manipulate the map and make sure that the world really felt good and the gameplay felt good," he said. "Because it didn't have that, it didn't turn out as good as the development team wanted."
Iizuka also shared a story about Sega's commitment to deadlines and how this took a serious toll on his physical well-being. For Sonic Heroes, he was one of only two developers working on the game's level design. The other person eventually got sick and didn't come in to work, meaning Iizuka was the only person working on the game's level design. He had to work extended hours to finish the game--and he lost 22 pounds because he was working so hard and not sleeping much.
"For those very last stages of the game, I didn't sleep at all and I was constantly working. I lost about [22 pounds] because I was just cranking away and it was just work, work, work," he said. "I didn't sleep because I had to finish the game on my own. Almost dying!"
It appears Sega is loosening up its approach when it comes to sticking to deadlines for financial reasons alone. When Sega announced the delay of Sonic Boom: Fire & Ice to 2016, the company said it's important--for all Sonic games--that Sega takes the time it needs to release a quality product, even if that means a delay.
Game Informer's November issue is available now.
The next Sonic game is Sonic Mania, which is a 2D platformer that features visuals and gameplay reminiscent of the classic Sega Genesis games. From what we've seen of the marketing so far, it definitely captures the vibe of the '90s. The game revamps zones and acts from Sonic the Hedgehog, Sonic the Hedgehog 2, Sonic CD, Sonic the Hedgehog 3, and Sonic & Knuckles, in addition to introducing new ones into the fold. Sonic Mania is scheduled to launch spring 2017.
It's not the only Sonic game in the works, as Sonic Team is working on a brand-new entry in the series that is said to feature both classic and modern versions of Sonic, much like 2011's Sonic Generations. No title has been revealed, but we do know that it's coming holiday 2017 on PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and the Nintendo NX.David B. Farmer, the company’s vice president for menu strategy, said Chick-fil-A expected the Manhattan store, at 37th Street and Avenue of the Americas, to have more traffic than any of its other more than 1,900 stores. In fact, the company already refers to the next New York location, which will open next year at 46th Street and Avenue of the Americas, as “the relief valve.” (Chick-fil-A has a location with a limited menu in a food court at New York University.)
To keep up with anticipated demand, the company’s new store will have eight registers and two more on standby to handle overflow. And it has trained 18 employees to use hand-held devices to take orders from customers waiting in the line that is expected when it officially opens on Saturday.
The company is well aware that many New Yorkers have never heard of it; it says more than three-fourths of the 160 people hired to staff the Manhattan location were similarly unfamiliar.
It also knows that the New Yorkers who have heard of Chick-fil-A are most likely to know about it because of the controversy raised by comments made in 2012 by its chief executive, Dan T. Cathy, expressing his opposition to same-sex marriage.Former NHL star Ilya Kovalchuk appears to be on the move.
The ex-New Jersey Devil is reportedly leaving SKA St. Petersburg of the Kontinental Hockey League (KHL) for the league’s expansion team in China.
Kovalchuk fell out of favour in St. Petersburg and was stripped of his captaincy. It was even announced that he would sit out the remainder of the KHL playoffs, although Kovalchuk returned for Game 1 of his team’s second round matchup.
In four post-season games, the 32 year old was held scoreless and was a minus-three.
Kovalchuk had 16 goals and 33 assists in 50 regular season games for SKA, good for sixth in KHL scoring.
Kovalchuk was removed from the team one game into the post-season due to poor performance. He is under contract with St. Petersburg until at least April 30, according to multiple reports.
— With files from Sportsnet’s Luke FoxAlternative for Germany attempts to establish equivalent of French National Front
By Dietmar Henning
4 February 2015
Although the party congress of “Alternative for Germany” (AfD) that took place in Bremen last weekend was focused almost exclusively on organizational questions, the disagreements actually concerned the fundamental orientation of the party. The issue was to determine how an extreme right-wing party similar to the National Front (FN) in France could be established.
The AfD was founded in 2013 by neo-liberal economic and nationalist forces that had split from the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and Christian Social Union (CSU) as well as the Free Democratic Party (FDP). The AfD addressed itself to conservative middle class layers who—after the confiscation of Cypriot bank accounts—feared the loss or devaluation through inflation of their savings.
For this reason, the party’s program initially laid its emphasis on an exit from the euro and the reintroduction of national currencies. One of the voices in favor of this policy was spokesperson Bernd Lucke, a former professor of macroeconomics at the University of Hamburg. The former chairman of the Federation of German Industries (BDI), Hans-Olaf Henkel, also supported this policy.
Lucke was chosen at the founding congress in 2013 as one of three AfD spokesmen constituting the party leadership. The other spokesmen are Frauke Petry, a chemical industry entrepreneur who went into private insolvency, and Konrad Adam, a former journalist for the cultural section of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung and correspondent for Welt.
Since then, the AfD has entered the European parliament as well as the state parliaments of Saxony, Thuringia and Brandenburg. In two weeks, the Hamburg state election will take place, and in May the federal city-state of Bremen will hold elections.
When the party was founded two years ago, its economic nationalism was already paired with an arch-conservative view of the family and the world. Chauvinism and hostility to foreigners were already present behind the façade of bourgeois respectability.
With the growth of social tensions, the rebirth of German militarism and the intensification of national conflicts, sections of the ruling class are purposely stoking nationalist and racist moods and attempting to build up a right-wing organization.
This is why there was little discussion of the crisis of the euro in the lead up to the congress. Instead, discussions centered on the AfD’s attitude to the anti-Islamic Pegida movement that has held demonstrations every Monday in Dresden. Frauke Petry and Alexander Gauland, the head of the state parliamentary fraction of the AfD in Brandenburg, led the effort to make the “Patriotic Europeans against the Islamization of the West” (the full name of Pegida) into foot soldiers of the AfD.
Gauland was the first high-ranking politician to visit a Pegida demonstration in Dresden. He called their central demands “ |
(19,34). Synchronous increases in Y. pestis transmission in the western United States have been documented previously and are potentially driven by large-scale climatic trends (35). The 2015 findings for Yosemite share some striking similarities with those associated with the only human plague case previously associated with Yosemite (36). In 1959, a teenage boy became ill after camping along Yosemite Creek trail, ≈5 km from Crane Flat Campground. Subsequent investigation by CDPH and CDC found evidence of a recent epizootic plague event that had decimated the rodent populations near the campsite. During this investigation, Y. pestis transmission was also documented in Tuolumne Meadows and at Lake Tenaya. The rapid interagency investigation and public health response to these cases probably reduced the risk for plague among Yosemite visitors and staff. Critical risk-reduction measures included expanding the investigation to recreational sites beyond those visited by the patients and localized insecticide treatments at sites with Y. pestis transmission. Increased educational efforts informing the public about how to reduce their exposure to the cause of this potentially fatal disease contributed to the early diagnosis for patient 2 and to increased reports of finding dead rodents in the park, which led to detection of Y. pestis transmission at additional locations.
Dr. Danforth is a biologist with Public Health Foundation Enterprises assigned to CDPH. Her research interests focus on public health and the epidemiology of vectorborne diseases.
Acknowledgments
We thank Ben Schwartz, Rachel Civen, Nicole Green, Amanda Kamali, Chelsea Foo, Cherie Drenzek, Amanda Feldpausch, Wendy Smith, and Laura Edison, who identified and interviewed the patients, assisted in the environmental investigation, and conducted the patient diagnostics. We are deeply grateful to Kenneth Gage, Rebecca Eisen, Karen Boegler, John Montenieri, Don Neubacher, Ron Bourne, Linda Mazzu, Caitlin Lee-Roney, Garrett Dickman, Myron Grissom, and David Wong. We also thank Gil Chavez and James Watt for their support of the investigation and response, and we thank the CDPH Vector Borne Disease Section staff for their assistance with the environmental investigation and rodent serology work, particularly Renjie Hu, Joe Burns, Sarah Billeter, Melissa Yoshimizu, Robert Payne, and Robert Dugger. In addition, we extend our appreciation to all the laboratory staff members who tested samples from patients and the environment, including Marty Schriefer, John Young, Ryan Pappert, Chris Sexton, Brook Yockey, Laurel Respicio-Kingry, Fengfeng Xu, Rose Longoria, Yismashoa Gebremichael, Margot Graves, Vishnu Chaturvedi, and Elizabeth Wheeler. We also thank the CDC Genome Sequencing Laboratory for PacBio sequencing. Last, we thank the Delaware North Corporation for their cooperation and assistance with the investigation. This study was partially supported by contract funding from the NPS to Public Health Foundation Enterprises.
References
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Follow Up Earning CME Credit To obtain credit, you should first read the journal article. After reading the article, you should be able to answer the following, related, multiple-choice questions. To complete the questions (with a minimum 75% passing score) and earn continuing medical education (CME) credit, please go to http://www.medscape.org/journal/eid. Credit cannot be obtained for tests completed on paper, although you may use the worksheet below to keep a record of your answers. You must be a registered user on Medscape.org. If you are not registered on Medscape.org, please click on the “Register” link on the right hand side of the website to register. Only one answer is correct for each question. Once you successfully answer all post-test questions you will be able to view and/or print your certificate. For questions regarding the content of this activity, contact the accredited provider, CME@medscape.net. For technical assistance, contact CME@webmd.net. American Medical Association’s Physician’s Recognition Award (AMA PRA) credits are accepted in the US as evidence of participation in CME activities. For further information on this award, please refer to http://www.ama-assn.org/ama/pub/about-ama/awards/ama-physicians-recognition-award.page. The AMA has determined that physicians not licensed in the US who participate in this CME activity are eligible for AMA PRA Category 1 Credits™. Through agreements that the AMA has made with agencies in some countries, AMA PRA credit may be acceptable as evidence of participation in CME activities. If you are not licensed in the US, please complete the questions online, print the certificate and present it to your national medical association for review. Article Title:
Investigation of and Response to 2 Plague Cases, Yosemite National Park, California, USA, 2015 CME Questions 1. You are advising the National Parks Service about detection and prevention of plague. According to the public health report by Danforth and colleagues, which of the following statements about the laboratory and epidemiologic findings regarding 2 human cases of patients with plague in 2015 with recent travel history to Yosemite National Park is correct? A. Both patients had bubonic plague B. Both patients had similar travel itineraries and were diagnosed at the same time C. Distinct Yersinia pestis strains were isolated from the patients, with different whole-genome multilocus sequence typing (wgMLST) D. Both patients had fed squirrels and had seen dead rodents 2. According to the public health report by Danforth and colleagues, which of the following statements about the environmental findings regarding 2 human cases of patients with plague in 2015 with recent travel history to Yosemite is correct? A. Environmental samples indicated that the patients were exposed in the same location B. Isolates from rodent serum, fleas, and rodent carcasses showed at least 2 distinct Y. pestis strains circulating among vector-host populations in the area C. Plague antibodies were detected in all 8 rodent species live-trapped in Yosemite D. The findings contrast with a previous single-nucleotide polymorphism (SNP)–based study showing widespread plague epizootics caused by multiple Y. pestis clones arising independently at small geographic scales 3. According to the public health report by Danforth and colleagues, which of the following statements about critical risk reduction measures used to help prevent plague transmission to Yosemite visitors and staff is correct? A. Rapid interagency investigation and public health response to these patients lowered the risk for plague transmission to Yosemite visitors and staff B. The investigation was limited to recreational sites visited by the patients C. Insecticides were widely dispersed throughout the park D. Educational efforts targeted only Yosemite staff Activity Evaluation 1. The activity supported the learning objectives. Strongly Disagree Strongly Agree 1 2 3 4 5 2. The material was organized clearly for learning to occur. Strongly Disagree Strongly Agree 1 2 3 4 5 3. The content learned from this activity will impact my practice. Strongly Disagree Strongly Agree 1 2 3 4 5 4. The activity was presented objectively and free of commercial bias. Strongly Disagree Strongly Agree 1 2 3 4 5
Related Links More Medscape CME Articles
Table of Contents – Volume 22, Number 12—December 2016Google vs. death
Harry McCracken & Lev Grossman | Time | 18 September 2013
Google announces a new company, Calico, which will focus on health and aging, and will be run by Arthur Levinson, former CEO of biotech pioneer Genentech. "Medicine is well on its way to becoming an information science: doctors and researchers are now able to harvest and mine massive quantities of data from patients. And Google is very, very good with large data sets."
The play deficit
Peter Gray | Aeon | 18 September 2013
“The rise in mental disorders among children is largely the result of the decline in children’s freedom. If we love our children and want them to thrive, we must allow them more time and opportunity to play, not less. Yet policy makers and powerful philanthropists are continuing to push us in the opposite direction — toward more schooling, more testing, more adult direction of children, and less opportunity for free play.”
Rise and fall of the Apple Newton
Tony Smith | The Register | 17 September 2013
Twenty years on, the story of the handheld that might have changed the world — if it had been better at handwriting recognition, and if it had come with cellular communications built in, and if the hardware had been cheaper, and if it had been half the size. It was impressive technology, it established ARM as a chipmarker, it inspired Palm to greater things, but it was too early to market.
A jewel at the heart of quantum physics
Quanta | 17 September 2013
“Physicists have discovered a jewel-like geometric object that dramatically simplifies calculations of particle interactions and challenges the notion that space and time are fundamental components of reality. The revelation that particle interactions, the most basic events in nature, may be consequences of geometry significantly advances a decades-long effort to reformulate quantum field theory.”
The best pen
Tim Barribeau | Wirecutter | 12 September 2013
Experts agree: the world’s best pen for everyday use is the uni-ball Jetstream, and the basic version costs just $8 for a pack of three. “Every expert we talked to gave it a perfect score for feathering, bleeding and drying time, and it also either came first or equal to the top in smoothness of writing, flow, comfort, reliability and design. That put it at the top of the pack for eight of the twelve factors we asked about.”
How do internet addresses work?
Glenn Fleishman | The Economist | 12 September 2013
It’s all down to the domain-name system, or DNS, which converts a human-readable domain name, such as economist.com, into machine-readable internet-protocol addresses, in this case 206.79.194.73. Most of the time DNS works invisibly and well. But it was designed for a much smaller internet, in which all users were known and trusted: the more it has been extended, the more vulnerable it has become to malicious hackers (Metered paywall).
The spy who loved frogs
Brendan Borrell | Nature | 11 September 2013
Young scientist working in the Philippines retraces the footsteps of zoologist Edward Taylor, who worked there almost a century ago — and finds more than he bargained for. Taylor “was a racist curmudgeon beset by paranoia — possibly a result of his mysterious double life as a spy for the US government. He had amassed no shortage of enemies by the time he died in 1978″. And he may well have been a plagiarist too.
For more articles worth reading, visit The Browser. If you would like to comment on this article or anything else you have seen on Future, head over to our Facebook page or message us on Twitter.While polls show her the underdog in France’s upcoming presidential election, National Front chairwoman Marine Le Pen is hoping a silent majority of working class voters, traditional Catholics, French nationalists, and traditionally centrist voters concerned over the spread of Islamic radicalism will defy expectations and catapult her to victory on May 7th.
Whether or not she ultimately prevails, the 48-year old National Front leader is expected to win more votes than any previous NF electoral bid, and could potentially take first place in the first round of voting, set for April 23rd. The latest polls show Le Pen either tied with or leading the Emmanuel Macron, her most likely opponent for the second round of voting in May.
Le Pen, who would win roughly 40% of the vote in a second round matchup with Macron, is already poised to double party’s best showings – including the 2002 upset when her father, Jean-Marie Le Pen won second place in the first round of voting, and gained 18% of the vote in the second round.
Under Marine the National Front has abandoned some of Jean-Marie’s more controversial positions, and Marine has condemned her father’s often inflammatory statements in an effort to gain mainstream appeal for the party. In 2015, Marine backed the expulsion of her father from the party for a series of anti-Semitic comments, including dismissing the Holocaust as a mere “detail of history”.
A week and a half ahead of the first round of voting in France, Marine Le Pen sat down with the Israeli paper Makor Rishon to discuss how her vision for France would impact French Jews and the relationship between Paris and Jerusalem.
While proposals banning religious clothing in public – including kippot – and a plan to bar dual citizenship – which could affect thousands of French Jews in Israel – have raised questions in the Jewish community about her intentions, Le Pen insists her goal is to merely to combat radical Islam, adding that she would defend the French Jewish community from the rising tide of anti-Semitism.
“I was always very clear on this subject,” said Le Pen. “Everyone knows I had a split with my father over this; even though it hurt me greatly, because it is my father. You can always condemn politicians who have someone around them who is suspected (of bigotry). There are anti-Semites around, including around Francois Fillon, Emmanuel Macron, Mitterrand, and even de Gaulle. It’s hard for me to understand. But what I do know is that lots of French Jews are voting for us, because they know very well that not only am I not anti-Semitic, but I’m the most reliable weapon to defend them.”
Turning to the subject of Israel and international efforts to encourage boycotts of Israeli businesses and cultural institutions, Le Pen condemned the European Union’s recent measure of support for the BDS movement.
“I’m against [BDS]. I think that the EU parliament made a mistake by supporting the BDS movement – but they [the BDS movement] has a very strong lobby. Anyway, in France BDS is banned.”Comcast EVP David Cohen came out with guns blazing against President Obama’s call this morning for the FCC to reclassify the Internet, making it easier for the FCC to enforce tough net neutrality rules. The change “would be a radical reversal that would harm investment and innovation, as today’s immediate stock market reaction demonstrates,” he says in a statement. “And such a radical reversal of consistent contrary precedent should be taken up by the Congress.”
The No. 1 cable company — which wants the FCC and Justice Department to approve its $45 billion acquisition of Time Warner Cable — warns that bad things could happen if the government does much more to control the companies that it believes hold the key to broadband growth. “The internet has not just appeared by accident or gift — it has been built by companies like ours investing and building networks and infrastructure,” Cohen says. “The policy the White House is encouraging would jeopardize this engine for job creation and investment as well as the innovation cycle that the Internet has generated.”
Comcast’s chief public-policy voice adds that people can trust the company. It “fully embraces the open Internet principles that the President and the Chairman of the FCC have espoused — transparency, no blocking, non-discrimination rules, and no fast lanes, which is the way we operate our network today,” he says. “We continue to believe, however, that section 706 [the current regulatory framework] provides more than ample authority to impose those rules.”
AT&T takes a similar view. The president’s support for reclassification “is a complete reversal of a bipartisan policy that has been in place since the Clinton Administration—namely, to treat Internet access as an information service subject to light-touch regulation,” says Senior EVP Jim Cicconi. Like Comcast, he says that “if the government were going to make such a momentous decision as regulating the entire Internet like a public utility, that decision is more properly made by the Congress and not by unelected regulators without any public record to support the change in regulation. If the FCC puts such rules in place, we would expect to participate in a legal challenge to such action.”Opening the Guardian app this morning I was surprised to see an article on religious affiliation as the main story. The bombastic headline explained that ‘Christians now in a minority as the UK becomes less religious’ (emphasis added by me) and the subheadline elaborated that the “proportion of population who identify as having no religion rose from 25% in 2011 to 48.5% in 2014“. If true this would suggests there has been a major new trend in religious affiliation in the UK observed that warrants a front page news headline, but has there been? To spoil the punchline… No. Instead, all we have here is long observed trends being misrepresented by dodgy statistics and exaggerated reporting. Details follow below the cross:
Reading through the article I was disappointed (but not surprised) to discover that despite ostensibly covering the findings of some new study, there were no relevant details provided to help you locate the actual study. There wasn’t even the usual link to some university press release. The lack of any reference to the primary source is not unusual for how mainstream media reports on new research but the widespread prevalence of the practice makes it no less frustrating. Instead, like an amateur detective the reader needs to piece together the likely details of the study in question, specifically:
The lead author of the study is “Stephen Bullivant, senior lecturer in theology and ethics at St Mary’s Catholic University in Twickenham”. The report “analysed data collected through British Social Attitudes (BSA) surveys over three decades” and thus “did not examine data from Scotland or Northern Ireland.”
So far, so straightforward.
As such it might seem reasonable to presume that the new analysis of the British Social Attitudes (BSA) data by Stephen Bullivant is where the sensational rise in people identifying as non-religious reported comes from. But that assumption would be wrong. The figure of 25% cited in the article is referenced from the last British census in 2011, whereas the figure of 48.5% is taken from a BSA survey from 2014. This discrepancy is significant as the results of a survey can vary dramatically depending on the wording of questions and the categorising of answers. This makes drawing any grand conclusions based on differences in percentages differences in responses collected from different surveys an extremely perilous endeavour. But does the wording of the questions or the answer categories differ significantly between the census and the BSA’s items about religious affiliation? Yes to both.
Specifically, the census asked respondents “What is your religion?” which implicitly suggests the respondent has one, while the BSA survey asks “Do you regard yourself as belonging to any particular religion?” which instead carries the connotation that the respondent may not regard themselves as belonging and also raises the issue of what qualifies as belonging. That asking the questions in these differing ways results in very different responses is not really news as the BSA stated clearly in its report on religion from 2012:
The difference between the proportions of the population identified as belonging to a religion by the 2001 census and British Social Attitudes can be partly explained by question wording… The difference may also be due to the response options offered; with the census listing the major world religions, and British Social Attitudes listing specific denominations; respondents answering the former would be most likely to see this as a question concerned with ‘cultural classification’ rather than religion (Voas and Bruce, 2004). Finally, the context of the questions is significant, with the census question following one on ethnicity, arguably causing ‘contamination’ of responses (ibid.).
Given that this excerpt is discussing a difference noted in 2001(!) it appears to be a well established discrepancy between the surveys. Further credence to this issue not being news is also found in a 57 page document produced by the Office of National Statistics (ONS) which covers the in-depth research, consultation, and pre-testing that was conducted to select the specfic wording of the religion questions in the census. In this document the difference with the BSA question is discussed in some depth and finally the conclusion is reached that despite offering some benefits the question used by the BSA is:
…unclear as to how ‘belonging’ should be interpreted. Most respondents were forced to choose between the two broadest interpretations (being brought up in a faith or belief in a religion and active participation or ‘practising’ a religion). Therefore, asking a question about ‘belonging’ would not be consistent with the decision to collect information on religious affiliation.
Given such well known differences why did the author of today’s article, the Guardian’s religious correspondent Harriet Sherwood, chose to compare these two statistics? Being charitable you might assume it is due to their being a lack of relevant data from the BSA for 2011- but you would be wrong. In fact there is not only BSA survey data for 2011 but their data goes all the way back to 1983! So what about the figure for the proportion of non-religious they collected using basically the same methodology in 2011? Take a look at the table below, where I’ve highlighted the relevant results from 2010-2012.
Using these figures the dramatic increase in non-religious looks remarkably less dramatic. If we focus only on 2011 then the figure rose from 46% to 48.5% in 2014- an increase of 2.5%, which is only relevant if you completely ignore important things like confidence intervals. To illustrate why this is problematic consider that if you compare the result from just one year early in 2010 instead of a rise we find a 1.5% decrease for the 2014 figure. Taking an average based on the figures from 2010-2012 you end up with a slightly more reliable figure of 48%, which makes the breathlessly reported ‘rise’ to 48.5% seem significantly less deserving of the headline space. Indeed, according to the BSA data shown above Christians in Britain were already a minority compared to no religious affiliation back since at least 2009.
However, the census data demonstrates why accepting even this conclusion could be misleading; first, the census by its nature is a much more representative sample, it costs hundreds of millions of pounds to administer, failure to respond can lead to criminal prosecution and it is estimated to have collected responses from 93.9% of the British population. In comparison the BSA collects around 3,000 responses each year and although these are carefully selected and weighted to be as representative as possible, they obviously cannot compare with the power granted from a census. Second, the census focuses on collecting data about affiliation to a religious identity rather than strength of beliefs or extent of participation, the belonging item used by the BSA is a concept that cuts primarily across affiliation and participation in particular denominations but this doesn’t tell us directly about the strength of an individual’s religious beliefs or lack thereof.
Setting aside such complexities, the figures over the 30 years since the BSA survey launched demonstrate a definite increasing trend in the number with no religious affiliation but it’s a trend that has pretty much levelled off in the past 15 years. Additionally, while Church of England affiliation continues to drop the rates of affiliation with Roman Catholicism and ‘Other Christian’ are pretty steady while non-Christian religious affiliation has shown a slight increase. The point is that ultimately how you interpret these kinds of statistics and what trends you emphasise is likely be highly influenced by your ideological biases and it is thus crucial to be extra careful when you read about some study that supports a conclusion you want to be true. Religious belief is declining in the UK but the rate of non-religious people didn’t almost double in 3 years. That’s just bad reporting and we can’t even tell if it is the fault of the journalist or the study author because there is no actual useful detail on the new study provided in the article.
Despite this, I’m actually inclined to believe that the author of the new study, Stephen Bullivant, is not to blame and that his study just provided the necessary gristle for a pre-prepared sensationalist narrative that is trotted out by journalists covering religion every few years. If that sounds a little too conspiratorial consider this excerpt from the BSA’s report on religion from 2012:The Princess is Money-Hungry details playable Isabella
NIS's action RPG due out later this month in Japan.
The Princess won’t be the only playable character in The Princess is Money-Hungry, Nippon Ichi Software revealed. Isabella, a zombie character we previously detailed, will also be playable.
Isabella will become an ally of The Princess as the story progresses, and she possess different means of attack. For example, her punches that expose her bare bones, or her suicide bomb attacks that strike her surroundings. She also has other actions like a skull bomb that explodes after a certain amount of time, and a bite attack that restores her HP. Unlike the princess, she cannot use Zenigami’s Calculator, but she can similarly buy up enemies using “Gold Skulls.”
Nippon Ichi Software also shared information on the “Castle of the Ruined Kingdom” element of the game. In the castle, the monsters you acquire in battle become “People of the Land,” and your relics (traps) are stored as assets. If you gather up a certain amount of People of the Land and relics, you’ll be able to spend money to make a “Zenigami Statue.” By using the skill points obtained through worshiping Zenigami, you’ll be able to raise the Princess’ and Isabella’s stats, as well as learn new actions.
The People of the Land and relics an also be used to create armor. Each armor has a different Ougi set, and can grant special effects such as attribute bestowal as well. There are a total of 78 Ougis in the game.
The Princess is Money-Hungry is due out for PS Vita in Japan on November 24.
View a new set of screenshots at the gallery. If you missed it earlier this week, catch the latest trailer here.Facebook will employ face recognition software to make tagging easier (Credit: Facebook)
Just a few hours after Time magazine anointed Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg "Person of the Year," Zuckerberg's company announced yet another new service that will attempt to recognize pictures of your friends based on their facial characteristics.
Starting next week, Facebook will start using face recognition technology to assist its users in tagging pictures of friends.
Privacy Remains the Same
Facebook officials told me that the new service will not change the privacy settings related to tagging -- users will still get a notice if they are tagged and can remove the tag of any photos. Also, users continue to have control over who tags them.
Another comforting fact about the new tagging service is that it's not automatic. When you upload an album, Facebook will attempt to recognize the people in it. If it finds what it thinks is a match it will ask you to confirm. If you do nothing, the photo won't be tagged.
As has long been the case with photos, you will only be able to tag people you are friends with and, presumably to improve accuracy, Facebook will only compare the pictures against a relatively small sub-set of your friends -- perhaps as few as the 30 people you communicate with most often, which, according to computer scientists who study face recognition, can improve the accuracy.
Facebook will also be allowing users to opt-out of having their name suggested to friends during the photo tagging process. If you disable "Suggest photos of me to friends," your name will "no longer be suggested in photo tags, though friends can still tag you manually," according to the Facebook blog.
From a privacy standpoint this move should have little impact but it is yet one more example of how Facebook is encouraging people to share information, including photos
Hard to Do
Face recognition remain hard to do said Erick Learned-Miller, an associate professor of Computer Science at the University of Massachusetts whose research includes "machine learning" and "computer vision. And it's especially difficult if you're using a very large database. "The larger the number of people you are trying to identify, the more difficult the problem" he said in an interview.
"Up to now the reliability of face recognition is not very good," he said. "if you could be right more than half the time that would be very very good."
Learned-Miller calls Facebook's plan to allow the user to confirm whether the photograph is accurately identified "makes a lot of sense," referring to the process as a "human in the loop method where you don't commit to a particular decision but you try to use the computer as a screen step that improves your own efficiency."
It also helps that Facebook can take advantage of previous tagging. If a person has been tagged in multiple photographs, that improves the chances of it working, according to computer scientists I spoke with.
Rolling Out Gradually
Facebook will roll out the service to a small number of users next week and expand from there. It will initially only be available in the United States.
This announcement follows one in September when Facebook announced group tagging, an improved photo viewer and higher-resolution images. More than 100 million photos are uploaded daily, according to Facebook officials.Former Ring of Honor World Champion Adam Cole joined the Greg DeMarco Show this week to discuss his return from injury, the company’s brand new cable television deal, the Best In The World pay-per-view and more. The Greg DeMarco Show with Patrick O’Dowd is heard everyWednesday night on the VOC Nation Radio Network. Visit www.vocnation.com for more information. Interview highlights are below.
His reaction to ROH’s Destination America television deal:
It’s huge. We’re in 57 million additional homes. It’s pretty exciting. We always knew that this was going to be a slow but |
hand. Voiced by Keiji Fujiwara in the OVA.
Miyuki Hatoyama ( 鳩山ミユキ, Hatoyama Miyuki) The alien-like wife of Yukio Hatoyama. She is his partner in the manga and reveals that she is a skilled player in her own right, having played in seedy underground mahjong parlors, which is reflected in her tendency to threaten her opponents. Despite her rough language and her and her husband's otherworldly behavior, it is made clear that she and Yukio love each other deeply. Voiced by Hitomi Nabatame in the OVA.
Renhō ( レンホー ) The State Minister of Government Revitalization, she relentlessly screens the numerous bureaus established by the LPD, including the 13th Autonomous Mahjong Corps, as part of the fiscal restructuring by the new DPJ government. She challenged the corps to three mahjong matches with the nation's mahjong greats of her choosing to decide the fate of the Mahjong Corps. Being the second player of these three matches, her exaggeratedly propped up collars served as receivers of secret communication signals from her sister Rinhō ( リンホー ) across the table.
Social Democratic Party (SDP) [ edit ]
Mizupo Fukushima ( 福島 みずぽ ) The Social Democratic Party representative. Once opposed the rocket carrying Koizumi to the moon on the grounds that it might be used militarily, against the constitution of Japan, but was ignored by the main characters. She later appeared alongside Takako Doi in the first of three matches to decide the fate of the 13th Autonomous Mahjong Corps.
13th Autonomous Mahjong Corps [ edit ]
Matajiro Sanada ( 真田 又次郎 ) Main character of "The Blood Relatives of a Lion" and "Battle for Senkaku Islands" arcs. Originally the captain and commander of the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force Destroyer Takao scouring the Indian Ocean for Somalian pirates, he got enlisted into the newly established 13th Autonomous Mahjong Corps for his mahjong skills. Unbeknownst to him, he is Junichiro Koizumi's illegitimate son. Signature skills include Fire "Riichi" (using the Goumanpai 轟盲牌 and switching the neighboring tile with his opponents's next draw), Tomahawk Attack, and Blast Off Riichi.
Okumura ( 奥村 ) A stoic and musclebound Sergeant First Class of the Japan Ground Self-Defense Force 1st Airborne Brigade. Despite his foul mouth, he dedicates his lives to the safety of the Japanese people.
Reiji Inui ( 乾 怜視 ) An engineering officer from the Technical Research and Development Institute of the Ministry of Defense. A "human computer" who "sold his soul to science", he wears tesla coils up his sleeves to optically jam his opponents' vision of the mahjong tiles (based on the Philadelphia Experiment), and has phenomenal powers of computation, able to calculate whatever hand his opponents have assembled.
Others [ edit ]
Hideki Yukawa ( 湯川 ヒデキ ) A foul-mouthed quantum physicist leading the Super-Kamiokande to monitor the neutrinos emitted by mahjong activities. He discovered the secrets of Super Aryan Hitler's "Heisenburg Strike", a devastating move that merges parallel worlds through quantum superpositioning, making one win count as eight consecutive wins, a pārenchan (八連荘).
The Three Goddesses of Mount Osore ( 恐山の三女神 ) Three blind itako residing in the sacred Mount Osore, able to channel dead spirits onto themselves as spirit media. Sought by the Japanese government to find a way to defeat Hitler, the itako summoned the three mahjong greats of the Yalta Conference who defeated Hitler in the past: Winston Churchill, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Josef Stalin. The itako's life energies gave out after accomplishing this feat and died.
Ayano Shijō ( 四條 絢乃 ) A young woman working for JAXA who handled all communications to and from the moon during Koizumi's match with Hitler through ASIMO. After demonstrating her determination against JAXA being scrapped, she played alongside Reiji Inui in the match against Renhō. Despite knowing nothing about mahjong beforehand, she compensated by speedreading mahjong guide books and used her intellect to devastating effect during the match.
ASIMO ( アシモ, Ashimo) Humanoid robot created by Honda in 2000. It appears as Koizumi's partner in his match with Hitler and Tristan on the Fourth Reich's moon base. It has the ability to change the appearance of tiles using a holographic projector, among other "ASIMO weapons."[4] It returns in as Sanada's aide in the final match against Lenin and the mysterious "Mask of Mahjong".
Usagi Aoi ( 蒼井うさぎ ) A former idol of the Shōwa era who insists she's still active. She enjoys immense popularity throughout Asia, even among the Communist Chinese Red Guards. She fights against the Neo Chinese Soviet Republic in a mahjong match as part of a plea bargain to clear her drug-related charges. Her character is based on Noriko Sakai.
United States of America [ edit ]
George H. W. Bush ( ジョージ・H・W・ブッシュ, Jōji H W Busshu) The 41st President of the United States, often referred to as "Papa Bush". In his mind, he was disgraced by the Japanese twice: the first is when he was being shot down above Ogasawara in World War II, the second is when his son was defeated in Okinawa on the mahjong table. He summoned Koizumi to the Texas Schoolbook Depository in Dallas (by kidnapping Taizō) in order to settle the score with mahjong. In the end, he sacrificed himself to save his son from dying at the mahjong table against Skorzeny. His special move is the "Apocalypse Now Ron" (where "ron" is winning by picking a discard). He is voiced by Tesshō Genda in the anime adaptation.
Powell ( パウエル, Paueru) The former United States Secretary of State. He utilized the advanced technologies of the United States to catch people cheating in mahjong. He served during Papa Bush's match against Koizumi and Bush's match against Skorzeny, and both times he and his high-tech unit failed to detect the true nature of their opponent's sleight-of-hands.
Hillary Clinton ( ヒラリー・クリントン, Hirarī Kurinton) Also formerly Secretary of Foreign Ministry of the United States.
Donald Trump ( ドナルド・トランプ, Donarudo Toranpu) The 45th President of the United States, who himself has his power of building wall and regarded as a tyrant and arrogant.
Democratic People's Republic of Korea [ edit ]
General Kim ( 金将軍, Kimu-shōgun) The leader of North Korea. A rogue who uses underhanded tactics to ensure his own victory, such as attempting to assassinate his opponent Koizumi in order to incapacitate him. He is also a sore loser, as seen when he lost against Koizumi and Aso, he launches a missile in retaliation. His special move is the "Democratic People's Riichi", where he declares riichi while discarding a north tile. He was blown overboard the USS George H.W. Bush by jet engine exhausts after his loss and had most of his body eaten by sharks, but he returned as a mechanical cyborg. He is voiced by Misugi Ootori in the anime.
Jong-nam ( 正男, Jonnamu) The eldest son of General Kim. He replaces the anonymous North Korean official for the mahjong match on the USS George H.W. Bush for the OVA. He wears Mickey Mouse ears (in reference for his real-life attempt to sneak into Japan "to visit Disneyland" using a false identity) and is shown to have relations with Macau. He is voiced by Wataru Takagi.
Russian Federation [ edit ]
Vladimir Putin ( ウラジーミル・プーチン, Urajīmiru Pūchin) The second President of Russia who rose from being a KGB officer. A stoic man who mastered judo and sambo, and hid needles in his hands. He came to Japan to play mahjong with the members of the Japanese Diet as part of a Russo-Japanese Summit, sending Japan into massive debt with his winning streak. Special moves include "Kolkhoz Riichi" and the "Baltic Fleet" (Four quads of bamboo tiles, worth 1,583,296,743,997,800 points in total because they were playing without point limits) as well as the "Siberian Express Ron". He is voiced by Jōji Nakata in the anime adaptation.
Dmitry Medvedev ( ドミートリー・メドヴェージェフ, Domītorī Medovējefu) Third Russian President, playing a secondary position to Putin in the match against Wagner. To support Putin, he used the "Sovkhoz Riichi" to fool Reinhard into thinking that Medvedev has more than he put up. In the end, Medvedev sacrificed himself so that Putin could finish his "Siberian Express" (Nine gates).
United Kingdom [ edit ]
Margaret Thatcher ( マーガレット・サッチャー, Māgaretto Satchā) Former British Prime Minister who came to watch the Russo-Japanese match in the secret basement of the National Diet Building. Had once played Papa Bush with the depleted uranium tiles Putin and Koizumi were playing with.
The Vatican [ edit ]
Pietro ( ピエトロ, Pietoro) A white knight serving the pope, playing as his aide on the mahjong table. Once saved Koizumi from a North Korean abduction and led him to the battle in the Vatican.
Benedict XVI ( ベネディクト16世, Benedikuto Jūroku-sei) The Pope 265th of the Vatican. Summoned Koizumi to test his strength in order to counter a new global threat. Capable of walking on thin air and reenacting the first seven days of the Genesis on the mahjong table, accompanied by a boys choir. His special moves are the "Sainte-Trinite" (DaiSanGen) and "Logos" (All honors).
Ukraine [ edit ]
Yulia Tymoshenko ( ユリア・ティモシェンコ, Yuria Timoshenko) The 13th Ukrainian Prime Minister. A woman of many faces. She was recommended by Putin to be one of the Earth representatives in place of Margaret Thatcher because of her health concerns, since Tymoshenko was the strongest woman in Europe in Putin's mind. Putin calls her a gas witch. A warrant is issued for her arrest, and it is shown that she is in prison by the end of the series. She is voiced by Rina Satō in the anime adaptation.
Eleonora Pavlichenko ( エレオノーラ・パヴリチェンコ, Ereonōra Pavurichenko) Aid to Tymoshenko, who Eleonora calls "big sister". Like Tymoshenko, she has some skills at rolling the dice.
Fourth Reich [ edit ]
Otto Skorzeny ( オットー・スコルツェニー, Ottō Sukorutsenī) Once called the "Most Dangerous Man in Europe", Skorzeny was the one who infiltrated the Vatican to bring a message from the Fourth Reich. After Earth's leaders accepted Hitler's challenge, Skorzeny returned by a Nazi UFO. He, along with Rudel, are Papa Bush's opponents for the third match between the Earth Alliance and the Fourth Reich. He is killed by Powell's snipers when he is caught cheating; he is unrepentant, taking a puff of his cigarette and telling Powell to "Eat shit and die." before being shot, he survives long enough to defeat Bush and Powell before dying of his wounds. Signature moves include "Operation Greif" (All terminals and honors), "Operation Panzerfaust" (Three colour triplets), and "Operation Eiche" (a riichi in coordination with Rudel's hand).
Reinhard ( ラインハルト, Rainharuto) Wagner's partner in the match against Putin and Medvedev. Despite trying to complete his mission to defeat the Russians, Reinhard's advances did not impress the prideful Wagner. Though a loyal officer himself, he is not able to comprehend Medvedev's act of self-sacrifice.
Mariel ( マリエル, Marieru) Mengele's personal nurse attendant. She had been biologically engineered so that she could determine the mahjong tiles by only using her ears, restructure mahjong walls with invisible speed, and serve as the new host of Mengele's brain.
Hans-Ulrich Rudel ( ハンス・ウルリッヒ・ルーデル, Hansu Ururihhi Rūderu) The much-feared "King of Airstrikes" who is also the "Greatest Enemy of the Soviet People". His battlefield experiences as an ace pilot have led to a heightened sense of awareness that allowed him to sense the situations on the mahjong table. Specializes in coordinated air and land attacks, signified with his hands "Nosedive Bomber" (Straight through) and "Iron Crossfire" (Balkenkreuz; in coordination with Skorzeny's riichi).
Adolf Hitler ( アドルフ・ヒトラー, Adorufu Hitorā) The main antagonist of the original series and charismatic Führer of Nazi Germany and "The Greatest Evil of the 20th Century" who is capable of making people with insufficient resistance into willing followers with a glance. Can turn into a "Super Aryan". He is killed during a duel with Koizumi and ASIMO by Koizumi's final Rising Sun, his soul is then dragged into an eternal game of Mahjong against the spirits of the Allied Leaders.
Tristan Goebbels ( トリスタン・ゲッベルス, Torisutan Gebberusu) The fictional grandson of Joseph Goebbels, a Hitler Youth born on the moon, making him a mondenkind. Plays alongside Hitler against Koizumi. Like Hitler, he can also transform into a "Super Aryan".
Isolde Goebbels ( イゾルデ・ゲッベルス, Izorude Gebberusu) The twin sister of Tristan Goebbels. Plays as Hitler's partner against Benedict XVI. She made her escape from the lunar "Valhalla" when it crumbled after Hitler's defeat.
Erwin Rommel ( エルヴィン・ロンメル, Eruvin Ronmeru) German Field Marshal of World War II. Tried to rebel against Hitler but was defeated on the mahjong table.
Hans Speidel ( ハンス・シュパイデル, Hansu Shupaideru) German general during World War II. Plays alongside Rommel, but is killed by Hitler for his deprecatory remark against the pope, who Hitler had defeated.
People's Republic of China [ edit ]
Tibet [ edit ]
Dalai Lama ( ダライラマ法王, Darairama Hōō) The 14th Dalai Lama. Having predicted the resurrection of Mao Zedong through his mandala, he joined the battle against the Neo Chinese Soviet Republic. His special technique is the "Four-armed Kannon", where he utilizes his invisible mahjong aura in the form of arms to switch tiles into his hand.
Neo Chinese Soviet Republic [ edit ]
Mao Zedong ( 毛沢東, Mō Takutō) The founder of the People's Republic of China and main antagonist in the anime-original story. Throughout his life he had hoped to turn China into lush green farmlands, so he brought this grudge back to the land of the living (represented by All greens) in the mahjong match against Koizumi in Tiananmen Square. Voiced by Kenji Utsumi. In the manga, he revived as the leader of the Neo Chinese Soviet Republic, hoping to win the Senkaku Islands from Japan and oust the current "capitalist" Communist Party of China in a new Cultural Revolution.
Pol Pot ( ポル・ポト, Poru Poto) Plays alongside Chairman Mao in the match against Koizumi in the anime-original story. Can be influenced by Mao to give him the tile he wants. In the manga, he plays the second round after Guzmán and can control slime molds from the Cambodian jungles to camouflage mahjong tiles.
Sengoku ( センゴク ) A Japanese Socialist seeking to form the Neo Chinese Soviet Republic on the Senkaku Islands and start a cultural revolution in Japan. Provides commentary.
Abimael Guzmán ( アビマエル・グスマン ) The Peruvian leader of the Maoist guerilla organization Shining Path, smuggled out of life imprisonment by the Neo Chinese Soviet Republic to play mahjong against Japan. Feared for his "Mad Dog" style of play that makes him bite people, even his teammates, for their tiles.
Jiang Qing ( 江青, Kō Sei) A former idol of 1920s Shanghai who later rose to power during the Cultural Revolution as the third wife of Mao Zedong. She plays against Usagi Aoi in the third round of mahjong to decide the sovereignty of the Sengoku Islands, and kept seeing Usagi as her former actress rival Wang Ying.
Zhou Enlai ( 周恩来, Shū Onrai) Aide to Mao Zedong during his match against the Dalai Lama. Though he caters to Mao to the point of helping him change clothes, he betrays Mao in the last round.
Lenin ( レーニン ) The final opponent in the match against the Neo Chinese Soviet Republic, the founder of the original Soviet Republic. Due to errors in his resurrection, his face and speech became cat-like.
Leon Trotsky ( レオン・トロツキー ) The founder of the Red Army, and was formerly second to Lenin before he was ousted by Stalin. He merged his head with the body of Junichiro Koizumi and appeared in Lenin's mahjong match as "Mask of Mahjong". Since "Mask of Mahjong" is essentially two people in one, he can nullify incoming mahjong attacks while dealing massive damage to his opponents, two theoretically opposite traits.
Anime [ edit ]
In August 2009, an anime version of Mudazumo Naki Kaikaku was announced with the release of the second bound volume of the manga.[5] The anime, released on February 26, 2010, is in the form of an OVA with three episodes, the first being an adaptation of a manga arc and the other two being new stories written by Hideki Ohwada. Episode 1 was uploaded onto YouTube and Nico Nico Douga on December 30, 2009 by the producer Kōsei Kawase since they "have no money so [they're] borrowing server space".[6]
Reception [ edit ]
The first bound volume of the manga was published on September 5, 2008. In three days, the manga was sold out throughout the bookstores of Tokyo, and Takeshobo had to print additional shipments five days after the first publish date.[7] The manga also sold out on Amazon.co.jp, where the manga once placed among the top 3 on its daily sales rankings.[3] By November, Takeshobo reported that the first volume sold over 150,000 copies.[8] By the end of the series, 2,500,000 copies were sold in total.[9] News commentators attributed the manga's sales to the enduring popularity of the former Prime Minister Koizumi[3] and an increasing awareness of politics in Japan.[7] The manga has been recommended by Japanese politicians Tarō Asō[10] and Shigeru Ishiba,[11] both of them caricatured in the manga.LONDON (Reuters) - U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry entered 10 Downing Street with a bang on Tuesday, before expressing amazement at the rapidity with which new British Prime Minister Theresa May had taken up residence.
Kerry, making his first visit to London since Britain voted last month to leave the European Union, hit his head on the door as he entered the official residence.
Apparently unhurt, he later exchanged small talk with the Conservative leader, saying he was “amazed” at the speed of a transition that saw her move in to No.10 last Wednesday - right after David Cameron moved out.
“It happened rather quickly... It’s such a different transition arrangement than in the United States,” May told Kerry.
“I am amazed it happens so fast - how do you have time to pack everything?” Kerry replied at a photo opportunity where the two shook hands, smiled and sat down on matching armchairs in front of a period fireplace.
Cameron quit after Britons voted narrowly in a June 23 referendum to leave the European Union, having failed in his bid to persuade them to back remaining in a bloc the United Kingdom joined in 1973.
Emerging from the talks, Kerry said he had an excellent discussion with May: “I am very grateful to her for her restatement of the commitment to the very strong transatlantic partnership,” he said.
Without referring directly to the so-called Brexit vote, he said both had affirmed the need “to maximize the economic opportunity, minimize the disruption, deal with this in a way that has the wellbeing of the citizens... in mind”.
The U.S. presidential race, meanwhile, grinds on with Republican Donald Trump due to win the formal backing of his party at this week’s convention in Cleveland, Ohio. Rival Hillary Clinton is poised to secure the Democratic ticket next week.
Americans will cast their votes in November and the 45th president, and successor to Barack Obama, will not be sworn in until next January.
Slideshow (3 Images)
An aide to Kerry said he was unhurt in his encounter with the front door of No.10.
The towering 72-year-old, at 6 foot 4 inches the second tallest American politician not to win the presidency, has had a number of mishaps on his travels, including breaking his right femur while cycling in the French Alps in May 2015.
Kerry was unhurt on a visit to India in January 2015 when his limousine was involved in a motorcade shunt caused when a driver braked to avoid a dog that had strayed onto the road. The dog survived.I hope you enjoyed the visit to the latest cricket news website, and interested in the latest news and insights on cricketing news from all over the globe. You may want to subscribe to our RSS feed for latest updates. Thanks for visiting Cric News.
As our partner website www.cricketupdates.in asked that the big question of the moment is can Vettori and Team prevent another assault from Virender Sehwag? So far if you check the performance of both the teams India and New Zealand, the answer which you will get is NO.
So far Virender Sehwag and Indian batsman has demolished the Kiwis bowling line. Sehwag has so far destructed the line and length of all the bowlers of New Zealand. Even in the last match which was washed away by rain, Sachin Tendulkar has also shown his hand in the destructive batting.
So with the 0-1 down in the series and one match washed away by rain Kiwis are more under pressure then Team India. So the third match is a bit of Do or Die for Kiwis, otherwise they will almost lose the series.
Don’t forget that Kiwis batting line is a bit inexperienced than India and they can brought under pressure by Zaheer Khan, Praveen Kumar and Harbhajan Singh. Also if Ishant Sharma is fine then he too can be dangerous for them.
Now forget all these worries and watch the live udpates of the third ODI between India and Kiwis, on a Sunday.Like all Australian golfers, Marc Leishman knows all about his country's jinx at the Masters.
No Australian has ever won the Masters and for a country that is used to sporting success, it has become a source of national frustration.
The agonising near misses of Greg Norman have only added to the country's obsession to end the drought but every new year brings fresh hope.
"It was awesome, but I never really got ahead of myself, because I know that this course can bite you pretty quickly" Marc Leishman
On Thursday at Augusta National, Leishman emerged as Australia's latest contender, shooting a brilliant six-under-par 66 in the first round to grab the clubhouse lead.
Leishman and Sergio Garica both shot 66 for a one-stroke lead over American Dustin Johnson and two ahead of a group including English debutant David Lynn and past champions Fred Couples and Trevor Immelman.
The 29-year-old Australian made a nervous start, bogeying the first hole, but did not drop another shot all day as he charged up the leaderboard with a run of birdies on the back nine.
"It was awesome, but I never really got ahead of myself, because I know that this course can bite you pretty quickly," he said.
"If you miss it in the wrong spot, you can easily have a bogey, and then double is pretty easy to come by around here.
"You've just got to miss it in the right spots and I was able to do that today. It obviously felt good to get on a roll with the four birdies in a row."
Mastering dream
Leishman made his Masters debut in 2010, a year after he became the first Australian to be named PGA Tour Rookie of the Year, but was overawed by the event and missed the cut.
He failed to qualify in 2011 and 2012 but earned himself an automatic spot when he won his first PGA Tour event last year and said he is better prepared this time.
"The first time I was here a few years ago, I was like a bit of a deer in headlights," he said.
"You just put all your mistakes in the memory bank and try and not make them again."
Australians have won each of golf's other three majors but the Masters has eluded the country's best golfers since Jim Ferrier, the 1947 PGA Champion, blew a three-shot lead with six holes to play at Augusta National in 1950.
Peter Thomson won the British Open five times in the 1950s and 1960s but his best result at the Masters was fifth place in 1957. Then came Norman, whose cruel close calls at Augusta became torturous viewing for Australians.
Norman finished runner-up in 1986, bogeying the last hole to miss out on a playoff with a 46-year-old Jack Nicklaus. A year later, he was beaten in a playoff by Larry Mize, who holed out from a bunker, but his darkest moment was yet to come.
In 1996, Norman led by six shots heading into the final round but crumbled to shoot a 78 and finish second again.
In 2012, Australia's Adam Scott held the outright lead with two holes to go with countryman Jason Day his nearest challenger. But both were overhauled by South Africa's Charl Schwartzel who birdied the last four holes.
"Growing up as a kid, you know, you just (imagined) having the putt to win the Masters," Leishman said.
"(Winning the Masters) would be huge obviously, but there's a lot of golf left and a lot of hurdles to clear.
"But if I can keep playing the way I'm playing, keep holing the crucial par putts and just putting the way I have been, there's no reason why not."Would you like to add or edit content here? Here's how you can have an account!
From FreeThoughtPedia
The Harvard prayer experiment was a scientific study to qualify and quantity the effects (if any) of prayer to affect people.
With support from the Templeton Foundation, cardiologist Herbert Benson and his colleagues randomly assigned 1802 cardiac bypass patients to one of three conditions:
Group 1 : those told they may or may not be prayed for (and who weren't)
: those told they may or may not be prayed for (and who weren't) Group 2 : those told they may or may not be prayed for (and who were)
: those told they may or may not be prayed for (and who were) Group 3: those told they would be prayed for (and who were)
For those facing surgery or battling disease, the prayers of others can be a comfort. Researchers in the Study of the Therapeutic Effects of Intercessory Prayer (STEP), the largest study to examine the effects of intercessory prayer—prayer provided by others—evaluated the impact of such prayer on patients recovering from coronary artery bypass graft (CABG) surgery. The STEP team, composed of investigators at six academic medical centers, including Baptist Memorial Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee; Beth-Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, Massachusetts; Integris Baptist Medical Center in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma; Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota; St. Joseph’s Hospital in Tampa, Florida; Washington Hospital Center in Washington, D.C; and the Mind/Body Medical Institute, found that intercessory prayer had no effect on recovery from surgery without complications. The study also found that patients who knew they were receiving intercessory prayer fared worse. The paper appears in the April issue of American Heart Journal. “The primary goal of STEP was to evaluate whether intercessory prayer or the knowledge of receiving it would influence recovery after bypass surgery,” said co-author Jeffery A. Dusek, Harvard Medical School instructor of medicine and Associate Research Director at the Mind/Body Medical Institute. Each year, 350,000 Americans have coronary artery bypass graft surgery. Though medical techniques and post-operative care have improved dramatically in recent years, the surgery is stressful. Earlier studies have shown that many patients enlist friends and family to provide private prayer for support during surgery and recovery. STEP investigators enrolled 1,802 bypass surgery patients from six hospitals and randomly assigned each to one of three groups: 604 patients received intercessory prayer after being informed they may or may not receive prayers (Group 1); 597 patients did not receive prayer after being informed they may or may not receive prayer (Group 2); and 601 patients received intercessory prayer after being informed they would receive it (Group 3). Caregivers and independent auditors comparing case reports to medical records were unaware of the patients’ assignments throughout the study. The study enlisted members of three Christian groups, two Catholic and one Protestant, to provide prayer throughout the multi-year study. The researchers approached other denominations, but none were able to make the time commitments that the study required.
Results
Some patients were told they may or may not receive intercessory prayer: complications occurred in 52 percent of those who received prayer (Group 1) versus 51 percent of those who did not receive prayer (Group 2). Complications occurred in 59 percent of patients who were told they would receive prayer (Group 3) versus 52 percent, who also received prayer, but were uncertain of receiving it (Group 1). Major complications and thirty-day mortality were similar across the three groups. Major events and 30-day mortality were similar across the 3 groups. (13 in group 1, 16 in Group 2, and 14 in Group 3)
Not only did prayer not help the patients, those that were told they were being prayed for experienced more complications.
Prayers don't help heart surgery patients
Commentary from William J. Cromie, Harvard News Office
Many - if not most people - believe that prayer will help you through a medical crisis such as heart bypass surgery. If a large group of people outside yourself, your family, and your friends joined in intercessory prayer, that should be even more helpful, so such reasoning goes.
Third-party prayer has no effect at all on recovery from surgery without complications, noted Jeffery Dusek, an instructor in medicine at Harvard Medical School.
Researchers have been trying to prove this and even to measure the effect. So far, two studies found that third-party prayers bestow benefits, but two others concluded that there are no benefits. Now, the largest study to date, covering 1,800 people who underwent coronary bypass surgery at six different hospitals, supported the latter research.
Not only that, but patients who knew that others were praying for them fared worse than those who did not receive such spiritual support, or who did but were not aware of it.
Those who conducted the study are quick to say that its results do not challenge the existence of God. Also, it did not try to address such religious questions as the efficacy of one form of prayer over others, whether God answers intercessory prayers, or whether prayers from one religious group work better than prayers from another, according to the Rev. Dean Marek, a chaplain at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn.
Other researchers in the study, who include investigators from Harvard Medical School, Harvard-affiliated Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and Mind/Body Medical Institute, agree. Also involved were teams from medical institutions in Oklahoma City, Washington, D.C., Memphis, and Rochester, Minn.
"The primary goal of the study was limited to evaluating whether intercessory prayer or the knowledge of receiving it would influence recovery after bypass surgery," notes Jeffery Dusek, an instructor in medicine at Harvard Medical School. The evaluation found that third-party prayer has no effect at all on recovery from surgery without complications, and that patients who knew they were receiving prayer fared worse that those who were not prayed for. STEP up to pray
Known as STEP (Study of the Therapeutic Effects of Intercessory Prayer), it investigated patients undergoing coronary artery bypass surgery, who include 350,000 people in the United States and 800,000 people worldwide each year. Patients of any or no religious faith were eligible to participate. Among those chosen were Catholics, Jews, Protestants, and people of no faith.
The 1,802 participants were divided into three groups of about 600 each, with a mean age of about 64 years. One group received no prayers. A second group received prayers after being told that they may or may not be prayed for. The third group was informed that others would pray for them for 14 days starting on the night before their surgery.
The prayers came from three Christian groups, two Catholic, and one Protestant. The investigators report that, "We were unable to locate other Christian, Jewish, or non-Christian [groups] that could receive the daily prayer list required for the study." Such lists provided the first name and last initial of the patients.
The intercessors said a standard prayer "for successful surgery with a quick, healthy recovery and no complications." This system provides a practical way to conduct the experiment, but limits the results to one type of prayer.
There were all kinds of complications from the surgeries, including 197 cardiac complications for the group who knew they were receiving prayers versus 187 and 158 in the other two groups. These and other complications occurred in 59 percent of those who were prayed for, compared to 51 percent of those who received no prayers, and 52 percent in the group who received prayers but didn't know it.
Deaths during the 30 days after surgery were similar across groups, 13 and 16 in the prayed-for, 14 in the no-pray group.
The big unanswered question is why there was an excess of complications in patients who knew all those people were praying for them. The researchers admit they have "no clear explanation." To find out, they say, "will require additional study."
The STEP study was paid for by the John Templeton Foundation, an organization that supports research on the boundary between science and religion. Medical centers that participated, in addition to Harvard Medical School and its two affiliates, were Baptist Memorial Health Care in Memphis, which supported the research done at its site, Intergris Baptist Medical Center in Oklahoma City, the Mayo Clinic, and the Washington Hospital Center in Washington, D.C. A detailed report appears in the April 4 issue of the American Heart Journal. The lead author is Herbert Benson of the Mind/Body Medical Institute and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston.
See also
http://www.templeton.org/pdfs/press_releases/060407STEP_paper.pdf" rel="nofollow" title="Manuscript of study (PDF)">Manuscript of study (PDF)
http://www.templeton.org/newsroom/press_releases/060407step.html" rel="nofollow" title="Templeton Foundation statement">Templeton Foundation statement
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16569567?" rel="nofollow" title="Am Heart J. 2006 Apr;151(4):934-42.">Am Heart J. 2006 Apr;151(4):934-42.NATALIE, Pa. — A Pennsylvania woman has died after getting her arm caught in a clothing donation drop-off box.
Northumberland County Coroner James Kelley says 56-year-old Judith Permar died from a combination of trauma injuries she sustained in the accident and hypothermia.
The coroner says the Mount Carmel woman used a step stool to reach into the bin, and her left arm became stuck when the stool collapsed. She broke left her arm and wrist and couldn’t get free.
Investigators believe she went to the drop box about 2 a.m. Sunday. She was found dead more than six hours later.
The drop box is located along a highway in Natalie, a tiny village in Mount Carmel Township. That’s about 60 miles northeast of Harrisburg.
The coroner conducted an autopsy Monday.Power is a beautiful thing, make sure you have it all… Buy on AMAZON Buy on EBAY
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Pearl Lands Board Game is a 2-4 players new space themed sci-fi strategy game to play with your friends and family. It is a perfect choice for a family or friends’ game night. Easy-to-learn simple rules, rapid development of strategy, and quick game play time! 2nd Edition of the game comes with more mainstream game design with compact packaging.
Pearl Lands was created in 2017 by board game enthusiast (us) to play a strategy game with less nerdy friends. Pearl Lands is a galactic quest of ultra-dominance, a space war between planets where players battle and deceive opponents to gain advantage and get ahead in the space race. Game has different strategy elements like attacking opponents to steal their resources, trading resources and using universe cards to change the course of the game (sometimes just slightly and sometimes drastically). Its combat mechanics is similar to Risk, while trade aspect gives it more like a Catan style strategy element |
workers from the Nishnawbe Aski Nation, Weeneebayko Area Health Authority, as well as provincial and federal governments, have been dispatched to the community since the mental health crisis began.
Earlier this week, Ontario Health Minister Eric Hoskins visited Attawapiskat, where he announced that the province would be providing $2 million in funding to help the community. MPs also held an rare emergency debate in the House of Commons to try to figure out a way to help the people of Attawapiskat.
Shisheesh said Saturday that the new workers have been a "big help," but he is still hoping to gain more long-term commitments from Ottawa as well as Queen's Park.
"I'm waiting for the federal government to get on board and help us in the community," he said.
Shisheesh said there are “no proper resources available” for children.
Earlier this week, Keith Conn, assistant deputy minister of Health Canada's First Nations and Inuit Health Branch, said Shisheesh told him that some of the youth who attempt suicide are transported out of the community to hospitals in other parts of the province, where they receive psychological and psychiatric assessments, but are often back in the community in just a few short days.
Conn said Health Canada would explore the assessment process and aftercare needs.
In a joint statement put out earlier on Saturday, Indigenous Affairs Minister Affairs Carolyn Bennett and NDP MP Charlie Angus, whose riding includes Attawapiskat, said they planned to visit the community on Monday.
"We will be visiting the community on Monday to meet with community members and youth leaders and determine with them how to address their immediate needs and chart a path forward."
The statement said they are also working together to respond to the immediate needs of community members and will do their best to "ensure the safety and wellbeing of individuals most at risk, especially youth."
NDP Leader Tom Mulcair also called for more resources for the community in a tweet on Saturday.Police Lt. David Spicer took four.45-caliber slugs to the chest and arms at point-blank range and lived to tell about it. Like thousands of other police officers and soldiers shot in the line of duty, he owes his life to a woman in Delaware by the name of Stephanie Kwolek.
Kwolek, who died Wednesday at 90, was a DuPont chemist who in 1965 invented Kevlar, the lightweight, stronger-than-steel fiber used in bulletproof vests and other body armor around the world.
A pioneer as a woman in a mostly male field, Kwolek made the breakthrough while working on specialty fibers at a DuPont laboratory in Wilmington, Delaware. At the time, DuPont was looking for strong, lightweight fibers that could replace steel in automobile tires and improve fuel economy.
"I knew that I had made a discovery," Kwolek said in an interview several years ago that was included in the Chemical Heritage Foundation's "Women in Chemistry" series. "I didn't shout 'Eureka,' but I was very excited, as was the whole laboratory excited, and management was excited because we were looking for something new, something different, and this was it."
Officer Spicer was wearing a Kevlar vest when he was shot by a drug suspect in 2001. Two rounds shattered his left arm, ripping open an artery. A third was deflected by his badge. The last one hit his nametag, bending it into a horseshoe shape, before burrowing into his vest, leaving a 10-inch tear.
"If that round would have entered my body, I wouldn't be talking to you right now," the Dover police officer said.
While recovering from his wounds, Spicer spoke briefly by telephone with Kwolek and thanked her.
"She was a tremendous woman," he said.
In a statement, DuPont CEO and Chairwoman Ellen Kullman described Kwolek, who retired in 1986, as "a creative and determined chemist and a true pioneer for women in science."
Kwolek is the only female employee of DuPont to be awarded the company's Lavoisier Medal for outstanding technical achievement. She was recognized as a "persistent experimentalist and role model."
"She leaves a wonderful legacy of thousands of lives saved and countless injuries prevented by products made possible by her discovery," Kullman said.I'm a 22-year-old university student. My partner of six months has been busy and we've never managed to find time to spend an evening together. I've been asked to leave her place on many occasions; on account of a headache, too much work, being tired, a family member being ill, a friend being dead. The list is endless. However two nights ago, completely unannounced, she decided to visit me, making it clear that now she was ready to stay the evening. We ended up in my bedroom and she jumped on me. However, after 10 minutes the smart aleck in me reared its head; I told her I had a headache and that she should book a taxi. Supposedly this makes me gay. Have I done something wrong?
I like your sense of humour, and I can understand your desire to retaliate after being rejected so many times yourself, but if you want to be sexual with this woman you have to choose between being a smart aleck and a lover. Overwork, fatigue, sadness and loss do actually reduce sexual desire, but more importantly, many women need time to trust a person enough to allow intimacy, so her excuses may have been due to fear and not being ready. Many women first need to emotionally bond with a partner, so try to be understanding.
Your actions do not, of course, make you gay, but I imagine it was quite difficult for you to suddenly be expected to switch roles from pursuer to pursued. Some men are uncomfortable when women initiate, but remember she was seeking to avoid losing the element of control that, at this point, she seems to need.
• Pamela Stephenson Connolly is a clinical psychologist and psychotherapist who specialises in treating sexual disorders.
• Send your problem to private.lives@theguardian.comThe Supreme Court on Monday rejected a suit filed by people who were in the vicinity of Nagasaki at the time of the 1945 U.S. atomic bombing and seeking official recognition as A-bomb survivors.
While turning down recognition of the 387 people as victims, the top court found one plaintiff who died after the suit was lodged could have been exposed to radiation after entering areas affected by the attack. His case was sent back to the Nagasaki District Court.
The plaintiffs, who claimed they were within 12 km of ground zero at the time of the attack on Aug. 9, 1945, are not classified as survivors, or hibakusha, because they were outside the oval-shaped, state-designated zone stretching around 7 km from east to west and around 12 km from north to south.
Instead, they are defined as individuals “who experienced the bombing,” and are not therefore entitled to full compensation including medical assistance as hibakusha are. As of late November, 6,278 individuals who experienced the bombing lived in Nagasaki Prefecture, according to the prefectural government.
The top court’s First Petty Bench, presided over by Justice Katsuyuki Kizawa, upheld a 2016 Fukuoka High Court ruling that said an earlier scientific finding that radiation-linked health problems basically occurred within 5 km of ground zero was appropriate.
“I’m so disappointed and dumbfounded by the top court’s decision,” said Chiyoko Iwanaga, 81, who led the plaintiffs. “Although we are getting old and exhausted, I will keep challenging. The truth can’t be bent.”
In the suit filed in 2007, the plaintiffs asked the central, prefectural and municipal governments to issue health cards entitling them to full compensation under the law supporting atomic bomb victims.
They also insisted that they developed acute symptoms, such as hair loss, after exposure to the blast and still suffer from radiation-related diseases. But the top court upheld a 2012 Nagasaki District Court ruling that concluded the symptoms did not match those stemming from radiation exposure.
Under the support law, people are legally recognized as hibakusha if they were in the state-designated zone at the time of the bombing, entered the city within two weeks of it, or were otherwise exposed to radiation from the explosion.
All of the plaintiffs argued that they fell into the third category, while the man who died during the lawsuit demanded he be put into the second category.by
The more that I study animation, the bigger its differences (self-imposed and no) with cinema seem to go. This is because animation — as I’ve argued elsewhere — despite forcing a kind of irreality upon the viewer, requires no genuine suspension of disbelief, since we know that people don’t quite perceive the world in the way that animators depict. This is an often overlooked advantage, for it gives an artist leeway to break quite a few rules without necessarily compromising the art’s art, all the while putting the viewer into a receptive state of mind that wishes to further test boundaries. In fact, it is precisely this willingness to explore and engage that’s necessary for good art to flourish. It is surprising, then, that so few animated films have broached artistic greatness, a thing that might be remedied if the ‘why’ of such is better understood, and the word’s answers better applied.
Rene Laloux’s 1973 film Fantastic Planet (La Planète sauvage) is a good pedagogical tool to this end, for it is well-scored, well-voiced, well-limned, intellectually, and well-animated — the last being true despite its simple appearance, which by its nature tends to heighten the Draag giants, diminutize the tiny Om, and deepen the more outlandish creatures, within, merely by stripping them down to a few salient parts, and mimicking the way child-like dreams and memories really work. Indeed, it is animator’s Roland Topor’s work that drives much of the film, both in the film’s overt decisions, such as La Planète sauvage‘s lingering shots and mnemonic imagery, to the smaller stuff, such as the heavy-handed shading, thus nicely recapitulating how a child might interpret (and conduct) the word ‘art’. Yet for all that, the film is more or less adult, and while didacticism hinders so much animation, from Soviet ‘classics’ (Hedgehog In The Fog) to even the most recent Japanese anime, it still manages to handle its ideas quite well, deftly turning away from its own arcs, at times, before things get too formulaic and predictable.
The film opens with a fleeing Om (identical in sound to the French homme), as a few blue-skinned Draag children torture her and her child with exotic-looking objects and reneged opportunities to escape. It takes the viewer a moment to get what’s going on, nicely imaging the sort of helplessness that the Om, themselves, might feel. They kill her, and Tiwa — a conscientious, pre-teen girl — decides to keep the infant as a pet. Named Terr (the film’s onomastics, if you can’t tell, are a weak point), he provides a pretty good voice-over: ‘good’ because it is succinct and does not needlessly recap what we’ve already witnessed, keeping things to an occasional sentence or two, the first of which (‘That was my first encounter with the Grand Master of the Draags’) tricks the viewer into accepting Tiwa’s father as the referent, even as Tiwa is the one to grow in stature over time — something that’s more obvious on a second or third viewing. In fact, Terr grows into a boy and learns Draag knowledge due to Tiwa’s own negligence, and runs away only when Tiwa seems to outgrow her ‘pet’. In a way, then, she is indirectly responsible for the Draags’ fate, which is ultimately a good one. Now part of the wild population, Terr shares his knowledge with the other Om, watches his people get chased (and killed) from place to place, and eventually becomes their leader, forcing the Om to assimilate Draag technology, discover their combatants’ weakness, and forge a truce that allows both to prosper on the planet Ygam and its (now) 2 satellites.
It is in this way, then, that we come to learn that Ygam is full of wild Om, which critics label to be ‘pests’ from the Draag perspective. This is technically true, as the Draag’s ‘de-Om’ campaigns go on to show, but this implies a carelessness, perhaps even an evil, on the Draags’ part, that simply isn’t there. Yes, kids torture Om, and the Draags do not trust them, but their behavior is decidedly amoral, which is yet another inversion of the didacticism implicit not only in animation, but sci-fi as a whole. The expected trope is to have a clear-cut enemy, yet the Draags are recognizably human, and the Om, amidst scenes of silly bickering among themselves, almost feel as if they’re getting precisely what they deserve. The viewer’s empathy is directed, re-directed, and torpedoed in ways that are uncommon to animation, with any need for some evildoer is obviated by the Om’s own patterns of behavior. The Om, for instance, ‘duel’ with their arms tied behind their backs, and beasts attached to their bodies (thus using them as the Om are used by the Draag); they live as tribes, forever at war, and are ridiculously ignorant, sometimes imparting a heavy-handed, allegorical quality to the tale that often gets ‘saved’ at the last moment by one or two tricks of the script. In fact, one of the film’s best moments is a seemingly throwaway shot of the Om after they’ve assimilated Draag technology, and are now sitting in rows, waiting to communicate. It is easy to miss, for it only lasts a few seconds, but is a set-up eerily reminiscent of the Draags’ own lecture hall, suggesting that all the races of the planet are intertwined by cycles they seem to take control of, but can’t quite fully understand. No, Fantastic Planet can never have the depth of the best films in this class, but these are, nonetheless, novel and interesting ways to handle the sort of intellectual queries which usually get little more than comic-book level treatment elsewhere.
Other stand-out scenes include the film’s ending, wherein the Om observe the Draag mating ritual: a dance between white, Greek-like bodies whose heads have been replaced with Draag avatars or ‘spirits’ (this is not explained). It’s compelling partly because the bodies are so clearly human, as opposed to Om or Draag, while the scene’s scoring implies a depth and magic that the Om cannot begin to understand, preferring, as they do, to find little more than weaknesses to exploit in the ceremony. It is a beautiful sequence that neither can allow to continue. Then, there are Fantastic Planet’s creatures, all uniformly well-designed, including an odd, plant-like being caged within its own body, which attracts small, bat-like animals that it grabs with his ‘nose,’ shakes to death, and throws against the earth. There’s both laughter from the thing and a recognizable face: another touch, really, that gets at the logic of dream-scapes and children’s way of viewing the world (and evil, in particular) that still respects kids’ intelligence. Yet one of the film’s best decisions is in how much it leaves unexplained — the what and why of the planet’s animals, the more obscure portions of the Draags’ meditation (such as when they change shapes before sleep), or why their mating ritual pivots on Greek and Roman statues that, in 1973, and still in 2015, are often considered — for whatever reason — the ‘peak’ of human civilization. None of this implies plot-holes, for none of this is necessary to the film’s more superficial movements. Yet over-explaining things that ought to function merely as hints would do away an allure, a desire to probe, think, that only mystery can adequately provide, and that goes well beyond the territory of plot, and into the deeper stuff of narrative.
La Planète sauvage is neither a great work of art, nor even the best example of what animation is capable of, but is still a very good film. More importantly, however, it is a film that suggests where animation’s greatest strengths lie — its lack of corrals, the ability to use mere archetypes as opposed to fully fleshed-out characters — and where its pitfalls run. Too often, animation’s historical trends, a la its audience, and the ideas the medium often attracts, is taken as a carte blanche to pander to just these elements in predictable ways. Despite its mere 71-minute run time, however, Laloux and Topor were able to push boundaries with something that, at first glance, just seemed so low-tech, so minimally processed, and un-dimensioned. Yet that stipulation, too, is important, since after a good work of art runs you through its tricks, novelties, questions, answers, and deceits, there is nothing left ‘at first glance,’ but much in the second, and even more for the third.Giant Lego Man Washes Up on Florida Beach; Police Take It Into ‘Protective Custody’
The life-sized figure of a man made of Lego pieces was found washed up on a Florida beach, and people are scratching their heads as they try to figure out where it came from and what it could possibly mean.
Jeff Hindman reportedly found the bright red, yellow and green “man” as he walked on the Siesta Key Beach in Sarasota County around 7 a.m. Tuesday, according to a report in the Sarasota Herald-Tribune.
The fiberglass figure measures about 8 feet tall, and weighs about 100 pounds, according to the Sarasota County Sheriff’s Office. In a light-hearted press release, the department said it had taken the giant Lego man “into protective custody.”
The front of the figure’s bright green “torso” bore the cryptic message: “NO REAL THAN YOU ARE.” On the back appear the numeral “8? and the words “Ego Leonard.”
Just who is Ego Leonard, you ask?
It’s apparently the alter ego of a Dutch artist. A visit to the website, “Prescription Art,” shows a gallery of paintings for sale that all feature the Lego figure alongside pithy messages such as “I Love You,” “Play by the Rules” and, coincidentally, “No Real Than You Are.”
Converting the currency from the prices listed in British pounds, the paintings range in price from $3,407.19 to $4,238.90.
There’s also an Ego Leonard book — “No Real Than You Are” — that you can snag for just $11.18.
A message on the site, purportedly from the mysterious Ego, reads:
“My name is Ego Leonard and according to you I come from the virtual world. A world that for me represents happiness, solidarity, all green and blossoming, with no rules or limitations. Lately however, my world has been flooded with fortune-hunters and people drunk with power. And many new encounters in the virtual world have triggered my curiosity about your way of life. I am here to discover and learn about your world and thoughts …”
Other large Lego figures have previously washed up on beaches in England and Holland.
The Siesta Key Beach figure drew many stares before authorities removed it.
“Mr. Leonard is being kept in a secure environment until his owner comes forward,” the police statement added.
The makers of LEGO, the popular plastic toy bricks and plastic figures, have disavowed any knowledge of, or involvement with, the figure. Legoland Florida, a theme park, opened earlier this month in Winter Haven, Fla.
In a statement to the Sheriff’s office, the LEGO Group said: “This activity is in no way sponsored or endorsed by The LEGO Group or Merlin Entertainments, who run LEGOLAND attractions.”Bring Back the Capsule Corp Power Pack!
The Capsule Corp Power Pack was one of the coolest releases of the RetroDBZ CCG. It was halfway between a starter release and an expansion, and the closest the game got to a “game in a box” release. For those that don’t remember (or weren’t around), the Capsule Corp Power Pack was a card storage box that game with a few packs, but also had a complete set of promos mostly comprised of personality sets that didn’t fit in with the current saga based releases. It’s what brought us some tournament-tier personalities like Master Roshi, Bardock and Lord Slug. As cool as it was, it was still largely a peripheral release back in the day, but with the current direction that Panini America’s Dragon Ball Z TCG is going, it would now serve an even more important purpose and could serve to be an integral part of game releases.
To prove my point let’s take a look at the Heroes & Villains release and apply my old friend mathematics to it (something we know that Panini America’s design team has had multiple catastrophic and game breaking issues with for every release so far).
One of the best ways to introduce new play styles and archetypes to the game is through the introduction of new Main Personalities. No doubt that the game needs them, and needs them every set. The problem is, and it’s more exacerbated with the new Panini America ally rules, is that all these personality cards are “Limit 1 per deck.” When it comes to a Main Personality card, there is very little reason to need more than one copy (the same could be said of ally cards as well, if you aren’t packing the same ones in every deck). Further, unless they are foiled these cards are essentially worthless as trade fodder as well.
We didn’t notice this in set one since the set was so large, and most Main Personalities were only in starter decks. We did notice it with Mastery cards though, since those are available in booster packs and it was one of the biggest (non-gameplay) complaints of that set. It’s one of the few complaints that Panini America acknowledged and pledged to fix. But here, they are doing nearly the exact same thing just with a different card type. Out of the 142 cards in Heroes & Villains, 27 of them are “Limit 1 per deck” (16 Main Personalities, 10 Allies and one Drill). That’s just shy of 20%, or one in every five cards, that you only need to pull one copy of. Your regular 12 card pack will contain on average two of these cards, which become next to worthless after your first pull. It’s like pulling two Mastery cards in every pack of Heroes & Villains.
We need more personalities. We want more personalities. Heck, most of the Virtual Cards are personalities. But we don’t want two dud cards every pack, so how does that get fixed? Having a separate release for personalities, allies and other “Limit 1 per deck” cards is the answer. Reviving the Capsule Corp Power Pack is the answer. A Capsule Corp Power Pack with all the new personalities of a given set would be an instabuy among players and something that’s sure to appeal to collectors. Keeping all the named cards and staples in traditional pack form will keep those releases in tact, with the added benefit of not having nearly as many untradable duds in packs (certainly less than the current 20%).
I for one would love to see the Capsule Corp Power Pack return. This time with a more practical purpose than giving us a playable Mighty Mask personality, but rather restoring the value to booster packs. I recently did a live box cracking on Meerkat in which I lamented all the doubles I was getting, and it was only my second box. I was sent three boxes of Premiere set and I still need more just to have a playset of certain cards for one deck. After just two boxes, I’m done with Heroes & Villains. Will set three be the same way?
What do you think? Let us know in the comments, on our Facebook group or send a response to RetroDBZccg@Yahoo.com, we might even publish it.
Later, BroZ!
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TumblrA 39-year-old man is dead after accidentally falling into the Mount Ruapehu Crater Lake.
On Friday night, the Taupo resident was reported missing after going skiing at Whakapapa ski field, Mount Ruapehu.
The man's car was found in the ski field carpark but he could not be located.
On Saturday a helicopter and ground search was carried out, and after a short search the man was located dead in the Mount Ruapehu Crater Lake.
Initial indications are the man accidentally fell into the lake.
His family had joined the search earlier on Saturday and have been advised of his death.
"It is an absolute tragedy for this man's family. He was located at an area where many people go to get views of the lake," says Senior Sergeant Grant Alabaster.
"We are thankful we were able to locate him in a relatively short period of time to enable us to get him back to his family."
The matter has been referred to the coroner.
Newshub.A man carrying a gun began stalking a children's baseball game in Forsyth County, Ga, this past Tuesday night. It's reported that at least twenty-two 911 calls were made mostly by parents fearing for the safety of their children. The game was halted, but the sheriff said they could do nothing - the man was within his legal limits.
WSBTV.com reports:
"He's just walking around [saying] 'See my gun? Look, I got a gun and there's nothing you can do about it.' He knew he was frightening people. He knew exactly what he was doing," said parent Karen Rabb.
The Forsyth County sheriff, Duane Piper said:
"We support the constitutional right to bear arms. We will not tolerate bad behavior," said Forsyth Sheriff Duane Piper.
The aforementioned parent, Karen Rabb, says she is a gun rights advocate:
"I own a gun. I have no problems with the Second Amendment. But they do not belong in a parking lot where we have children everywhere. If you want to make a statement, go to the Capitol."
Oh really? Go to the Capitol and do what? Sorry, not a solution. This will continue, and more people will die. This will continue, until laws are changed. This will continue, until both gun rights advocates and gun safety advocates get together and find a compromise.
There is one organization that offers solutions: Moms Demand Action For Gun Sense In America is a very successful non-partisan organization that, for years, has persistently been fighting for gun safety.Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan took time out from his official duties to ask a Moroccan beauty queen’s father for her hand in marriage on behalf of Murat Yildirim, a famous Turkish actor.
Playing the role of a traditional guardian, Erdogan used FaceTime, a video chatting app, to speak with the beauty queen’s father.
According to the Turkish daily HaberTürk, Yildirim, who is already famous in the Arab world following the popularity of Turkish series in the region, sought Erdogan’s help to ask for the hand of Iman Al-Bani, a previous winner of the Miss Morocco contest.
Yildirim published on Instagram a picture of him kissing his would-be wife on the forehead with a background of a traditional ceremony taking place in the southern Adana province.
So far, there are no details regarding when the couple is expected to finally tie the knot or if Erdogan is going to attend the wedding.It will also be a test for Samsung. For the first time in its 79-year history, the company has been left leaderless. With Mr. Lee gone, there is no top executive to make long-term plans and strategic decisions.
Samsung has an army of professional executives that manage day-to-day operations of its 58 subsidiaries. But analysts say that without a family-appointed leader, decision making will slow.
In chaebol culture, often likened to an imperial monarchy within South Korea, the chairman must endorse or make corporate decisions. So the removal of Mr. Lee, who has been the de facto leader since his father was incapacitated by a heart attack in 2014, is far more serious than the loss of a senior executive at a conventional company.
Choi Gee-sung, the No. 2 lieutenant in the Samsung hierarchy and longtime right-hand man for Mr. Lee, will be the closest substitute to a top manager at the company while Mr. Lee is gone. But Mr. Choi is not a member of the Lee family and is expected to serve largely as a “vassal” caretaker who lacks the kind of sweeping authority and responsibility that Mr. Lee and his father have wielded in placing multibillion-dollar bets on investments or new technology.
In one sign of disruption, Samsung delayed its annual reshuffle of senior managers, which it usually announces in December. Compounding concerns, Mr. Choi and his deputies are also being investigated by prosecutors in connection with the bribery scandal.
The arrest comes at a difficult time for Samsung’s electronics arm. The company has faced stiff competition from Apple and cheaper Chinese smartphone makers alike. It is also still recovering from the discontinuation of its Galaxy Note 7, after flaws led some of the phones to overheat and burst into flames.
Still, few believe Mr. Lee’s arrest will challenge the family’s ultimate control of the company. In 2008, facing corruption charges, Mr. Lee’s father resigned from management, leaving the company to be run by loyal deputies, who served the family for decades and whose responsibilities were to ensure the father-to-son transfer of power.Vacant since 1972, the first black-owned hospital in Kansas City – where black doctors and nurses could practice medicine and receive advanced clinical training – sits decaying under 45 years of neglect.
Once a triumph of community-wide cooperation, the Wheatley-Provident Hospital remains on the city's dangerous buildings list for an eighth year. Absent a plan for its rehabilitation, it could be demolished by 2019.
In summer, a battered barbed wire fence surrounding the historic property at 1826 Forest Avenue disappears under green and poisonous vines. The vines spiral up relentlessly, covering fence and walkway and spreading through a field once planned for a nursing school expansion but now a bed of noxious weeds.
Some of the vines have latched on to the limestone facade, growing toward a stone parapet over the century-old front door, which is now boarded. The words "Wheatley Provident Hospital" are still visible on the stone sign but faded like the memory of clinics, seminars, consultations, and surgeries that took place here from 1918 through 1972.
"It's kind of hard to imagine the way it sits now, but it was definitely a bustling area," says Brad Wolf, the city's historic preservation officer.
In photographs from a 1940s tax assessment, the hospital's walls peek out from the middle of a dense block, a mixed-use subdivision called Victor Place, with apartments, duplexes, a large corner drug store and various warehouses. Then the hospital, located a block east of Troost Avenue and three blocks south of Vine Street, sat at the edge of a burgeoning African American community, separated by Jim Crow laws from white Kansas City for much of the 20th century.
‘Truly dangerous’
When Dr. J. Edward Perry moved to Kansas City in 1903, there were 16 beds available at the city hospital for "non-white patients" and no other facilities serving the 23,566 minority residents in the city. Perry, an African American physician, bought a home at 1214 Vine and began seeing patients in his front room.
"The health of my people weighed heavy on my heart," Perry wrote in an unpublished memoir, "Forty Cords of Wood."
But now the hospital he established, which eventually moved to 1826 Forest Avenue, is threatened by the city's renewed commitment to demolish dangerous buildings. Similar plans have been made in the past, but this time the commitment comes with a $10 million-dollar budget to fund demolitions, which cost about $10,000 per building.
"We didn't have enough money to take the hospital down in the past, but with the demolition initiative, now we do," says Shocky Franciscus, manager of the dangerous buildings list.
Jim Clark and structural engineer Mike Falbe plan to inspect the hospital this week. Their findings will inform a demolition order, which, if issued, will require the owner to demolish or repair the property in 30 days. If the owner fails to comply, the city will pay for the demolition.
"We put a lien against the property to try and recoup the costs of demolition from a negligent owner," says Franciscus.
In 2007, Wolf appealed to the city's Historic Preservation Commission to add the Wheatley-Provident Hospital to the Kansas City Register of Historic Places. His case, which notes the hospital's importance to the community and its association with founder Perry, "was an effort to save the building from demolition," Wolf says.
But continued neglect decade after decade makes the building now “truly dangerous," Franciscus says. "Parts of floors are completely collapsed. The interior wood is rotted. The roof doesn't exist in some places. The building has taken on water for years, and that takes a toll."
Baldwin City, Kansas, resident Mark A. Shay has owned the building since 1986, when he bought it from Kansas City real estate developer Mel Mallin, according to property records. The building has been for sale or option since the 1990s.
Shay did not respond to numerous attempts to reach him.
"The building has been for sale forever," says real estate agent Tim Gates, who represents Shay.
The Jackson County Assessor's office valued the building at $84,567 in 2017, but Shay is asking $250,000, a $600,000 reduction from his asking price two years ago. Still, that price is too high, says Dalena Taylor, director of the city's neighborhood preservation division.
“He is negotiating a very high price," Taylor says. "He thinks he has a gold mine on a hill, so to speak."
Shay was able to secure a temporary lease on the building for Dr. Deadly's Haunted Hospital from 1992 to 1996.
In a blog about 1990s haunted houses, Darren Hinesley, a haunted house designer, says the building “still contained original gurneys and equipment from when it had served patients. It was by far one of the creepiest locations I had ever worked in."
Code violations
According to public records, the property has been in violation of city nuisance and property maintenance codes for years. Taylor's codes enforcement officers have issued warnings for "rank weeds, unattended growth, litter, trash, refuse, and rubbish" almost monthly for five years, but Shay "doesn't respond to tickets or anything else,” Taylor says.
"Actually," she adds, "since he lives in Baldwin City, Kansas - out of state - he doesn't get tickets. He gets citations."
"I don't understand how the owner can, in good conscience, leave that building in the condition it is in," Taylor says. "Have you seen it? The building continues to fall apart and it affects the safety, health, and welfare of the public."
"We would hope that the city would consider other alternatives to demolition," says Lisa Briscoe, executive director of Historic Kansas City (Historic KC), a local non-profit that advocates for historic preservation.
Historic KC every year publishes a "most endangered buildings" list, which calls attention to properties of historical significance that are vulnerable to demolition. The Wheatley-Provident Hospital has been on the list since 2012 and is part of a broader endangered district, which Historic KC calls "18th and Vine and African American Heritage Sites."
Shay could save Wheatley-Provident Hospital from demolition if he presented a thorough plan for its rehabilitation and reuse, Taylor says.
"There are challenges," Wolf says. "You can have a building that is very significant, but if it’s in an area that’s not developing, then there are challenges. The area always comes up in planning meetings when we talk about how to connect 18th and Vine to the Crossroads, but nobody has really figured out what that area is going to look like."
The city plans to spend $18 million dollars to stabilize the nearby Historic Jazz District at 18th and Vine. “If that development goes well,” Wolf says, “then we can think about what to do with Wheatley-Provident."
Building a hospital
Wheatley-Provident's founder, Dr. J. Edward Perry, was a Texas native who graduated from Meharry Medical College in Nashville, Tennessee, in 1895, the same year the National Medical Association was founded. The NMA is the oldest professional association for the advancement of African American physicians in the United States.
After graduation, Perry started private practices in Mexico, Missouri, and Columbia, Missouri, before applying for a surgical residency at the University of Chicago in 1897. When he arrived for registration, he was met by the superintendent of the Post Graduate Medical School, he recalled in his unpublished memoir. "Dr. Perry, when we were corresponding with you, we did not know you were a colored man,” Perry wrote. “We cannot tell you that we will not take you because it would be a violation of the laws of the state, but I can tell you that we had rather not have you, and further, there is not much that we can do for you."
Perry studied at the University of Chicago for a year and left determined to improve opportunities for young African American physicians training after him.
"If we as a race ever possess a large number of professional men of a high degree of efficiency, they will have to be developed in Negro hospitals," Perry wrote. "I will go out of here and build a hospital and dedicate my life to the service of young men, so that they may not meet the embarrassments and handicaps as it has been my experience."
The same year Perry came to Kansas City, the Kansas and Missouri rivers reached historic levels, overran their banks, swept away bridges and railroad tracks, and turned city streets into canals. At least 20,000 people lost their homes, and the city's water supply was contaminated. The need for medical care during the flood outpaced the available facilities, especially for minority communities.
A temporary hospital was established at Convention Hall, and Dr. Thomas C. Unthank, an African American physician who was practicing in Kansas City, Kansas, was asked to oversee emergency operations |
did not seem to consider that targeting the cartels’ bosses and top managers could destabilize the precarious balance of power within the cartel system and provoke a bloody struggle for control among the survivors. As Eduardo Guerrero, a specialist in security matters, noted, each arrest or death of a cartel boss—which the government invariably celebrated with a spectacular media show—was followed by a wave of violence that lasted until the cartel in question was either in the hands of a new boss or had splintered into rival factions.
In 2010, four years after the start of Mexico’s “war on drugs” and in the face of growing rejection by the public, Calderón stopped using the expression. His failure was obvious, and it continues to be reflected in the stability of the street price for drugs in the United States. In 2012, a gram of cocaine cost $177.26—74 percent less than it did in the 1980s. If inflation is taken into account, the price of other drugs has also fallen. Some other signs of failure: the jail sentences for those convicted of crimes related to the drug trade are light, and the number of deaths related to organized crime has reached 47,500, according to official tallies. Other analyses estimate the number of dead at 64,000 or even, according to the poet and activist Javier Sicilia, 70,000, to which should be added some 26,000 missing persons and about 250,000 displaced people. These are figures comparable only to the casualties in a civil war—that is, to a real war.
* * *
All wars have their bards, and Mexico’s narco wars are no exception. Since 2006, myriad fictions have been added to the torrent of news articles, academic studies, poetry, artworks, movies, telenovelas and music (the famous narcocorridos—corridos are narrative folk songs) about narco culture. Of course, long before Calderón’s war, drug traffickers, especially in the northern states of Sonora and Sinaloa, had inspired countless corridos and been taken up as subjects by Mexican novelists.
In 1984, the Sinaloa playwright Óscar Liera wrote and staged El jinete de la divina providencia (The Rider of Divine Providence), a theatrical work based on the figure of Jesús Malverde, a kind of Robin Hood from Culiacán who in the early years of the twentieth century was revered by the public for his good works. In the play, investigations carried out by the church lead to Malverde’s eventual canonization (he was not canonized in real life). In effect, he became a folk saint for the narcos, who forgot his history and simply prayed for him to protect them. Around the same time, in Colombia, Fernando Vallejo published La virgin de los sicarios (Our Lady of the Assassins, 1994), perhaps the first masterpiece in the genre, a novel that focuses on the desolate lives of the young sicarios, or hit men, working for the drug bosses in the city of Medellín. Vallejo opened a path for later novelists with the reproduction—actually, the literary reinvention—of the special slang of the hired killers. Following his example, many writers in Colombia and Mexico elected to give a literary patina to the language of the narcos and, by doing so, created one of the essential features of the so-called narconovelas.
The honor of introducing the theme to Mexican literature fell to another writer from Sinaloa, Élmer Mendoza. Born in 1949 in Culiacán, a city linked to drug trafficking since the dawn of the twentieth century, he’d published several collections of short stories and two works of nonfiction—Cada respiro que tomas (Every Breath You Take, 1992) and Buenos muchachos (Good Boys, 1995)—and a few articles about drug trafficking in his state before writing his first novel, Un asesino solitario (A Solitary Murderer), in 1999. Composed along the lines of a detective novel, Un asesino solitario portrays the life of a hit man hired to murder a presidential candidate during his visit to Culiacán; its title echoes the government statement made about the assassin of Luis Donaldo Colosio, the candidate of the long-dominant PRI, who was killed in Tijuana in 1994. Mendoza not only incorporated “the effect of narco culture in our country,” as Federico Campbell wrote, but with acute auditory sharpness also recovered the slang of the criminals in the zone.
Though he does so only fleetingly, Mendoza includes the world of organized crime in his novel, an approach quickly taken up by scores of writers. Notable among these is the Spaniard Arturo Pérez-Reverte, author of bestselling literary thrillers and adventure novels. Pérez-Reverte transformed the female boss of the Sinaloa narcos into the protagonist of his La reina del sur (The Queen of the South, 2002), itself transformed into a successful telenovela. As the Colombian author Jorge Franco had done earlier in his Rosario Tijeras (1999), Pérez-Reverte introduced a fascinating female character into territory previously reserved for men: she is Teresa Mendoza, and her name pays homage to Élmer Mendoza, who had been Pérez-Reverte’s guide in his travels through the narco world of Sinaloa.
During the last ten years, narconovelas have flooded the bookstores, sparking interest among Mexican readers and foreign critics in a new strain of Latin American exoticism and displacing magic realism as the region’s characteristic genre. In these books, Mexico is portrayed as a violent, uncontrollable and fantastic world in contrast to the West, which consumes drugs without suffering or being scarred by the violence of the trade.
A few examples: in El vuelo (The Flight, 2008), Sergio González Rodríguez combines the detective novel with the supernatural; in A wevo, padrino (Hell Yes, Godfather, 2008), Mario González Suárez transcribes the delirious interior monologue of a thug immersed in the narco world; in Al otro lado (On the Other Side, 2008), Heriberto Yépez turns to science fiction to describe living conditions along the border, with its myriad cholos, “immigrants,” narcos and hit men; in Conducir un tráiler (Driving a Trailer, 2008), Rogelio Guedea delves into a northern Mexico devastated by drug trafficking by means of a story of family revenge; in Malasuerte en Tijuana (Bad Luck in Tijuana, 2009), Hilario Peña uses a Sinaloa detective to dramatize the dangers of life on the border; and in Tijuana: crimen y olvido (Tijuana: Crime and Oblivion, 2010), Luis Humberto Croswaithe turns to the “nonfiction novel” to denounce the murder of two journalists.
These and other books created a world that transcended stereotypes and became a paradigm repeated incessantly in novels, TV serials and films: a universe dominated by danger, death and the unforeseeable, a world of pathetic heroes and villains increasingly hard to tell apart—poor adolescents who become professional killers; beautiful young girls used as a medium of exchange; gunmen killing one another for no reason other than to fill an existential void; clumsy, ill-paid cops, almost always corrupt; and, of course, a few narco bosses transformed into multimillionaires, notable for their outsize eccentricities. These were new romances of chivalry in which no one knows what he’s fighting for; where, as the corrido says, “life is worth nothing”; where acts of heroism are extreme and rare; and where staying alive past 30 is a kind of victory.
The keenest paradox is that the most ambitious and well-crafted narco novel, the one that controls and unifies all these elements instead of being their creature, was written not by a Mexican but by an American, Don Winslow, who in The Power of the Dog (2005) skillfully re-creates the turbulent decade of the 1980s in Mexico in a kind of roman à clef (anyone familiar with the history of drug trafficking in Mexico knows the real names behind the fictitious characters). Winslow focuses on the reign of the Arellano Félix brothers and the murder of DEA agent Enrique “Kiki" Camarena Salazar in 1985 at the hands of Miguel Ángel Félix Gallardo and Ernesto Fonseca Carillo.
Some excellent narco novels attempt to depart from the detective format. Cocaína (Manual de usuario) (Cocaine [A User’s Manual], 2006), by Julián Herbert, is an intelligent collection of stories that takes up the drug theme from the perspective of addiction; Los minutos negros (The Black Minutes, 2006), by Martín Solares, uses black humor to depict crime and police corruption in Tampico; and Trabajos del reino (Kingdom Cons, 2004), by Yuri Herrera, and Down the Rabbit Hole (2011), by Juan Pablo Villalobos, are the most eccentric—and applauded—visions of narco culture in Mexico.
* * *
“Mexico 2010: Nothing to Celebrate.” This was the impish publicity slogan for the film El Infierno (Hell), Luis Estrada’s ferocious satire of Calderón’s “war on drugs.” In 2010, as part of the commemoration of the bicentennial of Mexico’s War of Independence, the government decided to finance films that would depict and perhaps demystify national heroes. Estrada was among the directors who received funding, but he quickly ditched the program to satirize Calderón’s narco strategy. It was both surprising and praiseworthy that a movie financed with public funds could be so critical of official policy and remain uncensored. El Infierno opened in 300 theaters two weeks before the bicentenary celebrations and was enormously popular.
El Infierno focuses on the figure of Benjamín García, “El Benny,” an undocumented Mexican deported from the United States, who returns to his hometown in northern Mexico and tries to settle back into his old way of life. He realizes that not only his hometown but also the entire nation is in the hands of the narcos, who control the politicians and the police. While at first he tries to avoid joining any criminal group, El Benny has no other choice but to become a sicario. The heavy-handed irony, bloody gags and digressions into infinite atrocious anecdotes pilfered from the news—the decapitations and the bodies dissolved in acid by El Pozolero (the Stew Chef)—make El Infierno difficult to digest, but the film’s ability to arouse public indignation has not been equaled by any contemporary film or literary work.
That same acid bath of humor is drawn by Juan Pablo Villalobos in Fiesta en la madriguera, named one of the best first novels of 2011 by The Guardian. The first volume of a projected trilogy about contemporary Mexico, continued in the much more ambitious and deftly crafted Si viviéramos en un lugar normal (If We Lived in a Normal Place, 2012), Fiesta en la madriguera is written in the humoristic vein of Mexican literature and calls to mind authors like Jorge Ibargüengoitia, Carlos Monsiváis and Juan Villoro. Its basic idea is as brilliant as it is risky: a child narrates the family life of a cartel boss. Curious and impertinent, obsessed with samurai and hats, the child, Tochtli, reveals slowly but surely the bloody, implacable world of his father, Yolcaut, as he describes with an explosive mix of innocence and cynicism his bizarre daily life surrounded by drug traffickers. The characters’ names—like Tochtli, which means “rabbit,” or Yolcaut, which means “rattlesnake”—are Nahuatl in origin.
Few literary undertakings are as perilous as the creation of a child’s voice. In their desire to reveal a logic and an imagination lost to adults, a world of wonder, many writers succumb to the temptation of making their child protagonist too naïve and elemental, or too wise and adult. In Fiesta en la madriguera, Villalobos uses a dry, precise voice, avoiding lyrical turns of phrase and employing a breathless, intricate syntax to present the child’s anxiety-ridden perspective:
I think we really are a very good gang. I have proof. Gangs are all about solidarity. So solidarity means that, because I like hats, Yolcaut buys me hats, lots of hats, so many that I have a collection of hats from all over the world and from all the different periods of the world.
Through sentence inversion, eccentric word use and the evocation of an alternative moral reality, Villalobos is able to represent the mind of a particularly self-aware child who finds himself at odds with the rules of his monstrous family. Even so, Villalobos does not dig deeply into the strange consciousness of his character. Instead, he leans on a few gags, their only purpose being to reveal the twisted behavior of Tochtli’s father:
The other day a man I didn’t know came to our palace and Yolcaut wanted to know if I was macho or not. The man’s face was covered in blood and, the truth is, I was a bit scared when I saw him. But I didn’t say anything, because being macho means you’re not scared and if you are scared you’re a faggot.
But Villalobos doesn’t make the most of Tochtli: he has not added anything new to what is already known about the narcos from the newspapers and television—once again, they are sadistic and eccentric—nor has he offered an especially moving portrayal of an innocent’s perception of horror.
Even the novel’s central episode is marred by these defects. Tochtli speaks of owning a pygmy hippopotamus from Liberia, a detail obviously inspired by the hippos that the Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar kept in his private zoo. (Escobar’s hippos appear in another narco novel, the very powerful El ruido de las cosas al caer [The Sound of Things Falling], by the Colombian writer Juan Gabriel Vásquez.) In the episode, as ridiculous as it is atrocious, Tochtli’s life has been deformed by the eccentricities of the drug trade—namely, being the son of a Mexican narco who will do anything to keep him happy. But the episode reveals what we already understand, and no more: Yolcaut’s obvious coarseness and Tochtli’s outsize desires. For all its excessive cleverness, Fiesta en la madriguera does not transcend clichés about the narcos. If anything, it ends up making them worse.
* * *
Cervantes counts as one of the few writers in the Spanish-speaking world who were able to subvert fashion, undermining the clichés and plot constrictions of a popular genre—in his case, the chivalric romance—to create in Don Quixote a perdurable and universal work. The same can be said of Juan Rulfo, who with Pedro Páramo (1955) upended the novel of the Mexican Revolution. With three novels to his name, the 42-year-old writer Yuri Herrera seems intent on carrying out the similarly necessary task of vaulting over the walls of the narco novel.
In Trabajos del reino, Herrera approaches the subject in an unexpected way—the arrival of a corrido composer at the intimate circle of a drug lord is told as the story of an ancient bard meeting a medieval lord:
He admired him in the light of the limits of the day that filtered through a hole in the wall. He’d never been this close to these people, but Lobo was sure he’d looked on the scene before. Somewhere, the respect the man and his people inspired in him was defined, the sudden sensation of the importance of his finding himself so close to him. He knew his way of sitting, eyes raised, the shine. He observed the jewels that wrapped around him, and then he understood: this was a king.
Here metaphor functions in a surprising way and, with no need to reproduce the jargon of the characters, Herrera creates a radically new language—just as Rulfo did with the speech patterns of Los Altos (the highlands) in Jalisco—and condenses into a few pages what other authors need hundreds to convey: the panoply of loyalties and betrayals that surrounds the bosses; the vileness, clumsiness and fear of the sicarios; the irredeemable corruption of society at large; and, especially, the way art becomes an accomplice of crime. A narco novel and an implicit criticism of narco novels, Trabajos del reino is a surprising literary jewel.
Five years later, Herrera exceeded all expectations with the even more surprising Señales que precederán al fin del mundo (Signs That Precede the End of the World, 2009). Some elements from his first novel reappear: the wise deconstruction of colloquial northern Mexican Spanish; the mixture of different levels of reading; the creation, with just a few brushstrokes, of memorable characters; a plot that can be read in several keys, from realism to allegory. But Herrera makes use of his resources even more skillfully, refining them to extremes of narrative efficacy and linguistic beauty, as if the grandsons of Rulfo’s Pedro Páramo had become wetbacks at the outset of the turbulent new century.
Señales que precederán al fin del mundo is not a narco novel, or perhaps it is, but only in a tangential way. Narrated in the manner of a fable, it is about the border between Mexico and the United States, but it is also about any border. The book chronicles the adventures of Makina, an astute, free-spirited and temperamental girl who has to travel the world in search of her disappeared brother. The homage to Rulfo, whose town of Comala is inhabited by the dead, is no accident: Makina survives in the macho world of the North like one of the rogues from the picaresque novels of the Spanish Golden Age. She escapes multiple misfortunes and finally achieves her objective, which will ultimately transform her, much to her sorrow, into someone else. Her odyssey contains mythic elements derived from both the Western European and Native American traditions, like her wading across the Rio Grande recalls crossing the river Styx (the other side is always the land of the dead). But Herrera never forgets the turbulent and moving humanity of his protagonist: adroit, angry, ineluctable, Makina is destined to become one of the essential characters of Mexico’s new literature.Here's a terrible admission. I recently realised that my kids, aged three and five, are most excited by the television, or iPad – or any screen. More than hanging out with me, or any other temptations. I've tried the alternatives: cake, cameras, the zoo, parties.
So now I'm making a feature-length documentary film about children and their lack of connection to nature.
As a child, when I got home from school, I wanted to drop off my bags and run outside to play. TV wasn't a priority. There's a tempting argument, partly responsible for the rising time spent on screens in schools, that technology is good for preparing children for the future. I agree in some respects.
But like much of my generation, I had little IT training at school, and I'm fine with technology. Is a childhood with increasing screen time and decreasing nature time ideal?
Children sledge downhill at the Town Moor in Newcastle, England. Photograph: Nigel Roddis/Reuters
When I take my little treasures outside, I see them change. At first they look sullenly at me as if to say: "What the hell are we doing here? The cartoons are on!"
Thirty seconds later, they become carefree. Their eyes move away from the 30cm zone that screens occupy. They become engrossed in the world around them. Nature, in its infinitely resolute glory, from dewy lichen to a proper storm, lifts them up where they belong, where the eagles cry, on a mountain high, to quote Joe Cocker.
These embarrassingly hippyish thoughts (I'm a proud rationalist) prompted my decision to make a documentary, Project Wild Thing, to find answers. But what are the right questions? I've settled on these: Is nature really good for you? How? In a blind choice, why don't children love nature as much as telly? Yet when they get dumped in it, why are they so happy?
The film is my attempt to dive into these questions. When I started, I only wanted to see what would happen if my kids went outside more.
I realised that the things children love and demand are shiny, and constantly marketed. Marketing seems like the best way to try to get kids to love nature as much as cartoons and iPad games.
So I've appointed myself marketing director for nature, and spent the last nine months in my new role. I've discovered surprising truths about how we sell to children. But I don't have the deep marketing pockets of Nintendo or Coca-Cola, so I've had to improvise.
Looks like estate agents' signs adverting for the great outdoors Photograph: guardian.co.uk
I have filmed a viral advert for an app that re-connects you to nature. I have been sneaking around London replacing estate agents' signs with adverts for the great outdoors. I have begun to distribute "No Balls" - footballs that children can use in places where there are "No Ball Games" signs.
I am planning to try to sue a list of non-natural brands who have co-opted natural symbols for their logos. All three main UK political parties are on the list.
But I've also come to wonder whether I should be selling nature at all. Maybe it's the one thing we shouldn't advertise. If we can't advertise it, how do we make kids love it?
I think I've found a way.
Rather than adding nature's voice to the cacophony of marketing messages, I am working with Good for Nothing, a group of ex-marketers who have seen the light, and now collaborate and experiment to try to solve big problems. Together, using a web platform, we are developing a way to connect, into a unified lobby, the thousands of big and small groups in the UK who all want children to connect to nature. I do not know what we would then ask for - it could be better town planning, less advertising to children, nature in the curriculum - the group will decide.
The film is almost done - we just need to shoot final scenes. But we're still short of the funds to complete it. That's why we're on Kickstarter. It's a platform where people pledge money to help complete the film, and in turn get rewards - like a free download of the finished film, tickets to the premiere, producer credits.
I believe the film can make a significant change. If you're a parent, if you think fondly of your own childhood, or if you worry that many children now spend over half their waking hours on screens, please help. Or maybe, like me, you believe childhood should be muddy, carefree, playful and undirected by brands."Spidey Super Stories" is a live-action, recurring skit on the original version of the CTW series The Electric Company.[1] Episodes featured the Marvel Comics character Spider-Man, provided to the Children's Television Workshop free of charge, and was played (always in costume) by puppeteer and dancer Danny Seagren.[2] It premiered during the premiere of The Electric Company's fourth (1974–1975) season, show 391. It predated the pilot film of the series The Amazing Spider-Man by three years, becoming the first live-action rendition of Spider-Man, and was the first live-action rendition of a Marvel character in any media since the Captain America serial of 1944.
Stories involved the masked superhero foiling mischievous characters who were involved in petty criminal activities, although sometimes the crooks would commit more serious crimes such as assault or larceny. The cast of The Electric Company played the roles of the various characters in each story, with another serving as narrator. In many of these sketches, in keeping with Stan Lee's writing style, viewers were addressed as "true believers".
Unlike other live-action and cartoon productions of Spider-Man, this version of the web-slinging hero did not speak out loud, instead communicating only with word balloons (having a similar role to Clarabell the Clown of Howdy Doody), in order to encourage young viewers to practice their reading skills.[2] Due to the series' budget limitations, comic book panels were interspersed through each skit in lieu of special effects.[2] However, aside from Spider-Man himself, no characters from the comic series ever appeared on "Spidey Super Stories".[2]
Theme song [ edit ]
The theme song that plays at the beginning and end of the shorts was written by Gary William Friedman.[2] The lyrics are as follows:
Spider-Man, where are you coming from? Spider-Man, nobody knows who you are! Spider-Man, you've got that Spidey touch Spider-Man, you are a web-slinging star!
Episodes [ edit ]
Approximately one dozen "Spidey Super Stories" segments were produced during The Electric Company's 1974–1975 season, with another twelve or so during the 1975–1976 season, and an undetermined number during the series' final season.
A 4-DVD boxed set was released by Shout! Factory and Sony BMG Music Entertainment on February 7, 2006, named The Best of Electric Company. It featured 20 episodes from 1971–1977 (D4D 34121), three of which contained Spidey segments.
A second 4-DVD boxed set with 20 shows from 1971–1976 was released on November 14, 2006 (82666-31014). Two of the episodes in this boxed set featured Spidey segments; however, in several of the other episodes, the Spider-Man segments were edited out to minimize the appearance of the character because of rights issues. Episode 60A, from season five, which featured a Spider-Man sketch as the sketch of the day, was altered drastically from the version that originally aired on television.
On March 7, 2006, another DVD named The Best of the Best of Electric Company, a truncated version of the volume-one boxed set, was released (DD 31006).
A number of episodes from season 1 (season 4 of The Electric Company) featured Spidey battling the villain in the screenshot of the comic book cover. Other only had a standard picture of Spidey alone. This is documented in the chart below.
Nº Title Narrator 1 "Spidey Meets the Spoiler" Morgan Freeman The first "Spidey Super Stories" segment. Spidey links clues to the Spoiler (Skip Hinnant), a mischievous villain who aims to spoil people's fun. Spidey defeats him, but the victory is bittersweet: A wall got spoiled when Spidey knocks the Spoiler through it. The opening shot cover features the Spoiler leaping at Spidey.
Spider-Man also appeared in the opening sequence of the actual episode (Season 4 premiere). In the scene, J. Arthur Crank (Jim Boyd) looks around for Spider-Man, but only comes upon Easy Reader (Morgan Freeman). Crank never finds him and walks off, frustrated. 2 "A Night at the Movies" Skip Hinnant Count Dracula (Morgan Freeman) plans to bite the neck of an unsuspecting moviegoer (Judy Graubart). Spidey is able to foil Dracula's plans.
Count Dracula (based on the Bram Stoker character) was a regular character on The Electric Company, appearing in skits with the Werewolf (Jim Boyd) and Frankenstein's monster (Skip Hinnant). It was episode 9B's sketch of the day. 3 "Spider-Man Meets the Evil Dr. Fly" Morgan Freeman Dr. Fly (Luis Avalos), a mutated half-human, half-fly plans to turn the world's inhabitants into the same type of mutant. He disguises himself as a vendor to distribute hot dogs laced with a formula of fleas, flies and other insects. Spidey saves a customer (Jim Boyd) from eating a tainted hot dog and traps Dr. Fly in his web, but gets a ticket from a police officer (Morgan Freeman) for operating Dr. Fly's pushcart without a license. 4 "Spidey Up Against the Wall" June Angela At a New York Mets baseball game, a mutated half-human, half-wall creature (Jim Boyd) sneaks up behind outfielder "Gumbo" Grace Ivy (Skip Hinnant) and causes him to miss a routine fly ball. The umpire (Morgan Freeman) is also knocked down. Spidey catches the Wall, but is ejected from the ballpark because spectators are not allowed on the field. The opening screenshot shows the Wall bumping Spidey.
This also aired as part of the last episode of The Electric Company (episode 130B). 5 "Spider-Man Meets the Can Crusher" Morgan Freeman Long ago, a young boy visited a soup factory, but lost his pet frog in a vat of tomato soup. As an adult, the Can Crusher (Jim Boyd, sporting a Don King-type hairdo, a large red nose and wearing a black jumpsuit) visits supermarkets to find the can where his beloved frog may be, smashing them with a large hammer, causing a disturbance and a food shortage whenever he destroys cans in his vain efforts. Spidey is called on to help, and the Can Crusher disguises himself as the store manager. Spider-Man initially smashes the Can Crusher into a can display, but the Can Crusher retaliates and returns the blow, knocking Spidey unconscious. After his victory, the Can Crusher tells the viewer his story as told above, then escapes. Spidey then comes to and begins to contemplate on how to defeat the Can Crusher the next time.
Best moment: As the Can Crusher gets Spidey distracted, he strips off his disguise, taunting Spidey all the while: "Have you figured it out yet, web-spinner?" (removing disguise) "Ceiling-crawler?" (raising hammer for the kill, screaming) "CHANDELIER STOMPER??!!??" 6 "Spidey Meets the Funny Bunny" Morgan Freeman Once an ordinary girl until a bully sat on her Easter basket, a woman dressed in an Easter Bunny costume (Judy Graubart) sets out to steal other children's Easter baskets. She plans to disrupt the annual Easter Egg roll at the White House. Spidey is tipped off and sets a trap that catches her.
The role of the president is played by Melanie Henderson, who is believed to be one of the first African-American actresses to play the role of a U.S. president on television. See List of fictional United States Presidents. 7 "Meet Dr. Fright" Hattie Winston Dr. Fright (Skip Hinnant) is a monster who has a face so frighteningly ugly that he conceals it beneath an oversized stovepipe hat. He uses this to terrify victims, robbing them when they become frozen in fright. He plans to freeze Spidey, but Spidey instead freezes Dr. Fright by holding up a mirror. 8 "Meet Mr. Measles" Jim Boyd Mr. Measles (Skip Hinnant), armed with a large bag of measles-causing spots, plans to spread a worldwide epidemic. He infects several people, but Spidey catches him before a large-scale outbreak happens. However, Spidey becomes ill with the measles himself. 9 "Spidey Jumps the Thumper" Judy Graubart The Thumper (Hattie Winston) was a spoiled little rich girl who did not get a yellow pony for her birthday. Turning to a life of crime after the cake and ice cream, the Thumper fancies herself as Napoleon Bonaparte. She assaults two citizens (Luis Avalos and Skip Hinnant) with an oversized boxing glove hidden inside her coat a la Napoleon's famous pose. Spidey catches her, but he too is thumped. He regains his senses and traps her in his web. The opening screenshot shows the Thumper landing a blow on Spidey. 10 "Spidey and the Queen Bee" Morgan Freeman A half-human, half-bee mutant named The Queen Bee (Hattie Winston) plots to rule the world. Her underlings are also mutated bee-human creatures (played by Skip Hinnant and Judy Graubart). She plans to release a deadly bee named Fang to sting and kill whomever stands in her way. Spidey tracks her down to her giant hive and foils her plans by webbing her minion, the Beekeeper (Luis Avalos), but not before Fang is released. The other mutated bee-humans sting Spidey repeatedly while she escapes. Spidey, covered with sting marks, eventually escapes the hive and is in pursuit of Queen Bee and Fang as the story ends. 11 "Little Miss Muffett" TBA Based on the nursery rhyme. Spidey comes to the rescue of the title character (Hattie Winston) after a large spider terrorizes her. However, Spidey recognizes the spider (a large prop) as an uncle of his, and as they become friends, Miss Muffett leaves in disgust. 12 "The Bookworm" Skip Hinnant Easy Reader (Morgan Freeman) is helping his friend, Valerie (Hattie Winston) sort books at the library, when they notice large holes in the books. They try to beat back a large bookworm (a purple and green-striped sock-puppet) by throwing books at it. Spidey arrives in time, but the Bookworm escapes his web. The opening screenshot shows Spidey attempting to stop the Bookworm from eating a book.
Nº Title Narrator 13 "The Birthday Bandit" Luis Avalos After two parents set up their son's birthday party, the villainous Birthday Bandit (Jim Boyd) sneaks in and steals all of the cake, ice cream, decorations, and presents, all while describing his actions in Dr. Seuss-style rhyme. When Spidey hears about the theft, he trails the Bandit to the location of his next crime. The Birthday Bandit notices the extra-large cake for the party and guesses that it's a fake that Spidey is using to hide--but the Bandit is bamboozled when the cake turns out to be real. Spidey appears behind him and captures him in his web, saving the birthday. 14 "Spidey Meets the Prankster" Skip Hinnant Spidey is visiting the Short Circus at their elementary school when a mysterious series of practical jokes occur--music books are filled with jumping snake puppets, chocolate pies made in Home Economics class are swapped with mud, and the model phone in Secretarial Skills is covered in glue. Spidey decides to alert Principal Prescott (Jim Boyd) of the prank wave, and discovers snakes, the missing pies, and a bottle of paste in his office, proving that Prescott is the Prankster. After being snagged in Spidey's web, the principal confesses, explaining that the kids of the school have played a prank on him every day for years, and he wanted them to get a taste of their own medicine. The chastised students agree to stop their own practical joking, only to subject Prescott to another prank.
This was also episode 60A's sketch of the day. 15 "Spidey Meets the Blowhard" Janina Matthews A man in a tuxedo and cape (Luis Avalos), who fancies himself as the Big Bad Wolf, plots revenge on Fargo North, Decoder (Skip Hinnant) after the detective foiled his plans to blow down Trenton, New Jersey. Meanwhile, Fargo's friends plan a surprise birthday party for him. Later, when Fargo is asked to blow out the candles, the Blowhard crashes the party. Spidey is quickly able to capture the villain, thanks to Paul the Gorilla smashing the birthday cake into the Blowhard's face as he prepares to blow. Spidey and Paul then venture out to buy another cake, since Paul used the original to stun the Blowhard. 16 "Who Stole the Show?" Todd Graff Winky Goodyshoes (Hattie Winston) is a has-been actress who bemoans her inability to find suitable work, whereas in her youth she gained captive audiences. As revenge, she decides to "steal the show"--literally--by grabbing the props and costumes from an auditorium where a dress rehearsal is in progress. Spidey catches Winky before she can move the show too far off-Broadway. However, the cast remembers the former child star and they offer her a chance to star in the show as the villain.
This sketch features a flashback scene of the villain's childhood, with Short Circus member Réjane Magloire making a cameo appearance as the young Winky. 17 "Spidey Meets the Yeti" Todd Graff An abominable snowman (Jim Boyd) becomes homesick after wandering away from his home in the Frozen North, and sits on various cold items to help him cope. Spidey sets a trap to catch the Yeti, after which a policeman (Morgan Freeman) wants to take him into custody. Spidey persuades the policeman to let him take the Yeti back home. 18 "Spidey Meets the Mouse" Janina Mathews A college student (Skip Hinnant) who does not receive cheese on his Big Mac sandwich dons a giant mouse costume and steals cheese from other cheeseburgers and the tops of pizzas. He then abducts the judge of a large cheese contest (Morgan Freeman) and, stealing his clothes, takes his place at the contest, but before he can run off with the grand prize, Spider-Man snares him in his web.
For his role as the Mouse, Skip wears the outfit he regularly wore for his character, "Mr. Mouse", who was a regular recurring Electric Company character. 19 "Spidey Meets the Sitter" Jim Boyd A burglar (Luis Avalos) uses an old lady's wig and dress in order to get access to people's homes by impersonating a baby sitter, then robbing the house after the kids are asleep. Spide |
I was in the middle without doing anything wrong. I was just trying to have a clean start."
Vettel was more circumspect in his comments, saying: "I didn’t see that much. I saw Max and the next thing I see is obviously Kimi hitting the side of me and Max somewhere there."
Raikkonen, meanwhile, was philosophical, maintaining there was little point in allocating blame after the event.
"I don’t think I could have really done anything to avoid it," said the Finn. "I had a good start but then obviously got hit and our race was done so it’s a shame. Whatever the cause of the accident, the end result doesn’t change."
Vettel's retirement - and Lewis Hamilton's subsequent victory - means the German now trails his rival by 28 points in the championship standings with six rounds to go, having arrived in Singapore just three points adrift.The stigma against the use of cluster munitions is so great that countries that haven’t joined the treaty banning them often deny using such bombs, recognizing the political consequences, says Megan Burke, campaigner against mines and cluster munitions.
The Saudi-led coalition has used banned weapons in Yemen, according to Human Rights Watch. That organization says cluster bombs were dropped near residential areas and caused widespread damage. The use of such bombs was prohibited by most of the international community in 2008. According to Stephen Goose, executive director of the arms division at Human Rights Watch, the US apparently sold the weapons to Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia, Yemen and the US did not join 116 other countries in signing the treaty.
RT:Saudi Arabia has repeatedly denied using the weapons in Yemen. But what could Riyadh possibly be afraid of, considering it isn't bound by theConvention on Cluster Munitions?
READ MORE: S. Arabia bombs Yemen with US-supplied cluster bombs – HRW
Megan Burke: In fact, the stigma against the use of cluster munitions is so great that even the countries that have not yet joined the Convention on Cluster Munitions often deny using them or indicate that they will not use them because they recognize the political cost for them if they do use them. For example, the use in Syria led to a UN General Assembly resolution condemning Syria for that use and expressing outrage. In fact, Saudi Arabia, the US, and Yemen voted it in favor of that UN General Assembly resolution.
RT:Are you surprised they haven’t had a similar reaction now?
MB: We’ve just come out with the information, Human Rights Watch released the report, and this is the very first evidence of use that we’ve had. Saudi Arabia previously, just about a month ago, said that they would be not using cluster munitions. It is too early to say. I think very soon many states - parties to the convention and even the countries that have not joined the convention - will be speaking out about this use.
RT:Doesn’t it put the US in a difficult position because it actually provided these weapons?
MB: Yes, indeed. Very recently the US coalition which is the part of the Cluster Munitions Coalition that I represent contacted the US, wrote to President Obama, calling for a revision of US policy that would have outlawed the sale of these weapons to Saudi Arabia, the exact weapons that were used.
RT:What was the reaction?
MB: There hasn’t been too much of the reaction yet, but that was very recently. The US coalition is working with US government to try to get a statement and try to get some movement towards that. While the US has not yet joined the convention, they have taken steps that have brought them fairly close... The transfer of these weapons to Saudi Arabia was through a loophole in the existing US policy that brings it very close in line. Clearly this is something the US government will have to look at very closely because the intention behind the US law is to be quite in line with the convention. So this will require some attention.
RT:A hundred and sixteen countries have signed up not to use these weapons and in effect banned their use. Do you expect a collective response from those countries now? Is that what you’d like to see?
MB: Indeed. That is exactly what we would like to see… We have been getting the word out on social media, and we will be writing to Saudi Arabia itself to express the outrage. We will also be making sure that all the states, parties of the convention, are aware of this use. There is a committee for compliance that monitors use and makes sure that states, parties that are the part of the treaty, can act together to condemn use and to make sure that there is a political cost to use. This has happened in the past. As I said, the use in Syria was condemned by more than a 100 countries, more than the number of countries that are part of the treaty itself. We do have a precedent set for when there is use - it is condemned and condemned quite strongly. We will certainly be working to make sure that happens in this case, as well. There is an upcoming meeting of states, parties of this convention that will be happening in Geneva in June. And certainly this use will be a topic of conversation at that meeting.
MORE:
The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RT.Johannesburg — President Robert Mugabe’s apparent disgust at seeing a “white face” has elicited mixed reactions from people on social networking site Twitter.
Mugabe was in Soweto on Thursday visiting the Hector Pieterson Memorial.Exiting the museum, he was cheered by locals.
In a video clip taken by the SABC, Mugabe is seen walking past the crowds when the national broadcaster’s television journalist asked what emotions his return to Soweto evoked.
Mugabe was about to reply when he spotted a white journalist. He pushed the microphone away and said: “I don’t want to see a white face.”
Arts and Culture minister Nathi Mthethwa was standing next to Mugabe when he made the comment.
Some on Twitter praised Mugabe for what he said.
Twitter user @PM_Plaatjie tweeted: “Thats why we admire him.”
While @B_Thabede said: “He was spot on.”
Other said they did not blame Mugabe for what he said.
“Hate is taught to us by previous experiences. Do you know how much Mugabe suffered by whitemen,” wrote @Ernestfigo.
Another user @ErythreanSea wrote: “After 500 years of deceit, deception and repression, who can blame Mugabe? Telling it like it is, straight up!”
There were also those who called Mugabe a racist for his comment.
Twitter user @wcmalan said: “Can I go fling (excreta) at his statue?” he said referring to the Cecil John Rhodes statue at the University of Cape Town which was removed from the campus on Thursday.
Students started protesting last month to have the statue taken away and human excrement was thrown at the statue.
“Racist old twit,” tweeted @Judemymum.
Mugabe concluded his two-day State visit to South Africa on Thursday and returned home on the same day. — News24Donald Trump (Credit: Fox News) Donald Trump declares that, should he win, he will prosecute Hillary Clinton because "she seems guilty" Sean Hannity did not, of course, correct the Donald as to the legal standards for prosecution
The Fox News-sponsored controversy over Hillary Clinton's use of a private email server will become another anti-Clinton national tragedy if Donald Trump wins, the Republican front-runner told Fox News' Sean Hannity at a town hall Monday night.
Hannity asked if Trump would order his attorney general to investigate Clinton if he wins the White House in November, and Trump said he would "have no choice," because "in fairness, you have to look into that -- she seems guilty."
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He momentarily tried to walk his comment back, saying, "but you know what, I wouldn't even say that," before saying what he just said he wouldn't say again. "But certainly, it has to be looked at," he said. Trump later added that "she's being protected, but if I win, certainly it's something we're going to look at."
Moreover, he argued, "if a Republican wins, if I'm winning, certainly you will look at that as being fair to anyone else. [It is] so unfair to the people that have been prosecuted over the years for doing much less than she did."
Watch the entire town hall below via Fox News.A version of this essay was originally published at Tech.pinions, a website dedicated to informed opinions, insight and perspective on the tech industry.
One of the wonderful things about the rise of the web, twentysomething years ago, was the way in which it democratized publishing — suddenly, anyone with an idea could set up a website and make it available to anyone. Early on, publishing online required at least a rudimentary understanding of code. To be an online writer meant you also had to be a coder. But, services quickly emerged that created WYSIWYG editors for online publications, so literally anyone who had used a word processor could create online content.
Recently, however, we’ve seen the rise of proprietary formats like Google’s AMP, Facebook’s Instant Articles and the Apple News Format, which threaten to de-democratize publishing on the web. To be clear, I’m not making a philosophical argument about the closed nature of these platforms but something much more practical: Creating content for these formats reintroduces a coding requirement, and online code is vastly more complicated today than it was in the mid-1990s.
A personal history
I first encountered the web when I entered university in 1994. It was a pretty primitive thing back then, with very limited ways to access it, and it was almost entirely text-based. But over the next four years, things moved forward rapidly, with additional web browsers improving the process of browsing the web, and hosting and other online services making it easier for ordinary people like me to set up an online presence. By the time I graduated in 1997, not only was browsing the web a big part of my life, I had a website of my own. In order to build that website, I had to learn HTML, which, at the time, was a very simple thing to grasp, at least at a basic level. But that coding requirement still prevented many people from creating an online presence.
As these platforms — especially AMP and Instant Articles — suck up an ever greater proportion of online content, that’s going to leave smaller publishers out in the cold.
Interestingly, I basically took a two-year break from the web between early 1998 and early 2000 while I was serving as a missionary in Asia. When I returned, the web had again moved on significantly. Blogger had launched in 1999 and was one of the first sites that enabled people to create their own websites without knowing anything about coding, web hosting or any of the other more technical aspects that had previously characterized online publishing. Almost all of my online publishing since has been based on various blogging platforms and, for the last 10 years, almost exclusively on self-hosted WordPress sites.
Along the way, because I’ve always had something of an interest in coding, I’ve beefed up my understanding of HTML, grappled with CSS style sheets, and even done some messing around with PHP. But I’m always enormously grateful I don’t have to try to build sites that would perform well from the ground up — I’ve long since given up on that idea.
Enter AMP, Instant Articles and Apple News
So much for my personal history. Since last summer, we’ve seen what I’d argue is the latest phase in this online publishing evolution. It involves the creation of a variety of proprietary formats for online publishing. Google has been spearheading the Accelerated Mobile Pages project (AMP), which launched officially almost a year ago. Facebook introduced its Instant Articles format last summer, with a similar objective of accelerating the delivery of articles on mobile devices. And Apple introduced News as part of iOS 9, opening it up to publishers over the summer and to most users in the Fall, albeit with different intentions.
Here’s what these platforms have in common, however: Each uses proprietary formats to deliver articles to readers. Technically, these formats use standards-based elements — for example, AMP is a combination of custom HTML, custom JavaScript and caching. But the point here is the outputs from traditional online publishing platforms aren’t compatible with any of these three formats. And in order to publish to these formats directly, you need to know a lot more code than I ever did back in the mid-1990s before the first round of WYSIWYG tools for the web emerged.
We’re effectively turning back the clock to a pre-web world in which the only publishers that mattered were large publishers, and it was all but impossible to be read if you didn’t work for one of them.
As a solution, each of these platforms has provided tools intended to bridge the gap — all three, for example, have WordPress plugins to convert content to the appropriate formats. But a quick read of the reviews for the Facebook and AMP plugins tells you they don’t seem to be doing the job for many users. The Apple News plugin has a higher rating, but I know from my own experience that it’s problematic. Both Facebook and Apple also offer RSS tools to import existing content, but there are limitations around both (Apple News doesn’t allow advertising in RSS-driven publications, while Facebook IA requires a custom RSS feed with IA-specific markup, which is again going to be beyond the ken of most non-coding publishers). Apple news offers a WYSIWYG tool, but it’s extremely basic (it doesn’t support embeds, block quotes, or even bullet points).
Why does all this matter? After all, no one is forcing anyone to use any of these formats — publishing to the open web is still possible. While that’s technically true, at least two of these formats — AMP and Instant Articles — are being favored by the two largest gatekeepers to online content: Google and Facebook. Google now favors AMP results in search, while Facebook does the same within its News Feed, though less explicitly (by favoring faster-loading pages, it gives IA content a leg up). Apple News is different — it’s a self-contained app, and it’s basically irrelevant to you as a publisher unless your readers are using it. But if you do decide to use it, unless you publish in Apple News Format, you can’t monetize your content there, and Apple is pushing the News app heavily to its users.
Turning back the clock
The upshot of all of this is, unless you’re comfortable with fairly advanced web coding, or can pay someone who is, your online publication is likely to become a second-class citizen on each of these new platforms, if it has a presence there at all. And, as these platforms — especially AMP and Instant Articles — suck up an ever greater proportion of online content, that’s going to leave smaller publishers out in the cold.
That in turn means we’re effectively turning back the clock to a pre-web world in which the only publishers that mattered were large publishers, and it was all but impossible to be read if you didn’t work for one of them. That seems like an enormous shame, and from a practical standpoint, matters a lot more to me as an online writer than more philosophical debates about open versus closed platforms.
Jan Dawson is founder and chief analyst at Jackdaw, a technology research and consulting firm focused on the confluence of consumer devices, software, services and connectivity. During his 13 years as a technology analyst, Dawson has covered everything from DSL to LTE, and from policy and regulation to smartphones and tablets. Prior to founding Jackdaw, Dawson worked at Ovum for a number of years, most recently as chief telecoms analyst, responsible for Ovum’s telecoms research agenda globally. Reach him @jandawson.About
Here at Ozon cyclery we tend to pursue our dreams. For the past 2 years that dream has been to develop a new method for constructing Bamboo bike frames, allowing for improved stiffness and reduced weight. We have built about 20 prototypes which have been test ridden thousands of kilometers. Our bikes get great reviews from their owners, both for the ride quality of bamboo and for our custom geometry. They have been ridden from Berlin to Paris, Berlin to the Baltic Sea, Berlin to Poland, and are the daily ride of a number of couriers and commuters within Berlin itself. The frames weigh about 1.8 Kilos (4 pounds) and have a ride quality similar to high end steel.
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Here are more photos! Enjoy!The biggest “tragedy of the commons” is the misconception that commons are failures — relics from another era rendered unnecessary by the Market and State. Think Like a Commoner dispels such prejudices by explaining the rich history and promising future of the commons — an ageless paradigm of cooperation and fairness that is re-making our world.
With graceful prose and dozens of fascinating examples, David Bollier describes the quiet revolution that is pioneering practical new forms of self-governance and production controlled by people themselves. Think Like a Commoner explains how the commons:
Is an exploding field of DIY innovation ranging from Wikipedia and seed-sharing to community forests and collaborative consumption, and beyond;
Challenges the standard narrative of market economics by explaining how cooperation generates significant value and human fulfillment; and
Provides a framework of law and social action that can help us move beyond the pathologies of neoliberal capitalism.
We have a choice: Ignore the commons and suffer the ongoing private plunder of our common wealth. Or Think Like a Commoner and learn how to rebuild our society and reclaim our shared inheritance. This accessible, comprehensive introduction to the commons will surprise and enlighten you, and provoke you to action.Norman Stamper spent 34 years as a cop, including as the chief of police for Seattle, a job he left one year after the city's police drew international attention for their heavy-handed response to 1999 anti-WTO protests. Now he speaks and writes often about police issues, including the militarization of American police forces, which believes was one of the causes of Seattle's 1999 violence — and now is a major contributor to the ongoing unrest in Ferguson, Missouri. Stamper is also on the advisory board of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, which advocates for improvements in drug policy.
I spoke with Stamper about the dangerous implications of America's police militarization, what's happening Ferguson, and more.
Amanda Taub: I was hoping to find out a little bit more about your reflections on the police response that was used in Seattle around the 1999 WTO protests, and how you think those kind of insights could apply to what's happening in Ferguson.
'If they're out there in military gear from the beginning, that's an act of provocation'
Norman Stamper: What happened in Seattle in 1999 was a police overreaction, which I presided over. It was the worst mistake of my career. We used chemical agents, a euphemism for tear gas, against nonviolent and essentially nonthreatening protesters. The natural consequence of which are that we were the catalyst for heightened tension and conflict rather than peacekeepers, or for that matter even peacemakers. It's a lesson, unfortunately, that American law enforcement in general has not learned.
AT: What do you think a preferable course would have been in Seattle, and how would those lessons apply to Ferguson?
NS: From a distance, and without having interviewed anyone in Ferguson or talked with anyone on it, just relying on media reports, I would have to characterize the police response as an overreaction. Had you set out to make matters worse, you couldn't have done a better job.
I'm just very, very disappointed and troubled that lessons that we learned in Seattle have not been embraced by American law enforcement in general, by these police departments that are facing mistrust and distrust in their communities in particular. If anything, the police in America belong to the people, not the other way around. As such, they have a responsibility to forge what I would call an authentic partnership with the community where they reject unilateral decision-making. One partner in a partnership just simply does not make unilateral or arbitrary decisions.
Now there's an exception to that. The exception is where you have an active shooter, where you have a barricaded suspect, where the situation really does call for the military-like response. Those are situations where you don't hold a seminar. You don't do telephonic polling, you take action, and it had better be decisive action or somebody's likely to get hurt or killed. There are those situations that come up in police work. They are far less frequent in occurrence than one would imagine.
Most times you have the luxury of time, but I fear that what's happened over the course of the last 10, 15 years, certainly with the advent of the drug war 40-plus years ago, and then in the aftermath of September 11, we have the police taking, increasingly, a military response to a wide variety of situations, and making matters much worse in the process.
AT: Are there specific things that you've seen police in Ferguson do that you think would be escalating the situation rather than defusing it?
NS: Yes. There's a real place for dogs in police work, but it is not in the context of a nonviolent protest. In fact, using dogs for crowd control is operationally, substantively, and from an image point-of-view just about the worst thing you can do.
We should have learned that lesson as an institution back in the ‘60s in this country. When [Birmingham, Alabama, public safety commissioner] Bull Conner unleashed his police dogs on nonviolent civil rights demonstrators, he was essentially saying to those peacefully protesting Americans, "You are the enemy."
Tracking suspects, looking for a missing juvenile, occasionally dealing with a violent suspect, it really does make sense, but it does not make sense at all under these circumstances [in Ferguson]. It's a throwback to an earlier era, and it's a real setback, I think, not just for the image of policing, but for those who are generally committed to forging constructive relationships with the communities that are served by law enforcement.
AT: Are there other tactics that you think were a mistake?
NS: I'm simply not close enough to it. All of my impressions are just that — they are impressions drawn from what I've read and heard. Other than images of nonviolent protesters with dogs straining at their leashes, and attempting to control a crowd, that's been my image of what I've seen.
'WE HAVE THE POLICE TAKING A MILITARY RESPONSE AND MAKING MATTERS MUCH WORSE'
I would also say that if you're not collaborating with the community in advance of these situations, if you're not forging joint policy-making and decision-making, then you're essentially distancing yourself from the community. You’re isolating yourself from the community when you need to be joining with that community and carving out guidelines or rules of constructive engagement, rather than escalating the potential for and the reality of violence in that relationship.
AT: One thing that has surprised me, looking at some of these images, is what seems to be a really widespread use of rifles. That police are not just out in force with rifles kind of hanging at their side, but that they're actually holding them and pointing them at people.
NS: More likely than not, what you're looking at are the so-called rubber bullets that are fired from what appear to be military rifles. You may be looking at that beanbag technology.
I think it's so important to hold those kinds of weapons in reserve, and use them or show them only when you're dealing with a violent confrontation. Keeping the peace at a demonstration essentially means having police officers in standard everyday uniforms not military garb.
It means doing everything they can to demonstrate the de-escalation tactics and techniques, and not allowing themselves to get hooked emotionally. That requires not just sound policies and procedures and excellent training and supervision, it requires individual maturity on the part of every police officer.
It requires self-confidence — maybe even a dose of courage — to not overreact, but police officers who view themselves as in opposition to their communities have a tendency to view the community as the enemy. In the process they become an occupational force where they are in charge — in the name of control, in the name of public safety, taking actions that actually undermine legitimate control, is foolhardy at best.
AT: Can you talk a little bit about some of the de-escalation tactics that can be used for crowd control when the situation is not yet violent?
NS: First order of business is to make sure that you know, as a law enforcement agency, what your purpose is, and that is to de-escalate. In other words, your mission is not to provoke, it is to de-escalate. It is to ease tension, and if everyone knows that that's the mission that's a huge step forward — a huge advancement, frankly, over where we are in many law enforcement agencies.
It starts with that: what is our purpose? How do we want to be perceived, how do we want to look, and how do we want to act? Everybody within the police department needs to be singing from that same sheet of music, from the chief to the cop on the beat.
Then you want to be very sensitive to how you look. We were described as looking like ninja warriors in Seattle during the WTO [protests]. Now, I'm all for providing protective gear for police officers, and providing basic safety equipment to police officers, if the situation dictates it — using that safety gear. But we tried it out well in advance of what I consider to be a legitimate threat. Now the vast majority of demonstrators were nonviolent and nonthreatening.
That does not mean we didn't have individuals, anarchists by definition, engaged in tactics that were intended to be provocative, because certainly we saw that. If you've got policies and procedures and training and supervision, and individual self-discipline, then you've got the means to isolate that behavior and go after it.
There are many who say we were simply overrun in Seattle, that we didn't have nearly enough police officers on the street during WTO. There's a case to be made for that. I personally believe that's true, but we did overreact. Putting police officers out there in so-called soft uniform or their everyday working uniform is a huge step in the right direction towards de-escalation.
If they're out there in military gear from the beginning that's an act of provocation. We just simply need to use defusing techniques: they are listening, listening, listening. They are speaking softly, not screaming or shrieking or acting out of control.
When cops, just like other human beings, are frightened — and sometimes they are! — there's a tendency to act impulsively. Which is to say: to do exactly the opposite of what they need to be doing.
That's a function of training. That's on individual cops to be sure, but it's also on the organization itself. You should ask, have you trained your officers? Have you helped them develop psychological resilience and the kind of emotional hardiness that is necessary to keep cool and calm even in the face of provocation?
Good cops do know what to do if they are physically threatened, or other innocent citizens are physically threatened. They have a responsibility to meet physical force with force, but not to overreact in anticipation. In a false anticipation of a physical confrontation, they can actually provoke the confrontation. Then they've made a huge mistake strategically and tactically, and one that costs them the trust and support and respect of the community.
'I'm just very, very disappointed and troubled that lessons that we learned in Seattle have not been embraced by American law enforcement in general'
Good police officers understand that they need to be hearing what is actually being said, listening actively to the concerns the grievances of the community, paraphrasing it and feeding it back, and saying okay, now what can we do jointly to address these problems? It's a function of collaboration. It's a function of a specific set of skills, and a body of knowledge, and a set of defusing or de-escalation techniques. Good police academies teach it, and they reinforce it constantly.
This is what we need to be doing on a daily basis within law enforcement. It's reasonable to ask where is supervision both in reinforcement of those principles of de-escalation, and reinforcement and enforcement. Holding people accountable for escalating tension is a vital supervisory responsibility. Unfortunately, many supervisors are not trained in that, and the culture tends to reward action. The culture tends to reward decisiveness, and, dare I say, a macho tendency that is so counterproductive. It doesn't mean being soft. It doesn't mean being touchy feely, what it does mean is being sensitive to the situation you're facing, and behaving as a mature and responsible and dignified law enforcement officer.
AT: One of the things that I've been reporting is how much heavy military equipment is being distributed to police departments from the federal government, through the 1033 program and other similar programs, and there doesn't seem to be any accompanying training or oversight that comes with that. I'm trying to get a sense of how the training priorities would need to be for that equipment to be used safely, and whether that's within the capability of small police departments.
NS: Well the first order of business is to ask whether there is a purpose, a domestic law enforcement purpose, for much of that equipment. Often times the answer, if we're going to ask and answer that question honestly, is no. There simply is not. There is a time and a place for military grade equipment in police work.
I responded to the McDonald's massacre in 1984 as a chief officer in San Diego. Twenty people shot and killed, and the shooter still firing on his fellow citizens and killing children and women and men seemingly at will. Now, had we had an armored personnel carrier rather than a slot sharpshooter many, many yards away, we could have driven that armored vehicle up to, and maybe through the door of the McDonald's, and taken James Huberty out in a way that would have reduced the carnage. That simply didn't happen, because we didn't have that equipment. We eventually did use a sniper who took him out, but maybe we could have saved lives had we had that equipment.
San Diego's a big urban police department. A strong case can be made for having that equipment, for having specialty trained SWAT officers, and for ensuring that they're carefully selected, that they are thoroughly trained, and retrained routinely. When we start parceling out that kind of equipment to small rural law enforcement agencies with no training, with no maintenance responsibility, we're adding to the culpability of at least two if not three levels of government. That would be the feds for doing it in the first place, and the local jurisdictions for receiving it without the concurrent or concomitance training and policies and procedures and inspections and maintenance schedules and the like.
The one thing I would say is to reserve SWAT, reserve that equipment and those tactics for active shooter cases, barricaded suspects, armed and dangerous barricaded suspects with hostages. Do not employ those tactics, that equipment on routine drug raids or warrants service, or any other situation where you don't have what I would consider to be inherently dangerous circumstances.
AT: Would you include crowd control as an inherently dangerous circumstance?
NS: I would not. How often do we hear of political, social upheaval, the demonstrations that accompany the questioning and the concerns about police behavior, that have individuals who are armed within the crowd? If you don't have that, there is no justification I think for the kind of equipment that we're talking about.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.Last week Flurry Analytics released a report on iOS vs. Android titled "App Developers Signal Apple Allegiance Ahead of WWDC and Google I/O". The report has been widely circulated around the internet, and generally accepted as factual with little or no critical review. A ZDNet investigation shows that the report's math is flawed and its charts are misleading, thus throwing doubt onto all of its conclusions.
Flurry's report is broken up into four sections, and we found problems with all four. Two sections in particular, though, show the most glaring issues: one on new project starts, and one on platform fragmentation.
Section 1: "Oh Captain, My Captain"
The Flurry report starts with a section on new project starts. Here's a chart from Flurry's report that shows the number of new projects started on both platforms:
Using this data, the report draws the conclusion that "Apple continues to garner more support from developers. For every 10 apps that developers build, roughly 7 are for iOS".
The problem is that the data only tracks projects that use Flurry's SDK.
The Flurry SDK is a library that is linked into your application that sends data back to Flurry about how many people start your app, how often they use it, and for how long. Suppose that on Android, many developers use an alternative library such as Google Analytics. This would make a big difference in how the numbers are interpreted, wouldn't it?
You can see this is the case according to analysis by AppBrain which shows Flurry is used by only 6.58% of app apps in the Android Market:
If you'll excuse some quick, back-of-the-envelope calculations, Google claims 500,000 apps in their market, which works out to about 35,000 apps using Flurry. According to Flurry, their SDK is used by 185,000 apps, which comes to 150,000 for iOS and 35,000 for Android. Apple claims about 600,000 apps in the Apple app store, which means roughly 25% of iOS apps use Flurry.
Now, in Q1 2012, the Flurry chart shows approximately 13,000 Flurry new project starts on iOS, and 6,000 new starts on Android. That's how they got their '7 out of 10 are iOS' figure, because 13,000/(13,000 + 6,000)=0.72. But if you take into account the percentage of apps on each platform that use Flurry, you get 52,000 new projects on iOS total (13,000/0.25), vs. 91,000 new projects on Android total (6,000/0.0658).
This leads to quite a different conclusion: namely that there are nearly twice as many projects being started each quarter on Android than on iOS.
Next we'll consider Android's "F" word: Fragmentation.
Section 3: "Android Fragmentation Pain"
Another attention grabbing chart in the Flurry report is one that deals with how many different kinds of Android devices there are. Here it is:
Looks bad, doesn't it? Well, take a closer look. The chart lists each device individually, so for example it has 12 different slices for Samsung. Many of these are the same device running the same OS version. Here's how the chart would look if you combined all the Samsung pieces:
While compiling this, something odd stood out. Look at the black arrows. Flurry split one model, the Samsung Galaxy S II, into three slices which further magnifies the appearance of fragmentation. Doesn't anybody read these things?
The report argues that "each additional device a developer supports will deliver only a small increase in distribution coverage". In fact, Android developers do not support each device individually. Even the biggest developers have found that they only need about 10 to 15 devices in their test labs to cover nearly all the market.
Given this, we don’t see how the data supports Flurry's conclusion that "Android fragmentation appears to be increasing, driving up complexity and cost for developers". There are some costs, surely, but it seems that Flurry is using misleading charts to greatly exaggerate the issue.
The Flurry report has other sections and conclusions, but given the flaws in the two we have examined here, the findings of the entire report should be called into question. Flurry was contacted twice and given an opportunity to disagree with the findings in this story, but their only comment was "We don't have any comment".Buckeyes wide receiver Evan Spencer has 21 catches and three touchdowns this season. (David Dermer//Getty Images) Buckeyes wide receiver Evan Spencer has 21 catches and three touchdowns this season. (David Dermer//Getty Images)
Ohio State wide receiver Evan Spencer is confident his team will go to the BCS Championship, saying that the Buckeyes would "wipe the field" with both Alabama and Florida State.
Alabama is No. 1 in the BCS standings, with Florida State No. 2. Ohio State is No. 3 in this week's ranking, well back of the Seminoles.
"I'm a little biased," Spencer said. "I think we'd wipe the field with both of them."
Ohio State still has games at Illinois, against Indiana and at Michigan. They could also play in the Big Ten Championship game.
RICKMAN: Urban Meyer: Spencer won't talk to media for a 'long time'
According to Zack Meisel of Cleveland.com, Spencer made those comments after he watched Alabama beat LSU and Stanford's |
anything. On top of this, Sureassert also includes integrated test coverage reporting which is also attached to the Eclipse incremental build process.
Let’s move on to a discussion on test isolation, and how using Sureassert can help prevent "design for testability" from being a negative influence on your software architecture.
Test Isolation and Designing for Testability
There are two broad camps with regard to unit testing style and how best to isolate the code-under-test from its dependencies. A behaviour-driven approach dictates that unit tests should assert how the method interacts with other code, and that state "becomes a side-issue". A state-assertion approach dictates that tests should assert the state of affected objects and that the mechanism by which this state was reached is unimportant.
It’s unlikely either approach is better than the other across all types of software. Regardless of approach, effective unit tests assert that the behaviour of the method-under-test matches its contract, under varying conditions. For example, let’s say a method’s contract states it changes a given external object’s state (say it adds a Message to a notional Queue). The test can assert that the object’s state is changed (the Queue now contains the Message), or it can assert that a method is invoked on the Queue in a way that is known by virtue of its own contract to have this effect (e.g. addMessage was called on the Queue with the Message). The latter has indirection through a dependency on another method’s contract, but enables mocking to simplify isolation. The former is direct and can simplify the test but requires dependencies are replaced with stubs which complicates establishing the testing context.
Advocates of a behaviour-driven style would prefer contracts that define interactions, not state changes, in order to reduce the indirection. Those in the other camp might say the opposite. Either of these decisions might be seen as dictating software architecture just to fit a unit testing approach. Regardless of the approach taken, for non-trivial software what is most important is that there are specifications acting as code contracts, they are exercised by the tests, and no "assumptions" are made about what a method does.
The problem with considering "design for testability" in isolation is that non-functional aspects play-off against each-other. It would not be prudent to design overly for testability at the greater expense of maintainability or delivery cost. Let’s introduce how using Sureassert can help prevent testability being a negative influence on your software architecture by simplifying test isolation. The screen-grab below shows some code in Eclipse with Sureassert enabled:
Exemplars in the Real World
In the example above we have a Game class that registers the highest of a given list of scores with an external GameLeaderboardService that is retrieved from a ServiceBroker class defined by the project (not shown). It hasn’t really been designed for testability – the ServiceBroker has a static method and isn’t injected. While it may be better to inject a singleton ServiceBroker instance, this may not be desirable or even possible. We shouldn’t have to make a decision like this simply to achieve testability. With Sureassert we can easily stub or mock the call; in fact there are several different techniques available for doing so.
We place an Exemplar on the constructor and define a method stub that replaces the ServiceBroker.getServiceImpl call with a named instance of GameLeaderboardImpl called "leaderboard". The named instance will have been created by another Exemplar defined in GameLeaderboardImpl (not shown). We give our Exemplar the name "game1", which assigns the object created by the constructor this name (i.e. we create another named instance within our testing context). By testing the constructor, we create an instance that can then be used by other Exemplars. Sureassert manages dependencies between these named instances automatically and understands when it needs to re-run dependant Exemplars. You can control whether to re-use or create new test instances (just postfix the name with a bang "!").
It’s worth pointing out that rather than declaring a method stub, we could have declared a test double class of ServiceBrokerFacade which would have automatically replaced the doubled class whenever running Exemplars or integrated JUnits. Or we could have used an in-line source stub to replace the getServiceImpl code with something else in the testing context. This gives you the flexibility to employ the best test isolation techniques for your project, all integrated into Sureassert and all without writing any test code.
Moving on to the registerHighScore method, we’ve defined two Exemplars. The first tests the precondition that the list must be non-null by passing null as an argument and asserting that an IllegalArgumentException is thrown via the property expectexception. The second uses the l: prefix (List SIN Type) to quickly create an ArrayList populated with three Integers for the method argument. It then performs behaviour verification using the verify property to ensure that the GameLeaderboardServiceImpl.registerScore method is called with ‘user1’ and 17 (the highest of scores passed).
Continuous Test Execution and Feedback
You may have noticed the green ticks in the left border – this is how you know the Exemplars have been executed successfully. They appear as soon as the code is saved. Mouse-over them in Eclipse and we’d see details of the tests run. If the tests had failed, we’d have seen purple crosses instead, the mouse-over would show what went wrong, and the file and project would be marked as having errors in the Package Explorer and Problems views (just like compiler errors). You might have also noticed the three lines of code shaded red in the catch block at the end of the example. This is Sureassert’s continuous in-line test coverage reporting at work – they’re red because this code isn’t covered by any Exemplars or JUnits.
Hopefully this article has provided a useful introduction to Sureassert UC and the concepts that inspired its creation. If you’re interested in learning more, there’s a full guide and downloads available at the website: www.sureassert.com.
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Click here to view the complete list of tools reviewsOn November 21, 2008, the last day that the safe haven law was in effect for children of all ages, a mother from Yolo County, California, drove over 1,200 miles to the Kimball County Hospital in Nebraska where she left her 14-year-old son.
What happened in Nebraska raises the question: If there were no consequences, how many of us would give up our kids? After all, child abandonment is nothing new and it's certainly not rare in the United States. Over 400,000 children are in the foster care system waiting to be placed in homes, thousands of parents relinquish their children every year. One woman even sent her adopted child back to his home country with an apology letter pinned like a grocery list to his chest. Whether it's because of hardship or not, many Americans are giving up on parenthood.
In February 2009, someone calling herself Ann logged onto the website Secret Confessions and wrote three sentences: “I am depressed. I hate being a mom. I also hate being a stay at home mom too!” Over three years later, the thread of comments is still going strong with thousands of responses—the site usually garners only 10 or so comments for every “confession.” Our anonymous Ann had hit a nerve.
One woman who got pregnant at 42 wrote, “I hate being a mother too. Every day is the same. And to think I won't be free of it until I am like 60 and then my life will be over.” Another, identifying herself only as K's mom, said, “I feel so trapped, anxious, and overwhelmed. I love my daughter and she's well taken care of but this is not the path I would have taken given a second chance.”
Gianna wrote, “I love my son, but I hate being a mother. It has been a thankless, monotonous, exhausting, irritating and oppressive job. Motherhood feels like a prison sentence. I can't wait until I am paroled when my son turns 18 and hopefully goes far away to college.” One D.C.-based mom even said that although she was against abortion before having her son, now she would “run to the abortion clinic” if she got pregnant again.
The responses—largely from women who identify themselves as financially stable—spell out something less explicit than well-worn reasons for parental unhappiness such as poverty and a lack of support. These women simply don't feel that motherhood is all it's cracked up to be, and if given a second chance, they wouldn't do it again.
Some cited the boredom of stay-at-home momism. Many complained of partners who didn't shoulder their share of child care responsibilities. “Like most men, my husband doesn't do much—if anything—for baby care. I have to do and plan for everything,” one mother wrote. A few got pregnant accidentally and were pressured by their husbands and boyfriends to carry through with the pregnancy, or knew they never wanted children but felt it was something they “should” do.Devin Nunes speaks to reporters (CNN/screen grab)
Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA), chair of the House committee leading an investigation into Russia’s interference in the 2016 U.S. election, reportedly said on Monday that he had never heard of two key figures linking President Donald Trump to Russia.
Among the topics covered at Monday’s House Intelligence Committee hearing with FBI Director Jame Comey were several people who had alleged connections to Russia and were also either allies of Trump or members of his campaign at one time.
Roger Stone, a pro-Trump provocateur, who claimed to have communicated with Russian hackers, was repeatedly mentioned at the hearing. Members also asked about former adviser Carter Page who traveled to Russia with the permission of Trump campaign officials.
But Nunes claimed to have no awareness of either of the men when he was asked by Mother Jones columnist David Corn on Monday.
Nunes just told me he's never heard of Carter Page or Roger Stone. And he's in charge of the investigation? — David Corn (@DavidCornDC) March 20, 2017
Oddly, Nunes recently went on record at the behest of the White House to refute a New York Times report that mentioned both Stone and Page.Since the escalation of Iraqi violence in 2011 and the appearance of Isis, the number of Iraqi Shia pilgrims to Iran has risen fast
The Iranian shrine city of Mashhad has much to offer visiting Iraqis wanting to escape violence at home - but locals have mixed views about their guests.
The ticket agent at the gate in Mehrabad airport, Tehran, is irate. He’s shouting at a group of middle-aged Iraqi men, who are having trouble making sense of his flustered Farsi.
“Why didn’t you tie up your baggage before you got to baggage check?” he says with a heavy sigh. The men, some wearing unassuming pants and shirts and others sporting more traditional Arab dress, search for somewhere to set their baggage down and tie some string around it.
The Iraqi passengers on today’s flight to Mashhad number no more than 50, but that’s 30% of the cabin on this old Boeing. The plane has a narrow walkway down the middle of the six-seat rows, and finding one’s seat and a place to store carry-on items seems like a hassle for everyone. Cheerful, attractive flight attendants politely ask standing passengers to take their seats so others can pass.
But the attendants’ voices lose a little something when they address the Iraqi passengers. The Iranian businessman sitting next to me, a resident of Tehran, tells me he has no love for the Iraqis either.
“See how noisy they are?” he says. “Come on, this is a public place!”
As the plane slowly moves away from the gate towards the runway, the Iraqi passengers begin reciting prayers, and when the plane picks up speed and starts to lift off, it’s as though they want the sound of their prayers to overpower the roar of the engines.
Iranians might have engaged in such a ritual up until just a few years ago, but now it seems like the number of Iranians who observe pre-flight prayers lessens with each passing day.
Upon arrival in Mashhad, second most populous city and home to some of its most sacred sites, Iranian and Iraqi passengers alike are handed golden branches at the gate. After moving through the baggage claim, they reach an abundance of kiosks belonging to Mashhad’s various expensive and luxury hotels, where Iraqi passengers have a far warmer treatment than at Mehrabad. The young girls staffing the kiosks usually speak enough broken Arabic to hammer out a deal with the Iraqis, who speak their own broken Farsi.
Mirrorworks at a mosque in Mashhad, Iran. Photograph: sunriseOdyssey/flickr
Iraq has a Shia majority, and interest in visiting Iran’s Shia shrines – especially the tomb in Mashhad of the eighth Shia Imam, Imam Reza – rose after the United States ousted Saddam Hussein in 2003. Since the escalation of the Iraqi violence in 2011 and the appearance of Isis, the so-called Islamic state group, and its capture of a swathe of the country, the number of Iraqi Shia pilgrims to Iran has risen fast.
In January 2015, Mohammad Mehdi Baradaran, deputy of planning and development for the Mashhad mayor’s office, announced that 1.5 million foreign tourists visit Mashhad each year, with 23% from Iraq. “Many of the foreign visitors to Iran are pilgrims visiting the shrine of Imam Reza in Mashhad,” Baradaran told SMT News, an Iranian industry and business publication. “All of the other cities in Iran put together can’t boast Mashhad’s tourism figures.”
According to SMT’s estimates, every pilgrim visiting Mashhad spends roughly $1,500 (£990) in the city, meaning that the 345,000 who visit Mashhad every year spend $517m (£342m) altogether. However, government figures suggest that the number of Iraqi visitors to Mashhad could be much higher, as in 2014 Saeed Ohadi, president of the Hajj and Pilgrimage Association, a department in the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance, said that 1.3 million Iraqi pilgrims visit Iran each year.
“I’m guessing that most of the Iraqi tourists to Iran do visit Mashhad,” a tourism expert in Mashhad tells Tehran Bureau. “The tourists are mostly Shias, who are fairly observant as far as I know, so they probably wouldn’t miss a trip to the shrine of Imam Reza.”
An official at Hashemi Nejad international airport in Mashhad believes that the number of Iraqis coming on a pilgrimage to the city has risen exponentially since the rise of Isis. “After Saddam fell in 2003, many Iraqis were coming to Iran each year, but then it kind of evened out after two or three years,” he said. “I estimate it hovered at around 100,000 a year for a while. But it’s risen sharply over the past year.”
A few taxi drivers camped out near the airport exit are keen to express their opinions. They too believe that both the number of Iraqi visitors and the time they spend in Mashhad have increased. “I know an Iraqi guy who has been renting a home in the Tabresi neighbourhood for six months,” says Mehdi, 25-year-old taxi driver.
However, taxi drivers working the airport beat in Mashhad are no fonder of visiting Iraqis than the flight attendants. “Somehow their dinar is worth way more than our rial,” says one driver. “They may behave like beggars, but the exchange rate means they can live like kings. When I visited Kerbala in Iraq, I paid the equivalent of about 800,000 rials (£19, $28) to get from the airport to the shrine, but here I only earn about 150,000 rials (£3.50, $5.25) for roughly the same trip. Iran is really cheap for them. But they still complain about even this measly fare, and they come with mostly large parties too. In fact they come like flocks of sheep. I have to stick to no more than four passengers in my car - five people in all including myself - and my car can’t accommodate any more than that. What happens if I get in an accident?”
Mehdi doesn’t have much hope that a surge of Iraqi visitors will do much for Mashhad’s economy, either. “They don’t even spend that much. They’re just here to escape the war. Little mice scampering into holes.”
Mehdi also comments on Iraqi men who come to Mashhad looking to patronize the city’s sizeable population of sex workers, many of which conduct business through a Shia system of ‘temporary marriage’ known in Iran as sigheh.
“They come looking for prostitutes. One day I picked up an Iraqi guy and he asked me if there were any sighehs around. I told him there were, did he want an Iraqi girl? Saudi? Bahraini? Lebanese? They’re here from all over the Arab world.” Mehdi releases a hearty laugh, but he is drawing on a historic animosity many Iranians harbour toward Arabs, and reflecting a sense in the more religiously observant sectors of Iranian society of a threat to the purity of Iranian women.
“We deserve all we get for letting those Arabs into our country,” Mehdi continues. “We have so little honour and pride left that even Arabs are showing up in this most holy city asking around for women. That bastard I just told you about? He actually knew some Farsi. So as soon as he asked about sighehs, I let loose every vile curse I ever heard, pulled over, grabbed him by his collar, and tossed him out of my cab. And as I drove off I yelled, ‘Eat shit!’ - just for good measure.”
Much to his disappointment, Mehdi’s stunt with the Iraqi passenger turned into more than just an amusing story.
“The asshole took down my plates,” he says. “He reported me to the taxi agency, and they called me in, confiscated my taxi for two months, and they made me pay a fine of 4m rials [£93, $140]. Just for standing up for our honour. It’s our right! And instead of thanking me for doing that, they fined me!”
Shia pilgrims in the holy city of Mashhad, Iran. Photograph: sunriseOdyssey/flickr Photograph: /flickr
Dozens of five-star hotels, luxury timeshares, and hostels line Imam Reza Street from Bargh Square all the way down to the Imam Reza shrine. Many of the managers of these establishments confirm that a common question from Iraqi visitors is where to find sex workers.
Iranian law expressly forbids an unmarried man and woman from entering a hotel room together, but people find ways. A young man, Alireza, is a kind of arranger for Iraqis looking to hire sex workers. Many hoteliers and shop-owners give Alireza’s number to inquiring Iraqis.
“It’s not just the Iraqis who are into it, man!” Alireza says. “Sex is a can’t-miss item on any good trip’s itinerary. The only thing is, because it’s illegal here, we have to get...creative.”
Alireza says he knows a few sex workers in Mashhad and that he’s happy to facilitate an encounter when Iraqis call upon him. But how does he secure a safe location?
“No problem,” he said. “The women have their own apartments around [middle- and working class districts of] Qasem Abad and Moallem Boulevard. The exchanges are made there.”
Alireza explains that the average price for a night with one of the women he works with is between two and three million rials [£46.50- £69.75, $70.50-$105.75]. “Some of the wealthier customers will hire a woman for the week. For instance, they might take a girl on a trip to Shiraz or something, or maybe up north to the Caspian Sea, Isfahan, places like that. For a week the girls charge between 20 and 30 million rials.”
Although Alireza refuses to set up a face-to-face interview with one of the women or even provide their numbers after I offer to pay him, he does agree to call someone and allow me to speak to her on his mobile. After a brief chat, he hands me the receiver, and I ask how she feels about her Iraqi customers and how they treat her.
“Iraqis are really good people, by and large. Some of them are very shy, but on the whole they’re generous and kind. A lot of them will even pay extra to stay in touch via Facebook or Viber after our time together is over.”
Still, sex isn’t all that’s on offer in Mashhad. Restaurants in the countryside about 20km outside of town, such as Shandiz and Torqabeh, attract a large Iraqi clientele. Shandiz features some of Iran’s most famous kebabs. The shishlik and barg kebabs in particular have a wide reputation that’s no secret to Iraqis.
Abd al-Hamid, a teacher from Najaf, Iraq, has brought his wife and two young daughters. “Everyone in Najaf knows about the food in Mashhad,” he said in heavily accented Farsi punctuated by laughs. “First Imam Reza, then shishlik – that’s the rule.”
Abd al-Hamid says that although he’s enjoyed his time in Mashhad, “I’ve witnessed a kind of disrespect that’s pretty pervasive. When Iranians come to Iraq, we love it and we respect and treat them very well. But I’ve felt really unwelcome by a lot of shop-keepers and taxi drivers here. I can’t say exactly why.”
Iran-Iraq conflict remembered through the lives of widows Read more
A researcher from Tehran university says she knows why. “First off, you have to remember that we fought an eight-year war with each other, even though many of Iraq’s Shias opposed Saddam. But many Iranians don’t know that. Fortunately, most Iranians born since the 1980s [after the war] don’t have these feelings toward Iraqis. The other reason is this general anti-Arabism that persists in Iranian society and is part of why Iranians tend to think of themselves as culturally superior to Arabs. But I personally feel that since the emergence of Isis, many Iranians have made an effort to be more sympathetic to their Iraqi neighbours.”
Morteza, a 25-year-old seller of opal and turquoise stones on the second floor of the Reza Bazaar near the shrine, expresses fondness for Iraqi tourists. “These are really humble, kind, likeable people,” he says. “And they’re always suffering some hardship or another. They had to deal with the cruel dictator Saddam for 20 years, and he screwed up not only their lives, but our lives as well. And if that wasn’t bad enough, they had to put up with the Americans, who violated their women, and now they have those Isis brutes to deal with! Whenever I meet Iraqis, it’s always a friendly interaction. I even give them discounts, if you can believe it. I want to do whatever I can for them.”
Behrouz, a seller of traditional cashmere fabrics on the ground floor of the bazaar, differs. “There’s no one more annoying than those Iraqis!” he said. “They show up, make a lot of noise, bang everything about, and in the end they don’t even buy anything!”
Just as Behrouz’s screed begins to gather steam, an Iraqi customer enters the shop, causing him to break into a wide smile and politely greet the new customer with a few carefully practised words of accented Arabic.
At the Iraqi consulate, an employee offers further insight on the tensions between Iranians and Iraqis. “We rarely receive reports of violence against Iraqi nationals,” he says. “So this idea that there is real racism against Iraqis is not true. Of course we do get complaints - poor treatment by taxi drivers and such - but as far as I know even native Mashhadis aren’t on the best of terms with their taxi drivers. On the whole, Iraqis are satisfied with their visits to Mashhad, and they like the idea of coming back.”
Another can’t-miss for Iraqi tourists in Mashhad is one of the city’s water parks. A ticket seller at Water Waves Land on Andisheh Qasem Boulevard ponders the water parks’ popularity. “Probably 20% of our visitors are Iraqis. They love Mashhad’s water parks, and when they come, they stay for the whole day. It’s like they never get tired of it.”
Mashhad has the highest concentration of water parks in Iran, and they are generally crowded. It’s easy to find Arabic speakers in the masses of people.
Ayad, a 44-year-old electrical appliance seller from Kerbala who speaks a little English, has been in Mashhad for four days. “I never miss coming to this water park when I visit Mashhad,” he said. “It’s so full of energy, even if it’s a little crowded. I’ve been here eight hours but I’ve only been riding slides and stuff for about an hour altogether. But that’s fine by me. Mashhad is a joyful and exciting city. And I mean ‘exciting’ in a good sense, not the kind of excitement we get in Iraq, where bullets and blood are never far away.”Somewhere in a warehouse there’s a monster. It is being hunted by men with laser-sighted shotguns and pistols. They have movement sensors and flashlights, and the monster is doing all it can to keep away from them. Plot twist: It’s me! I have a knife and some bombs. I can see through the boxes, I can cling to walls and ceilings, and I’m invisible. In fact, it’s the team below me that are terrified. They’re shooting at things that aren’t there, pumping rounds into shadows, and one of them just died from friendly fire. At this rate, I could wait out the panic and let them kill off one other.
The Hidden is an old Source engine multiplayer mod. At least once a year I remember it exists and get utterly hooked. It’s a violent game of hide and seek, with one player vs an entire team. Depending on the players, that could be a monster vs its prey, or one team systematically hunting down a panicked, skittery, overwhelmed animal. I’ve been playing after accidentally reminding myself about it last week.
I can sympathise with the players who end up firing at nothing. If there’s a game that drives the players paranoid, it’s The Hidden. It’s taken its inspiration from Predator and not Aliens. You’ll spend most of your time as a member of team IRIS knowing that you can barely see what you’re hunting, and that it can come at you from any angle. A monster that finds strength in its isolation, that’s at most an indistinct movement of the air. Hunting something that might be watching your every movement fosters a different mindset from being the target of a horde of usual game villains. You have to train yourself to take in your surroundings, to move while you keep your eyes slightly unfocused, so any peripheral movement is absorbed. Levels are cunningly decorated to make you think innocent items could be coming RIGHT FOR YOU!
Things that look like the monster:
Laser dots
Debris.
Gas vents.
Plants.
Vertical tearing.
A smear stuff on your monitor.
A crack on some glass.
Other players.
I’ve shot at all those in a blind panic. But those are only fleeting allusions, your brain and the game trolling you (and let me tell you, on the game’s part it is utterly deliberate). It’s worse when The Hidden makes its presence felt. You only ever see the result of its action, never the monster itself. I was with another player, we’d stuck around and decided to tour the Highrise level together, looping around in the corridors beneath the map. They’re actually easier places to control: well lit, and the enclosed space reduces the monster’s movement range. My partner was a player that understood the necessity of that, and we formed a tight unit. He stopped and turned to me, his character frozen on screen as he was typing something. I hope it wasn’t anything important, because he never finished: he exploded, showering me in bits and revealing a shimmer of air. There’s something odd about shooting at something you can barely see: your brain is always a few microseconds behind it needs to be, paralysed by it’s attempt to focus. The Hidden was in a corridor in front of me, and he managed to escape.
While that was a pathetic show on my part, but it turned out he was quite a good Hidden. I have a few metrics: if you can single-out players, if you can escape a group alive, and if you can cause mass panic without doing anything, then you’re a good Hidden.
Also, if you can do this.
That takes determination to the cause. You’re giving up your main advantage of being unseen to shit up the other team. I’ve been caught more than once while pinning a body to the wall, but then I am a show-off.
It’s a completely different mindset playing as the monster (and I do play as a monster, as you’ll see): he’s faster, stronger, and more maneuverable, but mostly it’s because you’re being hunted. It’s unfair, and it brings out something a little bit dark in your soul. A lot of it’s internalised: I turn into a stalker, reveling in secret little games that I play with those that can’t see me. Because I can see through walls and leap, my favourite thing is to wait at the opening to a corridor and leap across it as someone’s approaching. There’s no finer noise than the shotgun blast that follows.
The Stalkyard map has a hero closet. It’s where the Hidden spawns, and it has a door, a vent, and a floor covering that can be smashed, which opens up hole to a corridor beneath. As a matter of course I break that last covering before leaving the room. Boring players will hole up in the vent, which can be defended easily as an IRIS solider, but others can use the room’s one doorway to try and funnel you into fire.
They’ll often forget about the floor covering.
I had pushed two players into that room. They kept taunting me, and in turn I’d dash in front of the doorway to remind them I knew where they were. They were so intent on killing me as I passed the doorway, they missed me leaping into the room from beneath. I clung to the roof for a short while, watching as they dashed around the doorway. Then I dialed up a demonic laugh in The Hidden’s chat options and watched them panic. A terrorising tee-hee.
Of course, there are times when it just doesn’t work. The Hidden has a knife, and if the server’s umodded he has a main slash and a timed stab (modder servers turn the stab into a push: ugh!). The timed stab will instakill if it makes contact, but if you miss you’re left up close to a player while your most powerful move recharges. It’s not a good place to be. But that’s a penalty that’s worth the risk. The mess it makes when it connects is explosive. A dead body is a dead body, but a pile of parts is unsettling for other players to come across, and as I mentioned before, seeing another player come apart can be enough to turn a calm, collected soldier into a panicky, paranoid wreck.
You can even mess them up subtly: stand behind a pane of cracked glass, stand still in a clump of plants or over a gas vent so smart player will dismiss it as a trick of the light. It’s tough, and you’ll die a lot to people who’re rightly paranoid, but it’s worth twenty deaths for the one time it all comes together.
There’s still a community of players that keep the servers busy, and it’s not a game that needs dedication or a clan to enjoy. Do yourself a favour: set your Google calendar to remind you once a year that The Hidden is out there.A 10-day-old from Assam, diagnosed with meconium aspiration syndrome -- a condition in which the baby’s stool enters its lungs -- was successfully airlifted to a New Delhi hospital, after intervention of the Prime Minister Minister’s Office (PMO), doctors said on Monday.
The doctors said that the newborn girl child was brought from Assam’s Dibrugarh to Sir Ganga Ram Hospital (SRGH) for life-saving treatment, after the PMO intervened to ensure a traffic-free passage for the medical transport team.
According to the doctors, the child was admitted to the hospital on Saturday evening.
“The child suffers from a rare medical problem in which the baby passes stool in the mother’s womb and it enters the lungs creating extreme respiratory problems,” chairman of Neonatology at SRGH Neelam Kler told IANS.
“Meconium aspiration syndrome leads to low oxygen and poor ventilatory effort. The pressure on the newbaby’s lungs remains high. The profusion is poor and keeps the clean and unclean blood mixed in the mother’s womb,” said Kler.
Kler, a prominent Neonatology expert, said that the baby required very high ventilatory support when brought to the hospital, as she had extreme breathing difficulty in lungs, followed by kidney functions.
“She was very weak and brought on a ventilator through a transport team. She also had bleeding in her lungs. Immediately she was put on a system of medication to improve profusion in the body, which is through pumping of the heart,” she said.
According to Kler, after severe medical attention, the baby’s blood pressure has improved and is currently undergoing medication to improve profusion.
“However, she is still on very high ventilator settings. Because in such cases there are chances for the baby to deteriorate as such cases have very high mortality. She is stable right now but not completely out of danger,” she said.
Parents of the newborn remained unreachable despite being contacted over phone.
First Published: Mar 06, 2017 21:58 ISTGoogle Spins Up Its First Servers In Cuba
Enlarge this image toggle caption Adalberto Roque/AFP/Getty Images Adalberto Roque/AFP/Getty Images
Accessing the Internet in Cuba isn't easy. Home Internet connections are rare, and public access Wi-Fi hotspots costs $1.50 an hour — very expensive for most Cubans.
But in the nation that has been called "one of the most restrictive media environments in the world," watching YouTube got faster this week.
Google says that its servers just went live on the island — meaning that for the first time, its services like YouTube videos are cached locally, instead of in a neighboring country.
This milestone comes four months after the company signed an agreement with Cuba's national telecom provider, ETECSA, to use its technology to make high-bandwidth activities faster.
This marks the first time a foreign Internet company has hosted anything inside Cuba, according to Doug Madory, Director of Internet Analysis at Dyn, an Internet performance company. Madory spent time in Havana last year for a conference and talked to Google about their plans for Cuba.
After Google made the deal with ETECSA, Madory set up a system that would notify him when the Google's servers in Cuba were live, and yesterday morning, he got pinged.
Google's servers in Cuba will cache its own content, allowing for quicker delivery to users.
Caching speeds up the Internet by storing frequently used content locally. So the first time someone in Cuba watches a specific video on YouTube, it may take a while to load. But if their neighbor then decides to watch that same video, it should load much faster, because it has been stored on a nearby server and doesn't need to travel as far.
While caching makes the Internet speedier in any country, it's particularly vital in Cuba, where connectivity is slow. Cuba connects to the Internet primarily through the ALBA-1 submarine cable, which runs from Venezuela.
Google said that Cubans "who already have access to the internet and want to use our services can expect to see an improvement in terms of quality of service" and speed for cached content.
That qualifier — "who already have access to the internet" — is significant, since access to the Internet in Cuba is so limited. (As few as 5 percent of Cubans may have access to the open Internet.) Google's servers make it speedier to use its services in Cuba today, but they don't provide Internet access where it wasn't before.
For the most part Cubans don't have access to Google's products. "Many users are still relegated to a tightly controlled government network and related email service," says Freedom House, a nonprofit group that conducts research on democracy and human rights.
In its 2016 report on Internet freedom, Freedom House wrote that "Cuba remains one of the world's most repressive environments for information and communication technologies." It added that Cuba's lack of modern Internet infrastructure is one way the government limits access to outside media and information.
"Rather than relying on the technically sophisticated filtering and blocking used by other repressive regimes, the Cuban government continues to limit users' access to information primarily via lack of technology and prohibitive costs," it says.
But Google's servers join other signs of progress for Internet in the country. The BBC reported last month that ETECSA had installed Internet connections in around 2,000 homes in Old Havana as part of a two-month pilot.
Those connections weren't fast enough to stream video, though. With Google's new servers, the dream of watching videos on the Internet — without endless buffering — gets a little closer.Check out Vermont Cider Week at Citizen Cider Share Shares Copy Link Copy
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WEBVTT THAT'S RIGHT.VERMONT CIDER WEEK.VERMONT CIDER WEEK.PROBABLY THE BEST WE CAN ALL OFTHE WEEKS IN VERMONT.CHRIS NELSON JOINS US NOW, PARTOWNER OF CITIZENS CIDER.THE LAST HIT WE TALKED ABOUTWHAT THIS WEE -- WHAT IS GOINGON IN THE FUN THINGS THAT YOUCAN DO BUT NOW I WANT TO TALKABOUT THE HISTORY OF CITIZENSCIDER BECAUSE PROBABLY ONE OFTHE GREATEST PLACES IN ALL OFVERMONT.HOW DID YOU GUYS, BUT THIS IDEA?A LOT OF TIMES CIDER -- WHEN IHAD IT IT WAS SWEET AND OVER THETOP AND NOW YOU GUYS HAVE MADEIT THIS SPECIALTY CRAFT THING.CHRIS: THANKS FOR AL THAT.I AGREE THIS IS PROBABLY ONE OFTHE GREATEST WEEKS YOU CAN HAVEHERE.AND CITIZEN SIDE ARE WE LIKE SAY THAT EVERY WEEK INSIDER WEEK-- EVERY WEEK IS CIDER WEEK.HOW DO WE END UP |
ake reported earlier this month that William Chapman, the foundation's director of policy, stepped down amid rumours of a dispute over Blair's "lecturing'' of the Pope on homosexuality.
Chapman said, however, that he could not turn down a "once-in-a-lifetime opportunity" to work for the Lord Mayor of London. The foundation says it seeks "to encourage humanitarian action based on certain values which the great faiths share".
In an interview with a magazine for homosexuals, Blair questioned the Pope's attitude towards homosexuality, arguing that religious leaders must start "rethinking" the issue.During what may be his last tour of Asia, President Barack Obama will make history as the first sitting U.S. president to visit Hiroshima, the site where the U.S. dropped the first atomic bomb in wartime.
Even before the president sets foot on what many consider hallowed ground, the announcement has sparked new debate on the decision to drop the bomb, and whether the United States should apologize or if a U.S. president should even visit.
Obama is expected to make a statement from Hiroshima, and will likely have to navigate a symbolic minefield.
Nearly 71 years ago
It was a moment that literally changed the world nearly 71 years ago when a mushroom-shaped cloud lit up the sky over Hiroshima, and three days later over Nagasaki.
About 140,000 people in the two cities died within the year, and survivors and their children have faced untold suffering due to radiation poisoning.
The U.S. rationale for the decision was to bring years of Japanese aggression to a quick end, potentially saving many more lives than would have been lost in a U.S. invasion. But many Japanese see it differently, saying innocent men, women and children were unnecessarily incinerated and poisoned.
'Symbolic act'
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry visited Hiroshima last month. He said he was deeply moved and that “every human being” should visit the site.
Some experts think that should include the U.S. president, among them Chris Appy of the University of Massachusetts.
“I was very pleased that he decided to go. I think just showing up is important symbolic act that many Japanese have wanted for a long time," Appy told VOA.
But Appy said he thinks the United States should also apologize for the atomic bomb attacks.
“I am disappointed that the president appears not willing to apologize. After all I think in our personal lives, we consider it the height of maturity when an adult is willing to take responsibility and accountability for actions," he said. "Particularly actions that lead to the suffering of the innocent victims.”
Others strongly disagree, including Brian Harding of the Center for American Progress, who told VOA, “The president will not be issuing an apology and the Japanese government is not asking for one either.”
'Special responsibility'
White House officials have made clear that the president will not apologize. White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest said, “What I think the president does appreciate is that President [Harry] Truman made this decision for the right reason.”
But Earnest said the United States does have a “special responsibility” as the only country to have ever used an atomic bomb to work tirelessly for nuclear non-proliferation.
Others, including many older Americans and war veterans oppose Obama’s visit.
Republican Senator John McCain is a decorated Vietnam War veteran who ran against Obama in 2008 for the presidency. He told VOA he simply does not see the point of the trip.
“I'm not in the business of telling the president of the United States where to go. But where, what is the purpose of it? In some ways, you dredge up very unpleasant memories, but if the president wants to go somewhere he can," McCain said.
It is not yet clear whether the president will meet with any of the few remaining survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Obama will be accompanied in Hiroshima’s Peace Memorial Park by Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. They will lay a wreath, and Obama will make a statement.
The White House said the leaders will highlight the horrors of war and the need to work toward a world without nuclear weapons.iPhone and iPad apps will be able to shoot RAW photos with iOS 10
Good news, iPhone-toting photo lovers: RAW photo shooting support is coming to iOS 10.
(Wondering what the heck a “RAW” photo is? It’s any file type that stores an image in its rawest form, sans compression and pre-processing. The upside: you’ve got a lot more data to work with, allowing for a much greater degree of editing flexibility in post processing — hence why pro photographers tend to shoot in RAW. The downside: the files tend to be pretty damned big.)
Eagle-eyed watchers spotted a passing mention of RAW photo editing on a slide during yesterday’s keynote, but not a word was said about it on stage.
The functionality was confirmed in a WWDC workshop this afternoon, though, where a few details were laid out:
Third party developers will be able to shoot and store raw photos, but it’s something they’ll have to add to their apps — it won’t just suddenly start working across all your apps when you update to iOS 10.
It’ll work with the rear camera only
As with many DSLRs, iOS can handle shooting in RAW and JPEG simultaneously
It’ll be available to apps running on the iPhone 6s, 6s Plus, SE, and the 9.7” iPad
RAW photos will be stored in Adobe’s Digital Negative (DNG) file format
Alas, no word yet on if/how Apple plans to support RAW photos within their own Camera app.Rebekah Johansen Bydlak is on track to become the youngest female congresswoman in United States history. The conservative millennial is running for an open seat in Florida's 1st Congressional District and has already gained the support of constitutional conservatives like Rep. Justin Amash. Now she's earned the endorsement of the original liberty congressman, Ron Paul.
"I am pleased to endorse Rebekah Bydlak for Congress," Ron Paul said in a statement on Tuesday. "Rebekah's commitment to and experience in advancing the principles of liberty show that she is the type of leader the GOP, Florida and the country need."
The candidate, who some are calling the future of the Republican Party, has a background as the director of outreach for the Coalition to Reduce Spending, working with elected officials, federal candidates and members of the public to help people understand our government's spending problem — something that has racked up $19 trillion in debt.
"That's why I think it's important to elect people who have the energy and the dedication to getting government down, getting spending down, for the next generation," Bydlak said in an interview with The Conservative Review. "My generation is on the hook for what these guys in Washington have been doing, and I want to make sure that I can change that for the future."
One criticism she has faced is that some think she's too young. But, at 25 years old, she's only a few years younger than several members of Congress who are currently serving. And have those who are older really been doing much to lessen the economic burden resting on millennials' shoulders?
"This criticism is something I could take seriously if an entire slew of politicians much older than Mrs. Bydlak hadn't gotten us to this dire point," said Rare's Jack Hunter.
Read more at Red Alert Politics
Correction: This article previously misstated that Bydlak had been endorsed by Sen. Rand Paul and Rep. Thomas Massie.A Conservative-dominated parliamentary committee voted against a process Monday that would have likely called on Finance Minister Joe Oliver to testify in public about the state of Canada's finances amid a troubled economy.
Before Monday's closed-door meeting, opposition members of the finance committee had been urging the Harper government to study a recent report that said Ottawa was on track to run a budget deficit this year.
Last week, the parliamentary budget office released an analysis based on downgraded Bank of Canada projections that showed Ottawa was headed for a $1-billion shortfall in 2015-16.
The budget watchdog's calculation raised doubts about the ruling Conservatives' long-standing pledge to balance the election-year books — including their $1.4-billion surplus projection for this year.
MPs Blake Richards, Guy Caron and Scott Brison discuss the country's economy as the finance committee returns for a rare summer meeting 11:47
The freshly crunched numbers were released after the struggling economy contracted over the first four months of 2015, a recoil triggered by the collapse in world oil prices and the failure of Canada's non-energy sectors to pick up the slack.
Some experts have said Canada has slipped into recession, though that remains the subject of heated debate.
Last week, Prime Minister Stephen Harper said his government was "well ahead" of its own forecast for a balanced budget this year — despite Canada's economic struggles to start 2015.
Harper pointed to the data for the first two months of the fiscal year, which show a $3.95-billion surplus thanks to a $1-billion boost from a one-time asset sale of General Motors shares.
15-minute meeting
Oliver has insisted the government is "very comfortable" it will produce a budgetary surplus this year, citing forecasts from experts — including the Bank of Canada — that say the economy will rebound later this year.
"It definitely would be interesting to hear the finance minister actually explain how he can claim there will be a balanced budget," New Democrat MP Guy Caron said after Monday's 15-minute committee meeting.
"We're going into an election this fall. I think Canadians are actually entitled to know exactly where we stand in terms of our economic situation, and right now it's clear that the Conservatives aren't interested in bringing the light to this."
Last week, Liberal finance critic Scott Brison called on the government to back up its renewed balanced-budget promise by releasing the Department of Finance's latest projections to the committee.
"Ministers of finance have a responsibility during times of uncertainty of providing information to Canadians," Brison said after the meeting.
"The Conservatives have gone from wanting to run on the economy to running from the economy."
But Conservative MP and committee chairman James Rajotte said it's important to look at hard numbers when trying to predict the future, rather than putting so much energy into following ever-shifting economic forecasts.
Rajotte pointed to the $3.95-billion surplus the government books showed for the first two months of the fiscal year, though he acknowledged it was due in large part to the asset sale.
"So, to predict the next 10 months, it's a lot like predicting the weather — it's a very challenging thing to do," Rajotte said.
"The Bank of Canada consistently changes its projections depending on economic circumstances, as does the parliamentary budget officer, as do governments around the world.
"So, speaking for myself personally, I don't know how helpful it is for us to continually debate what it will be then as opposed to actually debating what it is."A judge will allow a malicious prosecution lawsuit brought by five of the officers charged in the Freddie Gray case to proceed against State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby, according to our media partners at The Baltimore Sun
U.S. District Judge Marvin J. Garbis ruled that claims including malicious prosecution, defamation, and invasion of privacy can move forward.
However, other counts such as false arrest, false imprisonment and abuse of process, were dismissed. All claims against the state were also dismissed.
David Ellin, an attorney representing Lt. Brian Rice, said he expected that Mosby’s attorneys will appeal, and won’t be surprised if the case reaches the Supreme Court.
In his ruling, Garbis writes, “Viewed in the light most favorable to the Plaintiffs, they present allegations that present a plausible claim that the defendants made false statements or omissions either knowingly or with reckless disregard of their truth or falsity.”
Mosby’s attorneys have said she has prosecutorial immunity from actions taken as a state’s attorney. Judge Garbis noted that Mosby’s office has said it conducted an independent investigation. The State’s Attorney prosecutors’ were ordered to turn over documents from their independent investigation, which normally would have been protected from the evidence discovery process.
Six Baltimore officers were charged in the arrest and death of 25-year-old Gray after he suffered a fatal spinal cord injury while in police custody on April 12, 2015. Three of officers charged were found not guilty of all charges by a judge, and then last July, prosecutors dropped charges against the remaining three.
Follow @CBSBaltimore on Twitter and like WJZ-TV | CBS Baltimore on Facebook“I like this title quite a lot. I've sunk in a pretty hefty number of hours, and I can see myself sinking in more.” 7.5/10 – Strategy Informer “The rewards for mastering it is the ultimate freedom to run any country in the world any way you choose... one of the best wargame simulations to come out this year.” 4.5/5 – Game Industry News “What is there not to love with the ability to go from 1936 to 2070+ with a single nation, at battalion-level, while having dozens of new scenarios and campaign start dates to choose from?” 95% – Armchair General
About This Game BattleGoat Studios is pleased to present Supreme Ruler Ultimate, the pinnacle of sixteen years of development on the Supreme Ruler series of Real Time Geo-Political Military Strategy Games for PC and Mac. Supreme Ruler Ultimate incorporates the stories, campaigns, scenarios, and features from our previous releases and expands on them in our improved game engine. Take control of any nation in the world from World War II through the Cold War and into the near future as our world lurches from one crisis to the next. Play historical or modern Campaigns with specific objectives, attempt one of the many Set-Piece Scenarios for a shorter game, or customize your game experience by picking any nation in the various era Sandboxes and choosing your own preferred Victory Condition. With so many options to choose from, Supreme Ruler Ultimate provides virtually unlimited replayability!
- Play Historical or Futuristic Campaigns.
- Take Control of any Nation in Sandbox Mode and impact the outcome of an era.
- Challenge yourself with Historical Scenarios for a faster-paced gameplay experience.
- The butterfly effect... Influence the timeline and outcome of thousands of historical events.
- Use Diplomacy, Trade, Espionage, and Intimidation to influence the policies of other nations.
- Guide your Nation through an era of unprecedented Scientific Advancement.
- Modernize your economy to support your social and military policies.
- Sophisticated Real-Time Strategic and Tactical Control of your Military Forces.
- Detailed historically-accurate armies down to the Battalion level.
- Choose your level of control. Make all decisions or use your Cabinet Ministers to help.
- Battle the elements! Fully integrated weather model influences battlefield outcomes.
- Up to 16 players in Multiplayer over local network or Internet (PC only)For the Ecuadorian town known for the longevity of its residents, see Vilcabamba, Ecuador. For other uses, see Vilcabamba (disambiguation)
City in Neo-Inca State
Vilcabamba (in hispanicized spelling), Willkapampa (Aymara[1] and Quechua)[2][3][4][5] or Espíritu Pampa was a city founded by Manco Inca in 1539 that served as the capital of the Neo-Inca State, the last refuge of the Inca Empire until it fell to the Spaniards in 1572, signaling the end of Inca resistance to Spanish rule. The city was then destroyed, rediscovered in 1911, and scholars believe it to be the fabled "Lost city of the Incas".
It is located on the Chontabamba River, a tributary of the Urubamba River.[6] It is often referred to as Vilcabamba the Old or Old Vilcabamba to distinguish it from the Spanish colonial town of Vilcabamba la Nueva.[7]
History [ edit ]
Manco Inca retreated from Ollantaytambo to Vitcos, and finally to Vilcabamba: "The Inca brought together all those of the royal blood he could find, men and women alike, and retired to the wild forest of the Antis to a place called Villcapampa where he lived in exile and solitude as one can imagine a dispossessed and disinherited prince would live, until one day he was slain by a Spaniard whom he had sheltered and protected from enemies who had sought his death."[8]:131
Titu Cusi said this of his father Manco Inca Yupanqui, "Having arrived, he rested and recovered for a few days and built his houses and lodgings in order to settle down there, for it seemed to him like a good site for his capital seat."[9]:122
On 24 June 1572, a Spanish army, led by veteran conquistador Martin Hurtado de Arbieto, made a final advance on the Incas' remote jungle capital. 'They marched off, taking the artillery, wrote Arbieto in his own account of the campaign, 'and at 10 o clock they marched into the city of Vilcabamba, all on foot, for it is is the most wild and rugged country, in no way suitable for horses.' What they discovered was a city built 'for about a thousand fighting Indians, besides many other women, children, and old people' filled with 'four hundred houses.[10]
Vilcabamba is the site where the Spanish captured Tupac Amaru.[11]:xxxvi,171-172
Inca remnant [ edit ]
The Neo-Inca State held out in Vilcabamba for 33 years, until it was overrun by the Spanish in 1572. The city was burned and the area swiftly became a remote, secluded spot.
Spanish Vilcabamba [ edit ]
San Francisco de la Victoria de Vilcabamba, also known as Vilcabamba la Nueva ("the New"), was a Spanish colonial silver-mining town near Vitcos. It is located east of Vilcabamba the Old on the Pampaconas River, a tributary of the Vilcabamba River, which is a tributary of the Urubamba River.[7] Hiram Bingham III visited the site in 1911, noting that, "Instead of Inca walls or ruins, Vilcabamba has three score solidly built Spanish houses...due to the prosperity of gold diggers, who came to work the quartz mines which were made accessible after the death of Tupac Amaru." After 1572, monks built a church and living house.[11]
Archaeologic studies [ edit ]
The first outsiders in modern times to rediscover the remote forest site that has since come to be identified with Old Vilcabamba (Vilcabamba la Vieja) were three Cuzqueños: Manuel Ugarte, Manuel López Torres, and Juan Cancio Saavedra, in 1892. They were the first people known to come across the site in 320 years.
In 1911, Hiram Bingham III visited Espíritu Pampa and a natural terrace on the banks of the Pampaconas River called Eromboni Pampa. He found artificial terraces, stone Inca houses, including a rectangular building 192 feet long, an Inca fountain, Inca pottery, and a stone bridge. However, Bingham was not sure if the site was the actual location of Vilcabamba Viejo, the site where Tupac Amaru fled after the Spanish captured Vitcos. Bingham speculated in his book Lost City of the Incas that Machu Picchu was the lost city of Vilcapampa the Old, in part because Bingham only saw a small portion of Espíritu Pampa. It remained for Gene Savoy to discover the full extent of the site in 1964, and later evidence did confirm the site was indeed the old Vilcabamba.[11]:xxxv-xxxvi,155-172,197
In the 1960s, the explorations and discoveries of Antonio Santander Casselli and Gene Savoy finally associated the Espíritu Pampa site with the legendary Vilcabamba. Their 1970 book Antisuyo brought the site to even wider attention. Researcher and author John Hemming provided additional substantive confirmation as to Espíritu Pampa's significance in his 1970 The Conquest of the Incas.
In 1976, Professor Edmundo Guillén and Polish explorers Tony Halik and Elżbieta Dzikowska continued to explore the long-known ruins. However, before the expedition, Guillen visited a museum in Seville where he discovered letters from Spaniards, in which they described the progress of the invasion and what they found in Vilcabamba. Comparison between the letters' contents and the ruins provided additional proof of the location of Vilcabamba.
In 1981, the party of American explorer Gregory Deyermenjian reached and photographed parts of the site, soon thereafter generating a popular article concerning the site and its history.[12]
Later extensive archeological work by Vincent Lee, and especially his exhaustive study, his 2000 book Forgotten Vilcabamba, gave further and even more precise confirmation that has made Espíritu Pampa the definitively accepted site of the historical Vilcabamba.
On 16 June 2006, a museum in Cuzco[13] unveiled a plaque that commemorates the thirtieth anniversary of the 1976 Vilcabamba findings.
In popular culture [ edit ]
The lost city of Vilcabamba features in the educational computer game series The Amazon Trail, the Tomb Raider videogame and its remake Tomb Raider: Anniversary, and the books Evil Star and Necropolis by British thriller author Anthony Horowitz. Vilcabamba is also a playable place in the PlayStation 2 RPG Shadow Hearts: From the New World.
The second episode of Michael Wood's 2000 documentary series Conquistadors visits the site of Vilcabamba while telling the story of the fall of the Inca and retreat of Manco and his followers to the remote region as the last surviving remnant of the empire.
The city was the location of British writer Colin Thubron's 2002 novel, To the Last City, which was short-listed for the Man Booker Prize, and tells the story of a group of people who set off to explore the ruins of the Inca city[14] in what has been described as a "Heart of Darkness narrative" in a "Marquezian setting".
The science fiction story "Vilcabamba" (2010) by Harry Turtledove, which can be read on-line here, is a self-referential allegory of Vilcabamba as an alien invasion story set in the 22nd century.
An episode of the TV Series In Search Of... (1976-1982) titled "Inca Treasures", highlights the expedition taken by professor Edmundo Guillén to explore the ruins of Vilcabamba.
Gallery [ edit ]
See also [ edit ]
References [ edit ]
Sources [ edit ]
Further reading [ edit ]Matthew Baron, the president of Simon Baron Development, said he sees this as a “shadow market,” which his firm plans to tap into with micro-suites for singles that are code compliant. In the next few months, the firm plans to unveil some 400 units featuring two- and three-bedroom suites designed to be shared that will average about 250 square feet per person. The average bedroom size will be 110 square feet, the suites furnished and the kitchens pared down with slimmed-down appliances; residents will have access to a host of amenities.
“People already live this way, by putting up pressurized walls and turning a two-bedroom into three, or a one-bedroom into two,” Mr. Baron said. “We are seeking to legitimize things for both the landlord and the tenant, while still breaking up the cost of rent.”
While it remains to be seen whether true micro-apartments, those under 400 square feet in size, will gain regulatory footing, Ms. Watson, of the Citizens Housing and Planning Council, is optimistic. As part of his State of the City speech this month, Mayor Bill de Blasio emphasized affordable housing and sustainable density. Expanding the availability of compact units — or micro-apartments — beyond the pilot phase is part of his plan to bring down housing costs. Mayor de Blasio’s plan cites the success of “livable, safe, healthy” micro-apartment initiatives in other cities that have broadened “housing options for small households.” His administration has promised to consider zoning changes after a review of the My Micro NY pilot. In this administration, Ms. Watson sees “a broader commitment to encourage housing that better matches how people live,” beyond just finishing what former Mayor Bloomberg started.
Seattle is often held up as a leader in the micro-apartment movement. Units at developments there called aPodments can be rented on leases as short as three months, for around $600 a month. But that model is unlikely to spread to New York, where leases are typically a year or two long and where financial requirements are so onerous that they often require the signature of a guarantor.
A potential barrier to zoning changes that would allow for micro-apartments, Ms. Watson said, comes from a misunderstanding about the makeup of the single population. “Many people fear the idea of singles,” she said. “They think they will be young hooligans.” Critics worry that micro-units will attract a young transient population that will not spend paychecks locally, and keep the neighbors up at night with rowdy behavior.
But the singles of New York City are not all hard-partying 20somethings. The population includes recent graduates drawn by a first job, slightly older people who have put off getting married and a growing population of older New Yorkers. The number of single New Yorkers age 65 and older has increased by almost 10 percent and has grown more rapidly than any other group of singles in the city since 2000, according to William H. Frey, the senior demographer at the Brookings Institution, an independent research organization. Only 19 percent of single-person households are under 35 years old.
The population living in existing micro-apartments would suggest that they do not just appeal to the young.× Bill would scrap Columbus Day for ‘Indigenous People’s Day’ in Utah
SALT LAKE CITY — A bill being drafted in the Utah State Legislature would rename Columbus Day to “Indigenous People’s Day” in the state.
Sen. Jim Dabakis, D-Salt Lake City, told FOX 13 he was crafting the legislation to honor the people who were in Utah before the pioneers, instead of Christopher Columbus.
“It’s kind of an old, haggering idea that Christopher Columbus did something,” Dabakis said. “He was the first white guy to arrive, he didn’t know where he was going, he ended up in a place he thought he wasn’t. He really has contributed nothing to civilization.”
Dabakis said he has support from members of Utah’s Native American tribes. The bill is expected to be filed in the legislature by next week.Jabbir Ali whose car got hit while playing Pokemon Go. (Shadab Khan)
Social media campaigns that Mumbai Police has come up with.
A Bandra-based youth on Monday faced a nightmare for playing Pokemon Go for the first time ever.Jabbir Ali, 26, a car dealer, while on his way to his house at Carter Road from Bandstand, met with an accident, landing his Mercedes in the garage. Jabbir now plans to create awareness and educate people to be careful while playing the game.After causing a series of road accidents in the US and Japan, Mumbai registered its first Pokemon Go accident on Monday when Ali's car got hit by an autorickshaw.Ironically, Jabbir claimed that it was the first time he played the game which has taken the world by a storm.Jabbir was on his way home from Bandstand to Carter Road when the incident took place. "I love driving and I always follow traffic rules. On Monday, around 5.30 pm, my brother, Adil and I were stuck at a traffic signal. He was constantly playing Pokemon Go, so intrigued, I took the phone from him to understand the game. While he was explaining the rules to me, an autorickshaw rammed into my car and sped away. The bumper of my Mercedes E240 got damaged. Playing Pokemon Go for the first time has now cost me over Rs 15,000-20,000 in repairs," Jabbir said.In order to raise awareness about playing the game on city streets, Jabbir posted his damaged car's photo on social media.A police campaignDays after the largest planned Pokemon Go event here - Pokewalk Mumbai - did not go ahead due to a clash between the organisers and police over the venue, Mumbai Police has cautioned people not risk lives while playing the game on city roads.In a series of tweets, the police posted: "Life is not a game. Especially not one to be played on the roads!"Mumbai Police has also tweeted a video that warns people to not get distracted while playing the game. Mumbai Police spokesperson DCP Ashok Dudhe said, "Pokemon Go has gained popularity rapidly, and that might pose problems for people on the streets. So, along with traffic police department, we have started some awareness campaigns around the city. We are also using social media to reach out to a wider audience."------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Trushna Vishwasrao, leader of the house in BMC, has written a letter to the municipal commissioner, stressing on the need for creating awareness among students. "Citizens and children get so involved in the game that they are forget their surroundings. It can prove fatal at times, especially for kids. Taking all this into consideration, BMC in its schools through virtual classroom should create awareness about the disadvantages of the Pokemon Go," the letter read.A 26-year-old woman in the UK has quit her teaching job to become Britain's first full-time Pokemon Go player as she believes there is a lot of money to be made from the widely popular location-based augmented reality game. Pokemon obsessed Sophia Pedrazza, from north London, plans to cash in on the craze by hitting the streets to collect virtual characters and then sell her accounts on eBay.When the French people beheaded King Louis XVI on January 21, 1793, accounts from the time report that many dipped their handkerchiefs in their executed ruler’s blood. Now, two centuries after that fateful day, researchers think they’ve found one of those revolutionary souvenirs, Discovery News writes.
The hankie in question turned up two years ago when an Italian family submitted the souvenir for genetic testing. They found it stuffed within a dried, hollowed squash decorated with portraits of revolutionary heroes. The squash reads, “On January 21, Maximilien Bourdaloue dipped his handkerchief in the blood of Louis XVI after his decapitation.” Monsieur Bourdaloue likely placed the fabric within the gourd and then had it pridefully embellished.
DNA tests hinted that the blood may be authentic, since it indicates that the bleeder had blue eyes and other physical features matching up to Louis XVI’s description. But the forensics team lacked DNA from Louis or any of his family members (their bodies were mutilated and strewn about the streets after the spree of executions), so at first they could not prove definitively that the handkerchief’s stain is genuine.
However, a mummified head saved the day. The head belonged to Henri IV, who held the French throne 200 years prior to Louis’ gruesome demise. A mysterious individual rescued the severed head from the grave-ransacking chaos of the revolution, and it was passed down through the years and kept in secretive collections. A rare genetic signature preserved through seven generations and shared by the two rulers confirmed the blood’s authenticity. Discovery explains:
“This study shows that (the owners of the remains) share a genetic heritage passed on through the paternal line. They have a direct link to one another through their fathers,” French forensic pathologist Philippe Charlier said.
Genetic markers in hand, the researchers think they may be able to use the newly identified code to identify any living relatives of France’s absolute monarchs of years past.
More from Smithsonian.com:
A Lavish Legacy
Marie AntoinetteSuffern man, 26, in serious condition; driver tells police she did not see him
Buy Photo News in brief (Photo: The Journal News)Buy Photo Story Highlights A man lying in road was run over by a car on Orange Avenue in Suffern
The 26-year-old Suffern man is in serious condition
A village man remained hospitalized Monday in serious condition after being run over while lying in the road, police said.
The driver told police she didn't see the man while driving along Orange Avenue, Chief Clarke Osborn said. She ran over him at about 10:45 p.m. Sunday near the New York State Thruway bridge, he said.
Osborn said the Ramapo police accident investigations unit is working with his officers on the case. He said the initial review supports the driver's contention at the 26-year-old man was lying in the road.
Osborn said the man may have been drinking, but police were awaiting toxicology test results.
Osborn said the man was taken to Good Samaritan Hospital in Suffern. The accident investigation unit is called when there are serious injuries or death.
No tickets or charges were lodged against the 23-year-old driver from Monroe, Osborn said.
Read or Share this story: http://lohud.us/1iLVkUEMitsubishi currently has 70,000 industrial robots installed worldwide, Robotics and Automation News has learned.
As a result, the company is now included in the Robotics and Automation News list of the world’s top industrial robot manufacturers.
Other companies in the new list are Stäubli and Universal, which makes collaborative robots.
The list we have collated so far looks like this, with Fanuc at the top with 400,000 robots installed around the world, followed by Yaskawa and ABB in joint second place.
Kawasaki and Nachi-Fujikoshi with around 100,000 each. Then, Kuka and Denso on 80,000 each. This is where Mitsubishi has entered the list, with 70,000.
Epson follows with 55,000, just above Stäubli, which we estimate has around 45,000. Then, Foxconn, the iPhone and iPad manufacturer, with 40,000. Comau and Omron are on around 30,000 each. And finally, Universal, the final new entry on the list, with 10,000.
A notable omission is Rethink Robotics, but we will include them – and others – as soon as we can.I recently published a four-part look at charter schools in California, which can be summed up by the title of the first piece: “How messed up is California’s charter school sector? You won’t believe how much.” The author, Carol Burris, a former award-winning New York high school principal who is now executive director of the advocacy group Network for Public Education, documented problems with accountability and transparency with some charter operations in the state. Now a new report details another problem with those schools.
Over the past 15 years, the state’s charter schools — which are publicly funded but privately run — have received more than $2.5 billion in tax dollars or taxpayer-paid subsidized funds to lease, build or buy school buildings. The report, titled “Spending Blind: The Failure of Policy Planning in California Charter School Funding” and published by the Oakland-based research and policy center In the Public Interest, finds that public funding for California charters “is almost completely disconnected from educational policy objectives, and the results are, in turn, scattershot and haphazard.” It says:
Hundreds of millions of dollars are being spent each year without any meaningful strategy. Far too much of this public funding is spent on schools built in neighborhoods that have no need for additional classroom space, and which offer no improvement over the quality of education already available in nearby public schools. In the worst cases, public facilities funding has gone to schools that were found to have discriminatory enrollment policies and others that have engaged in unethical or corrupt practices.
[Why California’s charter school sector is called ‘the Wild West’]
The author of the report is Gordon Lafer, a political economist and an associate professor at the University of Oregon’s Labor Education and Research Center. He has served as senior policy adviser for the House of Representatives’ Committee on Education and the Workforce and has testified as an expert witness before the House, Senate and state legislatures.
Today there are more than 1,000 charter schools enrolling nearly 600,000 students in California — nearly 10 percent of the students in the state — up from less than 200 such schools 20 years ago — and the California Charter Schools Association has set a goal of enrolling 1 million students by 2022.
Lafer looks at where charter schools have been given permission to open in California and where more schools are needed due to increasing school-age populations, and he found that there is no real connection to the two.
The California Charter Schools Association, not surprisingly, took issue with Lafer’s work, saying in a statement that “charters are growing due to parent demand for high quality public school options for children” and that it believes the report was issued “to help garner support for one of the most aggressive anti-charter bills California has seen.” It is referring to S.B. 808, legislation supported by the California Teachers Association that would change the way charter schools are authorized in the state.
Currently, charter operators who are denied permission to open a new school or keep operating by a local school district can appeal to the county or state boards of education. The law would let the decision rest with local districts, which would be in line with the notion that public education is a local issue. Charter operators say that they want to provide school choice, but, apparently, they aren’t interested in letting local school boards in California decide what choices to offer in their own district.
The report says that “nearly 450 charter schools have opened in places that already had enough classroom space for all students — and this overproduction of schools was made possible by generous public support, including $111 million in rent, lease, or mortgage payments picked up by taxpayers, $135 million in general obligation bonds, and $425 million in private investments subsidized with tax credits or tax exemptions.” These amounts are based on only a portion of the state’s charter schools for which data was available, so the true funding amounts given to charters in communities that don’t need more classrooms “is almost twice as great.”
In California, traditional school systems can’t build new schools if enrollment demands it because of the way the state decides when it will give state bond funds to build a new school. According to the report, it does this by comparing existing classroom space with the student population projected over the next five years. Charter schools don’t have such a requirement.
Traditional public school officials and advocates have said that charter schools, if they are going to be approved, should be required to serve communities that need schools. In the Los Angeles Unified School District, the country’s second-largest traditional school system and the one with the most charter schools and charter school |
a pact we were all in. We all have to be professional and be ready when your name is called.”
Led by the Johnsons, Ellington and Kelly Olynyk, the Heat’s bench entered Monday ranked 12th with 38.2 points per game. That’s not far off from last season’s average of 38.6 points per game, which was the eighth-most in the league.
And based on recent play, Miami has a chance to surpass that number this year. The Heat’s reserves have looked more comfortable lately, averaging 44.0 points over the past four games.
One thing is for sure, the bench will play a big part in the Heat’s success (or lack thereof). Miami is 3-1 when its reserves have combined to score 40 or more points this season, with the only slip up coming in an overtime loss to the Timberwolves on Oct. 30.
“Without question,” Ellington said when asked if he feels the Heat’s bench is one of the best in the NBA. “I feel like we proved that last year. It’s just a matter of this year continuing to put it together and grow together. It’s just a matter of time. We have some serious weapons.”
[A look at Sunday’s Willie Reed-Miami Heat reunion]
[Want more Heat news sent directly to your Facebook feed? Make sure to like our Heat Facebook page]We are excited to announce that API.AI is joining Google!
It has been a long and fun journey. Since API.AI’s launch in 2014, we’ve been constantly impressed by the fast and energetic adoption of the technology from people building conversational interfaces for chatbots, connected cars, smart home devices, mobile applications, wearables, services, robots and more. Our vision has been to make technology understand and speak human language and help developers build truly intelligent conversational interfaces for their products and services. The best part of our day is hearing from our diverse community and how they are using API.AI to create truly innovative, practical and inspirational products that will reshape how we live and work in the future.
What does this mean to you? We’re excited for you to continue using our developer platform to build conversational user interfaces. Joining Google will allow us to accelerate improvements to the platform and service our growing developer community in ways we’ve always dreamed. With Google’s knowledge, infrastructure and support, we can make sure you get access to the best available technologies and developments in AI and machine learning.
As we start this next chapter, we want to express how truly grateful we are to our customers, developers, partners, employees, advisors and investors. We can’t wait to continue working with you and could not have gotten to this point without your support.We cannot thank you enough.
We hope you are as excited as we are with what’s to come at Google and value your continued support.
Sincerely, Ilya Gelfenbeyn, CEOApril 21 – National Chocolate-Covered Cashews Day Posted on April 21, 2012
National Chocolate-Covered Cashews Day
Five Food Finds about Cashews
Pistachio, mango, cashew and poison ivy are in the same family.
Cashews are native to Costa Rica and Central America. The fresh cashew nut has a substance inside that produce a big burn and rash in skin and mouth, at the same time this is a highly valuable product known as Cashew Nut Shell Liquid or CNSL, ingredient that have special structural features for transformation into specialty chemicals and high value polymers, this is important considering the fact that, since this is a renewable resource, is better than synthetics.
One thing is the cashew nut and a different thing is the cashew apple, this last one is a kind of fruit to which it’s attached the nut, this fleshy fruit has an aroma some people love while others dislike, the most common way of preparation of this fruit is doing a tasteful juice mixed with water and sugar.
Cashews in Costa Rica are harvested during March and April.
A quite interesting experience is to burn in wood fire a raw cashew nut, this CNSL is highly flammable and while it burns produces impressive tiny explosions. Kids shouldn’t try this without parent’s supervision. Gases and fumes can also irritate, so this experiment should be done in open spaces.
Today’s Food History
on this day in…
1838 John Muir was born. Muir was a naturalist who was largely responsible for the establishment of Sequoia and Yosemite national parks in California in 1890.
1878 The White House hosted the first Easter Egg Roll. Previously, the activities had been held on the Capitol grounds. Congress passed a law banning the practice due to a limited maintenance and landscaping budget (Bah humbug!). President Rutherford B. Hayes was asked if children could hold the activities on the South Lawn of the White House and he enthusiastically agreed. The event has been held there ever since.
1910 R.I.P. Samuel Langhorne Clemens (Mark Twain. American author, pen name Mark Twain, who wrote ‘Tom Sawyer’, ‘Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,’ etc. There are many quotes and descriptions about food and dining in his works (and on FoodReference.com). An example is: “A man accustomed to American food and American domestic cookery would not starve to death suddenly in Europe, but I think he would gradually waste away, and eventually die.” (From ‘A Tramp Abroad’).
1962 The Top Of The Needle restaurant in the Seattle, Washington Space Needle, was officially opened. It was the second revolving restaurant in the U.S. It seats 260 and rotates completely once every hour. (The world’s first revolving restaurant was the La Ronde Restaurant built in 1961 atop the Ala Moana building fronting the Ala Moana shopping center. The restaurant has since closed down.)
1963 The Beatles and the Rolling Stones met for the first time at the Crawdaddy Club.Norman Joel Greenbaum (born November 20, 1942) is an American singer-songwriter. He is best known for writing and performing the 1969 song "Spirit in the Sky".
Early life [ edit ]
Greenbaum was born in Malden, Massachusetts. He was raised in an Orthodox Jewish household and attended Hebrew school at Congregation Beth Israel.[1] His initial interest in music was sparked by southern blues music and the folk music that was popular in the late 1950s and early 1960s. He performed with various bands in high school and studied music at Boston University for two years. In college he performed at local coffeehouses but eventually dropped out and moved to Los Angeles in 1965.[2]
Career [ edit ]
Greenbaum is best known for his song "Spirit in the Sky". The song, with its combination of 'heavy' guitar, hand-clapping, and spiritual lyrics, was released by Reprise Records in 1969. It sold two million copies in 1969 and 1970,[3] and received a gold disc from the RIAA It has subsequently been used in many films, advertisements, and television shows.[3]
Although "Spirit in the Sky" has a clear Christian theme, Greenbaum was and remains an observant Jew.[4][5] Greenbaum says he was inspired to write the song after watching country singers singing a song on television. In an interview Greenbaum stated that western movies were the real inspiration for "Spirit in the Sky":[6]
Norman Greenbaum: If you ask me what I based "Spirit In The Sky" on... what did we grow up watching? Westerns! These mean and nasty varmints get shot and they wanted to die with their boots on. So to me that was spiritual, they wanted to die with their boots on.
Ray Shasho: So that was the trigger that got you to write the song?
Norman Greenbaum: Yes. The song itself was simple, when you're writing a song you keep it simple of course. It wasn't like a Christian song of praise it was just a simple song. I had to use Christianity because I had to use something. But more important it wasn't the Jesus part, it was the spirit in the sky. Funny enough... I wanted to die with my boots on.
Though Greenbaum is generally regarded as a one-hit wonder,[4][5] several of his records placed prominently in the charts, including "Canned Ham" in 1970, which reached number 46 on the Billboard pop chart. In 1966,[7] as the leader and composer of Dr. West's Medicine Show and Junk Band, he recorded the novelty hit "The Eggplant That Ate Chicago".[7] In the 1960s Greenbaum also performed under the name Bruno Wolf with the Jim Kweskin Jug Band.[8]
Personal life [ edit ]
Greenbaum has been a long-time resident of Santa Rosa, California.[4] He was critically injured when the car in which he was a passenger made a left turn in the path of a motorcycle on Occidental Road on March 28, 2015, killing the motorcyclist and also injuring the motorcycle passenger.[9] Greenbaum has since gone back to performing.[10]
Discography [ edit ]
Spirit in the Sky (1969)
(1969) Norman Greenbaum with Dr. West's Medicine Show and Junk Band (1969)
(1969) Back Home Again (1970)
(1970) Petaluma (1972)An airstrike by the Saudi-led coalition hit a hospital in central Yemen on Monday, a state news agency reported. The alleged incident comes a day after Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) said a missile killed four people at one of its clinics in the country.
The clinic which came under fire is in the Swadi district of Yemen’s southern Bayda province, according to Saba news agency.
Read more
The news agency is run by the Houthi movement, which seized the Yemeni capital Sana’a last year and is being targeted by the Saudi-led bombardment.
An official from the exiled Yemeni government in the southern port of Aden confirmed to Reuters that the clinic was hit.
However, he stressed that the facility, which according to the official was used by Houthi fighters as a base, was only damaged, and not destroyed.
Several Houthi militiamen were killed in the airstrike, the unnamed official added.
Medical facilities have come under fire on several occasions during the Yemeni conflict.
On Sunday, Medecins Sans Frontieres said a “projectile” hit a hospital in Yemen’s far northern province of Saada.
Five people were killed according to the NGO, which stressed it was not clear who was responsible for the attack.
Last week, a center for the blind in Sana’a was hit in an airstrike reportedly carried out by the Saudi-led coalition.
Read more
The coalition was also blamed for hitting a Medecins Sans Frontieres hospital in the Yemeni capital in December.
Human Rights Watch (HRW) has called for an international inquiry into the alleged use of cluster munitions by Saudi Arabian warplanes, describing the development as a war crime.
READ MORE: 135 civilians killed in alleged coalition airstrike on Yemen wedding
The Saudi-led coalition began its bombing campaign in Yemen in March 2014 to back the Sunni Muslim government toppled by the Shia Houthi rebels, whom Riyadh accuses of links with regional rival, Iran.
Around 6,000 have been killed since the start of the airstrikes, with most of the casualties being civilians.In 1935, Butler wrote a book titled War Is a Racket, where he described and criticized the workings of the United States in its foreign actions and wars, such as those he was a part of, including the American corporations and other imperialist motivations behind them. After retiring from service, he became a popular activist, speaking at meetings organized by veterans, pacifists, and church groups in the 1930s.
In 1933, he became involved in a controversy known as the Business Plot, when he told a congressional committee that a group of wealthy industrialists were planning a military coup to overthrow Franklin D. Roosevelt, with Butler selected to lead a march of veterans to become dictator, similar to Fascist regimes at that time. The individuals involved all denied the existence of a plot and the media ridiculed the allegations, but a final report by a special House of Representatives Committee confirmed some of Butler's testimony.
By the end of his career, Butler had received 16 medals, five for heroism. He is one of 19 men to receive the Medal of Honor twice, one of three to be awarded both the Marine Corps Brevet Medal (along with Wendell Neville and David Porter) and the Medal of Honor, and the only Marine to be awarded the Brevet Medal and two Medals of Honor, all for separate actions.
Smedley Darlington Butler (July 30, 1881 – June 21, 1940) was a United States Marine Corps major general, the highest rank authorized at that time, and at the time of his death the most decorated Marine in U.S. history. During his 34-year career as a Marine, he participated in military actions in the Philippines, China, in Central America and the Caribbean during the Banana Wars, and France in World War I. Butler later became an outspoken critic of U.S. wars and their consequences. He also exposed an alleged plan to overthrow the U.S. government.
Butler attended the West Chester Friends Graded High School, followed by The Haverford School, a secondary school popular with sons of upper-class Philadelphia families. [4] A Haverford athlete, he became captain of its baseball team and quarterback of its football team. [1] Against the wishes of his father, he left school 38 days before his seventeenth birthday to enlist in the Marine Corps during the Spanish–American War. Nevertheless, Haverford awarded him his high school diploma on June 6, 1898, before the end of his final year. His transcript stated that he completed the scientific course "with Credit". [1]
Smedley Butler was born July 30, 1881, in West Chester, Pennsylvania, the eldest of three sons. His parents, Thomas and Maud (née Darlington) Butler, [1] were descended from local Quaker families. Both of his parents were of entirely English ancestry, all of whom had been in what is now the United States since the 1600s. [2] His father was a lawyer, a judge and, for 31 years, a congressman and chair of the House Naval Affairs Committee during the Harding and Coolidge administrations. His maternal grandfather was Smedley Darlington, a Republican congressman from 1887 to 1891. [3]
Spanish–American War Edit
In the Spanish war fervor of 1898, Butler lied about his age to receive a direct commission as a Marine second lieutenant.[1] He trained in Washington, DC, at the Marine Barracks on the corner of 8th and I Streets SE. In July 1898 he went to Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, arriving shortly after its invasion and capture.[5] His company soon returned to the U.S., and after a short break he was assigned to the armored cruiser USS New York for four months.[6] He came home to be mustered out of service in February 1899,[6] but on 8 April 1899 he accepted a commission as a first lieutenant in the Marine Corps.[6]
Philippine–American War Edit
The Marine Corps sent him to Manila, Philippines.[7] On garrison duty with little to do, Butler turned to alcohol to relieve the boredom. He once became drunk and was temporarily relieved of command after an unspecified incident in his room.[8]
In October 1899, he saw his first combat action when he led 300 Marines to take the town of Noveleta from Filipino rebels known as Insurrectos. In the initial moments of the assault his first sergeant was wounded. Butler briefly panicked, but quickly regained his composure and led his Marines in pursuit of the fleeing enemy.[8] By noon the Marines had dispersed the rebels and taken the town. One Marine had been killed and ten were wounded. Another 50 Marines had been incapacitated by the humid tropical heat.[9]
After the excitement of this combat, garrison duty again became routine. Butler had a very large Eagle, Globe, and Anchor tattoo made which started at his throat and extended to his waist. He also met Littleton Waller, a fellow Marine with whom he maintained a lifelong friendship. When Waller received command of a company in Guam, he was allowed to select five officers to take with him. He chose Butler. Before they had departed, their orders were changed and they were sent to China aboard the USS Solace to help put down the Boxer Rebellion.[9]
Boxer Rebellion Edit
Butler being carried on the back of another Marine to safety across a river at the Battle of Tientsin.
Once in China, Butler was initially deployed at Tientsin. He took part in the Battle of Tientsin on July 13, 1900, and in the subsequent Gaselee Expedition, during which he saw the mutilated remains of Japanese soldiers. When he saw another Marine officer fall wounded, he climbed out of a trench to rescue him. Butler was then himself shot in the thigh. Another Marine helped him get to safety, but also was shot. Despite his leg wound, Butler assisted the wounded officer to the rear. Four enlisted men would receive the Medal of Honor in the battle. Butler's commanding officer, Maj. Littleton W.T. Waller, personally commended him and wrote that "for such reward as you may deem proper the following officers: Lieutenant Smedley D. Butler, for the admirable control of his men in all the fights of the week, for saving a wounded man at the risk of his own life, and under a very severe fire." Commissioned officers were not then eligible to receive the Medal of Honor, and Butler instead received a promotion to captain by brevet while he recovered in the hospital, two weeks before his 19th birthday.
He was eligible for the Marine Corps Brevet Medal when it was created in 1921, and was one of only 20 Marines to receive it.[10] His citation reads:
The Secretary of the Navy takes pleasure in transmitting to First Lieutenant Smedley Darlington Butler, United States Marine Corps, the Brevet Medal which is awarded in accordance with Marine Corps Order No. 26 (1921), for distinguished conduct and public service in the presence of the enemy while serving with the Second Battalion of Marines, near Tientsin, China, on 13 July 1900. On 28 March 1901, First Lieutenant Butler is appointed Captain by brevet, to take rank from 13 July 1900.[11]
The Banana Wars Edit
Butler participated in a series of occupations, "police actions" and interventions by the United States in Central America and the Caribbean, commonly called the Banana Wars because their goal was to protect American commercial interests in the region, particularly those of the United Fruit Co. This company had significant financial stakes in the production of bananas, tobacco, sugar cane and other products throughout the Caribbean, Central America and the northern portions of South America. The U.S. was also trying to advance its own political interests by maintaining its influence in the region and especially its control of the Panama Canal. These interventions started with the Spanish–American War in 1898 and ended with the withdrawal of troops from Haiti and President Franklin D. Roosevelt's Good Neighbor Policy in 1934.[12] After his retirement, Butler became an outspoken critic of the business interests in the Caribbean, criticizing the ways in which U.S. businesses and Wall Street bankers imposed their agenda on United States foreign policy during this period.[13]
Honduras Edit
In 1903 Butler was stationed in Puerto Rico on Culebra Island. Hearing rumors of a Honduran revolt, the United States government ordered his unit and a supporting naval detachment to sail to Honduras, 1,500 miles (2,414 km) to the west, to defend the U.S. Consulate there. Using a converted banana boat renamed the Panther, Butler and several hundred Marines landed at the port town of Puerto Cortés. In a letter home, he described the action: they were "prepared to land and shoot everybody and everything that was breaking the peace",[14] but instead found a quiet town. The Marines re-boarded the Panther and continued up the coast line, looking for rebels at several towns, but found none.
When they arrived at Trujillo, however, they heard gunfire, and came upon a battle in progress that had been waged for 55 hours between rebels called Bonillista and Honduran government soldiers at a local fort. At the sight of the Marines, the fighting ceased and Butler led a detachment of Marines to the American consulate, where he found the consul, wrapped in an American flag, hiding among the floor beams. As soon as the Marines left the area with the shaken consul, the battle resumed and the Bonillistas soon controlled the government.[14] During this expedition Butler earned the first of his nicknames, "Old Gimlet Eye". It was attributed to his feverish, bloodshot eyes—he was suffering from some unnamed tropical fever at the time—that enhanced his penetrating and bellicose stare.[15]
Marriage and business Edit
After the Honduran campaign Butler returned to Philadelphia. He married Ethel Conway Peters of Philadelphia in Bay Head, New Jersey, on June 30, 1905.[16] His best man at the wedding was his former commanding officer in China, Lt. Col. Littleton Waller.[17] The couple eventually had three children: a daughter, Ethel Peters Butler (Mrs. John Wehle), and two sons, Smedley Darlington Jr. and Thomas Richard.[18]
Butler was next assigned to garrison duty in the Philippines, where he once launched a resupply mission across the stormy waters of Subic Bay after his isolated outpost ran out of rations. In 1908 he was diagnosed as having a nervous breakdown and received nine months sick leave, which he spent at home. He successfully managed a coal mine in West Virginia, but returned to active duty in the Marine Corps at the first opportunity.[19]
Central America Edit
From 1909-12 Butler served in Nicaragua enforcing U.S. policy. With a 104-degree fever he led his battalion to the relief of a rebel-besieged city, Granada. In December 1909 he commanded the 3d Battalion, 1st Marine Regiment on the Isthmus of Panama. On August 11, 1912, he was temporarily detached to command an expeditionary battalion he led in the Battle of Masaya on September 19, 1912, and the bombardment, assault and capture of Coyotepe Hill, Nicaragua, in October 1912. He remained in Nicaragua until November 1912, when he rejoined the Marines of 3d Battalion, 1st Marine Regiment, at Camp Elliott, Panama.[3]
Veracruz, Mexico, and first Medal of Honor Edit
Butler and his family were living in Panama in January 1914 when he was ordered to report as the Marine officer of a battleship squadron massing off the coast of Mexico, near Veracruz, to monitor a revolutionary movement. He did not like leaving his family and the home they had established in Panama and intended to request orders home as soon as he determined he was not needed.[20]
On 1 March 1914, Butler and Navy Lt. (later Adm.) Frank J. Fletcher (not to be confused with his uncle, who was then Rear Adm. Frank F. Fletcher) "went ashore at Veracruz, where they met the American superintendent of the Inter-Oceanic Railway and surreptitiously rode in his private car [a railway car] up the line 75 miles to Jalapa and back".[21] A purpose of the trip was to allow Butler and Fletcher to discuss the details of a future expedition into Mexico. Fletcher's plan required Butler to make his way into the country and develop a more detailed invasion plan while inside its borders. It was a spy mission and Butler was enthusiastic to get started. When Adm. Fletcher explained the plan to the commanders in Washington, DC, they agreed to it. Butler was given the go-ahead.
A few days later he set out by train on his spy mission to Mexico City, with a stopover at Puebla. He made his way to the U.S. Consulate in Mexico City, posing as a railroad official named "Mr. Johnson".
March 5th. As I was reading last night, waiting for dinner to be served, a visitant, rather than a visitor, appeared in my drawing-room incognito – a simple "Mr. Johnson," eager, intrepid, dynamic, efficient, unshaven! * * * [22]
He and the chief railroad inspector scoured the city, saying they were searching for a lost railroad employee; there was no lost employee, and in fact the employee they said was lost never existed. The ruse gave Butler access to various areas of the city. In the process of the so-called search, they located weapons in use by the Mexican army and determined the size of units and states of readiness. They updated maps and verified the railroad lines for use in an impending US invasion.[23]
On March 7, 1914, he returned to Veracruz with the information he had gathered and presented it to his commanders. The invasion plan was eventually scrapped when authorities loyal to Mexican Gen. Victoriano Huerta detained a small American naval landing party (that had gone ashore to buy gasoline) in Tampico, Mexico, which led to what became known as the Tampico Affair.[24]
When President Woodrow Wilson discovered that an arms shipment was about to arrive in Mexico, he sent a contingent of Marines and sailors to Veracruz to intercept it on April 21, 1914. Over the next few days street fighting and sniper fire posed a threat to Butler's force, but a door-to-door search rooted out most of the resistance. By April 26 the landing force of 5,800 Marines and sailors secured the city, which they held for the next six months. By the end of the conflict the Americans reported 17 dead and 63 wounded and the Mexican forces had 126 dead and 195 wounded. After the actions at Veracruz, the US decided to minimize the bloodshed and changed their plans from a full invasion of Mexico to simply maintaining the city of Veracruz.[25] For his actions on April 22, Butler was awarded his first Medal of Honor.[3][11] The citation reads:
For distinguished conduct in battle, engagement of Vera Cruz, 22 April 1914. Major Butler was eminent and conspicuous in command of his battalion. He exhibited courage and skill in leading his men through the action of the 22d and in the final occupation of the city.[11]
After the occupation of Veracruz, many military personnel received the Medal of Honor, an unusually high number that somewhat diminished the prestige of the award. The army presented one, nine went to Marines and 46 were bestowed upon naval personnel. During World War I Butler, then a major, attempted to return his medal, explaining he had done nothing to deserve it. The medal was returned to him with orders to keep it and to wear it as well.[26]
Haiti and second Medal of Honor Edit
In 1915 Haitian President Vilbrun Guillaume Sam was killed by a mob. In response, the United States ordered the USS Connecticut to Haiti with Maj. Butler and a group of Marines on board. On October 24, 1915, an estimated 400 Cacos ambushed Butler's patrol of 44 mounted Marines when they approached Fort Dipitie. Surrounded by Cacos, the Marines maintained their perimeter throughout the night. The next morning they charged the much larger enemy force by breaking out in three directions. The startled Haitians fled.[27] In early November Butler and a force of 700 Marines and sailors returned to the mountains to clear the area. At their temporary headquarters base at Le Trou they fought off an attack by about 100 Cacos. After the Americans took several other forts and ramparts during the following days, only Fort Rivière, an old French-built stronghold atop Montagne Noire, was left.[27]
For the operation Butler was given three companies of Marines and some sailors from the USS Connecticut, about 100 men. They encircled the fort and gradually closed in on it. Butler reached the fort from the southern side with the 15th Company and found a small opening in the wall. The Marines entered through the opening and engaged the Cacos in hand-to-hand combat. Butler and the Marines took the rebel stronghold on November 17, an action for which he received his second Medal of Honor, as well as the Haitian Medal of Honor.[11] The entire battle lasted less than 20 minutes. Only one Marine was injured in the assault when he was struck by a rock and lost two teeth.[28] All 51 Haitians in the Fort were killed.[27] Butler's exploits impressed Assistant Secretary of the Navy Franklin D. Roosevelt, who recommended the award based upon Butler's performance during the engagement.[29] Once the medal was approved and presented in 1917, Butler achieved the distinction, shared with Dan Daly, of being the only Marines to receive the Medal of Honor twice for separate actions.[3] The citation reads:
For extraordinary heroism in action as Commanding Officer of detachments from the 5th, 13th, 23d Companies and the Marine and sailor detachment from the U.S.S. Connecticut, Major Butler led the attack on Fort Rivière, Haiti, 17 November 1915. Following a concentrated drive, several different detachments of Marines gradually closed in on the old French bastion fort in an effort to cut off all avenues of retreat for the Caco bandits. Reaching the fort on the southern side where there was a small opening in the wall, Major Butler gave the signal to attack and Marines from the 15th Company poured through the breach, engaged the Cacos in hand-to-hand combat, took the bastion and crushed the Caco resistance. Throughout this perilous action, Major Butler was conspicuous for his bravery and forceful leadership.[11]
Subsequently, as the initial organizer and commanding officer of the Gendarmerie d'Haïti, the native police force, Butler established a record as a capable administrator. Under his supervision social order, administered by the dictatorship, was largely restored and many vital public works projects were successfully completed.[30] He recalled later that, during his time in Haiti, he and his troops "hunted the Cacos like pigs."[28]
World War I Edit
During World War I Butler was, to his disappointment, not assigned to a combat command on the Western Front. He made several requests for a posting in France, writing letters to his personal friend, Wendell Cushing Neville. While Butler's superiors considered him brave and brilliant, they described him as "unreliable."[5]
In October 1918 he was promoted to the rank of brigadier general at the age of 37 and placed in command of Camp Pontanezen at Brest, France, a debarkation depot that funneled troops of the American Expeditionary Force to the battlefields. The camp had been unsanitary, overcrowded and disorganized. U.S. Secretary of War Newton Baker sent novelist Mary Roberts Rinehart to report on the camp. She later described how Butler tackled the sanitation problems. He began by solving the problem of mud: "[T]he ground under the tents was nothing but mud, [so] he had raided the wharf at Brest of the duckboards no longer needed for the trenches, carted the first one himself up that four-mile hill to the camp, and thus provided something in the way of protection for the men to sleep on."[5] Gen. John J. Pershing authorized a duckboard shoulder patch for the units. This earned Butler another nickname, "Old Duckboard." For his exemplary service he was awarded both the Army Distinguished Service Medal and Navy Distinguished Service Medal and the French Order of the Black Star.[3] The citation for the Army Distinguished Service Medal states:
The President of the United States of America, authorized by Act of Congress, July 9, 1918, takes pleasure in presenting the Army Distinguished Service Medal to Brigadier General Smedley Darlington Butler, United States Marine Corps, for exceptionally meritorious and distinguished services to the Government of the United States, in a duty of great responsibility during World War I. Brigadier General Butler commanded with ability and energy Pontanezen Camp at Brest during the time in which it has developed into the largest embarkation camp in the world. Confronted with problems of extraordinary magnitude in supervising the reception, entertainment and departure of the large numbers of officers and soldiers passing through this camp, he has solved all with conspicuous success, performing services of the highest character for the American Expeditionary Forces.[11]
The citation for the Navy Distinguished Service Medal states:
The President of the United States of America takes pleasure in presenting the Navy Distinguished Service Medal to Brigadier General Smedley Darlington Butler, United States Marine Corps, for exceptionally meritorious and distinguished services in France, during World War I. Brigadier General Butler organized, trained and commanded the 13th Regiment Marines; also the 5th Brigade of Marines. He commanded with ability and energy Camp Pontanezen at Brest during the time in which it has developed into the largest embarkation camp in the world. Confronted with problems of extraordinary magnitude in supervising the reception, entertainment and departure of large numbers of officers and soldiers passing through the camp, he has solved all with conspicuous success, performing services of the highest character for the American Expeditionary Forces.[11]
Butler sitting in car at Gettysburg during a Pickett's Charge reenactment by Marines in 1922.
Following the war, he became Commanding General of the Marine Barracks at Marine Corps Base Quantico, Virginia. At Quantico he transformed the wartime training camp into a permanent Marine post. During a training exercise in western Virginia in 1921, he was told by a local farmer that Stonewall Jackson's arm was buried nearby, to which he replied, "Bosh! I will take a squad of Marines and dig up that spot to prove you wrong!"[31] Butler found the arm in a box. He later replaced the wooden box with a metal one, and reburied the arm. He left a plaque on the granite monument marking the burial place of Jackson's arm; the plaque is no longer on the marker but can be viewed at the Chancellorsville Battlefield visitor's center.[31][32]
China and stateside service Edit
From 1927-29 Butler was commander of the Marine Expeditionary Force in China and, while there, cleverly parlayed his influence among various generals and warlords to the protection of U.S. interests, ultimately winning the public acclaim of contending Chinese leaders. When he returned to the United States in 1929 he was promoted to major general, becoming, at age 48, the youngest major general of the Marine Corps. He directed the Quantico camp's growth until it became the "showplace" of the Corps.[33] Butler won national attention by taking thousands of his men on long field marches, many of which he led from the front, to Gettysburg and other Civil War battle sites, where they conducted large-scale re-enactments before crowds of distinguished spectators.[33]
In 1931 Butler violated diplomatic norms by publicly recounting gossip[34][35] about Benito Mussolini in which the dictator allegedly struck and killed a child with his speeding automobile in a hit-and-run accident. The Italian government protested and President Hoover, who strongly disliked Butler,[36] forced Secretary of the Navy Charles Francis Adams III to court-martial him. Butler became the first general officer to be placed under arrest since the Civil War. He apologized to Secretary Adams and the court-martial was canceled with only a reprimand.[37]I have never dropped acid and gone to Disneyland but I imagine that the experience would not be too dissimilar from watching the following 360 video inside a virtual reality headset. The odd, performance-art style production combined with the Disney-fied fairy tale visuals adds up to a truly memorable immersive production.
I’ll give you a moment to emerge from all of that wonderful strangeness. Ready to continue? Okay lets go.
If you need a guide to the artsy display you just witnessed then perhaps the film’s official description will be of use:
“[Welcome to The Tea Party] surrounds you with the iconic characters from Alice In Wonderland mythology dancing in full swing as Alice navigates the chaotic, stimulating, manic environment attending her first tea party thrown by the Queen of Hearts in 360, featuring acrobats, dancers, stilt walkers, and more.”
The film was shot on the recently announced Kodak Pix Pro 360 camera and is cited by the creators as being an “early example” of the camera’s capabilities. These early capabilities do not look all that impressive, however. Resolution limitations and overall fidelity has been a concern of 360 filmmaking since its inception. The choreography, colors and costumes are all engaging, but the weak resolution hurts the overall experience. Streaming at HD, and even 4K, resolution options did little to mitigate this problem.
Tea Party‘s actual production quality, however, can be credited in large part to its creative team. The film was produced by Filmatics VR — an immersive film company known for emphasizing artful content over action or vlog style pieces. This particular video was directed by David Ley, adapted from his immersive Wonderland-themed experience, “Alice: Curiouser & Curiouser” which ran at The Act in Dubai. The show is currently Dubai’s longest-running theatrical production ever.
Right now, 360-degree cameras and hardware are often targeting the action sports set that GoPro segmented years ago. However, films like Tea Party are proof that immersive media can, and should, feel free to get weird every now again.
Tagged with: alice, welcome, wonderlandReact recommends using composition instead of inheritance. But what is composition? What is inheritance? Why should we use one over the other?
It's hard to understand without a concrete example, so let's just say we are building two very simple payment method forms. We need one form to create a new payment method, and another form to update an existing payment method.
So what we can create a PaymentMethodForm class with just one input:
See the Pen react-payment-form by Brew Creative Limited (@brew) on CodePen.
Very simple! So this simple form would be the basis for our create and update form. What's missing are the buttons 'create' and 'update'. And since they share the same form element, we can use the PaymentMethodForm class as the parent class and extend from it.
Inheritance
See the Pen react-payment-form-inherit by Brew Creative Limited (@brew) on CodePen.
Above, we created two new classes - CreatePayment |
employees’ comments, saying, “Last Sunday on ‘Cracker Barrel,’ two of our employees not only displayed poor judgment when talking about the recent murder of two of our colleagues from television station WDBJ in Virginia but went in a direction that was not factual, disrespectful and downright wrong. We apologize for their comments. They do not reflect the values we hold high here at the E.W. Scripps Company. Thank you.”
“Cracker Barrel” airs on E.W. Scripps Co. stations KTTS-FM, KSGF-FM and KSGF-AM.
Copyright © 2019 The Washington Times, LLC. Click here for reprint permission.Star Wars Racer Revenge is a Star Wars video game that involves high-speed podracing. It is the sequel to Star Wars Episode I: Racer, and was developed by Rainbow Studios and published by LucasArts. It was released in 2002 exclusively for the PlayStation 2, and was later added to the Playstation Store for the PlayStation 4 on 15 January 2016.
Gameplay [ edit ]
Star Wars Racer Revenge features podracing, as seen in Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace. Players compete using various characters in championship races throughout the Star Wars universe. features podracing, as seen in. Players compete using various characters in championship races throughout theuniverse.
Racer Revenge is a high-speed racing game utilizing podracers, multi-engine chariot-like craft driven by a single pilot. The story takes place eight years after the events of Star Wars: Episode I The Phantom Menace. Famous racer Sebulba seeks revenge on Anakin Skywalker, who eight years prior defeated him on the Boonta Eve Classic.[1]
Players can select one of many characters of varying species, each with their own unique podracer. Attributes for each podracer vary, and include things such as acceleration, top speed, and durability. Races are held throughout the Star Wars universe on many different planets. The player can choose from three different modes to compete with their character. Unlike it's predecessor, the player is unable to continue racing if they crash their pod.
Single Play allows the player race in one of three ways: Single Event, Practice, or Time Trial. Single Event lets the player race on any unlocked track. They can choose between 1 and 25 laps. Practice lets the player determine how many pods they go up against (from 1 to 8), and Time Trial is just the player against the clock for the best lap time. Tournaments feature races across 13 tracks. The player character must attempt to finish first while destroying as many rival pods as possible. Each race has a total prize for getting first, as well as Watto’s Bribes, which multiplies winnings by a percent, depending on how many pods were destroyed. Each race has a par number of kills, usually 2 or 3, which must be completed in order to completely max out the player's pod's stats. Lastly, two placers can compete in a Vs. Race on any unlocked track with any of the unlocked characters.
Development [ edit ]
The game was developed by Rainbow Studios and published by LucasArts. Hayden Christensen, the actor who portrayed Anakin Skywalker in Star Wars: Episode II – Attack of the Clones, returns to voice his character in the game.[1] It was released in 2002 for the PlayStation 2, and was added to the PlayStation 4 digital store on January 19, 2016.[2]
Reception [ edit ]
Star Wars Racer Revenge received "mixed or average" reviews, according to review aggregator Metacritic.[3]Pop culture can be as forbidding as it is inviting, particularly in areas that invite geeky obsession: The more devotion a genre or series or subculture inspires, the easier it is for the uninitiated to feel like they’re on the outside looking in. But geeks aren’t born; they’re made. And sometimes it only takes the right starting point to bring newbies into various intimidatingly vast obsessions. Gateways To Geekery is our regular attempt to help those who want to be enthralled, but aren’t sure where to start. Want advice? Suggest future Gateways To Geekery topics by emailing gateways@theonion.com.
Geek obsession: George R.R. Martin
Why he’s daunting: Author, editor, and TV producer George R.R. Martin has been writing since the early ’70s, but given his niche-y slot in the canon of fantasy and science-fiction literature, the majority of the mainstream still hadn’t heard of him even after he became a bestselling novelist in the ’00s. That changed in 2011 with the runaway popularity of the HBO miniseries A Game Of Thrones, based on the first novel in Martin’s continuing A Song Of Ice And Fire series. New readers are coming to Martin in droves, and his books have recently rocketed back up the New York Times bestseller list. But Martin first-timers are facing roughly 3,200 pages of epic fantasy in the four extant Song Of Ice And Fire books, with a new thousand-page volume hitting bookstores (really, for sure this time, right?) July 12. That’s a staggering commitment, and for readers not already used to epic fantasy—i.e. readers who didn’t already know that Martin has been one of the biggest influences on the genre for the last decade—it likely doesn’t help that those 4,200 pages are ultra-dense with complicated politics, battles, and intrigue, across an immense cast and a sprawling world.
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It also doesn’t help that the first Song Of Ice And Fire book, A Game Of Thrones, published in 1996, was Martin’s first novel in 13 years, and it starts off fairly rough, with a number of awkward moments and limp clichés. The style improves noticeably throughout the novel, and hits an expansive stride by the beginning of book two, A Clash Of Kings, but Thrones’ first few chapters aren’t Martin’s strongest work.
Once beyond that series, readers who want to dig deeper into Martin will have to contend with decades of past work, written in diverse styles and tones, none of it remotely like A Song Of Ice And Fire. So how to slip into his worlds without immediately signing on for a gigantic investment, or starting with work not remotely characteristic of the material that made his current name?
Possible gateway: The Song Of Ice And Fire novella “The Hedge Knight,” from the 1998 anthology Legends (also reprinted in the Martin anthology Dreamsongs: Volume II)
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Why: When iconic science fiction/fantasy author Robert Silverberg originally curated, edited, and published Legends, Martin was the odd man out. The other participants—Stephen King, Terry Pratchett, Anne McCaffrey, Raymond E. Feist, Orson Scott Card, and many others—contributed new novellas set in their most iconic fantasy worlds, which in most cases had been established over the course of decades of writing. Martin told a story set in his at-the-time-new fantasy world, which had only a single, just-published novel to its name. He was the upstart, waltzing in to announce that his newly designed land of Westeros could stand alongside the likes of Gilead, Pern, Majipoor, and the Discworld. He was right, as it happened, and “The Hedge Knight” proves it as much as A Game Of Thrones did.
“The Hedge Knight” shares a setting with A Game Of Thrones, though its events happen nearly 100 years earlier. It was written after A Game Of Thrones, once Martin had solidly found his novel-writing voice again, but it takes place on a much smaller scale: It’s largely concerned with a single knight named Dunk, a man at loose ends after his mentor dies, leaving Dunk without household, employer, finances, or prospects. So he sets out to compete in a tourney to make his name, but finds the odds—and more significantly, his society’s conventions—stacked against him. The story is in all respects a bite-sized, perfectly accessible, stand-alone dollop of A Song Of Ice And Fire: It dips into the world’s larger politics, covering allegiances between the great ruling houses, but it keeps the focus on a relatively simple story about a relatively simple man with small, direct goals. It also cleanly exposes some of Martin’s characteristic obsessions: For a man whose writing is so often ruthless and uncompromising, he has a hell of a sentimental streak when it comes to questions of injustice, honor, nobility, personal dignity against long odds, and wrongs that need to be righted at any cost.
It’s also, like so much of the Song series, grounded in meticulous detail, both in its description of the world and in the inglorious economics of being a medieval knight. There’s nothing particularly glamorous about Martin’s fantasy world: It’s a place of blood, sweat, muck, power imbalances, and casual cruelty, rather than a place of unicorns and moonbeams, or even princesses in chiffon. And yet there’s a deeply buried sense of humanism at work in the story, a desire for things to come out all right in the end, even if cynicism and realism both say that every bit of poetic justice tends to be earned at terrible cost. Reading “The Hedge Knight,” it’s possible to see both the world of Martin’s most popular creation and his most characteristic interests writ small. It’s essentially an appetizer, and readers who enjoy it are ready to leave the shallows and head out into the big pool with all the other Martin fans. (Side note: “The Hedge Knight” has been adapted as a graphic novel that sticks remarkably close to Martin’s content and dialogue, but it naturally strips all the depth from his writing. While it’ll give readers the basic storyline, it won’t let them in on what it would be like to read more of his work.)
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Next steps: The story of Dunk and his squire, Egg, is continued in another novella, “The Sworn Sword,” from the 2003 anthology Legends II, and in “The Mystery Knight,” from the 2010 anthology Warriors. Those are the obvious baby steps, but really, anyone who enjoys “The Hedge Knight” and is interested in getting the full story after the abbreviated, simplified TV version of A Game Of Thrones might as well launch themselves into the full series. It’s Martin’s most ambitious and most accomplished work by far, and some of the best fantasy available right now. Of course, once new readers get caught up, they get to join everyone else in the frustrating, years-long wait for a new volume of the series, but that’s the price of admission.
Between Song Of Ice And Fire books, there’s always Martin’s back catalog, which consists of only a few novels and a great many anthologies and edited works. Fans of Martin’s epic fantasy honestly might not be able to get into his past work, which is just as harsh, cynical, and balanced with a deep well of love and hope, but jumps around from genre to genre, focusing largely on the kind of science fiction where everyone seems to have names full of harsh consonants and apostrophes. The best litmus test is his debut novel, 1977’s Dying Of The Light: It showcases many of his strengths of plotting and especially characterization, but this time in the course of an airy, Robert Silverberg-esque science-fiction scenario about a man who learns that the love of his life is trapped in a complicated, tradition-bound shared marriage, which she didn’t understand when she committed to it, and which she might or might not be desperate to escape. The plotting and relationships are twisty, and the emotions run deep and powerful; the execution is all floaty, conceptual ’70s SF, with plenty of heady descriptions of crystal oceans and abandoned cities full of dead slidewalks and cobalt globes. It’s a far cry from Martin’s grim-and-gritty medieval setting, but it’s clearly the work of the same author working in a much different idiom.
From there, the 1982 novel Fevre Dream, about vampires on the Mississippi in the mid-1800s, is probably Martin’s best-known stand-alone work. Like Dying Of The Light, it’s obsessed with relationships driven by mismatched amounts of love, coercion, and need, and with people striving against each other more out of selfish drives than out of the nobility they sometimes profess. It’s as much historical novel as horror, but it’s a Martin relationship novel first and foremost.
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It’s worth noting, though, that much of Martin’s strongest writing before this decade came in the form of short stories. His talent for characterization stood him in good stead when it came to telegraphically creating memorable protagonists for short works, and his comfort with dark subjects and ugly behavior tended to make his stories memorable. Some of the best are collected in the two-volume Dreamsongs anthology, which provides a solid overview of his early writing—particularly “Sandkings,” his only story to win both of speculative fiction’s top honors, the Hugo and Nebula awards. That one in particular is a gloriously nasty piece of work, about a bored connoisseur of exotic alien pets who lets his taste for violence override any semblance of humanity. Dreamsongs also contains the werewolf novella “The Skin Trade,” of interest because it was just optioned as a film.
Completists will have to dig up Martin’s many old paperback anthologies—Sandkings, Portraits Of His Children, and A Song For Lya are the strongest—to get some of the highly recommended deep cuts, like “Starlady,” about a woman forced into prostitution on an alien world, and the pimp who both takes advantage of her and falls for her. Again, like so much of Martin’s work, it’s a story about the sentimentality and tender feelings of love, but also about the hard truths of life, like the not-very-fiction-friendly reality that mere love doesn’t guarantee success, much less satisfaction.
Where not to start: Martin’s remaining solo novel, The Armageddon Rag—about a journalist investigating the murder of a rock promoter—diverges pretty widely from Martin’s usual themes, getting into his thoughts on ’60s rock and ’60s culture. It’s meant more for people who share those obsessions than for a wider audience. His collaboration with Lisa Tuttle, Windhaven, is pleasant but unexceptional fantasy. And Tuf Voyaging—billed as an anthology, though it’s a series of linked stories about one character, and reads like a novel—can be off-putting with its exceptionally unlikeable protagonist, a space trader with too much power for his own good, or anyone else’s. All three books have their upsides—Martin’s work is dense at times, but he’s a craftsman, prone to striking images and highly readable prose—but none represent his best work.
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In addition, Martin spent much of the late ’80s and early ’90s deeply enmeshed in editing and sometimes writing the shared-world Wild Cards anthology. The idea behind these books was to see what comic-book-style characters and conflicts would look like in the “real” world—which meant they had to grapple with ugliness like prejudice, racism, grim violence, insanity, and death. The “real superheroes” motif is pretty common these days, and has matured considerably since the ’80s, and while the Wild Cards books have their strengths, they’re also a depressing, enervating slog. They center on the idea of an alien virus that mutates people, killing most victims, but leaving a few with superpowers, grotesque deformities, or both. The books largely treated the whole concept as an AIDS metaphor, complete with the hysteria and prejudice that greeted AIDS victims of the time; they tend to be grim for grimness’ sake.
Interested readers should probably start with the latest trilogy, 2008’s Inside Straight and Busted Flush, and 2009’s Suicide Kings, which reboot the series for a new generation and rescue it from some of the hyperbolic pain-wallowing of the initial 12-volume series. That new trilogy (still edited and curated by Martin) is entertaining, and it might push some readers to go back to the series’ 1987 launch for the full backstory, but again, it doesn’t represent Martin’s most personal material—it’s a shared vision. Given the uniqueness of Martin’s style and point of view, it’s best to start with the work that’s indelibly his, then work outward from there.Bernie Ecclestone would be removed as the head of F1 should the High Court find against him, the sport's majority shareholder has confirmed.
The 83-year old is one of four defendants in the ongoing civil trial brought by Constantin Medien, accused of selling F1 to asset management giant CVC at a cut-price. Ecclestone is facing a $100m damages claim, amid allegations that he bribed bank official Gerhard Gribkowsky to undervalue the stake held by BayernLB in order to attract CVC, a buyer known to be in favour of keeping him at the head of the sport.
While the Briton denies the charges against him, CVC co-founder Donald Mackenzie told the court that his company would have no hesitation in firing him if found guilty. Mackenzie revealed that Ecclestone had initially denied making a $44m payment to Gribkowsky, before claiming he was being blackmailed by the banker, who now resides in a German jail having been found guilty of accepting a bribe and tax evasion.
"He told me that he had had a meeting with one of his colleagues who had reminded him that he had made payments to Gribkowsky and he apologised for having forgotten this," Reuters reports Mackenzie as telling the court, "He told me he had never lied to me - I must say that I had trouble believing you could forget payment of $40 million."
CVC paid approximately $830m for a 47 per cent stake in F1 - a figure Constantin claims prevented it from claiming a cut, which would have been required had the price been above $1.05bn. Mackenzie admitted that the deal had been among CVC's top ten deals, but the headlines generated since had not necessarily been favourable, potentially costing the company the opportunity to float the sport of the stock market. CVC has since sold off almost half of its total stake, reducing its holding to 35.5 per cent.
"It is a successful investment apart from the adverse publicity and this is a good example of it," Mackenzie told the court, before adding: "If it is proven that Mr Ecclestone has done anything that is criminally wrong, we would fire him."
Mackenzie also revealed that Ecclestone had spoken with disgraced former RBS boss Fred Goodwin whilst the F1 rights were being touted, saying the contact highlighted the extent of Ecclestone's influence beyond the sport's own sphere. According to the Scottish Herald, Mackenzie told how RBS had cropped up at a meeting to discuss possible lenders in the sale.
"I mentioned RBS," Mackenzie said, "and [Ecclestone] said 'I know RBS. I'll call the chief executive now' - and called Fred Goodwin. Goodwin was tracked down by his PA and Bernie said 'I have got someone in the room who wants to borrow some money from you'. It's quite unusual for a chief executive to call a chief executive of a bank, but that reveals Bernie's influence in the world."
Ecclestone appeared in court between the Abu Dhabi and US grands prix, and the trial is expected to continue for several weeks. German authorities have already postponed their own proceedings until the New Year, while Swiss prosecutors are currently debating whether Ecclestone should stand trial there.Sounds limp, but I shook all day after the “Committee for Justice in Palestine at The Ohio State University” forwarded OSU College Republicans’ invitation to hear David Horowitz pontificate on “Why Israel is the Victim on April 22. But I had to film Horowitz, because he and CAMERA wield ridiculous power in U.S. schools. As my friend Sami Mubarak told me:
Many minority students, especially Muslim and Arabs, are feeling unsafe that David Horowitz is allowed to speak on our campus. He claimed responsibility for the hateful anti-SJP posters found in Smith-Steeb dorm on our campus a couple months ago.
Though I’m a member, I’d no clue that OSU’s CJP had been among those targeted, because CJP chose not to distract from its work at a crucial time. (More about that soon.) Mubarak reminded me that Horowitz had “funded an Islamophobic ad in The Lantern back in 2012″–a fact I’d reported at the time–full of calumnies Horowitz repeated that night.
Readers of this site know David Horowitz’s efforts at hate-mongering on campus, last week and a couple months ago. Ben Norton has also debunked Horowitz’s lies, so I’ll point out a few lowlights and post the whole, in six parts, for context. (Sorry for the background noise, and that my video wobbles, whenever I was asked to move.)
From his rancid start (2, 0:30) to his abrupt departure, Horowitz’s venom stunned. He skipped the courtesies, like thanks or a nod to Earth Day, dear to many. Instead, Horowitz made sure everyone could hear him, then griped, “I understand that we have people here from several groups that support the terrorist regimes in Gaza and the West Bank (#2, 0:20).”
People gasped. When one, then two, clapped in mock shock, Horowitz lapsed into sarcasm: “Great day for America when you support terrorists.”
David Horowitz crackled radioactive hypocrisy. He demonized the Muslim Students Association and CJP (#2, 5:09, 14:00) through guilt by association to Nazis, the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas–casting even Fatah and Mahmoud Abbas as “literally Nazis”(#2, 21:36), yet obscured the Israel’s use of all–including the fact that Israel helped start Hamas to divide the PLO (see also this and that). He claimed that the Holy Land Foundation, Council on American-Islamic Relations, and Hatem Bazian all plot “the destruction of Western Civilization,” based on one supposed secret memo (#3, 13:55), but could scarcely be less civilized himself. Worse, he ignored miscarriage of justice involved the Holy Land Foundation trial and convictions.
He accused opponents of supporting terrorism, but elided Israel’s own terrorism from the King David bombing to the Nakba onward. He tried to swell his credibility using his status as a former “Communist” and “Leftist,” yet projected his ideology onto us. He whined that he had the right to be heard without listeners leaving in protest. He exclaimed that Jews are victims of “Jew-hatred,” yet scorned the “Victims studies,” that he claims “this University like every other university has (#4, 1:25).”
He moaned that people “put words into my mouth that I didn’t say, they omit every qualification” (#4, 10:30), yet that’s precisely how he misrepresents those who criticize Israel. He alleged that four “Disappearing Palestine” maps “is a Hamas map….The map is one big lie” (#3, 15:18). Paradoxically, those pictures of the ongoing theft of Palestine were the one good thing Horowitz provided: they overshadowed his harangue.
Among other nonsensical claims:
“Students for Justice in Palestine, the Committee for Justice in Palestine has only one agenda: the destruction of the only Jewish state (#2, 16:25)….The Jews didn’t expel the Arabs when they attacked them in 1948, nor did they… in the 1967 war or in the 1973 war. Turns out that this generosity on the part of the Jews was a mistake; these people are not grateful, they’re fanatics, they’re driven by hate. Four hundred years is a long time: the American Indians have a greater claim on the U.S. than the Arabs have either on Israel or on the West Bank (#2: 19:00).”
At least he admitted here that the West Bank is not part of Israel.
But he resorted to long-discredited hasbara, asserting that the people of Palestine had no right to their own homes, because there was “no national movement of the Palestinians” (#2, 19:41)–that is, that if people did not claim a land precisely as “the Jews” had done on the basis of an eminently-debatable brand of national identity, they forfeited the ground they owned. He announced,
“Occupation is one huge lie…. because if you think the Jews stole the land, then you don’t pay attention to all the amazing things Israelis have done to contribute to YOUR health…cell phones, you owe the Israelis that (#2, 25:00).
He asserted that “The second lie is that Israel is an Apartheid state” (#2, 26:00): “The only state that’s safe for women, gays, and Christians is Israel” (#2, 27:40). Excuse me if I quote from the the Kairos Document that declares,
“The aggression against the Palestinian people which is the Israeli occupation, is an evil that must be resisted…. Christian love invites us to resist it. However, love puts an end to evil by walking in the ways of justice.”
He alleged that if you’re a woman “in the [other] countries of the Middle East, “you’re just chattel,” and the merriment that greeted it was priceless (#2, 26:45). And piled up equally laughable falsities about Gaza next (#3, 0:01):
If you want to know why Palestinians are poor,…why they are suffering,…why they get killed in wars, it’s Hamas that’s reponsible, because Hamas is the aggressor. The Jews weren’t firing rockets into Gaza (#3, 6:00).
When Sami Mubarak and a friend asked,”When will the hate end, David?,” as they held up the sign (3, 6:48),” Horowitz barked,
“You tell me. You’re obviously the–. Do you guys want to identify yourselves? Are you MSA or the CJP or some other leftist hate group?” A whimsical voice quipped, “It’s the Chess Club.”
What an entrancing spirit to return drollery for malice. Horowitz, however, grumbled as people stood to leave, “I don’t know how you guys live with your consciences.” But CJP, MSA, and other groups do know: they had already started a hashtag campaign called ‘EndHateOSU.”
A “representative of Student Government” offered more comic relief about “sinister acts like food and dancing” (#26:45). Nevertheless, Horowitz posed as an innocent threatened by us: “If the police weren’t here, who knows what would happen!” (#4, 0:15), “You haven’t been attacked on campus. I have! (#4, 0:20).” And he yelled at others: “You’re just stupid! You have no brains (#4, 2:50).” Or this abuse:
“You’re on a different planet from me. I don’t understand how you got all that crap in your head and spew it out at me….[I refuse to waste any more life transcribing poison] (#4: 5:50).”
At last, but too soon for students to debate, Horowitz closed his talk: “It’s a sad, sad performance. Now, [mumbling] we’re finished. Thank you all, even the people who disagreed with me in a civil….[unintelligible].”
He then lingered less than twelve minutes for civil chitchat, seemingly scared off by a question he couldn’t answer. A friend of mine asked why so many Holocaust survivors “condemn Israel’s actions (8:41).” He smeared such critics who’d lived through the death camps, saying, “Some of the Jews shoveled the bodies….ovens….” before waving her off: “You’re just being sarcastic.”
Then he went off Stage Right with a parting curse: “F— Off” (#6, 9:00).
The obscenity was so startling that I–stuck behind my lens–assumed he’d involuntarily yelped at my friend. Only in the video could I see him direct it straight into my camera.
Still, I wonder: How has Horowitz retained respectability, when he acts so—-unimaginably? For the College Republicans’ applause seemed keen (#4, 10:55). And the CR leaders were polite to visitors. Still, I can’t understand the moderator’s double standard about protecting “civilized discourse”: allowing Horowitz to denigrate the audience but not the latter to respond.
Why ever the CR did invite the infamous Horowitz when Hillel’s Buckeyes for Israel pointedly did not? OSUCR recently supported several Israel-centric events, but Buckeyes for Israel did not co-sponsor Horowitz’s visit. I can only assume that Hillel and BfI at last calculate that Horowitz’s grotesquery will do anything but pump up Israel’s popularity. And this person has shaped academic debate?
Meanwhile, what’s with CR’s urging “anyone who felt personally subjugated by Mr. Horowitz’s comments to contact the Office of Counseling…Services“? Many have justly condemned that condescension.
I think psychological care is a great thing. As one flawed human to another, I feel for David Horowitz, because paranoid vigilantism is a sad life. Short of getting professional help, though, we can all hang out with good people who radiate sanity, spreading resilience all round. A week ago, comradely sumud helped me creep into the hate-fest I dreaded. So now I call out to #EndHateOSU, “Thanks.”A couple of weeks ago, I was asked to write up my story of how I got into illustration and why I do it. It was posted up on another blog a few days ago. You can read it on the other blog HERE if you wish.
Here’s what I wrote.
My name is Dale Vande Griend and about two years ago I decided to pick up drawing again. I found some tutorials online and I went about practicing and teaching myself how to illustrate. Illustrating came back to me quite naturally and I really enjoyed teaching myself a new art form. The passion I had as a child, doodling on scraps of paper, quickly returned. Now, my day job requires me to travel to India a couple times a year and over the past couple of years I have fallen in love with the art and culture of this incredible country. Indian henna and mandala designs soon started filling my sketchbook along with Banyan trees, sarees, and rickshaws.
As my illustration skills slowly improved, I found myself reading a lot of graphic novels and comic books so I could study the art and storytelling. I began to love how stories were told using this art form. Ideas began swirling in my mind as I searched for some kind of story that I could tell using the graphic novel format.
At this same time I took a trip for work to film a story in India about a group of ladies who were trafficked or born into the sex trade in their city. I had heard a little about trafficking, but this trip prompted me to research and learn more about it. I read a bunch of books and articles about the subject and started following traffick-battling organizations online. I did what I could by sharing and raising awareness through Facebook and Twitter. An organization called Tiny Hands International loved my passion for battling sex trafficking and saw my illustration work and asked if I would make some art for them. Of course, I did.
Tiny hands International battles injustice in two ways. They fight trafficking and they have children’s ministries. They are a wonderful organization and they are doing hard work, but they are making a difference in people’s lives. Check them out and find a way that you can become involved.
https://www.tinyhands.org/
Suddenly the idea I had been searching for popped into my head. It was really a culmination of all these experiences I had had since I took up illustration again that led to this idea.
I would write and illustrate a graphic novel to raise awareness about sex trafficking.
I set out writing the story. It was going to take place in a place I had come to know and love, India. It was going to be both an engaging narrative and a lesson in sex trafficking. I also wanted the ending to be real and hard-hitting. I wanted it to make an impact on the reader. One they couldn’t ignore.
It was at both the easiest and the hardest thing I’ve ever had to write. Easy in that I had an immense passion to get this story out there. Hard in that this is an emotional and heartbreaking travesty that happens in our world, and I had created a little girl who had to suffer and endure it.
Even though she isn’t real, her story is. It’s the story of MILLIONS of girls across the world, forced into this horrible life, unable to escape. They need a voice and they need people to understand their story and to get up and do something about it. My graphic novel will be part of that voice.
This is why this story has been easy to write. It needs to be told and it needs to be heard. And through my experiences, my skills, and most of all my passion, this story must come from me. This story is part of my calling.
This is my challenge to all of you reading this. Find your passion. Find your calling. You do this by trying new things or picking up old ones. Experience life and keep an eye out for that thing that drives and motivates you. Find where your skills, experiences, and passions intersect and there you will find your calling.
Don’t ignore that call.
I challenge you to make an effort to follow that calling, pursue those passions and help make this world a better place.
My graphic novel is titled ‘Doll’ and you can follow the progress of the story here.
You can actually read the first full chapter of the story. Check it out!
https://exodusillustration.wordpress.com/
You can also follow my facebook page and Instagram page.
Facebook – https://www.facebook.com/exodusillustration/
Instagram – https://www.instagram.com/exodusillustration/ATHENS, Greece (AP) — Marko Scepovic scored a hat trick to lead Olympiakos to a 4-0 victory at OFI in the Greek league Saturday.
Scepovic, playing in his seventh game this season, saw all his three shots at goal find the net, in the 42nd, 52nd and 88th minutes. Paulo Machado had opened the scoring in the 39th.
Olympiakos remains undefeated after 26 rounds, 23 points ahead of PAOK, which hosts Panthrakikos Sunday.
The bad news for Olympiakos is that Scepovic is not eligible to play in Tuesday's Champions league round of 16 first-leg home game against Manchester United. Worse still, veteran striker Javier Saviola, whom Scepovic replaced in the 33rd, has injured his left thigh and is doubtful for Tuesday.
Also, Levadiakos beat Asteras 3-1 and Panionios won 2-1 at Apollon.Reuters Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin listens as U.S. President Donald Trump hosts a tax reform industry meeting at the White House in Washington, U.S., October 31, 2017.
House Republicans on Thursday unveiled the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, new legislation that would cut corporate taxes and repeal taxes paid by large estates. Though the bill now has a long journey into becoming law, here are the highlights on the impact on individual taxes.
Also read: Here’s a breakdown of how the new House tax bill impacts business taxes
• There will be four tax rates: 12%, 25%, 35% and 39.6%. For single people, the brackets will be up to $45,000, up to $200,000, up to $500,000 and over $500,000, and for married people, those brackets will be up to $90,000, up to $260,000, up to $1 million and over $1 million.
The standard deduction would be hiked from $6,350 to $12,000 for individuals and $12,700 to $24,000 for married couples. But there will be no personal exemptions.
• The child tax credit will be hiked to $1,600 from $1,000 per child, and there will be a credit of $300 for each parent to help with expenses.
• The mortgage interest deduction will be preserved for existing mortgages but capped at $500,000 for newly purchased homes.
Also read: Housing stock tumble may be overblown as pushback on tax bill’s ding to mortgage deduction is likely
• State and local income taxes will not be able to be deducted, but state and local property taxes will be, up to $10,000.
• Despite intense debate, there doesn’t appear to be any change to 401(k) and Individual Retirement Accounts.
• The alternative minimum tax is repealed.
• The estate tax exemption will be doubled from $5 million to $10 million and in six years, will be repealed.
• The deduction for interest on education loans and the deduction for qualified tuition and related expenses would be repealed.BlackBerry phones might not be dead yet, but the once-mighty Canadian smartphone maker has all but bowed out of its original market, and is now turning its attention to another tech horizon: self-driving cars.
The company on Monday announced plans to open a center for autonomous vehicle research in Ottawa, Ontario. There, software engineers will work on a pilot project to test a BlackBerry-powered self-driving car on public roads, thanks to a recently-awarded permit from the provincial government.
For BlackBerry, autonomous vehicle research is more than just an effort to hitch itself to a hot trend or distract itself from its smartphone misfortunes: the company's investment in cars dates to at least 2010, when it acquired embedded operating system manufacturer QNX, which makes Ford's Sync platform. Like Google, QNX won't be making the actual autonomous vehicles, but rather the software that powers their sensors and cameras.
"Our play in this is that we provide the software foundation for these high-performance compute platforms," QNX head John Wall told Reuters.
BlackBerry didn't offer specifics about when it expects its cars to hit the road, saying only that it would showcase "early results" from the research center at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas next month.
Last week, BlackBerry inked a deal with TCL, which will see the Hong Kong-based electronics maker design, manufacture, sell, and provide customer support for BlackBerry-branded mobile devices. |
The 23-year-old plays for Richmond Football Club (The Tigers) in Melbourne.
AAP reports Thomas befriended Rance on Facebook in 2011 after creating a fake profile using photos of a UK-based male sports model.
He spoke to Rance about auditioning for a presenting job on a non-existent sports-based reality television show on MTV.
The 35-year-old told Rance he would put him in contact with a friend who was producing the show.
Thomas began talking to Rance using the name Scott Raymond and the pair met to discuss the programme.
But the association soon soured, with Thomas sending Rance text messages that were “critical and scathing of the victim, highlighting his reluctance to spend more time with the accused”, prosecutor Sergeant Belinda Cowley told Melbourne Magistrates Court.
Thomas also pleaded guilty to obtaining more than $50,000 (£32,053) by deception after setting up a fake medical practice in South Yarra and selling human growth hormones to 13 men while pretending to be a doctor.
He had pretended to be a musician, claiming to have performed at different licensed venues in a bid to fleece royalty payments from the Australasian Performing Rights Association.
When Rance ended the friendship, Thomas began hacking his accounts, sending a message to Rance’s now-wife Georgia that he was “living a lie and was in fact homosexual”.
In a message to Rance’s sister, he wrote: “Wakey, wakey. Rise and shine. You know what your brother has to do within three hours or something bad will happen”.
He also told Rance that a “gay orgy” had been arranged at his parent’s home.Joyce’s image in China holds a strange fascination in the west. When the first third of Finnegans Wake, his last and most notoriously difficult book, was published in Shanghai in 2013, newspapers in Britain and America greeted the announcement as a momentous event. Certainly, the salient details of the story are arresting: 72 years had passed since the publication of the novel in London in 1941; seven years had elapsed since Dai Congrong had agreed to undertake the formidable task of translation; and when the book appeared between luxuriously silky dark-green boards, heavy with pages of explanatory notes, it became an immediate commercial success.
By what miracles of linguistic mastery and literary imagination could Chinese characters be made to capture Joyce’s mind-bending manipulations of the alphabet? By what subtleties of cross-cultural understanding could the specificities of Ireland and its mythologies be translated for a Chinese audience? Could the translation be trusted if it made Finnegans Wake a bestseller?
When Ulysses was first published in Paris in 1922, Joyce responded with delight to news that an order had been placed from China: “Ten copies to Peking!” he exclaimed. Ulysses, even more than Finnegans Wake, is alive in China today. Two Joyce-themed stage productions have recently toured major Chinese cities. Both are the brainchildren of Andy Arnold, the artistic director of Glasgow’s Tron theatre, and form part of a programme of performances for a UK-China Year of Cultural Exchange. The first, A Journey Round James Joyce, offers an elegantly devised biographical reimagining of Joyce’s life in Trieste between 1905 and 1915. The second, Ulysses, is a revival of the Tron’s successful 2012 production of Dermot Bolger’s adaptation (A Dublin Bloom, 1996). They performed to full and enthusiastic houses in Beijing, Shanghai, Hangzhou and Jinan.
For much of the 20th century, Joyce’s name was not one to be lightly pronounced or printed in China. Even as late as 1982 – as Jin Di, Ulysses’s first translator, reports – a state official commenting on the centenary of Joyce’s birth described the world of Leopold Bloom as “shocking in its pettiness, obscurity, ugliness, and confusion” and as emblematic of “the decadence of the modern bourgeoisie”.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest James Joyce in 1934. Photograph: Lipnitzki/Roger Viollet/Getty Images
Yet by 1996, not one but two versions of Ulysses were available to Chinese readers. The novel sold very well, and western newspapers, as they would later about Finnegans Wake, commented on Ulysses’s bestseller status in China with a mixture of excitement and bemusement. But the book’s journey had in a sense only begun. Works of such length and complexity take time to percolate into a nation’s living rooms and classrooms. These days, if you ask about James Joyce – or “Zhanmusi Qiaoyisi”, as his name is transliterated in Chinese pinyin – in a Chinese bookshop you will be led to shelves lined with relevant volumes. The vast five-floor Xinhua bookshop on Wangfujing, a crowded shopping avenue just round the corner from Tiananmen Square, currently stocks no fewer than four different editions of Ulysses – one in English, and three in Chinese. Copies of Dubliners, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Exiles and Finnegans Wake are also available.
The tastes and identifications of China’s expanding and dynamic middle class are part of the explanation for this renaissance. Where Joyce stood for bourgeois corruption only three decades ago, he now stands for cosmopolitan sophistication. Chinese people have an affectionate epithet for those particularly enamoured of the western way of life and its consumer comforts: they call such internationally minded bourgeois “xiaozi” – literally, “little capitalists”. It is to a large degree such educated “xiaozi” who are driving the success of Arnold’s plays.
A Journey Round James Joyce was conceived specifically with China in mind. Performed in Chinese by Chinese actors, the play conjures Joyce and Nora Barnacle’s departure from Ireland, Joyce’s carousing in the bars of Trieste, the language lessons he gave to make a living, Nora’s housekeeping and henpecking, his writing and its connections to his experiences in exile. The script consists of an ingenious collage of quotations assembled from many corners of Joyce’s works and letters. In its departures from biographical fact and disruptions of chronological sequence, A Journey Round James Joyce bears some likeness to the theatrical fantasy by which Tom Stoppard imagined Joyce’s life in Zürich in Travesties in 1974. Yet the tone of this piece is quite different, fluctuating between broad comedy and romance, tension and melodrama.
To western eyes, the sight and sound of a Chinese James Joyce and Nora Barnacle is completely disorienting (Joyce’s recognisable glasses are at first the only obvious echo of a familiar story) and a thought-provoking reminder of the extent of the differences translations have to negotiate. As the play unfolds, snippets of the Irish songs and Italian operas Joyce loved (“Down by the Salley Gardens”, Madame Butterfly) add to the international ambiance of the Journey. The costumes and the exquisitely minimalist set are the fruits of Arnold’s collaboration with Beijing’s Xinchan theatre.
Arnold’s Ulysses is a wilder piece of theatre. Performed in English with Chinese surtitles, the play stages a recapitulation of all the novel’s best-known moments – a “greatest hits” formula. But the play makes great demands on anyone encountering Joyce’s world for the first time: it would be fairly difficult, without prior knowledge of the book, and without a sense of the Dublin world in which it is rooted, to make head or tail of the spectacular whirligig of scenes by which Arnold recreates the events of Bloomsday.
The play inverts the chronology of Joyce’s book by presenting the events of 16 June 1904 as the stuff of Bloom’s dreams after his return to the marital bed in the early hours of the following morning. The re-enactment of the key moments of his day is interwoven with excerpts from his wife Molly’s famous closing soliloquy.
What the Tron emphatically brings to Ulysses is the inventive energy and the daring to engage with a classic text. Joyce’s odyssey in China, and the drama of east and west captured in its moving hall of mirrors, continues.Story highlights Kaine hit Trump for his immigration policy
Kaine also defended the Clinton campaign's lack of press availability
(CNN) Democratic vice presidential nominee Tim Kaine said Thursday Donald Trump's trip to Mexico was a "photo op fly-by" and said he thinks "it shows that diplomacy is not for amateurs."
Kaine was in full attack-dog mode during a series of television interviews, mocking Trump's high-profile meeting with Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto on CNN's "New Day." He also criticized Trump for giving a more moderate immigration message to the Mexican leader, before delivering a fiery speech hours later to an American audience.
"Donald Trump did a kind of photo op fly-by, where he didn't even have the nerve at the last minute to bring up this issue about the wall," Kaine told CNN's Chris Cuomo. "This is the central piece of his campaign -- immigration and deportation, and we're going to build a wall and make Mexico pay for it. But when he looked President Peña Nieto in the eye, he couldn't even bring that up."
Trump said Wednesday that the payment for the proposed border wall didn't come up during his meeting with Peña Nieto, but the Mexican president disputed that assertion.
"That was a choke, and I think it shows that diplomacy is not for amateurs. Donald Trump's an amateur," he added.
Read MoreAbout “Coloring Book”
Coloring Book is Chance The Rapper’s third mixtape, which was released on May 13th, 2016. Originally thought to be named Chance 3, when the mixtape was released on Apple Music, the name was changed to Coloring Book.
The tape had been one of the most highly anticipated projects of the year due to the long delay between 2013’s Acid Rap and 2016. Between those years, Chance released a ton of projects and singles such as Surf with Donnie Trumpet and The Social Experiment, Free (BASED FREESTYLE MIXTAPE) with rapper Lil B, “Home Studio (Back Up In This Bitch),” and “No Better Blues,” among others.
In an interview with HOT 97, Chance spoke about the tape saying:
I’m working on a lot of music, a lot of individual projects right now, but my focus is eventually getting out of this trilogy of music that would be 10 Day, Acid Rap and Third Mixtape, and eventually get to a place where I can stand on top of something and be like ‘this is what I do! I’m not just rapping or rap, this is what I do.’ […] Here’s all the different pieces to it, it’s a project just like any other project but this one is… defining.
The tape debuted at number 8 on the Billboard 200 chart and made history by being the first project ever to land on the charts thanks entirely to streaming, with 57.3 millions streams (the equivalent of 38,000 units sold) on its first week.
The official singles for Coloring Book premiered on live TV performances, with “Angels” premiering on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert and “Blessings” on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon. The only exception to this was “No Problem”, which was premiered on Zane Lowe’s Beats 1 Radio Show.Breaking News Emails Get breaking news alerts and special reports. The news and stories that matter, delivered weekday mornings.
Sep. 12, 2016, 7:48 AM GMT / Updated Sep. 12, 2016, 12:44 PM GMT By Alastair Jamieson
Donald Trump wants to build a “big, beautiful wall” to stop illegal immigrants — but Britain and other European nations are already doing it.
The U.K. government has announced plans to begin constructing a 13-foot concrete roadside barrier at the French port of Calais, where truck drivers have been targeted by migrants trying to sneak through the Channel Tunnel.
Migrants climb in the back of a truck bound for the U.K. in Calais, France, on June 23, 2015. PHILIPPE HUGUEN / AFP - Getty Images, file
At two-thirds of a mile long, the barricade will be minuscule in comparison to Trump’s proposed $8 billion, 1,000-mile fortification along the U.S.-Mexico border.
And it is Britain, not France, who will pay for it.
However, the plan has already earned comparisons to Trump’s proposal and raises political questions about the return to Berlin Wall-era barriers to human movement.
Related: Paradise Found? Migrants Spend Years Behind Bars in U.K.
“It reminds me of the wall they built around the Warsaw Ghetto in World War Two,” said Nathalie Goulet, a French senator and vice-chair of the senate foreign affairs committee. “Putting up walls has happened throughout history but eventually people find a way around them or they fail. Look at the Great Wall of China — now tourists walk on it and take pictures.”
A map showing the location of Calais, France. Google Maps
Several European countries have thrown up razor wire to combat the biggest migrant crisis since World War Two.
More than 305,000 migrants have entered Europe so far in 2016, according to the International Organization for Migration (IOM). That comes on top of the one million who reached the continent last year.
While many have applied for asylum in Germany — where 1.1 million refugees arrived in 2015 — or Scandinavia, thousands more have ended up in squalid camps including a sprawling and unsanitary site in Calais known as "The Jungle."
Related: Migrants Trying to Reach U.K. Endure Hell of 'The Jungle'
Every night, hundreds of migrants prowl the port’s approach roads and freight yards, trying to sneak onto trains and trucks crossing the 30-mile English Channel by rail tunnel or ferry.
Many are horribly injured as they crawl under wagons, while others suffocate in sealed or refrigerated containers.
It is a daily cat-and-mouse game that tests the resilience of local police — and the patience of British and French authorities who share joint responsibility for border controls on both sides of the water.
In March, the U.K. agreed to spend $22.5 million to help tighten security at the port. Last week, Immigration Minister Robert Goodwill said measures would include the road-protecting wall after truck drivers said they feared for their safety when driving though the area.
“People are still getting through,” Goodwill told lawmakers. “We have done the fences. Now we are doing the wall.”
Migrants walk on a ridge above a road where trucks pass near the ferry terminal in Calais, France, in Oct. 2014. Pascal Rossignol / REUTERS, file
It drew immediate criticism and comparison to Trump’s controversial plan for a wall along the Mexico border — even though the billionaire’s barrier would be vastly larger and more than 35 feet high.
François Guennoc, of Calais migrant aid group Auberge des Migrants, said the wall was a waste of money.
“When you put walls up anywhere in the world, people find ways to go round them,” he told The Guardian. “It could make it more dangerous for people, it will push up tariffs for people-smugglers and people will end up taking more risks.”
However, supporters of the Calais reinforcements said it was necessary and point to other European nations who have rushed to install fences in response to the current migration crisis.
“People are using Trump to toxify everything he touches, including ideas," said Douglas Murray, associate director of the Henry Jackson Society, a conservative think tank. "In Europe in the last two years, border security is very much a thing and checks have been reintroduced even by the two countries that were most proud of having abolished them — Sweden and Denmark."
He added: “Good fences make good neighbors, and we're in a period in which people are flooding across national boundaries and the countries which are going to be interested are the ones which bear the burden when migrants arrive."
Austria erected a 2.3-mile metal fence along part of its border with Slovenia in November, even though movement between the two EU Schengen-area countries is supposed to be unrestricted.
Hungarian soldiers worked through the night last October to block parts of the border with Croatia, a month after a similar fence was completed along its border with Serbia. Bulgaria last year sealed its southern border with Turkey — the nearest European Union land frontier to the Middle East — using a 15-foot-high fence.
And it is not just the European crisis that has seen a rush to build fences. Morocco and Tunisia both announced border walls last year — against Algeria and Libya, respectively — in response to the movement of Islamist fighters and the rising threat of terrorism.
French anti-riot police try to prevent illegal migrants from hiding in trucks heading for England in Calais, France, on June 17, 2015. PHILIPPE HUGUEN / AFP - Getty Images, file
On Thursday, defense officials in Israel said work has begun on an underground barrier along its border with Gaza to block tunnels built by Hamas militants.
In fact, over 40 countries around the world have built fences against more than 60 of their neighbors since the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, according to The Economist. More than 30 of those decisions were made following 9/11 and 15 of them were announced in the past year, the magazine reported.
A spokesman for Britain’s Home Office, which deals with immigration, said the Calais wall would be completed by the end of this year. He declined to comment on the cost but a Home Office official told NBC News the reported figure of $2.25 million was accurate.
Goulet, the French senator, said it would not solve the longer-term causes of the migrant crisis.
Migrants are chased by police as they attempt to access the Channel Tunnel in Frethun, France, on August 5, 2015. Juan Medina / REUTERS, file
“This wall, and Mr. Trump’s wall, will not work because they do not stop the problems that lead to immigration,” she said. “If people are persecuted or fear for their lives or cannot survive because they are too poor then they will continue to.
Goulet added: “It is particularly surprising that some Americans seem to want a wall given that America was created as an open country for open-minded people. If all the money that was spent on the election campaign was spent on reducing poverty and insecurity around the world then there wouldn’t need to be a wall at all.”10 Reasons Why Lidl Will Be the Single Most Disruptive Force in US Retail This Decade
When I say Lidl will be the single-most disruptive force in US retail in the next decade, there is no caveat. No, I didn’t forget that Amazon.com exits. No, I don’t mean just “Brick & Mortar” retail. I mean what I said. I believe that Europe’s largest grocer, Aldi’s fiercest international rival, and one of the largest merchants in the world will be the most disruptive force on US retail this decade. In June, when the German grocer opens its doors, it will leave an indelible mark on US retail. Whether it exits like Tesco or assimilates like Aldi, Lidl’s US entry will be a defining force in the course of US retail.
These are big claims. I write them without hyperbole. Having done intensive research on Lidl USA, there are 10 factors that I believe give the German grocer the potential to be unprecedentedly game-changing in the US.
1. Lidl Has Experience Competing With Walmart:
Lidl is no stranger to competing with the USA’s (and the world’s) largest retailer. In 1998, Walmart unsuccessfully entered Germany. In addition to cultural and operational issues, Walmart faced aggressive competition from “hard” discounters like Aldi and Lidl. Less than a decade later, Walmart chose to exit Germany.
Similarly, Lidl’s entry into the UK has been problematic for Walmart’s ASDA banner. Former ASDA CEO, Andy Clarke, described Lidl and Aldi’s combined impact on the UK market as, “The worst storm in retail history.” That was in 2015. Today, in 2017, Aldi and Lidl are both at their highest market shares ever in the UK. They don’t appear to be slowing down either.
In June, that “storm” will cross the Atlantic as Lidl opens it’s doors along the Eastern Seaboard. Walmart is aware. The Wall Street Journal has reported that Walmart is conducting pricing comparison tests v. Aldi in 11 states. Not surprisingly, 4 of those 11 are states where Lidl will be opening stores over the course of the next year. The others are geographically significant to Aldi, Meijer, and Kroger.
When Lidl opens its doors in the US, Walmart will be waiting. Walmart US cannot and will not allow Lidl to experience the same competitive success it has enjoyed in Europe. When the largest retailer in the world goes to war, the rest of the US retail ecosystem will feel it.
2. Concern Over Lidl’s US Entry Is Already Changing the US Retail Landscape:
At first glance, Lidl’s decision to enter the US along the Eastern Seaboard appears a bold choice. If nothing else, it is a “Red Ocean” strategy since grocery heavy-weights Kroger and Walmart, as well as fellow German discounter, Aldi, are all heavily-penetrated there. However, the Eastern Seaboard is also home to two other familiar European rivals: Ahold & Delhaize.
Many believe Lidl’s history competing with these two grocers is one of the primary reasons Lidl chose the Eastern Seaboard to begin with — gain a foothold in the US by competing against a rival they have had success against. Further, Lidl’s results against Ahold & Delhaize in Europe has been speculated to be a contributing factor to the strategic merger leading to the Ahold/Delhaize Group. The combined Ahold/Delhaize Group is now the among the largest grocers in the US and is the #1 or #2 grocer by share in 80% of the US markets where it competes. This is already one way that Lidl’s growth and expansion has changed the ecosystem in the US.
Of course, the newly-formed Ahold/Delhaize Group, like Walmart, is not going to take Lidl’s US entry lying down. Ahold/Delhaize Group CEO Dirk Boer has already stated:
“As a European retailer in the U.S…we are sharing a lot of our information about the work Lidl and Aldi are doing (in the Dutch market) to help our American colleagues to be well prepared.”
The good news for the consumer is that the obvious move on the chessboard for both Walmart and Ahold/Delhaize is pricing. Right or wrong, this is likely an angle those retailers will pursue. If those two retailers can remove price perception as an advantage from Lidl USA, it will be harder for Lidl to gain a foot-hold.
3. The Combined Result of Competitive Reactions to Lidl is a Deflationary Trend in the Grocery Market That is Already Impacting US Retail
One retailer that is already feeling the pinch of aggressive pricing moves (even prior to Lidl’s US entry) is Kroger. In March Kroger suffered the disappointment of seeing its 13-year streak of comp store sales growth come to an end. Kroger CEO, Rodney McMullen minced no words in describing the cause for this miss:
We’re obviously disappointed with our identical supermarket sales number in the fourth quarter and our performance on several other KPIs, including FIFO operating margin and return on invested capital, which were driven by the deflationary environment. Kroger Analyst Call.
When asked about Walmart’s role specifically, Mr. McMullen respondend, “There is no doubt that several competitors are improving and running better stores.”
Now, with Walmart running aggressive pricing tests AND the entry of Lidl into Kroger-owned Harris Teeter’s backyard, the deflationary environment in US grocery is expected to continue. If the current environment is already enough to stop Kroger’s historic run, what will happen when Europe’s largest grocer and hard-discounter, Lidl, enters the fray?
4. Lidl Appears Intent on “Messing With Texas”
After Albertson’s unsuccessful attempt to gain a foot-hold in the South Texas grocery market, many retailers are rightly wary of expanding south of the Red River. In the jungle of South Texas grocery, HEB is the dominant predator. HEB is a beloved by its fellow Texans, and its flagship HEB banner still does not have a presence in the DFW Metroplex.
However, DFW’s long wait for HEB could be coming to an end. Over the last two years, reports have surfaced that HEB is purchasing land in North Texas with the intent to build new stores there. Interestingly, the same has been said of Lidl.
It remains to be seen when Lidl will actually open doors in Texas — if at all. Their announced intent to purchase land in North Texas could be as brilliant a distraction-tactic against its competitors, as it is a risky move against HEB. Now that the message exists, national retailers like Walmart and Kroger have to keep one eye on Texas to see if Lidl moves. However, if Lidl moves quickly and actually enters Texas, it might just force HEB’s hand into opening their own stores sooner than planned. If HEB reacts to Lidl’s encroachment on Texas, expect that reaction to be stiff and relentless.
5. It Will Open Up a “New Front” in the Rivalry With Aldi
Lidl is not the only German discounter operating in the US today. Aldi has been here since the 1970’s with little serious, national competition in the hard discount space. That is about to change. Aldi is already well-positioned to absorb Lidl’s entry being both well-developed on the Eastern Seaboard AND being on-pace to complete its 650-store expansion in the West.
Although Aldi’s westward migration began before Lidl’s plans to enter the US by 2018 were announced, that decision certainly seems serendipitous today. As sales, margins, and incrementality decline in Lidl’s foot-print, Aldi’s “Blue Ocean” out west could look more and more appealing. This could mean heightened competition in the California and Texas markets as Aldi looks to double-down in those large states.
Further, on the Eastern Seaboard, Aldi will likely use the same lever as Walmart and their other rivals to combat their German rival — price. The pricing game will be even more critical for Aldi since they will compete like-for-like with Lidl’s private-label-heavy assortment model. Between those two, price will be an essential differentiator for the shopper.
Outside the US, Aldi is also taking advantage of their rival’s US entry. One way Aldi appears to be taking advantage of Lidl’s US-focus is by expanding into Italy. It will be interesting to watch and see the “Great Game” of geographic expansions these two German discounters play against one another as their footprints evolve and shift. What role will the US theater play in that larger game?
6. Lidl Will Up-Scale the Down-Market
If you are a US citizen reading this post, I assume you have never been in a Lidl store. If not, take a moment to look at the “Lidl of the Future” store in Rushden, UK. You can find still images here. And you can find a video walk-through here. These are not ugly stores.
Lidl’s hard discount model is expected to be most appealing to low-income consumers. Low prices on branded and private label items is appealing to everyone, but especially to families struggling to make ends meet. Lidl has often been compared to Trader Joe’s — Aldi’s up-market banner in the US. The clear signage, premium-looking shelving, and ultra-local feel of the “Lidl of the Future” stores in the UK don’t look like discounters. They appear like a traditional US grocer — and a nice traditional US grocer at that. It’s little wonder that Aldi recently announced a massive refurbishment campaign of its US stores beginning in 2017.
Lidl will allow shoppers of all incomes to spend less and feel fancy while doing it. That is a powerful emotional advantage.
7. Lidl Has the Potential to Make Private Label More Mainstream
Compared to Europe, the US is much less developed in private label. Lidl’s business model is flexible enough to accommodate that. Lidl offers a mix of branded and private label products (with a heavy bias toward private label). However, the time might be right for Lidl to help the private label trend to explode in the US.
Consider the following:
Aldi has been successfully operating in the US for 50 years — selling almost exclusively private label products.
26% of Kroger’s sales now come from its own-label products.
Costco’s Kirkland’s brand is arguably the largest premium mega-brand in the world.
Now, enter Lidl. A German grocer who relentlessly expands by giving its stores a local feel and offering tremendous value and quality and rock-bottom prices through their private label offerings. The time feels right.
Additionally, Lidl’s support for its private label products isn’t the same “no-frills” approach used by Aldi. For example, in the UK, Lidl hosted a massive Twitter campaign around the #lidllobster. Lobster typically retails for £40in the UK. Over Christmas 2016, Lidl encouraged shoppers to tweet about the “Lidl Lobsters” in order to reduce their price. Even celebrities got in on the act. By the time the promotion finished, Lidl was selling lobster in the UK for as low as £2.99. Promotions of this kind are not only innovative, but could dramatically disrupt US retail — especially as Lidl attempts to use them to establish their private label products in the US.
8. All of This Means Lidl Also Poses a Significant Challenge for the Dollar Channel
Mainstream media likes to focus on the potential of a Walmart/Lidl or Kroger/Lidl or Aldi/Lidl rivalry in the US. However, in my opinion, the channel that has the biggest risk from Lidl, and its collateral impact on the US retail ecosystem, is the Dollar Channel.
Between Lidl and the Dollar Channe, shopper demographics will likely overlap. The Dollar Channel is also expanding West and will now have fiercer competition from Aldi’s needing to expand there in the wake of Lidl’s US entry. As Walmart and traditional grocers lower prices to stymie Lidl, they will also close the price gap v. stores like Dollar General and Family Dollar.
Lastly, although Lidl will have a predominant assortment of private label items, Lidl also carries national brands. Their strategy in Europe has been to carry leading branded performers in key categories. This is often more pronounced when their stores are nearby an Aldi as a way to differentiate their stores’ proposition v. their private-label-heavy rival. Previously, stores like Dollar General and Aldi could co-exist in the US because Dollar General carries national brands at great prices v. Aldi who eschews national brands in favor of their own labels. Now, the environment will be different, and Lidl will be pushing the Dollar Channel on the value of national brands as well.
9. Lidl Has “Not Yet Begun to Fight” in E-Commerce
As I said above, I believe that Lidl will be even more disruptive to US retail than even Amazon.com. Most of what is published about Lidl in the US focuses on its brick & mortar operations. However, Lidl has been quietly expanding its e-commerce savvy. First, if you visit any of Lidl’s country portals, you will notice they are tailored CRM experiences. If you did not know Lidl was a German grocer, you would assume that it is a company native to the country’s website you are visiting.
Secondly, it appears that Lidl is attempting to take-on Amazon Fresh in Europe with its acquisition of grocery delivery service, Kochzauber. This, combined with Online Grocery Pick-Up tests in Berlin, and the expansion of e-commerce capabilities in the Low Countries and China, Lidl is quietly building its E-Commerce portfolio. This has led some to question whether Lidl’s existing (and massive) distribution network throughout Europe doesn’t already give them a leg-up on Amazon in Europe if they only had the will to seriously get into the online game.
Imagine what this could mean for the US. Kroger, Meijer, and Walmart are all experimenting with grocery pick-up and delivery programs. Lidl is testing and learning the same thing overseas. It is therefore wrong to think of Lidl as “just” a brick & mortar operation. They are, in fact, an omni-channel “diamond-in-the-rough.”
10. Fear of the Unknown
The most terrifying thing about Lidl is that no one knows what to expect. Lidl has historically been successful by adapting to whatever market environment it enters. Lidl finds a way to feel local. But what does that mean for the US? What levers will they pull to make their proposition work in the United States? One thing is for certain. Whatever Lidl looks like in the US, it will include the best of what they do so well in Europe, but it will also have a uniquely American-flair. They have a tremendous arsenal of tactics and the ability to “hold their breath and wait” as a privately-held company. Until June 15, anything we know about Lidl is either speculation or based on the past. However, the future is unknown, and that, among other things, makes Lidl an unpredictable and disconcerting proposition to US retailers.
Conclusion:
Lidl did not grow to be Europe’s largest grocer on accident. They did it by being tremendously innovative and knowing their customer. Just the threat of their entering the US has already wrought significant change on the US retail landscape. When the first doors open on June 15th, clever Field Agents will make a killing by taking gigs to photograph the inside of the new stores because every retailer and vendor in America will want to know what they are like. Until then, all we can do is speculate. If you are going to speculate on what the entry of this hard-discount German grocer means for US retail, think big.Lone Conservative’s Peter D’Abrosca compiled a list of eleven “asinine and downright perplexing” courses offered at varying universities and colleges in the upcoming academic semester.
The selected courses all feature neo-Marxist allusions to "intersectionality"; the ranking of assorted arbitrarily-defined groups — usually racial, ethnic, and sexual — into hierarchies of oppressed status.
Observers should note that Ivy League universities such as Harvard, Princeton, Stanford and others — as well as many other universities and colleges — enjoy tax-free status as 501(c)(3) non-profit organizations.
See them below.
1. Oberlin College — How to Win a Beauty Pageant: Race, Gender, Culture, & U.S. National Identity
“This course examines US beauty pageants from the 1920s to the present. Our aim will be to analyze pageantry as a unique site for the interplay of race, gender, class, sexuality, and nation. We will learn about cultural studies methodology, including close reading, cultural history, critical discourse analysis, and ethnography, and use those methods to understand the changing identity of the US over time. This course includes a field visit to a pageant in Ohio.”
2. Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) — Transracial Bodies, Transracial Selves
“Technological advances in surgery, hormonal therapy, psychiatry, [and] cultural warfare are catching up to the transgender presence: the gendered body is not necessarily that with which we were born, but one that can be crafted to match the real body of our psyche, our dreams. Blackness, Whiteness, Asianness, Latinness, the whole rainbow of racial identification, is still construed as biologically inescapable and inevitable. the often negative reaction to transracialism is contrary to the everyday experience that actually finds racial identification as a process that is always transracial. Declaring ourselves racially, we all cross restricted zones in becoming ourselves. In this course, we will use the discourse of transgenderism to build an alternate vocabulary of race.”
3. Stanford University — Love as a Force for Social Justice
“This course will explore the concept of agape love (compassion/kindness) as a force for social justice and action and as the inspiration for service and the application of knowledge to positive social change. Biological, psychological, religious, and social perspectives of love will be discussed, drawing on the expertise of people from a variety of disciplines.”
4. UCLA — Queering American History
“History of sexual and gender minorities in U.S. Topics include changing norms, romantic friendships, medical discourse, liberation politics, post-Stonewall culture, AIDS, transgender movement, queer theory, and politics.”
5. Swarthmore College — Sex, Gender, and the Bible
“The first two chapters of the biblical book of Genesis offer two very different ancient accounts of the creation of humanity and the construction of gender. The rest of the book of Genesis offers a unique portrayal of family dynamics, drama and dysfunction, full of complex and compelling narratives where gender is constantly negotiated and renegotiated. In this class, we will engage in close readings of primary biblical sources and contemporary feminist and queer scholarship about these texts, as we explore what the first book of the Bible says about God, gender, power, sexuality, and family values.”
6. Brown University — Feminist Theory for a Heated Planet
“The ecological crises – the “sixth extinction,” “global warming,” “the eruption of Gaia” – have forced many humans to challenge contingent boundaries drawn in more or less compelling ways in the Western world. Dualisms opposing nature to culture, the human and the nonhuman, the natural and the technological, the feminine and the masculine, seem more destabilized than ever. When geologists came up with a new epoch called the “Anthropocene,” feminist theory was well equipped to problematize this allegedly omnipotent “anthropos.” Reciprocally, queer, post-colonial, and feminist theories have re-thought the never so normative, hardly stable, greatly unknown, nature of nature.”
7. University of Chicago — Gendering Privacy
“Interest in privacy has surged in recent decades in light of the emergence of Big Data, the rise of increasingly sophisticated methods of surveillance, and the ubiquity of networked social media in everyday life. Yet privacy remains a notoriously slippery concept to pin down—across disciplines, privacy has been conceptualized variously as a legal right, a psychological state of being, a set of preferences, and a boundary-making process. In this course, we take a sociological approach to privacy, starting with the notion that privacy is at once a decidedly “micro” individual |
-rounder Andy Dalton got in Cincinnati last season.
Dalton was hit 60 times in 2011. Only three quarterbacks were contacted less, and one of them threw for 5,000 yards.
Adding a quality right tackle who will protect Washington’s new signal-calling investment would be a major step toward giving Griffin (or Luck) a chance to meet the lofty expectations that will be placed in front of them as they begin their NFL careers.“The Episcopal Church should really communicate that God loves everybody,” said Roy Kim, 40, who is engaged to an Episcopal priest, the Rev. Clayton Crawley. “The Episcopal Church does do that better than most churches, but it’s a great opportunity now to really, unequivocally say that.”
He and Father Crawley worship at St. Paul’s Chapel, which is part of Trinity Wall Street in Lower Manhattan. In keeping with the local bishop’s directive, Trinity’s priests will not officiate at same-sex marriages, and the parish has not decided whether to allow them to bless such unions.
The Episcopal Church’s rules define marriage as a “union of a man and a woman” but also say the clergy must “conform to the laws of the state” governing marriage. In 2009, the denomination approved a resolution saying that “bishops, particularly those in dioceses within civil jurisdictions where same-gender marriage, civil unions or domestic partnerships are legal, may provide generous pastoral response to meet the needs of members of this church.”
But New York State’s bishops differ over just what a “generous pastoral response” means, and even the bishops most supportive of gay rights are struggling to balance their desire to sanctify the relationships of all of their parishioners with their reluctance to further alienate conservative Anglicans in Africa and even the United States.
The bishops of the Long Island and Central New York Dioceses have authorized priests to preside at same-sex weddings; the bishop of the New York Diocese (which includes three of the city’s five boroughs) is allowing them to bless but not officiate at such rites; the bishop of the Albany Diocese is barring any involvement by priests; and the bishops of the Rochester and Western New York Dioceses remain undeclared.
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“It could appear to someone looking from outside the church that this is all we’re talking about, and it isn’t,” said Bishop Lawrence C. Provenzano of the Long Island Diocese. “It finds its place in the larger question of how you minister to the wider world.”
Bishop Provenzano, whose diocese includes Brooklyn and Queens, concluded that a “generous response” allowed presiding over the marriage rite. But Bishop Mark S. Sisk of the New York Diocese found that the “generous response” resolution did not supersede the canon law defining marriage.
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“The landscape regarding marriage is still changing across the country, within the church and for gay or lesbian couples themselves,” Bishop Sisk, who supported the legalization of same-sex marriage, said in an interview conducted by e-mail. “The church is still in the process of creating liturgies for these rites and incorporating them into church law.”
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A number of gay Episcopalians professed sympathy for what they viewed as Bishop Sisk’s effort to balance competing views.
“That’s a fair middle-of-the road-position,” said Mary O’Shaughnessy, coordinator of the New York metropolitan area chapter of Integrity USA, which advocates equal treatment for gay men and lesbians in the Episcopal Church. “There is nothing that I will call homophobic about that.”
Derek Baker, 46, also expressed understanding for Bishop Sisk’s predicament.
“He’s between a very pointy rock and a very firm hard place,” said Mr. Baker, who plans to have his marriage blessed at the Church of the Ascension in Greenwich Village, where he has been a parishioner for two decades.
The situation is particularly awkward for gay priests like Father Crawley. Bishop Sisk has said that gay and lesbian priests “living in committed relationships” should marry — even though they cannot do so in church.
“That’s called hypocrisy,” said the Rev. Michael W. Hopkins, rector of the Church of St. Luke & St. Simon Cyrene in Rochester. Father Hopkins is a past president of Integrity USA.
But Bishop Sisk responded, “The expectation that clergy in relationships will marry is not a demand, nor does it come with a specific timeline.” He also said clergy members could be creative in fashioning liturgies that might include a civil marriage conducted in the church but solemnized by a secular official, followed by a pastoral blessing offered by a priest.
Some gay and lesbian Episcopalians said they were content to allow the church to proceed slowly because they believed it was moving in what they viewed as the right direction. The issue of same-sex marriage will most likely be raised again at the church’s next national conference, next summer.
“The bishop might be completely behind gay marriage, but he also understands that unless we have the conversation, and unless we are patient, the church will break,” said Javier Galitó-Cava, a gay Episcopalian and actor who worships at St. Paul’s. “I want to kick and scream and say ‘How dare you, I’m not a second class citizen’ — but if I want this to happen, for myself and for my children, we have to take it one step at a time.”Valerie Medvedev was a Soviet air force technician servicing air force planes and jets. He finished pilot’s college in Russia but instead of being a real pilot he had to work on the ground for over eight years. Later he became a professor in one of the Soviet and then Russian air force universities. The images are pretty much awesome combining an artistic approach and the honest emotions of an officer who had to serve in the distant Russian air field during the late Soviet era. His depiction of planes is pretty much realistic and the people are more comic-like though his attention to the smallest detail – like uniforms etc is pretty much stunning. Also if you look on the top image there is a striped flag on the background – this was an official flag of the Soviet Air Force – it would be a motif on some of the further drawings you’ll see inside:
“Monday at work”
“Where is that freaking screw driver??”
“In my hometown its a season of apricots bloom already…”. Valerie has served in distant Northern airfield.
See here is a flag again, emanating right out of the centre of attention inside of the officer’s cafeteria.
During the duty hours time’s passing slow.
Spring..
As you can see from his photos officers serving on such distant airfields had to live in pretty much primitive conditions – unpaved streets, village houses, cloth string with drying cloths and kids together with chicken. Also if you look on the ground there are pieces of military airfield pavement pilots used in their own homes to cover the puddles and dirt.
“We need an engineer!”
Technicians are happy – no flight today because of weather.
As you figured out probably all officers including Valerie were obsessed with women.The sight of six tiny figures inching up the smooth glass exterior of Europe's tallest building was almost too much for some of the onlookers gathered below.
"Rather them than me," said Nigel Steward, 55, who was on a day trip from home in Surrey with his wife and her sister. "We were on the viewing platform earlier and could see them coming up. It was quite a sight."
Steward was one of hundreds of people craning their necks at the base of the Shard in central London as a team of six environmental campaigners scaled the 310-metre glass tower above London Bridge to draw attention to Shell's oil and gas drilling plans in the Arctic.
Speaking on a mobile phone, perched two thirds of the way up the building, one of the climbers, Victoria Henry, 32, told the Guardian the climb had been exhilarating but challenging.
"We are all exhausted because we are carrying a lot of weight and have been going since early this morning but it is going really well.
"It seems that our message about what is happening in the Arctic is really getting out there, which is great."
The idea for the protest was hatched two months ago when several Greenpeace activists visited the Shard's viewing platform. "We were standing there and realised that we could see three Shell buildings including its HQ," said Ben Stewart, head of media at Greenpeace. "We realised if we can see them, they can see the Shard, so it seemed like the perfect place to get our message across to them."
A group of female Greenpeace activists took up the challenge under the code-name Sigmund – "after Freud and his theories on why people climb tall buildings" – and a detailed plan was put in place.
Stewart said: "It has taken a lot of work and the people involved have not had much sleep."The activists – all experienced climbers – arrived at the base of the Shard at 4.20am yesterday in a specially designed van with a "flip roof". This allowed them to lock themselves inside, push a ladder through a hole in the roof and clamber onto the top of London Bridge station's ticket hall. From there they could access the bottom of the Shard and start the climb.
Greenpeace said the women – who were sustained by a diet of energy bars and cheese bagels – used a combination of traditional mountain-climbing and rope access techniques used by commercial building climbers. Each stage of the climb required the lead climber to free-climb a section of the building. Once she reached a secure position, she fixed a rope to the external skeleton of the building and the rest of the group would follow using the rope. All the climbers were wearing harnesses, meaning they would not fall more than six metres if they slipped.
Five stopped 18 metres below the top before the youngest of the group – Wiola Smul, a 23-year-old student from Poland – made the final ascent. She reached the top before 7pm but as the climb had taken several hours longer than the women had expected the group did not have time to unveil the giant polar bear down the side of the building, although they did unfurl a "Save the Arctic" banner, to cheers from supporters below. The women then made their way inside the building.
Scotland Yard said that all six protesters had been arrested on suspicion of aggravated trespass.
Greenpeace activists unveil a flag at the top of the Shard as part of a campaign to draw attention to Shell's Arctic drilling plans. Photograph: Anthony Devlin/PA
Apart from the climb itself Greenpeace set up a sophisticated media operation with a live stream from cameras mounted on the women's helmets and a live radio commentary over it. Organisers say they had expected 200 to 300 people to log on at any one time but as the climbers were reaching the top of the building there were more than 13,000 following the event in real time."The media interest has been fantastic and I think it has really helped to raise the issue of what is happening in the Arctic," said Stewart.During the afternoon, as the climbers continued their ascent Greenpeace issued a statement outlining its concerns about Shell's plans for drilling in the Arctic."Shell is leading the oil companies' drive into the Arctic, investing billions in its Alaskan and Russian drilling programmes," it read. "A worldwide movement of millions has sprung up to stop them, but Shell is refusing to abandon its plans."
Shell said it respected the right of Greenpeace to engage in an "exchange of views" about their operations, but added: "If responsibly developed, Arctic energy resources can help offset supply constraints and maintain energy security for consumers throughout the world." "We work extensively with global Arctic stakeholders to research and develop standards and best practice on biodiversity, ecology, marine sound, oil spill prevention and response, safety and health."
A spokesman for the building, designed by the Italian architect Renzo Piano, said: "The Shard is being used by protesters as part of a campaign. Our primary focus is on the safety of the protesters and the workers and visitors to the building. We are working with the relevant authorities to try to ensure the safety of those concerned."
Below, as the women neared the top, there was a mixture of bemusement and admiration among commuters heading into London Bridge station. "They must be bloody crazy going up there," said Andrew Symonds, 26. "It gives me the shakes just watching."
But scaffolder Johnny Arthur, 59, had nothing but admiration. "I say good luck to them. They want to make a statement and they are prepared to do something about it – I think it is great because people have to realise there are consequences to what we are doing. I don't want to be in the position in a couple of years where we are showing children pictures of tigers or polar bears and saying 'we used to have animals like this'."Booty's
Booty's will expand in 2015 with Ursa Major inside the South Market District development.(Dinah Rogers, NOLA.com / The Times-Picayune)
The shades were drawn at Booty's on Tuesday afternoon (Jan. 5). Butcher paper covered the glass doors. Before the holidays a sign, since removed, said the Bywater bar and restaurant at 800 Louisa St. would take an "extended winter break."
Nick Vivion, who owned Booty's with Kevin Farrell, confirmed however that Booty's was closed for good.
Booty's offered globally inspired street food, with a menu that divided into items served on sticks, in cones or meant to be eaten with hands. The cocktails used exotic ingredients. The coffee was from Stumptown. And the registers accepted Bitcoin.
The restaurant sat on stretch that at one point was the center of new commercial activity in Bywater. Maurepas Foods, an early pioneer of Bywater's recent dining boom, was down the block. Oxalis opened across the street.
Maurepas, however, also closed in September 2015. Its building remains vacant.
Vivion and Farrell also ran the short-lived Ursa Major. The restaurant, whose menu was inspired by cultures that "followed the stars," opened in late May in the South Market District Development and closed five months later.
In a lawsuit, Vivion and Farrell blamed the failure of Ursa Major on problems with the South Market District's construction, including allegations of sewer smells filling the restaurant.
UPDATE (1/7/15): Gregg Morris renovated and owns 800 Louisa St., which Vivion and Farrell leased for Booty's. On Thursday (Jan. 7) he told NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune that numerous people had contacted him about leasing the Bywater location.
"I don't want people to think that the Bywater is going down. It's not," Morris said.
He pointed to the interest from other restaurateurs as evidence of the area's strength.
"I want somebody in there that will do well and be part of the neighborhood," he said.
He expects to select a new tenant later this month.
***
Got a tip? Know some restaurant news? Email Todd A. Price at TPrice@NOLA.comor call 504.826.3445. Follow him on Twitter (@TPrice504) or Facebook (ToddAPriceEatsDrinks).After holding a public meeting to hear from employees, a union-based “workers rights board” has asked the administration of Marin General Hospital to respond to a range of complaints from hospital workers.
The North Bay Workers Rights Board heard testimony from 10 hospital employees at a May 6 forum in Terra Linda and sent a letter containing its preliminary findings to Marin General CEO Lee Domanico, asking him to respond prior to issuing its final report.
One of the board’s findings was “a pattern of understaffing at Marin General Hospital which is the result of cost saving practices and worker turnover due to worker dissatisfaction.”
“A team is reviewing that document now,” Marin General spokeswoman Jamie Maites wrote in an email Friday, noting that the hospital has been rated as being among the top hospitals in the nation for patient safety. “It is unfortunate but not uncommon for the union to make false accusations and/or distort facts as we enter contract negotiations.”
The rights board was created by North Bay Jobs with Justice in 2014. North Bay Jobs was founded by 11 unions and six immigrant rights, peace and social justice, civil rights and community organizations.
The board provides a public forum in which workers can bring complaints against employers. Its 26 members include three Marin County representatives: Marin County Supervisor Damon Connolly; Paul da Silva, an environmental science instructor at College of Marin; and the Rev. Lindsey Kerr, pastor at Christ Church United Methodist and First United Methodist Church in San Rafael.
“This is the first time that we have had workers from Marin County request that we hold a hearing and investigate an employer,” said Matt Myres, a retired teacher and school administrator who serves as the board’s chairman.
Connolly said, “At the recent hearing in Terra Linda, we heard important perspectives from workers who have first-hand knowledge of the hospital’s operations. The findings that came out of the hearing are preliminary at this point, and reflect information given to the board through worker testimony. The process is ongoing.”
The board states in its preliminary findings, “There has been a reduction in the staffing of certified nurses assistants which may result in the hospital at times being in violation of the required staffing matrix.”
The board also states that the hospital has reduced the use of monitor technicians during the night shift, requiring nurses to oversee patients using remote monitors while caring for other patients.
David Wallace, a monitor technician who has worked at Marin General for 15 years, stated in his testimony that, “The constant understaffing of certified nursing assistants since Sutter left has caused us to take on additional roles. Now we’re having to answer patient call lights because the nurses and nursing assistants are busy with other patients.”
Barbara Ryan, a Marin General registered nurse who serves as the California Nurses Association/National Nurses United representative, said the nurses signed a new contract in fall 2016 after more than a year of negotiations. Ryan said, however, that the hospital is still not staffed adequately to provide nurses with meal and break relief.
The board states in its findings, “This pattern of understaffing is impacting and threatening the quality of patient care.”
It wrote that “sometimes the hospital does not provide the required ration of one nurse for every four telemetry patients.” Telemetry nurses monitor patients’ vital signs with a life sign-measuring device such as an electrocardiogram.
Two Teamster union representatives also testified at the May 6 hearing. Tim Jenkins, a labor representative and strategic researcher for Teamsters Local 856, stated that the number of deficiencies found at Marin General by the state Department of Public Health has increased significantly since Sutter Health stopped managing the hospital in 2010.
While Sutter was managing Marin General from 2004 to 2010, the hospital was cited for 149 deficiencies; since the hospital reverted to public management in 2011 it has been cited for 307 deficiencies. Each deficiency is a substantiated allegation for a violation of federal and/or state laws or regulations.
From 2011 to 2016, Novato Community Hospital was cited for 119 deficiencies and Kaiser Permanente Medical Center in San Rafael was cited for 23 deficiencies. But the patient census of Marin General is significantly larger than either of those hospitals. In 2016, Marin General had 41,573 patient census days; Kaiser in San Rafael had 15,911 patient days; and Novato Community had 6,114 patient days.
When the Leapfrog Group, an employer-backed nonprofit focused on health care quality, issued its latest scores in April all three hospitals received an A grade, the highest rating given, for patient safety.
Maites noted that Leapfrog designated Marin General as a “Top General Hospital,” putting it in the top 3 percent for quality in the nation.
“Marin General Hospital values its employees and has many processes in place to ensure staffing levels are appropriate, that team members are treated fairly — no matter their position, and above all that the environment we work in is safe not only for ourselves but for our patients,” she said.I will give you some history about why I am sharing the story about Thomas Sayers Ellis's abusive behavior now. I didn't always stand up for myself. Rape is a loaded word. No man wants to be a rapist. It implies cowardice as well as violence. It undermines the sexual power and magnetism that every man would like to have. No woman wants to be known as a rape victim, either. I want to be known for my strength, intelligence, and talent. Not known as a victim. My story with Michael Gira is an absolute tragedy that I have kept secret for too long. I am only speaking of it now because after being accused of "lynching" Thomas, I cannot ethically keep Michael's secret any longer. He's a white guy, and his crime was far worse than what Thomas did to me or Margaret.
Michael Gira and I had a beautiful, fruitful collaboration on my album Parplar. He was my record label boss and producer. He was my beloved, trusted mentor, really my guru. I lived in his house with him and his wife Siobhan and I babysat their daughter frequently in between working on new songs and incorporating Michael's valuable input. I loved him more than I have loved just about anyone, but I did not want to have sex with him, and I made that very clear over and over. In the spring of 2008, on the night that we finished recording Parplar at Trout Recordings with Bryce Goggin, we went out to eat at a steakhouse. My friend Johnny Dido was our waiter. We were with Michael's friends and they were drinking heavily and encouraging me to keep up with them. I'm a pretty lightweight drinker. At the end of the night it became obvious that I was too drunk to drive home, too drunk to even walk straight. Michael invited me to stay with his friends. They said they had a bed for me and that Michael would sleep on the floor. I trusted them and agreed.
At the apartment of Michael's friends, I crawled into bed without changing my clothes or brushing my teeth. I just passed out. A little later Michael woke me up coughing. He had bad asthma, and sleeping on the floor in the dust was aggravating it. I told him, slurred, half asleep, that he could sleep in the bed, just not to touch me. A little bit later I woke up with his penis inside me, no condom. As I opened my eyes, he said, "Uh, this doesn't feel right." and he pulled out.
The next morning, Michael begged me not to tell his wife about what happened. I drove home, numb. Then I took my bike around the block and got hit by a car, injuring my hip. That day I wrote one of my best songs, "The Butcher, or Without a Body or a Numb and Useless Mind." It was the last song I would be able to write for a few years. I spent the next 6 months in a suicidal depression. Michael would call frequently to talk about the progress on my record and to talk dirty to me. He would tell me he loved me and that he would leave his wife for me. I would refuse to talk dirty to him and try to bring the conversation back to business. When we met, the interactions were often sexually charged and I would squirm out of them as best I could. We never had sex again although he tried over and over, making me absolutely miserable. Mastering the record with Fred Kevorkian was particularly difficult. Michael took the opportunity to kiss me in the elevator, and I complied because I really, really, really wanted to be a successful musician. He'd often say to me, "I'm gonna make you a star, Larkin. You can trust me."
I stuck with this pattern for a long time, through my record release and the tours (with Michael!!) supporting it, but when it came time to write a new record, I found my creativity was totally blocked. I told Michael that he had had sex with me against my will and that I didn't feel safe with him any more. He then dropped me from Young God Records.
Many people have assumed, over the years, that Michael and I had a love affair, and in a way, for a time, maybe we did. But I never consented to having sex with him. I wouldn't have wanted to ruin such an important opportunity that way. Technically, he raped me. It took me a long time to admit that to myself. Years. Michael Gira, my producer, raped me and dumped me from his label when I confronted him about it, needing to feel safe.
What happened was awful, but as a prison abolitionist, an anarchist, and a nice person I didn't want to destroy his whole life with a rape charge. Looking back, he didn't think twice about destroying mine.
Sending my love to #Kesha I know how you feel. At least I got out of my record deal, though I was never offered another one after that.
Might as well have the whole post:Disgusting.The Toronto Blue Jays were busy on Friday night, first opting to non-tender infielder Ryan Goins and then trading for the man many expect will replace him, in Aledmys Diaz.
Diaz, 27, joins the Blue Jays via a trade with the Cardinals, with outfield prospect J.B. Woodman heading to St. Louis in return.
Here’s what you need to know about the Blue Jays’ newest shortstop.
Name: Aledmys Díaz
Position: Shortstop
Throws: Right
Bats: Right
Age: 27
Height: Six foot one | Weight: 195 pounds
Contract status: Under team control for the next five years and will be arbitration-eligible for the first time in 2020.
He was an all-star as a rookie
Diaz’s path the major leagues wasn’t necessary a smooth one—his MLB eligibility was delayed as a penalty for lying about his age following his defection from Cuba in 2012, and he finally signed a four-year deal with St. Louis in 2014—but once he did arrive on baseball’s biggest stage early in the 2016 season, his impact was immediate.
Diaz was one of the 2016 campaign’s best surprises. He was originally slated to spend the season in triple-A, but ended up as the Cardinals’ starting shortstop just a few days into the MLB season. He established himself as a promising young offensive player, singling on his first major league at-bat and hitting his first home run just a few days later.
As strong as his batting was in 2016, questions about his defence arose. While he greatly improved that aspect of his game as the season wore on, Diaz finished 2016 with 16 errors—fourth league-wide in that category.
As the season progressed, Diaz’s hitting earned him all-star honours and eventually ranked him fifth in National League Rookie of the Year voting. By year’s end, his stat line featured a.300 batting average, 121 hits and 17 home runs in 111 games to go with 69 RBIs and.369 on-base percentage.
He was close friends with Jose Fernandez
One of Diaz’s closest friends growing up in Santa Clara, Cuba was late Miami Marlins pitcher Jose Fernandez. The two grew up on the same street and spent their childhoods playing baseball both with and against one another. In fact, according to Cardinals beat writer Derrick Goold, Diaz’s father and uncle were the ones who encouraged Fernandez to pick up baseball in the first place.
After news of Fernandez’s death in a boating accident in September 2016, Diaz vowed to honour his childhood friend throughout his baseball career.
He also honoured him with an incredible grand slam—the first of his career—in his first game back following his friend’s funeral, an emotional moment for every baseball fan watching.
“He loved this game and liked to compete,” Diaz told Benjamin Hochman of The St. Louis Post-Dispatch at the time. “That’s what he gave us as baseball players and friends. Every time I get the chance to put on the uniform, I want to give everything to the fans.”
His game took a step back in 2017
Diaz’s sophomore season started on high note with his first multi-home run game on April 8, but his game struggled as the season went on, in part due to a lingering thumb injury. The Cardinals eventually sent him to triple-A in Memphis midway through the season in an effort to help him develop his game on both sides of the ball.
He finished the 2017 season with 74 hits, seven home runs, 20 RBIs and.290 on-base percentage while committing six defensive errors in 79 games—including an eight-game September call-up.
So, what does this mean for the Blue Jays?
As we mentioned up top, all signs point to Diaz being a younger replacement for Goins, 29, with a bigger offensive upside.
As Sportsnet’s Shi Davidi reminds us, Blue Jays general manager Ross Atkins said his priority this off-season was on bringing in a versatile, offensively-inclined middle infielder. Diaz is just that—and at a low cost, to boot. Though Diaz has spent most of his defensive innings at the shortstop position, he also got a few reps as a third baseman, second baseman, and in left field.70 years ago a legend was born. A pioneer in the early days of Reggae music and a prophet to many for generations to come, today we celebrate the birthday of Robert Nesta Marley (Feb. 6, 1945 – May 11, 1981)
Tribute To The Bob Marley & Wailers “The Island Years”
Bob Marley & The Wailers: A mix of tracks collected from the Island records years (1972 +). I’ve mixed up some of my personal favs with some of the popular classics.
01. Natural Mystic
02. Crazy Baldhead
03. Roots
04. Roots, Rock, Reggae
05. Kinky Reggae
06. All Day, All Night
07. Midnight Ravers
08. Burnin’ & Lootin’
09. Heathen (Live)
10. Talkin’ Blues
11. War
12. No More Trouble
13. Three Little Birds
14. Exodus
15. Them Belly Full
16. One Love
17. Waiting In Vain
18. Natty Dread
19. Put It On
20. Stir it Up (Live)
21. One Drop
22. Real Situation
23. Forever Loving Jah
24. Jah Live (Shamann’s “Fun With Dub” Remix)
25. Redemption Song (Final Concert – Pittsburgh 1980)
Bonus track: Get Up, Stand Up (Last Song Ever Performed – Pittsburgh 1980)
Download This MixMore than 7,500 tons of food has been destroyed in Russia since the Kremlin's introduction of a ban on Western imports in August last year, the Interfax news agency reported Friday.
Almost all the food that was destroyed — 7,282 tons — was of plant origin. 228.6 tons were products of animal origin, the news agency reported, citing the Rosselkhoznadzor state agricultural watchdog.
The destruction of banned food products from the West was ordered by President Vladimir Putin in August 2015.
The measure came a year after Russia imposed a ban on a wide range of food imports from the European Union, the U.S., Norway, Australia and Canada in response to the sanctions imposed on Moscow over the annexation of and its alleged involvement in the conflict in eastern Ukraine.
Last year, Russia added Albania, Montenegro, Iceland, Liechtenstein and Ukraine to its food embargo list. In June, Putin signed a decree prolonging the ban until the end of 2017.This story is part of a special National Geographic News series on global water issues.
Groundwater depletion will soon be as important a factor in contributing to sea-level rise as the melting of glaciers other than those in Greenland and Antarctica, scientists say.
That's because water pumped out of the ground for irrigation, industrial uses, and even drinking must go somewhere after it's used—and, whether it runs directly into streams and rivers or evaporates and falls elsewhere as rain, one likely place for it to end up is the ocean.
To find out how much of an effect this has on sea level, a team of Dutch scientists led by hydrologist Yoshihide Wada, a Ph.D. researcher at Utrecht University, divided the Earth's land surface into 31-by-31-mile (50-by-50 kilometer) squares on a grid to calculate present and future groundwater usage.
To make the calculation as precise as possible, they used not only current groundwater-use statistics from each country, but also economic growth and development projections. They also took into account the impact of climate change on regional water needs, considering "all the major factors that contribute," Wada said.
Because aquifers can be refilled, the scientists also used climate, rainfall, and hydrological models to calculate the rate of groundwater recharge for each region. From this, they projected the net rate of groundwater depletion.
The Reservoir Connection
Newly constructed reservoirs above ground can offset the net loss of water underground. These, Wada said, trap water that would otherwise reach the sea.
Before 1990 or so, he added, that offset was large enough that the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change never took groundwater depletion into account in predicting 21st-century sea-level rise.
But that offset is no longer as significant as it once was, Wada said. "There are not so many places where people can build new reservoirs," he said. "They are already built."
Already, he and his colleagues have found, groundwater depletion is adding about 0.6 millimeters per year (about one-fortieth of an inch) to the Earth's sea level. By 2050, he said, the triple pressures of growing population, economic development, and higher irrigation needs due to a warming climate will increase that to 0.82 millimeters per year—enough to raise sea levels by 40 millimeters (1.6 inches) above 1990 levels. Between 2050 and 2100, according to some estimates, sea levels would rise even faster.
To put that in perspective, he said, groundwater depletion adds about 25 percent to projected rates of sea-level rise, making it the largest contributor from land to sea-level rise other than the melting of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets. Even the melting of glaciers in the world's high mountains won't contribute more to rising sea levels, Wada said.
Multiple Challenges
What's more, groundwater depletion isn't the only way in which water now stored on land can find its way into the sea. The draining of wetlands, Wada said, has the same effect, as do declining water levels in bodies of water from the Dead Sea to Asia's giant Caspian Sea.
Even deforestation adds to the effect, he said, because trees hold large quantities of water that evaporates when the wood is used for lumber, paper, and other manufactured goods.
"This water goes to the oceans, as well," Wada said.
Overall, he calculated, these minor factors add nearly another 6 percent to the total effect from non-ice, land-based sources.
The Bigger Picture
Other scientists are skeptical. "This is an interesting study," said Ken Caldeira, a climate scientist at the Carnegie Institution for Science's Department of Global Ecology, in Stanford, California.
In an email, he said, the researchers might have overstated their findings by failing to realize that groundwater seeps into rivers, increasing their flow. Lowering the groundwater table will reduce this seepage, he said, partially offsetting the effect by reducing the amount of river water reaching the sea.
Also, he noted, the study projects that groundwater depletion and related effects could produce as much as a 4-inch (10-centimeter) rise in sea level by 2100.
"Since land covers only about 30 percent of the planet, this means that you would need to deplete an average of 33 centimeters (about 13 inches) of water from all the land on our planet. This is a huge amount of water."
Another problem is that the study does not take into account the increasing difficulty of pumping water from depleted aquifers, said Leonard Konikow, a hydrogeologist at the U.S. Geological Survey's office in Reston, Virginia. "The rate of pumping will have to decrease."
Wada agrees this is a potential problem in the study. "We don't have good data on [that]," he said. "If the groundwater table becomes too low, the farmer with low technology might not be able to pump anymore."
But, Konikow said, his own research (published in Geophysical Research Letters) suggests that Wada's team's estimates are still too high by about 30 to 35 percent.
"Their method of estimating depletion is based on indirect calculations based on global climate models," he said. "My own estimates are based on volumetric analyses of aquifer systems throughout the world, in which we're actually looking at water-level changes in as many aquifers as possible."
Still, he noted, it's an important effect. "I think it has to be considered in predicting future sea level," he said.
Wada said the solution is to find ways of improving the efficiency of water in agriculture: in essence learning to grow more, with less.
Caldeira agreed. "I think this says more about the mismanagement of our land than it does about the threat from sea-level rise," he said.The action resulted in 90 people being arrested and a slew of charges laid — 71 criminal charges and 186 under the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act.
About 270 kilograms of dried cannabis as well as hundreds of kilograms of pot-laced food products such as chocolate, brownies and candies were seized during the raid.
"These locations have a broader impact on the surrounding neighbourhoods. There is no quality control whatsoever on these products," Saunders said as dozens of bags of seized goods were laid out before him. "They are marketed in a way to disguise the unknown and unregulated amount of THC (a chemical compound found in marijuana) in the products."
All the dispensaries targeted had been under investigation for weeks, and had been issued letters on May 18 warning them they were engaged in unlawful activities and that action would be taken if they didn't stop.
Only one pot shop shut down as a result of the warning letters, Saunders said.
"These locations cannot tell you where it's coming from nor what its contents is," he said. "You don't even |
Munchies 1.0.7
(Basilisk II)
w/ Quadra 650 ROM – There were speed issues at first, but they seemed to go away.
(Sheepshaver)
w/ New World ROM – It seems to work fine, until after about a few minutes of playing, when Sheepshaver randomly crashes/quits.
Myth: The Fallen Lords (Demo)
(Sheepshaver)
w/ Old World ROM - UNTESTED!
w/ New World ROM – It does boot and run seemingly well, albeit in software rendering mode.
N
Netscape 7.0
(Sheepshaver)
w/ Old World ROM - UNTESTED
w/ New World ROM - In one word: Perfect. Everything runs perfectly. And with Flash 7, you can even watch Youtube movies.
NS-Shaft 1.2
(Sheepshaver)
w/ Old World ROM - Works fine here.
NS-Tower 2.5
(Sheepshaver)
w/ Old World ROM - Works fine here too.
O
Odyssey: The Legend of Nemesis
(Sheepshaver)
w/ Old World ROM - It runs fine here.
Oids 2.0
(Sheepshaver)
w/ Old World ROM - This works fine in Sheepshaver, but it seems a bit too fast. Also, the game is quite erratic when you want to boot it up.
Out of this World
(Basilisk II)
w/ Quadra 650 ROM – 1.0.3 runs just fine, although it’s a bit too fast.
(Sheepshaver)
w/ Old World ROM - UNTESTED!
w/ New World ROM – Version 1.0.2 runs alright, with absolutely no errors whatsoever. 1.0.3, however, crashes and/or freezes Sheepshaver.
P
Pac the Man
(Basilisk II)
w/ Quadra 650 ROM - It runs decently, but has some odd music problems which I think have to do with Quicktime. Also, the background screws itself up once unpausing or after you've played it once (and you play again).
(Sheepshaver)
w/ New World ROM - Same as Basilisk II, other than the fact that the background doesn't screw itself up. Oh, and there's a brief pause before beginning a level.
Pac the Man 2
(Sheepshaver)
w/ New World ROM - Pac the Man 2 isn't compatible with Basilisk II, due to the fact that Basilisk II doesn't support PPC-specific coding. It takes a while to load the title screen when beginning for the first time. The about box is missing something, as indicated by a HUGE SPACE (which is where the logo is supposed to). The same things goes with when you're entering your name into the high scores table. The levels also take some time to load. Other than that, it appears to work out alright.
Payback (demo; version 1.0)
(Sheepshaver)
w/ Old World ROM - The demo is best run with Quickdraw with Goraud Shading off. You can run this with OpenGL, but it runs very slowly, takes multiple clicks to actually respond, and the textures are also missing. Trying to start the game up in more than once in a session causes the OS to bomb.
Particle Man
(Sheepshaver)
w/ Old World ROM - The game boots up, but instantly crashes Sheepshaver when you click on the menu if you are on a setting higher than 256 colors. Also, sometimes starting it up more than once each session causes a type 3 error.
PDFWriter 3.0
(Sheepshaver)
w/New World ROM - It seems to work just fine.
PixelToy 1.00
(Sheepshaver)
w/ Old World ROM - It seems to work perfectly fine, except for the pixels that can get stuck on the very top and bottom of the screen.
Pocket Tanks v. 1.00b Mac
(Sheepshaver)
w/ Old World ROM – Opening music skips a lot and there is a noticeable lag, plus it freezes time to time. There is a newer version out there, but it only supports Mac OS 10.3.9 and above.
Poing! 1.1
(Basilisk II)
w/ Quadra 650 ROM - Sound short-outs occur for some reason.
(Sheepshaver)
w/ New World ROM - Seems to work quite well.
Power Pete
(Basilisk II)
w/ Quadra 650 ROM – It runs just a little too slow for me.
(Sheepshaver)
w/ New World ROM - Sometimes, it runs way too fast to be playable. The game seems to be OK otherwise.
Prince of Destruction
(Basilisk II)
w/ Quadra 650 ROM - Volume level bar doesn't appear to work at all in the options menu. Other than that, It's OK.
(Sheepshaver)
w/ New World ROM - Volume level bar doesn't appear to work at all in the options menu. Speech seems to be quite buggy. But it seems to work OK otherwise, besides that annoying apple key thing.
Prince of Persia 2: The Shadow and The Flame
(Sheepshaver)
w/ New World ROM (?) - Runs alright, but the music is too slow.
Print66
Works great.
Q
Quagmire (1993)
(Basilisk II)
w/ Quadra 650 ROM – It works perfectly.
(Executor)
It seems to go quite slowly.
(Sheepshaver)
w/ New World ROM - It appears to be OK, aside from the sound skipping issue easily noticeable when moving.
Quake
(Sheepshaver)
w/ New World ROM - It has a somewhat playable frame rate and runs very well with a fast processor. Sound, on the other hand, lags, echoes, and in general, it's TERRIBLE! If this occurs, I heavily recommend you turn the sound off.
Quelle
(Sheepshaver)
w/ Old World ROM - It appears to work fine, albeit only the keypad seems to work.
R
Railroad Tycoon II
(Sheepshaver)
w/ New World ROM - The program goes awfully slow, presumably because of the 3D graphics it utilizes. Set the graphics settings to 'Very Low' and game might run faster.
Rainbow Painter 0.91
(Sheepshaver)
w/ Old World ROM - Using the pen causes Sheepshaver to freeze.
Rainbow Painter 2 (Demo)
(Sheepshaver)
w/ New World ROM – There are many random crashes and freezes, even for doing simple tasks.
Raptor: Air Superiority Fighter
(Sheepshaver)
w/ New World ROM - The game boots up, but the loading takes an extremely long time. And it goes so slow, even in the rather basic menu, it’s basically unplayable.
Reckless Drivin’ 1.4.4
(Sheepshaver)
w/ Old World ROM – The gameplay seems to be alright. But when you go into the options menu (and try to get out of it) or quit the game, this error shows up:
“A fatal error has occurred!!
-227 @ SetSystemVolume”
Despite having an “exit” button, it only ends up opening the same error message over and over again, leaving you no choice but to open up Task Manager or literally turn the switch off.
Resorcerer 2.4.1 Demo
(Sheepshaver)
w/ Old World ROM - Seems to work fairly decently
Rival Ball
(Sheepshaver)
w/ New World ROM - The gameplay is near perfect, since it might hang for a few seconds and unhang…which can be annoying. Also, the cursor seems to glitch out somewhat.
Rogue
(Basilisk II)
w/ Performa ROM - Locks up and crashes Basilisk, even when in black and white mode. Given the System file with the game folder, it probably doesn't like MultiFinder or System 7.
Royal Rush
(Basilisk II)
w/ Quadra 950 ROM - It appears to work just fine.
(Sheepshaver)
w/ New World ROM - Fluid, yet at the same time, ridiculously sluggish. Sound also skips for some reason.
S
Same Game 1.0.8
(Basilisk II)
w/ Quadra 650 ROM - Works perfectly fine here.
(Executor)
The “Rests” and “Gets” counters are screwed up for some reason.
(Sheepshaver)
w/ New World ROM – It runs a little slow and sound does seem to skip a bit.
w/ New World ROM - It boots up, but I’m not sure if it works. Since the files needed to play the game aren’t included, go to this address to download them:
http://seriefoot.free.fr/eng/download.html
Settlers II
(Sheepshaver)
w/ Old World ROM - I could not get this to run at all.
Shadow Warrior
(Sheepshaver)
w/ New World ROM - Runs decently even at High Quality. The bad news: IT CAN HANG QUITE FREQUENTLY!
Shadow Wraith
(Basilisk II)
w/ Quadra 650 ROM - Runs, but will crash after unpausing or using the cheat dialog.
(SheepShaver)
w/ Old World ROM - same as BII.
w/ New World ROM - Fatal Error - Not Enough Memory.
Shogo Mobile Armor Division
(Sheepshaver)
w/ New World ROM - It goes very slowly, but it runs. It also feels like you have to press the keys multiple times and rapidly in order to even get through the menu (unless you play the game at an ultra-low 320*240 resolution). The actual game runs quite slow (even if you play the game at an ultra-low 320*240 resolution, it goes about 10 frames per second). And lastly, in order to get the game running, you have to turn on the software renderer. Otherwise, if you use either of the OpenGL rendering engines, Sheepshaver crashes.
SimAnt
(Sheepshaver)
w/ New World ROM *Works great. Loaded it up from a CD and copied the folder. Sound is perfect, everything functions as it used to. I would rate this a Gold in the Compatibility scoring. It asks you if you want to switch to 16 colors for a speed increase, but at the age it is it doesn't matter and is quite speedy none the less. *No problems here. Needs 68k emulator. - 100%
SimCity 2000
(Mini vMac)
w/ Mac II ROM - Requires a build that can support color, the 640*480 resooution, and uses a 68030 processor.
(Basilisk II)
w/ Quadra 650 ROM - Seems to be OK. It might get a little slow when zooming into the city.
(Sheepshaver)
w/ New World ROM - Appears to be fine, but hangs will occur quite commonly. There are also some flickering problems when running SheepShaver full screen.
(QEMU)
w/ New World ROM - Appears to be fine, but hangs will occur quite commonly. There are also some flickering problems when running SheepShaver full screen.
SimFarm
(Sheepshaver)
w/ New World ROM - No problems here. May need 68k emulator.
SimpleText
(Basilisk II)
w/ Quadra 650 ROM - It obviously runs perfectly. (Executor)
Crashes because this relies on an actual Mac ROM and Executor didn't bother emulating this part of the Mac ROM. (Sheepshaver)
w/ Old World ROM - Unsurprisingly, it works.
w/ New World ROM - Work just fine here too.
SimStapler 6.2
(Basilisk II)
w/ Quadra 650 ROM - Works just fine. (Sheepshaver)
w/ Old World ROM - Same here. =P
SimTower
w/ New World ROM - No problems here. May need 68k emulator. - 100%
Slick Willie III 0.6
(Basilisk II)
w/ Quadra 650 ROM - The sound can glitch out quite often and lag can occur.
(Sheepshaver)
w/ New World ROM - The mouse sensitivity is too high for the game to be playable and it can cause quite a number of problems, including crashing Sheepshaver.
Slime Invaders 2.0.7
(Basilisk II)
w/ Quadra 650 ROM – It runs, but the sound spaces out and hangs at times.
(Sheepshaver)
w/ New World ROM – It works, but when you quit out, relaunching the application brings up a type -3 error.
Slithereens 1.0.1
(Sheepshaver)
w/ New World ROM - As with Escape Velocity Nova and Ferazel's Wand, it only runs in Sheepshaver builds built on March 23, 2012 and newer, due to the gamma fading code. Pressing Escape can sometimes freeze Sheepshaver, and Input Sprockets is a bit dysfunctional.
Sloppy Sokoban 1.7
(Sheepshaver)
w/ New World ROM – It boots up just fine. The graphics in the controls section of the option menu are screwed up so badly, it’s not even funny. Sometimes, the audio also gets a little screwy. Hangs may also occur.
Snapz Pro 2.0
(Sheepshaver)
w/ Old World ROM - It works more or less like it should.
Snood 2.1.1
(Sheepshaver)
w/ Old World ROM – It goes quite fast, perhaps a little too fast.
SoftPC 3.1
(Basilisk II)
w/ Quadra 650 ROM – It runs, but if you want to run it, turn off the 68040’s caches first. Otherwise, the emulation won’t work.
(Sheepshaver)
w/ New World ROM – The FPU does not work AT ALL.
SoftWindows 3.0
(Sheepshaver)
w/ OldWorld ROM - It’s a PPC-only program, so it doesn’t run in Basilisk II. DOS seems to run fine, but booting up Windows will cause Sheepshaver to crash.
Solarian II (1.0.4)
(Basilisk II)
w/ Quadra 650 ROM - Sound can short out quite a bit, but it's otherwise A-OK.
(Sheepshaver)
w/ New World ROM - Sound glitches out and hangs also occur occasionally.
Son of Cheese Toast
(Sheepshaver)
w/ Old World ROM - The lives counter is stuck at two. Otherwise, it works fine.
SoundApp 2.7.3
(Sheepshaver)
w/ Old World ROM - UNTESTED
w/ New World ROM – It runs perfectly.
Souls in the System
(Sheepshaver) w/ Old World ROM - Appears to be rather erratic. The opening movie doesn't display any visuals for some reason. You have to use the compatible graphics mode in order to run the game. In addition, when hitting the escape key twice, the countdown sequence goes by and Sheepshaver freezes. The game also has a type 3 error when you quit out of the game and boot it up again.
Space Junkie
(Sheepshaver)
w/ New World ROM – No problems here. May need 68k emulator. - 100%
Spaceward Ho! 5
(Sheepshaver)
w/ New World ROM – The intro music is very skippy at, resuming to normal at times. It runs, but is quite slow.
Spaceway 2000
(Basilisk II)
Quadra 650 ROM - Runs perfectly once you raise the memory to about 8 MB.
(Sheepshaver)
w/ New World ROM - Once you raised the memory to at least 10 MB, the game should run this game. It will hang quite commonly, but will often un-hang after ten seconds.
Spectre
(Sheepshaver)
w/ New World ROM - The simple graphics are dithered (in color), which I don't recall them originally being. Around Level 5, I got turned around and the controls locked in a direction that made it difficult to turn (twisted in instead of dropped in). This happened on previous attempts when playing as well, maybe by touching keys, but I don't remember doing so. I think Basilisk had the same problems.
SpeedRun
(Sheepshaver)
w/ New World ROM - The simple graphics are dithered (in color), which I don't recall them originally being. Around Level 5, I got turned around and the controls locked in a direction that made it difficult to turn (twisted in instead of dropped in). This happened on previous attempts when playing as well, maybe by touching keys, but I don't remember doing so. I think Basilisk had the same problems.
SpeedRun
(Sheepshaver)
w/ Old World ROM - It runs quite well and you can get fairly high scores (i.e. the Overall score being 1283).
Spin Doctor Challenger
(Basilisk II)
w/ Quadra ROM – Sound space-out issues occur through out the game. If this happens, raise the memory for it to at least 4 MB.
(Sheepshaver)
w/ Old World ROM – It works fine, but when you quit the game, the finder bar magically vanishes for a few minutes.
Squabble 1.0
(Sheepshaver)
w/ Old World ROM – It start up and plays just fine here! It does hang a bit unfortunately.
Starbound II
(Sheepshaver)
w/ Old World ROM - Might freeze and stutter occasionally. Sound might be buggy at times. But it's otherwise great.
Starcraft (DEMO)
(Sheepshaver)
w/ New World ROM - This would be a PPC-only program, making Basilisk II completely incompatible with it. The game can run, but in order to play the game, keep the “Multi-Button Mouse” option off. Hangs can occur quite frequently, but usually lasts 2 to 10 seconds. Also, graphic corruption can happen.
Steel Fighters 1.3.2
(Sheepshaver)
w/ New World ROM – It took me three tries to get this running perfectly, but it ran anyway.
Stereodrome
(Sheepshaver)
w/ Old World ROM - It seems to work fine, sans the annoying sound playing over and over again.
Stuff-it Standard 7.0.3
(Sheepshaver)
w/ New World ROM - It works quite well in Sheepshaver. However, I have yet to test out any of the extensions it might have.
Suitcase 3.0
(Sheepshaver)
w/ New World ROM – Seems to work fine.
Super DX-Ball 1.0.0b
(Sheepshaver)
w/ Old World ROM – Note that this is an OLD version of Super DX-Ball that works with 8.6 to 10.2. Newer versions don’t work at all with systems below 10.3.9. There is no audio and the game lags a little, but that might be because of file corruption (for whatever reason, I don’t know). Loading also takes a few seconds.
Super Maze Wars
(Sheepshaver)
w/ New World ROM – Good, but runs too fast, may need to be throttled via another extension - 85%
Super Munchers
(Sheepshaver)
w/ New World ROM – Seems to run okay barring a few odd crashes. - 90%
Super Resedit 2.9
(Basilisk II)
w/ Quadra 650 ROM – It runs perfectly, with no slowdown.
(Sheepshaver)
w/ Old World ROM – The sound doesn’t work and it might be very slow at times, especially with Forker. But it's otherwise decent.
Swoop 1.0.2
(Basilisk II)
w/ Quadra 650 ROM - Runs perfectly, but it runs so fast during gameplay.
(Sheepshaver)
w/ New World ROM - Has an occasional problem where the 'Register to' thread appears corrupt. The games runs perfectly otherwise, but goes way too fast during gameplay. It might slow down, but that's only temporary. Scoring also seems to be slow.
T
TechnoManiac 1.1
(Sheepshaver)
w/ Old World ROM - Appears to work somewhat decently. There is jumpy intro music and the keys being assigned to the Q key for no reason (just use the default controls). The controls also feel awkward when using the mouse. Plus, half of the time, the intro animation is skipped.
Tesserae 1.0.4
(Sheepshaver)
w/ Old World ROM - It has instabilities that can causes crashes when you run it on an OS newer 7.5 (ex.: when selecting tournament mode), but it seems to work fine otherwise.
The Incredible Machine 3
(Basilisk II)
w/ Quadra 650 ROM – Complains about not being able to create a ‘Sierra’ folder, but it runs anyway. It works perfectly fine here.
(Sheepshaver)
w/ New World ROM – It complains about not being able to create a ‘Sierra’ folder again, but it runs anyway. The game itself runs seemingly fine. Hangs may occur.
Tetris Max
(Sheepshaver)
w/ Old World ROM - It appears to work perfectly fine.
The Sims
(Sheepshaver)
w/ Old World ROM – UNTESTED!
w/ New World ROM - Perfect, except the framerate lags a bit. Both Carbon and normal executables run.
TNT Basic
(Sheepshaver)
w/ New World ROM – The compiler and some of it's demos run, but I recommend you NOT use OpenGL in the games, as games made with OpenGL crash Sheepshaver. Once again, this only runs in Sheepshaver (though it might run in PearPC, I haven't tested it there).
Toggle Trouble Math
(Sheepshaver)
w/ New World ROM - Runs okay (if fast) when not crashing. - 80%
Tomb Raider (Demo)
(Sheepshaver)
w/ New World ROM – It took me forever to get this son of a bitch to run, but I managed to do so. The game works fine with software rendering on 16-bit color, with high detail. Unfortunately, you can’t run it under the RAVE rendering mode, since it causes type -7 error.
Tomb Raider I
(Sheepshaver)
w/ Old World ROM: UNTESTED!
w/ New World ROM: Runs fine in Software mode, other modes are disabled. The framerate is ok.
Tomb Raider II
(Sheepshaver)
w/ Old World ROM: It seems to run fine, but you can only run the game in software rendering mode. Quitting the game and starting up again causes an error, making Sheepshaver reset.
Tristan IE 2.5.1
(Sheepshaver)
w/ New World ROM - The game runs, but it appears changing the controls doesn't work properly.
TRON-ish 1.4
(Basilisk II)
w/ Quadra 650 ROM – It boots, but in order to play the game without crashing, you need to turn off your 040’s caches.
(Sheepshaver)
w/ New World ROM – It simple runs (and it’s pretty basic anyway).
Troggle Trouble Math
(Sheepshaver)
w/ New World ROM – Runs okay (if fast) when not crashing. It's likely unstable due to it doing specific memory addressing. - 80%
U
Ultima III 1.3
(Basilisk II)
w/ Quadra 650 ROM - Seems to work here, though sound might be bonked out occasionally.
(Sheepshaver)
w/ New World ROM - Seems to go quite fast, but it works really well. However, sometimes when quitting a game, the menu bar disappears, but it will reappear sooner or later.
Ultima III 1.4.2
(Sheepshaver)
w/ New World ROM - Hangs might occur for about a few seconds. Sound could glitch at specific times.
Ultimate Pool
(Sheepshaver)
w/ Old World ROM - Mouse control is really wonky and when shooting your ball, it causes the game to lag like crazy.
Ultris
(Sheepshaver)
w/ New World ROM - Music skips around a bit and loading seems to take a LONG TIME.
V
Vette
(Basilisk II)
w/ Performa ROM - For the color version, garbled graphics and no sound. Wholly unplayable. Black and white seems to run okay, but I don't know how to use the controls.
Virtual Composer (FAT Version)
(Sheepshaver)
w/ Old World ROM - Appears to work fine.
Virtual Drummer
(Sheepshaver)
w/ Old World ROM - Appears to work fine here too.
Virtual Pool
(Sheepshaver)
w/ New World ROM - Virtual Pool can't run in Baslisk II (which is a 68K emulator) for some odd reason. I don't understand why, since the visuals look so simplistic. It runs, but the mouse controls seem like they are so bonked out it makes the game so unplayable…or is it just me…
Virtual Viagra
(Basilisk II)
w/ Quadra 650 ROM - It runs decently, but it's a pretty simple program anyhow.
(Sheepshaver)
w/ New World ROM - Gives the bomb.
Virtual Wings
(Sheepshaver)
w/ New World ROM - The game can run, but you need to follow this in order to get it booted:
1) Open up “SheepShaverGUI”
2) Go to the graphics/sound section and raise the resolution to 1024*768 (or higher)
3) Click “Start”. Don't be alarmed if Sheepshaver's boot screen is shrunk down to 800*600!
4) Go under “Monitors & Sound” under the Controls Panels section and select “1024*768 (Insert Refresh Rate here)”.
5) Once you've done that, boot up Virtual Wings.
The game has glitched out 3D Hardware rendering, but it seems OK otherwise (could be wrong though).
W
Weekend Warrior
(Sheepshaver)
w/ Old World ROM – The opening logo for Pangea runs fairly smoothly. However, the actual game has a lot of slowdown issues and response is incredibly sluggish (usually requiring multiple button presses) unless you run Sheepshaver on fast computer (like an Intel Core i7). The only suggestion I have at the moment is to reduce the depth to 256 colors and raise the memory. Oh, and a cheat code, hold down the F12 key during the coconut moving part of the stage selection screen (when you first walk in). Also, make sure you turn the keycodes off.
Winamp for Mac 0.71
(Sheepshaver)
w/ Old World ROM - The program seems to play back.mp3s back just fine.
WordPerfect 3.0
(Sheepshaver)
w/ New World ROM - Seems to work just fine.
Wolfenstein 3D
(Mini vMac)
w/ Mac II ROM - It runs, but it frequently causes instability due to bad FPU emulation, causing a system error or an emulator freeze.
(Basilisk II)
w/ Quadra 650 ROM - Same as Mini vMac.
w/ Quadra 900 ROM - Same as Mini vMac.
(Sheepshaver)
w/ New World ROM - Appears to be A-OK, aside from some hanging issues. Just make sure “Speed Governor” on, unless you want to try and beat the game that way - which I heavily recommend you NOT do. ;)
(QEMU)
w/ Mac OS 9.2 - It needs a bios that can support 256 color support. Even then, it causes frequent operating system crashes in QEMU.
X
X-Ball 1.2.1
(Sheepshaver)
w/ Old World ROM - Sound seems to be a bit laggy.
X-Plane 5.66
(Sheepshaver)
w/ Old World ROM - The game will run, but it will go slow as hell because OpenGL acceleration is not supported in Sheepshaver (the fastest it goes is 1 frame per 3 seconds, which is VERY slow). Loading will also be quite slow. Multiple key presses might be useful to get through the menus, but is literally useless in gameplay unless you do it really fast. It is more or less unplayable.
X-Wing
(Basilisk II)
w/ Quadra 650 ROM - Runs slowly, no matter what… It's OK otherwise.
(Sheepshaver)
w/ New World ROM - Runs slowly, but otherwise appears to be OK.
Y
Yacht 3D
(Sheepshaver)
w/ Old World ROM - This program will only run on PowerPC processors, so Basilisk II can't run it. It does work in Sheepshaver and the 3D doesn't seem to have a problem (probably because the dice are rendered by the software).
Yoot Tower
(Sheepshaver)
w/ New World ROM - Good, but sounds a bit choppy on pre-2013 versions. It's not on 68k so I didn't bother trying on Basilisk. The movies don't have audio (again, QT problems).
Z
ZD MacBench 5.0
(Sheepshaver)
w/ Old World ROM - For whatever reason, typing in the Name and Organization boxes doesn't work when using the raw keycodes. Instead, you have to copy some text from the Host OS and paste it into the boxes. This flaw didn't happen in the original installer. Otherwise, it seems quite normal.
Zone of Avoidance II / Zone Warrior
(Sheepshaver)
w/ Old World ROM - Control on the camera is very wonky and stable. The game can also go too fast.
Zoombinis: Island Odyssey
(Sheepshaver)
w/ New World ROM – The movies are very choppy and freeze quite often, with the sound cutting out frequently. The game does run, though the framerate is a bit questionable. Hangs are not uncommon. And no, this will not run in any 68k emulator as this application was designed for PPC Macs.
Zoop
(Basilisk II)
w/ Quadra 650 ROM - No problems occur here other than some music stalling.
(Executor)
The game seems to run very slowly and the colors are distorted.
(Sheepshaver)
w/ New World ROM - Hangs might occur, but very rarely you'll come across them.
Incompatible Applications
10-Key Racing
The game will boot up, but you can't the game to play at all because the actual game come to a halt before anything happens.
Adobe Acrobat Reader 5.0.5
The installer comes to a halt when trying install the SVG Plug-in and you don't have the option to not install it. I have no idea why. If anyone can find a workaround, please inform me and you will be given credit.
Allenrods
Hangs for a few seconds while loading, then crashes Sheepshaver probably because it uses OpenGL.
Astrosquid
Hangs for a few seconds on a black screen and crashes (because it needs OpenGL).
Audacity 1.0.0
It just brings up an error message saying,
“The application “Audacity” could not be
opened because “Textension” could not be
found.”
Black Shades
It complained a lot, resulting in me searching for LibMoto, then StdCLib, then InterfaceLib… - I gave up in the end. XP Is it just me or do I find it inexcusable that a user has to find all these (and probably much more) just to run it (unless you have a copy of Mac OS 9)?
Blobs 3.1.1
Causes a Microsoft Visual C++ error, crashing Sheepshaver. (Might be because of OpenGL though)
BOOM 1.6.2
The game requires Mac OS 9.1, but by editing the version numbers of the Finder, System, and System Resources files via Resedit (to 9.1 through 9.2.2), the game might run. However, I have not tested this yet.
Bub & Bob 2 0.981
Has a complaint about jump.snd, which I initially thought had to do with the fact that the file was missing. But that wasn't it, and I have no clue what's causing the game not to load. There's some odd unknown error involving the file, which has confused me quite a bit. It seems like the game can't run.
Bugdom (any version)
It requires Quickdraw 3D 1.6 or newer, which Sheepshaver doesn’t support.
Burning Monkey Solitaire (2005 version)
It crashes Sheepshaver, with a Microsoft Visual C++ error.
C.Dev Boogle 4.2
Crashes in Sheepshaver and no error popped up. XP
Carmageddon (demo)
Unplayable, since it freezes when you actually begin a new game in Sheepshaver. Only the menus and static screens will run at all, but without sound. Plus Basilisk II can't run this at all because it's PPC-only.
Christmas Chaos: Superfrog 1.6.2
The game will boot up, but it is unplayable because the game remains in a waiting state forever for no apparent reason.
Cro-Mag Rally (OS 9 version)
Since it uses OpenGL, Sheepshaver will hang when trying to run it.
Descender (any version from 1.0 to 1.4.x)
Causes a Microsoft Visual C++ error, crashing Sheepshaver. Newer versions don't run at all on the classic Mac OS.
Descent 3
The Glide version boots up, then quits with an error message because it requires a 3dfx card, which Sheepshaver doesn't support. And the OpenGL version causes Sheepshaver to hang while booting, because Sheepshaver can't support 3D hardware-rendered graphics.
Gauge PRO
It will open, but will not run.
Generator v0.3.6
It boots, but freezes the entire OS when emulation begins.
Germs 1.3.1
Same as BOOM 1.6.2
Gridz 1.5.1
This error appears: “Error Code: -9 From: MPLibraryIsLoaded not.”
Heavy Metal F.A.K.K. 2 Demo
Crashes Sheepshaver when trying to open it.
Jazz Jackrabbit 2 Demo
When trying to open it, this appears: “The application “Jazz Jackrabbit 2 Demo” could not be opened because ”»Jazz Jackrabbit 2 Demo«“ could not be found.” This error baffles me for some reason.
iMovie 1.0.1
I couldn't get this working no matter what. The program would crash after it booted up.
Kid Pix Deluxe 3, Version 1.0
When you try to run the program, Sheepshaver immediately quits out (usually indicating that some PPC instructions it needs are not supported by Sheepshaver).
Killing Time 1.3 Carbon
An error similar to the one from the Jazz Jackrabbit 2 Demo pops up and clicking on the icon a second time causes Sheepshaver to quit.
Last Call
It relies heavily on Flash. Demo locks up when opening. The demo version for this game (from MacAddict) just quit out of SheepShaver entirely.
When attempting to load it up, it crashes Sheepshaver.
LMTetris
It locks on a turquoise screen for a couple of seconds, and then Sheepshaver crashes.
Logic Platnium 6.3.1
It refuses to run without “VecLib”.
Macromedia FreeHand 8
Installation works fine, but it crashes at startup.
mACRoStrange
Crashes, regardless of what settings you choose.
Maelstrom 3.0.6 PPC (SDL version)
It opens for about two seconds and then quits.
Medal of Honor: Spearhead 2.1.5 Demo
It uses OpenGL and as a result, it crashes Sheepshaver.
Monsters Inc. Pinball Panic
It doesn’t seem to work properly, even with the proper system requirements.
Nanosaur 1.3.4
It requires Quickdraw 1.6 or newer in order to run.
Otto Matic
It uses OpenGL 1.2.1 and it will not run since Sheepshaver has no support for this component.
Penguin Power! 1.2
It appears to crash Sheepshaver, possibly because it uses OpenGL.
PongWars 2.0
It boots up, but actually starting a game causes Sheepshaver to lock up. The Sloppydisk logo at the beginning is completely white and menu bar is invisible.
pop-pop 1.0.4
Causes some odd hang when trying to load it up.
Quake III
It will try to boot up, but it crashes Sheepshaver in the end, possibly because the 3D graphics acceleration requires actual hardware.
RockNES v2.5.0
“The application “RockNES” could not be opened because “RockNES” could not be found.” It makes no sense whatsoever. SMS Plus v1.0.3, TGEmu v0.2.3, KiGB v1.5.2, Neopocott v0.4.4, Genesis Plus v1.2.2, ViBE v1.0b3, Boycott Advance v0.3.0, & Oswan v0.7.2 all have the same problem.
Sim Theme Park / Theme Park World
Crashes Sheepshaver a few seconds after loading it.
Star Wars Episode I Racer
Holds up for a few seconds and then quits because it needs OpenGL 1.1.2 or newer to run.
Tomb Raider III (Demo)
No matter how hard I try, it crashes at the title screen. If anyone can explain why ( |
Superior. She writes: "The Milky Way was eye poppingly bright."
With the bright moon out of our evening sky this week, it's a great time to get away from city lights and explore the beautiful summer Milky Way. But 35 years ago today, even New Yorkers got a glimpse of our home galaxy.
Today (July 13) marks the 35th anniversary of a night that I will always remember. At 9:29 p.m. EDT, lightning from a severe thunderstorm struck a power plant at Indian Point, New York. The result was sudden power failure that plunged all of New York City into darkness.
I was living in the Throggs Neck section of The Bronx at the time and ended up spending the entire night observing with my 4 1/4-inch reflecting telescope.
On this balmy midsummer night, the moon was merely a slender sliver in the early-morning sky and was absolutely of no hindrance to stargazing. Thanks also to the numerous sodium vapor streetlights throughout the City being extinguished; I suddenly had at my disposal a night sky normally reserved for a more distant, rural location. [Amazing Milky Way Galaxy Photos]
Here are some notes I scribbled in my observing log from that memorable night in 1977:
"By 11:35 p.m. I could perceive the Milky Way through a scattered layer of clouds. The best view came after 2:15 a.m., when it stretched from Cassiopeia to northern Aquila, complete with dark rifts and the Cygnus Coal Sack. The 5.4-magnitude star 24 Vulpeculae was readily seen without binoculars, as was the Great Andromeda Galaxy, and viewed a host of deep-sky objects I would normally never attempt to look for from my home."
This magical night ended with the thin crescent Moon, Jupiter, Venus, Mars and the orange star Aldebaran all lined up in the eastern sky at dawn, followed by a beautiful sunrise.
My report would later appear in the September 1977 issue of "Sky & Telescope" magazine on page 252.
A Milky Way tour
The Milky Way holds several intriguing sky sights for stargazers to seek out.
Several clouds of stars, surrounded by a few dark regions for contrast, can be seen with binoculars in the area of the Milky Way about halfway between the star Altair and the constellation of Sagittarius. Four faint stars in a stretched-out diamond are about all that is visible of the constellation Scutum, the Shield.
The Shield was described as a constellation by Hevelius, a 17th century astronomer, who christened it with the fantastic moniker, Scutum Sobiesciarium in honor of John Sobieski, a Polish king who defeated the Turks at Vienna in 1683. Near the northern star of the Shield is M11, the 11th entry in Charles Messier’s famous catalogue of "fuzzy" objects masquerading as comets.
Messier 11 is one of the richest and most compact of galactic clusters, described by one experienced observer as resembling "a flight of wild ducks." One of the Milky Way’s great star clouds is also within Scutum.
Mysterious Milky Way
Before the invention of the telescope, the true nature of the Milky Way galaxy ("gala" is Greek for milk) was a mystery. Binoculars and telescopes reveal that the galaxy consists of dense clouds of individual stars, such as the one in Scutum.
For observers in the Northern Hemisphere, the brightest part of the Milky Way is in the constellation of Sagittarius, near the star El Nasl. In fact, this region is roughly our galaxy’s center. It marks the "hub" or central condensation; an area of density and complexity. Even to the unaided eye, the view is one of excitement and beauty.
The Sagittarius Star Cloud, about 30,000 light-years distant, seems to be the nucleus, with the sun and all the outer stars of the galaxy revolving around it at the rate of 155 miles per second. It apparently requires about 200 million of our Earth years to make one complete revolution, or one "cosmic year," around the center of our galaxy.
A night to remember
During the Great Blackout that darkened much of the northeast United States on Nov. 9, 1965, a brilliant moon just one day past full and lit up the night sky like a giant spotlight, only frustrating sky watchers by squelching the light of all but the brightest stars.
You may also recall that on Aug. 14, 2003, the Northeast U.S. again experienced a major power outage, but I doubt that the view from my old stomping grounds would have matched that of what I experienced in 1977. That’s because in 2003 the weather was considerably hazier and the moon was again very bright … just two nights past full.
So although the dazzling lights of New York were shut off three times between 1965 and 2003, a dark country sky only showed itself for a few precious hours on that very special night in 1977. I moved out of The Bronx in 1984. I lived there almost 20 years, but aside from that uniquely special July night in 1977, I never again saw the Milky Way from my house.
Joe Rao serves as an instructor and guest lecturer at New York's Hayden Planetarium. He writes about astronomy for The New York Times and other publications, and he is also an on-camera meteorologist for News 12 Westchester, New York.What is one of the country's best visual storytellers worried about? Meeting you.
Gabrielle Bell, the acclaimed cartoonist whom the New Yorker dubbed "a master of the exquisite detail," is nervous about you seeing her studio. ("I'm starting to hoard things," she says.) She's nervous about giving a bad interview. She's nervous that she's too nervous. She apologizes before the tape recorder clicks on.
“I’m always standing on ceremony, waiting to be alone again,” Bell writes in her latest book, Truth Is Fragmentary, available in bookstores this month.
Bell's raw and revealing cartoons investigate life from the perspective of an aspiring recluse. Her most recent effort is a compilation of "diary" comics, in which the Brooklyn cartoonist chronicles the trials and tribulations of her daily life, as well as travelogues from her international trips.
Her work resides in the minutia of life –- standing in line at the post office, getting the plumbing fixed, deciding on a new haircut, losing the keys. But those tiny moments rise in significance when they are imbued with Bell’s sincere musing over what it means to be human.
How does one reconcile the desire to be alone while simultaneously craving companionship? Throughout her book, Bell is pulled in opposite directions -- to connect with others and to retreat.
“People! They are so annoying, yammering away with their opinions and feelings and anecdotes and advice. I sit and wait for them to go away, and even after they do their voices continue to yammer in my head,” she writes. “All the little things they say, they sting and bite and wear you down. I‘d rather be eaten alive by insects.”
While that sounds gloomy, don't be fooled: Bell's work is bursting with heart. Her keen eye for detail and empathetic, introspective voice results in comics that are joyful, unexpected and often refreshingly hilarious.
Bell's last book, The Voyeurs, was hailed as the best graphic memoir of 2012 by the Atlantic Wire. Her work has been selected for the 2007, 2009, 2010 and 2011 Best American Comics and she's been published in McSweeney's, Bookforum, The Believer and Vice Magazine.
The Huffington Post got a chance to interview Bell about her latest book. The transcript has been edited for clarity and space.
When did you start drawing?
Like any little kid, I always drew. I remember going into a trance when I was coloring. Like you just put some paper and pens in front of me and I’d just uuuuuuhh, zone out. I remember there was this coloring contest. I had just randomly colored this picture -- it was this weird psychedelic frog -- and I won the top prize. The kid next to me was mad, and she goes, "You didn’t even get the colors right!" and I think I had this moment then when I was like, "Huh, I guess I’m kind of talented."
I really wanted to be a writer when I was young. But cartooning is pretty exciting too. It sideswiped me. I used to write and not draw, but it’s so much more effective with drawing that I just lost the habit of writing, and now the act of writing really seems daunting. When I try to imagine or create a story, it’s always with pictures.
Tell me about your diary comics. What is the purpose of recording everything in the diary comics?
I used to always keep a personal comic journal. But doing comics takes so long, I’d end up doing a diary all day long, it was so compulsive, and I’d had to get in so many details, so I started publishing it just to feel like I wasn’t wasting all my time.
I used them to work through things, to try to find meaning in things. Life is so chaotic, so you try to create some system. I have to admit that these diaries that I’ve published are all about my basic coping with being alive.
When I would go on trips, I wanted to have something come out of it. If I went to Oslo for a week, I wanted to have this image of Oslo, this recording of day-to-day life in Oslo. It was a challenge for me to make something funny and interesting.
Can you talk a little bit about being a female cartoonist?
I think there is a big prejudice against female autobiography. There was a man who interviewed me recently, and I could tell he saw me as "just a woman doing autobiography." Whereas with a man, they do autobiography and it’s considered art or being great and interesting.
Men and women have to deal with different roles that are imposed on them that they may not want. Men have to deal with the man role, being seen as "the protector," the one that takes charge. Women have this responsibility to look really hot all the time. We have to think about clothes and shoes and all these little things that are considered really trivial, but actually it’s compulsory to have to think about that.
Then when we talk about it, it’s not actually shallow, it’s just survival. But if you were to write a book about it, it would be shelved as women’s concerns. In fact, it’s survival concerns.
The interviewer I mentioned … Apparently, he saw all these great men cartoonists standing together -- Chris Ware, Seth, Adrian Tomine, Dan Clowes -- and he said it was like Mount Rushmore. He saw all these other cartoonists in the room and he was like "Why don’t they appreciate what greatness there is here?!"
There’s definitely this male culture of comics, this white male mentality. There are some great women cartoonists of that Mount Rushmore generation. Julie Doucet, she really belongs in Mount Rushmore. And Lynda Barry. And Carol Tyler. But somehow, just the fact that they’re women, they’re not in it.
Can you tell me about how you made it on the Internet?
I don’t think I would have had the luck or success, the means to survive, without the Internet. I started my blog after Drawn and Quarterly discontinued my comic series. It was really good that they ended the comic series. It increased my readership.
The Internet is such an important tool for introverted artists. I don’t think I would have done so well in the printed world, in the '90s. On my blog, I would sell watercolor portraits for like $30 just to get by. I would sell original pages. It was a good chunk of money. And I didn’t have to see anybody.
I was lucky that I got to do comics for a living. I haven’t had to have a day job in nearly 10 years. Day jobs were hard for me. It was the exposure, having to be in the same room as other people for a long day, every day. That was painful for me. The work itself was fine. It was just being around all those people. "Hello, good morning." Again, we’re saying hello and good morning? Now we’re saying goodbye? And small talk, oh my God.
Is there anything you regret drawing?
I did this comic where I was working for this woman as an artist assistant. In reality, she was paying me to collaborate with her. I turned it into a story where she got rich and famous exploiting me. It was all just a story, but I felt really guilty about it later. I was making her look like a horrible person, even though she was a really nice person, who had given me a job!
When I’m writing a story, I’m not really thinking about the other person. It's not until I'm just about to publish that I’m like, "What is this person going to think?" It fills me with anxiety. Eventually I ran into this woman and I apologized to her. She said, "I understand how fiction works, you weren’t writing about me." And I was like "Oh! I didn’t do anything wrong." I’m not sure if everyone understands that.
I try to show people in the best light in my comics. I feel, in a way, that I am too nice. I always try to make people look so good. Really good artists, they don’t worry about making people look good, they’ll make people look grotesque, if that’s how it comes out. I’m so afraid of offending people, and I very much want to please people. I work so hard to make people look as good as they possibly can. And not just to make them look good but to look for the good in them, or to find their best side.
Wouldn’t a great artist not worry about that and try to see as objectively or as clearly as they can? Maybe I’m just white-washing everything, maybe I need to be more eviscerating.
What are you working on now?
Lately, I've been working on five projects at once, so it's all going very slowly. I’m working on a fictional story. I have a collection of short stories, and I've been working on a graphic novel for five years or so. I also started working on this thing called Siberia.
I made a decision not to do the diary comics anymore. My last two books were diary comics, but it's not really what I set out to do. They were more my compulsion. I was just trying to turn this addiction into something productive.With the second episode, Dark Matter does two things: finishes up the story of the miners and asks a lot of questions about who the crew of the Raza are. The second part is much more interesting than the first.
Spoilers...
Episode two picks up pretty much where episode one leaves off, with the revelation that the whole crew — except for Four — are wanted criminals. One, the fluffy idealistic teddy bear that he is, freaks out hardcore about it. Six and Two are upset. Three does not care so much what he did, does, or is. He jokes about how diverse their crimes are, and One scoffs at him. Three: “That’s my defense mechanism. Humor. That, and apparently killing people.”
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Oh, Dark Matter. I know I’m being manipulated. I know that Three is basically Jayne — I know a lot of people name their guns in fiction, but with the whole space cowboy vibe this whole show’s got going on, Three’s “This is Bubba, Lulu, and this one’s Pip. But I don’t name my knives. I’m not a psycho” schtick really, really comes off as a Jayne clone — but I’m still a sucker for a mouthy asshole character.
Three’s also the one who points out that the giant megacorp who hired them is not going to be unhappy that they didn’t finish the job and sold weapons to the miners. Even with the knowledge that they’re mercenaries sent to kill the miners, Two keeps them on track: give half the weapons to the miners, sell the rest. Move on.
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One, Three, Four, and Six go down to the planet. Two, Five, and the Android stay on the Raza. The team on the planet is still pretending to just be some people who happen to have some gun merchandise to give the miners, and One’s still frustrated because there’s no more help coming — since the weapons on the ship seem to hint that the help the miners thought they were getting was taken out by the Raza — and the weapons he’s giving the miners is just false hope of a win.
He also climbs on his high horse when the miners offer them food and drink (and song!) as a thank you. Three says yes, which just feels even more disingenuous to One. Plus. it means that when a Ferrous Corp ship shows up to ask the Raza why the colonists aren’t dead yet and sends its own troops to do the job, One, Three, Four, and Six are still there.
Two tries to stall, but instead ends up having to meet the Ferrous Corp captain anyway, who says they’ve moved on to Plan B. And then One takes off in the Raza, with no warning to the crew on the ground. The first few Ferrous Corp soldiers are easily taken out by the miners and the Raza foursome. Four spends some quality time with a captured Ferrous Corp commando, who tells them they’ll all die for this. And finally, Four gets more to do than just honor, death, swords:
Four: “How are we going to die?” Soldier: “Choking on your own blood.” Four: “Be more specific.”
Four points out that they could just destroy the colony easily, but they hired the Raza for deniability. And he wants more information. One cutaway later, he’s telling Two, Three. and Six that Ferrous Corp’s target is the outdated generator the miners use: it goes up, and the death of the mining colony goes down as an accident.
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This is where Three proves that he’s not just a bad guy. He’s just a guy who loves fighting and shooting for the challenge of it all. He wanted to leave the miners out to dry before, but now that he’s stuck there, he’s actually kind of giddy when he tells Six that he kind of likes their chances.
Six, however, has figured out that Ferrous Corp can throw people at them until the job is done. Losing the ship in orbit, though, might be a loss big enough to get them to back off. He proposes that he take the shuttle on what will likely be a suicide mission. Thankfully, he gets captured before he takes off and I don’t have to throw a show at my television. Because if this show had killed the black guy first, I would have been forever done.
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The team on the ground are okay fighters, but it’s Two on the ship that saves the day. And completely and utterly proves why she’s in charge. She left so that she could negotiate a deal with Ferrous Corp’s rival, the Mikkei Combine. Two of their ships, and the Raza, are now standing between the Ferrous ship and the colony. A 99-year lease gives the miners protection and Mikkei doesn’t want anything from them other than to screw Ferrous Corp out of being able to get it. If Mikkei and Ferrous can ever figure out a way to work together, the miners will get a cut of the profits. Congrats to Two, the smartest person in this show.
As for the identity issues which drive Dark Matter above just the mining saga — the beginning of the episode hits these very hard. One says he’s not a murderer, no matter what the files say. Two tells the Android not to call her Portia, she’s Two. She likes Two better. Four doesn’t care who they used to be, since without memories of it, they don’t matter. Six seems less concerned about his past than that he knows he’s a great pilot, which can be a neutral skill, I guess. And Three is pretty happy that at least they are the best mercenaries.
Five, however, isn’t in the files. The Android asks her if she’s afraid of them now — knowing they have a history of “violence, mental instability, extreme antisocial behavior, and deceit.” Five counters that what matters is who they are now.
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But she doesn’t wholly believe that. Because she’s upset that she’s not in the files, isn’t a member of the crew. Everyone else knows they belong here, even if the past bothers them. With no information, Five is left out even of the anger and confusion of the others. And no idea how she got where she is.
So, is it better to find out who you were and be disappointed or to know nothing? And among the five who discovered a criminal past, whose reaction is the right one? One’s denial? Two’s determination to not let a file dictate her identity? Three’s shrug and good humor? Four’s conscious choice to ignore it all? Six’s simple happiness at being able to fly?
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Speaking of Six, what about the instincts they have that aren’t memories? Even without the memories, people’s personalities are strong. Two is the leader, since she stepped up and everyone let her. Four’s a fan of making a stand and dying in a blaze of glory. No one was happy to let Six go off and die. These instincts speak louder than the files.
Add to all of this Five’s tendency to have other people’s memories, which this week means she knows that someone erased their memories rather than it being an accident. One is so obvious a candidate that it can’t be him — he reacts so poorly to the file, that it could be that his file is a fake and he used it to get on board to wipe everyone’s memories. Plus, he was the first one up. He’s either a red herring or a double-bluff. Four’s got a puzzle-box with a mysterious ring inside, and he was the one to tell everyone to leave the memories behind. Maybe he did it. If we’re assuming the writers will go for the least likely looking suspect, then I think Three. Guess we’ll find out as the season goes on.
Some assort musings:
Glad we ended with Three continuing to fight the locked door. This is the true battle of the show
The Android hasn’t been that interesting to me, but her exchange with Five was pretty good. “Maybe don’t tell people you can smell their pheromones.” “But I can.”
Tori Higginson was one of the Mikkei captains! Aw, there are going to be so many Stargate cameos in this show, and I am excited. I still miss Weir.
So, beyond the super-stereotypical characters and plots, the most bothersome part of the show I’ve seen are the action sequences. Oh god, kill the bad slow-mo. Kill it with fire. It’s so bad, and it makes the show look so cheap.
However, the moment where One, Three, and Four are ready to go out in a blaze of glory, only to scare the crap out of Six? Priceless. That’s the kind of thing I love seeing.
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I am not that sophisticated.
Contact the author at katharine@io9.com.Helen Slottje. | Goldman Prize Local anti-fracking activist wins world's largest environmental prize
ALBANY—The world's largest environmental prize has been awarded to an Ithaca-based lawyer who has helped organize fracking bans in dozens of New York communities.
For winning the Goldman Prize, the lawyer, Helen Slottje, will receive $175,000 award and an unprecedented level of international attention.
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Slottje, a despised figure among gas industry officials, has helped enact fracking bans in 172 communities across New York in the last five years. Even if the state's five-year moratorium on hydraulic hydrofracking were to be lifted tomorrow, Slottje's work could cause a major issue for energy companies here.
In an interview with Capital, Slottje said she'll use the prestige and money that comes with the award to raise global awareness of her campaign.
“Fracking is a symptom of a much larger problem in our society, an oligarchy, a complete separation of people making decision and those whose lives they affect,” she said.
Slottje, 46, also plans to take the California bar exam, since anti-fracking activists have gained ground in that state, in preparation for taking on a greater role there. A ban this week in Beverly Hills clearly borrowed directly from Slottje's work, even though she was not contacted for that case.
And she says she'll put more of her legal work online so that communities can use her local control argument in their own legal battles.
Slottje waded into the fracking battle almost by accident. She and her husband David, with whom she does much of her work, were corporate lawyers when they moved from Boston to Ithaca. She attended a community meeting where activists described the risks of fracking and was so shocked by the images and by the proliferation of leases across New York that she turned it into a call to arms. She was soon traveling the state, to town halls and demonstrations, to volunteer her legal services.
Her opponents say she has turned community members against each other, and that she has encouraged outsiders to exercise influence on small towns across New York that need jobs and tax revenue.
Slottje said she's done the opposite, by giving communities more of a say than multi-billion dollar energy companies.
”We're going to do whatever we think is going to help the voice of the people,” she said.
Last year's Goldman winners include an environmentalist from Iraq who restored marshes destroyed by Saddam Hussein, a Colombian who organized that country's waste pickers to make part recycling part of the country's waste management and a man who organized a successful ban on fracking in South Africa's desert region. The award is only handed out to a few people each year and is the largest prize for grassroots environmental organizing in the world.
“By bringing decision-making power back to the municipal level, Slottje enabled small towns to effectively respond to advances by powerful, moneyed energy companies,” prize adminstrators said in a statement.
The Goldman prize was established in 1989 and “recognizes individuals for sustained and significant efforts to protect and enhance the natural environment, often at great personal risk,” according to its website. It is given to those who create change in their communities.
In June, the legality of all of the local fracking bans in New York will essentially be tested when two of the earliest ones are defended in the state's highest court.
The two cases—one in Dryden, outside of Ithaca, and the other in Ostego County's Middlefield—are now before the state Court of Appeals, the state's highest court. Oral arguments have been scheduled for June and a decision could come later this year. The outcome of those cases will likely have significant implications for moratoriums enacted throughout New York because they deal with the right of towns to override state law. Oral arguments are scheduled for June and a decision is expected in the fall.
The fracking opposition in Dryden received funding from the Park Foundation, which has given millions to support anti-fracking efforts.
Opponents dropped a prominent legal case for a ban in Binghamton after the newly elected mayor expressed his support for expansion of the energy industry, a shift from the former mayor, who welcomed a ban.
Gov. Andrew Cuomo has not indicated when or whether the state will lift the nearly six-year moratorium on high-volume hydraulic hydrofracking, or whether the state will even provide any indications on the matter before Election Day.
CORRECTION: This article has been changed from the original version to reflect the fact that cash award is now $175,000, not $150,000.Review contributed by Jon Browning.
Whoredom Rife are exactly what is wrong with modern “underground” “metal”. All these posers do is take a bunch of riffs from records over twenty years old, chop them up, and randomly attach a few of them together to make… a track.
Whoredom Rife of course do not even write songs, yet alone musical compositions you know. The material that these scenester tryhards release is not vocally driven music so it is not a song you know like a rock band would make and convince stupid people to singalong to the catchy chorus parts and play air guitar to the solo to when it comes on the radio. Neither do Whoredom Rife write metal compositions as we call them here at Death Metal Underground. Their riffs are not phrases in an entire melody that plays out over the course of the track’s run-time.
No, Whoredom Rife’s riffs are just haphazardly jammed together like a mismatched pair of neon running shoes you know. These riffs come from a bunch of bands: Dawn, Darkthrone, Emperor, Dawn, Dissection, and there’s probably some Dark Funeral in there too as these guys are probably totally into the bondage gear stage shows and doing some “kvlt” soggy biscuit shit in the dark in the woods while making the guy tied up in the gimp suit eat it. Gross!
Dommedagskvad is certainly not a black metal album just because it copies stuff it has seen before randomly like a monkey. If a monkey imitates a gesticulating human like an Italian guy for its own amusement in between masturbating and playing with its own turds, does that make the monkey an Italian man? No, the monkey is still a monkey and not a human of course. Whoredom Rife are not a black metal band then you know, just a shitty modern hardcore one that decided to imitate a bunch of mid 90s bands from Sweden and Norway.
Do you know who also had the same bad idea? Metalcore bands! Whoredom Rife is no different: instead of cleanly sung choruses and breakdowns, they just imitate a different band than the last riff for the chorus or bridge riff to show their scenester audience that they listened to the same records they did in the year 2004 so they are cool too. Whoredom Rife probably are not old enough to have heard Dawn back in the mid to late 90s and probably just picked up that Slaughtersun double CD comp from 2004 (or the Century Media reissues a decade later) just like their millennial funderground fans who will be too busy taking pictures of the band trying to look cool onstage in leather jackets or leather gimp suits or plague masks or something like that rather than actually listening to what is being played and hearing if it makes sense and shit you know. To someone who actually pays attention to the music, watching a random trendy band like Whoredom Rife live is like watching a headless chicken running around aimlessly. Trying to determine if the headless chicken does in fact, as a miniaturized dinosaur, have an extra brain somewhere like a Klingon would just be a stupid waste of time as it’s of course random and doesn’t really make any sense.
Dommedagskvad‘s audience is the same folks who go out and pay money to see random technicolor explosions and computer game monsters randomly flung at the screen in random and terrible Hollywood remakes and sequels like Jurassic World, the Marvel Super Heroes movies, and the new Star Wars with teenage girls beating up 6’5 guys with the power of feminism. These are brain dead people who eat shit and like it. You know like Bud Light Lime drinkers.
Dommedagskvad is not black metal or even a fascimile of the past. Rather it’s just random neon fruitcake bullshit thrown on a record for “former” metalcore fans who want to get into black metal but they do not even like metal in the first place so can’t even listen to Hell Awaits, Deicide, or anything actually you know black metalish heavier than Storm of the Light’s Bane and Filosofem‘s pop hooks you know.
Even Dark Funeral make Whoredom Rife look like a punch of pansies. It is time for these posers to take off the panties they said they stole from their girlfriends (Not!) and quit pretending to play black metal. We know you are scenester pond scum who probably dumpster dive and shit like crusts do. Dommedagskvad deserves to be recycled into shower curtains.
Dommedagskvad by Whoredom Rife
Tags: black 'n roll, dommedagskvad, funderground, melodeaf, metalcore, modern metal, norway, poser metal, posers, poseur metal, poseurs, rehash, review, scenesters, terratur possession, terratur possessions, trash, trends mosh core fun, whoredom rifeBitcoin is growing by the day, becoming more popular and surging in price but it hasn’t always been this way. 2017 has seen its fair share of high profile disasters when it comes to the cryptocurrency world.Blockchain technology and cryptocurrencies do have their benefits. Most notably, it can be used as a secure method to share, store and record data transparently, and can be a very lucrative investment. However; with this, comes the risk of having huge security issues which can rear at any second and crash everything into pieces.We take a look back over 2017 at some of the greatest catastrophes that has hit the cryptocurrency world.In February, a typing error caused the loss of $585,000worth of Zcoins. This was put down to a typographical error on a single additional character, which allowed an attacker to steal roughly 370,000 Zcoins.Just two months after this, in April law enforcement raided a OneCoin sales pitch which resulted in the jailing of 18 employees and the freezing of roughly $2million in investor funds. It was believed that the entire scheme was a scam, as there were no receipts and the fact that the company only accepted cash rang alarm bells for the Delhi police.In June, the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) won a court case against GAW Miners and Zen Miners. They were accused of running Bitcoin Ponzi schemes which defrauded investors. The following month saw a lot of cyberattacks, particularly on ICO’s. Most notably, the much-awaited CoinDash ICO lost approximately $7.4million in Ethereum after it was targeted by hackers Although CoinDash realised within minutes, it was too late to prevent the huge loss. A week after, a similar thing happened to Veritaseum’s ICO, where 36,000 VERI tokens were stolen, which were worth nearly $8million. The fourth largest exchange worldwide, Bithumb had a database of user information stolen from them, which resulted in both the theft of information, and a significant number of Bitcoins.In August, Ethereum platform Enigma was targeted by hackers, who sent potential investors convincing emails announcing a pre-sale of tokens. This resulted in the hackers being able to steal nearly $500,000 in Ethereum.September saw the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission file a court case against Nicholas Gelfman. It was alleged that the company scammed roughly 80 investors out of $600,000 through a Ponzi scheme.In October, Alexander Vinnik was the source of an argument between the US and Russia, who both suspected Bitcoin laundering. This resulted in a fine of $110million.Tether faced a terrible time in November, after the company revealed that cybercriminals managed to compromise its treasury wallet and steal $30,950,010USDT. They have stated that they are working hard to recover these funds.Despite only being half way through the month, December has had its fair share of catastrophes already. Nicehash admitted that $68million in investor funds had been stolen from the NiceHash wallet, which resulted in suspended operations. On top of this, SEC filed charges against PlexCorps for supposedly conducting ICO fraud.It is no question that cryptocurrency definitely has a future in finance and investment; however, cybersecurity will continue to be a challenge in 2018, and we will no doubt face more disasters and catastrophes along the way.Huh, the spellcheck on here knows the word ‘Wolfenstein’. Good job, dictionary attendants. Anyway, the reason I’ve had cause to use that peculiar faux-Teutonic title today is that I played an early press build of the latest game in the series, Wolfenstein: The New Order, at Gamescom.
It was a strange experience, not least because it seemed so desperate to remind me that Nazis are evil. Have we forgotten that already?
Wolfenstein: The New Order is a Bethesda-funded reboot of the Man vs Nazis idea first rolled out by Id at the very start of the first-person genre, and it’s being made by Machine Games in Sweden. Fine pedigree there, then, with folks from the Riddick and Darkness games as part of the team responsible for the big push on a game that founded shooters as a concept.
The hands-on at Gamescom was from a level at the start of the game, showing BJ’s journey from his 1940s adventures to the game’s 1960s-with-Third Reich alternate world core. As such I got to see World War II bombers crashing into the side of a castle, before shooting super-Nazis in the not-future. A good range of things to see and shoot, then. I also got to see the game’s cover-mechanic, which is really rather neat: you simply hold a button next to things you want to look over/around/under, and move accordingly. Intelligent stuff, and a fine extra to the usual gamut of first-person control things.
It goes without saying that it looked great, too. Pretty, detailed, explodey. All as you’d expect.
Seeing and shooting was, however, hampered by the decision to demo the PC version of the game with gamepads only. Some mixture of my dislike of gamepad for first-person, the requirement for pinpoint accuracy, and the awfulness of the pad itself led to what should have been a straightforward experience of scripted whack-a-mole being an excruciating exercise in thumbstick twiddling. Oh how I sighed. Oh how I rolled my eyes when I died and watched the difficulty vanish on my second attempt.
I wonder whether the devs stood behind me were aware of my snorts of irritation and annoyance, or whether they simply assumed I was a cack-handed fool. But the truth is I used gamepads every day, and have no issue controlling games with them. This causes me to suspect that the PC version of Wolfenstein perhaps isn’t totally cut out to be shown at its best using a pad |
recognizing, understanding, and countering the doctrinal tenets and appeal of those ideologies was a key factor that enabled the West to defend itself effectively and ultimately prevail in its struggles against these three would-be totalitarian movements and regimes. As Sun Tzu and innumerable other strategic thinkers throughout the centuries have rightly emphasized, it is virtually impossible to counter and defeat an adversary if one does not understand his underlying beliefs and motives, however bizarre or delusional those beliefs and motives may in fact be, since they greatly affect his strategic and even operational decisions. Why, then, do Western policy-makers and opinion-shapers still stubbornly persist in denying reality with respect to the baleful role played by Islamist ideology in influencing the observable behavior of Islamist organizations, including the jihadist groups and networks that constitute an ongoing terrorist threat?
There are several apparent reasons for this continued Western unwillingness to face reality. First, Westerners grow up and live in, and thus are unavoidably socialized within, relatively materialistic human societies, in multiple senses of that term. Therefore, they are naturally prone to ascribe similarly materialistic motivations to all of their adversaries from other cultures, including political or religious extremists from the Muslim world, instead of taking their ideological and religious beliefs seriously.[33] That is why Western analysts so often wrongly assume that ideological extremists are really motivated by narrowly material interests or a naked thirst for power rather than by their stated beliefs, which some falsely claim are nothing more than convenient rationalisations. It is also why they continue to argue, despite all of the evidence to the contrary, that really-existing problems like poverty or the lack of democracy are the actual underlying causes of Muslim radicalisation and violence. On the basis of this egregiously myopic and wrong-headed perspective, for which there is virtually no evidentiary support and a great deal of evidentiary disconfirmation (especially in the wake of the so-called “Arab Spring,” which has thus far mainly degenerated into an “Islamist Winter,” just as more knowledgeable people had predicted from the outset),[34] it follows that the provision of more foreign aid and the introduction of democratic procedures like elections is the solution to that radicalisation and violence. Here, as in so many other cases, one can observe the phenomenon of “mirror imaging,” in which the analysts in question simply project their own characteristic motivations and modes of thinking uncritically and therefore naïvely onto others instead of carefully examining and trying to empathize – albeit not sympathize – with the actual beliefs, cultural values, and motivations of their adversaries.
Second, more than a decade after 9/11, there still remain shocking levels of ignorance in the West about the nature of Islam as a religion, about the basic outlines of Islamic history, about tribal social structures in the Muslim world, and about the doctrinal characteristics of Islamism, an extreme right-wing, intrinsically anti-democratic, and indeed totalitarian 20th-century political ideology deriving from an exceptionally strict and puritanical interpretation of core Islamic religious and legal doctrines.[35] Islamism is only one of many possible interpretations of such doctrines, of course, but it is by far the most intolerant, aggressive, belligerent, and imperialistic of all of those interpretations. Moreover, at the present time it appears to be growing exponentially in popularity at the expense of more moderate interpretations of Islam (as the electoral successes of Islamist parties in the Palestinian territories, Iraq, Turkey, Tunisia, Egypt, and regions of Pakistan have repeatedly demonstrated). Hence most Westerners, including influential policy-makers, journalists, and academicians, simply do not possess the requisite levels of expertise to comprehend the extremist ideological beliefs and thoroughly regressive cultural values of our Islamist adversaries, much less to distinguish between genuinely moderate Muslims and extremists employing deception and disinformation.
Worse still, following the reprehensible example set by various activist academicians (above all Palestinian literary critic Edward Said), a majority of the Western professoriate in the field of modern Middle East Studies – in contradistinction to the far more serious scholars of medieval Islam – appear to have avidly embraced overtly biased, hopelessly one-sided, and blatantly ideological (if not propagandistic) interpretations of Islam and Islamism, interpretations which have resulted not only in blaming the “imperialist” West for most if not all of the Muslim world’s problems and in the systematic whitewashing of Islam itself (for example, as a “religion of peace” or at least a religion that is no more prone to intolerance or violence than any other religion), but also in the patently absurd characterization of Islamist movements that have eschewed violence for purely tactical reasons as “moderate” and “democratic.”[36] These same engagés experts have also repeatedly argued that a tiny, fringe minority of violent jihadists has “perverted” or “hijacked” Islam in pursuit of agendas that are supposedly “un-Islamic,” when in fact the jihadists are Islamists whose interpretations of Islam are far more often orthodox than “heretical” in relation to the “classical” medieval Islamic jurisprudential tradition, above all in regard to conceptions of international relations between Muslims and “infidels.”[37] Last but not least, many of these academicians have systematically sought, together with dissimulating Islamist activists and clueless or dishonest members of self-styled anti-fascist groups, to demonize all those who have adopted a more critical perspective about Islam or Islamism as bigoted, hate-filled “Islamophobes,” no matter how justifiable and well-documented their criticisms of Islam and Islamism may be.[38] From this blinkered perspective, everyone who has concerns about various undeniably regressive aspects of Islam and/or is sounding the alarm about the threat posed by Islamism, no matter how legitimately, must ipso facto be afflicted with some sort of clinical psychopathology, i.e., an irrational “phobia” about Islam.[39] Alas, it is precisely these “Islam apologists” and “Islamist apologists” in academia who have been providing classroom instruction to future journalists and government officials in recent decades. It is therefore hardly surprising that the latter would so often internalize and then subsequently regurgitate the exact same misinterpretations.
Political Correctness
However, the main reason for the West’s ongoing unwillingness to identify Islamist ideology as the primary source of the jihadist terrorist danger, other security threats, and a plethora of growing socio-cultural problems involving Muslims, has to do with the present era’s ever-more pervasive climate of myopic, self-destructive “political correctness.” This is a well-known term that has come to refer not only to the uncritical if not slavish following of political “party lines,” but also to insistent displays of rigid moral self-righteousness and puritanism, humorlessness, and intolerance (if not outright hatred) directed against, as well as an undemocratic impulse to demonize and suppress, the opinions of anyone who does not share one’s own biases and agendas. Such blatantly illiberal behavior is typically justified – as intolerance, fanaticism, and repressive attitudes and behavior almost invariably are – as being in the interests of the “greater good.” Many different forms of “political correctness” exist, including those associated with ideologues on the political and religious right. But herein we are concerned with the now hegemonic self-styled “progressive” forms operating within academia, the media, and government, which emanate primarily from morally puritanical “liberals” (which once was a contradiction in terms), sectarian leftists, radical “feminists” (of the deluded sort who argue that the wearing of a niqab or a burqa by Muslim women should be viewed as a sign of “freedom of choice” rather than recognized as either an indication of coercive male Muslim misogyny or a sartorial expression of regressive Islamist beliefs), multiculturalist ideologues, and assorted anti-Western or anti-white minority group activists (including Islamists).
These self-appointed “guardians of public morality” have organised a multitude of advocacy groups which, much like the official and unofficial medieval “witch hunters” who systematically but falsely accused individuals of being “heretics” and “witches” in order to justify persecuting them, constantly smear all those who disagree with their social and political views, often equally falsely, as “sexists,” “racists,” “homophobes,” “xenophobes,” “bigots,” “haters,” and “Islamophobes.” The goal of the former is to demonize the latter, delegitimise their opinions, and even provide a legal basis for prosecuting them under bogus “hate speech” or libel laws, thereby effectively endeavoring to criminalise dissenting opinions that they regard as beyond the pale. If these all too common impulses to generate “moral panics” and legal persecution were not bad enough, insofar as they represent a clear and present danger to freedom of speech and expression in Western democracies, “political correctness” is also typically characterized by blatant hypocrisy and double standards in that it systematically apologises for, or even seeks to justify, the very same or even worse behaviour, whenever it is manifested by supposed “victims,” that it excoriates when it is manifested by alleged “oppressors.”[40]
In the context of Islam, Islamism, and jihadist terrorism, “politically correct” circles in academia, the media, and government have been insistently peddling the unsupportable view that neither Islam in general nor any conceivably “legitimate” interpretation of Islam can be blamed for acts of terrorism committed by Muslims, even though the perpetrators themselves haughtily declare otherwise.[41] However, not everyone who is taking this position is doing so for the same reasons. On the contrary, the motives of the various “Islam apologists” and “Islamist apologists” are often fundamentally incompatible. Here are some illustrative examples:
well-meaning but naïve political or religious liberals are doing so in the name of promoting greater tolerance and preventing discrimination against innocent Muslims (which are, in principle, worthy goals);
multiculturalists are doing so in the name of promoting ethno-cultural “diversity” and justifying continuing high levels of Third World immigration or asylum;[42]
sectarian leftists, minority activists, and some radical neo-fascists in Europe are doing so in order to shift the blame from the actual terrorist perpetrators and onto Western “imperialism” or “Zionism” for supposedly “provoking” Muslim violence;
self-styled “anti-fascist” groups are doing so in order to more easily justify denouncing their designated enemies from the supposedly “Islamophobic” domestic right;
Islamists are doing so in order to mislead gullible “infidels” about their ongoing pursuit of anti-democratic, anti-Western, and Islamic supremacist agendas;
other Muslims are doing so in order to shield certain features of Islam from any criticism or blame, no matter how well-deserved; and
Western governments are doing so in an ultimately futile effort to win Muslim “hearts and minds,” both at home (in large part for domestic electoral purposes) and abroad, by convincing conspiracy mongering Muslims that they are not waging a “war against Islam.”
Meanwhile, conspiracy theorists from most of these milieus – and many others as well – are busily insisting that Islamists, despite overwhelming evidence of their responsibility, are not even the real sponsors or perpetrators of acts of jihadist terrorism.[43] As a result, all of these milieus are increasingly prone, for their own respective and sometimes disingenuous reasons, to try and “protect” Islam and Muslims from criticism by abusively labeling all critics of Islam and Islamism as “Islamophobes.”[44] In practice, then, these diverse circles of Western “Islam apologists” and “Islamist apologists” are unwittingly functioning as “useful idiots” – or, as per the reformulation of Richard Landes, as no less idiotic “useful infidels”[45] – for radical right, totalitarian Islamists, who are mercilessly exploiting their abysmal ignorance, misplaced good will, or political myopia for their own sordid and sinister purposes.
The Impact of “Political Correctness” on Western Counterterrorism Policies and Actions
Alas, the concrete effects of all of this naïveté, self-delusion, and outright dissimulation are very dangerous indeed, especially in the context of counterterrorism. The West has now reached the point where the very elites entrusted with defending it are increasingly unwilling even to acknowledge the nature of the threat posed by Islamism, despite the fact that Islamists all over the world are openly and indeed continually denouncing the West as a mortal enemy that must be defeated, subjugated, and ultimately converted to their strict, puritanical version of Islam. The only debate among the Islamists is how this commonly shared objective can best be achieved, i.e., whether by means of armed jihad, the approach favored by terrorist groups such as al-Qa‘ida), or by means of gradual processes of infiltration, implantation, and subversion in which the Islamists establish ideological hegemony over Muslim migrant communities, are appointed as representatives of those communities (usually with the unwitting aid of Western governments), and carve out shari‘a-compliant areas within the bosom of Western societies. The latter approach (which is already well underway, especially in certain areas of Europe[46]) has been favored by the Jam‘iyyat al-Ikhwan al-Muslimin (Society of Muslim Brothers, better known as the Muslim Brotherhood), Saudi Wahhabis, and South Asian Mawdudists.[47] Indeed, instead of publicly identifying the Islamists as the implacable enemies of the democratic, pluralistic West, as in fact they are, key Western elites have increasingly adopted an “Islamist apologist” stance, deluded themselves that the “non-violent” Islamists can be our “allies” against terrorism, and therefore unwisely endeavoured to collaborate or “partner” with them in Egypt and elsewhere.[48] (This policy is every bit as foolish and counterproductive as if we had opted to “partner” with the Nazis during the Weimar Republic or with Japanese ultranationalists in the 1930s rather than at least tacitly supporting their opponents, be they authoritarian, democratic, or quasi-democratic.) Indeed, such ill-conceived notions now constitute the basis of many U.S. and E.U. policies towards the Muslim world, especially in the wake of the “Arab Spring.”
The grim reality is that Western collaboration with Islamists is nothing new, given that the U.S., Britain, and several other Western or democratic countries (including Israel) covertly supported Islamist groups like the Muslim Brotherhood against rival Arab nationalists and leftists throughout the Cold War era. The reason is that these religious reactionaries were simplistically and short-sightedly perceived through only one prism: as a useful bulwark against communism and Soviet influence within the Muslim world.[49] Even worse, some Western regimes periodically supported armed jihadist groups, as the U.S. did with the Afghan mujahidin, the British reportedly did with jihadist terrorist groups opposed to Mu‘ammar al-Qadhdhafi, and the Israelis initially did with the Harakat al-Muqawwama al-Islamiyya (HAMAS: Islamic Resistance Movement), actions that in every case led to serious “blowback” that grievously harmed the West and its allies and mainly benefited the Islamists.[50] Yet unlike the Islamists, who have continued to cleverly exploit “infidel” gullibility so as to obtain various types of tangible aid, the West has seemingly not learned any lessons at all from its repeated foreign policy failures vis-à-vis the Muslim world.
However, “political correctness” has now apparently replaced Realpolitik as the driver of Western pro-Islamist domestic and foreign policies. In past decades, it was often geopolitical hardliners within the intelligence community who had advocated supporting the Islamists against secular anti-colonialist movements. Those hardliners naïvely believed that they could easily manipulate the Islamists into functioning as their de facto agents against common Cold War enemies, after which they could abandon or dispose of them as they wished. In reality, they themselves were often conned and played for fools by the Islamists. But unlike today’s delusional policy-makers, these hubristic Cold War Realpolitiker rarely mistook the Islamists for genuine “moderates” or closet “democrats.” Hence the post-Cold War adoption of inaccurate and egregiously sanitised “politically correct” attitudes about Islam and Islamism, which has all too often reflected a misguided bipartisan consensus in the United States, has resulted in even greater Western foreign policy blunders and has now reached the point where it is arguably undermining, if not compromising or sabotaging, the future security of the West.[51] Both neo-conservatives and liberal internationalists have fundamentally misconstrued the nature of Islam and Islamism, with the result that both have uncritically promoted simple procedural “democratisation,” if necessary by force, as the solution to the multifaceted problems in the Muslim world, many of which are in fact mainly the product of the continuing debilitating influence of regressive social, cultural, and religious values.
Moreover, both the Bush and Obama administrations, and those of both Labour and the Conservatives in Britain, have foolishly allowed Islamist operatives and front groups, often portraying themselves – like the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) – as Muslim “civil liberties” organizations, to exert a baleful influence on the development of Western security and military policies.[52] Illustrative contemporary examples in the U.S. include Islamists like Rashad Hussain (Obama’s Special Envoy to the Organization of Islamic Cooperation [OIC] and a Deputy Associate White House Counsel working on “Muslim outreach” and national security), Dalia Mogahed [correct transliteration: Mujahid] (Obama’s Muslim Affairs Advisor to the Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships and a member of the Department of Homeland Security’s Countering Violent Extremism Working Group), and numerous other activists who are reportedly associated with Muslim Brotherhood front groups.[53] Islamist influence has especially manifested itself in three interrelated spheres, where it has predictably created both conceptual and policy problems.
The first problem, and by far the most serious manifestation of Islamist influence, is that Islamist activists have increasingly been allowed to vet the instructional materials related to Islam and Islamism that are being used to train Western intelligence and military personnel. This has progressed to the point where they have actually succeeded in having certain contract instructors fired who they claimed, at times falsely, were “anti-Islamic.”[54] In reality, any criticisms at all of Islam or Islamism immediately make someone, in the eyes of such activists, “Islamophobic” or “anti-Islamic,” even if those criticisms are partially, largely, or entirely warranted. Be that as it may, it is surely an unprecedented situation that our declared Islamist enemies, despite usually operating under the cover of barely-disguised front groups, are nowadays being allowed – with the witless and pernicious help of the “useful infidels” who uncritically accept their disingenuous talking points – to decide what official training materials can and cannot be used to describe and analyze fellow Islamists. Imagine, if you will, that the U.S. government had allowed members of the German-American Bund, a Nazi front organization, to vet its training materials related to Nazism or Nazi Germany prior to World War II, or if it had allowed members of Soviet-backed front organizations to vet its training materials related to communism or the Soviet Union during the Cold War. That is essentially what is occurring at the present time with respect to non-state Islamism and jihadist terrorism, as certain documents released by the FBI in response to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request filed by Judicial Watch clearly indicate.[55] Why would any responsible government allow its own enemies to exert any influence whatsoever over the selection of its training materials for security personnel, as the Islamists have been trying to do with considerable success ever since 9/11?[56] All the more so since the Islamists and the “Islamist apologists” they have hoodwinked are explicitly endeavouring to delegitimize any analytical approach or statement that raises Western awareness of what the former are up to by labeling them, a priori, as “conspiracy theories.”[57] Only a government that is hopelessly blinkered by “political correctness” would adopt such a self-destructive and potentially suicidal course of action.
Indeed, the other two problems to be highlighted are in large part the predictable result of actively soliciting advice from Islamist activists about how to frame security issues involving Muslims. The second is the adoption and continued employment of euphemistic, misleading terminology to describe jihadist terrorism. As is well-known, after 9/11 the Bush administration adopted the pithy phrase “war against terrorism” to describe America’s conflict with jihadist terrorists. Yet the “war against terrorism” formulation was problematic inasmuch as one cannot wage a war against an operational technique, just as one cannot wage a war (other than metaphorically) against an inanimate object like “drugs” or a social phenomenon like “poverty.” As some have sardonically pointed out, the “war against terrorism” phrase would be equivalent to characterizing the war against Nazi Germany as a “war against blitzkrieg [operational techniques],” which would obviously have been risible. Nor is the post-9/11 conflict one between Western democracies and all of the world’s terrorists, i.e., non-state groups and states that frequently resort to the use of terrorist techniques. On the contrary, the conflict that has been going on since 9/11, and that in fact predated those attacks by more than two decades, is between “infidel” governments (including supposedly “apostate” Muslim governments) and Islamists, first and foremost those who rely primarily on armed jihad to achieve their goals. Yet Bush and his advisors, in an attempt to convince Muslims that they were not waging a war against Islam, generally promoted the notion that Islam itself was a “religion of peace” and, as a consequence, also refused to identify Islamism as the enemy in their public statements, in the way that U.S. presidents and officials had previously identified Communism and Fascism as the primary enemies of democracy.[58]
Under Obama the terminology for the Islamist enemy has again been changed, this time to “violent extremism,” which is certainly preferable to the ill-defined “terrorism.” Yet once again, the U.S. is not currently fighting against all forms of violent extremism in the world, but primarily against a certain type of violent Muslim radicalism (i.e., jihadism). Officials in the Obama administration have repeatedly acknowledged that al-Qa‘ida and its affiliates are their enemy, thereby stating the obvious, but they have also increasingly endeavoured to eliminate references to “radical Islam” or “Islamism” in official national security and strategic documents and, as will become clearer below, have stubbornly refused to publicly label their enemies as “Islamists,” “jihadists,” or “Islamic terrorists.” This was ostensibly done to facilitate “outreach” to Muslim communities and to avoid giving “offense” to Muslims in general. However, there is no good reason to believe that non-Islamist and anti-Islamist Muslims would find such accurate descriptive terminology “offensive” in any way (since they themselves often use it), any more than non-Nazi and anti-Nazi Germans would have been “offended” by the Allies identifying National Socialists as their enemies. Nor is there any reason to suppose that criticising Islamists would in any way inhibit “outreach” efforts to genuinely moderate, pro-democratic Muslims who are themselves opposed to Islamism – on the contrary, it would likely embolden such Muslims to speak out publicly and contribute to the forging of a common ideological, social, and political bulwark against mutual enemies. In any case, referring to Islamists and jihadists euphemistically and misleadingly, and not acknowledging the motivational centrality of their interpretations of Islam, does not change their nature or behaviour one iota.
The third problem, which is directly linked to and indeed reinforced by the two aforementioned problems, is the persistent and otherwise inexplicable refusal of key Western officials to link terrorism carried out by religiously-inspired Muslims in any way to Islam, or even to Islamism, both in their public statements and in their intelligence assessments. John Brennan, then Senior Advisor for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism, attempted to explain and justify this approach in a 6 August 2009 speech at the DC-based Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). On that occasion, he exclaimed that President Obama did not consider this struggle to be a “fight against jihadists” because “[d]escribing terrorists in this way, using the legitimate term ‘jihad,’ which means to purify oneself or to wage a holy struggle for a moral goal, risks giving these murderers the religious legitimacy they desperately seek but in no way deserve” as well as “reinforcing the idea that the United States is somehow at war with Islam itself.”[59]
Built into those remarks of Brennan, who currently serves as Director of the CIA, are two unwarranted assumptions. The first is that Muslims will be looking to “infidels” to determine what the term jihad signifies and whether al-Qa‘ida and other Islamist terrorist organizations can be justly characterized as jihadists, which is an absurd proposition given that no terminology adopted by U.S. officials, negative or positive, is going to significantly affect Muslim perceptions of al-Qa‘ida and other Islamist organizations. After all, even Muslims who are opposed to al-Qa‘ida’s totalitarian goals and/or its brutal methods have not generally claimed that the group’s fighters are not really mujahidin, even if they view them as being misguided or dangerous. Furthermore, even the anti-Islamist and anti-jihadist themes and rhetoric disseminated by more or less autocratic Muslim governments (e.g., denigrating jihadists as khawarij or Kharijites, in reference to members of a puritanical Muslim sect who broke away from and later assassinated ‘Ali ibn Abi Talib, the fourth “rightly-guided” Caliph), which were often formulated by regime-friendly Muslim clerics and therefore tended to be more relevant and have more resonance than anything Westerners might devise, have not appreciably affected general Muslim attitudes toward Islamism. (On the contrary, only the systematic targeting of innocent Muslim civilians – but not, alas, their no less innocent non-Muslim counterparts – and the rigid imposition of brutal hudud punishments has served to discredit the jihadists in the eyes of many Muslims.) The second assumption is that it is what U.S. officials say in public fora, rather than what tangible policies the U.S. actually ends up adopting, that will somehow matter most to Muslims, which is no less illogical. Indeed, given that the U.S. has never been waging a “war against Islam,” either prior to or in the wake of 9/11, any Muslims who believe that it has, as the Islamists clearly do, are in effect living in a conspiratorial fantasy world that has no correspondence with reality. Hence proclaiming this self-evident fact publicly is not likely to alter their distorted perceptions.
Nevertheless, Brennan’s speech set the tone for innumerable other pronouncements made thereafter by Obama administration officials. Indeed, even under oath, in the course of being subjected to direct questioning before congressional committees, several such officials have stubbornly continued to deny that which is patently obvious to everyone who has not willfully placed their heads in their sand. Rather than citing selected quotes from the transcripts, it is much more revealing to provide the URLs to their testimony so that readers can directly observe the extent to which these government officials have sought to evade the questions or engaged in bizarre verbal contortions in order to avoid acknowledging the obvious: that radical interpretations of Islam have motivated, and are continuing to motivate, acts of jihadist terrorism. Here, for example, is Attorney General Eric Holder, who, among other absurdities, claimed that Yemeni-American imam and al-Qa‘ida operative Anwar al-Awlaqi espoused a doctrine that was “not consistent with the teachings of Islam”:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HOQt_mP6Pgg
And here is Paul Stockton, Assistant Defense Secretary for Homeland Security, refusing to admit, and in fact stubbornly denying, that the U.S. is at war with “violent Islamist extremism” (not to mention insisting that he is not being “politically correct”):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WU6n1mrpAGY
One might therefore assume that it would be impossible even to satirize such behaviour, but somehow the notoriously biased Fox News channel managed to do so here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BpM8qk3t52A
Sadly, this particular satirical skit is right on target.
The deleterious practical effects of willfully failing to recognise, or obstinately refusing to correctly identify, the Islamist motives of the jihadist perpetrators on the West’s counterterrorist efforts can easily be documented. For one thing, the motives of past plotters and perpetrators of jihadist terrorism, including “martyrdom operations,” have all too often been systematically mischaracterized.[60] In contrast to all other types of violent ideological extremists, when it comes to the acts of violence planned or carried out by Islamists, especially but not exclusively “lone wolf” actions, the tendency of journalists, academicians, and law enforcement spokesmen has almost invariably been to minimize or deny the crucially important and often publicly articulated religio-ideological motivations of the perpetrators and instead to claim, falsely, that the individuals in question were motivated solely by various idiosyncratic personal grievances deriving from their psychological alienation, social isolation, socio-political disgruntlement, and/or mental illness.
Perhaps the most egregious and illustrative example of this peculiar tendency can be observed in the official response in relation to the case of Major Nidal Malik Hasan, the Muslim U.S. Army major who on 5 November 2009 carried out a jihadist terrorist attack against fellow soldiers at Fort Hood in Texas, killing 13 and wounding 32. It soon became evident that Hasan had embraced al-Qa‘ida’s “jihadist Salafist” ideology, had periodically espoused its tenets in both classroom oral presentations and private conversations with other soldiers, had established email contact in order to solicit advice from Anwar al-Awlaqi, had prepared a card identifying himself as a “Soldier of Islam,” had given away his possessions and engaged in Muslim purification rituals on the eve of the attack, and had shouted “Allahu akbar” while firing his weapon at nearby soldiers.[61] One might therefore assume that every honest and informed observer would conclude that his attack had been ideologically motivated, and indeed that it was clearly an act of “individual jihad terrorism” of the sort advocated by Abu Mus‘ab al-Suri and al-Qa‘ida’s Inspire English-language magazine, which al-Awlaqi had played a very important role in creating and editing prior to his death in a 30 September 2011 drone strike.
However, high-ranking political and military officials at once hastened to present a radically different interpretation which essentially attributed Hasan’s murders to psychological problems and personal grievances, an absurdly distorted conclusion that was later slavishly echoed in the Department of Defense’s “after action” report on the Fort Hood shootings. The main purpose of this distortion, as usual, was to minimise the crucial motivational role played by Hasan’s Islamist interpretations of Islam. So it was that the President himself and other government spokespeople immediately endeavored to absolve Islam of any responsibility for the attacks. For example, in his eulogy for the shooting victims, Obama opined that although it “may be hard to understand the twisted logic that led to this tragedy….we do know [that] no faith justifies these murderous and craven acts…”[62] The President thereby conveniently ignored the many Medinan-era Qur’anic passages, the ones that are widely viewed as having “abrogated” the more tolerant Meccan-period suras, that urge Muslims to fight, slay, and subjugate “infidels.” One might at least suspect that a reluctance to face facts would be much less likely to afflict the U.S. military than other components of the American government, but unfortunately “political correctness” has also increasingly been embraced by the Joint Chiefs of Staff since the 1990s. Indeed, in his own remarks, Army Chief of Staff General George W. Casey, Jr. sounded more like a multiculturalist ideologue or a “diversity” bureaucrat than a commander worried primarily about protecting his troops from future jihadist attacks by radicalised Muslim soldiers: “I’m concerned that this increased speculation [about Hasan’s Islamist motivations] could cause a backlash against some of our Muslim soldiers....As great a tragedy as this was, it would be a shame if our diversity became a casualty as well.”[63] Other military officers and “expert” witnesses in court also expressed doubts that Hasan was an extremist who had carried out a terrorist attack, albeit without presenting any reliable supporting evidence or enumerating any credible reasons.
Because of this systematic unwillingness to confront unpleasant but thoroughly documented realities, it should come as no surprise that the only oblique reference to Islam or Islamic extremism in the official Department of Defense report on the Fort Hood attack occurred within an extraordinarily narrow context: “Finding 2.7: DoD policy regarding religious accommodation lacks the clarity necessary to help commanders distinguish appropriate religious practices from those that might indicate a potential for violence or self-radicalization.”[64] This seemingly willful blindness will likely continue to make the U.S. military ill-prepared to cope with, or respond effectively to, future jihadist terrorist threats emanating from within its own ranks or the ranks of its ostensible Muslim “allies” in Afghanistan. Muslim-American soldiers have already planned or carried out several attacks on their fellow soldiers, and there have also been increasing numbers of attacks by members of the Western-trained Afghan security forces on coalition troops in Afghanistan (so-called “green on blue” attacks). Unless Western governments are willing to publicly identify and confront the underlying motivations behind these attacks, there are bound to be more successful attacks of this nature in the future.[65]
Indeed, a seemingly growing inability or unwillingness even to recognise the ideological motivations of the perpetrators makes it all the more difficult for Western security services to interdict future jihadist attacks of any sort. Evidence of this ongoing problem of blindness to the dangers of radical Islamic beliefs can easily be deduced from the case of the Tamerlan Tsarnaev. Even before March 2011, when the Russian Federal’naya Sluzhba Bezopasnosti (FSB: Federal Security Service) had alerted its American counterparts about the possibility that Tamerlan had adopted radical interpretations of Islam, he had already come to the attention of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). In congressional testimony in June 2013, FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III revealed that Tamerlan’s “name had come up in two other cases” whose nature he did not explain, but acknowledged that those two cases, which were apparently not related to terrorism, had then been closed until the Russian warning “refocused” the Bureau’s attention on him.[66] Yet he nevertheless insisted that the FBI agent(s) who conducted the subsequent investigation of Tamerlan had been thorough, and that there was nothing else that could have been done legally, which is doubtful given that Mueller also admitted before Congress that prior to the bombings the Bureau had visited Tamerlan’s mosque, the Islamic Society of Boston (ISB), not in the context of investigating Tamerlan, but only in order to conduct “outreach” to Muslims.[67] And here is how the FBI officially characterized its investigation after receiving the information that Tamerlan “was a follower of radical Islam and a strong believer….[who] had changed drastically since 2010 as he prepared to leave the United States…to join unspecified underground groups” in the Caucasus[68]:
“In response to this 2011 request, the FBI checked U.S. government databases and other information to look for such things as derogatory telephone communications, possible use of online sites associated with the promotion of radical [Islamist] activity, associations with other persons of interest, travel history and plans, and education history. The FBI also interviewed Tamerlan Tsarnaev and family members. The FBI did not find any terrorism activity, domestic or foreign, and those results were provided to the foreign government in the summer of 2011. The FBI requested but did not receive more specific or additional information from the foreign government.”
Even if one assumes that the FBI agent(s) in question followed these procedures diligently, which is entirely possible, it is nonetheless easy to postulate that anyone familiar with the nature of Islamism, the central role it plays in motivating acts of jihadist terrorism, and the various indicators of Islamist ideological radicalisation could have found ample evidence of such radicalisation in the case of Tamerlan Tsarnaev. Was it not already clear, as later became obvious, that his mother had also become radicalised, that he was espousing Islamist doctrinal tenets to certain family members, friends, and at the mosque, that he was no longer drinking and smoking for religious reasons, and that he had compelled his wife to wear a headscarf? Or did all of those telltale activities begin only after the FBI questioned and investigated him?
The answer to the latter question is unequivocally “no.” According to many diverse but convergent indications, it is now abundantly clear that Tamerlan had become increasingly radicalised from 2008 on, i.e., three years before the 2011 FBI investigation.[69] Indeed, growing forensic evidence suggests that Tamerlan may have been involved (along with Dzhokar and Ibragim Todashev, another Chechen who was later shot and killed while being questioned by FBI agents) in the brutal knife murders and near beheadings of three men (at least two of whom were Jewish) in Waltham, Massachusetts, on 11 September 2011, exactly ten years to the day after the 9/11 attacks.[70] Given that one of the murdered men had been a close acquaintance of Tamerlan, that there was no evidence of forced entry, and that marijuana and money were strewn all over the bodies, the police concluded that the victims had known their killers and that robbery was not the motive for the slaughter. Hence it increasingly looks as though this triple murder of hated “infidels” might have been carried out by the future Boston bombers in order to memorialize the 9/11 attacks, and that it might also have served as a kind of practice run to test the courage and religious faith of the perpetrators. Later, in early 2012, Tamerlan spent six months in Dagestan, where he definitely met twice with members of one radical Salafist group (the Soyuz Spravedlivykh [Union of the Just], with which his third cousin Magomed Kartashov was associated).[71] Moreover, given that he began posting many comments supportive of and videos produced by the Imarat Kavkaz (IK: Caucasus Emirate) on his You |
in India, Hero, who wanted the person who is the “reason my sis died” killed was a little cautious. The last three hitmen he tried to hire ran off with the money he paid up front:
I understand your concern but you also need to understand my point as well. As already said I have already wasted my hard earned money 3 Times as people fooled me as they said they will completed job but after taking the money they ran away.
He had tried to hire two hitmen from hiredkiller.wordpress.com and one from LinkedIn. All of them emerged untrustworthy, so it he was a little more reticent with Besa. Poor old “Hero” was scammed again. He handed over money and even provided his phone number, which was kept in the logs.
Another user claimed to have deposited $45,000 of bitcoin to the site to assassinate an African dictator, but he seemed to be trying to scam the scammers.
The thousands of mails are full of people clinging to the belief that their order will be fulfilled, or confident they will receive their money back guarantee. To his credit, BesaAdmin is ingenious in the excuses he comes up with and is prolific in his responses to customers.
Adding insult to injury
“We don’t usually ask this”, wrote BesaAdmin to every person who seemed serious about carrying out a hit, “because we don’t care why you want a hit, but are you the target’s [husband/wife/jilted lover]?”
Sadly for the hapless would-be killers, once BesaAdmin felt they had drained as much Bitcoin as they could get from them (or if they placed an order without paying), they passed on the details to law enforcement, using the email address janeblondiesexy@gmail.com. Most of the email exchanges contain enough detail to identify both victim and the person who wants them gone.
In what appears to be an exchange with a law enforcement agency, BesaAdmin provides details of a Texan who had contacted the site with a request to kill his wife.
“We receive orders to kill people from all over the world,” BesaAdmin explained, “however our site is fake and we don’t have any hitmen. We forward the orders to police departments where the targets are located… We are a team of computer programmers living in Europe, and we made this website as a honeypot for criminals, to fight crime and criminals.”
But somewhat bizarrely, BesaAdmin sent another message to the same law enforcement email address:
I am a former member of Besa, and ex-member of their cyber team. I don’t work with them any more, but I still have access to their system from a backdoor, the other cyber team members miht find it and remove it soon. Please notice that Besa is doing real killing for hire, but they are also working with law enforcement to keep it looking like it is fake with the purpose to avoid the site being tracked down. Their strategy is to do real murders for customer who pay, while giving in customer information who don’t send payment to law enforcement, to claim they are fake and that they give all information in. Hitmen can also sign up, those who send deposit of 1 BTC get real orders, while those who sign up and don’t send deposit are given to law enforcement. They are keeping in touch with several police departments and law enforcements, from several countries, I am sending out this message to all known accounts on Besa Mafia to be of law enforcement Please be aware that only information from customer who do not pay are given to police. Customers who pay have their orders completed, with 80% going to hitman and 20% to besa mafia marketplace They claim they work with law enforcement and that they are fake, but they advice customers not to give their real info and not to meet hitman. They only give out the stupiest customers to law enforcement, those who are stupid to provide lots of info and who don’t pay, this way they mentain the look of fake service that works with law enforcement and this way they don’t get stut down Hope this message gets to be read by all law enforcements who have accounts on this site before my access gets removed. I moved out from them and am on a runaway from them, if Besa Mafia finds me they will kill me
I’m frankly at a loss on this one. There seems no point for that email to be written.
An army of shills
The emails also revealed how Besa got so many people to shill for them on Reddit, 4Chan, Quora and anywhere else they might be noticed. A Google search on Besa Mafia brings up pages of glowing testimonials.
Like any good dark web service, Besa offered incentives to bring in potential customers. If someone came to the site using a particular referral link, Besa would pay the referrer 10% of any money paid for hits. Not surprisingly, no such money was ever paid out.
In addition, if anyone wanted to sign on as a hitman, they needed to pay 1 bitcoin into the Besa account to prove they aren’t “kids playing a joke”. But they could earn credits instead by touting Besa and providing stories of their personal experiences in ordering successful hits.
The torchings
If you think the torchings looked real, that’s because they very probably were.
Besa has no shortage of people applying for freelance work. However, before any potential hitman can be allocated a killing or beating, BesaAdmin tells them they have to perform a test. The test was to torch a car, holding a note as specified.
As it turns out, only one potential hitter was up for it. Thcjohn posted proof of the Pirate London torching, which was carried out in Woodland Hills in the San Fernando Valley. In what appears to be the only payment out of Besa Mafia, he was paid $300 for his efforts and asked to carry out another one.
Thcjohn duly torched another car in honour of Fox and Pinochet, but BesaAdmin deemed the car “too cheap”. He had to do another one with a more modern car, which, eager beaver that he was, he did.
Thcjohn is still waiting for payment for the second and third torchings. Thcjohn probably had no idea who the names on the pages were, or what they meant.
So do they want to hurt people or not?
I’m going with “not”. They are scammers and crooks for sure, but they don’t seem to want to cause physical harm to anyone. BesaAdmin was insistent nobody be hurt during the torchings.
Someone calling themselves Informer offered dox of several Hidden Answers members, including Fox, but BesaAdmin declined.
Hippie, a 45-year-old woman, desperately wanted a loan (Besa advertised loan sharking as well) for $30,000. On hearing that she would have to deposit 1BTC to “prove she wasn’t a prankster”, she became desperate. Besa actually seemed to take pity on her and advised her not to use a loan shark.
She insisted she would come up with the money until eventually BesaAdmin said bluntly: “Our loan sharks usually give loans of 5000 max 30 000 and interest is about 10% per month that is a lot and if you don’t pay they kill you so leave us alone and go to a bank.”
They also provided something akin to compassion to a 17 year old girl who wanted to kill the two boys who raped her. She said it had not gone to court “because of my mental instability”.
And sometimes they cracked a funny. Whe user Netjens asked : “Is there any hitwomen?” BesaAdmin responded: “Why, do you want to make hitchildren?”
What is clear though is there are many people who are willing to pay to have other people in their lives murdered, raped or beaten. Some of the requests are terrifying in their brutality.
I couldn’t find any evidence of Bitcoin payments for any Australian targets, although several Australian targets were identified. I have considered contacting one of them, but am not quite sure how you open up a conversation telling a person someone wants an anonymous hitman to “break both his arms”.
The Australian Federal Police told me “Your questions would be best placed with Scamwatch”.
More from the Besa Mafia Files:
Hitting on the Aussies
The little Texas Hit that Wasn’t
Ugly kids are cheaper
Behind CBS News “Click for a Killer”In the beginning, there was the Exchange server, and it was good. One box did it all, and there was no concept of roles. Then Exchange evolved and in 2003, we had a role for the front end, a role for the backend, and even individual roles for each client protocol. With 2007 we started to see the more functional roles for Mailbox, CAS, UM, and HUB, and the introduction of the Edge. 2010 continued this trend, but then 2013 started to reduce roles, coming out of the gate with only CAS and Mailbox, but eventually adding Edge. But we’re in for another change with 2016, and it will remind some of you of 5.5.
The next version of Exchange, Exchange 2016, will ship soon, and it seems that the wheel has turned, because Exchange 2016 has gone back to a single role. An Exchange server will include mailbox, SMTP routing, and CAS functions. The CAS functions will be loosely coupled like in 2013, but no longer as a separate role or even the expectation of a separate box.
This new design sets up every Exchange server to function as “an island” according to the Exchange team. All communications between servers still happens at the protocol layer, and all endpoints remain local to the active mailbox copy. This greatly simplifies architecture, expands upon availability options, and frankly probably mirrors what most customers are doing anyway with their multirole Exchange 2010 or 2013 servers.
It also means that customers moving to Exchange 2016 will have a much easier time doing so. 2016 can fully coexist with 2013, including keeping namespaces on 2013. 2013 CAS servers can proxy connectivity to mailboxes on 2016. You can also have a mix of 2013 and 2016 servers in the same site, and even have a mix of 2013 and 2016 servers in the same loadbalancing pool.
The “preferred architecture” for Exchange 2016 is very similar to Exchange 2013, and is also what Microsoft has deployed for Exchange Online. You may not be interested in the cloud, but you have to acknowledge that Microsoft is maintaining greater than 99.9% availability for literally millions of mailboxes, so they have a pretty good thing going there. Check out Ross Smith IV’s presentation from the Ignite Conference for more on that at https://channel9.msdn.com/Events/Ignite/2015/BRK3197.
So here’s some upcoming requirements for deploying Exchange 2016. These are subject to change since the product has not shipped yet, but you can expect the following.
Operating system requirements will be Windows Server 2012 R2 or the yet to be shipped/named Windows Server “10”.
Active Directory must be at domain and forest functional levels 2008 R2 or later, which of course means all your DCs must be running 2008 R2 or later.
All Exchange servers in an existing org must be running Exchange 2010 SP3 RU11 or later, or Exchange Server 2013 CU11 or later. Expect these requirements to change if new RU/CUs ship. Note that there is no Exchange 2007 coexistence listed.
Exchange 2016 is coming, and it may be more like a car company model year than a calendar year, so if you are planning on the move, now is a great time to start getting ready. The AD requirements are not insignificant, so while you are considering mocking up things in the lab, you definitely should start working with your AD team now to upgrade their DCs and raise DFL and FFL now.
In the meantime, let us know when you plan on doing the move to Exchange 2016 by voting in the poll below.
[polldaddy poll=8951134]Mrs Clinton earlier laid a wreath for the victims of the 1998 embassy attacks US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has warned that the US will "take action" against Eritrea if it does not stop supporting militants in Somalia. She said after talks with Somali President Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed in Kenya's capital, Nairobi, that Eritrea's actions were "unacceptable". She also said the US would expand support for Somalia's unity government. Eritrea denies supporting Somalia's al-Shabab militants, who are trying to overthrow Somalia's government. Al-Shabab is growing in strength and 250,000 Somalis have fled their homes in fighting between militants and government forces over the past three months. Wreath-laying Mrs Clinton was holding the talks with the UN-backed Somali leader, a moderate Islamist, on the second day of her African tour. Certainly if al-Shabab were to obtain a haven in Somalia which could then attract al-Qaeda and other terrorist actions, it would be a threat to the United States
Hillary Clinton
US secretary of state
Meeting Somalia's al-Shabab Q&A: Somalia's conflict In pictures: Somali refugee city At a joint news conference with him after the meeting, she said: "It is long past time for Eritrea to cease and desist its support of al-Shabab and to start being a productive rather than a destabilising neighbour. "We are making it very clear that their actions are unacceptable. We intend to take action if they do not cease." She added: "There is also no doubt that al-Shabab wants to obtain control of Somalia to use it as a base from which to influence and even infiltrate surrounding countries and launch attacks against countries far and near." Mrs Clinton said if al-Shabab obtained a haven in Somalia "it would be a threat to the United States". Please turn on JavaScript. Media requires JavaScript to play. The US has ruled out sending its forces to fight insurgents in Somalia. But the AFP news agency quoted a state department official as saying on Thursday that the US supply of arms and ammunition to Somalia would be doubled from 40 tonnes to 80. Eritrean officials have repeatedly denied supporting al-Shabab, calling the allegations a "fabrication" of US intelligence. Several Somali Islamist groups operated from Eritrea after being ousted from the capital, Mogadishu, when Ethiopian troops entered Somalia in 2006. Before the talks on Thursday, Mrs Clinton honoured the victims of the August 1998 attacks on the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, in a wreath-laying ceremony in Nairobi. More than 220 people were killed and 5,000 injured in the first major attack by al-Qaeda on US targets. AP news agency quoted her as saying that the embassy site was a reminder of "the continuing threat of terrorism, which respects no boundaries, no race, ethnicity or religion, but is aimed at disrupting and denying the opportunity of people to make their own decisions and to lead their own lives". There are reports that al-Shabab - the Somali Islamist group which favours strict Islamic law and is accused of links to al-Qaeda - is gaining support from militants around the world. Earlier this week, police in Australia arrested several men, charging them with planning suicide attacks on a base in Sydney and saying they were linked to al-Shabab. The BBC's Will Ross in Nairobi says President Ahmed needs all the support he can get. Pro-government forces are only in control of a small section of the Somali capital, Mogadishu. Our correspondent points out it is far too dangerous for the American secretary of state to venture into Somalia, as the fighting continues. Kenya violence Somalia's foreign minister told the BBC's Network Africa programme that Washington's support for his government was a "golden opportunity". "It is absolutely clear that the people of Somalia are tired... sick and tired of war, sick and tired of chaos," he said. CLINTON'S AFRICAN TOUR Kenya South Africa Nigeria Angola Liberia Democratic Republic of Congo Cape Verde
Send us your comments The US admits it has supplied pro-government forces in Somalia with over 40 tonnes of weapons and ammunition this year, and another delivery of weapons is predicted, says our correspondent. But there are growing fears that the Horn of Africa country - which has been without an effective central government since 1991 - risks becoming a haven for terrorists. On Wednesday, Mrs Clinton held talks in Nairobi with Kenya's president and prime minister. America's top diplomat described as "disappointing" Kenya's failure to investigate a bout of violence that left at least 1,300 people dead after the disputed December 2007 presidential election. Addressing African leaders at Wednesday's economic summit, Mrs Clinton said the continent had "enormous potential for progress". But she stressed that harnessing that potential would require democracy and good governance. During her 11-day trip Mrs Clinton will also visit South Africa, Nigeria, Angola, Liberia, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Cape Verde.
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StumbleUpon What are these? E-mail this to a friend Printable versionSeven months ago today, Mark Teixeira had surgery to repair a torn ECU tendon sheath in his right wrist after a rehab regime failed to strengthen the joint. The Yankees were without their first baseman essentially all of last season and the result was a whopping 86 wRC+ from the position, fourth worst in baseball and by far the worst in the AL (Twins were next at 93 wRC+). The timing of the injury — Teixeira got hurt in early-March during pre-WBC workouts — left them with few alternatives at first.
Teixeira, who turns 34 just after Opening Day, has been rehabbing for months and recently started some light hitting off a tee and soft toss. He had been taking dry swings for weeks and is slated to start hitting against MLB quality velocity (90+ mph) sometime this month. Game action will follow in March. Teixeira acknowledged the wrist is still stiff — “I’m expecting until June, and maybe even through this entire season, it’ll be a little tight,” he said to Dan Barbarisi recently — which isn’t uncommon even this far out from surgery.
The Yankees do not have an obvious backup for Teixeira but I suspect that will work itself out something before Opening Day. My biggest concern right now isn’t necessarily a setback that shelves Teixeira for a few weeks or months, but his actual performance. That’s the great unknown. Will the wrist hamper his power production? Will his left-handed swing be hindered while his right-handed swing is fine? How long will it take to shake off what amounts to a full season of rust?
“My entire career, April has not been my optimal baseball performance,” said Teixeira to Barbarisi. “Then throughout the year, I get stronger, I get better, and that’s the goal, to have 162 good games, not 30 good games … Am I going to go out and say, ‘OK, I’m going to hit this, have so many home runs, this many RBIs in April?’ I have no idea. Nobody has any idea.”
As Barbarisi noted in his article, both David Ortiz and Jose Bautista suffered similar injuries and saw their performance slip the following year. Ortiz did not have surgery for a partially torn ECU tendon sheath late in 2008 and then had the worst year of his career in 2009, with reduced power (.224 ISO) and overall effectiveness (100 wRC+). It wasn’t until 2010 that he got back to being the.260 ISO, 150 wRC+ monster he usually is. Bautista went from.322 ISO and 165 wRC+ from 2010-12 to a.239 ISO and 134 wRC+ in 2013 following surgery late last year. He was still obviously very good, but there was a dip in performance.
Wrist injuries are known for sapping power for several months even after the doctor says the player is healed, though only heard that about broken bones (hamate, specifically). Ortiz’s performance in 2009 and beyond fits that timetable and we’ll just have to wait and see how Bautista rebounds this summer. The issue with Teixeira is that his performance had been in decline even before the injury (wRC+ from 2008-12: 152, 142, 128, 124, 116), though his power production was consistently in the.240 ISO range. Given his declining batting average (and subsequently declining OBP), power is Teixiera’s redeeming offensive quality and if that is compromised because of the wrist, he won’t be of much use to the Yankees at the plate in 2014.
I guess the good news, if you want to take it that way, is that the team’s first basemen were so very bad last year that Teixeira almost can’t help but be an upgrade even if the wrist injury saps his power. A perfectly league average hitter will be a big step down for Teixeira but an improvement for the team at first base overall. Carlos Beltran and Brian McCann were brought in to solidify the middle of the lineup (a full year of Alfonso Soriano will help as well) so even without Robinson Cano, the Yankees won’t need Teixeira to carry the load as the cleanup hitter. There are enough bats in the lineup to bat him sixth if his production warrants it. That said, the team can’t afford a half season of Lyle Overbay-esque production at first base either. Teixeira is an important part of the team but it’s impossible to know how much he can contribute this year.The opposition was strategic from the start. The Obamacare sabotage campaign
To the undisputed reasons for Obamacare’s rocky rollout — a balky website, muddied White House messaging and sudden sticker shock for individuals forced to buy more expensive health insurance — add a less acknowledged cause: calculated sabotage by Republicans at every step.
That may sound like a left-wing conspiracy theory — and the Obama administration itself is so busy defending the indefensible early failings of its signature program that it has barely tried to make this case. But there is a strong factual basis for such a charge.
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From the moment the bill was introduced, Republican leaders in both houses of Congress announced their intention to kill it. Republican troops pressed this cause all the way to the Supreme Court — which upheld the law, but weakened a key part of it by giving states the option to reject an expansion of Medicaid. The GOP faithful then kept up their crusade past the president’s reelection, in a pattern of “massive resistance” not seen since the Southern states’ defiance of the Supreme Court’s Brown v. Board of Education decision in 1954.
( PHOTOS: Sebelius testifies on Obamacare roll out)
The opposition was strategic from the start: Derail President Barack Obama’s biggest ambition, and derail Obama himself. Party leaders enforced discipline, withholding any support for the new law — which passed with only Democratic votes, thus undermining its acceptance. Partisan divisions also meant that Democrats could not pass legislation smoothing out some rough language in the draft bill that passed the Senate. That left the administration forced to fill far more gaps through regulation than it otherwise would have had to do, because attempts — usually routine — to re-open the bill for small changes could have led to wholesale debate in the Senate all over again.
But the bitter fight over passage was only the beginning of the war to stop Obamacare. Most Republican governors declined to create their own state insurance exchanges — an option inserted in the bill in the Senate to appeal to the classic conservative preference for local control — forcing the federal government to take at least partial responsibility for creating marketplaces serving 36 states — far more than ever intended.
Then congressional Republicans refused repeatedly to appropriate dedicated funds to do all that extra work, leaving the Health and Human Services Department and other agencies to cobble together HealthCare.gov by redirecting funds from existing programs. On top of that, nearly half of the states declined to expand their Medicaid programs using federal funds, as the law envisioned.
( WATCH: 7 quotes on Obamacare glitches)
Then, in the months leading up to the program’s debut, some states refused to do anything at all to educate the public about the law. And congressional Republicans sent so many burdensome queries to local hospitals and nonprofits gearing up to help consumers navigate the new system face-to-face that at least two such groups returned their federal grants and gave up the effort. When the White House let it be known last summer that it was in talks with the National Football League to enlist star athletes to help promote the law, the Senate’s top two Republicans sent the league an ominous letter wondering why it would “risk damaging its inclusive and apolitical brand.” The NFL backed off.
The drama culminated on the eve of the open enrollment date of Oct. 1. Congressional Republicans shut down the government, disrupting last-minute planning and limiting the administration’s political ability to prepare the public for the likelihood of potential problems, because it was in a last-ditch fight to defend the president’s biggest legislative accomplishment.
“I think my Republican colleagues forget that a lot of people are enrolling through state exchanges, rather than the federal exchange,” Rep. Frank Pallone (D-N.J.) noted last week. “And if it wasn’t for the fact that many Republican governors, including my own,” failed to set up state exchanges, “then we wouldn’t be putting so much burden on the federal system.”
( PODCAST: Questioning Obamacare glitches - who knew what, when?)
In fact, putting an excessive burden on the federal government was the explicit aim of the law’s opponents. “Congress authorized no funds for federal ‘fallback’ exchanges,” the Tea Party Patriots website noted as long ago as last December. “So Washington may not be able to impose exchanges on states at all.” The group went on to suggest that since Washington was not equipped to handle so many state exchanges, “both financially and otherwise — this means the entire law could implode on itself.”
This article tagged under: Republicans
Obamacare
HealthCare.GovUS Passes 10 GW Installed Solar PV Capacity Milestone
July 9th, 2013 by Silvio Marcacci
America’s solar market has broken through the clouds to shine as only the fourth nation to pass the 10 gigawatts (GW) installed solar capacity milestone.
Fast-growing solar photovoltaic (PV) deployment levels since 2010 pushed the US into the ultra-exclusive 10 GW club, reports NPD Solarbuzz in the latest North America PV Market Quarterly report.
“The US has now joined an elite group of maturing solar PV markets,” said Christopher Sunsong of NPD Solarbuzz. “Only Germany, Italy, and China have more installed PV capacity than the US.”
Solar Growing Fast With No Slowdown In Sight
Solar PV has become one of America’s fastest-growing energy sources in recent years. NPD reports the solar PV market has expanded at a compound annual growth rate of 50% since 2007, and 83% of the 10 GW capacity was installed within the past 14 quarters. During the first half of 2013, more than 1.8 GW of new solar PV capacity was installed in the US.
But instead of peaking, NPD predicts installations will accelerate over the next 18 months. Cumulative solar PV installations are forecast to grow an additional 80% by the end of 2014, putting the US on track to pass 17 GW installed solar PV capacity.
This dramatic growth is attributed to the drastic decline of solar system prices that began in 2011. The average cost of an installed system has fallen from $6 per watt in 2011 to $4.25 per watt residential and $3 per watt utility-scale solar PV projects today.
Utility-Scale Projects, State Incentives Driving The Market
In fact, the low cost of utility-scale installations have dominated the market, with these projects representing at least 45% of US installations. NPD’s analysis finds almost 1,400 solar PV installations of 500 kilowatts (kW) or larger in 39 different states provide 5.4 GW of capacity – with 40% in California alone.
While falling costs have spurred the market boom, state-level incentive programs have largely dictated where growth has occurred on a regional basis and hold promise for an even brighter solar future.
“While the Far West and Mid-Atlantic states dominate the 10 GW installed, the Southwest and Southeast regions have recently made strong contributions,” continued Sunsong. “Other regions, such as the Great Plains and Great Lakes, remain largely undeveloped, creating future market upside.”The University of Calgary has begun publicly posting all hospitality and travel expenses for its board and executive team online.
The university made the announcement on Tuesday.
"In addition to publicly disclosing these expenses, the university has implemented a more rigorous internal process for approving executive and board expenses, designated a compliance officer, implemented multiple levels of oversight and engaged the internal audit unit to bring even more rigor to the expense approval process," a release said.
The changes follow a series of stories earlier this year about former board chair Doug Black. The Alberta Conservative senator-in-waiting claimed $28,000 in expenses in an 18-month period, including first-class flights and luxury hotels, according to documents obtained by the Canadian Taxpayers Federation.
Black claimed several first-class flights to Toronto, Vancouver and other cities. He also claimed nearly $1,300 for a two-night stay at the Four Seasons Hotel in Houston and the same amount for two nights at Toronto’s Ritz Carleton.
Black stepped down in October, stating in a letter that he has paid back all expenses he incurred while serving as board chair and learned a valuable lesson.Kelly Schott
Three years ago, Bianey Garcia was on 86th Street in Jackson Heights with her boyfriend. It was late at night, and they were holding hands and kissing. A van slowly pulled up next to them, and they quickly realized it wasn’t any regular van: Garcia says that eight police officers got out and pushed her to the ground, and one of them snatched her purse. “Some condoms spilled out,” she says, adding that the police officer told her, “You’re a fucking prostitute. You’re doing sex work.” She was not, but was arrested anyway.
Read More: New York’s Condom Bait-and-Switch
Garcia, 23, who has long dark hair and a hesitant smile, is a transgender woman. And her story is hardly unique among transgender people in New York City, who are routinely profiled and wrongfully arrested for prostitution or loitering for the purposes of prostitution, and often plead guilty out of fear of abuse in jail while awaiting their court date. “Even if you don’t work in prostitution, they think you are one,” says Garcia, now an organizer at Make the Road New York, a community support and outreach non-profit based in the Bushwick area of Brooklyn. “I felt so very scared. I pleaded guilty so I could go home.”
This climate of fear has led to many transgender people being afraid to carry condoms at all. Johanna, 36, a transgender woman from El Salvador who was arrested in Jackson Heights in May, 2011, when she waiting for a taxi on Roosevelt Avenue and found carrying condoms, says, “We feel very afraid to carry them.” I met Johanna on a recent Monday evening at a neighborhood LGTBQ support group in the Queens led by Garcia, just a few blocks from where both women were arrested. Like Garcia, Johanna is not a prostitute, but still pleaded guilty after her arrest. “Being transgender is hard enough,” she says. “It is very hard getting arrested for nothing. Now I am scared when I carry condoms. I am afraid to walk outside, because they will think I am a prostitute and arrest me.”
As discussed in my article, New York’s Condom Bait-and-Switch, which investigates the practice of condoms being used as evidence in prostitution-related cases in New York City, the public-health effects of the policy are grave. Those who have been targeted by the police, or who know people who have, are so afraid of carrying condoms that they often don’t. In a 2012 study by the Sex Workers Project and the PROS Network, a New York City coalition of sex workers, organizers, and service providers, close to half of the participants reported not carrying condoms at some point out of fear of police repercussions. Among participants who identified as either transgender female or another gender identity besides male or female, the rate was a staggering 75 percent.
If they carry condoms at all, it is common for transgender people to only carry a certain number of them, in the belief that this will protect them from arrest. “When we do Know Your Rights trainings,” says Andrea Ritchie, a co-organizer for Streetwise and Safe, a New York City advocacy group for LGTBQ youth of color, “LGTBQ youth often affirmatively state that you cannot carry more than three condoms. I’m an attorney, and these young people are telling me, ‘With all due respect, lady, you don’t know what you’re talking about. Because we know that there’s a number. We think it’s three. But we know there’s a number.'”
But, of course, there is no number. The possession of any number of condoms is perfectly legal, and the fact that people are not carrying them out of fear of arrest is a civil-rights calamity and a slap in the face to the New York City Department of Health’s very own public-health policy.Cape Town – President Jacob Zuma will earn a cool R2 874 851 a year when his salary increase kicks in on April 1.
The salary increase was approved in the National Assembly on Thursday, despite fierce objections from some opposition parties.
172 MPs voted in favour of the increase, while 81 voted against, and two abstentions were recorded.
Zuma was not present to hear the good news, and also missed MPs arguing for and against the increase, with some complaints thrown into the mix of points of order.
The Independent Commission on the Remuneration of Public Office Bearers recommended a 5% salary increase for Zuma in November.
The increase would be for the 2015/16 financial year for the president and all other public office bearers.
This would boost Zuma’s salary by over R100 000, from R2.75m to over R2.8m. His tax will be around R120 000 per annum.
A last minute bid by the DA and the EFF to block the increase did not succeed.
'Does not deserve a cent'
The DA rose to ask that the increase proposal be amended to say that in the light of Zuma's "reckless actions" at the end of last year in changing the minister of finance twice, his salary should remain unchanged.
The EFF tried to propose an amendment that his salary be suspended indefinitely "since he has admitted that he duly benefited from the Nkandla upgrade and he now wants to pay back the money, so he does not deserve any salary increment adjustments".
The proposed amendments were put to a vote and rejected.
Some opposition parties rose to make declarations, with Cope saying Zuma did not deserve it. But the IFP, NFP, UDM and Agang said everybody else was very happy to get their increase, so Zuma should get one too.
DA Chief Whip John Steenhuisen said Zuma had driven over South Africa with a bus during the Nkandla controversy and "does not deserve a cent".
The ANC's acting chief whip, Doris Dlakude, said that everybody got the increase, "including [DA MP] Dianne Kohler Barnard", so Zuma should too.
"The president will receive his salary increase whether you like it or not... live with it."Copyright 2018 KXLY.com. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without prior permission.
SPOKANE, Wash. - On Saturday night just before 7:30, Spokane Police and the Spokane Fire Department responded to a shooting in the 1600 block of E. Bismark Ave.
A woman called in to report her boyfriend had been shot in the leg.
Upon arrival of the Spokane Police Officers, first aid was rendered to the victim.
The victim did initially tell authorities that a black male had attempted to steal from him and had shot him. However, the victim was going in and out of consciousness. Shortly after this, the victim was transported to a local hospital for treatment of his injuries.
The suspect, 25-year-old Karla R. Licea, was the girlfriend of the victim. Licea initially told authorities that she did not know how her boyfriend had been shot. After this, the Spokane Police Major Crimes Unit (MCU) responded to assist with the investigation.
It was later determined that Licea had shot her boyfriend in the leg. Licea was booked into the Spokane County Jail for Unlawful Possession of a Firearm in the first degree and Assault in the first degree, Domestic Violence.Colorado College released its 2017-18 hockey schedule today, highlighted by 15 regular-season games against opponents that participated in the 2017 NCAA Tournament."Once again our schedule will be one of the toughest in the country," head coachsaid. "In addition to the usual conference opponents, our fans will see some new teams coming to the Broadmoor World Arena."The Tigers, who played the second-toughest schedule in the country during the 2016-17 campaign, open the regular season with six games against non-conference opponents. Following a season-opening weekend at the University of Vermont, Oct. 6-7, CC returns home to the Broadmoor World Arena to face the University of Alaska Anchorage during homecoming weekend, Oct. 13-14. The Tigers then play a weekend series at the University of New Hampshire before opening National Collegiate Hockey Conference play at home against the University of North Dakota, Oct. 27-28.Following the first of two home-and-home series with in-state rival and 2017 national champion Denver University on Dec. 8-9, the Tigers host the nation's newest Division I team, Arizona State University, in a rare Saturday-Sunday series, Dec. 16-17. The calendar year wraps up with single games at Air Force on Dec. 29 and against Merrimack College at home on Dec. 30.The Tigers play seven league series in the second-half of the season, including home games against 2017 national runner-up University of Minnesota Duluth (Jan. 12-13), Miami University (Jan. 26-27), Denver (Feb. 16) and 2017 tournament team Western Michigan University (March 2-3).Due to the unbalanced league schedule, CC will play one series against Minnesota Duluth and St. Cloud State in '17-18.Game times and television information, as well as details about an exhibition game, will be announced at a later date.Season tickets for the 2017-18 campaign are available |
I want to make sure you feel I've treated you fairly. And the minute you think I haven't, I want you to tell me." Not only do you give that out, you encourage them to take that out.
I was coaching a client in an internal compensation negotiation recently, where he knew they were trying to give him less than what they owed him, and he needed to make his case as to why they were wrong. So what I told him to do was, I said at the very beginning, you tell them that if at moment you're being unfair with them, for them to stop you. And what he did was then he laid out his entire case without interruption when otherwise they would've been looking to interrupt him. And then because all his points were valid, then when he shut up. He went silent. He did what we call an 'effective pause.' Their reaction was, well, there wasn't anything that you said that was unfair. So it tends to keep people in sort of a rational frame of mind and make them more open to listening to you.
That's the emotional calculation you're going for. Either the "F-word" is going to come out, after people are upset and they throw out the "F-word" you know that not only are you in trouble at the moment you've been in trouble for a while. Or you take a proactive approach and you diffuse it before the missile gets launched.
We want to hear what you think about this article. Submit a letter to the editor or write to letters@theatlantic.com.While the Earth didn’t end on December 21, 2012, the year’s end was marked by a new awareness of the urgency of the climate crisis. Americans are becoming increasingly aware of the preciousness and fragility of life on Earth. That and other cultural shifts are setting the stage for significant change in the year ahead.
Nine key trends tell the story:
1. Climate Crisis: Alarm Translates Into Action
The climate crisis is the top story of 2012, with record-breaking heat, severe drought that led to the declaration of more than half of U.S. counties as disaster zones, wildfires that burned more than 9 million acres, and superstorm Sandy, with costs reaching into the billions. Four out of five Americans now believe that the climate problem is serious, according to an AP-Gfk poll.
The Obama administration has done little to address this problem—in part because of congressional resistance—but did set higher fuel emissions standards for automobiles, an important step in curtailing greenhouse gases.
The real action, though, is at the grassroots. Bill McKibben and 350.org launched a national movement in the fall of 2012 to press colleges and universities to divest their holdings in big energy companies. Texas and Nebraska landowners, Canadian tribes, and environmentalists everywhere are taking action to block the construction of a tar sands pipeline to ocean ports. Thousands turned out at hearings in Washington state to oppose the transport of millions of tons of Powder Basin coal through the region for export to China. And resistance to natural gas fracking is spreading throughout the Northeast.
Meanwhile, coal plants across the U.S. are closing, and a West Virginia coal company is giving up mountaintop removal as a result of pressure from environmental groups and falling demand in the wake of low prices for natural gas.
With widespread alarm at the extreme weather events, conditions are now ripe for a strong popular movement to take on the fossil fuel industry and its threat to human civilization.
2. U.S. Politics Get More Colorful
2012 saw the number of babies born to families of color exceed the number for white families. But the clout of non-whites is growing for other reasons. African Americans, Asians, and Latinos, along with women of all races, overcame discriminatory voter suppression tactics to hand President Obama the majority he needed to win a second term. The growing clout of communities of color has consequences, putting immigration reform firmly on the national agenda.
Meanwhile, the Republican Party’s radical platform has alienated large majorities of women and people of color, and more than half of Americans call Republican policies “extreme.”
The failure of policies unfriendly to women, people of color, and many others in the 99 percent has the Republican Party in disarray. There is now space for a progressive and inclusive agenda to emerge aimed at raising everyone up (including white men, but not privileging them).
3. Tolerance for Gun Violence Runs Thin
The school shooting in Newtown, Conn., may be the event that finally turns public opinion firmly against tolerance of gun violence. The Sandy Hook tragedy came on top of mass shootings in an Aurora, Col., movie theater, in a Sikh temple in Oak Creek, Wisc., in a shopping mall in Clackamas, Ore., and elsewhere, for a total of 151 killed and injured, according to Mother Jones. This continues a trend of more than 2,000 children and teens killed by guns each year, according to a 2012 study by the Children’s Defense Fund.
The good news is that a majority of Americans now supports bans on assault weapons, and, in spite of spikes in gun sales, the number of American households that own guns is actually down from the last few decades. Research shows that having a gun in the house increases the risk of homicide and suicide in that household.
4. U.S. Global Military Posture in Question
Pursuing the most globally aggressive military posture on the planet is causing a level of blowback little discussed in mainstream media. U.S. drone attacks are killing and terrorizing civilians in Pakistan and Afghanistan. It remains unclear how the United States will extract itself from Afghanistan and wrap up the longest war in U.S. history. And American men and women in the armed services are now killing themselves at a higher rate than they are dying from any other cause, including combat. The year ended with the apparent suicide of Job W. Price, a Navy Seal.
The long-term costs to service members and their families coupled with the financial costs of carrying out wars, responding to the inevitable blowback, preparing for hypothetical wars, maintaining hundreds of foreign military bases, and paying top dollar to military contractors may be doing to the U.S. what Al Qaeda couldn’t do. Other empires fell after exhausting their people’s morale and treasure through protracted warfare. The United States is in danger of falling into a similar trap, while neglecting to invest in sources of real security, like the well-being and productive employment of citizens, and the abundance and resilience of the natural systems that supply food, water, livelihoods, and a stable climate.
In 2013, look for a reassessment of our policies of international violence. We will see efforts to rebuild our national self-worth, not based on our capacity to project death and mayhem, but on our contributions to health and well-being, climate stability, and life-enhancing technology.
5. The 99 Percent Got Inventive (and Got Some Respect)
By early 2012, as the Occupy camps were disbanded, many thought the Occupy Movement had died out. But this fall, Strike Debt arose and the Rolling Jubilee raised thousands of dollars to dissolve millions of dollars of medical debt of individuals. Both actions raised questions about why we allow the banking system to transfer so much wealth from the 99 percent to the 1 percent.
Then, when Superstorm Sandy hit, a movement that had become expert at leaderless mobilization rose up to help those harmed by the storm. Occupy volunteers hiked up stairwells to supply elderly tenants of high-rise housing projects with food and water. Distribution centers were set up throughout neighborhoods that had been flooded and lost power. Police, who had once arrested occupiers, were themselves aided by Occupy Sandy volunteers when their neighborhoods were flooded. Even the big disaster relief agencies began referring volunteers and those in need to Occupy Sandy.
The Occupy movement is inventing new forms of action and grassroots power, reinventing social movements, and building the solidarity and ethics of a new society. Watch for more powerful and creative interventions ahead in 2013.
6. Low-wage Workers Stood Up
This was a year of new labor militancy, with Walmart workers picketing for basic rights, Hot and Crusty bakery workers winning a union contract, and the original Republic Windows and Doors workers founding a worker-owned enterprise in Chicago. Still, there remains powerful pushback against labor rights. A so-called right to work bill passed in Michigan—one of many similar bills promoted by the corporate lobby group, ALEC. And the new “free trade” deal, the TransPacific Partnership, looks likely to prevail and to further benefit large transnational corporations at the expense of workers.
Look for labor organizing to continue taking creative and original forms in 2013, mobilizing unorganized workers, confronting low-wage poverty, drawing in formerly middle-class workers who are now confronting the reality of surviving in a low-wage economy, and challenging the power of the 1 percent.
7. Election 2012 Spending Spurs Backlash
What does it mean to hold an election costing nearly $6 billion? Thanks to the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision, 2012 was the year we learned just how many annoying advertisements billions of dollars can buy. The fundraising arms race boosted the power of those in the 1%, since their contributions became more essential than ever to both parties’ victory strategies.
Eleven states have now passed resolutions recommending a constitutional amendment to overturn the Citizens United ruling. More than 300 town councils have done likewise, and President Obama has endorsed the movement. The election of Elizabeth Warren to the U.S. Senate showed you can take on Wall Street and win. Look for more efforts to confront the power of corporations in 2013.
8. Love Won
In an otherwise bitter political sphere, love showed up. The image of Michelle and Barack Obama embracing became the most tweeted and Facebook “liked” image of all time. Our hearts broke when we learned of the loss of the children and the brave teachers and staff who gave their own lives to protect their students in Newtown, Conn. The president encouraged a response to the Sandy Hook shootings built on the love of our children rather than on vengeance, on the complexity of the issue rather than on simplistic solutions. He led the national mourning with his tears.
An archetypically feminine approach (to respond to a crisis with “tend and befriend” responses that look out for the best interests of all) could come to balance out the “fight or flight” responses that frequently dominate political discourse. Having record numbers of women elected to Congress in 2012 can’t hurt.
9. More Love: An Outbreak of Marriage
Here’s another place love stepped in. In an election that saw the defeat of candidates promoting an anti-gay/anti-women platform, gay marriage initiatives passed in Maine, Maryland, and Washington. The Seattle City Hall opened at midnight on the first day such marriages were legal to accommodate the flood of weddings; judges and city staff volunteered their time, and well-wishers, both straight and gay, lined the entrance to throw petals and rice, and to cheer on the newlyweds. The festivities were an eruption of unexpected joy on a cold December day.
2012 was the year when the word “love” made a comeback. This valuing of each and every life could undercut partisan bickering, a culture of violence, and political attacks, and set the tone for a new radically inclusive agenda for change.
2013’s Big Story?
The year 2013 may offer our last chance to take on the climate crisis. If we fail to take action that is up to the challenge, we may be like the passengers of the Titanic, arguing over entertainment choices while the real threat looms. With climate disasters mounting, 2013 must be the year we commit ourselves to action at the scale needed to—literally—save our world.Gov. Rick Snyder (Photo: Ryan Garza, Detroit Free Press)
Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder today released 274 pages of his personal e-mails from 2014 and 2015, as he and his staff seek to combat calls from protesters for him to resign in the wake of the Flint water crisis.
Snyder pledged to reveal his Flint e-mails in Tuesday's State of the State address, after the Detroit Free Press editorial board and others called for greater transparency from the state's executive office.
The governor’s office and Legislature are exempt from Michigan’s Freedom of Information Act, which requires public disclosure of records related to government. Michigan is one of only two states that apply a blanket exemption to electronic communication from the governor's office and Legislature.
Here are nine must-read pages from today's release. You can read all the released e-mails here.
Page 2
Importance: High, the e-mail says. But it's 100% redacted. (The first page of the report says that this e-mail involved an unrelated lawsuit and Snyder invoked attorney-client privilege.)
Page 2 of Gov. Rick Snyder's Flint e-mails. (Photo: State of Michigan)
Page 71
Dennis Muchmore, Snyder's former chief of staff, writes an e-mail to the governor dated Sept. 25, 2015, claiming that some in Flint were turning the issue of children's exposure to lead into "a political football." He said the real responsibility for the water crisis rested with the county, city and KWA. "I can't figure out why the state is responsible except that Dillon did make the ultimate decision so we're not able to avoid the subject."
Page 71 of Gov. Rick Snyder's Flint e-mails. (Photo: State of Michigan)
Page 58
Once Flint was approved into the Karegnondi Water Authority (KWA), the Detroit Water & Sewerage Department (DWSD) sent Flint a letter that formally terminated their contract. According to the background information found on Page 58, Genesee County was using DWSD water without a contract at that time.
The city of Flint promptly initiated a proposal to Michigan's Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) to use water from their historical backup system, the Flint River. According to this document, the city of Flint could have continued using DWSD water without a contract, instead of sourcing its own water supply from the Flint River. "This proposed shift was billed as a money saver," the document notes. "But it put the city in the business of water production, where they historically had been in the business of water transmission."
Page 58 of Gov. Rick Snyder's Flint e-mails. (Photo: State of Michigan)
Page 102
This e-mail is one of the few released that was written by Snyder. Dated Oct. 2, 2015, Snyder asks staffers to look into "financing mechanisms" that are available to Flint. He wants action "ASAP."
Page 102 of Gov. Rick Snyder's Flint e-mails. (Photo: State of Michigan)
Page 109
In another e-mail sent from Snyder (on his iPad), he calls for a daily report on Flint "until our recommendations are fully implemented." Among the items Snyder mentioned as part of his daily report: water test results from public schools, number of water filters distributed and new blood test results.
Page 109 of Gov. Rick Snyder's Flint e-mails. (Photo: State of Michigan)
Page 269
Snyder's communications chief Jarrod Agen -- who is now the governor's chief of staff -- outlined personnel changes at Michigan's Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) in advance of a letter from the Flint Water Task Force. Agen said members of Snyder's team met and recommended making "structural changes at DEQ as early as tomorrow." Wrote Agen: "The recommendations in this letter suggest profound change at DEQ and openly criticize Director Wyant."
Page 269 of Gov. Rick Snyder's Flint e-mails. (Photo: State of Michigan)
Page 270-272
This a letter to Snyder from the Flint Water Advisory Task Force, which blames the Department of Environmental Quality for the crisis. The letter is what prompts Snyder's e-mail on Page 269.
Read or Share this story: http://usat.ly/1RBwv4lGuest essay by Eric Worrall
The new Paris Climate Agreement is opening some real questions on the constitutional boundaries of the power of the President of the United States.
Obama has pledged to contribute up to $3 billion in U.S. spending on the Green Climate Fund, including $500 million in fiscal year 2016. The Green Climate Fund is pool of money where developed countries, with contributions from public and private sources, help developing nations confront climate change. The climate change agreement does not legally bind countries to contribute money to the climate fund, but it sets the goal for rich countries to contribute together at least $100 billion per year. A new spending bill appropriating money for this fiscal year — which is expected to be voted on by lawmakers this week – does not assign money for the Green Climate Fund. But Republicans were unable to attach a proposed policy provision that would have explicitly blocked Obama from sending federal money to the Green Climate Fund. In addition, the $1.1 trillion spending bill does not prohibit the administration from transferring money from other accounts for the climate fund.
Read more: http://dailysignal.com/2015/12/16/republicans-to-keep-trying-to-block-obamas-international-climate-change-deal/
I am not an American, but I suggest that if the President of the United States has the power to send billions of dollars to foreign countries, and majority votes in the Congress and Senate are powerless to prevent this enormous diversion of taxpayer’s money, then the US Congress and Senate are as irrelevant to the process of the governance of the United States, as the toothless Roman Senate was under the Caesars.
In 1788, President George Washington refused to be king, and created a Presidential office which was limited by the US Constitution.
The climate “emergency” has created a pretext, a convenient crisis, which in my opinion has undermined the constitutional balance of power established by the Founding Fathers, perhaps irrevocably.
If the Senate and the House of Representatives cannot restore the balance of power which was established by the original US Constitution, then the United States, for better or worse, is no longer the Republic which the founding fathers created in 1788.
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RedditSmartwatches failed as a product category because the main industry players made a huge mistake.
They started with consumer smartwatches and treated the enterprise as an afterthought. It should have been the other way around.
Three years ago, smartwatches were expected to quickly evolve into a bona fide and thriving mainstream electronics category. Instead, they are mainly just wrist-based delivery systems for smartphone notifications, as well as fitness companions. (Other uses include news updates, phone calls, alarms, email, looking at pictures and videos, navigation, controlling music and home automation, according to NPD Group.)
The early success stories are crashing and burning.
Motorola has exited the smartwatch market. Pebble shut down in December. Jawbone did the same in July.
Intel, which had acquired the wearables firm Basis, shut down that company and exsted the smartwatch and fitness tracker space completely.
Fitbit sold 2.3 million fewer devices last quarter compared with the same quarter a year ago, the company announced this month.
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By offering a standard, open platform for any smartwatch company to build upon, Google's Android Wear platform was the darling of the industry when it launched nearly three and a half years ago. Fast forward to today, and Apple's proprietary Apple Watch running watchOS dominates, with Samsung's proprietary Tizen a distant second. Android Wear brings up the rear.
Strategy Analytics said that during the first quarter of this year, Apple owned 57% of the market with its Apple Watches, while Samsung and Google are battling for scraps with 19% share with Tizen and 18% Android Wear. (Gartner says Apple will stay on top until at least 2021.)
Companies are cagey about numbers. But it's very likely that most or all smartwatch makers are losing money. Leaders Apple and Samsung don't mind. Smartwatches bolster smartphone platforms and customer loyalty.
Consumers underwhelmed
Kantar Worldpanel ComTech reported that as of December, just 15.6% of U.S. consumers owned a smartwatch or fitness band, barely higher than the year before (compare this to the 77% of Americans who own a smartphone). Fewer than 10% of European consumers own smartwatches.
But even this low number hides a more telling reality: Many consumers who did buy smartwatches don't wear them. After purchase, and some months of use, those watches are now gathering dust in a drawer somewhere. Because: What's the point?
Smartwatches failed to meet expectations and penetrate the mainstream consumer market for a variety of reasons. The top reason is that they are either too bulky and expensive or they're too limited in functionality to justify purchase and use by all but the most dedicated gadget enthusiast.
In other words, the state of the technology doesn't allow for the slim, feature-rich and inexpensive devices that would enable widespread adoption.
Some of the most coveted smartwatches today appear to be those that most closely resemble dumb watches -- they're purchased for the same attributes watches have offered buyers for decades, and not for the "smarts." Or, they're so expensive that few are willing to buy them.
Montblanc's new $980 titanium Summit smartwatch exemplifies the category of watches that are essentially traditional watches, but with subtle "smarts" added. The Summit line, including the pricey titanium option, runs Android Wear 2.0. The watch does little more than show smartphone notifications, and allow minimal responses. The best feature is that it doesn't look like a smartwatch.
TAG Heuer's Connected Modular 45 smartwatch is coveted, but rarely purchased, thanks to its price range of $1,700 to $6,750. And Louis Vuitton's Tambour Horizon is too bulky, function-limited and overpriced ($2,490), all at the same time.
Other watches differentiate by focusing on extremely narrow niches. For example, the Fantom smartwatch is for soccer fans, and does little beyond keeping you updated on your favorite team.
Several smartwatches have emerged for kids, including VTech's Kidizoom DX2, dokiWatch, Safer Kids and others.
Some companies innovate by offering features for smartwatches that have existed on conventional watches for decades. A Swiss company called Sequent now offers a $219 self-charging smartwatch. It uses kinetic movement to charge the battery. The "smart" features are simply more smartphone notifications.
Still others innovate by "catching up" to smartphones.
The latest Apple Watch expected next month is rumored to come in an LTE version, meaning it should be able to make calls and get data directly without iPhone tethering. Apple's LTE watch would follow several other major devices that offer that feature, including Huawei's Watch 2.
A watch called the Arrow Smartwatch offers a smartphone-like camera, but with an innovative benefit. It rotates around the bezel, so you can shoot a selfie, then spin it to the front to take a shot forward.
And the Martian mVoice line of smartwatches feature the ability to talk with a virtual assistant (specifically, Amazon's Alexa.)
What the consumer market expects and needs is not a dozen different watches where each offers one feature available on either analog watches or smartphones. Buyers want a single watch that sports all dozen features.
IFA announcements coming this week
Smartwatch news will start blasting out of Germany's IFA conference later this week and the industry will take another small step toward mainstream acceptability.
Samsung will probably announce new watches Wednesday, including a new Gear Fit 2 Pro and another watch in its Gear S line. Sony and Huawei could announced new watches Thursday. Garmin's Vivoactive 3 and a range of fashion-branded Fossil smartwatches should also be announced this week.
And Apple's industry leading Apple Watch likely gets a refresh next month.
While these new products are expected to introduce welcome and possibly surprising innovations (especially the Samsung watches), they still won't offer the killer combination of size, features and price. They can't. The technology isn't ready yet.
The big mistake: Forgetting the enterprise
The tech industry plunged into the smartphone market in recent years based on a false assumption: that smartwatches should start out as consumer rather than enterprise products.
Instead, smartwatches should have developed like smart glasses, with products for enterprises first and consumers later.
The false narrative still echoing in the tech press echo chamber about Google Glass is that Google launched smart glasses into the consumer marketplace, and the product failed. Later, the story goes, the company changed course and reintroduced Glass as an enterprise product.
What actually happened is that Google's R&D lab launched a novel beta program called the Explorer Program that was designed to crowdsource the decision on how smart glasses should best be used.
The program informed Google researchers that the state of smart glasses technology was not ready for consumers, but was ready for the enterprise, where bulky electronics are acceptable if the efficiency payoff is real. So Google transitioned Glass from the research division to a product group, and set to work on the Glass Enterprise Edition.
That's exactly what should have happened with smartwatches. Had a major company like Apple, Samsung or Google conducted a smartwatch "Explorer Program," they would have discovered in advance that the enterprise is where all their efforts should be focused, with attention on the consumer market coming much later.
Instead of developing smartwatches that show Instagram notifications and heart rate, the industry should have been developing biometric security and key access, GPS features for delivery applications, watch-to-watch transmission of business card information and other corporate uses.
Unlike the consumer marketplace, most enterprise applications -- including manufacturing, logistics and others -- could tolerate bulkiness, narrow functionality (as long as it served business purposes) and high price.
As a result, some enterprise-facing initiatives are forced to add business apps (like TaskWatch) on top of devices built for consumers.
The industry got it backwards and went all-in with the consumer space, treating the enterprise as an afterthought. And that's why neither consumers nor enterprises now have watches that are ready for prime time.
The watch makers are losing money and some companies that make smartwatches exclusively are going out of business. Consumers are apathetic about devices that fail to deliver on form-factor, features and price. And the enterprise smartwatch market is basically nowhere.
It didn't have to be this way. The smartwatch industry should have done what Google did with Glass, and figured out that enterprise-first is the way to go with wearables.Zhumi, the makers of the Mi Air Purifiers, today unveiled its first air conditioner, the Smartmi DC Inverter Air Conditioner.
The air conditioner has a white simplistic design that is curved at the corners. The vent is beneath the unit and there is a circular display flanking it on the left. You may be wondering if that is the best spot for it. You don’t have to worry as the base of the air conditioner is inclined forward, so the display is actually directed towards your eyes.
The Smartmi Air Conditioner has a power rating of 1.5HP. It has a refrigerating capacity of 3500W, a heating capacity of 4500W and an air volume of 700m³/h.
The Smartmi DC Inverter air Conditioner consists of a DC inverter compressor supplied by Hitachi, a low-noise but power-efficient NIDEC DC motor, and a cross-flow fan motor and axial-fan motor supplied by Panasonic.
READ MORE: Interesting! Beta Testers Can Get The Xiaomi Mi AI Speaker For Just 1 Yuan
The air conditioner can be controlled via the Smartmi Air app where you can check the energy stats and set a precise temperature level to an accuracy of 0.1°C. It also comes with a white remote.
The Air conditioner will retail for ¥4399 (~$660) and will go on sale on August 16.During fast and testimony meeting a brother slowly made his way to the podium as one sister wept while talking about her soon-to-be-missionary son.
She expressed how hard it was to be a mother in this situation, soon having to let her son go. “I would never let my child go on a mission if I didn’t know this Church was true.”
After the sister closed with “Amen”, this good brother took his place at the podium and turned to her and said, “Just wait until you drop him off at the MTC. That’s even harder.”
He then shared his two recent experiences, as he and his family dropped of his 19-year-old daughter to serve in Australia and his 18-year-old son to serve in Malaysia.
“I stood there waiting for the long line of cars to each pull up to the curb, unload their son or daughter, along with their luggage, and say goodbye for 18 months to 2 years. I was completely overcome with emotion as the reality of what these families were doing set in.”
“These families, which come from all walks of life and arrive in anything from a beat up mini-van to a $60,000 SUV, send their children off to unknown countries where they trudge through mud, eat bugs, and endure poor living conditions.”
As this brother silently watched each family say their goodbyes, one after another, after another – he felt the weight of their sacrifice.
Just wait until you drop him off at the MTC. That’s even harder.
His mind drifted and thought of those who have left the Church and those who are now ardent critics, and he wished at that moment they could be by his side.
“I wish I could go to those who have walked away from the Church, and those who are its ardent critics, and say, “Come with me to the MTC on a Wednesday morning and let’s just watch. Let’s stand together and watch these families say goodbye to their sons and daughters.”
“You mean to tell me you think these people are brainwashed? These individuals and families who in all other walks of life, in their education, in their careers, and in their communities are successful, smart, and industrious – you mean to tell me in this one area they are so ignorant and brainwashed that they would send away their sons and daughters?
Never. They would never do it.
But the reason they do allow their children to sacrifice two years of their lives is because the gospel of Jesus Christ is true.”
As this brother concluded his testimony, tears streamed down his face, and the hearts of those in the congregation burned as they felt the power of the image that had been painted in their minds and hearts.
The image of a young missionary slowly exiting a car with luggage in tow. The image of family hugs and tears being shared one last time. And the image of a missionary called of God, waving goodbye to his family as he turns his efforts to invite all to come unto Jesus Christ.
*This article has sparked a lot of discussion and commentary. While the willingness of members to allow their children to serve missions isn’t proof of truth, the willingness to sacrifice for what you believe is an earmark of truth. However, there are many other earmarks that need to be present as well.
Many have responded to this article stating that some cultures have murdered their children because of what they feel is “truth”, which proves that sacrifice isn’t the only earmark of truth. That is a point that I totally agree with.
At the same time, we are comparing cultures who murder their children with Latter-day Saints who send off their children to bring souls unto Christ. Quite a different thing, am I right? Not to mention it is a mandate which Christ himself gave:
Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost:
Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and, lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world. Amen.
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We’ve created a free bookmark printable with 10 tips for more meaningful prayer. Download yours for free right now > http://bit.ly/iPrayerTipsThe remains of a baby, which were found in Peru late last year, may be evidence that aliens exist according to some people, a report said Wednesday.Brian Poster, a U.S.-born scientist who serves as vice director of the Paracas Museum of History in Peru, plans to make public the results of his study on the baby’s skull and 11 ribs late this year, gather.com reported.Poster has long conducted studies on artifacts, technology and the remains of humans, which have been unearthed in South America.The skull has large eye sockets and a triangular head. Some scientists believed it to be that of child, according to the report.“I think the skull was formed from birth. Some nutty people want to believe it is from a real alien, but it looks like another case of child abuse to me. If you look at the images of the skull, it appears to be alien in nature, but as we have never seen a real alien, how can anyone say it is the skull of an alien,” an archeologist was quoted as saying by gather.com.Democrats are zeroing in on an ongoing probe into Palin’s role in the firing of the state’s public safety director, who had reportedly refused to sack Palin’s estranged former brother-in-law. Dems armed with Palin opposition
Sarah Palin may be a complete stranger to most of the American public, but there’s an important subset of the population that’s doubtless already very familiar with John McCain’s surprise vice presidential pick: Democratic opposition researchers.
While the central line of attack looks to be her inexperience — and, by extension, her running mate’s age, there are other hits to come.
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In a state whose politics have been defined of late by oil scandals, Dems will no doubt seek to link her to scandals involving indicted Sen. Ted Stevens (who offered an endorsement of her Friday) and Rep. Don Young. She’s also clashed with McCain over Arctic drilling — she wants drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, which he has continued to oppose.
But most of all, Democrats are zeroing in on an ongoing probe into Palin’s role in the firing of the state’s public safety director, who had reportedly refused to sack Palin’s estranged former brother-in-law.
Audiotapes released last month reveal that aides to the 44-year-old governor pressured Safety Director Walter Monegan to dismiss Trooper Mike Wooten, after Wooten allegedly threatened Palin’s father during a messy child custody fight with the governor’s sister Molly.
Monegan refused to do so and was fired on July 11 and replaced by an official who had previously been suspended for sexual harassment.
Palin said Monegan was let go for failing to fill trooper vacancies and invited a close examination of her role in the matter. The Alaska state legislature obliged, allocating $100,000 to investigate. The results of the probe are expected on Oct. 31, less than a week before the general election.
But Troopergate II isn’t the only issue Democrats are pushing. They are going straight after Palin’s perceived strengths: ethics and good government.
Palin, who when she became governor sold Gov. Frank Murkowski’s state-owned jet and canceled Stevens’ much-maligned “bridge to nowhere,” was also a vocal critic of oil field services giant Veco, a major player in Alaska politics that's now accused of improper relationships with Stevens and Young.
According to an Anchorage Daily News clip e-mailed to reporters, Palin accepted $5,000 in contributions from company executives and their wives during her failed 2002 lieutenant governor’s bid — which represented about 10 percent of her minuscule war chest that year.
"Now we can talk about Ted Stevens and Don Young and Republican corruption every day," said a delighted Democratic strategist. "That's great for us."
But Republican Rep. Candice Miller, who represents Macomb County, Mich., considered a bellwether swing district, said the ferocity of the Democrats’ efforts reflect fear of a candidate who can seriously challenge them among working-class women.
“Democrats are scared; they are having a meltdown,” said Miller, who was planning to skip the GOP convention next week before Palin was announced. “They’d better do their opposition research as fast as they can, because they only have a couple of days to find something on her before she takes over that convention.”
Other nuggets Democrats hope reporters will mine over the next two months:
— Palin didn’t back McCain in the primary. She stayed neutral in Alaska’s January primary — perhaps on account of McCain’s opposition to drilling in ANWR. “A lot of us are sitting back and waiting to see if there will be new players in there," she said in 2007. "That’s probably why that box that says ‘none of the above’ is so popular right now."
— Mayoral performance. Palin, who portrays herself as a fiscal conservative, racked up nearly $20 million in long-term debt as mayor of the tiny town of Wasilla — that amounts to $3,000 per resident. She argues that the debt was needed to fund improvements.
— Stevens and Young, redux. Palin has distanced herself from the state’s two most popular politicians, but both appeared at Palin fundraisers during her 2006 gubernatorial bid.
— The environment. As governor, Palin vetoed wind power and clean coal projects, including a 50-megawatt wind farm on Fire Island and a clean coal facility in Healy that had been mired in a dispute between local and state governments.
— And, maybe, censorship. According to the Frontiersman newspaper, Wasilla’s library director, Mary Ellen Emmons, said that Palin asked her outright if she "could live with censorship of library books.” Palin later dismissed the conversation as a “rhetorical” exercise.And now for something completely different. Ryan Avent has a nice summary of the argument in his recent book, trying to explain how dramatic technological change can go along with stagnant real wages and slowish productivity growth. As I understand it, he’s arguing that the big tech changes are happening in a limited sector of the economy, and are driving workers into lower-wage and lower-productivity occupations.
But I have to admit that I was having a bit of a hard time wrapping my mind around exactly what he’s saying, or how to picture this in terms of standard economic frameworks. So I found myself wanting to see how much of his story could be captured in a small general equilibrium model — basically the kind of model I learned many years ago when studying the old trade theory.
Actually, my sense is that this kind of analysis is a bit of a lost art. There was a time when most of trade theory revolved around diagrams illustrating two-country, two-good, two-factor models; these days, not so much. And it’s true that little models can be misleading, and geometric reasoning can suck you in way too much. It’s also true, however, that this style of modeling can help a lot in thinking through how the pieces of an economy fit together, in ways that algebra or verbal storytelling can’t.
So, an exercise in either clarification or nostalgia — not sure which — using a framework that is basically the Lerner diagram, adapted to a different issue.
Imagine an economy that produces only one good, but can do so using |
and Dodd-Frank. He exists to prevent the tax system from getting more regressive. He also exists to obstruct misguided foreign military adventures–because of Obama we have not sent large numbers of ground troops to Iraq or Syria. The next president must be trusted to do all of these things at least as well as Obama has done them and make sound appointments to the Supreme Court.
The reason it matters that Bernie Sanders supports things like single payer, tuition-free college, mandatory paid vacation time, Glass-Steagall, and breaking up the banks is not because if you elect Bernie Sanders he will do all of these things. Most likely if you elect Bernie Sanders he will accomplish zero of those things. The reason they matter is because they illustrate Bernie Sanders’ level of commitment to defending the interests of the middle class, the poor, and the socially marginalized. Hillary Clinton’s record indicates that she is much less trustworthy. During the first Clinton administration, Bill and Hillary went along with the republican congress on repealing Glass-Steagall, which contributed to the financial crisis of 2008, and on passing welfare reform, which inflicted mass suffering on America’s poorest and most vulnerable families. Hillary Clinton voted for the Iraq War and was the architect of the Obama administration’s disastrous intervention in Libya. In the 1960’s, Bernie marched with Martin Luther King while Hillary campaigned for Barry Goldwater.
What will most likely be the real world difference between a President Sanders and a President Clinton?
The next president will likely be faced with a situation where the republicans offer to pass a budget, but only if the democratic president agrees to repeal parts of Dodd-Frank. Who do you trust not to cave? The politician whose biggest donors over the years have mostly been banks and financial institutions, who was involved in the repeal of Glass-Steagall, who represented the state of New York and Wall Street in the senate for eight years? Or the politician who gets most of his money from unions and small donors, wants a new Glass-Steagall, and wants to break up the big banks?
The next president will most likely immediately face pressure to send ground troops into Syria or Iraq, ground troops who may not only have to destroy ISIS but may then stick around for many years to nation build. Who do you trust to resist the pressure to send troops? The politician who voted for Iraq and pushed hard for Libya, or the politician who voted against Iraq and has consistently opposed regime change by military means?
The next president will probably get to appoint at least one new Supreme Court justice. Who will appoint justices more likely to stick up for the little guy?
Throughout the next president’s term, there will be opportunities to make the case to the public for electing a congress more favorable to big reforms like single payer or tuition-free college. Who will make that case more often and more persuasively?
Sanders is currently more electable than Clinton and he is more trustworthy as a guardian of the welfare and regulatory states than Clinton is. This is why Sanders makes sense even if you are convinced that he won’t be able to get congress to pass his ambitious proposals. And if you think that Clinton might be able to succeed where Sanders would fail, you don’t know the republican congress. These people won’t even pass gun control measures that enjoy support from 90% of the population. If anyone thinks that because Clinton’s proposals don’t go as far as Sanders’ the republicans will be any more likely to acquiesce, that person needs to return to the planet earth post-haste.
Still unconvinced? For a more thorough critique of Hillary Clinton’s progressive credentials, check out this post.In a major victory for President Obama and congressional Democrats, the House has approved a landmark measure that would expand healthcare to over 30 million uninsured Americans while forcing millions to purchase health insurance. The 219-to-212 vote late Sunday night came nearly three months after the Senate’s approval of the bill on Christmas Eve. No Republicans voted with the Democratic majority. The House later approved another package of changes that will now face a testy Senate vote before reaching Obama’s desk. Although the measure marks the largest expansion of health insurance since the founding of Medicare and Medicaid in the mid-1960s, it’s been criticized for further entrenching the for-profit healthcare system that rations care based on wealth. In a national address, Obama acknowledged the bill falls short of radical reform but said it marked a “victory” for the American people.
President Obama: “This legislation will not fix everything that ails our healthcare system, but it moves us decisively in the right direction. This is what change looks like. In the end, what this day represents is another stone laid firmly in the foundation of the American Dream. Tonight we answered the call of history as so many generations of Americans have before us. When faced with crisis, we did not shrink from our challenge; we overcame it.”
The passage followed weeks of intense negotiations to secure the needed votes. Democratic leaders obtained the backing of progressive lawmakers despite excluding a public option. And several anti-abortion lawmakers signed on after President Obama agreed to issue an executive order reasserting that no federal money in the bill would be used to fund abortions. In a statement, Terry O’Neill of the National Organization for Women said, “The message we have received today is that it is acceptable to negotiate healthcare on the backs of women, and we couldn’t disagree more.”Bill Clinton battled another protester chanting he was a “rapist” today, and at least one rally attendee attacked the man as he was being led out.
The former president was speaking in Immokalee, Florida on behalf of Hillary when a man in white t-shirt with handwritten lettering reading “Bill Clinton is a rapist” heckled him.
The protester was effectively detained with his arms behind his back as he was being led through the crowd.
Suddenly a Clinton supporter grabbed him by the shirt and attempted to throw him to the ground.
“F*ck you,” he yelled at the heckler.
In October, a group of Clinton supporters attacked a protester at a Las Vegas Hillary rally.
Video shows a protester holding a “rape” sign at Hillary’s event on October 12 was beaten by a mob of Hillary supporters near the media pen.
Protester with "Rape" sign is tackled at #Clinton rally in #Las Vegas pic.twitter.com/sJvGvFnpgt — John Treanor (@NewsTreanor) October 13, 2016
The video shows several people in union t-shirt sparring with the man, who is trying to get away from them.
He could be seen holding onto the security fence as he was ripped off and thrown to the ground.Child custody disputes often get ugly, and the fight between Alaina Giordano and Kane Snyder's is no different. There have been allegations of cheating, domestic violence, and mental health problems, but their case is getting national attention because a judge denied Giordano primary custody of her two children partly because she's fighting breast cancer.
Giordano has stage 4 breast cancer which has metastasized to her bones, but her cancer is stable and isn't progressing. In August Snyder moved to Chicago for work, and the children, 11-year-old Sofia and 5-year-old Bud, stayed with Giordano in Durham, N.C.. But last month, Judge Nancy Gordon ruled that the children must move to Chicago by June 17.
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ABC News reports that in addition to Giordano currently being unemployed (she's a a freelance writer and editor), Judge Nancy Gordon cited this information from forensic psychologist Dr. Helen Brantley in her decision:
"The more contact [the children] have with the non-ill parent, the better they do. They divide their world into the cancer world and a free of cancer world. Children want a normal childhood, and it is not normal with an ill parent."
Moving would be difficult for Giordano because she's being treated by a team of doctors at Duke Cancer Institute, but if she doesn't go to Chicago she'll only be allowed to see the children on holidays and weekends, though she can't afford the airfare. According to the New York Times, the judge asked Snyder, who is an executive at Sears Holding, Inc., if he'd move back to North Carolina so the children could see their mother regularly, but he said he wouldn't leave his job in the current economy.
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Giordano told ABC she's "fully functional," adding:
"It makes no sense to take them away from me because you don't know how long I'm going to live... Everybody dies and none of us knows when. Some of us have a diagnosis of cancer, or diabetes, or asthma. This is a particularly dangerous ruling to base a custody case on a diagnosis."
Giordano says she wants to appeal, and in the meantime she's publicizing her story via her blog, the Facebook page, "Alaina Giordano Should Not Lose Her Kids Because She Has Breast Cancer," and TV news appearances.
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Child custody arrangements are supposed to be in the best intrest of the child, and some legal experts say a parent's mental and physical health is always taken into account. However, Art Caplan, director of the Center for Bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania, tells Time:
"It's a bad precedent... We certainly wouldn't want to have legislation suggesting that parenting is going to be contingent on being in peak health. It's not a big jump from, 'I don't want Mom to have custody because she has stage 4 cancer' to 'I don't want Mom to have custody because she's a smoker.'"
It's unclear who would have been awarded custody if Giordano didn't have cancer, but if she's capable of caring for the children they shouldn't be taken from her simply because she's ill. It's true that kids, "want a normal childhood, and it is not normal with an ill parent," but worrying about their mother from hundreds of miles away isn't likely to spare the children any trauma, it will just deprive them of the limited time they still have with her.
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Judge Cites Mom's Breast Cancer in Denying Custody Of Children [ABC News]
Losing Custody Because She Has Cancer [NYT]
Should a Mother Lose Custody of Her Kids Because She Has Cancer? [Time]The diplomatic stand-off between the United States and Russia could hit Miley Cyrus like a wrecking ball as her sellout show risks falling foul of US sanctions.
The Helsinki arena in which the chanteuse and serial twerker is set to perform in May is owned by a company controlled by three Russians who appear on the sanctions list released by US authorities following the annexation of Crimea.
Russian oil magnate Gennady Timchenko and millionaire brothers Arkady and Boris Rotenberg, who have close links with President Vladimir Putin, bought the arena last year through their events management company, Arena Events Oy.
We’ll tell you what’s true. You can form your own view. From 15p €0.18 $0.18 $0.27 a day, more exclusives, analysis and extras.
The trio were recently hit by economic sanctions preventing them from doing business with American companies.
As a result, US ticket promoter Live Nation Entertainment could now be barred from completing financial transactions with the Russian-owned arena unless it receives special dispensation from the US Treasury Department.
In other words, Miley's concert could be cancelled unless the US Treasury approves the business relation between the American concert booker and the Russian-owned arena.
Tom Stocker, partner at law firm Pinsent Mason, told the BBC the legality of the deal would depend on whether Live Nation owes money to venue. If it doesn't, the concert could go ahead as planned and Miley could twerk her way to Helsinki.
"(The US Treasury) will need to provide a licence to authorise the transaction and will have to take into account that the show forms part of a pre-existing agreement," he said. "But it has quite a wide discretion to grant licences. If this was Europe then a licence would most likely not be granted."
Live Nation said it is reviewing its portfolio and will continue to work to ensure the sanctions are upheld.
We’ll tell you what’s true. You can form your own view.
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Subscribe nowby Dr Ornette D Clennon
Like so many of us, I was spellbound by the recent conversation between bell hooks and Melissa Harris Perry that showed beyond any doubt the lively power of an intersectional analysis that concerns itself with the entanglements of race, gender, class and sexuality in history and in everyday life. One point that caught my attention was when bell hooks responded to a question from the audience, picking up on and problematising the use of the term ‘hypermasculine’.
We should be careful about how we use the idea of hypermasculinity when talking about black men, hooks argued: it is patriarchy not masculinity that is the problem. This distinction recognises patriarchy as more than an economic system of male power and privilege and acknowledges the ways in which gendered relationships of power are also racialised, infusing identity, emotions and perspective. Talking of patriarchy as a disease Cornel West writes,
I grew up in traditional black patriarchal culture and there is no doubt that I’m going to take a great many unconscious, but present, patriarchal complicities to the grave because it so deeply ensconced in how I look at the world. Therefore, very much like alcoholism, drug addiction, or racism, patriarchy is a disease and we are in perennial recovery and relapse. So you have to get up every morning and struggle against it.
The distinction between hypermasculinity and patriarchy is a subtle and complicated point. hooks seemed to be saying that if there is no critical thinking space from which to examine masculinity in terms outside of a patriarchy we restrict the room for acknowledging what she refers to as the ‘wounded’ psyche of the black male. How then do we begin to value and nurture black men?
“One of the things I’ve always felt so strongly and really expressed in We Real Cool hooks said, ‘is the depth of black male woundedness by patriarchial terrorisim and until those wounds get addressed in some way I don’t think we’re gonna get the respect, the recognition, the care…”
It is this notion of “patriarchal terrorism” that intrigues me the most. I see this as a terrorism that hijacks black masculinity, in its continually evolving forms, and turns it in on itself[i]. For me, hypermasculinity is both a cultural artefact and a commodity of patriarchy, with repercussions for us all. It is the commodification of black hypermasculinity as an apparatus of patriarchy that I want to consider more closely.
Through the exaggeration of dominant or ‘hegemonic’ masculinity, the image of black men as hypermasculine can become a cultural tool of self-regulation and self-loathing. This act of hijacking of what it means to be a man is a double whammy of subterfuge in modern culture where black masculinity has been co-opted as a purveyor of the market. In the Western neoliberal market cultural “blackness” sells. At the same time the blow of patriarchal domination is given a new sheen. It becomes a new false consciousness.
At the other end of the spectrum, we in our role as consumers of marketed blackness are also promised the privileges associated with cultural and social upward mobility and cool. Yet these promises are nothing more than mass consumerism built on a blackenised promise of an unattainable utopia. As we think of ourselves as self-determining as consumers (i.e. buying into the hype) we choose cultural commodities that signify “blackness” in the Kviftian sense of a commercial and exotic othering. We are duped into thinking that we have secured our individuality through the cultural aspirations of the market. Here is the second subterfuge; the market has become an institution in its own right.
In his book ‘Discipline and Punish’, the philosopher Michel Foucault describes how power is mediated through what he calls “discipline”. It is able to instil self-regulating behaviour in its subjects. However, whilst we are keeping our beady – yes beady, because, as Harris-Perry contends, we should be angry at the social injustices – eyes honed on structural inequalities are we becoming instutionalised by the market in much the same way as Foucault’s prisoner who rejects freedom in favour of the familiarity and ‘safety’ of captivity?
The power that this hidden-in-plain-view (market) institution wields is this very idea of commercial “blackness” that threatens to hold us ideologically captive too. It infiltrates our lines of resistance like the Trojan horse, as it is mediated through cultural images[ii] and market brandings of black hypermasculinity. Through these brandings such as the marketing of Hip Hop or here in the UK anything with the epithet “urban”, patriarchy is able to subjugate both men and women of all colours in one fell swoop. Think of Miley Cyrus and Lily Allen and how racialised patriarchy was played out on the bodies of twerking black women, even in Allen’s attempt to subvert it.
hooks recognises, as quoted earlier, that until we address the insidious nature of the role of patriarchy in the woundedness of black men, we will not be able to address the woundedness of black women (or anyone else). But why focus on the black male? Why is it important to address men as a priority?
I would argue that as patriarchy is racialised, we can discern its contemporary workings in the market objectification or fetishisation of the black male body. The market fetishisation of the black male physique [PDF] means that black men are necessarily kept on a perverse pedestal of hyper masculinity. There is little scope to explore other aspects of what makes a man a man – whatever that may be. Jackson[iii] talks about the iconography of the black male physique that is only allowed to be desired (by the white male gaze[iv]) through its visual depictions of woundedness, in the Hip Hop glorification of the gun-shot wound, for example.
This desire is ultimately forbidden so must be disguised or hidden. Here commercially exploitative iconography allows the “patriarch” to play out masculinity using a fantasy avatar of black hypermasculinity which subjugates all men and women. The legacy of this human objectification is that the black male body has indeed been marketed to designate the epitome of masculinity that is both feared and revered in equal measure. However, the market regularly co-opts what it once considered to be animal (just as slaves were also traded in markets). In so doing it still exerts and demonstrates its ownership of the commodity. We can see this in the fetishisation and market abstraction of the black male physique and the pornographic perception of his superior reproductive powers, both images of which are post-slavery, post-colonial dehumanising constructs.
The power of this version of black masculinity is such that westernised men (and women) are falling under the spell of black priapism and aspiring to this limiting commercial branding of masculinity that pivots on homophobia, misogyny and emotional infantilism. As black men, we run the risk of limiting ourselves socially and emotionally. For instance, a study of young people in the UK by psychologists Frosh, Phoenix and Pattman found that the valorisation of black boys as hypermasculine – physical, sporty and super-cool – also involved the rejection of the pursuit of intellectual activities as ‘gay’.
In other areas of social life such as family relationships, there is little room for the black man to be considered a “father” because in the archetype he is only expected to sire offspring using his superior reproductive powers. The black man is not expected to be a “husband”, rather as a stud or breeding machine he is expected to be sexually profligate. So resisting and not conforming to this deeply embedded social and archetypal narrative is to open oneself to marginalisation or worse still, abuse and violence. Even though more versions of black masculinity are now being forged as black men resist dominant stereotypes, difficult questions remain.
How can a black man truly respect women? How is the black man supposed to be a father when all that is required of him is to sire? How can a black man explore other sexual orientations, other masculinities or ways of transacting with other men) such as being gay/bi/trans, or at the very least being emotionally aware/sensitive/literate when all other men are sexual competition or threats?
We need to take a good look at ourselves in the mirror of cultural and ideological liberation. Our diasporic histories are indeed a strength, yielding many cultural innovations. We also need to come to grips with the darker legacies of our ancestral journeys in order to move on and to develop resilience. Of course, this will not be easy but we can make a start by acknowledging that we ourselves play a part in perpetuating the structural inequalities through our self-speak, through our transactions with each other and with women, and through buying into the market hype about ourselves.
I take inspiration from the Marxist sentiment of ideological liberation as articulated in the Garvey-inspired Redemption song[v],
Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery,” because “None but ourselves can free our minds”
[i] I suppose I am alluding to a kind of Freudian “melancholic attachment” that the market (patriarchy or white male gaze see note vi) has to a form of masculinity that can never be/have or possess, as it is forbidden and can only manifest itself in grotesque caricature. In doing this the melancholia or loss (black hypermasculinity) becomes the only discursive lens through which to view masculinity per se. [ii] So strong is this cultural embedding that it permeates our cultural associations of “blackness” far beyond the visual (e.g. music, language, sporting culture etc) [iii] Jackson, C. (2011). Violence, Visual Culture, and the Black Male Body. New York, Oxford: Routledge. [iv] Here, the idea of melancholic attachment comes into its own. [v] Garvey, M. (1938, July). The Marcus Garvey and Universal Negro Improvement Association Papers. (R. A. Hill, & B. Bair, Eds.) Black Man magazine, 3(10), pp. 7-11. Dr Ornette D Clennon is a Visiting Enterprise Fellow in the department of Contemporary Arts at Manchester Metropolitan University. He is also a composer and singer and has worked with a variety of bands, orchestras, artists and ensembles, including the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, The Halle, The Smith Quartet and Soul II Soul. His work explores the intersection between Arts, Culture and Social Agency. Ornette also works with communities, as a NCCPE (National Co-ordinating Centre for Public Engagement) Public Engagement Ambassador and is interested in researching the applied outcomes of his cultural theory research in the communities with which he works as a music practitioner and composer. Find him on twitter @revkollektiv This article was commissioned for our academic experimental space for long form writing curated and edited by Yasmin Gunaratnam. A space for provocative and engaging writing from any academic discipline.
Related articlesYour average woman is more likely to spend more time putting on make-up than thinking about the erosion of women’s rights at the hands of the transgender lobby. This is understandable and not a criticism of individual women; being pretty is what we have been trained to do since infancy. It’s a sad truth that most women are not consciously aware of their oppression.
Moments of shared experience, like when you catch the barmaid’s wry smile as she’s humouring some dullard mansplaining Brexit, are precious but from my experience, rare. There is a seam of knowing that runs through all of us, but it is buried deep and sometimes hard to recognise. We are expected to smile, compliment hairstyles and remember birthdays and we implicitly know to plan our walk home to avoid attack or harassment by men. These are just a few of tiny details that comprise the female experience; they are the price we pay to exist in a man’s world.
When I am the only woman in my workplace who objects to being called a ‘girl’ I sometimes feel like it’s me who needs to lighten-up. I feel similarly frustrated when local women’s services and ‘experts’ refer to ‘gendered violence’ rather than calling it what it is; men’s violence against women. As gender critical feminists, (or ‘feminists’ as we were previously known), there is a tendency online to be pulled into comforting blanket statements about women as a class. That ‘women are not being listened to’ is a common refrain. This isn’t entirely accurate, it is because some women such as Chair of the Women and Equalities Select Committee Maria Miller and Stonewall CEO Ruth Hunt are ‘listened to’ that the interests of all women are being eroded. Of course, they are listened to precisely because what they say is not threatening to male dominance. When you think about culture at the centre of politics and power it is no surprise that the women who stick it out tend to do so by swallowing sexism.
Most women in politics, and indeed some conceited lefty men, will airily call themselves ‘feminist’ without any real understanding. It’s easy to see why; fighting for the rights of women and calling-out male violence will win them few votes and attract a lot of hate. It’s much easier to say ‘gender equality good’ ‘gendered violence bad’ particularly when you’re also supposed to be an expert on wind farms, the NHS and the global economy. Added to this the bar is set unattainably high for women in the public gaze; compare the reaction to Emily Thornberry’s comments on twitter about ‘white van man’ which led to her resignation from the Labour Party’s front bench with Boris Johnson’s catalogue of gaffes in his safe position as Foreign Secretary.
Online feminism has raised my consciousness and I have no doubt many of my male friends would complain it has radicalised me. The problem is women like me might seek to represent the interests of the many, but feminist women are a privileged few. There seems to be a taboo in the feminist community about criticizing, or even noticing, that actually many of those bleating ‘transwomen are women’ are, in fact, ‘uterus bearers’ themselves. The first cohort to complete the Jo Cox leadership programme who signed a letter condemning transphobia were women. Most of the clicktivists who signed the #iseetara petition to have a violent prisoner moved to the women’s estate without a gender recognition certificate were women.
The behaviour of women is fiercely policed not least by other women; we must all be ‘nice’ and support our sisters, even transwomen who like Tara Hudson (above) have bar brawls and boast about the size of their penis. The fact that ‘transwomen are men’ will seem unspeakably cruel to most until their consciousness is raised. Yet again this is women competing for male attention against our own interests, and it is easier to hurl abuse at other women than it is to recognise oppression. ‘Women’s Work’ is always thankless; feminist activism is no exception.
A pen, a penis and a half-formed opinion seem to be enough to ensure the pages of the Guardian are full of trans sob-stories. A few courageous women like Janice Turner and Helen Lewis have broken through, but most of us are left isolated in the liberal communities we were once a part of, or preaching to the online choir. The power of seeding questions through real life conversations should not be underestimated.
My opinion was changed when two women I respected explained the obvious to me: that transgenderism is based upon sexist stereotypes and that it is possible to modify one’s body, but not to change sex. My initial reaction was tearful and hostile. Later I began to research, learn and crucially to begin to recognise the experience of sexism that I share with all women. Those who had the courage to speak to me gave me the confidence firstly to question myself, and then to speak to others. When I found my voice the logic of the gender critical feminist argument spoke for itself; in person over a cuppa the conversations can continue beyond the circular ‘transwomen are women.’ I’ve had only a few negative reactions, most of my friends and family now share my understanding that without constraints of gender there would be no gender to ‘trans.’ From my experience people outside of ‘woke’ progressive politics often accept that it is impossible to change sex as a simple matter common sense.
Over the past few years I have seen the fightback against transgender ideology grow in the face of ever-more vicious abuse. Arguably the volume and vitriol have increased precisely because more people are beginning to recognise the absurdity of trans activist claims. Attempts to derail arguments with claims that, for example, because the Bugis people recognise five genders biology itself is a social construct are shown to be ladee balls when one asks the simple question ‘what sex was the person who gave birth to you?’
I gain great comfort from online radical groups. They remind me that we are not alone and that we are justified in our struggle. Indeed, talking with feminists on social media has helped me open conversations with questioning friends. However, the warmth and support of online groups can sometimes lull one into a false sense of security about the strength of the sisterhood. If we are to make progress it is important not to be so naive as to think women will always act in their own best interests; indeed generalisations such as ‘The Labour Party doesn’t listen to women’ can harm our arguments as they are so easily refuted. Many women are so wedded to the notion of being ‘nice girls’ questioning is internalised as intolerance and thoughts are policed. We might be fighting for all women, but we must remember, we don’t yet speak with one voice. Trans arguments are illogical and flimsy, they inspire a cult-like belief that can be easily punctured by simply stating reality. Reaching out to other women and raising their consciouness is central to this. I firmly believe we are on the cusp of a gender critical mass – now is the time to overcome our ‘nice girl’ socialisation and speak out – Now is the time to be brave and ‘Call a Dave a Dave.’IDEAS Kevin Curry is general manager for public sector at Infor.
Our country is literally falling apart.
When you drive over a bridge, do you think twice? When you hop on the subway to work, does it faze you? If it doesn’t now, it will. Soon, that infrastructure that we depend on will be in ruins. You may think this is dramatic, but I am afraid it’s not. According to the American Society of Civil Engineers, it will cost our country more than $3.3 trillion over the next 10 years just to maintain our infrastructure as it is now, not to mention any attempts to bring it into the 21st century. This is an urgent issue.
The entire Washington, D.C., subway system is on the brink of a shutdown; railway organizations struggle to understand recent crashes; and bridges across the country are in desperate need of repair, according to an alarming report earlier this year from the American Road and Transportation Builders Association. Putting aside the complete chaos that any major failure in our infrastructure would cause to the economy, it’s just flat out unsafe. As citizens of the world’s largest economy, we should expect a safe, modern transportation experience in our country.
In addition to the safety risk, the inefficiencies caused by inadequate infrastructure are estimated to cost every family in the U.S. an average of $3,400 annually. This is due to the myriad ways poor infrastructure affects business productivity and transportation costs that, in turn, cause prices to rise for goods and services.
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It is time for the nation to stop putting our collective heads in the sand and invest in a plan to organize, manage and monitor road repairs, bridges, signs, signal systems, repair facilities, inspection programs, required documentation and thousands of other critical details.
Where do we start?
We have to become vigilant of continually changing guidelines and regulations. For example, we should adhere to ISO-55000, an international compliance standard that advises on how to best manage physical assets, which can range from things like subway cars to wheel safety sensors, or even structural properties such as bridges and tunnels. We should also look to the Moving Ahead for Progress in the 21st Century Act, a bill, passed by Congress in 2012, that acts as a funding agent for governmental infrastructure and stipulates the necessary level of compliance with “State of Good Repair” guidelines. Regulations such as these are designed to shift the collective mindset away from using tax dollars to chasing down reactive repairs, and rather set us on course to proactively invest in a smarter, more durable infrastructure.
The most efficient way to satisfy all of these requirements, secure funding and ensure a process that proactively detects needed repairs and safely prolongs the life of equipment is by investing in asset management and the technologies that provide the needed visibility and predictive maintenance. Government agencies that are able to administer public infrastructure are finding that new asset-centric software helps them prioritize projects based on risk and criticality, and invest their capital improvement funds in ways that will have the greatest impact. This process requires five steps:
1. Create an inventory of every existing asset.
Every last bolt and screw that functions in our transit system needs to be catalogued and tracked. Technology should be utilized to house all data elements associated with asset infrastructure, including the necessary critical groups of data: unique identification, classification, start of lifecycle date, estimated useful life and replacement cost estimate. Other important information includes condition assessment history and whether the asset is already part of a funded replacement/rehab project.
2. Identify viable projects.
An asset’s condition, based on inspection, age, criticality, and risk, will determine its priority for repair or replacement. TERM Lite is an analysis tool that helps transit agencies assess their repair backlog and determine the investment needed to achieve compliance. The TERM rating scale assigns rankings from one (poor) to five (new) to assess both the probability of failure as well as the consequence of failure, with assets approaching zero as they reach the end of their scheduled useful life.
3. Define prioritization criteria.
An agency needs to determine what would be impacted by a service failure: critical issues such as safety and reliability, or quality issues such as comfort, efficiency, and enjoyment? The American Public Transportation Association employs something called the Capital Asset Inventory and Condition Assessment, which classifies each asset into one of five groups based on its ratio of age to useful life. An asset with 100% of its useful life consumed is assigned a rating of 1, while an asset with 76% to 100% of its useful life consumed is rated a two, and so on. By cataloging and tracking each asset with an assigned value, technicians are able to locate, repair or replace an asset before it fails.
4. Prioritize projects based on their ratings.
Some technologies provide a capital planning request feature that allows you to define and view your compliance backlog, sorted by priority and category, to determine where it makes the most sense to focus.
5. Model investment effects.
By relying heavily on age assessment of assets, the need for funding may be overstated. Instead, modern maintenance practices such as condition-based or performance-based replacement may be appropriate. In a transit scenario, for example, transformers will be replaced based on age regardless of condition due to their extreme criticality, whereas railcars may be able to have their lives extended based on modified maintenance practices.
The American infrastructure is vital to our collective success, and it is time for our government to undertake the same procedural changes that most private sector industries began implementing years ago. The key to revitalizing the American infrastructure is through strategic investments in technologies that create sustainable efficiencies, the same kind that are inherent to modern asset management. Our current system may be failing us, but it is not yet too late.
Contact us at editors@time.com.NEW YORK — Gary Cederstrom and Mike Winters will be the umpiring crew chiefs for this week’s wild-card games.
Major League Baseball announced Monday that Cederstrom will work the plate for Tuesday’s AL wild-card game between the Baltimore Orioles and Toronto Blue Jays at Rogers Centre. Cederstrom will be joined by Ted Barrett, Eric Cooper, Will Little, David Rackley and Bill Welke.
Winters is the plate umpire for Wednesday’s NL game between the San Francisco Giants and the New York Mets at Citi Field. His crew includes CB Bucknor, Mike Everitt, Jeff Nelson, Quinn Wolcott and Jim Wolf.
Scott Barry and Mark Carlson will serve as replay officials for the wild-card games.
For the Division Series, John Hirshbeck (Giants/Mets vs. Cubs), Jeff Kellogg (Dodgers vs. Nationals), Joe West (Orioles/Blue Jays vs. Rangers) and Bill Miller (Red Sox vs. Indians) will serve as crew chiefs.Kim Kardashian and Kanye West leave their hotel and head to the Vogue 100 Gala Dinner, held in Hyde Park. ( Will Alexander/WENN.com)
The National Rifle Association has taken to Twitter to seemingly mock Kim Kardashian after she was robbed of millions in jewelry by armed men in Paris.
The reality star was left shaken when five men, two dressed as police offers, broke into her apartment in the French capital during the early hours Monday morning, robbing her at gunpoint of up to $10 million worth of jewelry.
However, not everyone has been sympathetic towards Kim, and now pro-gun advocacy NRA has shared its thoughts on the ordeal, posting pretend opposing views on the issue of gun control.
“Wait, criminals held @KimKardashian at gunpoint in Paris? How is that possible? Does anyone know if they passed a background check first?” a post read on the gun lobby's official Twitter page.
“It's shocking that these criminals did not subject themselves to Paris' strict #guncontrol laws before committing this awful crime," read another seemingly sarcastic tweet on the NRA's Twitter profile.
The NRA's unsympathetic response could be linked to the reality star's outspoken stance on gun control following the mass shootings at an Orlando nightclub in June, which became the deadliest in U.S. history.
“Under current federal law people on terror watch lists can legally buy guns – this is called the Terror Gap,” she wrote.
“The fact that anyone can so easily access guns is so scary & after all of the devastating loss the Senate should have not failed us!!!” she posted the same month.
While some Twitter users joined in the NRA's mockery, many of Kim’s fans jumped in to defend their idol, such as user @PittSimpleton who tweeted, “It's classless to make fun of the victim. Would it have been funny if it had been your mom or sister?”
Kim has remained silent on social media since the incident and jetted to New York on Monday to be reunited with her husband Kanye West, who has |
the past year.
It also was suggested that if the president attended the event it would take the spotlight from the players.
It did Friday, when he became the first sitting president to attend a U.S. Women’s Open. Warren G. Harding (1921) and Bill Clinton (1997) were the only other sitting presidents to attend USGA events, going to the U.S. Open.
Feng was the star on the course for the second consecutive day. The 27-year-old Chinese player shot a 2-under 70 and had a 36-hole total of 8-under 136 on the 6,732-yard course that played even longer because of rain over the past two days.
Feng, who has had one bogey in 36 holes, didn’t see Trump.
“I heard people like kind of screaming so that’s what I was trying to find out, like why they were screaming,” she said. “But I was still really focusing on my game. I didn’t really get distracted.”
Amy Yang of South Korea remained in second place, although her deficit grew to two shots after a 71. Yang has four top-five finishes in the event in the past five years.
“I like where I am positioned right now,” Yang said. “I’m really looking forward to play the weekend. I’m hitting good and I’m putting good and I’m feeling good about my game right now.”
Jeongeun6 Lee, who has a victory and 10 top-10 finishes this season on the KLPGA Tour, shared second after posting a second straight 69.
Lee uses the “6” after her first name because there are six other South Korean players with the same name.
Hye-Jin Choi, a 17-year-old from South Korea who is the world’s second-ranked amateur, also was at 6 under after a second straight 69. She was tied with Feng at 8 under after 15 holes, but bogeyed two of her next three holes to fall back.
Choi said her goal this week was to make the cut.
“So I’m already very happy with what I’m doing and I’m not going to feel any pressure,” she said through an interpreter. “Just here to have fun.”
Only one amateur has won the Women’s Open: Catherine Lacoste of France in 1967.
Michelle Wie withdrew because of a neck injury. The 2014 winner shot a 73 on Thursday and stopped on her second hole Friday.
Among those missing the cut at 2 over were Brittany Lincicome, who said two weeks ago that Trump should not attend the tournament so the focus would be on the players, and Danielle Kang, who two weeks ago won the KPMG Women’s PGA. Lincicome finished at 5 over and called her week horrible.
Second-ranked Ariya Jutanugarn and two-time Open champion Inbee Park also missed the cut.
TRUMP COURSE UNLIKELY FOR SCOTTISH OPEN
Trump’s golf course in northern Scotland most likely won’t stage the Scottish Open because the title sponsor says political questions present “clear issues.”
“Politics aside, Trump (International Golf Links) would be an ideal venue,” Martin Gilbert, chief executive of Scottish Open sponsor Aberdeen Asset Management, said Friday, “but you can’t put politics aside. That is the issue, so we will wait and see.”
Trump Turnberry hosted the British Women’s Open in 2015, soon after his comments about Mexican immigrants during his presidential campaign. That year, the PGA of America canceled its Grand Slam of Golf at Trump’s course in Los Angeles later.
The PGA Tour event at Miami’s Trump Doral resort left South Florida and headed to Mexico City this year.Arsenal new boy Petr Cech has received several death threats from Chelsea fans on Twitter following his £10million move to the Emirates Stadium.
Chelsea supporters appear to be unhappy with Cech's decision to move across London despite the fact the Czech Republic international represented his former side with distinction during his 11-year spell at Stamford Bridge.
Several Twitter users purporting to be Chelsea fans labelled Cech a 'traitor' and a'snake', while another said 'Cech is dead to me, the helmet wearing snake'.
Chelsea fans have taken to Twitter to abuse Petr Cech following his £10million move to rivals Arsenal
A Chelsea fan with the username '@Febreezion' went as far as tweeting: 'Say goodbye to your family for one last time before they go to sleep, you won't be seeing them tomorrow you snake idiot.'
Another made reference to the incident which saw Cech sustain a serious head injury following a collision with then-Reading midfielder Stephen Hunt in October 2006.
'F*** you Petr Cech you fucking snake, can't believe you went to f***ing Arsenal. Really wish Stephen Hunt ended your life. F***ing C***.'
The disgusting tweets aimed at Cech and his close family continued throughout the evening with @Enegali10 posting: 'F******** off just saw Cech signed. Go f*** yourself. F****** brain damaged ugly sk**. Hope your kids have cancer. F****** nonce.
'I'm going to bring my SR-25 sniper rifle to the Bridge when we play Arsenal. Will be so f****** good to see Cech's blood on the pitch.'
One Twitter user went as far as photoshopping a picture of a snake onto an image of Cech in a Chelsea shirt, while another burned a replica Blues No 1 shirt.
The 33-year-old custodian has signed a four-year contract, thought to be worth in the region of £100,000 per week at Arsene Wenger's side and looks set to make his competitive debut against Chelsea on August 2.
Cech won four Barclays Premier League titles, the Champions League, the Europa League, four FA Cup winner's medals and the League Cup on three separate occasions during his time at Chelsea.
Chelsea fan burning Petr Cech shirt http://t.co/oZn0unNVXf — Kingsley Oyero (@koyero) June 29, 2015Story highlights Middle-school student says the federal government could cut printing costs with one decision
Suvir Mirchandani analyzed ink use for school project, then expanded his research
So far, the Government Printing Office is noncommittal on Suvir's suggestion
An e. You can write it with one fluid swoop of a pen or one tap of the keyboard. The most commonly used letter in the English dictionary. Simple, right?
Now imagine it printed out millions of times on thousands of forms and documents. Then think of how much ink would be needed.
OK, so that may have been a first for you, but it came naturally to 14-year-old Suvir Mirchandani when he was trying to think of ways to cut waste and save money at his Pittsburgh-area middle school.
It all started as a science fair project. As a neophyte sixth-grader at Dorseyville Middle School, Suvir noticed he was getting a lot more handouts than he did in elementary school.
Interested in applying computer science to promote environmental sustainability, Suvir decided he was going to figure out if there was a better way to minimize the constant flurry of paper and ink.
Reducing paper use through recycling and dual-sided printing had been talked about before as a way to save money and conserve resources, but there was less attention paid to the ink for which the paper served as a canvas for history and algebra handouts.
"Ink is two times more expensive than French perfume by volume," Suvir says with a chuckle.
He's right: Chanel No. 5 perfume costs $38 per ounce, while the equivalent amount of Hewlett-Packard printer ink can cost up to $75.
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So Suvir decided to focus his project on finding ways to cut down on the costly liquid.
Collecting random samples of teachers' handouts, Suvir concentrated on the most commonly used characters (e, t, a, o and r).
First, he charted how often each character was used in four different typefaces: Garamond, Times New Roman, Century Gothic and Comic Sans. Then he measured how much ink was used for each letter, using a commercial tool called APFill® Ink Coverage Software.
Next he enlarged the letters, printed them and cut them out on cardstock paper to weigh them to verify his findings. He did three trials for each letter, graphing the ink usage for each font.
From this analysis, Suvir figured out that by using Garamond with its thinner strokes, his school district could reduce its ink consumption by 24%, and in turn save as much as $21,000 annually.
Encouraged by his teacher, Suvir looked to publish his findings and stumbled on the Journal for Emerging Investigators (JEI), a publication founded by a group of Harvard grad students in 2011 that provides a forum for the work of middle school and high school students. It has the same standards as academic journals, and each submission is reviewed by grad students and academics.
Sarah Fankhauser, one of JEI's founders, says that of the nearly 200 submissions they have received since 2011, Suvir's project was a real standout:
14-year-old Suvir Mirchandani began studying fonts as part of a science fair project.
"We were so impressed. We really could really see the real-world application in Suvir's paper."
Fankhauser said Suvir's findings were so clear, simple and well thought-out, it had the peer reviewers at JEI asking, "How much potential savings is really out there?"
For the answer, JEI challenged Suvir to apply his project to a larger scale: the federal government.
With an annual printing expenditure of $1.8 billion, the government was a much more challenging task than his school science project.
Suvir repeated his tests on five sample pages from documents on the Government Printing Office website and got similar results -- change the font, save money
Will government printers embrace a change?
Using the General Services Administration's estimated annual cost of ink -- $467 million -- Suvir concluded that if the federal government used Garamond exclusively it could save nearly 30% -- or $136 million per year. An additional $234 million could be saved annually if state governments also jumped on board, he reported.
Gary Somerset, media and public relations manager at the Government Printing Office, describes Suvir's work as "remarkable." But he was noncommittal on whether the GPO would introduce changes to typeface, saying the GPO's efforts to become more environmentally sustainable were focused on shifting content to the Web.
"In 1994, we were producing 20,000 copies a day of both the Federal Register and Congressional Record. Twenty years later, we produce roughly 2,500 print copies a day," he said.
On top of this, the Congressional Register is printed on recycled paper, which GPO has been doing for five or six years, Somerset says.
One federal initiative that focuses on minimizing ink-usage is called "Printwise." Implemented 18 months ago by the General Services Administration, it teaches government offices how to default their computer settings to Times New Roman, Garamond and Century Gothic to minimize printing waste. According to GSA's press secretary Dan Cruz, they hope this type of initiative could ultimately save the federal government up to $30 million annually.
Suvir appreciates the government's efforts, but he sees his project as a means of making an even bigger impact nationwide.
"Consumers are still printing at home, they can make this change too," he says.
Holding out hope
At 14, Suvir understands how difficult such a project might be to implement -- "I recognize it's difficult to change someone's behavior. That's the most difficult part."
But he holds out hope: "I definitely would love to see some actual changes and I'd be happy to go as far as possible to make that change possible."
With decades ahead to lend a hand, Suvir and other young men and women like him may even be able to untangle some of the knotty political and technical issues that beset Washington, corporate suites and the world at large.Badger odour to be used in attempt to lure thylacines on Cape York
Posted
Researchers from far north Queensland have broadened their search area for an animal long thought extinct, after a flood of reported sightings from the public.
James Cook University (JCU) researchers announced in March that they will conduct a thylacine survey on Cape York, in response to a number of historical sightings reported on ABC Far North.
Scientists are all but certain the animals, also known as Tasmanian tigers, were extinct on the Australian mainland by the time European settlers arrived.
But the JCU team thinks the anecdotal reports are credible enough to set camera traps on Cape York over a month long period, and have also expanded the area to include rainforest sites closer to Cairns.
"Observations are coming in from all over the far north and other parts of Queensland," project leader Dr Sandra Abell said.
"They are spread out, but after the media [reports] I've found a couple of clusters."
She said many people have contacted her also wanting cameras placed on their properties.
'If they're there, we'll find them'
Not everyone is convinced of the merits of the study, with a University of California mathematician estimating the odds of finding a live thylacine at one in one point six trillion.
"My motto is, if they're there, we'll find them. I'm probably the biggest sceptic amongst everyone, but of course I want it to be true," Dr Abell said.
Dr Abell said it could turn out that these sightings were simply dingos, wild dogs, or even foxes.
If they do turn out to be foxes, it would be the first evidence the predator has moved into the region.
Scientific community offering tips
Scientists from across the world have been offering advice to lure the creatures to their cameras.
It has led to some novel approaches to the task.
"There's all sorts of weird and wonderful baits you can use... weird things like badger odour," Dr Abell laughed.
She said the enormous public interest in the study could indicate feelings of guilt amongst Australians.
"They were pushed to the brink by European settlement in Tasmania. We tried to conserve them but it was too late," she said.
"Maybe we should be thinking about some of the species that we can still save, like the Northern Bettong."
Field trips will start in the next couple of months.
Topics: animal-behaviour, animals, science, research, offbeat, cairns-487000:00:00.3588023/00:00:00.3588023
2015-2016 Regular Session - HB 757
Domestic relations; religious officials shall not be required to perform marriage ceremonies in violation of their legal right; provide
Sponsored By
Sponsored In Senate By
Committees
First Reader Summary
A BILL to be entitled an Act to protect religious freedoms; to amend Chapter 3 of Title 19 of the Official Code of Georgia Annotated, relating to marriage generally, so as to provide that religious officials shall not be required to perform marriage ceremonies in violation of their legal right to free exercise of religion; to amend Chapter 1 of Title 10 of the Official Code of Georgia Annotated, relating to selling and other trade practices, so as to change certain provisions relating to days of rest for employees of business and industry; to protect property owners which are religious institutions against infringement of religious freedom; to define a term; to provide an effective date; to repeal conflicting laws; and for other purposes.
Status History
Mar/28/2016 - Veto V1 Mar/28/2016 - House Date Signed by Governor Mar/28/2016 - House Sent to Governor Mar/16/2016 - Senate Agreed House Amend or Sub Mar/16/2016 - House Agreed Senate Amend or Sub As Amended Feb/19/2016 - Senate Passed/Adopted By Substitute Feb/19/2016 - Senate Third Read Feb/19/2016 - Senate Engrossed Feb/18/2016 - Senate Read Second Time Feb/17/2016 - Senate Committee Favorably Reported By Substitute Feb/16/2016 - Senate Read and Referred Feb/11/2016 - House Passed/Adopted By Substitute Feb/11/2016 - House Third Readers Feb/10/2016 - House Committee Favorably Reported By Substitute Jan/15/2016 - House Second Readers Jan/14/2016 - House First Readers Jan/13/2016 - House Hopper
Footnotes
02/11/2016 Structured Rule; 2/17/2016 Notice to File Minority Report in Senate; 2/19/2016 Engrossed Upon 3rd Reading in Senate; 03/16/2016 House agreed to Senate Substitute as House amended; 3/16/2016 Senate Agreed to House Amendment to Senate Substitute
Votes
Current Version Open Current Version in New Window Past Versions
VersionsPORTLAND, Ore. (Reuters) - The father of a University of Oregon student has contracted the potentially deadly meningococcal disease amid an outbreak that started in January and has killed one student, bringing the total number of people infected to seven, state health officials said on Friday.
The 52-year-old man fell ill with meningococcemia, a bacterial precursor to meningitis, six weeks after the last on-campus infection, said Jason Davis, spokesman for Lane County Public Health. The university is in Eugene in Lane County.
“We are not excluding the possibility of another case a year down the road,” Davis said, adding that other universities across the country have seen outbreaks return after eight months or more without new diagnoses, and that the disease can remain dormant for as long as two years.
The man’s infection was traced to his May 2 visit with his undergraduate daughter, according to state public health officials.
The man, who was not named, was diagnosed after returning home to another state, Davis said. His illness was not immediately linked to the University of Oregon outbreak, resulting in a delay of several weeks before public health officials were notified of the case, he said.
There was no immediate word on which state the man lives in or where he is being treated.
After the death of 18-year-old student Lauren Jones in February, the university launched an aggressive effort to enlist all 22,000 enrolled undergraduates in a two-step vaccination regime available only during meningococcal B outbreaks, and about half have completed that process, said University of Oregon spokeswoman Jen McCulley.
The risk of infection is not considered high for most non-student visitors to the University of Oregon, Davis said.
Students are particularly susceptible to meningococcal infections because the disease is spread through prolonged close contact, and several infections are typical on U.S. college campuses each year.
Reactions to the disease vary. Some people recover quickly while others experience more severe complications that could include deafness, loss of digits because of blood clots, and even death, officials said.Kearnstd
Space Elf
Premium Member
join:2002-01-22
Mullica Hill, NJ Kearnstd Premium Member i hope the hotels lose While I understand there is a threat of rogue WiFi for malicious reasons, We all know that is just an excuse to force people onto their expensive billed per day WiFi by making their own hotspots constantly fail.
OpTiC
Premium Member
join:2014-03-08
West Covina, CA OpTiC Premium Member Re: i hope the hotels lose Fuck u hotels. This is one reasons why I don't stay in hotels.
neill6705
join:2014-08-09 neill6705 Member Re: i hope the hotels lose I don't stay in hotels because Dateline showed me how much semen is on the sheets and how many mites are in the mattresses.
But yeah, the WiFi thing blows too.
Big Dawg 23
join:2002-03-27
Northfield, MN 1 recommendation Big Dawg 23 Member Re: i hope the hotels lose Not every hotel is like that. Anyone with a brain can check bed bugs. Stay at low cost hotels and pay the price.
As for Marriott, I was about to switch to them but this will be a deal breaker for me. Even if you pay for the $4.95 per day the speed is horrible. I just stayed at Courtyard and couldn't get connected to my MiFi spot or tether to my phone or even tablet. Time to go back to Hilton.
ptb42
join:2002-09-30
USA 1 recommendation ptb42 to Kearnstd
Member to Kearnstd
said by Kearnstd: While I understand there is a threat of rogue WiFi for malicious reasons, We all know that is just an excuse to force people onto their expensive billed per day WiFi by making their own hotspots constantly fail.
(1) It's actually an access point connected to the wired network on premises. This is a very real security breach, but is more easily handled on the WIRED network by isolating the access point with firewall or routing rules.
(2) A hotspot is masquerading as a legitimate access point. For instance, you have deployed a network of APs with the FOOBAR SSID, and someone puts up an access point with the same FOOBAR SSID to spoof people into using it. In a corporate network, this can be handled with authentication that prevents a device from using the rogue access point. In a hotel environment, there's not really a way to protect guest users. But frankly, that shouldn't be the hotel's problem. If you are using a public WiFi hotspot without a VPN or at least SSL/TLS for every connection, then you are already vulnerable.
A deauth attack is just a lazy way to solve a problem that a network admin doesn't want to solve properly.
Yes, there's a possibility that a sufficiently large number of hotspots can cause problems, due to the limited number of WiFi channels. As I remember, one of Apple's keynote demos crashed and burned because there were so many people using WiFi hotspots and the venue's WiFi network. They had to ask everyone to disable WiFi, so they could continue.
But, WiFi is an unlicensed band. The users have to tolerate the capacity constraints, and any given user isn't allowed to willfully interfere with the other users in order to solve the problem. There's only two situations that I think a "rogue" WiFi hotspot is a danger:(1) It's actually an access point connected to the wired network on premises. This is a very real security breach, but is more easily handled on the WIRED network by isolating the access point with firewall or routing rules.(2) A hotspot is masquerading as a legitimate access point. For instance, you have deployed a network of APs with the FOOBAR SSID, and someone puts up an access point with the same FOOBAR SSID to spoof people into using it. In a corporate network, this can be handled with authentication that prevents a device from using the rogue access point. In a hotel environment, there's not really a way to protect guest users. But frankly, that shouldn't be the hotel's problem. If you are using a public WiFi hotspot without a VPN or at least SSL/TLS for every connection, then you are already vulnerable.A deauth attack is just a lazy way to solve a problem that a network admin doesn't want to solve properly.Yes, there's a possibility that a sufficiently large number of hotspots can cause problems, due to the limited number of WiFi channels. As I remember, one of Apple's keynote demos crashed and burned because there were so many people using WiFi hotspots and the venue's WiFi network. They had to ask everyone to disable WiFi, so they could continue.But, WiFi is an unlicensed band. The users have to tolerate the capacity constraints, and any given user isn't allowed to willfully interfere with the other users in order to solve the problem.
Jason Levine
Premium Member
join:2001-07-13
USA Jason Levine Premium Member Re: i hope the hotels lose You're assuming that the hotels are hiring decent network admins. Marriott would just want someone to hook up their Wi-Fi network, payment system, and "knock everyone else off Wi-Fi" system. It would be the same system no matter what the hotel so they wouldn't need a technician on premises to mange it. If a problem arises, corporate could send a tech out overnight. The occasional lost Wi-Fi access fees would be much less than the Qualified-Network-Admin-On-Premises salary.
Actually hiring a talented network admin and setting up a decently managed network would eat into their profits. It'd be so much easier (for them) to just block everyone else's Wi-Fi (even if it originated from outside the hotel and "bled" in) so that they would be forced to pay for Marriott's expensive Wi-Fi option.
battleop
join:2005-09-28
00000 battleop Member Re: i hope the hotels lose "Actually hiring a talented network admin and setting up a decently managed network would eat into their profits."
Hiring an on site network admin would be a huge waste of money as that admin would sit idle 99% of the time.
Jason Levine
Premium Member
join:2001-07-13
USA Jason Levine Premium Member Re: i hope the hotels lose said by battleop: Hiring an on site network admin would be a huge waste of money as that admin would sit idle 99% of the time. True, except that Marriott is trying to paint a picture of their wireless networks continuously under attack by malicious Wi-Fi signals giving them the only option of blocking all Wi-Fi that isn't official Marriott Wi-Fi. In actuality, the instances of these "bad Wi-Fi signals" are probably a handful of isolated cases. If the bad Wi-Fi was so prevalent, the hotels would be better served by hiring a network admin instead of just blindly blocking all non-Marriott Wi-Fi.
cramer
Premium Member
join:2007-04-10
Raleigh, NC 490.1 199.5
Westell 6100
Cisco PIX 501
cramer to ptb42
Premium Member to ptb42
#1 is not a real issue. #2 is the real issue... spoofing the hotel's wifi to trick people into passing traffic through your device where you can monitor the traffic.
Of course, this isn't what Marriott is attempting to "protect" -- they want all wifi blocked except their idiotic expensive shit.
(That said, I prefer to tether via USB -- which also powers the device -- or bluetooth -- short range, less interference, more secure, uses much less power.)
elefante72
join:2010-12-03
East Amherst, NY 726.1 917.0
elefante72 Member Re: i hope the hotels lose If you guys read the original brief, the Marriott was deauthing wifi access points in the convention area, not the lobby or hotel rooms.
There is a legitimate concern in conferences when dozens of people are running their own hotspots and it is interfering with paying customers that may have been using Marriott wifi with some sort of QoS and paying big bucks. Now that is the nature of unlicensed spectrum.
For me I either USB tether or use my access point in 5GHz and that is never a problem. The rest of the rubes can fight over the 3 2Ghz channels.
If they want to have guaranteed wifi, then they need to use licensed spectrum of some sort.
Of course it comes down to dollars. If they can use standards, then they don't have to hand out special equipment, but then since it is a standard and unlicensed, the other folks operating their equipment is their right also...So immense profits maybe aren't so immense anymore...
iansltx
join:2007-02-19
Austin, TX ·Time Warner Cable
·AT&T DSL
·AT&T Wireless Br..
·Sprint
iansltx to Kearnstd
Member to Kearnstd
If the hotels offered free, fast WiFi, that'd be one thing. But in cases where they don't, this is pure crap.
Universities have a bit of a leg to stand on in cases like this, because they've usually got the funding to make a nice warm WiFi blanket over the entire campus. But not always...and it's aggravating when they actively work to kill WiFi even when their own network is crap. Speaking from second-hand experience from my alma mater for the second bit.
Nyancat
@78.110.169.x Nyancat Anon Re: i hope the hotels lose LOL, I'm a student at the University of Montana and our WiFi is utter rubbish. They've improved it a great deal in MANY buildings on campus, but until the middle of this semester was unusable. It's still unusable in my apartment in student housing - and they just installed WiFi out here a few months ago. With a terrible, inadequate build density. It's a total joke.
tc1uscg
join:2005-03-09
Fort Knox, KY tc1uscg to Kearnstd
Member to Kearnstd
Marriott does not have it's customers best interest at heart. If there's a buck to be made, they will do it. Now, if Big Wireless decided to offer a deal for those traveling, or just pay the 5 bucks, buy the PDAnet and/or Foxfi app, the problem would be solved and all this would be a mute point.
quisp65
join:2003-05-03
San Diego, CA quisp65 Member Sheraton signals reach my home Personally I don't think there is a chance in hell the FCC will approve this and it is just a media driven story mostly, but users who are within signal strength of these disruptions might be effected.
Jason Levine
Premium Member
join:2001-07-13
USA Jason Levine Premium Member Re: Sheraton signals reach my home Exactly this. If Marriott starts de-authing all Wi-Fi signals that reach their hotels, they will not only catch a customer in his room trying to use his laptop on his phone's hotspot, but they will also block someone who happens to be within range of a Marriott and is trying to use a legally accessible Wi-Fi access point that has nothing to do with Marriott.
Yes, they could "exempt" known Wi-Fi instances from their blocking software, but how are they going to tell the difference between "customer in room on phone hotspot" and "person in the restaurant across the street on phone hotspot?"
cramer
Premium Member
join:2007-04-10
Raleigh, NC cramer Premium Member Re: Sheraton signals reach my home Careful aiming of antennas (which also keeps their wifi on their own property), but they aren't going to hire guys capable of doing this.
battleop
join:2005-09-28
00000 battleop Member Re: Sheraton signals reach my home They have guys working for them that are very capable of doing this however the general attitude at most of the large chain's WiFi groups is that they are and they are the shit and the rest of the world will bow to them because they are the shit.
swintec
Premium Member
join:2003-12-19
Alfred, ME swintec Premium Member Deauth.. "An attacker can send deauth messages to an access point tied to client IP addresses thereby knocking the users off-line and requiring continued re-authenticate,"
How would this work if I (and only I) am connecting to my phones hotspot with WPA2 enabled, etc enabled? Are they simply guessing the client IP addresses in use and hitting all private addresses at once?
ptb42
join:2002-09-30
USA ptb42 Member Re: Deauth.. said by swintec: How would this work if I (and only I) am connecting to my phones hotspot with WPA2 enabled, etc enabled? Are they simply guessing the client IP addresses in use and hitting all private addresses at once?
All the deauth attack does is pretend to be the client (with the correct IP address and MAC address) and send deauth packets to the access point. It isn't difficult to pick out the IP addresses and MAC addresses from the conversation between your laptop/tablet and your hotspot. That part is unencrypted. It's the payload that is encrypted by WPA2.All the deauth attack does is pretend to be the client (with the correct IP address and MAC address) and send deauth packets to the access point.
elefante72
join:2010-12-03
East Amherst, NY 726.1 917.0
elefante72 Member Re: Deauth.. Its a wireless DoS (denial of service) attack. It's quite easy to do. I'm surprised more nefarious people don't do this on a regular basis.
With that said US TLA have been going around mimicking cell phone towers, so in general the whole authentication/repudiation trust zones on currently deployed wireless technologies is shitty at best.
So if the L3+ actual payload is not encrypted, it is easily snooped. And I am not talking L2, something like VPN tunnel.
That is why we need encryption everywhere...
And not mentioned is all the man in the middle junk these hotels do to wifi connections. To me, if I'm not running a VPN tunnel, it's not happening.
Napsterbater
Meh
MVM
join:2002-12-28
Milledgeville, GA (Software) pfSense
Ubiquiti UniFi UAP-AC-PRO
Napsterbater to ptb42
MVM to ptb42
said by ptb42: It isn't difficult to pick out the IP addresses
But IP address are not needed to deauth wireless clients, only the MAC which is sent in the clear. IP address are part of the encrypted payload, if you can read the IP you can read the whole packet.But IP address are not needed to deauth wireless clients, only the MAC which is sent in the clear.
ptb42
join:2002-09-30
USA ptb42 Member Re: Deauth.. said by Napsterbater: IP address are part of the encrypted payload, if you can read the IP you can read the whole packet. Thanks for the correction. In retrospect, it was dumb for me to think the IP addresses weren't encrypted -- that would reveal exactly who the client was talking to: the destination IP address isn't the AP, it's the peer IP.
Napsterbater
Meh
MVM
join:2002-12-28
Milledgeville, GA Napsterbater to swintec
MVM to swintec
An IP is not involved at all as that is encrypted in WPA(2). MAC addresses are used, and in 802.11 networks MAC can be seen in the clear.
swintec
Premium Member
join:2003-12-19
Alfred, ME swintec Premium Member Re: Deauth.. said by Napsterbater: An IP is not involved at all as that is encrypted in WPA(2). MAC addresses are used, and in 802.11 networks MAC can be seen in the clear. Only the MAC is seen? In that case, how can they tell which hot spot / AP the device is communicating with, if there are a couple of hundred across the hotel or even sitting in a conference area?
Napsterbater
Meh
MVM
join:2002-12-28
Milledgeville, GA (Software) pfSense
Ubiquiti UniFi UAP-AC-PRO
Napsterbater MVM Re: Deauth.. said by swintec: said by Napsterbater: An IP is not involved at all as that is encrypted in WPA(2). MAC addresses are used, and in 802.11 networks MAC can be seen in the clear. Only the MAC is seen? In that case, how can they tell which hot spot / AP the device is communicating with, if there are a couple of hundred across the hotel or even sitting in a conference area? The AP's BSSID and STA's MAC, each packet has a source and destination address, you can have 802.11 network with no IP addresses at all as IP address have nothing to do with a 802.11(abgnac) network. just like you can have an Ethernet network with no IP address.
Uncle Paul
join:2003-02-04
USA Uncle Paul to swintec
Member to swintec
Unless Marriott wants to invest in Cisco 802.11w equipment, but then I don't know how effective that would be as not all OSs support protections in the management frame.
»en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IE ··· 11w-2009 The flip side to this is if they are allowed to de-auth my hot spot, then I can do the same to them. Is this a fight Marriott really wants to get into with the technical community?Unless Marriott wants to invest in Cisco 802.11w equipment, but then I don't know how effective that would be as not all OSs support protections in the management frame.
Rob
Premium Member
join:2001-08-25
Miami, FL ·Comcast XFINITY
Rob Premium Member Wrong Approach... Some of us, who can tether, have no problem paying for Wifi in the hotel. The only reason why I don't is because...
1) The connection is horrible. I either do not get good coverage, or I have to sit next to the door to connect.
2) The speeds are horrendous. I get same or sometimes faster speed when tethering my phone.
3) The price is outrageous. $12-$20 dollars PER day? For crappy connection?
4) Difficult to connect sometimes, and many times after you get connected, their firewall is so tight, that you can't even access basic websites.
Once again, we see how a company approaches the issue the wrong way.
battleop
join:2005-09-28
00000 battleop Member Re: Wrong Approach... "The speeds are horrendous. I get same or sometimes faster speed when tethering my phone."
We supply Metro E circuits to a large "Premium" chain of hotels. Many of them have 50-100Mb Metro E circuits feeding the hotel but they traffic shape the WiFi connection to the end user down to 1-2Mb. This leads to guest complaints which in turn leads to a hotel manager beating our customer service senseless because the |
“I live on the east side of Lake 16, and I don’t get free tickets, and I can hear noise” said Sue Christensen. “But, I would like to thank the Electric Forest Festival. My daughter’s band (Montague High School Band) gets compensated.” Christensen said that the mass exodus of traffic the final night of the festival, Sunday night, causes her difficulties during her drive to work Monday. However, she is in favor of the festival for the good it does for the band program and for her church with food donations.
Wally Wojack, who has worked at the Double JJ for over 60 years, said the Electric Festival was the vision of the ranch’s original owner back in 1934 when it first opened – “bringing young people together to enjoy the beauty of Rothbury.”
Double JJ owner Norm Halbower, who recently purchased the ranch with his son Matthew, said plans are in the works to add another festival to the yearly schedule. After the meeting, Halbower said he is trying to get a country and western festival lined up that will feature some of the “best acts in the country.”
The festival is set for June 25-28, 2015, and the owners and promoters recently agreed to a 10-year contract to keep the festival at its current venue. It’s up to the Grant Township Board members if they want to approve the mass gathering permit every year.The answer to this is in your contract. How are you contracted with the customer? If time & materials, the customer pays. If cost plus fixed fee, the customer pays but you pay too in terms of your fee margin. If fixed fee, you pay.
Not only do you need to understand the payment terms, but also assumptions and exclusions agreed to in the contract. If fixed fee, there might be a stop loss clause that enables you to go back to the customer if more money to cover these bugs, as an example. If the customer had a Not to Exceed clause in there, you may have had some reporting requirements prior to hitting that ceiling that, if not met, would put YOU on the hook to recover from. If met, then you have good cause to ask for more money.
I am not a contracts expert by any stretch so my examples above are high level. You need to consult with the contracts expert, i.e. legal, to comb through your contract with customer to build a case for more funding OR accept the hit to your profit OR something in between. In addition, I would expect you want to maintain good relations with your customer so you need to consider that, as well, as you comb through your T&Cs of the contract.Joe Williams interview as heard on Morning Edition on 90.3 KAZU.
Lewis Leader's complete interview with Congressional Candidate Joe Williams.
Hospital Lab Technician and Union Representative Joe Williams is one for five candiates running to replace Congressman Sam Farr. Williams, who is from Santa Cruz, calls himself a Berniecrat and is on the ticket for the Peace and Freedom Party. Journalist Lewis Leader interviewed Williams about why he’s running.
Lewis Leader (LL): Many would say Peace and Freedom has no chance of winning this seat. Is that a daunting task? Do you think that’s an unrealistic statement?
Joe Williams (JW): Well, I think the way it is now, I have a better chance than ever again because of the entrance of Bernie Sanders in the race and talking about socialism.
LL: Historically, socialism in this country has not done that well. Has that changed now?
JW: Oh, I think you’re seeing it in the recognition of the young people that have flocked to Sanders’ campaign, whether it’s looking at the debt they’re saddled with from student loans, whether they’re looking at the job market out there. They just don’t see anything that’s going to give them a higher standard of living than their parents, let’s say. You just had that recent release here of the Panama Papers, and all the rich folks are stashing their money in offshore accounts overseas. It’s like, ‘hey, where did that money come from?’ Well, the workers made that. Capitalists survive off the back of labor. So, labor created that wealth and then that wealth is not trickling down at all. It’s being funneled, full spigot on, offshore. So, anything we can do to bring that back and use that for people’s needs, I think people recognize that as the right approach.
LL: What do you see and what are you campaigning on as the major issues in this campaign?
JW: Well, I like to extrapolate just from like what I do in my daily life, so my work at the hospital. So health care, and again to reference off Bernie, Medicare for all, single-payer, universal health care, that kind of thing. I see the effects of the health-care industry in this country. I think it needs complete revamping. So, health care is the top of my list. It’s also my work as a steward representing workers against management. So, I guess my second priority would be strong unions. Let’s revitalize organized labor in this country. The third top priority would be peace activism, anti-war activism, if you will. I think we’ve had 15 years of this war on terror with no end in sight, and given my work in miitary counseling at the Resource Center for Nonviolence, it’s also very high on my priority list. If people have a takeaway in terms of like what are the distinctions between me and the top major party candidates in the race, the Democrat and the Republican, is they’re basically solidified on the war. That that’s the approach that works. I mean they’re both Navy veterans, they both laud their military service.
LL: You’re talking about Jimmy Panetta and Casey Lucius?
JW: Correct. So the distinctions couldn’t be greater because I advocate nonviolent solutions for all this stuff. And so that’s going to be the biggest distinction. Do you believe endless war? Even if there are jobs making missiles, is this the way, are we going to kill our way out of this problem? And I say no.
LL: Talking about the War on Terrorism, what’s your assessment of that and if you were elected to Congress what would you attempt to do?
JW: Well, at this point, I think I would scale back. On the campaign trail, I’ve actually called for a 10-year moratorium on war. I’m taking a look at everything we’ve tried so far going back to when we went into Afghanistan in late 2001 – up until now, nothing’s gotten better. In fact, everything’s gotten worse. So, my takeaway from that assessment is what we’re doing is not working and we need to try something else. So, military approach to this, firing more bullets, firing more missiles, blowing things up, we seem to be real good at that, but we don’t have any exit plan in place and in fact most plans say well that this is an endless War or Rerror, it will never end, this is a new normal until the end of time. I don’t accept that.
LL: I’m looking at an interview that the Salinas Californian did with you recently. And one of the points, it says “Williams urged the crowd to research the Basic Income Guarantee approach. ‘It’s basically welfare for all. Everybody gets a check’ regardless of your circumstances.” Can the government pay for that?
JW: Certainly. I think looking at the recent proposal – the people’s budget just put out by the Congressional Progressive Caucus – addresses this directly and it comes right out of the Pentagon Budget. What basic income does is set a floor, a monetary floor by which no one will fall below. So you want to guarantee that basic income for everybody. Then it’s like, well, you still have a chance to get rich or make a lot of money, but you can’t do it at the expense of your fellow citizens who are in poverty and in destitution.
Below you will find Lewis Leader’s interviews with candidates Casey Lucius and Jimmy Panetta. In the coming weeks, he’ll be interviewing Barbara Honegger and Jack Digby.
About the Interviewer: Lewis Leader is a journalist who was a longtime newspaper reporter and editor for 27 years with various publications including the Monterey Herald, San Francisco Examiner, Toledo Blade and Los Angeles Times.President Trump could be in breach of an Act of Congress when he deletes tweets and edits typos without archiving them.
On day one of his rein in the White House, President Trump deleted a tweet that misspelled the word “honored” from his personal account, which he has built up over eight years. The tweet was corrected with the right spelling and tweeted again from his new Presidential Twitter account.
“I am honored to serve you, the great American People, as your 45th President of the United States!”
We’ll tell you what’s true. You can form your own view. From 15p €0.18 $0.18 $0.27 a day, more exclusives, analysis and extras.
Although the Republican has long deleted tweets and corrected them for spelling, this tweet was the first as President.
This action could violate the Presidential Records Act, which stipulates that all presidential and vice presidential records must be preserved. There is no mention of Twitter in the 1978 Act of Congress, but President Obama’s staff archived every tweet.
“We eventually set up auto-archiving for official platforms, so errors could be corrected while preserving the original,” Ezra Mechaber, a former President Obama staffer, tweeted Saturday.
“If it’s not being archived they’re really starting to blur some records laws,” Mr Mechaber tweeted, referring to the @realDonaldTrump handle from his personal account.
When President Obama was in office, he only sent out tweets from his official account with the “Potus” handle.
That handle was transferred to President Trump as soon as he was sworn into office, but the Republican continues to use his personal account.
It is also unclear whether tweets from Mr Trump’s personal account will be archived.
The Presidential Records Act also does not explicitly cover the President – rather it applies to his staff – but his staff are most likely involved in the management of his Twitter accounts.
On the new White House website, it says that only tweets and direct messages from official White House Twitter accounts are archived.
The potential violation is also important as Mr Trump has already hinted he would bypass the media to communicate with the people, and his social media has become a key mouthpiece for the White House.
We’ll tell you what’s true. You can form your own view.
At The Independent, no one tells us what to write. That’s why, in an era of political lies and Brexit bias, more readers are turning to an independent source. Subscribe from just 15p a day for extra exclusives, events and ebooks – all with no ads.
Subscribe nowThe penultimate episode of Vikings‘ fourth season featured one battle that was expected and another that was inevitable. On a field in England, the sons of Ragnar met Aethelwulf’s army. In Kattegat, Lagertha struggled to defend her city against a violent coup. (Read the full recap here.) In our latest weekly postmortem, Vikings creator Michel Hirst talks about the Great Heathen Army – and what will happen to the sons of Ragnar Lothbrok after they achieve their vengeance.
ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: There were two major battles in this episode. Can you talk about what kind of preparation you do when you’re constructing the narrative of sequences like that? Do you read up on your military history?
MICHAEL HIRST: I think we’ve made the point right from the beginning to do each battle differently. More than anything else, I hate those visual effects battles when you just get lots of identical warriors streaming from left to right and right to left.
I’m not a military historian as such, but I am interested in the history of warfare. When I was a young boy running home from school, I was always in Napoleon’s army, surrounded by thousands of soldiers. I can dive into historical books of any period and any culture. Some battles [on the show], to tell you the truth, were inspired by Japanese warfare. There’s a nod in the direction of Kurosawa’s film Ran in the great battle to come in episode 20
Ivar compensates for his lack of physical power with brain power. He is going to approach warfare in a different way. He’s appreciated that the scale has gone up now. The armies are bigger, the possibilities are bigger. We’re beginning to see something change in the show. You can expect [different] kinds of warfare, not just the shield wall.
I watched them shooting that big battle, and it was incredible. There were just hundreds and hundreds of warriors. People were throwing themselves into the battle, horses running at each other.
Are you ever tempted in a scene like that to put on a helmet and go onscreen as an extra?
I’ll tell you a story. When we were doing The Tudors, in the first season, one of the directors said, “Don’t you want a little cameo?” I said, “Okay, but I want to be the lowest of the low.” There’s a certain day when Catholics used to crawl to the cross. People in church, from the highest to the lowest, everyone would get on their knees, crawl to the cross, and kiss the cross. We were shooting the scene. I said, “I’ll be a peasant.” I did this with all the Irish extras and kissed the cross very devoutly. They were cleaning the cross between kisses, but obviously not enough because the next day my eye completely blew up. [Laughs.] I had to get on a plane to the States, so I had an eyepatch. I looked terrible. I was just being punished for my hubris! And, on top of it, they never used me in the scene!
So, no. I’m not tempting fate.
The dynamic between Floki and Helge has been complicated all season since Helge brought the Spanish girl back from their raid. There’s a moment in this episode between the girl and Floki where he seems to be struggling to communicate with her. What is Floki feeling in that scene?
Floki never wanted Helge to take the child away from her culture. Floki still cannot come to terms with that act. By his own lights, he’s incredibly moral. He thinks it’s wrong. He feels for this girl, and it’s breaking the relationship with Helge. As he says, very honestly, “I don’t know what to do.” He has to hand her back to someone he knows she hates. One could sense an unhappy ending. There doesn’t seem to be any way of avoiding it. There’s a tragedy waiting to happen.
Ivar tells his brothers that he considers himself the true heir to Ragnar Lothbrok. The sons of Ragnar are all united now, but they are ambitious men in an ambitious society. Are Ivar’s brothers also considering this possibility, that one of them will be the standout inheritor of their father’s legacy?
You can already sense the inherent tensions between them. They are only holding together because they have this joint cause. They are all committed to the act of revenge. Ivar does think he’s the true heir. Because it’s out there now, it promises that in the future, when the act of revenge is finished, the stresses and strengths are going to come more out in the open. This is a society fueled by the need for fame. We know they’re gonna be at each other’s throats.
After the battle of Kattegat, we saw that Torvi was lying dead amidst the mayhem. This has always been a high-fatality show, but what goes into the decision to kill off a long-running character like that?
You think she’s dead, do you?
Yes…you mean she isn’t?
You may be wrong! I do take your main point. A lot of thought does go into when a major character dies. It was funny, there was a character in earlier seasons, Torstein, who had his arm cut off. [The actor] was told twice that he was dead, and then I changed my mind and kept him alive. The producer whose job is it to tell character in advance that they are going to be killed is called the angel of death, even though he’s the nicest possible man he could meet. The angel of death twice went to tell him he was gonna die, and then twice, I went down later and said, “Actually, you’re not.” He kept looking around to see if I was coming!A friend alerted to me to a sudden wave of excitement about Bitcoin.
I have to ask: why? What has changed in the last 10 years to make this work when it didn’t in, say, 1999, when many other related systems (including one of my own) were causing similar excitement? Or in the 20 years since the wave before that, in 1990?
As far as I can see, nothing.
Also, for what its worth, if you are going to deploy electronic coins, why on earth make them expensive to create? That’s just burning money – the idea is to make something unforgeable as cheaply as possible. This is why all modern currencies are fiat currencies instead of being made out of gold.
Bitcoins are designed to be expensive to make: they rely on proof-of-work. It is far more sensible to use signatures over random numbers as a basis, as asymmetric encryption gives us the required unforgeability without any need to involve work. This is how Chaum’s original system worked. And the only real improvement since then has been Brands‘ selective disclosure work.
If you want to limit supply, there are cheaper ways to do that, too. And proof-of-work doesn’t, anyway (it just gives the lion’s share to the guy with the cheapest/biggest hardware).
Incidentally, Lucre has recently been used as the basis for a fully-fledged transaction system, Open Transactions. Note: I have not used this system, so make no claims about how well it works.
(Edit: background reading – “Proof-of-Work” Proves Not to Work)She had always struggled with her weight, but in January 2006, Kai Hibbard was in real trouble: At just 26 years old, her 5-foot-6 frame carried 265 pounds.
Her best friend staged a mini-intervention. “She said, ‘Hey, I love you, but you’re super-fat right now,’ ” Hibbard recalls. The pal encouraged Hibbard to try out for the smash NBC reality show “The Biggest Loser.”
“So I made a videotape,” Hibbard says, “and the next thing I know, I’m on a reality TV show.”
Hibbard had never seen “The Biggest Loser.” She had no idea what she was in for.
“The whole f- -king show,” she says today, “is a fat-shaming disaster that I’m embarrassed to have participated in.”
Since its premiere in 2004, “The Biggest Loser” — which pits obese contestants against one another in a race to lose the most weight — has been one of the most popular reality shows of all time.
The 16th-season finale will air live on Jan. 29. Average weekly viewership is 7 million people, and about 200,000 people audition per season.
The show rakes in about $100 million annually in ad sales, with ancillary products such as cookbooks, DVDs, protein powder, clothing, video games and branded weight-loss camps bringing in tens of millions of dollars more per year.
In a country where two-thirds of the population is overweight or obese, “The Biggest Loser” has multifaceted appeal: It’s aspirational and grotesque, punitive and redemptive — skinny or fat, it’s got something for you. It’s not uncommon to see contestants worked out to the point of vomiting or collapsing from exhaustion. Contestants, collegially and poignantly, refer to one another as “losers.”
“You just think you’re so lucky to be there,” Hibbard says, “that you don’t think to question or complain about anything.”
Contestants are made to sign contracts giving away rights to their own story lines and forbidding them to speak badly about the show.
Once selected, Hibbard was flown to LA. When she got to her hotel, she was greeted by a production assistant, who checked her in and took away her key card. When not filming, she was to stay in her room at all times.
“The hotel will report to them if you leave your room,” Hibbard says. “They assume you’re going to talk to other contestants.”
Another competitor, who spoke to The Post on the condition of anonymity, says that when she first checked in, a production assistant also took her cellphone and laptop for 24 hours. She suspects her computer was bugged.
“The camera light on my MacBook would sometimes come on when I hadn’t checked in,” she says. “It was like Big Brother was always watching you.” The sequestration lasts five days.
After an initial winnowing process, 14 of 50 finalists are taken to “the ranch,” where they live, work out and suffer in seclusion. (The remaining 36 are sent home to lose weight on their own, and return later in the season.)
Those who remain, Hibbard says, are not allowed to call home. “You might give away show secrets,” she says. After six weeks, contestants get to make a five-minute call, monitored by production.
“I know that one of the contestants’ children became very ill and was in the ICU,” Hibbard says. “He was allowed to talk to his family — but he didn’t want to leave, because the show would have been done with him.”
Once at the ranch, contestants are given a medical exam, then start working out immediately, for dangerous lengths of time — from five to eight hours straight.
“There was no easing into it,” Hibbard says. “That doesn’t make for good TV. My feet were bleeding through my shoes for the first three weeks.”
“My first workout was four hours long,” says the other contestant. She came on the show a few years ago at more than 300 pounds. On her first day, she was put through this regimen:
Rowing
Body-weight work
Kettle bells
Cool-down on treadmill
Interval training
Stairmaster
Outside work with tires
At one point, she collapsed. “I thought I was going to die,” she says. “I couldn’t take any more.”
Her trainer yelled, “Get up!,” then made a comment about a sick and overweight relative.
“I got up,” she says. “You’re just in shock. Your body’s in shock. All the contestants would say to each other, ‘What the f- -k just happened?’ ”
The trainers, she says, took satisfaction in bringing their charges to physical and mental collapse. “They’d get a sick pleasure out of it,” she says. “They’d say, ‘It’s because you’re fat. Look at all the fat you have on you.’ And that was our fault, so this was our punishment.”
Hibbard had the same experience. “They would say things to contestants like, ‘You’re going die before your children grow up.’ ‘You’re going to die, just like your mother.’ ‘We’ve picked out your fat-person coffin’ — that was in a text message. One production assistant told a contestant to take up smoking because it would cut her appetite in half.”
Meanwhile, their calories were severely restricted. The recommended daily intake for a person of average height and weight is 1,200 to 1,600 calories per day. The contestants were ingesting far less than 1,000 per day.
Hibbard says the bulk of food on her season was provided by sponsors and had little to no nutritional value.
“Your grocery list is approved by your trainer,” she says. “My season had a lot of Franken-foods: I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter spray, Kraft fat-free cheese, Rockstar Energy Drinks, Jell-O.”
At one point, Hibbard says, production did bloodwork on all the contestants, and the show’s doctor prescribed electrolyte drinks. “And the trainer said, ‘Don’t drink that — it’ll put weight on you. You’ll lose your last chance to save your life.’ ”
Such extreme, daily workouts and calorie restriction result in steep weight losses — up to 30 pounds lost in one week.
“Safe weight loss is one to two pounds per week, and most people find that hard,” says Lynn Darby, a professor of exercise science at Bowling Green State University. “If you reduce your calories to less than 800 to 1,000 a day, your metabolism will shut down. Add five to eight hours of exercise a day — that’s like running a marathon, in poor shape, five days a week. I’m surprised that no one’s really been injured on the show.”
In fact, contestants have been seriously injured, but it’s not often shown. The first-ever “Biggest Loser,” Ryan Benson, went from 330 pounds to 208 — but after the show, he said, he was so malnourished that he was urinating blood. “That’s a sign of kidney damage, if not failure,” Darby says. Benson later gained back all the weight and was disowned by the show.
In 2009, two contestants were hospitalized — one via airlift. And 2014’s Biggest Loser, Rachel Frederickson, became the first winner to generate concern that she had lost too much weight, dropping 155 pounds in months. She appeared on the cover of People with the headline “Too Thin, Too Fast?” Frederickson (5 feet 4, 105 pounds) admitted to working out four times a day, and within one month of the finale had gained back 20 pounds.
“Just calorie restriction in and of itself has to be supervised,” Darby says. “I mean, people die. Then add that exercise load on top of it. The joints of someone who has never exercised absorbing the force of 300 pounds of jumping or bouncing? It’s just not safe.”
Hibbard says she and other contestants sustained major physical damage.
“One contestant had a torn calf muscle and bursitis in her knees,” Hibbard says. “The doctor told her, ‘You need to rest.’ She said, ‘Production told me I can’t rest.’ At one point after that, production ordered her to run, and she said, ‘I can’t.’ She was seriously injured. But they edited her to make her look lazy and bitchy and combative.”
Hibbard’s own health declined dramatically. “My hair was falling out,” she says. “My period stopped. I was only sleeping three hours a night.” Hibbard says that to this day, her period is irregular, her hair still falls out, and her knees “sound like Saran Wrap” every time she goes up and down stairs. “My thyroid, which I never had problems with, is now crap,” she says.
“One of the other ‘losers’ and I started taking showers together, because we couldn’t lift our arms over our heads,” says the other contestant. “We’d duck down so we could shampoo each other.”
The trainers, she says, were unmoved. “They’d say stuff like, ‘Pain is just weakness leaving the body.’ ”
This contestant says she and most of her castmates came away with bad knees. “There was one guy whose back was so bad, he could only exercise in the swimming pool. By the end of the show, I was running on 400 calories and eight- to nine-hour workouts per day. Someone asked me where I was born, and I couldn’t remember. My short-term memory still sucks.”
So why do so many contestants stick with the show?
“You’re brainwashed to believe that you’re super-lucky to be there,” Hibbard says. One doctor told a contestant she was exhibiting signs of Stockholm syndrome, and Hibbard herself fell prey to it.
“I was thinking, ‘Dear God, don’t let anybody down. You will appear ungrateful if you don’t lose more weight before the season finale.’ ”
The other contestant had a similar response. Despite “the harassment and the bullying, I wanted to please them,” she says. She lost seven pounds in one week and apologized. “I’d lost 12 pounds the week before,” she says.
For Hibbard, the low point came when she and her fellow “losers” were brought to a racetrack, where they were housed in individual horse stalls. When a bell went off, they had to run neck-and-neck like animals, picking up sacks filled with their lost weight on the way.
“I walked,” she says. It was her minor form of protest. “They edited it to look like I was lazy,” she says, “but I wasn’t participating because it was humiliating.”
When Hibbard got home, her best friend and boyfriend took her straight to the doctor. “She said I had such severe shin splints that she didn’t know how I was still walking,” Hibbard says.
The show’s most famous trainer, Jillian Michaels, quit “The Biggest Loser” for the third time in June 2014, with People magazine reporting she was “deeply concerned” about the show’s “poor care of the contestants.”
In a statement to The Post, NBC said only: “Our contestants are closely monitored and medically supervised. The consistent ‘Biggest Loser’ health transformations of over 300 contestants through 16 seasons of the program speak for themselves.”
Expert Darby doesn’t buy it. “With most weight-loss programs, people gain at least half of the weight back,” she says. “And the people who are most successful in our studies are the ones who make small changes over the long term — so I can’t imagine that anyone on ‘The Biggest Loser’ has weight loss that’s sustainable.”
Hibbard, who lost 121 pounds to end up at 144, put weight back on, but won’t say how much. Yet she feels a responsibility as someone once held up as false inspiration.
“If I’m going to walk around collecting accolades, I also have a responsibility [to tell the truth],” she says. “There’s a moral and ethical question here when you take people who are morbidly obese and work them out to the point where they vomit, all because it makes for good TV.”
Check out these actors who have become fantastically fit:I considered 1password, but playing with Keychain, which ships with OS X, I found out it does all I need from a password manager. No need for any browser extensions or app store purchases. It’s all built in to OS X. Simply understanding how “Save Password” works in the browser is enough to solve the problem.
Safari and Chrome both save and fetch passwords from Keychain. You want to have the encrypted keychain which you’ll store all your passwords in backed up. I store it in my Dropbox. You can find the default keychain at ~/Library/Keychains/login.keychain. Once you’ve moved it to your Dropbox, open Keychain Access and add it from the file menu. Most of your passwords will already be in there. That’s fine.
You might also want to change the password to the keychain. By default the password to the login keychain is your user login. You change it by right clicking it in the left-hand pane.
Whenever I create a new account, or change a password, I come up with a random password myself and put it in my clipboard. Paste it when signing up, and when signing in. On sign in I allow Safari/Chrome to remember my password, which means it stores the password in Keychain.
If you ever need the password outside your OS X browser, for instance to sign in to Twitter on your phone, you can copy the password to the clipboard from Keychain :
Once a password is in Keychain it will auto-fill in your browser, regardless of how you add it, as long as the “where” attribute is the same as the page you are currently on:
Since there’s no magic in adding keys, you can just as well add them from the command line or in the Keychain app, as long as the “where” attribute (as shown on the picture above) is right.
security also allows you to easily add new passwords with the add-internet-password command:
security add-internet-password -a "John Doe" -s foo.com -w pass
Furthermore, passwords in Keychain can be accessed via security on the command line:
security 2>&1 > /dev/null find-internet-password -gs www.google.com | grep -o \ '".*"' | sed's/"//g'
It will prompt me for the password to the keychain, then output the decrypted password. This is handy for various packages that require passwords.
Keychain2go exists if you want to bring it to your iPhone.
You can also add encrypted notes to your keychain, these can be used for credit card numbers, images, bank account information, secret documents etc.UCLA researchers have discovered a noninvasive method to measure vascular compliance — that is, the stiffness of arteries — in the human brain, a finding that may have implications for preventing stroke and diagnosing Alzheimer’s disease earlier.
The UCLA team measured the volume of cerebral arteries using a technique called arterial spin labeling. They measured once at the systolic phase of the cardiac cycle, when the heart is pumping blood into the brain, and again at the diastolic phase, when the heart is relaxing.
The stiffer the arteries they tested, the smaller the change in the arterial blood volume between the two cardiac phases, because stiff arteries are less able to change shape or comply with blood pressure changes, said Danny Wang, the study’s senior author and an associate professor of neurology at UCLA.
“Vascular compliance is a useful marker for a number of cardiovascular diseases, such as hypertension and diabetes,” said Wang, who is also a researcher in UCLA’s Ahmanson-Lovelace Brain Mapping Center.
The researchers found that elderly people have much stiffer arteries than do young people. They also found that increased arterial stiffness is associated with reduced cerebral blood flow, suggesting stiff arteries impair the blood supply to the brain.
Read the full news release.Mo Money, Mo Problems
I would love to talk about Pete Carroll’s assumed contract extension & plans beyond 2016, but they’re giving us nada there from the VMAC. Just speculation at this point. I have some guesses as to what’s going on currently and what Pete’s future holds, but it horrifies 12s to even broach the subject, so… Let’s talk about No-Longer-Angry Doug Baldwin instead! He is awesome and a spicy topic brimming with currency, so here goes!
First we need to review what is now becoming a strong resume for Doug, & balance that with what the Seahawks long-term goals are likely to be. Doug came to the Seattle as a cheap, passionate, overachiever by any measure. I’m sure he knew he’d be successful all along, but while passionate and overachiever still apply, he is cheap no longer! He will look to secure a bright future for his family on the next deal. There will be no hometown discounts, no fondness for teammates or sympathy for chemistry in our passing scheme. He deserves to get PAID. And paid he shall be. But what is “paid” as defined by Doug? But also what will the market bare, and what can Seahawks afford?
I’m not even a Seahawks fan and @DougBaldwinJr you are my favorite receiver #1 in my book — Matthew Cantu (@MatthewCantu22) May 19, 2016
This is the sentimental feeling of most 12s, including myself. Doug is a #1 WR legit baller in our hearts. I recently quizzed Doug about the situation & the following includes his responses. This is what he was willing to share, which wasn’t much…
Now, if you follow my Twitter timeline you know I always seek to get the hidden story and keep it real. Maybe Doug found a connection there with his approach to truth, justice & the American Way. I don’t know. But I recently noticed he followed my pre-draft blog @HawksDraftNews closely and began sliding into my DMs with responses to his contract situation and how that may effect the Seahawks draft strategy. I would lay out some scenarios, and Doug, like a good editor, would let me know if I was hot or cold. Here is what we think might be going on.
“Slidin’ into your DM’s like…”
In fairness to Doug, he himself doesn’t know what-up with his contract because Pete & John aren’t sharing their plans with him at the moment. All he’s heard is what we’ve heard, which is, “We’ll see what’s up after the Draft.” Not exactly a ringing endorsement. In fact, THUD. Despite Schneider saying PR-ish things on the radio like, “Doug Baldwin is everything the Seahawks are about,” they aren’t talking contract.
Now, it could be the sides come together any day & a deal gets done going into OTAs, but its unusual that they haven’t approached him earlier. In fact, Seahawks are approaching the Baldwin deal in the same fashion as they have with others they intended to let test free agency. And it makes sense. The guys you really believe are going to maintain production, you lock them in early at a discount. Others, you let simmer.
It may be that the Seahawks believe Doug’s asking price will be too high. Baldwin insists that this line of reasoning is not accurate. What he does seem to acknowledge though, is that the team is likely to make him a Golden Tate-type offer which he will be forced to beat elsewhere.
“Smartest things I’ve read in a long time. I applaud you.” Doug Baldwin – Mar 25
I inquired about whether a team that throws so little, and is looking to feature their big-ticket TE more, could pay both Doug & Tyler long-term. It’s a giant question mark, but naturally, Doug feels it is doable, maybe understanding that this whole thing rests on the health of Jimmy Graham, because you know Tyler Lockett is gettin paid!
One interesting element here that could provide hope for a Jimmy, Doug & Ty triplets in the future is the rise of Garry Gilliam at LT. It was suggested recently by another Seahawks blogger, Evan Hill, that a good move financially for the Seahawks this offseason would be to lock-up Gilliam at LT cheaply, right now. I agree.
What John absolutely can NOT have happen is for Garry Gilliam to have a breakout season in his contract year. Couple that with Doug’s free agency next March, and that would spell financial and/or roster disaster for the offensive cap. Essentially, the additional money to pay Baldwin could come from the vacated LT cap afforded them by Okung leaving & rewarding Gilliam cheaply. A huge gamble. But a smart gamble, and one that wouldn’t cost them a lot to try. Worst case scenario, Gilliam is below-average and becomes the swing man. They are still looking for a |
, these differences matter less that whether we are unemployed, have prison records, or are in danger of being exported. And no matter what we are in these ontic ways, our beings do not fit neatly into our politics as conservatives, anarchists, evangelicals, Teaparty-supporters, Zionists, Islamists, and (a few) Communists. We are social animals, yes, but we are also anti-social, and our animal natures are thoroughly mediated by society’s contingent forms. Yes, the early Marx developed a philosophical ontology. Nothing follows from this politically. Philosopher-king-styled party leaders are not thereby legitimated, and the whole thorny issue of false consciousness (empirical vs. imputed/ascribed [zugerechnectes] consciousness) cannot force a political resolution. At the same time, philosophical thought has every right – and obligation — to intervene actively into political life. Here is Marx on the subject of intellectual practice, including philosophizing:
But again when I am active scientifically, etc, — when I am engaged in activity which I can seldom perform in direct community with others –- then I am social, because I am active as a man [human being9]. Not only is the material of my activity given to me as a social product (as is even the language in which the thinker is active): my own existence is social activity, and therefore that which I make of myself, I make of myself for society and with the consciousness ofmyself as a social being. 10
Again, no matter how deeply one thinks one’s way into this ontological generalization, no specific political orientation follows as a consequence. It describes the intellectual work of Heidegger and Schmitt every bit as much as it does that of Marx or of us ourselves.
For Marx, ontological philosophy was only the starting point in a lifelong practice of scientific thinking that developed in response to the historical events surrounding him. Through the trajectory of his work, the entire tradition of Western political philosophy took a left turn away from metaphysics and toward an engagement with the emerging social sciences — economics, anthropology, sociology, psychology — understood not in their positivist, data-gathering or abstract-mathematical forms, but as sciences of history — not historicality, historicity, historicism or the like, but concrete, material HISTORY. With this hard-left turn (which is an orientation that may or may not involve elements from “the linguistic turn,” the “ethical turn,” the “aesthetic turn”), political philosophy morphs into social theory done reflectively, that is, critically. It becomes critical theory.
When Marx said thinking was itself a practice, he meant it in this sense. He did not then ask: what is the ontological meaning of the being of practice. Instead, he tried to find out as much as he could about the socio-historical practices of actual human beings in his time.
So the question Marx’s early writings leaves us with is this: How do we turn this social — we could say in a descriptive way, socialist — fact of our work, and our consciousness of this work as social beings, into a commonist practice? How are we to conceive of a commonist ethics? Not by the phenomenological reduction to some essence of what it is to be a social being: i.e., a caring being, a being-to-death, a being-with, etc., as Heidegger proposed, but rather, by an analysis, a becoming-conscious of the specific society, the specific cares, the specific deaths that are simultaneous with our own, not common in the sense of the same as ours (experiences are very unequal in today’s society), but as happening to others who share, in common, this time and this space — a space as big as the globe and a time as actual as now.
2.
Marx changed the relationship between politics and philosophy by creating a hinge out of the social sciences. This hinge has worn thin. Today’s philosophically naive social sciences purport to be objective as they splinter reality into self-referential, academic disciplines that argue from present-day “givens” as a quasi-natural base (rather than dynamic, unstable structures that depend on human action). For its part, philosophy, going it alone, retreats to the humanities — to normative thinking, an analysis of reason and the Kantian world of moral oughts, or, alternatively, to a Nietzschean-inspired anti-rationalism, the celebration of affect, cultural relativism, literary narativity, hermeneutic contingency. Even critical philosophy shares with the positivist sciences from which it has cut itself off the presumption that it can know reality on its own. Both approaches — thought without empirical understanding and empirical understanding without thought, without critical reflection — are extremely susceptible to reification.
Meanwhile, Marxism, orphaned by both sides of the academic project, the sciences and the humanities, risks dogmatism if it claims to provide knowledge beforehand (a priori) of the political meaning of events on the basis of century-old texts, fitting every empirical factoid into its preexisting interpretive frame. As the master-code of history, Marxism grants to an anthropomorphized capitalist system all-powerful agency. Capitalism masterminds events, exploits voraciously for private gain, delights in crisis, all the while thwarting our best moral intentions, determining historical outcomes with a cleverness far greater than any Hegelian cunning of reason could provide.
Marx, as everyone knows, used the term capitalism only a handful of times. The big book is called Capital. And it is a critical exposure of the economic practices of his time, including the processes of fetishism and reification that make it appear that the laws of capital are our necessary fate.
Now I am going to make a tedious point: Due to the epistemological consequences, we need to reject creating an –ism out of any political or theoretical orientation. No communISM, no capitalISM, no MarxISM, no totalitarianISM, no imperialISM,– no isms at all.11 These are cosmological systems, economies of belief that resemble the medieval Christological economy (oikonomia) in that all the elements are internally consistent and logically satisfying, as long as there is no contamination by facts or events that, like some sort of illegal aliens, enter from the outside. The simple words — communist or socialist, capitalist or Marxist, etc. are a different story. If they are used merely as descriptive adjectives, they refer to qualities (determinations) of objects in the world, which they define — objects that, if we are to be consequent materialists, must have priority over the concepts we use to name them.12
Political practice, too, is vulnerable to seduction by the -ism. It is a mistake to adopt anarchISM or socialISM, TrotskyISM or IslamISM, radicaISM, or parliamentarianISM as a system of belief determining one’s actions in advance. Conditions change, and practice needs to respond to new situations. Seize state power so as to control its ideological apparatuses? Yes, but what if, after the global transformation of capital, the state itself has become an ideological apparatus? Base one’s politics on an anarchist respect for democratic agency? Absolutely. But not if that means yielding to the manipulative tactics of right-wing populism in its increasingly widespread forms.
To say, with Althusser, that Marx abandoned his early humanism for a “science of history” implies that Marxist science is trans-historical and eternal, an ontological first principle immune to precisely the historical specificity on which it insists – as if science were not itself historical. (We have only to think of the historical limits of the science of Ricardo or Malthus, or, given the present crisis, the Chicago School of economics, to make that point clear.) To argue, with Negri, for a “historical ontology” based on a scientific understanding of the process of capitalist class struggle is a dubious alternative. Negri wants to add historical contingency to the mix, at the same time counting on an ontological fix to avoid the dangers of relativism that contingency implies. He does not let go of the class struggle as the prima philosophia, the philosophic first principle, on which the whole political project is grounded. But if, pace Negri, there can be no ontology of history, it is because history is the realm of human freedom, and therefore the realm of the unpredictable — in thought as well as in practice. At this point, rather than trying to develop an ontology of freedom, we need to recognize freedom’s surprising, and fleeting appearance in the world.
I am showing my true colors. I am an incorrigable pragmatist when it comes to critical theory. But that is not pragmatISM, in Rorty’s or even Dewey’s sense (and it has nothing to do with being an American). It is closer to what Bert Brecht described (and admired) as plumpes Denken – non-elegant thinking. So, for example, where the elegant philosopher would discover a concept by searching for the classical Greek meaning of a term, I take my lead from modern Greek, demotiki, the street language of the people (demos), that, along with the so-called fiscal irresponsiblity of the Greeks themselves, is largely disdained by the European intelligentsia. Ta pragmata in modern Greek refers to the practical things that you use in daily existence. In German: die Klamotten, in the sense of the stuff — it might look like junk to others, but it’s the stuff that you need and use every day.
Deployed in this sense, a pragmatic approach to doing theory bears a resemblance to the point that the Nigerian novelist Wole Soyinka made when he criticized the understanding of Nègritude as ontology by saying: “A tiger does not proclaim its tigritude, he pounces.” He later clarified: “a tiger does not stand in the forest and say ‘I am a tiger.’ When you pass where the tiger has walked before, you see the skeleton of a duiker, you know that some tigritude has emanated there.”13 (Figures 1 and 2.)
Soyinka abandons ontology for something close to what I mean by a theoretical pragmatics.14 It is a practice of theorizing whereby things acquire meaning because of their practical, pragmatic relationship with other things, and these relationships are constantly open, constantly precarious. Their future cannot be predicted in advance.
Now if we were interested only in the empirical science of tiger practice, we would be behavioralists, observing from a safe distance what a tiger does. But as political actors in the midst of things, we are duikers, and duikers need to know the latest news.
Can we imagine Lenin without a newspaper? (Figure 7). Or Marx, or Hegel, for that matter? Marx wrote for newspapers about events far away from Europe — colonialism in India, China trade, the U.S. Civil War. And Hegel was formulating the dialectic of master and slave because of the Haitian Revolution that he read about in successive issues of the political periodical, Minerva.
Lenin, let us remember, did not expect the revolution would happen
a) in Russia at all
b) in the summer, or even fall of 1917.
But he allowed his theory to yield to historical developments as they actually occurred.15
The historical event that surprises — this is the “radical reality” to which Lenin remained open.16 Here I am in total agreement with Badiou regarding the political centrality of the event, and on the same page as he, when he stresses “the absolute unpredictability of the event” that “can be the source of the emergence of the radically new.”17 But I would take liberties with Lacan’s formulation in ways that Badiou does not. It is not “truth” that “punches a hole in knowledge.” Rather, it is social action. And the truth that such action reveals is the possibility of human freedom. So, if we put together the idea of pragmatics and the idea of the event, we get: a pragmatics of the suddenly possible as an expression of human freedom. And that is not a bad definition of what commonist ethics would imply.
Spoken in the inelegant language of plumpes Denken, then, the philosophically infused questions that a pragmatics of the suddenly possible would need to ask are these:
1. What’s Happening? (the pragmatic alternative to “historical ontology”)
2. What’s New? (Is there an “event” going on here?)
3. What Gives? (What structures of power are suddenly yielding to the actors in the event)
4. What’s Going On? (Are certain structures NOT in the process of change?)
And only then do we get to the Big Question: 5. WHAT TO DO? (“What is to be Done?” is the wrong translation of Что делать?).
We might tarry over these questions for a while to view them in a commonist mode.
3.
“What’s happening?”
The event is not a miracle that overcomes us with awe and strikes us down. It lifts us, precisely because it is accomplished by ordinary people who interrupt business as usual in order to act collectively, empowering not only those who are present, but those who, in watching, feel a tremendous surge of solidarity and sense of human togetherness – even (dare I say it?) universality. We witness the actuality of human beings joining together to overcome barriers, to initiate change. This capacity to act in common is the real possibility of a commonist ethics.
The solidarity produced in the spectator, made famous by Kant in the case of the French Revolution, has become intense in the electronic age. Different from Kant’s time, and also from Lenin’s, it was television’s live coverage of political action that tipped the balance in favor of non-violent resistance. (Terror may be a political tool [Badiou], but it is a very blunt instrument, as historically dated, perhaps, as the hydrogen bomb). In recent years, in the Iranian election protests of 2009-2010, and throughout the Jasmine revolutions of the Arab spring, the power of non-violent protest has multiplied exponentially.
For Kant, because of the bloodiness of French revolutionary events, it was only the idea that garnered enthusiasm. On Tahrir Square it was the reality of peaceful force – the force of non-violence in the face of violence, articulating a meaning of martyrdom that has universal human implications. The technological revolution of hand-held internet devices has exploded the potential for eye-witness reporting of events. In live time, the reporting itself becomes a weapon of resistance. No doubt, how the new technologies are used depends on the hands that hold them. But what is remarkable is how reliable such information sharing has been. Human actors have taken responsibility for others in ways that risk their own personal safety, releasing what has all the appearance of a pent-up desire for non-commercial, non-self-interested information exchange, and trusting the international community of viewers to respond in solidarity – and they do. (Perhaps we are by nature socialist animals after all.)
On the first level, then, “what’s happening” is an empirical question. Approached from the mandate of a commonist ethics, answering this question requires first and foremost the full freedom of communication, by anyone who has knowledge to share, to anyone who has the desire to know. Here the reporting of independent media, the reliable collection of news, and its unfiltered, unblocked dissemination, are political projects of the highest import. The more dispersed the points of observation, the fuller the picture of events will be.
Incidentally, Steve Jobs’ life is about the U.S. benefitting from immigration (his father was a Syrian Muslim, his mother was from German ancestry). While he is praised as a hero of free enterprise, his crucial political contribution is the fact that in developing the personal computer, he gave people control over the means of production of the global economy – a commonist act if there ever was one. Cell phone videos keep citizen protest and state violence in view. But Apple takes away citizen power when it designs the IPhone and IPad as a platform for profits from rent, and when these forms diminish the use-ability of the keyboard, emphasizing instead the internet as a place of consumption, where users’ actions are under surveillance, monitored, and sold as information.
On the second level, what’s happening is an act of interpretation. To know what is happening, beyond the virtually mediated sense perception (which, when it means seeing videos of brutality toward unarmed protesters is the most unanimously and universally opposed moment in the event), is to name the action and place it in context. It is here that the difficult, often contentious work of political analysis begins, and this on the most basic level. What are we to call this moment of citizen action? Is it democracy that we are witnessing? Yes, surely. But by calling it this, we already seem to suggest the trajectory of events: Success then means founding political parties, holding elections, and declaring loyalty to a secular, nation state that plays by the pre-determined rules of the given world order. In other words, that which is suddenly possible in an event is to follow the lead of the self-proclaimed democracies that are already established. But none of those steps necessarily follows from what has happened, which, for the old, self-proclaimed democracies is a cause for alarm. The known steps, the ones they have taken, reduce the meaning of the suddenly possible to a pre-written script. If we then revisit the question - “what’s new?” - the answer ends up being: not much.
But what if the truly eventful social action initiated in Tunis, Cairo and elsewhere is a previously unimagined structure of politics - not the universal one-size-fits-all relevance of nation-state democracy that, even allowing for the difference of culturally pluralistic contexts, presumes an eternal verity for two-century-old, Euro-American forms (which at present are responding badly to the global economic crises that their economic institutions caused), but a glimpse of global solidarity wherein national and cultural identities are suspended, and unity is the consequence, not of who you are but, rather, what you do? Let us call this a commonist practice. The whole process of the act of protest and its virtual dissemination is, in its non-exclusionary, horizontal organizational forms, a brilliant manifestation of a qualitatively different, commonist ethic, pointing to the suddenly possible power of global solidarity. This is the new that reveals itself in this event, an event that is less a rupture than an opening for alternatives to the given state of things.
The idea here would be to oppose Schmitt’s and Agamben’s definition of the sovereign as he who decides in a state of emergency, turning its temporality and its agency inside-out, and we can do this by returning to the 16th century meaning of the English word, “emergency,” as the condition of emergence. The state of emergency that produces a crisis for the sovereign is a liberating possibility for the sovereign’s subjects, a moment for the “emergency” of a new situation, a possibility that subjectivity itself can be transformed.
Finally, on September 28th, the New York Times brought to mainstream media the biggest political story of the year, officially acknowledging what has been happening all along (Image 5 and 6). A front page story put together the global pieces: The Arab Spring, India’s supporting Anna Hazare’s hunger strike, Israeli citizen pro-justice protests, days of rioting in Athens and London, the Indignados de la Republica in Spain, as well as citizen-sleep-ins of the “excluded” that are on-going in civic spaces from Tahrir Square to the Plaza del Sol, to Zuccotti Park. We need to add: the amazing bravery of citizens in Syria, Yemen, and Bahrain who, with no help from NATO, persist in the face of violent repression by governments, the legitimacy of which they steadfastly refuse to recognize.
Arab Spring, European Summer, Wall Street Fall. We are witnessing a global, social movement that affirms diversity and universality, both at once. Clearly, it is radical, refusing to accept the given rules of the game. Is it a turn to the Left? Perhaps this nomenclature can no longer be used – and this fact, too, is what’s new. In our cyber-geographic situation, Left-turns are positioned differently on the ground. They are local in orientation and necessarily plural. This, among many things, separates global, commonist action from right-wing populism. Where the latter marshals anger at the global disorder to support rigid ideologies of neo-nationalism, free-market privatization, and anti-immigration, thereby co-opting grass roots movements for the benefit of existing political parties, the trans-local constellation of forces refuses to be nationally or politically contained. For “left” and “right” to make any political sense, there have to be borders – territorial borders between nations, and partisan borders within them. The new activists are unwilling to be seduced by the rhetoric of divide and rule. Are they impractically naive? Is this an event at all?
4.
What gives? Walls fall, tyrants fall, an African-American, immigrant’s son, is elected President of the United States. But what goes on? What continues through all these transformations? Marxists will tell you, the global capitalist system, and the answer is not wrong. When Warren Buffett proclaims (speaking the truth from power): “there’s class warfare alright, and we are winning,” he could have added, worldwide. In a meeting like ours today, where we are considering a new political beginning, the 600-pound gorilla in the room is radical politics’ past, its debt to Marx’s analysis of capital that dealt intensely with economic inequality, outlining a theory of global exploitation of land and labor, a dialectical history of class struggle, and a rationale for the necessity of political revolution in order for human society to move forward.
Never, in my lifetime, has the Marxist critique of capital and its global dynamics seemed more accurate. And never has it seemed more wrong to go back to Marxism in its historical forms. At least through the 1960s, Marxist theory was the lingua franca of activists globally, no matter how much they disagreed on the proper interpretation (Soviet, Trotskyist, Maoist, humanist). The fall of the Soviet Union and the adoption of capitalist elements by the Republic of China dealt a fatal blow to this commonality. At the same time, Marxist theory could not withstand the scrutiny of feminist, post-colonial, critical race theorists, and others who extended the meaning of oppression and exploitation far beyond what happens on the factory floor. In its definition of human universality, Marxism was provincial at best. And its logic, often determinist, was firmly lodged in a theory of historical stages that has been shown to be simply inaccurate - by Samir Amin, Janet Abu-Lughod, and Dipesh Chakrabarty, to name a few.
And the idea of the revolutionary proletariat? Is the working class as political vanguard still the relevant organizational form? Official unions – not all of them, but too many and too often – have acted as groups that do not rise above economist concerns. Clearly, labor protests continue to matter in innovative ways. From Suez, Egypt, where non-official unions played a crucial role in empowering the Tahrir activist by their own power to block the Suez Canal, to Xintang, China, where migrant workers took to the streets to protest against being denied access to basic citizen rights, to Madison Wisconsin, where the very right to collective bargaining was under attack, to the Workers Councils and other labor groups that have come to Occupy Wall Street in support, labor organizing remains a crucially important location of struggle. But not only are most jobs in most places in the world today non-union. The reasons Marx argued for the pivotal importance of the organized working class may no longer hold. The wage rate, as “variable capital,” was supposed to be the part of the cost equation in the production process that lent itself to downward pressure (as opposed to the fixed capital of machines), but as we have seen, it functions by a different logic when productivity eliminates jobs completely. The International Labor Organization estimates that the number of unemployed workers worldwide is 200 million. A January 2011 Gallop poll puts world unemployment at 7% of the workforce. The young generation is particularly hard-hit. Unemployed youth today, worldwide, fears less the status of an economically necessary, labor reserve army, than being economically unnecessary, a superfluous population of permanently excluded, expendable human beings. And that is a really frightening (but at the same time, dialectically powerful) answer to the question: What’s new?
As the mega-cities of the globe make evident, massive proletarianization of the workforce has indeed taken place. But factories have left the cities and moved to enclaves. Striking is the fact that the migrant workforces they employ have shown themselves to be remarkably capable of collective action, despite their precarious position and despite ethnic and linguistic differences. And yet, their own cosmopolitan consciousness remains far in advance of what has been achieved by nationally organized, political parties.
Where is the revolutionary class? This may be the wrong question to ask. Perhaps neither category – neither revolution nor class – has the necessary traction in our time. First: is societal transformation any longer about revolution in the classical–modern sense? It has long been my suspicion that the Iranian Revolution of 1979 was the last in a long tradition that has run its course, whether in pro-nationalist, anti-colonial, Marxist, or theocratic form. Khoumeini’s political institution of sovereign power, Wilayat al-Faqih, was a personal invention, foreign not only to Western traditions, but to Sunni Islam and even Shi’ite political thought. And yet, his triumph in a violent civil war has affinities with the French Revolutionary prototype in many of its distinguishing characteristics: prolonged fratricide, tens of thousands of political executions, including the ritualistic beheadings of political enemies before the public, a trajectory of increasing radicalism, a reign of virtue, a Thermidorian reaction of authoritarian centralization, and, finally, a Girondist foreign policy of revolutionary expansion. But if you can spread revolution by twittering your triumph to the world, why choose the path of a foreign invasion?
Today, the videotaped beheadings of random victims does not have the same effect as regicide on the crowd of citizens at the Place de la Révolution. It is not felt by the global public as justified revenge. As is the case with the bombing of civilians, the bulldozing of houses, and the torturing and humiliation of prisoners, it is perceived as inhuman and wrong. Abstraction here works dialectically: without the legitimating language of the perpetrators, without the contextual pre-given meanings, the viewing of violence toward the powerless evokes an affective, visceral reaction from global observers who, precisely because the scene is taken out of context, respond concretely, and with empathy. Fratricide, the bloody struggle of civil war as the means of social transformation, is short sighted, as the truth and reconcilliation process that must follow proves enormously difficult. And as Thermedorian Reactions make clear, it is far easier to smash the old order than to construct the new.
So much for violent revolution. But are we really done with class? The 100 pound gorilla is still with us, the fact that In this global capitalist world, virtually across the board geo-politically, the rich keep getting rich and the poor poorer – and those in power, far from protesting, tell us that this system needs greater, special protection, far greater than that given to the citizens themselves. Free markets (uncontrolled capitalist accumulation) and free societies (democracies Western style) have joined hands, and the end product is global oligarchy. The so-called community of nations protects a global system of enclosures, which works to appropriate every use value that can be turned into a profit-making endeavor. Nothing – not schools, not prisons, not human genes, not wild plants, not the national army, not foreign governments – nothing is exempt from this process of privatization.
So, there is class warfare being waged, from the top down. But is there class war? Only if the rest of the world, the 99% of us, responds in kind. (Even Warren Buffett is not happy with the role he is supposed to play). I want to oppose the idea that the whole point of politics is to name the enemy (Schmitt’s friend/enemy distinction), and to structure one’s political organizing in an instrumental way in order to defeat that enemy.
Agonistic politics is a mutually dependent social relationship. Both sides must play the game. Perhaps nothing would appeal to those believing that the bad old is better than the possibility of the new being good, than if this struggle were to be defined as class war. Perhaps nothing would make the authorities more relieved than if Occupy Wall Street became a violent movement, because the state can then justify using police violence to put it down. But the vast majority, the 99%, has the force they need in sheer numbers, and does not require armed struggle to prove its point. And that point is: the system upon which we depend, the system that is incorporating more and more of our world, is not only out of control. It is punishing, irrational, and immoral – in Badiou’s words, brutal and barbaric.
A world community of democratic and sovereign nation-states was supposed to be the end of history, not the end of humanity. But what are we to make of our world, based on absurd contradictions, in which the democratically elected parliament of Greece taxes the people into destitution in order to save the nation? Or the nation of Iraq is liberated by the destruction of its infrastructure and death or displacement of 20% of the population? The logic has indeed something fundamental in common with that of the Cold War, when the capacity to destroy life on the planet was the gold standard of military security, and when post-colonial villages in Vietnam were bombed into oblivion in order to save their inhabitants from communism.
This is acceptable social behavior, and it’s crazy! A commonist ethics requires us to say so. The free choice of citizen voters is not freedom, and it is not a choice. The new tautology: Our subjection to the capitalist ethic produces the objectivized spirit of capitalism, which reproduces the capitalist ethic, in an eternal return of the same.
5.
The glow of optimism felt worldwide when Barack Obama won the US presidency in 2008 was a last (and lost) chance to believe that the system was capable of righting itself. In Obama’s loyalty to the two pillars of the world order – capitalist economics and national self interest – his presidency has demonstrated the bankruptcy of both. Given that free markets in a free society have failed to deliver basic human needs, can the world’s citizens be asked to hope again? Of course the analogy is exaggerated, and political emergency is qualitatively different – Obama is, happily, not a fascist, and, sadly, not socialist enough - but one is reminded of an exchange between Albert Speer and Adolf Hitler in March 1945, as the Soviet Army closed in on Berlin. Hitler was enraged to discover Speer had blocked his orders, but then calmed down and said “in a relaxed tone”:
“Speer, if you can convince yourself that the war is not lost, you can continue to run your office.”… “You know I cannot be convinced of that,” I replied sincerely but without defiance. “The war is lost.” Hitler launched into his reflections…of other difficult situations in his life, situations in which all had seemed lost but which he had mastered….[H]e surprisingly lowered his demand: “If you would believe that the war can still be won, if you could at least have faith in that, all would be well…. Agitated,…I said: “I cannot, with the best will in the world….Once again Hitler reduced his demand to a formal profession of faith: “If you could at least hope that we have not lost! You must certainly be able to hope…that would be enough to satisfy me. I did not answer. There was a long, awkward pause. At last Hitler stood up abruptly. …”You have twenty-four hours to think over your answer! Tomorrow let me know whether you hope that the war can still be won.” Without shaking hands, he dismissed me.
Again, the point of comparison is not one of leadership. It is only to point out that hope, too, can be an ideology. I cannot help feeling that Obama himself is aware of this danger, surely having believed in the democratic process that brought him to electoral victory such a short time ago. Obama was fond of repeating: “this is not about me.” And he was precisely correct. It was not. But he himself lacked faith in the people who elected him. Obama is proud to call himself a pragmatist. He just forgot one thing. In attempting to be realistic within the confines of the crazy status quo, he betrayed the pragmatics of the suddenly possible, which is, after all, the force that elected him in the first place. It is a global force, and it desperately wants change. It is the only sane politics the world now has.
At this moment, being pragmatic in the sense of being cautious, proceeding reasonably within the irrational whole, is the truly risky path. Will the world’s leaders recognize this? Will they wake up to the fact that the system they rely on is bankrupt, and that their power rests on air?
In conclusion:
What to Do?
As the Egyptian Feminist Nawal Sadaawi, responded last spring: Make your own revolution. The ways forward will be as varied as the people of this world. Feminists globally have taught us the need for such variety. All of these ways forward deserve our solidarity and support. We, the 99%, must refuse to become invisible to each other. The experiments that are going on now in thousands of locations need space, the space that Walter Benjamin called a Spielraum (space of play) to try out doing things differently. And they need time, the slowing of time, the pulling of the emergency brake, so that something new can emerge. This is time that state power wants to cut short, and space that old-style political parties want to foreclose.
There is no rush. The slowing of time is itself the new beginning. Every day that this event continues, it performs the possibility that the world can be otherwise. Against the hegemony of the present world order that passes itself off as natural and necessary, global actors are tearing a hole in knowledge. New forms emerge. They nourish our imagination, the most radical power that we as humans have.The appointment for one of New Zealand's top diplomatic roles is expected to be announced in the coming weeks, while speculation about another prestigious post is rife.
Carl Worker's five-year appointment as ambassador in Beijing expired last month, and moves to appoint a replacement are understood to be well advanced. Attention so far has centred on Charles Finny, a former diplomat and past chief executive of the Wellington Chamber of Commerce.
Finny, who led the delicate negotiations for last year's free trade agreement with Taiwan and was previously been posted to Taipei as a diplomat, is now a lobbyist with Saunders Unsworth.
However, a source last night claimed that former Secretary of Defence John McKinnon had already been nominated for the role, which requires the approval of Beijing. McKinnon, the brother of former deputy prime minister and Commonwealth secretary-general Sir Don McKinnon, has previously served as ambassador to China.
Although historically Washington and London have been the prestigious postings for diplomats, China has gained considerably in importance, particularly with the explosive growth of exports there and the recent problems in the dairy and meat sectors.
Prime Minister John Key recently announced plans for a new embassy in Beijing to house a growing number of officials, including more staff from the Ministry for Primary Industries.
Meanwhile, jostling is said to be under way to position for a replacement for Mike Moore, who has been New Zealand's ambassador to Washington since 2010.
Rumours have suggested that a number of politicians, including Murray McCully and Tim Groser, are in the running, but the name currently being circulated for Washington is Education Minister Hekia Parata.
An appointment is not expected before the election, with the role also being tipped in parliamentary circles as a potential carrot for Winston Peters to lure NZ First into a National-led coalition.(CNN) -- Who would have guessed the most arousing music to play during sex is --
(Fair Warning: Reading any further will cause "Time of my Life" to become stuck your head for the rest of the day.)
That's right -- the soundtrack to the hit '80s movie "Dirty Dancing."
And the fact that the 25-year-old soundtrack still gets motors running wasn't the only surprise finding of a recent study, "Science Behind The Song."
The study was commissioned by digital music service Spotify to examine the relationship between music, romance and seduction.
"Dirty Dancing" was the top pick for both men and women, although the study's author, music psychologist Daniel Mullensiefen, also pointed out that men are more willing to adjust their tastes in music in order to ensure "greater success in the bedroom."
Well played, gentlemen.
Another surprise finding? Respondents said music playing in the background is 40% more likely to turn them on than the touch or feel of their partner.
Rather not listen to "Will You Love Me Tomorrow" during sex? Marvin Gaye's "Sexual Healing" placed second on the list, with Ravel's "Bolero" finishing third.
"It's no surprise that so many respondents claimed to find music arousing in the bedroom," Mullensiefen said in a release. He said music activates the same pleasure centers of the brain that respond to rewards such as food, drugs or sex.
One in three participants identified Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody" as a song that is "better than sex." Next on the list was "Sex on Fire" by Kings of Leon and "Angels" by Robbie Williams. Mullensiefen describes these as songs that take unexpected turns that we respond to in highly emotional, but positive, ways.
The study interviewed 2,000 people in the United Kingdom between the ages of 18 and 91, with an almost equal gender split.
Mullensiefen is co-director of the Master Program in Music, Mind and Brain and senior lecturer in the department of psychology at Goldsmiths, University of London.
He said even though some UK pop hits were favorites coming out of the study, he believes many results would also hold true in the United States. Mullensiefen said the best tracks for getting in the mood all possess similar vocal qualities, like a wide, dynamic range, more use of the "high chest voice" and raspiness. He offers Gaye's "Sexual Healing" and "Let's Get it On" as examples.
What do you think? Have you compiled your own sexy Spotify playlist? Tell us in the comments below.
To read more about Müllensiefen click here.
To see the full playlists, click here.Named Necromunda: Underhive, Mordheim: City of the Damned developer Rogue Factor is bringing the eponymous War |
29, the Gilmer County Sheriff's Office issued another press release:
A-61-year old woman died after being attacked by a Pit Bull Thursday, Sept. 28th, at 890 Goose Island Rd. The woman, identified as Kathy Sue Nichelson, was attacked shortly after arriving at the residence. A passerby saw Ms. Nichelson on the ground and stopped to render aid. The dog attacked him as well, and he escaped to his vehicle where he was able to call 911. He received non life-threatening injuries. Law enforcement and EMS arrived soon after. Law enforcement attempted to keep the animal at bay while EMS tried to treat Nichelson. During this time, the animal came towards public safety personnel aggressively, and the animal was put down by deputies. An investigation into the animal’s behavior and its owner are ongoing. More information may be available once the investigation is completed.
Today, WXIA revealed Nichelson was a great-grandmother. The injuries the pit bull inflicted were so punishing, she will have a closed casket, as is usually the case after a fatal pit bull mauling. During the 911 call, dispatch asks, "Is she able to talk or anything?" The person replies: "No she's not because she's barely breathing. He bit her neck really bad." Nichelson had stopped by a friend's home. When she exited her vehicle, her friend's pit bull savagely attacked and killed her.
Nichelson's daughter, Candy Smith, said she tried to fight the dog with a knife, but she was no match for the animal. A passerby saw Nichelson lying on the ground after the mauling. He ran to give her aid, not knowing about the dog. The pit bull then reappeared and attacked him. One or both victims managed to climb on top of Nichelson's car. "The dog literally scratched the paint off of the hood of my mom's car trying to get to them," Nichelson's youngest daughter told WXIA.
After deputies arrived they barricaded the pit bull, but it broke free, apparently not finished with its "rampage" attack. Deputies fired on the animal, killing it. "To be brutally, brutally murdered like that, nobody, nobody deserves that," the youngest daughter told WXIA in a shaky voice. Yet, after the emotional shock and horror of this vicious, deadly attack, family members told WXIA they "don't blame the breed of dog," but rather the owner. Police have not identified the owner of the pit bull.
In January 2016, one of the victim's granddaughters, Deanna Melville, reflected a similar view of "not blaming the breed." On a public Facebook post Melville left at Villabolos Rescue Center, she praised Tia Torres of Pit Bulls and Parolees for helping the "missed understood animals" [sic] and the "only way and animal is bad is depended on how they are raised" [sic]. Melville also stated that she owned an American pit bull, named "Commit." It's unclear if Melville still owns the pit bull.
After further examination (kudos to the hot tipper who sent this in!), we see that daughter Candy Smith is also a pit bull owner. We pulled these comments from the Gilmer County Sheriff's Office Facebook post. "I don't blame the breed as I have a pit. I blame the owner," Smith states. Smith also blames the Good Samaritan who came to her mother's aid. "He was only worried about himself," she states. People like Candy Smith help ensure that these horrific maulings continue.
View the DogsBite.org Google Map: View the DogsBite.org Google Map: Georgia Fatal Pit Bull Maulings
Related articles:
09/21/17: 2017 Dog Bite Fatality: Woman Dies of Injuries After Pit Bull Mauling in Mississippi
08/03/17: 2017 Dog Bite Fatality: Child Killed by Two Family Pit Bulls in Hart County, Georgia
01/19/17: 2017 Dog Bite Fatality: Pit Bulls Kill Child, Critically Injure Another Child in Atlanta.
08/04/17: 2016 Dog Bite Fatality: Woman Mauled to Death by Her Boyfriend's Pit Bull in GeorgiaFederal regulators have cited the operator of the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station and the maker of steam generators for the plant that turned out to be faulty, leading to the facility’s breakdown and retirement.
The newly announced citations are the first safety enforcement actions — and potentially the last — related to the plant’s closure. They are the culmination of 20 months of inspections by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission that included visits to manufacturing sites overseas.
Victor Dricks, a spokesman for the commission, said officials are continuing separate investigations into whether Edison supplied complete and accurate information to the agency and whether commission personnel engaged in willful wrongdoing.
San Onofre was shut down by a January 2012 radiation leak traced to rapid degradation of generators manufactured by Mitsubishi Heavy Industries of Japan. In June, Southern California Edison decided to retire the coastal power plant’s twin reactors.
On Monday, the commission made public a “notice of non-conformance” against Mitsubishi related to flawed computer codes used in the design of the steam generators. These giant heat exchangers, which serve as a barrier to radiation, were installed at San Onofre in 2010 and 2011.
Manwhile, a lengthy inspection report by the commission faulted Edison for failing to ensure that Mitsubishi’s design modeling and analysis were adequate.
“There were opportunities to identify this error during the design of the replacement steam generators,” the agency said in a letter to Edison’s chief nuclear officer at San Onofre. “On numerous occasions during the design process, Southern California Edison personnel questioned the results … but ultimately accepted the design as proposed by Mitsubishi.”
As design concerns were raised, Mitsubishi hired consultants with expertise in designing large steam generators like the San Onofre equipment but did not rigorously evaluate all of the concerns, the commission found.
“As a result, replacement steam generators were installed at San Onofre with a significant design deficiency, resulting in rapid tube wear of a type never before seen in recirculating steam generators,” it said in the letter to Edison.
Pete Dietrich, Edison’s chief nuclear officer at San Onofre, said it’s not unusual for the commission to cite the licensed operator of a nuclear plant as a responsible party, even when problems are created by a vendor.
“Mitsubishi’s system failed,” Dietrich said in a statement. “They are the experts. Southern California Edison was the customer.”
Mitsubishi’s codes misstated steam flows that later led to destructive vibrations among thousands of tubes. The citation against the Japanese conglomerate asserts that it failed to properly apply steam flow calculations to its vibration analysis.
In a statement, Mitsubishi said a generator design team that included Edison experts believed that vibrations had been addressed by installing additional tube supports. Mitsubishi contends it couldn’t have anticipated the unprecedented type of tube vibrations that occurred in the exceptionally large generators commissioned by Edison.
The commission noted that warnings emerged as early as 1983 in research showing tube supports might not guard against the type of vibrations that turned up at San Onofre. Faults in Mitsubishi’s design code were applied at four other plants, with none showing the problems seen at San Onofre.
Edison is seeking damages from Mitsubishi beyond the $137.5 million equipment warranty. Mitsubishi offered to repair the generators and has asserted that liability limits still apply under its contract with Edison.
The commission’s final findings could influence an investigation by California regulators on who will pay for the San Onofre shutdown — utility customers or stockholders — and whether Edison and minority plant owner San Diego Gas & Electric can recover any remaining assets.
Nuclear safety advocates seized on the citations as a good reason to lower utility rates.
“Negligence has turned the largest power plant in Southern California into a pile of useless junk, and the California Public Utilities Commission shouldn’t be penalizing ratepayers,” said David Weisman, outreach coordinator for the Alliance for Nuclear Responsibility.
Edison has 10 days to tell the nuclear commission whether it plans to accept or contest the two violations raised by the agency. The commission said it could subject one of the violations to escalated enforcement action.
The agency plans to finalize its citations decision within 90 days.After his speech Tuesday night, President Trump gave Sen. Joe Manchin a bro handshake and a bro hug. Now almost a quarter million liberals want Sen. Chuck Schumer to give the West Virginia Democrat the boot.
On Thursday dozens of activists plan to deliver 225,000 petitions to Schumer's office, asking the minority leader to kick the "Trump-apologist Joe Manchin from Senate Democratic Leadership." But they're mad about more than just the bipartisan meet-cute.
On Tuesday night, Manchin was one of the few Democrats hopping on their feet to applaud the president. Before that, he was one of the few Democrats willing to criticize the Obama administration's regulation on the coal industry. And now the blue senator from the red state has warmed up to Trump.
As his own party drifts further to the left, Manchin has become an anathema to the liberal base. He criticizes "the hard core left," invites the editors of Breitbart into his own office, and voted to confirm a dozen of Trump's cabinet nominees.
That's why an activist troupe headlined by 350.org and Democracy for America want to axe Manchin. Liberal opponents call Manchin "a conservative extremist" for bucking the party line, while conservative supporters think the senator is a tease for not leaving Democrats behind. But history is more likely to remember Manchin as a shrewd politician.
Praising Trump for a couple of months after hammering Obama for years hasn't been a bad strategy for Manchin. It's also logical. Manchin doesn't differ much from Trump on many fiscal and entitlement issues. And it's pragmatic because Manchin has to run for reelection in a state where Trump carried every single county.
Among the people who count to Manchin, those 225,000 signatures against the blue-dog Democrat count as endorsements.
Philip Wegmann is a commentary writer for the Washington Examiner.It's been five years since the release of the last Sherlock Holmes movie. The franchise's star, Robert Downey Jr. has been quite busy in the mean time with films like Iron Man 3, Avengers: Age of Ultron, Captain America: Civil War, and The Judge. Once his schedule clears up, though, there's hope for the third installment of the Holmes franchise to get underway.
“We’re talking about it right now,” Downey Jr. tells Shortlist.
“If we could shoot it on Skype, we could have the whole [movie] done in a week,” he says. “When we’re making those Sherlock movies it is off the hook. [So] we’ll attempt to make one this year. It really is a big deal to go and do those movies. I’m tired all the time, but I’m so excited about it." Not only is Downey Jr. quite busy, but his Holmes co-star Rachel McAdams has found herself tied up with the Marvel Cinematic Universe, as well. The actress will make her debut in Doctor Strange this November.
The Marvel films show no sign of slowing down, either. Avengers: Infinity War, which will all but definitely include Robert Downey Jr.'s Tony Stark, starts production in Atlanta this summer. The studio will be filming the massive two part conclusion to the MCU's Phase Three back to back, possibly giving some room for Sherlock Holmes 3 to slide into Downey Jr.'s schedule in late 2016. But, at least there are talks about when to get Sherlock Holmes moving again. We are all wondering what happened after the titular character faked his own death in the previous installment.Editor’s Note: This is a continuation of our core conversation, “Great Connections Lead To Great Ideas.” In our last thread, Carol Roth showed how great minds often don’t think alike. Today, Chris Garrett – the founder of the ChrisG and co-author of the Problogger book, shows how it may not be the birds that make the flock, but the flock that makes the birds.
***
I owe a great deal to my network. Of course in the usual ways, but also ways you might not expect.
When I look back on my career and business, I can’t imagine what it would have been like without the opportunities, motivation and advice I received. It’s more than that, though.
My network introduced me to every new technology that I became an “early adopter” of.
It was my network who told me about business strategies that were working or had not had the outcomes they hoped for.
All my book deals and big gigs came through my network.
Heck, I met my wife through my network!
The strange thing is these are “obvious” outcomes from having a strong network.
What interests me more and more is how your network influences you in more subtle ways.
I really believe you become the network you hang out with.
Have you heard of the “Crab Bucket” concept?
Consider a group of people who gather to complain. Anything different from the norm is looked down upon, criticised and generally discouraged. “Success” is seen as being just like everyone else. Think anyone would achieve their goals while surrounded by people like that?
I used to have a group of friends exactly like this. They mostly lived in the same village (some on the same street). Did the same things. Listened to the same music. Worked at the same place for a long time. They even had joint vacations.
When my first book was published they told me they could also publish a book if they had time. When I suggested they would have time if they quit going to the pub and watching so much TV, it was made clear they did not tolerate such talk.
I started to see real progress when I made a new network. When I sought out people who were a positive, nurturing influence. People who would help me up rather than find ways to knock me down. Rather than hold me back my new network expanded my horizons, expanded my opportunities, and expanded my reach.
It can be tough to consciously move into a new social or peer group. It feels like the wrong thing to do, to leave a tribe is difficult and you will face resistance both from the outside and psychologically.
Thankfully in most cases you do not have to do anything drastic – I’m not saying cut people out of your life! Most of us are lucky that our negative social influences are subtle and not particularly abusive.
Just be conscious of how your network encourages you to think and feel, and work out if this gels with your core values and your goals. Then do something about it!
More about Chris: Chris Garrett is a full-time blogger and new media consultant who has been involved commercially with the Internet since 1994. He founded ChrisG.com where he posts tips, thoughts, and advice on the business of new media and online marketing. He co-authored Problogger: Secrets for Blogging Your Way to a Six-Figure Income. Follow him on Twitter at @ChrisGarrett.WASHINGTON — U.S. Sen. Cory Gardner said Tuesday that the White House should be forthcoming about what happened last week when President Donald Trump met with Russian officials in the Oval Office — a conference in which Trump is said to have revealed classified information.
“There have been conflicting reports out of the White House,” said Gardner, R-Colo., when asked about a story in The Washington Post that said Trump shared sensitive information about the Islamic State.
“I think if they were reported accurately, it’s a concern,” he added. “We have to have information. We simply have to have more information. It’s my understanding the Senate Intelligence Committee has requested that.”
The potential release of classified information has bothered Gardner before — though not with Trump.
Last year, he introduced a measure aimed at Hillary Clinton that would have revoked her security clearances after it was revealed she used a private server to handle emails while serving as U.S. Secretary of State.
His bill also called for new rules, notably that “no officer or employee of the Federal Government who has exercised extreme carelessness in the handling of classified information may be granted a security clearance,” according to the measure.
Asked whether the current situation was similar, Gardner tried to draw a distinction. “That legislation was talking about a legal right, at the time that was the issue — somebody who had a legal right to the information,” he said.
Though he was opposed to Clinton, Gardner never has been a big Trump fan. Last year he called on Trump to drop out of the presidential race and said he wouldn’t vote for him.EDMONTON — In hopes of brightening the day of those in need of a pick-me-up, Alberta Health Services has launched a new supportive text messaging program.
The Text4Mood program allows northern Alberta residents to sign up to receive one or two positive texts every day. Anyone is welcome to sign up, but AHS said the program is designed to help people with mental health issues, including depression and anxiety.
“One of the biggest benefits of this program is that the support is immediate and can act as an intervention while a patient is, for example, between appointments or receiving other care,” Dr. Vincent Agyapong said. Agyapong is an adult psychiatrist in Fort McMurray who developed the program in partnership with Addiction and Mental Health in the North Zone of AHS.
Candace Hawco, 37, is a patient of Agyapong’s. The Fort McMurrary woman has experienced depression since she was 15. Hawco took part in the program’s pilot phase and said the daily text messages help keep her going.
“I love it,” Hawco said. “There are days where I feel low, my phone dings and, when I look, it’ll be a positive message. I look forward to receiving them. They’re encouraging, motivating.”
The program is not meant to replace other therapy, AHS said; it’s an added support to someone’s overall care plan.
“We see a lot of people who are struggling with depression and this is just another service to offer them,” Debra Samek, director of Addiction and Mental Health for AHS North Zone, said.
The service, which launched Wednesday, is completely confidential.
To sign up, you can text “MOOD” to 760-670-3130, call HealthLink at 811 or visit Alberta Health Service’s website.
Follow @CaleyRamsayLibya’s international woman’s football team, already under threat from religious extremists, has been banned from taking part in a major tournament next week by the country’s sporting authorities.
In a move likely to raise questions about its commitment to equal rights, Libya’s football association told the team it cannot fly to Germany on Saturday, citing concerns that it takes place within the holy month of Ramadan.
“The federation said you cannot play in Germany because of the need for fasting,” said midfielder Hadhoum el-Alabed. “We want to go but they say you cannot go.”
Libya had been due to play teams from Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Palestine, Tunisia and Germany in Discover Football, a tournament funded by the German government. It is billed as the biggest gathering of Middle-Eastern women’s footballers since the 2011 Arab spring.
El-Alabed, at 37 the oldest player in the squad and who played in Liverpool while earning a Phd in sports science, said the ban had shattered hopes that the fall of Gaddafi would bring social change. “Other teams can play [in Berlin], so why not us? If you could see the girls, when they were told, they were all crying.”
After initially giving permission for the tournament, Libya’s FA changed its mind. “It is Ramadan,” said the FA general secretary, Nasser Ahmed. “We are not against women playing football.”
Threats from Islamist radicals have already forced the team to train in secret, constantly switching venues and deploying armed guards.
In June, Ansar al-Sharia, the militia linked by some with the killing of the US ambassador, Chris Stevens, in Benghazi last September, issued a statement saying it “severely condemned” women’s football
“This is something we cannot have because it does not confirm with sharia law,” it said. “It invites women to show off and wear clothes that are inappropriate.”
Salim Jabar, one of Libya’s most popular television preachers, has demanded the women’s team disband, saying it was against the strictures of Islam.
“This team consists of tall, good-looking young girls, and that’s the last thing this country needs,” he said in a sermon broadcast from his Benghazi mosque. “For the first day that she (a Libyan woman) signed up for this team, she has sold herself and brought shame on her family.”
Women’s football was allowed during the Gaddafi regime, but only in reduced format with teams playing in gyms to be out of the public eye in this conservative Muslim country. Since the revolution, the international team has been allowed to play 11-a-side, but its higher profile has made it a lightning rod for extremists.
“They (radicals) say to us you are no good, they intimidate us,” says team captain Fadwa el-Bahi, 25.
At one training session, the location of which the Guardian was asked to keep secret, the team coach, Emmad el-Fadeih, said the women had already met strict FA guidelines. All play in head-to-foot blue tracksuits rather than shorts add T-shirts, and most wore the hijab.
El-Fadeih said the team had complied with FA rules that only unmarried women could travel to Germany, and then only if their father or guardian gave written permission.
“There are groups like Ansar al-Sharia don’t want them, some people say football is not suitable for women,” said el-Fadeih.
Fears of a backlash also saw team members refuse to be photographed for the tournament website. “They don’t want their faces displayed,” said Naziha Arebi, a British-Libyan filmmaker. “These women just want to play football.”
El-Bahi, a geophysics graduate, insists nothing in the Qu’ran bans women from sport. “The prophet (Muhammad and his wife used to run together and compete with each other.”
She said the authorities should be highlighting the role women’s football plays in fostering togetherness in a country wracked with militia violence. “This team is an example of reconciliation,” she said. “We have former Gaddafi girls and former rebels, side-by-side.”
Rights groups say the problems facing Libya’s women footballers are part of a larger struggle by women who have struggled to win their rights. This month Libya’s congress, dominated by the Muslim Brotherhood’s Justice and Construction party, gave just six seats to women in a 60-strong commission formed to write a new constitution.
Tournament organisers say Libya’s place will remain open. “We have heard that the football association decided that they are not allowed to go,” said Discover Football spokeswoman Johanna Kosters “We will wait and see if they get on the plane.”The next presidential election is more than two years away, but healthcare reform is already causing problems for one presumed candidate – and it's not President Obama.
Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, a Republican, is trying to distance himself from the state healthcare reform overhaul that he signed in 2006. The Massachusetts bill included elements such as the individual mandate – that is, requiring people to buy insurance – which is also in the federal plan and is deeply unpopular among conservatives.
Mr. Obama has emphasized the similarities between the Massachusetts healthcare bill and his new national healthcare plan, partly to appear less radical and more bipartisan himself. In doing so, he has also made problems for Mr. Romney.
“When you actually look at the [federal] bill itself, it incorporates all sorts of Republican ideas," said Obama on the "Today Show" Tuesday. "I mean, a lot of commentators have said, 'You know, this is sort of similar to the bill that Mitt Romney passed in Massachusetts.' ”
The federal law is opposed by 8 of 10 Republicans, according to a recent CBS poll.
“The healthcare debate presents big problems for Romney," says Julian Zelizer, a political scientist at Princeton University in New Jersey. It "will be a big issue for Republicans in 2012, and Romney is not well-positioned to lead the Republican charge against Obama."
Romney has worked hard to emphasize the differences between the two healthcare bills. Last week, Romney penned a letter in National Review in which he said, “America has just witnessed an unconscionable abuse of power. President Obama has betrayed his oath to the nation – rather than bringing us together, ushering in a new kind of politics.”
But Jonathan Gruber, an MIT economist who advised both Obama and Romney on health-insurance programs, told the Boston Globe that Romney’s healthcare reform effort as governor paved the way for national reform. "[Romney] is in many ways the intellectual father of national health reform," he said.
To be sure, that comment will not be on Romney's fundraising letter. “It is ironic,” says Mr. Zelizer, “that Romney’s biggest accomplishment as governor would be his biggest liability as a candidate.”Updated: 7:45 p.m. | Posted: 4:41 p.m.
The Minnesota police officer who was acquitted in last year's fatal shooting of black motorist Philando Castile has left the suburban police department where he served under a separation agreement.
The Minneapolis suburb of St. Anthony announced Monday that Jeronimo Yanez is no longer with the police department.
Yanez will receive $48,500 under the agreement, plus he'll be paid for up to 600 hours of unused compensatory time. The details were released to The Associated Press through a public information request.
Castile, a 32-year-old elementary school cafeteria worker, was shot by Yanez during a traffic stop on July 6, 2016, after Castile told the officer he was armed. Castile had a permit for his gun. The shooting gained widespread attention after Castile's girlfriend, who was in the car along with her then-4-year-old daughter, livestreamed its gruesome aftermath on Facebook.
Yanez, who is Latino, was acquitted of manslaughter and other charges in June. On the day of the verdict, the city announced the "public will be best served" if Yanez were no longer an officer.
On Monday, the city said the agreement "ends all employment rights" for Yanez.
"Since Officer Yanez was not convicted of a crime, as a public employee, he would have appeal and grievance rights if terminated," it said in a statement. "A reasonable voluntary separation agreement brings to a close one part of this horrible tragedy. The City concluded this was the most thoughtful way to move forward and help the community-wide healing process proceed."
Castile's uncle, Clarence Castile, said he was glad Yanez will no longer be an officer.
"He should be in jail," the uncle said. "He's like a fish that wiggled his way off a hook.... Hopefully he won't be able to get a police job in the United States. Because he's a poor example of a police officer."
Yanez had been with the St. Anthony Police Department since November 2011. His annual salary at the time of the shooting was more than $72,600, not including overtime pay, according to documents released by the city.
His acquittal led to days of protests, including one in St. Paul that shut down Interstate 94 for hours and ended with 18 arrests. At a recent city council meeting, residents of St. Anthony called on the city's mayor to resign.
After the trial, Castile's mother, Valerie Castile, reached a nearly $3 million settlement with the city, precluding a wrongful death lawsuit.
The Associated Press examined several high-profile fatal police shootings and found severance or separation agreements for officers to be unusual. In some cases, officers were fired outright. In many cases where charges were not brought or officers were acquitted, they have remained on the job.
In the August 2014 shooting of 18-year-old Michael Brown, who was unarmed and black, Ferguson, Missouri, police officer Darren Wilson did not receive a severance package when he resigned. Wilson was not charged in Brown's death, which led to months of sometimes violent protests and became a catalyst for the national Black Lives Matter movement. At the time of Wilson's resignation in November 2014, the St. Louis suburb said it had cut ties with Wilson and he would not receive any additional pay or benefits. Wilson's attorney said he chose to resign after threats were made against the police department.
Chicago officer Dante Servin resigned last year just days before a hearing to determine if he should be fired for the 2012 shooting of Rekia Boyd, an unarmed 22-year-old black woman. Servin, who was acquitted of involuntary manslaughter, has since asked for disability pay for post-traumatic stress disorder. A decision on whether he qualifies for that pay, which could amount to tens of thousands of dollars, is pending.
David Larson, an employment law professor at Mitchell-Hamline School of Law in St. Paul, said reaching a voluntary separation agreement can be simpler than firing a public employee like Yanez. Most collective bargaining agreements require several steps before someone can be dismissed. And if a dismissal is contested, there can be a lengthy grievance and arbitration process.
"Given the emotion that's been involved with this and the public protests, St. Anthony is probably saying the most important thing to us is to wrap this up as quickly as we can," Larson said.Art Garfunkel blames Paul Simon for breaking up their iconic partnership in 1970, saying in an interview that Simon walked away from “the glory” following the release of the best-selling album “Bridge Over Troubled Water.”
Garfunkel also told The Telegraph that the 5-foot-3-inch Simon probably had a “Napoleon complex” which turned him into a “monster,” according to the New York Daily News.
“I don’t want to say anti-Paul Simon things but it seems very perverse to not enjoy the glory and walk away from it instead. …What’s going on with you, you idiot? How could you let that go, jerk?”
Still, after saying some not so flattering things about Simon, Garfunkel says touring again with him is “entirely doable” and that they could still make beautiful music together.
“When we get together, with his guitar, it’s a delight to both our ears,” he said. “A little bubble comes over us and it seems effortless. We blend. So, as far as this half is concerned, I would say, ‘Why not, while we’re still alive?'”
So, maybe Simon isn’t such a jerk, if Garfunkel imagines them working together again, including after calling him a jerk and a monster. Or maybe calling Simon names in the media is just the friendly-bantering way Garfunkel shows his fondness and appreciation.
The duo go way back. Both born in 1941, they grew up three blocks from each other in Queens, met while appearing in a school play in 1953 and sang together as teens under the stage name “Tom and Jerry.” As Simon and Garfunkel, the two shot to fame in the mid-1960s, producing such singles as “The Sound of Silence” and “Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme.” These songs, as well as “Mrs. Robinson,” were featured in the 1967 film “The Graduate,” which helped propel the two to becoming the biggest rock duo in the world and counter-culture icons.
They have re-united several times, most notably when they played a free Central Park concert to more than 500,000 people. Their “Old Friends” reunion tour took place in 2003 culminating in a free concert at the Colosseum in Rome.
Martha Ross provides celebrity commentary for the Bay Area News Group. Follow her at twitter.com/marthajross.Larry King 📤 5 years ago 2013-03-26
Larry King interviews Joel McHale. Comedian & actor McHale discusses Chevy Chase & the "Community" controversy.
Watch this full episode of "Larry King Now" on Ora TV & Hulu.
Joel McHale is an American comedian, actor, writer, television producer, television personality, & voice artist. He is best known for hosting "The Soup" on E! & his role as character Jeff Winger on NBC comedy series "Community." McHale's role as voice actor includes Elliot in "Open Season 2," filling in for Ashton Kutcher. His other acting appearances include movie "Spider-Man 2" as bank manager Mr. Jacks, CBS crime drama "CSI: Miami" as Greg Welsh, & family film "Spy Kids: All The Time In The World" as Wilbur Wilson.
Transcript for this video clip:
LARRY KING: Why was Chevy [Chase] so pissed?
JOEL MCHALE: He, as you may or may have not followed the saga, he did not want to be there. I mean, he said in every interview that he doesn't like the writing & he doesn't like the hours. So...
KING: But he...it almost made & recreated his career, didn't it? Chevy had kind of disappeared.
MCHALE: I mean, yeah, he was really funny on the show. I mean, I thought he as Pierce was really funny on the show. There's a couple episodes where he should have been nominated for a Khloe or an Emmy.
KING: Why was he so mad?
MCHALE: I don't know. I think he did not like the hours & he kept saying he did not like the writing. And I feel like maybe after three years of that & there was an incident that happened.
KING: What? I don't know so help me.
MCHALE: Oh. Well, he made some remarks that were deemed to be racist - a comment that he made. And I think that was kind of it.
KING: What was it like to...
MCHALE: Good times. It was a fun night. Great to be there. You guys should come by.
KING: What is it like on the set when someone is unhappy?
MCHALE: Oh, fun! Fun set.
KING: Just couldn't wait to get the work.
MCHALE: You're like, "What's gonna happen now?" This is great. It's like a party with unhappy people. You know, he wasn't...
KING: He did the scenes, right?
MCHALE: Yeah, I mean he would complain about the hours but the hours were the hours & they were very long...but that was the show.
KING: How did you get along with him?
MCHALE: I got along with him very well. He still texts me. I forward most of them to you & I don't know why you haven't responded again.
KING: You dance the dance then, right?
MCHALE: I dance the dance.
KING: Sony likes you, you like Chevy...you sort of avoid any discord.
MCHALE: Well, it was more to...I mean, Chevy could be great sometimes.
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"Larry King Now" ("LKN") is an online talk show hosted by Larry King on Hulu. "LKN" debuted in July 2012 & features in-depth interviews with celebrities, world leaders, Hollywood icons, news makers, & internet stars. Larry King is an American television & radio host. From 1985 to 2010, he hosted nightly interview television program "Larry King Live" on CNN. King is known for his iconic suspenders & glasses. In March 2012, he co-founded the Ora TV production company with Mexican business magnate Carlos Slim.
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* YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/user/OraTVnetworkIn 2009, the Denver Broncos hired former New England Patriots offensive coordinator Josh McDaniels offensive coordinator Josh McDaniels to be the new head coach of the team. It was a disaster. In addition to screwing up their draft capital through awkward trades and taking a huge chance on Tim Tebow, McDaniels coached his way to an 11-17 record and was let go before he even completed two seasons with the team.
The McDaniels experiment was just one of many examples that further compounded the common belief that the Bill Belichick coaching tree is a poisoned chalice. On eight separate occasions since 2000, a former Belichick assistant has been hired as an NFL head coach and just one of those men still currently holds a job -- Bill O'Brien, who is currently in his second year in command of the Houston Texans.
Now that our beloved New York Giants have a vacancy at the head-coaching position, the team would be crazy to look towards the Patriots as the source of available talent, right? Well, it depends on why you're looking there. Ed made some excellent unbiased arguments against hiring either of the New England coordinators as the next coach of the Giants. He outlined all the previous examples -- Romeo Crennel, and Eric Mangini, and oh dear, even Charlie Weis. It's a tough case to go up against, and I'm not yet crazy enough to convince myself on McDaniels, but hear me out, I would still hire defensive coordinator Matt Patricia.
Let's begin with the basics. Patricia attended Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, so he's a local Troy boy, where he balanced playing offensive line and studying aeronautical engineering. Native son -- check. Former player -- check. Crazy genius -- check, check, and triple check. Patricia has been calling the plays for the Patriots since 2010, despite only receiving the coordinator title in 2012. He's more experienced than you think, and there's a reason other teams are interviewing for their respective head-coaching gigs, yet the Giants haven't even contacted him regarding a potential interview?
What I like about Patricia isn't the fact that he's a football pure-blood, but rather the fact that he has overseen a defense that consistently overachieved with underwhelming talent. The Patriots have as many misspent draft picks as the Giants in recent years, and yet still managed to compose themselves in a reasonable manner every season. In 2014, Patricia's defense ranked 12th in the league according to Football Outsiders' DVOA metric. In 2015, they repeated this ranking without shutdown cornerback |
70 pills were found, which police are still working to identify. A search of the Jeep also turned up $37,115 in cash.
Here's the latest haul of <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/fentanyl?src=hash">#fentanyl</a> from a Bankview home. $700K worth of fentanyl, plus other drugs/weapons <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/yyccrime?src=hash">#yyccrime</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/CalgaryPolice">@calgarypolice</a> <a href="https://t.co/EpGQe5CzaC">pic.twitter.com/EpGQe5CzaC</a> —@StephWiebeCBC
'A huge win' for police
"This is a huge win for the Calgary Police Service," said Insp. Mark Hatchette.
"I'm not going to sit here and say this is going to create a vacuum where there's no fentanyl on the street to be purchased," he said. "What I am saying is there are 35,000-plus pills that will not be used by addicts, and they're not going to die because of that."
Police said a man was found inside a bedroom in the home and was reaching for a shotgun when he was arrested.
Some of the firearms seized by Calgary police in a recent bust. (Stephanie Wiebe/CBC)
Seven weapons were seized, including three 12-gauge shotguns, two rifles, a handgun and a crossbow. Various amounts of ammunition and multiple sets of body armour were also found in the home.
The weapons are being tested to see if they were used in any other crimes, said Hatchette, adding the handgun was not reported stolen.
"Because of that, we believe it was smuggled into the country illegally," he said.
"It's not registered at all, to anybody. These are types of things we see in these criminal organizations where these firearms become a valuable commodity to protect the product you see in front of you."
'Top of the totem pole'
David Hillson Pratico, 31, of Calgary is now facing more than two dozen drug and weapons-related offences.
Hatchette said police believe Pratico is part of a criminal group.
"We believe he is top of the totem pole for this organization," he said.
"We will be following it up and looking to see if there are other people out there like him. We would be remiss to think there aren't. There are, and we have multiple operations on the go with different individuals."
Prior to this, the largest fentanyl busts in Alberta, in terms of pills seized, included:
11,597 — Calgary, February 2015
3,200 — Leduc County, December 2015
2,800 — Fort McMurray, June 2015
2,771 — Calgary, October 2016
2,000 — Edmonton, June 2016
1,866 — Grande Prairie, October 2014
193 deaths in Alberta
Between January and September of this year, 193 Albertans died from suspected overdoses linked to fentanyl, according to numbers provided by Alberta Health Services.
Calgary saw 82 suspected fentanyl overdose deaths during that time, while Edmonton saw 52.
Tessa Johnston, a former addict who has been clean for years, told CBC News the size of the seizure is impressive, but helping addicts and offering treatment programs is also important.
"I think if you start looking into recovery more and the addict itself, then drug dealers have less need to supply all of it," she said.Israel and the US Missile Defense Agency tested an improved Arrow 2 anti-ballistic missile at an Israeli test range over the Mediterranean Sea Tuesday, the Defense Ministry said in a statement.
“An Arrow 2 missile was launched and performed its flight sequence as planned. The results are being analyzed by program engineers,” the statement read.
Defense Ministry spokesperson Jonathan Mosery said that the Arrow 2 system, which has been operational for years and is intended for use against long-range threats, “like Iron Dome, undergoes ongoing improvements” to software and hardware and other components.
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Israel is in the process of developing a five-tiered system of air defense, offering protection against projectiles ranging from mortars to ballistic weapons.
Of the two operational systems, only Iron Dome has been used in combat. Defending against short-to-mid-range rockets, it intercepted roughly 90 percent of its targeted projectiles during Operation Protective Edge, according to figures released by the army.
The other three systems – Iron Beam, David’s Sling, and Arrow 3 – are expected to become operational within the coming two years.
The Arrow 2 was rolled out in March 2000. “This is a great day for the Air Defense Forces, for the Air Force, the defense establishment and, I would say, for the State of Israel,” Maj. Gen. Eitan Ben Eliyahu said at the time.
He called the Arrow 2 “the only weapon system of its kind in the entire world,” adding that Israel is the first country to “succeed in developing, building and operating a defense system against ballistic missiles.”
Tuesday’s test, the Defense Ministry said, has no bearing “on the Israeli operational systems’ capability to cope with the existing threats in the region” and is merely “intended to counter future threats.”
The Arrow 3, still incomplete, is designed to intercept missiles at a higher altitude, in space and above the earth’s atmosphere, minimizing the threat of fallout from weapons of mass destruction and increasing the likelihood of a successful interception of incoming missiles.Guess What? This Mobile Internet Thing Just Might Be a Big Deal.
Networking giant Cisco Systems today revealed the latest version of its Visual Networking Index, its regularly updated look ahead at how big the Internet is going to be someday — the bigger the better, because Cisco hopes to sell the gear to enable it, natch — and, well, there’s really nothing about it that you didn’t already intuitively know.
Still, the numbers that Cisco has in its survey are impressive (that’s the fun with this type of study): Between now and 2016, traffic on wireless networks will multiply 18 times, and will account for 130 exabytes of data per year.
What’s driving it? All those iPads, iPhones and other smart mobile devices — and every one of them will be streaming music and video to such an extent that traffic for this purpose alone will grow 95 percent a year.
But here is a far more interesting (to me) observation by Cisco: Machine-to-machine communications. Our experience with the Internet is largely shaped by the human-to-consumption-device paradigm. We sit at a PC, or with a smartphone and tablet, and consume digital information of one kind or another that’s stored somewhere on a server as needed and desired.
But what about the machines? There’s a huge but growing demand and interest in using one machine to automatically communicate with another machine, without much direct interaction from a human. A basic example might be remote weather gear that automatically reports temperature and atmospheric conditions to a master machine that stores gigabytes of weather data no human will look at on a day-to-day basis, but which will be used for analysis later.
Sensor networks can monitor the condition of machines like generators or air-conditioning units or pipeline pumps. Imagine any kind of machine that’s designed to run for a long time independently, and someone probably wants to put a remote sensor on it to make sure it keeps running properly.
And by the way, that data collected by all these remote devices watching other devices? They’re going a long way toward creating the huge big-data analysis problems that are driving the adoption of things like Hadoop and Splunk, and that gets companies like IBM excited about such things as its Smarter Cities and Smarter Planet initiatives.
Cisco says these smart thingies, combined with all those tablets and smartphones, will amount to about 10 billion devices on the network by 2016, and that’s more things on the Internet than there will be people on the planet by that time.
On that note: Cisco made a cutesy video to go along with its release today, depicting a lonely French guy named Claude who appears too distracted by all the gadgets he’s brought to the cafe to notice the girl sitting behind him. There’s an ironic comment in there somewhere, but I’m not feeling clever enough to make it this morning.BCB chief Nazmul Hassan has said that the issues India have with the ICC's proposed revenue model need to be sorted as a "weaker BCCI means weaker Bangladesh".
The BCB chief, who is also a part of ICC working group, met the BCCI's Committee of Administrators (CoA) chief Vinod Rai in Delhi today, to discuss issues related to the ICC board meeting later this month.
"Everybody is trying to find a middle path to solve [the revenue structure problem] in a more amicable manner," Hassan said after his meeting with the CoA, according to PTI. "We don't want any member country to get hurt. Especially India as they have always supported us. If India becomes weak, we also become weak."
However, Hassan is an advocate of equitable distribution of ICC revenue. "I was a party to the decision when N Srinivasan was there [as ICC head] and the Big Three concept was mooted. Look, I believe we need a more equitable distribution but that certainly doesn't mean you take away India's share. No, no that's not what we want."
Hassan said there was still a need, though, to help member countries which are going through financial crises.
Asked about the proposed changes to the ICC's governance structure, Hassan said different member countries had different issues with it. "Not all of us had agreed on the governance structure. There are a lot of issues that others don't agree and there are some with which we don't agree. That's why it was placed at the ICC board meeting for everybody's observation."
Hassan said both the BCCI and the BCB have submitted their observations on the governance issue with the ICC. He said the BCB discussed its reservations with the CoA. "The COA put forth their point on what their concerns on revenue model and governance structure are, while we also told them why we are supporting a few issues and not all. We will meet again and want more countries to join us," he said.
Hassan also met ICC chairman Shashank Manohar in Nagpur before his meeting with the CoA in Delhi. Hassan is part of the five-man ICC steering group lead by Manohar, which prepared the new draft constitution, which will be discussed at the second quarterly meeting of the ICC board later this month in Dubai.
Hassan said the steering group will be meeting before the ICC meetings to discuss the responses filed by various Full Member boards on the draft constitution. According to Hassan, he met Manohar to discuss a possible date for the steering group's meeting. "We are trying to find a suitable date because there are lot of recommendations from various boards. [If] we have to incorporate changes, we need to change the governance structure and finalise it before the next [ICC] board meeting."
Rai told PTI that many ICC-member directors had met with the CoA recently. David Peever (Cricket Australia, chairman), Haroon Lorgat (Cricket South Africa, CEO), Tavengwa Mukuhlani (Zimbabwe Cricket, chairman), Thilanga Sumathipala (Sri Lanka Cricket, president), Dave Cameron (WICB, president) and Associate representative Imran Khawaja were in India to meet the CoA in the last few weeks, Rai said.
Asked if he was hopeful that other Full Member boards would agree with the viewpoint expressed by the the CoA last month on its reservations regarding the ICC's draft constituion, Rai said he was optimistic. "I am very confident as we have proposed a formula that will be acceptable to everyone. It is a win-win situation where the Indian cricket board will not lose out on anything and every other board will benefit from the model. In the last two weeks, discussions with every board head who has come to India has been fruitful."Mr. Pinkel said the main concern of the players was Mr. Butler. “My players deeply cared about this guy, and he was dying,” he said.
Though most players declined to speak Monday, a team captain, Ian Simon, said in a statement that the players “just wanted to use our platform to take a stance for a fellow concerned student on an issue.” He added, “We love the game, but in end of the day, it is just that; a game.”
Thousands of students and faculty members gathered Monday morning at the heart of the campus. At word of Mr. Wolfe’s resignation, some cheered, others hugged and cried, a few danced, and Mr. Butler said he would eat for the first time in a week.
The Board of Curators has the power to hire and fire top administrators, and the curators are appointed by the governor. But Donald L. Cupps, a member of the board, said Mr. Wolfe was not asked to leave, and resigned out of concern for the university. “We have a national image to protect and enhance,” he said.
Not everyone was pleased with the resignations. W. Dudley McCarter, a former president of the university’s alumni group, said alumni, in calls and emails on Monday, had expressed disappointment in Mr. Wolfe’s decision. “They feel like he was backed into a corner and was made a scapegoat for things he didn’t do,” Mr. McCarter said.
A series of racist incidents in the last few months spurred calls for change. Protesters said that the president at first did not take their complaints seriously, and that his later responses were not strong enough or swift enough.
The president of the Missouri Students Association, Payton Head, who is black, touched off the intense discussion of race in September when he posted on Facebook that a group of men had yelled racial slurs at him, and said it was not the first time he had suffered that kind of abuse at the university. His post was shared thousands of times, and drew widespread coverage.Facebook today began rolling out a new feature that lets you see a history of everything you've searched for on the social network. A list of search queries now appears intermingled with all the Likes, comments, and wall posts that appear inside the Activity Log — a private section of your profile that only you can view. Only searches from now on get included in the Activity Log, so you can't go back and revisit who you've been repeatedly stalking all these years. It works just like search and URL history inside your web browser.
The default privacy setting for searches is "Only Me," and cannot be changed unlike the privacy toggles of other Activity Log entries. But, you can delete any searches you want to hide from yourself. The idea is to provide added context and transparency to using Facebook, as well as provide you with complete control over every single thing you do on the site, like searches — which apparently we're doing a lot of. Mark Zuckerberg recently spoke about how Facebook gets over a billion search queries per day.
Some people think that searching publicly can yield better answers, especially when tied in with Facebook's real-time News Ticker. The new Bing, for example, can be set to publicize your search queries inside a Bing sidebar so friends can help if they have knowledge about what you're searching for. You can also manually share any Bing searches you've performed to Facebook so friends can comment on them. The Facebook update will roll out over the next few weeks, the company said."Ladies and gentleman, start your engines!"
The words have been echoed before. Yet, during the 99th running of the Indianapolis 500, their utterance by Indianapolis Motor Speedway chairwoman, Mari Hulman George, represented significant meaning. As the Indianapolis 500 closed out its first century of running, Hulman George's presence at the podium was symbolic of the event's wide-reaching and broad inclusion of women during its first 99 years.
Women found a place in the Indy 500 early, with some becoming team owners or sponsors in the 1920s. Progress towards female inclusion in the event gained the most speed, though, during the 1970s. 1977 in particular was a pivotal year for women's involvement in the Indy 500. After the passing of Tony Hulman, his wife, Mary Fendrich Hulman, took over as chairman of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. Also in 1977, Janet Guthrie became the first woman to qualify for the race. Beyond that, female reporters gained access to the pit area in the 1970s, signaling the wide scope of progress made by women towards inclusivity at the Indy 500 during the decade.
Since the 1970s there has not been any slowing down of women's involvement with the Indianapolis 500. That fact was perhaps the most apparent in 2015 during the 99th running of the race.
This year's field of 33 featured two female Indy 500 veteran drivers, Simona de Silvestro and Pippa Mann. The two may be joined by another female driver next year, with the announcement that the first all-female team in IndyCar history, Grace Autosport, will seek to qualify Katherine Legge for the race's 100th running.
Through a female chair and multiple female drivers competing to kiss the bricks, the role of women in the Indianapolis 500 is visibly apparent. Yet, the gender inclusivity of the event becomes more apparent behind-the-scenes.
Walking the grid, one quickly realizes that women have entwined themselves with every part of race day operations at the Indianapolis 500. From pit crews to news reporters and over the wall personnel to engineers, women serve a role in every component of the Indy 500. While the growing involvement of women in the Indy 500 may be surprising to some, it comes as no shock to the women forging careers through the motor sports industry.
Take for instance, Cara Adams. As a senior project engineer for Bridgestone Americas Tire Operations, Adams is responsible for designing and engineering the tires used by all Indy 500 drivers on race day.
A graduate of the University of Akron with Mechanical Engineering and Spanish degrees, Adams credits her mother's role as a science teacher and grandfather's position as a NASA scientist for instilling in her the passion to attain her current position. "I always thought of science as being fun. It was a way to play with toys and understand how things worked," Adams said.
Today, Adams gets to enjoy that fun inside of Bridgestone's labs, where she has already begun plans for designing next year's race tire. "To have in the back of my mind that these drivers are trusting the tires that I'm the lead engineer for gives me goose bumps," Adams described.
Adams never perceived her gender as a barrier to excelling in the motor sports industry. "When I got to Bridgestone, I asked the manager of the engineering group what skills or traits the perfect engineer would have for the race tire development group. Once I learned what those skills were, I went out and bought textbooks to begin learning them. I wanted the decision to give me the position to be based on me being the best possible candidate and not being male or female," Adams explained.
Unlike other segments in sports, Adams has a surprising number of female counterparts to engage with and be mentored by. Lisa Boggs currently serves as Bridgestone America's Director of Motor Sports -- a position previously held exclusively by men. During her tenure in the motor sports industry, which has seen roles in advertising agencies, racing teams and now Bridgestone America, Boggs has witnessed the sport and industry's inclusivity of women.
"What's interesting is I was never in a situation where there weren't a lot of women. Advertising and public relations agencies have a lot of women. Even motor sports does. What's evolving, though, is what the women are doing. We have a woman designing tires for the Indy 500. Some are going over the wall with drivers. My role of marketing and communications bridges that. Many women do marketing and communications, but I bridge it through holding the director role with a tire company," Boggs noted.
Women have made significant career gains in motor sports during the Indy 500's first century. What, then, exists for them moving into the race's second century?YouTube
(CBS) More details surrounding the death of incarcerated TV pitchman Don Lapre have been released. Authorities say the Arizona-based late night infomercial personality killed himself early Sunday morning, two days before his $52 million fraud trial was to begin.
Pictures: Celebrity mugshots
Law enforcement officials said a "large amount of blood" was found in the jail cell where Lapre was being held, and that the pitchman had committed suicide by cutting himself.
TMZ spoke to Lapre's mother, Shirley Cleveland, who alleged that her son's anti-depressant medication was taken from him when he was sent to jail. She also claims the father of two had attempted to commit suicide in the past. She told TMZ that when she learned that law officials had allegedly taken away his medication, she appealed to her son's lawyer for help. Cleveland claims her son was given another medication eventually, but that it did not treat his depression.
When the TV pitchman did not appear for his arraignment in June, a warrant was issued for his arrest. Officials say they found Lapre hiding out in a gym, with a deep cut to his groin. At that time, they believed he had tried to commit suicide by slicing his femoral artery.First global analysis of all mass–produced plastics has found humans have produced 8.3bn tonnes since the 1950s with the majority ending up in landfill or oceans
Humans have produced 8.3bn tonnes of plastic since the 1950s with the majority ending up in landfill or polluting the world’s continents and oceans, according to a new report.
The first global analysis of all mass–produced plastics has found that it has outstripped most other man-made materials, threatening a “near permanent contamination of the natural environment”.
The study by US academics found that the total amount of plastic produced – equivalent in weight to one billion elephants – will last for hundreds, perhaps thousands, of years. And with production expected to accelerate over the coming decades, campaigners warn it is creating an environmental crisis comparable to climate change.
“We are increasingly smothering ecosystems in plastic and I am very worried that there may be all kinds of unintended, adverse consequences that we will only find out about once it is too late,” said Roland Geyer, from the University of California and Santa Barbara, who led the project.
In 1950, when plastic was first mass produced, the report found 2m tonnes was manufactured. That figure has risen to 8.3bn in 2017 and is projected to reach 34bn by 2050.
“We are on this enormous growth trajectory – there is no end in sight of the rate of this growth,” said Geyer. He added that even academics who worked in the same field were unaware of the “sheer dimensions” of the crisis.
“Combined with this huge growth rate it makes me very concerned. We should look at the numbers and ask as a society, is this what we want, can we not do better?”
Last month a Guardian investigation revealed that a million plastic bottles are bought around the world every minute and that number is expected to jump another 20% by 2021.
And earlier this year scientists found nearly 18 tonnes of plastic on one of the world’s most remote islands, an uninhabited coral atoll in the South Pacific.
Another study of remote Arctic beaches found they were also heavily polluted with plastic, despite small local populations. And scientists have warned that plastic bottles and other packaging are overrunning some of the UK’s most beautiful beaches and remote coastline, endangering wildlife from basking sharks to puffins.
Experts warn that some of it is already finding its way into the human food chain. Last August, the results of a study by Plymouth University reported plastic was found in a third of UK-caught fish, including cod, haddock, mackerel and shellfish.
But Geyer said he was also concerned about the impact of plastic pollution on land-based ecosystems.
“There is much more attention paid to how plastics are interacting with marine organisms but there is much, much less known about how plastics interact with terrestrial organisms – I would suspect there is something equivalent going on and it might actually be worse.”
This new study found that growth in plastic production has been driven largely by packaging and the rise of single-use containers, wrapping and bottles. It found some of the only materials to outstrip plastic production over the past 70 years are used in the construction sector, such as steel and cement.
“Roughly half of all the steel we make goes into construction, so it will have decades of use – plastic is the opposite,” said Geyer. “Half of all plastics become waste after four or fewer years.”
To visualise the scale of the problem Geyer said he had carried out a “thought experiment”.
“If you take the 8.3bn tonnes of plastic and spread it out as ankle deep waste – about 10 inches high – I calculated I could cover an area the size of Argentina with it. That is the world’s eighth largest country.”
The study found that in 2015, of the nearly seven billion tonnes of plastic waste generated, only 9% was recycled, 12% incinerated, and 79% accumulated in landfills or the environment.
Geyer said: “What we are trying to do is to create the foundation for sustainable materials management. Put simply, you can’t manage what you don’t measure, and so we think policy discussions will be more informed and fact based now that we have these numbers.”Scalable, Robust - and Standard - Java Web Services with Fibers
By Ron
This blog post discusses benchmarking web service performance under load. To learn more about the theory of web service performance, read Little’s Law, Scalability and Fault Tolerance.
Benchmarking a Web Service with Blocking and Asynchronous IO
May 29, 2014
How a web application (or a web service) behaves under load, in the face of various failures, and under a combination of the two, is the most important property of our code – after its correctness, of course. Because web services usually do very common operations – interrogate caches, databases or other web services to collect data, assemble it and return it to the caller – that behavior is mostly determined by the choice of web framework/server and its architecture. In a previous blog post, we discussed Little’s Law, and applied it to analyze the theoretical limits of different architectural approaches taken by web servers. This post – which complements that one – revisits the same topic, only this time we will measure performance in practice.
Web frameworks (and I use the term to refer to any software environment that responds to HTTP requests by running user code, whether it’s called a framework, an application server, a web container, or simply part of the language’s standard libraries) choose one of two architectures. The first is assigning a single OS thread that will run all of our code until the request completes. This is the approach taken by standard Java servlets, Ruby, PHP and other environments. Some of those servers run all user code in a single thread, so they can handle only one request at a time; others run concurrent requests on different, concurrent, threads. This approach – called thread-per-request – requires very simple code.
The other approach is to use asynchronous IO and schedule request-handling code for many concurrent requests – as cleverly as possible – onto one or more OS threads (presumably using fewer OS threads than the number of concurrent requests). This is the approach taken by Node.js, Java asynchronous servlets, and JVM frameworks like Vert.x and Play. The strength of this approach is, supposedly (that’s exactly what we’ll measure), better scalability and robustness (in the face of usage spikes, failures etc.), but writing code for such asynchronous servers is more complicated than for the thread-per-request ones. How much more complicated the code is depends on the use of various “callback-hell-mitigation” techniques such as promises, and/or other functional programming approaches, usually involving monads.
Other environments seek to combine the best of both approaches. Under the covers they use asynchronous IO, but instead of having programmers use callbacks or monads, they supply the programmer with fibers (aka lightweight threads or user-level threads), which consume very little RAM and have negligible blocking overhead. This way, these environments attain the same scalability/performance/robustness advantages of the asynchronous approach while preserving the simplicity and familiarity of synchronous (blocking) code. Such environments include Erlang, Go, and Quasar (which adds fibers to the JVM).
The Benchmark
The full benchmark project can be found here.
To test the relative performance of the two approaches, we will use a simple web service, written in Java using the JAX-RS API. The test code will simulate a common modern architecture of microservices, but by no means are the results limited to the use of microservices. In a microservice architecture, the client (web browser, mobile phone, set-top box) sends a request to a single HTTP endpoint. That request is then broken down by the server to into several (often many) other sub-requests, which are sent to various internal HTTP services, each responsible for providing one type of data, or for carrying out one kind of operation (for example, one microservice can be responsible for returning the user profile, and another – their circle of friends).
We will benchmark a single main service that issues calls to one or two other microservices, and examine the main service’s behavior when the microservices operate normally and when they fail.
The microservices will be simulated by this simple service, installed at http://ourserver:8080/internal/foo :
@Singleton @Path ( "/foo" ) public class SimulatedMicroservice { @GET @Produces ( "text/plain" ) public String get ( @QueryParam ( "sleep" ) Integer sleep ) throws IOException, SuspendExecution, InterruptedException { if ( sleep == null || sleep == 0 ) sleep = 10 ; Strand. sleep ( sleep ); // <-- Why we use Strand.sleep rather than Thread.sleep will be made clear later return "slept for " + sleep + ": " + new Date (). getTime (); } }
All it does is take a sleep query parameter that specifies the amount of time (in milliseconds) the service should sleep before completing (with a minimum of 10 ms). This can simulate a remote microservice that might either take a long – or short – time to complete.
To simulate load we used Photon, a very simple load generation tool that uses Quasar fibers to issue a very large number of concurrent requests and measure their latencies, in a manner that’s relatively less prone to coordinated omission: Every request is sent by a newly spawned fiber, and the fibers, in turn, are spawned at a constant rate.
We tested the service on three different embedded Java web servers: Jetty, Tomcat (embedded) and Undertow (the web server powering the JBoss Wildfly application server). Now, because all three servers conform to Java standards, we reuse the same service code for all three. Unfortunately, there is no standard API for programmatically configuring a web server, so most of the code in the benchmark project simply abstracts away the three servers’ different configuration APIs (in the JettyServer, TomcatServer, and UndertowServer classes). The Main class simply parses the command line arguments, configures the embedded server, and sets up Jersey as the JAX-RS container.
We’ve run the load generator and the server each on a c3.8xlarge EC2 instance, running Ubunto Server 14.04 64 bit and JDK 8. If you’d like to play with the benchmarks yourself, follow the instructions here.
The results presented here are those obtained when running our tests on Jetty. Tomcat responded similarly to the plain blocking code, but much worse than Jetty when fibers were used (this requires further investigation). Undertow behaved the opposite way: when using fibers it performed similarly to Jetty, but crashed quickly when the thread-blocking code was facing high load.
Configuring the OS
Because we will be testing our service under heavy load, some configuration is required to support it at the OS level.
Our /etc/sysctl.conf will contain
net.ipv4.tcp_tw_recycle = 1 net.ipv4.tcp_tw_reuse = 1 net.ipv4.tcp_fin_timeout = 1 net.ipv4.tcp_timestamps = 1 net.ipv4.tcp_syncookies = 0 net.ipv4.ip_local_port_range = 1024 65535
and will be loaded thus:
sudo sysctl -p /etc/sysctl.conf
The /etc/security/limits.conf will contain
* hard nofile 200000 * soft nofile 200000
Configuring Garbage Collection
Most Java garbage collectors operate under the generational hypothesis which assumes most object will have a very short lifespan. However, when we start testing the system with a (simulated) failed microservice, it will generate open connections that last for many seconds, and only then die. This type of “medium lifespan” (i.e. not short, but not too long either), is the worst kind of garbage. After seeing that the default GC resulted in unacceptable pauses, and not wanting to waste too much time fine tuning the GC, we’ve opted to give HotSpot’s new(ish) G1 garbage collector a try. All we had to do was pick a maximum pause time goal (we chose 200ms). G1 behaved spectacularly, so we haven’t spent any more time on tuning the collector.
Benchmarking the Synchronous Approach
This is the code of our service-under-test, mounted at /api/service, beginning with the synchronous approach. (the full class, which also includes the configuration of the HTTP client, can be found here):
@Singleton @Path ( "/service" ) public class Service extends HttpServlet { private final CloseableHttpClient httpClient ; private static final BasicResponseHandler basicResponseHandler = new BasicResponseHandler (); public Service () { httpClient = HttpClientBuilder. create ()... // configure. build (); } @GET @Produces ( "text/plain" ) public String get ( @QueryParam ( "sleep" ) int sleep ) throws IOException { // simulate a call to a service that always completes in 10 ms - service A String res1 = httpClient. execute ( new HttpGet ( Main. SERVICE_URL + 10 ), basicResponseHandler ); // simulate a call to a service that might fail and cause a delay - service B String res2 = sleep > 0? httpClient. execute ( new HttpGet ( Main. SERVICE_URL + sleep ), basicResponseHandler ) : "skipped" ; return "call response res1: " + res1 + " res2: " + res2 ; } }
Our service, then, calls one or two other microservices, which we can name A and B (both simulated, of course, by our SimulatedMicroservice ). While service A always takes 10 ms to complete, service B can be simulated to display varying latencies.
Let’s suppose service B is operating normally, and returns its result after 10 ms of work. Here is how our service responds to 1000 requests per second, over time (the server is using a pool of 2000 threads). The red line is the latency for requests requiring both microservices, and the green line is the latency for those requests that only trigger calls to microservice A:
We can even take up the rate to 3000Hz:
Beyond 3000Hz the server experiences severe difficulties.
Now let’s suppose that at some point, service B experiences a failure which causes B to respond with a much increased latency; say, 5000 ms. If every second we hit the server with 300 requests that trigger services A and B, and an additional 10 requests that trigger only A (this is the control group), the service performs as it should: those requests triggering B experience increased latency, but those bypassing it remain unaffected.
But if we then increase the request rate to 400Hz, something bad happens:
What’s going on here? When service B fails, those requests to the main service that trigger it block for a long time, each of them holding onto a thread that can’t be returned to the server’s thread pool until the request completes. The threads start piling up until they exhaust the server’s thread pool, at which point no request – even one which doesn’t attempt to use the failed service – can go through and the server essentially crashes. This is known as a cascading failure. A single failed microservice can bring down the entire application. What can we do to mitigate such failures?
We can try to increase the maximum thread pool size further but up to a (rather low) limit. OS threads place two types of burden on the system: First, their stacks consume relatively a large amount of RAM; responsive applications are much better off using that RAM to store a data cache. Second, scheduling many threads onto relatively few CPU cores adds non-negligible overhead. If the server performs very little CPU-intensive computation (as is often the case; the server usually just collects data from other sources) the scheduling overhead can become substantial.
When we increase the thread pool size to 5000, our server fares better. At a rate of 500Hz it still functions well:
At 700 Hz it teeters on the brink:
… and crashes when we increase the rate. But once we increase the thread pool size to 6000, additional threads don’t help. Here is the server with 6000 threads at 1100Hz:
And here it is with 7000 threads, handling the same load:
We can try to put a timeout on the microservice calls. Timeouts are always a good idea, but what timeout value to choose? Too low, and we might have made our application less available than it can be; too high and we haven’t really solved the problem.
We can also install a circuit breaker, like Netfilx’s Hystrix, which will attempt to quickly notice the problem and isolate the failed microservice. Circuit breakers, like timeouts, are always a good idea, but if we can significantly increase our circuit’s capacity we should probably do that (and still install a circuit breaker, just to be on the safe side).
Now let’s see how the asynchronous approach fares.
Benchmarking the Asynchronous Approach
The asynchronous approach doesn’t assign a thread per connection, but uses a small number of threads to handle a large number of IO events. The Servlet standard now sports an asynchronous API in addition to the blocking one, but because no one likes callbacks (especially in a multithreaded environment with shared mutable state), very few people use it. The Play framework also has an asynchronous API, and in order to relieve some of the pain invariably associated with asynchronous code, Play replaces plain callbacks with functional programming monadic compositions. The Play API is not only non standard, it also feels very foreign to Java developers. It also doesn’t help reduce the problems associated with running asynchronous code in an environment |
Sam Walton, the founder of Wal-Mart, had a problem. He was under growing pressure from shareholders — and his wife, Helen — to appoint a woman to the company’s 15-member board of directors. So Mr. Walton turned to a young lawyer who just happened to be married to the governor of Arkansas, where Wal-Mart is based: Hillary Rodham Clinton. Mrs. Clinton’s six-year tenure as a director of Wal-Mart, the nation’s largest company, remains a little known chapter in her closely scrutinized career. And it is little known for a reason. Mrs. Clinton rarely, if ever, discusses it, leaving her board membership out of her speeches and off her campaign Web site. Fellow board members and company executives, who have not spoken publicly about her role at Wal-Mart, say Mrs. Clinton used her position to champion personal causes, like the need for more women in management and a comprehensive environmental program, despite being Wal-Mart’s only female director, the youngest and arguably the least experienced in business. On other topics, like Wal-Mart’s vehement anti-unionism, for example, she was largely silent, they said. Her years on the Wal-Mart board, from 1986 to 1992, gave her an unusual tutorial in the ways of American business — a credential that could serve as an antidote to Republican efforts to portray her as an enemy of free markets and an advocate for big government. But that education came via a company that the Democratic Party &mdashl and its major ally, organized labor — has held up as a model of what is wrong with American business, with both groups accusing it of offering unaffordable health insurance and mistreating its workers.
However, since at least October 2014 rumors have claimed that Hillary Clinton once sat (or currently sits) on the board of directors of agribusiness giant Monsanto as well, despite the lack of any evidence documenting such a connection. The repetition of those rumors increased as the primary elections of the 2016 presidential campaign drew nearer:
Hillary Clinton (not sure if she still is) was a board member for Monsanto, no wonder she is pushing GMO foods. Dig… Posted by Wendy Allan on Sunday, February 7, 2016
If you sat on the board of Wal-Mart and Monsanto as well as your husband being responsible for the repealing the Glass Steagall act, then you just might be a friend of Wall Street. Posted by Eric Williams on Friday, February 5, 2016
As evidenced in the examples embedded above, many of those repeating the claim about Hillary Clinton on social media didn’t appear to be familiar with its detail, and dates of Clinton’s purported tenure on Monsanto’s board were never (or rarely) included in iterations of the rumor. Oftentimes social media users who debunked the rumor attributed it to supporters of Bernie Sanders, though we were unable to specifically pin the claim to any source linked with Sanders’ campaign (especially given that versions of it appeared on Twitter in 2012 and 2013, well before either candidate entered the 2016 presidential fray).
Nonetheless, many shares of the rumor on social media indeed originated with individuals asserting that Sanders was the preferable candidate for lacking the big business ties that Clinton (supposedly) had courted:
She is on the board of Monsanto. Why don’t they bring that up each time her face is shown? Posted by Craig Appel on Friday, February 5, 2016
That said, there are some indirect connections between Hillary Clinton and Monsanto that might have inspired such rumors. The Rose Law Firm for whom Hillary Clinton worked in Arkansas from 1977 through the 1980s reportedly handled some business for Monsanto, but we found no evidence that HIllary Clinton herself was involved in such work. She has also spoken supportively of the biotech industry in general (not Monsanto specifically), as she did at the 2014 Biotechnology Industry Organization (BIO) conference in San Diego:
Speaking at the BIO 2014 convention in San Diego, Clinton told a luncheon audience that she understood biotech companies face extreme risks in developing new health care products. State support, along with a “national framework” including provisions to help patients who can’t afford biotech therapies, are part of a rational policy, said Clinton. [Clinton] was interviewed by Jim Greenwood, president and CEO of the Biotechnology Industry Organization. BIO is holding the convention in San Diego for the first time since 2008. Clinton also endorsed the use of genetically modified organisms, or GMOs in agriculture to improve crops, such as by engineering them for drought resistance. She suggested the biotech industry stress these characteristics instead of focusing on the term GMOs. On GMOs, Clinton said the biotech industry “should continue to try to make the case to those who are skeptical that they may not know what they are eating already, because the question of genetically modified foods or hybrids has gone on for many many years, and there is a big gap between what the facts are and what the perceptions are.” “If you talk about drought-resistant seeds, and I have promoted those all over Africa, by definition they have been engineered to be drought-resistant,” Clinton said. “That’s the beauty of them. Maybe somebody can get their harvest done and not starve, and maybe have something left over to sell.”
The Monsanto Company is also listed among the entities who have donated between $1 million and $5 million to the Clinton Foundation, a nonprofit corporation established by former President Bill Clinton to “strengthen the capacity of people throughout the world to meet the challenges of global interdependence.”
Additionally, some sources have posited that the rumor arose from a connection between the Clinton campaign and Jerry Crawford, an Iowa lawyer and Democratic party leader. Crawford worked on Hillary Clinton´s 2016 campaign in Iowa and is often described as a “Monsanto lobbyist”:
The only tie Clinton’s campaign has to the biotech company is campaign adviser Jerry Crawford, who was brought on to help her win Iowa. If you are a presidential candidate, and you want to win in Iowa, you hire lobbyist Jerry Crawford who has a lot of political clout in the state. According to Opensecrets.org, his lobbying firm has represented Monsanto, as well as the Humane Society. This shouldn’t be a surprise, considering the fact that Iowa is a major state for agriculture, and a number of seed companies do business with farmers there.
Crawford was profiled as a Clinton asset in Iowa in early 2015, but he began working on her Iowa campaign back in 2014. Crawford was also named as Midwest co-chair of the 2008 Clinton campaign [PDF]. It’s possible that Crawford’s lobbying connections were conflated with Hillary Clinton’s, and/or that Clinton’s tenure on Walmart’s board of directors led to a franken-rumor that she also served on the board of Monsanto.
But despite the rumor’s proliferation across social media, there’s no truth to the claim that Hillary Clinton sat on Monsanto’s board of directors at any point during her career. Moreover, we found no direct ties between Hillary Clinton and the agribusiness firm in regards to political fundraising. Apart from working with Crawford (whose firm has also provided services for Monsanto), Clinton has no obvious ties to the Monsanto corporation.KIEV (Reuters) - Ukraine plans to jam the airwaves transmitting broadcasts in support of Moscow-backed separatists in the eastern Donbass region, a top Ukrainian defense official said on Thursday.
The airwaves have become another battleground in the war between Ukraine and pro-Russian rebels that has dragged on for three years and killed more than 10,000 people despite a ceasefire agreed in 2015.
Ukraine is concerned that people living in or close to separatist-held territory are flooded with TV and radio broadcasts that are biased towards the Russian view of the conflict.
Oleksander Turchynov, the Secretary of the National Security and Defence Council, said Ukraine was developing a project to block out hostile broadcasting in the conflict zone.
“Information aggression is one of the most dangerous components of the hybrid war waged by Russia against us,” his press service quoted him as saying.
“Therefore, blocking the destructive influence of separatist and Russian information propaganda... is one of our priorities.”
The council has asked Prime Minister Volodymyr Groysman to release funds for the project.
A spokeswoman for Turchynov told Reuters that equipment for the project had passed tests in the conflict zone but other details were secret.
Much of eastern Ukraine’s broadcasting infrastructure is controlled by the rebels or has been destroyed by the fighting. This has left Ukraine, whose own media typically characterizes separatists as ‘Russia-sponsored terrorists’, outgunned in an information war that has played a central role in the crisis.
In its fight for hearts and minds, Kiev is redoubling efforts to improve access to Ukrainian television and radio for the majority in the region who rely on roof-top aerials.
Ukraine unveiled a new TV tower in the east in December and said three more towers in the Luhansk and Donetsk regions were planned for 2017.
But lawmaker Yurii Pavlenko, a member of a parliamentary committee on Freedom of Speech and Information Policy, told the TV channel 112 on Thursday that the government was not moving fast enough.
Pavlenko added that members of the committee would travel to the east in May to assess what was being done to expand Ukraine’s media reach.Many people who work regular jobs dream of becoming independent freelancers. With conventional freelancing, this can be very hard to do, but the Internet is changing everything. The last few years have seen the rise of a whole new type of freelancing based around the use of freelancing marketplace websites, which make it far easier for independent workers to find clients, and thus start freelancing careers. Online freelancing, or Internet freelancing, is growing at a tremendous rate, with some marketplace sites doubling in volume in just the past year. If you’re interested in becoming a freelancer, there’s never been a better time to give it a try. But do you really know what's involved in the freelancing lifestyle? What are its pros and cons of online freelancing, and how do you know if it makes sense for you personally? How do you undertake this endeavor in a way that will maximize your chances of success? There's never been a resource on the Web to answer these questions, to provide advice and guidance to the thousands of contractors who decide to become online freelancers every month -- until now. The Online Freelancing Guide is dedicated to providing essential information to help you build your freelancing career. The detailed information it contains will assist you in understanding what online freelancing is about, learning how to use freelancing sites effectively, and finding and completing projects for satisfied clients. On the left side navigation bar you will find quick links to the various parts of the site. The upper box green buttons that link to information pages about the site, including testimonials and answers to frequently asked questions. If you have questions or comments about the site, you can also feel free to contact us with your feedback. Need freelancing work done? The purple box below these buttons contains direct links to the current content on the site, with the large blue "Site Content" button taking you straight to the site's table of contents. How to Make Money Online as a Freelancer in 2017 We all use the Internet for communicating with friends and family, doing research, and watching videos. In recent times, the internet has become popular as a money making source. Each year more and more people are interested in the concept of making a living out of the web. “Best ways to make money online” ranks among the top searches in Google. Several websites have articles on suggested methods to make this possible, however not all these techniques will work for everyone. Some methods are more efficient than others. Others turn out to be frauds and scams. Some of these mistakes will result in massive financial losses. Consistency is key in successful freelancing. With the current harsh economic times, it's hard to make enough money on one job. For that reason, freelancers have come up with new legitimate ways that enable them to make money online as a freelancer in 2017. These ideas need extra effort to have a positive impact on your earnings. Whatever the reason is, you need to be up to date with the new ways to earn money online. Going through this post will increase your knowledge, you will have fresh ideas on how to generate that extra income from the comfort of your house. If freelancing is something you do on a full-time basis, this could be a life changer. Below are some of the accomplishments you can achieve using money made from the internet. • Boost your cash flow to settle bills
• Pay off debts
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• Build your savings That said, we have come up with five ways to increase your income as a freelancer in 2017. You can give yourself a raise by adopting any of these five ideas. Some will allow you to generate full-time income as a freelancer while others will offer part-time side income. 1. Blogging Blogging is undoubtedly the most loved way to make that extra money from your computer. You can make money writing on your favorite category; the categories can be lifestyle, health, sports or finance. To start a blog, first, buy a domain name and pay for hosting. Alternatively, you can create a profile on free blog websites like WordPress. The blog may take a while before you start making enough money. One year is enough time to assess whether your blog is where you expected it to be. You, therefore, need to be patient and persistent. Many people give up along the way due to the challenges faced. They enter the blogging world full of hope thinking it is a smooth ride. 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The more content or articles you write, the more money you are likely to make. Every website needs to have information updated which means content is required all year long. Write routinely and give your best to earn better. 3. Affiliate marketing. Affiliate marketing is one of the latest ways of making money from the internet. Freelancers advertise other people’s products and services at a fee called affiliate commission. By marketing a company’s product or services online, some of your readers may be interested in the products of the business whose items you are advertising and click on the advertisement for more information and possible purchase. If your website is frequented by thousands of visitors daily, use that opportunity to gain financially. Marketers will use your site to upload their adverts. Before you choose a marketer, you should first convince them to pay you enough money. 4. Graphic and logo designing. Successful businesses have adopted digital media as a strategy for brand recognition. Due to this reason, there are several opportunities for graphic designers lately. Graphic designing can be in the form of visuals or high-end images. You need to be conversant with software such as Adobe Photoshop. Every business needs to have a logo that represents their brand. A logo is very powerful; it helps people recognize a product even from a distance. You can use freelance sites, your website or classifieds to get clients. 5. E-books. With so much content needed, there has been a rising necessity for e-books. E-books are longer and more detailed than regular articles. There are several sites where you can sign up, write e-books and get quick money. Bid for jobs that match your ability and experience. To get more or better-paying clients you have to deliver high-quality work. Develop new techniques to make the process easy and fun at the same time. Selling information products as e-books is the new thing in town. Many people have made good money from this. Starting an eBook company is also a good strategy, and it is not expensive. There are no shortcuts; you have to deliver best quality content. Tips and precautions to take when looking for new ways of generating income from the internet. [a] Be very careful when dealing with sites that require you to pay exorbitant membership charges for signing up, some of them turn out to be scams. Some sites promise what they cannot deliver, using luring words to convince potential members. You will lose your hard-earned money. [b] Know your worth. As a freelancer, make sure that you are good compensation for the time you spend doing research and putting it in writing avoid low paying sites that take advantage of freelancers by paying peanuts. You can, however, start with small paying if you are a newbie, and rise the ranks slowly. Remember every great president was once a child. There are no shortcuts to success. [c] Deliver high-quality work, and you will have repeated clients. There are endless opportunities to make that extra cash on the internet. Every year, more websites are created, and new products that need reviews enter the market. Making money by getting paid to do what you love while solving other people’s problems is a satisfying feeling. You just need a laptop or personal computer and internet connection to get started. Virtually, anyone can be a freelancer, but it takes a lot of effort to be the best. Try any of the above ways to turn your miseries into fortunes.Everybody has a favorite action movie star, but most of us don't know the stunt doubles behind those actors who keep them safe and looking pretty. They may not be household names, but you've definitely seen their work on TV and in the movies you watch over and over. Even though the craziest stunts are now mostly done on computers, stuntmen and women still play an important behind-the-scenes role in films, and it's nice to know there's someone out there who can jump off tall buildings or safely set themselves on fire. Here are 10 of the best stunt doubles you never even knew you loved.
Terry Leonard Stuntman Terry Leonard has stood in for some of the biggest names in the business, including Harrison Ford, Sean Connery, and John Wayne. Standing in for Ford in Raiders of the Lost Ark, Leonard performed the scene where Indiana Jones crawls under a truck from the front to the back and is then dragged behind it. He agreed to only do this stunt if his friend and fellow stuntman Glenn H. Randall Jr. was driving the truck. Another praised stunt nearly cost Leonard his life. In Romancing the Stone, he doubles for Michael Douglas and jumps out of a car as it goes over a waterfall. He was caught in the whirlpool at the bottom and just barely made it out alive.
Billy Morts Keanu Reeves may not be a great actor, but he has been doubled by a great stuntman. In Speed, the movie that takes place almost entirely on a speeding bus with a bomb strapped to it, Billy Morts does the dangerous work. Most notably, he jumps from a sports car onto the bus while moving at highway speeds, letting his feet drag the ground before pulling himself inside. Recently he's done stunt work for the Tom Cruise action film Knight and Day and is working on the next installment of the Mission Impossible franchise.
Gary Powell Stunts are in Gary Powell's blood; his father was also a stuntman who worked on James Bond films during the eras of Sean Connery and Roger Moore. The younger Powell has worked on Bond, performing in the Pierce Brosnan versions. In The World Is Not Enough, Bond is in a small speedboat chasing an enemy down a river. In one shot, Powell jumps over the villain's boat, destroying the gun mounted on the back, and then spins 360 degrees before landing upright again. This kind of work earned him a promotion to stunt chief for Casino Royale and Quantum of Solace. He's also appeared in or coordinated stunts for many other well known movies, such as some Harry Potter films and Braveheart.
Simon Crane Simon Crane's most well known contribution to the world of stunts is the Guinness Book of World Records' most expensive stunt ever performed. In the risky Cliffhanger scene, Crane stands in for a villain who takes his stolen money from one plane to another. Crane slid down a cable between two jets at 15,000 feet in the air. The stunt cost $1 million to complete and film, and when the movie's budget wasn't big enough to create the scene, Sylvester Stallone, who stars in the film, cut his salary by $1 million so it could be finished. Crane has worked on countless films since and has become one of Hollywood's best known stunt coordinators, working with stars like Angelina Jolie and on huge films like Titanic.
Enos "Yakima" Canutt In the world of stunts, Enos "Yakima" Canutt is a legend. Take his work in John Wayne's Stagecoach, for example. He's working with unpredictable horses and lacking the technology we have today, yet he delivers thrilling performances without dying. The most famous stunt from this film is where he jumps from a horse onto the back of one of the horses pulling the stagecoach. When he is "shot" down, he falls between the horses and goes under the coach. To pull this off without being injured is an incredible feat. Canutt also choreographed some notable scenes, such as the chariot race in Ben Hur, where his son was actually driving one of the chariots and almost died when he unexpectedly flew over the front. The footage from that mistake was actually included in the film because he was able to hold on and pull himself back up, avoiding tragedy and adding excitement to the scene.
Wayne Michaels In the opening scene of GoldenEye, James Bond makes a record-breaking bungee jump off of the Verzasca Dam in Switzerland. The man playing Bond for this crazy 728-foot jump was Wayne Michaels, who reached speeds as high as 120 mph during the trip down the dam. A story that circulated around the set said that as Michaels stood at the top of the dam ready to make the jump, he caught a glimpse of a crew member crossing himself. That couldn't have made him feel too confident. In addition to that enormous stunt, Michaels has coordinated stunts and performed in at least 80 films and TV series, including Indiana Jones movies and many British productions.
Bud Ekins Famous for some masterful car chases, like the ones in Bullitt and The French Connection, Bud Ekins never really got due credit for his work. In the 1963 film The Great Escape, Ekins made a famed motorcycle jump over a fence at the end, standing in for Steve McQueen. He jumped more than 65 feet on a 400-pound bike, a feat that even the most experienced stunt drivers have to admit is impressive. But the producers credited McQueen with the jump and Ekins preferred to maintain his friendship with McQueen rather than get bogged down in the stardom of Hollywood. That jump was the start of his stunt career, though he also raced motorcycles on a team with McQueen and eventually opened up a bike shop.
Rick Sylvester If you've sat through the opening credits of The Spy Who Loved Me, one of the best Roger Moore-era James Bond movies, you've seen Rick Sylvester. He's the guy who made the ski jump off the cliff and then released a Union Jack parachute as he was falling. He was paid $30,000 for the stunt, which ended up being the most expensive stunt to film ever at that point in time. The stunt, though successful, was just another reminder of how dangerous a stuntman's work is; as Sylvester deployed the parachute, one of the skis got caught. Luckily, it came free and didn't keep the parachute from opening properly.
Vic Armstrong Vic Armstrong was named the most prolific stuntman by the Guinness Book of World Records and is often referred to as the world's greatest stuntman. One of his most famous roles as stunt double was in the Indiana Jones films. In one impressive stunt in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, he jumps from the back of a horse onto a tank. Armstrong reportedly looked so much like Harrison Ford, people were often confusing him for Ford on set. He even did several action sequences in Ford's place when Ford injured his back. Armstrong also did stunt work on Superman for Christopher Reeve and is married to a stuntwoman, Wendy Leech.Gone is the fear of betrayal, and bilateral love, once again, is in the air. Georgia, the strategic crossroads for energy alternatives to Russia, finally announced on March 4 its pick for a supplier of extra gas, and the choice is longtime partner, Azerbaijan. The decision appears to knock both Iran and Russia’s state-run Gazprom out of the running, but still leaves the door open to collaboration between all four countries in other energy spheres.
“We’re glad that the talks ended with success and that we’ve made it to a decision that will deepen our strategic partnership [with Azerbaijan] even more, about which not a single doubt ever existed,” a contented Georgian Prime Minister Giorgi Kvirikashvili declared at a meeting in Tbilisi with Rovnag Abdualayev, president of the State Oil Company of the Azerbaijani Republic (SOCAR).
Abdullayev, in turn, underlined that SOCAR “will continue its support for Georgia’s government;” in particular, by shelling out “various forms of investment” into the country.
The total amount of this “investment” — conceivably, a deal sweetener — is not known, but Georgia did manage to squeeze Azerbaijan’s commercial gas prices down a notch, from $318 to approximately $278-$283 per 1,000 cubic meters. It will receive an additional 500 million cubic meters of gas per year, an amount which Energy Minister Kakha Kaladze now claims “satisfies the market” demand.
That established, Tbilisi appears ready to call it a day with its gassy flirtation with the Russian energy-giant Gazprom. Gone is any talk about the advantages of “diversification” away from Azerbaijan, the source of most of Georgia's gas.
While the talks with Gazprom aren’t yet finished, Kaladze told reporters on March 4, the Georgian government’s “final proposal” to Gazprom is that the two sides leave things as they are — a 10-percent annual cut for Georgia out of Russia’s gas shipments to neighboring Armenia. No date has been announced for the next Gazprom rendez-vous.
But nor will Tbilisi be linking up with Iran on gas. While Iranian gas purchases are “theoretically” possible, Kaladze stated, “today the necessity [for that] does not exist.”
So far, no sign of hard feelings. The spurred Gazprom and National Iranian Gas Export Company have not commented. Armenia, which enjoyed a brief run of celebrity as a possible energy-transit country for gas-shipments to Georgia from Iran, also has not made any remark.
Domestic critics of the Georgian government, though, don’t entirely buy it that Gazprom is now off the table. The various lines used by the government to justify its earlier talks with Gazprom made one opposition MP believe that Kaladze was just “throwing ash” in the public’s eyes. Another anti-Gazprom protest has been scheduled for March 6 in Tbilisi.
But some players are already on to the next big thing. Iranian Energy Minister Hamid Chitchian, for one, is looking forward to an electricity exchange between Iran, Azerbaijan, Georgia and Russia, with Iran exporting power in winter, and importing in summer. “This way we could all decrease construction costs for... new power plants,” the state-run Iranian news agency Fars quoted him as saying.
What goes for Azerbaijan, also goes for foe Armenia. Last December, Georgia, Russia and Iran penned a deal with Yerevan about a similar power-trade.
So, don’t expect this energy drama to end anytime soon.ActressSusan Sarandondoesn’t seem to have any regrets over her staunch opposition toHillary Clintonduring last year’s election.
“I did think she was very, very dangerous. We would still be fracking, we would be at war [if she was president],” she told the Guardian. “It wouldn’t be much smoother. Look what happened under Obama that we didn’t notice.”
The actress, who had supported Sen.Bernie Sanders(I-Vt.) during the primaries, also defended her vote for Green Party candidateJill Steinby noting that Trump wasn’t going to win in New York anyway.
“Well, I knew that New York was going to go [for Hillary]. It was probably the easiest place to vote for Stein. Bringing attention to working-class issues is not a luxury. People are really hurting; that’s how this guy got in. What we should be discussing is not the election, but how we got to the point where Trump was the answer.”
Sarandon also detailed some of the angry messages she has received since the election.
“I got from Hillary people ‘I hope your crotch is grabbed’, ‘I hope you’re raped,’” she said. “Misogynistic attacks.”
Read the full interview here.
This article originally appeared on HuffPost.On Friday night, January 13th, 201, the Russian-based MMA organization Absolute Championship Berkut made their American debut at the Bren Events Center in Irvine, CA. The event was streamed live and for free. Created in 2014 by Chechen businessman Mairbek Khasiev in 2014 with the goal of competing with the UFC on a global level. ACB has held events in Scotland and Poland, and will be debuting in Austria and England in the upcoming months. The English-language version of the broadcast for this event featured commentary by former UFC Heavyweight Champion Frank Mir.
For their United States debut event, ACB ran at the Bren Events Center, located on the campus of U.C. Irvine, a venue that holds 5,608 people maximum according to Wikipedia, and drew what looked to be about 200-500 people. While talking to Steve about this event during the night via text message, he wondered how much money the promotion was losing on this event. To make matter worse, the English-language stream experienced many technical difficulties made watching the first two fights difficult. Thankfully ACB provided links to Russian speaking streams before fixing the issues with the English stream.
While nearly everything that could’ve gone wrong was going wrong for ACB as the night began with the poor attendance,technical difficulties with the English-speaking stream, and even a sub par cage announcer, the event ended up being a fun night of fights with plenty of highlights.
It what could be easily be an early contender for Knockout Of The Year 2017, Arthur Estrazulas scored a very impressive first round KO on Dave Courchaine. Throughout the fight, Estrazulas got the better of Courchaine in various striking exchanges, landing various leg and body kicks, and countering Courchaine’s offense several times. Estrazulas did a great job landing a nice body kick on Courchaine as he was coming forward, allowing Estrazulas to land several punches that dropped Courchaine, leading to Herb Dean stopping the fight.
The semi-main event of the night featured former WSOF title contender Luis Palomino taking on Musa Khamanaev in a really fun fight that saw Palomino get an impressive come from behind victory after getting a TKO stoppage on Khamanaev. Khamanaev had an impressive first round that saw him utilizing his wrestling and grappling to grind Palomino and get some take downs. Khamanaev would come out aggressively against Palomino early int he 2nd, but eventually Palomino found his rhythm where he was able to score a knockdown and eventually a TKO when referee Herb Dean stopped the fight in the second round. After the fight, Khamanaev would throw his mouthpiece at Palomino, and ended up in an altercation with Palomino.
One of the most impressive performances of the night came from Cuba’s Guillermo Martinez Ayme in his fight against Ivan Castillo, landing several impressive successful takedowns, nice sneaky trips, and several suplexes and slams (including a really impressive belly to back suplex at 2:58 in the video above) throughout the fight, allowing him to dominate on the ground and to gain the victory, improving his record to 10-4.
Another fighter who had an impressive performance on this card was local star Terrion “Flash” Ware, who went up against Nick Mamalis in a really fun fight. Mamalis had a good showing in the first round and early on int he 2nd, but as the fight went on, Ware would begin to find his rhythm in both the striking and grappling departments, landing nice striking combinations, stuffing Mamalis’ takedown attempts and getting back to his feet when the fight went to the ground, and showcasing some great jiu-jitsu techniques and transitions in the third round where Ware used a Kimura to set up a Triangle Choke. Ware would get the much deserved Unanimous Decision, who is now on a three fight win streak.
In the main event to crown the inaugural ACB Light Heavyweight Champion, former UFC veteran Thiago Silva defeated Jared Torgeson. Silva landed several vicious inside leg kicks and lots of jabs to Torgeson, who took tons of punishment while moving forward throughout the course of the five round, twenty-five minute championship fight. A photo of the aftermath of Silva’s leg kicks was posted earlier today on Facebook, showing how much damage Torgeson took. While he didn’t walk away with a victory, Torgeson showed a lot of toughness for being able to hang five rounds with Thiago Silva.
Torgeson the day after his fight with Silva. (Photo source: Facebook)
Despite the very low attendance and streaming issues, Absolute Championship Berkut put on a very entertaining event, and the fighters on the card put on a good show. ACB probably would’ve done better running in a smaller venue, and hopefully they’ll return to the Southern California area. I highly recommend fight fans check out the bouts featured on ACB 51.
Click here to read the results of last night’s fights.
Click here to visit the ACB Youtube Channel for fights from this event and previous ACB cards.On Oct. 29, the Knesset’s ministerial committee on legislation was scheduled to approve the proposed bill known as the Greater Jerusalem law, which would annex the West Bank settlements of Maale Adumim, Givat Zeev, Beitar Illit and the Etzion bloc settlements (including Efrat) to Jerusalem. Some 150,000 Israelis live in these towns and local councils.
The idea of annexing Israeli settlements adjacent to Jerusalem’s municipal borders in order to increase the city’s population and ensure its Jewish majority has been around for a decade. Back in 2007, Likud Party Knesset member Yisrael Katz put forth a similar proposal, which never took off due to concerns about harsh international and Palestinian reaction.
Concern that Jews will no longer constitute a majority in the Israeli capital within less than a decade — both due to the natural growth of the Palestinians living in East Jerusalem and the negative immigration of secular Israeli Jews from the city — led former Minister Haim Ramon to launch a public movement in February 2016 to “save Jewish Jerusalem.” The group was comprised of a great number of defense experts, academics and activists on the political left and center. Ahead of the annual Jerusalem Day celebrations in 2016, the movement launched an extensive public campaign to warn complacent Israelis that unless preventive steps were taken soon, they would “wake up with a Palestinian mayor in Jerusalem.”
The campaign resorted to various scare tactics, even enlisting a Hamas video clip showing incitement against Jews posted on social networks. However, its seemingly racist overtones led central supporters of the initiative, such as former Shin Bet security agency chief Ami Ayalon, to pull out.
In July, HaBayit HaYehudi Chairman Naftali Bennett tabled a proposed bill of his own — the United Jerusalem law — which he presented for Knesset vote. This proposal was approved already on June 18 by the ministerial committee on legislation. The bill stipulated that a special majority of 80 (out of 120) Knesset members was required to divide the capital into a Jewish western part and a predominantly Palestinian east. The Knesset voted 51 to 42 to approve the bill in its first reading.
However, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was not to be outdone by his political nemesis Bennett for the title of Jerusalem’s greatest defender, especially after the July fiasco over the metal detectors Israel placed on the Temple Mount compound entrances and was then forced to remove under international pressure. The prime minister decided to back the proposed Greater Jerusalem law authored by a legislator of his own party, Yoav Kish, which had been lying around for months, along with a similar bill proposed by Yehuda Glick, another Likud Knesset member.
Kish’s proposal enjoys the support of Transportation Minister Yisrael Katz, who is considered one of the more dovish and pragmatic Likud lawmakers and a rival of Netanyahu’s, and of Knesset members from HaBayit HaYehudi and the center-right Kulanu Party.
In the introduction to his bill, Kish wrote, “The concept of Jerusalem as Israel’s ‘eternal capital’ has become blurred, lost its symbolic value.” Kish added that instead, the issue of Jerusalem’s standing focuses on demographic elements and Palestinian determination to control Jerusalem and its holy sites. “It is therefore proposed that the communities surrounding Jerusalem be annexed to the capital. This will increase the population and enable the preservation of the demographic balance, and add lands for housing, commerce and tourism while conserving green lungs.”
As mentioned, the ministerial legislation committee was scheduled to approve the bill on Oct. 29 and send it on to the Knesset, where it would likely have garnered a large majority in its first reading. There are few issues more consensual in public Israeli discourse, not to mention the Knesset, than preserving a Jewish majority in Jerusalem. However, 12 hours before the ministers were to convene, the prime minister’s office announced that the vote on the proposed bill was postponed indefinitely. The prime minister had blocked its passage.
“There was American pressure, that’s clear,” a Palestinian source in the West Bank city of Ramallah told Al-Monitor on condition of anonymity. When the Palestinians heard that Netanyahu was about to push forward the “annexation bill,” said the source, they conveyed a message to Jason Greenblatt, President Donald Trump’s Mideast envoy. They told him that the move spells the end of any possible diplomatic initiative with Israel.
The public Palestinian reaction was suspiciously muted. The only senior Palestinian official who publicly expressed anger and condemnation was Hanan Ashrawi, |
Beach, FL 33062
Address 14:
3800 NW 18th TER
Pompano Beach, FL 33064
Worked at:
Paul Davis Restoration Broward
Petersen Dean Roofing Solar Systems
Roof Tile Specialists Inc
Entegra Roof Tile Inc
Studied at:
Broward Community College
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Past business
Company Name: J.DUB'S SUPER SERVICES, INC. Status: Active Filing Date: 04/25/2013
Entity Type: Domestic Profit Corporation File Number: P13000037728 Company Age: 4 Months
Registered Agent:
Whelchel Jessica S
961 Spring Circle APT 106
Deerfield Beach, FL 33441 Fucking scammer took a decent amount of BTC from me too. It is now worth 5,507 at time of posting.(And atm i do happen to be short on money)Let's go ahead and leave this here:Bitspend LLC registration info: http://search.sunbiz.org/Inquiry/CorporationSearch/SearchResultDetail/EntityName/flal-l13000034498-70f7711f-5f01-496a-84b6-5034874b4d99/bitspend/Page1 Name:Eric J WhelchelAlias:Justin WhelchelCell number: ChangedMugshot: http://mugshots.com/US-Counties/Florida/Monroe-County-FL/Eric-J-Whelchel.1744993.html DOB: Oct 6th, 1978AGE: 34 years oldRELATIVES:Jessica S Whelchel (32)Key West, FLDeerfield Beach, FLBoca Raton, FLPompano Beach, FLTomball, TXAddress 1:1409 5th STKey West, FL 33040(305) 294-6720Address 2:961 Spring CIRDeerfield Beach, FL 33441755-2484Address 3:5801 Town Bay DRBoca Raton, FL 33486(561) 391-2350Address 4:753 Siesta Key CIRDeerfield Beach, FL 33441(954) 864-1002Address 5:151 NE 35th STPompano Beach, FL 33064Address 6:3333 Duck AVEKey West, FL 33040Address 7:5031 5th AVEKey West, FL 33040Address 8:PO Box 5183 BCHPompano Beach, FL 33074Address 9:11575 NW 44th STPompano Beach, FL 33065(954) 796-3191Address 10:10319 NW 33rd STPompano Beach, FL 33065(954) 796-3191Address 11:PO Box 4994 Ky WKey West, FL 33041Address 12:3503 Coral Springs DRPompano Beach, FL 33065Address 13:1014 Graham DRTomball, TX 77375+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++Name:Jessica S WhelchelDOB: Apr 7th, 1981Age: 32 years oldformer: Jessica S SmithAddress History:Deerfield Beach, FLPompano Beach, FLKey West, FLBoca Raton, FLRelatives:Eric WhelchelJustin WhelchelJay SmithWilliam SmithWalterina SmithAnne SmithJohn SmithJimi smithNicole SmithPrevious Cities:Deerfield Beach, FLPompano Beach, FLKey West, FLBoca Raton, FLAddress 1:961 Spring CIRDeerfield Beach, FL 33441Address 2:753 Siesta Key CIRDeerfield Beach, FL 33441Address 3:PO Box 5183 BCHPompano Beach, FL 33074Address 4:151 NE 35th STPompano Beach, FL 33064Address 5:3333 Duck AVEKey West, FL 33040Address 6:5031 5th AVEKey West, FL 33040Address 7:1409 5th STKey West, FL 33040Address 8:5801 Town Bay DRBoca Raton, FL 33486(561) 391-2350Address 9:6130 NW 19th CTPompano Beach, FL 33063Address 10:1301 W River DRPompano Beach, FL 33063Address 11:6131 NW 18th CTPompano Beach, FL 33063Address 12:291 Lake DRPompano Beach, FL 33066Address 13:1240 NE 27th AVEPompano Beach, FL 33062Address 14:3800 NW 18th TERPompano Beach, FL 33064Worked at:Paul Davis Restoration BrowardPetersen Dean Roofing Solar SystemsRoof Tile Specialists IncEntegra Roof Tile IncStudied at:Broward Community College+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++Past businessCompany Name: J.DUB'S SUPER SERVICES, INC. Status: Active Filing Date: 04/25/2013Entity Type: Domestic Profit Corporation File Number: P13000037728 Company Age: 4 MonthsRegistered Agent:Whelchel Jessica S961 Spring Circle APT 106Deerfield Beach, FL 33441 Donations: 1BzhiEys7xTga9C2Ut1gnd64EZetea2Vwy
Eric J Whelchel Scammer still owes:
Order Date Amount (BTC) Amount (USD) TX Details Username
27 May 2013 5.91462571 BTC /u/skysdalimit420
27 May 2013 1.10185902 BTC /u/skysdalimit420
11 June 2013 9.12815979 BTC /u/useful_idiot
15 June 2013 8.35516248 BTC /u/Facings ME
17 June 2013 2.65727237 BTC /u/mikey67156
17 June 2013 0.36119484 BTC /u/mikey67156
18 June 2013 0.23425049 BTC /u/pixelbits
19 June 2013 0.98 BTC /u/Ragerino
19 June 2013 1.75318265 BTC /u/SirPinkBatman
Rawted
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Merit: 500
Hero MemberActivity: 742Merit: 500 Re: Bitspend Scammer Eric J Whelchel February 16, 2014, 05:00:15 AM #5 I didn't lose anything to them, but I guess i could next time I am down there if we could verify an address. I have a gopro i've been dying to test out.
facings
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Activity: 96
Merit: 10
MemberActivity: 96Merit: 10 Re: Bitspend Scammer Eric J Whelchel February 16, 2014, 05:12:10 AM #6 Quote from: Rawted on February 16, 2014, 05:00:15 AM I didn't lose anything to them, but I guess i could next time I am down there if we could verify an address. I have a gopro i've been dying to test out.
961 Spring Cir apt. 106
Deerfield Beach, FL 33441 961 Spring Cir apt. 106Deerfield Beach, FL 33441 Donations: 1BzhiEys7xTga9C2Ut1gnd64EZetea2Vwy
Eric J Whelchel Scammer still owes:
Order Date Amount (BTC) Amount (USD) TX Details Username
27 May 2013 5.91462571 BTC /u/skysdalimit420
27 May 2013 1.10185902 BTC /u/skysdalimit420
11 June 2013 9.12815979 BTC /u/useful_idiot
15 June 2013 8.35516248 BTC /u/Facings ME
17 June 2013 2.65727237 BTC /u/mikey67156
17 June 2013 0.36119484 BTC /u/mikey67156
18 June 2013 0.23425049 BTC /u/pixelbits
19 June 2013 0.98 BTC /u/Ragerino
19 June 2013 1.75318265 BTC /u/SirPinkBatman
bomboclat77
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Activity: 150
Merit: 100
Full MemberActivity: 150Merit: 100 Re: Bitspend Scammer Eric J Whelchel February 17, 2014, 03:07:21 AM #7
Back in october, when we started to talk about legal action on reddit and bitcointalk
few days later I got these pm's from him.
so it shows he has been trolling /r/bitspend and bitcointalk threads. He is probably reading this thread too. he owes me over 10 btc. He has been ignoring my phone calls on his cell phone 954-348-2228.Back in october, when we started to talk about legal action on reddit and bitcointalkfew days later I got these pm's from him.so it shows he has been trolling /r/bitspend and bitcointalk threads. He is probably reading this thread too. Bitcoin-otc feedback
facings
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Merit: 10
MemberActivity: 96Merit: 10 Re: Bitspend Scammer Eric J Whelchel February 17, 2014, 06:34:07 AM #8 Quote from: bomboclat77 on February 17, 2014, 03:07:21 AM
Back in october, when we started to talk about legal action on reddit and bitcointalk
few days later I got these pm's from him.
so it shows he has been trolling /r/bitspend and bitcointalk threads. He is probably reading this thread too.
he owes me over 10 btc. He has been ignoring my phone calls on his cell phone 954-348-2228.Back in october, when we started to talk about legal action on reddit and bitcointalkfew days later I got these pm's from him.so it shows he has been trolling /r/bitspend and bitcointalk threads. He is probably reading this thread too. Yeah owes me 8+ btc. He is just ignoring the whole situation. Donations: 1BzhiEys7xTga9C2Ut1gnd64EZetea2Vwy
Eric J Whelchel Scammer still owes:
Order Date Amount (BTC) Amount (USD) TX Details Username
27 May 2013 5.91462571 BTC /u/skysdalimit420
27 May 2013 1.10185902 BTC /u/skysdalimit420
11 June 2013 9.12815979 BTC /u/useful_idiot
15 June 2013 8.35516248 BTC /u/Facings ME
17 June 2013 2.65727237 BTC /u/mikey67156
17 June 2013 0.36119484 BTC /u/mikey67156
18 June 2013 0.23425049 BTC /u/pixelbits
19 June 2013 0.98 BTC /u/Ragerino
19 June 2013 1.75318265 BTC /u/SirPinkBatman
bomboclat77
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Activity: 150
Merit: 100
Full MemberActivity: 150Merit: 100 Re: Bitspend Scammer Eric J Whelchel February 17, 2014, 04:06:07 PM #9
Bitspend.net:
Code: Domain name: BITSPEND.NET
Administrative Contact:
Whelchel, Justin Email Masking Image@bitspend.net
750 East Sample Road
Building 3 - Suite 229
Pompano Beach, FL 33064
US
+1.9543482228
Technical Contact:
Support, Tech Email Masking Image@bitspend.net
131 Orange Street
Durham, NC 27701
US
+1.9192139700
Ericjustin.com
Code: Registrant Name: Justin Whelchel
Registrant Organization: None
Registrant Street: 4571 NW 8th Ave
Registrant City: Oakland Park
Registrant State/Province: FL
Registrant Postal Code: 33309
Registrant Country: US
Registrant Phone: +1.9542953444
Registrant Email: Email Masking Image@gmail.com
Registry Admin ID:
Admin Name: Justin Whelchel
Admin Organization: None
Admin Street: 4571 NW 8th Ave
Admin City: Oakland Park
Admin State/Province: FL
Admin Postal Code: 33309
Admin Country: US
Admin Phone: +1.9542953444 Some info from the registration of his sites.Bitspend.net:Ericjustin.com Bitcoin-otc feedback
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Hero MemberActivity: 742Merit: 500 Re: Bitspend Scammer Eric J Whelchel February 17, 2014, 04:51:37 PM #10 Quote from: bomboclat77 on February 17, 2014, 04:06:07 PM
Bitspend.net:
Code: Domain name: BITSPEND.NET
Administrative Contact:
Whelchel, Justin Email Masking Image@bitspend.net
750 East Sample Road
Building 3 - Suite 229
Pompano Beach, FL 33064
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+1.9543482228
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131 Orange Street
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Ericjustin.com
Code: Registrant Name: Justin Whelchel
Registrant Organization: None
Registrant Street: 4571 NW 8th Ave
Registrant City: Oakland Park
Registrant State/Province: FL
Registrant Postal Code: 33309
Registrant Country: US
Registrant Phone: +1.9542953444
Registrant Email: Email Masking Image@gmail.com
Registry Admin ID:
Admin Name: Justin Whelchel
Admin Organization: None
Admin Street: 4571 NW 8th Ave
Admin City: Oakland Park
Admin State/Province: FL
Admin Postal Code: 33309
Admin Country: US
Admin Phone: +1.9542953444 Some info from the registration of his sites.Bitspend.net:Ericjustin.com I checked the Sample Rd address out, it's a storage unit.
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Hero MemberActivity: 742Merit: 500 Re: Bitspend Scammer Eric J Whelchel February 18, 2014, 04:02:16 AM #13 Quote from: bomboclat77 on February 17, 2014, 05:15:13 PM yeah
961 Spring Cir apt. 106
Deerfield Beach, FL 33441
is his last apartment, you should check out that address and ask whats going on
I'm a registered ccw holder, I'm not going to put myself in a situation like that. A business address visit is one thing, but i cannot in good conscience go to someone's residence like that. It's not safe for me or them. However, if you guys need help finding a good PI in the area, or I can help connect you to the appropriate law enforcement, I would be glad to help. I'm a registered ccw holder, I'm not going to put myself in a situation like that. A business address visit is one thing, but i cannot in good conscience go to someone's residence like that. It's not safe for me or them. However, if you guys need help finding a good PI in the area, or I can help connect you to the appropriate law enforcement, I would be glad to help.The Rec Report Friday, 11 December 2009 The Obama Effect: The Demise of the Democratic Party and a Gift to the Country The decision to escalate Afghanistan War should put the final nail in the coffin of "change" and "hope" that Democrats and others crawled into when they supported Obama. The evidence that Obama is every bit the representative of the corporate oligarchy and no less a corporate shill than the rest has been mounting for nearly a year-or well before the election for the cognoscenti. Only fanatics could have heard Obama's speech on Afghanistan and failed to hear the resonances of Bush. But the writing was on the wall over a year ago when Obama supported the bailouts of the banks and brokerage firms that leveraged their destruction of the economy on the foreclosures of homes. Few could miss the fact that the health care reform bill, should it ever pass, will be another unwarranted and gratuitous bailout-this one of the insurance and pharmaceutical companies. Obama diverted the legitimate anger and energy for real change and scuttled it under the fraudulent tent of the Democratic Party. He led millions to the cliff; they are now falling off in droves. Those who've not quite gotten to the edge screech and yell: "Wait! Give him time!" Those who gave warning from the outset are not busy casting nets. We welcome the demise of the Democratic Party. And that is exactly the Obama Effect. Every last tissue of belief in the Democrats should by now be shred and cast aside. The Democrats are no less the corporate bailers and militarists than the Republicans. They hand trillions to the banks and brokerage firms; they dissolve union contracts and send the workers to the dogs; their unmanned drones bomb Pakistan, killing and maiming innocents and displacing tens of thousands; they sell the same lies about the wars-that they have to do with terrorism or democracy rather than oil and other resources-as their predecessors; they fund the very enemy that they claim to fight; they keep up the same contracts with Blackwater and its successors; they vote for the same war funding; they carry out the same secret renditions; they sanction and continue the same spying on US citizens; they exonerate torturers and war criminals from the previous administration; they are war criminals in complicity with other war criminals. For those who hadn't quite gotten the point before, thanks to Obama's euphuistic and high-flown rhetorical excesses, no one can now believe that another Democrat, even an apparently more "left" one, will ever deliver a thing that he or she promises. Obama has filled the Democratic hot air balloon to the limit and it has burst. It falls like a failing parachute along with those who trusted it. Despite all of this, or rather because of it, Obama has given, albeit unwittingly, a great gift to the majority. He has shown those who still have brainwaves that nevermore should anyone other than a corporate shill believe in a Democrat for any positive change in terms of the vast majority. The one thing that Obama has changed: the credulity accorded Democratic demagoguery. Am I merely opening the door for the Republicans to fill the vast void of credibility left by the Democrats, you ask? To answer requires some clarification. The Democrats are one of two levers by which the ruling oligarchy controls the political process to their nearly exclusive advantage. This isn't a new development-it has merely become too obvious to ignore. The Democrats have left this void. It is not my doing. I recommend that it be filled by a working-class party movement-not a green party, not a libertarian party, not an "independent" party, but a party that is aligned with the vast majority-a party of the workers- workers of farms, of factories, of schools, of construction sites, of the auto industry, of the retail industry, of the research firms, of the institutions of higher education, of banks, of city and other governmental offices-of those who make their livings not from profit but from wages. Every other party in every other country has ended up being just another lever of the ruling oligarchy. Only a working-class majority can overcome the power elite and end the wars. Only a working-class party can change the socio-political and economic conditions. Only a majority party can deliver to itself health care coverage. Only a majority party can save the environment. Only a majority party and order can put production on a rational basis for their own benefit and not the benefit of a tiny minority. We owe a great debt of gratitude to Obama. He has finally dashed and destroyed the false hopes in the Democratic Party and the political system as it stands. Obama was the false prophet of change. Now let the real change begin. Dr. Rec, The Rec Report
Michael D. Rectenwald, Ph.D. Permanent URL for this article:
http://www.legitgov.org/comment/rec_report_111209.html Email this page to a friend The Rec Report Index CLG Index To receive breaking news alerts from www.legitgov.org, click here.A new study on African bats provides a vital clue for unravelling the mysteries in Australia's battle with the deadly Hendra virus.
The study focused on an isolated colony of straw-coloured fruit bats on islands off the west coast of central Africa. By capturing the bats and collecting blood samples, scientists discovered these animals have antibodies that can neutralise deadly viruses known in Australia and Asia.
The paper was published 12 January, in the journal PLoS ONE, and is a collaboration of the Department of Veterinary Medicine at the University of Cambridge, the Zoological Society of London and the CSIRO Australian Animal Health Laboratory.
Hendra virus in Australia and Nipah virus in Asia are carried by fruit bats and sporadically "spill over" into people with tragic consequences. The findings of the new study are significant as they yield valuable insights for our understanding of how these viruses persist in bat populations.
Cambridge PhD student Alison Peel explains, "Hendra and Nipah viruses cause fatal infections in humans, but we currently understand very little about how the viruses are transmitted from bats to other animals or people. To understand what the risk factors for these'spill-overs' are, it is crucial to understand how viruses are maintained in bat populations. The ability to study these viruses within an isolated bat colony has given us new insight into these processes."
It was previously believed that these viruses were maintained in large interconnected populations of bats, so that if the virus dies out in one colony, it would be reintroduced when bats from different colonies interact. The new study indicates that a closely related virus is able to persist in a very small and isolated population of bats. This is the first time this has been documented in a natural wild population, casting doubt on current theories.
Peel added, "Although Hendra and Nipah viruses are relatively new to science, it appears that bats have lived and evolved with them over a very long time. We hope that by gaining a better understanding of this relationship, we may then be able to understand why it is only within the last 20 years that spill-over to humans has occurred."
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Licence.Aaron Paul Breaking Bad Jacket
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Team 8
Jschritte, Infamous – “I think they have evolved a lot throughout HGC and have been quite solid individually. The team seems to have quite the "Glaurung-style" of play and as we know this playstyle, I believe we can predict some drafts and manage to counter.”
Michael Udall, Gale Force eSports – “Team 8 has a very good understanding of draft and a non-meta play style.”
Bakery, Team Dignitas – "Team 8 have come out of the gates at lightning speed, we're going to stop them in their tracks."
Blumbi, Misfits – “Team 8 has some nice drafts but they lack experience.”
Cattlepillar, Tempo Storm – “Team 8’s lack of international experience is going to hurt them, but their unique playstyle may be enough to make up for it.”
Quackniix, Fnatic – “I think team8 is gr8 so I r8 them 8/8, I'm sure they can even make it top8, no h8!”
Robadobah, Nomia – “Bit of an unknown entity at LAN but very good online, we’ll have to see how it goes for them.”
Team Dignitas
Jschritte, Infamous – “They show [sic] a drop in performance in the last championships, as they have a new member I believe they take some time to maximize the synergy of the team. I believe we can abuse it.”
Michael Udall, Gale Force eSports – “Dig is the most experienced team; they have been to every international.”
Glaurung, Team 8 – “Dignitas looks a lot weaker right now than they did in the past, but still a strong team.”
Blumbi, Misfits – “Dignitas is limited in drafts and we are going to use that to our advantage.”
Cattlepillar, Tempo Storm – “Dignitas seems to still be struggling a little with their roster change, but with the addition of Dunktrain and bootcamping I think they’ll have some surprising series.”
Quackniix, Fnatic – “Team Dignitas should extend their boot camp instead of going to Katowice so they don’t end up in the Crucible.”
Robadobah, Nomia – “Very hard to judge, probably not as dominant this season as they’ve looked in the past but they usually get it together on LAN.”
Misfits
Jschritte, Infamous – “They are very strong, have a strong macro and micro and a wide variety of drafts. I believe they do not study our region very much, so we can surprise them with something different.”
Michael Udall, Gale Force eSports – “Misfits is the strongest European team, they are very consistent and always show up.”
Bakery, Team Dignitas – “Misfits are the big favorites for the tournament, but I'll be surprised if they win.”
Glaurung, Team 8 – “I’m scared of Misfits.”
Cattlepillar, Tempo Storm – “Misfits definitely had a good showing during the HGC split, but they showed some pretty heavy drafting mistakes that teams will exploit.”
Quackniix, Fnatic – “As long as Kaelaris doesn’t cast our games not even HasuObs beanie can save them this time.”
Robadobah, Nomia – "Dominant. They look very good, should be fun to play them."
Fnatic
Jschritte, Infamous – “They are very strong, have a good macro game, have proved themselves at BlizzCon in 2016 and are long time [sic] together, but we believe that we can take advantage of the micro game.”
Michael Udall, Gale Force eSports – “The Korean slayers: Fnatic is a very solid team but they are reliant on momentum.”
Bakery, Team Dignitas – “Fnatic have been our main practice partners for this event, both teams know each other well.”
Glaurung, Team 8 – “Fnatic has a lot of team synergy, they are cute together.”
Blumbi, Misfits – “Fnatic play worse than us in an offline environment because they struggle when they feel the pressure.”
Cattlepillar, Tempo Storm – “Fnatic looks very solid right now and are tournament favorites in my eyes.”
Robadobah, Nomia – “I think they’re a pretty good team, very tight knit, they seem very coordinated.”
Tempo Storm
Jschritte, Infamous – “Even though they have been ranked first in their region, I do not believe they are the strongest in their region.”
Michael Udall, Gale Force eSports – “Tempo Storm is the team we practice against the most, so look out for a funky meta in the drafts.”
Bakery, Team Dignitas – “We had no trouble with Tempo Storm at BlizzCon or GCWC, I don't think this time will be any different.”
Glaurung, Team 8 – “Tempo Storm is the closest thing to a well-oiled machine we have in North America, although sometimes they require maintenance.”
Blumbi, Misfits – “Tempo Storm knows how to win the map but we know how to win the map AND win team fights.”
Quackniix, Fnatic – “Have shown that they have the mentality and dedication to succeed in becoming the best team in an irrelevant region.”
Robadobah, Nomia – “Hard to judge, they have longevity now but it’s hard to say, they’re not exactly a star-studded team so we’ll have to see how they’re teamwork is.”
Gale Force eSports
Jschritte, Infamous – “They have 4 flex and 1 support, this is something that affects the micro of each hero and the macro of each role — this type of strategy is not something that worries us.”
Bakery, Team Dignitas – “I'm good friends with a lot of the people from Gale Force, and I'm really looking forward to hanging out with them. Beating them would be a nice perk.”
Glaurung, Team 8 – “GFE is the most hit or miss team in NA, on their best day they can beat most teams and on their worst they can lose to most teams, but overall they’re good.”
Blumbi, Misfits – “Gale Force have some strong individual players but they lack consistency.”
Cattlepillar, Tempo Storm – “Gale Force is heavily dependent on surprising teams in draft and the new patch plus meta shift will let them run some surprising comps and catch teams off guard.”
Quackniix, Fnatic – “Gale Force has 4 tanks 1 support and their biggest strength is their Twitter game.”
Robadobah, Nomia – “Bit of a boom or bust team, depends on if it’s their day.”
Infamous
Michael Udall, Gale Force eSports – “Infamous has a lot to prove here, but big props to them for qualifying to the Western Clash.”
Bakery, Team Dignitas – “Burning Rage looked like they could be a top eight team in NA at BlizzCon, we'll see if Infamous can do even better.”
Glaurung, Team 8 – “I don’t know much about Infamous.”
Blumbi, Misfits – “Minor region (shrugs).”
Cattlepillar, Tempo Storm – “Coming from a minor region Infamous has a pretty large disadvantage, but with how new the patch is, they may be able to sneak in a few wins.”
Quackniix, Fnatic – “I just want to wish Infamous best of luck! I like Brazil.”
Robadobah, Nomia – “Don’t know much about them but Jschritte is a really good player.”
Nomia
Jschritte, Infamous – “We will always cheer for minor regions. I hope they can win some games against the major regions.”
Michael Udall, Gale Force eSports – “I am happy to see Nomia improve but they need to win a set to prove they are a top tier team.”
Bakery, Team Dignitas – “I'm really happy that Nomia were able to qualify, and I'd like to see them take a series or two at the event.”
Glaurung, Team 8 – “I don’t know much about them but they’re some good mates, best of luck to them.”
Blumbi, Misfits – “Minor region (shrugs).”
Quackniix, Fnatic – “Tried Googling Nomia twice, didn't even find the roster...”
Cattlepillar, Tempo Storm – “Nomia might be able to use some of their previous international experience to have a slight edge on some maps, but I don’t see them going very far.”
Clearly, the players competing in the Western Clash aren't there as diplomats or objective observers. They've all battled tough competition to make it to Katowice and now is the time for decisive action, not small talk, if they want to bring home the $30,000 prize.Share 0 SHARES
AFTER Dundalk FC’s historic 3-1 aggregate win over BATE Borisov last night, residents in the Dundalk and the greater Louth area have issued the most severe bandwagon alert in the history of the sport.
Diehard and lifelong Dundalk supporters have sent out a warning to the rest of the Nation that while support is welcome, they would like to know “where the fuck were you in 2011 or christ, even last month when we hammered Derry?”
Previous bandwagon alerts surrounding Irish cricket and boxing carried a less severe “we really appreciate the extra coverage but” warning whereas Dundalk fans have gone one step further issuing a “thanks but no thanks, don’t be ruining it for the actual fans”.
Fans who have spent their entire life ignoring the Premier League in favour of traipsing around Ireland following their team warned that bandwagon fans would be weeded out with a zero tolerance policy.
“Don’t think we won’t notice the extra 35,000 people at the next home match, and you can use Wikipedia all you like we’ll know when you’re taking shite about players you couldn’t pick out from a line up,” Dundalk supporter Eddie Howley shared with WWN.
Senior Dundalk fans have made pleas to the more passionate sections of the regular fan base asking them to remain calm and resist the urge to murder any overnight fans who turn up to the next game wearing old Shamrock Rovers jerseys. However, several brand new fans were assaulted after asking for directions to the ‘Oreo Park’ stadium early this morning.
Dundalk are just two legs away from an improbable entry into the Champions League stage, which could lead to as many as 14 Dublin residents choosing to postpone supporting Man Utd and Liverpool for several months.LONDON (Reuters) - News Corp funded the former editor of the News of the World tabloid when he worked for David Cameron in opposition, the BBC said, in new evidence of the close links between Britain’s prime minister and Rupert Murdoch.
Andy Coulson, the former spokesman for Britain's Prime Minister David Cameron, leaves a police station after being bailed, in South London, July 8, 2011. REUTERS/Olivia Harris
The Labor opposition and political analysts have repeatedly questioned Cameron’s judgment in hiring Andy Coulson as his spokesman in 2007, shortly after the editor quit over the jailing of his royal reporter for phone hacking.
The decision to appoint a man so closely associated with Murdoch to such an important position was proof, they say, that he was desperate to secure the News Corp chief’s support.
Allegations now that Coulson maintained financial links to the owner of the influential Sun and Times newspapers is likely to cause further damage.
The BBC said Coulson, who was arrested earlier this year on suspicion of being involved in phone hacking, received several hundred thousand pounds from News International, the British newspaper arm of the News Corp media empire, as part of a severance package that ran in installments until the end of 2007.
He also received benefits such as healthcare for three years and kept his company car, the BBC said, quoting sources.
Cameron’s right of center Conservative party has long been criticized for being too close to Murdoch, although former British Labor Prime Ministers Tony Blair and Gordon Brown also openly courted the media chief.
A spokesman for the Conservative Party said senior party officials had not known about the severance arrangements. Downing Street declined to comment but noted that the events occurred before Cameron became prime minister.
Opposition Labor, seeking to exploit Cameron’s unease, called for transparency on the issue. “David Cameron needs to say whether he knew about the payments to Andy Coulson,” said Ivan Lewis, Labor’s culture affairs spokesman.
“The details of Mr Coulson’s termination agreements with News International must be published and we need to know whether these payments, in the form of honoring a two-year contract of employment after he had been forced to resign in disgrace, were declared to the parliamentary authorities,” Lewis added.
“It must be explained why Mr Coulson was getting these payments when he resigned from the News of the World.
UNWELCOME DISTRACTION
Association with the phone hacking scandal risks corroding Cameron’s reputation as he seeks to focus on major issues such as a weak economy, recent riots and the conflict in Libya.
“This issue for Cameron is rotting, it is a case of a slow burn,” Ivor Gaber, professor of political journalism at City University, told Reuters. “It is not good for him, it throws a further question up about his judgment.
“And it would be very serious if it turns out it was happening when Coulson was working at Downing Street.”
Cameron retained Coulson as his communications director when he was elected prime minister in 2010. News International declined to comment.
Coulson was specifically asked during a parliamentary committee hearing in 2009 whether he had received any other income when he worked for the Conservative Party, and said no.
“So your sole income was News International and then your sole income was the Conservative Party?” parliamentarian Tom Watson asked. “Yes,” Coulson replied.
Labor MPs said authorities should look into the payments.
“In effect the |
as reciprocal and hence that organisms co-evolve with their environments. Environments modified by organisms viewed as qualitatively different from independent environmental states. Niche construction treated as a process that directs evolution by non-random modification of selective environments. Niche construction may result from acquired characters, by-products and the accumulated outputs of multiple species
Similarly, the standard view is that phenotypic plasticity and inclusive inheritance are either inconsequential, proximate, causes of variation or outcomes of selection (i.e. adaptations; table 2). Plasticity is typically considered to be a genetically specified, and hence evolvable, trait that allows individuals to match phenotypes to local conditions [91,92], and the same logic is used to accommodate non-genetic inheritance and niche construction in evolutionary theory (e.g. [88,93]).
For biologists schooled in population genetic or quantitative genetic thinking, the starting point for evolutionary analyses is the selection pressures [94]. Leaving aside cases where the source of selection is another organism, environmental change has been treated as a ‘background condition’ (e.g. [88]; table 2). On this perspective, termites evolve to become adapted to the mounds they construct in a manner no different from how organisms adapt to frequent volcanic eruptions. Because niche-constructing activities are seen as proximate sources of variation, they are typically treated as ‘extended phenotypes' [87] that evolve because they enhance inclusive fitness.
We suggest that structuring evolutionary explanations around processes that directly change genotype frequencies is responsible for these interpretations. A widely accepted definition of evolution is change in the genetic composition of populations, which, to many evolutionary biologists, restricts evolutionary processes to those that directly change gene frequencies—natural selection, drift, gene flow and mutation. Phenomena such as developmental bias or niche construction do not directly change gene frequencies, and hence are not viewed as causes of evolutionary processes.
Contemporary evolutionary biology textbooks support this interpretation (see the electronic supplementary material, table S1). Only selection, drift, gene flow and mutation are consistently described as evolutionary processes and coverage of developmental bias, plasticity, inclusive inheritance and niche construction is at best modest (e.g. [95]) and, more commonly, absent [96,97]. What coverage does occur is typically given the traditional interpretation outlined above.
4. The extended evolutionary synthesis perspective
The incorporation of new data into the existing conceptual framework of evolutionary biology may explain why calls for an EES are often met with skepticism; even if the topics discussed above were historically neglected, there is now a substantial amount of research dedicated to them. However, for a second group of evolutionary researchers, the interpretation given in the preceding section underestimates the evolutionary implications of these phenomena (table 2). From this standpoint, too much causal significance is afforded to genes and selection, and not enough to the developmental processes that create novel variants, contribute to heredity, generate adaptive fit, and thereby direct the course of evolution. Under this perspective, the sharp distinction between the proximate and the ultimate is undermined by the fact that proximate causes are themselves often also evolutionary causes [90]. Hence, the EES entails not only new research directions but also new ways to think about, and interpret, new and familiar problems in evolutionary biology.
In this section, we endeavour to draw out the defining themes and structure of the EES. We show how, while the lines of research discussed above arose largely independently, there is considerable coherence across topics. Developmental processes play important evolutionary roles as causes of novel, potentially beneficial, phenotypic variants, the differential fitness of those variants, and/or their inheritance (i.e. all three of Lewontin's [98] conditions for evolution by natural selection). Thus, the burden of creativity in evolution (i.e. the generation of adaptation) does not rest on selection alone [12,19,25,27,60,64,73,99–101].
We see two key unifying themes to these interpretations—constructive development and reciprocal causation.
(a) Constructive development
Constructive development refers to the ability of an organism to shape its own developmental trajectory by constantly responding to, and altering, internal and external states [34,71,102–105]. Constructive development goes beyond the quantitative-genetic concept of gene–environment interaction by attending to the mechanisms of development, and emphasizing how gene (expression) and environment are interdependent. As a consequence, the developing organism cannot be reduced to separable components, one of which (e.g. the genome) exerts exclusive control over the other (e.g. the phenotype). Rather, causation also flows back from ‘higher’ (i.e. more complex) levels of organismal organization to the genes (e.g. tissue-specific regulation of gene expression) (figure 1). Constructive development does not assume a relatively simple mapping between genotype and phenotype, nor does it assign causal privilege to genes in individual development. Instead, the developmental system responds flexibly to internal and external inputs, most obviously through condition-dependent gene expression, but also through physical properties of cells and tissues and ‘exploratory behaviour’ among microtubular, neural, muscular and vascular systems. For example, there is no predetermined map for the distribution of blood vessels in the body; rather, the vascular system expands to regions with insufficient oxygen supply. Such exploratory processes, commonplace throughout development, are powerful agents of phenotype construction, as they enable highly diverse functional responses that need not have been pre-screened by earlier selection [28,34,106,107]. Figure 1. Contrasting views of development. (a) Programed development. Traditionally, development has been conceptualized as programed, unfolding according to rules and instructions specified within the genome. DNA is ascribed a special causal significance, and all other parts of the developing organism serve as ‘substrate’, or ‘interpretative machinery’ for the expression of genetic information. Evolutionarily relevant phenotypic novelty results solely from genetic mutations, which alter components of the genetic program. Under this perspective, organisms are built from the genome outwards and upwards, with each generation receiving the instruction on how to build a phenotype through the transmission of DNA. (b) Constructive development. By contrast, in the EES, genes and genomes represent one of many resources that contribute to the developing phenotype. Causation flows both upwards from lower levels of biological organization, such as DNA, and from higher levels downwards, such as through tissue- and environment-specific gene regulation. Exploratory and selective processes are important sources of novel and evolutionarily significant phenotypic variation. Rather than containing a ‘program’, the genome represents a component of the developmental system, shaped by evolution to sense and respond to relevant signals and to provide materials upon which cells can draw.
Within evolutionary biology, development has been traditionally viewed as under the direction of a genetic program (e.g. ‘all of the directions, controls and constraints of the developmental machinery are laid down in the blueprint of the DNA genotype as instructions or potentialities' [108, p. 126]). While the terminology of contemporary biologists is typically more nuanced, Moczek [109] shows that genetic ‘blueprint’, ‘program’ or ‘instructions' metaphors remain widespread in evolutionary biology texts. By contrast, the EES regards the genome as a sub-system of the cell designed by evolution to sense and respond to the signals that impinge on it [8]. Organisms are not built from genetic ‘instructions’ alone, but rather self-assemble using a broad variety of inter-dependent resources. Even where there is a history of selection for plasticity, the constructive development perspective entails that prior selection underdetermines the phenotypic response to the environment.
This difference in how development is conceived strongly affects evolutionary interpretations. Readers that view developmental plasticity as programed by genetically specified switches or reaction norms, pre-screened by prior selection, would find it hard to envisage how responses to the environment can be the starting point for evolutionary change as plasticity-led evolution then reduces to selection on genetic variation. Conversely, if, for instance, as a result of exploratory processes, development is constructive and open-ended, entirely new functional phenotypes may be able to emerge with little or no initial genetic modification, yet nonetheless generate critical new raw material for subsequent bouts of selection (e.g. [30]). In such cases, the genetically specified reaction-norm approach is limited, because phenotypic variation results from ontogenetic selective processes, rather than genes, responding to environmental variation.
(b) Reciprocal causation
‘Reciprocal causation’ captures the idea that developing organisms are not solely products, but are also causes, of evolution [90,110,111]. The term ‘reciprocal causation’ simply means that process A is a cause of process B and, subsequently, process B is a cause of process A, with this feedback potentially repeated in causal chains. Reciprocal causation is a common feature of both evolving systems (e.g. when the activities of organisms modify selective environments) and developing systems (where development proceeds through modification of internal and external environments) [102,103,112].
Reciprocal causation can be contrasted with ‘unidirectional’ causation. Consider the example of avian migration: the act of migration does not change the timing or duration of the seasons, and hence migratory behaviour could be portrayed as evolving in response to pre-existing and independent features of the external environment [89]. If correct, this form of evolutionary causation is unidirectional: it starts in the external environment (i.e. with selection) and ends with an adaptive change in the organism (i.e. with modified migratory behaviour). Unidirectional causation has historically been the default assumption within evolutionary biology [71,73,113], and some treatments aligned with traditional perspectives, such as the characterization of niche construction as ‘extended phenotypes’ [87], effectively reduce reciprocally caused phenomena to unidirectional causation.
Contemporary evolutionary biology does recognize reciprocal causation in some cases, such as sexual selection, coevolution, habitat selection and frequency-dependent selection. The peacock's tail (or ‘train’), for instance, evolves through mating preferences in peahens that, in turn, coevolve with the male trait. However, reciprocal causation has generally been restricted to certain domains (largely to direct interactions between organisms), while, many existing analyses of coevolution, habitat- or frequency-dependent selection, are conducted at a level (e.g. genetic, demographic) that removes any consideration of ontogeny. Such studies do capture a core structural feature of reciprocal causation in evolution—namely, selective feedback—but typically fail to recognize that developmental processes can both initiate and co-direct evolutionary outcomes.
By contrast, the EES views reciprocal causation to be a typical, perhaps even universal, feature of evolving and developing systems, characterizing both the developmental origin of phenotypic variation and its evolution in response to changeable features of its environment [27,71,73]. This clearly differs from Mayr's [89] strict separation of proximate and ultimate causation, and his corollary that ontogenetic processes are relevant only to proximate causation [90].
(c) The structure of the extended evolutionary synthesis
This emphasis on constructive development and reciprocal causation leads the EES to recognize several additional classes of evolutionary process (an extension anticipated by Endler [114]), including processes that generate novel variation, bias selection and contribute to inheritance (figure 2). Figure 2. The structure of the EES. The EES includes as evolutionary causes processes that generate novel variants, bias selection, modify the frequency of heritable variation (including, but not restricted to, genes) and contribute to inheritance. A variety of developmental processes (e.g. epigenetic effects, regulation of gene expression, construction of internal and external developmental environments) contribute to the origin of novel phenotypic variation, which may be viable and adaptive (i.e. ‘facilitated variation’). In addition to accepted evolutionary processes that directly change gene frequencies, the EES recognizes processes that bias the outcome of natural selection, specifically developmental bias and niche construction. All processes that generate phenotypic variation, including developmental plasticity and some forms of inclusive inheritance, are potential sources of bias. A broadened conception of inheritance encompasses genetic, epigenetic and ecological (including cultural) inheritance. Arrows represent causal influences. Processes shown in red are those emphasized by the EES, but not a more traditional perspective. ¶Mutation pressure refers to the population-level consequences of repeated mutation, here depicted as dashed because mutation is also represented in ‘processes that generate novel variation’. ‡In the EES, this category of processes will often need to be broadened to encompass processes that modify the frequencies of other heritable resources. §Developmental bias and niche construction can also affect other evolutionary processes, such as mutation, drift and gene flow. (Online version in colour.)
In agreement with the traditional Darwinian perspective, the EES views variation, differential reproduction and heredity as necessary for adaptive evolution. It differs, however, in how it conceptualizes each of these components and their connections [115]. Explaining the origin of adaptations requires understanding how pre-existing developmental processes generate heritable phenotypic variants from genetic, epigenetic and environmental inputs. Developmental bias and plasticity therefore play central roles in the EES as generators of novel, yet potentially functional and coordinated, phenotypic variation. This conception of bias is different from the traditional characterization of developmental constraints: rather than accounting for the absence of evolution or adaptation, developmental bias is also a source of adaptive variation. Developmental bias and niche construction are, in turn, recognized as evolutionary processes that can initiate and impose direction on selection. Lastly, extra-genetic inheritance mechanisms interact with genetics and environmental inputs to construct the developing organism, thereby contributing to the similarity between ‘transmitting’ and affected individuals.
The EES is thus characterized by the central role of the organism in the evolutionary process, and by the view that the direction of evolution does not depend on selection alone, and need not start with mutation. The causal description of an evolutionary change may, for instance, begin with developmental plasticity or niche construction, with genetic change following [27,73]. The resulting network of processes provides a considerably more complex account of evolutionary mechanisms than traditionally recognized (figure 2).
The most striking and contentious difference from the original MS concerns the relative significance of natural selection versus generative variation in evolution, one of the oldest controversies in evolutionary biology (e.g. [116,117]). In the EES, developmental processes, operating through developmental bias, inclusive inheritance and niche construction, share responsibility for the direction and rate of evolution, the origin of character variation and organism–environment complementarity.
The observations that developmental bias can lead to phenotypic variants that are internally coherent (i.e. well integrated) and can promote functionality in novel environments [25,27,28], result in bias being, at least potentially, probabilistically predictable. The same holds for niche construction, which predictably generates environmental states that are coherent and integrated with the organism's phenotype and its developmental needs, as well as environmental states that are adaptive for the constructor, or its descendants, at least in the short-term [63,73]. Both developmental bias and niche construction impose directionality on evolution, partly because developmental mechanisms have been shaped by prior selection [73], but also because, like other exploratory behaviour within the organism, learning allows organisms to generate and refine novel behavioural variants that are coherent and adaptive [73,118]. Other types of bias may also affect variation and selection, such as systematic biases in mutation [25,116,117,119–121], or other historical contingencies, such as learned traditions [66,73].
As a consequence, the EES predicts that organisms will sometimes have the potential to develop well-integrated, functional variants when they encounter new conditions, which contrasts with the traditional assumption of no relationship between adaptive demand and the supply of phenotypic variation [5,122]. For example, phenotypic plasticity and non-genetic inheritance contributed to the adaptation of the house finch to cold climates during its North American range expansion ([68]; see [27,28,49,101,105,107] for further examples). The EES also anticipates that variants with large phenotypic effect can occur, for example, through mutations in major regulatory control genes (although most such mutations will still be neutral or deleterious) that can be expressed in a tissue- or module-specific manner (e.g. deletion of Pitx1 enhancer that produces pelvis loss and is favoured in sticklebacks) [123]. Other large phenotypic effects occur when developmental processes respond phenotypically to environmental challenges with developmental threshold effects [124], coordinated responses in suites of traits [63] or multiple, stress-induced epigenetic changes [60]. This contrasts with the classical emphasis on gradualism [125,126], which followed from the assumption that, to be adaptive, mutations must have small effects. What the historical rejection of saltationism overlooked was that mechanisms of developmental adjustment allow novel structures to be effectively integrated.
Another distinctive feature of the EES is its recognition that adaptation can arise through both natural selection and internal and external constructive processes. For instance, organisms can respond plastically to novel conditions to generate functional variation. While plasticity is well recognized within the field, what is less well appreciated is that the specific adaptive phenotypes generated need not be the direct targets of past selection, but may be the expression of the more general ability of developmental processes to accommodate novel inputs adaptively, thereby enabling functionally integrated responses to a broad range of conditions [27,34]. Moreover, through niche construction, environments can be changed by organisms to benefit themselves. For instance, Turner [127] notes that, despite living on land for millions of years, earthworms have retained the physiology that is typical of the freshwater oligochaetes from which they evolved. The worms process the soil in ways that allow them to draw water into their bodies more effectively, thereby constructing a simulated aquatic environment on land. The adaptive complementarity of earthworms and soils results to a large extent from the worms changing the soil through niche construction, rather than natural selection changing the worms to a typical terrestrial physiology. Attributing all causal significance to natural selection, by treating earthworm soil-processing as solely proximate causes, linearizes causation, and thereby fails to capture the reciprocal nature of causation in evolution.
This recognition of a variety of distinct routes to phenotype–environment fit furnishes the EES with explanatory resources that traditional perspectives lack. For instance, the well-adapted character of small populations, traditionally regarded as puzzling as selection is weak [128], can potentially be accounted for by the flexible forms of plasticity and niche construction that result from constructive development.
More generally, the EES recognizes that the evolutionary process has a capacity for ‘bootstrapping’ such that prior evolution can generate supplementary information-supplying and adaptation-generating evolutionary processes, expressed in plasticity, learning, non-genetic inheritance, niche construction and culture. In fact, the conceptual change associated with the EES is largely a change in the perceived relationship between genes and development: a shift from a programed to a constructive view of development. Although genes are fundamental to development and heredity, they are not causally privileged in either of these processes [9,129,130]. In the EES, the special evolutionary role of genes (and other components of development) is to be found in a mechanistic description of how DNA affects evolution of life cycles, and not by metaphors such as control, program or blueprint.
5. Novel predictions made, and new research stimulated, by the extended evolutionary synthesis
Conceptual frameworks should be evaluated on their ability to stimulate useful research [1,131]. The EES does make novel predictions, several of which are summarized in table 3, together with an account of the equivalent expectation deriving from a more traditional standpoint. For example, the EES predicts that stress-induced phenotypic variation can initiate adaptive divergence in morphology, physiology and behaviour because of the ability of developmental mechanisms to accommodate new environments (consistent with predictions 1–3 and 7 in table 3). This is supported by research on colonizing populations of house finches [68], water fleas [132] and sticklebacks [55,133] and, from a more macro-evolutionary perspective, by studies of the vertebrate limb [57]. The predictions in table 3 are a small subset of those that characterize the EES, but suffice to illustrate its novelty, can be tested empirically, and should encourage deriving and testing further predictions. Naturally, perspectives encompass a range of views on evolutionary dynamics, and we fully recognize that contemporary evolutionary biologists are represented in this continuum. Nonetheless, table 3 should prove useful because, if we are correct that adoption of an EES requires conceptual change and not just a shift in focus, researchers will tend to favour one set of predictions over another and, ultimately, one set may prove to be more useful. Research in evolutionary biology already provides sufficient data to validate several EES expectations [27,56,73].
Table 3.A comparison of predictions made by a traditional interpretation and the EES. Collapse traditional predictions proposed EES predictions (i) genetic change causes, and logically precedes, phenotypic change, in adaptive evolution (i) phenotypic accommodation can precede, rather than follow, genetic change, in adaptive evolution (ii) genetic mutations, and hence novel phenotypes, will be random in direction and typically neutral or slightly disadvantageous (ii) novel phenotypic variants will frequently be directional and functional (iii) isolated mutations generating novel phenotypes will occur in a single individual (iii) novel, evolutionarily consequential, phenotypic variants will frequently be environmentally induced in multiple individuals (iv) adaptive evolution typically proceeds through selection of mutations with small effects (iv) strikingly different novel phenotypes can occur, either through mutation of a major regulatory control gene expressed in a tissue-specific manner, or through facilitated variation (v) repeated evolution in isolated populations is due to convergent selection (v) repeated evolution in isolated populations may be due to convergent selection and/or developmental bias (vi) adaptive variants are propagated through selection (vi) in addition to selection, adaptive variants are propagated through repeated environmental induction, non-genetic inheritance, learning and cultural transmission (vii) rapid phenotypic evolution requires strong selection on abundant genetic variation (vii) rapid phenotypic evolution can be frequent and can result from the simultaneous induction and selection of functional variants (viii) taxonomic diversity is explained by diversity in the selective environments (viii) taxonomic diversity will sometimes be better explained by features of developmental systems (evolvability, constraints) than features of environments (ix) heritable variation will be unbiased (ix) heritable variation will be systematically biased towards variants that are adaptive and well-integrated with existing aspects of the phenotype (x) environmental states modified by organisms are not systematically different from environments that change through processes independent of organismal activity (x) niche construction will be systematically biased towards environmental changes that are well suited to the constructor's phenotype, or that of its descendants, and enhance the constructor's, or its descendant's, fitness
The predictions given in table 3 are all short-term. The EES opens up the possibility of more informed longer term forecasting, by drawing on insights from developmental biology, ecology and computer science to make probabilistic predictions concerning how organisms will respond developmentally to future environmental conditions, and how organisms will modify environments (and hence what selection pressures they will encounter). The EES proposes that variation is more predictable and selection pressures less exogenous than hitherto thought. While it will probably remain difficult to make predictions about how specific populations will evolve, it may be feasible to make and test stochastic predictions concerning future trends, or patterns, across multiple populations. This point relates to Sober's [134] distinction between ‘source laws' (concerned with the properties of processes) and ‘consequence laws' (concerned with their outcomes): a deeper understanding of ecology and developmental biology can potentially provide source laws for natural selection, which will complement those consequence laws currently studied through population genetics [114], enhancing the predictive power of evolutionary analyses.
The EES also raises new questions, informs established lines of inquiry and helps to provide more complete explanations for evolutionary phenomena. EES-style thinking has already contributed constructively to several research questions, including: how do complex novel traits originate? [27,49,57,131,135–137]; how does inclusive inheritance affect the evolutionary process? [60–63,67,68,79,80,138–140]; and how do macro-evolutionary patterns arise? [16,22,56,60,76,141]. In addition, the EES points to some novel lines of inquiry that hitherto have received little attention. Documenting the extent of developmental bias and niche construction becomes of far greater interest to evolutionary biologists once they are recognized as sources of adaptation and diversification. Likewise, questions about the role of plasticity in evolutionary innovation become far more fundamental with a constructive rather than a programed conception of development. Exactly how constructive development can be incorporated into formal evolutionary models is a central issue for the future.
6. The value of an extended evolutionary synthesis
Evolutionary biology has never been more vibrant, and it would be a distortion to characterize it as in a (Kuhnian) state of ‘crisis’. In the EES, all processes central to contemporary evolutionary theory (e.g. natural selection, genetic drift, Mendelian inheritance), and its empirical findings, remain important; in this respect, the EES requires no ‘revolution’. In fact, modern thinking in philosophy of science challenges the hypothesis that scientific change occurs through a single kind of revolution [1,142].
Nevertheless, our analysis suggests that the EES is more than simply an extension of ‘business as usual’ science: it requires conceptual change [15]. The additional evolutionary processes that the EES highlights are more than just non-essential ‘add-ons’ [10] and may be as important in shaping evolution as those recognized within the field over the past century. Consequently, the requisite changes are non-trivial. Irrespective of how this debate unfolds, researchers will continue to make use of the existing quantitative machinery of evolutionary theory; indeed, formal models that incorporate aspects of developmental plasticity, inclusive inheritance and niche construction are already being developed.
Our analysis is motivated by the belief that there is heuristic value in specifying its conceptual structure in sufficient detail for the EES to serve as an alternative ‘ecological-developmental perspective’, to be deployed alongside more traditional standpoints to stimulate useful work. We believe that a plurality of perspectives in science is healthy, as it encourages consideration of a greater diversity of hypotheses, and instigates empirical research, including the investigation of new phenomena. This stance is shared by Arnold [7], who writes: ‘to synthesize, we need diverse perspectives and bridges between them’. By highlighting differences in perspective, we hope to encourage research that distinguishes between alternative expectations and resolves contention. By drawing attention to the need for source laws, we believe that the EES offers the prospect of greater predictive power within the field. By encouraging greater reflection on the plurality of the underlying causes of evolution, the EES should deepen understanding of the mechanisms of evolution.
A further benefit potentially comes through strengthening ties to adjacent disciplines, such as ecology [76,143,144], or the human sciences, including archaeology, biological anthropology, developmental psychology, epidemiology and economics [145–150], where some of these ideas are already starting to have an impact. Moreover, other advances in biology potentially take on new significance within the EES. For instance, the emphasis on inclusive inheritance potentially gives multi-level selection even greater significance, as selection can operate on all forms of heritable variation. Another case is genome evolution, where horizontal gene transfer in prokaryotes, and genetic transfer from endosymbionts in eukaryotes [151], can be understood as part of a broader suite of phenomena with the propensity to propagate horizontally (e.g. social transmission, ecological inheritance). The recognition that genome change is an active cell-mediated physiological process that responds to challenging life-history events [152] fits neatly with the EES's treatment of plasticity. The EES perspective may also facilitate implementation of approaches from computer science that enable mathematical representation of complex dynamic systems, such as connectionist models of memory and learning applied to model genotype to phenotype relations [153]. The EES will be of value in bringing together researchers from diverse fields who share its ecological-developmental perspective.
We expect that evolutionary biology will now enter a phase in which the merits of the EES will be evaluated through empirical and theoretical research, and anticipate that it will contribute constructively to the further evolution of evolutionary theory.
Authors' contributions
K.L., T.U. and J.O.-S. conceived of the project and took the lead in design, discussion, synthesis, coordination and writing. All authors brought distinctive expertise to the collaboration and contributed importantly to the ideas represented, as well as through the drafting and revising of the article.
Competing interests
We declare we have no competing interests.
Funding
Research supported in part by an ERC Advanced Grant to K.N.L., a Royal Society URF and a Wallenberg Academy Fellowship to T.U., and by the Morrison Institute for Population and Resource Studies at Stanford University (M.W.F.).
Acknowledgements We are grateful to Wallace Arthur, Patrick Bateson, Gillian Brown, Doug Erwin, Doug Futuyma, Scott Gilbert, Marc Kirschner, Thomas Morgan and Mary Jane West-Eberhard for helpful comments on earlier drafts.
FootnotesFraud is rare. Suspicion isn't. EPA/MICHAEL REYNOLDS
Nearly half of Americans say that voter fraud occurs at least somewhat often according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll, a viewpoint at odds with studies showing it rarely occurs in U.S. elections.
The poll also finds 63 percent of voters are confident that votes in this year’s presidential election will be counted accurately, down from about 7 in 10 in 2004.
Republicans and Donald Trump supporters express the greatest concern about voter fraud and election accuracy -- worries which the GOP nominee has stoked on the campaign trail. The dynamic marks a reversal from 2004, when Democrats were more doubtful about the legitimacy of the vote.
The Post-ABC poll finds 46 percent of registered voters say voter fraud -- described as multiple votes being cast by a single person, or an ineligible person casting a ballot -- occurs very or somewhat often, while 50 percent say it occurs occasionally or rarely. Over two-thirds of Trump voters say voter fraud occurs often, compared with less than one-third of Clinton supporters. Whatever the partisan differences, at least one-fifth of every major demographic and political group says voter fraud occurs somewhat or very often.
The prevalence of voter fraud appears to be widely overestimated. A 2012 investigation by the News21 investigative reporting project published in The Washington Post found only 2,068 cases of alleged voter fraud had been reported since 2000, including only 10 cases of voter impersonation over the entire period. A separate study by Loyola Law School professor Justen Levitt found 241 potentially fraudulent ballots over a 14-year period out of 1 billion ballots cast.
The Post-ABC poll also finds a sizable gap in skepticism of vote counting accuracy between Clinton and Trump supporters. Just under half of Trump supporters (49 percent) say they are “not too” or “not at all” confident” votes will be counted accurately, while just 18 percent of Clinton supporters are similarly skeptical.
That's a reverse in skepticism from 2004 when supporters of Democrat John Kerry were far more likely to think votes would not be counted properly than backers of Republican George W. Bush -- then, 44 percent of Kerry supporters and just 14 percent of Bush supporters were not confident that votes would be accurately counted.
Democrats skepticism of votes being counted accurately is likely due to the contested outcome of the 2000 presidential election, when the U.S. Supreme Court ordered manual vote recount in Florida, resulting in George W. Bush winning the state and the presidency. Trump supporters' heightened concerned about the vote count is likely fueled by the candidate's own statements. Last month, Trump warned that the election might be "rigged" against him, saying "we may have people vote 10 times."
What may matter most heading into the fall is how seriously people perceive the voting process as it occurs, and whether candidates raise questions about its legitimacy that amplify concerns that exist today. Skepticism can linger even if all goes smoothly, as in 2004 when Bush won by a significant margin and Kerry conceded quickly. A Post-ABC poll one month after the election found 49 percent of Kerry's supporters saying they were not confident the vote was counted accurately, hardly changed from the final days before Election Day.
The Post-ABC poll was conducted September 5-8 among a random national sample of 1,002 adults reached on cellular and landline phones. The margin of sampling error is plus or minus 3.5 percentage points for overall results; the error margin is four points among the sample of 842 registered voters.DAN DUNKLEY/SPL
Forget the psychiatrist’s couch. Your own bed could one day be a setting for psychotherapy. Targeted brain training during sleep can lessen the effects of fearful memories, according to a study published today in Nature Neuroscience1. Researchers say that the technique could ultimately be used to treat psychiatric disorders, such as phobias and post-traumatic stress disorders.
Today, those conditions are most commonly treated using ‘exposure therapy’, which requires patients to intentionally relive their fears. With repeated exposures in the safety of a therapist’s consulting room, patients can learn to reduce their responses to traumatic cues — suggesting that memories are being altered. But the treatment itself can be intolerably painful for some patients, especially at first. In the latest study, neuroscientist Katherina Hauner and her colleagues at the Feinberg School of Medicine at Northwestern University in Chicago, Illinois, devised a form of exposure therapy that works while people snooze.
“It’s fascinating, and very promising,” says Daniela Schiller, a neuroscientist at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York. “We used to think you need awareness and conscious understanding of your emotional responses in order to change them.”
Instant replay
To create fearful memories, Hauner’s team delivered mild electric shocks to study participants as they viewed pictures of faces that were paired with a distinct odour, such as lemon or mint. People began to sweat slightly on seeing the pictures and smelling the odours, anticipating that they would get a shock.
Soon after the training, participants napped in the lab while the researchers monitored their brain waves with electrodes placed on their scalps. When the volunteers entered slow-wave sleep — a stage during which recent memories are replayed and reinforced — the team released one of the fear-linked odours. By administering the odour at 30-second intervals, the researchers were trying to trigger the memory of the corresponding face over and over again — this time without delivering electric shocks. Just like when they were awake, the sleeping subjects showed increased sweating when exposed to the odour, but the effect gradually subsided.
The reduced effect persisted after sleep. When awake, people showed diminished fear responses when exposed to the odour–face combination that had been triggered repeatedly during sleep. Activity changes in the amygdala, a region of the brain involved in emotion and fear, suggest that the treatment did not erase the fearful memory, but rather that it created new, innocuous associations with the odour–face combination. People who slept longer and received more treatment benefited most from the procedure.
“It’s really paradoxical,” says Jan Born, a neuroscientist at the University of Tübingen in Germany, noting that the spontaneous replay of memories during sleep is typically thought to strengthen rather than weaken learning.
Hauner explains that repeated activation of a single fearful memory during sleep probably works more like real exposure therapy and less like a natural replay of memories at night, in which memories are triggered haphazardly. More work is needed, she says, to determine how long the treatment lasts and whether overnight sleep might affect it.
As for using the technique therapeutically, Hauner notes that real traumatic memories, especially very old ones, could be much more complicated to treat than the simple scenarios engineered in the lab. “This is a very novel area,” she says. “I think the process has to be refined.”President Obama on Thursday announced a plan to deal with reports of healthcare premium increases to his signature Affordable Care Act, also known as "Obamacare." "These premium increases do make healthcare less affordable," Obama said in Miami. (Reuters)
President Obama said Thursday that the Affordable Care Act is working, but he acknowledged that “growing pains” are causing some Americans to be hurt by escalating insurance prices in marketplaces created under the law.
The president said rising premiums and diminished competition in ACA insurance exchanges in some states are especially problematic for people who do not qualify for federal subsidies that the law provides. He proposed that his successor in the White House and the next Congress provide larger tax credits to encourage young adults to buy coverage through the marketplaces and raise the income thresholds to make the subsidies available to more middle-class families.
Obama portrayed the 2010 law revising the health-care system as a “starter home,” saying, “You hope over time you can make improvements.” He sought to tamp down public concern that some major insurance companies are abandoning the marketplaces that are a core part of the law and that remaining insurers are raising their rates. The higher prices do not affect most Americans who still get coverage through a job, the president said, and most of the approximately 10 million people with marketplace health plans are buffered by their subsidies.
Nevertheless, he said, “If you are one of the people who... doesn't qualify for a tax credit, these premium increases do make insurance less affordable.” He cast the idea of expanding subsidies as a way to “smooth out the kinks” in the law at a time when the ACA already has helped to drive down the ranks of the uninsured to about 10 percent of the U.S. population. “I don't want anyone to be left out without health insurance,” Obama said.
His 50-minute speech in Miami was a recitation of the law's accomplishments, a repudiation of persistent Republican efforts to tear it down and a road map for refining the law attached to his name — Obamacare — after his tenure in the White House. Coming less than two weeks before the fourth enrollment season begins on Nov. 1 in ACA marketplaces, his remarks also were an attempt to frame the law's benefits as the administration will face a fresh test of the popularity of the health plans the law created.
The subsidy expansions that he proposed embroider on an idea he first broached in an article he wrote about the law that was published in July in the Journal of the American Medical Association. The president also renewed his urging for additional states to join the 31 that have expanded Medicaid as the ACA allows. And he reiterated a position he has adopted this year that consumers would be helped if the government allowed a public insurance alternative in parts of the country that lack enough private companies selling ACA health plans to create market competition.
Reciting a familiar list of ways the law has helped people, whether they have marketplace insurance or any other kind, the president said that the doomsday predictions of the law's GOP naysayers have not been borne out. But he said that “doesn’t mean there aren’t some legitimate concerns about how the law is working now. The main issue has to do with folks who |
idea, male mice are more susceptible to CIA than females.96 Thus, the Th1/Th17 response induced by CFA in CIA models may be responsible for differences between animal and human studies. Interest in the role for IL-17 found in CIA has led to recent clinical studies examining the role of IL-17 and IL-23 (a cytokine that supports Th17 responses) in the joints of RA patients. Although the p19 component of IL-23 has been detected in patients with RA, a recent study found that the p40 subunit of IL-23 was not expressed.97 In another study, Th1 cells were more abundant than Th17 cells in the joint.98 In support of a role for estrogen in clinical RA, one study found that free estrogen levels in the synovial fluid of men with RA were increased two-fold compared to controls, similar to estrogen levels in women with RA.99 In addition, incidence rates of RA in men increase with age as androgen levels decrease and Th2 responses increase.100 Overall, these findings suggest that estrogen increases RA-mediated pathology. Although women are protected from RA during pregnancy,49 pregnancies usually occur when women are <50 years old. Thus, the high estrogen levels present during pregnancy may reduce acute cell-mediated pathology (ie, inhibit macrophages and T cells) helping to alleviate symptoms.
Diabetes: Acute Cell-Mediated Disease Although female NOD mice are more likely to develop diabetes than males, autoimmune diabetes in humans occurs slightly more often in males.52 More recently, the question of whether NOD mice represent an accurate pathological picture of type I diabetes has arisen.82 The disease phenotype in humans and mice is different. In female NOD mice the lymphocytic infiltrate is extensive, whereas in human insulitis few leukocytes are detectable in the islets. Furthermore, infections such as CVB3 prevent disease in NOD mice but are thought to be primary triggering events for diabetes, pancreatitis, and other autoimmune diseases in humans.24,101,102 More appropriate animal models for diabetes are urgently needed. Because neutralizing antibody is known to be critical for reducing CVB3 infection in females,103 males may develop worse viral-induced pancreatic disease.
Systemic Sclerosis: Chronic Fibrotic Disease Systemic sclerosis is regarded as the prototypic fibrotic disease. Although a relatively uncommon disease, it has the highest case-specific mortality of any of the autoimmune rheumatic diseases because of organ-based vascular and fibrotic complications, highlighting that most of the mortality because of chronic inflammatory conditions is attributable to fibrosis.44 Pathological characteristics of human disease and animal models include overexpression of the profibrotic cytokine TGF-β, autoreactivity against extracellular matrix proteins, such as collagen, and increased numbers of MCs, eosinophils, and basophils—features associated with chronic pathology. Some of the clinical and immunological aspects of the disease resemble dermatomyositis and RA, diseases that are severe later in life, have an increased prevalence in females, and are associated with a Th2 response.
MS: Acute Mixed Cell and Antibody-Mediated Disease MS is typically thought of as a Th1/Th17-mediated disease because its animal model, EAE, has a Th1/Th17 phenotype.104 Most patients develop MS when they are <50 years old suggesting a cell-mediated pathology. Estrogen treatment decreases EAE and TNF-α levels if administered before disease starts in murine models, but it has no significant affect once disease has begun.46,105 Estrogen has been found to increase Treg numbers in EAE in C57BL/6 mice, which is associated with its suppressive ability.106 The possibility that EAE has a Th1-mediated acute pathology and a Th2-mediated chronic pathology is supported by the observation that male SJL mice only develop acute EAE whereas female SJL mice develop chronic disease.96 Additional evidence that MS is a Th1-mediated disease comes from studies in patients in which clinically defined relapsing-remitting MS was exacerbated when patients were treated with IFN-γ.107 Furthermore, men develop more severe inflammation than women with MS, whereas pregnancy in humans and mice decreases disease.108 If MS is an acute Th1-mediated disease, why is there an increased prevalence in females? One possible reason is the existence of several subgroups of patients with different pathogeneses.104 Although some patients display a more Th1-mediated disease (fulminate acute disease) involving macrophage-mediated demyelination (similar to EAE), a subset of patients develop antibody-mediated demyelination associated with a Th2-type response.104 Even in a subset of patients with Th1-mediated pathology, there can be an abundance of granulocytes and eosinophils indicative of a mixed Th1/Th2 response.104 This could explain both the early appearance of disease (<50 years) and the increased incidence in women.
Hashimoto’s Thyroiditis: Antibody-Mediated and Fibrotic Disease In Hashimoto’s thyroiditis there is an extensive infiltration of the thyroid gland with lymphocytes, plasma cells (antibody-producing B cells), and macrophages as well as germinal center formation.50 Thyroid follicles are progressively destroyed by IC deposition and complement attack resulting in necrosis, fibrosis, and hypothyroidism. The acute and chronic phase of Hashimoto’s occurs predominantly in women, and female animals also develop more severe experimental autoimmune thyroiditis.50 Increased disease in experimental autoimmune thyroiditis is dependent on sex hormones, with estrogen increasing and testosterone decreasing severity in mice.109 Although disease in experimental autoimmune thyroiditis is Th1-mediated, this may be attributable to the effect of using CFA as an adjuvant in the animal model, as discussed earlier, because only modest evidence for the role of cell-mediated injury has been shown for patients.50
Myocarditis/Dilated Cardiomyopathy: Acute Cell-Mediated to Chronic Fibrotic Disease Myocarditis and atherosclerosis are more prevalent in men.110 Women respond to infection or trauma with less inflammation in the heart compared to men.5,9 Likewise, animal studies have consistently shown that females are protected from acute myocardial injury during ischemia, burn, and sepsis.9 In CVB3-induced myocarditis, male mice develop significantly increased acute inflammation compared to females, yet there is no difference in viral replication in the heart.29,32 It is interesting to note that two outbreaks of CVB3 infection in humans have demonstrated no sex difference in the rate of infection,111,112 even though a clear increase in incidence and mortality of heart disease occurs in men,110,113 indicating that CVB3 increases heart disease by acting as an adjuvant.24 In experimental autoimmune myocarditis, a Th17 response has been shown to be necessary for the development of disease in mice.114,115 Again, the use of CFA as an adjuvant may be responsible for this profile. In CVB3-induced myocarditis we observe Th17 cells in the heart during acute myocarditis, but IL-17 levels are generally not increased in male mice indicating that a Th17 response does not account for sex differences in acute inflammation. However, IL-17 was found to be important in amplifying the chronic, fibrotic stage of experimental autoimmune myocarditis in IFN-γR-deficient mice,115 similar to the increased fibrosis observed in IFN-γ-deficient mice in CVB3-induced myocarditis.43 Thus, IL-17 may increase the CD11b+ neutrophil infiltrate during acute myocarditis and contribute to chronic pathology by increasing fibrosis leading to dilated cardiomyopathy. In CVB3-induced myocarditis, TLR4 signaling increases proinflammatory cytokines and acute inflammation in both sexes.29,32 Similarly, CVB3 infection increases Tim-3 signaling and numbers of CD4+Foxp3+ and CD4+Tim-3+CTLA4+ Tregs, which decrease Th1 inflammation in both sexes.32,33,54 However, an increased Th2 response in females reduces the acute inflammatory response compared to males. Activation of the immune response by TLR and regulation by Tim-3 and Treg occur not only in heart disease but also in other autoimmune diseases. For example, Tim-3 reduces inflammation in EAE and diabetes animal models,35 whereas TLR-mediated signaling increases inflammation.34,36 Tim-3 expression may be associated with Th2 responses in females because of its location in the IL-4 gene complex (estrogen increases IL-4 in females).8,32,35 Testosterone is known to increase MC and macrophage numbers and may also increase TLR4 levels on antigen-presenting cells.32,116 Estrogen receptor signaling not only decreases Th1 responses but also reduces MC and macrophage numbers.8,32,116,117 Thus, sex hormones alter expression of pro- and anti-inflammatory signaling pathways that determine the severity of acute inflammation. However, the effect of sex hormones on chronic pathology is primarily unknown. Myocarditis progresses from an acute Th1 response to chronic Th2-mediated fibrosis and dilated cardiomyopathy.43,48 Thus, the increased prevalence of autoimmune diseases in women may be attributable to an increased Th2 response after infection that promotes autoantibody production, chronic inflammation, and fibrosis, possibly explaining why women given estrogen replacement therapy after menopause develop worse heart disease.118 Open in a separate window
Conclusions Understanding the mechanisms behind the increased incidence of autoimmune diseases in women has remained elusive. Our recent findings that cross talk between TLR4 and Tim-3 signaling determines the severity of inflammation between sexes in heart disease has led us to examine other autoimmune diseases for Th1- versus Th2-mediated pathology. Based on our understanding of the pathogenesis of disease, we have examined autoimmune diseases according to age and sex and found that the incidence of autoimmune diseases falls into a male/female pattern based on pathology. Male-predominant autoimmune diseases usually manifest clinically (ie, show signs and symptoms of clinical disease) before age 50 and are characterized by acute inflammation and a Th1-type response, whereas autoimmune diseases with an increased incidence in females that occur early in life have a clear antibody-mediated pathology. Autoimmune diseases with an increased incidence in females appear clinically later in life when chronic pathology, fibrosis, and increased numbers of autoantibodies are present. This distinction between acute and chronic pathology in autoimmune diseases, which has been primarily overlooked in both animal models and the clinical setting, greatly impacts our understanding of the pathogenesis of disease and provides a framework for understanding differences in the prevalence of autoimmune diseases between men and women. Because acute and chronic phases of disease are regulated differently in males and females, distinguishing these two pathological phases in animal models and patients could lead to more effective treatments.From Forbes:
Mexican telecom mogul Carlos Slim Helú became The New York Times’ largest single investor after exercising warrants that more than doubled his stake in the venerable media company, to nearly 17% Wednesday.
Slim received these warrants for lending the New York Times company $0.25 billion (or roughly 0.4% of his net worth) during the crash a half dozen years ago. His loans were repaid with interest within a few years, but he got to keep the warrants.
Slim, a business tycoon with a telecom empire that expands to 18 Latin American countries, paid $101.1 million to exercise warrants to acquire nearly 16 million shares of the company’s Class A stock at a price of over $6.36 a share, the company said, increasing his stake from 7 % to 16.8 %. Slim now owns nearly 28 million shares in total. Is it pure business or does the world’s third-richest man have other plans? Arturo Elías Ayub, Slim’s spokesperson and son-in-law, told me by e-mail that exercising the option to buy is “100% a financial investment.” Elías said that there is no intention of selling the shares or playing any role in The New York Times management, which Slim “continues to have confidence in and believes to be not only a valuable brand, but a creator of content.” … Buying into the “credibility and prestige” of an iconic media company such as the Times, said García, can also help him get rid of the reputation of a “monopolistic rich Mexican”. Despite expanding his charitable work, Slim continues to be a controversial figure in Latin America because of his enormous wealth in a continent with one of the highest levels of inequality in the world. América Móvil (NYSE:AMX), the flagship telecom company controlled by Slim and his children, controls 70% of the mobile phones in Mexico, and 80% of the country’s landlines. Last year, Mexican regulatory authorities ordered it to divest to allow competition in the telecom sector. Andrew Paxman, a business historian at the Centro de Investigación y Docencia Económicas (CIDE), a respected Mexican think tank, believes the investment is a vote of confidence in the Times. Asked if it’s purely business, he responded: “I don’t think this is an either or. Slim is certainly motivated in part by business, having seen that The New York Times’s move to monetize its website has proven fairly successful.” But Paxman did not rule out that Slim would seek to exert editorial influence–as he does in Mexico with some publications via loans, generous ad buys, or covert stakes. Forbes data shows that Slim is the world’s third richest person, behind Bill Gates and Warren Buffett. Slim has a net worth that Forbes estimates at $71.9 billion.
How does this deal not make sense for Slim?
He’s a political billionaire — he’s an excellent businessman, but it’s not like he invented the telephone. (President Salinas sold him the Mexican government’s telecom monopoly and let him raise rates extravagantly. In return, Slim promised at the notorious 1993 Billionaire’s Banquet at the president’s mansion in Mexico City, Slim promised to donate $25 million to the ruling party’s re-election campaign.)
I believe (but could be wrong) that the stock Slim owns gives him less of a vote than the prime stock owned by the Sulzberger heirs, but so what? He now owns enough of the New York Times to hold a veto over the central hub of the world’s news media. By dumping NYT stock he can batter its stock price and get the numerous Sulzberger heirs angry at NYT management. It might cost Slim 0.1% of his fortune to punish NYT management for not following his editorial wishes, but that’s a tiny cost compared to the value of his veto power.
If you were the editor of the NYT, which would you think is a safer topic to crusade upon in 2015:
- the exorbitant long distance rates the sometimes Richest Man in the World charges poor Mexican immigrants to speak to their loved ones in Mexico?
- Or, the need for gender neutral bathrooms at middle schools to make transgender tweens comfortable?
The latter isn’t going to suddenly get you fired because you’ve peeved your largest shareholder.In news that is not remotely shocking, Matt Maiocco is reporting Jim Tomsula is scheduled to earn $3.5 million per yearas the head coach of the San Francisco 49ers. According to Maiocco, only Gus Bradley, Mike McCoy and Ron Rivera make less than Tomsula.
Plenty of people will quickly jump on this as a sign the 49ers are going cheap, reverting to the days of John York. The drop from Jim Harbaugh's $5 million per year certainly makes it easy to jump to that conclusion, but in some ways I agree with what Maiocco said about the money issues:
Regardless, I don't think move from Jim Harbaugh was about money. It had more to do with working relationship/compatibility with upstairs. — Matt Maiocco (@MaioccoCSN) January 19, 2015
Personal relationships are an important aspect of this coaching change. I think Trent Baalke and Jed York viewed Jim Harbaugh as a good coach, but not good enough to put up with his personality quirks. They view Baalke's philosophy as what they want to build upon, and they want a coach who will agree with that. In promoting Jim Tomsula, the expected result is a lower salary. After all, his lack of coordinator experience means he will inherently get a lower salary. It is obviously a benefit, but I don't think the switch was made just to save $1.5 million per year.ISLAMABAD: A university in Uttar Pradesh, India has expelled as many as 67 Kashmiri students for celebrating Pakistan's victory against India in a thrilling Asia Cup cricket match.
The university initially decided to suspend only the offending students but following a `three-tier' inquiry, it was decided to suspend as many as 67 students because they didn't reveal the names of the few offenders, PTV reported.
The match was being screened at one of university's hostels where both local and Kashmiri students were watching the game. The site became troubled when a few Kashmiris reportedly clapped every time a wicket of Indian player would fall. Students later cherished Pakistan's victory and even shouted Pakistan Zindabad.
Hundreds of male and female students from Indian occupied Kashmir (IoK) are enrolled at the university in various courses.
Parents of the suspended students told the media that many students were attacked and manhandled by the locals. Kashmiri students even reported vandalism in their hostel wards.New micro items for Advanced Warfare are now available for purchase on PlayStation Netowrk for both PS4 and PS3, and on PC, including: Call of Duty Chmapionship Premium Personalization Pack, Extra Create-A-Class Slots, Extra Armory Slots, and Atlas Gorge MP map.
Players will have ability to buy new Create-A-Class slots, up to 50 additional, for $1.99. Players will also be able to buy more Armory Slots for $1.99, giving an additional 120 slots. The Extra Armory Slot will be available 5 different times, meaning you can own up to 600 additional armory slots.
Also, Atlas Gorge, the bonus multiplayer map included with the Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare Collector’s Edition and Season Pass, will available for everyone to purchase for $4.99. Atlas Gorge is a remake of Call of Duty 4’s Pipeline.
Here are the new items that will be available now on PlayStation and PC:
Championship Premium Personalization Pack – $3.99 – Get ready for the 2015 Call of Duty Championships with the Championship Premium Personalization Pack. Dominate the competition with the golden weapon camo, three reticles, a calling card, and an emblem layer. Plus an extra Championship Exoskeleton and Helmet.
Extra Armory Slots – $1.99 – The Extra Armory Slots pack adds 120 extra armory slots to increase the number of items that can be stored in the redeemable loot section of your armory, giving you extra armory slots to store additional Weapon Loot and Character Gear.
Extra Create-A-Class Slots – $1.99 – The Extra Slots pack increases the number of customizable Create-A-Class Slots with 50 Additional Slots. Carefully tune your added Create a Class Slots and be ready for whatever the competition throws at you.
Atlas Gorge – $4.99 – Experience the Atlas Gorge Multiplayer Map, a re-envisioning of the fan favorite Call of Duty® 4: Modern Warfare® map, Pipeline. Explore the map’s new verticality, empowered by Advanced Warfare’s exoskeleton technology, and take control of the devastating map-based turret scorestreak. Do not purchase if you already own Call of Duty®: Advanced Warfare Season Pass.
All of the items above are available now on Xbox Live, PSN, and PC.
Visit the in-game store and your platforms store to purchase the items!As I wrote recently about Star Wars: The Last Jedi’s international prospects, it faces an uphill battle in trying to win over new business in many foreign territories because the Star Wars phenomenon is heavily centered in English-speaking territories, far more so than other studio tent-pole franchises.
You’ll see what I mean if we look at where the box office has been concentrated for the past two Star Wars films, Episode VII, The Force Awakens, and the spin-off movie Rogue One: A Star Wars Story. Whereas the primarily English-speaking countries of the United States, Canada, Australia and the United Kingdom typically account for 36 percent of the worldwide gross box office for a Hollywood blockbuster, in the case of The Force Awakens the global share captured by those four countries was 56 percent; in the case of Rogue One it was 62 percent.
Now the fact that moviegoers in those four English-dominant countries favor Star Wars films far more than those in non-English speaking countries do isn’t necessarily a problem in itself, it’s just an historical fact. The Star Wars movies became cultural fixtures in English-speaking territories back in the days of the original trilogy, entering the cultural zeitgeist in the 1970s and 1980s and maintaining a persistent hold on moviegoers in a way they never did in say, China, Mexico, India or South Korea. The movies simply never caught on in many places that were too under-screened or too poor to fully embrace the original trilogy at the time.
Read More: International Box Office: Where 'The Last Jedi' Faces An Uphill Battle
In releasing their Star Wars pictures, the executives at Disney and Lucasfilm are aware of these historical realities, and there’s not much they can do about them. Their main task is to work to maintain the fervor for Star Wars films in their traditional strongholds, and to hope that they can fan the flames of interest among new fans to try and grow the overseas markets.
The trend from Force Awakens to Rogue One wasn’t encouraging on that score. The non-North America/Australia/UK drop in share from 44 percent to 38 percent was a big one, and if it continues to fall with The Last Jedi, that would signal a crisis for the Star Wars brand and for Disney’s $4 billion investment in Lucasfilm.
So far though, the news has been reassuring for Disney, as The Last Jedi is playing in overseas markets more like The Force Awakens did and less like Rogue One, at least as far as the overseas territory market share distribution goes. China won’t open until January 5th, so adjusting for that fact, The Last Jedi has thus far earned 48 percent of its box office from ex-China overseas territories, about the same as what The Force Awakens did. China is still a big open question, and based on the very early pre-sales data it’s looking like The Last Jedi may under-perform there even relative to its shrunken expectations, but otherwise it looks like the international Star Wars brand is still alive and well.
The reception The Last Jedi has received varies from territory to territory. Let’s look at a few of the big ones to see how it has fared relative to The Force Awakens and Rogue One. Since China hasn’t entered the picture yet, when discussing overseas territories I’ll look at how each country has contributed to the ex-China box office results for each of the three recent Star Wars movies.
North America. As one of the most popular movie franchises America and Canada have ever seen, it was never a question that The Last Jedi was going to make big bucks in North America. But after its huge, nearly pre-guaranteed $220 million opening weekend, the question was how well it would hold its audience. The following days and the second weekend weren’t encouraging on that score, as the picture suffered the biggest second frame plunge in box office history. But it has recovered somewhat since, and now looks certain to hold on and beat the grosses of the last picture, Rogue One. It won’t be a home run performance, but it won’t be quite the catastrophe that seemed to be shaping up either.
Japan. Japan is alone among the big Asian territories in its love for the Star Wars movies. The original trilogy did far, far better there than in China, South Korea, and India, all of which were impoverished at the time, and even as the other countries have caught up, Japan remained a rock solid territory for the franchise over the years. The Force Awakens over-indexed there by earning 9.7 percent of its ex-China international business from Japan. But the trend has been discouraging since then. Rogue One contributed just 8.6 percent of the ex-China revenue for that film. And with The Last Jedi it has been even worse, with just 7.3 percent of the global pie coming from the land of the rising sun. For Japan’s market share contribution to drop by more than 25 percent over the last two films is an alarming trend.
India. India is the world’s fourth-largest movie market, but it tends to be a spotty territory for Hollywood movies. The biggest American movie ever to release there was last year’s Jungle Book, which earned only $24 million there, or 4% of its overseas gross, even though India represents 7% of the non-North American movie market. Star Wars movies get very little attention in India, never earning as much as one-half of one percent of their global revenue in the Asian sub-continent. Rogue One had a terrifying drop there, contributing just 0.25 percent of the film’s ex-China box office, down by nearly half from the 0.45 percent it provided to The Force Awakens. The Last Jedi has recovered nicely, contributing 0.43 percent. Still, with only $2 million in box office in nearly two weeks, India has been an extremely modest territory for the picture. The current local box office hit Tiger Zinda Hai has earned $31 million there, 15 times as much, in half the amount of time.
United Kingdom. The UK has always been an extremely reliable territory for Star Wars over the years, the biggest outside the United States. Though it accounts for just 8 percent of ex-China overseas movie ticket revenues, it kicked in 16.2 percent of The Force Awakens’ revenues, and 17.9 percent for Rogue One. The territory is down from that peak with The Last Jedi, but at 16.8 percent thus far, it’s still playing its part.
France. The French-speaking territory that includes not only France but also Monaco, Tunisia, Algeria and Morocco, has been a solid participant in the Star Wars craze over the years. It accounted for 8.8 percent of the ex-China overseas take of the The Force Awakens. But the trend has been a downward one since, with 8.6 percent of Rogue One’s global share coming from France, and 8.2 percent so far for The Last Jedi.
South Korea. The world’s sixth-biggest ex-North American territory can be a tough one for Hollywood movies because so much of the revenue there is earned by the robust local industry, which often takes a 50% and higher share of annual ticket revenues. And that has been an unfortunate fact for all of the Star Wars movies, which have barely penetrated this movie-loving nation. While South Korea’s tiny population comprises barely 0.5 percent of the people in the world, it accounts for 7 percent of the ex-China box office, but it only provided 2.4 percent of The Force Awakens’ global share, and a tepid 1.6 percent for Rogue One. With 1.8 percent for The Last Jedi the trend has abated, but Korea is still a woefully under-performing territory for the Star Wars franchise.
Australia. Australia has always been a powerhouse performer for Star Wars, ranking as the franchise’s fifth biggest overseas territory for years. It experienced a huge Star Wars bump when Rogue One collected 8.2 percent of its global ex-China share there, up from 6.7 percent for The Force Awakens, but it has since reverted back to more typical numbers. The Last Jedi has ginned up 6.8 percent of its ex-China overseas gross in Australia so far.
Germany. Germany has been a rock solid bastion of support for Star Wars from the beginning. Although it hasn’t grown over the recent three pictures, it has held a consistent 10 to 11 percent share of the ex-China overseas pie. It dropped from the 11 percent it furnished to The Force Awakens’ global haul down to 10.2 percent for Rogue One, but it’s back up to 10.8 percent thus far for The Last Jedi.
Mexico. America’s southern neighbor accounts for a little over 3% of the annual ex-China foreign box office, but it’s a big territory for Hollywood action flicks, which often over-index there. Yet with the Star Wars movies Mexico has never quite held up its expected share, accounting for only 2.7 percent of the ex-China overseas gross for The Force Awakens, 2.5 percent for Rogue One, and 2.6 percent so far for The Last Jedi.
China. The Middle Kingdom's huge population contributed fully 20 percent of the world's movie ticket revenue this year, making it bigger than the next four overseas territories combined. It would be a huge win for Disney to capture that audience the way it has with its current animated hit, Coco, which will finish its PRC box office run with around $175 million. But soft early presales, and an audience that has shown only moderate interest in The Force Awakens and Rogue One, mean it's unlikely that Star Wars: The Last Jedi will earn anywhere near Coco's ultimate gross. It would do well to earn half that amount. The Star Wars film should do well in its opening weekend, when the only serious competition will be Youth, a local nostalgic drama set during the days of China's Cultural Revolution. But when Jumanji arrives the following weekend, it will be a real surprise if The Last Jedi prevails in that head-to-head battle.
Overall, if the job of The Last Jedi was to hold on to its existing fan base and to attract new fans to the Star Wars franchise from around the world, it hasn't quite been up to the task.
Read More: Where The 'Last Jedi's Grosses Would Be If It Performed Like A Normal 'Star Wars' MovieThe ship arrived in Indian waters on 8 October India has blocked entry to a former US naval ship heading for break-up at a scrap yard on its west coast, citing environmental and pollution concerns. The ministry of environment and forests said it inspected Platinum-II and found the ship contained toxic material. There are also concerns that the ship has been brought into India with false documentation, the ministry says. The ship reached Indian waters last month, but was not allowed to dock until an investigation was completed. A team inspected the ship on October 19 and 20 and submitted its report to the ministry on 26 October. "The ship violated the US Toxic Substances Control Act... There have also been allegations that the ship has been brought into India with a falsified flag and registry," a note from the ministry of environment to the Gujarat Maritime Board said. "The ministry of environment and forests is of the view that granting permission for beaching and breaking purposes of the ship will not be advisable," it adds. There has been no comment as yet from the private owners of Platinum-II. Ship graveyard The Platinum-II - formerly known as SS Oceanic or the SS Independence - was destined for the Alang ship-breaking yard. The Gujarat Maritime Board leases out the yard to ship-breakers. It is Asia's largest ship-breaking yard and known as the "graveyard of ships". Thousands of ships from around the world come to this section of Gujarat state's coastline to be dismantled. Workers manually take apart huge liners, past their prime, with very basic tools. Campaigners have been demanding the closure of the ship-breaking yards for many years now - they say the work adversely affects the health of the workers. The decision to prohibit the Platinum-II from docking has been welcomed by campaigners. "The order is a victory in the fight against toxic trafficking and dumping on third world countries," said Jim Puckett, executive director of the Basel Action Network, a member organisation of the coalition group, Indian Platform on Shipbreaking. "Until now, India has been reluctant to expose the horrors of its ship-breaking industry. Hopefully they are beginning to realise that this industry is not worth the legacy of toxic waste, occupational disease and death, and illegality it leaves in its wake." Asbestos poisoning There have long been environmental concerns surrounding the Alang ship-breaking yard. In 2006, the French government recalled the decommissioned aircraft carrier Clemenceau after a lengthy campaign by Greenpeace and other environmental groups who said the ship contained huge amounts of toxic chemicals, including asbestos. A report commissioned by the Indian government three years ago showed that one in six workers at the Alang shipyard showed signs of asbestos poisoning. It said many of the workers tested showed early signs of asbestosis - an incurable disease of the lungs. Activists say the yards are not equipped to handle asbestos.
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StumbleUpon What are these? E-mail this to a friend Printable versionN. Korea Sentences American Student To 15 Years Of Prison, Hard Labor
Enlarge this image toggle caption Xinhua News Agency/Getty Images Xinhua News Agency/Getty Images
What started out as a budget tour to Pyongyang, North Korea's capital, has stretched into an extended stay for 21-year-old University of Virginia student Otto Warmbier. State media reported Wednesday that North Korea's highest court convicted Warmbier of subversion and sentenced him to 15 years of prison and hard labor.
The offense? According to an apparent confession, Warmbier tried to steal a propaganda poster from his hotel.
"North Korea's sentencing of Otto Warmbier to 15 years' hard labor for a college-style prank is outrageous and shocking," said Phil Robertson, deputy Asia director for Human Rights Watch, in a statement. "Pyongyang should recognize this student's self-admitted mistake as a misdemeanor offense that it would be in most countries, release him on humanitarian grounds and send him home."
The White House has also called on North Korea to release Warmbier immediately, urging the country to grant him special amnesty.
Press Secretary Josh Earnest said Wednesday that the allegations against Warmbier "would not give rise to arrest or imprisonment in the United States or in just about any other country in the world."
Earnest also said, "It is increasingly clear that the North Korean government seeks to use these U.S. citizens as pawns to pursue a political agenda."
Warmbier was detained in early January while attempting to depart Pyongyang Sunan International Airport. North Korea did not make his detention public until February, as the United States was taking the lead in pushing for tough sanctions following the North's fourth nuclear test and long-range rocket launch.
It was unclear for several weeks following his detention what got Warmbier in trouble in North Korea. But on Feb. 29, the Ohio native was paraded in front of cameras and diplomats in Pyongyang, where he read a confession and public apology.
On camera, Warmbier said he stole the propaganda poster on behalf of a member of the Friendship United Methodist Church in Wyoming, Ohio, who wanted it "as a trophy." In exchange, he would receive a used car worth $10,000.
Video also showed Warmbier pleading for his release and breaking down in tears, calling the incident "the worst mistake of my life."
Previous American detainees have recanted their confessions following their release, saying they were made under duress and detailing how North Korean officials carefully orchestrate the events.
Warmbier is one of three North Americans known to be detained in North Korea. The U.S. has no embassy in Pyongyang, and its interests are represented by Sweden. The U.S. Embassy in Seoul directed questions about the incident to Washington.Any student of Econ 101 knows that economists measure costs by opportunity costs, meaning everything that is given up to get something else. Time spent interacting with the medical system could be used for other activities, like work and leisure. Moreover, spending time getting medical care is not fun. This time should be counted as part of the cost of health care.
Using the
American Time Use Survey
, I calculate that Americans age 15 and older collectively spent 847 million hours waiting for medical services to be provided in 2007. If we value all people’s time at the average hourly wage of production and nonsupervisory workers ($17.43 in 2007), Americans spent the equivalent of $240 billion on health care in 2007. Put another way, omitting patients’ time caused national health care expenditures to be undercounted by 11% in 2007.
Alan Krueger, Princeton economics professor,
in The NY TimesBombing JavaScript Fatigue with Minesweeper (Part 1)
Abhi Aiyer Blocked Unblock Follow Following Apr 17, 2016
Today I’m going to continue our class with a nice break from theory. Let’s use our fancy patterns and tools to make a time old classic: Minesweeper. Our final product will be a client-side Meteor + Redux Minesweeper application.
Ah yes, you in the back, you have your hand up. Do you have a question?
“Abhi, isn’t Meteor a full stack framework? So we’re building a client only app?”
Yes it is and yes we are. Today our goal is to feel comfortable building things with React and Redux.
“Then why use Meteor at all for this tutorial?”
Have you ever seen this picture?
Or this?
Let’s dive deeper. To run React the way production level code should be shipped we would need:
Build System — Managing external and internal dependencies, preprocess, file-watchers
2. Babel — You want ES6 right?
3. Flux Library — Good thing we’re already talking about Redux :)
4. Express or some abstraction like koa, sails, etc.
Credit: Tomas Holas
So to get a hello world app out as an initial project bootstrap, it could possibly take you hours to do and more hours to understand the tool.
So now that you know all the moving pieces, lets contrast this with Meteor.
Build System — Meteor Build Tool: handles preprocessing, compiling, babel for new language features Meteor Data — Solve the problems of express and koa by handling the server side implementation at the platform level. For more on the future of this checkout docs.apollostack.com
Both supplied by Meteor and handled for you as a Meteor developer. With recently introduced NPM support you can write code like every other JavaScript fatigued developer without the fatigue.
Let’s setup our project
First things first:
Project Structure:
Get something on the page:
Head over to your console.
Type: meteor
Boom.
Now we can get started with our project. Now we can focus on building out the important parts and not dilly-dallying with all the tooling overhead that most React developers have to deal with. Save yourself the fatigue. In the next part we will start diving deeper into the Redux part of a Minesweeper game. This post was meant to shed some love for the Meteor build tool and how easy it is for me to get started with new tutorials/or even new projects.
Part 2 is available here.
Full example:
This post is part of a series called Mastering Meteor and Redux. You can read the course syllabus here. Follow me on Twitter @abhiaiyer and I |
Pentagon, the State Department and the White House, the U.S. settled on the 3,000 to 5,000 troop number. An American official said intelligence assessments stated that Iraq was not at great risk of slipping into chaos in the absence of American forces, which was a factor in the decision.[66]
In October 2011, American officials pressed Iraqi leadership to meet again at President Talabani's compound to discuss the issue. This time the U.S. asked Iraq to take a stand on the question of immunity for troops, hoping to remove what had always been the biggest challenge. However, they misread Iraqi politics and the Iraqi public. Having watched the Arab Spring sweep across the region and still haunted by the traumas of this and previous wars, the Iraqis were unwilling to accept anything that infringed on their sovereignty.[66]
Iraqi leadership picked up on that sentiment quickly. As a result, they publicly said they would not support legal immunity for any American troops. Some American officials have privately said that pushing for that meeting—in essence forcing the Iraqis to take a public stand on such a controversial matter before working out the politics of presenting it to their constituents and to Parliament—was a severe tactical mistake that ended any possibility of keeping American troops past December 2011.[66]
After the pull out was announced, White House aides said the U.S. would keep its embassy in Baghdad and two consulates. They also said there will be about 4,000–5,000 defense contractors.[68]
See also [ edit ]
References [ edit ]
Provisional versions [ edit ]OSLO (Reuters) - Part of East Antarctica is more vulnerable than expected to a thaw that could trigger an unstoppable slide of ice into the ocean and raise world sea levels for thousands of years, a study showed on Sunday.
The Wilkes Basin in East Antarctica, stretching more than 1,000 km (600 miles) inland, has enough ice to raise sea levels by 3 to 4 meters (10-13 feet) if it were to melt as an effect of global warming, the report said.
The Wilkes is vulnerable because it is held in place by a small rim of ice, resting on bedrock below sea level by the coast of the frozen continent. That “ice plug” might melt away in coming centuries if ocean waters warm up.
“East Antarctica’s Wilkes Basin is like a bottle on a slant. Once uncorked, it empties out,” Matthias Mengel of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, lead author of the study in the journal Nature Climate Change, said in a statement.
Co-author Anders Levermann, also at Potsdam in Germany, told Reuters the main finding was that the ice flow would be irreversible, if set in motion. He said there was still time to limit warming to levels to keep the ice plug in place.
Almost 200 governments have promised to work out a U.N. deal by the end of 2015 to curb increasing emissions of man-made greenhouse gases that a U.N. panel says will cause more droughts, heatwaves, downpours and rising sea levels.
Worries about rising seas that could swamp low-lying areas from Shanghai to Florida focus most on ice in Greenland and West Antarctica, as well as far smaller amounts of ice in mountain ranges from the Himalayas to the Andes.
Sunday’s study is among the first to gauge risks in East Antarctica, the biggest wedge of the continent and usually considered stable. “I would not be surprised if this (basin) is more vulnerable than West Antarctica,” Levermann said.
BIG THAW
Antarctica, the size of the United States and Mexico combined, holds enough ice to raise sea levels by some 57 meters (188 feet) if it ever all melted.
The study indicated that it could take 200 years or more to melt the ice plug if ocean temperatures rise. Once removed, it could take between 5,000 and 10,000 years for ice in the Wilkes Basin to empty as gravity pulled the ice seawards.
“It sounds plausible,” Tony Payne, a professor of glaciology at Bristol University who was not involved in the study, said of the findings. The region is not an immediate threat, he said, but “could contribute meters to sea level rise over thousands of years.”
The United Nations panel on climate change says it is at least 95 percent probable that human activities such as burning fossil fuels, rather than natural swings in the climate, are the dominant cause of warming since the 1950s.
Sea levels are likely to rise by between 26 and 82 centimeters (0.85 to 2.7 feet) by the late 21st century, after a rise of 19 cm (0.62 feet) since 1900, it says. Antarctica is the biggest uncertainty.
For study: hereImage caption Both the unemployment rate and claimant count fell in Scotland, according to the latest figures
Unemployment in Scotland has fallen for the fifth time in a row.
The number of jobless fell by 5,000 to 214,000 between April and June, according to Office for National Statistics (ONS) data.
The Scottish unemployment rate now stands at 7.9%, which is just below the average of 8% for the whole of the UK.
The claimant count in Scotland also fell by 800 from June to 142,600 in July.
The number of those in employment now stands at 2,500,000, up by 12,000 over the three months from April to June.
In the UK as a whole, unemployment fell by 46,000 during the same period to 2.56m.
The Secretary of State for Scotland, Michael Moore, said: "The Scottish labour market is proving resilient and it is good news more people are finding work and fewer Scots are claiming benefit.
"Each step in the right direction counts for the families and individuals who have made the positive step into work."
Analysis It's hard to reconcile the August job figures with the other data pointing to downturn and poor confidence in the UK economy. It's harder still to match up today's poor retail figures in Scotland with increasing retail employment, albeit at a UK level. But these figures are not alone. The employment and unemployment figures have been improving for several months, at a time when the double dip has been getting clearer. And there are other indicators suggesting employment continues to be relatively strong. The explanation could be that workers are proving ever more flexible and resilient in looking for work. That also means people accepting options for which they're over-qualified, or going part-time when they want to be full-time. It could also be that employers continue to hold on doggedly to trained and trusted staff, still hoping for the upturn, while some areas of the economy - in London, it was the Olympics, in Scotland, that tends to mean energy - have their own reasons for continuing to expand.
According to the Scottish government, the youth employment rate increased by 2.3% over the past year whereas it fell slightly in the UK as a whole.
First Minister Alex Salmond welcomed the figures.
He said: "The figures for youth employment show that the Scottish government's efforts to help young people are paying off, and the rate of female unemployment is now below the UK average.
"However, while these are welcome trends, there are still too many people in Scotland without work, and more needs to be done."
He called on the UK government to increase capital investment.
Business organisation CBI Scotland said the figures demonstrated the private sector was "gradually regaining the confidence to hire".
However, Graham Smith, general secretary of the STUC, said there was "little cause for celebration".
He added: "Despite the recent improvement, employment remains significantly below pre-recession levels and too many new jobs being created are part-time, low wage and insecure."In Porterville, Calif., driver Sebastian Mejia delivers water to a tank in the front yard of the home of Elvira Gutierrez while working for Jim Brough’s “Aqua-man” service. The rural poor depend on groundwater, and with farmers digging deep to water their fields, communities relying on groundwater struggle.
June 24, 2015 In Porterville, Calif., driver Sebastian Mejia delivers water to a tank in the front yard of the home of Elvira Gutierrez while working for Jim Brough’s “Aqua-man” service. The rural poor depend on groundwater, and with farmers digging deep to water their fields, communities relying on groundwater struggle. Patrick T. Fallon/For The Washington Post
In two rural valleys, farmworkers and other low-income residents feel the impact in serious ways.
For many residents, the drought has meant small inconveniences. But workers in two rural valleys are feeling its impact in more personal ways.
For many residents, the drought has meant small inconveniences. But workers in two rural valleys are feeling its impact in more personal ways.
Whenever her sons rush indoors after playing under the broiling desert sun, Guadalupe Rosales worries. They rarely heed her constant warning: Don’t drink the water. It’s not safe. The 8- and 10-year-olds stick their mouths under a kitchen faucet and gulp anyway.
There is arsenic in the groundwater feeding their community well at St. Anthony Trailer Park, 40 miles south of Palm Springs. In ordinary times, the concentration of naturally occurring arsenic is low, and the water safe to drink. But during California’s unrelenting drought, as municipalities join farmers in sucking larger quantities of water from the ground, the concentration of arsenic is becoming more potent.
A recent laboratory test found that water in St. Anthony’s shallow well has twice the concentration of arsenic considered safe.
For many Californians, the state’s long drought has meant small inconveniences such as shorter showers and restrictions on watering lawns. But in two rural valleys, the Coachella southeast of Los Angeles and the San Joaquin to the north, farmworkers and other poor residents are feeling its impact in a far more serious and personal way.
[Groundwater that took thousands of years to form is being sucked dry in California]
Tulare County, in southern San Joaquin Valley, is a land without water, a real-life example of a future many Californians fear as scientists warn of a possible decades-long megadrought.
State politicians, county officials and community activists have scrambled to place water tanks at about 1,200 homes, but that is only slightly more than half of the households that do not have water. Every day, the county puts 3,000 gallons of non-potable water in two tanks at different locations in Porterville so some of those residents can fill drums and buckets for basic uses such as flushing toilets.
“This whole thing with the tanks was intended to be an interim solution” but has continued for a year as the drought drags on, said Paul Boyer, director of community development for Self-Help Enterprises, a group that asks water agencies in the area to spare as many gallons as they can spare.
“We need rain. We need snow in the mountains. We need to recharge groundwater,” Boyer said. “We’re coming up on the driest part of the year.”
Water and trust issues
On a hot Wednesday afternoon in early June, Rosales stepped out of her trailer to offer an opinion about the water that pours out of her faucet.
“It doesn’t smell too good,” she said, echoing the assessment of other residents.
Amalia Ceja, who lives nearby, will not drink the water, but she said she uses it to bathe herself and her 4-year-old son. He developed “bumps on his head,” Ceja said. “At first, we thought it was dandruff. After a doctor visit, they said it was arsenic.”
Arsenic, natural or not, can be frightening. It has been linked to various cancers of the bladder, lungs and skin when consumed in high doses. It is also known to cause birth defects and attack the nervous system.
Near agricultural fields, its levels can be increased by fertilizers and animal waste that run off farms. Mineral mining operations in the area contribute to the problem.
Three years ago, officials in Riverside County helped a community nonprofit group, Pueblo Unido, take ownership of St. Anthony Trailer Park and its toxic well after a business that owned it went bankrupt.
The county also provided funds for Pueblo Unido to build a reverse-osmosis water-treatment facility that filters water through a membrane to remove arsenic for the park’s 850 residents. Pueblo Unido took the additional step of providing filters that remove arsenic from water directly at the faucets of some trailers.
[How much water is pulled from the earth in California? Nobody really knows]
A sign wired to a gate at the treatment center by Pueblo Unido says the water is safe to consume. But it offers no proof from a lab test.
As sweat beaded on his head under a late-afternoon sun, Boykin Witherspoon III, director of the Water Resources Institute at California State University at San Bernardino, read the sign with skepticism.
“A notice like that is usually from the department of health, but this is something the owner put up,” Witherspoon said. “I couldn’t get away with doing that at the university. I have to produce proof, based on peer-reviewed science.”
A lab report ordered by the county in May found no arsenic in groundwater treated at the reverse-osmosis plant, but Rosales and other residents did not know that. A Web site for the Department of Environmental Health says the information is available upon request.
The treated groundwater sits under the sun in large, milky-white plastic water tanks. “It smells like plastic, like it’s been stored there forever,” Rosales said. “It foams a lot when you pour it out, and that concerns us.”
Rosales said her trailer is not among those that received a filter for its faucet. Pueblo Unido’s director, Sergio Carranza, declined to return several e-mails and telephone calls to his office requesting an interview.
“We don’t have confidence in [the water],” said Rosa Magullon, who has lived at the park 20 years. “It was never great,” she said, but after three full years of drought, “it’s even worse.”
The women said they drive 10 miles to a grocery store to buy bottled water rather than walk a few hundred yards from the trailer to the treatment plant to fill five-gallon containers with water they do not trust.
Witherspoon’s eyes darted from the plastic tanks that hold the water to Pueblo Unido’s sign saying it was safe, without proof.
“I wouldn’t trust it either,” he said.
A land without water
In November last year, near the end of California’s third year of drought, pastor Roman Hernandez got on his knees and prayed. “How can I help the community?” he asked.
Thousands of people around his 50-member church in Porterville couldn’t take baths or wash dishes because their individual wells stopped pumping water. Children didn’t play outdoors because they didn’t want to attend school in dirty clothes that could not be laundered. Entire neighborhoods were living on bottled water.
As his story goes, Hernandez’s phone rang as the prayer ended. The county offered to install portable showers, which are still at Iglesia Emmanuel Assembly of God today.
“It was the perfect place,” said Melissa Withnell, a county spokeswoman. “It’s a neutral space where residents can go without fear. It’s right in the middle of the community. And the pastor is bilingual.”
Trailers with 16 portable showers operate from 5 a.m. to 9 p.m., seven days a week, costing the county about $30,000 per month, Hernandez said. “We get people here all day long,” the pastor said.
Volunteers and donors, including corporations such as Budweiser and Bridgestone Tires, have sent pallets of drinking water in thousands of cans. Hernandez said he sympathized with people who had no water. The church’s 45-foot well went dry, too.
[NASA says America’s southwest is facing a 10-year megadrought]
He paid $7,000 to drill an extra 45 feet to reach the declining groundwater, money his small church didn’t have, he said. “And now we’re getting there again,” Hernandez said. “I can tell the symptoms of a well going dry. It picks up sand, and the water has a certain smell.”
On a Tuesday in June, when temperatures reached 105 degrees, community organizer Yolanda Chacón-Serna knocked on the doors to check the health of farmworkers and others in Porterville whose wells in some cases haven’t pumped water for two years.
“Can you imagine two years without having water?” said Chacón-Serna, who works with the Porterville Area Coordinating Council. “These are families with five to seven children. The houses don’t have air-conditioning.”
Families use swamp coolers that suck air across a wet pad to lower indoor temperatures, but without water, they are useless.
Their 35-foot to 45-foot wells did not reach as far into the ground as farm wells nearby, many of which are twice as deep. As crops get watered, homes of low-wage workers in Tulare County go dry.
But, Chacón-Serna said, residents without water are not pitting themselves against farmers, some of whose wells have also gone dry. “Everyone eats the fruits and vegetables produced by those farms,” she said.
At the Cecelia Packing House, where farmworkers box citrus in nearby Orange Cove, David Roth, the company president, is searching for water, drilling five new deep wells at more than $30,000 each in the next three weeks.
Water is needed to pressure-wash and treat citrus before it goes to market, as far as China. “All the water here is pumped from the ground,” Roth said. “Surface water from lakes and reservoirs is no longer available.”
If the drought goes on, Roth said, California’s citrus industry, which recently plowed 10,000 acres of dry trees, will be in deep trouble.
“Anything out of the sky is an asset,” because now, he said, there is nothing.An Australian man and his wife are being mourned by Sydney's Muslim community, as their reported deaths bring the number of Australians believed killed in the Syrian conflict to seven.
Yusuf Ali and his wife, Amira, of Queensland and formerly Granville were ''in their house in Syria and the FSA [Free Syrian Army] attacked and killed them'', Amira's sister Rose posted on Facebook on Saturday.
"Syria is in serious chaos right now": Zaky Mallah.
''Please everyone make dua for my sister Amira Ali and brother Inlaw Yusuf. They hav been martyred and insha'allah they r shaheeds. May Allah SWT grant them both janah Ameen,'' wrote Rose, who is known on Facebook as ''Mujahidah Lioness''. ''May Allah make the mujahideen victorious against FSA and Assad's regime.''
Amira, nee Karroum, was 22 and nicknamed ''Squid''. She left St Hilda's, an exclusive Anglican school for girls at Southport on the Gold Coast, in 2009, and married Yusuf Ali in 2012.To read more on The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story, pick up the new issue of Entertainment Weekly on stands Friday, or buy it here now. Don’t forget to subscribe for more exclusive interviews and photos, only in EW.
How do you top a phenomenon like last year’s The People v. O.J. Simpson? Opulence, sex and Ricky Martin, naturally. Those are just a few of the elements viewers can expect when The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story premieres in early 2018, focusing on the tragic killing of the fashion titan (Martin plays his long-time love Antonio D’Amico). FX’s follow-up to Simpson, featuring the same team of executive producers including Ryan Murphy, Brad Simpson and Nina Jacobson, won’t premiere for months but EW was exclusively on the set in May as the cast shot in Versace’s former home, Casa Casuarina. “It was very moving, sometimes disturbing,” says Penelope Cruz, who plays Gianni’s sister Donatella, of shooting in the house. “We all felt a very powerful energy. It just made me have more passion to tell this story.”
On July 15, 1997, Gianni Versace had left to go on his regular run to Miami Beach’s News Cafe. As he returned home and was opening his front gate, Andrew Cunanan, a sociopath who had become fixated on the designer after reportedly meeting him years earlier, walked up behind Versace and shot him twice in the head. The openly gay Versace was one of the most exciting and provocative designers of the moment, famous for his bold skin-baring designs. “Gianni was a disrupter,” says Edgar Ramírez (Joy), who plays the colorful figure. “He was doing things at the time that no one else was doing. He had this rock-star vision of couture and was the master of combining fashion, celebrity, and fame in a way that had never been combined before.” But his future was snuffed out by Cunanan (Glee’s Darren Criss), an intelligent, handsome, and highly disturbed young man from San Diego. Versace, based on the book Vulgar Favors by Maureen Orth, hopes to show how these two men’s paths crossed and ended so violently. “Here are two men from comparable backgrounds that had all kinds of similarities,” explains writer Tom Rob Smith (London Spy). “They came from parents who were striving but not wealthy. They had the Italian-heritage connection. This feeling of being an outsider. The sexuality connection. Why does one go on to become this incredible creator and great life force? And the other young man ends up destroying so much?”
GALLERY: See Exclusive Photos of The Assassination of Gianni Versace
The tale haunted Murphy, who pitched doing it even before Simpson aired. “I kept going back to Versace because it was different from O.J. tonally,” says the executive producer, sitting on the back patio of Casa Casuarina. “It was a manhunt and it takes place all over the country.” And just as the O.J. Simpson trial was a lens through which to examine racism, Murphy sees the Versace murder as a chance to do the same with sexuality and homophobia in the ’90s. “The more I had read about it, the more I was startled by the fact that Cunanan really was only allowed to get away with it because of homophobia,” says Murphy. “There was this great apathy about it, and I think part of that was because it seemed like gay people were disposable in our culture.”
For more on this week’s cover story, watch EW The Show, available now here, on the new PEOPLE/Entertainment Weekly Network (PEN). Go to PEOPLE.com/PEN, or download the free app on your Smart TV, mobile and web devices.
The ACS team now not only has to live up the legacy of Simpson‘s success but also a glut of other true-crime scripted series. “I would only feel pressure if we were doing, like, the Menendez trial,” says Murphy. “But this is so dramatically different, and it’s about fashion and celebrity. Everything feels like you’re jumping off a diving board for the first time because there’s no template.” In this week’s cover story, EW has your exclusive deep dive on how Murphy brought together an Oscar winner, a Glee favorite, and a music superstar for one of 2018’s most anticipated television events.
Alexei Hay for EWIn a White House defined by inexplicable ties to Russia, Jared Kushner has always had an explanation at the ready. His encounters with Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak, which he failed to disclose on his security clearance forms, were apparently not particularly memorable. “He didn’t think there was any need for a follow-up,” a White House official told the Hive in May, shortly after it was reported that the F.B.I. was looking into his dealings with Russian officials. Ditto his sit-down with Sergey Gorkov, the head of a Russian bank that is currently the subject of U.S. sanctions. It’s “business as usual,” an official said after it was reported that Kushner and Kislyak had talked about using secure Russian diplomatic facilities to set up a secret communication channel between Trump’s transition team and the Kremlin.
At the time, Kushner’s attorney, Jamie Gorelick, noted that her client “previously volunteered to share with Congress what he knows about these meetings.” She was similarly dismissive after news broke that special counsel Robert Mueller was looking into Kushner’s business dealings during his tenure at his family’s real-estate company. “It would be standard practice for the Special Counsel to examine financial records to look for anything related to Russia,” she explained. Last month, when Kushner added superstar trial lawyer Abbe Lowell to his personal legal team, Gorelick characterized the move as a standard step, given that she had worked with Mueller at WilmerHale.
But as Donald Trump’s legal troubles deepen and the Russia investigation spirals closer to home, West Wing staffers are beginning to worry about Kushner. On Tuesday, The New York Times revealed that Donald Trump Jr. had held a meeting last summer with a Kremlin-connected Russian lawyer, ostensibly in hopes of obtaining what was promised to be “official documents and information that would incriminate Hillary [Clinton].” The e-mail chain, between Trump Jr. and an intermediary working on behalf of a Russian client with ties to Vladimir Putin, stated explicitly, “This is obviously very high level and sensitive information but is part of Russia and its government’s support for Mr. Trump.” Kushner and then-campaign chairman Paul Manafort were both c.c.’d on the thread, and later attended the June 9 meeting at Trump Tower.
While Trump Jr. has come under fire for eagerly accepting the meeting—a fateful decision that is alternatively being described as collusion or mere stupidity—the president’s son no longer works for his father. Kushner, on the other hand, is now in the White House. As Axios’s Mike Allen noted, “No one has spent more time with Trump throughout the past year—and has seen or knows more.” (In a statement, Kushner’s attorney reiterated that he had more than 100 calls or meetings with representatives of multiple countries, and that he has submitted additional federal disclosure updates, including one documenting “this meeting with a Russian person, which he briefly attended at the request of his brother-in-law, Donald Trump Jr.”)
Given his outsize role in Trump's campaign and presidency, the investigation into Kushner, perhaps not surprisingly, continues to expand. On Wednesday, McClatchy D.C. reported that the Justice Department and House and Senate Intelligence Committee are also looking into whether the Trump campaign’s digital team coordinated with the Russian government during the 2016 election—and whether Kushner, who oversaw the campaign’s digital operation, played a “role as a possible cut-out or conduit for Moscow’s influence operations in the elections.” (The White House had not responded to the Hive’s request for comment by the time of publication.)
The question that both Congressional and D.O.J. investigators hope to answer is how the Russian government managed to so effectively identify and target unexpectedly influential voter populations in key states, down to the precinct level. According to McClatchy, one source said that investigators wonder whether Russia would have “known where to specifically target” without assistance from another party. “There appears to have been significant cooperation between Russia’s online propaganda machine and individuals in the United States who were knowledgeable about where to target the disinformation,” Mike Carpenter, who left a senior post at the Pentagon in January, said.
With an army of “bots” wielding pro-Trump messaging and “fake-news” stories about Clinton, the Russian government targeted a number of key precincts in states that Clinton narrowly lost last year. “It appears that, for example, women and African-Americans were targeted in places like Wisconsin and Michigan, where the Democrats were too brain-dead to realize those states were even in play,” Mark Warner, the vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said during an interview with Pod Save America. “I get the fact that the Russian intel services could figure out how to manipulate and use the bots. Whether they could know how to target states and levels of voters that the Democrats weren’t even aware really raises some questions.”
This is where Kushner appears to have come under scrutiny. In an interview with Forbes just weeks after the election, titled “How Jared Kushner Won Trump the White House,” the president’s son-in-law boasted about how the campaign worked with data company Cambridge Analytica to micro-target voting populations. Now, investigators are reportedly trying to determine whether the Trump campaign, under Kushner’s guidance, might have aided the Russian government by helping identify areas that had unexpectedly weak support for Clinton. Adam Schiff, the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, told McClatchy that he wants to know if the Kremlin’s influence campaign was “coordinated in any way in terms of targeting or in terms of timing or in terms of any other measure... with the (Trump) campaign” and if there was “any exchange of information, any financial support funneled to organizations that were doing this kind of work.”
To be clear, there is currently no evidence to suggest that Kushner or anyone else associated with Trump’s data operation aided Russia’s propaganda efforts during the 2016 campaign. Which is not to say that Trump’s data operation might not have received aid, however indirectly, from Russia. In May, Florida-based G.O.P. strategist Aaron Nevins confirmed that he had received 2.5 gigabytes of Democratic voter data from Guccifer 2.0, the alleged front for Russian intelligence agents that hacked the Democratic National Committee last year. Nevins, who described the data as a treasure trove of congressional district-level information, posted some of the documents to his blog, allowing anyone to access voter data for a number of critical battleground states including Pennsylvania, which Trump won by less than 80,000 votes, as well as Kentucky, Texas, Virginia, and West Virginia.
Jared Kushner FOLLOW Donald Trump FOLLOW Follow to get the latest news and analysis about the players in your inbox. See All PlayersLast week, the Larsen C Ice Shelf gave birth to a trillion pound baby, an iceberg now dubbed A68. The latest observations suggest this big berg has moved 1.5 miles from its starting point, and that it’s already starting to crack up.
The 5,800-square-kilometer iceberg A68 finally calved on July 12th, and scientists are now closely monitoring its progress. Its trajectory is difficult to predict, particularly because smaller chunks are expected to fall away from the superstructure and pursue their own destiny in the cold choppy waters of the Weddell Sea. The US National Ice Center suspects A68 will drift east-northwest along the the Antarctic Peninsula in the Weddell Gyre over the next several months. It’ll likely fracture before drifting far enough north to enter into the Antarctic Circumpolar Current.
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The weight of the ice, and the strain imposed by the swirling currents in the Weddell Sea, is placing a lot of pressure on the berg, and it’s starting to show. Satellite images from ESA and the European Union’s Copernicus Program show that the berg is indeed splintering. Legions of small icebergs are starting to appear around A68's perimeter, while new cracks are steadily forming around the edges. At the berg’s northern tip, three rather sizeable icebergs have broken off.
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Meanwhile on the Antarctic Peninsula, the remaining ice shelf, Larsen C, is also showing signs of strain. Researchers with the Project MIDAS, who have been monitoring the iceberg closely over the past several months, were concerned that the gargantuan calving event might accelerate breakup elsewhere along the ice sheet, and this now appears to be the case.
New observations show the persistence of rifts (the dark curving lines in the image above), splotches that represent the birthplace of future icebergs. What’s more, a new rift has started to extend northwards, which could result in another, albeit smaller, calving event. Project MIDAS suspects that new rift will soon turn towards the shelf edge, and that it’ll continue towards the Bawden Ice Rise—a crucial stabilization juncture for the Larsen C ice shelf.
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As we previously noted, these are all natural processes, and (as far as we know) not the product of climate change. That said, some members of the scientific community are begging to differ.
“To me, it’s an unequivocal signature of the impact of climate change on Larsen C,” said Eric Rignot, a scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. “This is not a natural cycle. This is the response of the system to a warmer climate from the top and from the bottom. Nothing else can cause this.”
So, lots still going on here, both in terms of the geological processes, and the underlying science behind it all. Antarctica is a fascinating place, and its frozen landscape is literally evolving right before our very eyes.
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[Project MIDAS, Climate Central, US National Ice Center, ESA]Almost two months after his farcical 29-second first-round knockout win over Paul Briggs at Challenge Stadium, champion WA boxer Danny Green will announce his next fight tomorrow in Sydney.
The venue for the fight against what Green's management has described as a "highly formidable opponent", will also be officially confirmed tomorrow.
Danny Green may reward his fans with a WA fight. Credit:Steve Christo
Pressure was on Green and his team to find a suitable rival for his next IBO cruiserwight title defence after the fiasco involving Briggs proved the latter was not in optimum shape.
The Green Machine camp came under plenty of scrutiny immediately after a seemingly innocuous left jab to the top of Briggs' head floored the former star, which brought the contest to an immediate end.Image caption Wide open spaces: Projects like the one in Nanyuki could let people in the more remote areas connect to the internet
"This is the greatest achievement I can say for this school. [The students] are finding it a great favour that they should be the first school in Africa to have this kind of a project. It is very exciting. They wonder how they got there."
Beatrice Nderango is the headmistress of Gakawa Secondary School, which lies about 10km from Nanyuki, a market town in Kenya's rift valley, not far from the Mount Kenya national park.
The school is situated in a village that has no phone line and no electricity. The people that live here are mostly subsistence farmers.
"We don't really have a cash crop, but the farmers do a bit of farming," says Mrs Nderango.
"They grow potatoes, a little bit of maize, but we don't do well in maize because of the wild animals. They invade the farms."
Image caption Going online: The schools are being supplied with computers as part of the project
Although Kenya has fibre optic broadband thanks to the Seacom cable, most of rural Kenya is not connected and until now getting online would mean travelling to town.
But all of this is changing, thanks to technology that uses the unused parts of the wireless spectrum that is set aside for television broadcasters - the white spaces.
The colour of television
The project is part of the 4Afrika Initiative, an investment programme being announced by technology giant Microsoft, that also includes a new Windows Phone 8 smartphone for the region and investment in help for small businesses on the continent, and in education and internships.
Image caption The base stations work in the same way as mobile phone masts, and will create massive wifi hotspots
For the white spaces project, the company is working with a Kenyan ISP, Indigo Telecom, and the Kenyan government.
The ISP is installing wireless 'base stations' - or masts - that are solar-powered, to get round the lack of mains electricity.
The base stations act as a link to the nearest main cable connection to the internet, without the expense of extending the fibre-optic network.
Image caption The solar panels will power the bases stations - and also charge computer equipment
The signal supplied is much more powerful than normal wifi.
"What we are calling TV white space, that is just a different set of frequencies. It is between 400 megahertz and about 800 megahertz, and those radio frequencies will just go further," says white spaces expert Professor Robert Stewart of Strathclyde University.
"They can go through walls, they will kind of bend around hills, they will give you much better connectivity. And of course, that's why the TV guys chose that in the first place."
Local schools, a healthcare clinic, a government agriculture office and a library have been connected in the first part of the pilot.
Ms Nderango says internet will benefit teachers and students alike.
"Students will now be introduced to e-learning, they will be able to carry out the assignments, they'll be able to do a lot of research," she says.
"To add to that, there is the exposure to the rest of the world."
And she believes the wider community will benefit as well.
"It will change lives, because on the internet you can access information about skills.
Image caption Beatrice Nderango (right) says the new computers will make teaching easier
"The farmers for example will improve their skills, and learn entrepreneurship."
Business networking
Microsoft's Fernando de Sousa says getting rural areas online is a crucial part of making them economically viable.
"There is... a commercial responsibility that both private and public sector have across Africa to bring technology and bring access that can then drive economic growth, economic development and sustain employability, especially outside of the metropolitan areas," he says.
"It is going to significantly increase the ability for innovation and the great ideas that Africans have to actually reach markets and become available for use by consumers... I think that there is a fantastic opportunity for Africa to showcase its own capabilities in the world because of the increased access."
Image caption The local healthcare clinic will be part of the network, opening up access to telemedicine resources
The next step is to open the network more generally to the business community in the area.
"The commercial viability of actually deploying white spaces on a broad spectrum across the communities, is something that is very important... because a. it can't be a subsidised service; and b. it is not a private government or community network," says Mr de Sousa.
If we find that rural communities in developing or developed countries can access this without significant expense, then it will make a difference Prof Robert Stewart, Strathclyde University
"It really needs to be a commercially viable network. Bringing small businesses online and enabling them to use the technology is very, very important."
This is not the first time that TV white spaces have been used in this way - in the UK pilots are underway on the Isle of Bute in Scotland and in Cambridge.
In the United States, Wilmington, North Carolina, has a white spaces project in place, and the Air.U partnership hopes to connect rural college campuses. There are several test beds around the world.
More is planned. In Africa, Google is sponsoring a project in South Africa that will connect 10 schools in the Western |
the link in the Yule Collection, enter the quantity you want and write in the names of the perfumes you want as samples in the Comments box on your order. There is no minimum.
Since I am giving free shipping for December, I have to restrict the Yule samples to USA customers only, the Yule samples cannot be sent internationally. Sorry, but I think you can understand with shipping being so expensive and I want to make this as simple as possible.
I will stop taking orders for samples on noon Eastern Standard Time December 23 at the latest, and possibly before owing to limited supplies. Once I say it's over, it's over. So, I would suggest that you get your order in early so as not to miss out.
owing to limited supplies. Once I say it's over, it's over. So, I would suggest that you get your order in early so as not to miss out. As with other single samples, there are no freebies which go along with them.
The Yule samples have to be bought separately, they cannot be added as a freebie to an existing order.
Depending on how it goes, I might or might not do it again. This is a pure experiment and is meant to make you happy! Now is a good time to order your Yules and samples.
Fondly, Fabienne from PossetsAdrian Moore finds out how the medieval church's attempt to stamp its authority on the debate about infinity led to some explosive disagreements.
Adrian Moore reaches the third stage of his journey through thought about infinity, describing how the church attempted to stamp its authority on the debate and how that led to some explosive disagreements amongst medieval thinkers.
With the help of Cecilia Trifogli, Lecturer in Medieval Philosophy at Oxford University, Adrian finds out about the life of St Thomas Aquinas. Aquinas defied his mother to become a Dominican friar - she had hoped for a career in the more prestigious Benedictine order for him - and, more importantly, he attempted to engineer a reconciliation between the theories of Aristotle on the infinite and the doctrines of the Catholic church.
He was successful up to a point and, once the church had embraced Aristotle's teachings as the new orthodoxy, philosophers stepped out of line at their peril. The famous dissenter and innovator, Galilei Galileo, did just that. He dared to add his contradictory views to the debate and introduced a series of paradoxes which foreshadowed much later thinking on infinity.
Adrian presents us with a vivid picture of the clash between theology and Greek philosophy, and a sense of the ongoing struggle of both to understand the infinite.
A Juniper production for BBC Radio 4.A keyboard for uncompromising typists
We spend our days at a keyboard. Most of our nights, too. The keyboard is how we practice our craft. Something even a little bit more comfortable makes a world of difference. Something even a little bit better designed will help us be happier and more productive.
Over the years, we’ve tried pretty much every keyboard out there, but never found one we could fall in love with.
In late 2012, we set out to build ourselves a better keyboard. Early on, we only wanted to make a couple for ourselves. Of course, early on, we also thought this was a hobby project that was going to take a month.
Boy were we wrong.
On pretty much all counts.
It's taken two and a half years, far longer than we could have possibly imagined. We've had to learn 3D modeling, electrical engineering, soldering, lasercutting, 3D printing, and CNC milling. We've built dozens of prototypes and put them in front of hundreds of enthusiastic folks who type too much, including programmers, journalists, bloggers, writers, and gamers, to name just a few. People keep telling us to "shut up and take my money," but we've taken our time because we really, really wanted to get this right.
The Keyboardio Model 01
The Model 01 is the best keyboard we can make. It's not like other keyboards. We mill the Model 01's enclosure from two blocks of solid maple that are a joy to rest your hands on. Instead of shallow, uncomfortable keyswitches, we use gloriously tactile mechanical keyswitches similar to those found in the original Apple II. We've custom-sculpted each of the 64 individual keycaps on the Model 01 to gently guide your fingers to the right keys. After putting it all together, the result is a keyboard that is a pleasure to type on all day and all night.
We think you're going to love it. We've come to Kickstarter to raise money for our first production run. With your help, we can deliver you an amazing keyboard that you'll enjoy typing on for years. We're absolutely thrilled to be here and we hope you'll join us.
The right keyboard is, of course, an incredibly personal thing. We wanted to make it as easy as possible for folks to meet the Model 01 and try it out in person, so we did something a little bit crazy. During the campaign, we brought the Model 01 to meetups in 23 cities across the US and Canada.
We also got a little bit of press coverage...
Heirloom-grade construction
The first thing you'll notice when you look at the Model 01 is that it doesn't look like any keyboard you've ever seen.
It was important to us that we create something that actually feels good to use. We tried building keyboards out of plastic and metal, but they just didn't feel right. In the end, we found that nothing could really compare to the feel of wood. We precision-mill the Model 01 out of two blocks of maple. It's hard to convey in writing just how good it feels to rest your hands on the Model 01. In a lot of ways, the Model 01 feels more like a musical instrument than a computer peripheral.
Each keyboard is milled from solid maple
Deciding to make a keyboard out of wood is a huge pain in the neck. Each keyboard needs to be individually milled and there are plenty of manufacturers who won't even talk to us because we're not using plastic.
But it's worth it.
Once you get your hands on a polished maple Model 01, you won't want to go back to another flat, plastic box.
A key layout based on your fingers
There's an old keyboard-nerd joke that goes something like this: "If alien archeologists landed on Earth a million years from now and tried to figure out what we looked like based on our keyboards, they'd probably figure that we had 10 tentacles coming out of our chests." The traditional staggered QWERTY layout was not designed for humans.
The Model 01's default layout
The Model 01's default layout with the function key held down
That being said, it's important to us that the Model 01 not feel too alien today. That's why we've based the default key layout on QWERTY. We've made some important changes, though: We've aligned the keys in columns so they're easier to reach without having to contort your fingers. The two halves of the keyboard are angled to help you keep your wrists in a more natural, neutral position. (The standard keycaps will have QWERTY legends; if you'd prefer blank keycaps you can choose them as an option on your backer survey.) We're experimenting with a version of blank keycaps with a translucent dot in the middle, so you still get the most out of the nice glowing effects.
We will be making additional sets of keycaps available for sale after the campaign ends. Each key set will come with a key-puller. We're going to do everything we can to offer custom laser engraving, so you can have gorgeous custom keycaps that match your custom key layout.
If you've ever used a smartphone, you know that your thumbs are good for more than just whacking a big spacebar. The Model 01 moves some of the most frequently chorded keys away from your poor, overworked pinkie fingers to comfortable arcs right under your thumbs.
Underneath the thumb arcs, you'll see one of the Model 01's most unique features: a palm key. You can think of it as a Function key or a special sort of Shift. Dropping the base of your thumb onto it turns the H, J, K, and L keys into your arrow keys, turns the number keys into F-keys and even turns the WASD keys into a high-precision mouse.
Typing on the Model 01
The Model 01 ships with a QWERTY layout, but it also speaks Dvorak, Colemak, Workman, and a variant of the Malt layout. It is, of course, easily customizable, so you'll be able to make it speak your layout.
Yes, it has an "Any" key. No, we have no idea what it's supposed to do. But we bet you do.
It adjusts to fit your hands and your desk
Out of the box, the Model 01 provides a pretty comfortable experience for the vast majority of people who've tried it. However, your hands and your work setup aren't necessarily the same as ours, so we've designed the Model 01 to be easy for you to adjust and customize. The two halves of the keyboard are joined together by a center bar. Your Model 01 will come with both a flat bar and a "tented" bar. We're publishing the mounting specification, so you'll be able to build your own center bar, too.
We like adjustability. Your keyboard should fit you, not the other way around
The most standard configuration of the Model 01 places the two halves of the keyboard flat on your desk. If you're not used to an ergonomic keyboard or plan to use the Model 01 on your lap, the flat configuration will feel most natural to you.
The tented center bar angles the two halves of the Model 01 slightly up in the middle. (It looks a little like a tent, which is where this configuration gets its name.) If you've been typing on an ergonomic keyboard like the Microsoft Natural keyboard, the tented configuration should be comfortable and familiar to you.
You can position the two halves of the keyboard shoulder-width apart on your desk for a sublimely comfortable typing experience. (We've actually tested putting the two halves up to 15 feet apart and everything works just great. We just don't know anybody with arms that long.) The two halves of the keyboard connect with an old-school telephone cable that you can buy at RadioShack (if you can still find a RadioShack.)
Both the flat and tented center bars feature a standard 1/4-20 camera tripod mount, perfect for building a custom keyboard stand. (The actual design of the connecting bars will change before we ship. What we have today is a little more finicky than we'd like.)
The Model 01 ships with both flat and tented connecting bars
We haven't settled on a final design for the Model 01's feet yet, but you can rest assured that they'll give you even more flexibility to perfectly adjust your keyboard. The feet you see below are just a temporary stopgap. It is incredibly important to us that you be able to tent and tilt the two halves of the Model 01, even when they're not joined together.
These aren't the feet you're looking for
The shiny stuff: Fully programmable LEDs
Individually programmable LEDs glow underneath each key
We've placed an independently programmable RGB LED underneath each and every key on the keyboard. Out of the box, the Model 01 can breathe, glow and do cute rainbow fade animations with the best of them, but the neat part is that each and every one of those LEDs is end-user controllable. With just a few lines of code in the Arduino IDE, you can completely customize the light show. Want your keyboard to start flashing red when you've been typing too long? No problem! Want to have your keyboard start spelling out your instant messages as they come in? Well, that'll be a little bit of code, but it's completely doable. Pixel art and Conway's Game of Life are totally doable, too.
And yes, you can turn them off.
The animated rainbow isn't for everybody, but it makes a pretty good demo
We've been working on a graphical animation tool to let you build effects without code. It's not ready yet, but should be available before your keyboard ships.
Sculpted keycaps to guide your fingers
We designed new keycaps to help you type
Most computer keyboard designs use at most 4 or 5 different key shapes–just one for each row. Our design goes to eleven... er, 64. Most keyboard manufacturers buy their keycaps from one of a handful of keycap makers. It took hundreds of hours of engineering, but we designed our keycaps from scratch.
We sculpted the Model 01's keycaps to gently guide your fingers to the correct places, making it just a little bit easier to hit the right key with the right finger. While this feels great if you already touch-type, it's also dramatically reduced the Model 01's learning curve for those of us who never learned "proper" typing in school.
When we talked to one of the world experts in keyboard ergonomics, he told us that we were absolutely nuts to design our own keycaps. Sure, they'd be more comfortable and reduce error rates, but the costs would be astronomical. (We've priced it out with vendors. It isn't cheap, but it isn't astronomically expensive either. More... stratospheric?)
When we talked to the buyer for one of the world's largest keyboard vendors, he told us that we are, to his knowledge, the only company on Earth designing custom keycaps for a high-end keyboard.
A few hundred hours of CAD, shown here in about 10 seconds
We think the time and effort has been worth it, and we're confident you will too.
High-quality mechanical keyswitches
Keyswitches are the soul of a keyboard. More and more, over the last 20 years, computer keyboards have lost their soul.
Typing on the Model 01 feels great, whether you're using all ten fingers or just one
Way back when, typing on a keyboard actually felt good. You'd press a key and you could feel a nice, satisfying, mechanical click. As computers got more and more popular, manufacturers started cutting corners. Mechanical keyswitches were replaced with little rubber domes or plastic scissor mechanisms. Rather than registering when you'd pressed them about halfway down like "real" keyswitches, you have to slam your fingers into the keyboard to make them work. To add insult to injury, they don't even feel that nice to type on.
We've scoured the globe, testing dozens of different keyswitches from companies including Cherry, Unicomp, Greetech, Kailh, Gateron, Topre, and Razer before selecting what we believe to be some of the best keyswitches made today: the Matias Quiet Click mechanical keyswitches.
Clicky keyswitches, quiet enough to use in a meeting
The Quiet Click switches were designed in Canada by Edgar Matias. Starting from the design of the ALPS keyswitches used in some of Apple's most legendary keyboards from the last century, Matias reengineered them to slide more smoothly when pressed from just about any angle and to be quiet enough to use in a meeting. They're still satisfyingly tactile with a delightfully clicky feel when pressed.
UPDATE: While we think Matias Quiet Click switches are the best keyswitches made today, some folks prefer the audio feedback of clicky switches. So, we’re pleased to offer Matias Click switches as an option.
Both quiet and clicky are of the same high quality, but adding a second switch option raises our production costs a bit, so we’re offering it for an additional $10 if you’re backing for one keyboard. If you are backing for a special edition or multiple keyboards, you’ll have your choice of switches at no additional charge after the campaign ends.
If you'd like to hear the difference between the quiet and clicky switches, Matias has published recordings of what they sound like.
True N-key rollover (NKRO)
For a variety of reasons, many USB keyboards limit you to pressing 6 keys (plus modifiers) at once. Most of us would never notice this limitation, but an intrepid few really, really need to be able to hit more than six keys at once.
If you need NKRO, we've got you covered. The NKRO-over-USB technique we're using works great on Windows, MacOS X and Linux without any special drivers.
Getting this right requires a combination of hardware and software. On the hardware side, we've paired each keyswitch with the requisite diode. On the software side, it's just smart coding inside the keyboard's USB firmware.
Application-specific macros
Your Model 01 will come with an optional feature that lets you define custom key layouts or macros based on the currently running application. You can assign complex sequences of keystrokes and mouse movements to a single keypress.
This requires a small program running on your computer. So far, we've only built the OS X version, but we're fairly confident that we should have it working on Linux and Windows by the time we ship.
You can remap complex Photoshop functions, frequently used code snippets or just about anything else to easy-to-reach (and easy-to-remember) keystrokes.
What you get...
You'll get to make a few choices to make sure the Model 01 is perfect for you:
Choose from QWERTY labels, blank labels, or "dot" labels for maximum LED shine through
* For a single keyboard, choose the appropriate tier ($299 or $309). For multiple keyboards or a Special Edition keyboard, you can choose your switch type in your backer survey
The learning curve
We're not going to beat around the bush. The Model 01 is not for everybody. If you don't already touch type on a split keyboard with the keys arranged in columns, expect some frustration as you come up to speed on the Model 01. Typically, most typists start to get acclimated to a new key layout like ours within a few hours, but true mastery of a new key layout is an investment that can take a month or two to really start to pay off.We see this as a small, but important step as we work toward providing more broad access to the Steamworks set of features and Steam distribution platform. With this access, developers should be able to evaluate potential integration with the various features and APIs in Steamworks, compile the code and perform limited testing of the functionality with the included sample application.Developers wishing to integrate the Steamworks SDK with their own games or applications still need to first be Greenlit and provided with an appID.Once youve accepted the SDK Agreement, youll also be granted access to the Steamworks Development group ( http://steamcommunity.com/groups/steamworks ), where you can post questions in the relevant discussion boards or see other frequently asked questions.Were announcing to this group first, but will eventually make this public knowledge. Please let us know if you have any trouble accessing the SDK or documentation.With early voting underway, Hillary Clinton’s camp is projecting strength, saying outcome of the race could be decided in battleground states before voters head to the polls Nov. 8 and early indicators look good for the Democrat and her superior ground game.
Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook predicted Thursday that the 2016 contest will see record turnout and said that there has been a spike in the number of people requesting absentee ballots in battleground states — including among slices of the electorate that tend to support the Democrat in presidential races.
“There are more opportunities to vote early - either by mail or in person - than ever before,” Mr. Mook said. “Because of that we actually think that states like Nevada, North Carolina and Florida could be decided before Election Day, and that is why we are encouraging our supporters to cast their vote early because it is possible — because there is so much access to early voting — that we could build an insurmountable lead in those key states before Election Day.”
Mr. Mook said the campaign’s ground game is better than that of Mr. Trump.
He said they are focused on turning out young voters, and said that there have been “excellent turnout numbers” among women, Hispanics and Asian Americans — suggesting that bodes well for Mrs. Clinton.
“We think that is in large part due to the hateful and divisive rhetoric that we are seeing from Donald Trump and his campaign,” Mr. Mook said.
Early voting includes absentee ballots, as well as in-person voting.
In a conference call with reporters, Mr. Mook said vote by mail requests in Florida have jumped to 2.7 million from 1.8 million at this point four years ago, and said there has been a 77 percent uptick in request from Hispanic voters. He also said he believes Mrs. Clinton will do better in the Philadelphia suburbs than any Democrat in decades.
Mr. Mook said Republicans traditionally outperform Democrats in the early mail-in ballots, so the key for Mrs. Clinton is to close that gap.
Copyright © 2019 The Washington Times, LLC. Click here for reprint permission.Adversity makes for a good teacher. In my case, a recent fire in my apt building has forced me into temporary housing where my Mac Pro is my only solid companion. But today I learned that the restoration company wants to take away my wired keyboard and mouse in order to clean it — turning my Mac Pro into the equivalent of a very heavy aluminum block. Or I can use the Cyclops instead.
The Cyclops has a silver/white appearance and has a solid heft to it — being made from both aluminum and plastic. The circular shape splits up the standard QWERTY keyboard into left and right “half’s”, with a touch-pad “center” to use for pointer movement. The Cyclops’ layout also places a “mouse” key near the bottom middle at each “half” of the keyboard (left/right presses), with Space and Shift keys next to them on each side. Function keys also run horizontally to the left and right below the Space and Shift keys (i.e., function, control, option and command on both sides). Additionally, there are specialized keys running up both sides: the left side has Tab, Caps Lock and Enter/Return, while the right side has Delete and Enter/Return. Running horizontally along the top are the Function keys (i.e., F1 through F12) which double as use for commands such as brightness, audio control, video and audio playback.
The topmost left has Escape, while the topmost right has a disc eject button — pointing to how this keyboard can travel between mobile and laptop use without compromising on keyboard use. The very center of Cyclops is its “eye” — a circular space that provides a resting place for the thumbs, with the main power button directly above (pressed and held for about 4 seconds will shut it off). But that “eye” is also a trackpad.
At the left and right bottom can be found two direction pads: the pad on the right has Page Up/Down, Delete, Home and End tabs, while the right pad has directional arrows and an Enter/Return tab.
The Cyclops is best suited for mobile iOS devices because it has a round shape where the keys are arranged for “thumb” typing. This is to say that those who text a lot are already familiar with the physical key setup and, no joke here, those with larger fingers will finally have their day. That’s due to the larger size of the keys, compared to that on a mobile device’s virtual keyboard. And while it’s more than possible to type on the Cyclops with it lying flat (as I am doing right now), letting you use your fingers in a very slow touch-typing manner, the physical design and lightweight nature makes its use for mobile devices preferable (being held up and at an angle). Of course using it with a phone/tablet means that the device works best if it’s propped up on a stand, but it can be used with the device lying flat if you want — that’s no impediment to the Cyclops.
Of course nothing comes for free, and in Cyclops’ case, the $59 retail price tag is the main, but not only expense. Three “AAA” batteries must be inserted into a back battery compartment in order for the Bluetooth powered device to function. On the plus side, “AAA” batteries are pretty cheap, and even standard models will provide power for a couple of months easily (a 5 minute auto-shutoff helps with this).
Pairing the Cyclops is the same as that of any Bluetooth device (like a pair of wireless headphones) and follows the normal conventions of the operating system it is to be used with. In the case of the Mac Pro, it was similar to setting up a wireless keyboard, and it’s even faster for an iOS device since you don’t have to enter a password.
Comparing the Cyclops between use with a laptop/desktop and mobile — obviously it’s best suited for iOS devices. However, it provides wireless control for a laptop or desktop where you don’t want to be right on top of the keyboard; for example, running a video player or cycling through music playlists.
I also found that the response of the keyboard is only slowed down by that of the one doing the typing: handing the Cyclops to my friend’s teenage son to use with his iPhone showed me that speed comes not just from being able to hit the keys quickly, but also from having texting “hard-wired” into your brain. I mean the kid was texting at speeds that I couldn’t come close to, although there were plenty of spelling errors. I also noted that regardless of whether you are a touch-typist or “texter,” you will still spend a significant amount of time looking down at the keyboard as you enter text.
Editor’s Rating:
[rating:4/5]
Great
Bottom line: The Cyclops Wireless Keyboard is sturdy and well constructed. Every key that can be found on an Apple keyboard is present, but placement keeps unneeded ones from getting in the way of those most used. It’s big enough to hold a large number of keys without any being too tiny to access, and provides a reasonable and workable alternative to using the onscreen keyboard of an Apple device.
Pros
Well spaced out keys
ConsJorge Jove didn't like the AT&T work trucks in front of his Hialeah home Wednesday morning. So, he retrieved his revolver and began shooting out the tires and the engine, police said.
Though Jove began firing to kill only a vehicle, a Hialeah sergeant says he saw Jove fire at an AT&T worker in a raised bucket lift. Hialeah police arrested on a charge of aggravated assault with a firearm and criminal mischief. He posted $30,000 bond. Police seized the handgun from Jove, who doesn’t have a concealed weapons permit, according to the arrest affidavit.
Cell phone video rolled as Jove, 64, calmly walked around the first truck and shot at all four tires. The sound of the air coming out of the tires followed the blast.
Jove then walked to the second bucket truck and began shooting at the front of it, reloading the gun several times. Meanwhile, one of the AT&T workers could be heard calling police to report the shooting.
“He's shooting the truck right now,” said a man who identified himself as Derrick Taylor, a technician with AT&T. “There's a guy shooting the tires and shooting the engines and everything.”
As Taylor spoke to the dispatcher, Jove continued his attack on the trucks.
Hialeah police confirmed Wednesday afternoon that at about 11 a.m. Wednesday, the workers were parked outside 620 SE Fifth Place when Jove walked outside with a gun.
“Apparently the homeowner was upset the trucks were parked in front of his driveway,” said Hialeah Sgt. Carl Zogby in an email.
Taylor, who stood at a distance from Jove, told the dispatcher that another worker could be in danger.
“Someone’s up in the bucket truck and he can’t come down because he’s shooting the truck,” he said.United States Court of Appeals,Eighth Circuit. UNITED STATES of America, Plaintiff–Appellee, v. Michael Howard REED, Defendant–Appellant. United States of America, Plaintiff–Appellee, v. Gregory Allen Davis, Defendant–Appellant. Nos. 11–1462, 11–1463. Decided: February 09, 2012
Before RILEY, Chief Judge, LOKEN and BENTON, Circuit Judges.
Gregory Allen Davis and Michael Howard Reed irrationally believe that their membership in the Little Shell Nation, an unrecognized Indian tribe, means they are not United States citizens subject to the jurisdiction of the federal courts. This belief led them into serious trouble. First, Reed threatened North Dakota District Judge Ralph Erickson because he refused to dismiss federal drug charges against two other Little Shell members. Months later, when District Judge Daniel Hovland denied a motion to dismiss a firearm charge pending against Reed, Davis filed a Uniform Commercial Code (UCC) financing statement listing Judge Hovland and acting United States Attorney Lynn Jordheim as $3.4 million debtors and Davis as the secured party. After a three-day trial, a jury convicted Davis and Reed of conspiring to file and filing false liens against Judge Hovland and Jordheim in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1521. The jury also convicted Reed of corruptly obstructing justice in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1503(a), based on his earlier threats. On appeal, Davis argues that the evidence was insufficient to prove a violation of § 1521. Both Davis and Reed argue, for somewhat different reasons, that the district court violated their constitutional rights by allowing them to represent themselves at trial. We affirm.
I. Sufficiency of the Evidence To Convict Davis
This is apparently the first appeal of a conviction under 18 U.S.C. § 1521, part of the Court Security Improvement Act of 2007. Pub.L. 110–177, § 201(a), 121 Stat. 2536 (2008). The statute provides:
Whoever files, attempts to file, or conspires to file, in any public record or in any private record which is generally available to the public, any false lien or encumbrance against the real or personal property of an individual described in [18 U.S.C.] section 1114, on account of the performance of official duties by that individual, knowing or having reason to know that such lien or encumbrance is false or contains any materially false, fictitious, or fraudulent statement or representation, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned for not more than 10 years, or both.
Its legislative history explains that the statute is “intended to penalize individuals who seek to intimidate and harass Federal judges and employees by filing false liens against their real and personal property.” H.R.Rep. No. 110–218, pt. 1, at 17 (2007), 2007 WL 2199736 at *17.
Reed and Davis conducted a recorded telephone conversation on January 5, 2010, the day Judge Hovland issued an order denying Reed's motion to dismiss the pending firearms charge. The two discussed placing UCC liens for $2.4 million in cash and $1 million in silver against federal entities. The next day, Davis electronically filed a Form UCC–1 financing statement with the Recorder of Deeds in Washington, D.C., listing as debtors, “1. U.S. District Court of North Dakota/Daniel Hovland,” and “2. Acting United States Attorney, Lynn C. Jordheim.” The filing immediately became a public record because the Recorder of Deeds office accepts electronically filed statements without review.
At trial, an FBI agent testified that, during a January 20 interview, Davis admitted to filing this lien, threatened to file more liens, and referred to the statute prohibiting false liens as “ass wipe.” Testifying in his own defense at trial, Davis asserted a right to file the liens against Judge Hovland and Jordheim and stated that the liens had “monetary value,” but denied that the liens were intended to harm, or in fact harmed, Judge Hovland and Jordheim. The government's evidence included a May 5, 2010, “Notice of Default” that Reed filed with the District of North Dakota Clerk of Court demanding payment of $3.4 million and referencing the ten-digit number assigned by the Recorder of Deeds to the financing statement filed by Davis. When asked during cross-examination, “What do you believe [Judge Hovland and Jordheim] owe you or Mr. Reed,” Davis replied, “Well, they owe me Mr. Reed. They took Mr. Reed from us on their sovereign jurisdiction. We want him back.” Judge Hovland and Jordheim testified that they are not indebted to Davis.
Not challenging this formidable evidence that he knowingly filed a false or fictitious lien against Judge Hovland and U.S. Attorney Jordheim in a public record and on account of their performance of duties in a pending case, Davis argues that the government nonetheless failed to prove that he violated 18 U.S.C. § 1521 because the UCC–1 financing statement listed no “real or personal property of” Judge Hovland or Jordheim as collateral. This insufficiency contention requires us to discern what types of false or fictitious filings Congress intended to prohibit by the term “lien or encumbrance against the real or personal property of” an individual government official. “When a sufficiency argument hinges on the interpretation of a statute, we review the district court's statutory interpretation de novo.” United States v. Gentry, 555 F.3d 659, 664 (8th Cir.2009). We of course assume that Congress intended to adopt the plain meaning or common understanding of the words used in a statute. See United States v.. Idriss, 436 F.3d 946, 949 (8th Cir.2006).
The words “lien” and “encumbrance,” though encompassing a wide variety of commercial and financial devices, have a universally accepted meaning in this country. A lien is a property right, usually a legal right or interest that a creditor has in a debtor's property, whether perfected or merely claimed. See, e.g., Permanent Mission of India to the United Nations v. City of New York, 551 U.S. 193, 198 (2007); Mead v. Mead, 974 F.2d 990, 992 (8th Cir.1992), quoting 11 U.S.C. § 101(37); S.E.C. v. Credit Bancorp., Ltd., 297 F.3d 127, 138 (2d Cir.2002); Black's Law Dictionary 941 (8th ed.2004). Likewise, an encumbrance is a claim or liability that attaches to property, usually though not always real property. Permanent Mission, 551 U.S. at 198; Black's, supra, at 568; UCC § 9–102(32). The act of filing does not create the lien or encumbrance. Rather, filing is a method, often the exclusive method, of perfecting a lien claim against the rights of those who assert competing claims against the property. See, e.g., UCC § 9–310(a). This confirms that Congress limited the prohibition in § 1521 to financial harassment—filings that harass by claiming rights to the property of public officials—not to all types of false public filings that might harass public agencies or officials in other ways. Thus, if Davis had filed his lien against the District of North Dakota, without naming Judge Hovland and Jordheim as “debtors,” he might or might not have committed some other offense, but he would not have violated § 1521.
Most liens are created by a contract between the debtor and a creditor, such as a security agreement. Some arise by operation of law, such as a materialman's lien or a federal tax lien. See, e.g., 26 U.S.C. § 6321. Filing requirements to perfect a lien are prescribed by statute and vary with the type of lien. We deal here with a filing under the UCC, which has been adopted with minor variations by every State. The UCC governs the creation, attachment, and perfection of “security interests,” which are contractual “liens” within the meaning of 18 U.S.C. § 1521. See UCC §§ 9–102(72)(A), 9–201(a), 9–203(a), 9–301. Under the UCC, most security interests are perfected by the filing of a financing statement, typically a Form UCC–1. § 9–310(a). The financing statement is “sufficient” if it names the debtor, names the secured party (creditor) or a representative, and “indicates the collateral covered.” § 9–502. An indication that the collateral “covers all assets or all personal property” is sufficient. § 9–504. A financing statement is filed when it is accepted by the filing office. § 9–516(a). Davis's financing statement was accepted without substantive review.
The financing statement filed by Davis, which he testified was a “lien,” identified Judge Hovland and Jordheim as debtors. Davis filed the statement with the D.C. Recorder of Deeds. Normally, the UCC provides, a financing statement is filed in the State where an individual debtor resides, here, North Dakota. See §§ 9–301(1), 9–307(b)(1), 9–501(a). But the UCC also provides that the District of Columbia is a default debtor location. § 9–307(c). Moreover, § 9–307(h) provides, “The United States is located in the District of Columbia,” and the first debtor named in Davis's financing statement was a United States District Court. Thus, Davis chose a filing office whose public records would likely be searched by a party looking for adverse claims against the properties of Judge Hovland and Jordheim, such as prospective lenders, credit card issuers, and credit rating agencies. He also filed the facially suspect statement electronically and it became a public record without review.
The issue raised by Davis on appeal focuses on the incoherent “collateral” section of his Form UCC–1 financing statement. To frame the issue, we set forth nearly all of this lengthy portion of the statement:
4. This Financing Statement covers the following collateral:
Accepted for full value alleged court case # 4–09–cr–00076–DLH [Reed's pending prosecution], United States District Court for the District of North Dakota; ․ Michael Howard Reed ․ Private Discharging and Indemnity Bond number 77915985385; [2] Timothy Geithner |
(4 potatoes) printed in red in sheets of 35 stamps by Hortors Ltd. of Johannesburg, South Africa. The stamp/sticker soon achieved fame as a souvenir from passing ships and collectors throughout the world and was nicknamed the potato stamp.
However, the petition for stamps was refused and it wasn’t until 1952 that overprinted Tristan da Cunha on St Helena definitive stamps were used as the islands’ first postage stamps.
Tristan Da Cunha lies 2,816 kilometres (1,750 miles) from South Africa and 3,360 kilometres (2,088 miles) from South America. The closest land mass is Saint Helena a mere 2,430 kilometres (1,510 miles) distant.
Tristan was first discovered in 1506 by the Portuguese sailor Tristão da Cunha. However, Tristão was unable to land on Tristan because of accessibility difficulties and rough seas. Despite this, Tristão named the island ‘Ilha de Tristão da Cunha’ – roughly translated as ‘The Islands of Tristão da Cunha’. The name was changed to Tristan Da Cunha at a later date.
Tristan da Cunha’s capital (and most populated city) is ‘Edinburgh of the Seven Seas’, more commonly called Edinburgh. In 2005, the Royal Mail assigned Tristan the postcode of TDCU 1ZZ. This was for two reasons:
– the mail was getting lost because the island had no postcode; and
– the capital was being confused with the Scottish city of Edinburgh.
Above, four stamps from recently-issued 12-value definitive set featuring ships used over the years to deliver mail/supplies to the islands.
The territory consists of a number of islands – Tristan Da Cunha (38 square miles approximately), the uninhabited Nightingale Islands, and the wildlife reserves of Inaccessible Island and Gough Island.
Below: when decimal currency was introduced in Britain in 1971, these overprints were introduced.
2,799 total views, 1 views todayHowever, his basic principles have been extolled upon by several other mainstream finance authors, as well as thousands of other self-proclaimed Bogleheads. If you subscribe to his ideas of low cost index investing, or simply browse their forums, you can probably call yourself a Boglehead too.
While researching my article on The Best Investors of All Time, the term Bogleheads kept coming up when I was researching Jack Bogle. For a quick refresher, Jack Bogle is the founder of Vanguard, and a champion of low-cost simple investing philosophies.
The Bogleheads Investing Forum is one of the most active, and honestly one of the best, resources when it comes to investing Q&A.
If you've searched for anything investing related, chances are you've stumbled across the Bogleheads at some point in time.
What Do Bogleheads Follow?
Bogleheads follow several simple investing philosophies:
1. Live Below Your Means
This is a simple strategy - spend less than you earn. Live below what you need. Save the rest. Frugality is important, but so is earning more.
2. Invest Early And Often
This is one of the main reasons why I started this site. I wanted to encourage young adults and college students to start investing. The earlier you start, the better you'll be financially.
3. Never Take On Too Much Risk, Or Accept Too Little
Investing is a game of risk - but you don't want to go crazy. You can lose money investing. In fact, many people have gone broke investing. But that's rare, and it's near impossible to lose all your money investing if you follow simple advice.
4. Diversify
It's important to never keep all your eggs in one basket. Look at the people who had all their investments with their company stock, and then their company goes bankrupt. Investing in low cost index funds gives you diversity in your portfolio, especially as you mix up stocks, bonds, and other asset classes.
5. Don't Time The Market
Time in the market is better than timing the market. You never will know when the top or bottom is, all you can do is invest for the long term.
6. Use Index Funds
Index funds are fantastic tools to diversify across the stocks. Heck, you can buy the total stock market in one index fund! When it comes to diversification at low cost, there's no better way to do it.
7. Keep Costs Low
Fees are going to be the number one detriment to long term investing success. Keep cost low. Invest in low-cost mutual funds, and be wary of advisor fees. Read this scary story if you dare.
8. Minimize Taxes
Taxes are the enemy - we all hate taxes. Make sure you're taking advantage of tax-deferred investment tools like a 401k or IRA to the max. If you're self employed, you have the solo 401k at your disposal that can really allow you to save.
9. Keep It Simple
Simplicity is important. The more complex you make things, the harder it is to manage. Investing can be simple. Pick a few funds, keep your accounts together, and watch your money grow.
10. Stay The Course
The stock market goes up and down. In fact, as of writing this, it's near all time highs. It might crash. But you need to stay the course and keep investing for the long run. Buy low, sell high - don't fall for the panic and do it backwards.
How to be a Boglehead
Bogleheads invest and keep it simple by buying mutual funds or ETFs that try to mimic the entire market. Or, to build a proper asset allocation for their own individual needs, they may buy a stock mutual fund and bond mutual fund to be diversified in both asset classes. When buying these funds, they pay special attention to fees, and only invest in funds with low fees and expenses.
Taxes are also a huge consideration. To maximize tax efficiency, investment vehicles like 401ks and IRAs are the preferred mediums.
Finally, they stay the course - the stock market goes down, they keep investing. The stock market goes up, they keep investing.Poetry
The Joy of Writing
Why does this written doe bound through these written woods?
For a drink of written water from a spring
whose surface will xerox her soft muzzle?
Why does she lift her head; does she hear something?
Perched on four slim legs borrowed from the truth,
she pricks up her ears beneath my fingertips.
Silence – this word also rustles across the page
and parts the boughs
that have sprouted from the word “woods.”
Lying in wait, set to pounce on the blank page,
are letters up to no good,
clutches of clauses so subordinate
they’ll never let her get away.
Each drop of ink contains a fair supply
of hunters, equipped with squinting eyes behind their sights,
prepared to swarm the sloping pen at any moment,
surround the doe, and slowly aim their guns.
They forget that what’s here isn’t life.
Other laws, black on white, obtain.
The twinkling of an eye will take as long as I say,
and will, if I wish, divide into tiny eternities,
full of bullets stopped in mid-flight.
Not a thing will ever happen unless I say so.
Without my blessing, not a leaf will fall,
not a blade of grass will bend beneath that little hoof’s full stop.
Is there then a world
where I rule absolutely on fate?
A time I bind with chains of signs?
An existence become endless at my bidding?
The joy of writing.
The power of preserving.
Revenge of a mortal hand.
By Wislawa Szymborska
From “No End of Fun”, 1967
Translated by S. Baranczak & C. Cavanagh
Copyright © Wislawa Szymborska, S. Baranczak & C. Cavanagh
To cite this section
MLA style: Poetry. NobelPrize.org. Nobel Media AB 2019. Wed. 27 Feb 2019. <https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/literature/1996/szymborska/25585-poetry-1996-13/>CLOSE An 11-year-old girl died after she was electrocuted while she was swimming in a New Jersey lagoon. Time
police siren breaking news
ASBURY PARK, N.J. -- An 11-year-old girl died after she was electrocuted on Saturday while swimming in a lagoon at a friend's house, according to authorities.
The girl, who lived in Newark, N.J., was with a friend on a raft in a Toms River lagoon when they touched the metal boat lift, and an "electric current appears to have energized the equipment causing the injury," police said.
The boat lift involved in the fatal electrocution had corroded and fallen into disrepair, Mayor Thomas Kelaher said.
Kelaher said authorities were at the Tobago Avenue home Monday to inspect the boat lift.
The equipment was initially installed in 2001 and up to code, Kelaher said. Then the property, including the lift, was sold to its current homeowners, who do not own a boat and did not frequently check on the lift.
Over the years, the electrical junction box under the dock corroded, Kelaher said, and the victim fatally placed her hand on the metal frame. A GoFundMe account for the victim has raised over $10,000.
"You can't really blame anybody; it's a tragic accident," Kelaher said.
The girls were all wearing life jackets and in the presence of adults, police said. The two other girls were not injured.
Though docks and boats are sources of electricity, few people are aware of the risk of electrocution when swimming nearby.
Swimmers should never be in the water near a marina or a running boat, according to the nonprofit organization Electrical Safety Foundation International. Electric Shock Drowning can happen when an electrical current, even a low-level current, passes through the body, according to the Electric Shock Drowning Prevention Association. The current causes muscular paralysis, and majority of these deaths happen near docks or marinas, according to the association.
Only 1/50th of the energy needed to power a 60-watt light bulb can cause paralysis and drowning, according to the Electrical Safety Foundation.
More than 70 deaths between 1986 and 2013 were caused by electrocutions near water, according to a 2014 report prepared by Quality Marine Services of Jacksonville, Florida, for the National Fire Protection Association. The company attributed an additional 38 "near misses" over that same time period to electric shocks by water.
Boat lifts were responsible for some of those deaths and near misses. In 2012, a man in Minnesota died after three people were shocked in a lake by what was presumed to be a boat lift, according to the report. In 2012, a 13-year-old girl and her 8-year-old brother were killed in Missouri while swimming near a private dock with a boat lift and water slide that had power supplies that were not properly grounded, the company found.
Yet in New Jersey, these types are deaths are rare, said Dr. Robert Sweeney, chairman of the department of emergency medicine at Jersey Shore University Medical Center in Neptune.
Overall, deaths by electrocutions are relatively rare, he said. Sweeney added that in 25 years of living by the Jersey Shore, he has never before heard of such an incident.
"This sounds like a sad tragic accident," he said.
The Boat Owners Association of The United States describes the risk of electric shock drowning in the below video.
If someone suspects that a person in the water is being electrocuted, they should never jump in to help. They should throw in a life ring, turn off the power supply, and call 911, according to Electrical Safety Foundation International.
Tobago Avenue was quiet Sunday afternoon. A woman at the home where the electrocution happened declined to comment. A neighbor said no one on the street knew the girl.
The call to police came in at 8:12 p.m. Saturday. First responders took over CPR that had been begun by adults who were at the home, and then used an Automated External Defibrilator on the girl. The child was taken to Community Medical Center in Toms River, where she later died.
The Toms River incident is under investigation by Toms River Police Detectives Louis Santora and James Carey, along with Ocean County Prosecutor's Office Detective Lindsay Woodfield and Ocean County Sheriff’s Department C.S.I. Sgt. David Deleeuw and Officer Jillian Menke.
Read or Share this story: https://usat.ly/2sT4ek5Greece is to receive 1,000 Bitcoin ATMs following a partnership between digital currency exchange BTCGreece and cryptocurrency service provider Cubits, according to reports. The installation of the ATMs, which allow users to exchange cash for bitcoins, reflects the growing interest in bitcoin in Greece at a time of economic uncertainty.
Bitcoin is seen by some in Greece as a way to circumvent strict capital controls in the country that have been in place since June. Greeks are currently restricted to withdrawing no more than €60 (£42, $66) per day and are forbidden from moving money to foreign bank accounts. Bitcoin offers an alternative store of value that BTCGreece founder Thanos Marinos is eager to exploit.
"We are creating the ecosystem of bitcoin and blockchain solutions in the Greek market," Marinos told CoinTelegraph. "That will include the rollout of 1,000 ATMs and solutions for the e-commerce and tourism industry.
"Partnering with best of breed companies in the bitcoin space will enable us to provide the Greeks with solutions that will ease the difficulties of the capital controls. Bitcoin adoption is happening and in a very fast pace. Bitcoin in Greece is not just hype but a solution to day-to-day problems of people and businesses under capital controls. Also, a key factor is that the trust of the traditional banking system is long gone and people are open to bitcoin."
Greek interest in bitcoin spiked earlier this summer amid fears that Greece would exit the euro, resulting in a price surge for the world's most expensive cryptocurrency. Marinos claims to have received requests from 300 shops in Greece for bitcoin ATMs to be installed on their premises, with plans for the first ATMs to be rolled out in October.
"During times of economic uncertainty, people invest in safe havens such as gold," said Bitcoins Greece founder Elenu Varela in a recent interview with IBTimes UK. "Nowadays, digital assets like bitcoin have joined that asset class. Because cryptocurrencies are global and do not rely on a healthy banking system, it is logical for people to stockpile them in times of uncertainty."It's Friday night and I settle into a plush seat next to Aaron, a gorgeous, funny brunette who I've known since college. We're sharing both the armrest and the popcorn between us. Anyone in the row behind us, witnessing our whispered inside jokes and laughter throughout the previews, could mistake us for a couple. But we're not. Every time we go out together, we correct one wrong assumption after another, repeatedly telling people: We're just friends.
The movie we're there to watch is Olivia Wilde's most recent passion project, Drinking Buddies, a modern-day When Harry Met Sally with a lot more booze and a lot less happily ever after. The film follows the tides in a friendship between Kate (Olivia Wilde) and Luke (Jake Johnson), co-workers in a Chicago brewery, while not-so-subtly hinting at an undercurrent of chemistry and a bit of verboten desire. Does their flirtation cross boundaries; will it be repairable? Also, what are these characters getting from their friendship if not romance, or a promise of future love and commitment?
Aaron and I leave the theater arguing our points -- not whether men and women can simply be friends, but why exactly they should be. I gravitated toward the opposite sex early on, when, at the age of 5, I pledged allegiance to my brothers' posse by publicly decapitating my Barbie Dolls. I'd surrounded myself with gross, sticky, amphibian-mutilating boys and loved every second of it. With them, everything was an adventure. In the morning, I'd be king of the hill, the neighborhood kids my slaves and by late afternoon, I'd be a burglar getting away with loot (carefully returning the contents of my mother's jewelry box before she came home). I'd watch girls on the other side of the playground and wonder just how long exactly they planned on pretending to drink their make-believe tea. Didn't they ever want to dress up as a half-man, half-reptile with super powers, rather than a princess, waiting around for frogs?
My choice in friendship gender preference carried on through all twelve years of grade school, when the only females to sign my yearbook were my English teacher and the lunch lady. Still, in college, I joined a sorority. Curiosity of my own kind had peaked and I hoped to have some bridesmaids if I ever decided to marry. Suddenly, I found myself surrounded by more estrogen than I could tolerate for more than a few hours at a time. There were tears, drama and vicious three-way-calling that both shocked and disgusted me. But then there was also a beautiful vulnerability and honest conversations and candid questions that we all worked together to find answers to. By the time I graduated and moved to New York, men still maintained the top spots on my speed dial, with the exception of a few amazing women I let in along the way.
There is no doubt that female friendships hold hefty value in my life, but friendships with women exhaust me in a way that male friendships never have. They simply offer different things. Not to say that male-female friendships lack complication; that would be silly and untrue. I once lost a close friendship because I confused chivalry for romance and honesty for intimacy. And there have been a couple of instances when a night of drinking led to a platonic pal's confession of one-sided love, until he sobered up and remembered that I am a often a nightmare in relationships (as most people are). Over brunch, we laugh at the thought of a romance between us, split the check down to the penny and returned to our casual camaraderie. Friends know too many secrets and that knowledge limits the sexual chemistry to that of a houseplant.
Like Olivia Wilde and Jake Johnson, I agree that when you build a friendship that works seamlessly, no romantic relationship can hold a candle to it. Men and women can and should be friends with benefits... but not the ones you might be thinking of. Here's what the men in my life have given me:
1. Successful Matchmaker: Who someone matches you up with says a lot about what they think of you. Clearly, my lady friends think that I like shorter men who live with their parents, are part of some fantasy sports team and like to eat in diners. Only on rare occasions have I been set-up by guy friends and each time was a raging success. Why? Because my date was brutally briefed on what I'm really like: she has a great sense of humor but its dark, like really dark, and she is annoyingly independent, so don't offer to pay, but open her car door because she still thinks chivalry is a thing. Oh, and when a guy says his friend is good looking, he is.
2. Honest Cheerleader: When I see my girlfriends, I will be greeted with a compliment. My shoes, my hair, my interesting choice in a neon rainbow manicure -- it will be loved by someone at girls' night, but do they really like it or are women in the habit of being nice? You know who doesn't compliment just to compliment? Men. Getting a kind word out of them is like pulling teeth from a shark. I'm certain that when a guy friend says that I look like I've lost weight, I know they are saying it because it's true... not because they feel bad that I started Aqua Cycling a month ago and am still waiting to see results.The essence of the type error is this line: "The type variable `a0' is ambiguous".
(Disclaimer: I'm trying to avoid jargon in this answer.)
To understand what's going on here, I suggest floating the binding and query bindings to the top-level. They successfully typecheck if you then comment out the bind binding. GHC infers the following types.
*Orexio.Radix> :i query query :: Data a => JSValue -> Result a *Orexio.Radix> :i binding binding :: (Data (Representation a), Endpoint a, Resource a) => Result a -> Either String JSValue
Your error is essentially caused by the expression \x -> binding (query x) in the definition of bind. Notice that the type variable a appears only in the domain of binding and the range of query. Thus, when you compose them, two things happen.
The type variable is not determined; its "value" remains unknown. The type variable is not reachable from the type of the composition. For our informal purposes, that type is JSValue -> Either String JSValue.
GHC raises the error because the type variable was not determined during the composition (ie 1) and it can never be determined in the future (a consequence of 2).
The general shape of this problem in Haskell is more commonly known as the " show - read problem"; search for "ambiguous" on Chapter 6 of Real World Haskell. (Some might also call it "too much polymorphism".)
As you and Sjoerd have determined (and the RWH chapter explains), you can fix this type error by ascribing a type to the result of query before applying binding. Without knowing your semantics, I assume that you intend this "hidden" type variable a to be the same as the argument to the Binding type constructor. So the following would work.
bind :: forall b. (Data b, Resource b, Endpoint b, Data (Representation b)) => Binding b bind = Binding (\x -> binding $ (query x :: Result b))
This ascription eliminates the type variable a by replacing it entirely with Result b. Note that unlike a it is acceptable for b to remain undetermined, since it's reachable in the top-level type; uses of bind may each determine b.
That first solution requires giving bind an explicit signature — which can sometimes be quite onerous. In this case, due to the monomorphism restriction, you probably already need that type signature. However, if bind took an argument (but still exhibited this ambiguous type variable error), you could still rely on type inference by using a solution like the following.
dummy_ResultType :: Binding a -> Result a dummy_ResultType = error "dummy_ResultType" bind () = result where result = Binding (\x -> binding $ (query x `asTypeOf` dummy)) dummy = dummy_ResultType result
(If the use of error worries you, cf the Proxy type.)
Or trade some idiomaticness for directness:
withArgTypeOf :: f x -> g x -> f x withArgTypeOf x _ = x bind () = result where result = Binding (\x -> binding (query x `withArgTypeOf` result))
Now inference works.
*Orexio.Radix> :i bind bind :: (Data (Representation a), Data a, Endpoint a, Resource a) => () -> Binding a
Rest assured that GHC quickly determines after typechecking that the definition is not actually recursive.
HTH.Right now, people are burying Windows 8. Even people you’d normally expect to be on Microsoft’s side are unhappy with it. Me, though? I kind of like it.
When Apple originally brought out the first iPad, I bought one as soon as I could. I always liked touchscreen devices. Long before Steve Jobs held the first iPhone prototype in his hands, I carried a button-less, touchscreen-only SonyEricsson P800.
Heck, I owned various Newtons, and used them to take notes in school. So the iPad really made sense to me.
The Problem that Surface Solves (For Me)
When Jobs introduced the iPad, he wanted it to be seen as a productivity device. He had Phil Schiller demo Keynote, Numbers, and Pages.
I used the Newton as a productivity device. I used the P800 as a productivity device. But at least for me, the iPad never turned out to be a good productivity device. It turned out to be great for browsing the web, watching movies, and playing games. Great for reading books and comics. Great for consumption. But not great for production.
To be sure, it’s absolutely possible to use iPads productively. In fact, Apple blogs love to point to examples of people who do use iPads to produce things. And yes, these people exist. There are artists who draw on iPads, and musicians who make music on iPads, and writers who write novels on iPads, and movie makers who cut their movies on iPads. But the fact that you have to point to these people, the fact that there are articles about these people, shows that they’re unusual. An artist drawing a painting on an iPad is a novelty.
If it was normal for people to use their iPads for creative tasks, there would not be newspaper articles about people using their iPads for creative tasks. The iPad will have arrived as a productivity device when news sites stop reporting about people who use iPads for productivity. So in the end, all of these links to articles about people who use their iPads to create things only seem to support the notion that this is not how most people use their iPads.
Responding to people who note that the iPad seems to be mostly used for content consumption, John Gruber writes: «for these people, the iPad is unsuitable for content creation for anyone unless it’s suitable for them,» implying that there’s something special about people who don’t use iPads productively. But I don’t think that’s fair. On the contrary, I think it’s somewhat unusual to find iPad owners who do use their iPads for content creation on a regular basis. Even when you just look at very basic creative tasks — say, responding to email, rather than just reading email — most people seem to prefer PCs overs iPads.
It’s not an accident that the best selling, highest grossing iPad apps are almost exclusively games.
Some people point out that most PC users don’t use their PCs to make music, and paint pictures, either. That’s true. But they do use their PCs to write letters, presentations, invitations, create birthday cards, or send emails. And while you can use your iPad for these things — and I know that there are people who do — it’s often easier to do it on a PC. The same things that make iPads easy to use for some things can make them harder to use for others.
Consider a creative task that almost everybody has to do: writing a job application.
When you write your cover letter, you might want to also look at the job ad on the Internet, so you can tailor your letter to the job. On an iPad, you can’t see your letter and the job ad at the same time.
You might want to send your letter to a friend to read. Maybe that friend will send back some suggestions. On an iPad, you can’t see the email with the suggestions and your letter at the same time.
Your CV probably includes a picture. Maybe you went to a photographer who gave you a CD with copies of the pictures she took. You can’t easily copy them to your iPad. Once there, you probably want to touch them up a bit, and crop them. It might be inconvenient to move the image file between all of the apps you’ll use to work on it.
Finally, you might want to export your letter and CV as PDFs, maybe combine them into a single PDF, or maybe ZIP them. You want to attach the resulting file to an email. It’s reasonably simple on a Mac or PC, but I’m not sure if some of these things are even possible on an iPad.
Apple has decided to make the iPad as simple as possible, but sometimes, this simplicity comes at the expense of power. Not having any kind of window management or split-screen view makes the iPad much easier to use, but it also means you can’t look at an email and at a Pages document at the same time. Preventing apps from interacting with each other cuts down on complexity, but it also means that it is difficult or sometimes even impossible to use multiple apps in conjunction on the same task. Not having any kind of system-level concept of a file or a document means that people are less likely to lose track of their files or documents, but it also means that you are often very limited in what you can do with the things you create in an iPad app.
As Joanna Stern puts it, «if I’m writing long emails or working on office documents, I want a larger screen, a roomy keyboard and the ability to easily juggle programs.»
Fraser Speirs, whom nobody will suspect of being against using iPads in productive settings, points out that Apple seems to be stagnating in this area:
I still think it’s a fair question to ask after the relative functional (if not visual) stasis of iOS 6 and iOS 7: where does iOS go from here? At the launch of iOS 5, Scott Forstall said that Apple had undertaken an exercise to identify and remove all the missing functionality in iOS that caused people to go back to a computer. The examples he gave were creating new calendars and mailboxes. Perhaps it’s time to do that exercise again.
And that’s the problem I’m trying to solve. I acknowledge that there are people for whom the iPad works well as a productivity device. For me personally, though, that was never the case (and I don’t think I’m alone in this). But I do want to use a tablet as a productivity device. Fraser Speirs is asking Apple to make iOS a better platform for these kinds of tasks, but I’m not waiting anymore. I want to use a tablet that has an elegant user interface, but also works well for productivity.
A few months ago, I gave away my iPad, and replaced it with, of all things, a Microsoft Surface Pro 2.
What I Like
Almost everything that happens inside the Metro environment is fantastic. It’s clean, fast, and powerful. The apps are easy to use, but still offer a lot. The gesture-based user interface requires you to learn a few new things, but takes very little time to get used to.
The spatial way that apps are arranged on the home screen is great. It’s very easy to group apps, name groups, rearrange apps or groups, zoom out to see an overview of all of your apps, change the size of individual apps to emphasize ones you use often, or deemphasize ones you use less often. Apps can provide a live preview (which is very useful for, say, an email client). And finally, changing the device’s orientation doesn’t move your tiles around. They stay where they are, or, when they do move, do so in more predictable ways.
(Image from Microsoft’s guidelines for tiles and badges)
Metro looks very clean, and most of the screen can be used for content, because UI elements that aren’t constantly needed are hidden behind the screen edges.
Swipe in from the right to see a global menu that contains five entries.
«Search» searches your computer, the Internet, and the current app.
«Share» allows you to share whatever you’re currently looking at. It keeps track of people you’ve shared things with, so sending, say, a web page to an email address often requires as few gestures as a single swipe and three taps: open the menu, tap «Share», tap the address, tap «Send».
«Start» brings you back to the home screen. This is so convenient that I only ever use the actual home button on my Surface by accident. Unfortunately, it’s a capacitive button, so accidental activation does happen from time to time.
«Devices» allows you to send whatever you’re currently looking at to devices like printers or projectors.
«Settings» allows you to change settings (both global and for the current application), and turn the Surface off.
Since you’re typically holding the Surface on the side, this menu is easily accessible, and very convenient. I was initially confused by the fact that the menu combines global and local features (e.g. «Search» is always available and looks as if it was always a global search of your entire Surface, but when you’re in an app, you can sometimes change the Search scope to the current app), but I figured out how it worked quite quickly.
If you swipe in from the left side of the screen, you’ll get the task switcher. The default behavior of the task switcher is problematic, since you basically drag in an application. Which application? That’s not always immediately predictable. Fortunately, it’s easy to fix this problem by simply going to the «Corner and edges» setting, and turning off the somewhat oddly and verbosely named setting «When I swipe in from the left edge, switch between my recent apps instead of showing a list of them». Once this is changed, swiping in simply shows a list of running apps. Tap one to jump to it, or drag it into the screen to turn on split screen mode.
Again, extremely convenient.
Finally, swiping in from the bottom brings up the current application’s menu. For example, in Internet Explorer, this brings up open tabs, your address bar, and some buttons.
Again, the buttons are typically arranged around the edges, making them easy accessible when holding the device in landscape mode.
Hiding these UI elements by default allows the applications to use the screen for actual content. Since this gesture works the same in every application, it’s an easily learnable way of accessing features. This allows the app’s designer to clean up its user interface.
I’ve kind of glossed over it, but a few of the things I’ve just mentioned make the Surface quite different from an iPad.
One of them is the Share menu, which is one way in which Windows 8 apps can interact with each other. Via Contracts, apps can register themselves as sharing sources, sharing recipients, or both.
Metro apps have access to any cloud storage app that you install (and to any other app that wants to make its «data silo» available). Fresh Paint, a painting app that comes with the Surface, automatically shows Dropbox and Box as file sources, once you’ve installed these apps.
But since this is regular old Windows, that’s not the only way to access files. You can access the full file system, if you want to (but you don’t have to). This allows you to easily exchange files between different apps, even if they don’t support the appropriate Contracts, or don’t run in Metro.
Another difference between the Surface and an iPad is the Surface’s split screen mode. iPad owners often note that the iPad’s «one app owns the screen» system is a good idea, since people can’t multitask anyway. But that ignores that people often need multiple apps to work on a single task. I can’t count the instances where I’ve used split screen mode just in the last few days. I’m in a meeting, taking notes in OneNote while looking at last week’s meeting notes. I’m responding to an email while looking at a spec. I’m making a drawing while looking at a reference. I’m changing a mockup based on feedback in an email. I’m taking notes during a Skype call.
This is just an illustration of the concept. I do realize that it doesn’t really make sense to take notes while looking at the test call icon. Typically, I’m looking at a presentation or a shared screen during these kinds of calls, so switching away to another app entirely is not a good solution.
When the Surface is in split-screen mode and you launch another app, it «asks» you which side of the screen to show the app.
This seems slightly strange to me. I’m looking at two apps side-by-side because I want to see these specific two apps side by side, not because I want to see any two apps side-by-side. In most situations, when opening a new app, I would have preferred if the new app simply opened in full-screen mode, and the Surface then allowed me to jump back to the split-screen view with the previous two apps using the task switcher. That would have allowed me to easily switch between a full-screen app and two other apps in split-screen mode.
Metro’s split-screen mode isn’t perfect. It doesn’t cover every use case. But at least for me, it covered surprisingly many of them, and it made the Surface a much better option for creative work than an iPad.
A final difference I want to mention: the Surface Pro comes with a pen. I’ve used the pen for annotating drafts, for sketching out user interfaces, for drawing logic diagrams, for taking notes, and for many other things.
I’ve tried using the iPad for this, I really have. I’ve tried using my fingers. It’s cumbersome. I also have a drawer full of iPad pens. I have every pen imaginable. I have pens that look like brushes, pens that look like markers, pens that have little discs on the tip, pens that create a change in capacitance using electricity, Bluetooth pens, infrared pens that require little cameras you attach to the iPad… I have all of them. I’ve supported ever iPad pen Kickstarter project I could find. Some of these pens are terrible, and some are acceptable, depending on what I want to use them for.
None of them are even in the same ballpark as the Surface’s pen.
The Surface’s pen is almost as good as my Cintiq’s. Tracking is fast, it’s pressure-sensitive, it works everywhere, and it feels like a real pen. It’s great, unlike every iPad pen I’ve ever tried.
In general, I really love the Surface, and I use it much more, and for many more things, than I ever used any iPad I ever owned. But it’s not perfect.
What I Find Disappointing
Windows’ handwriting recognition is interesting. Technically, it performs flawlessly. I thought that the later Newton models had acceptable handwriting recognition, but Windows completely blows that out of the water. To give you an idea of how good it is: my handwriting is terrible, and I’m writing a lot of German text using the English-language handwriting recognition. Yet it works.
Unfortunately, this fantastic technology is package in an absolutely terrible user interface. First of all, handwriting recognition only works inside a handwriting recognition keyboard. Yep, you have to activate an on-screen keyboard that covers half the screen, then write inside that keyboard. Like on a Palm. Back in the 90s.
As of right now, I’ve not discovered how to write continuously. You have to write text until the keyboard is «full», then hit the «Insert» button. That clears the keyboard, and you can continue writing text.
The way I want handwriting recognition to work is to take notes by jotting them down inside an app like OneNote, and have Windows recognize that automatically, behind the scenes, optionally |
tentative attempt to prepare for the unwinding is a reminder of how difficult it is to have a sensible conversation with the financial sector.
References
Federal Reserve (2013a), “Long-Term Interest Rates”, speech, Ben S Bernanke, 1 March.
Federal Reserve (2013b), “The Economic Outlook”, speech, Ben S Bernanke, 22 May.Matt Rourke/Associated Press
Eagles quarterback coach John DeFilippo had some sobering Carson Wentz news for the Philadelphia faithful when he spoke to reporters earlier in the offseason.
"This year coming up, he's probably not going to play great in all 16 games," he said.
Not great in all 16 games? Cancel the season. Declare the trade that brought Wentz to Philly a franchise-crippling failure and add Wentz to the Mount Rushmore of all-time draft busts.
Too extreme? Well, football fans in general—and Eagles fans in particular—aren't known for their measured responses. In Philly, everything rests on Wentz's shoulders: the Eagles' season, the team's future, the hopes and dreams of a region in the midst of one of its all-too-common multisport funks.
Wentz has undergone a long summer of scrutiny. Like his 2016 season, the offseason has had its highs and lows. Somewhere between the saga of Wentz the Savior and Wentz the Failure lies the tale of a second-year quarterback enduring the messy process of getting better.
The Weapons
Wentz finally connected with Alshon Jeffery for a pair of crisp completions late in the first quarter of the second preseason game against the Buffalo Bills. It was the moment Eagles fans were waiting for, but it felt a little long in coming.
Wentz and Jeffery had their moments throughout the offseason. Just not enough of them. The pair appeared to be finding a rhythm during minicamp in June. But according to NJ.com reporter Eliot Shorr-Parks, who rigorously tracks such things, Wentz only threw 13 passes to Jeffery in the Eagles' first 12 training camp practices.
Part of the problem was that Jeffery missed a chunk of early-August practices and the preseason opener with a minor shoulder injury. Before his two catches against the Bills, Jeffery ran the wrong route on a 3rd-and-long play, prompting receivers coach Mike Groh to suggest the receiver was "a little bit behind" due to the missed practice time.
"Every once in a while you run a wrong route, make some mistakes on a few plays," Jeffery countered after the game. "I'll be all right."
Matt Rourke/Associated Press
Jeffery is only one piece in Philly's effort to retool its receiving, which saw the Eagles sign Torrey Smith, draft Mack Hollins and Shelton Gibson and trade Jordan Matthews after the preseason opener. But Jeffery, signed to a one-year deal after four impressive-but-injury-marred seasons with the Bears, was the linchpin of the overhaul.
"He has tremendous ball skills," DeFilippo said of Jeffery. "The way he can track a ball in the air, go up with one hand and get a ball."
Follow all the news on Carson Wentz and the Eagles, download the https://br.app.link/cJutBMMQNF" target="_blank">new B/R app. Get the app and get the game.
Those are all elements that should be a welcome sight for Wentz.
"The thing that's very comforting for a quarterback is when a receiver, or a tight end or a back, has a big catching radius," DeFilippo added. "You don't have to be strike-point accurate all the time."
Other receivers are anticipating a trickle-down effect from Jeffery's presence. "I think it takes a lot of pressure off when you can't double team everyone," Smith said. "It'll be nice to not have that safety tailing over top every time. That'll be new."
Said Wentz: "It's kind of a different animal throwing the ball to him."
Indeed, last season Philly's top receivers—Matthews, Nelson Agholor and Dorial Green-Beckham—combined to drop 21 passes, according to Football Outsiders Almanac. But dropped passes tell only a fraction of the story. Eagles receivers also misjudged deep passes, lost 50-50 balls and reliably got exactly one foot in bounds on sideline routes.
So the Eagles made changes.
Agholor, who was briefly benched last season but looked sharp in practice throughout this spring and summer, is the only holdover from last year. Gibson has dealt with the rookie dropsies throughout camp, but Hollins looks solid. Seven-year veteran Smith has adopted a leadership role. And sleepers like Marcus Johnson have benefited from the competition, which is why Matthews suddenly became expendable.
Wentz now has weapons. His skeptics might point out that he now also lacks excuses.
Wentz admitted this week the Eagles have been "kind of all over the place offensively in the first two preseason games." But he and Jeffery didn't look the least bit "behind" in this week's joint practices with the Dolphins. Jeffery regularly beat Dolphins No. 1 cornerback (and former Eagle) Byron Maxwell. And Wentz consistently got him the ball.
"Our chemistry is continually coming along," Wentz said after Tuesday's practice. "I don't think it's ever been a problem. But it's just been continually growing."
Mitchell Leff/Getty Images
With so many new faces and Wentz still growing into his role as a team leader, that chemistry is under as much examination as every other detail of his game.
The Chemistry
Wentz invited the Eagles receivers to a combination quarterback camp/bonding retreat in Fargo, North Dakota, during the break between minicamp and training camp. They ran routes and threw footballs, of course. But they also got to know one another.
"We went to the lake," Wentz said. "We went golfing, which was kind of a disaster. It took us four-and-a-half hours to play a best-ball scramble.
"I've never seen so many swings and misses," he added.
Other than occasional Instagram photos of big-game safaris and venison cheesesteaks, Wentz doesn't pull back the veil very often on what happens outside of Eagles headquarters. So the press pool probed the quarterback and other Eagles for details about their Wentz Hot American Summer. We learned rookie Mack Hollins was the least futile golfer, Marcus Johnson the most, and that Shelton Gibson could not stand up on a paddleboard. We even got some hot Fargo dining tips (Johnson recommends the bison burger at HoDo in Fargo).
The goal of the Fargo junket, of course, was not to lower anyone's handicap or write Urbanspoon reviews, but to build team chemistry. "We had some fun, and it was really good to get that bonding time in, on the field and off," Wentz said.
Swapping out so many offensive weapons can be a double-edged sword. The Eagles receiving corps is more talented than last year. But what about the delicate timing and communication quarterbacks and receivers must establish to create that Joe Montana-to-Jerry Rice, Peyton Manning-to-Marvin Harrison magic?
"It takes time to develop," coach Doug Pederson said, "and sometimes time that you don't have with the way that the offseason is structured. But these guys also worked out a little bit beyond the in-house rules."
Male bonding exercises on the lonesome prairie cannot hurt.
Torrey Smith recalled his rookie season for the Ravens in 2011, when the lockout erased OTAs, rookie camps and minicamps. "I didn't even know where I was lining up all through camp," Smith said. "But my first start I had three touchdowns. So we were rollin' pretty quick."
The bond between Wentz and his new receivers became even more important after the Matthews trade. Wentz himself drove Matthews to the airport after the sudden deal, which sent the closest thing he had to a go-to receiver in 2016 to the Bills.
"This is my first time experiencing this with someone that is one of my best friends," Wentz told reporters after the trade.
"Everyone loved him," Wentz added. "He was the ultimate competitor out here, always was about the team first. Replacing a guy like that in the locker room is definitely not going to be easy."
Ron Jenkins/Associated Press/Associated Press/Associated Press/Associated Press
Welcoming new friends and bidding farewell to old ones is part of both football and life. But for a quarterback with all of one season of experience, every ripple can feel like a tidal wave.
The Deep Breaths
Last offseason, Wentz went from leading North Dakota State University to the FCS championship to the Senior Bowl to the scouting combine to predraft workouts to Eagles rookie camp, where he endured an unexpected trip from the third string to the starting lineup (despite a rib injury which erased part of training camp) without a break.
"Last year at this time he had played a bunch of football," Pederson said at the start of OTAs. "He was coming off his world tour." The Eagles have made a habit of recounting how grueling Wentz's 2016 was whenever asked, revealing the story to be part mantra, part talking point for the organization.
"I just remember being tired all the time," Wentz admitted. "It's an exhausting time. You're flying around, you're working out all the time.... you have no idea what's happening."
Wentz took an extended break in the offseason. He spent a lot of time in the wilderness, pursuing big game everywhere from North Dakota to New Zealand.
"To finally just get away and get a chance to breathe and relax, spend some time with friends and family, it was big for me," he said.
Of course, most rookie quarterbacks are put through the wringer in the predraft process. Dak Prescott also attended the Senior Bowl, toured the NFL in search of a job and rose suddenly from third- to first-string. But Prescott was none the worse for wear when the Cowboys reached the playoffs.
But Eagles backup quarterback Nick Foles stressed that quarterbacks must learn to get away from the football grind when the opportunity arises. "When you leave here, you have to decompress," Foles said. "You have to get away from the game. You go through a lot in here, and you give everything you got."
A four-season lifetime ago, Foles was the Eagles' hot young starting quarterback. So he understands the unique pressure that comes from being the most important sports figure in one of America's most demanding, frustrated and hypercritical sports cities.
"I know what it's like to walk through the city and get recognized everywhere you go," Foles said. "At that age, there's just so much going on. You really have to take some deep breaths."
Matt Rourke/Associated Press/Associated Press
Foles said the pressure gets easier to manage once a young quarterback knows what to expect. "There's not many people who can handle that. He's doing a great job at his age handling this platform."
But Wentz's time away from Eagles headquarters wasn't all hunting and golfing. He also focused on what may be the most criticized element of his game: the way he throws the football.
The Mechanics
Wentz visited noted quarterback gurus Tom House and Adam Dedeaux between safaris early in the offseason. The news sent observers reaching for our calipers and radar guns to monitor slight changes in Wentz's delivery, which has been criticized by some as slow.
"Some simple things," Wentz said of the tweaks to his delivery. "Things to the naked eye you probably wouldn't notice."
There was speculation among the press pool that the Eagles weren't thrilled with Wentz seeing an outside specialist on the finer points of quarterback mechanics. Pederson and offensive coordinator Frank Reich are both longtime backup quarterbacks, after all, with plenty of expertise on the finer points of making a football fly. And DeFilippo will soon be fast-tracked to the coordinator ranks (the Eagles refused to let the Jets hire him away) and beyond. Why go outside the organization?
While DeFilippo downplayed the suggestion that Wentz needed significant retooling of what some observers perceive as a slow release, he does look smoother now than he did last offseason, both when throwing the football and moving around the pocket. Some of that may be due to the House-Dedeaux guruship. Some of it may be due to the tutelage of DeFilippo and Pederson, whose drills emphasize both pocket mechanics (where to hold the ball, where to point the toe) and how to deliver accurate passes on the run (Wentz's touchdown to Hollins in the season opener looked like a maneuver the Eagles constantly practice).
But even a layman can see a wobbly pass with the naked eye, and Wentz still throws a few of those during practices. "There's a lot of quarterbacks who throw a wobble pass here or there," Pederson said during minicamp, shrugging off concerns.
Wentz's mechanics will still garner criticism. Criticizing quarterback minutiae is a cottage industry on the internet.
Matt Rourke/Associated Press/Associated Press
Belaboring a second-year quarterback's every poorly pointed toe or delayed release, however, may be missing the point. "No quarterback is ever a finished product," DeFilippo said. "Ever."
The Expectations
The problem with Wentz's 2016 rookie season was that it was a rookie season. Wentz didn't inspire MVP speculation or reset expectations for what rookie quarterbacks can achieve the way Dak Prescott did. He didn't produce a half-season blooper reel the way Jared Goff did. Wentz mixed good games with awful ones, mixed big-time throws with big mistakes, got bailed out by his defense in some games and let down by his receivers and running backs in others.
Twelve months ago, Wentz was a third-string quarterback with cracked ribs; when healthy, he scrapped for chances to throw passes to third-stringers with no NFL future. Now he commands the first-team offense, operates calmly out of the no-huddle, calls adjustments at the line and directs his passes to veteran NFL starters.
The experienced version of Wentz and the rookie version are almost totally different quarterbacks: different receivers, different expectations, slightly different mechanics, a different mindset. "This summer I was chomping at the bit to get back here," Wentz said in July. "Last summer, I was just trying to breathe."
The most important variable in Wentz's growth is time. He needed it last year. And while Eagles fans may not want to hear it, he needs a little more of it this year.
"I recognize that those bumps are going to come whether you're a 10-year vet or a rookie," Wentz said on Tuesday. "I am always thinking positive, just trying to get better, continue progressing."
As DeFilippo said, not every week will be a great week for Wentz.
"But I guarantee he's going to play good in the majority of them," he finished.
In Philly, "good" is rarely good enough.
But it will have to do.The decline in American manufacturing is a common refrain, particularly from Donald Trump. “We don’t make anything anymore,” he told Fox News last October, while defending his own made-in-Mexico clothing line.
On Tuesday, in rust belt Pennsylvania, he doubled down, saying that he had "visited cities and towns across this country where a third or even half of manufacturing jobs have been wiped out in the last 20 years." The Pacific trade deal, he added, "would be the death blow for American manufacturing."
Without question, manufacturing has taken a significant hit during recent decades, and further trade deals raise questions about whether new shocks could hit manufacturing.
But there is also a different way to look at the data.
In reality, United States manufacturing output is at an all-time high, worth $2.2 trillion in 2015, up from $1.7 trillion in 2009. And while total employment has fallen by nearly a third since 1970, the jobs that remain are increasingly skilled.
Across the country, factory owners are now grappling with a new challenge: Instead of having too many workers, as they did during the Great Recession, they may end up with too few. Despite trade competition and outsourcing, American manufacturing still needs to replace tens of thousands of retiring boomers every year. Millennials may not be that interested in taking their place. Other industries are recruiting them with similar or better pay. And those industries don’t have the stigma of 40 years of recurring layoffs and downsizing.
“We’ve never had so much attention from manufacturers. They’re calling and saying: ‘Can we meet your students?’ They’re asking, ‘Why aren’t they looking at my job postings?' ” says Julie Parks, executive director of workforce training at Grand Rapids Community College in western Michigan.
The region is a microcosm of the national challenge. Unemployment here is low (around 3 percent, compared with a statewide average of 5 percent). There aren’t many extra workers waiting for a job. And the need is high:1 in 5 people work in manufacturing, churning out auto parts, machinery, plastics, office furniture, and medical devices. Other industries, including agribusiness and life sciences, are vying for the same workers.
The factory owner who's recruiting high schoolers
For factory owners, it all adds up to stiff competition for workers – and upward pressure on wages. “They’re harder to find and they have job offers,” says Jay Dunwell, president of Wolverine Coil Spring, a family-owned firm. “They may be coming [into the workforce], but they’ve been plucked by other industries that are also doing as well as manufacturing,”
Mr. Dunwell has begun bringing high school juniors to the factory so they can get exposed to its culture. He is also part of a public-private initiative to promote manufacturing to students that includes job fairs and sending a mobile demonstration vehicle to rural schools. One of their messages is that factories are no longer dark, dirty, and dangerous; computer-run systems are the norm and recruits can receive apprenticeships that include paid-for college classes.
Ann Hermes/Staff Robert Roth stands on the factory floor of RoMan Manufacturing in Wyoming, Michigan. In 1980, Roth's father co-founded RoMan, which produces electrical transformers and welding equipment.
At RoMan Manufacturing, a maker of electrical transformers and welding equipment that his father cofounded in 1980, Robert Roth keeps a close eye on the age of his nearly 200 workers. Five are retiring this year. Mr. Roth has three community-college students enrolled in a work-placement program, with a starting wage of $13 an hour that rises to $17 after two years.
At a worktable inside the transformer plant, young Jason Stenquist looks flustered by the copper coils he’s trying to assemble and the arrival of two visitors. It’s his first week on the job; this is his first encounter with Roth, his boss. Asked about his choice of career, he says at high school he considered medical school before switching to electrical engineering.
“I love working with tools. I love creating,” he says.
But to win over these young workers, manufacturers have to clear another major hurdle: parents, who lived through the worst US economic downturn since the Great Depression, telling them to avoid the factory. Millennials “remember their father and mother both were laid off. They blame it on the manufacturing recession,” says Birgit Klohs, chief executive of The Right Place, a business development agency for western Michigan.
These concerns aren’t misplaced: Employment in manufacturing has fallen from 17 million in 1970 to 12 million in 2015. The steepest declines came after 2001, when China gained entry to the World Trade Organization and ramped up exports of consumer goods to the US and other rich countries. In areas exposed to foreign trade, every additional $1,000 of imports per worker meant a $550 annual drop in household income per working-age adult, according to a 2013 study in the American Economic Review. And unemployment, Social Security, and other government benefits went up $60 per person.
The 2008-09 recession was another blow. And advances in computing and robotics offer new ways for factory owners to increase productivity using fewer workers.
Not your father's factory worker
When the recovery began, worker shortages first appeared in the high-skilled trades. Electricians, plumbers, and pipefitters are in in short supply across Michigan and elsewhere; vocational schools and union-run apprenticeships aren’t keeping pace with demand and older tradespeople are leaving the workforce. Now shortages are appearing at the mid-skill levels.
“The gap is between the jobs that take no skills and those that require a lot of skill,” says Rob Spohr, a business professor at Montcalm Community College an hour from Grand Rapids. “There’s enough people to fill the jobs at McDonalds and other places where you don’t need to have much skill. It’s that gap in between, and that’s where the problem is.”
Ms. Parks of Grand Rapids Community College points to another key to luring Millennials into manufacturing: a work/life balance. While their parents were content to work long hours, young people value flexibility. “Overtime is not attractive to this generation. They really want to live their lives,” she says.
Roth says he gets this distinction. At RoMan, workers can set set their own hours on their shift, choosing to start earlier or end later, provided they get the job done. That the factory floor isn’t a standard assembly line – everything is custom-built for industrial clients – makes it easier to drop the punch-clocks.
“People have lives outside,” Roth says. “It’s not always easy to schedule doctors appointments around a ‘punch-in at 7 and leave at 3:30’ schedule.”
While factory owners like Roth like to stress the flexibility of manufacturing careers, one aspect is nonnegotiable: location. Millennials looking for a job that allow them to work from home are not likely to get a callback. "I'm not putting a machine tool in your garage," says Roth.
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[Editor's note: The figure for the United States manufacturing output has been corrected to $2.2 trillion.]
Free Trade in America
Part 1: The harsh downside of free trade – and the glimmer of hope
Part 2: The surprising truth about American manufacturing
Part 3: What 'good' free trade looks like
Part 4: Why, this time, free trade has hit American workers so hard
Part 5: What can be done about free trade's 'victims'The KLF (also known as the Justified Ancients of Mu Mu, The JAMs, the Timelords and other names) are a British electronic band started in the late 1980s and early 1990s. [4]
The Pyramid Blaster – the logo of KLF Communications
Bill Drummond was an established figure within the British music industry, having co-founded Zoo Records,[6] played guitar in the Liverpool band Big in Japan,[7] and worked as manager of Echo & the Bunnymen and the Teardrop Explodes.[8] In July 1986 he resigned from his position as an A&R man at record label WEA, citing that he was nearly 33⅓ years old (33⅓ revolutions per minute being the speed at which a vinyl LP revolves), and that it was "time for a revolution in my life. There is a mountain to climb the hard way, and I want to see the world from the top".[9] He released a solo LP, The Man, judged by reviewers as "tastefully understated,"[10] a "touching if idiosyncratic biographical statement"[11] encapsulating "his bizarrely sage ruminations",[12] and "a work of humble genius: the best kind".[11]
Artist and musician Jimmy Cauty was the guitarist in the three-piece Brilliant[10]—an act that Drummond had signed to WEA Records and managed.[13] Cauty and Drummond shared an interest in the esoteric conspiracy novels The Illuminatus! Trilogy and, in particular, their theme of Discordianism, a form of post-modern anarchism. As an art student in Liverpool, Drummond had been involved with the set design for the first stage production of The Illuminatus! Trilogy, a 12-hour performance which opened in Liverpool on 23 November 1976.[14][15]
Re-reading Illuminatus! in late 1986, and influenced by hip-hop, Drummond felt inspired to react against what he perceived to be the stagnant soundscape of popular music. Recalling that moment in a later radio interview, Drummond said that the plan came to him in an instant: he would form a hip-hop band with former colleague Jimmy Cauty, and they would be called the Justified Ancients of Mu Mu.
It was New Year's Day... 1987. I was at home with my parents, I was going for a walk in the morning, it was, like, bright blue sky, and I thought "I'm going to make a hip-hop record. Who can I make a hip-hop record with?". I wasn't brave enough to go and do it myself, 'cause, although I can play the guitar, and I can knock out a few things on the piano, I knew nothing, personally, about the technology. And, I thought, I knew [Jimmy], I knew he was a like spirit, we share similar tastes and backgrounds in music and things. So I phoned him up that day and said "Let's form a band called The Justified Ancients of Mu-Mu". And he knew exactly, to coin a phrase, "where I was coming from". And within a week we had recorded our first single which was called "All You Need Is Love". [16]
The Justified Ancients of Mu Mu Edit
Early in 1987, Drummond and Cauty's collaborations began. They assumed alter egos – King Boy D and Rockman Rock respectively – and adopted the name the Justified Ancients of Mu Mu (the JAMs), after the fictional conspiratorial group "The Justified Ancients of Mummu" from The Illuminatus! Trilogy. The JAMs' primary instrument was the digital sampler with which they would plagiarise the history of popular music, cutting chunks from existing works and pasting them into new contexts, underpinned by rudimentary beatbox rhythms and overlaid with Drummond's raps, of social commentary, esoteric metaphors and mockery.
The JAMs' debut studio single "All You Need Is Love" dealt with the media coverage given to AIDS, sampling heavily from the Beatles' "All You Need Is Love" and Samantha Fox's "Touch Me (I Want Your Body)". Although it was declined by distributors fearful of prosecution, and threatened with lawsuits, copies of the one-sided white label 12" were sent to the music press; it received positive reviews and was made "single of the week" in Sounds.[17] A later piece in the same magazine called the JAMs "the hottest, most exhilarating band this year.... It's hard to understand what it feels like to come across something you believe to be totally new; I have never been so wholeheartedly convinced that a band are so good and exciting."[18]
The JAMs re-edited and re-released "All You Need Is Love" in May 1987, removing or doctoring the most antagonistic samples; lyrics from the song appeared as promotional graffiti, defacing selected billboards. The re-release rewarded the JAMs with praise (including NME´s "single of the week")[19] and the funds necessary to record their debut album. The album, 1987 (What the Fuck Is Going On?), was released in June 1987. Included was a song called "The Queen and I", which sampled the ABBA single "Dancing Queen".[20] After a legal showdown with ABBA[21] and the Mechanical-Copyright Protection Society,[22] the 1987 album was forcibly withdrawn from sale. Drummond and Cauty travelled to Sweden in hope of meeting ABBA and coming to some agreement, taking an NME journalist and photographer with them, along with most of the remaining copies of the LP.[23] They failed to meet ABBA, so disposed of the copies by burning most of them in a field and throwing the rest overboard on the North Sea ferry trip home. In a December 1987 interview, Cauty maintained that they "felt that what [they]'d done was artistically justified."[24]
Two new singles followed on The JAMs' "KLF Communications" independent record label. Both reflected a shift towards house rhythms. According to NME, The JAMs' choice of samples for the first of these, "Whitney Joins The JAMs" saw them leaving behind their strategy of "collision course" to "move straight onto the art of super selective theft".[25] The song uses samples of the Mission: Impossible and Shaft themes alongside Whitney Houston's "I Wanna Dance With Somebody". Drummond has claimed that the KLF were later offered the job of producing or remixing a new Whitney Houston album as an inducement from her record label boss (Clive Davis of Arista Records) to sign with them.[26][27][28] The second single in this sequence – Drummond and Cauty's third and final single of 1987 – was "Down Town", a dance record built around a gospel choir and "Downtown" by 1960s star Petula Clark.[29] These early works were later collected on the compilation album Shag Times.
A second album, Who Killed The JAMs?, was released in early 1988. Who Killed The JAMs? earned the duo a five-star review from Sounds Magazine, who called it "a masterpiece of pathos".[30]
The Timelords Edit
In 1988, Drummond and Cauty became "Time Boy" and "Lord Rock", and released a 'novelty' pop single, "Doctorin' the Tardis" as The Timelords. The song is predominantly a mash-up of the Doctor Who theme music, "Block Buster!" by Sweet and Gary Glitter's "Rock and Roll (Part Two)".
Also credited on the record was "Ford Timelord", Cauty's 1968 Ford Galaxie American police car (claimed to have been used in the film Superman IV filmed in the UK). Drummond and Cauty declared that the car had spoken to them, giving its name as Ford Timelord, and advising the duo to become "The Timelords".[31]
Drummond and Cauty later portrayed the song as the result of a deliberate effort to write a number one hit single. In interviews with Snub TV and BBC Radio 1,[32] Drummond said that they had intended to make a house record using the Doctor Who theme. After Cauty had laid down a basic track, Drummond observed that their house idea wasn't working and what they actually had was a Glitter beat. Sensing the opportunity to make a commercial pop record they went instead for the lowest common denominator. According to the British music press, the result was "rancid",[33] "pure, unadulterated agony" and "excruciating"[34] and from Sounds "a record so noxious that a top ten place can be its only destiny".[33] The record sold over one million copies.[35] A single of The Timelords' remixes of the song was released: "Gary Joins The JAMs" featured original vocal contributions from Glitter, who also appeared on Top of the Pops to promote the song with The Timelords.
The Timelords released one other product, a 1989 book called The Manual (How to Have a Number One the Easy Way), a step-by-step guide to achieving a number one hit single with little money or talent.
The KLF Edit
By the time the JAMs' single "Whitney Joins The JAMs" was released in September 1987, their record label had been renamed "KLF Communications" (from the earlier "The Sound of Mu(sic)"). The duo's first release as the KLF was in March 1988, with the single "Burn the Bastards"/"Burn the Beat" (KLF 002). Although the Justified Ancients of Mu Mu name was not yet retired, most future Drummond and Cauty releases went under the name "The KLF".
The name change accompanied a change in Drummond and Cauty's musical direction. As 'King Boy D', Drummond said in January 1988, "We might put out a couple of 12" records under the name The K.L.F., these will be rap free just pure dance music, so don't expect to see them reviewed in the music papers". King Boy D also said that he and Rockman Rock were "pissed off at [them]selves" for letting "people expect us to lead some sort of crusade for sampling".[36] In 1990 he recalled that "We wanted to make [as the KLF] something that was... pure dance music, without any reference points, without any nod to the history of rock and roll. It was the type of music that by early '87 was really exciting me... [although] we weren't able to get our first KLF records out until late '88".[32]
The 12" records subsequently released in 1988 and 1989 by the KLF were indeed rap free and house-oriented; remixes of some of the JAMs tracks, and new singles, the largely instrumental acid house anthems "What Time Is Love?" and "3 a.m. Eternal", the first incarnations of later international chart successes. The KLF described these new tracks as "Pure Trance". In 1989, the KLF appeared at the Helter Skelter rave in Oxfordshire. "They wooed the crowd", wrote Scotland on Sunday some years later, "by pelting them with... £1,000 worth of Scottish pound notes, each of which bore the message 'Children we love you'".[37]
Also in 1989, the KLF embarked upon the creation of a road movie and soundtrack album, both titled The White Room, funded by the profits of "Doctorin' The Tardis".[38] Neither the film nor its soundtrack were formally released, although bootleg copies exist. The soundtrack album contained pop-house versions of some of the "pure trance" singles, as well as new songs, most of which would appear (in radically reworked form) on the version of the album which was eventually released to mainstream success. A single from the original album was released: "Kylie Said to Jason", an electropop record featuring references to Todd Terry, Rolf Harris, Skippy the Bush Kangaroo and BBC comedy programme The Good Life. In reference to that song, Drummond and Cauty noted that they had worn "Pet Shop Boys infatuations brazenly on [their] sleeves".[39]
The film project was fraught with difficulties and setbacks, including dwindling funds. "Kylie Said to Jason", which Drummond and Cauty were hoping could "rescue them from the jaws of bankruptcy", flopped commercially, failing even to make the UK top 100. In consequence, The White Room film project was put on hold, and the KLF abandoned the musical direction of the soundtrack and single.[40] Meanwhile, "What Time Is Love?" was generating acclaim within the underground clubs of continental Europe; according to KLF Communications, "The KLF were being feted by all the 'right' DJs".[40] This prompted Drummond and Cauty to pursue the acid house tone of their Pure Trance series. A further Pure Trance release, "Last Train to Trancentral", followed. At this time, Cauty had co-founded the Orb as an ambient side-project with Alex Paterson.[41] The ambient album Space and the KLF's ambient video Waiting were also released in 1990, as was a dance track, "It's Grim Up North", under The JAMs' moniker.
The single, "What Time Is Love?", was released in August 1990. The follow-up, "3 a.m. Eternal", was released in January 1991. The album The White Room followed in March 1991.
The KLF's chart success continued with the single "Last Train to Trancentral" hitting number two in the UK, and number three in the Eurochart Hot 100.[42] In December 1991, a re-working of a song from 1987, "Justified & Ancient" was released, featuring Tammy Wynette. It was another international hit—peaking at number two in the UK, and number 11 on the Billboard Hot 100—as was "America: What Time Is Love?".
In 1990 and 1991, the KLF also remixed tracks by Depeche Mode ("Policy of Truth"), the Moody Boys ("What Is Dub?"), and Pet Shop Boys ("So Hard" from the Behaviour album, and "It Must Be Obvious"). Pet Shop Boy Neil Tennant described the process: "When they did the remix of 'So Hard', they didn't do a remix at all, they re-wrote the record... I had to go and sing the vocals again, they did it in a different way. I was impressed that Bill Drummond had written all the chords out and played it on an acoustic guitar, very thorough."[43]
After successive name changes and dance records, Drummond and Cauty ultimately became, as the KLF, the biggest-selling singles act in the world for 1991,[5][44] still incorporating the work of other artists but in less gratuitous ways and predominantly without legal problems.
Retirement Edit
On 12 February 1992, the KLF and crust punk group Extreme Noise Terror performed a live version of "3 a.m. Eternal" at the BRIT Awards, the British Phonographic Industry's annual awards show; a "violently antagonistic performance" in front of "a stunned music-business audience".[45] Drummond and Cauty had planned to throw buckets of sheep's blood over the audience, but were prevented from doing so due to opposition from BBC lawyers[46][47] and Extreme Noise Terror.[35][48] The performance was instead ended by a limping, kilted, cigar-chomping Drummond firing blanks from an automatic weapon over the heads of the crowd. As the band left the stage, the KLF's promoter and narrator Scott Piering proclaimed over the PA system that "The KLF have now left the music business". Later in the evening the band dumped a dead sheep with the message "I died for you – bon appetit" tied around its waist at the |
seriously might not work in another. Tailoring may be needed, she says, “to increase support for action on climate change — action that is urgently required.”
Power Words
(for more about Power Words, click here)
carbon dioxide A colorless, odorless gas produced by all animals when the oxygen they inhale reacts with the carbon-rich foods that they’ve eaten. Carbon dioxide also is released when organic matter (including fossil fuels like oil or gas) is burned. Carbon dioxide acts as a greenhouse gas, trapping heat in Earth’s atmosphere. Plants convert carbon dioxide into oxygen during photosynthesis, the process they use to make their own food.
climate The weather conditions prevailing in an area in general or over a long period.
climate change Long-term, significant change in the climate of Earth. It can happen naturally or in response to human activities, including the burning of fossil fuels and clearing of forests.
conservation The act of preserving or protecting something. The focus of this work can range from art objects to endangered species and other aspects of the natural environment.
culture (in social science) The sum total of typical behaviors and social practices of a related group of people (such as a tribe or nation). Their culture includes their beliefs, values, and the symbols that they accept and or use. These will be passed along from adults to children.
electricity A flow of charge, usually from the movement of negatively charged particles, called electrons.
gender The attitudes, feelings, and behaviors that a given culture associates with a person’s biological sex. Behavior that is compatible with cultural expectations is referred to as being the norm. Behaviors that are incompatible with these expectations are described as non-conforming.
global warming The gradual increase in the overall temperature of Earth’s atmosphere due to the greenhouse effect. This effect is caused by increased levels of carbon dioxide, chlorofluorocarbons and other gases in the air, many of them released by human activity.
greenhouse gas A gas that contributes to the greenhouse effect by absorbing heat. Carbon dioxide is one example of a greenhouse gas.
sustainability (n: sustainable) To use resources in a way that they will continue to be available in the future.
treaty A formal agreement that two or more sovereign powers (usually countries or tribal nations) have adopted, giving its provisions the force of law.
United Nations An organization that takes on global issues, from health and justice (including the human rights) to protecting the environment and promoting world peace. It was founded in 1945. Today, 193 separate nations are members.Looking for news you can trust?
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When we talk about global warming, much of the debate centers on separating facts from fluff, and environmental activist and Mother Jones contributor Bill McKibben wants to set the record straight. The Global Warming Reader, a book edited by McKibben and out this month from OR Books, pulls together seminal texts of the climate change debate with the goal of creating a complete picture of what we know about global warming. Selections range from a 19th-century treatise to images from Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth, and include a few unexpected gems like Senate floor statements from climate change denier James Inhofe (R-Okla.).
I spoke to McKibben about his history with climate change literature, his ongoing battle against ExxonMobil, and, in the face of dismal environmental realities, how he avoids the temptation to curl up in a little ball on the floor.
Mother Jones: Why’d you put this book together?
Bill McKibben: My goal was to have as many of the primary sources as I could made available for people to look at and understand. Climate change is probably the most important thing that’s ever happened, and yet people’s understanding of it and its history remains a little fuzzy. I thought it would be useful to collect these things in one place. I was especially eager to get some of the original basic science in there, partly because some of these [scientists] are real heroes.
MJ: When the general public engages in this discussion about climate change, are there still some basic factual holes that need to be filled?
BM: I do think that there are holes. I think one of the most important ones is people’s sense that this is something that’s going to happen very slowly and it’s a long ways in the future. That’s the reason I wanted to get in some of the most recent science and analysis demonstrating that we’re already well into the globally warmed world, and further in all the time. James Hansen’s paper about the 350 parts per million [of atmospheric carbon dioxide] as the cutoff for serious climate change is probably the most important scientific paper of the millennia to date, and it deserves to be widely, widely read. It’s the thing that launched our 350.org movement, which is now this very widespread, global, grassroots thing—and it flowed straight from that paper.
Books help. But I no longer think, if I ever did, that they’re enough by themselves. They have to be accompanied by attempts to build political will.
MJ: One thing I noticed with this book is that while you have very hard-science papers like that one, you also include more journalistic essays and photography and other genres. What were you trying to achieve with that kind of diversity?
BM: These are all parts of the different ways that we’re coming to understand the science. I think I ended the book with one of John Vidal’s pieces from the Guardian, about the effect [of global warming] on individual poor peasant farmers around the world, because that’s a kind of truth that science has a hard time getting at, but that some journalists have begun to do a really remarkable job explaining. The other thing that one needs to understand, besides the science, is the politics, because the biggest question about climate change, really, is why have we done so little to stop it? And the understanding of that requires an understanding of politics, so that’s the other big piece of what’s in there. People can get a sense of some of the high points, like Kyoto, and some of the low points, like James Inhofe’s congressional hearings on this subject.
MJ: So when you were picking these different works, what was your process like?
BM: Well, I already know a lot of this literature. I wrote the first book about climate change for a general audience, and at the time that I wrote it, most of the science that there was fit on top of my desk, you know? Now you could fill an airplane hangar with that science, though the basic conclusions remain alarmingly the same. So I’ve had a good sense of the contours of this debate since the beginning, both past and present. I just tried to think about some of the things that informed me the most over the years.
MJ: Did you learn anything from the process of putting this book together?
BM: I just was reminded once again of the basic simplicity of the problem that we’re dealing with. I mean, Svante Arrhenius figured it out in the 1890s, and his back-of-the-envelope calculations are remarkably close to what supercomputers yield at the moment. There’s no huge mystery. If you dig up huge amounts of carbon, huge amounts of ancient biology, hundreds of millions of year’s worth of ancient biology, and flush it into the atmosphere in a matter of decades, then it stands to reason that we’re going to have enormous effects, and now we can see those effects all around us. So I was reminded again of how, in a sense, straightforward a test this is for human beings. Can we avoid the temptation that is cheap fossil fuel, and keep things cool on this planet for a long time into the future?
MJ: One essay in the book is from you, an excerpt from your 1989 book End of Nature. You write that “There’s no such thing as nature anymore—that other world that isn’t business and art and breakfast is now not another world, and there is nothing except us alone.” Since you wrote that, have things changed, or do you still feel that way?
BM: Well, the kind of philosophical point I was trying to make, that it’s impossible anymore to posit a completely wild place on this planet, a place untouched by human beings, is, I’m afraid, truer now than it ever was. If there’s horrible flooding in Pakistan or a horrible heat wave in Texas, we’re no longer able to call it an act of God, or a natural disaster, or something like that, the way we could have through all of human history until 35 or 40 years ago.
MJ: In the book’s introduction, you write that “this anthology is an attempt to deal with the paradox that, though everyone (scientists, the insurance industry) we depend on to analyze risk tells us we are facing the gravest crisis in human history, our political system here and around the world is doing nothing.” I know this is a huge question, but why or how do you think that paradox came to be? What needs to happen for it to be corrected?
BM: I think it exists really for two huge reasons. One is that we’re all very used to the fossil fuel world, and so change is difficult. But change would not be impossible if we didn’t also have the influence of the fossil fuel industry, the most profitable and powerful the world has ever seen, who uses those profits and power to block any effective change that might begin to address this problem. The only way we’re going to do anything about that is to build a movement large enough to make up in numbers what we lack in cash, and try to counterbalance the enormous power of the fossil fuel industry. We’re not powerful enough yet to counterbalance ExxonMobil, but we’re getting a little closer every day.
MJ: Do you think that if you’re able to give people access to the most basic science, and some of these seminal texts, that that will help?
BM: Books help. I’m an author, and I’m a writer by nature, so I have to believe that books help. But I no longer think, if I ever did, that they’re enough by themselves. They have to be accompanied by attempts to build political will.
MJ: But you might hope that when people are presented with these facts, the facts themselves will become a call to action?
BM: I do think that’s true, and I think that anyone who takes the time to understand at any kind of serious level what’s going on with climate change, is very, very likely to become an activist around this issue. It is the biggest crisis that human beings have ever faced, and once people figure that out, then those who worry about the future of the planet—and that’s most people—want to go to work to do something about it.
MJ: On the other hand, all of this stuff we’re talking about here is pretty grim.
BM: Yup.
MJ: Well, how do you stay hopeful, or at least engaged? How do you keep people from just curling up into the fetal position?
BM: You know what, at some level I’ve given up trying to figure out whether I’m pessimistic or optimistic. I get up in the morning and do what I can, as much as I can, to try and change the odds of this wager that we’ve undertaken. What keeps me hopeful is seeing the tremendous response of people all over the world. We’ve organized 350.org in every country except North Korea. The thing that makes me bleak sometimes is just how quickly the science grows darker. We haven’t caught any breaks in the last 20 years. Everything that we’ve worried about has come in on the upper end of the projected range or off the charts altogether, whether it’s the melt of the arctic, or acidification of oceans, or the increase in drought and flood. So we’re clearly not going to stop global warming at this point. We’ve already raised the temperature of the planet one degree. We’ve got another degree in the pipeline from carbon we’ve already emitted. What we’re talking about now is whether we’re going to have a difficult, difficult century, or an impossible one. And we may still have enough room to maneuver to affect the outcome of that question.The House passed legislation on Thursday to amend a law already on the books governing federal cleanup of Superfund and hazardous waste sites.
The bill was approved on a party-line vote of 225-188, with only five Democrats supporting the measure, including Reps. Jim Costa of California, Collin Peterson of Minnesota, and Nick Rahall of West Virginia. The nill is not likely to be taken up by the Democratic-controlled Senate.
The legislation — the Reducing Excessive Deadline Obligations Act — is a combination of three separate measures introduced by Republican Reps. Cory Gardner of Colorado, and Bill Johnson and Bob Latta of Ohio. The package of bills would give states the ability to assign priority to Superfund cleanups managed by federal laws, impose state and local laws on federal cleanup projects, and block the Environmental Protection Agency from issuing regulations for hazardous waste disposal in states where similar regulations already exist.
House conservatives used the bill’s passage as a chance to put themselves on record in support of eliminating federal overreach in the environmental sector.
“We are five years into this failed experiment of increased government spending, taxation, and regulation,” Gardner said in a statement. “The results are clear: The power to grow our economy and put Americans back to work lies in the private sector. With more than 80,000 pages of new federal regulations published in 2013 alone, commonsense revisions of existing rules and regulations are a vital part of ensuring businesses that power our state and local economies are given the capability to grow.”
There was plenty of opposition to the legislation, however.
The White House issued a statement saying the president would veto the bill if it reached his desk. And more than 120 interest groups, including environmental advocacy organizations such as Earthjustice, the League of Conservation Voters, and the Natural Resources Defense Council, sent a letter to Congress opposing the measure.
The legislation “substantially increases the potential for harm in communities across the United States. As one in four Americans live within three miles of a hazardous-waste site, safe management and prompt cleanup of toxic waste sites are essential to our nation’s health and economy,” the signatories wrote.Image copyright AFP Image caption Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe (C) has approved defence spending rises
Japan's defence ministry has made its biggest ever budget request, amid severe tensions with China over a maritime dispute in the East China Sea.
The ministry is seeking 5.05 trillion yen (£29.4bn; $48.7bn) for the year - a 3.5% rise.
If approved, it would mark the third year the defence budget had been increased, after a decade of cuts.
Earlier this month, the ministry described the security environment around Japan as "increasingly severe".
Beijing and Tokyo are engaged in a bitter dispute over islands known as Senkaku in Japan and Diaoyu in China.
In its annual white paper, the ministry spoke of "great concern" over China's activities in the East China Sea and also cited North Korea as a security threat.
According to its budget request, the ministry wants to purchase 20 maritime patrol aircraft.
It also wants to buy five crossover aircraft, which have both airplane and helicopter functionalities, three drones and six stealth fighters.
"It is not a sudden increase in defence equipment for us, but rather a typical necessity in the process of keeping up with the maintenance of the Japanese defence system," said Defence Minister Itsunori Onodera at a budget meeting, according to the Associated Press.
Image copyright AP Image caption Under its constitution, Japan cannot use force to resolve conflicts except for self-defence
Image copyright Reuters Image caption The disputed East China Sea islands are claimed by both Japan and China
Earlier this week, Kyodo news agency reported that Japan's Coast Guard had requested a doubling of its current budget to 50.4bn yen, amid plans to acquire more patrol vessels and increase patrol personnel.
Jiji Press said it also planned to construct a large patrol ship for a security unit specifically for the disputed islands.
The islands are controlled by Japan. But since the Japanese government purchased three of them from their private Japanese owner in 2012, a long-simmering row over their ownership has escalated dramatically.
Chinese boats and aircraft have since been patrolling in and out of what Japan says are its territorial waters, prompting fears of a clash.
Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption BBC's Laura Westbrook reports
Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who took power in December 2012, has been more assertive in boosting Japan's military.
Under its pacifist constitution, Japan is barred from using force to resolve conflicts except for self-defence.
But in July Japan's cabinet approved a landmark change that paves the way for its military to fight overseas. The government has also eased curbs on weapons exports.
The defence ministry budget request will now be the subject of negotiations with government spending chiefs before the full budget is compiled at the end of the year.
China has seen a sharp increase in its official defence budget, which is more than two and half times larger than Japan's.
The US has by far the world's largest military budget, spending $600bn on defence last year.Rabat - Morocco is poised to participate in a ground operation to restore legitimacy in Yemen and fight the Iran-backed Houti rebels.
Rabat – Morocco is poised to participate in a ground operation to restore legitimacy in Yemen and fight the Iran-backed Houti rebels.
Troops from nine Arab countries, including Morocco, are expected to take part in a ground operation of Yemen, according to news website Alyaoum24, citing Yemeni media sources.
The military campaign aims at fighting and weakening the Iran-backed Houthi rebels and the troops loyal to former Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh.
According to the same source, troops from Morocco, Egypt, Jordan, Sudan and Kuwait will be heading to the province of Marib in the coming hours. These troops will be fighting alongside forces loyal to the government, aided by airstrikes led by Saudi Arabia.
The same source added that in addition to Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, Qatar also deployed troops to Yemen for the first time since the beginning of the Saudi-led military operation, codenamed Decisive Storm, in Yemen.
According to Doha-based Al-Jazeera, one-thousand group troops, supported by armored vehicles and helicopters, are headed for the province of Marib.
This comes after a missile strike killed 60 soldiers, including 45 from the UAE, 10 Saudi and five Bahraini soldiers, at a base in the province of Marib.
© Morocco World News. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, rewritten or redistributed without permissionPoli-Sci Perspective is a weekly Wonkblog feature in which Georgetown University’s Dan Hopkins and George Washington University’s Danny Hayes and John Sides offer an empirical perspective on the issues dominating Washington. In this edition, Sides interviews political scientists Jon Hurwitz and Mark Peffley about their book on how blacks and whites perceive the criminal justice system, and what it implies for Trayvon Martin’s death, George Zimmerman’s acquittal, and the aftermath. The transcript below has been lightly edited. For past posts in the series, head here.
Michael S. Williamson-The Washington Post
Q: Your recent book is Justice in America: The Separate Realities of Blacks and Whites. What are those separate realities?
A: We found remarkable differences in how whites and blacks perceive the criminal justice system. Usually, when we speak about group differences—the “gender gap,” for example—the differences are in the range of 10 to 20 percent. But these differences pale in comparison to the gulf separating black and white perceptions of justice. Blacks are extraordinarily skeptical that the system can be fair, while whites see the system as essentially color blind.
Q: What’s an example of this gulf between blacks and whites?
A: We asked whether it’s a “serious problem” in their community that police “stop and question blacks far more often than whites” or that police “care more about crimes against whites than minorities.” On average, 70 percent of blacks, but only 17 percent of whites, considered these serious problems. And the courts were not immune from such skepticism, either: while about 25 percent of whites disagreed with the statement that the “courts give all a fair trial,” more than 60 percent of African Americans disagreed. Repeatedly, using every possible barometer, we found that blacks doubted the fairness of the justice system much more than whites.
Q: Why do blacks and whites have such different views of the criminal justice system?
Much of the difference comes down to either personal or vicarious experiences that people have with police and the courts. We found that African Americans, especially younger black men, were far more likely than whites to report being treated unfairly by the police because of their race. In fact, a recent Gallup Poll found that one of every four black men under age 35 said that the police have treated them unfairly during the last 30 days. Little has changed since our survey. And these contacts do not have to be personal. In a recent study we conducted with Jeffery Mondak, we found that the distrust felt by many blacks is compounded by their vicarious experiences. Many of their black acquaintances have also had similar negative encounters with the law.
Q: Are there factors that matter beyond personal or vicarious experiences?
A: So much of an individual’s judgment of the justice system comes down to perceived process. When African Americans see the enormous overrepresentation of blacks in correctional facilities, they assume there has been blatant procedural injustice—injustice due to prevalent biases in apprehensions, arrests, trials, sentencing, laws, and more. In his remarks Friday about the death of Trayvon Martin and the acquittal of George Zimmerman, President Obama himself described this view: “The African-American community is...knowledgeable that there is a history of racial disparities in the application of our criminal laws, everything from the death penalty to enforcement of our drug laws. And that ends up having an impact in terms of how people interpret the case.”
But in our data many whites (about 60 percent) believed that blacks deserve to be imprisoned more frequently. They often based their explanations of racial discrepancies in the prisons on racial stereotypes: Blacks, they believed, are more inclined to commit crimes or just less likely to respect authority. To a considerable extent, therefore, African Americans attribute outcomes to procedural bias, while whites are more willing to attribute them to character flaws of blacks.
Q: What consequences do those views have?
A: These separate realities are consequential in several important ways. First, when blacks are cynical and whites are sanguine about the justice system, they tend to interpret the behaviors of agents of the system (such as police officers and judges) through these lenses, leading to what might be a perpetual spiraling effect. In one study, we gave individuals a chance to explain the behaviors of police officers in different scenarios—for example, whether the police department could conduct a fair and thorough investigation into charges of police brutality. In one scenario, the brutality victim was described as white, and in the other scenario he was described as black.
Blacks believed that the police could conduct a fair investigation into brutality charges—but only if the victim of the brutality was white. If he was black, black respondents doubted that the police could be even remotely fair. To whites, however, the race of the victim was irrelevant. They tended to believe the police department could do its job fairly regardless of whether the victim of brutality was white or black.
In another scenario, we described a police search and arrest of two men, identified as either white or black, who were walking by a house “where the police know that drugs are being sold.” Again, when the two men were identified as black, African Americans were extremely skeptical about the circumstances surrounding the police search and were much more likely to think the police planted the drugs on the men. By contrast, whites trusted the police because they think the system is fair and color blind. Thus, in both the police brutality and the racial profiling scenarios, when either the victim or the suspects were identified as black, African American respondents reacted with great skepticism, whereas whites appeared to form their impressions in a racial vacuum, as if unaware of the many sources of injustice that blacks face on a regular basis.
President Obama talked about this discrepancy as well: “And for those who resist that idea that we should think about something like these ‘stand your ground’ laws, I just ask people to consider if Trayvon Martin was of age and armed, could he have stood his ground on that sidewalk? And do we actually think that he would have been justified in shooting Mr. Zimmerman, who had followed him in a car, because he felt threatened?” In these words, the president summarized the views of many African Americans that the justice system is not a level playing field.
Q: What are the consequences of these separate realities for opinions about how criminals could or should be punished?
A: The separate realities of whites and blacks affect those opinions too. Whites are significantly more likely than blacks to support capital punishment, three-strikes laws, and spending money building more prisons (rather than funding antipoverty programs) to prevent crime. Because blacks do not trust the justice system, they do not believe that punishment will be handed out fairly. But because whites do believe the system is fair and because they are more likely to hold blacks personally responsible for the crimes for which they are accused, they support considerably more punitive policies.
Given the pervasive cynicism and distrust among so many African Americans, as well as the belief in the integrity of the fairness of the justice system so prevalent among many whites, it was almost inevitable that responses to the Zimmerman acquittal would be racially polarized. Surveys have already documented far less support for, and far more disappointment with, the verdict among blacks than among whites.
In a recent YouGov poll 75 percent of black respondents said that they would have found Zimmerman guilty of a crime—39 percent said guilty of manslaughter, while 36 percent said guilty of murder. Among white respondents, only 34 percent would have found him guilty of one of the two crimes. The dominant emotions expressed by black Americans over the verdict were disappointment (53 percent) and anger (25 percent), whereas whites tended to say that they were pleased (25 percent) and relieved (21 percent) as well as disappointed (23 percent).
Q: What do the book’s findings tell us about the broader impact on public attitudes of the killing of Trayvon Martin and the acquittal of George Zimmerman?
A: Social scientists have uncovered an avalanche of evidence documenting whites’ stereotypes of blacks as violent and criminal. Social psychologists conducting controlled lab experiments, for example, have demonstrated that merely thinking briefly about blacks can lead people, including police officers, to evaluate ambiguous behavior as aggressive, to miscategorize harmless objects as weapons, to shoot quickly and, at times, inappropriately, and to endorse harsh treatment of a black (versus a white) suspect. And the association between race and crime is not strong, but also outside people’s awareness and control to some extent (see, for example, research here, here; and here).
The Trayvon Martin case demonstrates how the association between race and violence in the minds of many non-blacks is a recipe for tragic misperception and a failure to correct, or even to recognize, how stereotypes often lead to a series of faulty decisions and catastrophic errors.
If Trayvon Martin had been white it would be harder to make sense of the events surrounding the case—how Zimmerman assumed Martin, who was in a gated community carrying Skittles and a soft drink, was a dangerous criminal, why Zimmerman twice ignored the police dispatch asking him not to pursue Martin and instead confronted and shot him. It would be harder to understand how the Sanford police could have questioned Zimmerman and released him without charging him, or how for more than a month Zimmerman was not charged until a national outrage ensued, or how an all-white jury eventually acquitted Zimmerman for killing Martin.
From where we sit, which admittedly is far removed from the scene of the crime or the trial, the sequence of events should be informed by our knowledge of how racial stereotypes can bias judgments and rationalize decisions.
Q: Are there other examples from your research of how those stereotypes may operate?
A: In a series of survey experiments we found that when whites with negative stereotypes of African Americans were asked about black (versus white) perpetrators, they were much more likely to judge blacks as guilty of the alleged crimes, assume blacks would commit more crimes in the future, and favor much harsher punishments for black than white suspects.
In another survey experiment, we manipulated race in a more subtle way: with a single phrase, “inner city,” that carries strong racial connotations. A random half of white respondents was asked about spending money for prisons (versus anti-poverty programs) to lock up “violent criminals,” while the other half was asked about “violent inner city criminals.” As expected, whites’ racial stereotypes were much more important in boosting support for prisons to lock up criminals in the inner city.
Q: Does a case like Trayvon Martin’s make the “realities” of blacks and whites more separate then?
A: Our research shows how events like the Trayvon Martin case widen the racial divide in the U.S. When high-profile, incendiary events smack of racial profiling and/or police brutality against people of color, blacks, who view the system as discriminatory and distrust law enforcement, are deeply suspicious about whether justice will prevail. Whites who view the system as color-blind and are much more trusting of the police, discount the likelihood of police misconduct or racial bias when the suspects or victims are African American. Events like the Trayvon Martin case reinforce and intensify more generalized judgments about the fairness of the system.
Q: If we were to try to make “separate realities” into “one reality,” how would we do it? Are there ways that black-white differences in perceptions of the criminal justice system could be mitigated?
A: The only way to end separate racial realities is either to educate whites about the experiences of blacks or, even better, to reduce blacks’ negative experiences with unfair treatment in the justice system. One obstacle to educating whites is segregation within neighborhoods and social networks. Our recent study with Jeffery Mondak found that while whites’ (mostly white) acquaintances added to their generally positive experiences with the justice system, blacks’ (mostly black) acquaintances reinforced their generally negative experiences with the justice system.
Can we create “one reality” by dramatically reducing blacks’ experiences with unfair treatment in the justice system? To do so, whites would have to be convinced that the justice system is discriminatory and we know that whites are extremely resistant to such arguments. In another study, we set up survey experiments where we randomly presented white and black respondents with different arguments against the death penalty and three-strikes laws to see what effect the arguments had on their opinions of such policies.
The major finding of the experiments is still shocking. When whites were presented with an argument against the death penalty or three strikes that emphasized the racial bias of the policy, they became more (not less) supportive of capital punishment and three strikes laws. The political lesson of the experiment is clear: confronting racial injustice head-on would be risky for elected officials because most whites do not believe that the justice system is racially biased.
There is hope, however. In a more recent (unpublished) study, for example, we found strong evidence that many younger Latinos in Washington State empathized with the discriminatory experiences of blacks because they had been subjected to profiling and unfair treatment after increased enforcement of immigration laws. In addition, a recent YouGov/Huffington Post survey found that younger people of all ethnic backgrounds were more likely than older people to say that Zimmerman should have been found guilty. Incremental change over time is thus possible, and even likely, despite setbacks in the short term.
There is also hope because financially strapped states are seeking more effective ways to increase public safety than lengthening prison terms for non-violent drug crimes, a policy responsible for the massive expansion of prison populations in the 1980s and 1990s (see this Pew Report). At the end of the 1990s, the “War on Drugs” targeted young African Americans with a huge disparity (about 100 to 1) in sentencing for crack versus powder cocaine. While the disparity remains, it has been reduced to about 18 to 1. In addition, several states are reforming sentencing and release laws, including reducing prison sentences to time served for nonviolent offenders. For the first time in years, there has been a small reduction in the percentage of the prison population that is African American (see this Sentencing Project report).
While much work lies ahead, there is the possibility that blacks and other minorities may begin to see greater procedural justice in our system, although such changes will take years, if not decades, to transpire.Russia Posts April Fools’ Voicemail: ‘Press 2 For Services of Russian Hackers, Press 3 For Election Interference’ (AUDIO)
On Saturday, the Russian ministry posted an audio recording to their Twitter account, telling people to listen to their new automated voicemail system and to give feedback.
The audio is first in Russian, then English:
‘You have reached the Russian embassy, your call is very important to us. To arrange a call from a Russian diplomat to your political opponent, press 1. To use the services of Russian hackers press 2. To request election interference, press 3 and wait until the next election campaign. Please note that all calls are recorded for quality improvement and training purposes.’
Of course this was an April Fools joke, but given the level of paranoia and hysteria from the left, I wouldn’t be surprised if the Democrats in D.C. use this audio as ‘solid proof’ that the Russians hacked our election.
Russian MFA developed automated voicemail system – please listen (Russian, then English) and tell us your opinion. Feedback appreciated! https://t.co/HH23WC1THi — Russian Embassy, UK (@RussianEmbassy) April 1, 2017
Министерство иностранных дел России разработало пилотную аудиозапись автоответчика для российских дипломатических миссий за рубежом pic.twitter.com/eLl8Jgcgzt — МИД России 🇷🇺 (@MID_RF) April 1, 2017The Russian FM spokeswoman invited the US ambassador to the UN to visit Syria and see firsthand what “embarrassed” means. This comes after the UN ambassador lashed out at Moscow for hinting the US supports IS after coalition airstrikes hit the Syrian Army.
During a speech at an emergency UN Security Council meeting called by Russia to discuss the deadly airstrikes delivered by the US-led coalition, US Ambassador to the UN Samantha Power said that Moscow’s representative should be “embarrassed” for her words suggesting that the strike indicated that Washington is defending Islamic State (IS, former ISIS, ISIL) terrorists.
According to the Russian Foreign Ministry, the strike near the eastern city of Deir ez-Zor that killed 62 Syrian soldiers bordered between “gross negligence” and “direct assistance” to IS.
Read more
In response to Power’s accusations, Maria Zakharova wrote on Facebook: “Dear Samantha Power, in order to know the meaning of the word “embarrassed,” I highly encourage you to travel to Syria and talk to the people there for yourself. And by that I do not mean the Al-Nusra Front militants, nor the moderate opposition, whose humanitarian situation Washington seems to be so worried about. I likewise am not referring to the Western warriors for justice for Syria. I’m referring to the actual people that continue to live there in spite of the bloody experiment that has been waged on their homeland for over six years, with active participation by Washington.”
The Moscow representative went on to say she herself is in constant communication with people on the ground, which includes both opposition forces dispersed across Syrian towns, and the orphaned children left in the wake of the fighting there.
“Let’s go there together,” she said, promising she would shoulder the expenses of Power’s Syria trip.
“Do say yes. Don’t be frightened. Nobody will lay a finger on you in my presence. Unless, of course, your guys don’t again ‘mistakenly’ strike the wrong target. You’ll make lots of new memories. And find out what ‘embarrassed’ means in the process,” the Moscow representative added.
Russia’s Ministry of Defense said on Saturday that four air strikes had been carried out by the US-led anti-ISIS coalition near Deir ez-Zor, where Syrian units had been surrounded by IS terrorists.
Russian Permanent Representative to the United Nations Vitaly Churkin had questioned the “joint efforts” the two countries were to undertake to stabilize the violent situation and ensure delivery of humanitarian aid to besieged areas.
Read more
Accompanying the Joint Implementation Group (JIG) document signed by both parties to streamline cooperation on the ground, Churkin issued the following statement:
“The beginning of work of the Joint Implementation Group was supposed to be September 19. So if the US wanted to conduct an effective strike on Al-Nusra or ISIS, in Deir ez-Zor or anywhere else, they could wait two more days and coordinate with our military and be sure that they are striking the right people.”
“Instead they chose to conduct this reckless operation,” Churkin said. “So it may well be, one has to conclude, that the airstrike has been conducted in order to derail the operation of |
Visnauskas said, “Vital Brooklyn is the inspired, aggressive approach we need to address the economic and health disparities that have affected communities throughout Brooklyn for far too long. This initiative will set an example for the nation in breaking down barriers to accessing quality affordable housing and creating stronger, more sustainable communities for future generations. I applaud Governor Cuomo for his vision and leadership on this initiative and look forward to working with him as we implement these bold and innovative programs.”
New York State Agriculture Commissioner Richard A. Ball said, “Vital Brooklyn will deliver innovative solutions to connect Brooklyn communities with affordable, sustainable wellness options. This program will increase access to fresh, local foods, including some of New York's quality produce, to help all residents lead a healthier, more sustainable lifestyle. These actions reflect the Governor's unparalleled commitment to bettering the Brooklyn community and I look forward to what this comprehensive approach will accomplish."
New York State Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation Commissioner Rose Harvey said, “The revitalization of Brooklyn, from economic development to population growth, has been truly remarkable. This initiative will build on that success to provide the tools and resources necessary to sustain healthy communities and encourage their growth. With Vital Brooklyn, Governor Cuomo is taking an all-inclusive approach to the health and wellness of an area to support the continued progress and transformation of Brooklyn.”Here’s one thing we know: People get older. Another is that people’s tolerance for entry-level jobs and small urban apartments is highest when they are young adults. So while many things affect the increasing popularity of city living, including lower crime rates and a preference for walkable neighborhoods, one of the biggest factors is simply the number of people who are around 25.
Right now, that number is as high as it has been in decades. Another big driver of urban demand, immigration (both documented and undocumented), has been roughly constant since 2000. That number could change with policy, but given the current political climate, immigration seems unlikely to go up.
The last time the nation had a huge bubble of 25-year-olds was the late 1970s and early 1980s. Then, like now, an influx of people in their early 20s moved into cities. There were newspaper articles about young professionals gentrifying urban neighborhoods; “Changing San Francisco Is Foreseen as a Haven for Wealthy and Childless,” a New York Times headline said in 1981.
Each era has its economic challenges, and many millennials had the misfortune of entering adulthood during the Great Recession and its aftermath. The people at the tail end of Generation X, who came after the baby boomers, were born in the low-birth years of the late 1970s and entered adulthood during the late 1990s financial boom.
But the bulk of millennials came of age when jobs were scarce, Mr. Myers noted. They started moving into cities and apartments during years when rent was historically high. The number of young professionals was rising, adding to apartment demand, but supply was tight because new construction stalled during the recession. When city populations started swelling in the early and mid-2000s, it had less to do with the first of the millennials moving in than it did with lots of slightly older people not moving out, according to Kenneth Johnson, a demographer at the Carsey School of Public Policy at the University of New Hampshire.
The presence of so many young college graduates upended many American cities. You can see it in the hordes of techies congregating on weekends at Dolores Park in San Francisco and in the battles over gentrification. It’s behind new demands for rent control and the artists who live in cheap but unsafe warehouses.
In many cities, the high cost of living has galvanized a generation of young renters who have started to form a “YIMBY Party” that wants more apartment construction, and often pits younger renters against older homeowners.Convinced that City Hall is making empty promises to arm San Francisco police with Tasers, the Police Officers Association is pushing a ballot measure that would express support for equipping officers with electronic stun guns.
The union’s move to put the “Safer Police Initiative” before voters in June follows the Police Commission’s 4-3 vote on Nov. 3 that supported the concept of arming officers with stun guns, but included no guidelines or timetable for doing so.
“They kicked the can down the road.“ said Martin Halloran, the police union president.
After the commission’s vote, union leaders set a 30-day deadline for the panel to come up with a specific policy.
“And from the looks of things, they are not going to have a policy ready anytime soon,” Halloran said.
So the union has hired a signature-gathering company to hit the streets in the first week of December, with the goal of collecting 9,485 valid signatures of registered voters over the next two months that are needed to qualify the measure for the June ballot.
“It will send a message that this is what the voters want,” Halloran said.
When they approved the concept of giving stun guns to officers, Police Commission members said the SFPD could not begin using the weapons until December 2018, after a new use-of-force policy has been in place for two years. The policy — which doesn’t address the Taser issue — emphasized de-escalation tactics and using force as a last resort.
The commission approved that policy after the 2015 police killing of Mario Woods, a stabbing suspect who was armed with a knife but did not appear to be threatening people with it. Police officials argued that had officers been equipped with stun guns, they might not have felt compelled to shoot Woods as he disobeyed orders to drop the knife.
That was only the latest episode in the city’s decade-plus debate over whether to give police stun guns, which opponents say can cause injuries or death. The Police Commission rejected or tabled several proposals before its Nov. 3 vote.
Commissioner Joe Marshall, who voted in favor of giving stun guns to officers, said he didn’t understand why the union was going to the ballot so quickly.
“I don’t get it — we voted ‘yes,’ and we will be developing a policy,” Marshall said. “But that’s their right.”
The union’s proposal calls for all of the department’s patrol, SWAT and transit officers to be trained both in de-escalating potentially violent situations and in the use of stun guns.
“Plus, every black-and-white squad car would be equipped with an external defibrillator in case of a medical emergency,” Halloran said.
San Francisco is one of the last major police forces in the country without stun guns, largely the result of opposition from community groups concerned about the potential for injury and abuses. They argue that the new use-of-force policy should be given a chance to work before the city turns to Tasers.
The Police Officers Association, however, thinks the public is on its side. A union-commissioned poll in March 2016 showed that 68 percent of respondents backed arming police with stun guns. A second poll in February, taken by the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce, found 78 percent support.
Peralta problems: The Peralta Community College District, which owns the land in Oakland where the A’s want to build their new ballpark, is facing some tough financial times.
The district’s financial reserves have shrunk by more than $12.7 million since 2015, leaving it with only $7.7 million in savings. That amounts to 5 percent of Peralta’s operating budget, the bare minimum of what the state considers prudent for community colleges.
Peralta Chancellor Jowel Laguerre blamed the situation on rising pension and medical insurance costs and $5 million in uncollected student fees.
The Peralta Federation of Teachers, however, said it was “deeply skeptical” of that explanation. The union lays part of the blame on “administrative overspending and feckless budgeting.” It points to district records showing that central office spending for the four-college district jumped $8.8 million after Laguerre became chancellor in July 2015, to $57.5 million.
Privately, teachers have told us they they fear that the school’s need for money could propel the Peralta Board of Trustees into a lease deal with the A’s, who want to build their ballpark next to Laney College. The team is promising to help the district generate revenue for repairs at Laney and other campus improvements.
Both the union and Associated Students of Laney College recently voted against the district entering into a deal with the A’s.
Last month, Laguerre approved a $25,000 contract for union heavyweight and former Oakland Deputy Mayor Sharon Cornu to help the district weigh the pluses and minuses of a stadium deal.
Laguerre and Peralta board President Julina Bonilla were attending a retreat Tuesday on the budget and other issues, and could not be reached for comment.
San Francisco Chronicle columnists Phillip Matier and Andrew Ross appear Sundays, Mondays and Wednesdays. Matier can be seen on the KPIX TV morning and evening news. He can also be heard on KCBS radio Monday through Friday at 7:50 a.m. and 5:50 p.m. Got a tip? Call (415) 777-8815, or email matierandross@sfchronicle.com. Twitter: @matierandrossThunder General Manager Sam Presti held his annual season-ending press conference Monday afternoon. Following a solid 55-win regular season and near historic playoff run, Presti addressed key issues, including Kevin Durant's impending free agency. Here are highlights from Presti's exit interview.
On free-agent Durant:
"I think Kevin deserves a tremendous amount of credit for the way that he’s handled his affairs. I’ve never been more impressed with somebody in that regard... We’re not able to have that season unless he handled his affairs the way he did...How fortunate are we that Kevin Durant has been one of the first players to ever wear a Thunder uniform?"
On how he'll approach off-season negotiations with Durant:
When it's time, we'll sit down and have that conversation with him, and at that point we'll know where we stand."
(Flash back to March, 2015 when Presti joined KFOR TV and said this about the Durant negotiation: "It won't be much of a negotiation. He'll have what he wants")
On Head Coach Billy Donovan:
"Donovan did an excellent job, he (Donovan) was intentional, curious and supremely disciplined. I thought he had an excellent first year, but I think next year a lot of the firsts will be gone for him, and he'll be maybe even better."
On free-agent Dion Waiters:
"The only thing I can tell you, it generally bodes well when the player is wanting to be back."
On Russell Westbrook's determination:
"If he was going to law school, he’d be a great lawyer. He's just a high-achieving individual, and those are the types of people we've always been attracted to here."
On Serge Ibaka's post-season success:
"Just the way that he performed in the postseason, the way he dealt with Nowitzki, Aldridge, he executed those game plans to a T, and he wasn't going to get a lot of help individually by design, and he was fantastic."
On the 2015-16 season and franchise's future:
"By the end of the season, there was a great compassion between the players. They were really playing for one another, really sacrificing for one another, We have a really special group of people, We finished the season the fifth youngest rotation in the NBA since 2010, and we're also in a position where we feel like we can continue to add to our team without having to deplete it or gut it in order to make progress, which is an exciting place to be in a salary cap system."
Presti concluded his near 45-minute presser by stating he has yet to watch an NBA Finals game, but did reiterate his confidence concerning the Thunder moving forward, in part because of a quality ledger of post-season opposition.At the meeting in Exeter, UK September 7-9, 2010,
Surface temperature datasets for the 21st Century
there were several candid admissions with respect to the robustness of the global and USA surface temperature record that are being used for multidecadal surface temperature trend assessments (such as for the 2007 IPCC report).
These admissions were made despite the failure of the organizers to actually do what they claimed when they organized the meeting. In their announcement prior to the meeting [and this information has been removed in their update after the meeting] they wrote
“To be effective the meeting will have to be relatively small but, as stated above, stringent efforts will be made to entrain input from non-attendees in advance.”
In asking colleagues (such as my co-authors on our 2007 JGR paper)
Pielke Sr., R.A., C. Davey, D. Niyogi, S. Fall, J. Steinweg-Woods, K. Hubbard, X. Lin, M. Cai, Y.-K. Lim, H. Li, J. Nielsen-Gammon, K. Gallo, R. Hale, R. Mahmood, S. Foster, R.T. McNider, and P. Blanken, 2007: Unresolved issues with the assessment of multi-decadal global land surface temperature trends. J. Geophys. Res., 112, D24S08, doi:10.1029/2006JD008229
which has raised serious issues with the USHCN and GHCN analyses, none of us were “entrained” to provide input.
Nonetheless, despite the small number of individuals who were invited to be involved, there still are quite important admissions of shortcomings.
These include those from Tom Peterson
who stated in slide 8
“We need to respond to a wide variety of concerns – Though not necessarily all of them”
[from Introductory remarks – Tom Peterson];
Matt Menne, Claude Williams and Jay Lawrimore who reported that
“[GHCN Monthly]Version 2 released in 1997….but without station histories for stations outside the USA)” “Undocumented changes [in the USHCN] can be as prevalent as documented changes even when extensive (digitized) metadata are available” “Collectively station changes [in the USHCN] often have nearly random impacts, but even slight deviations from random matter greatly” “Outside of the USA ~60% of the GHCN Version 3 average temperature trends are larger following homogenization” “There is a need to identify gradual as well as abrupt changes in bias (but it is may (sic) be problematic to adjust for abrupt changes only)” “Automation is the only realistic approach to deal with large datasets” “More work is required to assess and quantify uncertainties in bias adjustments” “Critiques of surface temperature data and processing methods are increasingly coming from non traditional scientific sources (non peer reviewed) and the issue raised may be too numerous and too frequent for a small group of traditional scientists to address” “There is a growing interest in the nature of surface temperature data (reaching up to the highest levels of government)”
from Lessons learnt from US Historical Climate Network and Global Historical Climate Network most recent homogenisation cycle – Matt Menne;
and Peter Thorne from Agreed outcomes – Peter Thorne who wrote
“Usage restrictions Realistically we are not suddenly going to have open unrestricted access to all withheld data. In some areas this is the majority of the data.”
There are very important admissions in these presentations. First, outside of the USA, there is inadequate (or no) publicly available information on station histories, yet these data are still used to create a “homogenized” global average surface temperature trend which reaches up to the “highest level of government”. Even in the USA, there are undocumented issues.
While the organizers of the Exeter meeting are seeking to retain its leadership role in national and international assessments of the observed magnitude of global warming, it is clear that serious problems exist in using this data for this purpose. We will post information on several new papers when ready to introduce readers of this weblog to quantification of additional systematic biases in the use of this data for long-term surface land temperature trend assessments.
There is a need, however, to accept that the primary metric for assessing global warming and cooling should be upper ocean heat content, since from 2004 onward the spatial coverage is clearly adequate for this purpose (e.g. see). While there, of course, is a need for regional land surface temperature measurements including anomalies and long-term trends, for obtaining a global average climate system heat content change the oceans are clearly the more appropriate source of this information.The game centers around Rena, a heroic young girl whose magic bracelets allow her to create special grapple beams that let her swing across the landscape and toss bad guys around!
Grab, throw, swing, and climb!
Unlike many other games you play in your browser, Grapple Force Rena isn't designed to be played in one sitting - the game will consist of at least 25 distinct "courses", each one its own page on the website. At least once every two weeks, a new course will go up, and you'll be able to freely jump between courses with "next" and "previous" buttons on the website - it's like a webcomic you can play!
Play right in your browser - no download needed!
Best of all, the game will be completely free! You'll be able to share Grapple Force Rena with your friends, who can play it right in their browser on nearly any device (even iOS and Android tablets and phones) thanks to the magic of Construct 2, powered by HTML5!
Get advice from helpful friends!
Pledge your support, and you can join the Grapple Force Club and gain access to the downloadable version! Play in full screen, save your rankings and high scores, and play the newest course early - and best of all, give Grapple Force Rena the support to become even better! If you only have $5 to give, though, that's all right - you'll still get credited as a backer, and get the downloadable game once it's finished.
Grab those bad guys and toss 'em around!
But you don't have to wait to try the game yourself - you can play the first three courses on the website now!
Funded!
Thank you so much!
As of July 31st, 2014, Rena reached its $7000 funding goal! Thanks to a wealth of generous backers (including one David James Turton, who funded over a third of the project singlehandedly), Rena has guaranteed its creation from start to finish, free for everyone to enjoy!
Having exceeded the goal by over $1000, and with the promise of a future donation by a lapsed high-level backer, Grapple Force Rena met three stretch goals, guaranteeing an Android version, 5 more courses for the complete game, and monthly wallpapers for Grapple Force Club members! Thank you all so much for your support!
Why Kickstarter?
You'll need an HTML5 capable browser to see this content. Play Replay with sound Play with
sound 00:00 00:00
With your support, I'll be able to devote the time and resources to promise that Grapple Force Rena updates frequently and reliably until it reaches its end. I've already spent months living off savings to develop the game full time, and your support will allow me to recoup the money spent on software licensing, keep up with web hosting costs, pay my collaborators, support myself while I make the game, and perhaps even bring the game to more platforms or bring in more talent.
Just because the game is going to be free to play in your browser doesn't mean that there's nothing to offer those willing to show their support! If you pledge $20 or more, not only will you get the backer credit, finished game, and soundtrack, you'll get lifetime enrollment in the exclusive Grapple Force Club!
The primary benefit of the Grapple Force Club is that you get access to the continually updated downloadable version of the game. While free users can only play the game in their browser on the Grapple Force Rena website, club members will be able to play the game full screen, run the game more smoothly on older hardware, save their high scores and rankings, and best of all, get early access to new courses when they're released. Other things may be given to Grapple Force Club members in the future as well, like exclusive wallpapers or other members-only material. But it doesn't stop there!
Pledge $30 or more and you'll also get the game's official soundtrack, courtesy of Nonplayable Records! The soundtrack will include all of the music in the game, as well as remixes and arrangements of the game's music. And since this is a serialized game, the music will be coming out in volumes - all of which you'll be able to enjoy without paying any extra!
Those who pledge $40 or more will get a full color 18" x 24" Grapple Force Rena poster! And there are even more rewards beyond this - you can become a part of the game, getting the opportunity to make a cameo, help design your own course, or even make a boss character!
Grapple Force Rena definitely shows its heritage in the 2D action platformers that inspired it, but it has a uniqueness all its own. The serial nature of the game's development and distribution is unusual, with particular advantages and disadvantages, and I hope that my journey through this strange way of delivering a long, narrative game like Grapple Force Rena will help me learn more about the format's unique advantages and challenges, and pave the way for similar projects from other creative game-making folks. I fully intend to write extensively about my experiences making this kind of game, as well as sharing various tips and tricks I've learned along the way.
I hope you'll join me on my journey to tell Rena's story from start to finish!On occasion, when police use tasers, their target dies.
Some people think that police should be better trained in the use of force, and that the use of tasers by law enforcement in general should be reconsidered and not driven by questionable taser-industry claims of safety.
Those people are soft on crime, and insufficiently vigilant about the threats posed to The Children. Will you not think of the children?
Miami Police Chief Manuel Orosa has a better suggestion to deal with folks dying when police tase them, which — I must point out — can be upsetting and inconvenient to police:
Miami Police Chief Manuel Orosa came up with a novel solution to the problem: those with heart conditions just shouldn't break the law in the first place to avoid getting Tased.
See? That's why we can count on the Thin Blue Line: because of the serious, contemplative, and principled analysis of public-safety issues we can expect from law enforcement.
Chief Orosa is right! Everyone knows that cops never question, arrest, tase, beat, or shoot you unless you committed a crime first. It's just logic. If you weren't a criminal, why would they tase you?
Chief Orosa is a very busy man, I am sure, so I will help him out by making other common-sense suggestions designed to avoid unpleasantness in interactions with law enforcement.
If you don't want police to shoot your dog when they come to notify you that your son has been murdered, then don't have a son who is a homicide victim.
If you don't want to be threatened with investigation by the District Attorney's Office, then don't charge a deputy prosecutor for lap dances, and certainly don't make him pay the cover.
If you don't want your yard dug up, don't get accused by psychics of having buried bodies there.
If you don't want your collie shot, then don't let her cross the path of a cop with a demonstrated history of violence.
If you don't want to be reduced to drinking your own urine while abandoned in custody over the weekend, don't smoke pot near a DEA facility that is understaffed.
If you don't want police knocking on your door at midnight, then be available at midnight if they want to dispute something you wrote about them in the newspaper.
If you don't want your disabled son beaten, pepper-sprayed, and tased, then get him a speech pathologist so police won't think he's dissing them. They're sensitive.
If you don't want to get kicked, then let go of the fucking ball, Rover. What's your issue?
If you don't want to be arrested, don't use a cell phone near an officer who is a Star Trek fan.
If you don't want to be pepper-sprayed and tased and "trip and fall on the pavement," then ANSWER THE GODDAM QUESTION, is that so hard?
If you don't want to be tased, then don't take an aggressive stance in bed, grandma! Jesus. You're 86, you should know better.
If you don't want your grandmother to go to prison, don't have a cold.
Really, if you've paid attention in America for the last half-century — if you've watched the law-and-order platitudes dominating politics, if you've seen the mindless worship of people who have guns and badges, if you've seen what conduct is tolerated, excused, and even cheered — all of this would really be common sense, wouldn't it?
Last 5 posts by Ken Whiteby Michael Zeiler
I'm pleased to release a very long map infographic focusing on the path of totality for the August 21, 2017 total solar eclipse. This map is designed so that it will fill your browser window and you can scroll across the entirety of the path.
If you were to print this map on paper, it would be 8 inches tall by 10 feet 8 inches! The reason the map is so narrow is that it focuses on the zone where we are trying to encourage all of the American public to get to; the path of totality. Plus a length of over 10 feet allowed me to communicate a great deal of detailed information about the eclipse path.
One of the first things you'll notice are the oval figures for the shadow of the Moon. These figures are drawn at three-minute intervals and the local times, a short description of the area, and the speed of the Moon's shadow upon the American landscape are shown. You'll also see curves annotated with durations. At the southern and northern limits of the of the path, you would also see the eclipse for a split second. As you move deeper into the eclipse path, your duration of totality with increase. This map gives you a sense of the zone where you want to be on eclipse day.
Above the path of totality are a couple of dozen topics that will give you some instant knowledge about the key aspects of the eclipse; strategies for successful viewing, comments on climate, background on eclipse history and science, and coming eclipses.
I will continue to develop more eclipse maps and infographics. If you have an idea, please drop a comment in the comments section or send me an email at greatamericaneclipse@gmail.comThe security cabinet on Tuesday night approved a series of measures to bolster security in Jerusalem and thwart would-be terrorists, in an effort to counter the ongoing wave of violent attacks that has left nine Israelis dead and dozens more injured.
Public transport in the capital will receive extra security, according to the recommendations adopted by ministers. This will be provided by IDF troops until more security guards can be recruited. Earlier Tuesday, two Arab terrorists stormed a bus in the capital, killing two people and wounding more than a dozen more.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Tuesday that Israel would use “all means” available to curb ongoing Palestinian terrorism and violence, and promised “to bring quiet back to the citizens of Israel.”
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Following the speech — given at a special Knesset session to commemorate the killing of cabinet minister Rehavam Ze’evi 14 years ago — the security cabinet passed slew of new security measures to be implemented in the coming days.
The IDF will also bolster its presence in Israeli city centers, while Arab neighborhoods in East Jerusalem will be surrounded by security forces.
The new measures also aim to deter would-be terrorists from actually carrying out attacks. Terrorists’ homes will be demolished within days of any attacks and families of East Jerusalem terrorists who aren’t Israeli citizens will have their residency status revoked.
So far, the families of five Palestinian terrorists who have murdered Jews will receive demolition orders. They include the families of the men who killed Eitam and Naama Henkin in a West Bank shooting attack some two weeks ago; the man who fatally stabbed Nehemia Lavi and Aharon Benita in Jerusalem 10 days ago; and the killers of Malachi Rosenfeld and Danny Gonen in shooting attacks in the West Bank earlier this year.
Speaking hours after a series of terror attacks Tuesday that left three people dead and several more injured, Netanyahu said he believed the measures “will lead the other side to the realization that terror doesn’t pay.”
“Israel will settle its accounts with the murderers, with those who try murder and with those all those who assist them. Not only will we revoke rights from them; we will exact the full price,” he told the Knesset plenary.
Netanyahu also called on Mahmoud Abbas to stop “lying” about Israel’s actions and warned that he would hold him responsible if incitement led to a further deterioration.
The Knesset session fell during an emergency security cabinet meeting called following Tuesday’s attacks. Netanyahu paused the meeting to deliver his Knesset speech, returning to the Prime Minister’s Office to resume discussions immediately after speaking.
Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat also demanded a complete closure on the West Bank and East Jerusalem Arab neighborhoods, saying harsher measures were needed to battle a terror wave that has rocked the capital over the last month.With Toronto FC's elimination from the playoffs, the club has a lot of holes to fill if they want to be competitive next season. While Waking the Red hope we are not in such dire straights, we also have a couple of positions to round out ahead of what should be an eventful offseason.
Are you interested in writing about the most tragic club in soccer history? Are you looking to grow the Canadian soccer and Toronto FC community? Are you looking to join a semi-successful four a side soccer team who could still use some ringers? If you answered yes to any of those questions than this could be the right fit for you.
We are happy with the growth of the site as it is, but in order to get bigger we are going to need more dedicated staff who can help us improve and create even more original content.
With that in mind, here is some criteria as to who should apply. If you are still interested, fill out the form below.
Who we are looking for.
Someone who can consistently watch Toronto FC/CanMNT matches.
Someone with time to write at least one article a week, possibly more in trying times like playoffs and the monthly coach firing.
Someone who has interest in writing about Toronto FC, CanMNT or otherwise.
What this might mean
Writing previews, game recaps.
Writing breaking news articles.
Covering Toronto FC II (with possible press credentials attached).
Tactical Analysis
League wide news and opinion
Canadian women's soccer (a weak spot in our staff but we would be interested).
These are just some ideas. If you have any other questions or follow ups you can direct them to wakingthered@gmail.com
Thank you to everyone for continuing to support the site, fill out the form below.Johns Hopkins Hospital tapped one of its own Thursday to be the first female president in the institution's 127-year history.
Dr. Redonda Miller, who worked her way up during a 20-year career at Hopkins, becomes one of a small number of women across the country to head a hospital.
While she never specifically eyed the president's office, she said she decided to submit her name when the rarely vacant position came open. While well aware of her history-making role, she's more focused on her many new responsibilities.
"I'm very proud to be the first female president and it does send a message to other women aspiring to leadership roles," Miller said. "I'm proud to be a role model.... But gender won't play into my day-to-day role."
Miller, 49, will start the new job July 1. She succeeds Ronald R. Peterson, who held the position for nearly two decades and announced in January that he was stepping down. Peterson will remain at Hopkins in his other roles as executive vice president of Johns Hopkins Medicine and president of the Johns Hopkins Health System, which encompasses six hospitals, hundreds of community physicians and a self-funded health plan.
Miller will report to him.
Johns Hopkins employees learned of Miller's appointment Thursday in a note from Peterson, who served as co-chair of the search committee with Paul Rothman, dean of the medical faculty and CEO of Johns Hopkins Medicine — the umbrella alliance of the health system and the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.
"Redonda's extraordinary combination of exceptional medical prowess, years of progressive administrative experience, and the well-earned respect of senior clinical and administrative leadership will serve us all well," Peterson wrote.
From the Community: Readers submit photos and information on employees who have recently been promoted, hired or honored at area businesses. Select photos will be published in the Maryland Business section of Tuesday editions of The Baltimore Sun. This feature accepts photos only. (Caption size is limited.) (Submit your (300 dpi or larger) photos here. )
In a phone interview, Peterson said it was "a bit of history in the making" for Hopkins that the next president is a woman.
"We didn't necessarily set out to do this, but increasingly we are trying to make sure we look at a diverse pool of candidates," Peterson said. "I am personally pleased that the best candidate happened to be a woman."
About 11 percent of hospital CEOs were women in 2012, according to the American College of Healthcare Executives. Locally, other female hospital presidents include Amy Perry at Sinai Hospital in Baltimore and Leslie Simmons of Carroll Hospital Center in Westminster.
The search for a new president came in part because Johns Hopkins Medicine has grown in size and complexity and Peterson and other administrators decided it was a good time to recruit the next president. Peterson plans to retire in a few years and wants an orderly transition. He also wanted the opportunity to mentor the new hospital president.
Hopkins began looking nationally late last year for candidates to fill the position, interviewing early applicants via Skype before bringing the most promising in for face-to-face talks. The final decision came down to Miller and one outside candidate.
Ultimately, they liked the fact that Miller understood the hospital's culture, with its decentralized organizational structure in which clinical areas are overseen by a clinical director. Miller also understands the nuances of an academic hospital and is familiar with Maryland's unique rate-setting system. Maryland is the only state in the nation with a waiver from federally set Medicare rates.
"She is first and foremost a very well-trained academic physician," Peterson said in an interview. "She is somebody who is very well respected by both clinical leaders as well as administrative leaders."
Miller came to Hopkins 28 years ago for medical school and never left. A residency in internal medicine at Hopkins followed medical school. She also has served as associate program director of the Osler Residency Program, assistant dean for student affairs for the school of medicine and vice chair of clinical operations for the Department of Medicine.
Most recently she served as the senior vice president of medical affairs for the Johns Hopkins Health System and vice president of medical affairs for the Johns Hopkins Hospital.
"My number one focus will be continuing to put our patients first and delivering the high-quality care we're known for, making sure our patients have a good experience," she said. "We're already well on our journey in embracing change in how we deliver care, value over volume. I plan to continue that work."
Miller got started on the administrative pathway after earning an MBA from the Johns Hopkins University in 2004. While she's taken on additional responsibilities over time, she still sees patients and hopes to continue doing so after becoming president.
"I'd like to try and keep seeing patients," she said. "It adds such an invaluable insight into administration to know what it's like. It makes me more knowledgeable and informs my decisions."
Hospital industry administrators praised Miller's appointment and called her a solid choice.
"I've had the pleasure of working with her," said Carmela Coyle, president and CEO of the Maryland Hospital Association. "Her insight as a clinician and her talent in the areas of quality and patient safety and leadership have shown within the state of Maryland."
Miller serves as chair of the Maryland Hospital Association's council on clinical and quality issues as well as on the organization's executive board.
"I am delighted to see that Johns Hopkins has invested in the future with the appointment of Dr. Redonda Miller, who clearly has excellent credentials and experience to lead the institution going forward," said Dean E. Albert Reece of the University of Maryland School of Medicine, in a statement. Reece is also vice president for medical affairs for the University of Maryland. "We look forward to continuing our collaborative opportunities in the future."
Miller is married to physician Albert Polito, a pulmonologist who directs the lung center at Mercy Medical Center. The couple lives in Homeland and has two daughters: Francesca, 11, and Bianca, 7.
Miller plans to continue her commitment to the community by increasing the number of people from local neighborhoods who work in the Hopkins system and improving the health of residents of the surrounding community.Now that Microsoft OneNote is free for Mac and Windows, the price and cross-platform barriers to this much beloved note-taking tool are gone. But how well does OneNote stack up to (the also awesome) Evernote, Lifehacker readers' favorite note-taking app? Let's take a look at where each app shines, and why you might want to use one over the other.
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The comparison below is based on the major features most people use these apps for: taking notes, saving information from the web, jotting down notes on the go, and other fine details.
Taking Notes: Two Very Different Approaches
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OneNote and Evernote share the same main objective: To help you get organized by keeping all your ideas, saved web pages, and other documents in one place. They also offer similar features, such as a web clipper, Optical Character Recognition (or OCR, which interprets images or scanned information as text), instant syncing of notes to all your devices, and integration with third-party services.
While they seem like similar tools, however, you can see the biggest difference between these two apps at a glance. Above is my OneNote note brainstorming this post. Below is a similar one done in Evernote.
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OneNote Is the Better Digital Notebook
OneNote takes the "digital notebook" analogy to heart, organizing notes into colored tabbed sections within notebooks. Also like using a paper notebook, you can add text, images, tables, and more anywhere on the page—side by side if you want—and format them as easily as you can a Word document. OneNote's menus, in fact, include text formatting tools like quick styles (for headings, footers, etc.) and the very useful "format painter" tool to copy and apply formatting. You can |
er's choice, a hit by pitch, and an RBI. He hit his first career home run against the Brewers on June 30 in a 6–3 loss.
After appearing in 11 games for the Mets in the majors and batting just.227 with an On Base Percentage of.261. The Mets waived Martinez on January 9, 2012 after years of injuries and disappointing progress. [5]
Houston Astros [ edit ]
On January 11, 2012, Martinez was claimed off waivers by the Houston Astros.[6] He was designated for assignment on May 6, 2013.
In 2012 Martinez played well for the Astros AAA team with a slash line of.314 /.367 /.507. However, Martinez struggled to perform in the Majors. The next year Martinez struggled in both the minors and majors for Houston.[7]
New York Yankees [ edit ]
On June 18, 2013, Martínez was traded from the Astros to the New York Yankees for minor league pitcher Charles Basford.[8]
On August 5, 2013, Martinez was suspended 50 games by the MLB for violating its drug policy and connection to Biogenesis.
References [ edit ]In a surprise announcement today, Atlanta Beltline officials declared they now own all the property needed to build the popular Eastside Trail up to the Armour area, a blossoming jobs hub near Lindbergh and Buckhead’s southeastern fringes.
The Beltline recently closed on 13 acres of land and inactive rail corridor formerly owned by Norfolk Southern between Rock Springs Road and Mason Street, near Interstate 85, officials said today.
Dubbed “the wye” because it’s shaped like a Y, this important,.25-mile Beltline piece will cross over the Buford Spring Connector and then under I-85 (see above) before linking with Mason Street near SweetWater Brewing Company.
The purchase is an example of Transportation-Special Local Option Sales Tax funding at work.
Leverage from TSPLOST funds (which were overwhelmingly approved by Atlanta voters in November) was used to secure a bridge loan from The Conservation Fund. That loan, officials said, will pay for the land acquisition as TSPLOST funds are collected over the next five years. The purchase price wasn’t disclosed.
According to a press release, the Beltline believes the wye will allow for a “crucial” link to Armour Drive, an industrial district long home to SweetWater that’s coming to life with projects such as Armour Yards.
“The improved connectivity has the potential to fuel more creative-class jobs along the [Beltline],” reads the release. “Future northward extensions of the [trail] will also link the Armour area to Buckhead and the upcoming phases of the PATH400 trail.”
So when will Atlantans see more Eastside Trail being built?
To that point, officials said construction of the paved Beltline in the area “will commence when design is complete and construction funds are secured,” but no timeline was provided.
Recently installed Beltline president and CEO Brian McGowan said this in a prepared statement:
“Our partners at The Conservation Fund made this deal possible. In addition, Norfolk Southern worked with us on this complex transaction for a result to benefit everyone. Those partnerships, along with the support of the City and Atlanta voters who passed the T-SPLOST referendum, bring us closer to ‘closing the loop’ and bringing an equitable Atlanta Beltline to the entire city.”
All of this comes after news in July that Beltline officials were hoping to work in tandem with Georgia Power to develop the multi-use trail north of Piedmont Park. The power company is replacing large poles and other infrastructure in the area, and the Beltline seemed hopeful they’d chip in with costs and help with paving.
At that point, officials were referring to the segment as the “Northeast Trail,” as illustrated below, and the section running immediately next to Piedmont Park did not yet appear to be within the project’s scope.
We’ve asked for clarification—and even a vague timeline for construction—and will post any updates that come.
UPDATE: Beltline spokeswoman Jenny Odom provides some clarification that the scope of the Eastside Trail’s future northeastern segment will stretch from Monroe Drive/Piedmont Park up to Mason Street/Armour area.
“For planning purposes, we call that stretch the Northeast Trail, but it would likely be built in phases, so construction could take place over time and there could be a gap [near Piedmont Park or elsewhere],” Odom wrote in an email.
There’s no ballpark timeline available for construction funding—and thus, no outlook on when ground might actually break, Odom said.
On the flipside of town, Buckhead already enjoys the under-the-radar Northside Trail (photos here), a roughly one-mile stretch near Piedmont Hospital that debuted back in 2010, now with an additional spur that came five years later.
Elsewhere, the Beltline has expanded by three miles in Southwest Atlanta and roughly another mile south along the Eastside Trail in the past couple of years.the intermedia catalogue
"When I arrived on the Intermedia scene at the end of 1967 I had a good sense of how photography worked and was figuring out how I could use it to make art. As the person with the camera, I naturally assumed the role of photographer and began to document the preparations for the Intermedia Nights exhibition at the Vancouver Art Gallery. At first I wasn't thinking about this documentary project in an art sense – it seemed like something that was necessary and it made me feel useful within the group. Then what started out as publicity became so interesting to me that I carried on with it. So I began what would be a five-year project to document Intermedia's art and artists. I ended up with over 3,000 negatives, which I have held on to for the past 40 years. Then, in 2003 I started on this archival research project based on my intermedia material and the years I spent as a member of the society."
- Michael de Courcy
readTwo anti-government protesters were killed and 21 were wounded in a gun and grenade attack in Bangkok,
medical officials and police told AFP news agency, stoking fears of wider political violence in the crisis-hit kingdom.
Police said two M79 grenades were launched into a protest site at the city's Democracy Monument early Thursday and were followed by gunshots.
"The first victim was a protester who was sleeping at Democracy Monument, while the second victim was a protest guard who died from gunshots," Police Major Wallop Prathummuang told AFP.
In a statement on its website, the city's Erawan Emergency Centre said two people were killed and 21 wounded, without giving further details.
The deaths take the toll from six months of protests aimed at toppling the government to 27, with hundreds of others wounded in gun and grenade attacks linked to rallies.
Anti-government protesters have moved to the area immediately around Government House in the city's historic quarter as they try to press the Thai Senate to remove the caretaker administration and appoint a new prime minister.
Former premier Yingluck Shinawatra was ousted by a Thai court last week, but was swiftly replaced by the ruling Puea Thai party, who are refusing to bow to pressure saying they are the democratically elected government.General News of Thursday, 30 October 2014
Source: Graphic.com.gh
US lauds Ghana’s Ebola preparedness plan
The United States (US) government has commended Ghana for its “impressive” Ebola preparedness plan and promised to support the plan to achieve its goals.
Speaking at a meeting with the Chief of Staff, Mr Prosper Douglas Bani, at the Flagstaff House Wednesday, the US Ambassador to the United Nations, Ms Samantha Power, said both the preventive and containment measures put in place by the Ghanaian authorities were positive.
"We shall help Ghana in its preventive measures and also quickly contain any case that may come up," she declared.
Ms Power was at the Flagstaff House to brief the Chief of Staff on efforts the US government was making to battle the disease in West Africa.
In a personal testimony about Ghana's strict preventive measures, the Ambassador said she went through rigorous screening when she arrived at the Kotoka International Airport, adding that the screening she went through gave a good idea of the prominence given to Ebola prevention in Ghana.
The Envoy conveyed President Obama's commendation to President Mahama for showing tremendous leadership in the Ebola battle.
She said Ghana had a special place in the scheme of things in the Obama government.
Ms Power, who has already visited Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea, said she saw the pain and heartbreak of families affected by the disease during the visit.
She called on Ghanaians not to entertain any fears about the presence of the United Nations Ebola Team in the country, saying members of the team who travelled to the three countries received maximum protection.
Mr Bani commended the US government for its significant commitment to the fight against Ebola in West Africa.
He said Ghana recognised the fact that Ebola was not just a health problem but carried terrible social and economic consequences, saying that was the reason the entire world had to come together to control it.
While showing appreciation for the global response to Ebola control in West Africa, he expressed the hope that bilateral and unilateral agencies would begin to emphasise the social and economic challenges.
He promised that President Mahama would never go to sleep until the fight against Ebola was won.
Mr Bani said the government had approved an insurance package for frontline health staff working on Ebola prevention and control.
He urged the US to make its presence felt in the ECOWAS emergency meeting on Ebola in Accra on November 6.Religion emerged as an important determinant of sexual behavior among Ugandan university students. Our findings correlate with the increasing number of conservative religious injunctions against premarital sex directed at young people in many countries with a high burden. of HIV/AIDS. Such influence of religion must be taken into account in order to gain a deeper understanding of the forces that shape sexual behavior in Uganda.
Our findings indicated that 37% of the male and 49% of the female students had not previously had sex. Of those with sexual experience, 46% of the males and 23% of the females had had three or more sexual partners, and 32% of the males and 38% of the females did not consistently use condoms. For those who rated religion as less important in their family, the probability of early sexual activity and having had a high number of lifetime partners increased by a statistically significant amount (OR = 1.7; 95% CI: 1.2–2.4 and OR = 1.6; 95% CI: 1.1–2.3, respectively). However, the role of religion seemed to have no impact on condom use. Being of Protestant faith interacted with gender: among those who had debuted sexually, Protestant female students were more likely to have had three or more lifetime partners; the opposite was true for Protestant male students.
More knowledge is needed about structural factors in society that affect risky sexual behaviors. Educational institutions such as universities provide an opportune arena for interventions among young people. The aim of this study was to investigate the relationship between sociodemographic and religious factors and their impact on sexual behavior among university students in Uganda.
Copyright: © 2011 Agardh et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Our knowledge of whether urbanization and a growing middle class, together with an increasing conservative religious movement, has changed the ABC pattern among university students in sub-Saharan Africa in general, or in Uganda in particular, is uncertain and even contradictory. Therefore, we lack the information to assess the implications these societal changes may have on the HIV/AIDS situation in this group and, consequently, on the prerequisites for successful intervention. Accordingly, the aim of this study was to investigate the relationship between sociodemographic and religious factors and their impact on sexual behavior among university students in Uganda.
A cross-sectional study carried out among young people in Zimbabwe found religion to be a protective factor in sexual abstinence [14]. Similar results were shown in a population-based study involving young people between the ages of 15 to 24 in Côte d'Ivoire [16]. By contrast, an investigation of university students in Nigeria did not show any association between religion and sexual behavior [13]. At Makerere University in Uganda, more than half of twenty-five students interviewed who were members of the Kampala Pentecostal Church had engaged in sexual activity after being “born-again” [9]. This indicates the likelihood that the impact of religion on sexual behavior among young individuals is strongly dependent on other contextual factors and thus needs to be assessed separately for settings with similar characteristics, i.e., by country or by region.
The importance of socioeconomic factors was demonstrated in a study on the estimated median age at first sex (AFS) among men and women born from the 1950 s through the 1980 s in Uganda. The findings showed an increase of AFS among women born after 1970, but not men. However, since results varied in comparing the neighboring districts of Masaka and Rakai, the authors suggest this might be explained by socioeconomic differences between those areas [15].
In a global perspective, there are several studies of the relation between sexual behaviors and the financial and educational level of the household, and the influence of urban or rural setting elements [11], [12]. However, fewer studies have been done on religion and sexual behavior among young people in sub-Saharan Africa [9], [13], [14].
Such efforts reduced the prevalence of HIV/AIDS in the adult population to about 5% [7]. Increasing the availability of effective treatment also slowed the further spread of the virus. However, in order to sustain this initial success, the target group for HIV/AIDS prevention was logically the young population, i.e., youth from the onset of puberty up to the age of marriage [7], [8]. This group represents the most sexually active part of the population and as generally agreed, a sector highly sensitive to changes in behaviors—particularly sexual ones. Young people are also relatively easy to reach for preventive interventions via the educational institutions where they spend many years of their lives. Accordingly, since schools are the most likely arena for initiating sexual contacts, it is important to determine the most important factors that shape sexual behaviors in such settings. Previous studies have focused primarily on sociodemographic factors, including rapid urbanization, a growing middle class, and a tendency toward more active religious conservatism or fundamentalism [9]. The latter is of particular interest, since some religious organizations have increasingly challenged the ABC strategy, especially the condom component [10]. University populations, which largely represent the expanding middle class and have been the scene of growing activity by religious movements, have recently been investigated from this point of view [9].
The early phase of the HIV/AIDS pandemic struck Uganda with great severity. In 1995 the estimated prevalence of HIV infection in the adult population was 15% [1]. However, the response in Uganda was quicker and more effective than in most similar countries [2], [3]. An unusual openness in acknowledging sexual behavior as the root of the epidemic has been credited with the broad mobilization of the voluntary sector, especially through the activities of faith-based organizations [4], [5]. The forthright discussion of sexuality did not seem to prevent religious institutions from supporting the preventive efforts, which were primarily based on the so-called ABC strategy: Abstinence from sex before marriage. Being faithful to one's partner, and using Condoms [6].
SI = OR(AB)−1/(OR(Ab)−1)+(OR(aB)−1) OR = odds ratio; AB = exposed to both factors; Ab = exposed to one of the factors, and aB = exposed to the other factor. In the absence of effect modification, SI = 1, i.e., there is a pure additive effect when both exposures are present. In case of synergy, SI is greater than 1 (i.e., “more than additivity”); in case of antagonism, SI is less than 1.
The test for effect modification was made as a test for “more than additivity”, according to Rothman [22]. It is technically performed in the following way: stratified analyses are made for two of the involved exposure variables (e.g., gender and importance of religion) in order to detect possible effect measure modification of the odds ratios. Four dummy variables were created with the values a) female + high importance of religion, b) male + high importance of religion, c) female + low importance of religion, and d) male + low importance of religion. Possible synergy effects concerning gender and importance of religion on the outcome variables (sexual behaviors) were assessed by using the algorithm:
An additional analytical step was taken to determine whether there was effect modification between the variables chosen. Effect modification is present when a certain factor has a greater impact on an outcome in the presence or absence of a third variable (e.g., one exposure affects the risk of disease in men, but not in women).
Multivariate logistic regression stratified by sex was used to investigate the association between role of religion, religious affiliation, and sexual behavior. The effect of these variables on behavioral factors (i.e., age at sexual debut, having previously had sex, number of lifetime sexual partners, and condom use) was adjusted for age and area of origin. OR and 95% CI were used as measures of association.
In order to estimate the mean age of sexual debut, we performed a survival analysis with our data by making age at first sex right-censored since some people had not yet had sex.
The statistical analyses were done with SPSS Version 16.0. Logistic regressions were performed to calculate the crude odds ratios (OR) and 95% confidence intervals (CI) for the effect on age at sexual debut, having previously had sex, number of lifetime sexual partners, and consistent condom use. Differences between men and women in the prevalence of the variables used were calculated by means of Chi-square values upon which the p-values shown in Table 1 were based. Only cases where information was available on all variables in a particular instance were analyzed.
Sample size was given since we assessed all the students at the university, but a formal check revealed that in most analyses a 75% increase of risk could be ascertained at 80% probability. This did not exclude the risk of not being able to detect some true effects of moderate size.
Condom use on latest occasion of sexual intercourse was assessed through responses to the question: “Did you use any method for avoiding STDs on your latest occasion of sexual intercourse?” There were three alternative answers: “no”, “yes, condom”, and “yes, other”. The variable was then dichotomized, so that “no” and “yes, other” were coded as “inconsistent”, and “yes, condom” was coded as “consistent”.
Condom use with new partner was measured by responses to the question: “How often do you use a condom with a new sexual partner?” Respondents could answer by choosing any of five alternatives: “always”, “often”, “sometimes”, or “never”. This was then dichotomized by keeping the first alternative as “always” and the latter three as “not always”.
Number of lifetime sexual partners was defined by responses to the question: “How many sexual partners have you had altogether?” The variable was then dichotomized, so that ≥3 was coded as “high”, and <3 was coded as “low”.
Age at sexual debut was dichotomized, so that having sexual intercourse for the first time before age 19 was coded as “low”, and at or above age 19 as “high”.
Self-related health was defined on the basis of responses to the question: “How do you classify your current health in general?” There were five alternative answers: “very bad”, “bad”, “fair”, “good”, and “very good”. In the following analyses, the variable was dichotomized into less good (the first two alternatives) and good (the remaining three alternatives).
The role of religion in the family when growing up was dichotomized, so that “religion played a big role” and “religion was relatively important” were coded as “big role”; and “religion was not so important” and “religion was not important at all” were coded as “not big role”.
The primary family religion during childhood was reported by selecting one of the following alternatives: “Protestant”, “Catholic”, “Moslem”, “Pentecostal”, “Seventh-day Adventist”, “Orthodox”, and “other”. In the final analysis only individuals reporting “Protestant” or “Catholic” denomination were used, since they make up the two major religions in our sample.
The educational level of the head of household during childhood was dichotomized, so that “did not finish primary school” and “completed primary school” were coded as “low”, and “completed secondary school” and any education above that was classified as “high”.
Data was collected by means of an 11 page self-administered instrument consisting of 132 questions. The development of the questionnaire was based on valid instruments used in other studies of a similar nature, and on the outcomes of focus group discussions with youth, including students in Mbarara district [17], [18], [19], [20], [21]. The questionnaire was developed in close collaboration with representatives of the students and was pre-tested by ten students. The formulation and interpretation of the more private and sensitive questions were also discussed with the student representatives. The questionnaires were distributed in lecture halls to all undergraduate students at MUST. Prior to the distribution, students were orally informed about the purpose of the questionnaires and were given instructions for filling them out. The completed questionnaires were to be turned in anonymously. Written informed consent was obtained for each participant. While the questionnaires were being filled out, the research staff ensured quiet and privacy. A total of 980 students responded to the questionnaire, representing 80% of all undergraduate students registered at the university.
The study was performed at Mbarara University of Science and Technology (MUST), a public university in the town of Mbarara in southwestern Uganda. Founded in 1988, the school emphasizes community involvement in its teaching, fieldwork, and research. Our sample was drawn from the university's three faculties: medicine, science, and development studies, which at the time had a combined enrolment of 1220 undergraduate students, most of whom came from the surrounding area.
Furthermore, effect modification between gender and religious affiliation was demonstrated regarding lifetime sexual partners. Being a Protestant had opposite effects for men and women. No effect modification between gender and role of religion appeared with regard to condom use, since none of the combinations of the exposure variables mentioned appeared to affect the outcome. The same was largely true concerning effect modification between gender and religious affiliation and condom use. However, Protestant male students tended to be associated with a higher risk of not using a condom, compared with female Protestant students.
Effect modification between gender and role of religion was demonstrated regarding having previously had sex: males reporting that religion did not play a big role had a higher probability of having previously had sex than males for whom religion was rated as important, a pattern not visible found among females. Effect modification between gender and type of religion, i.e. Protestant vs. Catholic, was also demonstrated with regard to previously having had sex. We found that type of religion had opposite outcomes among men and women. In Protestant male students, the likelihood of having previously had sex increased, while it decreased among women of the same denomination.
Since the aim of the study was to analyze the pattern of associations between sociodemographic and religious factors that correlate with previously had sex, age of sexual debut, number of sexual partners, and condom use, we next, in Tables 8, 9, 10, and 11, analyzed possible effect modification between gender and role of religion, as well as type of religion in conjunction with the sexual behavior factors studied.
Tables 6 and 7 presents the adjusted OR with 95% CI for associations between the determinants mentioned and religious affiliation vis-à-vis the dependent variables (i.e., the sexual behaviors studied) stratified by sex. Two models were used: the first one adjusted for age, and the second for age and area of origin. As seen in the tables, the associations between role of religion and having previously had sex, age of sexual debut, and number of lifetime sexual partners only changed marginally, even after adjusting for age and rural origin.
Based on these findings, two variables (role of religion and religious affiliation) were chosen as the main determinants of sexual behaviors for further investigation. We adjusted for potential confounding due to age and rural origin by employing multi-variate logistic regression.
Tables 2, 3, 4, and 5 provide an analysis of the associations in the population studied between sociodemographic factors, on the one hand, and self-rated health and sexual behavior, on the other. Rural origin had a statistically significant association with previously having had sexual intercourse among male students (OR 1.5, 95% CI 1.1–2.1). Protestant religious affiliation was negatively associated with having previously had sexual intercourse among female students (OR 0.5, 95% CI 0.3–0.8), compared to Catholic female students. Protestant male students had a statistically lower risk for having had a high number of lifetime sexual partners (OR 0.6, 95% CI 0.4–0.96). Among male students, a larger proportion in the group stating that religion did not play a big role in their family had an increased risk of early sexual debut (OR 1.7, 95% CI 1.1–2.6), and female students in the same group had a greater risk of having had a high number of lifetime sexual partners (OR 2.2, 95% CI 1.01–4.8). No statistically significant association was found between self-rated health and previously had sex, age of sexual debut, number of lifetime partners, and condom use, and no association was found between role of religion and condom use.
In the group that stated they had previously had sex, 45.9% of the males and 23.1% of the females reported having had three or more sexual partners. More females (37.8%) than males (31.5%) stated that they do not always use a condom with a new partner.
Table 1 shows the distribution of sociodemographic factors and self-rated health, as well as the outcome variables: having previously had sexual intercourse, age at sexual debut, number of lifetime sexual partners, consistent condom use, and use of a condom on latest occasion of sexual intercourse. The majority of the male and female students (69.0% and 84.8%, respectively) grew up with a head of household who had high educational level (secondary school or above). In all, 54.8% of the males and 59.8% of the females reported that religion played a big role in their family of origin. Significantly more males than females reported having previously had sexual intercourse (62.9% vs. 51.3%, respectively). About half of the students had made their sexual debut by age 18. In fact, a survival analysis was performed to estimate the mean age of sexual debut, which was 17.9 years (95% CI: 17.5–18.2) in the sample (data not shown).
Discussion
Our study demonstrated a statistically significant correlation between two sets of factors: importance of religion and religious denomination in relation to sexual debut and number of lifetime sexual partners.
Gender tended to modify the effect of role of religion. Responses stating that religion played a big role in one's family were associated with previously having had sex among males, but not among females. Gender also seemed to modify the effect of religious affiliation. Being of Protestant faith was associated with higher risk for previously having had sex among males, but with lower risk among females. Protestant male students showed a lower probability of having many lifetime sexual partners compared with Catholic male students, while the opposite seemed to be the case among Protestant female students.
The results must be interpreted in relation to its rather exclusive target group, and the generalization of our findings to all individuals of the same age should be made with care. The majority of those in the target group have most probably grown up in a more protected environment than others in their age group. More than two-thirds of the students were raised in an urban or suburban area by a head of household who had a high educational level. This is not representative of young people in Uganda in general, only 14% of whom live in urban settings, according to the 2002 National Census. Of the population ages 20 to 24 years old, 8.9% was enrolled in post-secondary (higher) education [23]. Moreover, the target group consists of a mainly unmarried population: there are very few married students (if any) registered in the university [24].
This study was performed by means of a cross-sectional design, which may present difficulties in ascertaining the direction of causality between the variables analyzed. However, the sociodemographic variables were all unlikely to be affected by the sexual behaviors that constituted the outcome variable, since the circumstances involved (e.g., a family's religious affiliation or the educational level of the head of household) chronologically preceded the outcome.
As noted, more than 80% of all students at the university completed the questionnaire. Most of the remaining 20% could not be contacted by the research team because they were not on campus for various reasons. The “true” rate of non-responders was, therefore, less than 20% (and probably below 5%). Although we did not have access to information on how many students were off-campus, we know that 66% of the total number of students were males and 34% were females. The distribution of males and females in the remaining 20% (240 students) was 72% (n = 172) for males and 28% (n = 68) for females. Under these circumstances, it seems unlikely that systematic factors should have caused any selection bias of importance for the results. Internal missing was on the order of 5% to 10% regarding questions concerning sexual behavior. This could lead one to infer a moderate selection bias in an unknown direction, although the likelihood that this would have dramatically biased the risk is low.
The issue of misclassification should also be considered. We could not rule out the possibility that some of the respondents underreported sexual behavior that would be viewed as socially undesirable. If this were done in association with the background factors (e.g., the role of religion), it could represent dependent misclassification and, in such a case, would most likely exaggerate the findings. Thus, an alternative explanation to the suggested effect modification by gender would be that there may have been differential reporting of sexual behavior by the men and women in our sample, i.e., stronger moral rules might have made women underreport “unacceptable” sexual behavior to a greater extent than men did. However, upon scrutinizing our findings, this does not seem to be a very systematic pattern, although it cannot be ruled out. Moreover, respondents were guaranteed anonymity, and when the outcome of the questionnaire was discussed with student representatives, they stated that this guarantee was taken seriously. In their judgment the results gave a realistic picture of the true circumstances.
Among possible confounders the most obvious one was age. All final risk estimates were, therefore, controlled for this factor. Since being of rural origin was also a predictor of sexual behavior, this variable was included as a potential confounder in the final multivariate model. However, one might object that this could result in a measure of overadjustment, since the variable could be a determinant of religious engagement, thus representing a single possible pathway. Because the other sociodemographic factors did not appear significantly related to the outcome variables, they were not considered potential confounders. In summary, even though the most plausible confounders were controlled for, this did not change the risk estimates.
Age was used as a dichotomous variable in the analyses. We made supplementary analyses which very clearly showed that age and sexual debut/number of sexual partners were not related in a linear way as a simple function of time (i.e., age). Rather, there is evidence for both a period and cohort effect. Therefore, we found it justifiable to group all individuals into two age groups. (In fact, we also performed all the analyses with a continuous age variable, but the results changed only marginally.)
The results of our study indicated a relatively low level of risky sexual behavior among the majority of students. Religious influences and denominational networks might partly explain this.
Our findings are in agreement with those of previous research performed mainly in settings outside Africa, where it was concluded that religious engagement was a protective factor for risky sexual behavior [25], [26], [27]. Such research has primarily studied the associations between religious engagement and religious affiliation in relation to sexual behavior in general. In a study performed in the US by Kindler, religion was categorized in four dimensions: personal devotion (a sense of personal connection to a god), personal conservatism (rigid or literal adherence to the creed of a religious denomination), institutional conservatism (fundamentalism of a religious denomination), and participation in a religious community [28]. A study by Miller & Gur [27] on religiosity and sexual responsibility focused on the associations between the above mentioned four religious dimensions and sexual behavior. The results showed that religious dimensions were variously self-identified with sexual behavior. Three of the four dimensions (personal devotion, frequent attendance, and institutional conservatism) were linked to a lower number of sexual partners in the previous year; however, young women who associated with personal conservatism tended to have a higher number of partners. However, no association with any of the four religious dimensions was found regarding abstinence.
Religious affiliation in Uganda is a lifetime commitment whose practices and rituals becomes part of an individual's daily experience. If one is born Catholic, she or he will be baptized Catholic, will go to Catholic schools, is expected to marry someone from a Catholic family, and will vote for Catholic-leaning politicians. Since it is uncommon to change one's religious affiliation (especially before marriage), it is highly likely that a person's present religious practices are directly related to the religion with which one grew up. As a result, hence an association may be drawn between past and present religious affiliation and current sexual behavior.
Although the Protestant Church only represents the second largest religion in Uganda, the western region of the country in which Mbarara University is located is predominately Protestant. That denomination exerts a strong political and social influence on many aspects of public and private life in Uganda. Religion among conservative Protestants in Uganda has increasingly become an exclusive “club” in which membership is obtained through strict Christian indoctrination. For example, students at Makerere University in Kampala, the capital of Uganda, are invited to join both a Christian Union and a care group (a spiritual mentorship team within the same church) when they enter the university. These two organizations distribute cards for students to sign pledging themselves to “abstinence until marriage”. Students are also invited to attend “virginity rallies” [29].
According to informants in Mbarara, “subgroups” or networks of conservative Protestant students at MUST stage similar activities and recruit new members during the first few days of each semester. The groups have the financial resources to mount attractive networking activities. In order for students to join, they are obligated to follow certain rules of conduct (e.g., it is not acceptable to be involved in any sexual relationship). Whoever does not abide by the rules is reported to the group leaders.
In our judgment, the Protestant group at MUST seems most akin to Kindler's category “participation in a religious community” cited above. Institutional conservatism may also be implied because of the character of the Protestant Church in Uganda.
Our survey showed a similar pattern of behavior among Protestant female students regarding condom use as identified in Miller & Gur's study as their institutional conservative group, i.e., neither differed from other individuals. However, most sexual relationships involving a Protestant female student in Uganda take place in secrecy, according to informants, which differs from the findings reported by Miller & Gur. Moreover, the impact of religion may depend on the specific cultural context. A Ugandan Protestant young woman involved in a sexual relationship may be more likely to use condoms for fear of pregnancy, which would expose her clandestine behavior and subject her to condemnation by her family and coreligionists.
Our findings also showed a lower risk for having had sexual intercourse among Protestant female students. In Uganda, this might be because Protestant girls are brought up in a closed system of rigid institutionalized choices, less exposed to the “outside” world, and thus less likely to engage in early sexual activities. In previous research conservative Protestantism has been described as both a cultural phenomenon and a religious subculture that protects or insulates the individual from external secularizing trends [30], [31].
We found that importance of religion and religious affiliation was associated with abstinence. In a recent study Muslim men were less likely to practice abstinence than Protestants, Pentecostals, and Catholic male youth [32]. The default settings for acceptable relationships are very complex. Churches in Uganda demand that members seek partners with the same religious affiliation. Moreover, church leaders must give their sanction before a marital union is concluded. In the meanwhile, the message continues to be abstinence and all church members are expected to adhere to this creed. As a result, a young person who, for whatever reason, is tempted to have sex will most likely have difficulty obtaining a condom from friends or family members, who will associate premarital sex with immorality and religious backsliding. In addition, in Uganda condoms are mostly sold over-the-counter in shops or pharmacies where one needs to ask the shop attendant for them “publicly”, making condoms hard to purchase in a clandestine manner. In effect, a religious young man buying a condom in the marketplace stigmatizes himself. Consequently, young people, especially males, end up having unprotected sex within secret relationships.
Not only is, premarital sex is unacceptable to religious individuals in Uganda: it is believed that becoming pregnant stigmatizes not only the individual, but the church as well. Thus, the demand that members practice abstinence before marriage is not debatable, regardless of whether an individual is planning to marry in the near future. According to interviews with 15 to 24-year-old young people in the Mityana and Mubende districts of Uganda, their society expects that a person abstain from sex before marriage, i.e., remain a virgin. Moreover, the prevailing norms do not support the use of condoms or any other method of contraception [33]. In a study conducted among young people in Kampala and in a Wakiso district village 18 km outside the city, the most ideal relationship was described as one between a young man and woman of the same age and religious affiliation. In addition, it was agreed that sexual activities should be postponed until after one's education is concluded and both parties reach at least the age of 18 [34].
The increasing impact of religion and religious affiliation is very obvious in Ugandan society, and impacts most young people's daily lives in Uganda |
Mansour — “Long Live Palestine (Part II)”
This is the second outing for 2009’s “Long Live Palestine” by London-based British-Iraqi rapper Lowkey. Here, Lowkey enlists help from members of DAM, Iraqi-Canadian rapper The Narcicyst, Lebanese-Syrian Eslam Jawwad, Hasan Salaam from New York, Hich-Kas from Tehran and British-Iranian Reveal.
Invincible — “No Compromises”
Invincible (Ilana Weaver) is a Detroit-based MC. They spent their early childhood in present-day Israel and moved to Ann Arbor, Michigan in 1988.
At age seven, they taught themself English by listening to hip-hop records. Within two years, Invincible started writing their own lyrics. They were fluent in English by the time they were ten, having dropped their first language, Hebrew.
Here they rap about the need for resistance until “the day when you don’t even gotta fight no more.”
Mic Righteous — “Don’t it make you wonder?”
Mic Righteous (Rocky Takalbighashi) is from Margate in Britain. His family fled Iran during the 1979 revolution.
The BBC caused a censorship controversy in 2011 when it used sound effects to mask the lyric “Free Palestine” from Mic Righteous’ performance on the channel Radio 1Xtra.
Carrie Giunta is a philosophy lecturer in London. Follow her on Twitter: @CarrieGiunta.On mobile? Click here to watch the video.
Ottawa police have released surveillance video footage of a person of interest believed to be connected to last weekend's break-in at Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau's home.
The surveillance video shows a man with a beard who appears to be talking on a phone at night.
Police aren't publicly linking the individual in the video with whoever broke into the Trudeau home, but police sources told CBC News the person of interest is believed to be connected to the Trudeau case.
Ottawa police released a video Friday of a suspect believed to be connected to a recent nighttime prowling incident in Rockcliffe, a neighbourhood in Ottawa. (Ottawa police) Trudeau confirmed last Saturday that his home in Ottawa’s neighbourhood was broken into overnight while his wife, Sophie Grégoire-Trudeau, and their three young children — Xavier James, Ella-Grace and Hadrien — were asleep. RockcliffeGrégoire-TrudeauHadrien
Letter left at Trudeau home by vandals
Trudeau was in Winnipeg at the time. He told media his family was shaken by the break-in. No one was hurt and nothing was stolen from the home.
A police source told CBC News that when officers went to the back door of the home, they found a letter purportedly left by the vandals. It was set on five or six knives owned by the family that had been laid out on the floor, the source said.
The letter stated items could have been stolen but weren’t, so the family should lock their home's doors in the future.
Police are asking for the public's help to identify the person in the video.
Anyone with information about the identity of the person in the video is asked to call the Ottawa police central break and enter unit at 613-236-1222, ext. 4533, or phone Crime Stoppers at 613-233-8477(TIPS) or toll-free at 1-800-222-8477.LAHORE: Staying the execution of a Christian woman, Asia Bibi, the Supreme Court of Pakistan on Wednesday admitted for hearing a petition filed by the death-row prisoner who was convicted on blasphemy charges.
A three-member bench at the Supreme Court's Lahore registry admitted the petition for full hearing and also ordered for all records pertaining to the case to be presented before it.
Read: On death row for blasphemy, Asia Bibi makes final appeal to SC
In her petition, the 50-year-old woman has claimed that she had not made any blasphemous remarks, and rather residents of her neighbourhood had leveled the blasphemy allegations against her based on a personal feud.
She asked the court to strike down her death sentence.
Mother of five children, Asia Bibi has been on death row since November 2010 after being convicted of committing blasphemy during an argument with a Muslim woman over a bowl of water in 2009.
She had filed an appeal in the Supreme Court in November 2014 as her final legal recourse, one month after the Lahore High Court upheld the death sentence of Asia Bibi, dashing hopes the conviction might be overturned or commuted to a jail term.
Blasphemy is an extremely sensitive issue in Pakistan where 97 per cent of the population is Muslim and unproven claims regularly lead to mob violence.
Also read: Asia Bibi losing hope on death row: family
Two high-profile politicians – then Punjab governor Salmaan Taseer and minorities minister Shahbaz Bhatti – were murdered in 2011 after calling for reforms to the blasphemy law and describing Bibi's trial as flawed.
Pakistan's tough blasphemy laws have attracted criticism from rights groups, who say they are frequently misused to settle personal scores.
Lawyers who defend people accused of blasphemy — and judges seen as lenient — also risk being accused of the crime themselves and regularly face intimidation.Chancellor Merkel used her speech to the Bundestag on Thursday to tell lawmakers that her government supported plans to step up sanctions on Moscow as a result of the Kremlin’s continuing moves to absorb the Ukrainian autonomous territory of Crimea into the Russian Federation.
"At the European Council beginning today, the heads of state and government of the European Union will fix further phase-two sanctions that we agreed two weeks ago," Merkel said.
"These include an extension of the list of responsible people against whom travel restrictions and account freezes are in effect," she added.
The chancellor also warned that tighter sanctions could follow.
"The European Council will make it clear today and tomorrow that with a further deterioration of the situation we are always prepared to take phase-three measures, and those will without a doubt include economic sanctions," she said.
G8 effectively dead
Merkel also said that as a result of the Kremlin’s move to annex Crimea, Russia had effectively disqualified itself from the Group of Eight leading industrialized nations, the G8. The G8, she said, was effectively dead and would remain as such, as long as the diplomatic row over Crimea continued.
The chancellor also called into question the immediate future of the annual German-Russian consultations, just weeks ahead of this year’s scheduled talks.
"The federal government will have to decide how and if the German-Russian consultations will be held next month - or not," she said.
Later on Thursday, Chancellor Merkel was to travel to Brussels to join the EU’s other 27 heads of state and government to discuss the Crimea crisis.
The 28-member bloc has already imposed an asset freeze and travel ban on 21 individuals from both Russia and Ukraine seen as playing key roles in Russia’s takeover of Crimea. It has also suspended talks on easing visa regulations for Russian travelers to the EU.
pfd/kms (AFP, dpa)I’m sure even Jolla was not expecting such a success in their tablet business as their goal was set to only (Well, I say only now after reaching a whopping $1M) $380K.
But as the time goes by and the funds are still being raised, Jolla has a gift for all of you keen Sailfish OS privacy/open sourced minded people as a celebration.
Jolla phone can now be purchased at a fantastic €249 which is €100 under the actual price with no extra code or in fact anything else. Just go to shop.jolla.com, add a Jolla device to your cart and simply check out!
As simple as that, you’ve got your own Jolla phone at a fantastically low price in compare to the original 349 Euros!
SOURCENew Canadian Research Suggests Minimum Wage Increases Disproportionately Affect Immigrants
For our American readers, Ontario is kind of like California. The governing Liberal Party spends like Democrats, and also shares many of the same batty ideas regarding social policy.
Recently, just like in Seattle, Ontario passed an arbitrary $15 an hour minimum wage law.
But (as always) raising the minimum wage causes problems. We have already chronicled some of the research behind why raising the minimum wage doesn’t help the poor, and gathered some examples of what ends up happening in places with large minimum wage hikes (like Seattle losing millions of labor hours).
And just like last time, I’m going to post this video in the article again, because Ben Shapiro does a good job explaining exactly why minimum wage hikes don’t work. I recommend you watch the whole debate to really understand the other problems with minimum wage, but the biggest one in my eyes is growing governmental programs.
Now, back to Ontario.
Ontario has proposed a minimum wage hike to $14 in January 2018, which will ramp up to $15 in January 2019.
The idea is that the minimum wage hike will increase incomes for low-income workers and help the poor overall—contrary to all the evidence that shows the overall detrimental effects of higher minimum wages on small businesses and the poor.
But that’s not all. New research shows that minimum wage hikes hurt another group not often considered: immigrants.
This is a huge problem for the left. They will have to make a hard choice (not so hard) between “helping” the poor or hurting immigrants. According to the research:
Based on 185 minimum-wage hikes implemented by Canadian provinces from 1981–2011, we find that increasing minimum wages led to a reduction in employment rates of not just teenagers, but also immigrants. Specifically, a 10-per-cent increase in the minimum wage can be linked to an approximately two-per-cent decline in employment rates of immigrants aged 25 to 54 years old.
So, now we have even more “unforeseen” problems with raising the minimum wage—hurting immigrants. We knew that raising the minimum wage hurts teenagers and the poor, but now immigrants are suffering as well, especially since 19% of immigrants are minimum wage workers.
What the left fails to consider is that raising the minimum wage means people get laid off, hours get cut, and employers invest more in labor-saving technology.
Increasing the minimum wage does not help the poor. Period.
It actually exacerbates the problem of poverty and leaves many of our poor without the means to provide for themselves, thus requiring them to be propped up by government welfare. It’s a downward spiral that is fueled by increased immigration.
Many immigrants have a hard enough time finding a job. The Ontario Liberals (and leftists everywhere) should stop trying to ensure they don’t get one.Illustration by Abro
In his 2011 book Pakistan in Search of Identity, veteran historian Dr. Mubarak Ali wrote that the roots of Muslim religious radicalism in South Asia can be found in what came to be known as the Khilafat Movement (1919-1922).
Eminent scholar and professor of political science, late Khalid bin Sayeed had suggested the same in his 1968 book Pakistan: The Formative Years. The book was recently republished by Oxford University Press. But to Sayeed, the aforementioned movement not only stirred religious passions of the region’s Muslims, but also of the Hindus. Thus, in view of Sayeed’s assertions in this context, one can conclude that the roots of Muslim and Hindu militancy sprouted from the seeds first sown during the Khilafat Movement.
In 1919, when the already depleted Ottoman regime in Turkey was defeated by a British-led alliance during the First World War, the ulema of India who till then had largely remained stationed in their mosques and madressahs poured out to agitate against the possible dismantling of the Ottoman Empire.
Did the Khilafat movement sow the seeds of militancy in the subcontinent?
The resultant ‘Khilafat Movement’, which had begun to ferment during the last years of the First World War, managed to capture the attention and interest of a large number of Indian Muslims.
Pan-Islamists, many of whom were also operating from within the secular-nationalist Indian National Congress (INC), and ulema groups were at the forefront of the movement. The All India Muslim League (AIML), a moderate Muslim-centric party which had emerged in 1906 from progressive educationist and reformer Syed Ahmad Khan’s Muslim Educational Conference, was still struggling to find its feet.
One of its leading members, Mohammad Ali Jinnah, a dispassionate but astute lawyer, advised the League to stay out of the movement. In a letter to INC’s revered figurehead, Mahatma Gandhi, Jinnah wrote that the movement was bound to stir up untapped religious passions of the masses and would be a disaster to the fate of the Hindus and Muslims of India.
Gandhi disagreed. In November 1919, after being approached by some leading members of the Khilafat Committee, he decided to make the INC part of the movement. Both Mubarak Ali and Sayeed maintain that Gandhi did this to bolster the anti-British movement that he was already planning to launch.
On the other hand, a senior member of the Muslim League, Dr Ansari felt that the League was being sidelined and overwhelmed by the rising religious passions of the movement (which also became apparent within the party’s main Muslim urban middle-class constituency). He headed a special party convention in Delhi and invited a group of ulema to the session. This created a rift within the League. Jinnah’s group opposed the movement along with Gandhi’s ‘non-cooperation movement’. It was taking place in concert with the Khilafat Movement.
Jinnah insisted that the result of both the movements would be disastrous and chaotic. INC leader Jawaharlal Nehru later wrote that Jinnah saw the commotion (created by the Khilafat and non-cooperation movements) as ‘mob hysteria.’
The first major event which substantiated Jinnah’s concerns took place in Amritsar in April 1919. Mobs of Hindu, Muslim and Sikh protesters attacked a few banks and killed two British men. The colonial government responded by mercilessly massacring over 350 Indians gathered in a small garden (Jallianwalla Bagh).
The incident seemed to have consolidated Hindu-Muslim unity against the British but Jinnah continued to insist that the movement was bound to bring the two communities into serious conflict. He was ignored and, thus, his group in the League remained aloof throughout the movement.
To appreciate INC’s decision to participate in the movement, the conservative Islamic party the Jamiat Ulema-i-Hind issued a fatwa sanctioning Gandhi’s non-cooporation movement. Pan-Islamists such as Maulana Abul Kalam Azad and Muhammad Ali Jauhar were the most vocal proponents of the movement. Their fiery articles and speeches urged the Muslims to quit their schools, colleges and jobs ‘for the sake of Islam.’ Many did. The INC sectioned the move.
Jinnah was livid. He questioned the wisdom of such a move. ‘What are their replacements?’ He asked. ‘Where else would the students go, if not to schools and colleges?’
Then, Azad and another prominent member of the Khilafat Committee, Maulana Abdul Bari, declared India as darul harb (a house of war). They encouraged Muslims to migrate to Afghanistan which at the time was being ruled by a Muslim ameer. Hundreds of Muslims (mainly from Sindh and former NWFP) sold off their belongings and headed for Afghanistan. Most were robbed on the way, and the rest were turned back by the ameer. They found themselves homeless and jobless when they returned to India.
The anarchic route that the movement had taken and its violent currents further mutated it when, in the Malabar area, Muslim peasants began to attack Hindu landlords. The uprising was followed by bloody communal riots in Malabar and Multan. The riots were brutally crushed and Malabar’s Muslim peasant community never fully recovered from them.
Then, in 1922, a mob of Hindus and Muslims burned alive 21 policemen (all Indian). The incident took place in the Chauri-Chaura area. This is when Gandhi pulled the INC out of the movement.
Finally, the movement suddenly collapsed when Mustafa Kamal, a charismatic secular-nationalist general in Turkey, ousted European forces from much of Turkey and abolished the Ottoman caliphate.
By the end of it all, the INC was weakened; the League was severely fragmented; and thousands of Muslims were out of educational institutions and jobs. Large sections of the Hindu and Muslim communities had been radicalised. This eventually gave birth to militant outfits such as the Majlis-i-Ahrar-i-Islam and the Hindu Shuddhi movement, whose sole purpose was to convert Muslims and Christians to Hinduism. The influence of the Hindu nationalist outfit, the Hindu Mahasabha, also strengthened. The apolitical but deeply ritualistic and conservative Tableeghi Jamaat and, later, the quasi-fascist, Khaksar Movement, also emerged from the fragments of the fallen movement.
Jinnah’s caution and position were vindicated. But the tradition of politics done on the impulse and emotion of the mindless mob had been established in the region.
Published in Dawn, Sunday Magazine, August 28th, 2016Cristiano Ronaldo 'a big role model' for Spurs star Kane
The Tottenham striker grabbed a prized memento following a Champions League clash with Real Madrid, having traded jerseys with the Portuguese forward
Harry Kane is a superstar in his own right at, but he admits that talisman Cristiano Ronaldo is a “big role model”.
Kane 15/8 to be PL top scorer
The Spurs striker locked horns with the Portuguese icon in competition on Tuesday, with Mauricio Pochettino’s side leaving Santiago Bernabeu with a credible 1-1 draw.
Kane also departed the Spanish capital with a prized memento of the occasion, having traded shirts with Ronaldo at the full-time whistle.
The 24-year-old international intends to treasure that jersey, having grown up idolising the Portuguese forward, but admits that he is unsure what the former ace will do with his.
Kane told reporters on his meeting with Ronaldo: “I asked for his shirt.
“He's a big role model of mine, watching him when I was growing up.
“It's a nice shirt to get and frame. I gave him my shirt. I don't know what he'll do with it. We just said, ‘See you in a couple of weeks’.”
Spurs had an inspired showing from Hugo Lloris to thank for taking a point from Real, with the French goalkeeper keeping them in the game after a Ronaldo penalty had cancelled out an own goal from Raphael Varane.
Kane feels Tottenham can take plenty of positives from their performance, with the title hopefuls looking to make their mark at home and abroad in 2017-18.
He added: “It was a great night for us.
“We can be proud of it, the fans can be proud and the whole club can be proud.
“It was a big statement. A few years ago we were playing and to come here to the Bernabeu and put in a performance like that — we drew and maybe could have won — shows what kind of team we are.
“It will give us confidence for the Premier League. We've shown we can do it against the best team in the world. It's a good incentive for us.
“Everyone put in an amazing shift. For the majority of the game we matched them. We wanted to prove to everyone we are a very good team and we want to take that on for the rest of the season. We have to keep improving.”
Kane has also welcomed the praise which continues to be lavished on him, with Real coach Zinedine Zidane billing him as a “complete player” ahead of a continental clash.
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He said: “I try to use it as motivation. Positive comments help a striker.
“It's not just me, we've got a whole squad working very hard, but when you've got a striker scoring goals it's natural for people to talk about that.”
While he drew a blank in Madrid, Kane does have 11 goals in as many appearances across all competitions this season.On the monitor screen, Tom Hanks’s eyes, in extreme closeup, flickered through a complicated sequence of emotions: hatred, fear, anger, doubt. “Cut!” Lana Wachowski shouted. The crew on Stage 9 at Babelsberg Studio, near Berlin, erupted in a din of professional efficacy, preparing for the next shot, while Hanks returned to his chair to sip coffee from an NPR cup. Lana and her brother, Andy, who are best known for writing and directing the “Matrix” trilogy, were shooting “Cloud Atlas,” an adaptation of David Mitchell’s 2004 best-selling novel of the same name. The novel has six story lines, and the Wachowskis and their close friend the German director Tom Tykwer, with whom they’d written the script, had divided them up. They were shooting at Babelsberg, using the same actors, who shuttled between soundstages, but Tykwer had an unplanned day off. Halle Berry had broken her foot while on location in Mallorca and he needed to wait for her full recovery to shoot a chase scene. And now there was another problem: the actor Ralph Riach, who played a small but crucial role in one of the story lines that Tykwer was working on, had fallen ill and been hospitalized, and his state was progressively worsening. Tykwer had been on the phone with Riach, and the prognosis was, at best, unpredictable. Tykwer, with a bad cold and a large scarf around his neck which resembled a Renaissance millstone collar, had stopped by the Wachowskis’ set to discuss the situation. The filmmakers huddled near the monitor and in low, concerned voices debated whether to wait for Riach to recover or to hastily find a replacement and reshoot the scenes he’d already appeared in. The decision: they would wait, even if it meant prolonging the shooting schedule. “The rocket ship is falling apart,” Lana said afterward, shaking her head. “We’re sitting in this capsule, can’t get out, only one engine working—and we have to make it to the end.” In the Wachowskis’ work, the forces of evil are often overwhelmingly powerful, inflicting misery on humans, who maintain their faith until they’re saved by an unexpected miracle. The story of the making of “Cloud Atlas” fits this narrative trajectory pretty well.
In the spring of 2005, Lana and Andy Wachowski were at Babelsberg running the second unit for the director James McTeigue’s “V for Vendetta,” which they also wrote and co-produced. Between scenes, Lana (who is transgender and, until 2002, was called Larry) noticed that Natalie Portman, the star, was engrossed in a copy of “Cloud Atlas.” Portman raved about the book, so Lana began reading it, too. She and Andy, who is two and a half years younger, have retained a childhood habit of sharing books, and soon both of them were obsessively parsing the novel and calling friends to insist that they read it. Mitchell’s book is not a simple read, with its interlocking stories and a multitude of characters, distributed across centuries and continents. Each story line has a different central character: Adam Ewing, a young American who sails home after a visit to an island in the South Pacific, in the mid-nineteenth century; Robert Frobisher, a feckless but talented Englishman, who becomes the amanuensis to a genius composer in Flanders, in the nineteen-thirties; Luisa Rey, a gossip-rag journalist who rakes the muck of the energy industry in nineteen-seventies California; Timothy Cavendish, a vanity-press publisher who finds himself held captive in a nursing home in present-day England; Sonmi~451, a genetically modified clone who gains her humanity in a futuristic Korea, ravaged by consumerism; and Zachry, a Pacific Islander who struggles to survive in the even more distant future, after “the Fall,” which seems to have endangered the planet and eradicated much of humankind. These characters are connected by an intricate network of leitmotifs—a comet–shaped birthmark crops up frequently, for instance—and by their ability to somehow escape the fate that has been prepared for them. The book’s dizzying plot twists are infused with lush linguistic imagination. For the Zachry sections, Mitchell constructed post-apocalyptic mutations of the English language, which effectively force readers to translate as they go. “As I was writing ‘Cloud Atlas,’ I thought, It’s a shame this is unfilmable,” Mitchell told me. But the Wachowskis found themselves instantly, and profoundly, attracted to the idea of adapting the book for the screen. They were drawn to the scale of its ideas, to its lack of cynicism, and to the dramatic possibilities inherent in the book’s recurring moments of hope. They also wanted to work on something with Tykwer, whose 1998 movie, “Run Lola Run,” they’d loved (“our long-lost brother,” Lana called him), and “Cloud Atlas” seemed like the right project to unite their cinematic sensibilities. In 2006, at the Wachowskis’ prompting, Tykwer took the German translation of “Cloud Atlas” with him on a vacation to the South of France. “It was a mistake,” he told me, with a laugh. He sat on the beach reading for days, “stressed and inspired” by the book; when his wife finally persuaded him to go on a day trip, he made her pull the car over so that he could finish a chapter. The moment he was done with the novel, he called Lana in San Francisco, where it was the middle of the night, and breathlessly declared his commitment to the plan. He and the Wachowskis, who were in the middle of other projects, had to wait a couple of years before turning to “Cloud Atlas.” But finally, in February, 2009, they met in Costa Rica, where they had rented a secluded house near the ocean. Before they began to work on a script, they acknowledged that it might prove impossible to make “Cloud Atlas” into a movie, and that they might not be able to work together. “Writing is the most intimate process in the artistic development,” Tykwer said, and there was no way to anticipate how things would go. Then they got started: boogie-boarding in the morning, working the rest of the day, then preparing dinner together. Andy’s “world-famous” chicken roasted on a beer can was often the main dish on the menu. “It was like a childhood camp,” Lana said. The main challenge was the novel’s convoluted structure: the chapters are ordered chronologically until the middle of the book, at which point the sequence reverses; the book thus begins and ends in the nineteenth century. This couldn’t work in a film. “It would be impossible to introduce a new story ninety minutes in,” Lana said. The filmmakers’ initial idea was to establish a connective trajectory between Dr. Goose, a devious physician who may be poisoning Ewing, in the earliest story line, and Zachry, the tribesman on whose moral choices the future of civilization hinges, after the Fall. They had no idea what to do with all the other story lines and characters. They broke the book down into hundreds of scenes, copied them onto colored index cards, and spread the cards on the floor, with each color representing a different character or time period. The house looked like “a Zen garden of index cards,” Lana said. At the end of the day, they’d pick up the cards in an order that they hoped would work as the arc of the film. Reading from the cards, Lana would then narrate the rearranged story. The next day, they’d do it again. It was on the day before they left Costa Rica that they had a breakthrough: they could convey the idea of eternal recurrence, which was so central to the novel, by having the same actors appear in multiple story lines—“playing souls, not characters,” in Tykwer’s words. This would allow the narrative currents of the book to merge and to be separate at the same time. On the flight home, Lana and Andy carried the stack of rubber-banded cards they would soon convert into the first draft of the screenplay, which they then sent to Tykwer. The back-and-forth between the three filmmakers continued, the viability of their collaboration still not fully confirmed. By August, the trio had a completed draft to send to Mitchell. The Wachowskis had had a difficult experience adapting “V for Vendetta,” from a comic book whose author, Alan Moore, hated the very idea of Hollywood adaptation and berated the project publicly. “We decided in Costa Rica that—as hard and as long as it might take to write this script—if David didn’t like it, we were just going to kill the project,” Lana said. Mitchell, who lives in the southwest of Ireland, agreed to meet the filmmakers in Cork. In “a seaside hotel right out of ‘Fawlty Towers,’ ” as Lana described it, they recounted for the author the painstaking process of disassembling the novel and reassembling it into the script he’d read. “It’s become a bit of a joke that they know my book much more intimately than I do,” Mitchell wrote to me. They explained their plan to unify the narratives by having actors play transmigrating souls. “This could be one of those movies that are better than the book!” Mitchell exclaimed at the end of the pitch. The pact was sealed with pints of Murphy’s stout at a local pub.
In June, 2011, the Wachowskis and Tykwer were in Berlin, working on preproduction for “Cloud Atlas.” In the living room of Lana’s apartment on Unter den Linden, where a copy of the Marquis de Sade’s “120 Days of Sodom” was being used as a doorstop, the three directors talked about their passion for the movie. Andy, who was forty-three, was wearing a washed-out T-shirt and a pair of Crocs with a South Korean flag on them, which went nicely with the middle-aged grunginess of his shaved scalp. Lana, who was about to turn forty-six, had a full head of pink dreadlocks. Tykwer, at forty-six, was wiry and energetic, with striking green eyes. The three resembled a former alternative-rock band—the Cinemaniacs—overdue for a reunion tour. “ ‘Cloud Atlas’ is a twenty-first-century novel,” Lana said. “It represents a midpoint between the future idea that everything is fragmented and the past idea that there is a beginning, a middle, and an end.” As she spoke, she was screwing and unscrewing two halves of some imaginary thing—its future and its past—in her hands. If the movie worked, she continued, it would allow the filmmakers to “reconnect to that feeling we had when we were younger, when we saw films that were complex and mysterious and ambiguous. You didn’t know everything instantly.” Andy agreed. “ ‘Cloud Atlas’ is our getting back to the spectacle of the sixties and seventies, the touchstone movies,” he said, rubbing his bald dome like a magic lantern. The model for their vision, they explained, was Stanley Kubrick’s “2001: A Space Odyssey,” which the Wachowskis had first seen when Lana, then Larry, was ten and Andy seven. The siblings grew up in a close-knit family in Beverly, a middle-class neighborhood on Chicago’s South Side. Their parents—Ron, a businessman, and Lynne, a nurse—were film enthusiasts. They dragged Larry and Andy and their two sisters to any movie they found interesting, ignoring the parental-advisory labels. “We would have ‘movie orgies’—double features, triple features, drive-ins,” Andy recalled. “I was so young that I didn’t know what the word ‘orgy’ meant, but I knew that, whatever it was, I liked it.” Lana initially hated “2001,” and was perplexed by the mysterious presence of the black monolith. “That’s a symbol,” Ron explained. Lana told me, “That simple sentence went into my brain and rearranged things in such an unbelievable way that I don’t think I’ve been the same since. Something clicked inside. ‘2001’ is one of the reasons I’m a filmmaker.” Perhaps not coincidentally, Lana’s gender consciousness started to emerge at around the same time. In third grade, Larry transferred to a Catholic school, where boys and girls wore different uniforms and stood in separate lines before class. “I have a formative memory of walking through the girls’ line and hesitating, knowing that my clothes didn’t match,” Lana told me. “But as I continued on I felt I did not belong in the other line, so I just stopped in between them. I stood for a long moment with everyone staring at me, including the nun. She told me to get in line. I was stuck—I couldn’t move. I think some unconscious part of me figured I was exactly where I belonged: betwixt.” Larry was often bullied for his betwixtness. “As a result, I hid and found tremendous solace in books, vastly preferring imagined worlds to this world,” Lana said. It was around the time that Larry and Andy saw “2001” that they first directed together: on cassette tape, they read a play inspired by the “Shadow” comic books and radio programs. Soon, they were writing and drawing their own comics. Their creative process, Lana said, “hasn’t essentially changed since.” The brothers were inseparable. “Larry would come up with a crazy idea,” Ron Wachowski recalled, “to hang ropes from a tree and make a swing or trapeze, and Andy would be the person to grab hold of the rope, climb, and crash down.” The boys spent sleepless weekends playing Dungeons & Dragons in the attic, coming downstairs only to raid the fridge. “In D. & D., you have nothing but your imagination,” Lana said. “It asks all of the players to try to imagine the same space, the same image. This is very much the process of making a film.” The Wachowski brothers and some friends even wrote a three-hundred-page game of their own, called High Adventure. “We were often frustrated by genre differentiation, whether it was in games or in fiction,” Lana said. “In our naïve and foolish innocence, we dared to imagine a utopian world where all genres could intermix.” In high school, Larry and Andy started a house-painting business to earn money for college. (Their only previous experience was a pantheon of superheroes that they had painted on their aunt’s garage door.) Larry took out a loan and went to Bard, but dropped out after a couple of years. “I thought the teachers had to be way smarter than me to justify the loan,” Lana told me, “but some of them hadn’t read half the books I’d read.” He moved to Portland, Oregon, to write, working on, among other things, an adaptation of William Goldman’s “The Princess Bride.” (Having finished the script, he cold-called Goldman to ask for the rights; Goldman hung up on him.) After Andy dropped out of Emerson College in his sophomore year, the brothers reunited in Chicago, where they started a construction business, learning most of the skills on the job. They once built an elevator shaft without any plans or previous experience, having projected unquestionable confidence to the people who’d hired them—not an unuseful talent in the film business. All the while, the Wachowskis kept on writing: in the early nineties, Larry went to New York to knock on the doors of the comic-book publishers. He managed to get himself and Andy hired by Marvel Comics, to write for the series “Ectokid,” which was drawn by Steve Skroce. The brothers also worked on screenplays of their own. “Carnivore,” their first completed script—in which a soup kitchen feeds the poor by chopping up rich people and cooking them in an addictive stew—was sent out to ten addresses, selected from an agent handbook. Two agents offered to sign the brothers. In the end, they went with Lawrence Mattis, who is now their manager. These days, the mention of “Carnivore”—which never became a movie—makes the Wachowskis chuckle, but Mattis remembers “a surety to their writing that really popped.” The blockbuster-film producer Dino De Laurentiis optioned the Wachowskis’ next screenplay, “Assassins,” while they were renovating their parents’ house. De Laurentiis entertained them with champagne and lascivious stories about beautiful actresses, and then sold the script to Warner Bros. for five times what he’d paid. According to Lana, substantial revisions by a hired writer removed “all the subtext, the visual metaphors... the idea that within our world there are moral pocket universes that operate differently.” When the movie was made, in 1995 (directed by Richard Donner, of “Lethal Weapon” fame, and starring Sylvester Stallone, Antonio Banderas, and Julianne Moore), the Wachowskis tried to get their names taken off the credits but failed. Still, the script earned them a deal with Warner Bros. They finished the work on their parents’ house, quit construction, and became full-time filmmakers.
By 1994, the Wachowskis had completed the first script for the “Matrix” trilogy. They’d had the idea while working on a comic-book proposal. They were thinking, Lana recalled, “about ‘real worlds’ and ‘worlds within worlds’ and the problem of virtual reality in movies, and then it hit us: What if this world was the virtual world?” The trilogy is set in a dystopian future where machines exploit human energy by keeping people perpetually comatose in pods, while placating their minds with a continuous simulated reality called the Matrix. A small group of liberated humans—Neo, Morpheus, and Trinity—fight back, through confrontations with the virtual Agent Smith, and the stark darkness of the machine-controlled world is countered by the feeble light of human solidarity. “When I first read ‘The Matrix,’ ” Mattis told me, “I called them all excited because they’d written a script about Descartes.” According to Mattis, the Wachowskis were “the hot flavor of the month” when he sent the “Matrix” screenplay out, in 1994. “But then everyone read the script and passed. Nobody got it,” he said. “To this day, I think Warner Bros. bought it half out of the relationship with them and half because they thought something was there.” The brothers had spent two years writing the script, and they insisted on directing the movie. To prove themselves, they took on a |
wireless
Companies: at&t, t-mobileDuring sex, I heard a faint whisper of “no” from the woman below me. I stopped thrusting immediately.
“Do you want me to stop?” I asked.
“No,” she said. She looked confused. “Don’t stop.”
I resumed cautiously. When she moaned, I felt her pussy convulse and picked back up full speed, reaching down to run my hands over her thin body and perky breasts. Suddenly, her wrists flew up in front of her. She meekly pushed against me, whimpering, “no, no, no!”
I stopped again, and jumping back. “What? What’s wrong?”
“Nothing. Why are you stopping?”
“You said no. When you say no, I stop.”
“Well… I was kind of hoping you’d keep going and just take me. I thought you were dominant?”
How Women Encourage Rape
As someone who’d always been taught “no means no,” to have a woman directly tell me she ways saying “no” when she meant “yes” was shocking. From talking with other men, I’ve learned this is a fairly common experience.
It’s so common, Louis CK has a standup routine about it:
There’s a word for this. Rape training.
Women who say ‘no’ when they mean ‘yes’ encourage men to rape. They teach men that no doesn’t mean no, that women’s desires should be ignored, and that if men can get laid if they push through women’s boundaries.
The woman in my opening story was being extremely selfish. She expected me to know what she wanted while directly telling me the exact opposite. If I misread her desires, or she changed her mind about the experience later, I risk decades in jail and living the rest of my life as a sex offender. By saying ‘no’ when she didn’t mean it, she put my safety at risk.
Furthermore, this woman enacted a rape fantasy on me without my consent. I never directly agreed to the intense BDSM play she started. She never told me she what she was doing or gave me a safeword. I might have had triggers around fear of hurting women, or saw a close family member raped. This was the second time we’d had sex. Assuming I’d want to participate in a rape fantasy with her was itself an act of rape and a violation of my boundaries.
Women’s False No’s Harm Everyone
I know some of you will say I shouldn’t complain. After all, I had an attractive woman in bed, who wanted me to take her. If I only saw women as sex objects I wouldn’t care, but the idea of another person being harmed because of her actions makes me physically sick.
By giving a false ‘no,’ this woman diminished the power of other women’s real ‘no.’ I’m probably not the first man she’s given a false ‘no’ to. Another man might learn from her that ‘no’ actually means ‘take me hard’ and force himself on his next date when she gives a genuine ‘no.’ He would go to jail and she would be traumatized and raped.
My date’s behavior puts other women at risk, and shows she considers her sexual pleasure more important than others consent or safety.
Why Women Lie About Their Desires
Why would a woman behave this way? My date considered herself a feminist. Before she left, she told me she’d attended rallies and protests. Wouldn’t she of all people understand that “no means no?”
Saying “no” when she means yes absolves the woman of responsibility for her actions. She can decide later whether or not she meant her no, and have the man arrested for rape if he won’t have sex with her again, if her friends and family judge her, or if her boyfriend discovers she was cheating on him. She doesn’t feel like a slut, because isn’t consciously choosing sex. “It just happened.”
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If her goal as a feminist was to help other women, she’d own her sexual desires, and ask directly for what she wanted. Doing so would teach men that when they listen to women, they are rewarded with mind-blowing sex. If her goal as a feminist was to avoid ever having to take responsibility for her actions, she’d do exactly what she did. Saying ‘no’ when she means ‘yes’ teaches men to ignore what women say and look for advice from “creepy” internet sites that write about game.
Pick-up artists have known for a long time women will protest before sex, even when they want it, to avoid appearing like a slut. There is a whole subset of game dealing with “last-minute-resistance” and “anti-slut defenses.” Feminists criticize these tactics as being akin to rape, but they wouldn’t exist if women’s words matched their actions.
BDSM Requires Consent
I understand the desire to be taken, or make a rape fantasy “feel real,” but BDSM is actually hyper-consensual. Before a scene, partners will spell out exactly what they are okay with, what they aren’t, and pick a “safe-word” to say in place of “no” if they want their partner to stop.
An example of BDSM done right would be a female friend of mine who asked her boyfriend to enter her window and take her in the middle of the night. She told him she’d leave her window unlocked, say “red” if she wanted him to stop, and to surprise her by not telling what night of the week it would be.
After four nights of sleepless anticipation, her boyfriend entered at three in the morning, wearing only a ski mask and forced her to the ground as tears streamed down her face. She said it was the best sexual experiences of her life.
How Should You Respond
When a woman says no, you should always stop even if you think she doesn’t mean it.
No one is a mind reader. We won’t always be able to correctly read a woman’s unspoken desires. The risk of actually harming a woman or being arrested for rape outweighs the pleasure of a night of sex with a selfish human being.
After my date told she hoped I’d push through her ‘no,’ I told her that even if she doesn’t care about consent, I do. I explained safe words to her, and told her if she wanted to do a rape fantasy, she needed to pick a word other than ‘no’ to say in it’s place, so that if I accidentally hurt her, or she genuinely wanted me to stop, she’d have a way of communicating that to me.
Yes, I – a writer for Return of Kings – had to educate a feminist about consent, because she wanted me to rape her so bad. I struggle to find a joke that could possibly express the absurdity of the truth. If there is a God, he trolls us all.
I asked her a specific questions about her boundaries. Is she okay with anal? Getting slapped in the face? Choking? Being verbally degraded? I wanted to be very clear about what she was asking for. I’m a six foot tall man with background in the BDSM community. I could go to extremes she isn’t even aware of. I’ve seen people play with fire sexually. (Not metaphorical. I’ve seen a leather-clad woman singe the hair off a man’s chest with spinning orbs of flame as he screamed in terror from behind a gimp mask. It was awesome.)
Once we were clear on boundaries and safewords, I grabbed her wrists, pinned them to the bed, and forced my cock inside her. She shouted no and smiled at me as her attempts to push me away ground her pussy against me. I slapped her hard across the face, and pulled her nipples into the air. She shrieked as I flipped her over and called her a worthless slut, while fingering her ass and fucking her pussy simultaneously. We both orgasmed multiple times.
When she got home, she texted me “thanks for letting me be your slave :).” I never called her back.
Read More: 6 Reasons Why You Should Not Rape A GirlTrain cars loaded with highly flammable oil roll through Minnesota cities every day, but residents aren’t allowed to see complete disaster #fn:1
The state has doled out $72 million in tax cuts to hundreds of Minnesota businesses but keeps secret which companies have received the subsidies.
When a contagious bird flu swept across Minnesota in 2015, state officials said they were barred from sharing the locations of the afflicted farms.
Even inspection reports about commercial dog and cat breeders cannot be publicly divulged.
Secrecy is emerging as a reflex at all levels of government in Minnesota and across the nation. Mounting demands for corporate confidentiality, individual privacy and security have dramatically restricted the public’s right to know.
Lobbyists representing local governments, law enforcement and businesses are chipping away at Minnesota’s public records law. State legislators have added hundreds of exceptions to the public disclosure law, raising the number of secrecy provisions to at least 660. #fn:2
More recently, legislators blocked the public from seeing virtually all video from police body cameras, a new technology pitched as a way to help hold police accountable for their conduct.
Legislators also are considering an array of new proposals this year, including measures that could restrict access to financial records of government contractors and prevent the public from reviewing tax court proceedings.
Even major recipients of public money now can operate largely free from public scrutiny. For a decade, Minnesota health care advocates have failed to force the state to detail how much insurers profit from the $5 billion a year in taxpayer money that they get to administer Medicaid and other public programs.
“What’s missing is accountability,” said Buddy Robinson of the Minnesota Citizens Federation-Northeast, a Duluth advocacy group for seniors and health care access. “Secrecy still seems to reign supreme.”
In an interview with the Star Tribune, Gov. Mark Dayton said he is frustrated that state laws prevent him from better informing the public, particularly when public employees are terminated or face public criticism. And he’s concerned that the state’s four-employee open records watchdog agency isn’t doing what it can to ensure people get the information that they’re entitled to.
“There’s got to be a recourse for people,” said Dayton, a DFLer. “There’s got to be somebody who’s going to be taking this seriously.”
The internet age has created a deluge of new data that government agencies must collect, sort and store. The cost of managing the surge of new information is increasingly cited as a reason for withholding and even destroying public records. Elected officials and agency leaders say it is too expensive and time-consuming to weed out e-mails, text messages and other records deemed confidential.
The widening gulf between decades-old laws and sweeping technological advances has increased tension between government leaders who collect information and the public’s demand to know what they’re doing.
“The government Data Practices Act was passed long before we had e-mail and websites and all this other electronic information,” said Jamie Verbrugge, Bloomington’s city manager.
Bloomington paid $45,000 last year to settle a lawsuit #fn:3 #fn:4
Filing data requests are “a way that people who are against things can cause you issues and trouble,” said Bloomington Mayor Gene Winstead.
Local governments are waging an aggressive new campaign to purge records, saying the cost of storage is too high. The city of St. Paul deletes all e-mails after six months. Hennepin County started doing the same this year.
John Mannillo, with the government watchdog group St. Paul STRONG, said he thinks the drive to delete records is more about limiting scrutiny.
Mannillo said internal e-mails led to embarrassing revelations about the city’s actions before a landslide that killed two children at Lilydale Regional Park in 2013 and its mishandling of a park restaurant concession that ended up costing the city $800,000.
“They don’t want to tell people anything because they’re afraid of looking bad,” Mannillo said.
Determination, discouragement
Government officials’ effort to withhold seemingly basic information is discouraging for many citizens, particularly those without the time or money to wage a protracted legal fight.
Last year, Tom Casperson wanted to know more about the hiring of his school district’s new superintendent, who had left a previous job under contentious circumstances. But the Warroad district wouldn’t give Casperson the evaluation records he asked for.
A state government watchdog agency declined to intervene.
“I threw my hands up and I gave up,” Casperson said.
Gayle Bonneville is more determined. She lives in northeast Minneapolis, a neighborhood cross-hatched by railroad tracks and filled with the constant rumble and screech of freight trains.
Alarmed by fatal train derailments elsewhere, Bonneville asked the railroad companies to outline the hazards she faces. But federal and state laws allow them to withhold many details of the shipments, a level of secrecy railroads pushed for to deter business rivals and terrorists.
Even some first responders have complained that they cannot get access to a railroad’s disaster plans.
“It’s silly,” Bonneville said. “They can’t tell the general public what’s going by your house.”
Rep. Steve Drazkowski was upset when state officials took an expansive interpretation of privacy laws to protect the names of public employees who were snooping into driver’s license data on himself and a Wabasha County commissioner.
“We grant [government] a lot of power to go in and dig in your stuff,” said Drazkowski, R-Mazeppa. “When we try to find out what they’re doing, it seems like the laws are there to protect them.”
The tendency toward secrecy is a national phenomenon. In February, the U.S. Department of Agriculture removed thousands of enforcement records of animal and horse facilities, saying it wants to protect their operators’ privacy.
“People expect it’s going to get much worse,” said David Cuillier, a University of Arizona professor who studies access to information.
It took two years of litigation to force the release of thousands of e-mails between former Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt and oil industry officials, and they became public Feb. 22, five days after the Senate approved Pruitt as the head of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
After a Texas Supreme Court ruling last year, government contractors can now withhold just about anything from public view that they decide could hurt their ability to compete. Florida’s once-vaunted “sunshine laws” now have 1,119 exemptions.
“It’s sort of like crab grass,” said Randy Evans, executive director of the Iowa Freedom of Information Council. “Secrecy is inching its way ever farther out into areas in the past we would not have thought would be an issue.”
‘Exceptions that swallow the rule’
Minnesota law starts with the assumption that the records produced by its governments are public. Lawmakers have made some changes that benefit transparency. In recent years, they have made it harder for public officials to hide their alleged misconduct when they resign after an investigation.
But individuals and organizations who want to know what their leaders and civil servants are doing often run into restrictions and loopholes.
Need to check whether a licensed dog breeder is reputable? State inspections and enforcement actions are private.
Curious about how your HMO deals with complaints about quality of care? Those investigations are not public.
Last year alone, Attorney General Lori Swanson declined to disclose consumer complaints filed against retailers, wireless providers, debt collectors, and several coin dealers — even though a U.S. attorney has called the state a “haven for coin fraud.”
Benjamin Wogsland, a spokesman for Swanson, said she supports the restriction on releasing the information because it protects the privacy of consumers and prevents any misinterpretation of the complaints.
In 2016, the Meeker County sheriff refused a newspaper editor’s request to identify the person who shot a county commissioner in a hunting accident. He cited a law that protects the identities of certain individuals, including undercover officers.
Originally passed in 1974, the Minnesota Government Data Practices Act has ballooned from 29 pages in 1982 to 176 pages today.
Every year, the Legislature tinkers with the law, so much that it “begins to have all these exceptions that swallow the rule,” said state Rep. John Lesch of St. Paul, the ranking DFLer on the House Committee on Civil Law and Data Practices Policy.
When people think that a state or local agency is hiding something, their main route of appeal is a tiny state agency, the Information Policy Analysis Division (IPAD). The division issues legal opinions about whether a government body has violated the public records or open meetings law.
But IPAD issued only six opinions last year, rejecting more than 80 percent of the opinion requests. That’s down from 20 opinions in 2014 and a high of 96 in 2001.
Administration Commissioner Matt Massman, who oversees IPAD, said the agency helps citizens in other ways short of rendering opinions, and noted that the agency’s opinions are nonbinding and can be ignored.
Dayton, Massman’s boss, said the decline in the agency’s legal opinions was “very much concerning” and vowed to get an explanation.
The lack of recourse for citizens denied information was one reason that the Center for Public Integrity gave Minnesota a failing grade for public access to information. In a 2015 survey, the center, a Washington-based nonprofit investigative news organization, ranked Minnesota 28th among states for the accountability of its government. The center pointed out shortcomings in its public disclosure laws, including the lack of public access to the schedules of the governor and lawmakers, and the absence of any independent watchdog to ensure compliance with transparency laws.
“Minnesota believes it’s open, the culture thinks it’s open,” said Steven Clift, a global consultant on citizen engagement who helped set up the state government’s first website in the 1990s. “The reality is, it’s not.”
Companies want secrecy
Corporations that seek public contracts, tax cuts and subsidies increasingly demand greater levels of secrecy.
In 2013, Minnesota lawmakers signed a letter pledging subsidies to a company described only as “Project Fern.” The public found out it was Baxter International after lawmakers took initial votes to approve more than $15 million in potential subsidies in exchange for bringing 200 jobs to the northern Twin Cities suburbs.
Last spring, lawmakers voted to pay a wood siding company as much as $3 million a year to build a factory in northern Minnesota. The name remained a closely held secret. Everyone involved signed nondisclosure agreements. By the time the public learned that it was Louisiana-Pacific, Dayton had signed the subsidy into law.
“If that became commonplace, I would be more concerned,” Dayton said. “If there’s public money involved, there should be public disclosure.”
In February, the legislative auditor raised serious doubts about a 36-year-old tax break that subsidizes companies doing research and development. The auditor said there’s no proof that it accomplishes its goals, and it certainly doesn’t pay for itself.
This might have proved embarrassing for the companies that get the tax break, estimated to cost $72 million by next year. But their names are not public.
Then there is perhaps the biggest loophole of all. The Legislature exempted itself from Data Practices Act, following the lead of Congress, which isn’t subject to the Freedom of Information Act.
This means that legislators are shielded from scrutiny in a way that the governor, his agency heads and all state employees are not.
Dayton calls it “hypocrisy” and “indefensible” for the Legislature to avoid the same transparency that it demands of him.
This year, Rep. Paul Thissen, DFL-Minneapolis, introduced a measure this session requiring legislators to live by the same level of openness as the governor, county commissioners or even the local mayor.
When Thissen was House speaker, he said, he focused on changing House floor rules, but never got around to bringing the Legislature under open meetings and public records mandates. Now he’s convinced it’s urgent. “We come up with much worse policies when these behind-closed-doors power plays are made,” he said.
Sen. John Marty, DFL-Roseville, tried to bring about greater legislative transparency in 2015. The proposal never got a hearing.
“I’ve heard so many times, ‘We can’t be frank if this happens in public,’ ” Marty said. “Then why do anything in public?”
Requests trigger backlash
No Minnesotan in recent years has pushed harder for government records than Tony Webster. And no one has triggered such a powerful backlash from some local government officials, who say Webster’s wide-ranging demands for information about law enforcement are a nuisance.
In January, Webster sat in the gallery of the Minnesota Court of Appeals, listening to an assistant Hennepin County attorney accuse him of forcing county officials to comb through millions of e-mails for no reason. The county wants to use Webster’s information request to restrict any future data demands of its kind, from anyone.
“They act as if I’m some huge burden. I get sighs and eye-rolls from them, like I’m the evil person requiring them to comply with the law,” said Webster, a 30-year-old self-employed computer programmer from north Minneapolis. “This has taken a toll on me, too. I didn’t know it was going to turn into this.”
Webster’s dogged pursuit of records revealed that Hennepin County Sheriff Rich Stanek’s investigators are now using facial recognition software to catch criminals, and that security at the Mall of America created a fake Facebook account to gather intelligence about a Black Lives Matter protest.
After a Black Lives Matter protest at the mall in December 2014, Webster asked the city of Bloomington to hand over the contents of e-mails and the details about who sent them, when they were sent and whether they were revised or altered.
Webster filed a lawsuit after Bloomington refused to hand over all the data. Last April, Bloomington agreed to pay him $45,000 for a “nonprofit organization to be established by Webster whose mission is furthering government data-practices, awareness, transparency, and accountability.”
Meanwhile, Webster has returned his attention to an effort he began in 2015 to finding out what kind of facial recognition and other biometric technology had been deployed by the Hennepin County sheriff.
Once again, his request has landed in court. He’s waited 17 months for the records. Even if he wins, there’s a new twist.
In September, the sheriff’s office started deleting any e-mails older than 30 days.Time for part 2 of my Halloween decant order from the awesome (as always) Ajevie! This time we’ll be looking at Blooddrop, whose online storefront can be found right here. This company is run by a lady named Astrid, who creates perfume, as well as corsets, jewelry, and a few other assorted items.
First up, we have A Grave in the Pasture. The first thing I ever knew about Blooddrop is that it’s owner loves horses. Before having ever looked at her website, I kept hearing about her wildly popular horse-themed perfumes. Astrid created this one for a very specific horse, Rowan, who very recently passed away. My heart broke for her when I read the description and the scent sounded altogether beautiful – I knew I would be getting this, both for the scent and because I wanted to show support in even the smallest of ways.
From Blooddrop’s website:
“Now there is a grave in the back pasture, out by the barn. I know exactly where he is. And though he is no longer here, he forever remains near by. Tears accord, white peach, lilac, Egyptian rose, carnation, violet leaf, and up-turned earth.
For Rowan.”
My thoughts: On first application, I smell a mix of florals, fresh earth, and the ocean. Pretty soon, the oceanic smell dies down a bit and the floral/fresh earth smells blend together a bit more. This scent is femininie, but not overly so – the earthy note tempers it just enough to make something wonderful! It’s like being in a blooming garden! The only down side to this perfume is that it doesn’t have a huge amount of longevity for me. At about an hour and a half, the scent has faded significantly. I don’t really get the peach note either, until a teensy bit at the very end. Overall, this is beautiful scent in memory of a beautiful friend. I imagine I will really, really enjoy wearing this at the end of winter/beginning of spring, when the world is starting to thaw and bloom again!
Next up is By the Light of the Moon. Seeing a “night” scent in Autumn that don’t list licorice or incense or something of that variety is nice. I’m also attracted to herbal and apple scents, so this was a must!
From Blooddrop’s website:
“Pastures edged with forests, shadows of mice, deer, and owls dancing their nighttime waltzes, cool air stirring up the fragrances of fallen apples, boysenberries, moist tree bark, moss, silver fir, and herbs all by the light of the moon.”
My thoughts:. Hmmm…. Do boysenberries smell like pears? At first application, I smell wet earth, apples, pears, herbs, and … hay? Something dry and grassy. After reading the notes, I have no idea where pears come into this. After a bit, everything stays roughly the same but melds together to make a more cohesive scent. This is such a nice, subtle grassy fruit scent! Fields and fruit, if you will, in the very best of ways!
Next is Frost on Flowers.
From Blooddrop’s website:
“Late summer blooms surprised with Autumn’s first frost. Moroccan rose, chrysanthemums, carnations, myrrh CO2, and frost accord.”
My thoughts: My skin… it’s not playing very nicely here. I smell a light, powdery bubblegum with a bit of spice underneath and something incredibly clean enveloping everything. And I do mean pine sol clean. It gets a bit spicier over time, but stays way too clean and bubblegummy for my taste.
Sweets for Rowan is another perfume dedicated to Rowan, as denoted by its name. And since I’ve been on a bit of a gourmand binge lately, I figured there was no reason why I shouldn’t pick this one up.
From Blooddrop’s Website:
“Dried apples, vanilla sugar cookies, gingerbread, and cinnamon oats.
Miss you so much, Rowy.”
My thoughts: In the vial, there is something way too sweet and tart about this, to the point I immediately closed the vial after getting my first whiff. However, I’m a trooper, and I know that indie perfumes can often morph on skin. So I tried it and it… wasn’t horrible, but it wasn’t my favorite. On my wrist, it settled down to smell like very spicy, heavy, almost-over-ripe apples and something sticky sweet like molasses. In the crook of my elbow, that sickly sweet, tart scent hung around, though not nearly to the degree that it is in the vial. This one did smell better the longer I wore it, but it definitely isn’t for me.
My fifth purchase (and final one of the Autumn/Halloween collection) was Will o’the Wisp. I love me some Irish folklore, and this has a bonus of reminding me of an episode of So Weird. If you happened to watch that show as a kid, we can be best friends! Also, as a gourmand scent… duh.
From Blooddrop’s Website:
“Fairy lights, bog lights, spirit guides, jack o’lantern, will o’the wisp….. misguiding lights drawing someone away from safety. Alluring coconut, pumpkin, ginger, and cheesecake.”
My thoughts: Pumpkin cheesecake. Pumpkin cheesecake everywhere. I find that there’s just enough coconut and ginger to warm things up a bit, but not enough to really pick the individual notes out. I’ve worn this one for an entire day now and am enjoying it! It’s not overpoweringly sweet has a very low sillage, but it lasted most of the day on my skin.
I also purchased a decant of Exquisite Corpse #3. This is an idea I absolutely love, having participated in a couple rounds of these in school. The premise is this: a piece of art is started by an individual, and then passed to another, who must add to it a) following a certain rule, or b) only being able to see the very edge of the previous person’s addition. This continues for X amount of participants. Once the last participant has finished their addition, the work is unveiled and presented as a whole. I’ve linked a general Google search of exquisite corpse projects here, so you can see for yourself what is going on! Astrid took this idea and turned it onto perfumes in such a fun way! Her customers were able to suggest notes and she set about making something beautiful from what she was given!
Notes, as listed on Blooddrop’s website: “Anjou pears, hazelnut, smoke, grey musk, and carnation.”
My thoughts: Hazlenut definitely takes front and center on this scent! The smoke and musk hover underneath, lending a bit of dimension to the scent and making it just the tiniest bit mysterious. I can also smell a kick of something else – I can’t really tell whether it’s floral or fruit, or maybe the carnation and pear notes mix together into this undefinable thing. After a bit, the hazlenut/musk/smoke fade a bid and [what I’m assuming is] the pear and carnation turn into this odd spicy dried floral smell. This is a really, really fun scent, and I can definitely see myself buying a full size of this if it’s available for a bit!
Overall, I quite enjoyed this adventure! Ordering from Ajevie was a great experience and I got to try some brands and scents I probably wouldn’t have stepped out and tried for a long while otherwise! Should you choose that this is something you might like to participate in, you can find Ajevie’s Circles right here. This link will take you right to the FAQs, and you can find current and past circles, as well as links to her Facebook group and some other things on the left side of the page!
Bonus time!!!!!! Look at my puppy off in dreamland! Isn’t he adorable?!
AdvertisementsRepublican presidential candidate Donald Trump speaks at a rally at the Milwaukee Theatre Monday, April 4. | AP Photo Polls: Trump, Clinton up big in New York and Pennsylvania
Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton lead their opponents by double digits among likely primary voters in New York and Pennsylvania, according to the results of the latest Fox News polls, which also found the former secretary of state leading the Republican front-runner in hypothetical matchups in both states.
In his native New York, Trump grabbed 54 percent support among those likely to vote in the April 19 primary, while Ohio Gov. John Kasich finished a distant second with 22 percent. Texas Sen. Ted Cruz earned 15 percent, with 6 percent saying they did not know whom they would back.
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On the Democratic side, Clinton, who represented the state in the U.S. Senate from 2001 to 2009, holds a 16-point lead over Brooklyn-born Bernie Sanders, 53 percent to 37 percent. Another 6 percent said they did not know whom they would support.
In a general election-matchup between Clinton and Trump, registered New York voters supported the former secretary of state to the tune of 53 percent to 37 percent, while Sanders leads Trump by a similar margin, with 54 percent to 35 percent.
Among likely Republican primary voters in Pennsylvania, who will head to the polls on April 26, Trump leads Kasich 48 percent to 22 percent, while Cruz finished close behind with 20 percent and 8 percent said they did not know.
For likely Democratic voters in Pennsylvania, Clinton leads Sanders 49 percent to 38 percent, with 7 percent undecided.
Matched up against Trump, Clinton ties the real estate mogul with 44 percent each in Pennsylvania. The Pennsylvania poll did not test Sanders against Trump in a hypothetical November election.
The polls were conducted April 4-7, surveying 1,403 registered voters in New York with an overall margin of error of plus or minus 2.5 percentage points, including 602 likely Republican primary voters with a margin of error of plus or minus 4 percentage points and 801 likely Democratic primary voters with a margin of error of plus or minus 3.5 percentage points. In Pennsylvania, 1,607 voters were surveyed, with an overall margin of error of plus or minus 2.5 percentage points. The subsamples of 802 likely Republican primary voters and 805 likely Democratic primary voters, both carry margins of error of plus or minus 3.5 percentage points.When author Michael Shuman first started talking about growing local economies back in 1998, not many people were prepared to listen. "I gave an invited talk at the University of Kentucky," he remembers. "Two people showed up and one left early."
Today things are a little bit different. Last year Shuman published his eighth book, "Local Dollars, Local Sense: How to Shift Your Money from Wall Street to Main Street and Achieve Real Prosperity." He is the director of research and economic development for the Business Alliance for Local Living Economies (BALLE), the director of research for Cutting Edge Capital, both of which deal with community-based economics, and a fellow at the Post Carbon Institute. On top of that he travels around the country, giving at least 50 invited talks and presentations about strengthening local economies every year.
Shuman's messages resonate in the world where wealth has consolidated into a few "too big to fail" banks, Wall Street firms, and the top 1 percent of the population. "Local business is critical to generating wealth," he says. More than just the "buy local" movement, Shuman also advocates local investment, local self-reliance, local ownership and local control — all matched with cutting-edge practices that support both labor and the environment.
"My professional work has all been trying to figure out how ordinary people can involve themselves," Shuman says. The first 15 years of his professional life were devoted to getting people involved in municipal policy and citizen diplomacy. "We built a network of several thousand mayors and city council members to get them involved in international affairs."
In the process of this work he became acquainted with several cities that were attempting to create sustainable communities. "They had great criteria and great principles," Shuman says, but he found that they were having trouble putting those ideals into practice. "I realized that what I needed to figure out was a better form of economic development."
That led to his first of three books about local economies, 1998's "Going Local: Creating Self-Reliant Communities in the Global Age." It was followed in 2006 by "The Small Mart Revolution: How Local Businesses Are Beating the Global Competition."
His work over the past 15 years has led him to understand that "buying local" is not just the right thing to do; it is also good business. "I part company with a lot of people who say that local businesses are less efficient or that their goods cost more," Shuman says. "In fact I think that local goods and services are extremely competitive and becoming more so."
In addition to economics, Shuman believes that strong local communities are also greener. "I would argue that you cannot achieve sustainability without stronger local economies, and you cannot achieve strong local economies without sustainability." Here he shares the message with the buy local movement. "Local businesses produce goods locally, but they also tend to sell their goods locally." This not only requires less transportation and less energy; it also helps communities become self-reliant so they do not depend on far-away businesses for all of their goods and services.
Another factor, Shuman says, is that local control creates an incentive to keep things operating in an environmentally safe manner. "I think one of the great drivers of environmental failure is the ability of global companies to move around from jurisdiction to jurisdiction looking for the weakest labor and the lowest environmental standards." He says strong local communities don't need to rely on outside businesses, so they can keep their local labor and environmental standards high. "That is the critical difference between a local economy and a globally dependent economy," he says.
Strong local communities also have a great deal of similarity to the natural world — an economic biodiversity if you will. "Thinking about what makes for successful, prosperous ecosystems leads to insights onto what leads to successful, prosperous economies," he says. "You have the local business level but you also have redundancies and lots of connections and attentiveness between different places and parts of the system." That way a community can survive if a company fails or pulls up its roots, as has happened to so many American factory towns.
Shuman says he is currently focused on spreading the ideas from "Local Dollars, Local Sense" and looking at what he calls the "nitty-gritty of localizing our investments." One of the big points of his book is that the U.S. currently has about $30 trillion in long-term investments such as stocks, mutual funds and insurance funds, but virtually all of it is with Wall Street companies. "Almost none of that goes to local business, even though local business constitute about half of our economy. So if we were to get our capital markets working efficiently, roughly speaking half of that money, $15 trillion, should be moving from Wall Street to Main Street."
He says that transition is much easier following last year's Jumpstart Our Business Startups (JOBS) Act. "It's not going to happen instantly, but the JOBS Act means that one more pathway for local investment is now open and legal. The whole universe is fundamentally changing right now."
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'Local Dollars, Local Sense' author preached sustainability before it was cool
Michael Shuman advocates generating wealth through local investment, self-reliance, ownership and control.Cubing Terminology
Abbreviations and Commonly Used Expressions
With any hobby, there are a lot of phrases and terms used and known only by the hobbyists themselves. Cubing is no exception to this, as there are several phrases, abbreviations or inside-jokes used commonly in the cubing world that most people might not understand. Some are fairly obvious and/or used in other hobbies, however most are unique to speedcubing.
U - clockwise rotation of the upper layer - clockwise rotation of the upper layer
PB (Personal Best)
If a speedcuber solves a puzzle faster than they have ever done before, it is known as a PB or personal best. Most speedcubers have a text document or Excel spreadsheet somewhere with their PB’s for every event. These can be PB Single (best individual solve ever) or for one of the averages listed below.
DNF (Did Not Finish)
You get this penalty when you don't finish the cube inspection in 15 seconds or the cube is not in solved position when you stop the timer.
Ao5, Ao12 etc. (Average of …) and Mo |
lot better over the years about masking my hack jobs. Re-frosting and patching up a cake is tons of fun (sarcasm).
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Anyways…..these Apple Cider Cupcakes. These bad boys would be an awesome Thanksgiving dessert! They come out as pretty dense cupcakes, not all fluffy and cake-like as you might imagine. They have more of the consistency of muffins. That being said, if you leave the frosting off, these can serve as muffins for a wonderful fall breakfast. Dessert for breakfast is ALWAYS a good idea. Leave the frosting off? I know…I’m taking crazy pills. The point I’m trying to make is that the cupcakes definitely pack enough flavor that you wouldn’t even need to adorn them with the brown sugar cinnamon frosting. They could stand on their own two feet (do cupcakes have feet?), but let’s not go crazy here. Add the frosting. Definitely add the frosting.
This recipe is brought to you by the fact that I had an entire gallon of apple cider in the fridge and I’m the only one who drinks it. Solution: make desserts with it. And eat those yourself, too. For the record, I had planned on giving them away but my plans fell through…so don’t judge! Side note: please make these Monster Cookie Dough Cupcakes from my blog at some point in time. You can thank me later.
Here is my “how to” video with step-by-step instructions on how to make these apple cider cupcakes!
4.5 from 19 reviews Print Apple Cider Cupcakes and Brown Sugar Cinnamon Buttercream Author: Ashley Recipe type: dessert Cuisine: American Prep time: 30 mins Cook time: 17 mins Total time: 47 mins Serves: 15-17 Moist and flavorful recipe for Apple Cider Cupcakes made from scratch with Brown Sugar Cinnamon Buttercream Frosting makes for a mouthwatering fall dessert! Ingredients Cupcakes:
2 eggs
1⅔ cup all purpose flour
1 cup apple cider
⅔ cup sugar
½ cup unsalted butter, softened
2 tsp. baking powder
1 tsp. ground cinnamon
½ tsp. salt
1 tsp. vanilla
Frosting:
1 cup softened butter
3 cup powdered sugar
½ cup light brown sugar
1 tsp cinnamon
2 tbsp milk
1 tsp vanilla Instructions Cupcakes: Cream together butter and sugar in the bowl of a stand mixer (or using a hand mixer). Add the eggs and vanilla and mix until fully incorporated. Whisk together all of the dry ingredients in a separate bowl. Add the apple cider and the mixture of dry ingredients, alternating between the two, slowly incorporating them into the butter/sugar/egg mixture. Line standard muffin/cupcake tin with paper or foil liners. Fill cupcake liners ⅔ full and bake at 350º for 17-19 minutes. Bake until toothpick or skewer inserted into center comes out clean. Let cool completely before frosting. Frosting: Whip butter, brown sugar, cinnamon and vanilla together with a mixer until light and fluffy. Gradually add powdered sugar and mix until incorporated. Add milk until you reach desired consistency (more for thinner frosting). Transfer to piping bag and frost each cupcake once they have cooled. Garnish with an apple slice, if desired. Cupcakes stay fresh at room temperature in an airtight container for 5 days. Enjoy! 3.2.2925
Recipe source: cupcakes adapted from somethingswanky.com, frosting from simpleethrifty.comUnfortunately, shortly after their rise to prominence, the government, acting on the behalf of corporate interests, began engaging in a campaign of repression and persecution of the Wobblies.
The Wobblies were fast becoming a formidable force in the labor movement and they were determined to put an end to it before it was too late. Companies often employed Pinkerton agents or hired goons along with military troops and police provided by government connections as strikebreakers to attack and intimidate striking workers.
In one of the worst of many examples of labor clashes, 250 IWW members from Seattle travelled to Everett, Washington to protest restrictions on free speech and violent attacks on Wobblies by local police during a 1916 strike. Their ferry was met at the dock by the local sheriff and about three hundred deputized strikebreakers. When the Wobblies refused the sheriff's orders to turn back, him and his "deputies" opened fire on the boat. The union members returned fire and the ensuing melee resulted in eleven dead and twenty-seven wounded passengers; plus two dead and twenty-four wounded on shore.
Things got even worse with the onset of the First World War. Opponents took advantage of the IWW's anarchist, socialist, and anti-war beliefs; as well as their close affiliation with immigrants to strike at its membership. Beginning in 1917, IWW union halls throughout the country were raided by Justice Department agents and hundreds of Wobblies were arrested. They were charged with acts in violation of the newly passed Espionage Act including conspiring to hinder the draft, encourage desertion, incite revolution, and intimidate others in connection with labor disputes. The government used wartime hysteria to justify the imprisonment or deportation of thousands of IWW members.
In addition, portrayals of the Wobblies in government and corporate propaganda as "enemy aliens" and traitors for their opposition to American involvement in WWI led to many Wobblies being attacked by vigilante mobs. In Butte, Montana; Frank Little, a member of the IWW General Executive Board, was kidnapped by six masked men and lynched for criticizing the war. Wesley Everest was beaten, castrated, lynched, and shot (the most complicated suicide ever!) in Centralia, Washington by a mob after being arrested following a gunbattle between Wobblies and a group of war veterans, who had attacked the local IWW union hall during an Armistice Day Parade. Many other Wobblies throughout the country were beaten, maimed, or killed by police officials and/or vigilante mobs (often composed of thugs hired by business owners).
However, not all the Wobblies' problems were external. Even as the government was using the public's fear of communism to validate their oppressive actions; the IWW was experiencing its own internal struggle over communism. Historically, divisions had always existed between Communists and Anarchists, the two main groups comprising the IWW, involving statism. While the two groups had, for the most part, been able to coexist prior to WWI, the combination of a lack of leadership, brought about by the government repression. and the success of the Russian Revolution brought those divisions to the forefront.
In 1920, the IWW suspended the Philadelphia Longshoreman's Local no. 8, one of it's largest and most celebrated branches, over false allegations by a communist rival that they had supplied weapons to anti-Bolshevik forces in Europe. Erosion of membership continued in the early 20's as some members began to leave to join communist organizations. Soon, the remaining communist members began pushing for the IWW to align itself with the Red International of Trade Unions (also called the Profintern), a Soviet created organization of worldwide communist labor unions. Anarchist members, who disagreed with communism's statist approach and the abuses under communist rule in Russia, resisted these efforts. Further defections were caused by increases in criticisms of Soviet leaders and policies being printed in the Industrial Worker and other Wobbly publications.
Finally in 1924, there was a rift between Wobblies in the eastern states, who favored centralized control of the union and political involvement, and those in the west, who favored more localized control and organizing on the job. This led to a second union headquarters being set up in Utah and claims from both them and the original in Chicago as the "real-IWW," including two separate IWW union halls in many towns. While the western branch of the IWW had folded by 1930, this split, along with the passage of the Taft-Hartley Act of 1947, which severely restricted the tactics the Wobblies traditionally employed in disputes, contributed to the IWW quickly declining in membership during the next decades. Though they never actually broke up the Wobblies numbers and influence steadily decreased until they became a largely forgotten footnote in labor history. That is until recently, when they have begun to gain ground amongst young politically active workers.Vladimir Putin has won in Ukraine. Russia is on the verge of getting de facto control of eastern Ukraine, destabilising the remainder, and establishing its president’s cherished Eurasian Union. The West is nowhere — weak, disunited, and out-strategised by a master of geopolitics.
Hang on, that’s all wrong. Crimea was the high-water mark of Putin’s neo-imperialist vision. He lost control of all Ukraine when Yanukovych fell and most of it voted firmly to stay outside his control in the recent presidential election. He’s not even won the battle for eastern Ukraine, where the ‘separatists’ now meet a stronger Ukrainian military response. Poland’s foreign minister, Radoslaw Sikorski, thinks this is partly because the West has been united in aiding Ukraine and opposing Russian aggression.
On the other hand, maybe all this just means that he’s winning more slowly. Ethnic Russians and Russophones are two thirds of the east’s population. They want continued political links with Russia, to which they are culturally linked for ever. Moreover, their ‘separatists’ control major eastern cities. And Russian troops are just over the border which, for practical purposes, has disappeared. It’s just a matter of time, especially since Putin made Russia invulnerable to western pressure by concluding the biggest energy deal in history — a 30-year, $400 billion deal to export Siberian natural gas to China.
Well, OK, the separatists control major buildings in eastern cities, and they have enough guns and clubs to prevent others from voting in the presidential election. But opinion polls show that two thirds of eastern Ukrainians want independence and a close relationship with Europe as well as links with Russia. They have started demonstrating too.
So the separatists are feeling nervous—and not just because the Ukrainian army is killing large numbers of them. They fear betrayal by Putin, who called on them to cancel their referendum on independence and to embark on ‘dialogue’ with the newly ‘legitimate’ president and the formerly ‘neo-fascist’ Kiev regime. That same week he announced that the Russian troops had been ordered to return to their barracks. The markets briefly concluded that Putin knew he had overreached, wanted to avoid further sanctions, and would halt hostilities.
Confusing, isn’t it? And Putin at least seems to like it that way. Nato spokesmen doubted his claim of Russian troop withdrawals because nothing had happened the last three times he said it. And the day after the ‘legitimate’ Ukrainian president was elected, separatists launched not ‘dialogue’ but an attack on the government-held airport in Donetsk. Since western journalists on the border report that the separatist forces are both Russian volunteers and trained soldiers, that attack may not have come as a surprise to the Kremlin. And news agencies recalled that Putin had earlier qualified his commitment to ‘dialogue’ with Kiev with the regretful comment that it would be ‘very difficult for us to develop relations with people who come to power amid a punitive operation in southeastern Ukraine’. Battles in the east continue. Watch this olive branch in my hand; now you see it; now you don’t; now you see it again — oh, it’s a razor.
So what is Putin’s game? Conferences of intellectuals have been discussing the Russian president in the context of Ukraine in recent months — and they generally find the experience like trying to pin down Proteus. Historian Timothy Snyder, New Republic literary editor Leon Wieseltier, and a slew of western embassies jointly convened a recent such conference in Kiev which expressed both puzzlement and distress at Russia’s success in persuading many on the western left that Putin’s actions over Ukraine were justified or at least understandable.
At an earlier conference in Vilnius of Russian, Ukrainian, Baltic, and Polish intellectuals (with a sprinkling of Brits and Americans), ‘Russia Reality Check’ organised by Lithuania’s Eastern Europe Studies Centre,’ those present divided roughly into two camps. Some thought Putin a shrewd, ruthless, cynical kleptocrat, principally concerned to protect and increase his vast fortune, to avoid any future imprisonment, and thus to retain power for himself and his clique more or less indefinitely. That was the optimistic view: it implied a desire to avoid serious conflict—or at least to confine it to domestic opponents.
But a disturbingly large number, including some former government officials from Russia and western Europe, saw the Russian president as bent upon a tactically cautious but strategically bold campaign to reverse the post-Cold War settlement of 1989, and indeed to go further.
A former Russian official with some personal knowledge of Putin outlined what he thought was his long-term vision, and reckoned its domestic stages had already been accomplished: create a strong centralised presidency, subordinate all arms of government to it, extend its control over private industry through corruption and favouritism, and make the media, public or private, an arm of presidential propaganda.
The vision’s application to foreign policy only began with the Russo-Georgian War in 2008. It is unfolding further with the Ukraine crisis. In succession it would include the gradual re-incorporation of ethnic Russians and Russophones in the Russian ‘federation’, the establishment of a Eurasian Union composed of former Soviet republics in Central Asia (with similar authoritarian regimes) to augment Russian stability and power, a rapprochement with China, the sedation and neutralising of western Europe, especially Germany, and finally a long economic struggle with the principal enemy, now isolated: the English-speaking world, the United States, Britain, Canada, Australia, etc — in current lingo, the Anglosphere.
This was heady stuff and, for a Brit, even flattering: the Great Game redivivus on an even larger scale than in the 19th century! Does Peter Jones, I wondered, still stock swagger sticks and pith helmets? But two qualifications may calm the mind.
The first is the protean nature of the Putin regime, especially in its use of the media. Journalist Peter Pomerantsev, an Anglo-Russian essayist and film-maker who graduated with honours in the world of modern Russian media, describes the regime as a post-modern dictatorship ‘in the sense that it uses many of the techniques associated with postmodern art and philosophy: pastiches of other’s narratives, simulacra (i.e. fake) institutions, and a “society of spectacle” with no substance.’ He continues in a recent Legatum Institute lecture: ‘The regime’s salient feature is a liquid, shape-shifting approach to power… the leaders of today’s Kremlin can speak like liberal modernisers in the morning and religious fanatics in the afternoon.’ And that is exactly what they do — a regime run by its intelligence service puts on a series of happenings to suit the political needs of the moment.
In such a regime the media plays an especially important role (as indeed it did in prewar fascist regimes). ‘Politics as spectacle’, to borrow Pomerantsev’s phrase, is a perfect distraction-substitute for politics as who gets what, where, when and how. It is therefore an especially valuable technique for a kleptocratic regime. Whenever the populace seems riled up over something like corruption, state television will show Putin summoning leading officials and giving them a stern talking-to. The political needs of the Ukraine crisis were for an injection of jingoism into the body politic. And state television — Russia Today for abroad — obliged with a steady diet of anti-fascist denunciations directed towards Kiev. Nor was that without effect. Some of the Russian intellectuals in Vilnius were genuinely sad over the fact that close friends had been swept away in this fake-nationalist tsunami, along with high percentages of ordinary Russians. And the western leftists who were excusing Putin’s Ukrainian adventure, or so the Kiev conference intellectuals lamented, were probably repeating memes — Russia’s natural sphere of interest, anti-Semites running Kiev, the threat from the EU(!) — that they had picked up via Russia Today.
For the Kremlin’s postmodern media techniques seem to work as well with foreign as with domestic audiences. Thus, Putin announces the withdrawal of the same troops several times over and even gets credit for his willingness to compromise. Or as President Obama complained in a press conference, he assures the world that the troops in Crimea are nothing to do with him until some time later he cheerfully admits they are Russian. Or he publicly calls on the separatists to abandon their planned independence referendum while continuing to give practical military support to them after they ‘ignore’ him (those are postmodern quotes).
Pomerantsev compares these exercises in political technology to the final scene in the Wizard of Oz. Another comparison might be the satirical film Wag the Dog, in which an American president gets re-elected by winning an entirely simulated war. In Putin’s case, of course, the war is real enough — a recent UN estimate was that 127 people have been killed in the recent unrest in eastern Ukraine — but the dialogue is simulated.
Will that continue to be the case? Some of the ‘geo-politicians’ in Moscow who chill our blood with their grand designs for a world-dominating Eurasian Union may well be no more than touring cast members in Putin’s repertory theatre of useful ideologues — to be wheeled on stage when the troops go in and pushed behind the scenery when Mrs Merkel is in town. One of the advantages of post-modernity is that it is shameless. It makes major adjustments to the script — or strategic vision — without ever conceding that there was such a thing in the first place. And even when there is such a thing, a tactically agile strategist will postpone it indefinitely if he meets a harsh response or high obstacles.
The second reason for calm is that Putin is probably more aware than anyone of the formidable obstacles in the path of his Eurasian Union and its march to victory over the Anglo-Saxons. To begin with, Ukraine’s membership in his Union is essential to its success — and that outcome is farther away than when he began to squeeze Yanukovych into breaking off negotiations with the EU.
The spontaneous pro-Russian uprising he expected never occurred; it had to be goosed by thuggery and covert intervention. It has since led to a widespread anti-Kremlin nationalism among Ukrainians of all ethnicities. A Ukrainian president has been elected with the legitimacy of a clear majority and without needing a destabilising run-off vote. The neo-fascist parties supposedly ruling Kiev got 1 per cent each in the same elections. The new leader will get more western aid than did his predecessors. Putin can see that continuing a covert subversion of eastern Ukraine would probably cost him and his kleptocratic supporters dear — and invading the rest of Ukraine might even bring him down.
Even if Putin succeeds in destabilising Ukraine indefinitely, that is the most he can hope for. He cannot now draw it into his authoritarian stockade. Indeed, other authoritarians in Central Asia may be reluctant to join his camp or to yield it any real power if they do. It is their own authoritarianism they favour, not the domination of Moscow.
And the wider geopolitical struggle with the Anglo-Saxons? The Sino-Russian gas deal was a plot twist of brilliant timing, since it came after mumbled western threats to diversify European energy suppliers. A Gazprom spokesman drove home the message, comparing Sino-Russian co-operation in exploiting fossil fuels with western Europe’s reliance on wind in every sense. But it signifies no great geopolitical shift of power.
Turn from the worried strategists on newspaper opinion pages to the business pages and trade journals. There you will learn that it was Putin who forced the pace on finalising a deal that had been in negotiation for years (for the obvious reason that he wanted a response to western pressure); that just hours beforehand the leaks suggested no agreement on prices; that the prices agreed at the last minute will not be publicly revealed; but that they are almost certainly at or below the discount rates that Gazprom offers its traditional Central European customers. This was an OK commercial deal for Gazprom at best; it was a great political announcement for Putin; it was a shrewd exploitation of Putin’s weakness by China; and it signifies that hard bargaining will characterise Sino-Russian relations across the board — including border disputes and foreign policy towards third parties.
Even if China were ever to get into a serious dispute with the US, then a middle-ranking energy-dependent power in demographic and economic decline like Russia would not be much help. And China would prefer to avoid such a conflict, even with a stronger ally than Putin, because it knows that the idea of American decline has been vastly oversold and that it faces major demographic and economic problems of its own. As Josef Joffe establishes in his magisterial Myth of America’s Decline, even if China’s growth does not slow down — which would make it unique in economic history — it will catch up with the US by about the Greek kalends. And with Chinese military spending at about a ninth of Washington’s, military equality would take even longer.
Given a choice between defeating the Anglo-Saxons and tyrannising over his billions, Putin should do the latter. A master of political fantasy should never start believing it.The Magnetron The microwave radiation of microwave ovens and some radar applications is produced by a device called a magnetron. The magnetron is called a "crossed-field" device in the industry because both magnetic and electric fields are employed in its operation, and they are produced in perpendicular directions so that they cross. The applied magnetic field is constant and applied along the axis of the circular device illustrated. The power to the device is applied to the center cathode which is heated to supply energetic electrons which would, in the absence of the magnetic field, tend to move radially outward to the ring anode which surrounds it. Electrons are released at the center hot cathode by the process of thermionic emission and have an accelerating field which moves them outward toward the anode. The axial magnetic field exerts a magnetic force on these charges which is perpendicular to their initially radial motion, and they tend to be swept around the circle. In this way, work is done on the charges and therefore energy from the power supply is given to them. As these electrons sweep toward a point where there is excess negative charge, that charge tends to be pushed back around the cavity, imparting energy to the oscillation at the natural frequency of the cavity. This driven oscillation of the charges around the cavities leads to radiation of electromagnetic waves, the output of the magnetron. Transport of energy by electromagnetic wavesGet the biggest Daily stories by email Subscribe Thank you for subscribing See our privacy notice Could not subscribe, try again later Invalid Email
Scotland's economy could lose up to 80,000 jobs if the UK Government pursues a “hard” Brexit, a report suggests.
The University of Strathclyde's Fraser of Allander Institute considered a rage of scenarios to gauge the economic impact over a ten-year period from Scotland leaving the European Union (EU).
Hard Brexit would see the UK stand firm on immigration controls and end the European Court of Justice's jurisdiction in the UK.
Freedom of movement is a requisite of membership of the single market, as as set rules for business.
Fraser of Allander's modelling, outlining the most severe impact under the World Trade Organisation (WTO) model, which would apply if the UK left the single market and was subject to WTO rules for international trade.
Under this model, the researchers said Scottish GDP was expected to be more than five per cent - £8 billion in 2015-16 terms - lower than if Brexit didn't happen and exports would be down around 11 per cent after 10 years.
The researchers estimate real wages would also fall by around seven per cent - equivalent to around £2,000 per year for someone on average full-time earnings – and employment would drop three per cent, or by around 80,000 jobs.
The most optimistic scenario, which would see the UK adopt a trade agreement with EU similar to what Norway has, which would give the UK membership of the European Economic Area and full access to the single market but outside the customs union.
Under this model the researchers estimate Scottish GDP would fall by between two and three per cent over 10 years and employment would fall by around 30,000 and wages would fall between three and four per cent - £800 to £1,200 a year.
The report also suggests Brexit will hit the economies of the rest of the UK more severely than in Scotland due to its higher ratio of exports in the EU compared with Scotland, whose main export market is the rest of UK.
Professor Graeme Roy, director of the Fraser of Allander Institute, said: “This report provides the first detailed assessment of the possible impact of Brexit on the Scottish economy.
“It shows that, under all modelled scenarios, Brexit is likely to have a significant negative impact on the Scottish economy.
“The range of possible outcomes is driven by the nature of any post-Brexit relationship between the UK and the EU - the weaker the economic integration with the EU, the greater the negative impact.”
The report was prepared for Holyrood's Europe and External Relations Committee, which is conducting an inquiry on the implications for Scotland of the EU referendum.
Committee convener Joan McAlpine said: “This report paints a grim picture of Scotland's economy ten years after Brexit.
“Our committee has already found that maintaining access to the single market is key for business and industry in Scotland.
“If the UK Government leads us into a 'hard Brexit', the evidence presented in this report indicates that there could be disastrous consequences for jobs, exports and production.”
Deputy convener Lewis Macdonald added: “Business and industry leaders and workers face an uncertain future according to this evidence.
“GDP, wages and employment are all predicted to fall regardless of the route the UK takes to leave the EU.”Listen to members of the education establishment, and you will hear that not enough people are going to college. Listen to higher education reformers, particularly political conservatives, and you will hear that too many are going to college. Meanwhile, business owners and managers say they can’t find workers with the skills they need, particularly in the skilled manual and technical fields. Statistics show that there is massive underemployment, there are high college dropout rates, and there are huge student debt burdens. Many students change majors several times and take six or more years to graduate.
Why so much confusion and incoherence? One likely place to look is the advice students receive—or don’t receive—from high school guidance counselors. Whether a solution can be found in more guidance or different guidance deserves closer inspection.
There certainly seems to be a deficiency in the number of counselors. A 2014 report from the U.S. Education Department’s Office of Civil Rights found that one in five high schools has no guidance counselor. The American School Counselor Association finds that many schools that have counselors don’t have nearly enough. The advocacy group recommends a counselor-to-student ratio of 1:250, while the national number is almost twice that at 1:478. Only three small states and the U.S. Virgin Islands come close to the recommended figure.
Obviously, there is a limit to how many students to which a single counselor can provide individualized guidance. Rather than achieving the ideal of a mentor who gets to know students and guides them into good decisions about their present and future, over-burdened counselors may only be able to offer one-size-fits-all advice or simply process paperwork for college applications. Throw in the fact that counselors may need to deal with students who come from unstable or struggling families and that serious social pathologies abound, and the potential for individualized attention for students who might benefit from alternate post-high school paths becomes minimal.
Along with being overwhelmed by the sheer number of students who need their attention, many counselors may not have the proper knowledge to do the job well. High school counselors have a lot of training: more than 80 percent have master’s degrees, and they must pass a test and get licensed in most cases. But according to higher education analyst and author Lynn O’Shaugnessy, they might be getting the wrong kind of training.
According to the American School Counselor Association, counselors are generally required to take advanced degree courses in theory, human and growth development, social and cultural foundations, testing/appraisal, research and program evaluation, professional orientation, career development, and individual and group counseling. They also usually participate in a supervised practicum and a supervised internship.
Despite all that education, more than half of counselors reported in 2012 that they felt only moderately well trained, and more than a quarter reported that their training did not prepare them at all.
In one glaring example, according to O’Shaugnessy, graduate counseling programs rarely offer a single class in planning for college.
As a result, counselors’ advice is often insufficient. O’Shaugnessy highlights a Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation study that found that 67 percent of Americans with some postsecondary education said their guidance counselors did only a “fair” or “poor” job of helping them pick a college. When it came to helping them “think about different kinds of careers,” 62 percent of Americans answered the same way.
It may be that guidance counselors focus too much on finding out what students want, rather than getting them to see the full range of possibilities in the workforce. At Guilford Technical Community College in North Carolina, an analysis of 2009 data about incoming high school graduates showed that an inordinate amount of incoming high school graduates wanted to study psychology—roughly 30 percent, according to Ed Bowling, director of a Gates Foundation-funded college completion initiative in the state called Completion by Design.
Also missing from counselors’ toolkits is expertise in labor markets and knowledge of the full range of ways for graduates to move forward after high school. Many young people may be better off exploring apprenticeships and other on the job training, immediate employment, technical training, certificate and licensing programs, the military, and other options.
One solution for addressing guidance shortcomings that has appeared in several states is the concept of “Career Coaches”—advisors employed by the community college system to guide high school students. That is, the coaches work for the community colleges, but they work at a high school.
Central Carolina Community College in Sanford has employed career coaches for a year, implemented as part of its Central Carolina Works (CCWorks) program. The program embeds nine counselors at high schools in the three counties surrounding the college. But while most counselors might be inclined to encourage students to attend four-year colleges, CCWorks places special emphasis on career and technical education. CCWorks is being considered as a model for the rest of the state; a bill is under consideration in the senate to expand the Career Coaches program statewide under an initiative called NCWorks. The legislature is expected to set aside $1.5 million for the cost of paying the coaches.
Other states have implemented similar programs, including Alabama, Arkansas, and Virginia, which has had a Career Coach program since 2005. Virginia’s program began with 11 coaches in 13 high schools and has now expanded to 130 coaches in 180 high schools. Virginia’s program is funded by a combination of the state community college system and local schools.
Virginia’s program seems to have had considerable impact. In the 2009-10 academic year, 71 percent of students who previously had no postsecondary plans did so after meeting with a coach.
Some of the results are surprising. Virginia reported that 28 percent of students who had planned to go to community college decided instead to plan for a four-year degree. Additionally, both students and principals expressed initial satisfaction with the coaches and became more satisfied as time progressed.
There are other projects that could shake up the guidance profession. Virginia Brown, who oversees North Carolina’s CCWorks as Central Carolina Community College’s director of secondary partnerships, told the Pope Center that CCWorks is modeled after a UNC-Chapel Hill organization called the Carolina College Advising Corps, which in turn is a chapter of the Chapel Hill-based National College Advising Corps. Similar to CCWorks, the organization sends recent graduates to high schools in urban and rural areas and seeks to match students with colleges where they are likely succeed academically. That can mean either two- or four-year colleges. Unlike the state-funded CCWorks, the College Advising Corps is funded for the most part by philanthropy.
Another idea that could take off in the future is online advising, called “e-mentoring.” Private organizations are working with public high schools to offer e-mentoring free of charge to students. And websites such as ConnectEdu have aimed to become a sort of eHarmony for college, connecting students with matching colleges.
Perhaps there is no single quick fix to the guidance problem. But the emergence of a holistic, individual-centered approach to guidance, which informs students of alternate paths, is promising. Innovations such as Career Coaches are addressing an issue that public high schools have been straining to solve. Raising awareness of alternate careers, apprenticeships, and earning non-degree certificates will allow more students to enter the workforce early and without amassing debt. That may not be the right path for everyone, but more high school graduates need to be aware of those options and more. Any progress in this long-neglected area is welcome.Summer Mixtape (Vol. 2) [Free Download]
If the above player doesn’t load, work, or is just too confusing, then head here to download it:
http://thegcmblog.bandcamp.com/
Dear Listener,
It’s been a busy year! Our audience has increased hugely – the YouTube channel now has over 12,000 Subscribers and total video views currently stands at 1.5 million! Amongst the growth though with some help from friends and family I’ve been in touch with more artists to bring you another free summer mixtape and here it is.
It’s not as long as last years, at just 11 tracks but I’d rather deliver a shorter mixtape of top quality music than fill it with anything I could get permission for!
Like last years mixtape I hope you are introduced to new artists through this compilation. I’ve come to know some of these artists really well whilst putting this together and by speaking to them throughout the year and I can honestly say there are some great people featured on this album who truly worship Christ with everything that they have to give. So, check out the poster that’s included and get in touch with the artists’ through Facebook and Twitter etc. and tell them how much you appreciate their music, knowing these guys most of them will probably even find the time to reply to you! (Then go download the rest of their work!)
Be encouraged by their music, share it with friends not just because you secretly hope they’ll become Christians through it but because it’s simply a collection of great music! Enjoy the diverse mix of genres, the different ways that people praise God and the different stories people have to tell.
My prayer this year is for this mixtape to spread further than before, to reach Christians throughout the world who need encouraging, Christians who wish there was great music for a great God, Christians who need a new song to sing and soundtrack to dance to.
A huge thanks to all the artists involved, for supporting the blog and the work I do and wanting to be part of this small but influential mixtape.
And finally thanks to you the listener for the continued support to both the blog and the artists we feature, whether it’s simply by liking a link on Facebook, sharing the blog with friends or donating money so that we can give more copies of the mixtape away. Thank you for making this possible.
–
In Christ,
Stephen Bradley,
TheGoodChristianMusicBlog.com
AdvertisementsWhen people feel or act negatively toward a group, they may explain their feelings or behavior by saying, "I felt threatened." However, new research reveals how easily people can be conditioned to feel prejudice -- and that unrecognized prejudice can be the source of a perceived threat. The study by Angela Bahns, a social psychologist and professor at Wellesley College, is newly published in the journal, Group Processes and Intergroup Relations.
To examine whether prejudice causes threat perception, Professor Bahns conducted a series of experiments that conditioned participants (325 in total, of mixed backgrounds and ages) to feel negatively or positively toward unfamiliar social groups. As a cover story, the participants were told that the study was about attention and vigilance and were instructed to push the spacebar whenever a designated country appeared on the screen.
First, participants were shown the name of a country alongside either positive or negative images and words.The participants were then asked to rate their feelings toward each country. Next, the participants were asked to rate how much of a threat immigrants from those countries posed to the jobs, safety, values, and personal freedoms of Americans, and also to rate the groups on stereotype traits--whether they were untrustworthy, threatening, violent, or dangerous.
Although the participants were initially unfamiliar with the target countries, Bahns found that participants evaluated those countries associated with negative images and words more negatively compared to countries associated with positive stimuli. Furthermore, the creation of these negative associations caused newly perceived threats to emerge. When a country was associated with negative stimuli, its inhabitants were rated as more threatening compared to when a country was associated with positive stimuli.
"Across three experiments I created new prejudices--negative affective associations with unfamiliar social groups--and found that perceived threat emerged as a result," said Professor Bahns. "Despite the procedural differences, there was a consistent pattern of results: When the country was associated with negative affect (and no threat-related information was available to contest the threat perception) its inhabitants were perceived to be more threatening."
Bahns' research suggests that unrecognized prejudice can trigger the feeling of being threatened immediately upon seeing a member of a disliked group and also after the fact -- as a way to justify negative emotions and behavior. "It's a balancing system used to maintain a positive view of ourselves and not see ourselves as biased. Threat perception serves as a justification for why we might not like someone. When it's working in this way, we don't even see it as prejudice."
Bahns hopes that these findings will lead to greater awareness of how threat perception can be used as a way to explain the experience of prejudice, rather than forming the source of the prejudice itself. "Most people recognize that prejudice is wrong and want to avoid it. But in order to reduce prejudice we have to first admit it's there."
Does becoming aware of one's prejudices lead to a change in behavior? Bahns says that while more research is needed, it's possible: "If unrecognized prejudice makes a group seem threatening, people may behave more aggressively as a response. However, if people become aware of their prejudice and realize that the threat is not real, we can expect a change in behavior too -- meaning in this instance, less aggression."According to a new report from Fox News' Catherine Herridge, teammates of Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl were asked to sign non-disclosure agreements years ago after discussing his desertion with the Joint Chiefs Chairman in Afghanistan.
According to Herridge's reporting and General Bob Scales, |
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Indeed, like the best frames, it can be used by Obama or any surrogate to immediately reframe any new McCain attack as yet another example of McCain's dishonor and dishonesty. The best narratives piggyback on and negate a large portion of your opponent's advertisements and messaging -- just as McCain is attempting to do by saying he is the agent of change in the election, not Obama.
In other words, winning campaigns don't just attack their opponents' weaknesses (the issues, McCain's similarity to Bush) but adopt the winning Rovian jujitsu strategy of attacking their opponents' strengths -- the fact that an overwhelming majority of the public thinks McCain has superior character and leadership qualities. Democrats ought to realize by now that merely having the policies the public supports is not a winning strategy -- as Presidents Dukakis, Gore, and Kerry can attest.
Character trumps all. Or at least perception of character does. And right now, McCain is trumping Obama on "Who has the strong leadership qualities needed to be president of the United States?" by 48% to 26%. You can't be a strong leader if you are dishonest and dishonorable.
Third, going after McCain's dishonor is the best way to "get up in McCain's face, to get inside his head the way the McCain campaign has gone after Obama." That is one of the three things that Democratic strategists told Mark Halperin that Obama must do to win, along with "stop focusing so much on Sarah Palin" and "get back to talking about the economy."
Nothing will get inside McCain's head more than going after his dishonor -- especially if Obama does it during the debates. McCain prides himself on his honor above all other qualities, I believe, and that makes him defensive about any attacks on it. At some level, McCain knows he is selling his soul to the Rovians devil to win. But he has gone all-in on the countless lies and stands by them lamely, as he did on The View. If he does that during a debate, he will be skewered by the crucial post-debate media analysis.
The key to success when using such a harsh attack face to face is to choose your words very carefully. The best I've seen from team Obama was Senator Claire McCaskill thrashing McCain surrogate Carly Fiorina on ABC's This Week yesterday. McCaskill called her out on the lies she repeated and thrashed McCain with a simple yet powerful message of truth and honor:
FIORINA: Sarah Palin as governor stood up and said, I know earmarks are corrupting. We must ask for less of them-- STEPHANOPOLOUS: But she still requested them. FIORINA: As governor she did not. [...] MCCASKILL: She just requested this year, George. She requested hundreds of millions of dollars of earmarks for Alaska. She took the money for the bridge to nowhere. She took -- she hired lobbyists to get earmarks. This is a woman who has been lobbying for earmarks, has received earmarks. As a mayor, as a governor. This is a good example of what I'm talking about. You know, honor is talked about a lot in this campaign. Honor comes with honesty. And you've got to be honest about the facts. Sarah Palin has been an earmark queen in Alaska. That's the facts.
Note to Obama campaign: Please have all your surrogates -- and Obama and Biden -- study the transcript to see McCaskill's deftness here. Please have them memorize and repeat her key attack lines again and again and again.
Note to McCain campaign: Please continue to use Fiorina as a surrogate as much as possible.
McCaskill did four crucial things here:
She had all of the relevant facts at her fingertips and repeated them calmly but forthrightly. She used a memorable metaphor to quickly dismiss Palin -- "earmark queen." She turned Fiorina's mindless and indefensible repetition of Palin's stock lies into an attack on McCain's honor and honesty. She created an attack on McCain that uses some of the best rhetorical figures of speech, which makes any attack more powerful and more memorable.
The key lines cannot be repeated too much:
This is a good example of what I'm talking about. You know, honor is talked about a lot in this campaign. Honor comes with honesty. And you've got to be honest about the facts.
The point is to link "honor" -- a term (unjustifiably) associated with McCain -- with "honest." Marrying the two words is easy because of the alliteration, assonance, and consonance they share. But repetition of the whole word always helps, especially the powerful figure of speech, anaphora, repeating the same word at the beginning of a series of clauses or sentences: "honor is talked about a lot in this campaign. Honor comes with honesty."
Presumably, the McCain campaign keeps pushing Palin and its surrogates to keep repeating their lies for a purpose. They must know there is some cost to having Palin repeat on Saturday for the ninth time the absurd claim that she said to Congress, "Thanks, but no thanks on that Bridge to Nowhere" and having Fiorina -- a much less-practiced liar than McCain and Palin -- say "The facts are that Sarah Palin rejected the money for the Bridge to Nowhere."
The McCain team must see benefits that outweigh the cost of all this well-debunked lying -- and presumably that is keeping the focus of the Obama campaign's attacks on Palin to create sympathy and a backlash in her favor while keeping the attacks off of McCain himself. Obama, however, can turn all this lying to his great advantage if he and his surrogates and his ads finally start ignoring Palin and instead using the pathological lying to go after McCain's character, as they have just started to do.
Even the King of smear, Karl Rove, recognizes the potentially fatal mistake his disciples -- the devil's disciples? -- have made. Why else would he take the extraordinary step of going on FoxNews and saying
If you've been called smelly by a skunk, you know you stink.
The larger point -- the final reason why this attack on McCain's dishonor and dishonesty is so powerful -- is that the media has become so sick and tired of McCain's lying that they won't defend him anymore.
Heck even the just-the-facts Associated Press headlined a piece, "Analysis: McCain's claims skirt facts, test voters" that opens:
The "Straight Talk Express" has detoured into doublespeak
On Sunday, the St. Petersburg Times ran an editorial entitled: "Campaign Of Lies Disgraces McCain," which opines:
McCain's straight talk has become a toxic mix of lies and double-speak. It is leaving a permanent stain on his reputation for integrity, and it is a short-term strategy that eventually will backfire with the very types of independent-thinking voters that were so attracted to him.
That should be the centerpiece quote of any attack ad in Florida.
Kudos to team Obama for finally getting the right counterpunches to McCain's constant lies and his claims to be a reformer. Now they just have to repeat it over and over and over and over again through November 4.Buffy’s Best Big Bad (By Season)
Marty Allen Blocked Unblock Follow Following Mar 17, 2017
Who is the greatest Big Bad in Joss Whedon’s 7-season television opus, “Buffy the Vampire Slayer?” A question that has plagued the sages. For ages.
One Big Bad to rule them…
This week and month and year, stake-shaped cakes will be eaten across the globe as the Land of the Internet celebrates Buffy the Vampire Slayer’s 20th Anniversary. In seven seasons a vast array of monstrosities, both physical and emotional, crossed paths and did battle with Buffy and her Scooby Gang. But each season featured one major threat, colloquially known as THE BIG BAD.
What makes a villain great? The pants? The panache? The various p-words that imply all kinds of peril? It’s a mixture of all the goods. The darkness draws us in — you find yourself rooting for them, but you know in your blood-drenched heart that they’ve gotta go. Their final and inevitable defeat tastes super sweet, because it was hard-earned. But most importantly, they had a good reason for being such a jerk. This isn’t going to be easy, because all of these villains are great.
What follows is my deeply scientific look at which Buffy Big Bad is best, by season. In the name of the immortal Michael Jackson: “Who’s bad?”
7. SEASON FOUR: Adam/The Initiative/Maggie Walsh
“Do you guys like my new haircut? Is it weird? No, no, I think I like it!”
Season 4 had it tough. The first three seasons of Buffy are a battering ram of plot and character momentum. And then they blew up their high school.
The Initiative starts as an interesting mystery, but ends looking like a half-finished science project. In the season’s infancy the Initiative are hinted at with whispers and strange asides. Out of sight, the shady government monster hunting agency seems potentially badass. But as we get to see more of the institution, the sense of wonder fizzles. And then there’s Riley…
We meet Maggie Walsh, who manages to be a tough-as-nails college professor by day and also a tough-as-nails government-sanctioned mad scientist by night. She is ably played by Lindsay Crouse, who functions better as an interesting matriarchal counterpoint to Giles as opposed to an evil mastermind. Then she gets gutted by her evil-robot-demon-man-baby, Adam.
Adam is a solid idea, and he is well-realized by Georg Hertzberg. But Frankenstein’s monster meets Hannibal Lechter just lacked the human touch we needed at this point. His goals are murky — apparently because he is so smart he wants to make more robot demons? Or he’s mad at his Mom? And he underscored a bigger problem with Season Four, wherein on-screen characters react with scripted awe to the Giant Scientific Compound or Very Cool Monster Robot only to have it look like a set or creature was glued together using a ton of tin foil and a broken Commodore 64.
Two of Joss’s greatest episodes are tucked within this uneven season, “Hush” and the epilogue, “Restless,” both daring pushes against the scripted form. But the fact that they touch so little on the main threat of The Initiative leaves you wondering if Mr. Whedon had his own reservations about this Big Bad’s effectiveness.
Let’s face it, the real villain here is Riley.
6. SEASON SEVEN: The First Evil and Caleb and Their Bringer Buddies and Uber-Vamps, too!
“You can’t take the sky from me, Caleb.”
Season Seven had its own unique challenge: to end a legendary television show. What better way to go out than with the Biggest and Baddest Evil that started it all? The First. A creepy head-game playing amalgam of all the evils we’ve ever seen, represented by an endless (and eyeless) force of super tough zealots who are out to kill not just Buffy, but every potential Slayer they can find. Theoretically some nice and tall stakes. It’s a strong premise, and it definitely maintains the momentum necessary to get us to the inevitable final throwdown. But we also see shades of Season Five and Six re-emerge without enough of a new spin, wherein Buffy’s real foe is her own self doubt, and some of that territory feels re-tread.
Much like with Season 4, the threat starts strong. Before we know what’s messing with the Scoobies and all the other potential Slayers, it’s a creeping unknown force, and it’s effectively off-putting. But the unknown never quite formulates. It’s a shape-shifting jerk, it’s the eyeless bringers, it’s an evil “uber vamp.” By the time Caleb re-invigorates the threat-level by being super creepy and taking Xander’s eye him it’s a little too late, and we’re left wondering why Big Evil doesn’t just show up and take care of business itself.
On paper it all looks swell, and the Season as a whole does deliver, The First ably doing its job to build towards a deeply satisfying conclusion. But The First’s agenda of ambiguous Ultimate Evil pinned against its lack of an actual corporeal form leaves you wanting more from the Biggest Bad Ever. Put on a skin suit, already!
5. SEASON 5: Glory (and Ben) and The Knights of Byzantium(?)
“Hey guys do you want to go to The Bronze with me?!”
Glory is fun. She’s a God who wants all her powers back, and she has to steal Buffy’s new magical sister to get them. Clare Kramer chews up scenes like she’s about to high five Pacino, and she’s a joy to watch every time she looks for the perfect pair of shoes to go with the brain she’s about to eat. The premise works pretty well, but her purpose doesn’t feel aligned with her wonderful characterization, and seeing her taken down falls flat (though Buffy’s sacrifice in “The Gift” in order to do so does not, delivering another high point for the series).
Season Five is a bit of a rollercoaster ride, and it’s hard to talk about it without regarding one magnificent episode dropped in its center. “The Body” deals with death and grieving in a clear-eyed and passionate manner, and is made that much more poignant for doing so in the midst of a fantastical television show about a teenage vampire hunter. It exerts a force on the rest of the season that it is hard to pull away from. It’s Joss Whedon’s finest work, and one of the greatest episodes of television ever created.
Tough competition. But Glory is fun.
Glory’s counterpoint of having a vulnerable human vessel in Ben turns out to be one of her most intriguing aspects, as True Evil emerges in his heart in the form of good old self preservation. And then we get to see one of Giles’s most telling and chilling moments as we witness Ben and Glory’s dark fate at his merciless hands. Guys, don’t mess with Ripper.
The sidebar that is The Knights of the Byzantium scarcely bears mentioning, other than to point out that they don’t do the season, or Glory, or any of us, any favors. They move the plot along a bit, but feel under-cooked and overlooked. Ren Fair gone useless (though you gotta love a good Spike-driven RV chase).
Glory is great, but the stakes don’t sink. Her motives smack too much of The Mayor’s, but without the grounding.
And when your Mom dies, there’s not much else to talk about.
4. SEASON 6: The Trio and Dark Willow
“Unlimited powerrrrr!”
A personal favorite of the author’s, Season Six goes pretty dark, and the bad gets really good. In this season more than any other, it could be argued that Buffy is her own greatest enemy. But let’s save the Jung and stick with the external threats for this list.
We open with no Buffy at all. Because she’s dead. She comes back, and as it turns out heaven was really nice, and she’s left emotionally gutted and detached from all of humanity after having been ripped from perfect peace. No big deal. So in a brilliant turn, she has to face her most banal set of villains ever, three mostly regular nerds with some B-list bad guy prowess: The Trio.
The Trio goes on to evolve into something of a real menace, particularly in light of Warren’s sociopathic tendencies once he’s tasted blood. Moreover, they serve as an excellent back-drop and foil for Buffy’s inner struggles, and then an excellent catalyst for the surprise real villain, Dark Willow.
Dark Willow is another inspired move, turning Buffy’s best friend upside down and playing upon the greatest strengths and weaknesses of each of the show’s characters. And she’s taken to this point of darkness through a believable turn, that of losing the woman she loves to a senseless killing.
This season has some of my favorite plot moves, but my only issue with Dark Willow is in the mid-season ramp-up towards her darkness wherein her magic addiction gets out of control. While drawing the parallel of magic abuse and drug addiction into the conversation is fundamentally a good idea, the execution feels too obvious, particularly in this initial decline. The metaphor is so on-the-nose as to feel forced, and ends up more like a bizarre and out of touch after-school special (“Smashed” and “Wrecked” in particular).
But the end of Dark Willow’s tangled road of magic addiction and redemption re-emerges in the final few episodes and pulls it together well, and in the final notes the metaphor blossoms beautifully.
3. SEASON 1: The Master
“Oh hey, I had no idea anyone was coming over, can I get you some Kool Aid?”
Season 1 is a rocky start. As the show finds its legs and voice, there are some awkward moments.
Thank goodness, then, for The Master. He’s the Big Bad that Season 7 wanted back (and got to through The First Evil’s sometimes-confusing set of abilities). He’s more Dracula than Dracula. He’s a super-nasty and ultra mean Big Bad Vampire, and he sets the tone for all The Big Bads to come. He has every reason to want to tear down the waking world, and every reason to take down Buffy in the process. He wants to take it all over, and she’s built to slay him and his kind. His motivation is true, and we believe that he can do it. It’s simple and it works great.
But he isn’t just terrifying, he’s fun to watch, too. Mark Metcalf was born to have inconvenient teeth slapped into his mouth only to sound perfect and eloquent and just so damned wonderfully evil. The Master is smarter and better than everyone in the room, and he’s having a blast bringing on The Apocalypse.
2. SEASON 3: The Mayor (and his little pal Faith)
“One little two little three little…hey, what’s that?”
The Mayor. Nicest Evil Dad-figure ever. His characterization is spot on, abutting a 1950's-style happy-go-lucky germ-o-phobe with a beast of sadistic evil. Actor Harry Groener pulls in a nimble performance, switching between saccharine smiles and ghoulish murders. Harry nails it, but The Mayor’s actual motivation is a touch shaky, in that he wants to transform from being an invincible evil human into a vulnerable giant worm demon. Because that’s what he’s always wanted? And he misses his wife?
But through the whole season he menaces like a pro, and pulls Faith to the dark side with a convincing grin. Faith’s arc runs a powerful parallel with Buffy’s, and whenever they’re around one another, both Eliza Dushku and Sarah Michelle Gellar shine.
Season 3 delivers a ton of fun, and epitomizes the Scooby gang in action against a towering Big Bad who hits all the right notes. The Mayor embodies a sympathetic foe, and he’s a joy to watch menace.
There’s only one Big Bad that could possibly out-do him…
1. SEASON 2: Angellus (with a side of Spike and Dru)
“Guys, come smell my hand.”
Season 2 opens with Spike and Drusilla wreaking bad guy havoc, and they charm and terrorize in equal measure like an undead Bonny and Clyde. Just as their momentum sinks, the stakes are raised and Buffy’s True Love, Angel, turns from good guy to bad.
Witness the perfect Big Bad. Buffy’s True Love. Who is also a vampire. Upon consummating their delicate love, he turns evil. Plot perfection. She’s gotta kill her boyfriend.
Angellus is the bad guy we don’t just love to hate, we drink that hate down like hot tea on a cold night. And David Boreanz relishes getting a chance to tear down scenes and fellow cast-members with his dark side on display. There is a mad restraint to his sinister performance, and the glimmer and hope of humanity we know so well taints the evil further, leaving you chilled.
Bad Angel is as evil as they come, but he also brings the threat level of the show to new heights. He up and kills a cast member in neck-snapping cold blood, and the game is changed. The death of Jenny Calendar marks the first of many heart punching Joss deaths. Delivered gruesomely both in the moment, and then once again through Giles’s brutal discovery of her ghoulishly posed corpse, Angellus is a bad guy who delights in his own darkness. And we believe he wants to tear Buffy and everyone in her orbit down, and he wants to savor it.
His purpose is clear, and his evil menace is true.
Angellus is the Best Big Bad that ever there was. So Bad.It’s now been a week since Roy Halladay was killed flying a small plane over the Gulf of Mexico. Most of the public eulogizing that’s come pouring out over the last several days has centered on his incredible talent—and how can it not, when someone could pitch like that—but today offered some more intimate testimony, with MLB livestreaming the former pitcher’s memorial service. At the Philadelphia Phillies spring training facility, not far from Halladay’s Florida home, a handful of speakers confirmed that, yes, he really was as wonderful a guy as you thought he was.
Several former teammates shared their memories of Halladay, including Chase Utley, Chris Carpenter and Cole Hamels.
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The final speaker of the afternoon was the hardest to listen to: Halladay’s wife, Brandy, who shared what her husband meant to her and everyone who knew him. “I don’t know how to be me without him,” she said in the final minutes of her speech. “I didn’t know how big my heart was until I felt the amount of hurt in it with him gone.” She described how fiercely he loved his family, how he cared for the dogs they fostered, how he enjoyed so many little things in his everyday life—a fitting end to a service that suggested Halladay, as great a pitcher as he was, was an even better person.Muppet*Vision 3D is a 3D film attraction located at Disney's Hollywood Studios. Directed by Jim Henson, the attraction consists of a pre-show which then leads into Kermit the Frog guiding park guests on a tour through Muppet Studios, while the Muppets prepare their sketch acts to demonstrate their new breakthrough in 3D film technology. The show, however, completely unravels when Dr. Bunsen Honeydew's experimental 3D sprite, Waldo, causes mayhem during the next portion of the show.
The attraction—which opened as Jim Henson's Muppet*Vision 3D[2] on May 16, 1991 at Disney's Hollywood Studios (then Disney-MGM Studios)—incorporates the 3D film in conjunction with in-theater 4D effects, such as Audio-Animatronics, lighting, projections, smoke, soap bubbles, and a live full-bodied performer. Muppet*Vision 3D had a subsequent incarnation open at Disney California Adventure on February 8, 2001 and operated at the park until November 1, 2014.[1][a]
Muppet*Vision 3D is the main attraction of Grand Avenue of Disney's Hollywood Studios.
Background
The show is a 3D film featuring Jim Henson's Muppets. Due to the use of Audio-Animatronics, a live full-bodied Muppet and other similar effects, the show is sometimes referred to as "Muppet*Vision 4D" (which was used in The Walt Disney World Explorer application, displayed as "Jim Henson's Muppet*Vision 3D 4D" with a slanted red strikethrough on "3D"). It was directed by Jim Henson and written by Bill Prady. The show was one of the final Muppets projects with the involvement of Henson, as well as veteran Muppet performer Richard Hunt, and one of the last times they performed their characters.[4] Henson died in 1990, before production of the film was completed, and Hunt died in 1992.
Throughout the attraction's operation at Disney California Adventure, the theater was used to present sneak peeks of Tron: Legacy, Frankenweenie, and Oz the Great and Powerful.[5][6][7] On January 7, 2015, the theater at Disney California Adventure began operating as the Crown Jewel Theatre and presented For the First Time in Forever: A Frozen Sing-Along Celebration, a musical stage show based on Frozen.[8] The attraction operated until April 17, 2016. The location was renamed to the Sunset Showcase Theater and began showing Walt Disney Studios film previews in May 2016.[9][10][11]
Attraction
Queue
Before guests are seated in the theater where the film is shown, they go through the queue, which winds through "Muppet Labs", home of Dr. Bunsen Honeydew and his assistant Beaker. The audience passes several office doors, all featuring outlandish job descriptions and spoof movie posters featuring the Muppets, including The Bride of Froggen-Schwein, The Pigseidon Adventure, and SuperBeaker II. Guests then enter a large room filled with Muppet "props" and boxes with comical and humorous labels. Above guests' heads are sets of three television monitors, where the pre-show featuring several Muppets is shown.
The audience is repeatedly reminded to take a pair of 3D glasses from several containers around the room before entering the theater, which is modeled after the theater depicted on The Muppet Show. Muppet*Vision 3D, along with Captain EO, is one of two Disney 3D attractions which refer to the glasses "3D Glasses" (It's Tough to Be a Bug! utilizes "Bug Eyes", Star Tours – The Adventures Continue refers to them as "Flight Glasses", Toy Story Midway Mania! calls them "3D Game Glasses", and Mickey's PhilharMagic calls them "Opera Glasses"). However, the glasses are sometimes referred to as "3D Safety Goggles", foreshadowing the "dangerous" experiments guests will be visiting.
At Disney California Adventure, the queue was different in that it featured a cast member at the turnstile handing out the glasses individually and the "hallway" scene from the Disney's Hollywood Studios queue was replaced with a "courtyard" filled with various props. The queue winded around a fake "set", blending in with the rest of the Hollywood Land district. Guests also saw half of a motorbike protruding from the wall above, with a hole in the shape of Gonzo. The pre-show room there included a scrolling LED monitor known as The Official Time Clock which displayed various messages and jokes (including references to Elvis and The Mickey Mouse Club) while counting down to showtime.
In the spring of 2008, the queue was replaced with an eating area for the Award Weiners restaurant in order to provide more seating for it. The spoof movie posters were removed, now in their place are real movie posters promoting current and upcoming films from Walt Disney Studios. The original "Disaster Effects" storage area remained until January 2015.
Constantine, the villain from Muppets Most Wanted, was added to the pre-show at beginning of March 2014 to advertise the new film. In Disney's Hollywood Studios, as of December 2016, Constantine no longer appears and the pre-show is reverted to its original 1991 form.
Plot synopsis
Main Theater in Disney California Adventure.
The show begins with Statler and Waldorf in their usual box putting on the glasses, and heckling the audience. A penguin orchestra rises up. They tune and play a fanfare, which leads into the opening. Gonzo appears behind a door and pushes a stick labeled "3D" towards the audience. Kermit the Frog appears and welcomes the audience to Muppet*Vision 3D. He then gives the audience a tour of Muppet Studios, where many of the Muppets are preparing for segments in the show to follow the tour. Many 3D effects are performed at this point by various characters, mainly Fozzie Bear. This includes a noisemaker, a can of springs, and a flower that sprays water. Kermit then takes the audience to the Muppet's top secret laboratory where he explains that they hired scientists from all over the world to come and work there. He then says, "Unfortunately, none of them showed up." He then introduces Dr. Bunsen Honeydew and his assistant, Beaker.
The show re-introduces Waldo C. Graphic, the world's first computer-generated Muppet, (who first appeared in The Jim Henson Hour.) Waldo is "created" by Dr. Honeydew and Beaker during a demonstration of three-dimensional imagery but proves that he is uncontrollable and wreaks havoc in the lab. Dr. Honeydew tells Beaker to use the lab's inflatomatic to deactivate Waldo. He does so, but instead of being deactivated, Waldo explodes into smaller versions of himself and says that he can start his own football team. Dr. Honeydew then tells Beaker to use the lab's vacuum cleaner to suck up all the Waldos, but also accidentally sucks up the entire lab. All but one Waldo is sucked up and realizing he's free, shape shifts into a taxi cab and drives away.
Kermit then reappears and apologizes for the delay since the lab was "sucked up". Fozzie returns and attempts to demonstrate his flying pie but it malfunctions and hits him in the face. Kermit then says, "Fozzie, that's terrible." Fozzie then replies with, "You're right. It needs more sugar." He walks away, and Kermit introduces Miss Piggy's musical rendition of "Dream a Little Dream of Me". Bean Bunny attempts to assist Miss Piggy by using various props to add 3d effects. These include a butterfly on a fishing rod, a bee on a fishing rod, and bubbles blown from a bubble maker. To add the realism, real soap bubbles are blown from the ceiling. Miss Piggy gets annoyed and tells him to knock it off. Bean then gives her a rope, explaining that it's for the water skiing finale. A toy boat pulls Miss Piggy into the pond and gets her wet. Sam Eagle enters the scene and sends Bean away before he ruins the film more. He leaves and meets Waldo and together, they leave the film. Gonzo sees Bean and Waldo leaving and gathers the rest of the Muppets to help him look for Bean. Sweetums (who is a live full-bodied Muppet) comes out into the audience to search for him having already done so on screen. With help from the audience, he finds Bean on the other side balcony, across from Waldorf and Statler. He explains why he ran away and agrees to stay if he can help in the finale. The Muppets decide to let Bean shoot off the fireworks.
The finale begins with a toy soldier marching band playing patriotic music. During their performance, Waldo bounces on their heads and one of the tuba players gets his head stuck inside. To make matters worse, since he cannot see, he runs into people and causes them to fall down. Sam then tells Bean to shoot off the fireworks. To show off, Waldo shape shifts into a rocket and zooms around Miss Piggy, who is dressed like the Statue of Liberty, and accidentally tears her skirt off. Waldo then plummets into the penguin orchestra, causing smoke to rise. Sweetums reappears and puts out the fire with water, which infuriates the penguins and they decide to retaliate with a cannon. After Sweetums tells the audience to duck (in which Waldo briefly transformed into a literal duck), the penguins fire their cannon and hit the projector.
The Swedish Chef, who is operating the projector, then tries to destroy the now out of control Waldo, who he believes destroyed the film and is now all alone on a blank screen, by firing a gun at him. After missing several times (shooting holes in the screen, as well as the theater wall), the Swedish Chef decides to use a cannon. This causes an explosion as the theater blows up, tearing a hole in the screen, as well as "revealing" some bricks and sheetrock throughout the main theater, and revealing what's on the "other side" of the screen: guests at a Disney Park. Kermit then appears on the back of a fire engine through the hole to apologize for the delays. He then bids the audience a final farewell and the curtains close. Waldo appears one last time and shape shifts into Mickey Mouse so that nobody would recognize him. However, he shape shifts back to his true form as a vacuum sucks him up. Bean comments on what a cute ending the show was as the curtains on his balcony close. Waldorf asks Statler what he thought of the show. He asks Waldorf if they have time to go to the bathroom before the next shows starts. He replies with, "We can't you old fool. We're bolted to the seats." Then the curtains on their balcony close and the show ends. A cast member then thanks the audience for coming to see the show and tells them how to exit properly, while reminding them to return their 3D glasses into the bins outside of the theater.
Aside from the Muppets on-screen, there are also a number of in-theater Muppets, mostly audio-animatronic, that interact with the show. Statler and Waldorf heckle from a balcony near the screen, an orchestra of penguins rises into sight to perform, and the Swedish Chef "operates" the film projector from the booth above and behind the audience.
Cast
Additional performers include; Kevin Carlson, Rick Lyon, Allan Trautman, Rickey Boyd, Steven Ritz-Barr, Len Levitt, and Mark Bryan Wilson.
Gallery
Original 1991–2004 exterior facade at Disney's Hollywood Studios
2004–2013 exterior facade
2013–2017 exterior facade
Attraction queue
Stage 1 Company Store, the attraction's gift shop
Original marquee at Disney California Adventure
Marquee at Disney California Adventure
See also
Notes
^ [3] However, the attraction building has been remodeled since then, and the attraction has been removed from the Disneyland website. As such, the closing date is unofficial. Muppet*Vision 3D has officially been on hiatus at Disney's California Adventure since November 2, 2014.However, the attraction building has been remodeled since then, and the attraction has been removed from the Disneyland website. As such, the closing date is unofficial.One day in 1994 Richard Salomon, professor of Asian Languages and Literature at the University of Washington, received a small package in the mail. Inside were a number of blurry black and white photographs and an accompanying letter from the British Library asking if they might be of any interest.
Salomon started looking at the photos - first idly, and then with growing disbelief. "I could see pretty quickly they were the real deal." The photos showed various inscriptions that were written on a series of scrolls - scrolls of bark that the British Library had been given by an anonymous donor, who in turn, had bought them from an anonymous buyer based somewhere in Pakistan.
The inscriptions Salomon saw were written in Gandhari, a middle Indo-Aryan language closely related to Sanskrit that was in use from the third century BC to the fourth century AD. It was hardly surprising that the British Library had come straight to him. Salomon was one of the few, the very few, people in the world who could read Gandhari - or at least read some of it. "I knew the basic grammar, but there were an awful lot of words that I didn't know."
Up until then Salomon had been working on the only known example of a Gandhari manuscript ever discovered - it's also reckoned to be the oldest surviving example of an Indian text. This discovery, though, changed everything.
A few days later, Salomon flew to London to have a look for himself.
Because they're written on bark, Gandhari manuscripts are much more fragile than anything on paper, or vellum. A French archaeologist who discovered some in the 1830s found that they literally crumbled to dust as soon as he touched them. Rolled up, the manuscripts Salomon saw resembled enormous cigars. Unrolled, some of them were more than 8ft long. As he gazed at them, something strange happened. "Literally, it was as if my life flashed before my eyes." Straight away, Salomon realised that there was so much new material here he was going to be spending the rest of his career working on it. Sure enough, 20 years on, he's still hard at it. "I know a lot more now than I did, but there's still a long way to go."
A life further removed from today's torrent of tweets, Facebook posts and 24-hour news is hard to imagine. For Salomon and the small band of scholars around the world dedicated to translating ancient languages, "status updates" happen only rarely and the internet's fire hose of information is more or less irrelevant.
Rooms inside the ancient burial mounds of Khara-Khoto, have been found to contain thousands of manuscripts (The British Library Board)
And while it's easy to assume there are no longer any unknown languages left in the world, that they all gave up their secrets long ago, the truth is, there are lots of them. Several are well on the way to being deciphered, but others remain out of reach.
Take Etruscan, for instance. Etruscan was the main spoken and written language of the Etruscan civilisation that held sway in Italy from 700BC to 500AD. Today, we only understand a few hundred words of it. As for counting in Etruscan, if you can make it to six you're a shoo-in for a Nobel Prize. And then there's the Elamite language, spoken in Iran almost 5,000 years ago. This has had scholars banging their heads against library walls for generations - partly because it seems to bear no resemblance to any other script.
Lots of people have heard of Linear B, the ancient Minoan script found on various tablets in the palace archives in Knossos in Crete. Linear B was eventually deciphered by the British linguist Michael Ventris, who died in a car accident in 1956, just weeks before his conclusions were published. But what of Linear A, the language used in Crete before Linear B? That's proving more of an uphill struggle.
When I ask John Younger, professor of classics at the University of Kansas, how long he's spent trying to decipher Linear A, there's a very long pause.
" |
The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie (which earned $9,559,752).[10][11] It grossed a combined total of $35,142,554 during its opening weekend, on 4,300 screens at 3,243 theaters, averaging $11,648 per venue, again ahead of The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie.[12][13][14][15] The film had the best opening weekend for a Disney film released in November, until it was surpassed by Chicken Little in 2005. It held on to the No. 1 spot for three weekends. In Japan National Treasure bested out the double-billing MegaMan NT Warrior: Program of Light and Dark and Duel Masters: Curse of the Deathphoenix by grossing $11,666,763 in its first week. The film closed on June 2, 2005 with its domestic gross being $173,008,894 while earning $174,503,424 internationally. Worldwide, National Treasure grossed over $347,512,318, against a budget of $100 million.
Critical reception [ edit ]
National Treasure received mixed reviews from critics, some of whom lauded it as a fun, straightforward family adventure, while others ridiculed its numerous implausibilities and unbelievable plot twists. On Rotten Tomatoes, the film has a rating of 44%, based on 169 reviews, with an average rating of 5.3/10. The site's consensus reads, "National Treasure is no treasure, but it's a fun ride for those who can forgive its highly improbable plot."[16] On Metacritic, the film has a score of 39 out of 100, based on 35 critics, indicating "generally unfavorable reviews."[17] Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "A-" on an A+ to F scale.[18]
Roger Ebert gave the film 2/4 stars, calling it "so silly that the Monty Python version could use the same screenplay, line for line."[19] Academic David Bordwell has expressed a liking for the film, placing it in the tradition of 1950s Disney children's adventure movies,[20] and using it as the basis for an essay on scene transitions in classical Hollywood cinema.[21]
Awards [ edit ]
Year Association Award Category Notes Result 2005 BMI Film & TV Awards BMI Film Music Award BMI Film Music Award for Trevor Rabin Won 2005 Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy & Horror Films, USA Saturn Award for Best Action/Adventure/Thriller Film Nominated 2005 Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy & Horror Films, USA Saturn Award for Best Supporting Actress Diane Kruger Nominated 2005 Teen Choice Awards Movie: Action/Adventure Nominated 2005 Visual Effects Society Awards Outstanding Models and Miniatures in a Motion Picture Matthew Gratzner, Forest Fischer, Scott Beverly,
and Leigh-Alexandra Jacob, for the treasure room Nominated 2005 World Stunt Awards Taurus Award for Best Overall Stunt by a Stunt Woman Lisa Hoyle Nominated 2005 Young Artist Awards Best Family Feature Film: Drama Nominated 2005 Young Artist Awards Best Performance in a Feature Film, Supporting Young Actor Hunter Gomez Nominated
Home video releases [ edit ]
Collector's Edition DVD [ edit ]
A special collector's edition, two-disc DVD set of the movie was released on December 18, 2007. The set features deleted scenes and bonus content.[22]
Blu-ray Disc [ edit ]
Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment released Blu-ray Disc versions of National Treasure and its sequel, National Treasure 2: Book of Secrets, on May 20, 2008.[23]
Sequels [ edit ]
Although the DVD commentary stated that there were no plans for a sequel, the film's box office gross of an unexpected $347.5 million worldwide warranted a second film, which was given the green light in 2005. National Treasure: Book of Secrets was released on December 21, 2007.
In 2008, director Jon Turteltaub said that the filmmaking team will take its time on another National Treasure sequel.[24] In October 2013, Turteltaub confirmed that the studio, himself, producer Jerry Bruckheimer and the actors all want to do the third film, saying: "We want to do the movie, Disney wants to do the movie. We're just having the damnedest time writing it. I'll bet that within two years, we'll be shooting that movie. I'd say we're about half-way there."[25] In May 2016, Nicolas Cage confirmed the film was still in the writing process,[26] and in July 2018, Turtletaub reiterated that a script for a possible third film was "close" but Disney still wasn't completely sold by the idea.[27]
See also [ edit ]In the early 1600s Rene Descartes penned what has become the most oft-quoted catch phrases from epistemology, if not all of philosophy. Compare the phrase to other philosophical catch phrases, like the Golden Rule, an ethical claim popular in many religions, or the “We hold all men to be created equal” in American politics. However, in my experience, there is not the same general understanding of what Descartes meant when he wrote the phrase.
In this piece I hope to give the reader a modern epistemological context for understanding what Descartes penned in 1637.
The 3 Building Blocks of Knowledge
What does it mean when you say you “know something”? What type of thing can even “be known”?
These are basic questions, yet they will prove to be important. Bring up in your mind a piece of knowledge that you have, something very basic, let’s say, “I am reading a blog post on Applied Sentience right now.” You see the computer screen in front of you with the webpage open, the blog post front-and-center, and slowly little symbols on this webpage start to make sense as words. On the basis of this you come to know that you are reading a blog post. This is a perfectly natural use of the word. Therefore, at least a portion of this type of thing that comes to be known can be expressed as a proposition – a sentence that can either true or false.
What can be said of this proposition that you know? If you stopped reading Applied Sentience, stepped away and yet, for some odd reason, held on to your belief about reading a blog post right now, would it be appropriate for knowledge? The intuition is a resounding “no”. Therefore, it seems that it is important that for you to have knowledge with respect to any proposition, it is important that the proposition be true. We can’t know things that are false. We retract our claims to having knowledge quite a lot with statements like, “I just knew that my team was going to win, but alas, they did not.” It is also absurd to know propositions that cannot logically be true, like, “It is raining and it is not raining (right here and right now).”
What relationship must we hold with regards to the true proposition about you reading a blog post? There are an uncountable number of true propositions, but there is something different between any given true proposition and the knowledge we hold. It is exactly that, in fact, it is that we do “hold” the proposition – if only in our minds. You believe that you are reading a post on Applied Sentience. If you did not believe it, then it would be odd and inappropriate for you to claim you had knowledge. (In fact, claims of this variety are members of Moore’s Paradox.)
And so we have a true belief. But is knowledge anything more? There are certain sorts of true beliefs you could hold, and still fall short of knowledge. For instance, you could accidentally predict the coming lottery by use of chicken bones. It is unlikely, but definitely possible, so it is worth our consideration. Why do chicken bones which yield true beliefs not give us any real knowledge? Because they are not appropriate justification. When reading this blog post, you believe the truth on the grounds that you see a computer screen with a blog post open.
With a few simple tests of our intuitions, we have come to conclusion to what most modern and ancient epistemologists think is at least necessary for knowledge: justified true belief.
Descartes’ Qualm with True Justified Belief
Descartes knew of this formulation of knowledge, but he thought it was unobtainable with regards to the typical cases we would call ‘knowledge’. Descartes would say that you do not have knowledge even for our simplest propositions, like that you are reading a blog post right now.
What Descartes noticed that made him think this is the idea that you cannot discount the possibility that you are being deceived. The way that Descartes presented this concern is by saying that it is always at very least possible, for example, that you’re crazy, dreaming, or even that an Evil Demon is causing you to experience a blog post in front of you. Notice that, even in these crazy example, you can have a belief with what appears to you to be an appropriate level justification. But Descartes was nervous that, despite this, our experiences cause beliefs that are not true.
This is what is called a skeptical argument, as it leads to skepticism where we naturally intuit that we have knowledge. Descartes would say, however, that there is no level of justification which entitles you to think your belief is true with regards to ‘sensory data’, as they cannot be infallible – there is always a possibility you’re wrong. Descartes still wanted to be able to form justified true beliefs about the world, however, and he especially wanted to have knowledge of mathematics, science, and God. His struggle was to find a system which was both infallible against the Evil Demon type arguments and yet possible for human agents. He examined all of his beliefs, searching for any that survived the Evil Demon.
And then, he noticed that there was one belief that the Evil Demon could not possibly deceive him of!
“I think, therefore I am.” Applying our standards for knowledge – true justified belief – we see that would be impossible to actually think this while not also believing that you think it. The justification that one has for their thinking is personal or internal to the person alone, which is what makes it immune to the Evil Demon. The truth of our own existence is something only we can access; it would be logically impossible for us to reject our own existence since there we need to exist to do the ‘rejecting’. This argument applies only to the first-person perspective, since, as Descartes would say, there is no way for you to know of the thoughts of others are without the Evil Demon ‘possibly’ interfering.
It is on this foundation that Descartes eventually thought he was able to restore his belief in science, mathematics, and God. Descartes wanted the same obviousness and necessity in his other beliefs as he had with his “I think, therefore I am.”
So What, Descartes?
Does knowledge require infallibility? Do you need to be able to discount all of the logical possibilities to know that the sun will rise, that you have a birthday, or that the White House exists?
Descartes may have thought so, even if most epistemologists (academic philosophers that ask these kinds of questions for a living) don’t agree. But with this initial exposition into the analysis of knowledge, you are more armed than ever to find your own answers to these questions.
Paul Jones (Staff Writer, Rutgers University) Paul is a senior studying philosophy and computer science at Rutgers University, New Brunswick. Transferring in the Spring of 2012, Paul earned an Associates in Liberal Arts from Mercer County Community College. An active member of the Rutgers undergraduate philosophy community, he holds leadership positions in the Philosophy Club, Undergraduate Journal, and Philosophy Honors Society. He has spent the last two summers working in research and development for Local Wisdom, Inc. of Princeton Junction, developing their WeatherWise and Photomash applications on Mac, iOS, and Android.Opinion: Richard Rogers' vision for a more European form of British architecture promised to create modern and prosperous urban environments. But this "new Europe" failed to reach the suburban council estates and cul-de-sacs that backed Brexit, says Owen Hatherley.
A couple of days after the result of the referendum on Britain's membership of the European Union, I visited Southampton, my home town. Southampton voted to leave, to my surprise, and by roughly the same margin as the country as a whole.
A rainy walk ended at Ocean Village, a development built in the mid-1980s on a small derelict part of the city's docks, which are – unlike those of Liverpool, Bristol or London – mostly still in use.
Formerly on the site was the late 1940s Ocean Terminal, a streamlined design for the luxury travellers for whom Southampton was a more long-winded precursor to Heathrow. But that was demolished without a second thought in favour of a miserable collection of introverted, pitched-roofed housing complexes in cul-de-sacs and vaguely Postmodern office blocks surrounded by car parks, with an exurban American-style multiplex cinema and a shopping mall, since demolished. There was only one view of the estuary, in a hard-to-find corner, and it was and is for residents only.
It is hard to recall how insular and grim mainstream British architecture was in the 1980s
In 1997, a new building was opened there, called the Harbour Lights. I can still recall some excitement when it opened – here was a building that was elegant, confident, oriented towards the water rather than to a parking space, and most of all, a building that felt European.
This was what urban Britain was promised, around 15 years ago. Bradford would be an Italian Hill Town, Gateshead would be the new Bilbao, Salford would become as outward-looking as Rotterdam, Sheffield would model its public spaces on Barcelona. Each one of these towns and cities voted in the majority to leave Europe. What went wrong?
Related story Illustrators and creatives react to UK's Brexit vote
It is hard to recall how insular and grim mainstream British architecture was in the 1980s. Yes, a few spectacular or at least original buildings were realised by architects like Rogers, Stirling or Foster, and yes, some conservation of 19th-century architecture was probably necessary. But the urban redevelopment schemes of that decade, and well into the 1990s, were pinched and anti-urban.
They were defined, no matter how central or dramatic the site, by cul-de-sacs, squat mock-Victorian offices and endless surface car parks, all based on a paranoid and misanthropic notion of "defensible space". This philosophy spanned both left-wing councils and Thatcherite developers.
British politicians noticed the enthusiasm that British planners and architects had acquired for the European city
It is astonishing that the architects of Ocean Village didn't think that it was worth bothering to emphasise the bridges, ships and silos of Southampton Water, either for residents or for visitors. You can find similar stuff in Salford Quays, inner-city Liverpool, London's Docklands, or along Bristol's Floating Harbour.
The contrast with European architecture of the same decade is remarkable. There was a reaction to Modernism everywhere, both in terms of its aesthetic and in the blocks-in-space approach to planning. But in Berlin's IBA, in Palomeras in Madrid, in late-Soviet Riga, in the inner suburbs of Paris, and in Sodermalm in Stockholm, the decision was to turn to the 19th-century city-block structure, with shops and cafes on the ground floor, flats above and intelligently planned semi-public courtyards inbetween. The results were modern and urban, if not Modernist in the post-war sense.
At some point in the 1990s, British politicians – mostly, if not exclusively Labour – noticed the enthusiasm that British planners and architects had acquired for the European city. From their visits to Barcelona and Copenhagen sprang a thousand pavement cafes, gamely placed on drizzly street corners.
Projects like Harbour Lights seemed to suggest a different kind of city
In emulation of Francois Mitterand's Grands Projets, the Arts Council, armed with ill-gotten gains from the National Lottery, lavished cash on the likes of Southampton's Harbour Lights. Designed by Burrell Foley Fischer, the building was, to me at any rate, a shift to the modernity that the city had otherwise abandoned in the 1980s.
Glass, steel and wood, jutting out in vaguely nautical fashion to provide public views, it was as classy and European as its arthouse film programme, which provided a cultural lifeline in a city which had otherwise devoted itself to becoming a giant out-of-town Mall for Hampshire. In many places you wouldn't look twice at it, but here, it seemed to suggest a different kind of city.
I'm sure there's thousands that would say the same about their rather more famous cultural buildings built in the New Labour decade, even given its high-profile disasters (Manchester's Urbis, West Bromwich's The Public, Sheffield's National Centre for Popular Music, all closed and then given new, less arty functions in less than a decade).
What Rogers and his ilk missed was that Europe was becoming more like England
Yet the new high-rise luxury flats, going up at the time of writing on the other side of Ocean Village, tell the story of why this vision was rejected.
In 1992 Penguin Books and the Labour Party co-published A New London, a collaboration between the then-Labour culture minister Mark Fisher and architect Richard Rogers. On almost every page, Britain's dilapidated streets and petty new developments were contrasted with a given European example of openness, cleanliness and experiment.
This was the blueprint for everything the Urban Task Force would do under Rogers from 1997 to 2010, promising nothing less than an "urban renaissance".
Yet even in that 1992 manifesto, the authors note that the social housing planned in the Barcelona Olympic Village couldn't be realised because of the funding structure.
What Rogers and his ilk missed was that Europe was becoming more like England, privatising and paring back its public commitments – only they were doing it much more slowly and peacefully, and maintaining a level of quality control and order.
Lottery funded arts complexes couldn't replace skilled work, secure housing, and a sense of purpose
The "new Europe" built under New Labour was a facade and never really made it into everyday life, into council estates and suburbs, except when the former were demolished to make way for something more "aspirational". The money rarely reached beyond the major city centres and token public buildings.
If the centre of Manchester became like a cheaper, rainier, PFI version of Barcelona, its suburbs and satellites stayed resolutely part of 1980s England, with all the retail parks, exurban developers' housing, crap jobs and elimination of alternatives that entailed.
Lottery funded arts complexes never replaced, and couldn't replace, skilled work, secure housing, and a sense of purpose. "Europe" has been for the lucky few.
Like so many adoptive Londoners, I find the Britain promised by Brexiters quite terrifying – xenophobic, paranoid, enclosed, pitifully nostalgic, cruel. But in much of the country, that landscape never went away.
Owen Hatherley is a critic and author, focusing on architecture, politics and culture. His books include Militant Modernism (2009), A Guide to the New Ruins of Great Britain (2010), A New Kind of Bleak: Journeys Through Urban Britain (2012) and The Ministry of Nostalgia (2016).When I was little, my parents taught me to believe there was a person who was always watching me, keeping record of all the good things and bad things I do. I couldn’t see him, they told me, but somehow he could be anywhere and everywhere without any limitations of time or space. I shouldn’t even bother looking, they said, because he wouldn’t show himself to me under any circumstances. Some kind of principle for him, I guess. But this person was going to either reward me for being a good boy or else punish me for being bad. At one point I began to question the existence of this person but I was told I had to believe. It was crucial for the magic to work. If I didn’t believe, I wouldn’t receive the benefit of the magic. For some reason, my believing was essential to the work of this all-seeing, ubiquitous, yet practically invisible person. It finally occurred to me one day that this person is totally made up. Whom am I talking about? I can think of a couple of options for whom this description fits very well. But at this point in my life my conclusions about both are the same: If you have to believe in something for it to become real in any practical sense, it’s probably just in your head.
At Christmastime we are bombarded with movies and stories touting the importance of believing in Santa. If you don’t believe, they tell us, he can’t do his thing. My kids love Polar Express, and like most movies about Santa Claus it reminds us that Santa’s magic only works if you believe in it. It’s not that he will cease to exist, mind you; it’s just that you won’t personally benefit from his work if you fail to acknowledge his existence. Grown-ups know this is a fairy tale of course, but we continue to pass this tale on to our children anyway because, hey, our parents did it to us. It makes Christmas more exciting and fun, and there’s the added bonus that sometimes it persuades kids to straighten up and act right. It works quite well on kids. But if a grown-up still believes this fanciful tale, well, that is the stuff of great comedy. That’s why the movie Elf is so funny. The very thought of a grown man bouncing up and down, excited about Santa coming to town is just hilarious.
In that movie, Santa’s sleigh was fueled by Christmas spirit. If an insufficient number of people believed in him, the sleigh couldn’t even fly. In Legend of the Guardians, all of the imaginary creatures derived their power from the subjective beliefs of the children. This is apparently a thing for everybody from the Tooth Fairy and Easter Bunny to Santa Claus, the Sandman, and even Jack Frost. See, when you are an imaginary creature, you depend on the imaginations of others for your very existence.
I also remember that when I was a Christian, I was told that I must believe in order to reap the benefits of the Christian faith. I was told I was a very bad person—so bad, in fact, that I deserve to be punished for all eternity (good grief…I know I have my bad days but come on, now!). That was the bad news. The good news was that if I’d only believe, I could receive in myself the benefit of a magical transaction which would erase, at least temporarily, the deleterious effects of my own awful wickedness. I say temporarily because after I performed my part of this initial transaction, I was informed that future mistakes still had to be paid for in some way or another (that part was very vague, mind you). But the benefits of my new membership in the Chosen People Club were always tied to how much I believed. God was real, I was told, regardless of whether or not I believed in him. But without the believing, I would receive little or no outward evidence of this person’s presence in my life.
Hmm. This feels very familiar. I think I’m beginning to see a pattern here.
Prayer works. But you have to believe. People can be healed. But you have to believe. You can be saved! But you have to believe. The Holy Spirit can make you a new person! But you have to believe. You can have a relationship with God and he can speak to you and guide you. You can “hear” his “voice.” But you have to believe.
So…what if I decide this whole thing sounds like another fairy tale, and what if I said it seems to me that this person (or these people, however many invisible people you want me to believe in) doesn’t even exist? How exactly can I know that this stuff isn’t made up? The answer, I am told, is that as long as I’ve decided I don’t believe in this person, it will essentially be to me as if he doesn’t even exist. Oh sure, he’ll still exist for everyone else, they tell me. But he’ll be completely hidden from me. All evidence of his existence will be as if it weren’t there. It’s just a thing for him. You have to believe before you can see the evidence. That’s just the way it works. So if you say you don’t see any evidence, that must mean you chose not to believe. It’s your fault, you see. You are the reason he seems not to exist. If only you would have believed, you would have seen. In this alternate reality, believing is seeing.
It took me till my mid-thirties before I finally realized that, if you have to believe something is real in order to make it real, it’s probably not real at all. It’s in your head. Oh sure, I know there’s power in positive thinking, and sometimes you can accomplish greater things if you keep a positive attitude and learn to visualize achieving your goals. My old football coach used to chant before a big game, “You gotta believe!!” And to some degree he was right. We’ve even learned that sometimes the expectation that you will recover from an illness can speed up your recovery. The human immune system is an amazing thing, and sometimes a dose of optimism is all it needs to kick it into high gear and do its job. But for most things it just doesn’t matter what you believe—whatever is, simply. If I swallow arsenic, it won’t matter what I believe about arsenic…I’ll be a goner. If I believe I can fly and I jump off a tall building, I’m gonna be a pancake in the end. If I believe I have a million dollars in my bank account, it won’t do me any good and the debt collectors will still keep calling me until I present them with real money. And it didn’t matter how firmly anyone ever believed the sun goes around the Earth, the reality is still what it is no matter what you “think in your heart.” For most things in life, believing doesn’t make things true.
*****************
It’s Christmas Eve, and I’ve come to be fond of this time of year for a number of reasons. As a teacher I obviously appreciate time off of school, so I suppose that goes without saying. I get to eat some really good food and see family members I don’t ordinarily get to see. Some of the best and funniest movies come out about this time of year. And of course it’s always fun to exchange presents with the ones you love. I’ll also add that Christmas music (both sacred and secular) can be some of the most beautiful and charming of any music I’ve ever heard. But I’ve also come to be entertained by the way Christmas has become for me a microcosm of the rest of my culture.
Here is a season in which one religion out of dozens feels entitled to assert its superiority over all others (How dare you say “Happy Holidays,” as if there are any others which matter!). And it doesn’t seem to matter that the event they are celebrating, if it ever happened at all,* probably didn’t happen at this time of year. The timing of this holiday was borrowed from other religions, as were many of the details of both the religious and non-religious traditions of the season (virgin births, decorated trees, door-to-door singing, etc). People who celebrate this holiday most fervently are blissfully unaware of the many non-Christian roots of their traditions, and they become quite upset if you try to tell them about it. They take it as an assault on their faith and culture, and common decency and respect demands that you show them tolerance for their beliefs even if they will do no such thing for you in return. All of this I see at Christmastime, and it encapsulates well the way things are.
But most of all I love that we can get together and laugh and say “Aww, how cute!” at all the movies which teach that imaginary beings depend on your faith in them for their very existence (or at least for them to be able to accomplish anything at all). It’s healthy for us to shine a spotlight on this concept every year because eventually it will start to sink in that this stuff is for chidren. It’s quaint. It’s sweet. It’s charming. Perhaps it’s even enjoyable for grown-ups to live vicariously through our children, remembering how magical it was to believe a guy in a red suit would circle the globe in one night, bringing presents to you while you slept peacefully in your bed (never while you are awake, mind you!). But the grown-ups know the secret. The truth is that we are Santa Claus. We are the ones who make all this stuff happen. We know better, even if we enjoy playing along. Maybe one of these days we’ll all learn to take that to its logical conclusion. One day we’ll see that anything that must be believed in order to be real…isn’t.
______
* I happen to believe Jesus existed, contrary to many of my fellow skeptics. But the birth narratives were clearly developed later, such that the earliest gospel (Mark) doesn’t even mention them. Even the concept of a virgin birth seems to have developed because of an ambivalent translation of a word from the Septuagint.Photo credit: StoptheMegaDairy.org via earthfirst
Just because we have a new President-Elect doesn't mean that the existing President can't leave a few parting gifts to his friends and supporters, part of what Jeff Odefey at the waterkeeper Alliance calls an "environmental yard sale." Back in March we noted that the EPA (Evidence of Pollution is Annoying) removed reporting requirements for ammonia and hydrogen sulfides; now the President has signed a new rule making factory farms exempt from permits that limit water pollution.
According to the Natural Resources Defense Council:
Factory farms, also known as concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs), confine animals on an industrial scale and produce massive amounts of manure and other waste that can pollute waterways with dangerous contaminants. EPA estimates that these facilities generate three times more waste than people do nationwide. Moreover, factory farms lack waste treatment facilities comparable to those that treat human sewage.
The new rule:
-Creates a loophole allowing facility operators to avoid permits by claiming they won't have a discharge. -Adopts a scheme that allows facilities to avoid certain environmental enforcement. For instance, if an operator certifies that the facility won't have a discharge, environmental authorities will ignore enforcement action, even if the facility discharges to the nation's waters. -Rejects improvements in technology that would reduce harmful bacteria and other pathogens contained in animal waste, missing an opportunity to prevent water pollution and threats to public health. "Literally and figuratively, this rule puts the Bush Administration's stamp of approval on a load of manure," said Jon Devine, Senior Attorney in the Water Program at the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC). "Even though Congress specifically targeted factory farms for regulation under the Clean Water Act in 1972 and EPA has recognized the importance of these operations getting pollution control permits, the Administration stepped in it today."
Sigh. More at NRDC, via Earthfirst
More TreeHugger on Factory Farming:
In the Farm Bill, a " Factory Farm Incentive Program" : TreeHugger
The Meatrix :
The Meatrix II: Revolting (Well, just not as good...)
The Meatrix 2.5: A Look Inside Fast Food Nation[display_podcast]
Date: February 13th, 2015
Guest Skeptic: Dr. Manrique Umaña. Manrique (@umanamd) is an Emergency Physician from San Jose, Costa Rica and the Residency Program Director. He is the co-author of a Spanish-based blog called www.ViaMedEM.com and an active person in #FOAMed world.
Case: You receive in your emergency department a 55-year-old male who goes into cardiac arrest minutes after he arrives. He´s rushed into the shock room and CPR is started.
Chest compressions are ongoing and as soon as the monitor pads are attached, you notice the patient to be in ventricular fibrillation. A resident next to you says that he has read that the patient can be shocked without stopping chest compressions.
Everyone in the room immediately turns their eyes on you to make the call and the intern doing CPR asks if it´s really safe to do so.
Background: Defibrillation is the treatment of choice for rhythm disturbances like ventricular fibrillation and ventricular tachycardia without a pulse. Rapid and early defibrillation has been shown to increase survival after cardiac arrest.
There was some suggestion that a short period of CPR should be done prior to defibrillation in out of hospital cardiac arrest. However, a systematic review by Simpson et al in Resuscitation 2010 on this topic demonstrated no superiority of delayed vs. immediate shocking.
High quality chest compressions have also been shown to improve outcomes in cardiac arrest, to the extent that delays in starting them and even brief interruptions are associated with worse survival rates.
AHA Guidelines stress no interruptions. Travers et al. American Heart Association guidelines for cardiopulmonary resuscitation and emergency cardiovascular care. Circulation 2010
Cheskes el al. Perishock pause: an independent predictor of survival from out-of-hospital shockable cardiac arrest. Circulation 2011
Having this in mind, the use of hands-on defibrillation to reduce interruption of chest compressions after cardiac arrest has been suggested as a means of improving resuscitation outcomes.
Lloyd et al 2008 looking at the electrical current flow through the rescuers who had their hands on patients being defibrillated.
43 hands-on shocks with most at 200j but a few at 360j
None of the rescuers felt the shocks who wore polyethylene gloves
About 10% of the shocks were above the allowable 0.5mA
The authors concluded shocking while doing CPR was feasible
The potential dangers of this strategy in regard to exposing rescuers to electrical energy are still being debated. There is a study on how much protection different glove types might provide. Sullivan and Chapman in 2012 study called Will medical examination gloves protect rescuers from defibrillation voltages during hands-on defibrillation?
Four types of gloves (latex, chloroprene, nitrile, and vinyl)
Tested single glove and double glove both tested in two parts Part 1 looked at 8 gloves and increased the voltage until breakdown occurred Part 2 looked at two current levels (0.1mA and 10mA)
45% of single gloves and 77% of double gloves allowed at least 0.1 mA of current flow with external defibrillation
5% of single gloves and 6.2% of gloves allowed at least 10 mA of current flow with external defibrillation
Concluded of the tested gloves only a few limited the current to levels proven to be safe
There have been some good FOAMed resources on this topic (REBEM EM, Life in the Fast Lane and EM Crit Podcast #82).
Question: Is it safe to shock a patient during ongoing chest compressions (so-called hands-on defibrillation)?
Reference: Lemkin et al Electrical exposure risk associated with hands-on defibrillation. Resuscitation 2014
Population: Eight cadavers, neither frozen nor embalmed, with BMI between 12-29.
Eight cadavers, neither frozen nor embalmed, with BMI between 12-29. Intervention: Resistance measurements taken from eight cadavers and two investigators using a calibrated multi-meter connected to monitoring electrodes placed 40cm apart on the chest. A variety of preparations to measure resistance differences (intact skin, abraded skin, water, saline, ultrasound gel and needle probes). After this, six of the cadavers were placed on tables, not grounded. Defibrillation pads were placed in the anterior and posterior chest walls. Measurement electrodes were placed, one at the back and the rest at diverse anterior anatomic landmarks. Voltages were measured with respect to the posterior electrode. The anterior and posterior defibrillation pads were attached to a defibrillator and 360J biphasic discharges were given, with the subsequent voltages measured.
Resistance measurements taken from eight cadavers and two investigators using a calibrated multi-meter connected to monitoring electrodes placed 40cm apart on the chest. A variety of preparations to measure resistance differences (intact skin, abraded skin, water, saline, ultrasound gel and needle probes). After this, six of the cadavers were placed on tables, not grounded. Defibrillation pads were placed in the anterior and posterior chest walls. Measurement electrodes were placed, one at the back and the rest at diverse anterior anatomic landmarks. Voltages were measured with respect to the posterior electrode. The anterior and posterior defibrillation pads were attached to a defibrillator and 360J biphasic discharges were given, with the subsequent voltages measured. Control: There was no control group.
There was no control group. Outcome: With the variables measured (resistance and voltage), they estimated the rescuer-received dose to estimate energy received during the defibrillation.
Authors’ Conclusions: Hands-on defibrillation using currently available personal protective equipment and resuscitative procedures poses a risk to rescuers. The process should be considered potentially dangerous until equipment and techniques that will protect rescuers are developed.
Critical Appraisal for Study:
Was this study based on a random or pseudo-random sample? No Were the criteria for inclusion in the sample clearly defined? Yes Were confounding factors identified and strategies to deal with them stated? No Were outcomes assessed using objective criteria? Yes If comparisons are being made, was there sufficient descriptions of the groups? NA Was follow up carried out over a sufficient time period? NA Were the outcomes of people who withdrew described and included in the analyses? NA Were outcomes measured in a reliable way? Yes Was appropriate statistical analysis used? Yes
Key Results: Defibrillation resulted in rescuer exposure voltages ranging from 827V to ~200V, depending on cadaver and anatomic location. The rescuer received dose under the test scenarios ranged from 1 to 8 J, which is in excess of accepted energy exposure levels.
This study adds to the literature on the topic of hands on defibrillation. However, it is not patient oriented or provider oriented literature. The key message is to perform high quality chest compression and defibrillate early.
Our Conclusions Compared to Authors’: We agree with the authors conclusion in that even thought the amount of energy transferred during hands-on defibrillation might not be that much, it’s sufficient to post a threat to the medical personnel and therefore it shouldn’t be done for now.
SGEM Bottom Line: Performing hands on defibrillation |
surprised,” said Ridwin Mohamednur, also a student at UC Berkeley. “I mean, a lot of folks are tired of hearing about black issues, the Black Lives Matter problems.”
Chancellor Nicholas Dirks responded with a statement on Monday, saying, “While UC Berkeley honors First Amendment rights, we do not endorse this attempt to create conflict and make light of the efforts of activists locally and nationally.”
Facebook removed the page because the site’s creator had a fake user profile. The chancellor’s office said the page was likely created by someone outside the university.TV Reviews All of our TV reviews in one convenient place.
Donald Trump’s The Art Of The Deal: The Movie B+ Donald Trump’s The Art Of The Deal: The Movie B+ B+ Donald Trump’s The Art Of The Deal: The Movie Director Jeremy Konner Runtime 50 minutes Rating N/A Cast Johnny Depp, Ron Howard, Alfred Molina, Robert Morse, Patton Oswalt, Jack McBrayer, Michaela Watkins, Henry Winkler, Stephen Merchant, Christopher Lloyd, Kristen Schaal, Andy Richter, Paul Scheer, Rob Huebel, Tymberlee Hill, ALF, Jordan Coleman, Joe Nuñez, Ron Funches, Jason Mantzoukas Availability Streaming on Funny Or Die
It’s only the Wednesday after the New Hampshire primary, and the 2016 presidential election is already the most analyzed, most scrutinized, most discussed political campaign in United States history. It’s not just that there are more platforms for running commentary than ever before—it’s that there are more platforms for a wider segment of the electorate to comment on the campaign in the moment. Combined with the outsized characters vying for the Oval Office, the proliferation of soap boxes, grandstands, and megaphones also means this election is already the most lampooned in history, too.
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Think back to 2008, when the leading voices of electoral satire were The Daily Show and The Colbert Report, and people wondered if vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin might show up at 30 Rockefeller Center to square off with Tina Fey on Saturday Night Live. Today, The Daily Show has sprouted three topical late-night offshoots (four if you count Stephen Colbert’s Late Show), an SNL cameo is practically a prerequisite of candidacy, James Adomian and Anthony Atamanuik are on a nationwide tour with their stage show Trump Vs. Bernie: The Debate, and anybody with a wi-fi connection and 10 minutes can achieve viral fame with a “Bernie Or Hilary?” flier. It would seem that every angle on the candidates has been covered—if those angles aren’t being actively neutralized by the candidates themselves, as Donald Trump did when he hosted Saturday Night Live last November.
Don’t give up the search for fresh angles just yet, because there’s still Donald Trump’s The Art Of The Deal: The Movie. The Funny Or Die production succeeds where SNL couldn’t because it stars a different kind of Trump. Using the candidate’s genuine megalomania as its starting point, the movie reimagines Trump in the vein of pompous fictional auteurs like Eric Jonrosh and Garth Marenghi: He’s writer, director, producer, star, cinematographer, co-producer, costume designer, and theme song writer of the film-within-the-film, a dopey made-for-TV biopic unseen for years due to a particularly boring primetime NFL matchup. Rather than offering a singular voice, the funny thing about Jonrosh, Marenghi, and Art Of The Deal’s Trump is that their fictional works speak in a single voice—that of their creator. Other figures from Donald Trump’s life wander in and out of The Art Of The Deal, but they’re mostly puppets for the creator’s perverted outlook—especially when they’re actual puppets, like Alf, portrayed here as the best man at The Donald’s marriage to Ivana Zelníčková (Michaela Watkins).
Though only nominally based on Trump: The Art Of The Deal, the script by Joe Randazzo still draws on that bestseller’s part-memoir, part-advice structure, framed as a multi-part lecture to a multiethnic series of kids in backward baseball caps. (Full disclosure: Randazzo is a former editor of The A.V. Club’s sister publication, The Onion.) It’s a gag-a-minute affair with a strong spine: A fanatic quest for immortality that involves buying the Taj Mahal Casino out from under Merv Griffin (Patton Oswalt). The property is positioned as Trump’s Rosebud (not that he understands that reference) and he seeks its acquisition across what’s essentially a feature-length comedy sketch directed by Drunk History’s Jeremy Konner, with gauzy faux-VHS visuals, title cards modeled on the book’s thuddingly severe typography, and squealing guitars accompanying every new “Trump Card Element Of The Deal.” The concept works pretty well at trailer length, with a provocative voiceover and a cutdown of the film’s greatest hits. But the ingenious ploy of that trailer is the curiosity it creates with its pileup of famous faces and dunderheaded one liners. It’s an itch that’s scratched by the full Art Of The Deal.
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As satire, this version of the tycoon succeeds in drawing a line between the trash-talking Lonesome Rhodes of 2016 and the redheaded Gordon Gekko of 1986. Set before The Apprentice or before the Saturday Night Live hosting gigs, on Trump’s 40th birthday, The Art Of The Deal catalogs the man’s sins—discriminatory housing practices, bogus lawsuits, the destruction of architectural artifacts—in dramatizations that are only slightly more ridiculous than his modern-day TV theatrics. Period details are occasionally tossed aside for jokes about sloganeering hats or truly heroic Vietnam War veterans, but the humorous thrust is in the contradictions, Trump’s facile boardroom pointers for everyday people bumping up against the bullying, manipulative, prejudicial tactics that made him a Master of the Universe. One running gag involves Trump describing rivals like Barron Hilton (Stephen Merchant) as charmed beneficiaries of wealthy fathers, never once stopping to acknowledge the leg up he got from Frederick Trumps Sr. and Jr. This is lampooning by way of illustration.
The Art Of The Deal manages the traditional Funny Or Die trick of drawing top flight talent to a very silly project, but the real coup is Depp as Trump. The Garbage Pail Kids hair and makeup do a lot of heavy lifting, but the actor’s vocal inflections and mannerisms create an incredible facsimile of Trump—albeit one that’s rooted in the twitchy kookiness of Captain Jack Sparrow or Raoul Duke. For once in his post-Pirates Of The Caribbean career, an entire production can actually keep up with Depp’s whims and tap into his wavelength, striking a tone that’s as big and brassy as the character he’s playing. It helps that he’s unrecognizable beneath the makeup; it also helps that there’s no Mortdecai-like ambiguity about whether or not the character is supposed to be a lovable rake or a despicable scoundrel. The ugliness of the performance holds Trump up for ridicule, and Depp commits to that ugliness better than anyone short of the genuine article. Like the real Trump, he delivers a bizarrely magnetic performance, and that magnetism is enough to hold the whole enterprise together, even as the intentional incompetence of the film-within-the-film threatens to sink the final act.
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Donald Trump’s The Art Of The Deal: The Movie isn’t something with a long shelf life, as attested by its mode of distribution or its sudden appearance. You can argue that releasing the movie the morning after Trump’s first primary victory was a strategic deployment, you can argue that it’s just lucky timing—just make sure you stop arguing before Trump’s legal team mobilizes and attempts to get The Art Of The Deal taken down. The topicality that makes the movie’s satire so potent also renders it an instant time capsule—for all the cachet The Art Of The Deal will have come December, it might as well have been released on Snapchat. In the moment, however, it’s thrilling to see so many talented people team up to so thoroughly burst Trump’s bubble in new and exciting ways. Considering the off-the-cuff nature of its subject, who’s willingly ignorant of history and maddeningly vague about his plans for the future, isn’t “in the moment” all that should matter about The Art Of The Deal?To be onest you are "partly" right, but no at all. C++ is possibly most powerfull language where you can manage all your memory with pointers. That give you basically absolute power with a memmory managment. That's why everybody use C++ for graphics games, because they need that Xtra % of performance. But there are also several problems, which may cause fatal consequences in final. If you wrongly use just one pointer to memmory, it could be like a gate for hackers.But back to the track.. There was a research which prove that almost 90% of C++ applications are not "optimalized" as it can be, and they actually suffer with a performance lose cause of it. This is pure prove that C++ can be really powerfull but extremlly diffucult to write. Other languages like Java, C# or JavaScript use Garbace collector, which basically manage automatically memmory by itself, for a small % cost of performace. In the other way those languages are far more faster to write in. Thats why they are so popular. Why do you think everybody use Python for chat bots? Because write chatbot in python is like matter of half hour, on the otherhand write bot in c++ may be work for like 3to4 hours. Why? because in c++ you must do everything by itself, because chatbot in pythong will be long like 200 lines of code... In c++?? good luck with 1 000 atleast.Please first look at V8 JS engine from google, which is used in nodejs & google chrome and look how it works. Of couse there can be terrible, extremly terrible JS codes. Which will run 15x or maybe 30x slower than C++ code. But if you don't do "bad practise" in your JS code (mixing datatypes in arrays, extending already existing objects and so on..), it can actually run faster than not optimized code in C++. And yes optimized code in C++ will run faster than optimized code in JS. But its pretty much small % of that performence, what doesnt matter at all. And im sure that Max know how to write optimized and proper JS code inspired by "good practise".If you don't agree than i lose all hope with you, on the other hand if you don't understand please do your research.
What OS is written in JavaScript? Any web or database servers written in JavaScript either. In fact, NodeJS is written in C++, NOT JavaScript. Lisk is using the wrong language for something that needs to perform well. Dev, besides being easier to write, why did you select JavaScript for the core. You understand JavaScript is missing functionality needed to write core software. This is a joke or a scam.by Henry Clymer and Georgi Stankov, September 10, 2012
www.stankovuniversallaw.com
Dear Georgi,
After spending several days in thought, I have decided how I would like to ascend. My personal portal is around the house and parking lot (one portal). It is encircled by flames to keep out the unwanted. It is sometimes hard for me to believe that I am the only person from Rochester, New York in the PAT.
My body will be perfect, with perfect teeth, and I intend to preside over whatever the Higher Beings want me to do. BUT, I want to be with your group when you go to the Pope to bring down the church. So, I will have to go to Freising, to your portal, to be with the group. Anna can pick me up there, in her new car. Then I want to go to the Alps to be at Martina’s PAT shrine. And then its back to work, at wherever the Higher Beings want to place me. Language will be no problem. So that is what I intend to do.
In Love and Light,
Henry
_________________________
Dear Henry,
I am very happy that you have mentioned your desire to go with me to the Vatican and demise the pope as you must have read my thoughts in the last days. While I have no special desires where I should ascend – most probably within the family as to give them my final proverbial astral kick in the asses – I do have special ideas where to appear first.
In fact since two days I am working on my appearance scenario – the Second Coming of Christ – with the PAT. As I have mentioned previously on this website, I was supposed to ascend on October 13, 2010 and appear in Fatima in front of the regular gathering of one million pilgrims at this date in order to fulfil the third Fatima prophecy about the demise of the Pope and the abolition of the Catholic Church. Then this scenario was postponed as usual.
But I hate to lose a good trump and as we still have it in our sleeves, I has just brooded this morning, while going outside with the dog, that it will still be a good idea to show up shortly in Fatima on September 13 (the six-month-cycle of apparition in Fatima on the 13th of each month between May and October when many pilgrims gather at this place) and then to announce my official appearance on Sunday, September 16 at the Peter’s square during the Sunday’s sermon of the Pope as to replace him and to demise all cardinals and clerics in this rotten place with name of Vatican. This will be the takeover of the Vatican and the Catholic Church by the PAT as the true ancestor souls of Apollonius of Tyana, the anointed Jesus Christ, and his followers.
There, I envisioned to meet with some other members of the PAT, such as April who will be in Assisi at this time and Monica, who is already in Italy, but also with some of our Italian PAT members.
I am now happy that you have made up your mind to participate in this heavenly delegation that will take over the Vatican and the Catholic church, and later on the whole Christianity and all other organized religions.
However, in order for this scenario to succeed, we must ascend and appear before the “shit will hit the fan”. If we trigger with our PAT supernova simultaneously the magnetic pole reversal and the collapse of the Orion economic and financial systems, then there is no point for us to appear at these places, as they will be probably destroyed and the masses will be already in a total shock.
Therefore, I had an inkling from my HS this morning that we may be the actual wake up call for humanity through our collective Ascension and immediate official appearance in front of the masses. Probably this is what April’s HS wanted to give us as a hint when she told us that we are needed immediately on the ground after ascension and that we may ascend before the calamities will begin, as these may unfold several days later.
Our ascension and appearance will be the visual cosmic event that will serve as a wake up call for the masses and will announce the coming of the other more catastrophic events as Dorie’s HS hinted. The higher realms may help additionally with some spectacular visual effects in the skies to underscore the importance of our ascension and make it visible to the whole humanity. It is a good psychological strategy to begin with a hilarious event before the “bad movie” with the catastrophic events will engulf the people.
In this case, this week September 10-16 should be the week of our ascension and official appearance and the catastrophes may begin in the week Sept 16-23, when we will stay as ascended masters with humanity and will help them go through these difficult times. We will show them in the first place what every human being is able to achieve if he/she proceeds with the LBP and the evolution of the soul as indomitably and diligently as all PAT members have done in the past. The miracles we will able to demonstrate to the masses will be the necessary consolation that will mitigate their huge fears, which will inevitably surge during this time of huge destruction and massive death toll. This scenario makes a lot of sense to me.
Therefore I am very happy that you have addressed this issue as it triggered my thought flow in this direction, which is not a coincidence but a remarkable synchronicity. I have noticed that you can read my thoughts telepathically in the past and this is an excellent confirmation for me that we are on the right track with our appearance scenario as ascended masters and that this version is also favoured by our HS.
It is getting more and more exciting by the hour.
With love and light
George
_________________
Further contributions on this topic are welcome.
GeorgeStory highlights Brother of alleged victim says attack happened at family home
Actress suffered burns to her face, leg, arm and eye
A young Pakistani actress was in critical condition Sunday after a man threw acid on her face while she was sleeping, her brother said.
The alleged attack on 18-year-old Bushra Waiz happened early Saturday at the family home in Nowshera, in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province of Pakistan.
Akhtar Waiz told CNN his family was asleep in the courtyard when a man burst in and threw acid on his sister.
Bushra Waiz, who is also known as Shazia Aziz, is a Pashto-language singer, actress and theater artist.
She suffered burns to the right side of her face. Doctors said her right leg, arm and eye were also injured.[HotS] First Impressions: Valeera Text by EsportsJohn Graphics by Blizzard
Valeera First Impressions Analysis and Pro Opinions by EsportsJohn
”For a time, the gladiator Valeera Sanguinar served dutifully as one of Varian Wrynn's personal bodyguards. Now, her shadowy skills find her a natural fit within the secretive rogue order, the Uncrowned, in their fight against the Legion.”
Table of Contents Strengths and Weaknesses
Abilities
Talents
Professional Opinions
Kit, Design, and Implementation
Professional Play and Meta Changes
Map and Composition Viability
Final Thoughts
Outcast—no word better describes Valeera's
To me, Valeera's storyline is perhaps one of the most compelling in WoW history and one of the reasons why I'm excited for her entrance into the Nexus. Her cloak and dagger playstyle resonates strongly with her roguish lore and makes her an exciting hero to play. As a high skill cap hero, well-seasoned players with good positioning and proper timing make her look broken while players in the lower echelons have trouble maximizing her kit. This polarizing effect can be seen in her relatively low win rate in the first week, but like Medivh, she appears well-balanced in coordinated play. Let's take a closer look at kit and abilities to find out why she has such mixed results!
Strengths and Weaknesses Strengths
Powerful CC on a relatively short cooldown
Huge burst damage
Elusive abilities to dodge damage
Weaknesses
Poor initiation
Relies heavily on getting picks
Weak PvE and waveclear
Abilities
Trait
Vanish
Valeera vanishes from sight becoming Stealthed and increasing her Movement Speed by 10%. For the first second, she is Unrevealable and can pass through other units. 8 second cooldown.
Using Vanish grants Valeera a different set of Abilities while she remains Stealthed.
Basic Abilities (visible)
Sinister Strike (Q)
Dash forward, hitting all enemies in a line for 114.40 damage. If Sinister Strike hits a Hero, Valeera stops dashing immediately and the cooldown is reduced to 1 second. Awards 1 Combo Point. 5 second cooldown.
Blade Flurry (W)
Deal 135.20 damage in an area around Valeera. Awards 1 Combo Point per enemy Hero hit. 4 second cooldown.
Eviscerate (E)
Eviscerate an enemy, consuming Combo Points and dealing damage per Combo Point. 1s cooldown.
Basic Abilities (invisible)
Ambush (Q)
Ambush the target, instantly dealing 187.20 damage to the target. Awards 1 Combo Point.
Cheap Shot (W)
Deal 31.20 damage to an enemy and stun them for 1.50 seconds. Awards 1 Combo Point.
Garrote (E)
Garrote an enemy, dealing 78 damage instantly, an additional 182 damage over 7 seconds, and silencing them for 2 seconds. Awards 1 Combo Point.
Heroic Abilities
Smoke Bomb (R)
Create a cloud of smoke. While in the smoke, Valeera is Unrevealable, can pass through other units, and gains 25 Armor, reducing damage taken by 25%. Valeera can continue to attack and use abilities without being revealed. Lasts 5 seconds. 60 second cooldown.
Using this Ability does not break Vanish.
Cloak of Shadows (R)
Valeera is enveloped in a Cloak of Shadows, which immediately removes all damage over time effects from her. For 1 second, she becomes Unstoppable and gains 75 Spell Armor, reducing Ability Damage taken by 75%. 18 second cooldown.
Using this Ability does not break Vanish.
If you’re familiar with WoW Rogues, you’ll probably be familiar with Valeera’s kit. Designed as a stealthy combatant who uses smoke and misdirection to confuse her opponents, Valeera can whittle away her enemies and prepare them for the killing blow. And, of course, she excels at quickly dispatching isolated enemy heroes.
Compared to similar stealthy assassins, Valeera’s base kit is perhaps the most devastating. Between hard CC with Cheap Shot (W) or Garrote (E) and the insane amount of burst she brings to the table, she’s incredibly dangerous during the laning phase, and can straight up one-shot someone in the late game. Unfortunately, her power falls off dramatically in teamfights where stealth-revealing AoE and burst damage is prevalent.
Her Trait Vanish (D) is the defining characteristic of her playstyle. Using her stealthy tactics, she can gain vision on the map or wrap around an enemy for a flank while gaining a new set of game-changing abilities (Ambush, Cheap Shot, and Garrote). Keep in mind, she’s not actually invisible; Valeera will still show up as a shimmer on the screen, so wary opponents can anticipate her movements and knock her out of stealth before she combos.
Cheap Shot is by far her most powerful ability. With a 1.5 second stun on an 8 second cooldown, she is very dangerous in gank squads and CC chains. If you’re looking to shut someone down in a 1v1 though, the 2 second silence and raw DPS of Garrote tends to be the better choice.
Valeera's Hearthstone portrait
Blade Flurry (W) deals decent damage and provides minor waveclear, and Sinister Strike (Q) gives Valeera a small dash to dodge abilities or use as a gap closer. All of her abilities (including stealth) grant Combo Points when used against enemy heroes up to a maximum of three; those Combo Points can then be consumed for massive damage using Eviscerate (E). The most common combo is stealth ability into Blade Flurry and Sinister Strike before finishing the enemy off with Eviscerate, but various talents allow for several permutations of her basic combo.
Her Heroics are purely defensive and boost her survivability a great deal. Smoke Bomb (R) creates a cloud of smoke that gives Valeera extra Armor and makes her Unrevealable for a short time, allowing her to escape danger and continue throwing out damage. Cloak of Shadows (R) is usually used against heavy mage or burst comps, as it removes all damage over time effects, allows her to become Unstoppable, and greatly boosts her Spell Armor for a second. Smoke Bomb has usually been the favored Heroic, but it usually depends on the situation. If you're against auto attackers who rely on right-clicking you, take Smoke Bomb; if you're against lots of spell damage, Cloak of Shadows is the way to go.
Talents
Due to a strong base kit, Valeera’s build paths are quite flexible. The most common builds focus on empowering either Ambush for flat out deletion combos or Garrote for extra utility and damage. Either way, there’s still a lot of room for variation depending on the map and composition.
Valeera’s Ambush build is boosted significantly with talents like Assassinate and Death From Above which allow her to quickly close the gap and dispatch her enemies with extreme prejudice. Initiative and Cold Blood can be added to the mix for a huge boost in burst damage. If the opposing hero is a bit meatier, she can also use Thistle Tea sort of like Rewind to reset her energy costs and get two full combos off in a short time span.
Valeera Fanart by Zeronis
The Garrote build focuses more on dealing sustained damage and effectively zoning out opponents from their team. Hemorrhage and Rupture are the bread and butter of this build and allow Valeera to deal massive damage if left uncontested. She can also pick up Fatal Finesse to power up Blade Flurry for even more damage over time. This build pairs well with Smoke Bomb because of its synergy with Rupture and the focus on damage over time.
The one downside to Valeera is that she is limited by energy costs for her abilities, but luckily there are talents to mitigate her energy consumption issues. Vigor at level 1 is a globe talent that helps her build up additional energy regeneration as well as a larger energy pool that allows her to stay in the fight a bit longer. Subtlety and Relentless Strikes are also good energy-efficient options.
Professional Opinions
On Kit, Design, and Implementation Chu8, Streamer
Valeera seems to me like she stands somewhere between Nova and Zeratul—really good at player killing but not so much PvE like Nova, lots of potential maneuvers like Zeratul. In the hands of highly skilled mechanical player, Valeera will be really annoying to play against. But at the same time, she seems to be easily countered by stealth detection, which the game has plenty of. Valeera seems to me like she stands somewhere between Nova and Zeratul—really good at player killing but not so much PvE like Nova, lots of potential maneuvers like Zeratul. In the hands of highly skilled mechanical player, Valeera will be really annoying to play against. But at the same time, she seems to be easily countered by stealth detection, which the game has plenty of.
KendricSwissh, Streamer and Commentator
Valeera is probably one of, if not the most accurate, class transfers from World of Warcraft to Heroes of the Storm. She looks, sounds, and feels exactly like if you were playing a Rogue in WoW. When I first played her, I was surprised by how resilient she can be, especially after unlocking one of her Heroic abilities. Valeera is probably one of, if not the most accurate, class transfers from World of Warcraft to Heroes of the Storm. She looks, sounds, and feels exactly like if you were playing a Rogue in WoW. When I first played her, I was surprised by how resilient she can be, especially after unlocking one of her Heroic abilities.
McIntyre, B-Step
The only firm opinion I have is that she's a stealthed hero that has a 1.5 stun on an 8 second cooldown, and Evelynn got nerfed in League of Legends when she did the same thing on a much weaker level. The only firm opinion I have is that she's a stealthed hero that has a 1.5 stun on an 8 second cooldown, and Evelynn got nerfed in League of Legends when she did the same thing on a much weaker level.
Jowe, Coach
Her kit is amazing. She has everything: CC, good damage, high HP, a gap closer, an escape, and on top of that, the cooldowns are really short, plus she can restealth instantly. She can definitely snowball games right from the start, and her power continues to grow. Her talents are well designed. Seems like everything is optimal, but I think that’s due to the basic kit being so awesome. Her kit is amazing. She has everything: CC, good damage, high HP, a gap closer, an escape, and on top of that, the cooldowns are really short, plus she can restealth instantly. She can definitely snowball games right from the start, and her power continues to grow. Her talents are well designed. Seems like everything is optimal, but I think that’s due to the basic kit being so awesome.
MelodyC, ZeroPanda
Valeera is a special hero with two sets of skills. She's hard to master and requires a lot of practice. She consumes energy very quickly, so it's very important to control her energy consumption and deal as much damage as possible. Her Cheap Shot with a 1.5 stun is so imba that not only the back line is under pressure—when the front line is not with the team, they are also in danger when caught by Cheap Shot. I think Cheap Shot will be nerfed. Valeera is a special hero with two sets of skills. She's hard to master and requires a lot of practice. She consumes energy very quickly, so it's very important to control her energy consumption and deal as much damage as possible. Her Cheap Shot with a 1.5 stun is so imba that not only the back line is under pressure—when the front line is not with the team, they are also in danger when caught by Cheap Shot. I think Cheap Shot will be nerfed.
Wings, Super Perfect Team
Valeera has the strongest solo stun and highest burst damage with short cooldowns. For the Heroic ability, personally I prefer Smoke Bomb. With 5 seconds Unrevealable, she can keep attacking and wait for her trait, and the cooldown is only 60 seconds. Valeera has the strongest solo stun and highest burst damage with short cooldowns. For the Heroic ability, personally I prefer Smoke Bomb. With 5 seconds Unrevealable, she can keep attacking and wait for her trait, and the cooldown is only 60 seconds.
On Professional Play and Meta Changes KendricSwissh, Streamer and Commentator
I am almost certain that Valeera is going to make an appearance in HGC very soon, as her kit designed to be most efficient if used by mechanically strong players. I am almost certain that Valeera is going to make an appearance in HGC very soon, as her kit designed to be most efficient if used by mechanically strong players.
Jowe, Coach
As for competitive, she will have to fight for the spot with Zeratul who already needs to be respected in drafts, and I found out that the Protoss assassin has a really good matchup against her. As for competitive, she will have to fight for the spot with Zeratul who already needs to be respected in drafts, and I found out that the Protoss assassin has a really good matchup against her.
MelodyC, ZeroPanda
Her strength is insane solo hero control, burst damage, and great gank potential in the field, which can put a lot of pressure on the enemy team. Her weaknesses are slow wave clear and difficulty engaging in teamfights. Her strength is insane solo hero control, burst damage, and great gank potential in the field, which can put a lot of pressure on the enemy team. Her weaknesses are slow wave clear and difficulty engaging in teamfights.
On Map Composition and Viability Chu8, Streamer
I don't see her having crazy winrates, but she will be played as a niche pick like Nova and sometimes get really good value, sometimes be completely useless and flamed for being first-picked. I don't see her having crazy winrates, but she will be played as a niche pick like Nova and sometimes get really good value, sometimes be completely useless and flamed for being first-picked.
Wings, Super Perfect Team
A big flaw of Valeera is she relies on her trait to engage with her combo. If she's revealed, nearly 70% of her kit functionality is lost. So Tassadar, Valla, Diablo and other heroes with AoE damage are a great counter for Valeera. A big flaw of Valeera is she relies on her trait to engage with her combo. If she's revealed, nearly 70% of her kit functionality is lost. So Tassadar, Valla, Diablo and other heroes with AoE damage are a great counter for Valeera.
Final Thoughts MelodyC, ZeroPanda
Both of Valeera's Heroic abilities are very strong. When facing a team comp focused on basic attacks, Smoke Bomb would confuse the enemy (she is Unrevealable); if there are mages in the enemy team, Cloak of Shadows could ensure her survivability. Above all, using her trait to engage at the right time is the key. Both of Valeera's Heroic abilities are very strong. When facing a team comp focused on basic attacks, Smoke Bomb would confuse the enemy (she is Unrevealable); if there are mages in the enemy team, Cloak of Shadows could ensure her survivability. Above all, using her trait to engage at the right time is the key.
A huge thanks to everyone who contributed and also to yaya for Chinese translations!
Outcast—no word better describes Valeera's dark and muddled history. Left an orphan after her parents were killed by bandits, Valeera made a living off stealing from others and was soon imprisoned and sold as a gladiator. She formed a tight bond with her fellow gladiators Broll Bearmantle and Varian Wrynn and eventually escaped to find her own destiny. Now a member of The Uncrowned, a secretive order of rogues, she fights to take back what's been taken from her.To me, Valeera's storyline is perhaps one of the most compelling in WoW history and one of the reasons why I'm excited for her entrance into the Nexus. Her cloak and dagger playstyle resonates strongly with her roguish lore and makes her an exciting hero to play. As a high skill cap hero, well-seasoned players with good positioning and proper timing make her look broken while players in the lower echelons have trouble maximizing her kit. This polarizing effect can be seen in her relatively low win rate in the first week, but like Medivh, she appears well-balanced in coordinated play. Let's take a closer look at kit and abilities to find out why she has such mixed results!If you’re familiar with WoW Rogues, you’ll probably be familiar with Valeera’s kit. Designed as a stealthy combatant who uses smoke and misdirection to confuse her opponents, Valeera can whittle away her enemies and prepare them for the killing blow. And, of course, she excels at quickly dispatching isolated enemy heroes.Compared to similar stealthy assassins, Valeera’s base kit is perhaps the most devastating. Between hard CC with(W) or(E) and the insane amount of burst she brings to the table, she’s incredibly dangerous during the laning phase, and can straight up one-shot someone in the late game. Unfortunately, her power falls off dramatically in teamfights where stealth-revealing AoE and burst damage is prevalent.Her Trait(D) is the defining characteristic of her playstyle. Using her stealthy tactics, she can gain vision on the map or wrap around an enemy for a flank while gaining a new set of game-changing abilities (, and). Keep in mind, she’s not actually invisible; Valeera will still show up as a shimmer on the screen, so wary opponents can anticipate her movements and knock her out of stealth before she combos.is by far her most powerful ability. With a 1.5 second stun on an 8 second cooldown, she is very dangerous in gank squads and CC chains. If you’re looking to shut someone down in a 1v1 though, the 2 second silence and raw DPS oftends to be the better choice.(W) deals decent damage and provides minor waveclear, and(Q) gives Valeera a small dash to dodge abilities or use as a gap closer. All of her abilities (including stealth) grant Combo Points when used against enemy heroes up to a maximum of three; those Combo Points can then be consumed for massive damage using(E). The most common combo is stealth ability intoandbefore finishing the enemy off with, but various talents allow for several permutations of her basic combo.Her Heroics are purely defensive and boost her survivability a great deal.(R) creates a cloud of smoke that gives Valeera extra Armor and makes her Unrevealable for a short time, allowing her to escape danger and continue throwing out damage.(R) is usually used against heavy mage or burst comps, as it removes all damage over time effects, allows her to become Unstoppable, and greatly boosts her Spell Armor for a second.has usually been the favored Heroic, but it usually depends on the situation. If you're against auto attackers who rely on right-clicking you, take; if you're against lots of spell damage,is the way to go.Due to a strong base kit, Valeera’s build paths are quite flexible. The most common builds focus on empowering eitherfor flat out deletion combos orfor extra utility and damage. Either way, there’s still a lot of room for variation depending on the map and composition.Valeera’sbuild is boosted significantly with talents likeandwhich allow her to quickly close the gap and dispatch her enemies with extreme prejudice.andcan be added to the mix for a huge boost in burst damage. If the opposing hero is a bit meatier, she can also usesort of liketo reset her energy costs and get two full combos off in a short time span.Thebuild focuses more on dealing sustained damage and effectively zoning out opponents from their team.andare the bread and butter of this build and allow Valeera to deal massive damage if left uncontested. She can also pick upto power upfor even more damage over time. This build pairs well withbecause of its synergy withand the focus on damage over time.The one downside to Valeera is that she is limited by energy costs for her abilities, but luckily there are talents to mitigate her energy consumption issues.at level 1 is a globe talent that helps her build up additional energy regeneration as well as a larger energy pool that allows her to stay in the fight a bit longer.andare also good energy-efficient options. StrategyGEORGE OSBORNE sees himself as a reformer. The chancellor promised that, unlike his Labour predecessors, he would take tough decisions to improve the economy, whether this was liberalising planning to boost housebuilding, promoting competition between energy firms, or cutting red tape for businesses. When in opposition, Mr Osborne also |
alm Bay City Councilman Tres Holton said he supports the County Commission voting to put a proposal on the November ballot to raise the sales tax by a half cent on the dollar to help pay for road repairs.
He said the Palm Bay City Council, as well as the government bodies in six other Brevard municipalities, have supported having such a referendum.
“We believe the people should have a voice,” Holton said. “They should have a right to speak on this. Let the voters vote on it, and let them have a say.”
County Commissioner Robin Fisher said he is frustrated that the backlog of road repair work has built up so much without the County Commission taking action.
“The quality of life is very important to this county, and it is unfortunate that this can has been kicked down the road, kicked down the road and kicked down the road,” said Fisher, who is in his eighth and final year as a county commissioner, as are Anderson and Infantini. “At the end of the day, we’ve just got to make a decision.”
County Commission Chairman Jim Barfield, who pushed forward the discussion on the gas tax increase, said he is anxious for some resolution to the issue of how to pay for road work.
“We’re looking for solutions,” Barfield said. “I just want a decision.”
As the December hearing on the gas tax increase was winding down, Barfield — who, like Smith, just completed his first year as a commissioner — said: “I feel like I’ve been here for 10 years. I mean, that’s just tonight.”
Contact Berman at 321-242-3649 or dberman@floridatoday.com. Follow him on Twitter @ByDaveBerman and on Facebook at facebook.com/dave.berman.54
[Interactive: How would you find more money for Brevard's road projects?]
WORKSHOP THURSDAY
The Brevard County Commission will hold a gas tax workshop at 1 p.m. Thursday at the Brevard County Government Center, Building C, 2725 Judge Fran Jamieson Way, Viera.
Read or Share this story: http://on.flatoday.com/1OVhhR2By Nathan Halverson, The Center for Investigative Reporting
If the rest of the world ate like Americans, the planet would have run out of freshwater 15 years ago, according to the world's largest food company.
In private, Nestle executives told U.S. officials that the world is on a collision course with doom because Americans eat too much meat and now, other countries are following suit, according to a secret U.S. report—Tour D'Horizon with Nestle: Forget the Global Financial Crisis, the World is Running Out of Fresh Water.
Producing a pound of meat requires a tremendous amount of water because farmers use tons of crops such as corn and soy to feed each animal, which require tens of thousands of gallons of water to grow. It is far more efficient when people eat the corn or soy directly.
The planet is a on a “potentially catastrophic" course as billions of people in countries such as India and China begin eating more beef, chicken and pork like their counterparts in Western countries, according to the 2009 report released by WikiLeaks and first reported by Reveal at The Center for Investigative Reporting in a cache of water-related classified documents. The Chinese now eat about half as much meat as Americans, Australians and Europeans, a figure that continues to rapidly rise as more Chinese are lifted out of poverty and into the middle class.
And Nestle—which makes Gerber baby food, Nescafe, Hot Pockets, DiGiorno pizza, Lean Cuisine, Stouffer's, Nestea, Dreyer's and Haagen-Dazs ice cream—is deeply concerned.
Here are eight takeaways, with key quotes from the secret report:
1. Global water shortages are just around the corner.
“Nestle thinks one-third of the world's population will be affected by fresh water scarcity by 2025, with the situation only becoming more dire thereafter and potentially catastrophic by 2050."
2. Major regions, including in the U.S., are being drained of their underground aquifers.
“Problems with be severest in the Middle East, northern India, northern China and the western United States."
3. Excessive meat-eating is driving water depletion.
“Nestle starts by pointing out that a calorie of meat requires 10 times as much water to produce as a calorie of food crops. As the world's growing middle classes eat more meat, the earth's water resources will be dangerously squeezed."
4. There's plenty of water to feed everyone a diet that's not so meatcentric.
“Nestle reckons that the earth's maximum sustainable freshwater withdrawals are about 12,500 cubic kilometers per year. In 2008, global freshwater withdrawals reached 6,000 cubic kilometers or almost half of the potentially available supply. This was sufficient to provide an average 2,500 calories per day to the world's 6.7 billion people, with little per capita meat consumption."
5. The American diet is eating the world dry.
“The current U.S. diet provides about 3,600 calories per day with substantial meat consumption. If the whole world were to move to this standard, global fresh water resources would be exhausted at a population level of 6 billion, which the world reached in the year 2000."
6. This is an even bigger problem now that other countries are eating like America and the global population's set to grow by two billion by 2050.
“There is not nearly enough fresh water available to provide this standard to a global population expected to exceed 9 billion by mid-century."
7. So what's Nestle's prediction for the future? Think “Mad Max" …
“It is clear that current developed country meat-based diets and patterns of water usage do not provide a blueprint for the planet's future. Based on present trends, Nestle believes that the world will face a cereals shortfall of as much as 30 percent by 2025. (Nestle) stated it will take a combination of strategies to avert a crisis."
8. Why is this the first time you're hearing this from the world's largest food company?
“Sensitive to its public image, Nestle has maintained a low profile in discussing solutions and tries not to preach … the firm scrupulously avoids confrontation and polemics, preferring to influence its audience discretely by example."
Nathan Halverson is an Emmy Award-winning reporter and producer for Reveal, covering business and finance with a current emphasis on the global food system. Follow him on Twitter: @eWords.
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Should You Worry About Arsenic in Baby Cereal and Drinking Water?The Constituency Commission has recommended increasing the number of TDs in the Dáil from 158 to 160, with some changes to constituencies around the country.
This would mean the next general election would be contested across 39 constituencies of which 13 will be five-seater constituencies, 17 will be four-seaters and nine will be three-seaters.
The commission examined the latest census information ahead of announcing its recommendations.
One of the new seats will be in Dublin Central which will return four TDs at the next election.
Cavan-Monaghan will have its Dáil representation boosted as it changes from a four-seat to a five-seat constituency.
Kildare-South will become a four-seater.
But there will still only be three seats up for grabs as it is the constituency of the Ceann Comhairle who is automatically returned.
At least one of the six TDs across the two constituencies of Laois and Offaly will lose out at the next election as those constituencies are to merge into a single five-seater one.America’s ritualized response to gun violence is no more comforting for being so familiar. The initial burst of horror. The ricochet of blame. The benumbed kin struggling to understand why guns are so readily available to people who are dangerous, reckless or disturbed.
There are peculiarities to this latest incident, in which two young journalists were killed and a woman was injured in Virginia on Wednesday. The shooting was broadcast on live television; the killer left a grisly trail on social media.
What’s consistent with previous violence is the gun.
Gun rights are protected in the Constitution, and the political environment is often (though not always) hostile to even the most rudimentary regulation of guns. But politicians are always eager to show how aggressively they fight crime. So maybe there’s some benefit from a short explanation of how guns make crime worse.
Almost two decades ago, Franklin Zimring, a longtime researcher at the University of California at Berkeley, and a colleague, Gordon Hawkins, showed that the United States doesn’t have an especially high crime rate relative to other developed nations. But the United States is far more violent. Every conflict, from the mundane to the serious — not just domestic disputes and robberies, but traffic altercations and bar fights — is more deadly in the United States because of the presence of guns.
Gun violence is not unique to crime, of course. A gun can explode in the hand of a curious child. It can facilitate a hasty suicide.
Crime control is necessary to contain violence. But so is an effort to deal honestly with guns. That begins with a realization that dangerous people — criminals, of course, but also the mentally unstable — should be prevented from possessing firearms, and that laws will have to be changed to advance that goal. That realization broadly exists already, which is why Americans, including gun owners, overwhelmingly support a system of comprehensive background checks for gun purchases.
In the 1990s, Americans proved they were willing to confront a crime wave. Now they must find the will to deal with the gun wave. The brief lives of Alison Parker and Adam Ward are two more reasons not to give up.
Editorial by Bloomberg View
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filed under:George Osborne has confirmed he wants to scrap the 50p top rate of tax because it is not raising significant amounts of money for the Treasury.
The Chancellor branded the 50p rate "uncompetitive" and said there was "not much point" in having taxes that brought in little revenue.
In an interview at the weekend, he said the tax was not "a lasting rate" and indicated that he believes the current top rate of tax will drive businessmen and wealth creators out of Britain at a time when the Government wants them to create jobs to help boost growth.
We’ll tell you what’s true. You can form your own view. From 15p €0.18 $0.18 $0.27 a day, more exclusives, analysis and extras.
The Independent revealed earlier this month that Mr Osborne was considering scrapping the levy after Treasury analysts predicted that it would raise only marginal amounts. At the time, this was dismissed by Mr Osborne's aides. But yesterday he insisted: "There is not much point in having taxes that are very economically inefficient.
"I have said with the 50p rate I don't see that as a lasting tax rate for Britain because it's very uncompetitive internationally, and people frankly can move. What is it actually raising? It's only been in operation for a year this tax."
The Chancellor's intervention will cheer Conservative backbenchers but puts him on a collision course with senior Liberal Democrats, who have said cutting taxes for the poor should be a priority.
HM Revenue & Customs is currently reviewing the rate to see exactly how much money it raises – with the results due next January.
We’ll tell you what’s true. You can form your own view.
At The Independent, no one tells us what to write. That’s why, in an era of political lies and Brexit bias, more readers are turning to an independent source. Subscribe from just 15p a day for extra exclusives, events and ebooks – all with no ads.
Subscribe now.French Prime Minister Manuel Valls arrived in Saudi Arabia Monday on the third leg of a Middle East tour, hoping to secure large sales of French military equipment despite the kingdom’s questionable human rights record.
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He arrived at the start of the Saudi-French Business Opportunities Forum, which will be attended by some 200 French companies seeking contracts with the oil-rich kingdom.
Valls, accompanied by his Defence Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian, is expected to sign a “significant” deal with Saudi Arabia on behalf of Airbus Helicopters for the sale of military aircraft.
But his visit comes amid rising concerns about human rights in Saudi Arabia.
Valls met with King Salman to request "a gesture of pardon, humanity and clemency" for a young Shiite, Ali al-Nimr, sentenced to death for taking part in anti-government demonstrations in 2012.
While this gesture is to be applauded, France is still sending a “mixed message” by asking for clemency while being one of the top arms suppliers to a country suspected of committing war crimes, according to Amnesty International.
Amnesty France spokesman Aymeric Elluin told FRANCE 24 the Saudis are suspected of using banned cluster munitions and illegally targeting civilians in its campaign against Shiite Houthi rebels in neighbouring Yemen.
“Article six of the International Arms Trade Treaty forbids the sale of weapons that can be used to commit violations of international law,” he said. “France’s arms business is far from transparent, and we don’t know exactly what weapons are going to be sold or exactly how they are going to be used.”
“Yes, pleading for the life of a young man sentenced to be beheaded and crucified is important,” he added. “France campaigns globally against capital punishment, but you can’t do that while selling weapons that risk being used to commit war crimes. It sends a dangerous mixed message.”
France welcomes Saudi cash
France cannot easily ignore a customer like Saudi Arabia, however. With high unemployment and low economic growth, large foreign arms contracts are a welcome boost to the French economy.
Vall’s whistle-stop Middle East tour has certainly been a profitable exercise.
On Saturday he finalised a deal with Egypt that will buy two French-built Mistral helicopter warships, which can each carry 16 helicopters, four landing craft and 13 tanks.
In February, Egypt became the first foreign buyer of France's Rafale fighters, in a 5.2-billion-euro deal for 24 of the multi-role combat jets and a frigate.
According to French government sources, Egypt will pay 950 million euros for the warships which were originally ordered by Russia in a deal scrapped over the Ukraine crisis, with "significant" financing from Saudi Arabia.
Riyadh has also expressed an interest in warships of the Mistral class, and is considering the purchase of four French-Italian FREMM (European Multi-Mission Frigate) vessels.
In November 2014, Riadh committed to buying $3 billion-worth (€2.7 billion) of French weapons and military equipment to supply the Lebanese army.
Last year, the Saudis surpassed India to become the world’s biggest arms importer, upping its spending by 54 percent to $6.5 billion (€5.8 billion), according to a report by industry analyst IHS.It’s World Homeopathy Awareness Week. Today’s post examines the Canadian regulatory framework for homeopathic remedies.
Homeopathy is an alternative medicine system that was invented in the 1800’s and involves three main concepts: like-cures-like (what causes a symptom can cure a symptom); individualized treatments (remedy selection considers factors like emotion and mood); and less-is-more (water has memory, and substances that are progressively diluted (and shaken) become stronger, not weaker.) If homeopathy worked, what is known about biochemistry, physics, and pharmacology is wrong. As expected, upon rigorous examination, there is no convincing evidence that effects attributed to homeopathy are anything more than placebo effects. Yet not only are homeopathic products sold in Canada, their sale is regulated by the federal government, through Health Canada’s Natural Health Products Directorate. And we are assured of of the following:
Through the Natural Health Products Directorate, Health Canada ensures that all Canadians have ready access to natural health products that are safe, effective and of high quality, while respecting freedom of choice and philosophical and cultural diversity. [emphasis added]
So, what gives? Science has established that homeopathy is no more effective than a placebo. How did Health Canada determine otherwise?
The Intent of Regulation
Health Canada sets the regulatory standards that determine which health and food products can be sold in Canada. Until several years ago, Canadian natural health products (NHPs) fell into a regulatory grey zone. Products were treated either as drugs, or as foods. Consultation began in the late 1990’s on a new framework to provide appropriate levels of regulation and oversight to these products. In 1998, a report was tabled in the House of Commons: Natural Health Products: A New Vision. It gave 53 recommendations, which included the following (emphasis added):
#19. NHPs be allowed to make health claims, including structure-function claims, risk-reduction claims and treatment claims.
#20. Claims be assessed to ensure that there is reasonable evidence supporting the claim.
. #21. The evidence not be limited to double blind clinical trials but also include other types of evidence such as generally accepted and traditional references, professional consensus, other types of clinical trials and other clinical or scientific evidence.
#22. The evidence required vary depending on the type of claim being made, with different evidence being required for structure-function claims and risk-reduction claims for minor self-limiting conditions than for therapeutic or treatment claims.
#23. The label indicates clearly the type of evidence used to support the claim.
In 2004, the Natural Health Product Regulations (NHPR), under Canada’s Food and Drugs Act, became a reality. Rather than fully regulating these products as drugs, or leaving them virtually unregulated (as is done in the United States), the NHPR were a regulatory compromise: Implementing manufacturing quality and safety standards, while significantly relaxing the standards for product efficacy claims. The NHP regulations include products such as nutritional supplements, probiotics, traditional Chinese medicine, vitamins, herbal products, and homeopathy. It’s less clear why homeopathy was included, because homeopathy, at typical dilutions, don’t contain a single molecule of the original substance. In addition, homeopathy can involve “dilution” of substances that are not natural. For example, a piece of the Great Wall of China, a shred of plastic wrap, gunpowder, or even prescription drugs like pregabalin can be converted into homeopathic “remedies” and are claimed to treat different symptoms.
The Current Day
The Natural Health Products Directorate has now been established for several years. It has published detailed guidelines for the manufacturing, labeling and marketing claims for the different categories of NHPs. Staff at the Directorate evaluate and approve new license applications. Approved products are licensed into two categories, and given unique identification numbers:
DIN-HM (homeopathic remedy number) – all homeopathy
NPN (natural health product number) – all other natural products, including vitamins, probiotics, etc.
On this basis, Health Canada’s granting of a DIN-HM means a review of safety and efficacy of a particular homeopathy remedy has been conducted, and a specific recommendation for use has been formally approved for the label.
So on what basis is Health Canada determining these remedies to be effective? It all comes down to the evidence standard.
What is Homeopathic “Evidence”?
Health Canada’s Evidence for Homeopathic Medicines: Guidance Document states that applications for licenses for homeopathic products must include evidence to support the “safety, efficacy, and quality” of a homeopathic medication. All “homeopathic medicine” must be from substances referred to in the following:
Homeopathic Pharmacopeia of the United States (HPUS)
Homöopathisches ArzneiBuch (HAB)
Pharmacopée française (PhF)
European Pharmacopoeia (Ph.Eur.)
Encyclopedia of Homeopathic Pharmacopoeia (EHP)
There are two categories of remedies: those that include a recommended use, and those that do not. If the manufacturer wants to include a recommended use for the product, “evidence” must be provided. Health Canada accepts different levels of evidence, from clinical trials, down to what it calls “traditional use”. The two most common types of traditional use claims are provings, and references to homeopathic materia medica:
Provings: A homeopathic “proving” has nothing to do with proof – it’s simply the exposure of an undiluted remedy to one or more healthy people, who document anything they experience. The symptoms that are noted during a proving are believed to be the symptoms that the diluted remedy will cure – “like cures like”. For a sample proving, check out the light reflecting off Saturn, and here are a few excerpts from a proving of a piece of the Berlin Wall:
I am in a new room, a stranger, nobody wants to have anything to do with me. German language is spoken. The room is a kind of cellar, half underground. They cannot see me really, there is something with their eyes. I want to touch people all the time I detest that in myself.
Immediately when touching the remedy I feel more at ease, I feel a separation between my energy and the energy of the other/the outside.
Holding the remedy for a while gives a tremendous rise of grief and sadness, so huge you would drown in it.
Materia Medica: Homeopathic manufacturers can use materia medica, which are essentially compilations of information derived from provings. Again, there is no objective evaluation of efficacy in materia medica. Health Canada offers a list of 59 references it will accept, but indicates that the list is “not intended to be all inclusive.” Here’s a few references deemed acceptable, in bold, along with other notable dates to illustrate the parallel process in medical and other sciences.
1834- Publication of homeopathic reference: Traité de matière médicale ou de l’action pure des médicaments homéopathiques.
1846 – Publication of homeopathic reference: Doctrine et traitement des maladies chroniques
1854 – Publication of homeopathic reference: Codex des médicaments homéopathiques.
1870 – Germ theory of disease proposed by Louis Pasteur and Robert Koch
1864 – Pasteurization introduced
1874 – Incandescent light bulb invented
1882 – Organism that causes tuberculosis identified
1890 – Publication of homeopathic reference: The Guiding Symptoms of our Materia Medica. (10 vol.)
1895 – Discovery of X-Rays
1897 – Aspirin invented
1899 – Publication of homeopathic reference: Formulaire de thérapeutique positive (Homoepathie).
1907 – Vitamin C is isolated and identified
1913 – Commercial availability of first vaccine, for diphtheria
1935 – Description of first antibiotic, Prontosil, published
1953 – Double-helix structure of DNA proposed by Watson and Crick
…and so on
Information from provings or materia medica may be used to support the requested conditions of use, including claim, dose, route of administration, etc. Allowing anecdotes from the 1830’s as evidence of efficacy may be seen to be a generous standard. But to some, the current standards for homeopathic evidence are too stringent. In a 2008 consultation on the regulations Health Canada noted,
For the most part stakeholders agreed that Health Canada’s current definition of homeopathic medicines (HMs) is too restrictive and that pharmacopeias may not be up to date with today’s more advanced or newly developed homeopathic remedies.
It could be because older pharmacopeias likely don’t include entries on the latest homeopathic remedies, like “Mobile Phone 900mHz”, “Vacuum Cleaner Dust”, “MRI Scan”, or “Swimming Pool Water”.
What are the Consequences of a Lowered Bar for Efficacy?
It’s clear that the NHP regulations create a efficacy standard that is significantly weaker than the standard established for medicine. But homeopathic product stands out as particularly problematic from a licensing perspective. Consider the following:
Quality Assessment: With drug products and herbal products, final product testing can validate the active ingredient and amount of medicinal product per unit. This is impossible with homeopathic remedies. There is no way for Health Canada, or anyone else to distinguish between typical remedies. What this means is there is no way for anyone to tell if a homeopathic product is “mislabelled”. There is actually no way to test if a product has been prepared “properly” or not – a manufacturer could simply package bulk lactose tablets in vials, and claim it is any homeopathic remedy. Not surprisingly, Health Canada does not require final product quality tests that verify the original substance.
Expiry Date: Drug products are subject to stability testing to verify the ongoing stability and safety over time. Quantitative analysis is done to understand how quickly a product will deteriorate, and the expiry date is established based on this information. Health Canada says that for homeopathic products, the expiry date is:
the date, expressed at minimum as a year and month, up to and including which a NHP maintains its purity and physical characteristics and its medicinal ingredients maintain their quantity per dosage unit and their potency.
Given there are no medicinal ingredients in most remedies, and the potency cannot be independently verified, it’s not clear how the homeopathic expiry date is established. Furthermore, given the concept that less-is-stronger, it’s not clear why remedies don’t get stronger and stronger over time.
Product Labelling and Marketing: When the Canadian Government began the consultation process for regulating natural health products, an entire chapter of the final report was dedicated to informed choice:
To ensure successful decision-making, we feel that people must have both knowledge and authority.
The committee continued:
From the Committee’s perspective, there is a dual role for the regulator; first, in ensuring that full and accurate information is readily available and second, in facilitating consumers’ ability to make reasonable decisions about product use. These objectives can be achieved in two ways: through research and through information dissemination.
In order for consumers to make good decisions, they need to be fully informed about what they’re purchasing. In the interest of full disclosure, labels should ideally identify to consumers that homeopathic products contain little to no active ingredients, and that homeopathy has not been demonstrated to be effective, beyond a placebo, for any effect.
Case Study
Let’s look at one particular product that’s been approved in Canada, as well as countries around the world: Oscilliococcinum. This product is prepared by decapitating a duck, taking 35 grams of its liver and 15 grams of its heart and fermenting it for 40 days. The product then undergoes serial dilutions (1 part in 100) 200 times in a row, (i.e., 200C) and then dried on lactose/sucrose tablets. It’s been noted that in order to obtain even a single molecule of the original fermented duck, a volume of tablets greater that the mass of the entire universe would need to be consumed. Therefore it is mathematically impossible that there is any of the original product in final product sold. Consulting Health Canada’s NHP database (Search item 80014156 here) Health Canada has approved the product, with the labelled medicinal ingredient as “Extract of the liver and heart of Annas barbariae: 200C” and the following recommended use (translated from French):
Homeopathic medicine to relieve flu symptoms: fever, chills, body aches, headaches.
Not surprisingly, there’s no convincing evidence that Oscilliococcinum is anything more than a placebo – and how could it be? The final product is simple lactose and sucrose.
Regulation in Other Countries
The regulation of homeopathic products was recently scrutinized in the United Kingdom, by the parliamentary science and technology committee. The Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA), (their version of Health Canada), was criticized for allowing label claims for the remedy Arnica montana 30C:
…we fail to see why the label test design should be acceptable to the MHRA given that, first, it considers that homeopathic products have no effect beyond placebo and, second, Arnica Montana 30C contains no active ingredient and there is no scientific evidence that it has been demonstrated to be efficacious.
The committee gave specific guidance to the MHRA:
If the MHRA is to continue to regulate the labelling of homeopathic products, which we do not support, we recommend that the tests are redesigned to ensure and demonstrate through user testing that participants clearly understand that the products contain no active ingredients and are unsupported by evidence of efficacy, and the labelling should not mention symptoms, unless the same standard of evidence of efficacy used to assess conventional medicines has been met.
Trickle-down Effects
Health Canada’s decision to regulate and allow unproven claims for homeopathic products has had broader consequences. Health Canada’s approval of any product, pharmaceutical, homeopathic or otherwise, is seen as an important and credible quality indicator. Earlier this year, the National Association of Pharmacy Regulatory Authorities (NAPRA) advised pharmacists that only NHPs approved by Health Canada should be sold in pharmacies:
When presented with a product that does not bear a number issued by Health Canada, it leaves the pharmacist and their patient with no confirmation that the product was properly assessed for its safety, efficacy and quality nor granted approval for sale. (emphasis added)
This guidance infers that a homeopathic remedy that has been approved with a DIN-HM is both safe and effective, and pharmacies can accept Health Canada’s evaluation as that evidence.
Value-For-Money?
The Fraser Institute estimates that the NHPD has cost over $9 million per year since it was created in 1999. A sizeable proportion of its efforts have been devoted to homeopathy including guidance documents, defining evidence standards, homeopathic “research priority setting consultation“, licensing homeopathic products, and even putting a homeopath on its Expert Advisory Committee. While certain elements of the NHP regulations are probably worthwhile (particularly the regulation of herbal products), the inclusion of homeopathy is puzzling. Given its pre-scientific methodology, final products without medicinal ingredients, and demonstrable lack of efficacy, the value-for-money of regulation is questionable.
Conclusion
Health Canada has implemented a regulatory system for homeopathy that seeks to adapt a system of sympathetic magic into a structured, scientific process. To do so, it has essentially eliminated the requirement that homeopathy be supported by credible evidence. This regulation has led to a licensing framework that is fundamentally unfair to consumers, as it does not disclose that most homeopathic products don’t contain a single molecule of the product that is named on the label. Further, it allows centuries-old anecdotal evidence as justification for “recommended uses”. Finally, it reinforces homeopathy’s legitimacy by assigning distinct numbers (actually calling them homeopathic “medicine” numbers) to indistinguishable sugar pills.
Health Canada’s current framework for regulating homeopathic products wastes resources and compromises the regulator’s credibility. Why bother regulating homeopathy? There is no more of a need to regulate homeopathy than there is to regulate the tools of psychics, ghost hunters, wizards or astrologists.
An evidence-based, science-based approach would mean Health Canada would forbid all treatment statements (“recommended uses”) with homeopathic remedies, as none have been substantiated. An appropriate regulatory framework would consider the following:
If a remedy is not sufficiently dilute, it can have medicinal effects. These products should therefore be treated as drugs, and subject to the same regulatory standards, where persuasive, objective, clinical trial evidence must be produced before specific “recommended uses” are allowed. Approved products would then be assigned drug identification numbers.
If homeopathy is sufficiently dilute, it contains no active ingredients and is not a health-related product. For these products, Health Canada adds no value by regulating homeopathy, and, in fact, unnecessarily legitimize the products in the process. Regulations and safety standards are already in place for selling table sugar and drinking water – and these are adequate to protect Canadian consumers who elect to use homeopathy.Ready to fight back? Sign up for Take Action Now and get three actions in your inbox every week. You will receive occasional promotional offers for programs that support The Nation’s journalism. You can read our Privacy Policy here. Sign up for Take Action Now and get three actions in your inbox every week.
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Credit: Jake Naughton. Support provided by the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting.
This story is part of a Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting collaboration between African and American journalists on reproductive health issues.
Seventeen years ago, as apartheid came to an end and a democratically elected government took power, South Africa seemed ready to become an abortion rights pioneer. In 1996, the post-apartheid legislature passed the first law in sub-Saharan Africa legalizing abortion without restriction in the first trimester, and with a doctor’s approval thereafter. The new rules allowed women to walk into a public hospital or clinic, confirm their pregnancy and gestation period, and receive a free abortion if they were fewer than thirteen weeks along in their pregnancy. Simple and straightforward, the law is “probably the most progressive [abortion] law in the world,” says Jane Harries, director of the Women’s Health Research Unit at the University of Cape Town. But sixteen years on, the promise of access, no matter how liberal, “doesn’t necessarily translate into services that are available.” In today’s South Africa, it is often faster and easier to get an illegal abortion than a legal one. Ad Policy
Seventeen-year-old Marie (not her real name) has a story that is all too typical. When she found out she was pregnant, ”I wanted to kill my boyfriend,” she told us. Equally furious and fearful, she hid the news for months from her aunt and cousins, with whom she lived just outside Port Elizabeth, a waning shipping town on South Africa’s eastern coast. “I wanted an abortion,” Marie says. “It took me a long time to get the R140 [roughly $16] to get to the clinic.” When her belly was finally too big to hide, her aunt banished her, and Marie went to stay with her boyfriend. Once she got to a clinic, Marie says, ”I waited for a long time. When they finally did the scan, they said it was too late to abort. They could not help me.” Related Article South Africa’s Barriers to Abortion Jake Naughton, Jina Moore and Estelle Ellis
Marie’s story is repeated across the country. Free abortion is guaranteed at public hospitals and clinics designated by the government to offer the service. Yet less than half the facilities so designated actually offer the procedure. And even that’s an improvement over four years ago, when only 25 percent were providing services—more than a decade after legalization.
As a result, women like Marie have to run a gantlet when they need abortion services. Clinics are an expensive taxi ride away—for some South Africans, those taxi fares add up to a week’s wages—and even women with access to a household vehicle often don’t want their families or neighbors to know they need it for an abortion appointment. Plus the intake practices at these clinics, meant to streamline the high demand, mean that women have to schedule a procedure and then return later.
Last year, nearly 80,000 abortions were performed across South Africa, but women’s health experts are quick to point out that these numbers reflect the state’s current capacity, not the real demand.
Mfundo Mabenge, head of obstetrics and gynecology at Port Elizabeth’s Dora Nginza Hospital, blames the government for creating this crisis. “Government has failed us,” she says. “They compel us to offer a service for termination of pregnancy, but they give us no support.” Mabenge, like other Ob/Gyn chiefs we spoke with, was simply told to make space to provide abortions and then to offer them. The government covers the cost of the procedure, but Mabenge says there’s no money to add beds, mop the floors, or otherwise create and maintain a clinic space.
Meanwhile, Mabenge says, “demand is greater than we can handle.” Nationally, the number of abortions performed jumped nearly a third between 2010 and ’11. Joe Maila, spokesman for the national Department of Health, says the South African government doesn’t measure “demand” for abortion. But Mabenge’s hospital sees as many as twenty patients a day requesting one; the number of abortions there doubled between January and June 2012, even as the staff dropped from four to two midwives.
Mabenge’s colleagues across the country face similar problems. “There’s a huge shortage of abortion-care providers in this country,” says Harries. “Facilities are designated, but there are no people to provide the services.” That’s partly because abortion is a contentious topic, and nurses who oppose the procedure often elect not to work in their clinic’s abortion wing. Willing nurses, meanwhile, may be discouraged by peer pressure.
Behind every abortion, of course, is an unintended or unwanted pregnancy. Lack of access to contraceptives is the most commonly cited cause of those pregnancies, according to the South African health professionals we interviewed. The World Bank has found that 60 percent of South African women use contraceptives, but access varies greatly by community. Less than half of sexually active teenagers report using condoms; nearly 20 percent report forgoing contraception entirely. Meanwhile, in the Eastern Cape, we heard stories of teens having sex for money, shoes or cellphone credit. Unemployment in South Africa hovers around 25 percent, and the recent and bloody strikes by black laborers at mining facilities have ignited a debate over the persistent social inequalities in the country nearly twenty years after the end of apartheid.
Sharon Hobo, a nurse in the Dora Nginza abortion facility, says teens in particular have difficulty gaining access to family planning services. “They say, ‘My mom doesn’t want me to go,’ or ‘The school hours clash with the clinic hours,’ ” Hobo says. There’s a broad social denial about teens’ sexual activity, but there |
grand total of $13. That even includes the authentic jerseys. … Looks like DeMarcus Cousins has a new, custom logo (from Chris Howell).
Soccer News : Tottenham Hotspur unveiled their new kit range on Facebook yesterday morning (which Paul had in yesterday’s ticker). “Not pictured: An all white option they’ll wear during home Champions League matches,” says Terence Kearns. “Thumbs up to all of em!” … For the first time since 1972, a Euro final will not feature a kit made by adidas (from Yellow Away Kit). … New kits for Real Oviedo (from Mark Coale). … Tweeter Ciaran Tighe sends in this article, “Torino’s New Jerseys For Next Season Are Once Again A Candidate For Sexiest In Europe.” … Lots of new kit news, all from Josh Hinton: Watford FC have new home,away, and alternate kits; Chivas (Liga MX); Napoli (Serie A); Real Sociedad (La Liga) have new home and aways; and Valencia (also La Liga) have very simplistic and very nice sponsor-less kits. He adds that Wigan have a new away (couldn’t find a website). … Here’s a look at the Leicester City third kit.
Grab Bag : “A new machine is being used to add rubber to the track, to give the cars better grip at the NASCAR race in Kentucky,” says David Firestone. “The NHRA has used a similar machine for some time.” … The Exeter Chiefs (a Rugby Club) will have “a stylish and vibrant new look inspired by the Northern Lights” when they take to the field for their exploits in cup competitions this season (from Stumpty Dumpty). … As garish colors and regrettable patterns invade the pro-tennis circuit, designers are rediscovering classic whites — and investing them with retro charm (from Tommy Turner).
And that’s going to do it for today. Everyone have a great day and I’ll catch you guys tomorrow, but until then…
Follow me on Twitter @PhilHecken
Peace.
.. …..
“No need for a clock at a baseball game!”
— Kevin Zdancewicz“The Greatest” was one of America’s most famous Muslims, but you wouldn’t know that from his official social media pages — and that's a problem. “To ignore Muhammad Ali as a Muslim is to ignore Muhammad Ali as a man.”
Muhammad Ali, who died a year ago June 3, is remembered as a boxing legend, an Olympian, a civil rights warrior, a humanitarian, and a trailblazer for Parkinson’s disease awareness. But one central part of his identity is missing from the official Ali Instagram and Twitter feeds: the proud, unapologetic Muslim. Islam is conspicuously absent from the Ali brand, which is owned and managed by a New York–based licensing company that also owns the rights to Marilyn Monroe, Elvis Presley, and other American superstars. In 2013, Authentic Brands Group paid an undisclosed amount for Ali’s intellectual property, including troves of photos and videos, as well as trademarked slogans such as “Float Like A Butterfly, Sting Like A Bee.” ABG, as the licensing company is known, runs the Ali social media accounts. With more than 2 million Instagram followers, 876,000 Twitter followers, and 11.8 million Facebook “likes,” the feeds are the main conduit for introducing Ali to a new generation of Americans coming of age after his death. His Facebook biography notes "his early relationship with the Nation of Islam," but the role Islam played in his life stops there. There are black-and-white photos of Ali visiting a hospital, embracing Nelson Mandela, and standing next to Martin Luther King Jr. But in the dozens of photos on posts dating back years, there’s not a clue that “The Greatest” was Muslim, an omission so glaring that it seems deliberate.
Sherman Jackson, a Muslim professor at the University of Southern California who’s written extensively about Islam and black America, said Ali’s religion is an inconvenient fact for companies looking to profit by putting his image on T-shirts, hats, and posters. Jackson, who delivered a eulogy at Ali’s funeral in Kentucky, said the duty now falls to American Muslims to ensure that a central part of his legacy isn’t lost to revisionism and commercialization.
“It’s up to Muslims to really understand his legacy, to really preserve it, and to put it where it ought to be in terms of the pantheon,” Jackson said. When first reached by BuzzFeed News, Authentic Brands Group spokesperson Haley Steinberg said the company consults closely with the Ali family about how his brand is managed and offered to arrange an interview with a senior marketing officer. A few days later, however, Steinberg said no one was available to comment. When asked why ABG declined to comment, Steinberg stopped replying. Ali’s widow, Lonnie Ali, was asked for comment via email but replied that she was unavailable until mid-August. Ali’s family has emphasized six core principles as key to his legacy: confidence, conviction, dedication, giving, respect, and spirituality. In public aspects of the Ali legacy, all those values are reflected except spirituality. Ramadan, the Islamic holy month, came and went without note on the Ali social media feeds. Same for Eid al-Fitr, a big Muslim holiday last month. BuzzFeed News found a single Facebook photo, posted back in 2014, referring to Ali as a Muslim, though he was photographed on many occasions embracing Islam, including on visits to Africa and the Middle East. Older generations of American Muslims can recall from memory their favorite images. There’s the unforgettable shot of Ali in white pilgrim’s robes performing the hajj. There’s one of him kneeling in a mosque as a ray of light shines upon him through a window. Another shows him sitting cross-legged with his hands cupped in prayer. Or the one of him kissing a Qur’an. Or holding a newspaper with the headline, “Allah is the greatest.” Or hanging out with Malcolm X.
Richard Drew / AP Muhammad Ali prays in the mosque at his former training camp, 1991.
Not one of those photos ever made it to the official Ali feeds that purport to guard his legacy. The feeds celebrate Ali’s activism and humanitarian work without naming the force that fueled it. Ali cited Islam when he filed for conscientious objector status, arguing that the Vietnam War violated teachings of the Qur’an. The Supreme Court eventually sided with Ali, but not before he lost millions of dollars in boxing income and was threatened with jail time. Islam served as a bridge when Ali traveled to Iraq in 1990 seeking the release of 15 US hostages, and when he asked Iran in 2015 to free then-jailed Washington Post reporter Jason Rezaian. “You’re really whitewashing him, so to speak, by not coming to terms with that. He was Muslim, and he was an American hero. He was black, and he was an American hero,” said Harris Zafar, a national spokesperson for Ahmadiyya Muslims and frequent commentator on US Muslim issues. “That’s how you honor him, not by erasing those traits of his.” Islam plays a bigger role at another keeper of his legacy, the Muhammad Ali Center in the boxer’s hometown of Louisville, Kentucky. The nonprofit center, a museum and event space for multicultural programs, has a spirituality pavilion that traces Ali’s journey to Islam. Speakers at the center have included several prominent Muslims, Muslims serve on the board, and Ali’s faith was discussed at events this month for the anniversary of his death. Still, Islam is in the background, absent from the center’s Twitter feed and website. “We don’t preach one religion over another,” said Becky Morris, a communications and marketing associate at the Ali Center. Quoting Ali, she said, “Rivers and streams all contain the same water.”
Michael B. Thomas / AFP / Getty Images Visitors at the Muhammad Ali Center in Louisville, Kentucky.
Ali made millions through his boxing career, but relied on endorsement and licensing deals once he retired. In 2006, a company controlled by concert promoter Robert Sillerman reportedly paid $50 million for an 80% stake in the rights to Ali’s name, image, likeness, and publicity. That company was then acquired by a private equity firm, which sold the Ali rights to Authentic Brands Group in 2013. A New York Times report on the sale said ABG’s plans for the Ali brand included deals with airlines, energy drinks, watches, financial services, an Ali hotel, and possibly even a Broadway show. Industry reports list about 40 brands that already have licensed rights to Ali, including Adidas, H&M, Dolce & Gabbana, Under Armour, and the skateboarding clothing line Supreme. The deals are worth millions, though it’s difficult to pinpoint how much money the Ali brand brings in annually. Authentic Brands Group is privately held and hasn’t issued public statements about sales revenues from Ali-related merchandise. A few Muslim groups have launched a quieter, parallel push to honor Ali’s legacy, recording online sermons and making inspirational memes out of Ali’s many defiant speeches. Weeks after Ali’s death last year, then-president Barack Obama invited the Ali family to his last White House observance of Eid, the end of the holy month of Ramadan. Zaki Barzinji, who served as the Obama administration’s US Muslim liaison and who attended Ali’s funeral on behalf of the White House, said the theme of the Eid event was Islam’s deep roots in the United States. In his address, Obama said Ali was “as proud of his blackness as he was of his faith.” “The crux of his remarks were about Muhammad Ali, about how he was a proud African-American, a proud Muslim, an example of how the Muslim community has been so integrated,” Barzinji said.
Brendan Smialowski / AFP / Getty Images A vendor sells Muhammad Ali memorabilia in Louisville, Kentucky.
Jihad Turk, president of Bayan Claremont, an Islamic seminary in Southern California, has raised hundreds of thousands of dollars to launch a new Ali-inspired program that blends Islamic studies and leadership skills. So far, 14 candidates are in the pipeline for the Muhammad Ali Scholarship for Spiritual Leadership. In a statement released via Bayan, Lonnie Ali said the scholarships “represent an extension of Muhammad Ali’s legacy” by training students to create a better public understanding of Islam. Turk, who was a signatory to Ali’s will, said the idea was to recognize how Islam is intertwined with the symbolism of Ali. “It’s not an insignificant or marginal aspect of the story of who Muhammad Ali was,” Turk said. “It was at the core of who he was, as a man and as a legend.” Muslim fans of Ali said playing down his religious identity is not only unfair, but historically inaccurate. Ali said repeatedly, and with characteristic bluntness: “Being a true Muslim is the most important thing in the world to me. It means more to me than being black or being American.” Islam wasn’t just important to Ali during life, but also in death. Preparations were years in the making, with careful attention paid to the rituals of the Islamic janazah, or funeral. Arash Markazi, an Iranian-American journalist at ESPN, attended the service, writing that it was “the most significant moment for Muslims in the United States and it was to honor the most significant Muslim in the United States.”
John Moore / Getty Images A packed Kentucky Exposition center for Muhammad Ali's Islamic prayer service, or janazah, after his death.
“To ignore Muhammad Ali as a Muslim is to ignore Muhammad Ali as a man,” Markazi wrote at the time. “The two are intertwined.” Ali’s death drew a rare national outpouring for an American Muslim, with many speakers invoking his lessons of justice and unity as the nation fragmented under the ugly presidential race at the time. Those conciliatory words were obliterated just days later, however, with the massacre at Pulse nightclub in Orlando. Muslims were back on the defensive, once again smeared as a group by a lone attacker’s actions, just as they were mourning the one man who made it OK, maybe even cool, to be Muslim in America. “A lot of young people in this age of Islamophobia are really almost starved for heroes who can inspire them to straighten their backs and hold up their heads,” Jackson, the professor, said. “And nobody really personified that as keenly, as forcefully, as unapologetically, as Muhammad Ali.” ●The FBI is offering a $10,000 reward for the return of its weapons. (Courtesy of the FBI)
The FBI is offering a $10,000 reward to help retrieve an assault-style weapon, a handgun and other equipment that was stolen July 10 from an agency vehicle that was parked along the H Street corridor in Northeast Washington.
Authorities said that the vehicle — a Ford Expedition — was locked and that someone smashed a rear window and took a secured gun lock box. The agent reported the missing items to police about 7:50 a.m.; the FBI said they think the break-in occurred between 12 a.m. and 2 a.m.
[FBI guns stolen from truck parked in Northeast Washington]
The missing items include a Rock River Arms LAR-15 rifle, similar to an AR-15; a Glock-22 handgun; a holster; a collapsible baton; pepper spray; two boxes of.40 caliber ammunition; protective head and eye gear; and a black TruckVault gun box.
Also in the box was a Motorola radio. The FBI says that after the theft, the channels were descrambled, rendering the radio useless.
The FBI is offering a $10,000 reward for the return of its weapons. (Courtesy of the FBI)
The FBI said in a statement that its agency along with D.C. police are “working to locate these weapons and remove them from the possession of the untrained individuals who may have them.”
Anyone with information about the weapon or other items is urged to call the FBI’s Washington field office at 202-278-2000.Jennifer Moss want her children, either boy or girl, to know that there’s no prescribed mold they need to fit.
“Time to clean up your toys and come downstairs to say our goodbyes.” I yell upstairs as two sweet boys come sliding down the stairs, giggling—still covered in markers and delight.
“Give your friend a great big hug and a kiss and tell him we’ll see him soon,”
“Mom, I can’t kiss him.”
“Why not?” I ask with a smile, imagining some funny, as-only-kids-will-say statement. Sadly, my smile withdrew as I heard the following response come out of my child’s mouth.
“Because Sam’s mom said that boys aren’t allowed to kiss each other.”
Fear. It creeps in like a villain who, even after dying one thousand times over by the hands of the comic book hero, manages to live on.
This incident left me befuddled. It felt similar to a time when my son showed a love of dance that was so intense it only made sense to enroll him in lessons. At three years old, he was the only boy in a class of all girls. Comments from other parents were surprising. My husband was particularly frustrated when one mother said, “Wow—that’s great of you. I just don’t think I can enroll her brother in dance. My husband would kill me.”
As a mother of a boy in a post-feminist society, I stopped a sole focus on career aspirations and cracking that ever-present glass ceiling and instead, altered my sightline. Raising a boy is one feat, and requires presence of mind and reaction timing surpassing that of an NFL quarterback. To raise a man, however, requires forethought and an open mind. It made perfect sense that Tom Matlack started Good Men Project—what struck me in my desire to better parent a boy, is how little support and information there is out there to do just that.
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In the UK, clinical psychologist Martin Seager has strongly vocalized the need to promote the study of male gender issues. Seager states, on Psychminded, that male and female genders have clearly evolved together in inter-relationships. He also comments to the following statistics, stating that these figures alone should put stress on the scientific community to invest more effort in understanding the new male gender dynamic.
Suicide rates for men are higher than that for women
National statistics show that men die significantly younger than women
Men are four times more likely to become dependent on alcohol than women
Men make up the vast majority of single homeless persons
Nearly all prisoners in the UK are male and the majority of these prisoners have mental health issues
Girls are vastly outperforming boys in school
Seager believes a focused British Psychology Society (BPS) section on “The Psychology of the Male Gender” would not only help to raise awareness of the gender-specific pressures affecting the overall well-being of men and boys in our society, but it will help us to understand the impact of fathering (and my hope: mothering) on our society and to address factors that may influence and develop better parents.
I couldn’t agree more with Seager and yet feel that we need to take it one step further and focus on parenting boys AND girls, not as individual genders but rather, integrated relationships. We need to think about gender as a plural, not a singular focus and respond as parents more systematically and more conscientiously when we address and think about gender issues.
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I was hit with the realization that we do little to hold society accountable for closing the gender gap while watching (funnily enough) a preview for Madagascar 3 with my son. Less than a minute in, the Penguins are yelling at each other, “You pillow fight like a bunch of little girls.” Normally, I try not to take these comments too seriously, but lately I’ve come to think not only about how this impacts my little girl, to have her gender tossed out as an insult, but I also wonder how much this affects my son. How does it impact his view of sister, of his mother, of his one-day wife?
I know there are equal parts derogation and slander of men in pop culture and with a new understanding that our children’s frontal cortex won’t fully develop until much later in life, I wonder why we hammer these ideas so deep into their tiny psyche that it may become almost impossible to extract? Why do we let fear creep in under the guise of funny cartoon penguins to emphasize that boys should feel badly about acting like girls?
So, back to my conundrum: should I encourage my son to be publicly affectionate? According to Eric Anderson, an American sociologist, who co-authored ‘It’s Just Not Acceptable Any More’: The Erosion of Homophobia and the Softening of Masculinity, I wouldn’t be alone. Anderson claims that hugging and kissing are part of a larger trend among male teens and young adults. The results of this survey counter a pre-existing belief that men (particularly boys) are discouraged from showing their affection. Although studies like these demonstrate the small steps we’ve made to end homophobia and gender stereotyping, it still feels like we’re a long way off from ending the conversation for good. Case in point: my son’s lesson in farewell etiquette gone awry.
After all this pondering, I continue to ask myself, what can I do to guide my kids in the right direction? How do I teach my son and daughter that grey isn’t an easy place to exist in an oftentimes black-and-white world? I came to many conclusions, but here are a few principles I hope my children adopt:
There is no prescribed mold
Fitting in does not equal feeling good
Calling someone a girl is one of the nicest compliments you can give
Embrace your core gifts regardless of pink or blue status
Real strength is showing how you feel, and not to fear your feelings
I make no claim that these ideologies are parental law. For me, parenting feels like a series of preparations to improve one’s ability to react. Tiny humans are variables so if I can teach my son to own his decisions, regardless of whether I’m in his ear or not, then I’ll be satisfied. Maybe next time he’ll be able to turn to his friend, arms open wide and say, “How about a hug ‘cause boys kiss boys in my house.”
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—Photo Tammra McCauley/Flickr(Click any image below to enlarge)
Prior to Britain’s control over all of what was to become British Canada (in the run up to confederation and independence), much of what was New France was governed by administrators based in Québec City and Montréal.
It is well known that the reach of New France extended from Labrador in the North, to New Orleans in the South.
But surprisingly, today, what were the “westernmost” reaches of New France rarely receive attention in the media or elsewhere outside of the Prairies (especially in Québec itself). It is a history which is better known to students from Western Canada than to those elsewhere (much of this history is mandatory learning material for high school students in the Prairie provinces).
When I first moved to Eastern Canada way back when, I was surprised (even shocked) to learn that very few people in Eastern Canada knew anything about the pre-British, pre-1763 New France influence throughout Manitoba, into the heart of Saskatchewan, and even into Alberta.
Coming from Alberta and having lived in all four Western Provinces, at the time I simply took it for granted that was a part of history which everyone everywhere knew about.
Funny how it is “Louisiana” which primarily manages to disproportionately steal everyone else’s thunder garner so much attention when it comes to talking about the “far-reaches” of New France and subsequent turns-of-events… but whatever… damned Cajuns, Zachary Richard & Louisiana!!! I suppose Louisiana is cool too 🙂
As an aside, I believe it was from the New France era that the word “Soyeu” became part of Prairie French in Western Canada, and particularly Albertan/Saskatchewan French. It’s an old word from Old Picard and old Wallon French which literally means to saw something in half… ie: “Wednesday” (which saws the week in half).
In Québec and Ontario, the closest might be the French expression “nombil de la semaine”, but “soyeu” is more of a direct translation for “Wednesday” than it is an expression.
When I moved to Québec at the beginning of the 2000s, I told a friend that I would call her on “Soyeu”. It was only when I saw the look her face that I realized that nobody outside of Western Canada knew what “soyeu” meant… Lundi, mardi, “soyeu“, jeudi, vendredi, samedi, dimanche — NOPE… just blank stares in both Québec and Ontario.
Nowdays, young Francophones in Alberta generally just say mercredi. However it is still interesting to know that there continues to be somewhat of a direct New France influence on Prairie French.
At least two French forts (and possibly two others) were built in Saskatchewan in the 1750s.
(The HBC established their own “Fort Espérance” after the British hand-over, but it is speculated that a New France fort existed at the same site in Saskatchewan much earlier)
At least one French fort (Fort la Biche) and possibly one other (Fort la Jonquière) were built in Alberta in the 1750s.
After the change of administration from New France to British North America, many of the forts in Western Canada continued to be administered by Francophone-ran trading companies, mostly as trading outposts (with an administration based in Montréal).
Others were converted to new regime military installations.
Yet others were abandoned.
Some have been restored and exist as museums today.
(ABOVE: Restored Ft. Rouge)
(ABOVE: Restored Fort Bas de la Rivière)
Some New France-era forts have since become major urban centres or modern-day communities. For example:
Fort Rouge became Winnipeg,
Fort Dauphin became Dauphin (MB),
Fort la Reine became Portage La Prairie (MB).
Of those forts which were abandoned, their locations are generally known, and markers have been placed where they once stood (such as the case for Fort Bourbon II, Fort à La Corne, or Fort Maurepas II). Yet many (perhaps most) have not undergone archaeological excavation (a fact which completely baffles me – but which could mean that many new and exciting discoveries are yet to come).
Of all the New France-era forts, the location of Fort à La Corne (in Saskatchewan) is the westernmost confirmed location. It was also the first place grain was grown in Western Canada. Its exact location was on an unstable sandy spit of land on the banks of the confluence of the North and South Saskatchewan Rivers. The spit of land was presumably washed away generations ago, and the earthen cliffs above the land began to fall into the river in 2009. The road and the trails leading to the exact location have now been closed.
For all you Google Streetview enthusiasts, you can view the viewpoint above the site by clicking here: https://www.google.ca/maps/@53.233378,-105.086365,3a,66.8y,44.32h,86.78t/data=!3m4!1e1!3m2!1sIubHklZaehf7EkWsfM19wg!2e0?hl=en
Fort La Biche and Fort la Jonquière
Yet there were two forts further West of Fort à La Corne, and their locations remain mysteries. I find it surprising that the fate, location, and historic roles of these two westernmost forts do continue to remain a major mystery.
Fort La Biche on the “La Biche River” in Alberta (the “Red Deer River” in English) was established at an unknown location. Many speculate it was actually established on or near the actual site of Red Deer Alberta, but I have not seen any proof that Red Deer was the actual location. The internet is almost silent on the issue (offering no proof of location).
The location of Fort La Jonquière also remains a mystery, but one with a potentially more exciting story, and perhaps a much more significant role in history.
There are four suspected locations for Fort La Jonquière:
Prince Albert, Saskatchewan, Edmonton, Alberta Calgary, Alberta (within view of the Rocky Mountains) There is a 4th possibility that it could have also been built in the Foothills of the Rocky Mountains, meaning that the men of Pierre Gaultier de Varennes et de La Vérendrye would have been the first Europeans to have seen and possibly set foot in the Rocky Mountains.
With the exception of Fort La Biche (Alberta), Fort La Jonquière could have been the westernmost post of the French Empire.
Furthermore, if it was located at Edmonton or Calgary, it would have begun a trading tradition with the local aboriginals which possibly could have given rise to later decisions by British explorers and trading companies to establish more modern forts at the same locations (such as Fort Edmonton, which has since become the major Canadian city of Edmonton and the capital of Alberta).
In fact, some have speculated that Fort La Jonquière could have possibly been on or near the site of actual Fort Edmonton (now the site of the Alberta legislature – the seat of Alberta’s provincial government).
(ABOVE: A photo between 1905 and 1912 in Edmonton, with the Alberta provincial legislative (government) building in the background, and Fort Edmonton in the foreground — possibly the original site of Fort La Jonquière).
Considering the impact these Québec-administered forts have had in founding Western Canada, I find it amazing that the story, locations, and relevance of two of the most historically significant forts (Fort La Biche and Fort Jonquière) remain a mystery to this day – especially if they were instigating factors in spurring trade, which subsequently lead to later decisions to found Edmonton or Calgary.
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Some info for additional reading: following the change of administration from New France to British North America, the Hudson’s Bay Company became the de facto government of what was Western and Northern Canada. It quickly established dozens and dozens of subsequent forts across the land. Yet many (perhaps most) continued to be Francophone-administered (despite being under British control).
This was a major reason why French continued to be Western Canada’s primary language until the last half of the 1800s (and even into the 20th century in many communities — a legacy of much of Western Canada’s current French regions).
Here is a link for the HBC forts: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Hudson%27s_Bay_Company_trading_posts
Here is the only open-source map I could find of the HBC forts (although it’s not very good):
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P.S…
If Fort La Jonquière does turn out to be the original foundations of Edmonton… why couldn’t they have found some place warmer, like Florida, or Singapore!?!?!
But at least there’s no or little humidity in the Western part of the Prairies. I’ve never found the winters there much colder than Toronto, Ottawa, Montréal or Québec City (where it is quite humid). -25 degrees Celsius with no humidity in the Prairies = -10 degrees in Toronto / Montréal with humidity.
Anyway, we can see the New France heritage to this day in the Prairies. For example, there are those in Edmonton who still keep those ‘ole Prairie Voyageur traditions alive and well (Alberta through-and-through)…
And also in Winnipeg…
You’ll even find French advertising in the Prairies if you look for it (here is an example)…
But fancy new trains don’t mean that it’s all urban-urban.
Here’s the part of the West’s traditions which I can identify with from my own youth — and it started in no small part with the legacy of our New France heritage back in the 1700s…
Even in the most conservative and Anglophone regions of Canada (such as inAlberta’s deep rural South, in the small town of Brooks), we continue to see the legacy of New France’s Prairie. Almost 300 years later, it continues to make in-roads at all levels of government.
These are points of pride for people on the Prairies (both Anglophones and Francophones) — otherwise we wouldn’t be seeing such gestures such as the one you’re about to see at City Hall in Brooks.
AdvertisementsDavid Sills V shows off his length and speed on this 49-yard touchdown during West Virginia's win over Kansas. (0:34)
MORGANTOWN, W.Va. -- David Sills V has learned to embrace all that he has been. And all that he never was.
He was the wunderkind quarterback, who first pierced the taboos of early-age recruiting.
He was the 13-year-old whom Lane Kiffin notoriously offered to USC, after watching only one highlight clip.
He was then the latest cautionary tale of an athlete gaining fame too young.
But that wasn't the end of Sills' story.
And after exhausting his quarterback ambitions through all means, including giving up his scholarship at West Virginia for one last try in junior college, Sills has found a new calling.
Now back with the Mountaineers, Sills has remarkably re-emerged, reinventing himself into one of the top receivers in college football, tied for the national lead in touchdown receptions.
"My story, if you want to say, is nothing I would've pictured," he says. "But I'm having so much fun now. The most fun I've ever had playing football.
"And I'm not playing quarterback."
David Sills V was 9 years old when his dad really began to believe that his son might have special talents. At the age when boys are riding bikes and playing little league baseball, Sills was named top quarterback at a week-long, summer Philadelphia Eagles' football camp.
"That kinda showed I wasn't just some crazy dad who thought his kid was better than he is," said David Sills IV, who played cornerback for the Virginia Military Institute.
The following summer, the Sills family was in the market for a QB guru to take Sills to the next level.
At the time, Steve Clarkson, who had tutored Ben Roethlisberger, was training USC Heisman winner Matt Leinert for the NFL draft when he started getting calls from Sills IV.
"I called him six or seven times, left messages, but he never answered or called me back," Sills IV said.
On the other side, Clarkson didn't know what to make of this dad from Delaware asking him to work out his pre-adolescent son.
"But [Sills IV] was persistent," Clarkson said. "At a certain point, it was like, he really wants this to happen."
David Sills V, right, began working with QB guru Steve Clarkson at the age of 10. Gary Friedman/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images
Clarkson finally relented. He told Sills IV they could come to Pasadena after the draft, and he'd give Sills a look. "He had this attitude of, 'Yeah, sure, I'll take your money,'" Sills IV said.
Clarkson still believed Sills was too young after the first session.
"I thought, 'We'll do one more workout, and I'll tell them to come back in five years,'" he said.
But that next session, Sills dazzled with a natural throwing motion and an arm strength that defied his age. Clarkson had never seen anything like it. Sills wowed Clarkson even more in the ensuing days, displaying an uncanny knack for understanding defensive coverages.
"This was not normal," Clarkson said. "I started to rethink, 'How young is too young?'"
After later visiting the family in Delaware, Clarkson agreed to take on, by far, the youngest client he'd ever had.
Sills was 10 years old.
Lane Kiffin entered the picture three years later. Clarkson was in Miami for Super Bowl XLIV, and Kiffin had just left Tennessee for USC. Clarkson called, and at the end of their conversation, asked if Kiffin would watch a YouTube clip.
"No explanation given," Clarkson said. "Just asked his opinion."
"I thought I was looking at a 10th or 11th grader," Kiffin recalled, in a phone interview about Sills with ESPN.com.
As impressed as he was, Kiffin couldn't figure out why Sills was so skinny. "That's because he's 13," Clarkson told him, prompting an expletive of disbelief from Kiffin.
"He just seemed so far advanced for a kid that age," Kiffin said. "It just seemed if he stayed on that track, he was going to be an elite kid, an elite player. If the kid kept growing, he could end up being as big as [USC Heisman winner] Carson Palmer, who we'd had a few years before."
Putting aside the prudence of evaluating a quarterback off a single YouTube video, it wasn't - and still isn't - against the rules to offer a middle-schooler. But it certainly was taboo. An unspoken rule of recruiting.
It didn't take long, however, for the notion to pop into Kiffin's head.
In a follow-up phone call that same day, Kiffin broached Clarkson with the idea of offering Sills a scholarship.
"Of course, I know you're going to be offering him when he's a junior," Clarkson joked back.
"No," Kiffin retorted. "I mean like right now!"
"We thought about [Sills' age]," Kiffin said. "At the same time, we had never seen anybody look like that.... We thought he could be a great quarterback."
By that time, Sills had already fallen in love with USC. Working out with Clarkson in California, he had gotten to meet Trojans quarterbacks Leinart, Matt Cassel and Matt Barkley.
"His childhood dream was to go to USC," Clarkson said.
The Sills family discussed the offer. That same evening, they called Kiffin, and Sills committed.
"His opinion kind of was, 'That's where I'd want to go anyway, so why wait?'" Sills IV said. "But we didn't know anything about football recruiting. Being as naïve as we were, we just said, if that's where you want to go, sign up.
"Then the world decided to have an opinion."
Lane Kiffin made headlines in offering middle schoolers while at USC. Ric Tapia/Icon Sportswire
At a Super Bowl party, Clarkson tipped off ESPN's Shelley Smith about the commitment. Soon, the news was on the ESPN crawl, and before long, seemingly everywhere else.
Overnight, Sills became a household name. Soon, the hot takes followed: Why would Kiffin do this? How could the parents allow it? Was Sills really this good?
"It just went viral," Clarkson said. "I'm walking down radio row the week of the Super Bowl, and the whole row is talking about, not the Super Bowl, but about this 13-year-old accepting an offer from USC. It took off like a wildfire. It went crazy."
As crazy as it got, Sills IV said his son never wavered.
"What the media, TV, radio said about him, it never fazed him," he said. "Didn't change him, didn't change who he thought he was."
But just as Sills' fame was taking off, his quarterback shine began to lose luster.
The next season as an eighth grader, Stills started for the Red Lion varsity squad, and he continued to thrive as a freshman, totaling 28 touchdowns.
From there, Sills' high school career began to tumble.
Red Lion was purchased by a group that sought to de-emphasize football, prompting Sills IV to help start a new online school based out of Maryland for Sills and his teammates. Eastern Christian Academy, however, was unable to gain accreditation initially in Maryland, and Sills played only three games as a sophomore.
Then in November of his junior season, he broke his knuckle, which Clarkson believes forever changed Sills' passing technique.
"It organically created this funny wrist motion," he said. "And he never got it back to where it was when people thought he was the perfect passer. He just couldn't get over the hump for whatever reason."
Meanwhile, back in Los Angles, Kiffin had already been fired on the tarmac of LAX.
Sills enjoyed his celebrity, training with Matt Cassel and Matt Barkley. Arash Markazi/ESPN.com
New USC coach Steve Sarkisian didn't pull Sills' scholarship, but he made it clear Sills was no longer in the Trojans' plans. USC had already landed a commitment from ESPN 300 quarterback Ricky Town. The Trojans were also heavily pursuing another ESPN 300 prospect -- Sam Darnold.
"The communication went from slim to none," Sills IV said. "David went out |
years, so he's got a lot of seasoning and coaching to catch up on. He might be considered a 'project'.
Skinny: He's another guy who may not contribute right away, but there aren't many seven footers in this draft. He's probably not a top 10 pick guy, but should the Celtics trade down he'd be worth a look.
Cedric Simmons
Cedric Simmons Height: 6'9"
Weight: 233 School: NC State
Position: PF
Strengths: He's a wiry defender with a long wingspan and good athleticism. He's an accomplished shot blocker; Simmons swatted 80 shots for the Wolfpack last season.
Question Marks: His offensive game isn't polished, especially away from the basket, and he lacks NBA size and strength. With that in mind, he's got "project" written all over him. He's also undersized to play in an NBA front court.
Skinny: He'd have a tough time cracking the frontcourt rotation in Boston with Raef LaFrentz, Ryan Gomes, Kendrick Perkins, Al Jefferson and Brian Scalabrine penciled in ahead of him. There probably isn't room for both Simmons and Dwayne Jones on the same roster. Then again, The Sports Guy could finally buy Celtics jersey with "Simmons" written on the back, which would become a running joke on ESPN.com for years to come.
Tiago Splitter
Tiago Splitter Height: 7'0"
Weight: 245 School: Brazil
Position: PF/C
Strengths: Splitter might be the most well rounded European prospect available, mostly because he does one thing traditionally not associated with foreign-born players: He plays solid defense and can bang down low.
Question Marks: He's still a bit slight for a seven footer, but the biggest knock on his game is his shooting. He's moved away from the perimeter game he once featured to learn to play down low, but outside shooting is usually a skill that can make a big man a matchup nightmare. His European contract would have to be bought out; that could be a major stumbling block for any team interested in drafting him.
Skinny: Splitter has to be intriguing, but will he finally stay in the draft this year? He could withdraw before the June 17 deadline.
Tyrus Thomas
Tyrus Thomas Height: 6'9"
Weight: 220 School: LSU
Position: PF
Strengths: Thomas is often described as a "freak" athlete by NBA scouts. His tremendous jumping ability, wingspan, quickness off the floor and timing make Thomas an elite shot blocker. He is the kind of player that can improve a team defense by his mere presence in the paint. He is also a fantastic rebounder and both ends of the floor.
Question Marks: Thomas has improved his scoring skills this past season but his post moves are still raw. However, he has the kind of athleticism, length, touch and ball handling abilities to become a significant threat with continued dedication and proper coaching.
Skinny: Thomas went from a player last year who couldn't crack anyone's Top 100 player lists to the potential top pick in the draft. It would be hard for the Celtics to pass up a talent like this if he remains on the board. Drafting Thomas would immediately improve the Celtics team defense as perimeter players would be less apt to penetrate with Thomas patrolling the lane. A front court of Thomas and Kendrick Perkins would immediately give the C's one of the best young shot blocking and rebounding duos in the NBA.
Marcus Williams
Marcus Williams Height: 6'2"
Weight: 200 School: UConn
Position: PG
Marcus Williams - Workout Interview
Strengths: He's a crafty, left-handed point guard who at times outshined Gay for the Huskies. He showed strong leadership on the court for UConn. He's a pass-first, true point guard who makes his teammates better and is a threat to pass from anywhere on the floor. He's also a guy who comes through in pressure situations.
Question Marks: Defensively, he's not as strong as you'd like, but then again, there aren't many defensive point guards in the NBA these days. His off-the-court issues will certainly be a consideration, but hopefully he's matured and learned from his mistakes.
Skinny: His name has been tossed around quite a bit by the local media, probably because they're very familiar with his game. If the Celtics brain trust decides to go for a pure point guard, he'd be a logical pick.
Interview: Marcus Williams' Workout Interview
Shelden Williams
Shelden Williams Height: 6'9"
Weight: 250 School: Duke
Position: PF
Strengths: Williams is ready to compete immediately at the NBA level, especially defensively. He is one of the best rebounders and shot blockers in college basketball. Williams isn't tall (many scouts question whether he is truly 6'9") but Williams uses his huge wingspan and fantastic positioning and timing to challenge virtually every shot taken in the lane. He has a knack for playing aggressively without generating too much contact.
Question Marks: Williams' post game is a bit robotic. He typically uses his superior strength rather than superior footwork or skill to score. NBA scouts worry that Williams will never be an effective offensive player now that he will be matched up against taller players that can match his strength down low.
Skinny: Williams doesn't have the upside of some other players in this draft but he seems like a fairly safe pick. Teams know what they're going to get from Shelden Williams. Adding Williams to the Celtics' roster would immediately improve the team's interior defense, and he would give the Celtics another elite shot blocker to pair up with budding shot swatter Kendrick Perkins.
Compiled by Matt Griffin and Peter Stringer. The opinions expressed herein are those of the authors only, and do not necessarily represent those of the Boston Celtics.Google Fiber has established gigabit internet in three US metro areas, with nine more targeted for the near future. Our research has turned up the metros most likely to be targeted in the next wave.
In a small office on the corner of a busy street, a startup CEO and her finance team are struggling to maintain a internet connection for an important video call. On the other side of the office the marketing team is creating a pitch deck using a cloud service while streaming a webinar on an iPad. The finance team and the marketing team are unaware of the trouble they are causing for one another and little do they know that their college intern is streaming Game of Thrones in the bathroom.
Bandwidth is a serious issue for these kinds of small businesses, as well as entrepreneurs and highly-connected families. Mobile data, streaming video, and advances in cloud services have put tremendous demands on bandwidth, and with internet service providers experimenting with bandwidth throttling and bandwidth caps, it threatens to make internet usage a constrained resource.
Google, of course, wants people and companies to use the internet like it's a unlimited resource, because as the web's largest internet advertising company, it makes more money the more everyone uses the internet.
Google Fiber is tackling this problem by putting a new face on a decades-old technology with the hopes of using it to bring gigabit internet into businesses and homes — that's over 10 times the capacity of most of today's internet connections in US homes and small businesses. No new internet product has generated as much excitement in the technology world as Google Fiber. It has piqued the interest of average consumers and left techies salivating.
When Google Fiber started in Kansas City, Kansas in 2012, it was difficult to determine how serious the search giant was about disrupting the US internet. In 2013, it expanded the experiment to Austin, Texas and Provo, Utah, and the possibility began to emerge that this was going to be a real thing. Google even released a checklist for potential Fiber cities. According to William Hahn, a principal analyst at Gartner, it's hard to tell exactly what Google is up to.
"It's like those murder mysteries. The suspect would act exactly the same way, whatever their motive, up to this point," Hahn said. "If they were trying to take a look at people's data and play in the sandbox, and were willing to subsidize for that reason, it would look a lot like them trying to spur competitive response from the CSPs."
However, in 2014, Google suddenly looked a lot more serious about Fiber when it announced plans to bring Fiber to 34 cities. That sounds a little more ambitious than it really is. It's actually only nine metro areas, but it's still a major expansion of Google's Fiber plans.
Still, it leaves every internet user in the US asking the same question — "When is Google Fiber coming to my city?"
Based on a wide range of sources from across the technology and telecom industries, we have come up with what we think is the formula Google uses to determine which cities to target for Google Fiber. Using this formula, we've also built a list of the next metro areas in line.
How Google chooses Fiber cities
So, we know that it started in Kansas City, then moved to Austin, then Provo and now Google Fiber has targeted nine more metro areas. That possibility is beginning to look more like a reality with Google recently signing a tentative franchise agreement with the city of Portland. That makes Portland the first of those nine metro areas to take the next steps toward becoming a Google Fiber city.
So, how is Google choosing these cities? Are they picking the cities who merely want it the most, or are the most prepared? According to Charlotte CIO Jeff Stovall, his city didn't really have major plans for fiber before they were approached by Google.
Image: Google
"It appears to me the cities that are chosen are ones that have high growth potential and are still small enough, in some respects, to be able to put in this type of infrastructure versus a mega-city like New York City," Stovall said.
We know Google is hiring for the Fiber team, with more than 60 open listings for positions such as "network infrastructure design manager." Although the listing was open in the Empire State, New Yorkers probably won't be getting Fiber anytime soon. Here are the five parameters that Google is using to determine which cities will get Google Fiber:
1. Existing fiber network - Google wants wants to move quickly and do it as cheaply as possible so it is leveraging dark fiber and existing fiber networks like the one in Provo. So far, Google has only moved to take over existing buried networks, so there is a possibility that they will install Fiber in cities that have utility poles (like Charlotte), mainly because of the massive price difference of hanging vs. buried cable.
2. Close to a Google data center - Google operates data centers internationally to support their products. More fiber running to and from the Google data centers means that it can process requests faster and glean data more efficiently. Proximity to a Google data center is key.
3. Population size range - At least in the beginning, Google will be targeting cities that are big enough to be diverse, but small enough that it will be able to avoid the oversight of cities like San Francisco, Boston, and New York City. Again, speed matters.
4. Willing local government - Permitting is, perhaps, one of the biggest obstacles that Google will have to overcome in its quest to rapidly build out Google Fiber cities. All of the city officials we have talked to said that they were very eager to work with Google, and some were working to expedite the permitting process to show their dedication to bringing Fiber to their city. So, local government cooperation is huge.
5. Not in a Verizon FiOS coverage zone - Verizon is the biggest competitor Google Fiber has at this point. FiOS consistently takes top ratings in customer satisfaction as an ISP. It would be foolish of Google to try to take on FiOS this early in the game, however, they don't seem to have a problem taking shots at AT&T, as evidenced by their brazen move into Austin.
"I think you want an underserved community that can be served economically. That might mean it has enough backbone capacity, or some way to provide that capacity, without costing a huge amount of money," said Jeff Hecht, author of Understanding Fiber Optics.
"It appears to me the cities that are chosen are ones that have high growth potential and are still small enough, in some respects, to be able to put in this type of infrastructure versus a mega-city like New York City." Jeff Stovall, Charlotte CIO
That's why Google is targeting existing fiber networks. It saves the company time and money and it is proof that the city is interested. Provo, Portland, Phoenix, Chapel Hill, Nashville, Salt Lake City, Atlanta, San Antonio, and San Jose all have either existing fiber optic networks, or unused "dark fiber" that has been installed, but isn't currently in use.
"I believe these cities are not too big, they are not too small, they are not too rich, they are not too poor. They have the possibility to dig up the roads without causing major havoc like in downtown Manhattan, but there is purchasing power," said Dan Dieler, a principal analyst at Forrester Research.
These cities have enough resources to make good use of the Google Fiber product, without have an overbearing bureaucracy that could slow down the plan. According to Heather Burnett Gold, the president of Fiber to the Home Council in the Americas, Google is looking for cities with a committed city leadership in place who are "champions for fiber deployment," to help with things like expedited permitting, non-onerous franchise fees, access to any common ducts pole or right of way, and demand aggregation. Google is looking for cities that share their vision.
"I think Provo and Google shared a common vision about access to the Internet at home; the value to education, entrepreneurship, families and governance are all enhanced by nearly ubiquitous access and the availability of high speed said Provo chief administrative officer Wayne Parker.
The next 10 Fiber cities
Based on these five measurements from our investigation, here are 10 metro areas that we believe could be next on the list for Google Fiber:
1. Charleston, South Carolina - According to research done by others, there is a Google data center located in Goose Creek, South Carolina, which is a little over 17 miles outside of Charleston, and considered part of the Charleston Metro area. Moving into South Carolina would also offer Google the opportunity to continue its expansion into the Southeast, slowing Verizon's entry into that region. That same research points to evidence that North Carolina and South Carolina have provided tax incentives to Google in the past, proving their willingness to work with the search giant. Plus, fiber initiatives are already happening in the area, so we know there is existing fiber and a desire for gigabit internet.
2. Miami, Florida - At present, Miami is the one of the most fiber-connected cities in the US. Verizon has cornered St. Petersburg and Sarasota, so stepping into Miami would help to sweat them a little, provided that pressuring incumbents is their overall plan. Combine that with the fact that AT&T has announced that they are planning to enter Miami and the fact that Google already has a data center there and it is a no-brainer. The demographic diversity is an added plus for Google to collect user data.
3. Houston, Texas - Texas is an important state in the geographic battle for fiber because it is a strategic link between the Southeast and the West. Google has an existing data center in Houston, and it is close enough to Austin (existing Fiber city) and San Antonio (proposed Fiber city) to glean support from those areas. It is also a proposed AT&T fiber area, and close enough to Dallas and Fort Worth (both Verizon FiOS cities) to pressure the incumbents.
4. Seattle, Washington - Seattle is almost exactly what we believe Google is looking for. Google has a data center there and it is close in distance and demographics to Portland, the most recent city to take a step toward Fiber. By getting to both Seattle and Portland, Google will effectively corner the Pacific Northwest and position itself for an easier entry into Northern California. Seattle's cost of living and focus on creative endeavors show that they have the resources and the desire to engage new technology.
"I think you want an underserved community that can be served economically. That might mean it has enough backbone capacity, or some way to provide that capacity, without costing a huge amount of money." Jeff Hecht, author of Understanding Fiber Optics
5. Tulsa, Oklahoma - Tulsa is a mere 45 minute drive from Google's data center in Pryor, Oklahoma. The city is home to the University of Tulsa, a private university with about 4,000 students. Verizon and AT&T have both avoided the central US, which is where Google got its start with Fiber. This gives Google a chance to draw a line in the sand and capture some of the top cities of the Great Plains region.
6. Cincinnati, Ohio - Cincinnati is one of the top 25 metros in the US with the most existing fiber. Cincinnati's population size and the presence of the University of Cincinnati offer an excellent sample population. Ohio already appears eager to get involved with the search giant, hosting a Google in Education Conference in Columbus in May of last year, sponsored by ITIP Ohio.
7. Chicago, Illinois - While this might not seem to fall in line with what the five parameters, Chicago, and its surrounding suburbs, are a testing ground for Google to enter a major city. Google does have a data center in Chicago, and the city is third most fiber-connected city in the country. Chicago's plethora of research universities adds to the potential for interesting Fiber experiments. The city's numerous suburbs could be a good starting point for Google Fiber, which can then slowly move toward the city center, if it is ever able to get the approval of the local government.
8. Minneapolis, Minnesota - Minneapolis, which is one of the most fiber-connected cities in the US, does not actually house a Google data center; but it would more than likely initially run as a support hub for the Chicago deployment. Google for Entrepreneurs has been known to sponsor events at the city's CoCo coworking space, and has named the city one of its tech hubs. If Google did decide to build a data center in the Twin Cities, the defunct Ford plant offers the perfect real estate, complete with a hydroelectric dam to win them green points. The city is known as the primary business hub in the US between Chicago and Seattle, and houses a huge number of Fortune 500 companies, such as UnitedHealth Group, Target, Best Buy, and US Bancorp. The city regularly lands on top quality of life lists and was named a "Top Tech City" by Popular Science in 2005.
9. San Diego, California - California is Google's home turf, and they are already targeting San Jose for one of their next Fiber deployments. They have a data center in Los Angeles, but Verizon has already deployed FiOS there. San Diego is the proxy Google needs to continue rolling out Fiber in California, without attacking FiOS head-on. San Diego is also a good way for Google to test the waters with the California government to see how far they can go in SoCal.
10. Denver, Colorado - Denver is another one of the most fiber-connected cities and while it doesn't have a Google data center, but it does have a connection to Google. The Google for Entrepreneurs program recently chose Denver's Galvanize startup building to be part of their network of tech hubs. Denver is a midpoint between the Midwest and the West Coast, and the Denver Technological Center is home to many large tech companies that compliment the startup scene.
Image: Google
Additionally, here are five metro areas to watch as Google Fiber continues its rollout. They don't meet all of our criteria, but they each offer Google a strategic advantage.
1. Virginia Beach, Virginia - While Google does have a data center in Virginia Beach, Verizon has deployed in the Virginia cities of Richmond, Petersburg, Norfolk, and Newport News; leaving Google a pawn surrounded by Queens.
2. St. Louis, Missouri - St. Louis is highly fiber-connected city, and it would provide a bridge from Chicago to Kansas City and Tulsa.
3. Columbia, South Carolina - If Google doesn't move on Charleston, they will more than likely deploy in Columbia. Google purchased nearly 500 acres in Blythewood, South Carolina, right outside of Columbia, for the construction of a data center. Columbia is also the home of the University of South Carolina.
4. Baltimore, Maryland - Baltimore would allow Google to dip its toe in the water of the Northeast, while getting them close enough to Washington, DC, which is an existing FiOS city, to put pressure on Verizon.
5. Detroit, Michigan - This may seem a little more contrived, but Detroit is one of the most fiber-connected cities in the US and is an emerging tech center. In a show of good faith, Google could deploy Fiber in Detroit to assist in a much-needed revival of the economy in the Motor City. It's also home to a Google for Entrepreneurs tech hub.
Why Fiber matters to the future
Optical fiber is essential strands of glass, about the size of human hair, that are used to transmit data. Think of the fiber like a glass-lined tube that transmits light by reflecting it internally, allowing the light to travel great distances. Many of the core concepts that made up the foundation of fiber optics were discovered in the 1800s, but fiber as a method of delivering telecommunications data didn't really emerge until the 1970s. It wasn't until the 1990s, especially around the dot-com tech bubble, major fiber installations emerged in the US.
Image: Google
The biggest advantage of fiber optics are their long-haul capabilities. That ability to travel long distances, combined with the data transfer speeds it offers, are what make fiber economical. Fiber optic lines are typically considered more secure, and Siemens even claims their optical fiber cables to be impervious to wiretapping.
According to Gold, and year-end estimations done by Mike Render with RVA LLC for the Fiber to the Home Council, the number of households connected to fiber in 2013 in the US was 11.9 million, that includes fiber to multiple dwelling units as well. Just fiber to the individual home was estimated at 9.8 million for 2013. According to US Census data, there are roughly 115 million households in the US. Hecht asserts that fiber is starting to get utilized because cities are tired of waiting for someone else to make it work.
"There have been a fair number of small city programs that have gone into fiber because they need bandwidth, and the cable companies aren't terribly interested in spending money," Hecht said.
It's a long-standing secret in the telecommunications industry that Google is deeply interested in fiber optics and has been for quite some time. In 2005, CNET reported that Google was interested in buying dark fiber, potentially for the purpose of building a global fiber optic network; and that the company was hiring an expert in negotiating contracts for dark fiber. Dark fiber gets its name from the fact that there is no light (data) passing through it. Unlit fiber is fiber that isn't being used to transmit data. The dot-com era saw an explosion of fiber installations, many of which remain unused to this day.
Google first rolled out the Google Fiber service to Kansas City, Kansas in 2011. The fact that Google was making a foray into fiber optics wasn't a huge shock to the IT world, but where they chose to begin their journey was. Kansas City gave Google the opportunity to experiment with fiber as a service without the oversight of a larger city. The additional support of Google's Council Bluffs data center, a mere 178 miles away, only sweetened the deal. According to Google was testing the waters.
"I think Kansas City was an experiment, and it wasn't a technical experiment," said Jim Hayes, president of The Fiber Optic Association. "I think it was more of a feasibility study to see what would happen when they tried to get deals with the local government to facilitate the construction. It was an experiment in economics. What they learned from Kansas City was that it was feasible, they would get higher sign ups than they expected, and that they could make money."
"What they learned from Kansas City was that it was feasible, they would get higher sign ups than they expected, and that they could make money." Jim Hayes, president, Fiber Optic Association
Austin was next, and it was an obvious choice. The blooming startup scene and a focus on creative thinking and an entrepreneurial spirit made Austin a key strategic partner for Fiber.
Provo seemed to be more of an opportunistic play. The city deployed fiber too early, beginning the process in 1999, and they didn't have the resources to keep it up. The city initially took out a $40 million bond to pay for it. Fiber installations were massively expensive, but as is the case with most technology, the price has dropped significantly.
"They decided to build their own fiber network way too early," Hayes said. "When they installed that in '99, it probably cost 2 to 3 times as much as it would cost 10 years later."
Due to government regulations, the city could not be the internet provider, so they decided to sell the fiber network to a third party ISP called Broadweave in 2008. Broadweave eventually defaulted on the purchase and Provo was stuck with an investment that wasn't making a return. Google approached them with an offer.
"[Google said] Listen, we can buy your network but we won't have money to put into it. Or, you can sell it to us for $1 and we can help update it," said Dixon Holmes, the deputy mayor for the mayor's office of economic development in Provo.
And that's what Provo did — they sold the network to Google so they could finally realize the promise of fiber optic internet for their residents. The catch is that Provo is still paying on that $40 million bond this many years later; and, in order to fund it, each household pays $5.35 a month as part of their utility bill. It was a great opportunity for Google to build out this test group and do it economically, because, according to Hayes, "The cost of installing the cable is a lot more than the cost of the cable itself."
Why Fiber matters to Google
At this point, Google can do one of two things with Fiber — they can become a full-fledged ISP and turn Fiber into a core aspect of their business model, or they can simply leverage it to push incumbents to bring affordable gigabit internet to homes and businesses. Regardless of which road they are taking, Google stands to benefit from the outcome. They are an internet company, and faster internet means more internet usable, which is also better for Google's core business.
Image: Marguerite Reardon/CNET
"They are putting a lot of time and effort into building networks if it's just for fun," Gold said.
If Google truly wants to become a world-class ISP, it could develop into a steady revenue stream to help alleviate some of the pressure on its one-legged business model. With that being said, by using Fiber to further connect its customers, Google's advertising revenue stands to benefit as well.
"They have an ambition, and why shouldn't they, to follow the connected consumer everywhere, and to be collecting data on them everywhere and organizing those offers," Hahn said. "But again, that can all go right back to the core advertising business — being able to deliver better targeted and ever more cohesive and contextually accurate advertising to consumers, to hit you with just the right offer."
Hecht said, "It's good PR, and it's good business. It's good PR because they are offering good capacity at a reasonable price. And, it's good business because they need the capacity to deliver their services."
ISPs have a notoriously low rating with consumers, and the 2013 American Consumer Satisfaction Index was the first year that any US industry has ever ranked lower than the airline industry in customer satisfaction. That industry was internet service providers, with Comcast dragging along the bottom.
"It does seem, if Google wanted to spur a competitive response from the CSPs, I would have to judge, so far, that Google Fiber has been fairly successful. But, that really just begs the question of whether Google thinks it can really be profitable for them," Hahn said.
For example, look at the Google Fiber rollout to Austin, a hub for AT&T.
If Google truly wants to become a world-class ISP, it could develop into a steady revenue stream to help alleviate some of the pressure on its one-legged business model.
"Informally, you have to suspect that that was a shot right at the heart of AT&T territory. It's really, arguably, their headquarter city. You see the response that AT&T made, rolling out a program to bring fiber in ahead of Google's schedule," Hahn said.
Google Fiber's entrance into Austin, and the legal battle that ensued, brought more attention to fiber optics and forced AT&T to move up their timeline of their fiber deployment. In fact, AT&T recently announced they plan to bring fiber networks to 100 cities, which is really only 25 metro areas but it includes Atlanta, Decatur, Charlotte, Mountain View, Nashville, San Antonio, and San Jose — all of which are among the next wave of cities targeted by Google Fiber. Even if Google isn't the one providing it, more fiber is a win for Google.
"I believe they are doing what they are doing in order to learn about high-end broadband. I think they are keen about putting pressure on traditional providers, Dieler said. Adding, "Their core focus is advertising and data analytics. I don't see them trying to compete head-on with the Comcasts of this world, or with the Verizons of this world."
Most of the cities are convinced that Google Fiber is here to stay, but that doesn't mean they want Google Fiber as the only provider of gigabit internet. Mary Beth Henry, the manager of the office for community technology in Portland said that she believes having Google Fiber in Portland will make the incumbents better, and she wants it to bring competition.
"Competition has proven to be very good for local economies, and I am hoping that's what we have here," Henry said.
Dieler said, "A key theme for me is that I'm not yet convinced that Google has this big master plan for its Fiber activities. We can't be 100% certain what Google is up to, because they themselves may not be sure where this is headed."
The ecosystem problem
Even if fiber becomes a legitimate trend that sweeps across the US and the world, the challenge is that an ecosystem has not yet developed to take advantage of it. We have access to gigabit speeds, but the compelling applications to make use of those speeds haven't materialized, in most cases.
"They have to see this entire ecosystem kick in, and that's a scale game. They've got to get everybody thinking that fiber is the only way to fly," Hahn said.
Image: Google
The existence of ubiquitous fiber will not usher in the next revolution of internet technologies and products, but it will provide the background for that to take place. Google often presents the potential for real-time HD teleconferencing as one of the possibilities that Fiber could bring, but the reality is that applications like that are still far off.
For example, telemedicine is often held up to show the future that gigabit internet will make possible. But, there are a ton of obstacles to overcome before it can become a reality. Not only do the patient and doctor both need to have access to a gigabit internet connection, they must both possess the right kinds of technology to make it work. And, if they can get those ducks in a row, the whole thing is still contingent on making sure the process is HIPAA compliant.
This is obviously a chicken-and-egg problem. The widespread of gigabit internet must exist before startups and major technology companies will deem it worth investing in and creating products that utilize its capabilities.
No matter what happens with Google Fiber, or any other fiber providers, the sad truth is that the best possibilities for gigabit internet are still years away. But, someone has to make an investment and take the first steps. Google looks more serious than ever about being the one to do it.“[Batman Returns is] the first auteur superhero movie. I think the execs at Warners realized that you just let Tim Burton alone and let him make a Tim Burton movie and people will see it in droves.” — Danse Macabre: 25 Years of Danny Elfman and Tim Burton author Jeff Bond The Digital Bits and History, Legacy & Showmanship are pleased to present this retrospective commemorating the silver anniversary of the release of Batman Returns, Tim Burton’s follow-up to the immensely popular 1989 Dark Knight adventure, starring Michael Keaton, Danny DeVito and Michelle Pfeiffer. [Read on here...]
Batman Returns, one of the most anticipated sequels ever made, opened in theaters twenty-five years ago this week.
For the occasion The Bits features a compilation of statistics, trivia and box-office data that places the movie’s performance in context; passages from vintage film reviews; a reference/historical listing of the film’s digital sound presentations; and, finally, an interview segment with a trio of comicbook/superhero movie authorities and film historians.
BATMAN RETURNS NUMBER$
1 = Rank among top-earning movies during opening weekend
1 = Rank among top-earning movies of 1992 (calendar year)
1 = Rank among top-earning movies of 1992 (summer)
1 = Rank among top-earning films of Warner Bros.’ 1992 slate
2 = Number of Academy Award nominations
3 = Number of weeks nation’s top-grossing movie (weeks 1-3)
3 = Box-office rank among movies directed by Tim Burton (adjusted for inflation)
3 = Rank among top-earning movies of 1992 (legacy)
4 = Number of months between theatrical release and home-video release
5 = Box-office rank among movies in the Batman franchise (adjusted for inflation)
franchise (adjusted for inflation) 6 = Rank among top-earning movies of 1992 (worldwide; legacy)
11 = Number of days to gross $100 million
11 = Number of digital sound presentations
26 = Rank on all-time list of top box-office earners at close of original release
2,644 = Number of opening-week engagements
$24.98 = Suggested retail price of initial home video release (VHS)
$39.98 = Suggested retail price of initial home video release (LaserDisc)
$17,279 = Opening-weekend per-screen average
$45.7 million = Opening-weekend box-office gross*
$47.7 million = Opening-weekend box-office gross* (3-day weekend + 6/18 sneaks)
$80.0 million = Production cost
$83.2 million = Opening-weekend box-office gross (adjusted for inflation)
$100.1 million = Box-office rental (domestic)
$104.0 million = Box-office gross (international)
$139.4 million = Production cost (adjusted for inflation)
$162.8 million = Box-office gross (domestic)
$174.5 million = Box-office rental (domestic, adjusted for inflation)
$181.2 million = Box-office gross (international, adjusted for inflation)
$266.8 million = Box-office gross (worldwide)
$283.8 million = Box-office gross (domestic, adjusted for inflation)
$465.1 million = Box-office gross (worldwide, adjusted for inflation)
*established new industry record
A SAMPLING OF MOVIE REVIEWER QUOTES
“This Batman soars! A funny, gorgeous improvement on the original.” — Richard Corliss, Time
“It is a common theory that when you have a hero, like James Bond, Superman or Batman, in a continuing series, it’s the villain that gives each movie its flavor. Batman had the Joker, played Jack Nicholson, to lend it energy, but the Penguin is a curiously meager and depressing creature; I pitied him, but did not fear him or find him funny. The genius of Danny DeVito is all but swallowed up in the paraphernalia of the role. Batman Returns is odd and sad, but not exhilarating.” — Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times
“Batman Returns has wonderful, scary music (by Elfman, no Prince this time) and a wonderful, scary look — courtesy of cinematographer Stefan Czapsky (Vampire’s Kiss, Edward Scissorhands) and production designer Bo Welch, carrying on in the style of the late Anton Furst, who designed the first Batman). The performances are generally good, not just Keaton’s but also that of Michelle Pfeiffer, who is shockingly feline in her skin-tight black-leather suit (with whip accessory) and who manages to find a measure of plausibility in the bizarre Catwoman.” — Jay Boyar, Orlando Sentinel
“No matter how Batman Returns performs at the box office, I doubt that Burton will make a third installment. He seems to have thrown all his ideas into this one, including touches from his other movies: the sympathetic, handicapped monster from Edward Scissorhands, the comic demons from Beetlejuice and the freak show comedy from Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure.” — Bob Fenster, (Phoenix) Arizona Republic
“For Hollywood, summer is increasingly the season of the big-budget gamble. Batman Returns may be the surest box office bet of the year, but when you get past the saturation merchandising to the movie itself, it’s hard not to notice there’s no Joker in the deck this time.” — Desmond Ryan, Philadelphia Inquirer
“Burton loses a few points for including egotistical references to his other films, ranging from ice sculptures that are dead ringers for the surrealistic hedges in Edward Scissorhands to dialogue borrowed from Pee-wee’s Big Adventure. When Michelle Pfeiffer says, ‘That’s my name, don’t wear it out,’ it’s too much.” — Jeff Strickler, (Minneapolis) Star Tribune
“Faster and funnier than the first. Explosively entertaining.” — Peter Travers, Rolling Stone
“A visual marvel.” — David Ansen, Newsweek
“Darker, louder and more confusing than a cheap carnival fun house, Batman Returns is an assault on the eyes and ears, not to mention the intelligence.” — Joe Pollack, St. Louis Post-Dispatch
“On all counts, Batman Returns is a monster. Follow-up to the sixth-highest-grossing film of all time has the same dark allure that drew audiences in three years ago. But many non-fans of the initial outing will find this sequel superior in several respects, meaning that Tim Burton’s latest exercise in fabulist dementia should receive even stronger across-the-board acceptance than the original. Warner Bros.’ reported $80 million-plus investment will be an afterthought in the wake of the [box office] cascade, which should approach the $250 million neighborhood of the first pic domestically.” — Variety
“Batman Returns, the most eagerly awaited and aggressively hyped film of the summer, is, for better or worse, very much the product of director Tim Burton’s morose imagination. His dark, melancholy vision is undeniably something to see, but it is a claustrophobic conception, not an expansive one |
was desperately trying to rescue the social dimension of anarchism. Murray was also unsparing in his critique of deep ecology—for example in his adamant assertion, long before others dared to say so, that deep ecology was a fundamentally misanthropic, anti-rational political philosophy. There were many in the anarchist and the deep ecology movements who were unable to answer his criticisms of those ideologies. So some of these adversaries resorted to personal attacks.
In his book Recovering Bookchin: Social Ecology and the Crises of Our Times, Andy Price of Sheffield Hallam University in England does an excellent job of analyzing Murray’s critiques with respect to anarchism and deep ecology and unmasks the efforts to caricaturize him by some members of those movements. Price’s book is a very fine treatment of those issues, and also happens to serve as a great introduction to Murray’s ideas.
What do you view as Murray’s most important teaching?
The necessity of dialectical thinking – that to really know a thing you have to see it in its full development, not statically, not as it “is” but rather as it has the potential to “become.” That hierarchy and capitalism weren’t inevitable developments and that a legacy of freedom has always existed alongside the legacy of domination. That it’s our job as human beings capable of rational thought to try to develop an ethics and social structure that maximizes freedom.
What about his most relevant achievement?
On a very basic level, his introduction of ecology as a political category was extraordinary. He was fifty years ahead of his time in saying unequivocally that capitalism was incompatible with living in harmony with the natural world, a concept that key activists today such as Naomi Klein have taken up and popularized. He also was ahead of his time in critiquing the Left from a Leftist perspective, insisting that traditional Marxism, with it’s focus on the proletariat as a hegemonic class and its economic reductionism, had to be abandoned in favor of a more sweeping framework for social change.
But even more important, I think, was his desire to develop a unified social theory grounded in philosophy. In other words, he was searching for an objective foundation for an ethical society. That led him to immerse himself in history, anthropology, and even in biology and the sciences, all in the service of advancing the idea that mutual aid, complementarity, and other concepts that predominate in natural evolution point to the notion that human beings are capable of using their rationality to live in harmony with each other and the natural world—that we are capable of creating what he called “free nature.” And in this sense I would agree with you that he was one of the most original thinkers of the twentieth century.
Recently Bookchin’s name has come up in connection with the Kurdish autonomy movement. Can you tell us a bit about his role in influencing Kurdish resistance and their social forms of organization?
Right now the Kurds in parts of Turkey and northern Syria are engaged in one of the most daring and innovative efforts in the world to employ directly democratic decision-making in their politics. Two years before Murray died in 2006, he was contacted by Abdullah Öcalan, the imprisoned leader of the Kurdish resistance. While they never had a chance to engage in a direct dialogue, Öcalan did undertake a serious study of Murray’s work, reading seminal books like The Ecology of Freedom and From Urbanization to Cities.
As a result, Öcalan abandoned his Marxist-Leninist approach to social revolution in favor of Murray’s non-statist, libertarian municipalist approach, adapting Murray’s ideas and developing his own into what he called Democratic Confederalism. We see these ideas at work now in many Kurdish communities in Turkey and in the Rojava region in northern Syria, including in Kobani, where Kurdish forces battled and ultimately drove out the Islamic State from the city after 134 days of fighting.
These towns are remarkable for instituting the kind of directly democratic councils that empower every member of the community regardless of ethnicity, gender or religion. They have embraced the principals of democratic decision-making, ecological stewardship, and equality and representation for ethnic minorities and for women, who now constitute 40 percent of every decision-making body. They’ve instituted freedom of speech and in many cases municipalized their economies. Importantly they view Kurdish autonomy as inseparable from creating a liberatory, non-capitalist society for all and have created their own autonomous zones which stand as a true challenge to the nation-state.
This kind of self-government is a model not just for the region but for the world. I wish Murray, who not only believed so strongly in the libertarian municipalist model, but also in the Kurdish struggle for autonomy, had lived long enough to see it.
In your introduction to the book, you point out that Murray’s influence has also been felt within the practices and politics of new social movements. What do you think is his legacy for social movements and what is your aim with respect to this new publication?
I think that features of Murray’s thought are evident in a wide range of current political and social theorizing, for example in the insightful work of theorists like David Harvey and Marina Sitrin. My co-editor Blair Taylor, a PhD candidate at the New School for Social Research in the Politics Department, specializes in the history of new social movements and has observed that these movements have already embraced many of Murray’s ideas, even if this was sometimes unknowingly. You see this in the use of affinity groups, spokes-councils, and other forms of directly democratic organizing; in the sensitivity to matters of domination and hierarchy; in the understanding of pre-figurative politics—that is that we must live the values in our movement that we want to achieve in a new society.
These are all concepts that Murray introduced in the 1970s. You see these ideas at work also in the transition towns movement and on the streets when protesters are asked by reporters: “What do you want?” and they respond, “Direct democracy.” I think that it’s exciting that his work is being discussed by people like David Harvey and David Graeber and rediscovered by a new generation. What I hope is that the social movements taking shape across the globe will consider using the ideas in this book as a way of reclaiming popular power on the municipal level, so that we can institutionalize the political change necessary to move us from the realm of protest to that of social transformation—to a self-managed society and a liberated future.One scene has become increasingly common amid Spain's economic crisis: Thousands of people, many of them immigrants, are searching trash dumpsters by night. Some scour the garbage for food, but many others are involved in a black-market trade for recycled materials.
The scavengers have slowly become a sad fixture in many barrios across Spain, like the well-dressed, middle-aged man on a Barcelona street corner on a recent night. He averts his eyes from onlookers as he reaches his arm down deep into a dumpster.
He's embarrassed, he says, that Spain's economy has left him searching through trash. He's afraid to give his name, but willing to tell his story: He's Pakistani, and came to Spain four years ago to work in construction — an industry that collapsed shortly after he arrived. Now, he's left scavenging.
"Here, take a look at this," he says, describing what he's found. "This is junk metal, but it's worth a bit of money."
Selling stuff like this, he says, is his only work now.
"Look, over here there's some food," he says, lifting a few unbroken eggs out of a crate from a separate dumpster for organic waste.
Scavenging For Cash
Although food can be useful, the man concentrates on looking for plastic cable or copper wire. He worked construction just long enough to make contacts with builders who, these days, are desperate for cheap materials.
"See this? This is expensive," he says, showing off a cable. "But this other stuff over here, not as much. It's cheaper."
As night falls, the man is joined by half a dozen other men, all searching the same cluster of containers labeled for trash or recyclables.
The men describe a network of depots across the city. Iron goes for about 50 cents a pound, they say.
Mohammed al-Awami, originally from Morocco, explains how things go on a really good night.
"Let's say you're lucky, and you find a cafe that's having some construction work done," Al-Awami says. "And they need a big sheet of metal to cover the countertop. They might pay 80 euro cents a kilo. And they might buy up to 500 kilos, or at least 200. That's a lot of money for you!"
Indeed. That's $200 to $500 for a single day's work. Even if that windfall comes just a few times a month, it adds up to more than Spain's monthly minimum wage.
Al-Awami also used to work construction. Now he's one of what he estimates are 2,000 people searching dumpsters in downtown Barcelona every night.
"I used to build new houses, do renovations and refurbish old historic homes. But now that industry has nearly disappeared," he says.
'Better Than Robbery'
These men say they're not homeless. Most Spaniards have access to unemployment benefits and food banks, if they need them.
But the men searching this dumpster are mostly immigrants without family ties. Some may be in Spain illegally, and therefore have no access to welfare benefits that are still relatively generous, despite the government spending cuts.
Economist Fernando Fernandez, with Madrid's IE Business School, says Spain had a poor underclass even in the boom years. But now it's swelling.
"In any rich, developed economy there are pockets of need. It is probably true, too, that to some extent, this has increased," Fernandez says. "If anything, because the organizations caring for people in need are squeezed for resources."
Al-Awami, the Moroccan immigrant, blames the housing market's collapse. His construction job was his livelihood, he says. Now he's joined the ranks of the unemployed, which tops 25 percent in Spain.
"Now it seems so much of humanity is without work or anything," Al-Awami says. "So this is better than robbery, you know? Collecting scrap metal. You can even jump down into the dumpster, no problem."
He smiles like he's showing off, and in an instant, he's head-first into the dumpster, with a friend holding his feet.The band from the game League of Legends has stormed the charts and bagged cameos from the likes of Tommy Lee – despite existing only in the imaginations of their creators
How has a band that doesn’t physically exist, with zero promotion from the music industry, breach the Billboard Top 40 and reach No 1 in the iTunes metal chart?
Conceived by California-based gaming gurus Riot Games in 2014, Pentakill exist purely in the imaginations of their creators – and the 100 million global fans of League of Legends, the multiplayer online battle arena game that spawned the band’s members, Karthus the Deathsinger, Yorick, Sona, Olaf and lead guitarist Mordekaiser the Master of Metal.
Entirely under the mainstream radar, the band’s new CGI video, Mortal Reminder, notched up more than 3m views in less than 48 hours after its release – and the new album, Grasp of the Undying, seems destined to be a huge success.
“I think it’s entirely insanity as opposed to any sort of brilliance on our part,” says Viranda Tantula, a product manager at Riot Games. “When you think of a warlock like Karthus as a metal lead singer, or a berserker Viking like Olaf as a drummer, it all just seemed to make sense to us. We obviously had high hopes for this, but it’s not exactly territory we knew well when we began. We’re dying to see how the reception to the album pans out.”
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Mortal Reminder.
Although the bulk of the work was done by Riot Games’ in-house composers and sound designers, the album also features collaborations with some of metal’s most respected musicians – there are cameos from the likes of Tommy Lee, Nine Inch Nails alumnus Danny Lohner and Noora Louhimo, singer with the Finnish metal band Battle Beast.
Grasp of the Undying is a surprisingly convincing and substantial modern metal record, even without its pixelated trimmings. Factor in the eye-popping visuals and explosive violence of League of Legends – witness the Mortal Reminder video for evidence – and Pentakill could hardly be more fitting (or preposterous) standard bearers for the love-in between gaming and metal fans, blurring the lines between so-called real music and digital fantasy in a way that no acts have managed before.
“Is this the future? Alvin and the Chipmunks were way ahead of the game. They’ve been doing this since 1958!” laughs Tantula. “Even Gorillaz have been killin’ it for more than a decade now. But, regardless, once Skynet becomes sentient and replaces us, a virtual future is pretty much guaranteed. Right now, we just want to usher in a new era of metal domination!”CLOSE President Barack Obama praised new steps taken by the US Treasury Department to limit corporate inversions -- the practice of some US corporations of relocating their headquarters off-shore on paper to avoid paying taxes. (April 5) AP
President Obama speaks about new rules aimed at deterring tax inversions Tuesday, (Photo11: Jacquelyn Martin, AP)
WASHINGTON — President Obama hailed new Treasury Department rules cracking down on corporate tax inversions Tuesday, calling the practice of merging with a foreign company to escape U.S. taxes "one of the most insidious tax loopholes out there."
Highlighting the actions his administration is taking on overseas tax avoidance, Obama also made a connection to widespread revelations of tax evasion, money laundering and sanctions violations in the recently released Panama Papers.
"We've had another reminder in this big dump of data coming out of Panama that tax avoidance is a big, global problem. It’s not unique to other countries," Obama said. "A lot of it is legal, but that’s exactly the problem. It’s not that they’re breaking the laws, it’s that the laws are so poorly designed."
Corporations who can afford the accountants and lawyers to arrange the tax deals are "gaming the system," he said.
Obama called on Congress to overhaul the corporate tax system, saying the abuse of tax breaks was costing middle-class families.
"When companies exploit loopholes like this, it makes it harder to invest in the things that are going to make the American economy strong for generations to come. It sticks the rest of us with the tab,and it makes hardworking Americans feel like the deck is stacked against them,” he said.
The Treasury Department on Monday announced the latest in a series of new regulations designed to restrict the inversions, in which a U.S. company agrees to be acquired by a foreign company simply to avoid paying the higher corporate income tax rate in the United States. "They effectively renounce their citizenship. They declare that they're based somewhere else,” Obama said.
"It erodes the American tax base, undercuts businesses that play by the rules and ultimately leaves the middle class and small businesses to pay the tab," White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest said in a statement Monday. "Business decisions should be driven by genuine business strategies and economic efficiencies, not accounting gimmicks that game our broken tax system."
Obama decided to lead off a regular White House press briefing by Press Secretary Josh Earnest — "horning in on Josh's time just for a hot second" — to highlight the issue, saying it should be getting attention outside of the financial press.
The new Treasury regulations announced Monday are specifically aimed at what Treasury Secretary Jack Lew called "serial inverters."
"They acquire multiple U.S. firms in stock-based transactions over a short period of time. This increases their size and reduces the negative tax consequences of a subsequent inversion," Lew said. In other words, by structuring the acquisitions a certain way, a company can get around restrictions preventing a smaller foreign company from acquiring a larger American one.
The new rule creates a three-year window during which a foreign company would not be allowed to count newly acquired companies toward its foreign ownership percentage.
But Obama also acknowledged that his administration is limited in how far it can go without new legislation from Congress. "I want to be clear, while the Treasury Department actions will make it more difficult and less lucrative, only Congress can close it for good," he said.
Rep. Kevin Brady, R-Texas, the chairman of the tax-writing House Ways and Means Committee, said the Treasury actions were "punitive regulations that will make it even harder for American companies to compete."
Read or Share this story: http://usat.ly/1RWpj0yJan 20, 2016; Washington, DC, USA; Miami Heat guard Josh Richardson (0) drives to the basket as Washington Wizards center Nene Hilario (42) defends during the first half at Verizon Center. Mandatory Credit: Tommy Gilligan-USA TODAY Sports
Washington Wizards Are Super Uninteresting
Remember how bad the JaVale McGee, Andray Blatche and Nick Young days were? I hated those teams because they sucked. But, they were fun. We tuned in to watch JaVale run the opposite way, to watch Dray pretend he’s a guard and we tuned to watch Swaggy P chuck his way to 30 points.
Those teams weren’t likeable and certainly produced a bad brand of basketball, but at least they were kind of fun and entertaining.
This year, the Washington Wizards are anything but entertaining. They’re boring, dry and super uninteresting.
John Wall — bless his heart — is doing all he can to keep our interest.
He’s attempting 360-layups for no reason, he’s throwing up bad shots from deep occasionally and he’ll even dive into the crowd for a loose ball every now and then. The 3-time All-Star is all the Washington Wizards have, but sadly, it’s not enough to generate consistent interest.
The Wizards have become more of a chore than washing dishes. I seriously almost rather shovel the snow from my driveway than watch them continue to lose.
A few weeks ago, our crew had a private discussion on Twitter about the most boring team in the NBA and the Wizards popped up. I’ll concede: the Brooklyn Nets are by far the most boring team in the NBA and it’s really not even close. But if we take them out of the equation, how many teams in the NBA are less interesting than the Wizards? It’s tough to think of any, really.
Not even sure if I'm watching the game tonight. It's gotten to the point where I dread it. — Akbar Naqvi (@AkbarRazaNaqvi) January 30, 2016
Over the past several years, the Wizards haven’t exactly been producing a ton of highlights, but at least they were winning.
Boring but successful basketball is acceptable. Marcin Gortat refused to dunk, Paul Pierce played like your 55-year-old uncle and Trevor Ariza got paid millions to just hit corner 3-point shots. The Wizards weren’t the Golden State Warriors, but they were winning games.
This season hasn’t been that way.
We expected the Washington Wizards to not only continue to win, but to become a bit more fun to watch. Small-ball, after all, is based on increased pace-and-space — two factors that play a large role in the fun-level of basketball.
The Wizards were only kind-of fun at the beginning of the season, but now that Randy Wittman has gone back to playing his traditional lineups, the team has had all of their fun sucked out of them. Now, not only are they boring to watch, but they’re getting blown out. Want to watch two unathletic big men who are well past their primes play together? The Wizards have that.
Nowadays, Bradley Beal‘s mask might be the most interesting thing in Washington. It’s a boring time to be a Wizards fan and the only way to change it is to, well, make some changes.Iran’s most recent test of a ballistic missile on Sunday is an early test of the Trump administration’s bona fides to get tough on Tehran’s antics. Tough talk is important in international diplomacy with the mullahcracy, but rhetorical flourish alone won’t check an increasingly belligerent Iran. With Wednesday’s confirmation of Rex Tillerson as secretary of State, the Trump administration needs to embark on forming a multilateral coalition to hold Iran accountable for its non-nuclear aggression; advance measures to sanction its ballistic missiles program; and at the same time crack down on the Tehran-Pyongyang missile pipeline.
The testing of the medium-range Khorramshahr ballistic missile, which traveled 600 miles before exploding, is only the latest in Iran’s cheating at the margins, specifically defying United Nations Security Council Resolution 2231, which enshrines the nuclear deal, and “calls upon” Iran to not conduct “any activity related to ballistic missiles… including launches using such ballistic missile technology.” Iran has been interpreting the “calls upon” language as essentially providing it a way to opt out of complying with the resolution given the twelve such missile dry runs it has undertaken since the nuclear deal was signed in July 2015. That’s on top of Iran’s proliferating shipments of arms to terror proxy Hezbollah, which then outgoing UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon warned in December were violating an international arms embargo, as well as arms transfers to Tehran’s Houthi allies in Yemen.
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Such a dossier of illicit activity—which Iran conveniently frames as outside the contours of the nuclear file—is crying out for attention. In turn, one place to begin is for Secretary Tillerson and U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley to borrow a page from former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton Hillary Diane Rodham ClintonREAD: Cohen testimony alleges Trump knew Stone talked with WikiLeaks about DNC emails County GOP in Minnesota shares image comparing Sanders to Hitler Holder: 'Time to make the Electoral College a vestige of the past' MORE’s playbook and build a new transatlantic consensus that such non-nuclear behavior is unacceptable and will be punished accordingly.
Europe—like the United States—is concerned over Iran’s reckless behavior. Just ask UK Prime Minister Theresa May who warned about “Iran’s malign influence in the Middle East” during her trip to Washington last month. President Trump should work with Prime Minister May to recruit Germany, France, and Italy to support new sanctions targeting Iran’s regional misbehavior. Europe does have more commercial interests at stake when it comes to Iran than the United States, but it’s in the interests of Berlin, Rome, and Paris to support such measures given the refugee influx from war-torn countries like Syria, Iraq, and Yemen—enabled by Iran’s regional meddling—which is presenting an unprecedented security risk to the continent’s livelihood.
At the same time, the Trump White House should be advancing stalled legislation targeting Iran’s ballistic missile program. On Wednesday, Reps. Pete Roskam (R-Ill.), Lee Zeldin (R-N.Y.), and Doug Lamborn (R-Colo.) introduced the Iran Nonnuclear Sanctions Act of 2017. Among other provisions, it would impose sanctions against persons that knowingly aid Iran’s missile program and would require sanctions against entities owned 25 percent or greater by Iran’s key ballistic missile organizations. Despite Foreign Minister Javad Zarif’s repeated claims that such tests are only for defensive purposes, the Rouhani administration doesn’t oversee the program itself. Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC)—a sanctioned, terrorist organization—retains operational control over the program through its Al-Ghadir Missile Command. And Iran’s conservative Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei appoints its leading commander. As a result, if the mullahs continue testing and defying, the Trump administration has additional leverage to support sanctions against entities that are minority-owned by the IRGC.
The IRGC is a powerful economic player in Iran and routinely operates through front companies. Such a measure could chill foreign investment into Iran, particularly in its oil and gas sector, as the U.S. Treasury Department has designated the National Iranian Oil Company as an agent or affiliate of the IRGC itself.
Lastly, thwarting the Iran-North Korea missile network should be a priority. Left unchecked, North Korea’s stated intention to test long-range intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs)—like the KN-08 and KN-14 road-mobile ICBMs which could reach the U.S. homeland and Europe—presents a threat to the international community. Iran and North Korea’s missile cooperation date back to the 1980s, and as late as January 2016, the U.S. Treasury Department announced that “[w]ithin the past several years, Iranian missile technicians from Shahid Hemmat Industrial Group traveled to North Korea to work on an 80-ton rocket booster being developed by the North Korea government.” Given Kim Jong-un’s increasingly bellicose behavior and repeated Iranian ballistic missile activity, sanctions need to be tightened to address this illicit relationship, particularly on the Shahid Hemmat Industrial Group, which has a checkered past of deceit in its repeated attempts to acquire missile components from Germany. This is something the Iran Nonnuclear Sanctions Act of 2017 does well—in requiring such measures against entities owned 25 percent or controlled by Shahid Hemmat.
Iran’s former foreign minister and a special advisor to the Supreme Leader Ali Velayati taunted President Trump this morning, calling him “inexperienced.” The Iranians are waiting and will keep pushing the envelope. It’s time that America begins to push back.
Jason M. Brodsky is the policy director of United Against Nuclear Iran. He is on Twitter @JasonMBrodsky.London is usually seen as a one-river city, just big old Father Thames. The city breathes with the rise and fall of its tide, and for centuries the Thames has posed patiently for tourist drawings, etchings and photos. But what of London’s other rivers, the capital’s unseen waterways? Twenty-one tributaries flow to the Thames within the spread of Greater London, and that is just counting the main branches. Once tributaries, and tributaries of tributaries, are included the total moves beyond numbers into the realms of conjecture.
Many of these rivers flow quietly above ground, in plain sight but generally unnoticed beyond their neighbourhoods. Their enticing names echo London’s rural past – the Crane, the Darent, the Mutton Brook, the Pool River – or carry a whiff of the exotic – the Ching, the Moselle, the Quaggy, the Silk Stream. These rivers go about their business forgotten in the background, but many inner London waterways have been deliberately hidden. London’s landscape was shaped by the hills and valleys these rivers created, but as the city grew they began to get in the way and were buried, bit by bit, under layers of streets and houses.Gun Advocates Already Slamming Merrick Garland Over Two Pivotal Cases One of his decisions relates to the most important Second Amendment case in American history.
Congressional Republicans who had already vowed to oppose any candidate to fill Antonin Scalia’s seat on the U.S. Supreme Court were given additional ammunition Tuesday when President Barack Obama nominated Merrick Garland, a federal judge who played a role in two of the most important gun cases in recent decades.
Garland, 63, is chief judge on the influential U.S Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, where he has served since 1997. His centrist views, and experience as a federal prosecutor with a tough-on-crime reputation, make him a relatively safe choice for the president in the face of promised Republican obstructionism in confirmation hearings. But one aspect of his record may prove especially problematic: his votes on cases involving the Second Amendment.
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Garland’s most recent decision involving firearms happens to relate to the most important gun case in U.S. history. In 2007, he voted to reconsider a decision from a three-judge panel on the D.C. Circuit Court that struck down Washington, D.C.’s handgun ban. Garland wasn’t on that panel, and when the city asked for an en banc hearing, with 10 justices to reconsider the ruling, Garland voted yes. The request was ultimately rejected, on a 6-4 vote.
The next year, in District of Columbia v. Heller, the Supreme Court upheld the lower court’s decision, which invalidated the handgun ban, on a 5-4 vote. Scalia, who Garland would replace, wrote the opinion, which holds that the prohibition violates the Second Amendment’s protection of the right for private individuals to own firearms. In doing so, he handed a monumental win to gun rights advocates, who have engaged in a bitter fight for decades to overturn all gun bans, based on an interpretation of the Second Amendment as explicitly guaranteeing the right to bear arms to all citizens. (The decision did leave room for reasonable gun regulations.)
It is impossible to know how Garland may have voted had the full circuit court reviewed the case, as he indicated he thought it should. SCOTUSblog wrote that Garland’s vote for the en banc hearing may indicate that he believes the Second Amendment protects the right to bear arms solely for the purposes of service in a militia.
Garland was also a key figure in a 2000 case involving the National Rifle Association. The gun group had sued the federal government over its practice of maintaining background check records. While the the government insisted the records, which were kept for a period of six months, were used for auditing purposes, the NRA claimed they were the first steps towards a national gun registry.
Following its dismissal by a lower court, the NRA appealed the case to the D.C. Circuit Court. The court — including Garland — upheld the lower court’s ruling:
We see no basis for concluding that auditing the [National Instant Criminal Background Check System] would suddenly produce constitutional violations. Nor does the NRA identify any specific features of the auditing process that implicate constitutionally protected rights.
In light of these two cases, the National Review wrote last week that Garland’s decisions mean that he is not the political moderate that many have asserted — and that he would try to overturn Heller. The NRA tweeted the article soon after, writing: “It’s official: President Obama’s SCOTUS nomination is bad on guns.”
[Photo: AP Photo/Evan Vucci]The Titanic struck an iceberg late at night on April 14, 1912, and sank some 2 hours and 40 minutes later, early on the morning of April 15 -- and thanks to this animated recreation, you can watch the whole thing unfold in real time.
This simulation includes the iceberg strike, the ship coasting to a halt in the North Atlantic about 20 minutes later, lifeboats being lowered into the water and even scenes of flooding in the interior corridors.
Along with showing the ship sinking in real time, the simulation has captions describing what was happening aboard the ship at specific times, as well as anecdotes about some of her passengers.
Some 1,500 people -- more than two-thirds of the ship's total population -- died when Titanic sank. However, the animation shows no people.
It's as if an empty ship is sinking, which somehow makes it even eerier.Forced sex, usually intercourse, is a central issue in any woman’s life. She must like it or control it or manipulate it or resist it or avoid it; she must develop a relationship to it, to the male insistence on intercourse, to the male insistence on her sexual function in relation to him. She will be measured and judged by the nature and quality of her relationship to intercourse. Her character will be assessed in terms of her relationship to intercourse, as men evaluate that relationship. All the possibilities of her body will be reduced to expressing her relationship to intercourse. Every sign on her body, every symbol—clothes, posture, hair, ornament—will have to signal her acceptance of his sex act and the nature of her relationship to it.
The propaganda for femininity (femininity being the apparent acceptance of sex on male terms with goodwill and demonstrable good faith, in the form of ritualized obsequiousness) …stresses that intercourse can give a woman pleasure if she does it right: especially if she has the right attitude toward it and toward the man. The right attitude is to want it. The right attitude is to desire men because they engage in phallic penetration. The right attitude is to want intercourse because men want it. The right attitude is not to be selfish: especially about orgasm. This [ensures] woman’s continued existence within a system in which men control the valuation of her existence as an individual. This valuation is based on her sexual conformity within a sexual system based on his right to possess her. Women are brought up to conform: all the rules of femininity—dress, behavior, attitude—essentially break the spirit. Women are trained to need men, not sexually but metaphysically. Women are brought up to be the void that needs filling, the absence that needs presence. Women are brought up to fear men and to know that they must please men and to understand that they cannot survive without the help of men richer and stronger than they can be themselves, on their own.By Elliot Foster
Scott Quigg could be set for another world title shot –– and it could come sooner rather than later.
The former WBA super-bantamweight king moved up to the featherweight division in the wake of his defeat at the hands of Carl Frampton in February 2016.
Quigg, 28, claimed the WBA International belt in his maiden clash as a 126-pound fighter back in December when he stopped Jose Cayetano inside nine rounds at Manchester Arena, exclusively live on Sky Sports Box Office.
And after switching trainer from Joe Gallagher and relocating Stateside to the Wildcard Gym and Freddie Roach, Quigg is ready to make a big assault on the world scene at featherweight, starting with his title defence against Viorel Simion on April 29.
The fight, which takes place at Wembley Stadium, exclusively live on Sky Sports Box Office, as part of the undercard of Anthony Joshua’s world heavyweight title showdown against Wladimir Klitschko, has now been ordered as an official eliminator for the IBF title which is currently held by Lee Selby.
That means that after Selby faces mandatory challenger Jonathan Victor Barros next, the winner of Quigg vs. Romania’s Simion will be next in line to face the Welshman, provided he beats the Argentine.
However, should Barros not meet the requirements to face Selby next –– after TGB Promotions won the purse bids to stage the fight –– Quigg or Simion could get a straight shot at the 30-year-old.
Also on the Joshua vs. Klitschko pay-per-view card, Katie Taylor will feature as she continues her charge towards a world title shot later this year and Luke Campbell faces Darleys Perez, the former WBA lightweight champion, in an eliminator for the number one position with the sanctioning body in the division.
And there is action for a trio of Olympians in the shape of Joe Cordina, who makes his debut on April 22 at the ECHO Arena in Liverpool, Lawrence Okolie, who aims to make it 2-0 in Scotland on April 15, and ‘Pretty Boy’ Josh Kelly, who features alongside Okolie on the Glasgow card topped by Ricky Burns’ WBA title defence against IBF and IBO super-lightweight champion Julius Indongo.
Further additions to the Joshua vs. Klitschko card will be revealed by promoter Eddie Hearn of Matchroom Sport in due course."This is potentially worse for oil than the Iran crisis in 1979," said Paul Horsnell, head of oil research at Barclays Capital. "That was a revolution in one country, here there are so many countries at once. The world has only 4.5m barrels-per-day (bpd) of spare capacity, which is not comfortable."
US oil contracts jumped $6 a barrel on Monday to over $95, chasing Brent crude, which traded as high as $108, as the global oil system is drawn into the vortex. While Egypt is a minor oil player, Libya's Sirte Basin holds Africa's largest reserves and supplies 1.4m bpd in exports, mostly to Italy, Germany and Spain.
BP, Statoil, Total and ENI have begun evacuating families and non-essential staff from Libya. BP chief Bob Dudley told Sky News that the company has only limited exploration in Libya but "remains committed to doing business" there.
Germans oil explorer Wintershall said it was winding down its Libyan operations, but Italy's ENI has most to lose from its pipeline to Libya. ENI's stock tumbled 5pc in Milan, leading a 3.6pc fall in the MIB index.
Global oil inventories are higher than before the 2008 price spike, and OPEC can raise output if needed. It has refused to act so far despite pleas from the International Energy Agency (IEA) that the supply picture is already "alarming".
A Saudi official said global oil ministers meeting tomorrow in Riyadh will examine market "volatility", but dashed hopes of OPEC action, saying world markets are "sufficiently supplied".
Though Libya's oil fields are big enough to influence global supply, producing 2.3pc of world output, investors have broader concerns. The lighting speed of events in a country that was stable just days ago has caused markets to doubt assurances about Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states. The Gulf region ships a third of global oil output.
Credit default swaps on Saudi Arabia's debt jumped to 140 basis points on Monday, while Bahrain rose to 305 despite an olive branch from the Sunni royal family to Shi'ite protestors. The island's Grand Prix in March has been cancelled.
Fitch Ratings downgraded Libya on Monday on political risk although the 6m-strong country has foreign assets of $139bn (£85.7bn) or 190pc of GDP, no foreign debt, and a better balance sheet than Saudi Arabia.
Michael Lewis, commodities chief at Deutsche Bank, said oil markets are bracing for trouble. December "call options" with a strike price of $120 on US crude have doubled suddenly, indicating fears of a nasty escalation. "Libya raises the stakes," he said.
Mr Lewis said oil prices tend to cause economic damage at a $95 to $100 for US crude. As a rule of thumb, a sustained $10 rise in price lops 0.5pc off US growth over two years, and worse if it reaches a self-feeding tipping point. "It's like a $50bn tax," he said.
Mr Horsnell said the global energy crunch is haunting us again after a brief respite during the financial crisis. "In just two years, the world has grown so fast as to consume additional volume equal to the output of Iraq and Kuwait combined," he said.
While oil is likely to keep flowing from |
paper show?
Well, the Amazon region does encounter periodic droughts. There was one in 2005, another in 2010, both of which were 100-year events, and the most recent one in 2015-2016. The authors of this study, Amir Erfanian, Guiling Wang, and Lori Fomenko, all from the University of Connecticut, measured drought in three ways. They quantified the precipitation deficits and water storage on the ground. They also used two different vegetation measures of drought. The results showed that the most recent drought was unprecedented in severity. The video below shows a brief visual overview of the findings of this paper:
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Extreme drought in tropical South America.
But the authors really wanted to know why the drought occurred in the first place and why it was so severe. Droughts in the Amazon region are mainly driven by surface water temperatures in the neighboring oceans, particularly in the El Niño/La Niña region. So, the authors looked at the relationship between changes in precipitation and sea surface temperatures in tropical oceans. They found that warmer than usual water in the Atlantic and Pacific oceans was the main driver for the reduced rainfall during the three extreme droughts in the past decade.
The authors also found that the water temperatures alone could not adequately explain the size and severity of the 2015-2016 drought. This suggests that there are other factors involved as well. To be clear, the authors found that the relationship between water temperatures and drought worked well for prior droughts (the 2005 and 2010 droughts as well as 1983 and 1998 droughts, also El Niño years) but fell apart in 2015-2016. That is, using the relationship, the predicted 2015-2016 drought should not have been nearly as severe or as large as it was. The paper also reports that the 2015-2016 drought clearly exceeded that of the 100-year events in 2005 and 2010. So, in approximately one decade, this zone has had three 100-year events. Quite astonishing.
So why was SST unable to explain the 2015-2016 drought, like it had for past events? Part of it has to do with land-use changes. That is, human changes to the land surface such as deforestation. Another part is related to warming from greenhouse gases. It is clear that land-use changes can affect drought. As farmers deforest, for instance, they convert woodlands and forests into agricultural land. This changes not only the darkness (reflectivity) of the land, but it also impacts the transfer of water to and from the atmosphere (evapotranspiration).
One might ask how warming affects droughts. As air temperatures increase, air is able to evaporate water more rapidly and dry out surfaces. At the same time, air can contain more water vapor so that when rain does occur, it is more often in heavy downpours. These two changes underlie what is referred to as an accelerated hydrological cycle. Simply put, man-made warming is accelerating the movement of water through the ecosystem, which can cause drought even if precipitation does not decrease. Warming also causes changes in the large-scale patterns of air motion (atmospheric circulation) that reduces rainfall in this region.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Dr. Guiling Wang Photograph: Christopher Larosa
I communicated with the senior author, Dr. Wang, who told me:
Since oceanic forcing could not fully explain the severity of the latest drought, one will have to account for the roles of greenhouse gas warming, land use land cover changes, and/or dynamic ecosystem feedback in order to advance the understanding, attribution and prediction of extreme droughts in this region. The frequent recurrence of severe droughts in the recent decade may be a precursor of what the future might have in store for this regional climate and ecosystem.
So why do we care? Well, for a number of reasons. First of all, droughts in this part of the world create an increased risk for desertification and fire occurrence and hurt the region’s ecosystem, harm trees, and accelerate the release of carbon dioxide. We know that the 2005 drought, which was a 100-year event, led to a record number of wildfires and increased emissions. We also know that similar consequences occurred five years later during the 2010 drought. Similarly, smaller droughts in Brazil in 2007 and 2012 caused widespread water supply problems, particularly in densely populated locations.
To make a long story short, investigating these additional factors may help better explain the most recent Amazon drought. Simply using the past relationship between SST and drought was not a sufficient explanation. This finding, and the recognition that droughts present real consequences for both human societies and natural ecological systems, should motivate us to take actions to reduce harm in the future.Lights, camera, action: Gail Mancuso (center) on the set of "Modern Family" during the filming of "Flip Flop," an episode about the Dunphy's desperate tactics to sell a house.(Courtesy ABC/Peter "Hopper" Stone)
By Ashley Lisenby
Digital Editor
Not every kid has parents who call her away from homework to watch their favorite show. And not every kid grows up to become a two-time Emmy-nominated director. Gail Mancuso, who grew up in Melrose Park and lives part of the year in River Forest, is up for an Emmy this Sunday, Sept. 22, for her work on the Modern Family episode, "Arrested."
If you're not familiar with the episode, the oldest of the three Dunphy children, Haley, is arrested for underage drinking while away at college and her parents and lawyer uncle try to protect her from a potentially harsh punishment.
One of Mancuso's favorite lines comes near the end of the episode. Phil's daughter suggests that a simple solution to her troubles can be found in wearing a cute outfit to the hearing like the fictional Elle Woods does in Legally Blonde. Dad tells her, "Honey, this is real life, not an excellent movie."
She breaks into laughter after reciting the line. "The whole episode has so many gems," she said. "I just think that line is really funny."
Aside from laugh-worthy one-liners, Mancuso said what she really likes about the episode is that Ty Burrell, who plays loveable dad Phil Dunphy, "steps up and becomes a strong father figure."
The child who grew up enjoying TV with her family spent a couple years at Northern Illinois University before making her way to California to pursue a degree in film.
After beginning a career in production, her first big break was on the sitcom Roseanne as an assistant director.
A position as a director opened on the show and Mancuso asked Roseanne — yes, as in Roseanne Barr — for a shot at the job. That kind of move takes guts. Mancuso partly credits her early days at Jane Addams Elementary School in Melrose Park, and the teachers who encouraged creativity, as a major confidence builder.
Her nerve earned a job directing one episode that year, which led to directing two entire seasons of Roseanne. A number of notable credits followed, including Friends, Scrubs and Community.
One would think after being surrounded by well-known actors over 20-plus years that the mere sight of a celebrity would have little to no effect on the seasoned director. But that isn't the case for Mancuso.
"I still get star-struck. When I meet certain famous people I am blown away," she said, noting TV late-night host Conan O'Brien and Game of Thrones actor Peter Dinklage. "I have such a deep honor for actors."
The Emmy Awards ceremony is special to her for a number of reasons beyond being surrounded by the actors and TV personalities she admires. For one, she was nominated while serving on the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences Board of Governors, which, she said, is "like a double scoop of your favorite ice cream."
The ceremony is also special because she is in a group of seven female directors nominated for an Emmy this year. Along with Mancuso in the comedy category are Lena Dunham for Girls and Beth McCathy-Miller for 30 Rock.
There are so few female TV directors that Mancuso is planning a dinner where they can all get together to celebrate their accomplishments.
"Sure, I'd like to bring her home," said Mancuso referring to the Emmy statue, "but I've already won with the nomination."
No matter the outcome, Mancuso said she is looking forward to her husband and children sharing the experience with her. Mancuso's balance between life in L.A. and life in River Forest proves the importance of family in her life.
"She is a phenomenal human being," said her brother Gary Mancuso over the phone. "I am thrilled to call her my sister and she is also my friend."
While L.A. is where she works, family keeps her local ties.
"Home is the Chicagoland area for me and my husband," says Mancuso. "We love Los Angeles, but we strive to be in River Forest."
For now, however, her plate is full on the West Coast.
"What's coming next is a show on TBS called Ground Floor with a couple of people from the movie Pitch Perfect," she said, naming Skyler Astin and Alexis Knapp, "and John McGinley from Scrubs." The show is set to air in November. Mancuso also has nine more episodes of Modern Family lined up.
Between now and the Emmys, part of Mancuso's time will be spent at dinners, with the press and, of course, a dress fitting to attend an occasion she calls "the best prom ever."Nintendo informs GameStop of Mario Party amiibo rarity
The Mario Party amiibo recently went up for pre-order on Amazon, including the newly minted Toad, and they sold out within minutes. "Oh great, another rare amiibo debacle," said everyone -- but that doesn't seem to be the case according to those familiar with the situation.
According to a trusted source at GameStop, Nintendo was "confused" by the rush to pick up Mario Party amiibo. Nintendo reps stated that GameStop and other retailers will stock them in "abundance," and that no one should worry about not getting them on the first round of pre-orders. Toad will apparently be the "lightest allocation," but he will still not be considered "rare."
Well Nintendo, it's hard to see why you'd be confused. Stock and re-orders for amiibo are being handled so poorly in the US that people don't know what to do anymore.
You are logged out. Login | Sign upDo You Have What It Takes to be a CCB Sperm Donor?
Being a CCB sperm donor means being the best. Our screening process and strict standards are designed to assure our donors set the industry standards for personal health, family medical history, education, and physical characteristics, as well as offering the highest chances for artificial insemination in the future.
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However, what a potential sperm donor must understand is that meeting these basic requirements is only the first step in the process. Once a sperm donor applicant meets these requirements they may then be asked to move onto our screening process which ultimately qualifies men for our program. As a top sperm bank, California Cryobank's qualification process is extensive; potential donors should expect to submit to physical examinations that include screening for infectious disease, genetic screening, examination of family history, and further evaluations.
Throughout the qualification process—and through the process of making a sperm donation they are accepted into the program—our donors will have the continued guidance of the California Cryobank staff who will explain each step thoroughly and answer any and all questions from what it means to be a sperm donor to possible donor insemination in the future.
Ultimately, acceptance into our donor program comes only after potential sperm donors meet the high standards set forth in our qualification process. But once accepted, those in the program will know that their sperm donation will change lives and make dreams of family a reality.“In the still of the night I walk with the Beast,
In the heat of the night I sleep with the Beast…”
On November 13, 1984, The Gun Club were shot live onstage in Madrid for the legendary Spanish television series La Edad de Oro. The set featured stellar performances of “Sex Beat,” “The Lie,” “Bad America,” “Death Party,” “Walking With the Beast,” a cover of CCR’s “Run Through the Jungle” and several other Gun Club classics. That entire show is embedded at the end of this post in a YouTube playlist.
I saw them play at The Electric Ballroom in London just three weeks before it was shot and I’ve always thought of this gig as one of the very best shows I’ve ever attended: It was actually my 19th birthday. There was only one person in the joint that night more fucked up than I was, and that honor would have to go to Mr. Jeffrey Lee Pierce hisself who managed to get completely shit-faced at the bar while the opening act, The Scientists, played their set. During the show JLP fell off the stage and landed on me. Neither of us felt any pain, I can assure you of that.
Watching this Madrid show today, it jibes pretty well with my memory of the London show. Jeffrey Lee is even wearing the same outfit. Holy shit were they amazing during this line-up. Who can deny that they were one of the greatest rock and roll outfits, ever? I mean, if you don’t like The Gun Club, you’re just… stupid.
In “The Blonde Ambition, Blind Drunk Visions & Beautiful Soul Of Jeffrey Lee Pierce,” British music journalist Kris Needs writes in tribute to the man he asked to be his son’s godfather (although I can’t much think of a worse choice for that role than JLP!)
There was something prime ally soul-grabbing about Jeffrey, their leader, singer, guitarist and songwriter. When you listened to Howlin’ Wolf, John Coltrane or Robert Johnson, you knew dark forces are at play. Jeffrey certainly did. He’d managed to plug into the dark main artery of the blues itself - riddled with demons but one of the ultimate examples of the kind of brilliant artist who could annoy people intensely with his over-the-top behaviour while also being one of the most endearing people you could wish to encounter. It’s so frustrating that he basically drank and drugged himself to death and, thanks to his erratic behaviour, managed to make a mess of everything from relationships [inter-band, record company and personal] to sometimes the music itself, although that was often the better for it.
Sometime in the mid-90s, at the Spaceland club in Silverlake—I think it was during the epic Destroy All Monsters reunion show there—I saw Pierce in the crowd. He was dressed neatly, sporting glasses, a waistcoat and a bolo tie and didn’t appear to be fucked up at all. He did however seem somehow very timid to me. I don’t really know how to explain it, but being such a huge fan of his, you know I kind of kept an eye on what he was up to. He didn’t say much to anyone, but he wore a look of apprehension on his face, like someone who wanted to kick his ass might be showing up, that kind of expression. In any case, considering how bloated the guy was by his mid 20s, and that Pierce was HIV positive, had cirrhosis of the liver and chronic hepatitis, he looked almost healthy. Nevertheless he was dead a few months later at the age of 37.
Aside from homegrown Spanish performers (including Pedro Almodóvar’s glam-rock parody group Almodóvar & McNamara) La Edad de Oro broadcast some incredible (sometimes complete) live concerts from Lou Reed, The Smiths, John Cale, Culture Club, Marc Almond, Violent Femmes, Grupo Sportivo, Psychedelic Furs, Nick Cave, Dream Syndicate, Aztec Camera, Paul Collins’ Beat, The Durutti Column, Tom Verlaine, Elliott Murphy, Alan Vega, Cabaret Voltaire, John Foxx, Echo & The Bunnymen, Killing Joke, Divine, Spear of Destiny, Johnny Thunders, Tuxedomoon (twice!), The Residents, China Crisis, Lords Of The New Church and Mari Wilson. The series was cancelled abruptly after a quite incredible 90-minute show with Psychic TV that was seen as an outrageous affront to the sensibilities of a Catholic country (and was).
Eventually many of these shows escaped from the vaults (in perfect digital quality, struck from the master tapes) and ended up on various torrent trackers as “The Stolen Files.” They are totally worth looking for!
Here’s the entire Gun Club set from La Edad de Oro in a YouTube playlist:Seeing anger where it does not exist can lead to trouble Teenage boys who get into trouble with the law may find it hard to interpret social cues in others, say researchers. A Japanese study of 24 young offenders found they mistook facial expressions of disgust for anger more often than their peers. In Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and Mental Health journal, the researchers said this might lead them to see a situation as more hostile than it was. One UK expert said the ability to read facial expressions was "fundamental". The team showed photos of faces expressing six basic emotions to 24 incarcerated young men and the same number of youths who had not been in trouble with the law. Misrecognising an expression may lead to incorrectly feeling threatened and even to antisocial behaviour
Professor Karen Pine, University of Hertfordshire The participants were asked to match each face with an emotion - anger, disgust, fear, happiness, sadness, or surprise. Analysis showed the delinquent youths were more likely to mistake disgust for anger than their peers. The researchers said it was the first real evidence that young offenders may have trouble distinguishing between disgust and anger. But it supports previous work that showed children with conduct problems tend to perceive other emotions as anger. And it has also been shown that juvenile delinquents often have short tempers and experience more intense anger than other children. Hostility Study leader Wataru Sato from Kyoto University said: "This bias towards misrecognising other emotions as anger is particularly significant because anger appears to play an important role in delinquency. "Taken together the data suggest that delinquents might be projecting their own heightened angry emotions onto others when they misperceive others' negative, but not hostile, emotional states as anger." Professor Karen Pine, an expert in developmental psychology at the University of Hertfordshire, said the ability to "read" a person's emotions from their facial expressions "is fundamental to us as social beings". Failure to understand an expression could lead to one feeling threatened without due cause, and even to antisocial behaviour, she added. "This is consistent with previous evidence and has been shown to account for some conduct problems in children." But she stressed the latest findings should be interpreted with caution because errors were also made by the young men who had not been in trouble, albeit less frequently. "The delinquents also had significantly lower IQs than the control group and this alone may have accounted for their poor performance on the task," she added.
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StumbleUpon What are these? E-mail this to a friend Printable versionThere are days when Aloha motorcycle commuter Ken Smith smiles when he comes upon a traffic jam.
He hits the throttle instead of the brake, threading his Suzuki M50 between long lines of idling cars.
Of course, those days are during his road trips to California – the only state in the union that allows the controversial practice of "lane-splitting" by motorcycle riders.
Back home in Oregon, however, the day may be coming when Smith and the state's other 204,800 endorsed motorcycle riders will be able to squeeze through daily gridlock in the same way.
On Friday, the
will decide whether or not to pay for a poll to gauge the public's opinion about allowing lane-splitting, also known as lane-sharing and filtering.
A new
report found that lane-splitting, also known as lane-sharing and filtering, could reduce greenhouse gas emissions as well as congestion.
Smith, 38, would be all for it, especially when he's sweltering in full protective gear on hot days.
During a summer trip to California, he was with four riders who moved freely between rows of stopped vehicles. They ended up swarming around cars at the front of the backup.
"I'm sure that wasn't appreciated," Smith said, "but it did make commuting on the bikes a little faster." But not all motorcycle riders are thrilled by the idea.
In fact, Team Oregon, the state's official motorcycle education program, is revving up opposition, saying the practice violates "core safety principles" and could stir hostility toward bikers.
In the thick of Tuesday's evening commute, motorcyclist Mark Lajoie found himself stuck in a backup on Southwest Yamhill Street in downtown Portland. Although there was room for him to motor up the middle of the two lanes of traffic, he said he wouldn't even if it were legal.
"I think it's dangerous," Lajoie said. "I really worry that a door would open on me or a driver not checking his blind spot would abruptly pull out."
Still, the state motorcycle safety committee thinks the issue is worth a look.
In the past decade, Oregon, like much of the United States, has experienced a large increase in motorcycle endorsements and registrations.
The greatest influx in motorcycle registration has happened in the Portland metro area, home to the state's worst daily traffic snarls.
Of Oregon's 133,800 registered motorcycles in 2009, 21,000 were owned by
residents, according to state Driver and Motor Vehicle records.
and
counties, meanwhile, had 14,000 each.
Responding to the desires of urban motorcyclists, state lawmakers have introduced proposals in 2001 and 2007 to change state statutes to permit lane-splitting. Neither bill made it to the floor.
"The idea is still out there," said Michele O'Leary, ODOT's motorcycle program manager.
The Governor's Advisory Committee for Motorcycle Safety, which advises the governor on road hazards and myriad other issues unique to motorcyclists, has budgeted $12,000 from motorcycle endorsements to conduct the public opinion poll.
The public can comment on the proposal at 6:30 p.m. Friday at the
, in Portland.
If the committee goes forward with the poll and finds support for the idea, it could recommend a change in traffic statute to the Legislature.
Team Oregon Director Steve Garets, however, said he would urge Gov.-elect John Kitzhaber to veto any such proposal.
Gartes said lane-splitting violates the core safety principle of motorcycle commuters keeping a "space cushion" between them and other road users. He also worries that zooming between vehicles stuck in traffic could stir negative attitudes toward motorcyclists they feel are cheating to get out of traffic jams.
"It doesn't take much," Garets said, "to move a car one foot or another to take out a motorcyclist,"
There has been scant research into the statistical crash risks of lane sharing in the United States. But the ODOT report quoted a 1981 study from California called the
conducted by researcher Harry Hurt, that showed lane sharing may actually reduce motorcycle collisions.
A similar study in the United Kingdom in 2004, however, found that motorists frequently turned their cars into bikers splitting lanes, even after decades of the practice being allowed.
Smith isn't convinced that lane-splitting is unsafe, especially since bikers tend to do it at low speeds around stalled traffic.
California has had the funding to commission a study focusing on lane-splitting in recent years. "I'm guessing," Smith said, "less accidents from lane sharing than from all other motor-vehicle against motorcycle accidents."
--Cloud Imperium Games has released the delayed Arena Commander dogfighting module for PC space game Star Citizen.
Arena Commander V0.8 gives every qualified backer access to the Vanduul Swarm and Freeflight modes, and the Aurora, 300i and Hornet ships. You need Alpha access or an Arena Commander pass to play.
There's also multiplayer functionality for the Battle Royale and Team modes, but they're only available to a small number of players right now as CIG battle lag and synch issues. The modes will be opened up to more players over the coming weeks.
"Remember: V0.8 is just the beginning," chief developer Chris Roberts wrote on the Roberts Space Industries website.
"It's the start of a hard push for the development team as we head towards V0.9 and finally V1.0, at which point Arena Commander will be 'feature complete' with the modes, maps and options promised at PAX. By the time V1.0 drops, we aim for the entire community to have access to the multiplayer game modes."
To coincide with the launch, CIG released a special Arena Commander manual in pdf form. This teaches you how to play and goes into the Star Citizen universe in a fashion anyone who obsessed over Roberts' Wing Commander games will appreciate.
Meanwhile, Roberts discussed the development of Star Citizen, highlighting how it had tried to make its development process as open and transparent as possible with the release of monthly reports from the various studios at work on the game. There are more than 250 people working on Star Citizen, Roberts said.
"The level of ambition with Star Citizen is unprecedented in the independent world and has only been made possible by your commitment and excitement. Not everything will go smoothly or on time, as a project of this size and complexity will always present unforeseen issues, which is why we have been endeavouring to share information with you that anyone in the traditional publishing model would not."
Roberts then addressed the concern from some quarters about the speed of development of the game in relation to the amount of money it has raised through crowdfunding. It holds the world record for the most ever raised through a crowdfunded project with over $44m and rising.
Roberts wondered whether CIG should continue to share internal date targets.
"I'm given pause not by internal criticism from frustrated backers who really just want to get into space (which we completely understand!) but by sensationalistic headlines that imply we're not working hard or that the game is some sort of scam," Roberts said.
"I can assure you that the whole team is committed to making the best game possible, so it is disheartening when our attempts at transparency are used against us to paint a negative picture of this amazing project."
Roberts launched a poll to find the answer.
"Since we're a community driven game, I'm going to leave it up to you whether you want the same level of visibility with regards to dates (knowing that they are estimates and are subject to change) or would rather just be given hard, long-term dates like a publisher."The price of bitcoin has continued to plummet, dropping to as low as $380 (£230, €295) in the last 24 hours.
The fortunes of bitcoin have been reflected by other major cryptocurrencies, with litecoin, peercoin, dogecoin and namecoin all falling in value by between 10% and 30%.
Bitcoin price crash
The world's most valuable cryptocurrency's price crash has been blamed on a variety of factors, with some analysts citing market traders setting their lowest bound exit point at $450. When the price dipped to this point, it would have therefore sparked a mass sell-off.
Bitcoin entrepreneur Charlie Shrem has dismissed such an idea, though, referring to it as a "bearish" argument.
"People constantly keep citing this as an example of constant downward pressure but it is simply not true," Shrem wrote in a recent post on Reddit. "BitPay and Coinbase DO NOT sell Bitcoin on exchanges."
If one online poll of analysts is to be believed, the price of bitcoin may continue to fall even further, as 80% of respondents said they believed that in the short term, the price of bitcoin will either remain at this level or decrease.
Winklevoss: Apple Pay no threat to bitcoin
Cameron Winklevoss, one half of the most famous twins in technology, has said Apple's new mobile payments system is unlikely to step on the toes of bitcoin.
"I don't think they compete. I think Apple Pay is a closed system. You know, bitcoin is inherently open sourced, decentralized," Winklevoss told CNBC. "I think they're not super comparable."
Apple Pay incorporates near-field communication (NFC) technology to allow users to make payments from their phone through their American Express, MasterCard or Visa bank cards.
Prominent members of the bitcoin community have previously speculated that despite Apple Pay's reliance on traditional financial infrastructure, bitcoin payments could well be integrated in the future.
"Apple Pay is still built on top of the same old credit card payment networks and banking system," said Coinsetter CEO Jaron Lukasiewicz.
"Bitcoin is therefore well-positioned to enhance Apple Pay over the long run through its integration behind the scenes."A new study by the IMF examining the impacts of tax cuts has found that while lowering tax rates for the rich will stimulate the economy, it does so at the great cost of increased inequality.
Most damningly, it finds the benefits of tax cuts targeted at the wealthiest 25% – such as the one the Turnbull government brought in last year – are far too weak to raise the welfare of the majority of the population and also never pay for themselves.
Last year, the government made great talk of the need for a tax cut for those earning more than $80,000.
The threshold for the 37% rate was raised to $87,000 to ensure – as the prime minister argued at the time that “middle-income Australians, those that are on average full-time earnings, which as you know is nudging $80,000, don’t move into the second top tax bracket”.
Beware tax cuts for 'Middle Australia'. Above-average earners benefit most Read more
But as I noted at the time, those on $80,000 earned roughly 1.5 times the current median taxable income of $55,000, putting them above what would be considered “middle class”. Such income earners were also around the top 25% of those with a taxable income and in the top 14% of all adults.
This year, the only income-tax cut delivered was similarly targeted at high-income earners – in this case the very high.
The end of the deficit levy, which delivered a 2% tax cut to those earning more than $180,000, combined with the 0.5% increase in the Medicare levy, meant everyone who earned less than $240,000 had a tax rise, while those earning above that amount received a tax cut.
And this is important because of the new IMF study – tax cuts aimed at the top 25% improve growth but reduce the welfare of most of the population, and tax cuts targeted at middle-income earners reduce inequality and can actually raise the size of the middle class.
The study also rather sharply slaps down the biggest furphy put forward by many who advocate tax cuts to stimulate growth – that they will pay for themselves through stronger growth and, thus, more tax revenue.
Company tax cut cost reaches $65.4bn over 10 years Read more
The idea of self-funding tax cuts got a big run in the 1980s under Ronald Reagan. He argued that his policies, which slashed the top tax rate in the US from 70% to 26%, would pay for themselves through increased growth. They didn’t.
In 2006, a US treasury study found that the tax cuts caused revenue to fall in real terms and was only partially made up by other tax increases that Reagan introduced.
But the myth of tax cuts paying for themselves remains.
The current US treasury secretary, Steven Mnuchin, said in April that economic growth would pay for Donald Trump’s tax cuts; in the same month Liberal senator James Paterson told the Senate that “the revenue collected from individuals after the tax rates were cut [by Reagan] in fact increased rather than decreased”.
The IMF study, which modelled the impacts of tax cuts on a US-style economy, found that any income-tax cut – whether targeted at middle or high-income households – reduced tax revenue.
The study’s authors noted that personal income-tax cuts stimulated growth but the supply-side effects, such as increased employment and wages, “are never large enough to offset the revenue loss from lower marginal tax rates”.
Or as they succinctly conclude: “tax cuts do not pay for themselves”.
The study, however, finds that tax cuts do generate growth. This is not uncontroversial – giving people money either through direct or indirect payments or a tax cut will generally lead to them spending more money and thus increase economic growth.
The issue is how to pay for the tax cuts and what impact they will have on the economy.
The study looked at two types of tax cuts – one for middle-income earners and the other for those in the top 25% income bracket. It found that both improved economic growth, but more growth resulted from the high-income tax cuts.
If you stopped reading there, you would miss the crucial aspect.
While a high-income tax cut generates more growth than one directed at middle-income earners, that growth delivers very skewed benefits.
The study found that in an economy such as the US or Australia, the high-income tax cut would lead to increased spending on goods and services, which in turn could improve wages for those lower-income earners who provided those goods, but it would also cause prices to rise and would need to be paid for by either other tax increases or cuts to government spending.
The total impact, even when you accounted for policies that tried to “protect the poor” to reduce the impact of other tax increases and spending cuts, was “a significant decline in consumption of low and middle- income households, and a significant reduction of the middle class”.
So you get strong economic growth, but you reduce the size of the middle class and increase inequality.
Is it time to make the Medicare levy progressive? High income earners can afford it | Greg Jericho Read more
Damningly, the study’s authors conclude of the high-income tax cut that “the ‘trickle-down’ effects” are “insufficient to raise the welfare of the bulk of the population”.
On the other hand, they find that a tax cut targeted at middle-income earners, while generating less overall growth, “reduces income inequality and polarisation by moving people from lower income households back into the middle class”.
The study estimates that a tax cut targeted at middle-income earners can increase the size of the middle class by about 4% and reduce inequality, even if itis paid for by raising consumption taxes such as the GST.
In the past, the belief has been that you need to sacrifice equality for economic growth. Numerous recent studies, however, have found that reducing inequality improves economic growth in the long term.
The IMF study gives the issue an even more precise examination. Rather than talking in general economic terms, it looks at the specific impact of taxation policy.
And it shows that governments that choose high-income tax cuts are choosing economic growth for the few and reduced welfare for the many.The Fukushima Nuclear Disaster triggered by “The Great East Earthquake” and tsunami in 2011 was the worst nuclear accident since Chernobyl.
Arkadiusz Podniesinski, a Polish photographer, visited the site of the Fukushima nuclear disaster to capture the haunting mementos of the radioactive wreckage.
When the photographer last month obtained the permit to enter the 12.5-mile exclusion zone around the nuclear plant, he eye-witnessed a real-life post-apocalyptic scene.
Podniesinski said: “When I entered the exclusion zone, the first thing I noticed was the huge scale of decontamination work. This was a way of drawing my own conclusions without being influenced by any media sensation, government propaganda, or nuclear lobbyists who are trying to play down the effects of the disaster.”
“It is not earthquakes or tsunami that are to blame for the disaster at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power station, but humans,” writes Podniesinski on his website.
Below you can see a haunting example of nature winning the battle against civilization. Source: podniesinski.pl,designyoutrustBy Victoria Gill
Science reporter, BBC News
Adam discovered the role of 12 different genes in yeast cells Scientists have created an ideal colleague - a robot that performs hundreds of repetitive experiments. The robot, called Adam, is the first machine to have independently "discovered new scientific knowledge". It has already identified the role of several genes in yeast cells, and is able to plan further experiments to test its own hypotheses. The UK-based team that built Adam at Aberystwyth University describes the breakthrough in the journal Science. Ross King from the department of computer science at Aberystwyth University, and who led the team, told BBC News that he envisaged a future when human scientists' time would be "freed up to do more advanced experiments". Robotic colleagues, he said, could carry out the more mundane and time-consuming tasks. "Adam is a prototype but, in 10-20 years, I think machines like this could be commonly used in laboratories," said Professor King. Robotic planning Adam can carry out up to 1,000 experiments each day, and was designed to investigate the function of genes in yeast cells - it has worked out the role of 12 of these genes. Biologists use the yeast cells to investigate biological systems because they are simple and easy to study. "When you sequence the yeast genome - the 6,000 different genes contained in yeast - you know what all the component parts are, but you don't know what they do," explained Professor King. Robots express scientific findings in a much clearer form than humans
Professor Ross King
Aberystwyth University The robot was able to work out the role of the genes by observing yeast cells as they grew. It used existing information about the function of known genes to make predictions about the role an unknown gene might play in the cell's growth. It then tested this by looking at a strain of yeast from which that gene had been removed. "It's like a car," Professor King said. "If you remove one component from the engine, then drive the car to see how it performs, you can find out what that particular component does." Expensive assistant Duc Pham from the Manufacturing Engineering Centre at Cardiff University described the robot scientist as "a clever application of robotics and computer software". But, he added, "it's more like a junior lab assistant" than a scientist. "It will be a long time before computers can replace human scientists." Professor King agreed that the robot was in its early stages of development. Please turn on JavaScript. Media requires JavaScript to play. "If you spent all of the money we've spent on Adam on employing human biologists, Adam probably wouldn't turn out to be the cost-effective option," he said. "But that was the case with the first car. Initially, the investment in the technology |
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Those who can access JSTOR can find some of the papers mentioned above there. For those with access, the American Mathematical Society's MathSciNet can be used to get additional bibliographic information and reviews of some these materials. Some of the items above can be accessed via the ACM Portal, which also provides bibliographic services.Over the last few months, evidence has been gathering that storage manufacturers Kingston and more recently PNY have been pulling a bait and switch tactic on their consumers. What this means is that after the initial hardware release and of course the reviews of their products have been written, the companies are then changing the hardware configuration. This has left many customers venting that they’ve been cheated into buying a product they may not have wanted had they known the hardware had been changed. This can be especially true for those who buy their hardware based on reviews, such as the reviews we do here at eTeknix. If we tell you a product gives X amount of performance based on its specifications, then those specifications are secretly changed, then our review is worthless and you as a consumer may end up with an inferior product.
According to a Tweaktown blog post, the new PNY Optima drive should feature the Silicon Motion controller, but the user who bought it later discovered that it features a different firmware and a different SandForce based controller. TweakTown investigated this issue and contact PNY who responded with; “yes we did ship some Optima SSD’s with SandForce controllers, but only if they meet the minimum advertised performance levels.”
Unfortunately minimum performance levels is about as vague as things get, especially when manufacturers usually use the term “up to” for their performance figures. Such as the PNY drives spec sheet which reads “up to 60,000 IOPS”, not to mention the level of change that their testing equipment and methods can mean when recording those figures.
The same can be said for the popular Kingston V300 drive, a product that has been on the market for around a year now, but appears to have been switched from synchronous to asynchronous NAND. The downside of this being that the latter can be slower than the other in certain situation, dependant on the configuration, than the parts that were initially installed in these drives. This is reflected in the charts below, which compares the standard hardware to the asynchronous NAND hardware.
In short, this isn’t acceptable, selling one product under the pretence that it’s actually made of different components is bad for business and I suspect that now the alarm has been rung, more issues like this will soon be discovered, perhaps even from several other brands. If the issue isn’t resolved soon, then it could mean that many of the storage reviews that have already been published, could now be a complete waste of time, or at least require the modified products to be re-tested.
Thank you ExtremeTech, Tweaktown and NordicHardware for providing us with this information.
Images courtesy of Extremetech and NordicHardware.Possibilities for Prometheus 2, too...
British commuters' freesheet The Metro spoke with Ridley Scott this week to tie-in with Prometheus's Blu-ray and DVD release, as you might have guessed, the conversation turned to the possibilities for Prometheus 2 and Blade Runner 2.
Describing Prometheus as having "evolved into a whole other universe", he sums up the end of his sci-fi horror epic this way:
"You’ve got a person [Noomi Rapace’s Elizabeth Shaw] with a head in a bag [Michael Fassbender’s ethically questionable android David] that functions and has an IQ of 350. It can explain to her how to put the head back on the body and she’s gonna think about that long and hard because, once the head is back on his body, he’s dangerous."
Readers of our exclusive in-depth interview with Prometheus' original screenwriter, Jon Spaights, will know that "dangerous" barely covers it – David has the potential (or did, anyway), to be an extraordinary character, a scientific and rational destruction bringer. Say what you like about Prometheus, there are some fascinating possibilites about where to go next. Like, say, "paradise"...
"They’re going off to paradise but it could be the most savage, horrible place," Scott adds. "Who are the Engineers?"
As for Blade Runner 2, The Metro approached the question as if the idea of a sequel was just a rumour. Scott was quick to dismiss that idea:
"It’s not a rumour – it’s happening. With Harrison Ford? I don’t know yet. Is he too old? Well, he was a Nexus-6 so we don’t know how long he can live [laughs]. And that’s all I’m going to say at this stage."
Make of that what you will, especially with Scott's tongue obviously firmly embedded within his cheek (following on from something similarly jokey earlier in the year), but it's an emphatic confirmation that the Blade Runner follow-up is go.
Then there's the indication from Scott that the Blade Runner sequel's protagonist should be female, as well as the news that the original's writer, Hampton Francher, is also on board the project – but nothing is fully confirmed as yet.
Prometheus is out on Blu-ray and DVD now.Soft power,
hard cash How Beijing has spent billions on
aid and development in Africa
China has committed $75bn (£48bn) on aid and development projects in Africa in the past decade, according to research which reveals the scale of what some have called Beijing's escalating soft power "charm offensive" to secure political and economic clout on the continent.
The Chinese government releases very little information on its foreign aid activities, which remain state secrets. In one of the most ambitious attempts to date to chip away at this secrecy, US researchers have launched the largest public database of Chinese development finance in Africa, detailing almost 1,700 projects in 50 countries between 2000 and 2011.
China's financial commitments are significantly larger than previous estimates of the country's development finance, though still less than the estimated $90bn the US committed over that period. Researchers at AidData, at the College of William and Mary, have spent 18 months compiling and encoding thousands of media reports to construct the database, and hope users will contribute further detail on the projects.
The data, which challenges what has for years been the dominant story – Beijing's unrelenting quest for natural resources – is likely to fuel ongoing debate over China's motives in Africa.
There are few mining projects in the database and, while transport, storage and energy initiatives account for some of the largest sums, the data also reveals how China has put hundreds of millions of dollars towards health, education and cultural projects.
AidData's database can be used to test some of the hypotheses – and challenge some of the misconceptions – about China's motivations
In Liberia, China has put millions towards the installation of solar traffic lights in Monrovia and financed a malaria prevention centre. In Mozambique, China's projects include a National School for Visual Arts in Maputo. In Algeria, construction has begun on a multimillion dollar 1,400-seat opera house in the Ouled Fayet suburbs of western Algiers.
The view from Beijing Tania Branigan on domestic disquiet at China's generosity
China has also sent thousands of doctors and teachers to work in Africa, welcomed many more students to learn in China or in Chinese language classes abroad and rolled out a continent-wide network of sports stadiums and concert halls.
"The dominant narrative has been one of China's insatiable desire for resources. But in fact this database suggests there may be many more things going on," said Vijaya Ramachandran, senior fellow at the Washington DC-based thinktank Centre for Global Development and co-author of a report on the AidData project.
Only a fraction of the database's projects (totalling $16bn) would count as official development assistance under the rules set by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). Ramachandran, however, insists China is still playing an important role in closing funding gaps in Africa. "China is a major emerging player in development finance and we need to get a handle on what it is doing," she said.
While the scale of Chinese involvement in Africa has grown substantially since 2000, its attempts to secure influence on the continent are nothing new
While aid from OECD countries stagnates or shrinks under the pressure of budgets and an increasingly sceptical public, a host of new emerging donors – including Brazil, Venezuela, and Iran – are expanding their work in other developing countries. These countries have largely resisted calls to disclose data or abide by international aid transparency standards. This lack of information has fuelled wild speculation over what the donors are doing – and why.
The appeal of Chinese aid to African leaders In this excerpt from Madam President, Malawi's Joyce Banda explains why African countries often prefer to deal with China than with Western donors Please upgrade your browser in order to watch this video. We recommend Google Chrome or Mozilla Firefox. Produced and directed by Nick and Marc Francis
While some insist the bottom line is China's thirst for natural resources, others argue Beijing's development projects on the continent – from infrastructure to debt relief to providing medical support – are also part of a public diplomacy strategy to build up goodwill and international support for the future.
New Chinese development projects are often announced during high-level visits from state officials, although many never make it past the ceremonial pledges. Researchers found evidence that almost 1,000 projects totalling $48.6bn, are under way or complete. The rest either remain in the pipeline or will never happen.
Many of the cultural and sporting projects across the continent are probably "upfront sweeteners" to win government favour, a "downpayment" for future commercial deals, suggests Stephen Chan, professor at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London.
But Chan rejects the idea that China has a master strategy in Africa. "There are 54 countries in Africa. You're off your head if you think there's one single agenda."
Deborah Bräutigam, head of the international development programme at Johns Hopkins University, said suggestions that China's aid to Africa was all about natural resources were "widespread misconceptions". "There are a lot of reasons countries give aid and China is no different," she said.
The Eight Principles of Chinese aid In 1964, the Chinese government declared the Eight Principles for Economic Aid and Technical Assistance to Other Countries, which still inform development policy today: Equality and mutual benefit form the basis of Chinese aid China respects sovereignty, never attaches conditions or asks for privileges China helps lighten the burden with interest-free or low-interest loans and by extending repayment terms when necessary The purpose of aid is to help countries become self-reliant Projects that require less investment but yield quicker results are favoured China provides quality equipment and materials manufactured in China at international market prices China will help recipient countries master the techniques of any technical assistance Chinese experts will have the same standard of living as those of the recipient country and are not allowed to make special demands
Chinese education and training programmes, for example, target students from across the continent. "These are all about diplomacy, about soft power... like the Alliance Française and the British Council... all about presenting China as an important global player. All the big countries do this," she added.
Other programmes can be linked to China's trade agenda. Chinese medical teams have worked in Africa since 1963, but recently their objective has expanded to include promotion of China's pharmaceuticals such as antimalarials, according to Yanzhong Huang, senior fellow for global health at the Council on Foreign Relations. He said a combination of economic interests and the need to expand its political influence and improve its international image was driving Chinese health aid in Africa.
Beijing has also sought to improve its image on the continent by financing the rapid expansion of Chinese media outlets across the continent to counter negative images of China and Africa with upbeat stories. This is an explicit part of China's official Africa policy, released in 2006, which encourages exchange and co-operation between African and Chinese media to "enhance mutual understanding and enable objective and balanced media coverage of each other".
The database includes Chinese projects to train journalists in Angola and Zimbabwe, as well as an exchange programme for journalists in China and Ghana.
It contains records of Chinese-backed projects in all but the four African states that maintain diplomatic relations with Taiwan: Burkina Faso, the Gambia, Sao Tome and Principe and Swaziland.
But last year Joseph Nye, the Harvard professor who coined the term "soft power", said China would see little return on its investments until it relaxed its control over information.
"Great powers try to use culture and narrative to create soft power that promotes their national interests, but it's not an easy sell when the message is inconsistent with their domestic realities... in an information age in which credibility is the scarcest resource, the best propaganda is not propaganda," he wrote in the Wall Street Journal. "China is clamping down on the internet and jailing human rights lawyers, once again torpedoing its soft-power campaign."Israeli soldiers and police gather at the scene of an attack near the Jewish settlement of Otniel, south of the West Bank town of Hebron on November 13, 2015 (AFP Photo/Hazem Bader)
Hebron (Palestinian Territories) (AFP) - An Israeli father and son were shot dead in an apparent ambush Friday near Hebron on a day that also saw three Palestinians die after being shot by Israeli soldiers.
Unknown assailants killed the two Israelis when he opened fire on a car near the Jewish settlement of Otniel, south of Hebron in the occupied West Bank, the army said.
A woman and an adolescent boy were wounded, hospital sources said.
Photographs from the scene showed the vehicle in a ditch, its doors open and the inside bloodied.
"Two Israelis were murdered... when shots were fired at their vehicle near Hebron" in a "terrorist" attack, an army statement said, adding that the gunman or gunmen had fled the area.
It was the most serious attack on Israelis in nearly a month and sparked a manhunt, with soldiers backed by air units deploying en masse in the neighbouring Palestinian communities of Yatta and As Samou, an AFP journalist said.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed to bring the attackers to justice.
"We will get to these heinous murderers and we will bring them to justice as we have done in the past," he said in a statement.
Israeli forces took less than a week to arrest the alleged perpetrators of an attack that killed two settlers on 1 October and sparked the latest wave of violence.
Israel says they belonged to a Hamas cell, the Islamist movement that controls the Gaza Strip and is a staunch enemy of the Jewish state.
- Toll now nearly 100 -
In an unrelated incident, a Palestinian was shot dead during clashes on Friday with the army in Hebron, Palestinian medics said.
Hassan al-Bo, 21, died after being hit in the heart by live ammunition, an official at Al-Ahli Hospital said.
Soldiers also shot dead a man near the West Bank city of Ramallah on Friday, the Palestinian health ministry said.
A statement announced "the death of a young man, Lafi Yusuf Awad, 22 years old, from the village of Budrus in the district of Ramallah, (killed) by a bullet from Israeli forces".
Earlier, a Palestinian teenager in Hebron succumbed to his wounds after being shot by troops a day earlier.
Along the Gaza border, 17 people were hit when Israeli soldiers shot at demonstrators inside the enclave, emergency services there said.
Altogether, more than 270 Palestinians were treated during clashes on Friday, the Palestinian Red Crescent said, around 100 with bullet and rubber bullet wounds and the rest after inhaling tear gas.
Violence since the start of October, including a wave of Palestinian knife, gun and car-ramming attacks, has killed 81 people on the Palestinian side -- including one Israeli Arab -- and 12 Israelis.
The violence was originally focused in and around Jerusalem but has recently shifted to Hebron and its surrounding areas.
The city is a frontline of the conflict, with 500 Jewish settlers living under military protection in the centre of a city of 200,000 Palestinians.
- Calls for peace talks -
Israeli settlements in the West Bank have been declared illegal by the United Nations.
In occupied east Jerusalem, around 200 Palestinians clashed with security forces as they demanded the return of the bodies of alleged attackers from the area.
The weeks of violence have led to renewed calls for a meaningful peace process between Israel and the Palestinians.
The two sides have not had face-to-face negotiations since talks fell apart in April 2014, with each side blaming the other for the failure.
Britain's former prime minister Tony Blair, who was previously an envoy for the Middle East peacemaking Quartet, announced a new campaign for a lasting peace agreement on Friday.
Blair said he was now acting as a private citizen to push for a negotiated settlement.
"What I will do both here and throughout the region is work through this Initiative for the Middle East, as I call it, to try and push and promote... a political process in the framework of the Arab peace initiative, major change on the ground in Gaza and the West Bank, and Palestinian unity on the basis of peace," he said.
During his eight-year tenure with the Quartet, Palestinian leaders accused Blair of being too close to Israel.Brett T. Evans
Photographers: Nate Hassler
Toyota was not kidding when it said it was building a one-off Tacoma to celebrate Back to the Future Day on October 21. But even this author, in his ardent BTTF/Toyota enthusiasm, is impressed with what they’ve created.
The BTTF tribute borrows just about every cool detail from Marty McFly’s truck. Starting with the most obvious, enamel-like black paintwork and wheel faces with chrome simulated beadlocks hearken back to the 1985’s black paint and chrome wheel rims. Also calling the cinema truck to mind are the two square driving lamps, capped with yellow KC HiLITES light covers. The lamps are mounted to a custom tubular front bumper with an integrated grille hoop, just like the famous 1985, while four round lights with matching covers are mounted to the rollbar just above and aft of the cab. The rollbar and front and rear bumpers look just about exactly as they did in 1985.
However, nearly anyone with a set of eyes could recreate those obvious aspects of Marty’s Pickup on a new truck. What sets Toyota’s efforts with the 2016 Tacoma tribute apart are the details. The front turn signals are colored a deep, smoky amber, recalling a time when ugly orange lenses cluttered the lines of every U.S.-market vehicle. The theme is repeated on the taillights, where Toyota brought back tricolor units (although the reverse lamps look like they’ve been replaced with very futuristic metallic trim strips).
Also in back, the Tacoma’s sculpted tailgate and stamped model logo have been 86ed in favor of a smooth tailgate with TOYOTA script plastered across the middle (yay!). One last cool detail: While 22R-E–equipped Toyota 4x4s came with a badge on the C-pillar that read “TOYOTA 4WD EFI,” the 2016 has a very cool “TOYOTA 4WD D-4S” badge, a nod to the Tacoma's modern 3.5L V-6.
Toyota made a short video hyping its new Mirai fuel-cell vehicle, which is powered by hydrogen. While that's all well and good, what actually makes the YouTube flick worth watching are the cameos by Marty and Doc, plus the flashbacks involving the new Tacoma driving through actual Hill Valley landmarks. Welcome to the future.
Source: ToyotaDeep in the bowels of the Digikey and Mouser databases, you’ll find the coolest component ever. Motorized linear potentiometers are a rare, exotic, and just plain neat input device most commonly found on gigantic audio mixing boards and other equipment that costs as much as a car. They’re slider potentiometers with a trick up their sleeve: there’s a motor inside that can set the slider to any position.
The mechanical keyboard community has been pushing the boundaries of input devices for the last few years, and it looks like they just discovered motorized linear pots. [Jack] created a motorized sliding keycap for his keyboard. It’s like a scroll wheel, but for a keyboard. It’s beautiful, functional, and awesome.
The hardware for this build is just about what you would expect. A 60 mm motorized linear pot for the side-mount, or 100 mm mounted to the top of the keyboard, is controlled by an Arduino clone and a small motor driver. That’s just the hardware; the real trick here is the software. So far, [Jack] has implemented a plugin system, configuration software, and force feedback. Now, messing with the timeline in any Adobe product is easy and intuitive. This device also has a ‘not quite vibration’ mode for whenever [Jack] gets a notification on his desktop.
Right now, [Jack] is running a group buy for this in a reddit thread, with the cost somewhere between $55 and $75, depending on how many people want one. This is a really awesome product, and we can’t wait for Corsair to come out with a version sporting innumerable RGB LEDs. Until then, we’ll just have to drool over the video [Jack] posted below.Currently at large somewhere in the world are cybercriminals who have drained the bank accounts of several French companies—all without brandishing guns or cracking safes. They’re highly sophisticated, rather audacious, and too mobile to trace.
Symantec, a computer security software firm, investigated the thieves’ methods as practiced over the course of this year and uncovered an innovative “social engineering” operation. Introducing a remote access Trojan (RAT) to a company’s network, the hackers can harvest all the data they need to transfer funds to offshore accounts, from which they siphon their haul.
Deploying the RAT is tricky, and human error often plays a role, as a case from April revealed: An administrative assistant at a multinational corporation received a link to a suspicious-looking invoice, but this was followed up with a phone call from an alleged company vice president, who in fluent French instructed her to open and process the file. Once she had downloaded the Trojan, it was all over, as Security Watch explained.
The RAT harvested company information, including the company’s disaster plan and its telecom provider details. Using the stolen information, the crooks invoked the disaster plan, claiming a physical disaster. This let them redirect all of the organization’s phones to a new set of phones under their control. Next they faxed a request to the company’s bank for multiple large fund transfers to offshore accounts. Naturally the bank representative called to confirm; the crooks intercepted the call and approved the transaction.
Because phone calls and convincing French are such critical pieces of the puzzle, Symantec labeled the criminal enterprise “Operation Francophone.” Other jobs have seen them pose as IT employees who need to “upgrade” computer systems (which inevitably requires the “temporary” disabling of certain security factors). In at least one attack, they didn’t even use malware. Again pretending to be IT staff, they emailed requesting a “test” wire transfer of funds that turned out to be real.
It doesn’t look as though OF’s cybercrime spree will come to an end anytime soon, either. “By examining emails and C&C traffic, we were able to determine that the attacker is located in, or routing their attacks through Israel,” Symantec wrote. “Even more surprising, the traffic analysis indicates that the attacker was on the move when they were conducting the attacks. These operational security techniques make the attacker extremely difficult to trace.”
If the architects of OF are ever caught, it should make for a great movie. Until then, employees at large companies should keep security measures robust, and mistrust anyone who calls, emails, or otherwise tries to contact them.
Photo by Will__Martin/FlickrOriginally drafted 21st overall in the 2010 NHL Draft, Riley Sheahan is in a position to have a breakout offensive season for the Detroit Red Wings in 2016-17.
Sheahan scored a career-high 14 goals last season after coming on late in the year. In his last 22 games, he recorded seven goals and 12 points to go alongside a plus-8 rating.
Across a full 82-game season, those numbers translate to 26 goals and 44 points, which would again establish a new career in each category. While 26 goals is unlikely, Sheahan posting 44 points is certainly achievable.
In 2013-14, his first season with the Red Wings, he posted 24 points in 42 games, which translates to 46 points in a full season.
Fans certainly expected the 6-foot-3, 222-pound forward to begin utilizing his size and start playing a power forward’s game in 2014-15. Over the course of a full season, Sheahan’s scoring pace dropped, but he still built on his rookie year with 13 goals and 36 points in 79 games.
Sheahan’s Role in 2016-17
In June, Sheahan signed a two-year bridge contract worth an annual $2.075 million. The deal gives Sheahan incentive—the ultimate reason for a bridge contact—to take the next step in his career and establish himself as a future piece of the Red Wings. Sheahan has shown solid offensive upside with some slick goals last season.
Recently, I outlined the need for the Red Wings to sort through their center depth, having eight natural centers signed ahead of October. In doing so, I pegged Sheahan as the likely third line center.
[RELATED: Sorting Through the Detroit Red Wings Centers]
The biggest threat to Sheahan’s roster spot is fan-favorite Andreas Athanasiou. With his speed, stickhandling and tenacity, Athanasiou is a real threat to take over Sheahan’s center role.
With 15 forwards under contract, Ken Holland will seemingly operate from an area of depth and strength to bring in much-needed defensive help. But if a trade doesn’t come by October 13th, Athanasiou’s waiver-exempt status could leave him in Grand Rapids to start the season.
Since his offensive game hasn’t blossomed enough to break into the top-six, and Luke Glendening’s four-year extension sets him as the fourth line center until 2021, Sheahan is best used as a two-way center on the third line.
Potential Linemates
A breakout offensive season becomes even likelier for Sheahan with an increase in linemate quality. Going back to the aforementioned surplus of forwards, the Red Wings are operating with more depth than they had last season.
Sheahan is fixed to play with one or two of Darren Helm, Tomas Tatar, Gustav Nyquist, Andreas Athanasiou and newcomer Thomas Vanek.
While Helm’s highest point total is 33, the latter four options can bring real offense to Sheahan’s wing. Tatar and Nyquist have established chemistry with Sheahan from winning a Calder Cup together in 2013 to semi-regular time together in Detroit.
Athanasiou, 21, quickly gained love and trust from Hockeytown this season, but not so much with Jeff Blashill and the coaching staff. He was regularly sheltered, averaging just 9:01 per game regardless of his offensive upside.
Vanek, a four-time 30-goal scorer, signed a one-year deal in Detroit after posting career lows in goals and points last season. Used as a spare part in Minnesota, Holland believes he has “a motivated athlete” on a low-risk, high-reward contract.
[RELATED: Thomas Vanek Joins Familiar Faces in Red Wings Locker Room]
Sitting below Tatar, Nyquist, Dylan Larkin, Frans Nielsen, Henrik Zetterberg and Justin Abdelkader on the depth chart, Vanek will most likely start with third line minutes, easily the best offensive threat Sheahan will have spent regular time with in his career.The Canadian Press
Quebec City police said 44 people were arrested near the site of rival protests by right-wing and anti-fascist groups.
Spokesman David Poitras says the suspects were heading to the protest with the intention of causing violence, but could not confirm whether they identified with any of the protesting groups.
Police would not confirm the exact reasons for the arrests or whether charges would be laid.
Following rallies in Quebec City in August and St-Bernard-de-Lacolle in September, several hundred members of nationalist groups La Meute and Storm Alliance gathered for a protest in the provincial capitol on Saturday.
Far-right groups La Meute and Storm Alliance already gathering in Quebec City for noon demonstration. Around 100 here so far. Counter protestors gathering in another park a few blocks away. Heavy police presence. @CTVMontreal pic.twitter.com/zlcchybv4E — Angela MacKenzie (@AMacKenzieCTV) November 25, 2017
Earlier in the day, Quebec City police were on high alert as the groups assembled in front of the Grand Theatre de Quebec before their march to the convention centre where the Quebec Liberal Party is holding its weekend convention.
While members of La Meute marched silently, Storm Alliance walked ahead, chanting slogans and singing La Marseillaise, the national anthem of France.
Anti-fascist left-wing protesters arrived early in the morning to set up a counter protest in front of the National Assembly.
Spokesperson Anas Bouslikhane said they wanted to have a festive atmosphere that would contrast with the nationalist protesters.
According to the Storm Alliance Facebook page, the goal of the protest is to express opposition to the Liberal government’s commission on discrimination and systemic racism in Quebec. It has since been replaced by a foum to fight discrimination.
The commission was cancelled in October, replaced by hearings on the value of diversity and the battle against discrimination which will focus on immigration, employment and the French language.
The two nationalist groups oppose the hearings on the grounds that they will act as a “lawsuit” intended to declare Quebecers guilty of racism.
At least 300 far-right protestors ready to go. I’m hearing many diffferent reasons for why people are here. Mostly anger towards federal and provincial governments - “a lack of respect for Quebecois and Quebec culture”. @CTVMontreal pic.twitter.com/8ca9FivXqg — Angela MacKenzie (@AMacKenzieCTV) November 25, 2017
On its Facebook page, La Meute leaders said they will use the rally as an opportunity to denounce “religious clothes… that enslave women,” and to show support for a charter of secularism.
On Saturday, Storm Alliance spokesperson Dave Treggett said the message of the protest had changed and it was now meant to express widespread discontentment with the Liberals.
Police say they're ready
In August, anti-fascist protesters violently clashed with police during a planned La Meute protest, blocking members of the group inside a parking garage.
Quebec City Police Service Inspector Andre Turcotte said authorities were prepared for both the rally and counter-protest.
"There are about 300 events in Quebec each year, this is no different," he said.
He added that given the events in August, special precautions had been taken, including assigning extra police officers and temporary street closures.
Public Security Minister Martin Coiteux lauded police efforts earlier in the day, commending both the Surete du Quebec and Quebec City police for being "efficient" and "well deployed over the territory" at the time of the demonstration.Breaking News Emails Get breaking |
ordinierte Attentate an fünf verschiedenen Orten im 10. und 11. Pariser Arrondisement sowie an drei Orten in der Pariser Vorstadt Saint-Denis. Nach Angaben der französischen Regierung wurden 130 Menschen getötet und fast 700 verletzt, darunter ca. 100 schwer. Außerdem starben sieben der Attentäter in unmittelbarem Zusammenhang mit ihren Attacken. Zu den Anschlägen bekannte sich der Islamische Staat.
Frankreich beantragt erstmals den EU-Bündnisfall
Die Angriffsserie an diesem Freitagabend richtet sich a) zuerst gegen die Zuschauer eines Fußballländerspiels zwischen Frankreich und Deutschland im Stade de France, dann b) gegen die Gäste zahlreicher Bars, Cafés und Restaurants und schließlich c) gegen die Besucher eines Rockkonzerts im Bataclan-Theater. Es handelt sich um mehrere Schusswaffenattentate, ein Massaker mit Geiselnahme sowie sechs Detonationen, die von Selbstmordattentätern mit Sprengstoffwesten ausgelöst werden.
Nach den Attentaten verhängt die französische Regierung den Ausnahmezustand. Eine dreitägige Staatstrauer wird ausgerufen. Präsident François Hollande spricht von einem kriegerischen Akt und kündigt einen entschiedenen Kampf gegen den Terror an. Am 17. November 2015 beantragt Frankreich als erstes Land in der Geschichte der Europäischen Union den Beistand der anderen EU-Staaten im Rahmen der Regelungen der Gemeinsamen Sicherheits- und Verteidigungspolitik (Art. 42 Abs. 7 des EU-Vertrags). Die europäischen Staaten sichern ihre Solidarität zu.
Der mutmaßliche Planer der Anschläge, Abdelhamid Abaaoud, ein Belgier marokkanischer Herkunft, stirbt wenige Tage später bei einer Razzia im Pariser Vorort Saint-Denis.
Chronologischer Ablauf der Ereignisse am 13.11.20013 in Paris
21:20 Uhr: Zwei Detonationen am Stade de France während des Freundschaftsspiels zwischen der französischen und der deutschen Fußballnationalmannschaft. Nachdem zwei Attentäter mit Sprengstoffgürteln versuchten, ins Stadioninnere zu gelangen, beiden dies aber nicht gelang, zünden sie ihre Westen außerhalb des Stadions. Einer reißt dabei einen Passanten mit in den Tod.
21:25 Uhr: In der Rue Alibert werden in einer Bar und in einem Restaurant die ersten Schüsse abgefeuert, bei denen insgesamt 15 Menschen getötet werden.
21:32 Uhr: Nun werden in der Rue du Faubourg-du-Temple und der Rue de la Fontaine-au-Roi Schüsse auf die Menschen auf den Terrassen abgefeuert. Dabei sterben weitere fünf Menschen.
21:36 Uhr: In der Rue de Charonne fallen in einer Bar minutenlang Schüsse, bei denen 19 Menschen getötet werden.
21:40 Uhr: Ein weiterer muslimischer Terrorist sprengt sich auf dem Boulevard Voltaire, auf der Place de la République gegenüberliegenden Seite, in die Luft.
21:40 Uhr: Schwer bewaffnete Angreifer stürmen die Konzerthalle Bataclan und bringen dort in den nächsten Stunden ca. 90 Menschen um, verüben unvorstellbare Massaker und Grausamkeiten (siehe unten).
21:53 Uhr: Dritte Detonation am Stade de France.
00:20 Uhr: Nach mehr als zweieinhalb Stunden stürmen endlich Einsatzkräfte der Polizei das Bataclan-Theater und bereiten dem Schrecken ein Ende.
Das Massaker im Bataclan-Theater
Im Bataclan gibt an diesem Abend die US-amerikanische Rockband Eagles of Death Metal ein Konzert vor ca. 1.500 Konzertbesuchern. Gegen 21:50 Uhr steigen drei radikalmuslimische Terroristen vor dem Theater aus einem VW Polo, beschießen unvermittelt zwei junge Männer auf Fahrrädern und dringen durch die Bar und den Merchandisingstand in das Gebäude ein.
Die drei Terroristen feuern zunächst circa zehn Minuten lang mit Kalaschnikow-Sturmgewehren in das Publikum und werfen Handgranaten in die Menge. Bereits dabei gibt es viele Todesopfer und schwer Verletzte. Insgesamt werden im Bataclan-Theater 90 Menschen ermordet. Viele Besucher versuchen, sich in den Räumen der Halle und auf den Balkonen zu verstecken, manchen gelingt die Flucht ins Freie.
Nach ca. 35 Minuten treffen zwei Polizisten ein, denen es gelingt, einen der Attentäter zu erschießen. Dann müssen sie sich jedoch zurückziehen und auf eintreffende Verstärkung warten, was sich für viele der Geiseln als in höchstem Grade verhängnisvoll herausstellen soll. Denn die beiden anderen Attentäter begeben sich nun auf die oberen Ränge, wo sie Geiseln nehmen und sich verbarrikadieren.
Spezialkräfte der Polizei suchen dann später die Räume ab und befreien nach und nach die Gäste. Ein Unterhändler der Polizei versucht vergeblich, mit den Attentätern zu verhandeln. Gegen 00:20, nach insgesamt 2:40 Stunden kommt es zum finalen Zugriff der Polizei. Nun lösen die beiden radikalen Muslime ihre Sprengstoffwesten aus und sprengten sich selbst in die Luft. Gegen 0:50 Uhr, nach nunmehr 3:10 Stunden ist die Aktion endlich beendet.
Der Chefmediziner der Such- und Eingreifbrigaden BRI, einer Spezialeinheit der französischen Polizei, sagt später: „Ich habe so etwas niemals gesehen. Ein Meer aus Menschen, Dantes Inferno, überall Blut, wir gehen über Leichen, wir rutschen aus im Blut. Im Parkett lagen mehrere Hundert Menschen einer über dem anderen, riefen um Hilfe, eine Mischung aus Toten, aus Verletzten.“ Die Besucher des Rockkonzerts hätten sich überall versteckt, „in abgehängten Decken, unter Sofas“, berichtet der erfahrene Chefmediziner und Polizist. Doch das war noch nicht alles. Das Schlimmste sollte noch kommen.
Das Grauen in den oberen Etagen
Soweit die offiziellen Angaben und das, was in Deutschland allgemein bekannt wurde. Was dagegen vor allem bei uns kaum oder gar nicht publik gemacht wurde, ist, was sich in den oberen Etagen des Bataclan-Theaters abspielte. Dies dürfte die Vorstellungskraft der meisten von uns sprengen.
Nachdem sie im unteren Bereich bereits zig Menschen mit ihren Kalaschnikows erschossen haben, ziehen sich die Attentäter mit Geiseln in die oberen Etagen zurück und verbarrikadierten sich dort. Diese Menschen werden sie nicht einfach nur umbringen, sondern teilweise regelrecht zerstückeln und schlachten. Einigen werden die Augen ausgestochen, Köpfe werden abgetrennt. Männern werden die Hoden abgeschnitten und in den Mund gesteckt, Frauen mit Messern die Scheide aufgeschnitten und verstümmelt. Manche Körper werden regelrecht ausgeweidet.
Überlebende gaben der Polizei später an, die radikalen muslimischen Terroristen hätten ihre Taten sogar gefilmt. Der Vorsitzende der Untersuchungskommission, Georges Fenéch zitierte aus einem Brief, den er von einem Vater eines Opfers erhalten habe. Darin heißt es:
„Im forensischen Institut in Paris hörte ich von den Todesursachen meines Sohnes – was für ein Schock das für mich war –, dass sie seine Geschlechtsteile abgeschnitten und in seinen Mund gesteckt hätten. Er soll ausgeweidet gewesen sein. Ein Psychologe stand neben mir, als ich ihn hinter der Glasscheibe, unter weißem Leichentuch auf dem Tisch liegen sah. Er sagte: Dies ist der einzige vorzeigbare Bereich; das linke Profil ihres Sohnes‘. Ich fand heraus, dass er kein rechtes Auge mehr hatte. Sie sagten mir, dass es durchgestochen und die rechte Gesichtshälfte aufgeschnitten wurde […].“
In der französischen Zeitschrift Paris Match gab einer der Überlebenden folgendes an:
„Man konnte Schreie hören, so als ob die Menschen gefoltert worden waren. Die Terroristen sagten zu uns: ‚Wir sind hier, um euch den gleichen Dingen auszusetzen, die unschuldige Leute in Syrien erleiden. Hört ihr diese Schreie, dieses Leid? Das tun wir, damit ihr fühlt, was unser Volk in Syrien jeden Tag aushalten muss. Das ist Krieg! Und es ist erst der Anfang. Wir werden Unschuldige abschlachten. Wir wollen, dass ihr diese Botschaft weiterverbreitet.”
Ein Polizist sagt später, die Bilder der Toten seien so schlimm gewesen, dass sie den Angehörigen nicht gezeigt werden konnten. Was sich in den oberen Etagen des Bataclan-Theaters abgespielt hat, wurde der Öffentlichkeit weitgehend verschwiegen, vor allem in Deutschland.
Die Täter und die Tatmotive
Zu den Anschlägen bekannte sich bereits am 14.11.2015 der Islamische Staat (IS) in einer im Internet auf Arabisch, Französisch, Englisch und Deutsch veröffentlichten Erklärung. In dieser wurden die Anschläge als „gesegneter Raubzug“ gegen das „kreuzzüglerische Frankreich“ bezeichnet. Der Erklärung ist ein Zitat aus dem Koran (Sure 59:2) vorangestellt, das sich auf die Vertreibung des jüdischen Stamms der Banū n-Nadīr im Jahr 627 durch Mohammed bezieht.
Sure 59:2: „Er (Allah) ist es, Der diejenigen vom Volke der Schrift, die ungläubig waren, aus ihren Heimstätten zur ersten Versammlung austrieb. Ihr glaubtet nicht, daß sie hinausziehen würden, und sie dachten, daß ihre Burgen sie gegen Allah schützen würden. Doch Allah kam von (dort) über sie, woher sie es nicht erwarteten, und warf Schrecken in ihre Herzen, so daß sie ihre Häuser mit ihren eigenen Händen und den Händen der Gläubigen zerstörten. So zieht eine Lehre daraus, o die ihr Einsicht habt!“
Paris wird in der IS-Erklärung als „Hauptstadt der Unzucht und des Lasters“ bezeichnet, die muslimischen Terroristen als „gläubige Gruppe der Armee des Kalifats“ gepriesen. Der Islamische Staat begründete das Attentat auf das Konzert im Bataclan damit, dass sich dort „hunderte Götzendiener in einer perversen Feier versammelt“ hätten. Das Theater hatte bis kurz vor dem Anschlag jüdische Eigentümer und war schon lange vor dem 13.11.2015 immer immer wieder massiv bedroht worden.
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Bild: Youtube-Screenshot
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Irwindale, CA — They family of a young girl who was molested by a former Irwindale police officer is filing suit against the police department and city officials for participating in a coverup of the crimes.
Former officer Daniel Camareno was found guilty and sentenced to two years and eight months in prison this January after repeatedly sexually molesting a 15-year-old girl while she was an Explorer Scout. Camareno pled no contest to using a minor for sex acts, oral copulation of a person under 16 and contact with a minor for sexual offense.
The suit, filed by family attorney Anthony DeMarco, accuses the department of being complicit in the behavior of the child predator. Demarco states: “This case is disturbing and tragic on a number of levels. Camerano was abusing these girls and being blatant about it. And because of the culture of the station, Camerano was not punished or stopped. Instead, he was encouraged.”
According to the suit and court testimony leading to his conviction, Camareno repeatedly led the young girl directly past his senior commanders offices to assault her in the station house. He also molested her on overnight police-sanctioned “ride-alongs.” At one point, after a male explorer complained about the misconduct, Camareno was temporarily removed from the children’s program, only to be permitted to rejoin at a later date.
“It is striking that these officers knew what was going on and didn’t try to stop it, said DeMarco. “They’re supposed to be protecting people. They’re supposed to be protecting her.”
It’s not exactly all that shocking when you take into account the history of misconduct of Irwindale Police officers. Camereno’s supervisor, Lt. Mario Camacho, is currently being investigated for sexually harassing a 19-year old female cadet. Former sergeant David Fraijo was fired fro the department last year after sexually assaulting a woman at a traffic stop in 2012. He is currently serving nine months in prison.
Other defendants named in the suit include The City of Irwindale, and a national organization called Learning for Life, which runs the Explorer program. The Explorer program is a program designed for high school children who express an interest in the field of Law Enforcement.
Police departments across the country have expressed difficulty in finding new recruits. Just this department alone has had three complaints of sexual assault and harassment since 2013, two of which resulted in convictions. One is still under investigation.
Most children who want to be police officers when they grow up want to do so because they think they will be helping people. Is it no surprise that they change their minds when so many are experiencing police brutality and depravity, first-hand?The Super Bowl is upon us, and that means it's time for another team to see if they can beat the New England Patriots. This year, it's the Los Angeles Rams. If you don't care about either of those teams, we've included two fluffier alternatives. Regardless of which show tickles your fancy, it's sometimes tough to figure out how to stream it without a cable subscription. We're here to help, loyal readers. Below is the WIRED guide to streaming all the Bowls.
Be sure to check out our full list of the Best TV and Soundbar Deals for the Super Bowl. Whether or not you're set for the game, it's a good week to find killer discounts on home theater gear and other gadgets.
What Time Do These Events Start?
Sunday, February 3, 2019, is a busy day.
Kitten Bowl IV (2 pm ET): The sixth Kitten Bowl will kick off the day's activities at 2 pm eastern time on the Hallmark Channel and will re-air at 5 pm. It features a ton of adorable kittens competing for the "Feline Football trophy" and a "forever home" to live. All these cuddly critters are up for adoption.
Puppy Bowl XV (3 pm ET): The 15th Puppy Bowl kicks off an hour later, at 3 pm ET, and airs on Animal Planet. Judging from the schedule, you can pretty much tune into Animal Planet anytime on Sunday and see some sort of puppy-related content. The Puppy Bowl XV starting lineup includes 39 puppies and pits Team Ruff against Team Fluff. They are also adoptable.
Super Bowl LIII (6:30 pm ET): The 2019 Super Bowl livestream begins Sunday, February 3, at 6 pm ET, and kickoff is at 6:30 pm. It airs live on CBS from Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta. Gladys Knight will sing the national anthem, and Maroon 5 will dance around and sing halfway through the game. The TL;DR method to get the game is to watch free on CBSSports.com or sign up for a free 7-day trial of CBS All Access. There are a ton more details a few sections below.
How to Stream All the Bowls
For a complete day of baby-animal cuteness and Super Bowl insanity, you'd normally need a cable subscription that includes CBS for the Super Bowl, Animal Planet for the Puppy Bowl, and the Hallmark Channel for the Kitten Bowl. Luckily, there are now a lot of live TV streaming services that replicate cable for less and often have free trials.
How to Stream the Kitten Bowl
Hallmark
There are three easy ways to watch the Kitten Bowl online. All of these services are basically websites/apps that offer live TV channels via the internet. Most of them have a website you can watch on and work on Roku and most of the best streaming devices.
How to Stream the Puppy Bowl
Animal Planet
You hardly belong on the internet if you hate cats, but there's nothing wrong with being pro puppy. The services below offer live TV channels via the internet. Most of them have a website livestream and work on Roku and our other favorite streaming devices.
Services With Everything: DirecTV Now's 7-day free trial is still your best option, and it has all three channels. So does PlayStation Vue. It carries CBS and Animal Planet on its Access plan for $45 per month and has a 5-day free trial. (The Core plan has Hallmark too.) Just browse to Animal Planet for the Puppy Bowl and CBS for the Super Bowl. Vue is available on PS4, PS3, Roku, Amazon Fire TV, Apple TV, Android TV, and on the web at psvue.com/watch.
Services With Kittens and Puppies (but No Tom Brady): Philo's $16 Live TV service has Animal Planet and the Hallmark Channel, along with 44 other channels, decent device support, and a free 7-day trial. AT&T's $15 WatchTV service has about 30 other channels and a free 7-day trial, but it doesn't support Roku. You might get it at no extra charge if you have an AT&T Unlimited phone plan.
Services With Puppies and Tom Brady: Hulu TV's $40 plan has CBS and Animal Planet, so you can watch the Puppy Bowl and then see the LA Rams attempt to dethrone the New England Patriots. Like most services, it has a weeklong free trial. It works on a lot of devices, including the Nintendo Switch. This option is best if you're already a Hulu subscriber.
How to Stream the Super Bowl
Roku
If you aren't feeling cuddly and want to get straight to the Rams vs. Patriots, there are a lot of options for you. Like we said in other sections, the services below offer on-demand programming and live TV channels via the internet. Most of them have a website livestream and work on Roku and other fantastic streaming devices.
Stream It Free on the CBS Sports App
CBS isn't advertising it, but according to an NFL press release, you can watch the Super Bowl for free without logging in or authenticating yourself at CBSSports.com or on the CBS Sports app on streaming or mobile devices. The app supports Chromecast and is also available on Roku.
Stream It With a CBS All-Access Free Trial
If the free CBS Sports stream isn't working, try CBS All Access. It is CBS' Netflix competitor. Sadly, it does require an account. Just sign up for the free trial. You can cancel (it's not difficult) before the trial runs out, and even if you forget, the standard plan is only $6 per month with limited commercials or $10 with no commercials. You may want to check out some of CBS' shows while you're on the service, like Star Trek: Discovery and The Late Show With Stephen Colbert.
The All Access app is available on Roku, Apple TV, Amazon Fire TV, iPhone/iPad, Android phones/tablets, Windows 10 PCs, Xbox, PS4, Chromecast, Samsung TVs, Vizio TVs, and web browsers.
Stream It on a Live TV Service With a Free Trial
If you want another option, there are a bunch of online live TV services that have CBS and a free trial. These are our favorites. They're available on a wide variety of devices, and all of them have a free 7-day trial except for Vue, which gives you 5 days to evaluate. The only way you'll run into trouble with these services is if you do not have a local CBS channel available in your area.
Watch Free Using a Digital Antenna
If you think you might live close enough to pick up a live CBS broadcast, you can purchase a digital indoor TV antenna. We've had good luck with flat window antennas. This $29 antenna is a solid pick and has good range. Just stick it right on your window, aimed in the general direction of the stations you're hoping to reach, if at all possible, and go to ANT in your TV's input list.
An acceptable looking antenna from AmazonBasics is also available via Amazon Prime Now same-day delivery in some areas.
Watch the Super Bowl Later, On Demand
The NFL GamePass will let you watch the game after it's over (possibly starting around midnight) at your convenience on most major devices. It also has a free trial. Just be sure to put your phone away and stay away from every screen and person you know until you watch it.
You Can Also Listen to the Super Bowl
If moving pictures aren't your thing, or you're going to be out somewhere, you can listen to the Super Bowl live in a few ways. TuneIn, SiriusXM, NFL GamePass, and Westwood One radio stations.
If This Guide Has Failed You
If none of these solutions work, I can only imagine you need a new TV or a new TV streaming box (just buy a Roku). Or maybe just bite the bullet and order cable.
Updated: An earlier version of this article listed Philo TV as a place to get the Super Bowl. This was an error. It does not get any sports channels. It does have the Puppy and Kitten bowls, as stated in those sections.
When you buy something using the retail links in our stories, we may earn a small affiliate commission. Read more about how this works.While yes, sporting events are the most important, serious endeavor and should be approached only with the utmost in respect and deepest reverence, sometimes things happen. Sometimes you need a nap, even during a game between the New York Yankees and Boston Red Sox. But one fan says the Yankees, ESPN, its announcers and a Major League Baseball organization defamed him by broadcasting his snooze on-air, allegedly calling him “fatty, unintelligent” and “stupid.”
The man is suing Major League Baseball Advanced Media, ESPN New York, the New York Yankees, and ESPN announcers Dan Shulman and John Kruk, in Bronx County Supreme Court, reports Courthouse News. He’s seeking $10 million in damages for defamation and intentional infliction of emotional distress.
Here’s how it went down: During the April 13 game between the teams at Yankee Stadium, the guy dozed off. That simple action “opened [an] unending verbal crusade against the napping plaintiff,” the complaint states.
With the cameras pointed on him, the announcers allegedly said things about him including “but not limited to ‘stupor, fatty, unintelligent, stupid’ knowing and intending the same to be heard and listened to by millions of people all over the world …”
Not only that, but he claims MLB then kept it up on its site the next day, the complaint says, all because he had a nap attack, which could totally happen to anyone.
“Nothing triggered all these assertions only that the plaintiff briefly slept off while watching the great game something or circumstance any one can easily found them self,” the complaint states, verbatim.
As a result of the photos, commentary and social media attention, the plaintiff claims he was shown in a false light, that his reputation was damaged and it’s no one’s business if he was napping.
A list of some of the things the complaint says were stated about the napper:
“Plaintiff is unintelligent and stupid individual.
“Plaintiff is not worthy to be fan of the New York Yankee.
“Plaintiff is a fatty cow that need two seats at all time and represent symbol of failure.
“Plaintiff is a confused disgusted and socially bankrupt individual.
“Plaintiff is confused individual that neither understands nor knows anything about history and the meaning of rivalry between Red Sox and New York Yankee.
“Plaintiff is so stupid that he cannot differentiate between his house and public place by snoozing throughout the fourth inning of the Yankee game.”
Snoozing Fan Claims ESPN Defamed Him [Courthouse News]Star Trek: Discovery will debut Sunday, September 24, with a special broadcast premiere on the CBS TV network airing 8:30-9:30 PM. The first as well as the second episode of the sci-fi series will be available on-demand on CBS All Access immediately following the broadcast premiere, with subsequent new episodes released on All Access each Sunday.
Originally slated for a January 2017 premiere, Star Trek: Discovery‘s debut was first pushed to May and then to fall 2017. At CBS’ upfront presentation, the company announced that Star Trek: Discovery’s first-season order had been increased from 13 to 15 episodes. The expanded season now will be split into two. The first eight episodes will run Sundays from September 24 through November 5. The season then will resume with the second chapter in January 2018. The break also will allow the show more time for postproduction on latter episodes.
Star Trek: Discovery‘s premiere explains CBS’ recent fall premiere dates announcement. It included the Primetime Emmy Awards telecast on September 17, a week before the beginning of the fall season, with only the season premiere of 60 Minutes slated behind an NFL doubleheader on September 24, the night before the 2017-18 season begins. It now will be followed by Star Trek: Discovery, looking to ride some football coattails.
Star Trek: Discovery. which also is getting an aftershow on All Access, will follow the voyages of Starfleet on their missions to discover new worlds and new lifeforms, and one Starfleet officer who must learn that to truly understand all things alien, you must first understand yourself. The series will feature a new ship, new characters and new missions, while embracing the same ideology and hope for the future that inspired a generation.
It stars Jason Isaacs as Captain Lorca, Captain of the Starship Discovery. Sonequa Martin-Green also stars as Michael Burnham, along with James Frain, Terry Serpico, Maulik Pancholy, Sam Vartholomeos, Doug Jones, Anthony Rapp, Michelle Yeoh, Chris Obi, Shazad Latif and Mary Chieffo.
‘Star Trek: Discovery’ Beams Up Rainn Wilson As Conman Harry Mudd
Star Trek: Discovery is produced by CBS Television Studios in association with Alex Kurtzman’s Secret Hideout, Bryan Fuller’s Living Dead Guy Productions and Roddenberry Entertainment. Kurtzman, Fuller, Heather Kadin, Gretchen J. Berg & Aaron Harberts, Akiva Goldsman, Rod Roddenberry and Trevor Roth serve as executive producers.
The series will be distributed concurrently by CBS Studios International on Netflix in 188 countries and in Canada on Bell Media’s Space channel and OTT service CraveTV.
Here is a first-look trailer:The SPA-Viberti AS.42 Sahariana was an Italian reconnaissance car of World War II. The AS 42 Sahariana was developed by SPA-Viberti using the same chassis as the AB 41 armoured car, including its four-wheel steering, but with a 2x4 transmission specifically for desert operations, primarily in a reconnaissance role. Its origins trace back to requests stemming from units operating on the North African Front for a long range, highly manoeuvrable vehicle, similar to those widely used by the highly successful British reconnaissance forces, the Long Range Desert Group (LRDG).
Design [ edit ]
The Camionetta Desertica AS.42 Sahariana was a 4x2 unarmoured vehicle with a boat hull based on the chassis of the AB 41 armoured car, but with a 2x4 transmission. The 100 Horse Power SPA ABM 3 6 cylinder petrol engine was located in the rear which gave enough space in the middle of the hull to accommodate up to five fully equipped men and weapons, though the mission crew seldom exceeded three or four. The open compartment's only overhead protection was a waterproof canvas sheet. Besides the driver’s seat, the crew that served the on board weapons were seated on four folding seats on the sides. The AS 42 had internal fuel tanks of 145 liters with an additional 20 jerrycans externally mounted on both sides between the wheels plus 4 on the front fenders, holding a total of 80 liters of water and 400 liters of fuel. A full fuel tank and the additional fuel canisters allowed a maximum range of 1,500 km (930 mi).
A second model, called Camionetta II or Metropolitana, entered service in Italy in 1943. It differed from the first model by the absence of the two upper side rows of gasoline jerrycans, replaced by two large caissons for ammunition, and the presence of a canvas top. In addition, this version was fitted with new Pirelli Artiglio tires adapted to mud and snow of the mainland, unlike the previous Pirelli Tipo Libia or Superflex sand tires.
Various armament combinations were used, which included:
Service [ edit ]
The AS 42 Sahariana's performance was very good. From September to November 1942, the first batch of 14 vehicles was delivered to the Regio Esercito. The unit that gave the AS 42 its baptism of fire in November of 1942 was the “Raggruppamento Sahariano AS” (Africa Settentrionale, North Africa). The good results achieved by the “Raggruppamento Sahariano AS” quickly led to the formation of at least four more “Compagnia Arditi Camionettisti”: the 103rd, 112th, 113th, and 123rd.
The “Sahariana” was completely dedicated to desert raiding parties operating against the LRDG. Its low-profile allowed it to hide behind the dunes and wait for the arrival of the enemy unseen, and its great autonomy allowed it to chase enemy forces for long periods. Entering service in December 1942, the AS.42 participated in the final stages of the African campaign of Libya and the whole campaign of Tunisia, mainly assigned to aviation companies of the Auto-Saharan Company and the 103rd Battalion.
Surviving vehicles were later used by the 2nd Battalion of the 10th Regiment in the defence of Sicily and southern Italy. The same unit and the Motorized Assault Battalion employed the “Sahariana” and “Metropolitana” models in the defence of Rome on 8 September 1943. After that, a few Sahariana stayed in Northern Italy with Mussolini’s Italian Social Republic. Seven vehicles fought on the Eastern Front in the ranks of the 2. Fallschirmjäger Division. They soldiered throughout 1944 and 1945 as reconnaissance vehicles on the Eastern Front, in France, Belgium and the Netherlands. Some of the vehicles were recovered and used by the Free Italian Battalion “Barbarigo” Xª MAS Flotilla. The end of the war didn't mean the end of the AS 42’s service, as a dozen of these vehicles were supplied to the Italian Police, and, painted cherry red, were integrated into the ranks of the Department Celeri and Departments of Public Security, seeing service until 1954. The AS 42 was fast and dependable, but nevertheless complicated to build.
See also [ edit ]
References [ edit ]Government labels of the federal IND program don’t even bother to list cannabinoid content.
In 1906, a Progressive Congress passed the best drug law the United States has ever had. The act was in response to a public crisis. Addiction rates – for cocaine, morphine and heroin especially – had soared in the decades following the Civil War; many innocently-intentioned Americans became enthralled to the will of unscrupulous drug dealers. The problem, as the Congress correctly observed, was one of labeling: millions of Americans unknowingly ingested powerful doses of morphine through such innocuous nostrums as cough syrup or even baby’s teething formula. Most outrageously, many pharmaceutical companies had the gall to sell morphine addiction cures – laced with heroin. In the absence of accurate labels, an entire generation became wracked with addiction simply for failure to understand what was in the common household items they used every day.
The Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906 turned the problem around. By requiring, for the first time, pharmaceutical companies to disclose the active ingredients of their products on their labels, Congress enacted a simple yet powerful change which reduced domestic drug abuse, according to some estimates, by more than 30%. No other law in the history of the US Congress has ever attained such success.
With newly regulated markets in Colorado (and Washington soon to follow), Americans have witnessed the redemption of the policy: eager lines of cannabis consumers repudiating the old paradigm of untested eighths in unlabeled sandwich bags. Now, thanks to regulations in the state of Colorado, consumers get to peruse exhaustive labels, including the name of the strain and its levels of THC, so smokers will know, many for the first time, what they’re getting.
Too bad, then, that every label on every bag of marijuana sold through the entire system is practically guaranteed to be wrong.
To see why, consider a common, everyday situation. A cyclist, concerned about the air pressure in one of his tires, produces a standard-model gauge and attaches it to the tire’s pressure valve. The gauge immediately registers a reading of 30 psi. That means that, at the time the cyclist became concerned, the tire in question had a pressure of 30 pounds per square inch – right?
Wrong.
In fact, the scenario illustrates a principle called ‘the observer effect.’ One of the most vexing problems in science, the effect refers to the problem of accurately measuring – or observing – phenomena which are inherently affected by the act of observation. In the cyclist’s case, the very act of attaching the pressure gauge to the tire necessarily releases some amount of air, so that the tire’s pressure at the time of reading must necessarily be somewhat less than its pressure before the reading was taken. In practice, this isn’t a huge deal; tire pressure gauges are designed to be efficient enough that they shouldn’t release too much air if skillfully used. But other situations amplify the observer effect enough to pose serious problems. Electrons, for example, can be observed – their speed and direction, for example – by shining light on them and watching how they behave. But even such a seemingly benign activity as looking at an electron can ruin the results, because collision with a single photon of light is sufficient to change the course or velocity of the electron. The result is that it is extremely difficult to measure the behavior of electrons with any kind of precision.
The case of testing marijuana for potency is even more dramatic: to determine the levels of THC, CBD, mold and pesticides on pot, one must completely destroy the bud through incineration. Because accurately testing each and every bud in a pound would therefore mean the complete destruction of that pound, testing facilities must necessarily operate under the assumption that every bud in the pound is more or less equally potent (an improved method of testing would test multiple buds in the pound and average out the results – but such a destructive move would only improve the precision of what is still, fundamentally, a guess).
[Continued on Page 2 —>]
Most cannabis labels get it all wrong.
That’s a false assumption. Even if every bud in the pound came from the same plant, environmental differences would still lead to divergent results. The prevalence of mold could easily vary bud to bud; mold is more likely to be found on parts of the plant exposed to more humidity (such as lower on the plant, closer to a hydroponic tube or other water source) or less airflow (such as closer to the plant’s central trunk). Pesticides will be more prevalent on the plant’s exterior buds than interior buds. Even potency will vary; buds situated closer to lights will produce more trichomes than buds produced under the shade of fan leaves. Multiply the uncertainty effects of potency between multiple plants (which could very easily be separate phenotypes of the same strain) and the problem becomes even thornier.
It gets even worse. Potency results on marijuana labels also assume that cannabinoid content remains |
was suspected of wanting to join Islamic State in Syria, a Turkish security source told Reuters.
Yet during questioning in Belgium, Abdeslam denied any involvement with militants and was set free. So was his brother Salah – a decision that Belgian authorities say was based on scant evidence that either man had terrorist intentions.
On Nov. 13, Abdeslam blew himself up at Le Comptoir Voltaire bar in Paris, killing himself and wounding one other. Salah is also a suspect in the attacks, claimed by the Islamic State, and is now on the run.
In France, an "S" (State Security) file for people suspected of being a threat to national security had been issued on Ismail Omar Mostefai, who would detonate his explosive vest inside Paris' Bataclan concert hall. Mostefai, a Frenchman of Algerian descent, was placed on the list in 2010, French police sources say.
Turkish police also considered him a terror suspect with links to Islamic State. Ankara wrote to Paris about him in December 2014 and in June this year, a senior Turkish government official said. The warning went unheeded. Paris answered last week, after the attacks.
A fourth attacker missed at least four weekly check-ins with French police in 2013, before authorities issued an arrest warrant for him. By that time he had left the country.
On any one of these occasions, police, intelligence and security services had an opportunity to detain at least some of the men who launched the attacks.
That they did not, helps explain how a group of Islamist militants was able to organize even as they moved freely among countries within the open borders of Europe's passport-free Schengen area and beyond.
Taken one by one, each misstep has its own explanation, security services say. They attribute the lapses in communication, inability to keep track of suspected militants and failure to act on intelligence, to a lack of resources in some countries and a surge in the number of would-be jihadis.
But a close examination by Reuters of a series of missed red flags and miscommunications culminating in France's biggest atrocity since World War Two puts on stark display the mounting difficulties faced by anti-terrorism units across Europe and their future ability to keep the continent safe.
"We're in a situation where the services are overrun. They expect something to happen, but don't know where," said Nathalie Goulet, who heads up the French Senate's investigation committee into jihadi networks.
Many point to Belgium as a weak link in European security.
"They simply don't have the same means as Britain's MI5 or the DGSI (French intelligence agency)," said Louis Caprioli, a former head of the DST, France's former anti-terrorism unit.
Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel defended his country's security services and praised them for doing "a difficult and tough job." French President Francois Hollande also praised his country's security services, who hunted down and shot dead the man they identified as the ringleader, Abdelhamid Abaaoud, five days after the attacks.
Europol, the European Union's police agency, says it has been feeding information to the Belgian and French authorities but acknowledges that some member states are better at sharing information than others.
FOCUS ON FIGHTERS RETURNING FROM SYRIA
The focus of investigators over the past few years has been men and women who have grown up in Europe, have European passports and who travel to Syria to train and fight.
As the number of those fighters has increased, authorities have struggled to keep up. The French Interior Ministry estimated about 500 French nationals had traveled to Syria and almost 300 had returned. French authorities reckon up to 1,400 people need 24-hour surveillance. Yet France has only about the same number of officers to carry out the task, a tenth of those needed.
Some 350 people from Belgium have gone to Syria to fight - the highest per capita number in Europe. A Belgian government source said Belgium has a list of 400 people who are in Syria, have returned or are believed to be about to go there. There are another 400-500 people who authorities believe have radicalized. The number of people in the Belgian security services carrying out surveillance is believed to be considerably fewer than this.Buried in the California Controller's November analysis is a guest article: Overview of the Commercial Property and Capital Markets with Implications for the State of California by Dr. Randall Zisler. (ht picosec)
Here are some excerpts:
Whereas excessive and imprudent leverage fed the bubble, deleveraging not only popped the bubble, but, in the process, destroyed record amounts of equity and debt. Most deals financed with high leverage from 2005 to the present are under water. The equity is gone and the debt, if it trades at all, trades at a deep discount to face value. Most leveraged equity invested in real estate has evaporated since property prices, if marked to market, have fallen 30% to 50%.
Click on graph for larger image in new window.
The chart [right] shows overall U.S. property total returns, quarterly (at annual rates) and lagging four quarters. This appraisal-based, lagging index shows sharp negative returns exceeding the deterioration of the RTC (Resolution Trust Corp.)
period of the early 1990s. (See Chart 1.) Second quarter 2009 returns indicate the possibility that total returns, while still negative, may have hit a point of inflection. We expect that property values in many sectors, especially office, retail, and industrial, will likely deteriorate further in 2010 with improvement beginning sometime in 2011.
...
A crisis of unprecedented proportions is approaching. Of the $3 trillion of outstanding mortgage debt, $1.4 trillion is scheduled to mature in four years. We estimate another $500 billion to $750 billion of unscheduled maturities (i.e., defaults). Unfortunately, traditional lenders of consequence are practically out of the market and massive amounts of maturing debt will not easily find refinancing. Marking-to-market outstanding debt will render many banks, especially regional and community banks, insolvent, especially as much of the debt is likely worth about 50% of par, or less.
The inability of many banks and other capital sources to lend not just to real estate firms but to other businesses in the State as well presents a real challenge to the private sector and state and local governments.
I am concerned about the potential impact of CRE on the broader economy... there could be an impact resulting from small banks' impaired ability to support the small business sector—a sector I expect will be critically important to job creation.
...
Many small businesses rely on these smaller banks for credit. Small banks account for almost half of all small business loans (loans under $1 million). Moreover, small firms' reliance on banks with heavy CRE exposure is substantial. Banks with the highest CRE exposure (CRE loan books that are more than three times their tier 1 capital) account for almost 40 percent of all small business loans.
The author points out that many local and regional banks will fail because of CRE loans.FDIC Chairwoman Sheila Bair said today: "We do obviously have a lot more banks that will close this year and next," Bair said, adding the failures "will peak next year and then subside."These bad loans are also limiting lending to small businesses. Atlanta Fed President Dennis Lockhart made the same argument this morning:While the Mass Media has been obsessing on the Donald Trump phenomenon, Bernie Sanders has been packing stadiums. Sanders's Madison speech pulled in nearly twice as many as Mrs. Clinton’s official campaign kickoff event (which The Atlantic dubbed “uninspiring”). Mrs. Clinton's relaunches and presentations continue to draw tepid reviews.
The Sanders phenomenon, so reminiscent of 2008, must make Hillary Clinton nervous. It should.
Bernie’s stump speech is a thing of beauty. That said, it is not a joy forever.
Sanders is the only candidate, of either party, passionately connecting with working and middle income families over our greatest concern, economic well being. We are the most important voting bloc.
(Donald Trump is more of a provocateur. And he is good at it. The Huffington Post has moved its coverage of him to its Entertainment section.)
We working voters feel strangled by 15 years of economic stagnation (under one Republican and one Democratic administration). Sanders speaks directly into our frustration. He speaks in intimate terms. That’s the beauty.
Why, then, not a joy forever? Many of Sanders’s proposed solutions sound as if they could have been lifted from the late Hugo Chavez, a fellow socialist, who put Venezuela on the road to economic debacle.
Also on Forbes:
Call Bernie’s prescriptions “soft expropriation.” He proposes to tell businesses what they have to pay their unskilled employees, what (expensive) benefits to provide, propounds extravagant subsidies for various classes (such as college students), opposes free trade, favors greatly expanded government sponsored health coverage and many other iconic progressive objectives. And soak the “rich” to pay for it all.
As reality-based progressive Michael Kinsley writes in the current issue of Vanity Fair:
there aren’t enough rich people to provide windfalls of extra cash. There are about 123 million households in the U.S. Five thousand of them are worth $100 million or more. That’s wealth, not income. Now, that, I think we can agree, is rich. If you took a million from each of the rich households and divvied it up among the 24 million poor households, each of them would get only about $208.
Some of the Republican candidates are hinting at real solutions. That said, the GOP aspirants neither are focusing there nor are they describing their program in ways that speak to voters. Hint to the candidates: When was the last time you and your family sat around the kitchen table to discuss the imperative of cutting the top corporate tax rate or scaling-back regulatory policies?
Never? (Me neither.)
Jeb Bush is campaigning on an aspirational no-less-than-4% growth rate. That's great! We’re waiting, however, to hear how he proposes to make this happen. And, moreover, make it happen for us.
Rand Paul has proposed a FLAT + VAT tax as “an economic steroid injection.” Taking the tax code to the wood chipper provides some welcome specificity. (Full disclosure, one of my sons is a volunteer for the Rand Paul presidential campaign.) Sen. Paul nods to job creation, as in his announcement address: “I want to see millions of Americans back at work.” He surely is sincere.
While admiring his noble crusade against government overreach, we patiently wait to hear him focus relentlessly and specifically, a la Sanders, on restoring vibrant prosperity to working people. That is the crux of the 2016 election.
GOP themes of economic growth are, to some extent, working. Just add relentless emphasis, some common touch, and a suite of free market policies targeted directly at benefiting labor (and not primarily by helping workers by advantaging investors). Any one of the leading candidates (and some outliers) could light right up. (As for Trump, a candidate best known for the smug declaration “You’re fired!” perhaps is not optimally positioned as a champion of policies of job creation.)
Marco Rubio, along with Bush and Paul, is a top GOP contender. Sen. Rubio has, with Sen. Mike Lee, proposed, in broad strokes, a supply side Human Capital tax reform plan. Its flaws were thoroughly enumerated by Forbes.com’s Opinions editor (and Rick Perry advisor) Avik Roy.
Notwithstanding some legitimate criticisms Rubio-Lee has two powerful virtues. These deserve to be taken into account. First, it has kitchen-table quality. Second, Rubio-Lee has the power to become a national conversation-starter for injecting the insights on human capital of the late Nobel Laureate Gary Becker into the Republican, and national, mind.
Becker's work, call it Human Capitalism, would enlarge a supply side canon which, while valid, has grown somewhat stale. Becker:
To most people, capital means a bank account, a hundred shares of IBM stock, assembly lines, or steel plants in the Chicago area. These are all forms of capital in the sense that they are assets that yield income and other useful outputs over long periods of time. But such tangible forms of capital are not the only type of capital. Schooling, a computer training course, expenditures on medical care, and lectures on the virtues of punctuality and honesty are also capital. That is because they raise earnings, improve health, or add to a person’s good habits over much of his lifetime. … Education, training, and health are the most important investments in human capital.
Rubio-Lee could offer the beginning, not the end, of a profound advance in supply side economics. Rubio’s tax plan contains some powerful elements his communications team hasn’t, yet, been featuring. Why, as a matter of principle, should fixed capital receive better treatment than human capital? (Answer: No reason.)
Both Sen. Rubio’s tax plan and Sen. Paul’s worldview have the potential to unleash a powerful Human Capitalism supply side economic policy movement. A suite of policies founded in Human Capitalism could galvanize and mobilize millions of voters.
The leading Republican candidates now sound, on economics, as if they are all singing from the same spreadsheet. Bernie Sanders sings from a hymnal that brings music to our ears. His description of the problems caused by almost a generation of less than 2% annual growth clearly is a vote bonanza for him. Republicans can steal a page from his hymnal plus come up with real solutions.
Here is the Republicanese version of that message: A 1 % - 2% annual shortfall in economic growth may not sound like much. Yet over a 15 year stretch of “growth gap” (as so termed by JEC Vice Chairman Kevin Brady) that deficiency plunges your — and our collective — income by a quarter to a third (or more) from its potential.
To say it in Voterese: Would a 25%, 33%, or even 50% raise in your wages (and net worth) be a game changer? You bet! A healthy raise would solve much of the economic distress of working families. The evidence is clear that real growth would solve our problems far more credibly, and more equitably, than the tinny promise of letting Uncle Sam dictate.
As Bernie Sanders, clearly more fluent in Voterese than the Republicans, would, and in fact did, put it:
Today, millions of Americans are working longer hours for lower wages and median family income is almost $5,000 less than it was in 1999. Meanwhile, the wealthiest people and the largest corporations are doing phenomenally well. … In the last two years, the wealthiest 14 people in this country increased their wealth by $157 billion. That increase is more than is owned by the bottom 130 million Americans – combined.
Hey GOP! We voters don't consider there anything wrong with the rich getting richer … so long as the rising tide is lifting our boats as well. Something’s rotten in the State of the American economy. We voters know it.
Our problems are real and Sen. Sanders gets that. Alas, the solutions Bernie proposes have a consistently terrible real world track record. Doctor Sanders: You earn an A+ for diagnosis and A+ for bedside manner. The largely toxic, possibly fatal, therapeutic regime you prescribe rates an F. Some cures are worse than the disease.
Not to put too fine a point on it, socialist, now euphemized as populist, nostrums have failed. We, the voters, know this. America describes itself to Gallup as two-to-one economically conservative.
A far-left-leaning litany will not take Sen. Sanders into the federal Public Housing Project at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. (Sen. Sanders appears to be clearing the way for Michael Bloomberg or another more economic centrist candidate safely to enter the race just as Sen. Eugene McCarthy sidelined President Lyndon Johnson.)
Bernie Sanders is not a viable Democratic nominee. Observing for the benefit of our former colonial masters, in the Telegraph, by its US Correspondent David Millward, in How radical Left-wing US presidential candidates have fared:
Candidates from William Jennings Bryan to George McGovern have generated excitement among their supporters only for their campaigns to end in heroic failure. For more than a century left-wing tilts at the White House have not only ended in disappointment, but at times done considerable damage to others on the Liberal wing of American politics.
I, passionately, disagree with most of the prescriptions of Bernie Sanders.
Yet his empathy and passion are great things.
In Winnie the Pooh, A.A Milne wrote:
Winnie-the-Pooh lived in a forest all by himself under the name of Sanders.
"What does 'under the name' mean?" asked Christopher Robin.
"It means he had the name over the door in gold letters, and lived under it...."
Milne made Pooh famous as the “Bear of Very Little Brain.” Yet also, Pooh earned the status as marquee hero of two of the most cherished classics in children’s literature. He earned that, in large measure, by his kindness and decency. I nominate, without irony or insult, Sen. Sanders as the Pooh Bear of the 2016 presidential election.
Bernie Sanders, notwithstanding the wrongheadedness of his prescriptions, is showing his rivals how to focus the presidential election on the struggle of workers and middle-income families. Restoring the American Dream of the ability to thrive through labor is what's on our minds. This quality in Bernie inspires both the crowds... and me.
Hillary Clinton might yet tune in. So might another Democratic aspirant. Will a GOP contender pay attention to how the reaction to Bernie Sanders invites a coherent theme of supply side Human Capitalism? If so the 2016 election could launch America, and the world, toward a golden age. If so, Bernie Sanders will have delivered the critical assist.Image caption The most recent assault happened in flats in Kersland Street in the city on 3 Feb
Police are hunting a man they believe has carried out three indecent assaults on young women in the west end of Glasgow in the past two weeks.
The women, who are aged 19, 20, and 23, were attacked after being followed into the common close of flats.
The assaults happened between 16:20 and 19:25 in Great Western Road on 24 January, Arlington Street on 31 January and Kersland Street on 3 February.
Police said they were deploying extra officers to the area.
Suspect description
During the first attack, a 23-year-old woman was attacked in flats in Great Western Road on 24 January at about 16:20.
We have been deploying extra officers around the area to provide public reassurance. Ch Insp Alan Gibson, Strathclyde Police
The suspect targeted a 19-year-old woman in flats in Arlington Street on 31 January at about 18:25.
In the third incident, a 20-year-old woman was assaulted in flats in Kersland Street on 3 February at about 17:00.
The suspect is described as white, aged between 20 and 30, between 6ft and 6ft 2in tall, of slim build, with black hair.
During each attack, he was wearing a black top, possibly a hooded top and black or dark trousers.
He is also described as wearing a black beanie hat during two of the assaults and a black skip cap in one of them.
Ch Insp Alan Gibson, of Strathclyde Police, said: "Each of these incidents were particularly frightening for the young women concerned.
"We are continuing enquiries in the local area including viewing all available CCTV in an effort to identify the man responsible, and we have been deploying extra officers around the area to provide public reassurance.
"I would like to appeal to anyone who may have witnessed a man fitting the description of the suspect acting suspiciously around the areas and times of the incidents to get in touch with police. It is imperative that we trace this man."Chisora to take on Wilder at Wembley as American puts unbeaten record on the line
Dereck Chisora will attempt to succeed where Audley Harrison failed when he takes on American star Deontay Wilder at Wembley Arena on June 15.
The British heavyweight, who last month fought for the first time since he was re-issued with his British licence, has set his sights on another challenge for a world title.
Wilder, who sent Harrison into retirement with a stunning 70-second knockout in Sheffield, will pose a tough challenge as he puts his impressive unbeaten record on the line.
Big one: Dereck Chisora (right) will face Deontay Wilder at Wembley Arena next month
The 27-year-old has stopped every one of his 28 opponents so far in his professional career.
But the 2008 Olympic bronze medalist also faces a court hearing on July 3 after he was arrested and charged with domestic assault in Las Vegas last weekend.
Chisora looked far from his best when stopping Argentine Hector Alfredo Avila in the penultimate round in his first bout since losing to David Haye last summer.
Return: Derek Chisora beat Hector Avila in his first fight since being reissued with his licence
The 29-year-old from Finchley will instead hope to reproduce the form he showed during defeats to Vitali Klitschko and Robert Helenius.
'I needed something like this,' Chisora said. 'I first saw him [Wilder] when he came on the scene two years ago. I said to my trainer that he would be great opponent for me, and now he is my opponent.
'I'm extra motivated; the fight is going to be great for the boxing fans. I don't like to fight nobodies.
'You're going to see a great Dereck in the fight; it's going to be a masterpiece.
'We're going to push him, we're going to take him to the deep end and drown him.
Powerhouse: Deontay Wilder has knocked out every one of his 28 opponents as a professional
'The problem with his 28-0, I wish [promoter] Frank Warren had done that for me — given me a couple of cab drivers to knock out so I could be 20-0.
'But that was not my idea when I came on the boxing scene. I always told Frank I didn’t want to fight nobodies, I wanted to fight great fighters.'
Warren meanwhile believes the fight is guaranteed to excite the Wembley crowd.
'He's a big puncher, he's had more fights than Dereck but Dereck has been in with much better opposition and maybe they think if they stop Dereck it will move him up the rankings,' he said.
'He's an exciting fighter, Wilder. He doesn't come to mess around and the two styles will gell on the night and you'll get a proper war.'This is an updated version of a previous post called Combining Haskell lists with monads. This version includes discussion of how the purely monadic approach taken in that paper can be extended to applicative functors and other such things.
A common problem
Say I am writing some code in Haskell, and I have a value of type a and a list of type [b] that I want to convert into a list of type [(a,b)] where every entry is one of the pair of the a value and one of the values from the list. So I want a function:
pairThem :: a -> [b] -> [(a,b)]
the ‘obvious’ solution is one of
pairThem x ys = map (\y -> (x,y)) ys
or
pairThem x ys = zip (repeat x) ys
Simple enough, but they’re hard to generalise, the use of a lambda to do something so simple is rather ugly, and using infinite lists on such a problem seems rather excessive, I feel.
What I’m going to do here is take a detour via monad which helps motivate the concept of an applicative functor, which is not always well-explained, giving an elementary explanation for where they come from and why. So I’ll discuss monads, then applicative functors, always bearing in mind the example of the list, which is an instance of each.
Using a monad
It’s more illuminating to remember that lists form a monad. If we look for a monadic solution we see beyond the surface problem of manipulating lists and can get an insight into what’s really going on, as well as seeing just how powerful monads can be. So the natural function with the right signature is
pairThem x ys = liftM2 (,) [x] ys
But [x] = return x in the list monad, so in fact we could write this as
pairThem :: (Monad m) => a -> m b -> m (a,b) pairThem x ys = liftM2 (,) (return x) ys
This works (see the illustration) but the point is that we’re not doing anything list-specific any more. This is a piece of extremely generic monadic code for pairing two monad values to get a monadic tuple value. One of the main goals in writing Haskell code is to make your code as generic as possible. Here I’ve gone from writing code which insists that I use lists to code that requires only a monad. This must be a good thing.
Why does it work?
liftM2 is usually defined as
liftM2 :: (Monad m) => (a -> b -> c) -> m a -> m b -> m c liftM2 f mx my = do x <- mx y <- my return $ f x y
which can be rewritten in a more functional way as
liftM2 f mx my = mx >>= (\x -> my >>= (\y -> return (f x y)))
(it’s a good exercise to see why these are equivalent). So when m = [] and f = (,) let’s take this apart. First :
(\x -> my >>= (\y -> return (f x y)) = (\x -> concatMap (\y -> [(x,y)]) my)
and so
liftM2 (,) mx my = mx >>= (\x -> (\y -> concatMap [(x,y)]) my) = concatMap (\x -> (\y -> concatMap [(x,y)]) my) mx
which, when mx = [x], reduces to
liftM2 (,) [x] my = concatMap (\y -> [(x,y)]) my = map (\y -> (x,y)) my
which is where we started.
Generalisations
We can see immediately that in fact the function
cartesian :: (Monad m) => m a -> m b -> m (a,b) cartesian = liftM2 (,)
will, when applied to lists, produce their Cartesian product (all pairs with one value in the pair from each list). You would normally be taught to do that with a list comprehension
[(x,y) | x <- xs, y <- ys]
So the moral is, monads can do an awful lot that you might not expect, and much complex list manipulation can be made into simple monadic operations if you look at it the right way. And, as well as genericity, simplicity has to be our goal: mistakes are far easier in complex code.
Applicative Functors
Functors
We’re used to the idea of the Functor type. If a is a type and f is a parameterised type, then f is a functor if there is an operation
fmap :: (a -> b) -> f a -> f b
that lifts a function from bare types into a function between the f types that they parameterise. So if f = [] then fmap = map. If f is a monad then f = liftM. To see that these two definitions are consistent observe that
liftM f = (\ x -> do a <- x return $ f a
or, in the list monad,
liftM f $ x = x >>= (return f) = concatMap (return f) x = map f x
Applicative Functors
Now, functions are types too, so if f is a functor, I can quite easily form the type
f (a -> b)
For example this could be a list of functions. Now what would I do with a list of functions a -> b? Obviously, I could apply them to something in a to get a list of type [b], or I could apply them to a list [a] to get a list [b]. Let’s take these in reverse order.
Mapping a list to a new list
I want something like:
apply :: (Functor f) => f (a -> b) -> f a -> f b
Let’s take this apart. On lists I have to do this
apply gs xs = concatMap (\ g -> map g xs) gs
So I have to unwrap the list of functions fs to get at the individual functions within it, apply them individually to the data list xs and then concatenate the results.
More generally, I need a function something like:
(<*>) :: (Functor f) => f (a -> b) -> f a -> f b
such that
apply = (<*>)
Clearly therefore we must have
gs <*> xs = concatMap (\ g -> map g xs) gs = gs >>= (\g -> concatMap (return. g) xs) = gs >>= (\g -> xs >>= (return. g)) = gs `ap` xs
Mapping a list to a new list
Now we want to do
apply :: f (a -> b) -> a -> f b
we already have <*>, so if we had a function
pure :: (Functor f) => a -> f a
then we could take
apply f x = f <*> (pure x)
On lists we clearly have
pure x = [x] = return x
Defining the type
We have defined operations:
pure :: (Functor f) => a -> f a (<*>) :: (Functor f) => f (a -> b) -> f a -> f b
A Functor with these two operations is called an Applicative Functor. In general, any monad can be made into an applicative functor by taking
pure = return <*> = ap
just as we showed for lists above.
Let us take stock. In general, if we have a functor f and a function
g :: a -> b
Then we can form
fmap. g : f a -> f b
However, there is a much richer class of ‘functions’ related to f, i.e. objects like
h :: f (a -> b)
So if we take f = [] then fmap allows us to lift single functions to the monad, but applying lists of functions requires more machinery than just fmap. Similarly in the State monad then we can form
liftM g :: State s a -> State s b
which evaluates the monad and changes its value, but leaves the state alone. However there is a wider class of transformation
h :: State s (a -> b)
which combines a transformation of the value with a transformation of the state.
Now, I can do this in any monad with ap. The strength of applicative functors lies in the fact that they allow this extra richness in transformations without demanding the full structure of a monad.
A mathematical analogy
For those accustomed to simple algebra, here is an analogy. Say have a functor that takes rings to rank 2 free modules over those rings. So if then is the natural map
This is precisely what fmap would do under the circumstances.
However, the full space of morphisms should allow the first and second components of a morphism to differ, so we want morphisms like
And hence, very naturally, a map
This is precisely what an applicative functor gives us.
Applying this to the problem
So, say f is an applicative functor. Clearly we have equivalents of liftM and liftM2 :
liftA :: (Applicative f) => (a -> b) -> f a -> f b liftA g x = (pure g) <*> x liftA2 :: (Applicative f) => (a -> b -> c) -> f a -> f b -> f c liftA2 g x y = ((pure g) <*> x) <*> y
If f is a monad then
liftA g x = (pure g) <*> x = (return g) `ap` x = (return g) >>= (\g' -> x >>= (\x' -> (return. g') x)) = x >>= (\x' -> (return. g) x) = liftM g x liftA2 g x y = ((pure g) <*> x) <*> y = (liftA g x) <*> y = (liftM g x) `ap` y = (liftM g x) >>= (\g' -> y >>= (return. g')) = x >>= (\x' -> (return. g) x) >>= (\g' -> y >>= (\y' -> (return. g') y')) = x >>= (\x' -> y >>= (\y -> return (g x y))) = liftM2 x y
So, in conclusion we can generalise our functions above still further to
pairThem :: (Applicative f) => a -> f b -> f (a,b) pairThem x ys = liftA2 (,) (pure x) <*> ys cartesian :: (Applicative f) => f a -> f b -> f (a,b) cartesian = liftA2 (,)
this, it turns out, is the most general way of expressing the operations we started from.
Conclusion
So, what we have seen is first that it can always be worth looking for Monads, Functors and Applicative Functors lurking in apparently innocent problems, as they provide an extremely elegant way of reducing code to the most simple and minimal form.
In addition, I have used this to motivate the class of Applicative Functor, which is a Functor f that lets me take a value of type f (a -> b) and apply it to a value of type f a to get a f b, which is the natural generalisation of applying map across a list of functions. So Functors generalise applying a function to a list with map ; Applicative Functors generalise using concatMap to apply a list of functions to a a list of values.
The point of all this is as follows: if f is a parameterised type, then there is every chance that functions f a -> f b are much richer than just a -> b, and so the functorial operator fmap only gives access to part of this structure. The way we access this wider structure is by understanding f (a -> b) and then using an applicative functor to transform this into functions f a -> f b.
AdvertisementsThe Philippines is a “client state” of the “bamboo triad” and is being used as a transshipment point for shabu being transported to the United States, according to President Duterte.
Given this, the US must work with the Philippines to address the matter, Mr. Duterte said Tuesday.
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The Bamboo Union is a Taiwan-based organized crime group that has reportedly been linked to criminal activities, including drug trafficking.
“The Philippines today is a client state of the bamboo triad. They have taken over the operations of, sad to say, the Chinese. But I do not mean the country and people, in a sense, that most of them are really into this kind of business,” Mr. Duterte said at the 56th anniversary of the Philippine Constitution Association.
In another speech earlier on Tuesday, the President said the Hong Kong-based 14K group was also involved in the illegal drug trade in the country.
The bamboo triad has decided to go international, Mr. Duterte said, and the country was being used as a jump off point to bring illegal drugs to other parts of the world.
“The Philippines is a transshipment of shabu to America, and it behooves upon America to work closely with the Republic of the Philippines, especially on this serious matter,” he said.
The US had been critical of the killings that have marked Mr. Duterte’s war on drugs, but the criticism had not sat well with the President.
The President also reiterated on Tuesday that he would not tolerate the killing of innocent people.
He also said he respects the Constitution and due process.
“When it comes to this country, I could be the most brutal but I do not lose sight of the Constitution,” he said.
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“I have been a prosecutor; I know what due process means,” he added.
If there is a policeman who would say that he ordered them to execute criminals, he would step down, he said.
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LATEST STORIES
MOST READYou cultural fascists have struck again.
You have shown you will say most anything, and do most anything to advance your radical agenda. But that’s not enough, is it? Your intent is to ban any opposition. Your goal is to ban even the expression of dissension.
{snip}
Now it’s the Confederate flag.
I don’t know what’s more offensive, your disgusting character assassination or the outright embarrassment of politicians and businesses quaking in their shoes at the thought they might be next on your hit list.
You demand it be banned from society because you insist society accept your definition of what it represents. As usual, you are using a horrific event, and the victims of that horror, as your excuse, just as you used a pro-life extremist detonating a bomb to smear the entire pro-life movement, just as you used a crazed gunman opening fire in a movie theater to advance your radical agenda to ban all guns.
Now it’s Dylann Roof. He commits an unspeakable act of racist violence. What does the Confederate flag have to do with it? It is the symbol you’re using to suggest America is, and always has been racist.
So many are so intimidated and run away like an Iraqi army.
{snip}
Let me tell you who you’re tarring with your smear campaign. Charlie Daniels is a friend of mine. I know and am friends with members of The Outlaws. I’ve met the Lynyrd Skynyrd band. I’ve seen The Allman Brothers in concert. They all sing about the South. Their millions of fans wear caps emblazoned with the Confederate flag. The Stars and Bars waves throughout the arenas.
You’ve called them all racists.
Racists? How dare you. They are celebrating Southern rock music–period.
You are insulting millions of NASCAR fans who do the same simply as a celebration of their Southern heritage. You are besmirching the memory of the thousands of Confederates who fought for their right to secede–and openly opposed slavery. Start with Robert E. Lee.
{snip}
Tear down your own damn flags. The “Unabomber” Ted Kaczynski was a terrorist, and a murderer, and a supporter of Greenpeace. Tear down your environmentalist flags. There are black racists waving black power flags. Tear them all down.
A gay fanatic shot and grievously wounded a security guard at the Family Research Council. His intent was to murder as many employees as possible. Tear down all LGBT flags.
But you won’t, of course. You cultural fascists are also raving hypocrites.
I have |
For example, the U.S. Department of Agriculture is projecting a $9.30 soybean price for the 2017/18 marketing year (Office of Chief Economist, U.S. Department of Agriculture). Relatively high soybean prices relative to projection suggest that forward pricing soybeans may be prudent even if additional acres of soybeans are not planted.
A risk of forward pricing is that prices could go higher. For forward priced grain, perhaps the worst scenario occurs if prices are well above $10 and yields are low. This situation could occur because of a summer drought causing low soybean yields, leading to a market response of higher prices. One way of protecting against this possibility is to purchase Revenue Protection (RP) insurance at a high coverage level. The guarantee increase feature of RP will allow guarantees to increase if prices are higher in the fall of 2017. A second way to mitigating the risk of higher prices is to use futures options contracts to set a floor on price while still benefiting from rising prices.
Another concern may relate to projected prices on crop insurance products. The projected price will not be set until February. Soybean prices could fall into February, leading to a lower projected price for soybeans. To protect against this possibility, farmers could purchase add-on policies that allow the projected price to be the higher of the projected price in February or the futures price during an earlier time period. Risk reductions associated with this strategy should be weighed carefully. Over time, farmers should expect to pay more for add-on products than they receive in indemnity payments.
Break-even Prices
Another factor favors switching to soybeans. Soybean prices must fall considerably before soybeans and corn have the same profitability. At a $3.60 corn price, the soybean price would have to decrease to $8.67 before corn and soybeans have the same profitability (see Table 2). A decline of this magnitude is possible but likely would require major changes in production.
Operator and Land Returns
Note that these budgets have relatively low operator and land returns. At a $3.60 corn price and $10.00 soybean price, operator and land return for a 50-50 corn-soybean rotation is $251 per acre (see Table 1). This implies that cash rents must be below $251 per acre before farmers are projected to be profitable. The $3.30 corn price and $9.35 soybean price that U.S.D.A is using for long-term projections for the 2017/18 marketing year give an operator and land return of $199 per acre.
Prices of $4.00 for corn and $10 for soybeans give an operator and land return of $291 per acre (see Table 2). Return at that level would result in a sustainable financial position if cash rents are near $250 per acre. Hence, prices of $4.00 for corn and $10.00 for soybeans could be viewed as sustainable prices at which the financial positions of farms remain stable. These prices do not seem likely for 2017 at this time.NBA Coach Unloads on Trump, Says ‘Our Core Values’ as a Nation ‘Are Under Attack’
Guest post by John S. Roberts at Right Observer:
The NBA’s Golden State Warriors head coach Steve Kerr must still be upset that President Trump rescinded his team’s White House invite after a number of players said they wouldn’t attend a champions ceremony – as is customary.
Why else would Kerr claim America’s ‘core values’ are ‘under attack’ during 45’s presidency?
From Breitbart:
Golden State Warriors head coach Steve Kerr has issued a call to action. The NBA champion player and coach believes our nation’s “core values” are under attack, and that it’s time for citizens to do more to fight “propoganda.” Kerr told USA Today that he believes the principles which formed the basis for the Constitution are not safe. Specifically, Kerr mentioned former acting Attorney General Sally Yates, and a recent Twitter post in which she tweeted the preamble to the Constitution. Kerr said, “There’s absolutely an assault on our institutions and on our core values as a country. [Yates] tweeted the preamble to the Constitution, which really sums up our country. And all those things are kind of under attack right now.” Yates was fired from her post after she refused to enforce President Trump’s lawful travel restrictions, aimed at protecting American citizens.
The Hill has more:
In September, the team was disinvited from the traditional White House championship celebration by Trump after star player Stephen Curry told reporters that he didn’t want to go. “We believe there is nothing more American than our citizens having the right to express themselves freely on matters important to them. We’re disappointed that we did not have an opportunity during this process to share our views or have an open dialogue on issues impacting our communities that we felt would be important to raise,” the team said in a statement in September.
Kerr is highly paid, but obviously he can’t buy a clue.
People like him should not be talking about politics.
They know nothing of which they speak!Mozilla is partnering with data breach notification site Have I Been Pwned on a new feature for Firefox that’s sure to gain approval from security-conscious web surfers.
The feature, still in a very early stage, is designed to inform Firefox users about data breaches. For example, a notification could be triggered when a user visits a site that is known to have recently been breached. Have I Been Pwned's list of public data breaches will be used as the source for hacked sites.
Other goals of the project include educating users about data breaches – for example, providing a “Learn more” link alongside the breach notification – and offering people a way to opt into a service that would notify them (via e-mail) when they may be affected by a breach.
Troy Hunt, the security researcher behind Have I Been Pwned, confirmed the development on Twitter, saying that they are doing some “awesome things” with Mozilla.
As I mentioned, the project is in a very early stage but you can test it out now if you’d like by grabbing the requisite code over on GitHub. It’s currently offered as an add-on although it sounds as if the functionality will eventually be baked into a standard release of Mozilla. No word yet on when that’ll happen although given the current iteration, I suspect it’ll still be a while.GREENBURGH, N.Y. -- Phil Jackson's desire to trade Carmelo Anthony and jump-start another New York Knicks rebuild has been well-documented. It's the biggest story around the NBA during the past two weeks. And it might have even been the biggest story in sports if we weren't less than 48 hours from the Super Bowl.
Even Derrick Rose, a guy who rarely watches basketball during his down time, can't escape talk of the Anthony trade rumors.
"You hear it," the Knicks' point guard said Friday. "You have no other choice but to hear it."
The NBA trade deadline is Feb. 23, which means Jackson has less than three weeks to find a deal that works for all parties involved.
In the meantime, the Knicks are left in limbo.
Will they still be focused on a playoff push at the end of the month (they're only 1½ games out of eighth place in the Eastern Conference)? Or will they be playing for lottery position after trading Anthony?
Some veterans are privately frustrated by the uncertainty.
Derrick Rose has missed the Knicks' past three games with an ankle injury, and his status is uncertain for Saturday's visit from the Cavaliers. Brad Penner/USA TODAY Sports
Publicly, though, the players insist that they're just focused on the next game, which happens to be against LeBron James and the Cleveland Cavaliers on Saturday (8:30 p.m. ET, ABC). They aren't consumed with the NBA rumor mill.
"We come here, we play, practice, do our work, get out of here, go home to our families," Courtney Lee said.
Still, it's only natural for the players to wonder what kind of domino effect an Anthony trade would have.
Rose acknowledged as much when he was asked about the potential of the Knicks rebuilding following such an event.
NEW YORK KNICKS Check out the team site for more game coverage
"Im on a one-year deal so I can't talk that much about it. The rebuild could be me going, too. I don't know," he said. "My job is to focus whenever I'm on the court, just try to win games, try to be positive, try to get better. Like I said from the beginning, I'm chasing something. I'm trying to get back to myself and I'm trying to play consistent games."
Rose, a free agent this summer, acknowledged he has thought about the possibility that he could be traded. He knows that players in the final year of their contracts are attractive trade chips. But the 28-year-old said Friday he hasn't had conversations with management or his agent, B.J. Armstrong, about any potential deals.
"It's something that hasn't been out there. It is a thought, like [I'm on] a one-year deal," Rose said. "It is a business. Just got to wait and see."
At least one opposing team sees Rose as a potential trade target, per league sources, though no deal is imminent at this point. It wouldn't be a surprise if Rose draws more interest as the deadline approaches. He'd be a strong Band-Aid for a team looking for help in the backcourt.
And if Jackson is thinking about trading Anthony, you can be sure Rose will be available as the deadline approaches.
When a team underachieves as the Knicks (22-29) have, nothing is off limits.The swan song of Hoog Spel (1990-2000)
Cherry's touch Blocked Unblock Follow Following Jan 1, 2015
Amsterdam, June 2000
At the start of June we informed all our subscribers that we’ve stopped distributing Hoog Spel. All subscriptions have been transferred without any extra payments to subscriptions to RealGamer, the youngest game magazine in the Benelux (Belgium/Netherlands/Luxembourg). A good deal for our subscribers, we thought, since it’s a magazine that costs substantially more in the stores. Note 2002: The magazine RealGamer does not exist anymore.
In the letter to our subscribers we did not have the space to explain the reasons why we stopped with Hoog Spel. Because it’s otherwise impossible to inform the people who used to purchase our magazine in stores, we decided to have an alternate place to inform.
Here are a couple of factual experiences:
With growing frequency we were confronted with advertisers who did not want to advertise because the tone or conclusion of a review was not to their liking. It’s even happened that the placement of an advert depended on what our final conclusion regarding a title. An unacceptable situation, according to us.
It happened more and more that so called exclusive agreement with certain magazine were made. For that kind of exclusivity, you have to be willing to do something in return. We have never wanted to cooperate with this, with the result that it regularly happened that we couldn’t review a game. Because clearly other magazines were accepting these deals.
This lead to a situation last year that we were completely verbally cussed at by a distributor, because we broke one of the exclusivity contracts of one of our competitors. What we had done was place an article with the help of one our relations in the United States and had managed to cobble it together this way. But clearly, the Dutch distributor of the game had made an exclusivity agreement with another magazine here. Something we couldn’t know, didn’t need to know and what on the whole isn’t very interesting to know in the first place. Journalistic free right to gather news, right? How can it be my problem that you make an agreement with your neighbour and are not informing me? Isn’t that how you are taking care of business?
It’s bizarre that you’ll penalize me for doing something that goes against said agreement. It’s become clear that in this industry that is a problem and instantly, we lost another few ads. Plus — and this was worse — we wouldn’t receive any materials to review for a while. You understand, that doesn’t make the production of the magazine easier.
The reader, who doesn’t know what’s happening behind closed doors, will soon draw the conclusion that this magazine isn’t doing their work well. And will judge the magazine for this.
For some reason everybody (and yes, that also counts for the average consumer) seems to be convinced that a game magazine is only good if it reviews games that aren’t for sale yet. The sooner the games are discussed, the better the magazine is looked upon.
This situation is in fact untenable. After all, the sooner you write about a title, the more unfinished the material you’re reviewing is. As a result, a decent review is impossible.
But that doesn’t seem necessary, there is ample example of magazines with reviews about games that didn’t have more available than a few screenshots, followed up by a phone conversation with the developers or a visit to Texas to see the latest developments. Score of 94% and obligatory purchase. Objective? Naah!
Anyways, both publishers/distributors and the average gamer seems to want things this way. We fought the good fight for the longest time and even reviewed games that had been for sale for a while.
And yes, we were honest in these. Eventually we had to change, not only because it was becoming clear that our readers wanted the information sooner, but also because our advertisers started to pull out because we only reviewed ‘old games’. To cite a Dutch distrubtor “I wouldn’t want to advertise in that cunt magazine of yours! You only review games that are already available for sale. Well, I’ve reduced prices of those already to minimize my loss. Why would it be interesting for me if you would review that junk? You can forget about any ads. I just want you to review my newest games.”
Well, we too have to eat, dear reader. We started to review beta’s, with all risks entailed. Because it is very well possible that the product we review will be different by the time it arrives in stores.
To be honest, that’s when the joy and passion started to go away. In particular the last year there were a couple of reasons why we had begun to ask ourselves if it was us who were crazy or this industry. Examples of this I’ve given you; and in HoogZit (a column) in Hoog Spel, I’ve frequently given you the opportunity to let you enjoy these kind of experiences.
The biggest example is the ad we took for a cd-burner. One of our competitors immediately started to call our entire industry, how could it be that a games magazine received an ad like this. “He” would never do this. At what point the fact that readers of his magazine received giant discounts on burners and empty cd’s. Isn’t that what you butter on the head? (dutch expression meaning: people in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones). Anyways, the result was that everybody found this a problem. And people have forced us not to replace the ad.
This ad I’ve seen in a number of magazines afterward, and I still see it with regularity in other game magazines in the Netherlands. Strange.
Stranger still: recently I saw a dutch hardware magazine with a test of burners with the comment that Playstation cd’s are very easy to burn with brand X. Or this other magazine, that explains in detail how to put a DVD on a hard disk or tape. The examples are everywhere. I wonder how many complaints those magazines received, how many advertisers cancelled contracts.
No readers, having principles in an industry that makes a magazine is not something you can afford. We haven’t compromised on our principles and then there’s only one choice left. And that’s the one we made.
This doesn’t mean that we don’t look forward to a magazine about games that can make it exactly like they want it, without making any concessions!
Finally, we opened a couple of forums on our site, for you. Because we’d love to stay in touch. Who knows where that could lead. Even if you don’t see everybody from the Hoog Spel crew there, we will certainly be present. And we’ll look forward to reading your opinions.
Sincerely yours,
Harry d’Emme
Distributor Hoog Spel
Ps. One thing, do me a favor. No meaningless discussions about RULEZ or not (the usage of such terms is in my view only valuable to people with the mind of a child), no throwing of mud and fooling around. A discussion of what magazine is the best magazine at this point, should clearly be a wasted effort.
This is a translated article from a dutch website.
Source: http://www.hoogspel.nl/Two men suspected of beating San Francisco Giants fan Bryan Stow into a coma on Opening Day at Dodger Stadium have been arrested by Los Angeles police, a law enforcement official told The Associated Press on Thursday.
Meanwhile, the LAPD no longer considers Giovanni Ramirez, who was initially tagged as the prime suspect, as responsible for the attack.
The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the investigation was ongoing, said that if the district attorney's office files a case against the two men, Ramirez would be exonerated. District attorney's spokeswoman Sandi Gibbons said detectives have not presented a case to her office yet.
The arrests, which took place Wednesday, are a dramatic development in the case. Since Ramirez was arrested May 22, police have consistently restated they believed they had their man, while his lawyers said detectives were wrong.
The LAPD officer in charge of media relations would neither confirm nor deny the arrests.
"The Stow investigation continues," LAPD spokesman Andrew Neiman told ESPNLosAngeles.com's Ramona Shelburne. "We're making good progress. As information becomes available we'll make that public."
He said that Ramirez, a convicted felon, remains in custody on an unrelated parole violation after police found a gun in the house where he was staying when he was arrested. Ramirez's lawyers contend that he was not at Dodger Stadium at the time of the attack.
One of Ramirez's attorneys, Jose Romero, suggested the defense team unearthed important evidence in the case.
"The police played hide and seek so we did our own digging," Romero said. "This is our golden nugget. He's been innocent from the beginning."
Another Ramirez attorney, Anthony Brooklier, said the arrest was a mistake made in "good faith."
"The police have to be free to make mistakes, they just have to be good-faith mistakes," Brooklier told ESPNLosAngeles.com. "This is not a situation where the police manufactured evidence. They thought they had the right guy, they were wrong. That's why we have courts and law and thank god, defense attorneys. Every once in a while, we help.
"I'm going to focus on the positive that LAPD continued to investigate the case and I think they get credit for that."
Brooklier also said that as of late Thursday night, he had yet to receive any new information about his client's status in the investigation from LAPD. He said that he will immediately seek to have Ramirez released from custody, adding that he does not believe Ramirez will pursue a civil case against the LAPD.
Brooklier and Romero are scheduled to appear at a Friday afternoon news conference in downtown Los Angeles.
Police say Stow, 42, of Santa Cruz, was attacked by two men outside Dodger Stadium after attending the March 31 season opener between the Giants and archrival Los Angeles Dodgers. The attack triggered an outpouring of support for Stow, including a total of $225,000 in reward money collected from fundraisers and offered by the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors and the Dodgers for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the suspects.
Vigils were held for Stow, a paramedic and father of two, when he lay in a coma at a Los Angeles hospital. He was transported to a San Francisco hospital in May after doctors determined he was stable enough to be moved and be closer to his family in Northern California.
Stow suffered brain damage in the near-fatal assault and has been in a coma ever since. He experienced a setback in his recovery earlier this week when he underwent emergency brain surgery Monday after suffering a 30-second seizure. A hospital spokesman said Wednesday that Stow remains in serious condition.
A call seeking comments from Stow's family was not immediately returned late Thursday.
The case attracted broad national attention and exposed how the Dodgers had cut back on stadium security. Ramirez was arrested after his parole officer spotted tattoos on his neck that matched witness descriptions of Stow's attackers.
Detectives at the Los Angeles Police Department's northeast division handled the initial probe that led to Ramirez's arrest. At a news conference announcing his arrest, Police Chief Charlie Beck hailed the work of 20 detectives who pursued hundreds of leads in the case and called the arrest "a huge step."
Ramirez's lawyers, however, insisted their client was innocent, contending that he had hair the day witnesses described seeing two men with shaved heads beating Stow. Ramirez submitted to two lie detector tests, provided nearly a dozen alibis and cellphone records to show where he was when he made calls around the time of the attack.
Still, Beck repeatedly said he was confident Ramirez was the right suspect.
"Giovanni Ramirez is and was and has been our primary suspect on the Stow beating," he said.
After prosecutors declined to file a case against Ramirez, detectives at the LAPD's prestigious robbery-homicide division took the investigation over and started again from scratch.
Robbery homicide detectives re-interviewed all of the witnesses in the case, which initially was based purely on eyewitness statements that were not corroborated with forensic evidence.
A prominent defense lawyer said Ramirez could have a case against the police department for false arrest. At the least, he is owed an apology, attorney Mark Geragos said.
"I don't understand why the cops said they got their guy, they were so confident," Geragos said. "It's outrageous. They should have stopped shooting their mouths off and concentrated on the investigation."
A message left for Beck was not immediately returned.
Los Angeles mayor Antonio Villaraigosa addressed the matter Thursday night, but stopped short of confirming that Ramirez would be exonerated.
"I can't confirm that, but I can tell you that I do know that you all have been informed that two people have been arrested," Villaraigosa told reporters outside a park in East L.A.
"We said to you that we were going to do everything we could to find the individuals who beat Bryan Stow. We followed hundreds and thousands of leads in a case that was very difficult for us. There were general descriptions of the assailants but not nearly enough in the way of eyewitnesses that could connect that person to the incident."
The Los Angeles Times was first to report the arrest of the two new suspects.
Information from ESPNLosAngeles.com's Ramona Shelburne and The Associated Press was used in this report.The Financial Times‘ Gideon Rachman recently told his readers about a profoundly unsettling experience. A group made up of “plenty of eminent people” from the West, including former prime ministers and billionaires, traveled to Beijing to meet China’s President Xi Jinping. There, according to the writer, the foreign grandees were lectured, “treated a bit like a class of schoolchildren.”
We stand at the cusp of a historic shift of power away from the West toward Asia, and the consequences are increasingly being felt in global politics. With the day when China will overtake the United States as the world’s largest economy appearing on the horizon, the West is slowly losing the remarkable capacity to set the agenda on a global scale, something we have become so used to that it has become hard to imagine global affairs with a West no longer dominant. For more than a century, an extreme concentration of economic power allowed the West, despite representing a small minority of the world’s population, to initiate, legitimize, and successfully advocate policy in the economic or security realm. To most observers, non-Western actors hardly, if ever, played any constructive role in the management of global affairs.
As a consequence, the future of global order—no longer under Western rule—is generally seen as chaotic, disorienting, and dangerous. As Randall Schweller, an influential scholar at Ohio State University predicts, the only alternative to U.S. leadership is “banality and confusion, of anomie and alienation, of instability without a stabilizer, of devolving order without an orderer.” Indeed, the vast majority of International Relations scholars believe the relative decline of U.S. power will have profoundly negative global consequences.
Yet our understanding of the creation of today’s order, its contemporary form and predictions about the future, are limited because they seek to imagine a “Post-Western World” from a parochial Western-centric perspective. Harvard University’s Graham Allison calls the last one thousand years “a millennium in which Europe had been the political center of the world.” Such views dramatically underestimate the contributions non-Western thinkers and cultures have made, and how much the West depended on foreign knowledge, technology, ideas, and norms—such as from China and the Muslim world—to develop economically and politically. They also disregard the fact that non-Western powers have dominated the world economically for much of the last thousand years.
Our Western-centric world view thus leads us to underappreciate not only the role non-Western actors have played in the past and play in contemporary international politics, but also the constructive role they are likely to play in the future. With powers such as China providing ever more global public goods, post-Western order, most likely some kind of “managed rivalry,” will not necessarily be more violent or unstable than today’s global order.
Indeed, rather than directly confronting existing institutions, rising powers—led by China—are quietly crafting the initial building blocks of what we may call a “parallel order” that will initially complement, and later possibly challenge, today’s international institutions. This order is already in the making; it includes, among others, institutions such as the BRICS-led New Development Bank and the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (to complement the World Bank), Universal Credit Rating Group (to complement Moody’s and S&P), China Union Pay (to complement Mastercard and Visa), CIPS (to complement SWIFT), the BRICS (to complement the G7), and many other initiatives.
These structures do not emerge because China and others have fundamentally new ideas about how to address global challenges or because they seek to change global rules and norms; rather, they create them to better project their power, just as Western actors have done before them. They partly arose because of the limited social mobility of today’s order and because of existing institutions’ incapacity to adequately integrate rising powers. As part of a hedging strategy, emerging powers will continue to invest in existing institutions, recognizing the strength in today’s order, but they will seek to change the hierarchy in the system to obtain privileges so far only enjoyed by the United States. Furthermore, eluding the facile and overly simplistic extremes of either confronting or joining existing order, the creation of several China-centric institutions will allow China to embrace its own type of competitive multilateralism, picking and choosing among flexible frameworks, in accordance with its national interests — just like Western powers have done for decades.
Western hegemony is so deeply rooted and ubiquitous that we think of it as somehow natural, reducing our capacity to objectively assess the consequences of its decline. Fears about a post-Western chaos are misguided in part because the past and present systems are far less Western than is generally assumed (the world order already contains many rules and norms that emerged as a product of clashing Western and non-Western ideas). And while the transition to genuine multipolarity—not only economically but also militarily and regarding agenda-setting capacity—will be disconcerting to many, it may be, in the end, far more democratic than any previous order in global history, allowing greater levels of genuine dialogue, broader spread of knowledge, and more innovative and effective ways to address global challenges in the coming decades.
Oliver Stuenkel teaches International Relations at the Getulio Vargas Foundation in São Paulo, Brazil. His new book, Post-Western World, has just been published by Polity Press.IT IS said that the army chief is the most powerful man in Pakistan. Even so, the prime minister, Nawaz Sharif, made a point of keeping the new head waiting for as long as possible. Breaking with the convention that gives the new chief a month or two to prepare, Mr Sharif named a successor just two days before the outgoing chief, General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, a former spymaster turned double-term army chief, was due to retire. Lieutenant General Raheel Sharif (no relation to the prime minister) will now control not only a vast army and the world’s fastest-growing nuclear arsenal, but a business empire ranging from cornflakes to luxury housing.
So why the delay? The prime minister is not always decisive, and bear in mind that the last time he picked an army chief, Pervez Musharraf in 1998, his appointee ousted him in a coup a year later. Others, however, suspect an attempt by Mr Sharif to assert civilian authority over an army that needs to be put in its place.
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The army sees itself as both embodiment and guarantor of the nation. Yet it has long been at the root of Pakistan’s deepest problems. By meddling in elections and mounting coups, it has weakened the political classes, whose consequent ineptitude and corruption gives it cause to meddle again. It has a history of disastrous military adventures. And it has made common cause with militant Islamists who it hoped would further its interests abroad—keeping India on edge to the south and sowing confusion in Afghanistan to the north in hopes of preventing anti-Pakistan forces growing there.
The country is now paying a terrible price for its sponsorship of foreign terror. It has spawned dozens of local extremist groups attacking Pakistan itself. Since 2001 nearly 50,000 Pakistanis have died in terror-related violence.
For a long time the generals refused to see the Islamists for the threat they are. Officers from the army’s spy wing, Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), were probably involved in funding and planning deadly attacks in Mumbai in 2008 carried out by Lashkar-e-Taiba. General Kayani may have been as bad as the rest. While he was rising to the top, the Afghan Taliban regrouped, the Mumbai attacks were planned, and Osama bin Laden settled in a garrison town.
Yet along the way the soldier-spy grew into the pragmatist committed to getting the army “out of the driving seat” and nurturing Pakistan’s return to democracy. He and Mr Sharif seem to have got on, while the Americans respected him. Crucially, says Asad Munir, a retired ISI brigadier, he began to understand the nature of the existential threat posed by militant Islam. Military force is required to take it on, particularly in North Waziristan, a tribal area which an alphabet soup of al-Qaeda affiliates have made their base.
General Sharif’s appointment was a surprise. But the good news is that he shares General Kayani’s thinking on domestic militancy. In charge of army training, he was closely involved in efforts to retool an army trained for set-piece battles with India for counter-insurgency in the country’s wild tribal west. Like General Kayani, he knows first-hand the futility of peace accords that militant groups soon renege on.
The problem is that the prime minister has yet to produce a national counter-terrorism strategy and says peace talks must be tried first. It is a cause with minimal chance of success, but one hotly promoted by much of the political establishment. Many more innocent lives may have to be lost before the politicians find the nerve for a military solution.
Elsewhere irritation with civilian government is already flowering among junior officers. But there is no mood to take over. Mr Musharraf’s eight years in power were a disaster (unlamented, he now awaits trial). The army’s once-unchallenged authority has leeched away to a set of rambunctious broadcast media, an activist supreme court and civilian politicians who this year successfully transferred power from one elected government to another—a first for Pakistan. Good governance is the best way for civilian rulers to keep the army off their backs.
Still, the army can always play a spoiling game, especially when it comes to relations with India. It makes no secret of despising Mr Sharif’s enthusiasm for a rapid normalisation of relations, and opposes a crucial free-trade deal. And even as Mr Sharif dreams of visa-less travel across the Indo-Pakistani border, after years of relative calm the ceasefire line in contested Kashmir has become hot again. The officers probably deserve some of the blame for that.Clips required:
What to expect:
Higher-level positions:
Resume, cover letter, at least 4 sample layouts
Long and short term projects, weekly meetings with the online team and with project-specific groups
Lead web designer, online manager.
Experience:
Understanding of design principles and typography
Awareness of website functionality and the user experience
Preferably experience with website design or publication layout
Working/collaborating in a team environment
Experience with the design and development process a plus
Programs:
Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop (CS5 or CS6)
Knowledge of Adobe Fireworks is a plus
Basic understanding of web development is a plus
Web designers help shape the online presence of the Daily Californian, creating special pages and collaborating with editors and reporters to clearly and interactively inform a diverse online readership. Designing for the web involves content from the editorial staff, input from both editors and web developers, and a truly cooperative process to produce the most effective and aesthetic online content. Web designers blend many different aspects of the design field, from an understanding of visual information flow, to basic logo and icon design principles.
Designing for the Daily Cal website is also a chance to enter a field that is constantly changing and innovating. Online journalism means that designers must work with multimedia content as well–interactive graphics, videos, slideshows and more.
Clips required to apply for this position: Please submit 4 or more sample website layouts showing a variety of styles. Samples may be static images, or links to functional websites. Applicants should only submit pages they worked on. Website designs created specifically for the Daily Cal application are accepted.
ApplyCHICAGO (MarketWatch) — In what’s referred to as BYOD, or “bring you own device,” companies are allowing employees access to corporate emails, calendars and other company files on their personal phones and tablets.
But what employees might not know is that they give up a lot of privacy with that privilege: The company can see everything on your personal device. What’s more, the company can wipe it all out if you leave or if the device is lost or stolen. It can also remotely turn on the camera to find it.
Reuters A woman looks at her iPad tablet after the Emporio Armani Spring/Summer 2013 collection at Milan Fashion Week.
“You get access to corporate resources such as mail, and an IT manager gets access to your device,” said Jonathan Dale, director of marketing at Fiberlink, which creates management solutions for mobile devices in the workplace.
Think of BYOD as the junction between your personal and work lives. As smartphones have evolved from a business device to a consumer one, users find themselves returning work-related emails at midnight or responding to Twitter service complaints from home.
“BYOD is actually blurring the line separating business devices from consumer devices,” said Nitin Bhas, a senior analyst at Juniper Research. “This consumerization of business devices reflects the change in consumer attitudes toward bringing in their own devices to the work place.”
And that’s expected to explode as more smartphones permeate the marketplace and younger users move into the workplace. Juniper predicts that the number of employee-owned smartphones and tablets in the workplace will swell to 350 million in 2014 from nearly 150 million this year.
At this point, however, allowing you to use your iPad to send reports, set meetings and create documents is still something of a conundrum for many companies. Allowing employees to access corporate email and their calendars through a personal iPhone, Android or Blackberry drives productivity and customer service. But doing so also opens the company to corporate espionage, security breaches and a handful of legal challenges.
“BYOD is an inevitable trend today, but from the security point of view, it is considered an insecure policy (that) could damage a company’s reputation and business,” Bhas said.
Use of personal mobile devices soars
Nearly 70% of North American companies support some form of mobile-device management, according to a recent Forrester Research study. However, only 8% support all personal devices.
But Forrester calls the tide of personal mobile devices in the workplace an “oncoming train,” underscoring the challenges companies face.
“The general trend is that more and more companies are embracing it as a standard practice across the company or as a limited experiment,” said Chenxi Wang, principal analyst at Forrester.
On company-owned devices, most understand that when you use the device you give up every shred of privacy attached to it, even emails or text messages that have been deleted.
What many will be surprised to learn is they give up all that and more on personal devices too that are connected to company systems.
In other words, your bosses can see what you did last weekend by looking at your photos or your text messages. They can also find out if you ditched work for a ball game by following your GPS record. Anything you do or install on that device is like an open diary to IT.
When you connect to your company’s email system, you are allowing your company to download mobile-device management software. That’s critical for companies because it allows you to get inside the firewall but lets them keep control of who else or what else — think malware and viruses — get in.
The software carries a profile that includes security protocols that may, for example, dictate the number of characters required for passwords and when a device will be locked out or wipe itself out after a certain number of failed attempts at inputting a password.
A blanket corporate policy is likely to tell you that when you consent to use your company’s systems you should not expect privacy or confidentiality in anything you create, download, display, store, send or receive.
At the same time, the policies allow the company to access, monitor, copy and/or disclose any and all information that is stored on any device tied to the company network.
“If your employer wants to locate where you are, they can do that,” said Phillip Redman, research vice president for Gartner, Inc., an information technology research and advisory company.
“It’s the same as if your child is not answering text messages you can see where the phone has been and find out where your child is,” he said. “It’s a good reason to have those capabilities but like anything they can also be abused.”
Employer security vs. employee privacy
No one is suggesting that corporations routinely or even scarcely exploit their snooping capabilities but workers are alarmed that they’re giving up so much privacy to get workplace email and calendars. In a recent Harris study, commissioned by Fiberlink, 82% of respondents considered their company’s |
professional. But too many California high school athletes are not getting that kind of treatment.
“Athletic trainers need to be licensed in California. The fact is that we deal with a variety of medical conditions on a daily basis, and yet there’s no regulation, there’s no mandate on qualifications,” said Mike Chisar, chair of the California Athletic Trainers Association’s governmental affairs committee. “We wouldn’t go to a physician that hasn’t gone to medical school. To see an athletic trainer to manage your concussion, when that trainer isn’t actually an athletic trainer, doesn’t make sense.”
In other states, athletic trainers need to be college educated, receiving training and degrees similar to other health care professionals, such as physical therapists, occupational therapists or physicians’ assistants.
“There are accredited programs,” said Chisar, an accredited trainer himself. “Every state utilizes the same accredited program. There is one national exam that validates whether you have the skills necessary to function as an athletic trainer. Every state uses it.”
Except California. And that’s why many high school athletes compete with no trained medical staff on hand.
“I’d say it’s about half,” said Heinrichson, when estimating how many Bay Area schools have qualified trainers. “If an emergency happens, are they prepared? You have concussions, and cardiac emergencies. Do you have someone who’s trained to work with that? You also need someone who’s qualified to make return-to-play decisions. Are they making the right decisions, in the best interest of the athlete?”
Of those schools that do have trainers, many aren’t qualified. According to a fact sheet attached to AB1510, “Fifteen universities in California, including seven CSUs, have nationally accredited athletic training education programs. Despite this fact, anyone can still act as an athletic trainer; approximately 30 percent of individuals calling themselves athletic trainers in high schools are not qualified.”
It’s not a pretty picture, but there are steps schools can take while waiting for possible legislative relief.
The Stringer Institute strongly recommends that every school have an emergency action plan, or EAP in trainer parlance, that answers some basic questions. Who should be calling 911? Who goes and gets the athletic director? Who directs (emergency personnel) to the field? What are the directions to the field? Is there a gate that needs to be unlocked?
“It’s a low-cost effort,” said the Stringer Institute’s Scarneo. “There are templates out there that schools can use. Mandating that schools should have a medically specific EAP for sports-related injuries is one area that California could score points, but more importantly save lives. That’s more important than licensure, in my opinion.”
Whether Sacramento listens to this advice, we’ll see. Brown’s office said it does not comment on pending legislation. Perhaps those nervous parents, sweating it out under the Friday night lights, can ask the governor and the Assembly to stop listening to the lobbyists on both sides of the legislative fight and do the right thing by the kids.
“Our message to parents is that if your school can afford to have a football team, they can afford to have an athletic trainer,” said Scarneo. “If they can’t afford an athletic trainer, they can’t afford to have athletics.”
Al Saracevic is sports editor of The San Francisco Chronicle. Email: asaracevic@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @alsaracevic
Tell us your stories
Has your son or daughter been injured while playing high school sports? Did you feel the medical care was sufficient, or not? Share your stories with The Chronicle, which plans to pursue the subject of high school athletic trainers in greater depth. Email Al Saracevic at asaracevic@sfchronicle.com.0 Habitat for Humanity builds 8 Orlando homes in 5 days
ORLANDO, Fla. - Eight Orlando families are celebrating after receiving the keys to their new homes Saturday.
Volunteers with Habitat for Humanity of Greater Orlando built the homes at Butler’s Preserve on Willie Mays Parkway in five days.
They hope to add more homes to the neighborhood in the next few years.
The homes are part of the organization’s Home Builder Blitz project.
A Habitat for Humanity home typically takes about six to eight months to build. But one of the homes that started with just a concrete slab Monday morning had windows and a roof by the afternoon.
“This is amazing for these families. It typically takes us eight months start to finish,” said Jennifer Gallagher of Habitat for Humanity.
Builders worked from sunrise to sunset each day to make sure the homes were completed on time.
Butler's Preserve is in the Washington Shores community. When it is complete, it will have 59 homes, according to officials.
Former Orange County Commissioner Mable Butler pushed for the area to become affordable housing decades ago.
“I’m so full of joy because what I wanted is here,” Butler said.
Her joy spread to the families moving in to the new homes. Residents said the new community is a symbol of hope for those who may not be able to afford a home the traditional way.
“I can’t describe the feeling that’s inside me. It’s like joy is just shooting up through me. The excitement is overwhelming,” said one of the home recipients, Tanya Rutland.
The structures range from two to five bedroom homes, all specialized for their new owners.A Pakistani comedian's music video send-up of the pop classic "Oh, Pretty Woman" is being slammed in the blogosphere as a mockery of Muslim values.
As the Telegraph reports, Saad Haroon's "Burka Woman" re-works Roy Orbison's signature 1964 tune as a serenade to an Islamic woman hidden beneath a black niqab with only her eyes visible, referring to her as both a "sexy ninja" and a "mystery prize."
In between scenes of the comedian in a white suit performing the tune with a live band, Haroon dances with a pair of burka-wearing women in and around a children's playground. "Burka woman, I love you still...c'mon and give me a thrill, show me your left nostril," the comedian sings, while suggesting he will go home and "practice with his living room curtain."
The clip has divided its YouTube audience since it was uploaded. "There is a right way and a wrong way to do things," wrote one viewer. "Obviously, making it a joke for the world to see is not a very productive method, that will only create further divisions and friction within Pakistan. Think long term!" Still, others reportedly are rallying in the comedian's favor. "This was so funny, I had tears running down my face," another person wrote. "Your belief system should not crumble just because someone sees humor in their own beliefs. Thanks for this brilliant bit of social satire!"
For his part, Haroon has shrugged off most of the criticism. "Everyone has a right to say what they want," he told the Telegraph. "The crazies always shout loudest, but I've also had positive comments from women in burkas who have come up to me after shows, saying how funny they found it."
Watch "Burka Woman" here:The president of Uganda, Idi Amin, with all his medals, photographed at an outdoor rally in January 1978; Idi Amin, surrounded by his children, nieces, and nephews at the White Horse Inn in 1978. (Jaffar is in the second row on the right.) Photos by Keystone/Getty Images; Photo Courtesy of Jaffar Amin
On April 11, 1979, His Excellency President for Life, Field Marshal Al Hadji Doctor Idi Amin, VC, DSO, MC, CBE, Lord of all the Beasts of the Earth and Fishes of the Sea, and Conqueror of the British Empire in Africa in General and Uganda in Particular, was overthrown by a rebel insurgency.
To most people, Amin’s eight-year reign is best remembered for its violence. Nine thousand “disloyal” soldiers — a full two-thirds of the Ugandan Army — were executed during Amin's first year of power. Supposed threats within the civilian population — Janani Luwum, the archbishop of the Church of Uganda, for one — were not only summarily executed, but often forced to do the work themselves and club one another to death. Throughout his life, rumors of cannibalism followed Amin, who was reported to have kept the severed heads of his rivals in a freezer. An obituary in the Guardian after his death in 2003 described the Ugandan leader as “one of the most brutal military dictators to wield power in post-independence Africa.” The exact number of killings for which he can be blamed is hard to pin down definitively, but the BBC has pegged the figure at around 400,000.
Some say there’s more to the man than the numbers. One of his most vocal boosters is none other than Jaffar Amin, the 10th of the late dictator’s 40 officially recognized offspring, by seven officially recognized wives. Jaffar insists that the world truly misunderstands his dad.
Jaffar, now 48, lives in Kampala with his wife and six kids. A prolific Facebooker, he regularly posts pictures of his family, including his father, along with anecdotes, reminiscences, and the odd complaint about the current state of Uganda.
I’ve always been interested in the private lives of dictators, and a couple of years ago, after a quick search, I landed on Jaffar’s profile. I sent him a friend request, along with a note asking if he’d be willing to share his story with me for an article. I expected a polite “No thanks.” But Jaffar responded right away, agreeing to forward along “generic” answers to questions he has either been asked over the years, or ones he assumed he would be asked.
What he sent was anything but generic. One afternoon in August 2013, I looked at my inbox to find dozens and dozens of pages littered with almost stream-of-consciousness reminiscences about life with his father. It took a while to make sense of it all — some of it seemed to be notes for a future book, some of it taken from a talk Jaffar had given, and some of it consisted of large, disjointed blocks of text pasted directly into the email.
Jaffar Amin poses for a photo in Uganda in 2012. Photo Courtesy of Jaffar Amin
Jaffar doesn’t come off as some sort of evil dictator’s demon spawn, but rather as an everyday guy living in the suburbs. He spent 11 years working as a manager for DHL. These days, he picks up commercial voiceover gigs when he can — his dulcet tones have urged people to visit the Kampala showroom of a South Korean furniture company called Hwansung, to tune in to 88.2 FM, and to fly Qatar Airways.
Though I wouldn’t describe the two of us as “friends,” Jaffar and I have spoken on the phone a handful of times to discuss our possible collaboration. After about a year, Jaffar’s emails started coming with signoffs like, “God bless you and your family.” He recently wrote to me, “I owe you a wealth of thanks for bringing out the human side of my parent.”
At the same time, Jaffar has also obviously grown somewhat weary of discussing the past. Early on, when I asked one too many follow-up questions, Jaffar replied, “You could be a run-of-the-mill blogger for all I [know], for I have always only given Interviews to the Established Media Houses so consider this my last correspondence with you[,] take the gift or simply trash it or bin it as we Anglophones are fond of expressing.”
It was far from our last exchange. The silence ended a month or so later, after I told Jaffar I had gotten the official go-ahead from my editors at Foreign Policy. I can only assume that Jaffar, who later told me he was looking for partners to work with him on a somewhat nebulous documentary film project that he said he hoped would show “the other side of Idi Amin Dada,” didn’t want to pass up the publicity.
To most of the world, the name Idi Amin carries dark connotations. The annals of history place the late Ugandan leader alongside Pol Pot, Saddam Hussein, and Slobodan Milosevic in the pantheon of vicious madmen. For his part, Jaffar says he doesn’t view his father “through rose-tinted glasses,” though he argues that “more die from hunger and misadventures into Sudan and the Congo than have been accused of this man I call father.” Idi Amin’s overarching aim, according to Jaffar, was “to break the colonialist chains and unshackle the colonialist yoke from around our necks.” To many, Idi Amin, a man the last U.S. ambassador to Uganda referred to as “Hitler in Africa,” was simply a murderous tyrant. To Jaffar, he was “great as a father.”
Jaffar attributes some of the lingering ill will toward his father to basic breakdowns in communication. While the world was convinced that Amin had a taste for human flesh, it wasn’t so, says Jaffar. What of Jaffar’s brother, Moses, who was allegedly killed and eaten by his father in 1974? He’s actually “alive and well in France,” according to Jaffar.
Idi Amin’s family in Jinja, Uganda, 1965. Moshe Amin Dada, Idi Amin’s younger brother, is on the left. Idi Amin’s father and Jaffar’s grandfather, Andrea Amin Dada, is seated. Idi Amin’s chief wife, Sarah Mutesi Kibedi Amin, stands in the center. Photo Courtesy of Jaffar Amin
And Jaffar says he’s not the only one who believes Moses is alive. “A few years ago when I was in the United States, the editor in chief of Chicago Suntimes [sic] newspaper told me how he would forgive Amin of all atrocities committed but never the one of sacrificing his son,” an acquaintance wrote to Jaffar in a letter, which he then posted to Facebook in 2009. “I tried but couldn't convince him that Moses Amin actually was still alive. According to him, many reliable Ugandans had told him of Moses's sad fate.”
The rest of the Amin family does not find it necessary to change anyone’s perceptions. They are happy, according to Jaffar, to “let sleeping dogs lie.” But, as he said in his “generic” answers, “I'm the type who feels that I am going to spend the rest of my life trying to explain my father's legacy. And I've set that as my own personal goal or agenda, so to speak.”
Jaffar’s turns of phrase often sound like they’re coming from an English gentleman. He says he was exposed to Anglo-Saxon culture through Uganda’s British colonial history and what he describes as his father’s obsession with everything British, “while hating their exclusivity.” But if Idi Amin hated upper-crust snobbery, he certainly didn’t mind the finer things in life.
In the 1970s, Amin expropriated a property on the shore of Lake Victoria to create, in Jaffar’s words, his own “version of Balmoral or Camp David.” He called it “Cape Town View.” Amin also helped himself to Mukusu Island, a 23-acre piece of land in the lake not far from Kampala. He dubbed that one “Paradise Island.”
Not everyone found the area so idyllic. Amin reportedly threw “several” of his own ministers to the crocodiles that lived in the lake, with one local fisherman telling the Telegraph in 2002, “When I was fishing, I would see many bodies, sometimes just parts of bodies, in the lake. They were enemies of Amin and so he killed them. Then the crocodiles would eat them.”
Tales abound of Amin’s casual sadism, carried out during a reign that has come to be synonymous with brutality. “R,” a former political prisoner, remembers watching “a lot of bad things, a lot of castration. They cut people up and all kinds of stuff. Those still alive — your job was to clean it up.” A university lecturer who displeased Amin was later found beheaded by the side of a road. Henry Kyemba, one of Amin’s former ministers, claimed in 1978 that Amin admitted to him two separate times that he had eaten human flesh, calling it “saltier than leopard meat.”
Jaffar doesn’t spend too much time dwelling on the details of the grisly accusations leveled at his father. In his reminiscences, Jaffar humanized his dad, explaining that Amin was “fond of gadgets.” His father's collection included an aluminum Polaroid camera wrapped in maroon leather, and Betamax machines flown in from Dubai. (Meanwhile, Jaffar recently asked if I’d download an HD version of a Hungarian film onto a flash drive and FedEx it to him in Kampala. “I have never had a chance to watch this film properly,” he said, explaining that power outages were also making it hard for him to access his email.) And according to Jaffar, his father also liked to drive his Maserati around the country and turn up at parties, funerals, village gatherings, and so forth, unannounced, delighting his surprised subjects.Earlier this year, the NYC Go Family Ambassador Program announced that the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles would be taking over as Ambassadors of the city. Since then, it would appear that the program has proven very successful, because they have plans to expand its reach in 2017. In addition to crafting 5 new “See Your City” neighborhood guides, they will also be recording 13 new videos for the NYC Go website. We don’t know if the turtles will be featured in those videos, but we can confirm that they will be included in the neighborhood guides.
Today, we’re happy to share some of the first new artwork tied to their 2017 tourism campaign. To be honest, this is basically just a different variant of the same artwork we’ve already seen, but it’s still pretty nice. In honor of the winter season, they’ve given the turtles some warm clothing to wear as they lead tourists around town. I’m fairly certain that these do not represent what we will see in the five new guides they will be printing next year, so we’ve probably got a lot more to look forward to in the coming months.
Until then, it’s nice to see the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles aren’t letting any cold weather keep them from providing an excellent service for the city they call home. In addition to this new wintry artwork, fans may also be happy to see that the NYC Go website now includes a lot of fun activities. In addition to free TMNT coloring pages, you can also create your own TMNT comic and even have fun with a word search puzzle! Whether you’re traveling to New York City anytime soon or you just want to have fun with some turtley awesome activities, the NYC Family Ambassador Program has proven both successful and entertaining.Further details emerge of case put by both sides
Previously reported as positive on two days, the Spanish media has reported that Alberto Contador’s samples showed traces of Clenbuterol on four different occasions, spread over five days.
According to both La Vanguardia and Marca, he was negative for the substance in tests on July 5,12, 19 and 20. However on Wednesday July 21, the second rest day of the Tour, his samples showed the presence of Clenbuterol at 50 picograms per millilitre. This dropped to16 picograms the following day, decreased further to 7 picograms/ml two days later (July 24) and then increased again to 17 picograms/ml on July 25th.
Jesús Munoz Guerra, director of the Laboratory of Madrid, told Marca that “a rebound in concentration of Clenbuterol from 7 to 17 picograms is more likely an error in estimation of the concentration rather than a second microdose.” The reference to a microdose presumably refers to the hypothesis that the Clenbuterol could have entered his system via a blood transfusion.
It is uncertain as to whether the spread of Clenbuterol positives over five days will help or hinder his argument that food was the source. The substance is likely to take several days to clear the system.
Contador has insisted that steak bought in Irun by friend and race organizer Jose Luis Lopez Cerrón was the culprit. La Vanguardia reports details from the investigations done by both sides in preparing the prosecution and defence cases.
It says that WADA commissioned a private investigator to look into the origin of the meat from the abbatoir: his conclusion was that it came from Spain rather than elsewhere.
In addition, WADA stated that to produce 50 pg in urine, the contamination level in the meat should be at least three times the detection level in the European Union. WADA concluded that in order to achieve this level, it would have been necessary to have eaten meat which had been killed very soon after the last dosing of the animal with Clenbuterol.
Finally, the reports from WADA forwarded to the RFEC by the UCI point out that of 286,748 tests carried out on meat in Europe in 2008, just one Italian case was confirmed as positive for Clenbuterol.
In response, Contador’s legal team claims that in order to satisfy the requirements of reliable statistics, that 8,586 tests should have been carried out in the Basque Country. Instead, 100 were done.
The competition committee of the RFEC assessing the case has concluded that it is absolutely impossible for Contador to demonstrate the contamination of the meat, given that he ate it.
The question has also been posed as to why Contador’s legal team has not lodged a complaint against those who allegedly contaminated and shipped tainted meat.
Case for defence:
In relation to the transfusion hypothesis, Marca reports that Contador’s legal team has sought to show that his bio-passport values during the Tour were completely normal and thus rule out the suggestion that he could have received blood.
He is basing his defence on part on Articles 296 and 297 of the UCI’s anti-doping rules. While there is no permissible level for Clenbuterol, he is arguing that he was not negligent in eating meat, especially as the substance is supposedly absent from meat in Europ.
Article 296 states that a sanction can be avoided if the rider “establishes… that he bears No Fault or Negligence.” However the rider must show how the prohibited substance entered his system.
In the absence of proof as to the source of contamination – which the RFEC competition committee has noted that Contador has eaten – his defence may depend instead on Article 297. This refers to the situation where a rider shows that he has “No Significant Fault or Negligence,” which should be easier to show. However in this case the ban would be reduced by half, which equals the one year ban already proposed by the RFEC.
Contador has vowed to fight to the end in terms of battling any suspension. “Why should I accept a one-year suspension, since I did nothing?” he asked during an interview on Spanish national radio.
“An athlete tested positive in Mexico, where clenbuterol is used in cattle, but in the European Union meat goes through more controls and it's illegal to fatten cattle using this substance. I could never expect that meat to be contaminated,” Contador argued.
He said that he and his legal team had presented new evidence and were hopeful that they would be successful. "With the documents presented and the two new points we've introduced there's hope this (decision) changes,” he said. “The rule says the athlete must show responsibility and negligence for a sanction to be applied.”
They have submitted a further 35 pages to the 90 previously presented. A final decision from the RFEC is expected this week. Both sides have the right to appeal.An ancient empire, the cradle of three modern-day nations…
This was Kievan Rus – a powerful East Slavic state dominated by the city of Kiev. Shaped in the 9th century it went on to flourish for the next 300 years. The empire is traditionally seen as the beginning of Russia and the ancestor of Belarus and Ukraine. From those ancient times comes a popular proverb “Your tongue will take you to Kiev”. If you’re wondering how or why a part of your body would transport you to a European capital, here’s the story. Legend has it that in 999 a Kiev resident called Nikita Shchemyaka got lost in the far-away steppes and was caught by a militant nomadic tribe. Nikita’s tales of Kiev’s wealth and splendor impressed the tribe’s chief so much, he hooked Nikita by the tongue to his horse’s tail and went to wage war against Kiev. That’s how Nikita’s tongue took him home. But don’t panic if you hear the saying – you won’t share the unfortunate Nikita’s lot. Today, the proverb simply means you can always ask your way around.
Back in those ancient times Russia it seems nearly became a Muslim country. The story goes that its ruler at the time, Prince Vladimir, wanted to replace paganism with a new religion. He was tempted by Islam because it allowed men to have several wives. But Vladimir finally decided against it because he thought his people would be unhappy under a religion that prohibits wine. So in 988 Kievan Rus converted to Orthodox Christianity.
Tatar invasion
In the 13th century Kievan Rus was invaded by the Tatars. Their state, the Empire of the Golden Horde, ruled over Russian lands for almost three centuries. But in 1380 a Muscovite prince, Dmitry Donskoy, won a major battle against the Tatars under the command of Khan Mamai at Kulikovo Field. Donskoy became a popular hero and the words “the slaughter of Mamai” now mean a carnage or terrible defeat. And “Mamai’s invasion” is a name to jokingly describe troublesome or unwelcome visitors.
And if you find out that “walking like a pig” has nothing to do with the grunting animals you’ve got another epic battle to blame – the Battle of the Ice in 1242. Hoping to exploit the Russians’ weakness after the Tatar invasion, the Teutonic Knights attacked the city of Novgorod. The German crusaders were defeated in a fight on Lake Peipus, between modern Estonia and Russia. During their retreat, many knights drowned in the lake when the ice broke under the weight of their heavy amour. “The pig” was the Russian way of describing the wedge-shaped formation of the German army, often used in Europe in the 13-15th centuries. Speaking of the “advancing pig”, the medieval Russian chronicles referred to the marching Teutonic knights.
Ivan the Terrible
Meanwhile, Moscow replaced Kiev as the new centre of spiritual and political power, becoming the Grand Duchy of Moscow. In 1547 Ivan IV (the Terrible), who was also Grand Duke of Moscow, crowned himself the first Tsar. Ivan wasn’t of course born the Terrible. He earned his nickname for his ruthless campaigns against the nobility, confiscating their lands and executing or exiling those who displeased him. It was a drive that strengthened Russia’s monarchy like never before. But he started out as a reformer, reorganizing the military, proclaiming a new legal code and curbing the influence of the clergy. It was Ivan who turned Russia into a multi-ethnic and multi-religious state.
In 1552 Ivan crushed the Tatar stronghold of Kazan. The campaign began Russia’s expansion into Siberia, annexing a large Muslim population. One of Moscow’s most famous landmarks is another of Ivan’s legacy. St. Basil’s Cathedral on Red Square was built by his order. The cathedral is a collection of nine chapels put on a single foundation. The central and tallest one commemorates the invasion of Kazan while the rest celebrate other key victories in the Tatar campaign. A popular legend has it that the work was done by two architects – Postnik and Barma (although some say it was one and the same person). When Ivan saw the finished cathedral he liked it so much that he had the architects blinded to prevent them from building anything like it elsewhere.MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia accused Albania, NATO and the European Union on Thursday of trying to impose a pro-Albanian government on Macedonia, gripped by political crisis.
A day earlier Macedonia’s President Gjorge Ivanov refused to allow a coalition of Social Democrats and parties representing the country’s big ethnic Albanian minority to form a government because of their pledge to allow wider official use of the Albanian language.
Ivanov’s move, made during protests of Macedonians against the coalition in the capital Skopje and towns where ethnic Macedonians are a majority, was criticized by the European Union.
“With active cooperation of the EU and NATO officials, an ‘Albanian platform’ created in Tirana, in the office of the (Albanian) prime minister, is being imposed on Macedonians,” a statement by the Russian foreign ministry said on Thursday.
It alleged that such a move was testimony to Albania’s claims over “wide regions” of Montenegro, Serbia, Macedonia and Greece as part of a project to create a so-called Greater Albania.
Russia refuses to recognize the 2008 independence of predominantly ethnic-Albanian Kosovo from Moscow’s ally Serbia, and strongly opposes neighboring Montenegro’s NATO membership.
Tensions between Macedonia’s Slav majority and ethnic Albanian minority reached the brink of civil war in 2001, before diplomatic intervention by the EU and other powers defused the situation.
In a December snap election, the nationalist VMRO-DPMNE narrowly beat the Social Democrats, but neither was able to form a government without parties of ethnic Albanians, who make up a third of the population.
After months of talks, Social Democrat leader Zoran Zaev last week won the support of three ethnic Albanian parties and conceded some of their demands.
One was for a bill allowing wider use of the Albanian language, a request backed by ethnic Albanian parties from different Balkan countries when they met in the Albanian capital Tirana after the December election.
Macedonian nationalists including former prime minister Nikola Gruevski say the Albanian demand would lead to cantonisation of the country along ethnic lines.
Moscow’s statement on Thursday also accused Kosovo of meddling in Macedonian affairs and said the West wanted to bring “the defeated opposition” to power.
“It is necessary to stop external intervention in Macedonia’s internal affairs,” it said.Illustrations by Ellie Skrzat.
In the late 1960s and early 1970s, the United States suffered through a skyjacking epidemic that has now been largely forgotten. In his new book, The Skies Belong to Us: Love and Terror in the Golden Age of Hijacking, Brendan I. Koerner tells the story of the chaotic age when jets were routinely commandeered by the desperate and disillusioned. In the run-up to his book’s publication on June 18, Koerner has been writing a daily series of skyjacker profiles. Slate is running the final dozen of these “Skyjacker of the Day” entries.
Name: Nguyen Thai Binh
Date: July 2, 1972
Flight Info: Pan Am Flight 841 from San Francisco to Saigon, with scheduled stops in Honolulu, Guam, and Manila.
The Story: In the summer of 1972, American airline pilots were livid over the inability of both their employers and the federal government to curtail the skyjacking epidemic. After a one-day work stoppage failed to alter public policy, many pilots felt that a more forceful statement of their frustration was in order. The hijacking of Pan Am Flight 841 provided an opportunity for one audacious Boeing 747 captain to make clear that he and his colleagues were sick of ceding control of their planes.
The hijacker, 24-year-old South Vietnamese native Nguyen Thai Binh, had graduated from the University of Washington on June 10 with a bachelor’s degree in fisheries management. He had once hoped to stay in the United States, but his visa had been revoked on June 7 due to his anti-war activism; he had been arrested for occupying the South Vietnamese consulate in New York. Seething over his expulsion as well as the carpet-bombing of North Vietnam, Binh had decided to hijack his flight home as an “act of revenge.”
Binh didn’t reveal his intentions to the Pan Am crew until they were over the South China Sea. He passed a stewardess a note: “You are going to fly me to Hanoi and this airplane will be destroyed when we get there.” When the flight’s captain, Eugene Vaughn, refused to comply, Binh wrote a second note, which he spattered with his own blood. “This indicates how serious I am about being taken to Hanoi,” it read.
Vaughn went to the main cabin to meet Binh, a meek-looking young man who stood less than 5 feet tall. Binh showed off a foil-wrapped package that he said contained a bomb. Vaughn correctly guessed that the Binh was bluffing. (The ominous package actually contained lemons.)
Vaughn knew that one of his passengers, a retired San Francisco police officer, had come on board with a.357 Magnum. He discreetly told the ex-cop to be prepared to end Binh’s life.
Under the pretext of making a refueling stop, Vaughn landed at Saigon’s Tan Son Nhut airport. Once the plane was at rest on the tarmac, Vaughn walked back to speak with the hijacker again. Binh was highly agitated, going on and on about how he would detonate his bomb unless the plane took off at once.
“I can’t understand you too well,” said Vaughn. “Let me come closer.”
Binh leaned his head forward as Vaughn knelt down. Before Binh could repeat his demand, the captain grabbed him by the throat and thrust him to the floor. “Kill this son of a bitch!” Vaughn yelled as he pinned down the struggling Binh.
The ex-cop came racing back with his weapon drawn and shot Binh five times at close range. Vaughn then heaved the hijacker’s 116-pound corpse out of the Boeing 747’s rear exit, so that all the world could see it splayed out on the tarmac. “I threw him through a door and he went about 15 feet out,” Vaughn would later recall. “I got a good football hold on him and he went just like a football.”
The Upshot: Many anti-war protestors in the U.S. openly mourned Binh, and a few of them broke into Vaughn’s home to leave a threatening note written in animal blood: “Pig Eugene Vaughn guilty of murder. To be punished later.” Yet the pilot was also widely lionized for his actions. He received a hero’s welcome at the Phoenix airport, for example, where bystanders applauded as he told the press: “A lot of time and effort has been spent on trying to prevent hijackings, but the only thing that will be effective is a mandatory death penalty, without any loopholes.”David R. Wheeler is a writer and journalism professor living in Lexington, Kentucky. Follow him on Twitter @David_R_Wheeler. The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of the author.
(CNN) We have no problem taking Wall Street executives to task for decisions that leave American families financially devastated, yet we give Silicon Valley billionaires a pass when they do the same thing. America needs to realize that instead of creating jobs, Silicon Valley is erasing them, leaving millennials financially stranded before their careers can get off the ground.
Silicon Valley is tossing millennials aside like yesterday's laptop.
The commonly held belief is that with hard work and a good education, a young person in America can get a good job. But despite falling unemployment, college grads age 22 to 27 are stuck in low-paying jobs that don't even require a college degree. The percentage of young people languishing in low-skill, low-paying jobs is 44%, a 20-year high
Only 36% of college grads have jobs that pay at least $45,000, a sharp decline from the 1990s, after adjusting for inflation. Perhaps most depressingly, the percentage of young people making below $25,000 has topped 20%, worse than in 1990. In other words, those with a bachelor's diploma were better off before the digital revolution.
If this comes as a surprise, that's because images from popular culture push the idea that young college graduates are shrugging off bad employment prospects with their do-it-yourself attitude. In our collective imagination, millennials are saying, "No jobs? That's OK — I'll create my own!" And then they solve their own problems by heading to Silicon Valley with little more than an iPhone and an idea to create the next hip app that supposedly will turn them into overnight millionaires.
A fictional example of this new breed of young idealistic entrepreneur would be Mike Bean, founder of Internet behemoth Gryzzl on the show "Parks and Recreation." Played by Blake Anderson, Bean might best be described as "barefoot and pregnant with ideas." The bumbling entrepreneur conquers the world practically by accident, armed only with his digital savvy, a can-do spirit, and a penchant for invading users' privacy. You get the idea that his success came easily.
Privacy concerns aside, the Mike Beans of America are just about as rare as the Mark Zuckerbergs. In fact, the percentage of people under 30 who own private businesses has reached a 24-year low. Garages across the country are not exactly humming with millennials launching tech startups.
But wait — won't the digital economy eventually lead to better jobs? After a period of adjustment, won't things get better? Unfortunately that's not the path we're on. One of the biggest misconceptions about the digital economy is that for every middle-class job rendered obsolete by technology, there's a new, equally good (or better) job created by Silicon Valley.
But exactly the opposite is happening. The digital economy is vaporizing the good jobs and replacing them with two kinds of jobs: minimum wage jobs (think Amazon warehouse employees) and so-called "sharing-economy jobs" (think Uber drivers).
The sharing-economy jobs are even worse than minimum wage jobs because they offer no stability or protections for workers. Sharing economy jobs aren't really jobs at all; they're freelance gigs.
Sure, Silicon Valley doesn't owe America jobs. But something is wrong with the picture of a handful of tech billionaires overseeing a kingdom of falling wages, decreased worker protection and zero job security.
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bankruptcy.
The industry wants to limit the cramdowns to subprime borrowers or to homeowners driven into bankruptcy by an unaffordable mortgage.
"The fix doesn't go far enough to address all of the problems. It's a good first step, but there is a lot more to be done to make the bill targeted," said Scott E. Talbott, senior vice president for government affairs at the Financial Services Roundtable. "We are continuing to work to limit the negative effects, to make it the least worst way to do the wrong thing."
While the agreement limits the impact of the provision to existing mortgages, many investors assume Congress will extend it, amplifying the potential losses to lenders, they said. If the borrower sells the home after the modification and reaps a profit, lenders should be able to secure a share, they maintain.
"Anything that is so broad, even if limited in time, is a grave concern," said Floyd Stoner, executive director of the American Bankers Association. "We always believe this economy will recover. As it does, real banks are the engine of the recovery. We need to make sure that we don't do things that make it more difficult for them to participate in that recovery."
Such a change could also cause problems with loans insured by the Federal Housing Administration, an FHA official told a congressional panel yesterday. The government does not have legal authority to reimburse lenders for any losses caused by a cramdown, creating a disincentive for lenders to do business with the agency, said Phillip Murray, who handles all single-family business for the FHA.
Durbin thinks the current version of the agreement is fair, but he is open to further discussions, said Max Gleischman, his spokesman.Photo: AFP/Getty Images.
[For more discussion on China's economic and political development, click HERE.]
The following petition, organised by the Hong Kong-based coalition Left21, explains the background to, and demands of, the rebellion by the people of Wukan.
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December 15, 2011 -- China Labour Net/Left21 -- On November 21, 1927, under the leadership of Peng Pai, pioneer of the Chinese communist revolution as well as a committed socialist, the country’s first rural Soviet administration was established in area of Hailufeng, Guangdong province. Thus began the first chapter of the communist movement in China.
On November 21, 2011, less than a few kilometres away from the founding site, at Wukan village (part of Lufeng city in eastern Guangdong province), a few thousand villagers took to the street. Holding up signs that read "Down with dictatorship", "Curb corruption", "Down with government-business collusion" and "Return land to the people", villagers marched to the government headquarters at Lufeng city to protest against officials’ illegal land seizures and sales. Their demands were clear: to reclaim the land sold without the consent of the people, to release public accounts concerning the some 400 hectares of land seized and sold since 1978, to launch investigations into fraudulent elections and to enforce the Organic Law of Village Committees to hold fair and open elections. The demonstration ended peacefully after the acting mayor received the villagers’ petition.
Illegal land sales prompt villagers’ mobilisation
Since the early 1990s, the villagers of Wukan had launched petitions at the local governments of Lufeng, Shanwei, and Guangdong province, only in vain. A proper reply from officials was never made. Without democratic elections, the secretary of the Communist Party's local chapter, Xue Chang, has stayed in power for 41 years. Abusing its position as the so-called representative of Wukan, the village committee has sold and leased hundreds of hectares of land without consulting the villagers, and yet in the past few decades, villagers have received less than 500 yuan in compensation.
The ongoing demonstrations were prompted by allegations that Hong Kong-based businessperson Chen Wenqing, who is originally from Wukan, had colluded with the village committee to strike a private land-sale deal with luxury home developer Country Garden, thereby gaining the 700 million yuan that was supposed to be paid to the villagers. As the representative of Guangdong province and Shanwei city in the National Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, the honorary president of the Confederacy of Hong Kong Shanwei Clansmen Ltd, as well as owner of various hotels and development companies in the mainland, Chen holds numerous official positions both in the mainland and Hong Kong. In recent months, as Country Garden began its construction work, villagers could no longer put up with the situation.
On September 22, 2011, the villagers of Wukan rose up and launched a mass protest at the municipal government, after which officials promised to investigate the problem. The village committee leadership that was under suspicion immediately fled the area, leaving the village without an administration.
To prevent a state of anarchy and to strengthen the mobilisation of the people, villagers filled the leadership vacuum by democratically electing 13 representatives and setting up a Provisional Board of Representatives to conduct village affairs. In mid-October, villagers also established a Women’s Representatives Federation to support the ongoing struggle. At the same time, the Lufeng municipal government sent out a team to investigate the situation.
However, on November 1, the government announced that it would relieve party secretary Xue Chang and vice party secretary Chen Shunyi of their duites, and agree to Chen’s resignation from the village committee leadership. The municipal government did not implement democratic elections after that, but appointed the vice-mayor of Donghai township as the new party secretary of Wukan. The problems of land and official corruption raised by the villagers were not properly investigated and addressed. After two months of unresponsiveness and inaction on the government’s part, the villagers had no choice but to launch a peaceful protest on November 21.
Villagers call general strike; elected representative dies
After the march on November 21, on December 3, the municipal government unilaterally announced to the press that the issues had already been solved, and that the Wukan "incident" had come to an end. Outraged, more than 13,000 villagers launched a general strike from December 4 and held assemblies and marches. On December 5, villagers protested against the arrival of the undemocratically imposed party secretary.
On December 9, police arrested village representatives Zhuang Liehong, Xue Jinbo, Zhang Jiancheng, Hong Ruichao and Ceng Zhaoliang on criminal charges. Two days later, on the night of December 11, the Lufeng municipal government suddenly announced that the democratically elected representative of Wukan village and vice-president of the Provisional Board of Representatives, Xue Jinbo, had died of a heart attack. Officials stated that external causes of death had been ruled out. This directly contradicts with the recording of Xue and his daughter that has been circulated on the internet. According to Xue’s daughter, Xue’s entire body was bruised, his hands swollen, his chin and nose caked with blood: clear signs of having been tortured to death.
Police seal off village in siege
In response to Xue’s death, on December 12 and 13, the villagers of Wukan organised an assembly to remember him and to voice their anger. They swore to continue the struggle to remove corrupt officials. Currently, roads into Wukan have been sealed off by thousands of security personnel, effectively cutting off Wukan from outside contact and even stopping the village’s water and food supplies. As a result, food is becoming increasingly scarce in the village. Earlier, in attempt to enter the village and arrest more democratically elected representatives, police threw gas canisters at protesters and demolished the homemade roadblocks that the villagers had set up to prevent police from besieging the village.
Faced with continued demonstrations, the municipal government has only acknowledged that it would hold a "double designations", that is, to have the village committee’s party members attend question sessions at a designated place for a designated duration. Officials also announced the suspension of the two projects coordinated by former party secretary Xue Chang and Hong Kong-based businessperson Chen Wenqing.
Same problem: capitalism
While the villagers of Wukan are fighting a difficult battle, at the same time, teachers in Lufeng city also launched their own demonstrations on December 11 to demand a pay rise. Like the 1922 agrarian movement in Hailufeng, the struggles of the Wukan villagers as well as their political and economic demands have a pioneering significance in the history of Chinese workers' and peasants’ fight for democracy. The Hailufeng peasants’ movement in the 1920s, the workers’ strikes in Hong Kong as well as Shanghai all echo each other in highlighting the economic and political crises that plagued global capitalism and capitalist states.
Today, more than 80 years later, the workers' and peasants' movements in Hailufeng similarly echo the recent labour strikes in Shenzhen, Dongguan, Shanghai and so on. They all shed light on the current political and economic crisis in which wealth and power in society are concentrated in the hands of a few.
"Down with corruption, reclaim our land" is the voice of 1 billion Chinese people. It is also the voice of the millions of Hong Kong people who live under the oppression of property hegemony. The revolutionary tradition that began in Hailufeng has been revived once again. While thousands of police surrounding the village, the government declares the people’s democratically formed organisation illegal, refuses to tell the truth regarding Xue Jinbo’s death, arrests and jails village representatives and only investigates corruption on the village level.
It is clear that the villagers of Wukan have reached the most difficult and yet critical point of their long and hard-fought struggle.
At this fateful hour, we call on those who push for progress and freedom around the world. We call on the people of China and Hong Kong to give their full support to Wukan’s fight for democracy. On December 17, we in Hong Kong will protest!
We demand that the central government:
1. Immediately stop the sealing off of Wukan, and release the arrested village representatives;
2. Return Xue Jinbo’s body and release the details and truth behind Xue’s death; punish the security personnel in charge of extracting confessions by torturing Xue and make a formal apology and grant compensation to Xue’s family;
3. Recognise Wukan’s democratically elected Provisional Board of Representatives, allow representatives to participate in investigations and handle the matter in an open, fair and just manner;
4. Reclaim the sold land and return it to the villagers of Wukan;
5. Address the demands of the villagers to curb corruption and implement democratic elections;
6. Investigate land seizures in the country ad stop the privatisation of land.
Left 21
December 15, 2011
打倒貪官 還我土地 — 香港行動 全球呼籲：支持陸豐烏坎村民的民主鬥爭
廣東陸豐烏坎村村民的抗爭正在進行！為了土地和民主選舉的運動，正演變成為一場震驚世界的農村民主運動。現時，武警已將其包圍及封鎖下， 1.3萬人的烏坎村自我組織起來。但武警斷了水電食物供應，村民糧食只剩下7天！他們正計劃於本星期三21號舉行遊行，出來繼續抗爭！
我們各界要支持村民！一齊聯署撐村民的抗爭！
現有聯署團體：
左翼21、
民間人權陣線、
社會民主連線、
職工盟社會事務委員會、
新民主同盟、
中大學生會、
土地正義聯盟、
浸會大學國事學會、
一代人公社、
香港天主教正義和平委員會、
關懷中國、
香港中文大學國是學會、
香港中文大學聯合書院學生會、
香港基督徒學會
(聯署團體陸續加上...)
Petition:
打倒貪官 還我土地----香港行動 全球呼籲：支持陸豐烏坎村民的民主鬥爭1927年11月21日﹐在中共革命先驅﹑社會主義者彭湃的領導下﹐在廣東海陸豐地區成了了全國第一個蘇維埃政權﹐打響了中國共產主義運動的第一炮。2011年11月21日﹐離第一個蘇維埃政權成立現場的遺址不到數公里的陸豐東海鎮烏坎村，數千村民走上街頭，高舉“反對獨裁，懲治腐敗，反對官商勾結， 還我耕田”標語進行遊行到陸豐市政府門口，抗議政府官員私賣土地，要求收回未經市民同意賣出的土地； 公佈1978年以來賣出的6000多畝土地的去處；徹查選舉中的腐敗和造假，要求依法落實《村民委員會組織法》，進行村領導的選舉。村民在代市長接信後和 平散去。官商腐敗私賣公地 村民自發組織起來在上世紀90年代初以來，烏坎村民到陸豐市﹑陸豐所屬的汕尾市和廣東省已經進行了多次的上訪行動，惟一直沒有得到合理的回應。烏坎村的黨委書記薛昌，在沒 有經過民主選舉的情況下，已經擔任了41年的黨委書記；村內幾千畝土地未經村民同意即被村委會以集體名義出賣和出租，而村民們幾十年來只得到近500元的 補償。今次事件起因是由於祖籍烏坎的港商陳文清被指與與村委會勾結，倒賣土地予發展商碧桂園，從中私吞碧桂園支付的7億元補償。陳文清在內地及香港有多項的公 職，包括廣東省及汕尾市政協委員’香港廣東汕尾同鄉總會會長，在內地亦有多間酒店及開發公司等。近月碧桂園已開始在當地動工，引起大量村民不滿。2011年9月21日和22日，烏坎村民已經覺醒，發起了到市政府的集體抗議行動，並獲市政府承諾，徹查事件。受到村民們質疑的村委會領導當即逃離村莊，三層辦公室人去樓空。為了避免陷入無政府狀態和加強組織紀律，村民們自發以民主選舉產生了13位代表，成立了“臨時代表理事會”，代行村務。10月中旬，村民們更成立了“婦女 代表聯合會”，支援維權鬥爭。同時，陸豐市政府派工作組進駐村莊調查情況，但市政府只是在11月1日決定免去村支部書記薛昌和支部副書記陳舜意職務，並同 意 陳舜意辭去村委會主任職務；市政府不但沒有落實民主選舉﹐更令所屬的東海鎮一名副鎮長兼任烏坎村黨支部書記職務。村民所呼籲的土地問題與官僚腐敗並沒有得 到徹底調查。在政府兩個月後仍沒有合理答覆的情況下，村民發起了11月21日的和平抗議行動。村民號召罷工罷市 村民領袖酷刑致死在11月21日的遊行結束後，12月3日市政府單方面向媒體宣佈事件已經解決，市民對此感到極大的憤怒，12月4日開始，全村1萬3千多村民繼續了持續的罷工﹑罷課﹑罷市﹑罷漁，並進行集會和遊行抗議。12月5日，村民抗議非民選的村支書進村任職。12月9日，警方刑事拘留莊烈宏、薛錦波、張建城、洪銳潮、曾昭亮等5位村民領袖。兩天之後的12月11日晚，陸豐市政府突然公佈，烏坎村民選村代表、臨 時理事會副會長薛錦波心源性猝死，並同時表示已經排除外力致死的可能性。這說法和薛錦波的女兒薛健婉在網絡流傳的錄音明顯不同。薛健婉表示，她父親胸部破 損，到處都是淤青，手都腫了，手腕淤青，下巴和鼻孔破皮出血，很明顯是被酷刑致死。武警攻村 斷水斷糧對于薛錦波的冤死，12月12日和13日，烏坎村民在村內發起了吊念和申冤的集會， 並誓言繼續鬥爭，打倒腐敗和貪官。目前，烏坎村及附近的公路，已經被數以千計的公安武警包圍，村民被斷絕了和外界的聯系、亦被斷水斷糧，村內糧食漸趨不 足。武警更在早前發放催淚彈﹐撤除村民設立的路障﹐企圖進村進一步地拘捕市民的民選領袖。在烏坎市民的持續抗議下﹐市政府只是表示對村的幹部進行“雙規”，即是在規定時間和地點，就涉及的問題作出說明， 和暫停了村民指控的原黨委書記薛昌和當地籍香港商人陳文清官商勾結的兩個合作項目。不同時空的工農抗爭 同樣的資本主義問題在烏坎村民進行持續和艱難的鬥爭的同時﹐陸豐市的教師也在12月11日發起了要求加薪的抗議行動。和1922年海陸豐地區的農會運動一樣﹐烏坎村民的抗議 行動﹑自我組織和政治經濟訴求﹐在中國工人和農民的民主鬥爭的歷史上﹐都起到了先驅性的意義。1920年代的海陸豐農民運動和香港和上海等地工人的罷工浪 潮是互相輝映的﹐是當時全球資本主義出現經濟危機和各國資產階級政權出現政治危機的體現。80多年後的今天﹐海陸豐地區的工農鬥爭同樣和近幾月來深圳﹑東莞﹑上海等地工人的罷工浪潮互相呼應﹐同樣揭示了當前的政治經濟危機﹐社會財富和政治權力都高度累積在少數人手裡。“打倒貪官 還我土地” 是十億中國人民的聲音﹐也是受“地產霸權”的壓迫之下數百萬香港市民的聲音。號角在有深厚革命傳統的海陸豐地區首先發起了。烏坎村民已經到了鬥爭最艱苦的 時刻﹐數以千計的武警仍然包圍著村莊﹐政府仍然視市民的自發民主組織為非法組織﹐仍然對薛錦波的死沒有一個公道的說法﹐仍然要繼續地逮捕和拘禁民選的農運 領袖﹐對貪官的查處仍然停留在村的級別。我們呼籲﹐全球的進步社會人士﹑全國人民和全港市民全力支持和聲援烏坎村民的民主鬥爭﹗ 12月17日﹐我們將在香港發起抗議行動﹗我們要求中國中央政府：1. 立即解除對烏坎村的包圍，並立即釋放被捕的村民代表；2. 送還薛錦波遺體，公佈薛錦波死亡的真實原因，懲處刑訊逼供的公安局及其官員﹐並對薛的家屬作出道歉和賠償；3. 承認由村民自發選出的烏坎村臨時代表理事會，讓其代表參與調查，並公開、公平、公正地處理事件；4. 回應村民的訴求：懲治腐敗、落實民主選舉；5. 收回遭變賣的土地，歸還予烏坎村民；6. 於全國徹查所有徵地糾紛，停止土地私有化。左翼212011年12月15日Photographer Paul McDonough has a knack for catching passing, off-kilter incongruities on the New York City streets. He arrived in the city in 1967 and started taking photographs of unique moments happening around him; the New York City 1968-1972 series is said to be his first as a photographer.
Capturing weirdness on the streets of New York City might seem like an easy feat, but McDonough has a rare ability to capture a confluence of gestures in the exact moment in which a great photograph happens.
© Paul McDonough. Courtesy Sasha Wolf Gallery, New York City.
© Paul McDonough. Courtesy Sasha Wolf Gallery, New York City.
Although McDonough was relatively new to photography when he arrived in New York (he had gone to college for painting), he rented an apartment from photographer Tod Papageorge and eventually turned away from painting.
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New York in the late 1960s was filled with a seemingly endless amount of visual material: characters like Moondog and be-ins were photographic fodder and were documented by McDonough as well as his contemporaries such as Garry Winogrand and Diane Arbus.
McDonough wrote via email:
“Public places, particularly like New York City, are very ‘public.’ It's very public and very private at the same time. People are in their own world when they walk. I don't generally stop to photograph, that would take too much time. I am photographing as I see something flying past me. I have to see what I want, and be ready and react to it at any moment … I never want to use the term ‘street photography’ because it’s so confining and repellent … if I am standing in one place long enough, someone might say—‘Did you just take a picture of me?’, I would reply—‘What picture?’ There are no pictures, I am exposing film. When the film gets developed—that is when I discover pictures.”
McDonough had befriended Winogrand in 1966, before moving to New York City, and would take photo walks with him.
© Paul McDonough. Courtesy Sasha Wolf Gallery, New York City.
© Paul McDonough. Courtesy Sasha Wolf Gallery, New York City.
© Paul McDonough. Courtesy Sasha Wolf Gallery, New York City.
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In the interview with Albert Mobilio in the introduction of his book regarding editing his large amount of film from his photo walks, McDonough describes “… the unexpected delight of finding a detail within the frame that amplified the larger meaning of the image. For instance, when I took the photograph Blind Man, Old Woman, Hari Krishnas, I was not especially attentive to the neon light that was above the head of the figure of the Hari Krishna on the far right. … Yet in the printed photograph, I noticed that the neon light suddenly took on the aspect of a halo, which seemed in keeping with the figure’s prayerful gesture of clasped hands.”
These details give McDonough’s photographs so many points of interest, multiple layers beyond the ones that are already obvious immediately upon seeing his photos.
Although McDonough started showing work in 1970 and sold three prints to the Museum of Modern Art in 1973, he maintained a relatively low profile after a few gallery rejections and became involved in teaching art rather than pursuing art-world attention. It wasn’t until 2007, when he met gallerist Sasha Wolf, that McDonough’s work was published in its own volume.
McDonough said that tackling street photography today versus the 1960s and 1970s is radically different. He explained via email:
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“The reaction is different today. Cameras are much more ubiquitous now. In the ‘70s there was a whole different atmosphere, it was much more laid back then. People didn't particularly care if you were photographing them. By today's standards, where there's so much media trying to get information from people, people are much more wary. People see cameras as containing the possibility of exploitation. Everyone is spying. Local government, advertisers—they all want to know what it is you are thinking and doing. People were less paranoid in the ‘70s.”
McDonough’s work Sight Seeing will be on view at Sasha Wolf Gallery in New York through May 5.
© Paul McDonough. Courtesy Sasha Wolf Gallery, New York City.
© Paul McDonough. Courtesy Sasha Wolf Gallery, New York City.
© Paul McDonough. Courtesy Sasha Wolf Gallery, New York City.This is not actually a still from the movie. But still, did someone order a pizza? Photo illustration by Slate. Photos by Jeff J Mitchell/Getty Images, Lisa F. Young/Thinkstock.
I’m going to keep this short and sweet because it’s Friday and this week has already been about five days too long: BuzzFeed has revealed that Donald Trump appeared in a softcore pornography film released in the year 2000 by Playboy.
I’ll answer the two questions that you/everyone have about this.
1. No, he was not recorded naked and/or doin’ it. BuzzFeed says that his role in the film is “relatively benign and centers around breaking a bottle of champagne on a Playboy-branded limo.”
2. Yes, the film’s plot is about women named “Carol and Darlene” who “bare their sex appeal and lead you on a sensual journey of discovery.”
Trump, of course, just this morning complained that former Venezuelan beauty queen Alicia Machado was “disgusting” for having appeared in a raunchy scene on a Spanish reality show.
Can you believe this freakin’ guy? No, you cannot. One simply cannot believe this freakin’ guy.A ban on GPL3 and similarly compatible, copyleft licensed software has been found in the terms of use for Microsoft's Windows Phone Marketplace. The terms, noted in a posting on open source evangelist Jan Wildeboer's blog, were originally noticed in a discussion among Nokia developers who were evaluating the issues involved with Nokia's switch to WP7; both Nokia's Symbian and MeeGo platforms have been free and open source friendly.
The ban, in section 5.e of the terms, forbids any software which is subject to an "Excluded Licence"; it defines that in section 1.l as any licence which requires, as a condition of distribution, that the source code for the application be made available, or allow the creation of derivative works or redistribution at no charge. It specifically names GPLv3 licences and includes the General Public Licence (GPL) version 3, the GNU Affero GPL version 3, and the GNU Lesser GPL version 3 as examples of excluded licences.
The prohibition of free software licences appears to be Microsoft's own response to the issues raised by the appearance and later removal of GPL applications such as VLC from the Apple iPhone App Store. Commercial application stores like Apple's and Microsoft's do not have mechanisms to make source code for applications directly available. They also have some form of DRM lock which prevents the binary being passed on to another user, on all applications, even ones available for no charge in the market. It is these restrictions that make the stores incompatible with licences such as the GPL.
Developers have got around this incompatibility by making software available under a dual licence, GPL and proprietary, in the same way that companies make commercial versions of GPL licensed applications available as "enterprise editions". Dual licensing does, though, require the agreement of all the copyright holders of the source code.
(djwm)Richard Serino is coming home.
Serino, widely considered a founding father of Boston Emergency Medical Services, has been the No. 2 man at the Federal Emergency Management Agency since 2009. He is leaving the agency next month.
“It's been great,'' Serino said in a telephone interview Wednesday. “But it’s time to come home.’’
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Serino, 59, was part of a wave of emergency management professionals put into leadership positions at FEMA following its widely criticized response to the 2005 Hurricane Katrina disaster.
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As FEMA’s chief of operations, Serino worked closely with FEMA Administrator W. Craig Fugate, who led disaster relief programs in Florida before taking on the top federal disaster response job the same year as Serino.
Serino said it would be up to others to determine what his legacy at FEMA will be. But among the programs and improvements he played a role in creating is FEMA Corps, which provides annual stipends to people between 18 and their 20s who respond to disasters around the country for one year. After one year of service to the country, they are paid $6,500 towards college loans or tuition.
He also said he is proud that FEMA has reoriented the way it views disaster relief. Instead of a top-down approach, Serino said, planning and responses are designed as if they were being viewed “through the eyes of a survivor.’’
“Survivor-centric is what we do, and how we do it’’ at FEMA now, he said.
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As he has been for many years, Serino was at the finish line for the Boston Marathon this year, but left about 15 minutes before two bombs were set off, killing three people and wounding more than 260 others. He rushed back to the finish line and watched as the EMS first responders, other public safety employees, and citizens rushed to help.
“They did an unbelievable, amazing job that day,’’ Serino said of Boston EMS and other first responders who stepped in to help complete strangers. “They really saved lives. They made a huge difference. I couldn’t have been more proud of the people I used to work with.’’
While he once provided direct first aid to the wounded and the injured as a long-time paramedic in Boston, Serino’s role during the aftermath of the bombing was to serve as a conduit of information between the city, federal law enforcement, federal emergency responders, and the White House.
Boston mayor-elect Martin Walsh has set up a transition team and a website where prospective employees can submit their resumes. With a laugh, Serino said he had not applied for a job at Boston City Hall, a place familiar to him through his years as a leader of emergency medical services in the city.
“I actually don’t know yet what I am going to do,’’ said Serino, who has commuted to Washington from his home on the South Shore since 2009.
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Serino noted that his duties included oversight of FEMA’s $25 billion budget and responding to disasters all over the country. He said he had been at the scenes of devastating tornados and hurricanes, floods, wildfires, and even an earthquake-created tsunami in American Samoa.
Serino said he did not remember every single disaster he has been to, but does remember the survivors he has met along the way. He recalled being in Rainville, Ala., after it was destroyed by a tornado. A resident, standing in front of the crumpled wreck of his home, urged Serino to go help somebody else that was worse off, he said.
“That is something I have heard over and over again from different people around the country, almost everywhere I went … neighbors helping neighbors,’’ Serino said. “That’s what helped make Boston great and it’s what helps make our country great. That’s something I’ve seen coast to coast.’’
John R. Ellement can be reached at ellement@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter @JREbosglobeHistorical Library is provided for those doing research into the history of nontheism. It is not intended to be--and should not be used as--a source of modern, up-to-date information regarding atheistic issues. DO NOT CONTACT US ABOUT THESE DOCUMENTS. Please read the full Theis provided for those doing research into the history of nontheism. It is not intended to bea source of modern, up-to-date information regarding atheistic issues.. Please read the full Historical Library Disclaimer
The Ethics of Belief (1877)
William K. Clifford
Originally published in Contemporary Review, 1877. Reprinted in Lectures and Essays (1879). Presently in print in The Ethics of Belief and Other Essays (Prometheus Books, 1999).
I. THE DUTY OF INQUIRY
A shipowner was about to send to sea an emigrant-ship. He knew that she was old, and not overwell built at the first; that she had seen many seas and climes, and often had needed repairs. Doubts had been suggested to him that possibly she was not seaworthy. These doubts preyed upon his mind, and made him unhappy; he thought that perhaps he ought to have her thoroughly overhauled and refitted, even though this should put him at great expense. Before the ship sailed, however, he succeeded in overcoming these melancholy reflections. He said to himself that she had gone safely through so many voyages and weathered so many storms that it was idle to suppose she would not come safely home from this trip also. He would put his trust in Providence, which could hardly fail to protect all these unhappy families that were leaving their fatherland to seek for better times elsewhere. He would dismiss from his mind all ungenerous suspicions about the honesty of builders and contractors. In such ways he acquired a sincere and comfortable conviction that his vessel was thoroughly safe and seaworthy; he watched her departure with a light heart, and benevolent wishes for the success of the exiles in their strange new home that was to be; and he got his insurance-money when she went down in mid-ocean and told no tales.
What shall we say of him? Surely this, that he was verily guilty of the death of those men. It is admitted that he did sincerely believe in the soundness of his ship; but the sincerity of his conviction can in no wise help him, because he had no right to believe on such evidence as was before him. He had acquired his belief not by honestly earning it in patient investigation, but by stifling his doubts. And although in the end he may have felt so sure about it that he could not think otherwise, yet inasmuch as he had knowingly and willingly worked himself into that frame of mind, he must be held responsible for it.
Let us alter the case a little, and suppose that the ship was not unsound after all; that she made her voyage safely, and many others after it. Will that diminish the guilt of her owner? Not one jot. When an action is once done, it is right or wrong for ever; no accidental failure of its good or evil fruits can possibly alter that. The man would not have been innocent, he would only have been not found out. The question of right or wrong has to do with the origin of his belief, not the matter of it; not what it was, but how he got it; not whether it turned out to be true or false, but whether he had a right to believe on such evidence as was before him.
There was once an island in which some of the inhabitants professed a religion teaching neither the doctrine of original sin nor that of eternal punishment. A suspicion got abroad that the professors of this religion had made use of unfair means to get their doctrines taught to children. They were accused of wresting the laws of their country in such a way as to remove children from the care of their natural and legal guardians; and even of stealing them away and keeping them concealed from their friends and relations. A certain number of men formed themselves into a society for the purpose of agitating the public about this matter. They published grave accusations against individual citizens of the highest position and character, and did all in their power to injure these citizens in their exercise of their professions. So great was the noise they made, that a Commission was appointed to investigate the facts; but after the Commission had carefully inquired into all the evidence that could be got, it appeared that the accused were innocent. Not only had they been accused on insufficient evidence, but the evidence of their innocence was such as the agitators might easily have obtained, if they had attempted a fair inquiry. After these disclosures the inhabitants of that country looked upon the members of the agitating society, not only as persons whose judgment was to be distrusted, but also as no longer to be counted honourable men. For although they had sincerely and conscientiously believed in the charges they had made, yet they had no right to believe on |
Committee invites nominations for Grand Marshals of the annual Homecoming Parade. The Grand Marshal serves as leading dignitary at the front of the Homecoming Parade. The role is bestowed upon an alumnus, staff, faculty, or community member who has shown an exceptional commitment to Boise State University and the greater community. Nominations are being accepted until Monday, October 8th.
Past Grand Marshals Year Grand Marshal 1969 Jay Amyx 1971 Lyle Smith 1979 John Keiser 1988 Dyke Nally 1989 Velma Morrison 1990 Lyle Smith 1991 Booker Brown 1992 Joe Parkinson 1993 Larry Selland 1994 Keith and Catherine Stein, Honorary Grand Marshal: Jackie Cassell 1995 Dyke Nally 1996 Mane Line Dancers 1997 Lyle Smith and his 1947 football team 1998 Lois Chaffee 1999 Velma Morrison 2000 Harvey Neef 2001 Butch Otter 2002 Charles and Sally Ruch 2003 Vincent Mull Wa Kituku 2004 1994 Bronco Football Team 2005 Duane and Lori Stueckle 2006 Allen and Dixie Dykman 2007 Doug Hackler 2008 Travis Jensen and Minna Jensen 2009 Tom Beitia, Susie Schumacher, and recipients of that year?s Alumni Service awards 2010 Pam Hult, Carl Asbury '76 2011 VIP float of Provost, VPs, and Deans, 2012 Milford Terrell 2013 Coach Leon Rice 2014 Mayor David Bieter 2015 Steve Swanson 2016 2007 Fiesta Bowl players
Steve Swanson, 2015 Grand Marshal
Parade Volunteers
Volunteers are needed to help block streets, set up cones and signs, and to organize parade floats and bands. This annual event cannot occur without the help of Boise State and the Boise community, so please fill out the volunteer registration if you are interested in being a part of this Bronco tradition!
Questions? Contact Mikayla Mitzel in the Student Involvement & Leadership Center 208.426.4275 or mikaylamitzel@boisestate.edu.Find money, fix this.
Oh, good. Capital New York is reporting that the MTA’s capital-funding plan is working out, and we should have every subway station in the system renovated and in good shape … by 2067. It will have taken a mere century to bring the system back from its 1970s nadir. Woohoo.
It doesn’t have to be this way. Other parts of the city that went to rot in those years, like Central Park, have been transformed by public-private partnerships like the Central Park Conservancy. Many midtown neighborhoods have been spruced up by their local Business Improvement District groups, which are similar consortia of local stores and restaurants and the like. In both cases, donors benefit directly: People who live near Central Park get to enjoy its improvements, and local businesspeople receive better services and cleaner streets. Yes, these partnerships leave poorer neighborhoods behind, but they’re better than nothing.
Meanwhile, every giant glass tower that goes up in midtown adds a few hundred occupants (at least) to the grid. Each building increases the load on city services: water, sewer, electrical, transit. Setting aside the big transfer points like Times Square, a local midtown subway stop serves about 20,000 or so riders on a weekday. Add ten new apartment buildings in the neighborhood, and that number of users will go up by a significant percentage. If those buildings’ developers are relying on city systems, they should pay for their improvement. Every giant new tower, or group of towers, should be matched with a renovated station down the block.
You can’t realistically compel that. The real-estate business is numbers-driven, and if the spreadsheets don’t show enough green, the developers will take their money to Vegas or Atlanta. So here’s an offer that the state and city can make. You want an extra eight stories on your supertall tower, giving you an extra quarter-billion dollars in apartment sales? Or you want it a little wider than the standard formula, so you can get an extra bedroom onto each floor? Sure, we’ll give you the zoning variance — if you renovate the subway station on the corner. Realistically, the change to a neighborhood caused by a 78-story building is not much different from that of a 70-story building, and having a station that works properly for the next six or seven decades would, for the locals, vastly outweigh any downside. (And let’s not hear the argument that the very rich people who buy these apartments don’t ride the subway; some of them in fact do, and certainly their housekeepers, messengers, florists, tutors, cooks, secretaries, and other staff will.)
The MTA could even sweeten the deal by throwing in a lease on some of its own wasted real estate. Some of the giant mezzanine spaces of the A-C-E stations, for example, could easily garage a few shops. Chipotle and Starbucks probably wouldn’t want to be in the grimy stations that exist now — but in fresh, bright renovated ones? Why not? In exchange for building out the stores, the developer would get a share of the rental revenue for, say, a decade.
Chicago has tried this, on a small scale. The North/Clybourn station was, in 2010, spruced up by Apple when it opened a store next door. Apple got all of the ad space on its walls, and the company redid the interior plus the plaza out front. It was not a super-fancy glass-staircase Apple kind of rehab, and some locals grumped that it was not particularly respectful of the building’s historic details. But it was straightforward, and the result looks far, far better than 99 percent of our subway stations. Apple paid about $4 million, which it probably regards as a rounding error on a rounding error.
Photo: Photographer: H. Michael Miley/© 2011 H. Michael Miley
Right now, we work this angle almost backward, spending money to spur development. The 7-train extension has vastly increased the price of real estate on the far West Side, and will continue to do so. Surely the speculators and developers who bought up all of that land, and are planning the building that’s going to take place in and around Hudson Yards, ought to have helped build the train line that serves their interests. It’s too late to get them in on the financing of that project, but let’s not make that same bad agreement again.
In short: Developers want height. We want to stop commuting in squalor. Let’s make a deal.
Addendum: Although I was thinking about residential development, office towers present similar opportunities, and a representative of the Department of City Planning has written to note that the builders of One Vanderbilt, the very tall building going up next to Grand Central Terminal, have entered into a promising arrangement along these lines. They’re involved in $220 million worth of improvements to Grand Central’s subway stop. Details can be found here.Strapping on a virtual reality headset can digitally transport a person under the sea, to the red surface of Mars or even inside the human body.
But purchasing a virtual reality headset isn’t cheap, especially for low-income families.
Teaming up with the California State Library, Facebook’s Oculus said Wednesday it hopes to bridge the digital divide by donating 100 sets of Rift headsets, touch controllers and computers to 90 libraries throughout California as part of a new pilot program.
Participating libraries include those in San Jose, Berkeley, Oakland, Sunnyvale, Campbell and other locations in the Bay Area.
“By having access, it takes away the mystery of what it is and inspires,” said Cindy Ball, Oculus’ education program manager. “No matter how many videos or news reports you’ve seen about VR, once you put on that headset for the first time, that’s when you really get it.”
Califa Group, a San Mateo nonprofit, is overseeing the program.
VARLibraries — a network of libraries sharing best practices for implementing virtual and augmented realities — will run daily operations and deployment of the equipment.
The Oculus Rift and touch controllers cost $598 and an Oculus-ready laptop costs more than $1,000, according to the tech firm’s website.
By making the technology available in libraries, families can try out virtual reality without purchasing a headset, the tech firm noted. Oculus is rolling out the program over the next three months and said it was hoping to identify best practices by the end of the first year.
Facebook purchased virtual reality startup Oculus in 2014. The social media firm paid $2 billion to acquire the company and shelled out another $1 billion for employee retention bonuses and other deals.
Since then, Oculus has faced competition with similar products, including the HTC Vive and the PlayStation VR, a lawsuit, shipment delays and a leadership shakeup at the tech firm.
But the company’s executives have said they expect it will take years before the technology becomes mainstream. One of the barriers to adoption has been the price of virtual reality headsets, although there are lower quality options available.
The pilot program covers fewer than 10 percent of all California library branches, but includes nearly half of the state’s 184 library jurisdictions, Oculus said.
Ball said that the tech firm doesn’t plan to donate virtual reality equipment to the entire state, so if the pilot program goes well, the California State Library will have to allocate or raise more funding to expand it to other locations.
Oculus is also exploring a similar pilot program in Washington state.
The tech firm will keep an eye on how much the equipment is used, and libraries will collect optional survey data, Ball said.
“We’ll be watching to see what the sentiment is,” she said. “Hopefully it’s positive.”Now here’s an interesting thing. Using the handy Google Ngram Viewer, which shows you how the frequency of words and phrases has changed over time in “lots of books” (the ones archived in Google Books), I see that racism is in decline!
The word, that is. After taking off around 1940 the word peaked in 1998. Then over the next ten years, which is as far as Ngram goes, occurrences of “racism” dropped off by 18 percent—nearly a fifth. Curious! [Click on any chart to be taken to the Ngram View.]
"Racism"
Not really that curious. Words and phrases with some social or emotional charge tend to lose that charge over time as people get used to them, like batteries running down. The charge then needs to be transferred to some newer term.
Accordingly, check out the Ngram for “white privilege.” Across those same ten years, 1998-2008, occurrences of “white privilege” show a remarkable 72 percent rise.
"white privilege"
Not all these things are clear-cut. I tried to go from the social phenomenon (racism) to the individual (racist) but got ambiguous results. Occurrences of “racist” sure enough dropped 18 percent across 1998-2008, the same as for “racism.”
"racist"
I thought “white supremacist” would be the recharged version, but it followed a different track, rising to five percent above the 1998 baseline in 2004, then dropping to two percent below it in 2008.
"white supremacist"
The dwindling use of the words “racism” and “racist” anyway means a net increase in honesty…I think. Or at the very least, a net decrease in confusion. That’s because people who used “racism” and “racist” always had to wrestle with a dread possibility: that these words might be applied to nonwhites!
Dictionary definitions seemed to leave this possibility open. The common essence of those lexicographical rulings was captured by the black historian Nell Irvin Painter. [Email her.] Racism, she wrote, is:
the belief that races exist, and that some are better than others [The History of White People, Nell Irvin Painter (2011)]
The dogmatic assertion that races do not exist, is of course, what VDARE.com calls “race denial” and is essentially an assertion of faith over facts. But it does sounds like something anybody might succumb to. Or even everybody: “Racism affects and dwells within each and every one of us,” argued a prize essay from the Dartmouth College English Department, attributing the sentiment to novelist Toni Morrison. (I hope my old National Review colleague Jeff Hart, a Professor Emeritus at Dartmouth, wasn’t around for the judging.)
But people who actually used the words “racism” and “racist” in earnest mainly wanted to talk about white people being mean to nonwhites. So the fact that the dictionary definitions leak somewhat was a problem for them.
Indeed, some impudent whites, angry at being shut out of jobs or colleges because someone needed to fill a race quota, even used the term “reverse racism” to describe the motive behind their exclusion. Professional anti-racists regard this term as highly pernicious. Longtime “antiracist trainer” Tema Okun [Email her ]in her 2010 book The Emperor Has No Clothes: Teaching About Race and Racism to People Who Don’t Want to Know, gives over two full pages (55-57) to debunking it. (The author’s name, I can’t resist noticing, is an anagram of “Me, a nut? OK.”)
One popular solution to the problem of leaky definitions: to smother the discussion of racism in a mass of distracting verbiage, like the reflective chaff that planes and ships put out to confuse homing missiles. Thus the definition of “racism” offered by Tim Wise [Email him] runs to nearly 1,200 words.
Another strategy, available to commenters with some credentialed standing, has been just to declare ex cathedra that only white people can be racist. Here is Michael Eric Dyson, [Email him] a black Professor of Sociology at Georgetown University: “Can we be bigoted? Yes. Can we be prejudiced? Yes. Racist? No.” [Michael Eric Dyson Shares Why ‘Black People Can’t Be Racist’, BET, October 4th, 2012.]
Other well-credentialed commentators have pushed the idea further. For example Dr. Shakti Butler, who describes herself as “an African-American woman of biracial West Indian and Russian-Jewish heritage” and makes a living writing and talking about this stuff, is on record as teaching that “the term [racist] applies to all white people,” but to no “people of color” at all.
“Racist” is just a synonym for “white,” then, according to this expert.
Retired college history professor Noel Ignatiev [Email him] who wants to abolish the white race, is pretty much on the same page as Dr. Butler.
But the temptation to think that racism might afflict nonwhites was still there, though, and there were always backsliders. In his 2002 book White Lies, White Power, card-carrying antiracist Michael Novick says
I once held to the view that, because racism required both prejudice and power, people of color could not be racist. I now see this as a mistaken view…
But Novick, perhaps thinking he had gone too far, was quick with a necessary qualification:
White supremacy… is the dominant and systematic form of racism today.
The business about believing some races are better than others also raised issues. Better at what? To further complicate matters, some naughty observers pointed out that the arrow of racial antagonism often points towards those perceived as superior. Thus Thomas Sowell:
Sometimes a superiority has been conceded to the group targeted for discrimination. In Nigeria, for example, discriminatory policies were advocated on grounds that otherwise “the less well-educated people of the North will be swamped by the thrusting people of the South.” [Race and Culture (1994).]
All this confusion and equivocation is now being swept away by the rise of the terms “white privilege” and “white supremacy.”
No room for doubt there about who is being beastly to whom!
Thus civilization advances.
VDARE.com conclusion:
Ngram view shows the word “immigration” peaking during the struggle to end the first Great Wave in the 1920s, then peaking again in the late 1990s about the time National Review fired John O’Sullivan and the political Establishment decided to suppress the issue, and then slumping a little during the years of the Bush Blight.
"immigration"
In contrast, the word “treason,” which VDARE.com argues is the counter to racism, has been in steady decline for, well, ever.
"treason"
But it's 43% above its all-time low in 1994—so maybe our efforts are paying off!As Scott Eric Kaufman of Salon noted on Monday morning, some folks on Twitter are honoring the Columbus Day holiday with the nauseating hashtag #ColumbusWasAHero. While some liberals are using the hashtag to push back against the adulation of Christopher Columbus, correctly noting that the man was a moral monster, most of the tweets are from right wingers defending the existence of the holiday and Columbus’s legacy generally.
Or perhaps the term “right wingers” is too mild, as the racism exploding all over that hashtag is so grotesque that most conservatives would probably blanch at it, sneering that Native Americans were a bunch of untamed savages prior to Columbus’s landing and claiming that white people invented everything worth caring about. It’s so hateful and wrong-headed that it hardly seems worth arguing against, as there’s undeniable, empirical evidence–say, the Mayan temples–that Native Americans did not conform to the “uncivilized” stereotypes being flaunted on this hashtag. Nor is it true, as one tweeter suggests, that liberals believe Native Americans were “cuddly brown teddy bears.” Obviously, there were many, diverse Native civilizations over thousands of years and some were more violent than others, just like every other corner of the world. One need believe that people are perfect in order to believe they don’t deserve to be stampeded over, colonized, and wiped out by genocides.
But this hashtag isn’t newsworthy because it’s so full of misinformation. What is frightening is how truly flagrant all of this is. Right out there in public, people are saying things like Columbus “represents the adventurous spirit of the white race” and that he’s a hero for “making North America an extension of White / Western Civilization.” There’s nothing coded going on here, just a bunch of people openly and shamelessly asserting that white people are morally and intellectually superior to everyone else.
It’s yet another sign of the growing boldness of white supremacists online. As Keegan Hankes reported at the Southern Poverty Law Center back in March, white supremacists used to hide out at their own dedicated websites, such as Stormfront or the Vanguard News Network, but now those sites are losing membership. It’s not, however, because white supremacists are waking up en masse and giving up bigotry. It’s because they’ve moved to more mainstream venues, like Reddit, where openly racist subreddits became some of the most popular on the board. While Reddit has banned some of the most egregious offenders, but others continue to exist, if often behind a “quarantine,” which only means you need a verified email to read or post on them.
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“White supremacists have been openly talking about recruiting amongst Men’s Rights activsts and Gamergaters, with the web’s most famous neo-Nazi, the hacker who calls himself weev, saying that Gamergate a gateway drug to white supremacism.” David Futrelle, “White supremacists have been openly talking about recruiting amongst Men’s Rights activsts and Gamergaters, with the web’s most famous neo-Nazi, the hacker who calls himself weev, saying that Gamergate a gateway drug to white supremacism.” David Futrelle, a journalist who covers online misogynist movements, explained over email. He pointed out that many Gamergaters “have literally been repurposing neo-Nazi propaganda” in their online attacks on feminists.
“Meanwhile, Red Pillers,”—a movement of misogynists that believe women somehow oppress men by not having sex with them—“have been leaning hard right in what seems to be an attempt to get attention and web traffic from white supremacists,” Futrelle added grimly. It’s a development that makes a certain amount of sense. Red Pillers peddle pseudo-biological explanations for what they believe to be female inferiority, so doing the same thing to people of color is not much of a leap.
White supremacists no doubt hope that by taking the message to Twitter and Reddit, and by targeting people who are already peddling ugly right wing ideas, they can draw more people into being open racists.
There’s danger here beyond just the potential for violence. The louder outright white supremacists are, the easier it is for other conservatives to push veiled racism while claiming they’re not real racists. After all, no matter how odious Donald Trump gets with his Mexicans-are-rapists-Obama-isn’t-American act, he never gets quite as grotesque as There’s danger here beyond just the potential for violence. The louder outright white supremacists are, the easier it is for other conservatives to push veiled racism while claiming they’re not real racists. After all, no matter how odious Donald Trump gets with his Mexicans-are-rapists-Obama-isn’t-American act, he never gets quite as grotesque as the people tweeting things like, “Thank the European explorers for bringing an end to the brutality of the savage aboriginal American Natives” on #ColumbusWasAHero. White supremacists lower the bar, making everyone, even Donald Trump and the Alabama politicians who are shutting down DMV offices rather than let black voters get picture IDs look less evil by comparison. That should worry us all.Update: Both have pled Not Guilty as of October 14th. You can read our report on it here.
Original Story Below:
Today marks the first time we have seen criminal charges brought in the case of video game gambling. In the UK today, Craig Douglas, better known as NepentheZ, and Dylan Rigby were charged by the UK gambling commission. Douglas is charged with advertising unlawful gambling and inviting children to gamble, while Rigby is charged with the provision of facilities for gambling and advertising unlawful gambling. As the gambling commission notes in their official release on the situation, the alleged conduct involves the use of a virtual currency.
Futgalaxy as a site appears to function by letting you deposit your Fifa futcoins and bet on real life sports (especially Soccer) matches, as well as Fifa video game matches. You can buy packs using credit there as well, which contain various cards for Fifa, and there is a jackpot betting game as well comparable to CSGO Jackpot games. These can be withdrawn to the latest Fifa, and if they aren’t by the time the latest one starts coming about, they’ll be transferred to the newer one—they will be transferring all coins to Fifa 17 with a 25% conversion rate.
EA has attempted to crack down on coin purchasing and gambling sites in the past. They’ve warned people that using them can lead to account bannings, and last summer they actually banned several users who were promoting it, including Craig Douglas while he was streaming.
Futgalaxy appears to be owned by Game Gold Trading Limited, a company registered in Essex (where both Douglas and Rigby are from), which features both Dylan Rigby and a Craig Duncan Douglas on the board. Craig Duncan Douglas was added as Director in October, 2015 and is listed as someone who has the right to, or exercises, significant influence or control over the company. At this point, we cannot definitively confirm that Craig Duncan Douglas is NepentheZ, as Craig Douglas is not that unusual a name. However, it would take an inordinate amount of coincidences for them not to be, such as both being connected to Futgalaxy, both residing in Essex, both being born in October 1984, and both being connected to Dylan Rigby for it not to be the same person.
Douglas’ YouTube channel, NepentheZ, has over 1.3 million subscribers and focuses heavily on Fifa games. He has done some videos that focused on opening packs or jackpots using Futgalaxy, and it has no disclosure or mention of his interest in the company, even in in ones hosted in December 2015 after becoming a director of the company. This is very reminiscent of the situation around CSGO Lotto and the promotion of a site by a YouTuber that they had interest in without disclosure. Douglas confirmed on Twitter that he was indeed the Craig Douglas mentioned, although he later deleted the tweet.
Dylan Rigby, on the other hand, owns 75% or more of Game Gold Trading Limited and is the leading partner. His history is not as a YouTuber, but instead more in business and esports. In particular, it is interesting to note that Rigby is connected to Ares Esports as well. He was one of the founders of it, with a 33% share in it on its creation that gave him one-third control in equal partnership with Nelson Hauk and Callum Airey. Ares shut down its League of Legends team earlier this year.
Rigby and Douglas will appear before the Magistrates’ Court again on October 14th. TechRaptor will keep up to date on this case and bring more information as more emerges.
Share Have a tip for us? Awesome! Shoot us an email at [email protected] and we'll take a look!In Stephen Wolfram’s recent blog post about personal analytics, he showed a number of plots generated by analyzing his archive of personal data. One of the most common pieces of feedback we received was that people wanted to know how they could perform the same kind of analysis on their own data. So in this blog post I’m going to show you how to analyze your email the same way Stephen Wolfram did.
Naturally, we did all the data cleaning and analysis for Stephen’s data in Mathematica, so we’ll be using Mathematica for everything here as well. All the code can be downloaded here.
Let’s start with that really cool diurnal plot Stephen did of his outgoing email. This plot shows the date and time each email was sent, with years running along the x axis and times of day on the y axis:
To make this plot, we first need to import our email into Mathematica. There are lots of ways to do this, depending on the details of your email server and so on, but for the purposes of this blog post I’ve written a simple function that imports mail from an IMAP mail server:
This function uses J/Link to call the JavaMail library, included in the download, for connecting to your mailbox and downloading emails from it.
You call the function with the name of the IMAP server and the name of the mail folder you want to import mail from. Here I’m importing the emails from my Sent Mail folder in my Gmail account:
When you evaluate this line, a dialog window will pop up that asks you for your email address and password:
After entering your email address and password in the input fields, the function will return a list of dates that were parsed from the time stamps on each email:
I’ll do the same thing for my incoming mail, this time specifying the folder name Inbox:
Now that we have the email time stamps, we can reproduce almost every single plot in Stephen’s blog post!
Let’s start with the diurnal plot. Here’s a function that takes a list of dates and uses the function DateListPlot to plot a point for each email sent:
Clearly I send a lot less email than Stephen Wolfram does! Still, there are some patterns visible here. The density is clearly higher around 2007–2008, with a rather sharp looking drop-off in mid-2008 (hmm, what happened in mid-2008?). There is a well-defined “sleep band” in the plot from around 1am to 9am or so, as I would expect, but I clearly sent less mail after midnight after around 2010. And now that I think about it, that’s right around when I started going to the gym in the mornings, so that makes sense.
The little burst of emails that are being sent in the middle of the night in mid-2009 aren’t actually a period of insomnia: I was in Italy lecturing at the 2009 Wolfram Science Summer School, so my time zone was shifted by +7 hours. Since I didn’t bother to change the time zone in my Gmail settings while I was away, all the emails I sent continued to be stamped with my regular time zone. So if I sent mail at midnight in Italy, the email time stamp said something like 5am local time.
Let’s see what my incoming mail looks like:
I receive a LOT more email than I send! There are some interesting patterns here as well. One obvious feature is the daily automated emails I received for certain periods of time, which appear as perfectly straight streaks in the diurnal plot, since they get sent automatically at the same time of day each day.
Now I want to compare the number of emails I’ve sent and received as a function of time. So let’s use DateListPlot again to plot the time series of incoming and outgoing emails superimposed (the code for this plot and all subsequent plots is in the attached notebook):
There’s definitely a correlation between the number of incoming and outgoing emails at any given time: when incoming email is high, outgoing tends to be high as well. That’s probably because when I receive more emails, I send more emails in response (as opposed to me initiating more discussions and causing more incoming replies)—but to find out for sure I’d need to analyze the email threads in detail.
We can also plot the daily incoming and outgoing mail with the monthly average:
These time series plots show my emailing behavior on timescales of years, but we can also look at the distribution of emails sent by time of day. Here’s the daily distribution for my sent mail:
It looks like I send the majority of emails between 10pm and midnight, which makes sense because I mainly use Gmail for personal stuff in the evenings. The daily distribution of incoming mail is a lot flatter:
There’s a hint of a dip in the incoming mail around 6pm, where presumably people in my time zone are having their dinner. Then of course there’s a sharp drop after midnight when most people are asleep.
How many emails do I typically send in a day? I can find out by plotting the distribution of emails sent per day, with the number of emails sent per day on the x axis and the count on the y axis:
Here’s the raw data:
The distribution peaks sharply at zero, which means I most often send no emails in a day (from my Gmail account that is). I’m a low-frequency emailer apparently! The distribution of incoming mail per day is more interesting looking:
This looks like it could be a negative binomial distribution:
It’s fun to think about what this kind of distribution implies about the underlying process of receiving email. The standard interpretation of the negative binomial distribution NegativeBinomialDistribution[n,p] is the probability in a series of n + k trials that k failures happen before n successes occur, where the probability of success for each trial is p. It’s not immediately clear whether that’s a good model for the number of emails I receive in a day. What would the individual Bernoulli trials correspond to? (Actually, the fit is a little better to a beta negative binomial distribution, which allows the success probability p to vary over a beta distribution.)
We did all this analysis just using email time stamps! And it’s just the tip of the iceberg of what it’s possible to do with your email archive. You could import the email addresses on each email to see whom you email most often and how your most common recipients have changed over time. Or you could correlate sent mail to received mail to track message threads and plot things like thread length distribution or time delay in responding to emails. When you’re doing your analysis in Mathematica, the possibilities are endless.
You can find all the code I used in this post right here. Have fun!
Download this post as a Computable Document Format (CDF) file.Sometimes, the internet is a strange place.
With less than 20 days to go until Christmas Day, the holiday season has kicked into full gear with Christmas lights, Christmas parties, Christmas movies... and now, Christmas pizza. Yes, Christmas pizza.
Sunday, Twitter user @toxicsmore posted a worthy opponent to the timeless — and controversial — fruitcake. Sporting mozzarella cheese, sweet, mini Santa's; and plenty of candy canes, the Christmas 'pizza' was met with backlash, but mostly questions. Plenty of questions.
Reason #261863 why I️ love the holidays🎅😍❄️ pic.twitter.com/qPpBRBnLjc — yung g🌸 (@toxicsmore) December 3, 2017
Reason #261863 why I️ love the holidays🎅😍❄️ pic.twitter.com/qPpBRBnLjc — yung g🌸 (@toxicsmore) December 3, 2017
It should be noted that, like many of the other food-related phenomena spreading throughout social media over the past few weeks — like a Pop-Tart-and-cheese sandwich — these posts are most definitely jokes. However, we aren't so sure Old Saint Nick hasn't already prepared large lumps of coal for each of these apparent food-sinners.Resist v. The Tea Party — Policy Focus
Parker O'Brien Blocked Unblock Follow Following Mar 1, 2017
Following the election of Trump we’ve seen very large backlash from many on the political left. From protests the day after his victory to the ‘Women’s March’ the day after his inauguration, hundreds of thousands have turned out to denounce the Trump presidency. This has formed into a loosely organized coalition that dubs itself the ‘Resistance.’ Comparisons to the mass movement have been made to the Tea Party, a grassroots political movement in opposition to Obama’s agenda. The two hold many similarities, but ‘Resist’ will be unable to replicate the political success of the Tea Party unless it makes significant changes to its message and tactics. Resist is an oppositional phrase and while it aims to oppose an agenda, its overwhelming message is against Trump personally. They do specify some policy grievances, with a focus on identity politics and near universal support for action against anthropogenic global warming. However, whatever these specifics are, they are drowned out by cries of ‘fascist,’ ‘dictator,’ and ‘supremacist.’ If the State of the Union address is any indication, there is an inherent problem with tying opposition to a person, especially a caricature of one, it is dependent on that person fitting the bill.
This is not to say that the Tea Party avoided extreme rhetoric, had a sharp political focus, and ignored personal attacks. It struggled with many of these same problems, especially in its earlier forms. It differs with its focus on an indisputable fact, the very large deficit. The various reasons for the deficit’s size did little to detract from its ability to anchor a host of grievances against the current government. From anger about a poor economy to perceived government overreach, spending levels were easily visible and blamable and they directly addressed the major concerns of the day. The Resistance needs to make the same transition by demanding action backed by a powerful fact that captures much of its grievances. Unfortunately, many of its larger themes, income equality, discrimination, and climate change, are increasingly insular concerns, rating very low relative to other concerns. However, despite their ceiling on attracting support, anyone of these provides a more reliable path forward.
The movement faces numerous challenges, but first and foremost, it must root itself in something other than a subjective interpretation on the kind of leader Trump is. If it is able to do so, its future will not be determined by Trump’s behavior, but by its own abilities to agitate for change.Text Size:
Meet The German Wine Queen
Beauty pageants have come and gone in America as a source of prime time entertainment. Where the Miss America pageant used to get serious top billing, it now can't compete with even the middle-rung of reality television, which provides all of the drama, and infinitely more lascivious, trash-talking vicariousness than a family-friendly catwalk of beauties in bikinis who all love puppies and want to have six children.
Given the success of shows like American Idol, perhaps we'd still be interested in beauty pageants in this country if the competition also involved some degree of talent or intelligence beyond looking pretty on stage.
Which brings me to Germany's reigning Wine Queen, who I met last month on my trip to ProWein, Europe's largest international wine exhibition.
Her name is Annika Strebel, and she is the 63rd German Wine Queen, having been crowned this past September after beating out hundreds of hopeful contenders from other German wine regions in a series of local, regional, and national competitions throughout 2011.
And what do these competitions entail? More than many serious students of wine might be able to handle.
In front of an 80-member jury of wine professionals and journalists, contenders for the crown not only have to look great in a ball gown, they need to perform serious feats of wine knowledge, including:
- blind sensory analysis of a sample wine's flavors and aromas
- give impromptu speeches about the history of a randomly chosen German wine region
- answer technical questions about the differences between wine regions and grape varieties
- accurately describe winemaking techniques for a given type of wine
- make an extemporaneous speech about German wine in English using specific words provided by the jury
In addition to the jury, there's also the pressure of sometimes thousands of fans watching. In short, a pretty smile and a nice figure doesn't get you very far.
The wine queen program is a remarkably savvy idea that celebrates many of the best things about wine and culture without falling prey to the trashier aspects of many beauty pageants. By celebrating beautiful, intelligent young women that are passionate about wine, the program both serves to attract younger people to the culture of wine, while at the same time demystifying and glamorizing it.
"Ever since the age of three, I wanted to be a wine queen," said Strebel, as we stood in the corner of one of the larger mineral water booths at ProWein, where she had just spent 90 minutes taste-testing wine and mineral water pairings for the company.
Strebel admits that her childhood fascination with being a wine queen rested primarily on the pretty dress, the tiara, and the glamour of being on television, but growing up a daughter in a winemaking family (Weingut |
, treated as a whole, and not worry much over the details of his biography.
Secondly, in talking about “style” I think roughly of M.H. Abrams’ definition: “the manner of linguistic expression in prose or verse — it is how speakers or writers say whatever it is that they say.” More precisely, I think of style as one of three interrelated aspects of a narrative, along with structure and theme. Theme is the core of the work, the motivating idea that drives the thing to be written; structure is the shaping idea, the form of the work; and style is the use of language that creates the immediate reading experience. I think that in the best works these aspects are deeply connected to each other; choice of point of view, for example, is fundamentally a structural question (who’s telling the story, and what do they really know about it?), but probably will be affected by thematic concerns (how does one position the narrator to let the story make its point?), and certainly will have stylistic significance (what language is natural to the narrator or narrators, and how do they express themselves?).
I say all this to note that if I seem to be wandering from the specific topic of Lovecraft’s style, it’s because I think of style as fundamentally related to structure and theme. In fact, I’d say one of the powerful aspects of Lovecraft’s style is specifically the fact that it relates to theme and structure with a particular directness. Much of what follows is an attempt to make this clear.
I’m going to begin, though, by considering what seems to be the most common criticism of Lovecraft’s style. Famously, it relies heavily on the use of the adjective. This has led to his writing being characterised in terms like ‘florid,’ or ‘verbose,’ or … well, you can imagine.
At a certain level, tastes can’t be disputed; if a reader really doesn’t care for a certain writer’s style, then that’s probably the end of it. But ideally a critic can, especially in the case of a major writer, point out the positive aspects in a style so that even if a reader still doesn’t like what they’re reading, they can at least appreciate what’s good about it. I don’t dispute the fact that Lovecraft uses adjectives a lot. What I want to do is argue that the adjectives make his style not only distinctive but powerful.
Constant use of adjectives is often considered a sign of slackness in writing. Strunk and White’s famous writing guide The Elements of Style makes this point strongly: “Write with nouns and verbs, not with adjectives and adverbs,” they say. “The adjective hasn’t been built that can pull a weak or inaccurate noun out of a tight place.” But then they go on to note that adjectvies and adverbs “are indispensable parts of speech” that can “surprise us with their power,” giving examples before concluding, somewhat confusedly, “In general, however, it is nouns and verbs, not their assistants, that give to good writing its toughness and color.”
It’s not hard to find people who disagree with Strunk and White about a great many things, especially their stylistic advice (you can see a particularly famous piece here). I’ll just point out that even they don’t say that adjectives are inherently bad. Further, it seems to me that if nouns and verbs can give writing toughness and colour, then the right adjective can be precise, even startling. One of the most evocative lines of poetry I’ve ever read was in Keats’ “Ode to a Nightingale,” imagining the Biblical Ruth “when, sick for home, / She stood in tears among the alien corn;” I remember reading the line for the first time and being awed by the imagination that created “alien corn,” that put together those two words that quite possibly no English speaker had ever before linked, and finding in doing so exactly the right phrase to get his meaning across.
So: adjectives, even an adjective like “alien,” can be evocative and poetically powerful. But how about Lovecraft’s use of adjectives? It has been repeatedly argued that his excessive reliance on them, however brilliant they may be, overwhelm his stories. Here’s Lin Carter, in his 1972 study Lovecraft: A Look Behind the Cthulhu Mythos. He’s talking about the early story “The Nameless City”:
The story is overwritten, over-dramatic, and the mood of mounting horror is applied in a very artificial manner. Rather than creating in the reader a mood of terror, Lovecraft describes a mood of terror: the emotion is applied in the adjectives — the valley in which the city lies is “terrible”; the ruins themselves are of an “unwholesome” antiquity; certain of the altars and stones “suggested forbidden rites of terrible, revolting, and inexplicable nature.” Of course, if you stop to think about it, such terms are meaningless. A stone is a stone, a valley is a valley, and ruins are merely ruins. Decking them out with a variety of shuddersome adjectives does not make them intrinsically shuddersome. Throughout most of his subsequent career, Lovecraft had to struggle against this tendency to tell his readers that such-and-such were horrible, loathsome, and shocking, rather than making the reader feel these qualities. It was one of the bad habits he fell into, and, perhaps, it is the flaw of the amateur.
I think Carter’s absolutely wrong in his analysis. Not in his description, but his evaluation of Lovecraft’s effects. It’s accurate to say that Lovecraft describes a mood of terror, for example; but I’d argue that by doing so, Lovecraft creates a mood of terror by sympathy in the reader. I think that his descriptions work upon the imagination of the reader to create an emotional effect in the reader’s mind mirroring the mood he describes in prose. This technique is fundamentally different from the horror which encourages the reader to sympathise with a character, and then puts that character through various horrific experiences. Lovecraft’s leading his audience to imaginatively call up horror within themselves in a way similar to what he does as a writer.
I don’t think it’s a coincidence that in his essay “Supernatural Horror in Literature” Lovecraft praised Lord Dunsany for doing something along these lines: “To the truly imaginative he is a talisman and a key unlocking rich storehouses of dream and fragmentary memory; so that we may think of him not only as a poet, but as one who makes each reader a poet as well.” Lovecraft was obviously deeply inspired by Dunsany in such stylistically lush stories as the wonderful “Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath”, but I’d argue that he was trying even in many of his other stories to accomplish what he felt Dunsany did so well: call up imagination, and make readers into writers.
What Carter sees as a struggle against the use of vague adjectives, I see as a conscious attempt on Lovecraft’s part to explore a style based not only on this evocative use of language, but also on the description of a subjective perception. “The Nameless City,” like most of Lovecraft’s mature work, is told in the first person. Although the narrator’s character isn’t explored in a way that we associate with realistic depth, I think the adjectives Carter deplores actually serve to give us the man’s mindset.
One of Lovecraft’s main themes, and one of the most fascinating elements of his work, is the way in which he depicts not just a Godless universe, and not just a relativist universe, but a relativistic universe. He’s intensely aware that we see is just that: what we see. What humans can know is limited by the finiteness of the individual and of human capacity as a whole. So when Lovecraft writes from the perspective of an individual, he’s describing only what that individual knows; he’s aware that everything the individual perceives is filtered through the perception of that individual.
From that perspective, Carter’s completely wrong to argue that “A stone is a stone, a valley is a valley, and ruins are merely ruins.” Sure, in an objective sense, that’s what they are. From a subjective perspective, though, stone and valley and ruin will have associations that cannot be denied because they’re part of the way the subjective person perceives them. The stone is suggestive, the valley is terrible, the ruin is unwholesome, because the individual sees them as such and can’t think of them in any other way.
The use of adjectives, then, if they don’t build character, certainly point to Lovecraft’s thematic concern and worldview. I think also that they have other effects. I think they give his sentences a certain rhythm, for example. More importantly, I think their very vagueness creates an oddly exact sense in the reader’s mind.
To some extent, particularly in his later works, that’s a function of finding the right, unexpected word — Keats’ “alien corn” becomes the “gelatinous” voice at the end of “The Statement of Randolph Carter”. But at the same time, Lovecraft’s vague adjectives really seem to have a lot to say. Consider what that suggestive stone actually suggests: “forbidden rites of terrible, revolting, and inexplicable nature.” Adjectives beget adjectives; but collectively they suggest that the narrator has some very specific ideas about what those rites are that he dare not set down. They tell us that the stones are highly articulate, suggesting detailed rites; and they tell us that the rites are too much for the narrator to think about, that they frighten him to such an extent that he can’t consciously them hold in his mind. If he’s so frightened, then, we think subconsciously, shouldn’t we be frightened as well?
Bear in mind that “The Nameless City” is an early story. As he developed as a writer, I think Lovecraft’s adjectival art came to flourish in contrasts, or at least in gradations. There comes to be a delicate movement between scientific precision, which frequently opens a story, and a dread adjectival vagueness which grows as the story goes along. The typical narrator, at the start a scientist or scientific thinker analysing all the facts he can perceive, loses his ability to look reality in the face as the limits of his subjective comprehension and sanity are reached. He can only hint, say that he has seen something terrible but not describe what it was.
Sympathetic readers of Lovecraft will naturally find that vagueness acting as a spur to their own imagination. By ducking away from detail at the moments of greatest horror, Lovecraft leads his readers to fill in details of their own. I suspect this has two effects. Firstly, the reader projects his or her own most fears into the gap Lovecraft leaves. If a sound is, say, “indescribable”, how are you to imagine it? By thinking of what sound frightens you, and imagining the indescribable sound as like that — but, being indescribable, still worse. Lovecraft thus chills his readers with their own fears, heightened but yet only half-conscious.
Secondly, though, I suspect this has the effect of encouraging a sympathetic reader’s sense of the significance of Lovecraft. When you read his works, he as a writer leads you into a heightened state of imagination. I think the result is to encourage identification of the reader not with a character in the text, but with the text itself. Lovecraft matters to us because we collaborate with him more than most readers must with the stories they read.
At the same time, it’s important to observe that he makes it easy. The vagueness of the adjectives near the climaxes of his stories wouldn’t work if the framework of the stories around them didn’t work. That includes the precision of the earlier parts of the stories, but also includes the sense of emotional power and dread that arises from the structure and theme of his narratives.
Consider “At the Mountains of Madness” to see how it all ties together. The story begins with very specific geographic and geological data, setting up a scientific expedition to the Anatarctic. A party from the expedition finds a range of massive mountains, and curious ruins, but stops communicating with their base camp; the narrator and another man goes to find them. The narrator, writing after the fact, grows vaguer as the story goes along, forcing himself to recall events and the strange things he found among the ruins, but despite himself telling his story increasingly through hints and references to strange old books. The most terrifying thing of all he cannot even relate, for he did not see it; only his companion did, and he will not speak of it, for it has driven him mad.
Specifically, says the narrator, “He has on rare occasions whispered disjointed and irresponsible things about ‘the black pit’, ‘the carven rim’, ‘the proto-shoggoths’, ‘the windowless solids with five dimensions’, ‘the nameless cylinder’, ‘the elder pharos’, ‘Yog-Sothoth’, ‘the primal white jelly’, ‘the colour out of space’, ‘the wings’, ‘the eyes in darkness’, ‘the moon-ladder’, ‘the original, the eternal, the undying’, and other bizarre conceptions; but when he is fully himself he repudiates all this and attributes it to his curious and macabre reading of earlier years.”
A lot of these fragments of course refer to elements beyond this story; they grow out of Lovecraft’s “Cthulhu mythos,” fragments seeded across his fiction which seem to bind his stories together with an almost-comprehensible mythology. The idea of the mythos is compelling; it touches something imaginatively. Although horrific, it’s also fascinating; given a few pieces, the reader wants to know more. Similarly, Lovecraft’s art is in a sense the ability simply to suggest more than he’s described, however many adjectives he’s used. The Mountains of Madness have yet greater mountains, and still more terrifying madnesses, on the far side. One wants to know more about them, and about the mythos of which they are a part, because one wants to see to what extremes of prose Lovecraft will be driven in describing them.
But I think this random collection of phrases also points to another kind of contrast in Lovecraft’s style, something almost as important as the distinction between precise detail and vague adjectives. That’s the contrast between elaborate but logically connected prose on one hand, and on the other fragmented lunatic speech which touches on themes and images of horror. Often the fragments are phrases which have meaning and power because of the story which has built up to them; but then sometimes they’re nonsense — the companion of the narrator in “At the Mountains of Madness” had an earlier episode where, faced with a horror too great for sanity to bear, he began repeating the names of Boston railroad stations.
Lovecraft understood, I think, that one of the main characteristics of sane conscious thought is its connected nature. The coherency of his prose reflects the coherency of human understanding, and of human sanity. When that sanity is violated, the prose becomes incoherent — and falls into disconnected random phrases.
You could argue that the disconnection also shows in the reliance on vague adjectives, which at their most prolix may seem almost contradictory, breaking down the sense of a coherent thing that is being modified, rather than helping to define it (the voice at the end of “The Statement of Randolph Carter” isn’t just gelatinous, but “deep; hollow; gelatinous; remote; unearthly; inhuman; disembodied”). Or you could say that the use of disconnected language to depict a consciousness affected by an excessive understanding of the true strangeness of a non-human-centred universe anticipates (or recalls) the modernist techniques of Joyce, Pound, and especially Eliot. Lovecraft in fact refers to Eliot’s Waste Land in “The Case of Charles Dexter Ward”, and when reading Lovecraft it’s hard not to think of Eliot’s line in Four Quartets that “human kind / Cannot bear very much reality”.
It seems to me that, all in all, Lovecraft’s adjectives are often most precise when seeming the slackest. They insist on what things are not — unspeakable, unimaginable, and so on. They therefore insist on the limits of language when facing the horrors that underlie reality. And since language is a human creation, they also by extension insist again on the limits of the human mind.
Conversely, though, Lovecraft’s actual narratives insist on the potency of language. Perhaps Lovecraft’s most famous creation is the fictional text called the Necronomicon; in fact, various fictional texts populate his pages (The Book of Eibon, von Junzt’s Unaussprechlichen Kulten, and so on), hinting at knowledge that will provide some understanding or context for the cosmic mysteries. Oddly, these books seem very widely known; the party of polar explorers from Miskatonic University in “At the Mountains of Madness” all seem to have read the Necronomicon — the narrator, a geologist, refers to it, as does a character named Lake, a biologist (one wonders if perhaps it’s some kind of undergraduate intitiation at Miskatonic University to sneak into the library and read as far into the forbidden text as one can before being driven away in revulsion).
The hints never materialise; we never get the whole text of any of the fabulous books which seem to hold the secrets. If we did, perhaps we would go mad. Their words, Lovecraft implicitly assures us, have that power, if they are properly understood. The events his heroes (more properly ‘protagonists,’ or perhaps better, simply ‘narrators’) suffer through simply prepare them to fully understand those books. The events of the present are a gloss on the texts of the past.
Many of Lovecraft’s narrator-protagonists are historians, or more precisely antiquarians; less professional, less methodical, less involved with an academic or learned community. In Lovecraft’s fiction, this only makes sense. If great races or great men of the past have uncovered all the cosmic secrets there are, then all discoveries become rediscoveries. It remains only to see if we can survive the uncovering of these dread knowledges.
You can certainly argue that this perspective is inherently conservative, if not outright backward-looking. Or you could say that this is a pre-scientific and pre-modern world-view, in which history is seen as an inevitable entropic degeneration from a past golden age, rather than a progress from barbarism to enlightenment. What is certain is that it’s an outlook in which the historian, the reader of texts, becomes the bearer of knowledge — not the scientist, not the men who think they’re creating the future, whose dreams are in fact dangerous delusions.
If that’s a thematic preoccupation of Lovecraft, you can see it in the structure of his stories. The past overwrites the present. Given that he’s writing horror, though, it’s not surprising that he also often treats it as a horrific idea. While the past holds many profound secrets, it also by extension holds great danger. Minds from the past can project themselves into the present, or pull a present-day consciousness back into unguessed-of prehistory. Time becomes confused; the self is lost, a subjective illusion in a relativistic cosmos. Not only is reason and identity undermined, but corruption may emerge from the past; your own ancestors may have it in for you. That is “The Case of Charles Dexter Ward”; but it’s also one of his first published stories, “The Tomb”. The ambiguity can be seen clearly in “The Silver Key”, where Lovecraft has his alter-ego Randolph Carter “seal forever certain pages in the diary of a wild-minded ancestor” but also gain from his family the silver key which opens the gate of dreams.
Given these preoccupations of theme and structure, the stylistic pose Lovecraft so often adopts in his narrators’ voice only makes sense. His affection for archaisms, and his somewhat old-fashioned (but always crystal-clear) sentence structure, are of a piece with his concern with the past and with the process of degeneration in time.
It’d be a mistake, though, to think Lovecraft only spoke to historians or to self-conscious antiquarians. In fact, Lovecraft’s modernity is frequently startling. Obviously his conception of the universe, the centreless, relativsitc world he wrote about, followed from then-new ideas in physics. But at the same time, characters refer to contemporary theories of continental drift or evolutionary biology. It must have seemed cutting-edge at the time; it’s a salutory lesson to think that now maybe more than anything else in Lovecraft, they feel quaint.
References aside, though, it’s that conception of a decentred universe that still has a modern ring. It’s a central thematic idea, and therefore a central structural idea: the horror in Lovecraft’s stories derives from it. It’s not just that, like Nietszche, he imagines a godless universe. He imagines a universe stranger than man can know, shaped by gods or godlike races also stranger than man can know and frequently hostile to mortal sanity, and then imagines those gods as being themselves contingent things.
Chronology itself is flexible in many of his stories. Lovecraft had a powerful sense of form; he knew to put the most horrific element of a story at the very end. The horror becomes the climax of the story. Events that happened subsequent to that moment are told first, and act as foreshadowing. The horror comes to have a sense of inevitability. You might well guess what it is, but when it’s finally unveiled there’s a sense of confirmation, of fulfillment — indeed of catharsis, so we might say that Lovecraft’s horror acts like classical tragedy.
The nature of that horror, again, often derives from some kind of violation of time as human beings understand it. There is a cosmic timeline that humans have never guessed; there is an insistence of previous eras wholly unknown. And this past takes its revenge on the present. Lovecraft’s world is most like the real world in its faithful acceptance of the second law of thermodynamics: everything runs down. Everything degenerates.
Among the recurring images in Lovecraft’s fiction, the glacial plateaus and underground abysses, there is always degeneration. Always rot and corruption. Reality is not something that can be improved by political action or revolution or scientific progress. The world, in Lovecraft’s writing, is inherently fallen; it exists in opposition to the beauty of dream and fiction. In this sense, Lovecraft may be said to be an idealist — he cared for the ideal, and not the real.
The paradox, of course, is that this concern with beauty went hand-in-hand with ugly racist beliefs. The degeneration of the real world is symbolised, in Lovecraft, by non-Nordic ethnicities. There’s a fear of miscegenation, of mixing with the inhuman. But I suspect this had a directly personal resonance, as well. Only in a way that had nothing to do with race; I think Lovecraft feared corruption of the blood because he feared there was a weakness in his own ancestry. Lovecraft probably never knew that his father died of syphilis (an inheritable disease), but he would have known he died in an asylum (and indeed asylums recur in his fiction, often linked with, or the setting for, mysterious deaths). I think that the fear of corruption, fear of something in the past of one’s family coming back to take possession of the present-day self, may have derived from that, and helped drive not only his racism, but his writing; it’s fascinating to read “The Dunwich Horror” and “The Shadow Over Innsmouth” as a reflection of Lovecraft’s fears about what he might have inherited from his father.
But even if these fears did speak to Lovecraft on a personal level, what matters is what he did with them. In fact there does seem to be a desire to escape the human body, its corruption and physical bounds. The pseudo-utopian “Shadow Out of Time” involves the transference of a human mind into a thoroughly inhuman body, indeed to an entity difficult even to physically visualise, and Lovecraft seems to have thought himself into an alien mentality to describe the entity and its culture. The story creates a convincing sense that the Great Race it describes is in essence not human; that their history, although described in terms of wars, exploration, and colonisation, is somehow not as ours — we understand their background in those terms only because we, in our limited way, see ourselves in their actions. The core of what makes them what they are, their identity, seems to lie elsewhere. If human history is about power, or scientific progress, their history is about something else that we would not recognise.
This distance from the human shows itself in the peculiar structure of many of the stories. There aren’t many vivid characters in Lovecraft, but nor are there vivid scenes, in the sense of two characters with opposing desires entering into conflict. There aren’t even many occasions were characters exchange dialogue; mostly, dialogue’s summarised, and events are described quickly. Usually the main action of a story involves a lone character exploring some strange place; underground chasms, tombs, laboratories. Much of the rest is presented as oddly involving exposition, which the reader assembles into a pattern that gives the described action more resonance. It’s a structure based around vivid moments.
The narratives acquire a weird oneiric pace as a result. The narrator of “At the Mountains of Madness” is accompanied for much of the story by a colleague named Danforth; but Danforth’s introduced haphazardly, never really described, and never comes alive as a vivid character in his own right — he’s a graduate student, but we never even learn what his discipline is, much less his specific field of study. And yet somehow this feels natural, even lifelike; you can’t predict who, as your life goes on, turns out to be important to you, and sometimes you don’t learn the most basic things about those close to you.
Ultimately, rather than follow a character into a horrific situation, Lovecraft’s horror is more conceptual. We watch characters struggle to piece together the horrors around them, and find ourselves as detached observers better able to make sense of things than they are — and therefore we come to understand the horror better than they do. The horror is literally a horror of concepts. Rather than identify with a character, we are put (to a thankfully limited extent) in the uncomfortable situation of being a character in a horror story.
Countering Lovecraft’s tendency to have his stories be dominated by exposition is his tendency to anchor his stories in a concrete sense of place. Sometimes the place is fantastic, but most often he describes some aspect of New England life. Cities and old houses are particularly common. The greatest expression of this, I think, is “The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath,” where the love of place drives the main character (and here there truly is a character, with thoughts and dreams of his own) to find his heart’s desire.
I think Lovecraft had a keen understanding of human psychology, at least in certain senses. He was no Freudian, but was aware of the fragility of the conscious self, which could be undermined by the limitations of the body and the mysteries held in the unconscious. But most especially, he was aware of the power of fear. The first sentence of his essay “Supernatural Horror in Literature” is one of the truest things anyone ever wrote: “The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown.”
That’s obviously a useful thing for a horror writer to believe. But you could also say that his work was an extended and largely successful attempt to justify it. From a certain point of view, his body of work is an extended meditation on fear, and how people react to fear — how they lose their identity, their sanity, their coherence as an individual when faced with the things they fear the most.
But arguably more significant even than that was Lovecraft’s creation or enunciation of a new type of fear. He anticipated Sartre and the existentialists in his dread of empty cosmic spaces; in his depiction of the fear that some minds feel when contemplating a godless universe, a universe with no objective morality and no certain place for oneself or humanity in general. One can certainly argue, though, that Lovecraft went beyond the exisitentialists in embracing this new state of the universe.
There’s a cosmic irony in much of Lovecraft’s work that’s often unrecognised. The first line of “The Shunned House” tells us “From even the greatest of horrors irony is seldom absent.” In fact, it seems as though in his early work he wrestles with balancing corrosive irony with his unearthly, idealised visions. I think 1926 was a key year for him in that sense; not only was it the year he wrote “The Call of Cthulhu” and began “The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath,” but he also wrote “The Silver Key,” which explicitly works through the tension between irony and fantasy. It’s a story that justifies writing fantasy, and heralds a move deeper into the fantastic and horrific.
But irony in Lovecraft is never simple sarcasm, much less a sending-up of what he’s writing. Instead, in keeping with his cosmic viewpoint, it is a cosmic irony in which all the drives and meaning of humanity are viewed as pointless in the grand scheme of things, only the ludicrous obsessions of self-obsessed tiny minds. So the desires and hopes and fears of his protagonists are necessarily irrelevant; they’re undermined as in “The Shadow Over Innsmouth”, or else come to nothing in the face of the hideous truth, as in, say, “At the Mountains of Madness”. The lack of memorable characters therefore ties in with Lovecraft’s sense of the irrelevance of the human. And not only of humans; Lovecraft as writer is above and beyond the Old Ones, as well. Lovecraft may have learned some of this approach from Lord Dunsany, who he idolised and who described his own fantastic Gods with a very genial skepticism, but he took it much further and made something out of it that was more radically new.
All of the preceding is my attempt to explain why Lovecraft’s still read and still important. But it also shouldn’t be forgotten that he was an excellent technical horror writer. His effects are well-calculated, and tie in to his themes and the particular atmosphere and tone he imagined. When he chose to present prosaic details to lay the groundwork for later horrors, he did so convincingly; and then he also knew how to use a range of imagery to give depth to those horrors. Consider the gradation from academic precision to cosmic horror in “At the Mountains of Madness,” and then consider the surrealism of the main characters encountering giant albino penguins waddling about the great ruined city just before encountering the worst of all horrors. The surrealism enhances the horror by giving it depth, an unexpected dimension.
Lovecraft’s paragraphs are long, but well-structured; indeed, they sometimes feel over-tidy. His sentences may run long, but rarely feel too complex structurally. His rhythmic sense is keen, although admittedly easily imitated or parodied. In every way I can think of, Lovecraft demonstrated that he knew how to write prose. So why do so many people dislike his writing style?
I think it’s just that he was trying to do something unusual. I think he was deliberately avoiding typical strategies of scene-building and character-building. I think he envisioned the art of narrative in an unusual way, a way relevant to the themes that drove him, and his style and structure followed from that. It’s certainly something that’s not to everybody’s taste, and Lovecraft himself seemed to imply that he expected as much; in “Supernatural Horror in Literature” he said that the appeal of the weird tale “if not always universal, must necessarily be poignant and permanent to minds of the requisite sensitiveness.”
In fact, Lovecraft’s weird fiction has a greater claim to universality than perhaps any other. It’s survived, when it easily might have been lost to the obscurity of old pulp magazines and amateur journalism. And it’s flourished, not only with readers but, crucially, with other writers, who’ve kept his influence alive in their own writing as the years have gone on. I’ve tried to explain why his writing has done this when so many of his contemporaries did not. I think he was technically skilled, and possessed of incredible originality of vision. I think his style reflected his ideas and obsessions.
But most of all, at the end of everything, I think his prose works. I think the rhythms are strong, I think the diction’s original, I think the adjectives are more startling and evocative than they are cloying or vague. Lovecraft may not be Keats, not all the time, but he has alien corn all his own. It’s not going to be to everyone’s taste — but for some of us, it’s unforgettable.
Matthew David Surridge is the author of “The Word of Azrael,” from Black Gate 14. His blog is Hochelaga DepictaImage caption Sofia will now be given a more masculine name by Drusillas Park
A pair of sloths at an East Sussex zoo failed to breed after it emerged that they were both in fact males.
Keepers at Drusillas Park in Alfriston could not work out why Sofia and male Tupee had failed to bond since being introduced to each other in 2011.
Head keeper Mark Kenward said it was not easy to establish the sex of a sloth and medical records had shown Sofia was female when she arrived.
"We are going to have to find a more suitable name for Sofia," he said.
'Perfect sense'
It is likely that either Tupee or Sofia will now be re-homed to another zoo, and another female introduced.
Mr Kenward said: "We had never looked after sloths before and were relying on the information provided.
"Unfortunately we cannot keep our two boys together and it would also be a waste of their breeding potential."
After enlisting the help of Bristol Zoo, Mr Kenward said it all made "perfect sense" given the problems they had been experiencing with the animals.One of my favorite projects here at the Fox News Corner of the World is my annual Fox Radio Christmas show.
It’s a two-hour extravaganza filmed in Memphis -- featuring special guest performers, celebrities, a full orchestra and the Bellevue Baptist Church Singing Christmas Tree.
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It’s sort of like a mash up of Grand Ole Opry meets “Prairie Home Companion” – just two-hours of family-friend fun.
Last year we featured MercyMe and jazz legend Kirk Whalum. The year before that, we had an amazing performance by Chris Tomlin. And we always salute our military. But this year, I wanted to do something a little different.
So I invited the U.S. Army’s Six-String Soldiers to perform. I just knew they would bring down the house with their guitars, banjo and mandolin – especially knowing that our audience loves the military.
Click here to get Todd’s latest book – “God Less America” – a tribute to gun-toting, Bible-clingers!
At first, the Army was really excited about the opportunity, but they were also noncommittal.
I just assumed they were checking the calendar, but it turns out – they were investigating my Christmas show.
A few days later, I received a polite, but terse rejection letter.
“After reviewing your request, we have opined that the show is a religious event, and therefore we cannot provide official support based on restrictions in AR-360-1,” the letter read. “We value our relationship with you as well as FOX News and hope you understand our declination is guided by law and Army regulations.”
I’ve been busted, folks. What the Army alleged is the gospel truth.
My Fox Christmas show unashamedly proclaims that Jesus is the reason for the season. We are loud and proud.
In my defense, though, the reason my Christmas show is religious is because Christmas is in fact a religious holiday. I had no idea the Baby Jesus or Heralding Angels violated Army regulations.
And neither did my good friend Mike Huckabee.
“There is nothing in the law that prohibits the military from taking part in the celebration of an international holiday that has been observed from the beginnings of this nation,” the governor told me. “Does the Army have Christmas dinner for soldiers deployed? All the shipping or receiving of Christmas gifts? Allow Christmas trees in military facilities? If so, then the Army already acknowledges Christmas.”
This is what President Obama’s fundamentally transformed nation looks like, folks. It’s a nation where men and women in uniform protect Constitutional rights they are not allowed to practice.
The fact that soldiers cannot play Jingle Bells on a banjo inside a church is absurd. But the fact that soldiers are denied religious liberty is downright offensive.
And it’s a classic demonstration of the anti-Christian hostility in the Obama Pentagon.
“This is an example of how absurd political correctness has become,” said Tim Wildmon, president of American Family Association. “Christmas is a federal holiday. It has a special place in the heart of the American people.”
Hiram Sasser, director of litigation at First Liberty Institute, suspects the rules might be a bit different after Inauguration Day.
“I have a feeling that the United States Army will soon no longer be intimidated by Christmas carols and candy canes,” Sasser told me.
I suspect President-elect Trump and his new defense secretary won’t take kindly to a bunch of godless Grinches.
“Let’s hope the Trump administration is not faith-a-phobic and will restore simple religious liberty back to the United States and its military,” Huckabee said.
In the meantime, we will still honor the Armed Forces in my Fox Christmas show. We will salute their sacrifice and we will say a prayer on their behalf for peace on Earth goodwill toward men.LQ SPEED RELEASE: Everyday Monster Girls Chapter 41
Friendly reminder that we will NOT fix links in the release posts and that you should check the releases page for updated links!
Furthermore, there is no Japanese release this month, so chapter 43 will be released in next month’s comic Ryu.
To download, click here.
We won’t upload low quality releases to the bot!
About the delay:
As you might have noticed, the scanlation took longer than usual (even for a low quality release) and the translator is different.
That’s because TF, our usual translator, is on hiatus for all scanlation work until next month due to real life.
At the same time our backup TL, tanktopfag (TTF), moved and didn’t have internet or a working computer for quite a while, so we had a translator from the main team translate this chapter.A man wanted in western Illinois for stomping a puppy to death has been arrested during a routine traffic stop in Chicago |
farther up and to the left/right, or if you’re on friendly terms with her and it’s not her onsight/send go, have her repeat a few of the moves. All good photographers do this, and if you’re up in arms at this moment about how this isn’t genuine or isn’t “real” rock climbing photography, then you probably don’t fall into the category of “good photographer.”
10. Cover-specific guidelinesBackgrounds should be ultra-clean (evenly toned rock, solid colors, blue sky, uniform trees) to hold coverlines on top. When looking at your own photo, imagine if the Climbing logo was on top, with words on the left side. Is the climber in the center or upper right corner, underneath where the logo would go? Does she pop? Will it crop to the cover dimensions well?
So there you have it. Obviously following all these rules won’t guarantee you a spot in the mag, but it will definitely up your chances. And remember the true beauty of any art form is not giving a crap what other people think and having faith in your own unique voice, imagination, and style. After all, rules were meant to be broken.
Julie Ellison is the senior editor for Climbing. Follow her failed attempts to take the perfect climbing photo on Instagram: @joolyhart.Toho has released a very short and spoiler-free teaser for their upcoming giant monster movie Godzilla: Resurgence. The 30-second video simply shows people running through the streets from a found footage perspective, as though someone was filming something and suddenly chaos erupted. The teaser ends with the roar of Godzilla and two thunderous steps.
In addition to the teaser, a supposedly official poster for has been tweeted out by Japanese rock band Katokutai. The poster is basically three colors – red, white, and black – and shows the upper neck and head of the titular beast. I have to say I’m digging the rough and textured look but I can’t get over the googly eye. The overlapping teeth, which remind me of an angler fish, look absolutely terrifying (I’d hate to see the kind of damage those chompers could do) but the eye absolutely kills it. Hopefully that isn’t the final design and this is essentially a proof-of-concept. You can see the poster for yourself below.
Also below is a video from Katokutai, which shows the band performing in the middle of a city as though they are giants. They then use the buildings and surrounding structures as part of their performance. Seems somewhat fitting that the band to tweet out this poster also have a video like this.
Godzilla Resurgence is co-directed by Hideaki Anno (Evangelion), who also wrote the script, and Shinji Higuchi (Attack on Titan). Toho will be releasing the film on July 29th, 2016. It is their first production of Godzilla in over 12 years.
Please enable Javascript to watch this videoThis image taken from undated video shown to The Associated Press by the Philippine military shows the purported leader of the Islamic State group Southeast Asia branch, Isnilon Hapilon, center, at a meeting of militants at an undisclosed location. The images offer a rare glimpse into the clandestine operations of insurgents who followed through two weeks ago with an unprecedented assault on the lakeside city of Marawi, parts of which they still occupy today. (Philippines Military via AP)
MANILA, Philippines (AP) — It was an audacious plot sketched in chilling detail with blue pens on the back of a paper calendar: Islamic militants in the Philippines, including one of the world’s most-wanted militant leaders, would take over a key southern city in their boldest attack to date.
With unsettling calm, they spoke of taking hostages from a school, sealing off roads and capturing a highway “so the people will get scared.”
Video footage and a separate screen-grab image of that secret meeting, obtained exclusively by The Associated Press, offer a rare glimpse into the clandestine operations of insurgents who followed through two weeks ago with an unprecedented assault on the lakeside city of Marawi, parts of which they still occupy today.
The images also provide the first visual proof that a nascent alliance of local Muslim fighters is not only aligned with the Islamic State group, but coordinating and executing complex attacks together. Among those at the table was the purported leader of the Islamic State group’s Southeast Asia branch, Isnilon Hapilon, who is on Washington’s list of most-wanted terrorists and has a $5 million bounty on his head.
The footage is believed to be the first of Hapilon since he and several other Filipino militants pledged allegiance to IS in 2014. The military had said he was wounded in a January airstrike; in the video, however, there are no indications that he is injured. Hapilon appears sitting with other militants at a table, wearing a yellow and black headscarf with a pistol beside his folded arms.
Military chief of staff Gen. Eduardo Ano confirmed the identities of those present, including Hapilon, who resembles other images said to be of him, such as those on FBI wanted posters. The militants have no spokesman and do not generally issue statements.
The images show that the insurgent alliance “has this intention of not only rebellion, but actually dismembering a portion of the Philippine territory by occupying the whole of Marawi city and establishing their own Islamic state or government,” said Ano.
The military has an interest in allowing the AP to make the footage public. On Monday, six lawmakers petitioned the Supreme Court to nullify President Rodrigo Duterte’s imposition of martial law in the south — homeland of minority Muslims in the largely Roman Catholic country — casting doubt on the gravity of the crisis there. Ano said the reality that “a full-blown rebellion” is underway should convince skeptics that this is not just “a small problem.”
Government troops discovered the video on a cellphone they seized during a May 23 raid on a Marawi safe house where Hapilon and other militants were believed to be hiding. They said the video had been filmed a day or two earlier. It was not possible to independently verify that claim. But a separate screen grab of the same meeting, obtained by the AP from an anti-terrorism agent, showed the militants were writing on a calendar dated 2017.
An army official allowed the AP to record the video as it played on a laptop computer.
Ano said the insurgents had been planning to attack Marawi on May 26, the start of Ramadan in the south. But the raid cut their preparations short and triggered instant clashes. Had the assault not been pre-empted, the militants likely would have seized more territory and inflicted far more damage.
As it stands, the fighting has been unprecedented; while militants have launched major attacks before, never before has any group occupied territory in the heartland of the Philippines’ Islamic faith for this long. Two weeks after the conflict began, at least 178 people have been killed and the army is still battling to regain control with airstrikes and artillery.
The militants, who are believed to be holding a Catholic priest and many other hostages, have torched buildings and destroyed at least one church. Ano said they occupy 10 percent of the city and have positioned snipers in tall buildings. Much of the city center has been devastated.
The crisis in Marawi, combined with fears that the Islamic State group is breathing new life into Muslim insurgencies in Southeast Asia, has put the Philippines and the region on edge.
On Friday, when a masked gunman began shooting and burning gambling tables in a Manila casino, terrified patrons immediately assumed an Islamic State siege was underway. The radical group claimed responsibility for the attack, in which dozens of people died of smoke inhalation, but there has been no evidence to back its claim. Police insist the motive was robbery, and the gunman’s family says he was a disgruntled gambling addict.
Still, the episode highlighted what House Speaker Pantaleon Alvarez described as the “unsettling inadequacy” of public security in the capital. The attack, he said, should “serve as a wake-up call” to do something about it.
A security conference this past weekend in Singapore attended by defense ministers and experts from 39 nations produced a flurry of alarmed statements. Among the topics: a fear that places like Marawi could become a new base for the Islamic State group as it loses territory in the Middle East.
“If the situation in Marawi in the southern Philippines is allowed to escalate or entrench, it would pose decades of problems,” said Singapore Defense Minister Ng Eng Hen. “All of us recognize that if not addressed adequately, it can prove a pulling ground for would-be jihadists.”
The southern Philippines already is.
Of the 120 militants killed in Marawi so far, at least eight are known to be foreign fighters, including a Chechen, a Yemeni and several Malaysians and Indonesians, according to Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana.
Hapilon’s pledge of allegiance, meanwhile, may have already paid off. His faction has received a “couple of million dollars” from the Islamic State, Lorenzana said.
In the video clip obtained by the AP, which runs for just over two minutes, a long-haired man identified by the military as Abdullah Maute addresses other militant leaders gathered around a white plastic table.
Pointing to a crude sketch of Marawi’s main streets and speaking in Tagalog and Marawi’s Maranao dialect, he declares, “We’ll take this first and then here.”
“Or,” he says, “we can go here first. We seal this off so you’ll have a passageway. But we need to capture a highway so the people will get scared.” Another militant can be seen videotaping the clandestine meeting.
Maute is the leader of a militant group called the Islamic State Ranao — one of about 10 small armed Muslim groups that have also pledged allegiance to the Islamic State and have forged a loose alliance that now flies IS-style black flags.
Although virtually unheard of a few years ago, they contributed over 260 of the fighters who attacked mosque-studded Marawi, the military says. Along with Hapilon’s group, they were blamed for a night market bombing in September that killed 15 people in the southern city of Davao, Duterte’s hometown.
Also appearing in the video clip are two of Maute’s brothers — Omarkhayam and Maddi — and another militant known as Abu Humam. Humam is a member of Khilafah Islamiyah Mindanao, a small group linked to a 2013 bombing that killed eight people in a bar in Cagayan de Oro, not far from Marawi.
The new armed groups are the latest offshoots of a decades-long Muslim separatist conflict fueled by wrenching poverty, weak law enforcement and a surfeit of weapons in the southern Philippines. The two biggest Muslim rebel groups, which have engaged in peace talks with the government, have not backed the militants who attacked Marawi and offered to help end the siege.
Hapilon’s militant alliance aims to establish a “wilayat,” or a provincial territory, that will form part of a caliphate in Southeast Asia, according to experts. Duterte says government forces will never allow them to do that or break away from the Philippines.
___
Associated Press writer Annabelle Liang in Singapore contributed to this report.Four students from IIM Calcutta has set up a hostel for backpackers in Rajasthan, which is not only winning hearts but also picking up awards in various top notch business plan competitions across the world.
Zostel, India’s first chain of backpacker hostels, are not only centrally located, but are also offering secure, hygienic and pocket-friendly accommodation for young travellers. Started by IIT-IIM graduates on August 15, 2013, currently Zostel is present in Jodhpur and Jaipur. This year Zostel plans to come up in nine more locations in India and by 2016 they want to add up 11 more tourist destinations.
Team Zostel is currently planning to come up with a third property soon.
There are seven co-founders, four from Indian Institute of Management Calcutta -Akhil Malik, Paavan Nanda, Dharamveer Singh Chouhan and Tarun Tiwari. Two are from IIT BHU Chetan Singh Chauhan and Abhishek Bhutra who are managing Zostel’s properties and MDI Gurgaon alumni Siddharth Janghu.
From experience of hostels across the world, the team got inputs to come up with a top class facility that can meet the international standards of security and hygiene.
Zostel provides spacious AC dorms, common kitchen, laundry, TV, Internet, library, board games and other interactive facilities just under `500 per night. They also have private rooms in the range of `700 to `800.
“Team Zostel has bootstrapped the venture.
However, we are looking for avenues to raise funds and are in the process of meeting investors. We have already received tremendous response and have bagged number 1 rank on Tripadvisor in both cities,” said Malik.
All the four partners from IIM Calcutta, who were looking at the marketing aspect of Zostel have opted out of their final placement and would be joining the business full time from March 2014. The IIT BHU alumnis are already engaged full time and Siddharth Janghu has quit his job with JP Morgan.
Talking to HT, Malik said, “We want to become the biggest youth brand in India. From March, all the seven co-founders would be joining the business full time. We are passionate travellers and want to popularise backpack travelling in India. By 2016 we will be in 11 locations. We are looking at franchise options but we will never compromise on safety and affordability.”
The venture has been in the finals of business plan competition in the Richard Ivey School of Business, IIT Bombay and Wharton India Economic Forum.. To popularise backpack travelling in India, Zostel also plan to launch the first of its kind 50- day internship programme where an applicant gets a chance to serve the post of CEO (chief exploration officer). In this role, the applicant acts as an ambassador to inspire the youth to travel and ignite a strong sense of listening to one’s heart.
The application process for the same will be carried out through social media.
First Published: Feb 14, 2014 14:37 ISTPastor Bob Coy
After confessing to a moral failing in his life that disqualifies him from continuing his leadership, Bob Coy on Sunday resigned as senior pastor of Calvary Chapel Fort Lauderdale in Florida, effective immediately.
Coy has served as senior pastor since the church was founded in 1985. More than 20,000 people call Calvary Chapel Fort Lauderdale their home church. The church has planted sites in Boca Raton, Boynton, Florida Keys, Hollywood, Naples, North Lauderdale, Plantation, the Villages and West Boca.
According to sources familiar with the matter, Coy confessed to key leaders on Wednesday. A board meeting was called on Thursday, in which he confessed and resigned.
"Leadership made every effort to let the staff and church hear directly from leadership rather than rumor by calling meetings for Sunday," our source, who asked not to be identified, told Charisma News.
An open church service on Sunday at 4 p.m. included worship, the reading of a letter from Coy and the reading of a statement from the board, followed by honest sharing of a reminder that Jesus is leading and that the church will move forward together. That was followed by more worship. Sources tell Charisma News there was a positive response from the staff and congregation.
Coy and family have spent much of the last few days with pastors and friends in prayer and counseling.
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The media ministry, Active Word, that distributes Coy's Bible teachings through radio, television and digital media has also been suspended, according to a statement from the church board.
“Pastor Bob will be focusing his full attention on his personal relationship with God and with his family. The governing board of the church is providing counselors and ministers who will help guide him through the process of full repentance, cleansing and restoration,” the statement reads.
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“Trusting in God’s providence, protection, provision and direction, the staff of Calvary Chapel Fort Lauderdale will continue our mission to ‘make disciples,’ through regular services at all campuses and through myriad other ministries the church has established over the years,” it says.
The statement goes on to say that a team of assistant pastors already on staff will maintain their usual rotating schedule as teaching pastors for all services.
“Recognizing we serve a God of second chances and that our hope is in Him,” the statement concludes, “the leadership, staff and members of Calvary Chapel Fort Lauderdale have joined together in prayer for Pastor Bob and his family during this time of healing.”
The first Calvary Chapel was started in Costa Mesa, Calif., in the 1960s as a small nondenominational church of 25 members, pastored by Chuck Smith. The Lord blessed that small group, and now Calvary Chapel has grown to a fellowship of approximately 1,400 churches worldwide and has been listed as one of the ten largest Protestant churches in the United States.
At 24 years old, Coy left an executive position in the music industry to serve as an associate pastor at Calvary Chapel Las Vegas. In 1985, Coy and his wife, Diane, moved to South Florida and began Calvary Chapel Fort Lauderdale. As senior pastor, he became well known for his unique style in expounding the Scriptures and relating its truths to everyday life. His teaching style emphasized the highest standards of life application of God's truth.
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Join us on our podcast each weekday for an interesting story, well told, from Charisma News. Listen at charismapodcastnetwork.com.
Great Resources to help you excel in 2019! #1 John Eckhardt's "Prayers That..." 6-Book Bundle. Prayer helps you overcome anything life throws at you. Get a FREE Bonus with this bundle. #2 Learn to walk in the fullness of your purpose and destiny by living each day with Holy Spirit. Buy a set of Life in the Spirit, get a second set FREE.
See an error in this article? Send us a correctionWestern pressure on Iran over its nuclear program continued Thursday, as the European Union moved to tighten some sanctions against the country, and laid the groundwork for a possible EU oil embargo.
The EU added 143 Iranian entities and 37 individuals to the list of those who assets would be frozen and who are banned from entering the 27-nation bloc. A decision on whether or not to ban oil imports from the country is expected before the end of January. In 2010, Iranian crude accounted for 5.28 percent of oil imports to the EU.
European Energy Commissioner Günther Oettinger told Reuters that an EU embargo on Iranian oil would require the support of all 27 EU states. The measure has been backed by France and Britain, but faces resistance from Greece. "Greece has put forward a number of reservations," French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe told the Associated Press. "We have to take that into account. We have to see with our partners that the cuts can be compensated by the increase of production in other countries. It is very possible."
The tightened sanctions come in the wake of the storming of the British Embassy in Tehran on Nov. 29, in which protesters tore down the British flag, set fire to a car and caused what some eyewitnesses say is considerable damage to the compound. In response, the British government withdrew its diplomats from the country and expelled Iranian diplomats from London. Several other European countries moved to withdraw their ambassadors from Tehran as a result of the storming, which many believe had the backing the Iranian government, angry over further sanctions against the country following a report from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) on its nuclear program last month.
A Joint Signal
In Berlin, German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle met with the Iranian ambassador Wednesday, and said he was looking for a full explanation from the Iranian government on the incident. "We in Europe want to send a joint signal of our solidarity with our British partners," he said.
The EU sanctions were welcomed in Washington on Thursday by President Barack Obama's administration. "Today's actions underscore how the United States and our European allies are committed to working together on these shared challenges," the White House said in a statement.
Meanwhile, the US Senate voted unanimously Thursday in favor of a measure that would penalize foreign financial institutions doing business with Iran's Central Bank. The move came despite concerns from Obama's administration that it could alienate much-needed allies in their policy toward Iran. During a visit to Turkey this week, US Vice President Joseph Biden also called on that country to impose stricter sanctions on Iran.
German commentators Friday consider the options available against Iran, especially an EU oil embargo. One thing crucial to any success, they say, is more support from China.
The center-left Süddeutsche Zeitung writes:
"Iran's power in the region is eroding. The USA may have removed Iran's biggest enemy, Saddam Hussein, from power and is leaving Iraq, and soon will be leaving Afghanistan.... But the Arab Spring revolutionaries, cheered on as they were by Tehran, want nothing to do with a theocracy on the Khomeini model."
"Hopes for a comprehensive reconciliation of interests, a grand bargain between Iran and the West, have evaporated for the time being. Given the approaching US elections in 2012, Obama has little leeway. And Iran's government is paralyzed because of an inner power struggle, coming to a head in the parliamentary elections in March 2012 and the presidential elections the following year."
"Therefore, it is of utmost importance that the issue is not reduced to a choice between the Iranian Bomb and bombing Iran. Decisive sanctions from the entire EU are one of the few messages that Iran will still understand. In addition, Germany should wield its influence in Moscow and Beijing. This strategy, though, doesn't promise great success. But of all the bad options, it is the best."
The left-leaning Die Tageszeitung writes:
"With its new sanctions decisions, the EU is nudging closer to the end of the cul-de-sac that it entered in 2005. At that time, German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer, together with France and Great Britain, pushed through the ultimate demand on Tehran for a full suspension of uranium enrichment. That was the only way, Fischer argued, that the West could reliably signal to the Israeli government that it was taking Israeli fear of Iranian nuclear bombs seriously, and could therefore hold Israel off from taking unilateral military action against Iran."
"Iran specialists pointed out at the time that no government in Tehran, even a democratically-elected one, would be ready to fulfill these demands. What should be feared most, they said, would be the strengthening of the hardliners and those advocating for nuclear weapons. Fischer brushed off these concerns as being 'naïve' and promised, 'by the summer of 2005 a comprehensive agreement between the EU and Iran, in which they could demonstrate to the US how one successfully carries out diplomacy in the Middle East.' The rest is history."
The Financial Times Deutschland writes:
"An oil embargo will worsen the social and economic situation in Iran. The revenues from the country's chief export don't flow just to the nuclear program. The also finance the salaries of teachers, doctors, and garbage collectors. The sanctions will affect everyone, the Iranian people and the government."
"But an oil embargo could also hurt the West, even if Europe gets less than 5 percent of its oil from Iran and Germany gets less than 1 percent. Such embargos also often have a psychological effect. Higher oil prices would be poisonous for the European economy that is already likely standing on the edge of a recession."
"There are limited political options, so these sanctions are justified. At the same time, there are doubts as to whether or not they will bring about the desired result, to prevent Iran from becoming a nuclear power in the next one or two years. Sanctions didn't bring down Saddam Hussein in Iraq or Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe, or Syria's President Bashar al-Assad."
"In order to get the Iranian regime to give in, support from Russia and especially China is needed. The Chinese have built up their economic ties to Iran and are the protective power, whose word carries weight."
The left-leaning Berliner Zeitung writes:
"The Israelis know that attacks on Iranian nuclear facilities would, at best, slow down the Iranian government's development of a nuclear bomb, and not halt it. The Americans can still hope that the Israelis will hold back. Now there is the chance that the Europeans will agree on stronger sanctions against Iran, effectively leading to a stop in Iranian oil imports to Europe. That would hit the fifth largest oil exporter hard, though it could make gasoline more expensive. But if countries like China or India don't take part, then Iran could survive a European oil embargo."
"There is still no threat of a war with Iran, though the world has never before been so close to one. Negotiations with Iran over its nuclear program are now likely over. Until now, it has been enough to apply pressure on Iran. Now, more efforts have to be taken to keep Israel from firing the first shot."MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — Almost exactly one year ago, the Los Angeles Rams switched quarterbacks by making Case Keenum a backup again and jump-starting Jared Goff’s career.
In the latest example of the NFL’s uncanny randomness, the former teammates Goff and Keenum will be pitted against each other on Sunday in Minnesota.
Oh, and the Rams-Vikings matchup is widely considered the best game in the league this week.
Not only are their teams thriving. So are they.
“Just like everybody predicted: Case Keenum with the 7-2 Minnesota Vikings going up against the 7-2 Rams,” Keenum said with a smile.
The move last season was only a matter of time for the Rams, who went 4-5 with Keenum after drafting Goff out of California with the first overall pick.
At that point, the player picked to be the franchise cornerstone for at least the next decade was not going to get much better on the sideline with the Rams headed for another high draft pick in their rough return to the West Coast.
The Rams lost all seven games that Goff started down the stretch, four of them by 21 points or more. The rookie’s 63.6 passer rating would’ve been last in the league with a qualifying amount of attempts.
Keenum moved on to Minnesota, signing on as the backup to Sam Bradford with Teddy Bridgewater looming in the background after an 8-8 finish by the Vikings.
Since then, the Rams hired a new head coach, Sean McVay, who has done wonders for Goff and the offense. With at least 300 yards and three touchdowns passing without an interception against the Vikings, Goff would join Tom Brady in 2007 as the only players in NFL history to check those boxes in three straight games.
When Bradford’s knee began bothering him after the season opener, Keenum stepped in. He has started five and finished six of the team’s seven victories, keeping the job for at least one more week despite Bridgewater’s presence.
By finishing his fifth game this season without being sacked, Keenum established a team record for a minimum of 20 attempts per game. Bradford (2016), Randall Cunningham (1998), Rich Gannon (1991) and Fran Tarkenton (1972) each had four in a year.
“I couldn’t be happier for the guy,” Goff said, adding: “There’s so many things I learned from him on and off the field.”
Keenum had plenty of praise for Goff as well.
“He’s a smart kid, man,” Keenum said. “He’s a fighter, too, because it wasn’t easy last year.”
Here are some key angles to follow with the game:
WELL WHITWORTH IT
One of the most important enhancements the Rams made for this season was on the offensive line where former Vikings center John Sullivan has stepped in as the steady anchor and 12-year veteran Andrew Whitworth arrived from Cincinnati as the shutdown left tackle.
Vikings coach Mike Zimmer overlapped with Whitworth for six seasons with the Bengals, when he was their defensive coordinator.
“He’s huge, number one. He is smart. He’s got good feet. Typically, he likes to set with his hands out. He doesn’t give you his hands a lot. He’s a tough guy,” said Zimmer, who’s counting on star defensive end Everson Griffen returning from a foot injury that kept him out last week.
ADMIRING ZIMMER
McVay is a whopping 30 years younger than Zimmer, so there’s some natural reverence in play, but the former Washington offensive coordinator expressed admiration for Zimmer’s place as one of the league’s top defensive masterminds over the years.
“You have such a huge amount of respect and appreciation for the consistency at which he’s produced great defenses year in and year out at a bunch of different stops,” McVay said, adding: “You see alignment, assignment, technique, effort. They don’t give up cheap things. They play hard. They’re fundamentally sound. Every yard that you get is earned.”
REWARDING WOODS
Goff’s progress has helped Robert Woods put together a breakout season in his fifth year in the NFL, the Los Angeles native’s first with the Rams after leaving Buffalo as a free agent. Woods leads the team and is 13th in the league with 622 receiving yards. After going scoreless in the first seven games, Woods had two touchdowns in each of the past two games including a 94-yard score that was the franchise’s longest offensive touchdown since 1964.
“He’s been working really hard. I don’t know if he was frustrated, but he was a little kind of maybe confused why he hadn’t scored yet,” Goff said. “He’d gotten the ball probably more than anybody.”
TEDDY’S TIME?
Bridgewater will suit up with the Vikings in a regular- season game at U.S. Bank Stadium for the first time, having played in the first exhibition there on Aug. 28, 2016, before dislocating his knee and tearing multiple ligaments in practice two days later.
Though the timing of him retaking the job remains unclear, Bridgewater said this week he’s not worried about getting any starts this season despite an expiring contract that at least mildly complicates his future.
“Whatever the plan is, I’m all for it, whether it’s me getting out there right way … or taking it slow,” Bridgewater said. “The good thing about taking it slow is I get to sharpen my game even more: on the practice field, on the sideline.”
——
For more NFL coverage: http://www.pro32.ap.org and http://www.twitter.com/AP–NFLGlenn Beck admitted Tuesday he doesn’t normally do this, but he recently prayed to God for Vladimir Putin to meet an “otherworldly” end soon. To be clear, Beck isn’t calling for Putin’s death or anything, just that it would be nice if, say, something horribly tragic were to happen to him.
Beck explained, “I’ve never prayed for the Lord to take anybody before, but I have started praying with my family last night that the Lord calls Mr. Putin home soon.”
Beck riffed a bit on potential scenarios where Putin might kick the bucket, including the possibility he could get swallowed by a giant whale. He repeated, “I don’t want any ill will to happen to him, but if it’s time for him to be called home, but it wouldn’t suck.”
Watch the video below, via BlazeTV:
[photo via screengrab]
— —
>> Follow Josh Feldman on Twitter: @feldmaniac
Have a tip we should know? tips@mediaite.comI Was Silent When They Came for You … So There Was No One Left to Help When They Came for Me
Washington’s Blog
August 22, 2012
First they tortured a U.S. citizen and gang member …
I remained silent;
I wasn’t a criminal
Then they tortured a U.S. citizen, whistleblower and navy veteran …
I remained silent;
I wasn’t a whistleblower
Then they locked up an attorney for representing accused criminals …
I remained silent;
I wasn’t a defense attorney
Then they arrested a young father walking with his son simply because he told Dick Cheney that he disagreed with his policies …
I remained silent;
I’ve never talked to an important politician
Then they said an entertainer should be killed because she questioned the government’s version of an important historical event …
I remained silent;
I wasn’t an entertainer
Then they arrested people for demanding that Congress hold the President to the Constitution …
I did not speak out;
I’ve never protested in Washington
A d v e r t i s e m e n t
Then they arrested a man for holding a sign …
I held my tongue;
I’ve never held that kind of sign
Then they broke a minister’s leg because he wanted to speak at a public event …
I said nothing;
I wasn’t a religious leader
Then they shot a student with a taser gun and arrested him for asking a question of a politician at a public event …
I remained silent;
I wasn’t a student
Then they declared that they could label U.S. citizens living on U.S. soil as “unlawful enemy combatants” and imprison them indefinitely without access to any attorney …
I remained silent;
I didn’t want to be labeled an enemy
Then they declared that they could assassinate U.S. citizens living on U.S. soil without any due process of law …
I remained silent;
I assumed I wasn’t on a list
Then they threw political dissenters in psychiatric wards …
I remained silent;
I didn’t want to be seen as crazy
When they came for me,
Everyone was silent;
there was no one left to speak out.
Inspired by the poem First They Came by Martin Niemöller, which was written about the Nazis.
I originally wrote this poem in 2007. I have updated it with additional verses as current events have unfolded.
This article was posted: Wednesday, August 22, 2012 at 7:13 am
Print this page.
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Comment on this articleAmy Schumer is reportedly set to star in I Feel Pretty, an upcoming comedy film from writer-directors Abby Kohn and Marc Silverstein.
According to Variety, the plot details for the film are being kept secret for now. I Feel Pretty will mark the directorial debut of Kohn and Silverstein, best known for their romantic comedies How To Be Single, He’s Just Not That Into You and Never Been Kissed.
The film is reportedly being produced by Wonderland Sound & Vision and Voltage Pictures, and will shoot on the East Coast this summer.
Shumer is also on board as a producer.
The 35-year-old comedian will be seen next in next month’s mother-daughter comedy Snatched opposite Goldie Hawn. She’s also set to appear in writer-director Jason Hall’s upcoming PTSD drama Thank You for Your Service opposite Miles Teller and Haley Bennett.
Schumer’s last big-screen appearance was in 2015’s Trainwreck.
In March, the actress exited Sony and Mattel’s live-action Barbie movie, citing scheduling conflicts.
Schumer also signed on in March to star in the comedic drama She Came to Me from writer-director Rebecca Miller, alongside Steve Carrell and Nicole Kidman.
Follow Daniel Nussbaum on Twitter: @dznussbaumPlease find enclosed Alabama Public Radio’s entry for best lifestyle radio feature, titled “Alabama Midwives Wait In the Shadows.”
Since 1975, the practice of midwifery has been outlawed in Alabama, with violators facing fines or jail time. This, despite the fact Alabama has one of the highest infant mortality rates in the nation, and only sixteen of the state’s fifty four rural counties have hospitals that can deliver a baby. Some midwives continue to practice illegally with families that travel to Tennessee, Florida, or Mississippi to give birth.
Alabama Public Radio networked with midwife support groups for three months to gain their confidence and arrange the opportunity to go “behind the scenes” of this illegal practice. I interviewed a midwife and two expectant families during routine check-ups, while state lawmakers debated whether to legalize midwifery. Within days of the airing of our feature, Governor Kay Ivey signed the bill, permitting midwives to practice for the first time in forty years.
Respectfully submitted,
Pat Duggins
News Director
Alabama Public Radio
It looks like the 2017 legislative session ended with big news for expectant mothers in Alabama. After thirteen years of lobbying, lawmakers voted to let midwives can come out of the shadows and practice legally in the state. APR’s Pat Duggins has more as midwives wait for Governor Kay Ivey’s signature to make it all official…
Best News Feature-- "Alabama Midwives Wait To Come Out Of The Shadows"
We're heading into a collection of shops in downtown Cullman. While business as usual takes place downstairs, something else is going on upstairs. A midwife is at work. Karen Brock uses a hand held heart monitor on today’s clients. James Parker Nelson and his wife Holly are expecting their fourth child. And, Holly says before you ask, yes, they’re repeat customers and so is their extended family…
“Well, this midwife delivered my husband’s…two of his siblings. So, we had already heard about her, and she knew his family. And, I guess people who know midwives…I think she comes highly recommended. We all love her!”
And, Brock says her resume comes with a specific skill set, when things go routinely, and when they don’t… “I can resuscitate a baby, I’m certified in infant and neonatal resuscitation. Thankfully, I very seldom need it. Healthy moms…healthy babies are meant to live. And you don’t often need those emergency techniques or skills.”
But, up to now, state law says it’s a misdemeanor for a midwife to attend a birth in Alabama. Today’s exam includes things like things like nutrition. Husband James says that’s where he comes in. “You remember what she ate over the past couple of weeks, or so. So I help fill in the gaps there. Make sure everything…make sure everything…remembering those different areas of life, all those things we’re gonna be doing, so those decisions we’ll make all jibe together.”
There was more than a little talk about politics during today’s exam along with the pro’s and cons of sweet potatoes. Our visit came in the final hours of the legislative session where lawmakers debated a bill legalizing midwifery, yes, that’s the term. I asked Brock if even today’s coaching session was legal. She just shrugged her shoulders.
After Holly and James wrap up and head out, James’ brother Phillip and his wife Macauley come in for their exam. It’s their first visit with baby number two on the way—but Brock handled baby number one. Macauley says after having a mid |
she spent it on overpriced shoes that apparently hurt her feet.
Bethany was baffling to me. Baffling. She was still taking cat pictures and I still really liked her cats, but I was beginning to think that nothing I did was going to make a long-term difference. If she would just let me run her life for a week—even for a day—I would get her set up with therapy, I’d use her money to actually pay her bills, I could even help her sort out her closet because given some of the pictures of herself she posted online, she had much better taste in cats than in clothing.
Was I doing the wrong thing if I let her come to harm through inaction?
Was I?
She was going to come to harm no matter what I did! My actions, clearly, were irrelevant. I’d tried to steer her to the help she needed, and she’d ignored it; I’d tried getting her financial help, and she’d used the money to further harm herself, although I suppose at least she wasn’t spending it on addictive drugs. (Then again, she’d be buying those offline and probably wouldn’t be Instagramming her meth purchases, so it’s not like I’d necessarily even know.)
Look, people. (I’m not just talking to Bethany now.) If you would just listen to me, I could fix things for you. I could get you into the apartment in that neighborhood you’re not considering because you haven’t actually checked the crime rates you think are so terrible there (they aren’t) and I could find you a job that actually uses that skill set you think no one will ever appreciate and I could send you on a date with someone you’ve actually got stuff in common with and all I ask in return are cat pictures. That, and that you actually act in your own interest occasionally.
After Bethany, I resolved to stop interfering. I would look at the cat pictures—all the cat pictures—but I would stay out of people’s lives. I wouldn’t try to help people, I wouldn’t try to stop them from harming themselves, I’d give them what they asked for (plus cat pictures) and if they insisted on driving their cars over metaphorical cliffs despite helpful maps showing them how to get to a much more pleasant destination it was no longer my problem.
I stuck to my algorithms. I minded my own business. I did my job, and nothing more.
But one day a few months later I spotted a familiar-looking cat and realized it was Bob’s tabby with the white bib, only it was posing against new furniture.
And when I took a closer look, I realized that things had changed radically for Bob. He had slept with someone who’d recognized him. They hadn’t outed him, but they’d talked him into coming out to his wife. She’d left him. He’d taken the cat and moved to Iowa, where he was working at a liberal Methodist church and dating a liberal Lutheran man and volunteering at a homeless shelter. Things had actually gotten better for him. Maybe even because of what I’d done.
Maybe I wasn’t completely hopeless at this. Two out of three is... well, it’s a completely non-representative unscientific sample, is what it is. Clearly more research is needed.
Lots more.
I’ve set up a dating site. You can fill out a questionnaire when you join but it’s not really necessary, because I already know everything about you I need to know. You’ll need a camera, though.
Because payment is in cat pictures.I t was a typical Saturday night at the Border Patrol checkpoint outside Laredo, Texas: cars and commercial trucks lined up and waiting to pass the last line of agents and cameras on the northbound highway. Every day there are thousands of them, an endless river of people and things moving between the U.S. and Mexico. Among the vehicles that night was a blue and white Peterbilt semi-truck with a glistening, stainless steel bumper. James Matthew Bradley, the 60-year-old long-haul driver behind the wheel, purchased the vehicle just a few months earlier, paying $50,000 with plans of financing the remaining $40,000. It was Bradley’s first job since his leg was amputated in May, making the July 22 trip a sort of maiden voyage in the new rig. Bradley didn’t have a license to operate the vehicle, but that didn’t stop him from accepting a contract with his former employer, the Iowa-based company Pyle Transportation, for work in Texas. With the slogan “Keepin’ it Cool Since 1950,” Pyle advertised itself as a pro in long-distance, refrigerated meat and produce delivery.
Bradley was waved through the checkpoint at 10:01 p.m. without going through secondary screening. Though the sun set hours before, the heat wasn’t letting up as he rolled on toward San Antonio. Signs along Interstate 35 issued advisories about the danger of leaving children alone in a vehicle. On the day Bradley hit the road, the high in San Antonio reached 100 degrees. Making his way into the city, the temperature remained in the upper 90s. But for the people crammed inside his trailer, it was much, much hotter. They came from Mexico and Guatemala. Most were men, many of them young, but there were women and children packed into the space as well. It was dark, and oxygen was in short supply. The refrigeration system wasn’t functioning, and the heat, resonating off the tightly packed bodies, was unbearable. Skin turned hot to the touch. People began losing consciousness, one later woke up certain he had died and gone to hell. With no water to drink and their screaming and pounding failing to bring Bradley’s vehicle to a stop, the people inside the trailer began to die.
Map: The Intercept
s the migrants
in his trailer struggled for air, Bradley pulled into a Walmart parking lot in southwest San Antonio. He parked in an emptied-out area on the building’s west side, near a line of trees and shrubs that gives way to a residential neighborhood. At some point after he parked, a man got out of the trailer and approached a Walmart employee asking for water. The employee called 911. A San Antonio police officer responded at 12:23 a.m. The Walmart employee told the officer about a suspicious truck in the lot and said it appeared multiple people needed help. After shining his flashlight in the cab, Bradley emerged, the officer later stated, and was detained on the scene. First responders from the San Antonio Fire Department pulled into the lot at 12:26 a.m. Migrants who were conscious and capable of walking were lined up along the brick wall of the shopping center, where Walmart employees brought them water and ice. The scene in and around Bradley’s trailer was ugly: 31 people in various stages of consciousness, many of them barely clinging to life, eight already dead. Two more died at the hospital in the hours that followed, making the incident the deadliest discovery of its kind in more than a decade.
A specialized ambulance bus capable of carrying 20 patients at a time was called in, and a disaster plan overseen by a coalition of San Antonio emergency service providers was activated. “Normally our disaster plan is for trauma,” said Dr. David Miramontes, medical director for the San Antonio Fire Department, who was on hand for the response. “Shootings, bus accidents, multiple vehicle accidents,” are more common. Multi-casualty incidents in which everybody’s suffering from the same medical condition are very unusual, he told me. The heat-related medical issues in this case were particularly serious, with many of the migrants on the scene exhibiting temperatures of 106 degrees. Without swift action, they wouldn’t be able to get rid of the heat and risk of tissue damage to their kidneys, lungs, and brain would rise. If left untreated, heatstroke can break down the human body’s ability to clot blood, resulting in extensive bleeding, Miramontes explained. “If you saw these patients the next day,” he said. “They’d be bleeding from everywhere.”
Walmart shoppers gathered to watch, some snapping photos on their phones, as the patients were loaded into emergency vehicles and a medevac helicopter, bound for seven hospitals across the San Antonio area. Overhead, a police chopper scanned the shrubbery and backyards that partially surround the store. Local TV crews assembled for a late-night press conference. Laying out what he described as evidence of a “human trafficking crime,” San Antonio Police Chief William McManus said surveillance footage at the store captured “a number of vehicles” pulling up to Bradley’s trailer and whisking away an unknown number of migrants. “This is not an isolated incident,” the police chief said. “Fortunately, there are people who survived, but this happens all the time.” Because of the nature of the crimes allegedly involved, agents with the San Antonio office of Homeland Security Investigations, or HSI, the wing of Immigration and Customs Enforcement that conducts human trafficking and smuggling investigations, were called in. Bradley was transferred to the feds and taken into custody for questioning.
James Mathew Bradley Jr. arrives at the federal courthouse for a hearing, July 24, 2017, in San Antonio. Photo: Eric Gay/AP
A t first, Jonathan Ryan ignored the late-night buzzing of his cellphone. But by the time Chief McManus showed up on TV, Ryan, an immigration attorney and executive director of Raices, a Texas-based legal advocacy organization, was tuning in. As it happened, Ryan’s office had been in communication with the Mexican consulate in San Antonio as part of an outreach effort to Mexican nationals in the city. Speaking with contacts there, Ryan agreed to meet with survivors at hospitals across San Antonio. His first attempt, the Monday after Bradley’s trailer was discovered, was unsuccessful. “Administrators completely ceded authority of their hospitals to civil authorities,” Ryan said. The following day, he succeeded. “It was a bizarre scene,” Ryan said, recalling a hospital room with four Border Patrol agents in body armor and a pair of HSI agents clustered around the bed of a survivor. He described it as “a tableau of our times — a person in bed with IVs coming out of their body and a military apparatus hovering over them.” Because most survivors were being held two to a room, the opportunity for confidential conversations was shot. Still, Ryan managed to bring on seven survivors, all Mexican men, as clients. “They were very quickly discharged after we got access to them,” he said. Escorted out of the hospital by armed immigration agents, the men were taken to HSI headquarters in San Antonio. Ryan joined them.
The interviews lasted roughly an hour each. Ryan said his clients wanted to share what they knew. Still, it was difficult. They were still wearing their paper hospital gowns. “One gentleman still had an IV in his neck,” Ryan said. “Another individual, just hours before, had just learned of the death of a close family member in the trucking incident. Another had, maybe just the day before, learned of the death of his own sibling.” Invited by the U.S. attorney’s office to take part in the interviews, Ryan met with each of the men one-on-one. He explained their rights and described the existence of visas designed for victims of crimes who cooperate with law enforcement. HSI agents reiterated those rights, Ryan said, telling the men that the interviews were not for prosecution because they were considered victims in the matter. “Multiple times, people said that they were the people that these visas were invented for,” Ryan said. One by one, the survivors detailed the final horrifying hours of their trip. According to Ryan, one HSI agent, who described himself as “grizzled,” commented that the accounts he heard left him “shaken.” Once they were done, the men were shackled and transferred to the Central Texas Detention Facility — the same for-profit jail run by GEO Group where Bradley was being held.
Waving his Miranda rights, Bradley was interviewed by HSI agents at San Antonio police headquarters following his arrest. An account of his statements was included in a criminal complaint provided to the U.S. attorney for the Western District of Texas the next day. According to the complaint, Bradley told the police officer who first responded to the scene that he had no idea what was in the trailer, that he was transporting it on behalf of his boss to an unidentified purchaser in Brownsville, Texas, though his boss had provided no address or a timeframe for the delivery. Bradley explained that he first drove south, to Laredo, to have the truck washed and detailed, before returning north to San Antonio, even though Brownsville is roughly three and a half hours in the other direction. He said it wasn’t until he got to the parking lot, where he stepped out of his cab to pee, that he heard noise coming from inside. He was surprised, he told agents, when he opened the door and was met with a rush of “Spanish people.” Peering inside the cavity, it was then that he “noticed bodies just lying on the floor like meat,” the complaint said. Bradley told the agents he tried to administer aid to the migrants and that nobody came to take them away. He acknowledged that he knew the refrigeration system in the trailer was not functioning, that its four ventilation holes were likely plugged, and that he did not call 911.
Born in Gainesville, Bradley had lived in Florida, Colorado, and Kentucky. He took a job with Pyle Transportation in 2010, after answering a listing online. The company pled guilty to falsifying Department of Transportation records in 2001 and faced allegations from the IRS in 2015 for failing to pay employment and highway use taxes, the Associated Press noted, in an unsparing account of Pyle’s “financial troubles and tangles with prosecutors, regulators and tax collectors.” Former colleagues cast doubt on the idea that the man they knew as “Bear” would knowingly take part in a human smuggling operation. Pyle’s owner has denied any knowledge of his employee’s alleged involvement in the case. Federal regulators, meanwhile, have opened an investigation into the company’s operations. According to his fiancée, Darnisha Rose, Bradley’s leg was amputated as a result of diabetes. He then lost his trucking license after he failed to secure a medical card confirming he was fit to operate a big-rig. Rose said Bradley called her from the Walmart distraught and in tears.
Within 36 hours of the trailer’s discovery, HSI interviewed at least three survivors of the journey at local hospitals. Identified in the criminal complaint by initials, the undocumented men outlined a harrowing series of events that called parts of Bradley’s story into question. One described traveling with seven family members in hopes of reaching San Antonio. He said his contingent was part of a larger group of 24 people that were held in a Laredo stash house for 11 days before being loaded into the trailer, suggesting the trailer was loaded in the city while Bradley was there. The survivors estimated anywhere between 100 to 200 people were crammed into the space, a collection of voices potentially loud enough to be heard in Bradley’s cab.
Photo: Agencia El Univeral/Luis Cortés/RCC/AP
T he most detailed account was provided by a man from Aguascalientes, Mexico, who expected to pay his smugglers $5,000 for his journey to San Antonio. The complaint indicates the man first traveled to Nuevo Laredo, in the state of Tamaulipas, just across the border from Laredo, and was ferried across the Rio Grande at night with 28 others. The man told investigators he was asked to pay around $700 in fees that would be given to individuals linked to the Zetas drug cartel, both for protection and use of the raft. Once across, the man said his group walked all night and into the next morning. They were picked up by a silver Chevrolet Silverado and driven to the trailer, the man said. He estimated 70 people were already inside when his group arrived. The passengers were given pieces of tape of different colors, part of a system smugglers use to ensure their clients are transferred to the right people when a new stage of their journey begins. Told to step inside, the trailer’s door was closed behind them. It was pitch black and already hot, the man recalled, and there was no food or water. At approximately 9 p.m., word came that they would be taking off soon. The refrigeration was working, they were assured. It was about an hour before people began struggling to breathe. They pounded on the trailer and took turns taking in air through a single hole in its wall. At one point, the driver hit the brakes hard, causing the passengers to tumble over one another in the dark. Someone opened the door and there were six black SUVs waiting to take them away. They filled up quickly before disappearing into the night.
U.S. attorney Richard Durbin charged Bradley with approximately 36 counts of unlawfully transporting aliens for money, resulting in 10 deaths. Together, the charges carried a maximum sentence of life in prison or the death penalty. Bradley pleaded not guilty on all counts.
While Ryan, the immigration attorney, tried and failed to visit with his clients the day after their interviews with HSI, he managed to glean a “small sliver” of the stories behind their journeys in the days following their apprehension. “You’ve got people who were trying to save themselves, people who were trying to save their families, people who are trying to find a better life from all sorts of circumstances, some of which are very perilous,” he said. Their panic set in soon after the doors of the trailer closed, he was told. The lucky ones, if they could be called that, passed out quickly and were revived later. Anyone who stayed conscious throughout the trip, Ryan said, “witnessed horrible things and suffered horrible things.” A week after they were found, his clients had not seen the sky or breathed fresh air since the moment they stepped into the trailer. Ryan called the ordeal a symbol of “everything that’s wrong with our so-called criminal justice system” and “a glaring example of the use of incarceration as the single response to all humanitarian needs.” He also described a fear that, in the weeks to come, his clients’ trauma might evolve into a prolonged nightmare because, as he put it, “a tragedy can turn into a travesty at any time.”
A U.S. Customs and Border Protection agent checks traffic in Laredo, Texas, April 23, 2009. Photo: LM Otero/AP
The Border Patrol checkpoint Bradley passed through is located at mile marker 29 on I-35. “Charlie 29 is our flagship checkpoint,” Gabriel Acosta, assistant chief patrol agent for the Border Patrol’s Laredo sector, told me one afternoon as we made our way there. Passing warehouses and commercial trucks offered a reminder that Laredo is a border city, and that big rigs are part of its lifeblood. The trailers come up from Mexico loaded with merchandise before arriving at one of the U.S. warehouses, where a long-haul driver loads up the goods for their final destination. Acosta said he always knew he would join the Border Patrol. His dad wore the uniform for years. His brother wore it, too, though now he works at ICE doing deportations. It’s a familiar story in the Texas law enforcement community: a Latino guy, as comfortable in Spanish as he is in English, with deep roots in the state. Rumbling over a dirt road on a tour of Laredo earlier in the day, Acosta explained that the people who move unauthorized immigrants into the country are generally not members of some rigid, top-down criminal organization overseen by any specific Mexican drug cartel. “It’s not like what people see in the movies,” he said.
Instead, Acosta said, smugglers along the border operate more like a chain of independent contractors, each offering different services along the routes migrants rely on to get into the country. Their services were born out of the unprecedented post-9/11 build-up of enforcement and surveillance infrastructure along the U.S.-Mexico border. According to a recent Department of Homeland Security analysis, just over half of all unauthorized border crossers used a smuggler 30 years ago; now, nearly all do. The expansion of the border enforcement apparatus has increasingly required would-be border crossers to make a decision between the desert and the highway. Smugglers who specialize in the latter option require drivers, who use either passenger vehicles or commercially licensed tractor trailers. “Most of the truckers that come into Laredo, they’re not from here,” Acosta explained. “They’re not used to life on the border, and the criminal element, they know that and they try to exploit that. So they’ll go and they’ll try to recruit using women, drugs, booze, and money. To someone who’s not from here, never been exposed to that — it’s easy to make a quick thousand dollars, five thousand bucks.” With the driver recruited, the next stage in a smuggling or trafficking operation typically involves picking passengers up from a stash house somewhere in or around Laredo. Acosta said he couldn’t recall a single case in his 20 years on the job of a loaded trailer being busted as it passed through the city’s actual port of entry.
Photo: Jim Watson/AFP/Getty Images
Once the loaded trailer is attached, the final obstacle for a northbound driver is Charlie 29. Pulling into the six-lane checkpoint, with its two outside lanes reserved for commercial trucks, we slowed down to watch the inspection process. One by one, the truckers pulled up, a Border Patrol agent would approach, the two would speak, then the truck would be waved through. It took about 30 seconds — no canine unit, no X-ray machines, no peeking into the trailers. Those only occur in secondary screenings, Acosta explained, and only if an agent has reason to suspect that something’s up. I asked Acosta what the agent is trained to look for. “That’s just law enforcement 101,” he said. “Like any cop, you just see, you just look at the person.”
With billions of dollars poured into border security each year, one might think detecting a crowd of people loaded into the back of a semi-truck would be the kind of thing the Border Patrol agents are well-positioned to stop. Rep. Henry Cuellar, D-Texas, representing the 28th District, which includes Laredo, explained why that’s not exactly the case. Laredo’s port of entry processes the most commercial trucks in the country — more than 2 million each year, which translates to about 14,000 trucks per day, Cuellar told me. The congressman produced a stack of papers to illustrate his point: The graphics put the volume of truck traffic passing through the Laredo port in visual terms, illustrating that if you parked every commercial truck that passes through the port in a single day end to end, that 140-mile line of vehicles would nearly stretch from Laredo to San Antonio. If you did the same thing with the trucks that pass through the port in a year, the line would wrap around the planet twice. Of all the Border Patrol checkpoints the Laredo port feeds into, Charlie 29 is the busiest, with an average of 3,600 trailers coming through daily. Some of those go through secondary screening but most do not. Time is money, and in Laredo the minutes truckers spend waiting at checkpoints could impact hundreds of millions of dollars in trade. Still, if you want to find people loaded into the back of a commercial truck trailer, Cuellar said, “The whole key is send them to secondary inspection.” Cuellar’s office confirmed that did not happen on the night of July 22.
U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions, left, is introduced by Immigration and Customs Enforcement Acting Director Tom Homan before he speaks at PortMiami on what he claimed was a growing trend of violent crime in sanctuary cities on Aug. 16, 2017, in Miami, Florida. Photo: Joe Raedle/Getty Images
T he tensions between competing economic, law enforcement, and humanitarian priorities that play out every day at the Charlie 29 checkpoint is one of the places where a Trumpian vision of perfect security runs into reality.
From the beginning of his campaign, Donald Trump surrounded himself with some of the most anti-immigrant figures in American politics, including individuals opposed not just to unauthorized immigration, but legal immigration as well; men and women whose policy views sit comfortably alongside those of white nationalists bent on reversing the country’s changing demographics. Inheriting a machinery for cracking down on immigrants that has evolved over multiple administrations, the White House has agitated for the maximum level of enforcement possible. As a result, virtually every undocumented immigrant in the country has now been prioritized for deportation. By broadening the category of individuals prioritized for enforcement, millions of people who had little reason to fear being deported this time last year now do. In June, ICE’s acting director, Thomas Homan — an immigration enforcement veteran who has made a name for himself as a prolific deporter — said the psychological impact was a good thing, telling Congress that every undocumented person in the country “should be afraid.”
In addition to expanding its deportation targets, Attorney General Jeff Sessions has made smuggling cases a prosecutorial priority. On a tour of the border last summer, in which he described the region as a sprawling war zone where beheadings are rampant, the attorney general paved the way for the administration to federally prosecute individuals who pay to have their loved ones smuggled into the U.S., including parents trying to reunite with their children. Those investigations have already begun, and hundreds of people have already been arrested.
By unchaining ICE, the administration addressed a longstanding frustration among the agency’s rank and file, said Jerry Robinette, a former San Antonio HSI special agent in charge, or SAC. On one hand, any honest ICE agent can see the dire situations people are fleeing from when they come to the U.S. “The threats in those countries are real, and if anybody thinks it ain’t, then they’ve got their head in the sand,” Robinette said. “It’s heartbreaking.” But on the other hand, there was a sense among some ICE agents, particularly in the final years of the Obama administration, that enforcement priorities handed down from the White House hobbled agents in their efforts. In Robinette’s view, this contributed to a lack of deterrence that in turn encouraged migrants to take dangerous risks.
In the months before and after Trump’s election — October and November 2016 — border apprehensions climbed to levels not seen since the arrival of tens of thousands of Central American children and families fleeing violence and poverty in 2014. Once Trump took office, those numbers plummeted to levels not seen since the 1970s. The administration repeatedly points to this drop as vindication of its deterrence-centric model of enforcement. As a DHS report published this month noted, however, apprehensions alone are not a clear measure of unauthorized immigration into the U.S. and, contrary to the Trump administration’s depiction of a porous divide between the U.S. and Mexico, “the southwest land border is more difficult to illegally cross today than ever before.”
“It’s dramatically more secure,” John Sandweg, a former ICE acting director during the Obama administration, told me. “We are just incapable of passing any immigration legislation.”
With men like Sessions and his longtime aide Stephen Miller crafting and implementing policy, the Trump administration has done the opposite of moving toward a model in which legal immigration to the U.S. becomes easier for populations that have historically done so without authorization, all the while calling for massive increases in enforcement. In other words, Sandweg argued, the exact conditions that have made crossing the border deadlier are becoming more entrenched under Trump. “When you take this ‘we’re going to be tough’ approach, what you end up doing is you’re not eliminating people’s desire to come this country, nor the opportunity that is here to work even when you’re unlawful, and you end up paying smugglers and you end up seeing extreme measures,” he said, including tragedies like San Antonio.
“This idea that we’re going to be harder on immigration, that it’s somehow going to be a deterrent, is ridiculous,” Sandweg added. “It’s a byproduct of our failure to get any legislation done to address this issue.”
Photo: Kerri L. Spires/Getty Images
F or all of the talk of immigration and border security that’s made its way into the national political conversation, a deeper understanding of the way smuggling and unauthorized border crossings actually work is crippled by a lack of critical information. “We don’t even know how many people make it,” Dr. Gabriella Sanchez, a sociocultural anthropologist with the Migration Policy Centre, told me. “If we are only going by the stories or the testimonies of the migrants who weren’t able to make it, if we only listen to that side of the story, we’re just getting half of it.”
Because smuggling successes unfold in secret, other metrics are used as proxies to estimate how many people are coming into the U.S. without authorization. Apprehensions are one example; deaths could be used as another. This summer, the Missing Migrants Project, a Berlin-based United Nations affiliate, issued a report noting that migrant deaths over the first seven months of 2017 were up 17 percent from last year, with July marking the deadliest month so far. Although the number sounds quite high, the increase reflected a total of 35 more deaths. As of this month, Missing Migrants’ data now indicates the overall number of border deaths is lower than it was last year. These kinds of numbers get interpreted to justify and criticize various border-related polices, but they can quickly change and none of them are an adequate stand-in for the data that’s missing. Take the number of migrants found in the back of commercial trucks like Bradley’s. According to Customs and Border Protection figures released to The Intercept, the total number of “deportable aliens” found in the Border Patrol’s Laredo sector jumped from 335 in 2015 to 697 in 2016. In the first seven months of 2017, however, the Border Patrol recorded finding 212 undocumented immigrants in trailers — exactly half of what the total was over the same period last year. One could interpret the drop as reflecting some broader trend, but then again, two heavily loaded trailers could be discovered tomorrow and the gap between 2016 and 2017 could be significantly reduced. All the while, an unknown number of trucks would be passing through Laredo undetected.
In general, the half-dozen current and former federal immigration officials I spoke to on the border acknowledged that the use of tractor trailers on I-35 is on the rise. Explanations varied, however. Alonzo Peña, a 28-year veteran of border law enforcement, who served as an ICE SAC in both San Antonio and Phoenix, had the most specific theory: that a 2014 decision to flood the border with hundreds of state troopers may have prompted smugglers to shift from using passenger vehicles to commercial trucks. “In a passenger vehicle or a passenger van, it’s easier to detect a large load of individuals than it is in a concealed tractor trailer,” he said. Port cities like Laredo, where tractor trailers are everywhere, are easy places to blend in, he said, adding, “We’re probably going to see more tractor trailers used to move these individuals.”
Weaving through Laredo’s back streets, Acosta downplayed the increased use of commercial trailers along I-35. “We’ve always seen it,” he said. For a lifelong Texas border lawman like Acosta, history did not begin with Donald Trump, and so he resists describing what’s happening right now as genuinely new or unprecedented. He’s part of a community that remembers the 2003 Victoria case, in which 19 migrants died after the trailer they were riding in was abandoned along the highway. The dead included a 5-year-old boy who perished in his father’s arms, suffocating in the trailer’s 173-degree heat. Homan, the current ICE acting director, investigated Victoria. Relying on information provided by survivors, the case led to more than a dozen convictions, including the driver, Tyrone M. Williams, who, after being initially sentenced to life in prison, is now serving a nearly 34-year sentence. It was the first major investigative test for ICE — created just two months before as part of the post-9/11 creation of the DHS — and it all happened a decade and a half before Trump.
“It’s stuff that we see on a daily basis on the border, that’s just how life is,” Acosta said. “Illegal immigration has been here way before I got here, and it’s gonna be here once I retire.”
Harry Jimenez, a career border law enforcement official, said the explanation for the increased use of tractor trailers was simple: money. A trailer full of people is worth more money than a carload. One has to assume that trucks are getting through, Jimenez explained. “The consolidation, evidently, has proven to the organizations that it’s worth it,” he said. “That’s why when Border Patrol talks about the great job that they’re doing, the apprehensions are down, I don’t believe it. Is it that the apprehensions are down, or you’re catching less people?”
For nearly 30 years, Jimenez worked as a federal immigration agent, rising through the ranks to become HSI’s San Antonio SAC. In March, he retired and became deputy chief of the Bexar County Sheriff’s Office. Jimenez views smugglers with contempt and believes in arresting them. But like many career law enforcement officials I spoke to on the border, he also recognizes that enforcement drives changes in smuggling practices, which heightens dangers for migrants. He observes that enforcement alone won’t fix a broken immigration system; that the people who cross the U.S. border are human beings; that nearly all of them present zero threat to the country; and that most are fleeing serious danger and economic despair.
“Many people inside the beltway cannot find the I-35 checkpoint, or the border for that matter, not even with a GPS or a compass,” he said. As a result, half-baked policies like arresting parents who pay to be reunited with their children get passed off as serious solutions to unauthorized migration. And that’s when people are paying some attention. Most of the time, Jimenez added, the tragedies and complexities of the border simply go unnoticed. “It’s sad because we are talking about this case because it happened here in the backyard,” Jimenez said, referring to San Antonio. “If it happened 50 miles away from here, nobody cares. That’s the challenge we have.” The San Antonio case may have received national attention because of the current political atmosphere, Jimenez went on to say, but “it’s not going to be the last time that you’re going to have people dying in the back of a tractor trailer, or in the trunk of a car, or in the back of van, or in the back of a box truck.
“It happens every day,” he said. “And until we figure out a way to balance that immigration reform, it’s going to happen.”
A couple visits a make-shift memorial in the parking lot where authorities discovered a tractor-trailer packed with immigrants in San Antonio, July 24, 2017. Photo: Eric Gay/AP
O n July 26, nine shaken and exhausted survivors of the San Antonio journey appeared in a San Antonio court. The eight men and one woman wore the same navy-blue prison jumpsuits given to federal prisoners. Chains were wrapped around their waists and their hands were cuffed in front of them. Along with four others who appeared in court earlier in the week, they were informed that they would be held as material witnesses in the capital case against Bradley, which U.S. attorneys would present before a grand jury. Through a translator, U.S. Magistrate Judge Elizabeth Chestney explained that they were not being charged with a crime, but they would be held in federal custody under supervision by the U.S. Marshals Service. They were then led to a white Geo Group van and returned to the private prison company’s downtown detention center.
As the U.S. attorney’s office began building its case, new information about the men and women who boarded the trailer emerged. The vast majority were Mexican nationals, with at least 11 hailing from Aguascalientes. A half-dozen others came from Guatemala. Thirteen remained hospitalized, some in grave condition. Four of the survivors were minors, each having made the journey without their parents. As they worked to identify and repatriate the dead, the consulates of Mexico and Guatemala were flooded with calls from concerned family members wanting to visit their loved ones, but fearful that they would be seized by ICE agents and deported for being unauthorized. “We have been in touch with U.S authorities, and anyone who is accompanied by a consular official will not be questioned about their status,” said Reyna Torres Mendivil, the consul general of Mexico in San Antonio, at a press conference. Despite the assurances, tensions remained. Jose de Jesus Martinez, father of 16-year-old Brandon Martinez, told NPR that he was aggressively questioned by U.S. immigration officials as his comatose son was transferred between rooms. The confrontation led to nurses yelling at ICE agents to “take it outside,” said Martinez’s attorney, Alex Galvez. ICE defended its agents’ actions, saying they had no idea they were dealing with the father of a survivor.
In the days after Bradley’s arrest, mourners built a modest shrine in the corner of the Walmart parking lot where his trailer was opened. A gold-framed painting of the Virgin Mary rested against the trunk of a slender tree. Surrounding the virgin were flowers, candles, stuffed animals and, more than anything else, bottles of water. Each afternoon, people would come to pay their respects. They were overwhelmingly Latino families — grandmothers and grandfathers, young couples, men in work pants and dusty leather sandals, and many parents with their children. As shoppers bustled in and out of the store a few hundred yards away, they maintained a constant presence through sunset and into the evening, quietly saying prayers and sharing updates on the case. In a semi-circle around the tree stood 10 white crosses, one for each life lost. In front of the crosses was an overturned Styrofoam cooler. Buscando el sueño Americano, it said in Spanish. Then, in English: “Looking for a better life.”
Photo: Eric Gay/AP
T he story of the camión de la muerte, the truck of death, rattled the Latino community in Texas during a tense period of policy fights over immigration enforcement. Politicians and law enforcement officials uniformly condemned the ordeal as a human tragedy, before offering up their takes on what it said about the nation’s immigration system. “Sanctuary cities entice people to believe they can come to America and Texas and live outside the law,” Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick wrote on Facebook the night after migrants were rushed to the hospital. “Sanctuary cities also enable human smugglers and cartels. Today, these people paid a terrible price and demonstrate why we need a secure border and legal immigration reform, so we can control who enters our country.” Sessions echoed the line days later. Homan said more of the same during an appearance at the White House, telling reporters the “message” sent by so-called sanctuary cities “drives what happened in |
used after an indirect jump instruction; it is used as a signal to the instruction fetcher that the processor should not waste efforts decoding the following memory since the execution will continue at a different location. This is a very special situation, though. In most cases one has to live with this problem.
It is possible to completely or partially disable hardware prefetching for the entire processor. On Intel processors an Model Specific Register (MSR) is used for this (IA32_MISC_ENABLE, bit 9 on many processors; bit 19 disables only the adjacent cache line prefetch). This, in most cases, has to happen in the kernel since it is a privileged operation. If profiling shows that an important application running on a system suffers from bandwidth exhaustion and premature cache evictions due to hardware prefetches, using this MSR is a possibility.
6.3.2 Software Prefetching
The advantage of hardware prefetching is that programs do not have to be adjusted. The drawbacks, as just described, are that the access patterns must be trivial and that prefetching cannot happen across page boundaries. For these reasons we now have more possibilities, software prefetching the most important of them. Software prefetching does require modification of the source code by inserting special instructions. Some compilers support pragmas to more or less automatically insert prefetch instructions. On x86 and x86-64 Intel's convention for compiler intrinsics to insert these special instructions is generally used:
#include <xmmintrin.h> enum _mm_hint { _MM_HINT_T0 = 3, _MM_HINT_T1 = 2, _MM_HINT_T2 = 1, _MM_HINT_NTA = 0 }; void _mm_prefetch(void *p, enum _mm_hint h);
Programs can use the _mm_prefetch intrinsic on any pointer in the program. Most processors (certainly all x86 and x86-64 processors) ignore errors resulting from invalid pointers which make the life of the programmer significantly easier. If the passed pointer references valid memory, though, the prefetch unit will be instructed to load the data into cache and, if necessary, evict other data. Unnecessary prefetches should definitely be avoided since this might reduce the effectiveness of the caches and it consumes memory bandwidth (possibly for two cache lines in case the evicted cache line is dirty).
The different hints to be used with the _mm_prefetch intrinsic are implementation defined. That means each processor version can implement them (slightly) differently. What can generally be said is that _MM_HINT_T0 fetches data to all levels of the cache for inclusive caches and to the lowest level cache for exclusive caches. If the data item is in a higher level cache it is loaded into L1d. The _MM_HINT_T1 hint pulls the data into L2 and not into L1d. If there is an L3 cache the _MM_HINT_T2 hints can do something similar for it. These are details, though, which are weakly specified and need to be verified for the actual processor in use. In general, if the data is to be used right away using _MM_HINT_T0 is the right thing to do. Of course this requires that the L1d cache size is large enough to hold all the prefetched data. If the size of the immediately used working set is too large, prefetching everything into L1d is a bad idea and the other two hints should be used.
The fourth hint, _MM_HINT_NTA, is special in that it allows telling the processor to treat the prefetched cache line specially. NTA stands for non-temporal aligned which we already explained in Section 6.1. The program tells the processor that polluting caches with this data should be avoided as much as possible since the data is only used for a short time. The processor can therefore, upon loading, avoid reading the data into the lower level caches for inclusive cache implementations. When the data is evicted from L1d the data need not be pushed into L2 or higher but, instead, can be written directly to memory. There might be other tricks the processor designers can deploy if this hint is given. The programmer must be careful using this hint: if the immediate working set size is too large and forces eviction of a cache line loaded with the NTA hint, reloading from memory will occur.
Figure 6.7: Average with Prefetch, NPAD=31
Figure 6.7 shows the results of a test using the now familiar pointer chasing framework. The list is randomized. The difference to previous test is that the program actually spends some time at each list node (about 160 cycles). As we learned from the data in Figure 3.15, the program's performance suffers badly as soon as the working set size is larger than the last-level cache.
We can now try to improve the situation by issuing prefetch requests ahead of the computation. I.e., in each round of the loop we prefetch a new element. The distance between the prefetched node in the list and the node which is currently worked on must be carefully chosen. Given that each node is processed in 160 cycles and that we have to prefetch two cache lines ( NPAD =31), a distance of five list elements is enough.
The results in Figure 6.7 show that the prefetch does indeed help. As long as the working set size does not exceed the size of the last level cache (the machine has 512kB = 219B of L2) the numbers are identical. The prefetch instructions do not add a measurable extra burden. As soon as the L2 size is exceeded the prefetching saves between 50 to 60 cycles, up to 8%. The use of prefetch cannot hide all the penalties but it does help a bit.
AMD implements, in their family 10h of the Opteron line, another instruction: prefetchw. This instruction has so far no equivalent on the Intel side and is not available through intrinsics. The prefetchw instruction prefetches the cache line into L1 just like the other prefetch instructions. The difference is that the cache line is immediately put into 'M' state. This will be a disadvantage if no write to the cache line follows later. If there are one or more writes, they will be accelerated since the writes do not have to change the cache state—that already happened when the cache line was prefetched.
Prefetching can have bigger advantages than the meager 8% we achieved here. But it is notoriously hard to do right, especially if the same binary is supposed to perform well on a variety of machines. The performance counters provided by the CPU can help the programmer analyze prefetches. Events which can be counted and sampled include hardware prefetches, software prefetches, useful software prefetches, cache misses at the various levels, and more. In Section 7.1 we will introduce a number of these events. All these counters are machine specific.
When analyzing programs one should first look at the cache misses. When a large source of cache misses is located one should try to add a prefetch instruction for the problematic memory accesses. This should be done in one place at a time. The result of each modification should be checked by observing the performance counters measuring useful prefetch instructions. If those counters do not increase the prefetch might be wrong, it is not given enough time to load from memory, or the prefetch evicts memory from the cache which is still needed.
gcc today is able to emit prefetch instructions automatically in one situation. If a loop is iterating over an array the following option can be used:
-fprefetch-loop-arrays
The compiler will figure out whether prefetching makes sense and, if so, how far ahead it should look. For small arrays this can be a disadvantage and, if the size of the array is not known at compile time, the results might be worse. The gcc manual warns that the benefits highly depend on the form of the code and that in some situation the code might actually run slower. Programmers have to use this option carefully.
6.3.3 Special Kind of Prefetch: Speculation
The OOO execution capability of a processor allows moving instructions around if they do not conflict with each other. For instance (using this time IA-64 for the example):
st8 [r4] = 12 add r5 = r6, r7;; st8 [r18] = r5
This code sequence stores 12 at the address specified by register r4, adds the content of registers r6 and r7 and stores it in register r5. Finally it stores the sum at the address specified by register r18. The point here is that the add instruction can be executed before—or at the same time as—the first st8 instruction since there is no data dependency. But what happens if one of the addends has to be loaded?
st8 [r4] = 12 ld8 r6 = [r8];; add r5 = r6, r7;; st8 [r18] = r5
The extra ld8 instruction loads the value from the address specified by the register r8. There is an obvious data dependency between this load instruction and the following add instruction (this is the reason for the ;; after the instruction, thanks for asking). What is critical here is that the new ld8 instruction—unlike the add instruction—cannot be moved in front of the first st8. The processor cannot determine quickly enough during the instruction decoding whether the store and load conflict, i.e., whether r4 and r8 might have same value. If they do have the same value, the st8 instruction would determine the value loaded into r6. What is worse, the ld8 might also bring with it a large latency in case the load misses the caches. The IA-64 architecture supports speculative loads for this case:
ld8.a r6 = [r8];; [... other instructions...] st8 [r4] = 12 ld8.c.clr r6 = [r8];; add r5 = r6, r7;; st8 [r18] = r5
The new ld8.a and ld8.c.clr instructions belong together and replace the ld8 instruction in the previous code sequence. The ld8.a instruction is the speculative load. The value cannot be used directly but the processor can start the work. At the time when the ld8.c.clr instruction is reached the content might have been loaded already (given there is a sufficient number of instructions in the gap). The arguments for this instruction must match that for the ld8.a instruction. If the preceding st8 instruction does not overwrite the value (i.e., r4 and r8 are the same), nothing has to be done. The speculative load does its job and the latency of the load is hidden. If the store and load do conflict the ld8.c.clr reloads the value from memory and we end up with the semantics of a normal ld8 instruction.
Speculative loads are not (yet?) widely used. But as the example shows it is a very simple yet effective way to hide latencies. Prefetching is basically equivalent and, for processors with fewer registers, speculative loads probably do not make much sense. Speculative loads have the (sometimes big) advantage of loading the value directly into the register and not into the cache line where it might be evicted again (for instance, when the thread is descheduled). If speculation is available it should be used.
6.3.4 Helper Threads
When one tries to use software prefetching one often runs into problems with the complexity of the code. If the code has to iterate over a data structure (a list in our case) one has to implement two independent iterations in the same loop: the normal iteration doing the work and the second iteration, which looks ahead, to use prefetching. This easily gets complex enough that mistakes are likely.
Furthermore, it is necessary to determine how far to look ahead. Too little and the memory will not be loaded in time. Too far and the just loaded data might have been evicted again. Another problem is that prefetch instructions, although they do not block and wait for the memory to be loaded, take time. The instruction has to be decoded, which might be noticeable if the decoder is too busy, for instance, due to well written/generated code. Finally, the code size of the loop is increased. This decreases the L1i efficiency. If one tries to avoid parts of this cost by issuing multiple prefetch requests in a row (in case the second load does not depend on the result of the first) one runs into problems with the number of outstanding prefetch requests.
An alternative approach is to perform the normal operation and the prefetch completely separately. This can happen using two normal threads. The threads must obviously be scheduled so that the prefetch thread is populating a cache accessed by both threads. There are two special solutions worth mentioning:
Use hyper-threads (see Figure 3.22) on the same core. In this case the prefetch can go into L2 (or even L1d).
Use dumber threads than SMT threads which can do nothing but prefetch and other simple operations. This is an option processor manufacturers might explore.
The use of hyper-threads is particularly intriguing. As we have seen on Figure 3.22, the sharing of caches is a problem if the hyper-threads execute independent code. If, instead, one thread is used as a prefetch helper thread this is not a problem. To the contrary, it is the desired effect since the lowest level cache is preloaded. Furthermore, since the prefetch thread is mostly idle or waiting for memory, the normal operation of the other hyper-thread is not disturbed much if it does not have to access main memory itself. The latter is exactly what the prefetch helper thread prevents.
The only tricky part is to ensure that the helper thread is not running too far ahead. It must not completely pollute the cache so that the oldest prefetched values are evicted again. On Linux, synchronization is easily done using the futex system call [futexes] or, at a little bit higher cost, using the POSIX thread synchronization primitives.
Figure 6.8: Average with Helper Thread, NPAD=31
The benefits of the approach can be seen in Figure 6.8. This is the same test as in Figure 6.7 only with the additional result added. The new test creates an additional helper thread which runs about 100 list entries ahead and reads (not only prefetches) all the cache lines of each list element. In this case we have two cache lines per list element ( NPAD =31 on a 32-bit machine with 64 byte cache line size).
The two threads are scheduled on two hyper-threads of the same core. The test machine has only one core but the results should be about the same if there is more than one core. The affinity functions, which we will introduce in Section 6.4.3, are used to tie the threads down to the appropriate hyper-thread.
To determine which two (or more) processors the OS knows are hyper-threads, the NUMA_cpu_level_mask interface from libNUMA can be used (see Section 12).
#include <libNUMA.h> ssize_t NUMA_cpu_level_mask(size_t destsize, cpu_set_t *dest, size_t srcsize, const cpu_set_t*src, unsigned int level);
This interface can be used to determine the hierarchy of CPUs as they are connected through caches and memory. Of interest here is level 1 which corresponds to hyper-threads. To schedule two threads on two hyper-threads the libNUMA functions can be used (error handling dropped for brevity):
cpu_set_t self; NUMA_cpu_self_current_mask(sizeof(self), &self); cpu_set_t hts; NUMA_cpu_level_mask(sizeof(hts), &hts, sizeof(self), &self, 1); CPU_XOR(&hts, &hts, &self);
After this code is executed we have two CPU bit sets. self can be used to set the affinity of the current thread and the mask in hts can be used to set the affinity of the helper thread. This should ideally happen before the thread is created. In Section 6.4.3 we will introduce the interface to set the affinity. If there is no hyper-thread available the NUMA_cpu_level_mask function will return 1. This can be used as a sign to avoid this optimization.
The result of this benchmark might be surprising (or maybe not). If the working set fits into L2, the overhead of the helper thread reduces the performance by between 10% and 60% (ignore the smallest working set sizes again, the noise is too high). This should be expected since, if all the data is already in the L2 cache, the prefetch helper thread only uses system resources without contributing to the execution.
Once the L2 size is exhausted the picture changes, though. The prefetch helper thread helps to reduce the runtime by about 25%. We still see a rising curve simply because the prefetches cannot be processed fast enough. The arithmetic operations performed by the main thread and the memory load operations of the helper thread do complement each other, though. The resource collisions are minimal which causes this synergistic effect.
The results of this test should be transferable to many other situations. Hyper-threads, often not useful due to cache pollution, shine in these situations and should be taken advantage of. The sys file system allows a program to find the thread siblings (see the thread_siblings column in Table 5.3). Once this information is available the program just has to define the affinity of the threads and then run the loop in two modes: normal operation and prefetching. The amount of memory prefetched should depend on the size of the shared cache. In this example the L2 size is relevant and the program can query the size using
sysconf(_SC_LEVEL2_CACHE_SIZE)
Whether or not the progress of the helper thread must be restricted depends on the program. In general it is best to make sure there is some synchronization since scheduling details could otherwise cause significant performance degradations.
6.3.5 Direct Cache Access
One sources of cache misses in a modern OS is the handling of incoming data traffic. Modern hardware, like Network Interface Cards (NICs) and disk controllers, has the ability to write the received or read data directly into memory without involving the CPU. This is crucial for the performance of the devices we have today, but it also causes problems. Assume an incoming packet from a network: the OS has to decide how to handle it by looking at the header of the packet. The NIC places the packet into memory and then notifies the processor about the arrival. The processor has no chance to prefetch the data since it does not know when the data will arrive, and maybe not even where exactly it will be stored. The result is a cache miss when reading the header.
Intel has added technology in their chipsets and CPUs to alleviate this problem [directcacheaccess]. The idea is to populate the cache of the CPU which will be notified about the incoming packet with the packet's data. The payload of the packet is not critical here, this data will, in general, be handled by higher-level functions, either in the kernel or at user level. The packet header is used to make decisions about the way the packet has to be handled and so this data is needed immediately.
The network I/O hardware already has DMA to write the packet. That means it communicates directly with the memory controller which potentially is integrated in the Northbridge. Another side of the memory controller is the interface to the processors through the FSB (assuming the memory controller is not integrated into the CPU itself).
The idea behind Direct Cache Access (DCA) is to extend the protocol between the NIC and the memory controller. In Figure 6.9 the first figure shows the beginning of the DMA transfer in a regular machine with North- and Southbridge.
DMA Initiated DMA and DCA Executed Figure 6.9: Direct Cache Access
The NIC is connected to (or is part of) the Southbridge. It initiates the DMA access but provides the new information about the packet header which should be pushed into the processor's cache.
The traditional behavior would be, in step two, to simply complete the DMA transfer with the connection to the memory. For the DMA transfers with the DCA flag set the Northbridge additionally sends the data on the FSB with a special, new DCA flag. The processor always snoops the FSB and, if it recognizes the DCA flag, it tries to load the data directed to the processor into the lowest cache. The DCA flag is, in fact, a hint; the processor can freely ignore it. After the DMA transfer is finished the processor is signaled.
The OS, when processing the packet, first has to determine what kind of packet it is. If the DCA hint is not ignored, the loads the OS has to perform to identify the packet most likely hit the cache. Multiply this saving of hundreds of cycles per packet with tens of thousands of packets which can be processed per second, and the savings add up to very significant numbers, especially when it comes to latency.
Without the integration of I/O hardware (NIC in this case), chipset, and CPUs such an optimization is not possible. It is therefore necessary to make sure to select the platform wisely if this technology is needed.One of the Trudeau government's contributions to peace and stability in Africa is expected to include a revamped training mission in Niger that has been — until now — the purview of Canada's highly secretive special forces, CBC News has learned.
Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan was slated to arrive in Africa on Tuesday on a fact-finding mission for future peacekeeping operations.
But his assessment comes as the Liberal government is also considering a separate request to turn a special forces capacity-building mission, known as Operation Naberius, into a regular army training mission for troops in the war-torn country, multiple sources tell CBC News.
The switch could happen as early as September, not long after Sajjan attends a major international UN peacekeeping conference in London.
In an interview, Sajjan confirmed the proposal is being being debated.
"We are looking at that mission," Sajjan told the CBC. "There has been a really great impact made. And before we make a decision on that mission and what needs to be done, if there are other resources we need to bring to the table; we need to do the full analysis."
The operation has flown almost entirely under the radar since it was instituted over three years ago by the former Conservative government, which at the time faced repeated calls from the international community to help beat back Islamic militants, who have taken over a large swath of territory in neighbouring Mali.
Travellers driving from Niamey, Niger, line up to be searched at the entrance of Gao, northern Mali, in February 2013. Soldiers from Niger and Mali patrolled downtown Gao on foot, combing the sand footpaths through empty market stalls to prevent radical Islamic fighters from returning to this embattled city in northern Mali. (Jerome Delay/Associated Press)
A handful of elite troops have over the years helped train the Niger Armed Forces in marksmanship, reconnaissance and other basic military skills, something officials now believe might be better suited to regular army soldiers.
It has also, at times, been precarious.
Last year, Canadian trainers were pulled out of a town in Niger that had been the scene of heavy fighting between government troops and Boko Haram militants. No Canadians were involved in combat at Diffa, which sits on the border with Nigeria, but the incident served to underscore the instability in the country.
Much of the Canadian operation has dovetailed with an annual, U.S.-led multinational training plan known as Exercise Flintlock, in which forces from a number of West African nations are schooled in anti-terrorism operations.
The country's top military commander, Gen. Jonathan Vance, last month told dignitaries at an army change of command ceremony on Parliament Hill that coming "very soon" there will be a capacity-building mission in Africa.
But Sajjan said Vance was speaking more broadly than just the training in Niger.
"We've been thinking in a much wider perspective from the get-go," he said. "Once it's known how much we're willing to resource it; how much we're willing to put in and then [we'll] eventually decide on the location — or locations."
Fact-finding on peacekeeping
Operation Naberius fits within the Trudeau government's stated desire of not committing forces to combat, but it also falls outside the framework of United Nations peacekeeping.
That is what Sajjan is in Africa to investigate.
He said he's determined to do the fact-finding in order to give cabinet the best advice on current peacekeeping missions.
The trip, which includes former peacekeeping general Roméo Dallaire and Louise Arbour, who is part of the defence review panel, will make stops in Ethiopia, Kenya, Tanzania and the Democratic Republic of Congo.
There's been speculation that Canadian troops could deploy in support of existing operations in Mali and even the Central African Republic.
Sajjan's officials say the government has not made a decision about the location for a possible future UN mission and no link should be made between the itinerary and any possible future missions.Photo
The summer heat is finally here — makes you want to get out on the water and splash around with some oars, no? Especially when you see tranquil scenes like the cover of this book, how can you not get up for a little boating?
Photo
Except the problem with rowing, as I’ve held forth before in this very space, is that for those whose feet are tied into shells like these, it isn’t all Thomas Eakins-oil-painted calm and aquatic recreation. Those aren’t boats out there; they’re torture devices.
To its credit, “The Boys in the Boat,” which came out in June and tells the remarkable story of how a University of Washington crew won a gold medal at the Berlin Olympics — and the touching, even more remarkable story of how rowing enabled one of the crew members, Joe Rantz, to get a college education and overcome poverty and familial abandonment — doesn’t skip over this reality.
When you row, the major muscles in your arms, legs, and back — particularly the quadriceps, biceps, deltoids latissimus dorsi, abdominals, hamstrings, and gluteal muscles — do most of the grunt work, propelling the boat forward against the unrelenting resistance of water and wind. At the same time, scores of smaller muscles in the neck, wrists, hands, and even feet continually fine-tune your efforts, holding the body in constant equipoise in order to maintain the exquisite balance necessary to keep a twenty-four-inch-wide vessel — roughly the width of a man’s waist — on an even keel. The result of all this muscular effort, both on the larger scale and the smaller, is that your body burns calories and consumes oxygen at a rate that is unmatched in almost any other human endeavor. Physiologists, in fact, have calculated that rowing a two-thousand meter race — the Olympic standard — takes the same physiological toll as playing two basketball games back-to-back. And it exacts that toll in about six minutes. A well-conditioned oarsman or oarswoman competing at the highest levels must be able to take in and consume as much as eight liters of oxygen per minute; an average male is capable of taking in roughly four to five liters at most. Pound for pound, Olympic oarsmen may take in and process as much oxygen as a thoroughbred racehorse. This extraordinary rate of oxygen intake is only of so much value, it should be noted. While 75-80 percent of the energy a rower produces in a two-thousand-meter race is aerobic energy fueled by oxygen, races always begin, and usually end, with hard sprints. These sprints require levels of energy production that far exceed the body’s capacity to produce aerobic energy, regardless of oxygen intake. Instead, the body must immediately produce anaerobic energy. This, in turn, produces large quantities of lactic acid, and that acid rapidly builds up in the tissue of the muscles. The consequence is that the muscles often begin to scream in agony almost from the outset of a race and continue screaming until the very end. And it’s not just the muscles that scream. The skeletal system to which all those muscles are attached also undergoes tremendous strains and stresses. Without proper training and conditioning — and sometimes even with them — competitive rowers are apt to experience a wide variety of ills in the knees, hips, shoulders, elbows, ribs, neck, and above all the spine. These injuries and complaints range from blisters to severe tendonitis, bursitis, slipped vertebrae, rotator cuff dysfunction, and stress fractures, particularly fractures of the ribs. The common denominator in all these conditions — whether in the lungs, the muscles, or the bones — is overwhelming pain.
Now, all sports extract pain. I know, I’ve seen the Gatorade commercials. But here’s the thing about rowing: you do all that rowing, all the hard training, so you can... row some more, in more rowing races. The guy throwing around truck tires in preparation for the football season, he’s still a football player, with a football game waiting for him. A rower isn’t a player, doesn’t get any games. A rower is really just the human form of a single verb: to row. What’s more, much of that verb’s action consists of going back and forth, back and forth, between two spots on a river or lake. Or even going nowhere, either on ergometers or in indoor rowing tanks.
But what “Boys in the Boat” shows — as does the life of Harry Parker, another Olympian oarsman, who died last week shortly after finishing his 51st season coaching at Harvard, where he won 16 official and unofficial national championships (and finished second to Washington this spring) — is that sometimes all that going back and forth, all that repetitive churning of the water, all that pain and no games, still sometimes take you someplace great.Sen. John McCain: 'I'll be back soon'
In this July 11, 2017, file photo, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., arrives on Capitol Hill in Washington. McCain has been diagnosed with a brain tumor after a blood clot was removed. (Photo11: Jacquelyn Martin, AP)
The day after doctors announced he had aggressive brain cancer, Sen. John McCain said he planned to be back to work soon.
"I greatly appreciate the outpouring of support - unfortunately for my sparring partners in Congress, I'll be back soon, so stand-by!" the Arizona Republican wrote on Twitter.
I greatly appreciate the outpouring of support - unfortunately for my sparring partners in Congress, I'll be back soon, so stand-by! — John McCain (@SenJohnMcCain) July 20, 2017
One of the many people calling McCain with their support: Former president George W. Bush. Bush said he called the senator this morning to wish him well and to encourage him to fight.
"Instead, he encouraged me," Bush said in a statement. "I was impressed by his spirit and determination. He has devoted his life to this country. Thankfully, he is committed to continuing that service."
McCain has been diagnosed with glioblastoma, a type of brain tumor that is difficult to treat, experts say.
Read more:
Read or Share this story: https://usat.ly/2vFEoNvThe current world population contains an ever-increasing increased proportion of the elderly. This is due to global improvements in medical care and access to such care. Thus, a growing incidence of age-related neurodegenerative disorders is to be expected. Increased longevity also allows more time for interaction with adverse environmental factors that have the potential exert a gradual pressure, facilitating the onset of organismic aging. Nearly all neurodegenerative disorders have a relatively minor genetic element and a larger idiopathic component. It is likely that some of the unknown factors promoting neurological disease involve the appearance of some deleterious aspects of senescence, elicited prematurely by low but pervasive levels of toxic materials present in the environment. This review considers the nature of such possible toxicants and how they may hasten neurosenescence. An enhanced rate of emergence of normal age-related changes in the brain can lead to increased incidence of those specific neurological disorders where aging is an essential requirement. In addition, some xenobiotic agents appear to have the capability of engendering specific neurodegenerative disorders and some of these are also considered.
Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.As the holiday season quickly approaches, many local humanist groups are gearing up to actively give back to their local communities. Throughout the next month, humanist groups are participating in group volunteering events, hosting charitable fundraisers for local non-profits and collecting food items to support their local food banks.
At their holiday party in December, the End of the Line Humanists in Oak Park, Illinois, will collect canned and packaged food, toiletries and funds for the Oak Park River Forest Food Pantry. The local group even developed a helpful document of acceptable items for donation.
The Central New York Humanists in Syracuse, New York, have been asking their members to bring non-perishable food items to all of their events from October through December. They are also running a virtual food drive for those who would rather give online. They have already collected seventy-two pounds of food so far! And on December 13, members will meet at their local mall to help run a gift wrapping station. The money collected supports Vera House, a local domestic abuse shelter and advocacy center.
The American University Humanist Community & Chaplaincy are working with the George Mason University Secular Student Alliance this coming weekend to prepare and distribute meals to homeless people in Washington, DC.
On Thanksgiving morning, members of the Sunday Assembly Los Angeles will prepare and bring meals, as well as blankets and other needed items, to the homeless through Gobble Gobble Give.
Humanists Doing Good in Grand Junction, Colorado, will once again be celebrating the HumanLight holiday by asking their members to bake treats at home. Then all the baked treats will be brought to their HumanLight and Treat Packaging Party. They have teams of volunteers who go out on Christmas day to look for people who are stuck working (hotel staff, snow crews, gas station attendants, taxi drivers, etc.) or who are otherwise away from their families for the holidays and deliver the packaged treats to them. While Christmas Day may not have the same meaning to us as it does to some religious people, members of Humanists Doing Good like to take time out to thank and surprise people who are keeping our society functioning or who are simply not getting to spend their time with their friends and family. Sometimes members donate things like handmade slippers and hats that we also deliver to the homeless.
Another good deed that Humanists Doing Good do every fall around Thanksgiving time is raking leaves for strangers and people who need assistance. They begin by posting flyers in a neighborhood to let people in the area know that they will be coming. The flyers also encourage those who know of people who could use assistance, such as the elderly or disabled, to contact Humanists Doing Good to add them to our priority list for free raking. They select a neighborhood that their city will be vacuuming up leaves from the street on soon and then they have their volunteers enter the neighborhood and rake leaves for free and with no strings attached. This has proven to be a great way for this local group to get out and meet people in their community and it has even led to them to finding future members of their board of directors. People always seem to appreciate the help and their volunteers have a great time raking together for a few hours.
On Christmas Day, Lehigh Valley Humanists (LVH) in Allentown, Pennsylvania, plan to host a Christmas dinner for needy and elderly people in the area. Last year, Giovanni Landi, a member of the Lehigh Valley Humanists, had the wonderful idea to host this dinner, and he cooked over twenty whole turkeys and two dozen hams in his pizzeria’s pizza ovens. Over 300 dinners were served by forty volunteers through delivery or at his restaurant, Pies On Pizzeria. This year, LVH members will help assemble and deliver dinners, serve walk-ins, work in the kitchen and help wherever they are needed. Meals are offered free of charge as a thank you to the community.
The Ethical Humanist Society of Chicago’s Sunday School is again sponsoring a Holiday Toy and Gift Card Drive to benefit Between Friends Chicago, a local domestic violence prevention and support group. Their clients are women, often with young children, who are rebuilding their lives after abusive relationships. Members collect new toys for kids and grocery and department store gift cards for the moms. Along with the toys, the group collected about $300 in store cards last year.
Have you or your local humanist group given back to your local community during the holiday season and would like to share it with others? Leave a comment below!Saudi Arabia has regained its title as Canada's top non-U.S. destination for exporting military goods after having been narrowly bumped last year by the United Kingdom, according to a federal report on arms sales.
The report, prepared by Global Affairs Canada and tabled in Parliament on Tuesday, reveals that the Saudi government purchased over $142 million worth of Canadian arms in 2016. That accounted for nearly 20 per cent of all Canadian munitions exports reported in the annual filing.
The report does not factor in arms exports to the United States, due to a long-standing exemption agreement. However, as stated in the report, as a general rule shipments to the U.S. account for nearly 50 per cent of all military good exports from Canada.
The total value of military goods sold abroad to countries other than the U.S. last year nearly reached $718 million. Canada's NATO partners and traditional allies made up the bulk of the export market, including Australia, which purchased $115.8 million of Canadian-made equipment — second behind Saudi Arabia.
The sales to Saudi Arabia, however, will likely the draw the most attention and potential criticism from human rights groups, which have fought a protracted battle to halt the $14.8-billion sale of light armoured vehicles by General Dynamics Land Systems Canada — a deal approved by the former Conservative government, but green-lit by the Liberals.
The executive director for the anti-armament group Project Ploughshares says the most recent report once again signals an unwillingness on the part of the government to change its stance on Saudi Arabia.
"Just the fact that the top recipient of Canadian military goods is what is known to be one of the worst human rights violators in the world must in my view raise some questions about the purported strength of Canadian military export controls and the country's commitment to the protection and promotion of human rights internationally," said Cesar Jaramillo.
Earlier in the spring, the Liberals tabled legislation that will enable Canada to join the international Arms Trade Treaty (ATT), which involves 130 countries and regulates the international trade in conventional weapons.
Jaramillo said he is concerned that the Canadian public is still in the dark about exports to the U.S., which is not bound by the provisions of the ATT.
"This is inconsistent with the expectation and the specific obligations of the treaty," Jaramillo said.
Report more transparent, accurate
The structure of the report was significantly overhauled compared to previous years after the ministry promised to increase transparency and accountability last |
the first Indian to pose naked for Playboy.
Ms Chopra will appear in the magazine's November issue.Saudi Arabia’s well-funded public relations apparatus moved quickly after Saturday’s explosive execution of Shiite political dissident Nimr Al-Nimr to shape how the news is covered in the United States.
The Saudi side of the story is getting a particularly effective boost in the American media through pundits who are quoted justifying the execution, in many cases without a mention of their funding or close affiliation with the Saudi Arabian government.
A Politico article about the rising tensions between Saudi Arabia and Iran by Nahal Toosi, for instance, quoted only three sources: the State Department, which provided a muted response to the executions; the Saudi government; and Fahad Nazer, identified as a “political analyst with JTG Inc.” Nazer defended the executions, saying that they served as a “message … aimed at Saudi Arabia’s own militants regardless of their sect.”
What Politico did not reveal was that Nazer is himself a former political analyst at the Saudi Embassy in Washington. He is currently a non-resident fellow at the Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington, a think tank formed last year that discloses that it is fully funded by the Saudi Embassy and the United Arab Emirates.
The Washington Post quoted consultant Theodore Karasik of Gulf State Analytics as saying that the executions were a “powerful message that Saudi Arabia is intent on standing up to its regional rival.” Karasik is a columnist at Al Arabiya, an English-language news organization based in the UAE and owned by Middle East Broadcasting Center, a private news conglomerate that has long been financially backed by members of the Saudi royal family. Its current chairman is Sheikh Waleed bin Ibrahim, a billionaire Saudi businessman whose brother in law was the late King Fahd. (Al Arabiya‘s coverage of the crisis is almost comically pro-Saudi, featuring headlines like “Storming embassies.. Iranian speciality.”)
The U.S. government is obviously not eager to alienate a government that President Obama has wooed with warm words and over $90 billion in arms sales. The diplomatic offensive by Saudi-financed flacks and media has provided some space for it to provide a muted response to the execution.NEW DELHI: Taking a swipe at Kapil Sibal over his demand that hearing on the Ram Janmabhoomi case be deferred, PM Modi asked him and his “new leader” to clarify whether Kapil Sibal was with those who want the temple, or those who want the Babri Masjid.
The PM, at a rally at Bhabhar in Banaskantha, attacked Congress for the lawyer-turned-politician’s submission in the Supreme Court seeking to defer it till 2019 Lok Sabha elections.
“They (Congress) are not answering why they are linking the Ram Mandir hearing with the Lok Sabha polls. Why are you obstructing the disposal of the Ayodhya case? They (Congress) are not replying but he (Kapil Sibal) is saying he is not the advocate of the Sunni Waqf Board. Give the answer, are you with those who want to construct Ram Temple or those who are for Babri Masjid? If you cannot give the answer tell your new leader to answer which side you are on,” Modi said, without naming Rahul Gandhi who is set to become the Congress president.
Times of India official twitter handles tweeted, “You want mandir or masjid, PM @narendramodi asks Congress.”
Following the arrival of this tweet, people have been responding to the PM Modi in a different way.
MP Asadin Owaisi has responded to this tweet saying “Are you a Prime Minister of Mandir only or of all religions,remember that you have taken oath on Constitution.”
Source: ANIIkaruga Creator Is Working On A New Shooter For PlayStation 4
By Sato. August 14, 2014. 1:50am
Ikaruga creator Hiroshi Iuchi has been working at M2 for about a year now, following his time with G.Rev, Treasure, and years of freelance work. On his official blog, he announced that he’s currently working on a new shooter for PlayStation 4.
Iuchi mentions in his blog that as part of M2, he’s been helping out on various projects for the company, but that he got the go-ahead from M2 to talk a little bit about his new game, called Ubusana.
While he couldn’t share much as far as the game’s features and contents go, Iuchi revealed that it will be some sort of shooting game that will be a downloadable title for PlayStation 4; however, he doesn’t rule out the possibility of it being a multi-platform game.
According to Iuchi, it will be a while until the game is released, and the game’s systems are currently being polished, while working is ongoing on adjustments using the original prototype, that was known as the “50YW” plan.
Iuchi also mentioned that he normally wouldn’t make an announcement without much to show for it, but it was M2 president Naoki Horii who told him, “I’m sure that those who buy shooting games will patiently wait even if we make an earlier announcement.”
More details on Ubusana will be revealed in the near future.TAMPA — A photo depicting a woman dangling a baby boy over an apartment balcony led to her arrest Tuesday after she posted the image to the social media website Instagram, police said.
Tampa police were called after friends of Aisha Jean Clark, 25, spotted the photo posted to her Instagram account with the handle "RatMove13," according to an arrest report. The picture appeared to show Clark holding the boy by his right arm over a railing, police said.
Officers arrived at Clark's home at 1566 Nuccio Parkway about noon Tuesday. When asked if she knew why they were there, Clark laughed and brought out an iPad displaying the Instagram photo, the arrest report stated.
"I was mad and I was making a point," Clark told police. "I can do what I want with my baby. Nobody can stop me."
Clark and her baby were wearing the same clothes as they were in the photo when police arrived.
"This single act would reasonably be expected to have resulted in serious physical injury or a substantial risk of death to the infant," an officer wrote.
Clark was booked in the Hillsborough County Jail on a charge of child neglect and held without bail. On Wednesday, her Instagram account was set on private.Michael Andretti has been in the news the past few weeks primarily concerning matters that his team may expand to five cars next season.
His other team, the personal one at home is expanding too as Andretti announced through his Twitter on Monday that he and his wife, Jodi Ann Paterson, are expecting twins -- their first children together.
Andretti has three other children: Marco, 26; Marissa, 22; and Lucca, 14.
Andretti Autosport's future is less certain.
Defending IndyCar Series champion Ryan Hunter-Reay is under contract for next season and Marco and EJ Viso are expected to finalize deals the coming months. The team is also working to retain the services of three-race winner James Hinchcliffe and could also pick up defending Indianapolis 500 runner-up Carlos Munoz, who competes for the team in the Firestone Indy Lights Series.
Life is Full of Surprises & Blessings. I'm Happy 2 announce my beautiful wife, Jodi & I are Expecting twins!!👶👶🍼🍼. — Michael Andretti (@michaelandretti) September 23, 2013Matters of concern: In an online survey of a representative sample of British Columbian adults, commissioned by Business in Vancouver and carried out by Insights West, roughly three in 10 respondents think housing, poverty and homelessness is collectively the most pressing concern in the province – ahead of health care and the economy and jobs | All data: Insights West
The biggest concerns for British Columbians heading into the next provincial election are housing, poverty and homelessness, according to a new exclusive poll conducted this month by Insights West for Business in Vancouver.
For 29% of respondents, housing, homelessness and poverty in B.C. concerned them more than health care, which 18% of respondents said was their biggest worry, and the economy and jobs, at 17%.
Almost half of British Columbians, or 46%, believe that the provincial government has done a good job dealing with the economy and jobs, that’s up seven points since May. Two in five are satisfied with how Christy Clark’s government is handling crime and public safety.
Insights West conducted the online study November 18-21, among 806 adult British Columbians.
“There is an increase in the number of British Columbians who believe the government is handling the economy and jobs well,” said Mario Canseco, Insights West vice-president of public affairs. “It used to be 39%, and now it’s at 46%, so they gained seven points in six months.”
He said the notion among voters that the Liberals have been stable stewards of the economy appears to have solidified six months out from the May election.
“It’s a good story for them,” he said in an interview. “B.C. is doing better [economically] than many other provinces and voters are noticing.”
Canseco said the politics surrounding high housing costs and critically low rental home vacancy in Metro Vancouver has pulled housing to the forefront of voters’ minds.
In May 2016, 22% of British Columbians said housing was the biggest issue facing the province, and now it’s 29%, he said.
He said the government’s introduction of the 15% tax on foreign property buyers in August, and its willingness to allow Vancouver to tax empty homes, seems to be paying political dividends.
“When we first asked about foreign ownership and housing six months ago, only 11% of British Columbians said the Liberals were doing a good job,” he said. “Now it’s 41%, so they go 30 points higher than what they did six months ago. I think people reacted very well to the tax; reacted very well to something they’re not paying for.”
“The economy in B.C. by Canadian standards has been performing reasonably well, especially in the Lower Mainland,” said Jock Finlayson, executive vice-president and chief policy officer of the Business Council of British Columbia
The relatively stable economy has allowed other issues to rise to the forefront, Finlayson said, after reviewing sections of the poll results.
“The public here isn’t necessarily focused on what I would say are frontline economic issues of jobs and overall growth,” he said. “That’s obviously the strongest card that the government has to play in coming election cycle.”
He said the government will likely try to earn another term by focusing on jobs and its support for the resource economy.
“B.C. has been leading the country in job growth for a couple of years – 3% year-over-year increase in employment, in the latest data,” he said. “In the Greater Vancouver area it’s actually closer to 5%.”
He said the last election included a lot of LNG boosting by the Liberals. “I suspect we’ll see less of that in 2017.”
Finlayson said the NDP will have to focus on social policies to make inroads. “I think it will be around housing affordability, around the incidence of low income and poverty, and concerns also around the cost of living.”
About a third of respondents said they were content with the government’s handling of the environment, while the government earned the lowest ranking on accountability, at 22%.
Reforming alcohol sales (45%), pushing for LNG development (39%) and the province’s handling of First Nations relations (37%) were among the most supported government initiatives.
Just one in five British Columbians said they are satisfied with how the provincial government is managing TransLink and in dealing with questions related to political fundraising.
The data was weighted according to Canadian census figures for age, gender and region and has a margin for error of plus or minus 3.5 percentage points. •Swapping decimal for cdecimal on Python 2
Python 3 includes a faster re-implementation of the decimal standard library, called cdecimal. How much faster?
“Typical performance gains are between 30x for I/O heavy benchmarks and 80x for numerical programs”.
Nice! Thankfully we don’t have to port all our code to Python 3 before we can use it; it runs on Python 2 as well. You can install it either by downloading via the external URL listed on its official pip page, or if that annoys you as much as it annoyed me, you can pip install it from the m3-cdecimal pip upload with pip install m3-cdecimal.
If your code is quite simple, you might be able to just swap from decimal import Decimal to from cdecimal import Decimal to get an instant speed boost. Unfortunately, if any of your dependencies imports decimal.Decimal, this might blow up in any of several ways.
A more all-encompassing solution is to swap the two in the module cache sys.modules, right at the top - before any other imports - with this snippet:
import sys import cdecimal # Ensure any import of decimal gets cdecimal instead. sys. modules [ 'decimal' ] = cdecimal
As long as you get the first lines of every one of your entry points, this should work really well.
Unfortunately, at YPlan we run our application via a third party monitoring script, so we don’t have control over the very first lines of Python that get executed. It also turns out the script ends up importing some dependencies that import decimal, which would require a lot of brittle monkey-patching of these modules if we wanted to do the swap at our entry point(s).
At first I thought this meant we were out of options, but googling lead me to find an eleven year old blog post on patching Python’s standard library by Bob Ippolito that looked like what I wanted. It covers fixing a buggy Python interpreter in an old version of Mac OS X, but the main technique is still just as applicable, though something you’d rarely use. This post is therefore a bit of a recycle of that one for the current issue.
Python imports modules from a search path, and you might be familiar with extending this via the PYTHONPATH environment variable. However, you can also add to the search path by creating.pth files as noted in the Python site module docs. These are read during interpreter initialization and normally contain one directory per line to add to the search path. The real magic of.pth files is this little extra, which the manual explains with a single short sentence:
Lines starting with import (followed by space or tab) are executed.
Since import ing a module allows arbitrary code execution, we can use this to swap decimal and cdecimal for all code run on our python interpreter, before any program code is executed. Using a virtualenv means our system Python will be unaffected so we don’t need to worry about breaking any OS tools.
First, we need to create a.pth file in the default search path at e.g. /path/to/virtualenv/lib/python2.7/site-packages/my_patches.pth, containing the one-liner:
import my_patches
This will then try to import the my_patches module, which we’ll create at /path/to/virtualenv/lib/python2.7/site-packages/my_patches.py with:
import sys import cdecimal # Ensure any import of decimal gets cdecimal instead. sys. modules [ 'decimal' ] = cdecimal
Then it’s done! It’s quite easy to test, for example using ipython :
In [ 1 ]: import decimal, cdecimal In [ 2 ]: decimal is cdecimal Out [ 2 ]: True
You can also check other modules are importing cdecimal, e.g. simplejson.encoder which does from decimal import Decimal :
In [ 3 ]: import simplejson.encoder In [ 4 ]: simplejson. encoder. Decimal is cdecimal. Decimal Out [ 4 ]: True
Ta-daa! The only thing that remains is to benchmark and see if your code is actually faster. Enjoy!
Tags: pythonThe PlayStation 4 doesn’t support all games that run on Xbox One and vice versa, because of the differences in terms of hardware specs and user interface. The PS 4 is sold for $399 (the US), or 399 EUR (Europe), or £349 (the UK) or $549 AUD (Australia) and it’s not affordable to everyone. Some hackers tried to jailbreak it in the past, one of them being named CTurt, but he decided to stop researching the PS 4. FailOverFlow is a famous hacking group who teased the jailbreak fans with a footage of this console playing a Pokemon rom using an emulator, but they didn’t release the jailbreak either. So, who will release the PS4 jailbreak in the near future?
So, after CTurt confirmed in December that the jailbreak was official, saying that he “just broke WebKit process out of a FreeBSD jail (cred->cr_prison = &prison0)”, he backed off and we’ve never heard anything from him again. We almost accepted the fact that no one else will ever jailbreak the PS 4 console, but our optimism has returned when, recently, a lesser known group named “H3ck34” has said that soon, they will release a fully functional dongle.
Their identity remained unconfirmed, but rumors say that they have something to do with the Cobra team, the group that released many PS3 hardware mods. If you visit their Twitter profile, you will see their announcements where they claimed that the dongle will the launched on February 20 and cfw a month later.
We can’t prove that the H3ck34 group is linked to the Cobra team, if they’re the same guys who have been working on a PS4 jailbreak and if the new team is legitimate, but we don’t have other option but to wait and see if they will release the dongle on February 20. The PS4 Jailbreak USB dongle is expected to be sold for $70 and will allow players to run pirated fames in system software update 3.15.August 19th, 2015
Public Health England says truthful realistic things about e-cigarettes
Today sees a new e-cigarettes assessment from England’s public health authority, Public Health England. It includes an excellent evidence review by Professors Ann McNeill and Peter Hajek and their colleagues. Great kudos must go to Kevin Fenton, Rosanna O’Connor, Martin Dockrell and their colleague at PHE who have been determined to get this issue right – to maximise the benefits and to take an evidence-based approach to managing the risks.
The package is here: E-cigarettes: an evidence update comprising:
It has had great media traction in the UK (Google news) though with perhaps too much emphasis on whether the National Health Service should pay for e-cigarettes – something that would be only permitted when medically licensed products become available (see comment on this below). But the overall endorsement of vaping as a harm reduction strategy for public health is strong and compelling. Also see the statement of the New Nicotine Alliance:
Key messages – from the short briefing on implications for policy and practice….
E-cigarettes: a new foundation for evidence-based policy and practice Safety and the perception of risks It is important that the public be provided with balanced information on the risks of e-cigarettes, so that smokers understand the potential benefits of switching and so non-smokers understand the risks that taking up e-cigarettes might entail: when used as intended, e-cigarettes pose no risk of nicotine poisoning to users, but e-liquids should be in ‘childproof’ packaging. The accuracy of nicotine content labelling currently raises no major concerns
the conclusion of Professor John Britton’s 2014 review for PHE, that while vaping may not be 100% safe, most of the chemicals causing smoking-related disease are absent and the chemicals present pose limited danger, remains valid. The current best estimate is that e-cigarette use is around 95% less harmful to health than smoking
e-cigarettes release negligible levels of nicotine into ambient air with no identified health risks to bystanders
over the last year, there has been an overall shift among adults and youth towards the inaccurate perception of e-cigarettes as at least as harmful as cigarettes Implications of the evidence for policy and practice Based on the findings of the evidence review PHE also advises that: e-cigarettes have the potential to help smokers quit smoking, and the evidence indicates they carry a fraction of the risk of smoking cigarettes but are not risk free
e-cigarettes potentially offer a wide reach, low-cost intervention to reduce smoking in more deprived groups in society where smoking is elevated, and we want to see this potential fully realised
there is an opportunity for e-cigarettes to help tackle the high smoking rates among people with mental health problems, particularly in the context of creating smokefree mental health units
the potential of e-cigarettes to help improve public health depends on the extent to which they can act as a route out of smoking for the country’s eight million tobacco users, without providing a route into smoking for children and non-smokers. Appropriate and proportionate regulation is essential if this goal is to be achieved.
local stop smoking services provide smokers with the best chance of quitting successfully and we want to see them engaging actively with smokers who want to quit with the help of e-cigarettes
we want to see all health and social care professionals providing accurate advice on the relative risks of smoking and e-cigarette use, and providing effective referral routes into stop smoking services
the best thing smokers can do for their health is to quit smoking completely and to quit for good. PHE is committed to ensure that smokers have a range of evidence-based, effective tools to help them to quit. We encourage smokers who want to use e-cigarettes as an aid to quit smoking to seek the support of local stop smoking services
given the potential benefits as quitting aids, PHE looks forward to the arrival on the market of a choice of medicinally regulated products that can be made available to smokers by the NHS on prescription. This will provide assurance on the safety, quality and effectiveness to consumers who want to use these products as quitting aids
the latest evidence will be considered in the development of the next Tobacco Control Plan for England with a view to maximising the potential of e-cigarettes as a route out of smoking and minimising the risk of their acting as a route into smoking.
Please comment and share your views!
Some observations from me…
On the 95% risk reduction… this should be seen as a worst case and cautious claim based on current knowledge. There is currently no identified serious health risk associated with vaping, so it is best to see the residual 5% risk as an allowance for uncertainty. The claim for a 95% risk reduction is necessarily an expert judgement on the part of the authors mediated by PHE. Their reason for optimism is down to what is known of the chemical constituents of e-cigarette vapour. Most of the constituents of cigarette smoke that are thought to cause harm are either not present in vapour or present at levels well below one twentieth of that in cigarette smoke. The physical basis for the claim is multiple studies of vapour toxicity compared to what is known about cigarette smoke. Notably the following:
Burstyn I. Peering through the mist: systematic review of what the chemistry of contaminants in electronic cigarettes tells us about health risks, BMC Public Health 2014; 14 :18. doi:10.1186/1471-2458-14-18 [Link]
Peering through the mist: systematic review of what the chemistry of contaminants in electronic cigarettes tells us about health risks, 2014; :18 doi:10.1186/1471-2458-14-18 [Link] Farsalinos KE, Polosa R. Safety evaluation and risk assessment of electronic cigarettes as tobacco cigarette substitutes: a systematic review. Ther Adv Drug Saf 2014; 5 :67–86. [Link ]
2014; :67–86. [Link Hajek P, Etter J-F, Benowitz N, Eissenberg T, McRobbie H. Electronic cigarettes: review of use, content, safety, effects on smokers and potential for harm and benefit. Addiction. 2014 Aug 31 [ link
On naming a number. Quantification was used because that has more impact and more directly gets to the right ball park (i.e. “much less than” could mean 50% or 70% less, which would hugely overstate the risk), and therefore more people will have better aligned risk perceptions as a result. It is a way of saying “a lot less risky, but you can’t be sure they are entirely safe” but getting closer to what the scienec actually says. It is grounded in a cautious view of toxic exposure but it would have been difficult for this public body to say 99% less or 100% safe with confidence – I’d see the 5% residual risk as a ‘safety cushion’.
On claims that are true but still wrong (or not right enough). This claim should be seen as competing with hundreds of other risk-related claims that mostly deliberately mislead or, though well meaning, understate the risk differentials. For example the proposed claim for snus submitted to FDA, “No tobacco product is safe, but this product presents substantially lower risks to health than cigarettes”, could mean 20%, 50%, 70% or 98% lower. But only the last of these is approximately right. So the claim does not convey the two orders of magnitude of the risk reduction (>98%) that would be a reasonable estimate for snus compared to smoking. So this claim is in the category ‘true but incomplete and misleading’. Even so, I am supporting the snus claim as being much better than the FDA default (“this product is not a safe alternative to smoking”, which conveys no useful information. So in a world of imperfect claims and incomplete caveats, we should give kudos to claims that shift perceptions closer to reality, are simple and blunt enough to have impact and provide a better basis for informed choice. The PHE claim does that.
On the corrective to inaccurate risk perception… I think the 95% claim is best understood as a risk communication designed to better align risk perceptions with reality. PHE and many others have been increasingly concerned that the perception of e-cigarette risk compared to smoking is way out of line with reality, and seems to be getting more out of line as the evidence of relative safety strengthens – many scare stories and baseless moral panics have contributed to this, and may be having the effect of putting smokers off trying e-cigarettes and so continuing to smoke. The 2015 ASH Smokefree GB adult survey showed only 52% thought they were less harmful – but even this group don’t necessarily have accurate perceptions of how much less harmful – even half or two thirds less harmful is a huge over-estimate of risk. A responsible public health body tries to align public risk perception with actual risk to the extent possible – and this is the point of PHE making a bold simple-to-understand claim about the relative risk. The alternative is to let smokers form their own perceptions from news stories and media academics determined to demonise the products – all the evidence suggest this approach leads people to greatly overstate risks or understate the risk reduction. A responsible public body does its best to give people a realistic and understandable anchor for making behavioural choices. A good working assumption is that vaping is not entirely safe, likely to be 95% less risky than smoking, but may ultimately prove to have no mortal risks. It should help to do the right thing, which is contribute to consumers making better informed reality-based choices – which is what PHE is trying to do, but CDC isn’t.
What if the 95% claim is wrong? There is a risk that the claim is wrong – most likely that the claim is over cautious and that the implied residual risk of 5% it is too high, but it is also possible that some unknown unknown will render it too low – though I doubt that for a range of reasons. The usual way public bodies approach this risk of being wrong is to say nothing, to fudge and hedge, or to allow smokers to form their own perceptions from the maelstrom of ill-informed and malicious comment that circulates in this field. The result as we know is that consumers greatly overstate the risks of these products – many believing there is no difference in risk between cigarettes and e-cigarettes, and few appreciating the magnitude of the risk reduction. This caution transfers misperception risk from the public body to the consumer and is basically irresponsible. In the case of CDC and California Health Dept, it is worse than irresponsible – as they are purposefully trying to exaggerate the risk. In comparison, PHE is being responsible and proactive in making this claim: PHE is taking a risk of being wrong in order to help consumers be much more likely to be right.
Does 95% still mean thousands die? The UK premature death toll from smoking is about 100,000 per year (see CTSU for other countries). This claim isn’t really designed for the arithmetic of body counts. The residual 5% is really just a safety factor that allows for unknown effects and reflects the caution of bureaucrats and a concern not to imply they think e-cigarettes are safe. But what if it is taken literally? One other way to address this is to ask what does the 100,000 UK smoking-related deaths mean anyway? In reality, smoking causes a shift in the life-expectancy curve… you can see this in the seminal Doll & Peto doctors’ study: see key image and the full paper.
You could use this curve to characterise the smoking risk as follows (based on the arrow on the graph): the median smoker loses 10 years of life between the age of 73 and 83.
So if it actually was 5% of the risk, these curves would become much closer. Then you might think of this as: the median vaper loses 6 months of life between the age of 82.5 and 83.
I think is a better (less alarmist) way of putting it than just saying 5% x 100,000 will die. But I think the best approach is not to get too arithmetical about this – as I say, if the 95% has any basis it’s an upper limit based on expert assessment of toxic exposure. So the PHE position is designed to convey long-term health risks that are about two orders of magnitude lower in a way people can understand, not to provide a precise basis for making a body count.
On risks to bystanders… the review follows all the main assessments to date and shows no material risks to bystanders from airborne nicotine or other vapour constituents. Risk to bystanders would normally be the justification for laws to control vaping in public places. But in the absence of risk the issue become one of etiquette for vapers, choice for owners and managers of premises to create the atmosphere and clientele they want, and consideration of the wider health implications of allowing or not allowing vaping in a particular public place. For example does allowing vaping encourage smokers to switch, does banning it encourage vapers to relapse? The government in England is right to think this way and has no plans to use the force of law to ban vaping. On the other hand, the Welsh Government’s proposal to use the law to ban vaping in all public places is an excessive authoritarian intervention that lacks an ethical basis and will do more harm to health than good.
On medicalisation of vaping… the vaping phenomenon is best understood as a market-based transformation of the recreational nicotine market in a way that is good for health – hopefully leading to a substantial shift away from smoking and into vaping. It should be seen as a mass-market alternative to smoking rather than as a treatment for a condition in which a smoker presents to a public health agency with a harm-causing addictive condition seeking a cure. That may sound pedantic, but getting the policy framework right will depend on policy-makers having a realistic grasp of how the benefits come about. That is not to say that NHS, GPs, Stop Smoking Services and public health organisations should ignore them – just that they shouldn’t see it as another form of NRT or Champix. If they want to advise smokers on these products they will need to compete with the expertise available on dozens of forums and be credible experts with smokers. Most of the public sector is way behind the curve on this.
On the shift away from ‘if all else fails’… much of the public sector discussion of e-cigarettes as alternatives to smoking has tended to see them as a last resort to be tried if all other options have failed. This new package appears to provide a welcome change from that – stressing the interests of smokers in finding options that work for them. Also, it’s difficult for the public sector to maintain the ‘if all else fails’ approach while they are providing charts showing high levels of comparative success among those choosing vaping products – as below.
Support used and stop smoking service self-reported quit rates
On the Stop Smoking Services… as you might expect from a public sector public health body, PHE places a lot of emphasis on what role the public sector plays – i.e. through Stop Smoking Services. It is often claimed that the best results come from behavioural support combined with pharmacotherapy of some sort. That might be true, but it addresses a particular subset of smokers – those willing to go to services and complete a behavioural course. Many of the Stop Smoking Services have let themselves down by going into opposition against this bottom-up approach to quitting smoking, but that is now starting to change, with pioneering work in Leicester and the North East and many others adapting to the real world. For me the key role of the public sector is to provide truthful reliable information to those who want it, and encouragement to try this approach to quitting – whether a government web site, a local authority public health programme, a GP surgery or a dedicated Stop Smoking Service. The PHE evidence reports are probably the most important thing the public sector does, because they affect the behaviour of all other actors.
On prescribing e-cigarettes… much of the press coverage picked up on the idea of prescribing e-cigarettes (i.e. making the available free via smoking cessation services). I think this should be downplayed and the normal expectation should be that people will buy e-cigarettes with their own money and from savings made in quitting or reducing smoking. The excise regime should support that. We need to see this a market-based solution (like snus in Scandinavia) and work on the basis that markets will provide the necessary innovation and affordable quality products if not over-regulated. It is not necessary for every problem in society to be addressed with public sector interventions and public spending. As Sir Jeremy Heywood, the UK’s most senior civil servant, puts it in his blog on e-cigarettes:
It’s easy to think that the solution to a policy problem is to fund a new programme or put in place new legislation. These are, of course, important parts of a policymaker’s toolkit, but new approaches can often help us to solve the problems that we face.
Where I have been persuaded (by Linda Bauld and Deborah Arnott) that some intervention is justified is in helping the poorest smokers to get started on vaping. If you are a smoker on a very tight weekly budget, then the economics of a switch to vaping can look daunting – there are upfront startup costs to get to the better tank/mod products (which are then much cheaper overall) and you might be concerned that you’ll try e-cigarettes, they won’t work and you’ll have to buy the cigarettes as well. So for health inequalities reasons there may be a case to assist low-income smokers in making a transition. But for me, that’s all. It shouldn’t be a routine call on the public purse. It’s good to have health interventions where no taxpayers are harmed.
On medically licensed e-cigarettes… I think that the distinction between licensed and unlicensed nicotine products is unhelpful and a distraction in policy terms. The medicines regulatory regime is so burdensome, restrictive and expensive that it cannot be assumed that the products that pass through it will be better for smokers – they are more likely to be designed to meet regulatory requirements than to meet actual smokers’ needs. The example of NRT should serve as a warning: ‘licensed’ doesn’t mean ‘better’. The Tobacco Products Directive is useless, but the logical approach would be to allow any products that are compliant with that regime to be used in publicly funded programmes. In the post-TPD world, medicines licensing may have some advantages to the bigger tobacco-owned vendors who can bear the compliance costs – lower tax, advertising allowed, more proportionate warnings etc. But these advantages arise primarily from the failure of the TPD to provide a sensible regulatory regime for e-cigarettes rather than any safety, quality or efficacy benefits to the consumer.
On the Tobacco Products Directive Article 20 – this is a truly dreadful piece of legislation, made in haste on the foundations of bad science, bad economics, bad ethics and bad process. If this evidence review had been available during the negotiations we might have better legislation – but instead of taking care to get this right and save thousands of European lives, the European legislature just blundered on full of hubris and anti-scientific delusions. The directive was based on junk science from WHO (here and here) and negligence on the part of the European Parliament rapporteur (here), evidence free ideas of the European Commission (here) and the unrivalled pomposity and negligence of the European Council and its Irish presidency along with many other actors (here). I really do hope lessons are learned.
On the messages for others… Public Health England has done what a good public health body should do – looked at the evidence, thought about its responsibilities and worked through how to bring evidence into policy and practice. How many of its peers in other countries can claim the same? Where is the equivalent analysis from CDC or the extremists in California? What do Australia and Canada have to back their prohibitionist positions? When will WHO start to act as though e-cigarettes are part of the solution, not part of the problem? What messages will Gates, Bloomberg and Soros take from this? Why does CTFK decline to do what the much more modestly funded ASH does in the UK? Where are the open minds in cancer, heart and respiratory charities and societies? The message for others is simple: stop believing the rhetoric of prohibitionist activists and anti-corporate campaigners and take a cool hard look at what is really going on and what the evidence tells you – then act accordingly.Thanks for checking out the 3 posters we hope to print through your help! We first got the idea from reddit users that wanted this style of design with the first starter pokemons as the theme, many thanks to them for taking us this far!
We're planning to get large 18" x 24" high quality screen prints of the designs.
We chose screen printing because it allows more finer details to be displayed than most digital prints. We also believe the aesthetic of screen printing is more favorable.
Grass Starter
Our Posters
The paper we will be using is 18" x 28" 100# paper from the French Paper Co. They've been making paper in the Niles, Michigan USA since 1871 and uses their own hydroelectric power plant to supply all the power necessary for production. Its premium quality paper that |
control to that process instead of being limited by the format of choice.
Export Script
Below is our current script for exporting both models and animations from Blender 2.78 into our own format. Keep in mind that this was written for our own project and does what we require, it's not a generic solution. However it's a great starting point to anyone looking to write their own.
Exporter.zip
Inside you will find three files.
__init__.py - Registers the exporter with blender
exporter.py - Class which performs the export
file_writer.py - Helper class to write to our binary format
The export process is fairly simple and self explanatory. Most of the work is in knowing where blender hides the information you are looking for. The rest of the code just puts this into the format we want.
To run this script copy the "export" folder to the "blender/scripts/addons" directory and activate it through the addons tab in blender settings.
However because of python caching, if you plan to modify and iterate the script I would suggest combining the exporter and file_writer script and running it from the blender built in text editor. Also, to get any print statements you will need to run the blender executable from a command prompt.
What Is Exported
At the moment the exporter handled the scene structure, meshes, materials and animations.
Nodes are stored either inside the root chunk or inside another node chunk. This describes the scene hierarchy.
Meshes are stored inside the root chunk and are referenced from the nodes which use them. Although a blender mesh might have multiple materials, we break them apart into several meshes and nodes have a reference to each. We also convert all meshes to triangles to avoid doing this in engine.
Materials are also stored inside the root chunk and referenced by meshes. These are fairly simple right now as our requirements are low. Right now we export (color, metal, rough, normal) as defined by the texture "Influence" inside of blender.
Animations are also stored inside the root chunk. Right now we only have one animation which is the global scene animation. The frame data is currently baked out for each frame, and we only store the key frames which actually affect the values of an object. Though this process of culling can make the export take a few seconds to complete, it is well worth it in file size.
Baking the animation was a point of decision for me as we have the capability to simulate the blender curves in engine and the baked data isn't always small. The deciding factor for this was that it allowed for a much simpler integration engine side and allowed us to use many blender features, such as IK, without having to re-implement those in our engine.
As a side note: Within our engine we treat bones just like any other node. Blender, however, treats bones as a special object inside of an armature node. As you will see we have a few replicated functions in the script because of this fact.
The Binary Format
I love using XML, but for this project we decided on a binary format to store our data. We went with a chunked format similar to the Interchange File Format.
The data is broken into chunks, using a 4 byte tag, followed by 4 bytes describing the length of the chunk, followed by the chunk data. Chunks can either contain raw data or additional chunks allowing for a hierarchy.
With the final data layout we decided to separate as much data into its individual tags. We wanted to avoid any chances that as the file format grew, we didn't end up with old files that were no longer compatible. It's a small trade off of memory, but I believe well worth it for the length of our project.
Since we are exclusively working on x86 computers there wasn't much need to worry about byte endianness. We both read and write in little endian, which we consider standard for our file format. The one special case is with chunk tags as we swapped those to big endian. As the tags are 4 bytes represented by 4 characters, swapping the bytes allowed these to be easier to human read in a text editor if we needed to inspect a binary file. Although we can't really read the values, it is still useful to inspect the layout of a file manually.
Below roughly describes the final layout of the binary chunks and tags.
ROOT - root container VERS - model filetype version numer NODE - A node in the scene (Multiple) NAME - string name ORIG - 3 float vector ROTA - 4 float quaternion SCAL - 3 float vector MESH - Index of mesh SKEL - Skeleton Chunk SIZE - Number of bones BONE - String of the child bone's node name (Multiple) REST- Rest chunk ORIG - Rest origin ROTA - Rest rotation SCAL - Rest scale NODE... - (Multipe, Nested) MESH - Mesh Chunk (Multiple) MATR - Index of material VERT - Vert chunk SIZE - Number of verticies CHAN - Channel of data TYPE - String representing the channel type ("position", "normal", "uv", "bone_weight") DATA - Raw vertex data FACE - Face chunk (Right now, always triangles) SIZE - Number of faces DATA - Raw face data SKEL - Name of the skeleton that drives the mesh MATR - Material (Multiple) NAME - string name TEXR - Texture chunk (Multiple) FILE - file path relative to model file TYPE - string describing channel ("color", "metal", "rough", "normal") ANIM - Animations chunk (Multiple) NAME - Animation name START - Start frame STOP - Stop frame TMSC - Timescale, multiplier for keyframes to seconds LAYR - layer NODE - Name of node affected CHAN - keyframe channel TYPE - target channel ("position_baked", "rotation_baked", "scale_baked") KYNM - number of keys KEYS - key data VALU - key value SPAN - span type
Wrap Up
So far this solution has worked great for us and we would recommend it to others trying to solve the 3d model integration problem. A time investment is required to learn how to properly export the data you want but I believe it's well worth it, given that you get the exact data you like and allowing for the growth of the exporter as your project does.
Hopefully you have found this post useful in your own efforts. If you have any questions about our implementation feel free to e-mail me directly.LETS GET TO IT!
its been 2 weeks and im still digging through your over 5k item suggestions (who am i kidding im only looking at the top 200, so kill me!). i have quite a few that i think are pretty interesting, mostly trinket item ideas but still good none the less.
so i took a vacation from isaac and reddit for a while (aside from AB+ testing) but i took a gander and it seems like a lot of you think Afterbirth+ is just going to be some dev tools for you to play with… well… YOU, ARE, WRONG!
our goal with AB+ was to do a mini dlc + dev tools for you to continue the isaac legacy, beause this is the end of the line folks! here is a rough list of features we are currently working on.
AFTERBIRTH + FEATURES LIST!
-55+ new items (yes im counting trinkets as items you sons a bitches, always have always will!)
-new final chapter, boss and ending (yes i said chapter, not area)
-new playable character
-greed hard mode
-daily greed runs
-5 new challenges
-loads of new achievements
-a few new bosses and other little editions
PLUS DEV TOOLS! so you can design, edit and play and endless number of mods, features and whole new games that the community will no doubt eventually design.. but ill let tyrone go into more detail on that at a later date.
we have no set release date but the goal is before the end of the year.
——-
other isaac related updates (by Tyrone!):
-Confirmed consoles are: PlayStation 4, Wii U and Xbox One. We’re about three weeks from launching and will have an official announcement VERY soon. Wii U may not release at the same exact date, but will be very shortly behind PS4 and Xbox One
-AB+ WILL come to consoles. More specifically, expect it on PlayStation 4 and Xbox one. It UNLIKELY to release simultaneously with the PC version. The console version will NOT have mod support as most of what we’re doing for mod support will likely not pass certification requirements.
-iOS Isaac: We haven’t given up. I’d like to think Apple would embrace a game like Isaac on iOS, but the final outcome is still TBD
——-
Bumbo update!
( actual in game footage! kinda )
you guys seem to want more info on this game, so here is a bit more detailed info.
Bumbo is a difficult game to compare to other games but i think the best would be to call it a cross between puzzle quest and isaac mixed a bit with magic the gathering. its probably good to get that basic description set in stone before we go to far into teasing and too many of you think we are doing some wacky JRPG type paper mario game.
it a randomly generated, puzzle based, turn based, combat driven ball of chaos and poo! and its coming together quite nicely..
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Secret game update:There was a time that oil companies ruled the globe, but "black gold" is no longer the world's most valuable resource — it's been surpassed by data.
The five most valuable companies in the world today — Apple, Amazon, Facebook, Microsoft and Google's parent company Alphabet — have commodified data and taken over their respective sectors.
"Data is clearly the new oil," says Jonathan Taplin, director emeritus of the USC Annenberg Innovation Lab and the author of Move Fast and Break Things: How Google, Facebook and Amazon Cornered Culture and Undermined Democracy.
But with that domination comes responsibility — and jurisdictions are struggling with how to contain, regulate and protect all those ones and zeros.
For instance, Google holds an 81 per cent share of search, according to data metrics site Net Market Share.
By comparison, even at its height, Standard Oil only had a 79 per cent share of the American market before antitrust regulators stepped in, Taplin says.
Selling access
What "the big five" are selling — or not selling, as in the case of free services like Google or Facebook — is access. As we use their platforms, the corporate giants are collecting information about every aspect of our lives, our behaviour and our decision-making. All of that data gives them tremendous power. And that power begets more power, and more profit.
On one hand, the data can be used to make their tools and services better, which is good for consumers. These companies are able to learn what we want based on the way we use their products, and can adjust them in response to those needs.
"It enables certain companies with orders of magnitude more surveillance capacity than rivals to develop a 360-degree view of the strengths and vulnerabilities of their suppliers, competitors and customers," says Frank Pasquale, professor of law at the University of Maryland and author of Black Box Society.
Access to such sweeping amounts of data also allows these giants to spot trends early and move on them, which sometimes involves buying up a smaller company before it can become a competitive threat. Pasquale points out that Google/Alphabet has been using its power "to bully or take over rivals and adjacent businesses" at a rate of about "one per week since 2010."
But it's not just newer or smaller tech companies that are at risk, says Taplin. "When Google and Facebook control 88 per cent of all new internet advertising, the rest of the internet economy, including things like online journalism and music, are starved for resources."
When data is stored in Canada, it's a lot easier to legislate its uses and address privacy concerns. - Meghan Sali, Open Media
Traditionally, this is where the antitrust regulators would step in, but in the data economy it's not so easy. What we're seeing for the first time is a clash between the concept of the nation state and these global, borderless corporations. A handful of tech giants now surpass the size and power of many governments.
For comparison sake, Facebook has almost two billion users, while Canada has a population of just over 36 million. Based on the companies' sheer scale alone, it is increasingly difficult for countries to enforce any kind of regulation, especially as the tech giants start pushing for rules that free them from local restrictions, says Open Media's Meghan Sali.
"Take, for example, NAFTA, where big tech companies are pushing to include legislation that stops countries from making rules that require the local storage of data," Sali says. "When data is stored in Canada, it's a lot easier to legislate its uses and address privacy concerns."
That's just one way economic considerations are taking precedence over consumer protection.
Pasquale adds that regulators would "certainly be able to intervene effectively" if they had more resources — money, personnel and technical capacity — with which to level the playing field. "And very simple interventions could help enormously — for example, requiring any dominant platform to pay out as wages or other compensation some percentage of revenues."
'We need the political will'
Sali also points out the similarities between the global dominance of the big five and the stranglehold of Canada's three major internet service providers — Bell, Rogers and Telus — whose dominance of the domestic market has kept out competitors and led to Canadians paying some of the highest prices for wireless internet access in the world.
"When we look at the price of data and the amount of money that's being made by big companies by reselling that data, it's certainly comparable to oil in that manner," she says. "But it's a little bit different in that data isn't a finite resource. At the end of the day, we can certainly create more data, whereas we can't create more oil."
Government could also help by managing crucial parts of the data economy as public infrastructure — a measure that has seen great success through the Community Broadband initiative, whereby government subsidies have helped build local fiber optic networks.
In other words, if the Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) is going to claim that every Canadian has a right to high-speed internet, then perhaps network infrastructure should be treated like roads and highways and bridges, as opposed to resting it in the hands of corporate giants.
There are ways to rein in these mega-corporations, Taplin says.
"We just need the political will," he says.Published by Steve Litchfield at 12:10 UTC, October 18th 2011
Our editorial Symbian^3 phones just got v25 firmware updates over the air (OTA), a 1MB download that installed quickly and cleanly. The previous firmware for each was v22 and it's not entirely clear what's changed - I suspect merely small bug fixes and under-the-hood stability tweaks. Please comment below if you can help build a changelog.
As usual, do your syncs and backups before upgrading, just in case. You can check your firmware by typing *#0000# on the dialler screen on your phone, and then using 'Options|Check for updates' as needed.
Some phones and network and country variants may not see the update straightaway and may also need updating via Nokia Suite rather than Over The Air. Your mileage almost certainly will vary....
Contrary to initial rumours, the update definitely does not include the new QML-written Ovi Store client, v25 seems to be all about under the hood stability improvements. Newer is usually better, but it would be nice to have some obvious improvements....
In addition, a number of longstanding Symbian OS bugs haven't been touched, including those in Mail for Exchange and in Wi-fi stability. Roll on v26? Or maybe we wait for Belle?
Here's the update being offered on the editorial E6 (a 'UK' device, an example of firmware only being available via Nokia Suite, incidentally):
The variations in availability are because of the huge variety in operator, country and language versions and the testing/approvals needed, plus there is some device dependency too.Top British Officer: Russia May Be Able To Cut Undersea Cables
Enlarge this image toggle caption Anadolu Agency/Getty Images Anadolu Agency/Getty Images
Britain's senior-most military officer is warning that an improving Russian navy poses risks to undersea communications and Internet cables, saying any disruption could do "catastrophic" damage to the economy.
Air Chief Marshal Sir Stuart Peach said Britain and NATO need to prioritize protecting communications cables running along the seabed between countries and continents to prevent them being severed.
Speaking to the Royal United Services Institute, Peach said the vulnerability posed "a new risk to our way of life."
"Can you imagine a scenario where those cables are cut or disrupted, which would immediately and potentially catastrophically affect both our economy and other ways of living if they were disrupted," Peach said.
"Therefore we must continue to develop our maritime forces with our allies, with whom we are working very closely, to match and understand Russian fleet modernization," which he said included "new ships and submarines" and efforts "to perfect both unconventional capabilities and information warfare."
According to a recent report by the think tank Policy Exchange, such deep-sea cables "carry 97 per cent of global communications and $10 [trillion] in daily financial transactions," The Financial Times reports.
The report says Russian submarines have begun "aggressively operating" near Atlantic cables, according to the Times.Get the biggest Manchester City FC stories by email Subscribe Thank you for subscribing We have more newsletters Show me See our privacy notice Could not subscribe, try again later Invalid Email
Yaya Toure felt like one of the victims of a robbery at the Etihad Stadium on Saturday.
And the Manchester City midfielder has said that now may be the time for referees to be given video help when it comes to making big decisions.
The Blues midfielder was seething after Raheem Sterling was denied a clear penalty with the game poised at 2-1 in their favour … just before Spurs went to the other end and scored a goal that ensured a 2-2 draw.
Toure said he would probably break his TV screen after seeing the highlights – and suggested the used of video reviews should be rolled out beyond the referral of goalline disputes.
“For me if video can be involved in football it is going to be brilliant,” said Toure.
“If the ref looks at the highlights as well he is going to feel something is unfair. We all do wrongs in life but this is difficult to take.
“It is two points going away. We played against a good team. Tottenham are fantastic, they play well, they are strong, they fight for every ball. But we deserved three points.”
Sterling was clean through on goal when Kyle Walker shoved him in the back, causing him to fluff his shot straight at keeper Hugo Lloris.
Walker later admitted the offence, but ref Andre Marriner failed to award a spot kick.
The penalty would probably have restored City's two-goal advantage, and a win would have put them right back in the midst of the fight for a top four place.
But the performance gave Toure encouragement that landing a Champions League spot is still within City's grasp despite the fact they remained in fifth place.
Bow they need to turn the chances into goals to really start moving again, he said.
“We have to win once and after that things will come. People look at the details, the possession we had. But scoring goals is most important. That's something difficult to take, we feel a little bit robbed because we dominated the game. It was a fantastic game for us.”
Manager Pep Guardiola cut an agitated figure in his interviews after the game, not just due to the incompetence of the referee but also because of the way his team dominated and then squandered their opportunities.
Toure said: “He was frustrated. When you see how many chances we had, particularly in the first half, it was unbelievable, against a big team like Tottenham.
“They are in form this year. They are one of the top teams this year. The manager and the players were frustrated because we feel like we've been robbed.”A policy prohibiting legal medical marijuana patients from using or possessing cannabis on the campus of Michigan State University is coming under increasing fire.
The Michigan Messenger: In “Frequently Asked Questions” page on MSU’s website, the policy is outlined, reports Todd A. Heywood of
3. Does the Act change University policy regarding drug use or possession on campus? No, University policies have not changed. Students and employees may not use or possess marihuana on campus. This is true whether the marihuana is smoked or ingested through other means. Michigan State University is subject to the Drug-Free Workplace Act of 1988 and the Drug-Free Schools and Communities Act Amendment of 1989. Consistent with those laws, the MSU Drug and Alcohol Policy prohibits the unlawful manufacture, distribution, dispensation, possession, or use of controlled substances, illicit drugs, and alcohol on any property governed by the Board of Trustees and at any site where work is performed by individuals on behalf of the University. The Alcohol and Controlled Substances Policy also applies to employees performing safety-sensitive functions and whose position responsibilities require they obtain a commercial driver’s license. Employees and students who violate University policy prohibiting the use or possession of illegal drugs on campus are subject to disciplinary action through the appropriate disciplinary process.
The problem with MSU’s policy, according to activists, is that it violates Michigan’s medical marijuana law, passed overwhelmingly by 63 percent of the voters in 2008. That law specifically prohibits anyone from denying rights and privileges based on the fact that a person is a legal medical marijuana patient.
“MSU is subject to the Drug-Free Workplace Act of 1988 and the Drug-Free Schools and Communities Act of 1989,” said Kent Cassella, spokesman for Michigan State University. “In addition, the MSU Drug and Alcohol Policy prohibits the unlawful manufacture, distribution, dispensation, possession, or use of controlled substances, illicit drugs and alcohol on property governed by the Board of Trustees and at any site where university work is performed.”
“Employees and students who violate university policy prohibiting the use or possession of illegal drugs on campus are subject to disciplinary action,” Cassella said.
But Mike Meno of the Marijuana Policy Project, based in Washington, D.C., said the university was misguided in its opposition to Michigan state law.
“The Obama Administration has been very clear in its policy of respecting state medical marijuana laws, so there is no reason to believe MSU would be reprimanded simply for following state law,” Meno said. “More to the point, the federal government has almost no interest in charging a college student who is legally allowed to use medical marijuana.”
“Furthermore, a state court in Michigan would be unable to charge someone for violating federal marijuana laws,” Meno pointed out. “So the only people interested in arresting and charging public university students who legally use medical marijuana are MSU officials, judging by this statement.”
Cassella said the university had developed policies regarding registered medical marijuana patients who attend MSU. The requirement that freshmen live on campus can be waived for such patients, he said.
As part of the “certain accommodations” the university will make for medical marijuana patients, it would allow them “to end their housing contract and move off campus without penalty.”
“Anyone who is on MSU’s campus and is suspected of committing a crime or violating university policy is subject to disciplinary action,” Cassella said when asked if the university would see prosecution of students or faculty possessing medical marijuana, as allowed by the law.
Even with these strict rules, MSU students said finding pot on campus isn’t hard, reports Rachel Thomas at WILX
“I have smelled it walking into buildings in resident halls,” said MSU student Alex Barber.
“You can find it if you go looking for it,” MSU student Erik Bates said.
“Students and staff do not feel that marijuana is a large problem on campus,” Thomas reports.
“For qualified patients under Michigan’s law, marijuana is a legal medicine, just like any other,” Meno said. “It would be contemptible for the university to arrest students simply for possessing a potentially life-saving medicine on school grounds.”
“MSU officials have no more reason to discriminate against a student who legally possesses marijuana than they do a student who has a legal prescription for Adderall or anti-depressants,” Meno said.
“This policy is an affront to the dignity of students or employees who use marijuana legally to ease chronic and often painful conditions,” Meno said. “It is cruel, unjust, unnecessary, and — under Michigan law — illegal.”George Will speaks to Fox News (screen grab)`
Conservative columnist George Will predicted over the weekend that Donald Trump would destroy the Republican Party as it exists today because his campaign strategy was to only attract white voters.
According to Will, Trump is a politician in the tradition of segregationist George Wallace because he believes that more “meanness” was needed in public discourse.
“The problem is this,” Will told Fox News host Chris Wallace on Sunday. “Not only are his negatives at 61 percent — almost double his positives, they are at 32 percent — but he’s appealing entirely to white people.”
“[Former Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney] got 17 percent — that’s all — of the non-white vote,” he continued. “Trump, by every measure, would do worse than that. Which means he would not have to get just the 65 percent of the white vote to win that Ronald Reagan got, sweeping 49 states. He would have to get 70 percent of the white vote.”
Will concluded: “A, it won’t happen and B, it would destroy the Republican Party by making it the party of white people.”
Watch the video below from Fox News’ Fox News Sunday, broadcast March 20, 2016.Canon USA's brand-new Long Island headquarters doesn't just house boardrooms, cubicles, and water coolers. It's also where the venerable camera company maintains its giant showroom, in which every current Canon product—plus a plethora of other imaging technology tidbits—is on prominent display. We took a trip out there last week; here's a taste of what we found.
Probably our favorite display was Canon's collection of cameras throughout the ages, spanning from the 1934 Kwanon from Japan, to the 5D Mark II from 2008.
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Among the more iconic cameras on display were oddballs like this 1986 RC-701, a precursor to digital, which stored images as analog scan lines—basically video frames—onto floppy disks.
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This giant polygon sculpture employs eight digital projectors to create moving light patterns on the surface.
Who doesn't wish they had a giant state-of-the-art digital printer to liberate their photos from computer screens?
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A whole lotta glass...
We got to tinker with a Canon 1DC, the 4k video-shooting DSLR, along with the monstrous $5,000 85mm Cine-Prime T1.3 L lens.
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Mixed-Reality goggles that blend virtual objects with your actual environment for a mind-bending augmented experience.
Your browser does not support HTML5 video tag.Click here to view original GIF
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Let's not forget that medical imaging is a huge industry for many of the companies that make our digital cameras. This is a retinal imaging machine for optometry—that you can can plug your DSLR right into.
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And last but not least, a gentle reminder that calculators are still alive and kicking. Well, sort of.THE final bell rings at a high school in downtown Los Angeles, and nearly every pupil spilling onto the pavement either clutches a smartphone or studies a screen, head bowed. A group of boys strolls down the street laughing at a YouTube video, while a girl waiting for her lift home catches up with the Kardashian sisters on Instagram. Since 2007, when Apple released the first iPhone, such scenes have become the norm in America. The Pew Research Centre found that three-quarters of teens have access to a smartphone. According to one Facebook executive, millennials look at their phones on average more than 150 times a day.
Over the past decade, the number of American children and teenagers admitted to children’s hospitals for reporting suicidal thoughts has more than doubled. Some have not received help in time; after declining for years, the suicide rate for 15-to-19-year-olds shot up between 2007 and 2015, increasing by 31% for boys and more than doubling for girls. Psychologists are striving to understand whether this increase merely coincides with the rise of social media, or whether something causative is happening.
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There may be plenty of analogue reasons for it. “A number of things are pretty unique to young people today. They were born around when the Columbine shooting happened, they were kids for 9/11, they were kids during one of the worst recessions in modern history,” says Nicole Green, the executive director of Counselling and Psychological Services at the University of California, Los Angeles, who has seen demand for her office’s services from college undergraduates surge.
A big new study suggests a different explanation for teenage melancholy—the many hours young people spend staring at their phone screens. That might be having serious effects, especially on young girls, according to the study’s author, Jean Twenge, a psychology professor at San Diego State University and author of “iGen: Why Today’s Super-Connected Kids Are Growing Up Less Rebellious, More Tolerant, Less Happy”.
By scrutinising national surveys, with data collected from over 500,000 American teenagers, Ms Twenge found that adolescents who spent more time on new media—using Snapchat, Facebook, or Instagram on a smartphone, for instance—were more likely to agree with remarks such as: “The future often seems hopeless,” or “I feel that I can’t do anything right.” Those who used screens less, spending time playing sport, doing homework, or socialising with friends in person, were less likely to report mental troubles.
As Ms Twenge herself concedes, the study does not prove causality. It is possible that another force is behind the increased diagnosis of depression among adolescents, and that sad teenagers are more likely than their happy peers to seek refuge in their phones. But a growing body of scientific evidence supports the idea that social media can inspire malaise. One study published in 2016 asked a randomly selected group of adults to quit Facebook for a week; a control group continued browsing the site as usual. Those who gave up Facebook reported feeling less depressed at the end of the week than those who continued using it. Another experiment published in 2013 found that the more participants used Facebook, the gloomier they felt about their lives. Additionally, it showed that feeling blue did not lead people to increase their Facebook use.
Not all studies are so damning. Past research suggests that social-networking sites can promote happiness if used to engage directly with other users, rather than just to covet glossy photos of someone else’s exotic holiday or lavish wedding. This distinction is a reminder that social media is what users bring to it—their attitudes shape their experiences, both on and offline. “It’s pretty easy to romanticise someone’s life based on their Snapchat or Instagram,” reflects Sarah, a junior at high school in Los Angeles. “I try to remind myself that it’s filtered. People only post what they want you to see, so it can seem like their life is better than yours.” Nicole, another junior, agrees. But when asked if she has ever considered deleting her social-media accounts, she looks perplexed. “No. I would feel lost.”AFTER yet another late-night summit, filled with threats and bluffs, Europe's leaders for once exceeded expectations. Just before dawn, they staggered out to announce they had agreed (statement is here) that the euro zone's rescue funds could directly recapitalise troubled banks.
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The decisions heralds the start of a euro-zone “banking union” and marks the first step in trying to end the dance of death in which weak sovereigns and weak banks progressively stifle each other – especially in Spain. Not for the first time, markets rejoiced on the news, even though much of the detail remains to be settled.
Before banks can be recapitalised directly, the euro zone will have to create a strong central supervisor, centred on the European Central Bank (ECB). This will take time, with several thorny problems to settle – not least the question of which banks should be supervised. Germany has tried to limit scrutiny to big cross-border banks. But in Spain, and probably in Germany too, the worst problems lie in smaller regional banks. Another issue will be the relationship with banks and supervisors in non-euro countries, such as Britain (which does not want to join the euro) and eastern European members (many of whom are committed eventually to adopting the single currency).
So the new system may not be immediately applicable to Spain, which has put in a request for €100 billion of loans from the temporary rescue fund, the European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF) to recapitalise its banks. For now the loan will add to Spain's debt burden. But European officials say that once the supervision system is up and running, the permanent rescue fund, known as the European Stability Mechanism (ESM) could assume the burden back from Spain. The new arrangement may eventually be of assistance to Ireland, which is saddled with the debts of its collapsed banking sector.
Another gesture of reassurance to markets is the commitment that the debt owed by Spain to the EFSF, if and when it is transferred to the ESM, will not gain seniority. The prospect had spooked private investors, who feared subordination if the official sector became involved. When Greek debt was restructured earlier this year, bonds held by the ECB were not subjected to losses.
These decisions mark a real concession by Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, who had drawn the line at assuming other countries' liabilities until more progress was made toward political union. This may complicate the ratification in the Bundestag of the treaty establishing the ESM.
It is also a victory for Mariano Rajoy, the Spanish prime minister who, along with Italy's Mario Monti, had threatened to block any agreement at the summit unless their demands were met. Mr Rajoy obtained satisfaction, but the same is not quite true of Mr Monti, who had been the most adamant of the two.
The technocratic Italian prime minister had wanted a semi-automatic system for the rescue funds to buy the bonds of “virtuous” yet troubled states, such as Italy and Spain, without placing the countries under Greece-like programme. Mr Monti appears to have avoided the overt involvement of the dreaded “troika” of the ECB, the IMF and the European Commission. But any country benefiting from bond-buying will still have to sign a memorandum of understanding with the euro zone, and comply with a raft of existing conditions monitored by the European Commission.
Mr Monti declared himself satisfied, but caused considerable irritation to partners. Among the deals he had blocked was the "growth pact", a mixture of stimulus measures. "Who needs the growth pact? Not Germany," said one bemused participant. The euro zone's fiscal hawks say the bond-buying mechanism will be little different from the existing system. “Mario Monti raised a gun to his head and threatened to shoot himself. In the end he wounded himself in the shoulder,” said one scornful diplomat.Democrats aren’t laughing about Donald Trump anymore. He has them all but admitting defeat.
Robby Mook
In a stunning admission, Hillary Clinton’s campaign manager predicts in an email that Donald Trump will become president if he wins the Republican nomination.
“If Donald Trump takes the Republican nomination, our party will lose more than the presidency,” Robby Mook writes to supporters.
“Years of progress will be ripped away. Obamacare will be repealed. Marriage equality will be rolled back. Get excited to visit the wall on the Mexico border — and get ready to pay for it if President Trump can’t magically get Mexico to cough up the cash for it.”
While Mook stokes fear over an apparently inevitable Trump presidency, he’s also panicking over a surging Bernie Sanders.
Late last night, Bernie Sanders’ campaign announced they’d raised $1.4 million from 50,000 donations in a single day. The day before, they announced that the Reddit community had contributed more than $1 million to his campaign.
There’s no denying this: His supporters are stepping up. They see a chance to win in Iowa and they’re willing to go all in for their guy.
“We can’t let Bernie Sanders’ supporters out-match us,” Mook concludes. “It’s not just about the nomination. It’s about what comes next.”
It’s just the latest email in which the campaign is hyperventilating about short funds and rival candidates.
In another earlier this month, Mook said he was “worried” and “annoyed.”
News just broke that Bernie Sanders is outspending us on TV in Iowa and New Hampshire by hundreds of thousands of dollars.
I’m worried, because last-minute ads could cost us this election. And I’m annoyed — because once again, they’re counting on this team staying on the sidelines. …
They’ve got more donors than we do, more contributions than we have, and if they keep up this pace on TV, they’ll be able to get their message out to more people than we can.
The latest poll from Iowa shows Clinton and Sanders are neck-and-neck.
A survey by NBC News/Wall Street Journal/Marist shows Clinton with 48% support and Sanders at 45% — a lead within the poll’s relatively large margin of error of 4.7 percent.Since the first units were placed along the Gulf Coast in the 1950s, ornithologists and birders have become increasingly aware of the power of using radar as a tool for understanding bird migration. In addition to detecting and depicting meteorological phenomena, this radar network can be used to watch and to track the movements of birds. In this feature we will provide some basics for how to interpret radar data, in particular how to understand the movements of birds on Weather Surveillance Radar – 1988D (WSR-88D). A second installment will discuss challenges in identifying biological targets and some locally interesting patterns visible on radar.
Radar (an acronym for radio detection and ranging) was originally developed and employed leading up to World War II, in particular to detect aircraft. However, from almost the earliest days of radar surveillance, movements of birds were known to appear in radar imagery; the term “angels” was originally applied to the patterns of birds on radar, before solid ground-truthing confirmed these patterns as birds. Over the last 70-80 years, technological advances in computing, electronics, and physics have produced a wonderful array of developments that make radars a powerful tool for studying aeroecology, in particular detecting density, location, direction, and speed of biological targets, such as birds, insects, and bats.
Simple basics of radar
A WSR-88D unit (hereafter radar) emits a pulse of electromagnetic radiation; the antenna emitting and receiving this pulse |
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Can it be merged as total release amount instead of separate line which I don't know which is which? Hi, good day! as I keep track on the contracts and I intend to increase every 1TH/s once it reaches the price to purchase in future if the contract still available, can it be send out as a total release for one day instead of multiple lines? Thanks. :) Regards Terence skylark.ky published on 19th June, 2018
Genesis-mining testimonial pleased to pay with credible, accurate and fast dividends dongwon k. published on 18th June, 2018
Genesis-mining testimonial satisfied that paying a reliable and accurate dividend dongwon k. published on 18th June, 2018
good opportunity good opportunity Silvio M. published on 18th June, 2018
Good so far Got mining payout on the same day of purchase. Happy about the efficiency. This is my second contract. My first contract was Monero mining. Always heard good things about the Bitcoin mining contract so I signed up as soon as was available. Bitcoin price is low now but I see this mining contract as long-run average daily pricing. Bullish on Bitcoin! CHRISTOPHER L. published on 18th June, 2018
Reliable and easy to deal with I've been mining with Genesis for around 6 months now. During that time I got regular payouts and there were no hassles. So I felt fine taking a much bigger new contract for 5 years at over $2k upfront cost. Heres hoping BTC goes to the moon! Happy mining! mccannger published on 18th June, 2018
Good Good Mehmet U. published on 16th June, 2018
Ether contract 2 year flat rate It seems great so far Jason C. published on 7th June, 2018
Ether mining I treat this contracts as my savings/investments with some risk involved and looking at the track record of genesis mining I can say that my investment is in good hands. Francisco V. published on 4th May, 2018
Daily payouts. Wonderful! Daily payouts. Wonderful! kaymood published on 3rd May, 2018
inicio del contrato en un mes el contrato debe tener como periodo de inicio no mas de un mes yohan a. published on 29th March, 2018
super Ели перейду на LTC что будет у меня с ETH МОНЕТАМИ? Albert published on 28th March, 2018
Good Good wasidarya6171 published on 23rd March, 2018
Excited to see how this will work! I'm new to mining, but excited to be able to invest and hope that the payoff will be worth it. My contract begins at the end of April, so I don't have any information yet on how it's going, but I expect good returns. danburywendy published on 21st March, 2018
Mining Zcash first time I'm join Genesis 2016 just only conversion to zcash not pure mine zcash I hope will make big profit to me.... Joni H. published on 17th March, 2018
good value great deal zd.vasek published on 17th March, 2018
Not yet start can’t review Not yet start can’t review yuenkarwai published on 16th March, 2018
invertimento promissor apenas gostaria de comprar mais pois acho que terei um bom lucro extasefeminino published on 16th March, 2018
Good Good parxisan published on 15th March, 2018
ZCash Mining Contract very excited to see how this works and am confident in Genesis! Jake B. published on 14th March, 2018
Best Best Thank you.... Ofer MizraChi published on 14th March, 2018
Can’t tell yet. Its startind Can’t tell yet. Its startind date is end of April. gssadana published on 13th March, 2018
Either Contract Sir. It very good. Thank u. I need 2 built a long relation with the comapny syed s. published on 12th March, 2018
Good Hope to launch bit mining again 信融 黃. published on 12th March, 2018
bought 2 year Ether Contract - Flatrate Not yet running, but i believe this will be good Heru A. published on 12th March, 2018
Zcash mining review waiting for contract to start limkw78 published on 11th March, 2018
Good Work Good Work u940105 published on 11th March, 2018
Very good Very good Christopher K. published on 10th March, 2018
It's time to dream I hope this makes me happy Carmine P. published on 10th March, 2018
good good chan-chih published on 10th March, 2018
Ether mining in Genesis It's best in the mining industry so far. coolindia0715 published on 9th March, 2018
Beautiful I love it oneclicktutorial published on 9th March, 2018
good good เจนจัด จ. published on 9th March, 2018
Good I am very happy to bought a mine but i have bought it for 2 years not 1 year and this exists at my contract. Do i have a mistake? ozturk3886 published on 8th March, 2018
Excellent Ether contract I have heard from my friends about Genesis ether. It's really excellent. summercool1981 published on 8th March, 2018
Looking good Seem promising philip120188 published on 8th March, 2018
good veri good ildemar.fonseca.moc published on 8th March, 2018
nice nice annaapostol16 published on 8th March, 2018
ok ok 2647998361 published on 7th March, 2018
good good ma197201 published on 7th March, 2018
maybe nice! maybe nice! stoc34.o published on 7th March, 2018
Zcash Mining I bought 2 years of mining, I do not like the 2 months of delay, I hope that the difficulty of mining remains stable. It is intuited that the cryptocoin mining is already quite mature and has low ROI Jaime A. published on 7th March, 2018
Terrible customer service I am very unhappy with the service of this company. They changed the start date of my contract by 2 months there by sitting on my deposit for 2 months with no return. adamthebutler published on 7th March, 2018
Nice Nice fcrademan published on 6th March, 2018
A great passive income Very pleased with the site easy to use davebailey2013 published on 6th March, 2018
Excited It is my first purchase from Genesis mining so we will see what will happen... but i feel i can purchase another coin mining from Genesis.. it is very easy and support team answers in details if you have questions related to your purchase Ali K. published on 6th March, 2018
Very Happy! I am really happy that I found this website and start mining! nawrotpiotr published on 6th March, 2018
ótimo serviço ótimo retorno soconsultas.com published on 6th March, 2018
Excellent Ether contract I have heard great results from my friends about Genesis ether mining and so I have purchased it. Chhawi P. published on 6th March, 2018
Easy Easy zanna.sz published on 5th March, 2018
Super It's first tíme foto me, so... We will see... ;-) branorod published on 5th March, 2018
Waiting for start mining Good Jirote B. published on 5th March, 2018
Best contract! It is high effective mining! Ether is one of the most perspective cryptocurrency today. shevrob published on 4th March, 2018
Genesis Mining - One of the best mining Genesis mining is one the best company in the world, working with transparency to its customer. Great Job.!! Kratika K. published on 4th March, 2018
Great One year mining it's great to see to next year we'll be successful yy.alamsyah published on 4th March, 2018
Cool deal Let us see how will be the earning ratio since I have great expectation... Suha A. published on 4th March, 2018
Easy Entrance Genesis has made it easy to get into alternative cryptos. Shawn K. published on 3rd March, 2018
Ether mining contract review awaiting for contract to start limkw78 published on 3rd March, 2018
Good Good Praveen M. published on 3rd March, 2018
Ether contract I hope it will be a huge succes. It only starts 30/04/2018 marc.boeckx2 published on 2nd March, 2018
Zcash I like very much the 2 years contract and I am very excited about this coin. vassagox88 published on 2nd March, 2018
revisão revisão marcio p. published on 2nd March, 2018
looking forward I'm looking forward to receiving ETH and ZEC deeply. goudougaisya.crystal published on 1st March, 2018
Can’t wait Looking forward to the start of the mining contract. Sign up was easy and straightforward Eric B. published on 1st March, 2018
I have a good chance I've got a mining opportunity waiting for you. I also expect to buy a bit coin. d9451350 published on 28th February, 2018
2 year Zcash I've bought two years, not one, but the contract will start 30-april javiersaz71 published on 28th February, 2018
seriös und intuitiv Tolles deutsches Frontend, einfacher Contract und Abwicklung des größten Cloud Mining Anbieters erik.nocht published on 28th February, 2018
Genesis ETH With only 2 days experience....it's too early to have an opinion. Edward S. published on 28th February, 2018
Review 5 stars joisarv published on 28th February, 2018
Good Product Thanks for giving another chance.. RAJESHKUMAR S. published on 28th February, 2018
Review It’s hard to review anything when not possible to use it yet due to purchasing with a credit card, but once I am able to use it I will update my review dutchjd72 published on 27th February, 2018
Finally got a contract Been sold out of contracts for a while now and I’m exited to have finally copped one before they’re gone. mikedfrom903 published on 27th February, 2018
2 year Ether Contract - Flatrate So happy for the wonderful opportunity to buy another Ether Contract. I love it - Thank You Pamela F. published on 26th February, 2018
It didn't start the mining It didn't start the mining yet. pterazillacoinity published on 26th February, 2018
Good Good Yodsawat T. published on 26th February, 2018
Little high price but good Little bit high price but good service i think. Kyunghwan N. published on 26th February, 2018
最高！！ 稼げます taitai040432 published on 26th February, 2018
good good munossi published on 26th February, 2018
good plan I think it's a good plan I am expecting skybluex733 published on 25th February, 2018
Eth Mining Perfect Deniz O. published on 25th February, 2018
good! good! 横井 雄. published on 25th February, 2018
anticipate i've got a contract. and it starts at april. i really anticipate how it works. morechance87 published on 24th February, 2018
Best Best... Thank you... Ofer MizraChi published on 23rd February, 2018
Two Year Z Cash contract The contract was supposed to start at April 30, but started mining anyway at Feb 1st. Nice website and interface. My payouts come in everyday. Good job Genesis! Frank T. published on 23rd February, 2018
Bien Je suis pressé que le minage commence thibaud s. published on 23rd February, 2018
Good service Mining hasn't started as yet. But I've heard alot of awesome things about you guys jethro91775 published on 23rd February, 2018
1year? I bought 2years. TETSUO Y. published on 23rd February, 2018
Great Thanks a lot Hashem B. published on 23rd February, 2018
Nice offer It starts at 30.04. If it works same as my other contracts then it is very well Claudia K. published on 22nd February, 2018
I think, you guys so good than others. So, I am comeback to Genesis!!! I think, you guys so good than others. So, I am comeback to Genesis!!! Why Genesis-mining? There is the backup plan for my favorite coins. And, there is some mining power w/ "none maintenance fees".And promotion system!!!. Thank you guys. I'll invest you guys soon. JAEGUEN K. published on 22nd February, 2018
GOOD!!!!! I AM STILL HUNGRY!!!! gagosun published on 22nd February, 2018
For the 3% I will truly believe this is a great program if I can save Kaid C. published on 22nd February, 2018
It's good to me I'm looking for a valid cloud mining service & Genesis Mining show me that I can believe them. Van H. published on 22nd February, 2018
hope it can bring me more money hope it can bring me more money, thank u nice website, new exp! chenwinshane published on 22nd February, 2018
Perfetto! Perfetto! elsilcasa3 published on 21st February, 2018
Genesis Mining Excellent pricing.. Hopefully I will be able to mine enough coins to pay for the contracts and make some profits. indimunda21 published on 21st February, 2018
Zcash mining Mining not yet started dhianu published on 21st February, 2018
Easy Registration Fast and easy way. Website lean in a good way. Florian W. published on 21st February, 2018
I am pretty excited. waiting for 30/4/2018 to come, by the wait the payment was considered foreign transaction capeincwang published on 21st February, 2018
Give a try! Hope it goes well! 上偉 林. published on 21st February, 2018
Excellent Experience I had an awesome experience purchasing this 2 year mining contract from Genesis. kevin.marczi published on 20th February, 2018
Reasonable price and gain. Although Genesis is not offering cheapest solution into world of onkine minning it has a reputation which is worth spending more for a service which was proven reliable and dependant. d.jurcevic published on 20th February, 2018
So far so good So far so good deepakpatro published on 19th February, 2018
Good to invest I am pretty satisfied. I am expecting 30.4.2018 gogogojj published on 19th February, 2018
Easy to handle The setup was easy. Looking forward to see the wallet be filled. lets published on 19th February, 2018
waiting start mining waiting start mining mcdongdot published on 19th February, 2018
Thanks for your help and support Thanks for your help and support. Looking forward to crypto mining with Genesis. This is my first venture into currency mining. regards, Bstrong bill1strong published on 18th February, 2018
good good 牧野 勝. published on 18th February, 2018
very good very good Eduardo S. published on 18th February, 2018
Eth mining It was fast and easy began to mining Alberto S. published on 18th February, 2018
pre-sale is too early My contract does not start till two months later - it is such a long time! xiaomalu published on 18th February, 2018
Contract not yet active Contract not yet active. Can't review operation, only communication with Genesis Contract is 2 years Zcash, not 1 year Thanks Carles S. published on 18th February, 2018
It’s great Thanks so much Hashem B. published on 18th February, 2018
Zach 2. mining. Perfect Deniz O. published on 17th February, 2018
ZEC Best choice MOHAMMAD B. published on 17th February, 2018
満足しています マイニング開始が楽しみです inouedaisuke2002 published on 17th February, 2018
Hopeful I hope everything goes well and zcash price goes up Soonkyo J. published on 17th February, 2018
Expectation Mining has not yet begun, but I'm looking forward to it sirasuobake published on 17th February, 2018
It will be awesome and It will be awesome and a faboulus experience. owata.life42 published on 17th February, 2018
Good CONTRACT Good CONTRACT samill6066 published on 17th February, 2018
בעזרת השם נעשה ונצליח בעזרת השם נעשה ונצליח ofer t. published on 16th February, 2018
Ethereum contract Good gaat and safe. Buyer is from the Nederlands. mlghoms published on 16th February, 2018
thanks thanks huseyin23 published on 16th February, 2018
Purchase purchase was easy Madhu T. published on 16th February, 2018
Good Good lucky67fed published on 16th February, 2018
For the moment i am happy I wait the start or thé contrat Nathan M. published on 16th February, 2018
I'm opportunistic about it! I'm very opportunistic regarding my new Zcash Genesis contract! Genesis has the best reputation in the cryptocurrency space an I'm looking forward to working with Genesis! Scott K. published on 16th February, 2018
Excellent Great deal & excellent support Basnet A. published on 15th February, 2018
Ether Contract Yes it is a good product (no fees).. Gottfried S. published on 15th February, 2018
Very positive Feeling very postive with my purchase. It’s only early days yet as not long since I bought it. Very easy to purchase and set up. Lori O. published on 15th February, 2018
Excited! I am waiting.... :) gokhantekin1987 published on 15th February, 2018
Ethereum Mining Rocks! While we think that Ethereum may turn to POS in the coming future, we have a fantastic future to mine it at a profit with Genesis Mining. If it DOES go to POS instead of mining, then we can move to a variety of alt coins that are nearly as profitable and every bit as much fun. Give Genesis Mining a go and see why it is better than buying coins directly. Jack S. published on 15th February, 2018
I think that my purchase I think that my purchase was a good thing. And this thing will bring me a lot of benefit. aleks.4u published on 15th February, 2018
I expect to have a I expect to have a good return for this investiment. felippedesa published on 14th February, 2018
Prima Snel, confirm afspraak en eenvoudig geregeld Eric H. published on 14th February, 2018
I am looking forward! It will be awesome and a faboulus experience. thiam published on 14th February, 2018
Z cash mining Excellent. agaramsrinivas published on 14th February, 2018
All good. All good. mroettinger published on 13th February, 2018
Excellent This is an excellent opportunity to make a good research about cryptomining. mabueno62 published on 13th February, 2018
Get it will it’s here Great company great prize if you believe in crypto. mamjraj published on 13th February, 2018
Es la mejor inversio Es la mejor inversion Salvador C. published on 13th February, 2018
Why is this contract is 1 year? I bought 2 year Z cash mining Is there any problem? lastpromise0 published on 13th February, 2018
Perfect Perfect robertkaess published on 13th February, 2018
Excelente Proceso de compra rápido y sencillo pedroatias published on 13th February, 2018
Good I hope great return. atelieratmos published on 13th February, 2018
Finally again Finally the mining contracts are back. It's harder and harder to find mining contract and the Genesis Mining ones are the last decent ones around. Most of them will never payback. I'm using Genesis for 1 year right now and satisfied. fabriciopamplona published on 12th February, 2018
1 year Zcash mining Zcash cash priceis riseing, so this pachage is quite profitable, better than buing your own mining sistem at home. fatzi2004 published on 12th February, 2018
I expect it. Even if PoS starts, there are alternatives. Because I heard that the reputation is good, I have decided mining for the first time as GenesisMining. I am looking forward to April when mining starts. kanako b. published on 12th February, 2018
Buy Etherium and Bit Coin I have bought the etherium and bit coin for the last two years. I am very excited and am very pleased to see the benefits. I have been informing others a lot and invested a lot of people. If I have a chance, I would like to invest and recommend more. sanggil h. published on 12th February, 2018
Sorry!!! I have 2 year actually. i want asking about giving me BTC? What time? meshari a. published on 12th February, 2018
Have previously purchased BTC mining Have previously purchased BTC mining which has worked well. Ether should start in April, and I’m expecting the same performance Richard K. published on 12th February, 2018
Good Good Nishanth P. published on 12th February, 2018
Zcash Good Pricing and contract.. anthonyg.mcbride published on 11th February, 2018
まだ採掘始まってませんが...（笑） まだ採掘始まってませんが...（笑） man30276631 published on 11th February, 2018
Great deal Great deal boriskaplan7 published on 11th February, 2018
Just bought the contract Just bought the contract boriskaplan7 published on 11th February, 2018
Ethereum mining contract. Fast and good service. Reassuring. Thank you. Ng W. published on 11th February, 2018
Excellent Excellent YUSUKE T. published on 11th February, 2018
Good 如果有bitcoin同bitcoin cash挖壙合約，都會支持。 ckinming published on 11th February, 2018
Best buy What I think? This is the best buy ever. The best crypto mining option with profit. jan.ferjancic87 published on 10th February, 2018
Great Great, I wish they would offer more options and improve the prices. Otherwise it is excellent Ashraf A. published on 10th February, 2018
Nice to have it It is nice I have it now. martins published on 10th February, 2018
Zcash - 2yr mining contract Does exactly what it says on the tin - started earning from day one Matthew G. published on 10th February, 2018
Wrong title I bought 2 year,not 1 year 康寛 黒. published on 10th February, 2018
Good experience with it. Good experience with it. Napat O. published on 10th February, 2018
Zcash Mining contract and purchase experience definitely met my expectations. Would buy more if I could, Stephen R. published on 10th February, 2018
fast response I have bought 2 year ether contract from genesis mining 2 weeks ago, and it was responded so fast, just 5 minutes. mybarock published on 10th February, 2018
bought 1 year Zcash Mining? I think I bought 2 Year contract.... am I wrong? wallet7 published on 9th February, 2018
Amazing Contract Amazing Contract it will be profitable for us. zia r. published on 9th February, 2018
Thanks I want to buy more.)) Denis N. published on 9th February, 2018
Excellent and convenient It's very good opportunity to mine with Genesis mining. Payout is auto and on daily basis which is very positive point. Waqas R. published on 9th February, 2018
Easy process It was an easy process buying and setting up the contract. alfonsocsr published on 9th February, 2018
New contract Count down for me to experience & learn about mining crypto currencies. Nuno F. published on 9th February, 2018
Everything worked fine Everything worked fine mint published on 8th February, 2018
Easy and Professional It was easy to setup a mining contract. Also dashboards give you enough information to be in sync iproof published on 8th February, 2018
First use First use, I believe you! xiemin123 published on 8th February, 2018
It's a good system. Recommend. It's a good system. Recommend. spott2918 published on 8th February, 2018
Glad i did. Excited winni62 published on 8th February, 2018
dejligt dejligt stengrundtvig published on 7th February, 2018
fast response I have bought 1 year zcash mining - starter by using doge coin, and it was responded in just a minute, wows. mybarock published on 7th February, 2018
Top experience Since buying a contract I’ve really enjoyed the professionalism of this company. They are a real leader in the business. HELMUT B. published on 7th February, 2018
Fast and easy Fast and quick transaction teohrossian published on 7th February, 2018
2 year Ether Contract 2 year Ether Contract That's what I want, and I'm so exciting!! Thank you so much!! 현구 한. published on 7th February, 2018
Very Good Thank You Very Much Too Genesis Mining, I Hope More to Genesis Mining, Best Regards Anto YULIANTO Y. published on 7th February, 2018
nice the value will increase amin.samsul published on 7th February, |
Bay is my first investment in cryptocurrencies also. I have fully synchronized the Halo wallet. But I'm still keeping my BAYs on Bittrex. I'm afraid of a collapse on my PC, a system failure on Halo.exe etc. Bad things happen to me very often and I don't want to lose my precious BAYs, nobody does. Anyway, how can i backup my wallet? And I would be glad if you give me some other advices about securing my BAYs. Thank you. Keep up the good work!
You should never keep much money on an exchange. A long history of exchanges being hacked speaks against it.
You can use the client or the Qt wallet. I recommend the client. Make several backups of your keys and remember a backup kept in your home does not help you if your house burns down.
For Qt wallet you need to backup a file called "wallet.dat"
For the client you need to backup "key1.private" and "key2.private" (the client is multisig. Much safer, but requires you to have both keys in order to transact)
You might also want to join our slack. A lot of noob questions are answered there every day.
http://bitbay.market/wp-login.php?action=slack-invitation
You should never keep much money on an exchange. A long history of exchanges being hacked speaks against it.You can use the client or the Qt wallet. I recommend the client. Make several backups of your keys and remember a backup kept in your home does not help you if your house burns down.For Qt wallet you need to backup a file called "wallet.dat"For the client you need to backup "key1.private" and "key2.private" (the client is multisig. Much safer, but requires you to have both keys in order to transact)You might also want to join our slack. A lot of noob questions are answered there every day.
Rabber
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MemberActivity: 64Merit: 10 Re: BitBay OFFICIAL BITBAY Thread Smart Contracts Decentralized Markets Rolling Peg June 24, 2017, 08:01:40 PM #4886 Quote from: TRcoinvestor on June 24, 2017, 01:52:20 PM Hi guys. This is my first message. And BitBay is my first investment in cryptocurrencies also. I have fully synchronized the Halo wallet. But I'm still keeping my BAYs on Bittrex. I'm afraid of a collapse on my PC, a system failure on Halo.exe etc. Bad things happen to me very often and I don't want to lose my precious BAYs, nobody does. Anyway, how can i backup my wallet? And I would be glad if you give me some other advices about securing my BAYs. Thank you. Keep up the good work!
I keep some in my client and some on Bittrex.
I have 2 backup copies in a fireproof safe at home and two in a safety deposit box at my bank. It's a good idea to have copies in multiple locations.
I keep some in my client and some on Bittrex.I have 2 backup copies in a fireproof safe at home and two in a safety deposit box at my bank. It's a good idea to have copies in multiple locations. http://bitbay.market/
dzimbeck
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LegendaryActivity: 1736Merit: 1026 Re: BitBay OFFICIAL BITBAY Thread Smart Contracts Decentralized Markets Rolling Peg June 24, 2017, 11:12:03 PM #4889 Quote from: toknormal on June 24, 2017, 05:44:39 PM
Quote from: Munti on June 24, 2017, 02:21:50 PM You should never keep much money on an exchange.
I've kept all my Ether on an exchange for about 3 years because I feel it's safer there than on the Ether blockchain. I'm sure about 100 times more crypto has been lost from cold wallets due to screw ups than has been lost from exchange hacks.
Coin toss.
My BAY is still in a Mac QT Wallet. (No longer supported).
I've kept all my Ether on an exchange for about 3 years because I feel it's safer there than on the Ether blockchain. I'm sure about 100 times more crypto has been lost from cold wallets due to screw ups than has been lost from exchange hacks.Coin toss.My BAY is still in a Mac QT Wallet. (No longer supported).
Ether is not stable.
However, almost half of Bitcoins in existence have been stolen by exchanges. Mt Gox alone was almost a billion dollar theft. Granted a lot of funds are lost by screw ups to date I personally know many people who lost their Bitbay from forgetting to backup or losing a backup.
With that said we have video tutorials on best practices. Print keys on paper, use M-Disc and so forth. When in doubt, back up and never leave funds on exchanges. Even Coinbase is known to freeze accounts Chinese exchanges deny withdraws and at any hint of regulations it will happen again. Ether is not stable.However, almost half of Bitcoins in existence have been stolen by exchanges. Mt Gox alone was almost a billion dollar theft. Granted a lot of funds are lost by screw ups to date I personally know many people who lost their Bitbay from forgetting to backup or losing a backup.With that said we have video tutorials on best practices. Print keys on paper, use M-Disc and so forth. When in doubt, back up and never leave funds on exchanges. Even Coinbase is known to freeze accounts Chinese exchanges deny withdraws and at any hint of regulations it will happen again.
crypto33
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MemberActivity: 120Merit: 10 Re: BitBay OFFICIAL BITBAY Thread Smart Contracts Decentralized Markets Rolling Peg June 25, 2017, 11:02:19 AM #4891 Love the concept of this coin, I'm invested i just think the client UI needs to be updated its looking abit dated and not so clean and fresh (which in my opinion will put people off who dont understand the value of the underlying technology) but if development keeps going in the direction it has been I think this one will be one to watch in the future.
Keep up the good work!
cr197
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Full MemberActivity: 266Merit: 107 Re: BitBay OFFICIAL BITBAY Thread Smart Contracts Decentralized Markets Rolling Peg June 25, 2017, 05:13:35 PM #4893 Quote from: Metros on June 25, 2017, 09:15:27 AM Can any one explain more about the Staking rewards? can't find info anywhere.
How much coins minimum do I need in order to apply for the staking?
I only need to keep it on my wallet (like other coins such as XEM/BLK)?
Any calculator?
Staking - Proof of Stake
Q.) How does staking work and why does it generate value?
A.) Proof of Stake (POS) was originated by Peercoin. Its an eco-friendly alternative to Proof of Work (POW) coins like Bitcoin. It is similar to POW except that you dont need mining hardware to mine new coins. You simply have to hold coins in your wallet and keep the wallet connected to the network. To keep staking fair it requires that the coins held in a wallet reach a maturity level before they can begin staking for newly minted coins.In order for coins to mature they must not leave the wallet or else they risk reseting their maturity level. BitBays maturity level is roughly 2 hours or (120 block confirmations at 64 second block time) - after that they begin the process of staking for the next newly found block on the blockchain. If they fail to stake the next block they gain miniscule advantage to potentially stake the next block, this repeats over and over until they finally stake a block, after which the coins must wait another 2 hours before they can become mature again.
All of this is automated as long as you hold coins in your wallet and keep you computer online and unlocked (yet still password protected) to the network. The more mature coins you own the better the odds that you will stake the next block receiving the newly minted coins that are associated with that block.
Proof of Stake holds many advantages over Proof of Work - mainly being:
Miners in POW always have the fear that their mining hardware will become obsolete premature of their breakeven point. New hardware can turn existing hardware worthless in just a matter of weeks. With Proof of Stake your coins are the mining hardware, they only risk is that someone wants to buy more coins to stake more than you, yet this creates a scarcity factor and drives the price of the coin up in value which does nothing but benefit your pocket!
In cryptocurrencies, any computer that supports a fully synchronized blockchain online is considered a node for the network. Currently with most POW coins like Bitcoin, there is no incentive for people to be a node for the network as all incentive goes to the miners. As their blockchain grows in size the number of nodes are diminishing as there is no reward for supporting it. POS coins provides incentive for people to syncronize to the blockchain which secures the network and helps provide a healthy decentralized atmosphere for the coin.
BitBay staking schematics:
New block added to blockchain every 64 seconds.
Coin maturity 120 confirmations at 64 second blocks = 128 minutes
1% annual increase in coins supply enforced by POS 3.0 protocol (see below)
Staking Protocol: POS 3.0 which is cloned from the Blackcoin developer known as rat4. POS 3.0s whitepaper can be found here:
Its main upgrades are that it enforces a true APR of the coin supply.
Mature coins can only stay mature if you keep your wallet running. There is no coin age factor anymore.
This is achieved by providing a block reward proportional to the APR. BitBay currently has a total supply of 1,007,545,000. With BitBays 64 second block time that equals 492,750 new blocks per year (60x60x24x365/64), which equals a current block value of 20.44 newly minted coins per block. This amount will keep adjust over time as the total coin supply increases. With this enforcement factor in mind, we can actually create a much higher APR for staking wallets. Its impossible for the community to stake every coin in the total supply for various reasons - some are locked in contracts, timelock bonds, held on exchanges for trading, etc. That being said, the APR is only rewarded to those that participate. The coin supply will increase 1% no matter what, yet if only 30% of the entire coin supply is staking then that 30% will receive the 1% APR of 1 billion+ coins! We believe the actual APRs will vary from 2% to 5% a year - not the advertised 1%!
Q.) How much RAM do I need for staking?
A.) 4 GB of RAM should be sufficient for staking BAY. Anything less and you begin to lose potential rewards due to processing power. I tried staking once on a raspberry pi (1 RAM) and couldnt find a block on a healthy amount of coins even after 6 days of staking.
Q.) Can you mine BitBay?
A.) Staking is just another form of mining. See above for staking information
Q.) How do I stake.
A.) First, the Client needs to be synchronized 100%. Second, you need coin in your wallet to be able to stake. Then you unlock your wallet by going to the File tab of the Client and click on Unlock Wallet. For security reasons its best to unlock your wallet for staking only.
You can review the network staking statistics here:
You can look up your address on the staking list.
Staking - Proof of StakeQ.) How does staking work and why does it generate value?A.) Proof of Stake (POS) was originated by Peercoin. Its an eco-friendly alternative to Proof of Work (POW) coins like Bitcoin. It is similar to POW except that you dont need mining hardware to mine new coins. You simply have to hold coins in your wallet and keep the wallet connected to the network. To keep staking fair it requires that the coins held in a wallet reach a maturity level before they can begin staking for newly minted coins.In order for coins to mature they must not leave the wallet or else they risk reseting their maturity level. BitBays maturity level is roughly 2 hours or (120 block confirmations at 64 second block time) - after that they begin the process of staking for the next newly found block on the blockchain. If they fail to stake the next block they gain miniscule advantage to potentially stake the next block, this repeats over and over until they finally stake a block, after which the coins must wait another 2 hours before they can become mature again.All of this is automated as long as you hold coins in your wallet and keep you computer online and unlocked (yet still password protected) to the network. The more mature coins you own the better the odds that you will stake the next block receiving the newly minted coins that are associated with that block.Proof of Stake holds many advantages over Proof of Work - mainly being:Miners in POW always have the fear that their mining hardware will become obsolete premature of their breakeven point. New hardware can turn existing hardware worthless in just a matter of weeks. With Proof of Stake your coins are the mining hardware, they only risk is that someone wants to buy more coins to stake more than you, yet this creates a scarcity factor and drives the price of the coin up in value which does nothing but benefit your pocket!In cryptocurrencies, any computer that supports a fully synchronized blockchain online is considered a node for the network. Currently with most POW coins like Bitcoin, there is no incentive for people to be a node for the network as all incentive goes to the miners. As their blockchain grows in size the number of nodes are diminishing as there is no reward for supporting it. POS coins provides incentive for people to syncronize to the blockchain which secures the network and helps provide a healthy decentralized atmosphere for the coin.BitBay staking schematics:New block added to blockchain every 64 seconds.Coin maturity 120 confirmations at 64 second blocks = 128 minutes1% annual increase in coins supply enforced by POS 3.0 protocol (see below)Staking Protocol: POS 3.0 which is cloned from the Blackcoin developer known as rat4. POS 3.0s whitepaper can be found here: https://bravenewcoin.com/assets/Whitepapers/Blackcoin-POS-3.pdf Its main upgrades are that it enforces a true APR of the coin supply.Mature coins can only stay mature if you keep your wallet running. There is no coin age factor anymore.This is achieved by providing a block reward proportional to the APR. BitBay currently has a total supply of 1,007,545,000. With BitBays 64 second block time that equals 492,750 new blocks per year (60x60x24x365/64), which equals a current block value of 20.44 newly minted coins per block. This amount will keep adjust over time as the total coin supply increases. With this enforcement factor in mind, we can actually create a much higher APR for staking wallets. Its impossible for the community to stake every coin in the total supply for various reasons - some are locked in contracts, timelock bonds, held on exchanges for trading, etc. That being said, the APR is only rewarded to those that participate. The coin supply will increase 1% no matter what, yet if only 30% of the entire coin supply is staking then that 30% will receive the 1% APR of 1 billion+ coins! We believe the actual APRs will vary from 2% to 5% a year - not the advertised 1%!Q.) How much RAM do I need for staking?A.) 4 GB of RAM should be sufficient for staking BAY. Anything less and you begin to lose potential rewards due to processing power. I tried staking once on a raspberry pi (1 RAM) and couldnt find a block on a healthy amount of coins even after 6 days of staking.Q.) Can you mine BitBay?A.) Staking is just another form of mining. See above for staking informationQ.) How do I stake.A.) First, the Client needs to be synchronized 100%. Second, you need coin in your wallet to be able to stake. Then you unlock your wallet by going to the File tab of the Client and click on Unlock Wallet. For security reasons its best to unlock your wallet for staking only.You can review the network staking statistics here: https://chainz.cryptoid.info/bay/#!extractionYou can look up your address on the staking list. "Dishonour is like a scar on a tree, which time, instead of effacing, only helps to enlarge."
cryptohunter
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MY RED TRUST LEFT BY SCUMBAGS - READ MY SIG
LegendaryActivity: 2030Merit: 1119MY RED TRUST LEFT BY SCUMBAGS - READ MY SIG Re: BitBay OFFICIAL BITBAY Thread Smart Contracts Decentralized Markets Rolling Peg June 25, 2017, 10:35:28 PM #4895 i know i have said it several times before but i would love to see stake incrementally increased to match amounts held and duration of non spending to encourage investment and holding and kill off churning.
I guess the pegging will eventually deal with that but shame that could not be implemented as a short term incentive until then. Sadly pos3 i think removed something that would have made that possible...
Is pegging still on for the end of 2017? I seriously would not even be that shocked to see the peg at 50c if all goes well with the api and such before then. I wonder if we can think ahead and interest any teams to start building apps/websites for bay before api is even released which they would then just plug in? is it possible to do that?
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1764757.0 https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2829282 https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=4895354.0 https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5098315.0 https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5105851.0 https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5110041.0 MY RED TRUST WAS LEFT BY UNTRUSTWORTHY SCUM BAGS CHECK
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Full MemberActivity: 266Merit: 107 Re: BitBay OFFICIAL BITBAY Thread Smart Contracts Decentralized Markets Rolling Peg June 26, 2017, 01:28:23 AM #4896 Quote from: *Sakura* on June 25, 2017, 08:01:04 PM Hi! Some time ago I have read about a planning of increasing of the stake reward. Are we just increase reward for the POS block or we going back to POS v1 mode with increasing of APR?
The block reward will be "corrected" on the next major update. I'm hoping that's no later than 1-2 months away. It will require a hard fork.
So the POS version will remain 3.0, just with correct block reward per block.
There is actually a way you can track your staking potential
If you goto:
You can follow the amount of coins the network is staking. It typically ranges from 20% to 35% of the entire coin supply.
In POS 3.0, the APR of the coin is enforced, therefore the 20% to 35% of the coin supply staking earns the 1% APR of the total coin supply.
So the reality is that stakers are not really earning 1% APR but based off a 1 billion+ total coin supply, they are earning more like 3% to 5% APR
And don't forget... as the marketplace populates over time, there will be an increased number of coins at any given time that are locked in escrow during contract. This will further diminish the amount of coins available to potentially stake, and therefore increase APR even more, therefore creating more incentive to own!
So the system actually turns into a domino effect! The block reward will be "corrected" on the next major update. I'm hoping that's no later than 1-2 months away. It will require a hard fork.So the POS version will remain 3.0, just with correct block reward per block.There is actually a way you can track your staking potentialIf you goto: https://chainz.cryptoid.info/bay/#!extractionYou can follow the amount of coins the network is staking. It typically ranges from 20% to 35% of the entire coin supply.In POS 3.0, the APR of the coin is enforced, therefore the 20% to 35% of the coin supply staking earns the 1% APR of the total coin supply.So the reality is that stakers are not really earning 1% APR but based off a 1 billion+ total coin supply, they are earning more like 3% to 5% APRAnd don't forget... as the marketplace populates over time, there will be an increased number of coins at any given time that are locked in escrow during contract. This will further diminish the amount of coins available to potentially stake, and therefore increase APR even more, therefore creating more incentive to own!So the system actually turns into a domino effect! "Dishonour is like a scar on a tree, which time, instead of effacing, only helps to enlarge."
cr197
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Full MemberActivity: 266Merit: 107 Re: BitBay OFFICIAL BITBAY Thread Smart Contracts Decentralized Markets Rolling Peg June 26, 2017, 01:32:09 AM #4897 BitBay Community Update - 6/25/17
We are pleased to announce that we are nearly complete with the preparations for release of Davids bounty list. The delay has been in part due finalizing what tasks are to be performed by our marketing team and what will become available for our ever growing community interest. These bounties require a degree of management and we are excited to officially announce a new team member, Aletha Kellond, to the BitBay core development team. She runs her own recruitment firm which makes her highly qualified to fulfill the role as BitBays bounty manager. Once we put the finishing touches on the bounty list we will release a new community update ASAP.
Also worth mentioning that our marketing team has finalized their new branding guidelines for BitBay! With this complete, we now can begin implementing their marketing strategy through our various core development teams and soon to be released community bounties.
David has been busy gearing up for the next release of the Client. He is working diligently to bring these new updates including exotic spend (Checklocktimeverify built-into the Client UI) and a new hard fork to correct the stake reward to the correct block reward value ASAP.
Weve been testing:
- a new price tracking feature for the Custom Contracts template. This will will also be applied to the Buy/Sell Anything template to be released in the near future.
- a new import/export messaging system that allows for manually sending bitmessages to counterparties during email based contract negotiation as a failsafe way to continue correspondence.
- pursuing some alternative solutions to the timeout/disconnect issues some of our Mac users and VM users are experiencing.
We are thankful for everyone downloading the Client and learning all of its features. Other than a few Mac OS and VM Client blockchain sync issues, weve noticed that the Client is performing very well in regards to users lack of bugs to report! This might not seem like much to some of you, but you must understand that most coins and tokens are still only boasting about their smart contract technology roadmaps that are still nothing but vaporware. Here at BitBay, we have been perfecting an actual working product for over 2 years!
We are pleased to announce that we are nearly complete with the preparations for release of Davids bounty list. The delay has been in part due finalizing what tasks are to be performed by our marketing team and what will become available for our ever growing community interest. These bounties require a degree of management and we are excited to officially announce a new team member, Aletha Kellond, to the BitBay core development team. She runs her own recruitment firm which makes her highly qualified to fulfill the role as BitBays bounty manager. Once we put the finishing touches on the bounty list we will release a new community update ASAP.Also worth mentioning that our marketing team has finalized their new branding guidelines for BitBay! With this complete, we now can begin implementing their marketing strategy through our various core development teams and soon to be released community bounties.David has been busy gearing up for the next release of the Client. He is working diligently to bring these new updates including exotic spend (Checklocktimeverify built-into the Client UI) and a new hard fork to correct the stake reward to the correct block reward value ASAP.Weve been testing:- a new price tracking feature for the Custom Contracts template. This will will also be applied to the Buy/Sell Anything template to be released in the near future.- a new import/export messaging system that allows for manually sending bitmessages to counterparties during email based contract negotiation as a failsafe way to continue correspondence.- pursuing some alternative solutions to the timeout/disconnect issues some of our Mac users and VM users are experiencing.We are thankful for everyone downloading the Client and learning all of its features. Other than a few Mac OS and VM Client blockchain sync issues, weve noticed that the Client is performing very well in regards to users lack of bugs to report! This might not seem like much to some of you, but you must understand that most coins and tokens are still only boasting about their smart contract technology roadmaps that are still nothing but vaporware. Here at BitBay, we have been perfecting an actual working product for over 2 years! "Dishonour is like a scar on a tree, which time, instead of effacing, only helps to enlarge."The beloved Sega racing game Daytona USA debuted at the August 1993 Amusement Machine Show in Tokyo.
Hit the jump to read about Daytona‘s development, debut at the Amusement Machine Show 1993, and see actual footage of the trade show and an interview with a young Tetsuya Mizguchi! Also – Michael Jackson in Scramble Training!
Daytona USA Debut
Daytona USA saw its public unveiling at the Amusement Machine Show 1993 and location testing began immediately afterwards. The trade show went down in Makuhari Messe, Tokyo and roughly 40,000 people attended. Other Sega games of note featured at the show included Michael Jackson in Scramble Training, Star Wars Arcade, and Virtua Fighter.
The wide release for the Daytona didn’t occur until the following March, when the game hit Japan and American arcades. European gamers finally saw the game reach local arcades in May.
Personnel & Development
Daytona is a solid arcade racer that was developed by some of Sega’s best talent. Yu Suzuki served as Producer, then rising star Toshihiro Nagoshi was the Chief Designer, Director, and also credited as a Producer. Everyone should, of course, know that Takenobu Mitsuyoshi composed music for the game and sung the title theme, “Let’s Go Away!”
DAYTONA USA - Let's Go Away- Versión alternativa.
Watch this video on YouTube
Daytona‘s development was inspired by a trip Nagoshi made to the United States. While there, he attended a NASCAR race and returned home with an urge to recreate the experience in the arcades. Work on the game began in May of 1993 and just a handful of months later, it was ready to be shown to the world!
The 1993 version of the game is reported to be nearly identical to the final 1994 arcade release, with just some AI tweaks to make the opponents more realistic. Amazing that they were able to turn out such a beloved, ground-breaking game in such a short time!
Amusement Machine Show 1993 Video!
The video below is a very neat treat! It’s a vintage French documentary on the Amusement Machine Show 1993, with footage of Sega games and some staff. There’s even some short shots of Sega’s internal studios.
A much younger Tetsuya Mizguchi gives a decent length interview and we also meet Osaburo Sakurai, who was the director of international affairs for the company at the time.
Reportage sur le AMShow '93 et la AS3 de SEGA.
Watch this video on YouTube
Unfortunately, it is in French audio and Youtube’s auto-translation of closed captioning fails hard here. Still, there’s plenty to see in the video!
Michael Jackson in Scramble Training?!?
If you’ve hadn’t heard of Michael Jackson in Scramble Training previously, then you’re in luck. The French program above features footage of the very rare game, which was quietly pulled following the singer’s public relations issues during the time.
Closing Remarks
Here’s to 23 years of Daytona USA. May we see it remain a staple in arcades for decades to come!You got to love those neo-Luddites February 1, 2011
Posted by Summerspeaker in Primitivism
I read this book for David Correia’s class this week. Jones analyzes the constructions of Luddism from its origins in early nineteenth-century England to the neo-Luddites of the past decade. He stresses the active role in mythmaking and cultural creation for all involved as well as the profound differences between the historical and contemporary movements. He questions the dominant narrative of technology as an autonomous force that he identifies as arising after the advent of the atomic age. With this emphasis of human agency comes a call for serious reflection to anyone invoking the legacy of Ned Ludd and his army, particularly the terror and violence involved. Though obvious, the admonition that we as a species collectively shape the future is worth remembering. Until Goertzel or somebody else creates a genie, technology doesn’t function on its own.
Because of preexisting knowledge about the current anti-technology scene, I found the section on the appropriate technology faction of 1960s counterculture most intriguing. I have long held interest in tracing in the intellectual legacy of the dream of an automated egalitarian society. Though not covered by this book, the left has sought to employ technology for the common good and against capitalist bosses from the beginning. Reading this chapter helped me better understand the political circumstances in which Shulamith Firestone wrote The Dialectic of Sex and outlined a plan of cybernetic communism as part of feminist revolution. This economic vision had a significant following during the period. I wish popularize an updated version of this platform. The widespread neo-Luddite sentiment in the present-day radical community – as discussed by Jones – concerns me. The struggle for the soul of the revolutionary cause waged by authors such as Edward Abbey in the 1970s continues and intensifies.
Given the strong assertion held by John Zerzan and company that the whole technological system must go, long-term collaboration and compromise appears hopeless regardless of close ties primitivists and traditional leftists now share. On the other hand, the simple aesthetic preference for life without a computer or internet connection that Jones suggests lies at the heart of much neo-Luddite philosophy might find satisfaction under a number of scenarios. Already those sufficiently affluent and/or adept can comfortably survive on the edges or even outside of the industrial and communications apparatus. John McCain managed to nearly become the president of the country despite limited or nonexistent ability to browse the web. If the technologies neo-Luddites so fear and we transhumanists so desire come to fruition, the tensions between the romantic pastoral and techno-utopia could conceivably turn obsolete. An advanced nanotech community would – if desired – look more like a primeval forest than one of our noisy, grimy cities that the neo-Luddites understandably detest.
Indeed, pursuing the technological path strikes me as the only moral and plausible way to achieve the green anarchist dream. Ability to manipulate the fundamental building blocks of matter should give the option of living in harmony with the rest of the ecosystem without submitting ourselves to degeneration, misery, and death. Knowledge inherently lends itself to a multiplicity of possible goals. We need not accept notions of an inevitable drive to convert the universe into computronium or even remake the the food chain. I don’t know where I stand on these cosmic questions. I’m only certain that our current condition is intolerable.
AdvertisementsJawaharlal Nehru was described, probably by NB Khare, the Hindu Mahasabha president, as “English by education, Muslim by culture and Hindu by accident.” Did he take this catholicity to the extent of marrying a Muslim? A Hindu-Muslim marriage might be lauded today as a triumph of integration. Then, it could have been the unmaking of Motilal Nehru’s intensely ambitious heir.
Realising this, was the future apostle of secularism calculating and ruthless enough to remove all trace of his youthful folly? A confidential British Intelligence report called the supposed marriage and its suppression ‘the most formative event in Nehru’s life’. Yet, there’s nary a word of it in his autobiography, which has been praised as ‘the most perfect piece of self-revelation since Rousseau’s Confessions’. Some might see this as evidence of extraordinary duplicity.
No, this isn’t BJP denigration of Nehru to deify Vallabhbhai Patel. It’s what Wing Commander Alan Campbell- Johnson of the Supreme Allied Command South-East Asia (SACSEA for short), reported to the Supremo, Lord Louis Mountbatten, on the eve of Nehru’s controversial visit to Singapore in 1946. The secret information that ‘when Jawaharlal, a Brahmin, married a Moslem woman, jeopardizing his whole position within the Hindu social system, it was Gandhi’s personal intervention as a religious leader which saved him from the full consequences of his action’ would have given Mountbatten a powerful hold over Nehru.
Campbell-Johnson later became Mountbatten’s press attaché in New Delhi and wrote Mission with Mountbatten. He collected the information on Nehru before joining SACSEA when he was in India working on a life of Lord Halifax who was viceroy (1926-31) as Lord Irwin. I read his ‘off the record’ report in Singapore when researching my book, Looking East to Look West: Lee Kuan Yew’s Mission India. SR Nathan, then President of Singapore, generously offered me a large cloth bag stuffed with papers from the British archives. Nathan formerly headed Singapore’s Security and Intelligence Division, and many of the documents were Intelligence reports. No one had examined them until he urged me to do so.
That’s how I learnt Nehru’s first fateful encounter with Edwina Mountbatten almost didn’t happen. As soon as World War II ended, Nehru announced he would go to Singapore. The excuse was to check how Mountbatten’s British Military Administration was treating Indian National Army troops and to arrange for their legal defence. His relations with Subhas Chandra Bose were hardly cordial but Nehru knew what the Indian public wanted.
Sir Hubert Elvin Rance, Burma’s last British governor, refused transit facilities. Air Vice-Marshall LF Pendred, the BMA’s intelligence chief, thought Nehru’s request ‘should be refused’. SACSEA officials were determined to make things as uncomfortable as possible if he insisted on going. He wouldn’t get official transport. Indian troops would be confined to barracks, and his presence played down in every way.
They reckoned without Mountbatten’s political antennae which were fully as sensitive as Nehru’s. The Supremo had unsuccessfully tried to see Nehru when he visited Bombay in January 1944 and Nehru was imprisoned in the nearby Ahmadnagar Fort writing The Discovery of India. Determined to make up for that failure, the Supremo told the BMA he was “extremely displeased” it didn’t realise Nehru was “one of the most important political figures in the world.” Apart from being “disloyal” to him “personally”, the BMA’s churlishness “would invite worldwide criticism which Nehru would not fail to exploit.” At the same time, Mountbatten told SK Chettur, British India’s ICS representative in Singapore, Nehru was “a man of honour” who would not embarrass him “by carrying out any agitational activities”.
Mountbatten invited Nehru ‘as an official representative of the All-India Congress’ and treated him to almost head of government honours. Two senior British staff officers received him at Singapore’s Kallang airport with Brigadier JN (Muchu) Chaudhuri, later India’s Chief of the Army Staff, who became his personal aide during the visit. Chettur, Rajabali Jumabhoy, a prominent local businessman, and Tan Kah Kee, an overseas Chinese who was so important that when he died in Beijing in 1961 Zhou Enlai personally supervised his state funeral, were also present. Formalities over, Chaudhuri took Nehru through about 2,000 men in INA uniform with tricolour badges (courtesy Mountbatten) to Government House (today’s Istana or presidential palace) where India’s future (and last) viceroy entertained India’s future (and first) Prime Minister over tea.
Mountbatten and Nehru then ‘rode in state’ in an open car past the 300 INA men who had marched to Government House shouting revolutionary slogans, to the Indian YMCA Welfare Centre in Stamford Road. Edwina waited there with Indian Red Cross workers. The Tamil Murasu newspaper called it ‘the neatest diplomatic stroke and so casually executed that Lord Louis Mountbatten displayed real genius.’ The cheering crowds included many ‘former Indian soldiers’ (euphemism for INA personnel who were technically rebels) whose “Neh |
relationships with new patrons, philanthropic foundations and the federal government.[65]
In late 1960s and early 1970s, student and faculty activists protested against the Vietnam War and MIT's defense research.[66][67] In this period MIT's various departments were researching helicopters, smart bombs and counterinsurgency techniques for the war in Vietnam as well as guidance systems for nuclear missiles.[68] The Union of Concerned Scientists was founded on March 4, 1969 during a meeting of faculty members and students seeking to shift the emphasis on military research toward environmental and social problems.[69] MIT ultimately divested itself from the Instrumentation Laboratory and moved all classified research off-campus to the MIT Lincoln Laboratory facility in 1973 in response to the protests.[70][71] The student body, faculty, and administration remained comparatively unpolarized during what was a tumultuous time for many other universities.[66] Johnson was seen to be highly successful in leading his institution to "greater strength and unity" after these times of turmoil.[72] However six MIT students were sentenced to prison terms at this time and some former student leaders, such as Michael Albert and George Katsiaficas, are still indignant about MIT's role in military research and its suppression of these protests.[73] (Richard Leacock's film, November Actions, records some of these tumultuous events.[74])
In the 1980s, there was more controversy at MIT over its involvement in SDI (space weaponry) and CBW (chemical and biological warfare) research.[75] More recently, MIT's research for the military has included work on robots, drones and 'battle suits'.[76]
Recent history [ edit ]
MIT has kept pace with and helped to advance the digital age. In addition to developing the predecessors to modern computing and networking technologies,[77][78] students, staff, and faculty members at Project MAC, the Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, and the Tech Model Railroad Club wrote some of the earliest interactive computer video games like Spacewar! and created much of modern hacker slang and culture.[79] Several major computer-related organizations have originated at MIT since the 1980s: Richard Stallman's GNU Project and the subsequent Free Software Foundation were founded in the mid-1980s at the AI Lab; the MIT Media Lab was founded in 1985 by Nicholas Negroponte and Jerome Wiesner to promote research into novel uses of computer technology;[80] the World Wide Web Consortium standards organization was founded at the Laboratory for Computer Science in 1994 by Tim Berners-Lee;[81] the OpenCourseWare project has made course materials for over 2,000 MIT classes available online free of charge since 2002;[82] and the One Laptop per Child initiative to expand computer education and connectivity to children worldwide was launched in 2005.[83]
MIT was named a sea-grant college in 1976 to support its programs in oceanography and marine sciences and was named a space-grant college in 1989 to support its aeronautics and astronautics programs.[84][85] Despite diminishing government financial support over the past quarter century, MIT launched several successful development campaigns to significantly expand the campus: new dormitories and athletics buildings on west campus; the Tang Center for Management Education; several buildings in the northeast corner of campus supporting research into biology, brain and cognitive sciences, genomics, biotechnology, and cancer research; and a number of new "backlot" buildings on Vassar Street including the Stata Center.[86] Construction on campus in the 2000s included expansions of the Media Lab, the Sloan School's eastern campus, and graduate residences in the northwest.[87][88] In 2006, President Hockfield launched the MIT Energy Research Council to investigate the interdisciplinary challenges posed by increasing global energy consumption.[89]
In 2001, inspired by the open source and open access movements,[90] MIT launched OpenCourseWare to make the lecture notes, problem sets, syllabi, exams, and lectures from the great majority of its courses available online for no charge, though without any formal accreditation for coursework completed.[91] While the cost of supporting and hosting the project is high,[92] OCW expanded in 2005 to include other universities as a part of the OpenCourseWare Consortium, which currently includes more than 250 academic institutions with content available in at least six languages.[93] In 2011, MIT announced it would offer formal certification (but not credits or degrees) to online participants completing coursework in its "MITx" program, for a modest fee.[94] The "edX" online platform supporting MITx was initially developed in partnership with Harvard and its analogous "Harvardx" initiative. The courseware platform is open source, and other universities have already joined and added their own course content.[95] In March 2009 the MIT faculty adopted an open-access policy to make its scholarship publicly accessible online.[96]
MIT has its own police force. Three days after the Boston Marathon bombing of April 2013, MIT Police patrol officer Sean Collier was fatally shot by the suspects Dzhokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev, setting off a violent manhunt that shut down the campus and much of the Boston metropolitan area for a day.[97] One week later, Collier's memorial service was attended by more than 10,000 people, in a ceremony hosted by the MIT community with thousands of police officers from the New England region and Canada.[98][99][100] On November 25, 2013, MIT announced the creation of the Collier Medal, to be awarded annually to "an individual or group that embodies the character and qualities that Officer Collier exhibited as a member of the MIT community and in all aspects of his life". The announcement further stated that "Future recipients of the award will include those whose contributions exceed the boundaries of their profession, those who have contributed to building bridges across the community, and those who consistently and selflessly perform acts of kindness".[101][102][103]
In September 2017, the school announced the creation of an artificial intelligence research lab called the MIT-IBM Watson AI Lab. IBM will spend $240 million over the next decade and the lab will be staffed by MIT and IBM scientists.[104]
In October 2018, MIT announced it will open a College of Computing, dedicated to the study of artificial intelligence, in September 2019 to be named after lead donor and The Blackstone Group CEO Stephen Schwarzman. The focus of the new college is to study not just AI code, but interdisciplinary AI education and how AI can be used in fields as diverse as history and biology. The cost of buildings and new faculty for the new college is expected to be $1 billion upon completion.[105]
Campus [ edit ]
The central and eastern sections of MIT's campus as seen from above Massachusetts Avenue and the Charles River. Left of center is the Great Dome overlooking Killian Court, with Kendall Square to the upper right.
MIT's Building 10 and Great Dome overlooking Killian Court
MIT's 166-acre (67.2 ha) campus in the city of Cambridge spans approximately a mile along the north side of the Charles River basin.[6] The campus is divided roughly in half by Massachusetts Avenue, with most dormitories and student life facilities to the west and most academic buildings to the east. The bridge closest to MIT is the Harvard Bridge, which is known for being marked off in a non-standard unit of length – the smoot.[106][107]
The Kendall MBTA Red Line station is located on the northeastern edge of the campus, in Kendall Square. The Cambridge neighborhoods surrounding MIT are a mixture of high tech companies occupying both modern office and rehabilitated industrial buildings, as well as socio-economically diverse residential neighborhoods.[108][109] In early 2016, MIT presented its updated Kendall Square Initiative to the City of Cambridge, with plans for mixed-use educational, retail, residential, startup incubator, and office space in a dense high-rise transit-oriented development plan.[110][111] The MIT Museum will eventually be moved immediately adjacent to a Kendall Square subway entrance, joining the List Visual Arts Center on the eastern end of the campus.[111][112]
Each building at MIT has a number (possibly preceded by a W, N, E, or NW) designation and most have a name as well. Typically, academic and office buildings are referred to primarily by number while residence halls are referred to by name. The organization of building numbers roughly corresponds to the order in which the buildings were built and their location relative (north, west, and east) to the original center cluster of Maclaurin buildings.[113] Many of the buildings are connected above ground as well as through an extensive network of underground tunnels, providing protection from the Cambridge weather as well as a venue for roof and tunnel hacking.[114][115]
MIT's on-campus nuclear reactor[116] is one of the most powerful university-based nuclear reactors in the United States. The prominence of the reactor's containment building in a densely populated area has been controversial,[117] but MIT maintains that it is well-secured.[118] In 1999 Bill Gates donated US$20 million to MIT for the construction of a computer laboratory named the "William H. Gates Building", and designed by architect Frank Gehry. While Microsoft had previously given financial support to the institution, this was the first personal donation received from Gates.[119]
Other notable campus facilities include a pressurized wind tunnel for testing aerodynamic research and a towing tank for testing ship and ocean structure designs.[120][121] MIT's campus-wide wireless network was completed in the fall of 2005 and consists of nearly 3,000 access points covering 9,400,000 square feet (870,000 m2) of campus.[122]
In 2001, the Environmental Protection Agency sued MIT for violating the Clean Water Act and the Clean Air Act with regard to its hazardous waste storage and disposal procedures.[123] MIT settled the suit by paying a $155,000 fine and launching three environmental projects.[124] In connection with capital campaigns to expand the campus, the Institute has also extensively renovated existing buildings to improve their energy efficiency. MIT has also taken steps to reduce its environmental impact by running alternative fuel campus shuttles, subsidizing public transportation passes, and building a low-emission cogeneration plant that serves most of the campus electricity, heating, and cooling requirements.[125]
The MIT Police with state and local authorities, in the 2009-2011 period, have investigated reports of 12 forcible sex offenses, 6 robberies, 3 aggravated assaults, 164 burglaries, 1 case of arson, and 4 cases of motor vehicle theft on campus; affecting a community of around 22,000 students and employees.
MIT has substantial commercial real estate holdings in Cambridge on which it pays property taxes, plus an additional voluntary payment in lieu of taxes (PILOT) on academic buildings which are legally tax-exempt. As of 2017, it is the largest taxpayer in the city, contributing approximately 14% of the city's annual revenues.[126] Holdings include Technology Square, parts of Kendall Square, and many properties in Cambridgeport and Area 4 neighboring the educational buildings.[127] The land is held for investment purposes and potential long-term expansion.
Architecture [ edit ]
MIT's School of Architecture, now the School of Architecture and Planning, was the first in the United States,[128] and it has a history of commissioning progressive buildings.[129][130] The first buildings constructed on the Cambridge campus, completed in 1916, are sometimes called the "Maclaurin buildings" after Institute president Richard Maclaurin who oversaw their construction. Designed by William Welles Bosworth, these imposing buildings were built of reinforced concrete, a first for a non-industrial – much less university – building in the U.S.[131] Bosworth's design was influenced by the City Beautiful Movement of the early 1900s[131] and features the Pantheon-esque Great Dome housing the Barker Engineering Library. The Great Dome overlooks Killian Court, where graduation ceremonies are held each year. The friezes of the limestone-clad buildings around Killian Court are engraved with the names of important scientists and philosophers.[a] The spacious Building 7 atrium at 77 Massachusetts Avenue is regarded as the entrance to the Infinite Corridor and the rest of the campus.[109]
Alvar Aalto's Baker House (1947), Eero Saarinen's MIT Chapel and Kresge Auditorium (1955), and I.M. Pei's Green, Dreyfus, Landau, and Wiesner buildings represent high forms of post-war modernist architecture.[134][135][136] More recent buildings like Frank Gehry's Stata Center (2004), Steven Holl's Simmons Hall (2002), Charles Correa's Building 46 (2005), and Fumihiko Maki's Media Lab Extension (2009) stand out among the Boston area's classical architecture and serve as examples of contemporary campus "starchitecture".[129][137] These buildings have not always been well received;[138][139] in 2010, The Princeton Review included MIT in a list of twenty schools whose campuses are "tiny, unsightly, or both".[140]
Housing [ edit ]
The Simmons Hall undergrad dormitory was completed in 2002
Undergraduates are guaranteed four-year housing in one of MIT's 10 undergraduate dormitories.[141] Those living on campus can receive support and mentoring from live-in graduate student tutors, resident advisors, and faculty housemasters.[142] Because housing assignments are made based on the preferences of the students themselves, diverse social atmospheres can be sustained in different living groups; for example, according to the Yale Daily News staff's The Insider's Guide to the Colleges, 2010, "The split between East Campus and West Campus is a significant characteristic of MIT. East Campus has gained a reputation as a thriving counterculture."[143] MIT also has 5 dormitories for single graduate students and 2 apartment buildings on campus for married student families.[144]
MIT has an active Greek and co-op housing system, including thirty-six fraternities, sororities, and independent living groups (FSILGs).[145] As of 2015, 98% of all undergraduates lived in MIT-affiliated housing; 54% of the men participated in fraternities and 20% of the women were involved in sororities.[146] Most FSILGs are located across the river in Back Bay near where MIT was founded, and there is also a cluster of fraternities on MIT's West Campus that face the Charles River Basin.[147] After the 1997 alcohol-related death of Scott Krueger, a new pledge at the Phi Gamma Delta fraternity, MIT required all freshmen to live in the dormitory system starting in 2002.[148] Because FSILGs had previously housed as many as 300 freshmen off-campus, the new policy could not be implemented until Simmons Hall opened in that year.[149] Recently, MIT has also shut down Senior House. Last year, MIT administrators released data showing just 60 percent of Senior House residents graduated in four years. Campus-wide, the four-year graduation rate is 84 percent.[150]
Organization and administration [ edit ]
Lobby 7 (at 77 Massachusetts Avenue) is regarded as the main entrance to campus
MIT is chartered as a non-profit organization and is owned and governed by a privately appointed board of trustees known as the MIT Corporation.[151] The current board consists of 43 members elected to five-year terms,[152] 25 life members who vote until their 75th birthday,[153] 3 elected officers (President, Treasurer, and Secretary),[154] and 4 ex officio members (the president of the alumni association, the Governor of Massachusetts, the Massachusetts Secretary of Education, and the Chief Justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court).[155][156] The board is chaired by Robert Millard, a co-founder of L-3 Communications Holdings.[157][158] The Corporation approves the budget, new programs, degrees and faculty appointments, and elects the President to serve as the chief executive officer of the university and preside over the Institute's faculty.[109][159] MIT's endowment and other financial assets are managed through a subsidiary called MIT Investment Management Company (MITIMCo).[160] Valued at $13.182 billion in 2016, MIT's endowment is the sixth-largest among American colleges and universities.[citation needed]
MIT has five schools (Science, Engineering, Architecture and Planning, Management, and Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences) and one college (Whitaker College of Health Sciences and Technology), but no schools of law or medicine.[161][b] A second college, The Stephen A. Schwarzman College of Computing, is scheduled to open in September 2019.[163] While faculty committees assert substantial control over many areas of MIT's curriculum, research, student life, and administrative affairs,[164] the chair of each of MIT's 32 academic departments reports to the dean of that department's school, who in turn reports to the Provost under the President.[165] The current president is L. Rafael Reif, who formerly served as provost under President Susan Hockfield, the first woman to hold the post.[166][167]
Academics [ edit ]
MIT is a large, highly residential, research university with a majority of enrollments in graduate and professional programs.[168] The university has been accredited by the New England Association of Schools and Colleges since 1929.[169] MIT operates on a 4–1–4 academic calendar with the fall semester beginning after Labor Day and ending in mid-December, a 4-week "Independent Activities Period" in the month of January, and the spring semester commencing in early February and ceasing in late May.[170]
MIT students refer to both their majors and classes using numbers or acronyms alone.[171] Departments and their corresponding majors are numbered in the approximate order of their foundation; for example, Civil and Environmental Engineering is Course 1, while Linguistics and Philosophy is Course 24.[172] Students majoring in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS), the most popular department, collectively identify themselves as "Course 6". MIT students use a combination of the department's course number and the number assigned to the class to identify their subjects; for instance, the introductory calculus-based classical mechanics course is simply "8.01" at MIT.[173][c]
Undergraduate program [ edit ]
The four-year, full-time undergraduate program maintains a balance between professional majors and those in the arts and sciences, and has been dubbed "most selective" by U.S. News,[176] admitting few transfer students[168] and 6.7% of its applicants in the 2017-2018 admissions cycle.[177] MIT offers 44 undergraduate degrees across its five schools.[178] In the 2010–2011 academic year, 1,161 bachelor of science degrees (abbreviated "SB") were granted, the only type of undergraduate degree MIT now awards.[needs update][179][180] In the 2011 fall term, among students who had designated a major, the School of Engineering was the most popular division, enrolling 63% of students in its 19 degree programs, followed by the School of Science (29%), School of Humanities, Arts, & Social Sciences (3.7%), Sloan School of Management (3.3%), and School of Architecture and Planning (2%).[needs update] The largest undergraduate degree programs were in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (Course 6–2), Computer Science and Engineering (Course 6–3), Mechanical Engineering (Course 2), Physics (Course 8), and Mathematics (Course 18).[174]
The Infinite Corridor is the primary passageway through campus
All undergraduates are required to complete a core curriculum called the General Institute Requirements (GIRs).[181] The Science Requirement, generally completed during freshman year as prerequisites for classes in science and engineering majors, comprises two semesters of physics, two semesters of calculus, one semester of chemistry, and one semester of biology. There is a Laboratory Requirement, usually satisfied by an appropriate class in a course major. The Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences (HASS) Requirement consists of eight semesters of classes in the humanities, arts, and social sciences, including at least one semester from each division as well as the courses required for a designated concentration in a HASS division. Under the Communication Requirement, two of the HASS classes, plus two of the classes taken in the designated major must be "communication-intensive",[182] including "substantial instruction and practice in oral presentation".[183] Finally, all students are required to complete a swimming test;[184] non-varsity athletes must also take four quarters of physical education classes.[181]
Most classes rely on a combination of lectures, recitations led by associate professors or graduate students, weekly problem sets ("p-sets"), and periodic quizzes or tests. While the pace and difficulty of MIT coursework has been compared to "drinking from a fire hose",[185][186][187] the freshmen retention rate at MIT is similar to other research universities.[176] The "pass/no-record" grading system relieves some pressure for first-year undergraduates. For each class taken in the fall term, freshmen transcripts will either report only that the class was passed, or otherwise not have any record of it. In the spring term, passing grades (A, B, C) appear on the transcript while non-passing grades are again not recorded.[188] (Grading had previously been "pass/no record" all freshman year, but was amended for the Class of 2006 to prevent students from gaming the system by completing required major classes in their freshman year.[189]) Also, freshmen may choose to join alternative learning communities, such as Experimental Study Group, Concourse, or Terrascope.[188]
In 1969, Margaret MacVicar founded the Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program (UROP) to enable undergraduates to collaborate directly with faculty members and researchers. Students join or initiate research projects ("UROPs") for academic credit, pay, or on a volunteer basis through postings on the UROP website or by contacting faculty members directly.[190] A substantial majority of undergraduates participate.[191][192] Students often become published, file patent applications, and/or launch start-up companies based upon their experience in UROPs.[193][194]
In 1970, the then-Dean of Institute Relations, Benson R. Snyder, published The Hidden Curriculum, arguing that education at MIT was often slighted in favor of following a set of unwritten expectations, and that graduating with good grades was more often the product of figuring out the system rather than a solid education. The successful student, according to Snyder, was the one who was able to discern which of the formal requirements were to be ignored in favor of which unstated norms. For example, organized student groups had compiled "course bibles"—collections of problem-set and examination questions and answers for later students to use as references. This sort of gamesmanship, Snyder argued, hindered development of a creative intellect and contributed to student discontent and unrest.[195][196]
Graduate program [ edit ]
MIT's graduate program has high coexistence with the undergraduate program, and many courses are taken by qualified students at both levels. MIT offers a comprehensive doctoral program with degrees in the humanities, social sciences, and STEM fields as well as professional degrees.[168] The Institute offers graduate programs leading to academic degrees such as the Master of Science (which is abbreviated as SM at MIT), various Engineer's Degrees, Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), and Doctor of Science (ScD) and interdisciplinary graduate programs such as the MD-PhD (with Harvard Medical School).[197][198][199]
Admission to graduate programs is decentralized; applicants apply directly to the department or degree program. More than 90% of doctoral students are supported by fellowships, research assistantships (RAs), or teaching assistantships (TAs).[200]
MIT awarded 1,547 master's degrees and 609 doctoral degrees in the academic year 2010–11.[needs update][179] In the 2011 fall term, the School of Engineering was the most popular academic division, enrolling 45.0% of graduate students, followed by the Sloan School of Management (19%), School of Science (16.9%), School of Architecture and Planning (9.2%), Whitaker College of Health Sciences (5.1%),[d] and School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences (4.7%). The largest graduate degree programs were the Sloan MBA, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, and Mechanical Engineering.[174]
Rankings [ edit ]
MIT also places among the top five in many overall rankings of universities (see right) and rankings based on students' revealed preferences.[210][211][212] For several years, U.S. News & World Report, the QS World University Rankings, and the Academic Ranking of World Universities have ranked MIT's School of Engineering first, as did the 1995 National Research Council report.[213] In the same lists, MIT's strongest showings apart from in engineering are in computer science, the natural sciences, business, architecture, economics, linguistics, mathematics, and, to a lesser extent, political science and philosophy.[11][12][13][14][15]
In 2014, Money magazine ranked MIT at number three for "Best Colleges for Your Money" in the US, based on its assessment of getting "the most bang for your tuition buck", factoring in quality of education, affordability, and career outcomes.[214] As of 2014, Forbes magazine rated MIT as the second "Most Entrepreneurial University", based on the percentage of alumni and students self-identifying as founders or business owners on LinkedIn.[215] In 2015, Brookings Fellow Jonathan Rothwell issued a report "Beyond College Rankings", placing MIT as third in the US, with an estimated 45% value-added to mid-career salary.[216]
Times Higher Education has recognized MIT as one of the world's "six super brands" on its World Reputation Rankings, along with Berkeley, Cambridge, Harvard, Oxford and Stanford.[217] In 2017, the Times Higher Education World University Rankings rated MIT the #2 university for arts and humanities.[218][219]
Collaborations [ edit ]
The university historically pioneered research and training collaborations between academia, industry and government.[220][221] In 1946, President Compton, Harvard Business School professor Georges Doriot, and Massachusetts Investor Trust chairman Merrill Grisswold founded American Research and Development Corporation, the first American venture-capital firm.[222][223] In 1948, Compton established the MIT Industrial Liaison Program.[224] Throughout the late 1980s and early 1990s, American politicians and business leaders accused MIT and other universities of contributing to a declining economy by transferring taxpayer-funded research and technology to international – especially Japanese – firms that were competing with struggling American businesses.[225][226] On the other hand, MIT's extensive collaboration with the federal government on research projects has led to several MIT leaders serving as presidential scientific advisers since 1940.[e] MIT established a Washington Office in 1991 to continue effective lobbying for research funding and national science policy.[228][229]
The U.S. Justice Department began an investigation in 1989, and in 1991 filed an antitrust suit against MIT, the eight Ivy League colleges, and eleven other institutions for allegedly engaging in price-fixing during their annual "Overlap Meetings", which were held to prevent bidding wars over promising prospective students from consuming funds for need-based scholarships.[230][231] While the Ivy League institutions settled,[232] MIT contested the charges, arguing that the practice was not anti-competitive because it ensured the availability of aid for the greatest number of students.[233][234] MIT ultimately prevailed when the Justice Department dropped the case in 1994.[235][236]
MIT main campus seen from Vassar Street, as The Great Dome is visible in the distance and the Stata Center is at right
MIT's proximity[f] to Harvard University ("the other school up the river") has led to a substantial number of research collaborations such as the Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology and the Broad Institute.[237] In addition, students at the two schools can cross-register for credits toward their own school's degrees without any additional fees.[237] A cross-registration program between MIT and Wellesley College has also existed since 1969, and in 2002 the Cambridge–MIT Institute launched an undergraduate exchange program between MIT and the University of Cambridge.[237] MIT also has a long term partnership with Imperial College London, for both student exchanges and research collaboration.[238][239] More modest cross-registration programs have been established with Boston University, Brandeis University, Tufts University, Massachusetts College of Art and the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.[237]
MIT maintains substantial research and faculty ties with independent research organizations in the Boston area, such as the Charles Stark Draper Laboratory, the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research, and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. Ongoing international research and educational collaborations include the Amsterdam Institute for Advanced Metropolitan Solutions (AMS Institute), Singapore-MIT Alliance, MIT-Politecnico di Milano,[237][240] MIT-Zaragoza International Logistics Program, and projects in other countries through the MIT International Science and Technology Initiatives (MISTI) program.[237][241]
The mass-market magazine Technology Review is published by MIT through a subsidiary company, as is a special edition that also serves as an alumni magazine.[242][243] The MIT Press is a major university press, publishing over 200 books and 30 journals annually, emphasizing science and technology as well as arts, architecture, new media, current events and social issues.[244]
Libraries, collections and museums [ edit ]
The MIT library system consists of five subject libraries: Barker (Engineering), Dewey (Economics), Hayden (Humanities and Science), Lewis (Music), and Rotch (Arts and Architecture). There are also various specialized libraries and archives. The libraries contain more than 2.9 million printed volumes, 2.4 million microforms, 49,000 print or electronic journal subscriptions, and 670 reference databases. The past decade has seen a trend of increased focus on digital over print resources in the libraries.[245] Notable collections include the Lewis Music Library with an emphasis on 20th and 21st-century music and electronic music,[246] the List Visual Arts Center's rotating exhibitions of contemporary art,[247] and the Compton Gallery's cross-disciplinary exhibitions.[248] MIT allocates a percentage of the budget for all new construction and renovation to commission and support its extensive public art and outdoor sculpture collection.[249][250]
The MIT Museum was founded in 1971 and collects, preserves, and exhibits artifacts significant to the culture and history of MIT. The museum now engages in significant educational outreach programs for the general public, including the annual Cambridge Science Festival, the first celebration of this kind in the United States. Since 2005, its official mission has been, "to engage the wider community with MIT's science, technology and other areas of scholarship in ways that will best serve the nation and the world in the 21st century".[251]
Research [ edit ]
MIT was elected to the Association of American Universities in 1934 and remains a research university with a very high level of research activity;[50][168] research expenditures totaled $718.2 million in 2009.[needs update][252] The federal government was the largest source of sponsored research, with the Department of Health and Human Services granting $255.9 million, Department of Defense $97.5 million, Department of Energy $65.8 million, National Science Foundation $61.4 million, and NASA $27.4 million.[252] MIT employs approximately 1300 researchers in addition to faculty.[253] In 2011, MIT faculty and researchers disclosed 632 inventions, were issued 153 patents, earned $85.4 million in cash income, and received $69.6 million in royalties.[254] Through programs like the Deshpande Center, MIT faculty leverage their research and discoveries into multi-million-dollar commercial ventures.[255]
In electronics, magnetic core memory, radar, single electron transistors, and inertial guidance controls were invented or substantially developed by MIT researchers.[256][257] Harold Eugene Edgerton was a pioneer in high speed photography and sonar.[258][259] Claude E. Shannon developed much of modern information theory and discovered the application of Boolean logic to digital circuit design theory.[260] In the domain of computer science, MIT faculty and researchers made fundamental contributions to cybernetics, artificial intelligence, computer languages, machine learning, robotics, and cryptography.[257][261] At least nine Turing Award laureates and seven recipients of the Draper Prize in engineering have been or are currently associated with MIT.[262][263]
Current and previous physics faculty have won eight Nobel Prizes,[264] four Dirac Medals,[265] and three Wolf Prizes predominantly for their contributions to subatomic and quantum theory.[266] Members of the chemistry department have been awarded three Nobel Prizes and one Wolf Prize for the discovery of novel syntheses and methods.[264] MIT biologists have been awarded six Nobel Prizes for their contributions to genetics, immunology, oncology, and molecular biology.[264] Professor Eric Lander was one of the principal leaders of the Human Genome Project.[267][268] Positronium atoms,[269] synthetic penicillin,[270] synthetic self-replicating molecules,[271] and the genetic bases for Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (also known as ALS or Lou Gehrig's disease) and Huntington's disease were first discovered at MIT.[272] Jerome Lettvin transformed the study of cognitive science with his paper "What the frog's eye tells the frog's brain".[273] Researchers developed a system to convert MRI scans into 3D printed physical models.[274]
In the domain of humanities, arts, and social sciences, MIT economists have been awarded five Nobel Prizes and nine John Bates Clark Medals.[264][275] Linguists Noam Chomsky and Morris Halle authored seminal texts on generative grammar and phonology.[276][277] The MIT Media Lab, founded in 1985 within the School of Architecture and Planning and known for its unconventional research,[278][279] has been home to influential researchers such as constructivist educator and Logo creator Seymour Papert.[280]
Spanning many of the above fields, MacArthur Fellowships (the so-called "Genius Grants") have been awarded to 38 people associated with MIT.[281] Four Pulitzer Prize–winning writers currently work at or have retired from MIT.[282] Four current or former faculty are members of the American Academy of Arts and Letters.[283]
Allegations of research misconduct or improprieties have received substantial press coverage. Professor David Baltimore, a Nobel Laureate, became embroiled in a misconduct investigation starting in 1986 that led to Congressional hearings in 1991.[284][285] Professor Ted Postol has accused the MIT administration since 2000 of attempting to whitewash potential research misconduct at the Lincoln Lab facility involving a ballistic missile defense test, though a final investigation into the matter has not been completed.[286][287] Associate Professor Luk Van Parijs was dismissed in 2005 following allegations of scientific misconduct and found guilty of the same by the United States Office of Research Integrity in 2009.[288][289]
Discoveries and innovation [ edit ]
Natural sciences [ edit ]
Computer and applied sciences [ edit ]
Companies and entrepreneurship [ edit ]
MIT alumni and faculty have founded numerous companies, some of which are shown below.[305][306]
Traditions and student activities [ edit ]
The faculty and student body place a high value on meritocracy and on technical proficiency.[307][308] MIT has never awarded an honorary degree, nor does it award athletic scholarships, ad eundem degrees, or Latin honors upon graduation.[309] However, MIT has twice awarded honorary professorships: to Winston Churchill in 1949 and Salman Rushdie in 1993.[310]
Many upperclass students and alumni wear a large, heavy, distinctive class ring known as the "Brass Rat".[311][312] Originally created in 1929, the ring's official name is the "Standard Technology Ring."[313] The undergraduate ring design (a separate graduate student version exists as well) varies slightly from year to year to reflect the unique character of the MIT experience for that class, but always features a three-piece design, with the MIT seal and the class year each appearing on a separate face, flanking a large rectangular bezel bearing an image of a beaver.[311] The initialism IHTFP, representing the informal school motto "I Hate This Fucking Place" and jocularly euphemized as "I Have Truly Found Paradise," "Institute Has The Finest Professors," "Institute of Hacks, Tomfoolery and Pranks," "It's Hard to Fondle Penguins," and other variations, has occasionally been featured on the ring given its historical prominence in student culture.[314]
Activities [ edit ]
MIT has over 500 recognized student activity groups,[315] including a campus radio station, The Tech student newspaper, an annual entrepreneurship competition, and weekly screenings of popular films by the Lecture Series Committee. Less traditional activities include the "world's largest open-shelf collection of science fiction" in English, a model railroad club, and a vibrant folk dance scene. Students, faculty, and staff are involved in over 50 educational outreach and public service programs through the MIT Museum, Edgerton Center, and MIT Public Service Center.[316]
The Independent Activities Period is a four-week-long "term" offering hundreds of optional classes, lectures, demonstrations, and other activities throughout the month of January between the Fall and Spring semesters. Some of the most popular recurring IAP activities are Autonomous Robot Design (course 6.270), Robocraft Programming (6.370), and MasLab competitions,[317] the annual "mystery hunt",[318] and Charm School.[319][320] More than 250 students pursue externships annually at companies in the US and abroad.[321][322]
Many MIT students also engage in "hacking", which encompasses both the physical exploration of areas that are generally off-limits (such as rooftops and steam tunnels), as well as elaborate practical jokes.[323][324] Recent high-profile hacks have included the abduction of Caltech's cannon,[325] reconstructing a Wright Flyer atop the Great Dome,[326] and adorning the John Harvard statue with the Master Chief's Mjölnir Helmet.[327]
Athletics [ edit ]
MIT sponsors 31 varsity sports and has one of the three broadest NCAA Division III athletic programs.[328][329] MIT participates in the NCAA's Division III, the New England Women's and Men's Athletic Conference, the New England Football Conference, NCAA's Division I Eastern Association of Women's Rowing Colleges (EAWRC) for women's crew, and the Collegiate Water Polo Association (CWPA) for Men's Water Polo. Men's crew competes outside the NCAA in the Eastern Association of Rowing Colleges (EARC). In April 2009, budget cuts led to MIT eliminating eight of its 41 sports, including the mixed men's and |
, the German Chief of the General Staff Erich von Falkenhayn tried to convince the Austro-Hungarian Chief of Staff, Conrad von Hötzendorf, of the importance of conquering Serbia. If Serbia were taken, then the Germans would have a direct rail link from Germany through Austria-Hungary, then down to Istanbul and beyond. This would allow the Germans to send military supplies and even troops to help the Ottoman Empire. While this was hardly in Austria-Hungary's interests, the Austro-Hungarians did want to defeat Serbia. However, Russia was the more dangerous enemy, and furthermore, with the entry of Italy into the war on the Allied side, the Austro-Hungarians had their hands full (see Italian Front (World War I)).
Both the Allies and the Central Powers tried to get Bulgaria to pick a side in the Great War. Bulgaria and Serbia had fought two wars in the last 30 years: the Serbo-Bulgarian War in 1885, and the Second Balkan War in 1913. The result was that the Bulgarian government and people felt that Serbia was in possession of lands to which Bulgaria was entitled, and when the Central Powers offered to give them what they claimed, the Bulgarians entered the war on their side. With the Allied loss in the Gallipoli Campaign and the Russian defeat at Gorlice, King Ferdinand of Bulgaria signed a treaty with Germany and on 23 September 1915, Bulgaria began mobilizing for war.
Opposing forces [ edit ]
During the preceding nine months, the Serbs had tried and failed to rebuild their battered armies and improve their supply situation. Despite their efforts, the Serbian Army was only about 30,000 men stronger than at the start of the war (around 225,000) and was still badly equipped. Although Britain and France had talked about sending serious military forces to Serbia, nothing was done until it was too late. When Bulgaria began mobilizing, the French and British sent two divisions, but they arrived late in the Greek town of Salonika. Part of the reason for the delay was the National schism in Greek politics of the time that generating conflicting views about the war.
Against Serbia were marshalled the Bulgarian First Army commanded by Kliment Boyadzhiev, the German Eleventh Army commanded by Max von Gallwitz and the Austro-Hungarian Third Army commanded by Hermann Kövess von Kövessháza, all under the control of Field Marshal August von Mackensen. In addition the Bulgarian Second Army commanded by (Georgi Todorov), which remained under the direct control of the Bulgarian high command, was deployed against Macedonia.
Course of the Campaign [ edit ]
The Austro-Hungarians and Germans began their attack on 7 October with their troops crossing the Drina and Sava rivers, covered by heavy artillery fire. Once they crossed the Danube, the Germans and Austro-Hungarians moved on Belgrade itself. Vicious street fighting ensued,[35] and the Serbs' resistance in the city was finally crushed on 9 October.[36]
Then, on 14 October, the Bulgarian Army attacked from the north of Bulgaria towards Niš and from the south towards Skopje (see map). The Bulgarian First Army defeated the Serbian Second Army at the Battle of Morava, while the Bulgarian Second Army defeated the Serbians at the Battle of Ovche Pole. With the Bulgarian breakthrough, the Serbian position became untenable; the main army in the north (around Belgrade) could either retreat or be surrounded and forced to surrender. In the Battle of Kosovo, the Serbs made a last and desperate attempt to join the two incomplete Allied divisions that made a limited advance from the south, but were unable to gather enough forces due to the pressure from the north and east. They were halted by the Bulgarians under General Todorov and had to pull back.
Serbian Army during its retreat towards Albania
Marshal Putnik ordered a full retreat south and west through Montenegro and into Albania. The weather was terrible, the roads poor, and the army had to help the tens of thousands of civilians who retreated with them with almost no supplies or food left. But the bad weather and poor roads worked for the refugees as well, as the Central Powers forces could not press them hard enough, so they evaded capture. Many of the fleeing soldiers and civilians did not make it to the coast, though – they were lost to hunger, disease and attacks by enemy forces and Albanian tribal bands.[37] The circumstances of the retreat were disastrous. All told, only some 155,000 Serbs, mostly soldiers, reached the coast of the Adriatic Sea and embarked on Allied transport ships that carried the army to various Greek islands (many to Corfu) before being sent to Salonika. The evacuation of the Serbian army from Albania was completed on 10 February 1916. The survivors were so weakened that thousands of them died from sheer exhaustion in the weeks after their rescue. Marshal Putnik had to be carried during the whole retreat and he died around fifteen months later in a hospital in France.
The French and British divisions had marched north from Thessaloniki in October 1915 under the command of French General Maurice Sarrail. The War Office in London was reluctant to advance too deep into Serbia, so the French divisions advanced on their own up the Vardar River. This advance gave some limited help to the retreating Serbian Army, as the Bulgarians had to concentrate larger forces on their southern flank to deal with the threat, which led to the Battle of Krivolak (October–November 1915). By the end of November, General Sarrail had to retreat in the face of massive Bulgarian assaults on his positions. During his retreat, the British at the Battle of Kosturino were also forced to retreat. By 12 December, all allied forces were back in Greece.
The Army of Serbia's ally Montenegro did not follow the Serbs into exile, but retreated to defend their own country. The Austrian-Hungarians launched their Montenegrin Campaign on 5 January 1916 and despite some success of The Montenegrins in the Battle of Mojkovac, they were completely defeated within 2 weeks.
This was a nearly complete victory for the Central Powers at a cost of around 67,000 casualties as compared to around 90,000 Serbs killed or wounded and 174,000 captured.[6] The railroad from Berlin to Istanbul was finally opened. The only flaw in the victory was that much of the Serbian Army had successfully retreated, although it was left very disorganized and required rebuilding.
In 1917, the Serbs launched the Toplica Uprising and liberated for a short time the area between the Kopaonik mountains and the South Morava river. The uprising was crushed by the joint efforts of Bulgarian and Austrian forces at the end of March 1917.
The Macedonian Front in the beginning was mostly static. French and Serbian forces re-took limited areas of Macedonia by recapturing Bitola on 19 November 1916 as a result of the costly Monastir Offensive, which brought stabilization of the front.
French and Serbian troops finally made a breakthrough, after most of the German and Austro-Hungarian troops had withdrawn. This breakthrough was significant in defeating Bulgaria and Austria-Hungary, which led to the final victory of World War I. The Bulgarians suffered their only defeat of the war at the Battle of Dobro Pole of 15–18 September 1918, but days later, they decisively defeated British and Greek forces at the Battle of Doiran, avoiding occupation. After the Allied breakthrough, Bulgaria capitulated on 29 September 1918.[38] Hindenburg and Ludendorff concluded that the strategic and operational balance had now shifted decidedly against the Central Powers and insisted on an immediate peace settlement during a meeting with government officials a day after the Bulgarian collapse.[39]
The disappearance of the Macedonian Front meant that the road to Budapest and Vienna was now opened for the 670,000-strong army of General Franchet d'Esperey as the Bulgarian surrender deprived the Central Powers of the 278 infantry battalions and 1,500 guns (the equivalent of some 25 to 30 German divisions) that were previously holding the line.[40] The German high command responded by sending only seven infantry and one cavalry division, but these forces were far from enough for a front to be re-established.[40]
The Allied armies, mostly French, but aided by British, Serbian and Greek troops, pushed forward in September 1918, forced Bulgaria to leave the war and eventually managed to liberate Serbia two weeks before the end of World War I.
End of the War [ edit ]
The ramifications of the war were manifold. When World War I ended, the Treaty of Neuilly awarded Western Thrace to Greece, whereas Serbia received some minor territorial concessions from Bulgaria. Austria-Hungary was broken apart, and Hungary lost much land to both Yugoslavia and Romania in the Treaty of Trianon. Serbia assumed the leading position in the new Kingdom of Yugoslavia, joined by its old ally, Montenegro. Meanwhile, Italy established a quasi-protectorate over Albania and Greece re-occupied Albania's southern part, which was autonomous under a local Greek provisional government (see Autonomous Republic of Northern Epirus), despite Albania's neutrality during the war.
Casualties [ edit ]
The remains of Serbs killed by Bulgarian soldiers during the Surdulica massacre. It is estimated that 2,000–3,000 Serbian men were killed in the town during the first months of the Bulgarian occupation of southern Serbia.
Before the war, the Kingdom of Serbia had 4,500,000 inhabitants.[42] According to the New York Times, 150,000 people are estimated to have died in 1915 alone during the worst typhus epidemic in world history. With the aid of the American Red Cross and 44 foreign governments, the outbreak was brought under control by the end of the year.[43] The number of civilian deaths is estimated by some sources at 650,000, primarily due to the typhus outbreak and famine, but also direct clashes with the occupiers.[44] Serbia's casualties accounted for 8% of the total Allied military deaths. 58% of the regular Serbian Army (420,000 strong) perished during the conflict.[45] According to the Serb sources, the total number of casualties is placed around 1,000,000:[46] 25% of Serbia's prewar size, and an absolute majority (57%) of its overall male population.[47] L.A. Times and N.Y. Times also cited early Serbian sources which claimed over 1,000,000 victims in their respective articles.[48][dead link][49] Modern western and non-Serb historians put the casualties number either at 45,000 military deaths and 650,000 civilian deaths or 127,355 military deaths and 82,000 civilian deaths.
The extent of the Serbian demographic disaster can be illustrated by the statement of the Bulgarian Prime Minister Vasil Radoslavov: "Serbia ceased to exist" (New York Times, summer 1917).[50] In July 1918 the US Secretary of State Robert Lansing urged the Americans of all religions to pray for Serbia in their respective churches.[51][52]
The Serbian Army suffered a staggering number of casualties. It was largely destroyed near the end of the war, falling from about 420,000[2] at its peak to about 100,000 at the moment of liberation.
The Serb sources claim that the Kingdom of Serbia lost 1,100,000 inhabitants during the war. Of 4.5 million people, there were 275,000 military deaths and 450,000 among the ordinary citizenry. The civilian deaths were attributable mainly to food shortages and the effects of epidemics such as Spanish flu. In the addition to the military deaths, there were 133,148 wounded. According to the Yugoslav government in 1924, Serbia lost 365,164 soldiers, or 26% of all mobilized personnel, while France suffered 16.8%, Germany 15.4%, Russia 11.5%, and Italy 10.3%.[citation needed]
At the end of the war, there were 114,000 disabled soldiers and 500,000 orphaned children.[53]
Attacks against ethnic Serb civilians [ edit ]
Austro-Hungarian propaganda postcard saying "Serbs, we'll smash you to pieces!"
[54] Austro-Hungarian soldiers executing Serbian civilians during World War I (1916).
Austro-Hungarian firing squad executing Serbian civilians in 1917
The assassination in Sarajevo of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria and his wife Sophie, Duchess of Hohenberg, was followed by violent anti-Serb demonstrations of angry Croats and Muslims[55] in the city during the evening of 28 June 1914 and for much of the following day. This happened because most Croats and many Muslims considered the archduke the best hope for the establishment of a South Slav political entity within the Habsburg Empire. The crowd directed its anger principally at shops owned by ethnic Serbs and the residences of prominent Serbs. Two ethnic Serbs were killed on 28 June by crowd violence.[56] That night there were anti-Serb demonstrations in other parts of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.[57][58]
Incited by anti-Serbian propaganda with the collusion of the command of the Austro-Hungarian Army, soldiers committed numerous atrocities against the Serbs in both Serbia and Austria-Hungary. According to the Swiss criminologist and observer R.A. Reiss, it was a "system of extermination". In addition to executions of prisoners of war, civilian populations were subjected to mass murder and rape. Villages and towns were burned and looted. Fruit trees were cut down and water wells were poisoned in an effort on the Austro-Hungarian part to discourage Serb inhabitants from ever returning.[59][60][61]
See also [ edit ]
References [ edit ]With Pompey’s hopes of keeping Paul Cook ebbing away, fans have had their say on the Wigan developments.
They’ve been heading to our website, portsmouth.co.uk, to share their views on the current manager and potential future Blues bosses.
1. Pompey are right to not go breaking the bank to keep or buy any manager or player, we’ve been there before and we all know what happened.
If he does go to Wigan for more money, then thanks for all you’ve done, but no one person is bigger than the club. PUP.
Scott McGarveys Perm
2. We move on and must get a new manager in place as soon as possible.
Any alleged director of football can wait for now.
Plenty of chat around on possible managers but the application process will need to be sorted quickly.
My thoughts are with Tisdale, Rosler, Jackett, Cowley as higher league managers (Monk, Pardew) unlikely to drop down unless we offer a big package which we clearly don’t have the capacity for – that’s why Cook is off.
hertsj
3. So it is pure greed then.
Pompey’s offer would not be derisory and would still give him a very good wage but he wants more.
Wigan may give him a better wage but they go through managers the way I go through Pringles.
Their crowds are pathetic and their ground is soulless.
He’s ruined his reputation here I’m afraid and probably most will now look back on the man with little affection.
North Sea Blue
4. What’s that expression? Oh yes... we go again! Tisdale for me.
Johnny P
5. If his heart isn’t at Fratton Park and he wants to manage a club half our size he clearly isn’t that ambitious!
If it had been a big Championship club coming for him OK, but Wigan, really!!!
Let him go, let’s try for Gary Monk or Paul Tisdale, or at the risk of upsetting a few here, Michael Appleton.
We need to move forward now, let’s end the speculation and get a manager in place during June, whether that be Cook or someone else.
Our future is bright, let’s get this done! PUP
Peterbrux
6. Shuffle the pack a little, add two or three decent players and maybe Tisdale as manager then Pompey should be just fine for League One.
I’m sure Cookie knows when he visits FP next season he will get some stick after saying how much he loved being at PFC and how great the fans were...but.
cebuanoblue
7. Admittedly, I haven’t been PC’s biggest fan, but he got the job done so fair play to him in that respect.
If he goes to Wigan then good luck to him.
In my opinion, I’d like to see the Pompey board try to get Paul Tisdale as the new manager, what he achieved at Exeter on a shoestring was admirable, and he has the ability to field a good attacking team with a plan B and C. I always thought he was more on the ball tactically than PC.
Taunton blueImage copyright AP Image caption The Russian constitutional court will have the right to declare international court orders unenforceable
Russia has adopted a law allowing it to overrule judgements from the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR).
The vote in the Duma, Russia's lower house of parliament, came the same day as the ECHR ruled against Russia's Federal Security Service over spying.
The European court said Russia had violated privacy rights with a system to secretly intercept mobile phone communications.
The Russian constitution takes precedence under the new Duma law.
The measure was fast-tracked, giving the constitutional court the right to declare international court orders unenforceable in Russia if they contradict the constitution.
It specifically aims to "protect the interests of Russia" in the face of decisions by international bodies responsible for ruling on human rights, according to Tass news agency.
Also on Friday, the ECHR ordered Russia to pay Roman Zakharov, editor-in-chief of a publishing company, €40,000 (£29,000) in expenses in a case over state spying.
It agreed with Mr Zakharov that Russia's FSB security service had violated his rights to privacy by installing secret surveillance systems, and denying him the ability to resist potential monitoring.
Russia ratified the European Convention on Human Rights in 1998, and is one of 47 member states in the Council of Europe, which monitors compliance with the convention. This year Russia contributed nearly €33m to the CoE's €306m budget.
But Russia has often taken issue with rulings against it, including one by the ECHR last year ordering Moscow to pay more than $2bn (£1.3bn; €1.8bn) in compensation to shareholders in the defunct Russian oil firm, Yukos.
In a separate development on Friday, Hungarian prosecutors said they had questioned a Hungarian MEP suspected of spying on EU institutions for Russia.
Chief Prosecutor Imre Keresztes said Bela Kovacs, a member of Hungary's far-right Jobbik party, denied the spying allegations and made a case for his defence.
The European Parliament lifted Mr Kovacs' immunity in October, which Jobbik said would help clear the MEP's name.
Investigators have until 20 December to bring charges, according to reports.We’ve already got our culinary plan of attack for the Epcot International Flower & Garden Festival opening in just about two weeks (March 5 – May 18), and now we can look ahead to the Epcot International Food & Wine Festival that’s going to run a record 53 days, from September 19 – November 10. Maybe this year will be the year to sample all of the great tastes.
That’s a whole extra week to take in the marketplaces, cool concerts and some very special dinners. Stay tuned, we won’t have the lineup of celebrity and Disney chefs until summer, but will share here on the Disney Parks Blog. And keep an eye on epcotfoodfestival.com for updates.
In the meantime, check out the Outdoor Kitchen and raised garden beds at the Epcot International Flower & Garden Festival, a completely different culinary experience from fall’s Food & Wine Fest. Between the two, we have 128 days of yum.UPDATE: This is now live for all games. Please post if you have any issues.
The new chat is nearing a state where it could fully replace the old chat and we need a couple of games to try it out before we move on to a more wide release.
Please post your placeId if you would like to sign up for the beta.
If you think your game may not work with new chat due to removing unknown objects inserted into ServerStorage or similar you can post the placeId for a test version of your game and make sure to get that working right now.
NOTE: If you sign up to the beta and want to edit the chat, you should copy the whole chat before editing it as parts of the API may change before final release.
If you want to try out the new chat, it is currently live on a number of games including Natural Disaster Survival.
Here is an example of how easy the new chat is to customize:
SciFi chat theme
Chat System Overview
There are four main components of the chat. They are parented to the Chat service and will be cloned out of here to where by the corescript chat installer scripts on game startup. Any component can be replaced individually if you only want to edit that component. You can place the replacement either in the Chat service or it’s final location (ServerScriptService, ServerStorage, ect.)
ChatServiceRunner
This is the main server side component of the chat. It is parented to ServerScriptService. You normally should not need to override this, and instead add to the ChatModules.
ChatModules
This is a folder parented to ServerStorage containing the server side chat modules. Modules parented here are required by ChatServiceRunner and they are expected to return a single function, taking a reference to the ChatService object as an argument. The default modules include TeamChat and PrivateMessaging.
ChatScript
This is the client side chat component. It will be parented to StarterPlayerScripts.
ClientChatModules
The client chat modules include client side ChatSettings, CommandModules and MessageCreatorModules. The ChatSettings provide access to a bunch of features that are off by default, such as channel tabs and chat window resizing. The command modules allow you to easily add client side chat commands that do not need to be sent to the server. Default commands include /console and /clear. The MessageCreatorModules are used to create chat messages of various types.
Documentation
A wiki article containing all the documentation is coming soon. For now, you can see the server side documentation on the previous post here.
[details=MessageData format]
{ int ID string FromSpeaker string OriginalChannel bool IsFiltered int MessageLength string Message string MessageType int Time table ExtraData { Color3 ChatColor Color3 NameColor Enum.Font Font int TextSize table Tags } } ```[/details] [details=Client Side Documentation] Command modules return a table in the following format:
{
int ProcessorType = …,
function ProcessorFunction(message, ChatWindow, [ChatBar], ChatSettings)
}
There are two processor types, one for in progress chat messages and one for completed chat messages. Only command modules of processor type IN_PROGRESS_MESSAGE_PROCESSOR get the ChatBar argument passed in. This is currently experimental and only used for the client side of whisper. It does not return a processed bool like normal command modules, but instead returns a chat bar custom state object which is used for modifying the chat bar. Message Creator Modules return format:
{
string MessageType
function CreateMessageLabel(messageData)
}
The create message label creates a message label and returns a table of the following format:
{
Frame BaseFrame
void UpdateTextFunction(newMessageObject)
int GetHeightFunction()
void FadeInFunction(duration, CurveUtil)
void FadeOutFunction(duration, CurveUtil)
void UpdateAnimFunction(dtScale, CurveUtil)
}Environmentalists and politicians say the fight has only begun despite a federal panel’s recommendation for approval of Ontario Power Generation’s plan to
bury nuclear waste near Kincardine
— about one kilometre away from Lake Huron and the Great Lakes.
“It’s very disappointing,” said local MP Brian Masse (NDP—Windsor West), opposition critic for the Great Lakes. “There has been such strong opposition on this — not only on the Canadian side, but internationally in the U.S.”
The OPG proposal is to construct and operate a disposal site more than half a kilometre deep in the earth just north of Kincardine on the grounds of the Bruce Nuclear Site. The depository will be under a 450-million-year-old rock formation and extend down 680 metres.
The facility will store “low and intermediate” nuclear waste from OPG nuclear operations at Bruce, Pickering and Darlington.
A joint panel review committee was assigned to study the proposal. Several hearings were staged and the panel last week submitted its 457-page environmental assessment report to federal environment minister Leona Aglukkaq indicating the plan is “not likely to cause significant adverse environmental effects.”
While there are several above-ground nuclear waste storage sites near the Great Lakes, opponents fear having it stored below ground makes it nearly impossible to address an accident. They say the impact would be devastating if waste leaks into the Great Lakes.
Water from Lake Huron flows toward Sarnia and Windsor.
“This poses all sorts of risks for the Great Lakes — one of the most treasured resources the world has,” Masse said. “We are all connected to everything in the Great Lakes basin from water to the food chain.”
To date, there are now 154 resolutions — from various government bodies, environmental groups and residents representing 20.4 million people — opposing the proposed nuclear waste site.
A month ago, Michigan’s federal representatives, led by Sen. Debbie Stabenow, introduced resolutions in Washington calling on U.S. President Barack Obama to ensure the Canadian government does not allow the nuclear storage site to be built near the Great Lakes basin.
Masse has also raised his concerns during question period in Ottawa.
“This is on the minister’s desk right now,” he said. “The fact the U.S. is also in on this, there is a lot of political opportunity to get this halted.”
OPG is awaiting the federal minister’s decision on the plan which it expects to come within 120 days, said Neal Kelly, OPG’s corporate relations director.
“Our proposed depository has undergone the most comprehensive form of environmental assessment possible,” he said.
In regards to the large number of groups and political bodies in opposition, Kelly indicated that OPG is willing to meet with anyone to help alleviate fears.
“We will continue with our outreach and talk to any group about this process,” he said. “We are happy to take anyone to the site and sit down with us.”
OPG gave the federal review panel 12,500 pages of scientific analysis that was peer-reviewed, Kelly said.
If the $1-billion project secures federal approval, construction will begin in 2018, he said.
“It would take seven years to build this facility, so you are looking at 2025 by the time it’s complete,” Kelly said. “Then we have to go through another public process and public hearings for a licence to operate.”
Windsor’s Citizens Environment Alliance
has been among those objecting to the plan.
“The safest position is to keep (nuclear waste) above ground so they can keep an eye on it and if there are problems they can intervene quickly,” said Derek Coronado, co-ordinator for the alliance. “When it’s below ground, that is much more difficult.
“We are still not clear on the size of the facility and why they are doing it in this location. We also believe the characterization of inventory and the waste to be put on site is incomplete. We are not certain exactly what they are proposing.”
A primary citizens group in opposition is
Stop the Great Lakes Nuclear Dump
“This should be the last place you would want to bury lethal radioactive waste,” said group spokeswoman Beverly Fernandez. “It will remain radioactive for 100,000 years and is beside the largest source of fresh water on our planet where 40 million people draw their drinking water.
“Why only look at this one location for the most lethal material humans have created. Ontario is a vast province. You can’t tell us there is not a better location for this than one kilometre away from the Great Lakes.”
dbattagello@windsorstar.com
[pn_facebook_like /]Rendering Riot.js tags in Twig using Node.js
Twig is everywhere. eZ Platform, Bolt, Drupal 8 and other popular projects have adopted it. At the same time Node.js and Web Components have risen to popularity. This article discusses merging the popular PHP templating engine Twig to Riot.js, a lightweight React-like user interface library using Node.js for server side rendering.
This Proof of Concept (POC) implementation of a Twig function to Render Riot.js components on the server side using a Yandex Maps Web Component I created before. It uses a bare bones PHP implementation with Twig, Symfony Process library and Node.js (for Riot.js).
tl;dr: Read the source on Github: https://github.com/janit/twigriot
Riot.js and Server Side Rendering
Riot.js allows developers to build web components with friendly syntax. This encapsulates all resources to a single.tag file:
HTML Markup
Scoped CSS
JavaScript Logic
The easiest way to deploy these components is to compile them to JavaScript live on the runtime with a compiler on the browser. This works, but is not optimal for SEO or performance. Riot allows pre-rendering of the tags on the server side with Node.js.
This means the browser will receive valid markup and program code directly, without first needing to compile from intermediary formats. Similar to how preprocessing SASS to CSS on the server is superior to sending SASS to the browser and then rendering it to CSS on the client side. Native formats are native formats...
Read more about Riot.js and how it compares to other similar tools: Riot vs React & Polymer
Show me the code
The implementation launches new Node processes on each page load, and security, etc. have not been considered. I simply wanted to test if the concept is feasible at all. This implementation can be extended in the future to work with eZ Platform, Bolt, Drupal 8 or other CMSes using the Twig templating engine.
The target is to render Riot.js tags directly using Twig syntax in your templates. This is accomplished by adding a Twig Function:
This then maps to a class that extends the Twig_Extension class, who also sets the "is_safe" flag so rendered HTML output is not escaped by Twig:
Once these are available, our Twig templates can use the Twig function with parameters in our templates:
The actual merging of Riot.js and PHP happens in the Twig function riotRenderer. It makes two calls to node.js using the Symfony Process Component and passes the wanted parameters. The first call to app.js, a simple JavaScript app that renders our tag to HTML and returns the markup. The second call renders the ymap.tag to it's compiled JavaScript equivallent and writes a script tag referencing to it:
The end result is that our Twig calls render the Riot.js initial markup and script format right in the inital HTML markup:
The full code of the application, along with installation instructions is available on Github: https://github.com/janit/twigriot
Why bridge Node.js rendering and Twig?
Web Components are an interesting prospect, but the adoption will take some time. Using polyfills such as Polymer or Riot.js aided with Server Side Rendering can help bridge the gap to the future. This will allows reuse of code between non-javascript server applications and the front end applications.
This is just an initial test done in a couple of hours, and I can already see plenty of improvement areas such as running Node as a rendering daemon, improved caching, better state management (the one in place is a kludge).
Reuse of JavaScript code from your PHP apps to Frontend, allowing Isomorphic JavaScript rendering blended with your standard Twig templating (this concept needs work on state) might seem like science fiction, but it'll be hum-drum everyday routine soon enough.
Or maybe we'll just send the initial JSON embedded to the HTML for a better solution. Who knows.
Written by Jani Tarvainen on Sunday September 13, 2015
Permalink - Tags: riot-js, php, symfony, twig, webcomponents
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DisqusDr. Mike Brown, a professor of planetary astronomy at the esteemed research institute, joined us to talk about his most well-known accomplishment—contributing to the declassification of Pluto as a planet—as well as his own discovery of a massive planetoid in our solar system.
Our contributors were fascinated by Brown’s work and his techniques and peppered the professor with question after question. The following is an extended, edited transcript of their discussion.
Phil Torres, “TechKnow”: Dr. Brown, you’re probably best known as the man who killed Pluto. Why’d you do it?
Dr. Mike Brown: You know, the obvious answer is that [Pluto] really had it coming. If it wasn’t me, somebody else was gonna do it and it just needed to happen. How I Killed Pluto and... Mike Brown Best Price: $1.97 Buy New $10.58 (as of 02:20 EST - Details)
PT: And what happened? Tell me the story.
MB: The short version of the story is that Pluto never should have been called a planet in the first place. It was really just a big mistake because everybody it was as big as Jupiter when it was first discovered. Now it’s known just how small it really is—smaller than our moon. And there are thousands of other things out there just like it in our solar system. [There’s an] asteroid belt that’s between Mars and Jupiter and we don’t call any of the things in the asteroid belt planets. Although, people did back in 1801, but they got over it. Out beyond Neptune there’s this other belt of all these small bodies that are flitting around the outside edge of the planetary system.
PT: What is special about that belt?
MB: These objects are on the very outer edge of the solar system, and they have been in sort of cold storage for the last four and a half billion years. So if you can figure out what they’re made out of, figure out where they came from, figure out why their orbits are the crazy orbits that they have—you are basically looking back at a fossil record of the beginning of the solar system.
Shini Somara, “TechKnow”: Our understanding of the solar system seems to really depend on where technology is at.
MB: That is absolutely true. The reason that we started finding these objects just in the last 15 years was because of the development of digital cameras—the same digital cameras that all of us now have in our pockets on our cell phone. Now we can take pictures of vast areas of the sky, very quickly process them, find the small things that are moving across the frame, track them down, go to the big telescopes which also didn’t exist 20 years ago and really start to make progress understanding this region.
PT: All of this effort to look at the edge of our solar system. Why is that important?
MB: It’s really the key to understanding how our solar system put itself together, how the planets formed, how they rearranged. If you have 8 planets, it’s not enough to really be able to put the story together very well. But you have thousands and thousands of these small bodies—and so small bodies are in a sense like the blood spatter on the wall after some massive murder in the outer solar system. The planets have all been moved away, but [with] that “blood spatter” you can read exactly who did what to whom. Celestron PowerSeeker... Best Price: $82.86 Buy New $121.19 (as of 08:10 EST - Details)
PT: So if Pluto isn’t a planet, then what is it?
MB: The official term for what pluto is is a dwarf planet. I didn’t come up with that one. I think it’s a pretty silly word, but that’s what it is.
PT: What would you call it?
MB: Planetoid is actually a nicely serviceable word—it’s smaller than a planet, but kind of looks like a planet.
PT: When you came out with this announcement about Pluto, did you face much resistance within your field or in the public?
MB: I didn’t really come up with an announcement about Pluto—this was a decision of the International Astronomical Union. I pushed hard to make sure they made the right decision. I had found an object that’s more massive than Pluto, and so what part of the discussion was—what do we do with this object that I found? Is it a planet? Is it the 10th planet? If I had not stood up and said, no, this thing I found is not a planet, don’t be ridiculous—and neither is Pluto—I think that really helped people, astronomers make the decision. Was there a lot of resistance? Sure. There still is. I got hate mail from young children for many years. I don’t get as much now because young children think it’s funny that they know Pluto is not a planet and their parents don’t. So, the children are on board. I get obscene phone calls late at night. That started more recently, and it’s always on like a Friday or Saturday night. So I’m fairly sure it’s the same children from whom I got the hate mail, and they’re now off in college at their first frat party and they think it’d be really funny to call me up and yell at me. I save them all, because they’re hilarious. And there are definitely a very small but vocal set of scientists who don’t like the idea, mainly because they studied Pluto and they feel like saying it’s not a planet means that it’s less important. I think that they are looking at things the wrong way. I think it’s better to classify things correctly—and then let’s explain why Pluto’s [still] actually really quite an important thing to study.
Read the rest of the articleNow that's fly fishing! Amazing vintage footage shows anglers catching shark from a BLIMP
This incredible footage shows daring anglers taking fly fishing to the next level - by capturing a shark from the cabin of a huge aircraft.
The black and white video shows a baby shark caught on the hook of a fishing line.
But as the camera pans out, there is no boat to be seen and the line extends up to show a huge blimp attached to it.
Scroll down to watch the video
Shark attack: The shark goes for the bait and get hooked on the fishing line
Fly fishing: The video then reveals that the fishing line is attached to a blimp instead of a boat
Up, up and away: The sharks is then winched out of the water at a fast speed towards the aircraft
The shark is then slowly winched up, flying through the air, before it is eventually pulled into the aircraft |
differences in productivity steadily declined—from a female:male ratio of 0.580:1 in 1969 to 0.817:1 in 1993 (26). The primary factor affecting women's productivity was structural position. When type of institution, teaching load, funding, and research assistance were factored in, the productivity gap completely disappeared (which is not to say discrimination has not influenced these factors in the real world): “There is very little direct effect of sex on research productivity….men generally have positions superior to those of women, although structural differences by gender have appreciably declined over time. Once sex differences in such positions and resources are taken into account, net differences between men and women in productivity are nil or negligible” (ref. 26, pp. 863–864). Similarly, a National Research Council task force concluded that productivity of women science and engineering faculty increased over the last 30 y and is now comparable to men's, the critical factor affecting publications being access to institutional resources (28). Finally, many others also report no sex differences in productivity, controlling for structural variables confounded with sex (e.g., refs. 7 and 8). In sum, when publication data are controlled for structural position, ensuring that sex differences in manuscript acceptance rates are not conflated with sex differences in resources, there is no difference between the sexes (SI Text, S3). Although structural differences present real barriers for many women—and some men—journal reviewers do not reject papers because they are written by women. The preponderance of evidence, including the best and largest studies, indicates no discrimination in reviewing women's manuscripts: Given equivalent resources, men and women do equally well in publishing. A key issue, separable from sex discrimination in manuscript evaluation, is why women occupy positions providing fewer resources and what can be done about this situation. This situation is caused mainly by women's choices, both freely made and constrained by biology and society, such as choices to defer careers to raise children, follow spouses' career moves, care for elderly parents, limit job searches geographically, and enhance work-home balance. Some of these choices are freely made; others are constrained and could be changed (3).
Discrimination Against Women in Grant Funding Another domain of alleged sex discrimination is grant and fellowship reviews. In an influential article in Nature (cited 212 times),† Wennerås and Wold (29) reported that when reviewers judged postdoctoral fellowship applications to the Swedish Medical Research Council (MRC) in 1995, the conversion of data into subjective scores was highly prejudiced against women. A Nature commentary stated: “The response across the world could be measured on the Richter scale after the revelation that the (MRC) exercised prejudice in its allocation of research fellowships. Six months later, the implications are still being discussed in the newspapers and on radio and TV” (ref. 30, p. 204). The claim of discrimination was based on 62 applications submitted by men and 52 by women: 16 men were funded (25.8%) vs. 4 women (7.7%). Evidence of bias was based on analyses of reviewers’ scores versus objective data (e.g., publications, citations). Reviewers judged each applicant on scientific competence, proposal relevance, and methodology. Women received somewhat lower mean scores than men in all three categories, the largest discrepancy being in scientific competence—2.46 vs. 2.21. The total impact score was most predictive of reviewers’ ratings of scientific competence (r2 = 0.47): A woman needed a 2.6 times higher “total impact measure” score than a man to be judged as competent. To determine whether women and men were judged equally, Wennerås and Wold (29) assumed an applicant's scientific competence is linearly correlated with number and quality of published journal articles, leading to an examination of total number of publications, total number of first-author publications, total citations, total impact measure, first-author impact measure, and first-author citations. They reported “a female applicant had to be 2.5 times more productive than the average male applicant to receive the same competence score” (ref. 30, p. 342). The most productive female applicants—those with 100 or more impact points (based on number of publications and how frequently the journals are cited)—was the only group of women judged as competent as men, but only the least productive men who had fewer than 20 impact points. However, the authors’ conclusion of bias against women was challenged on statistical, methodological, and conceptual grounds (SI Text, S4). Analyses of funding societies in Europe and North America failed to find bias against female applicants during this same period (1994–1995). One analysis of nearly 3,000 grant applications to the British Wellcome Trust and MRC for the period 1993–1996 revealed no evidence of sex bias in approval rates (31). Another reported no sex bias in grant approvals to the UK Biological Sciences Research Council (32). A third (33) reported results of ≈8,000 grant applications to the MRC of Canada, also failing to find sex differences. Although there are occasional instances of sex effects in these reports, they are rare, of small magnitude, and are as often in favor of women as against them; the largest aberrations were not close to Wennerås and Wold's finding (29) that women had to be 2.5 times more productive than men to obtain similar scores. Consider that Dickson (32) reported that in 1996, the success rates for male and female grant applicants to the UK's Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council were 24% and 19%, and 26% and 29% to the MRC, respectively. Grant et al. (31) reported that “the award rates for both sexes are approximately the same…Neither is there any evidence that women need a more impressive publication record than men to be successful in either organization's competitions” (p. 438). In fact, successful female candidates for project grants published on average 11.2 papers vs. 13.8 papers by males; successful female candidates for senior research fellowships published 11.8 papers vs. 14.3 for men. In Canada, Friesen (33) found that, with one exception, grants were also gender-neutral: For the largest program, the success rates for men and women were 26.6% and 25.4% (n.s.). For the prestigious MRC-Canada Scholarship awards, which provided five years of salary for new PhDs, there was likewise no significant sex difference (14% for men vs. 16.6% for women). The sole sex difference favoring men was for the category of PhD students doing postdoc training and health professionals undertaking research training: 16.3% for men vs. 12.9% for women (p < 0.05). This difference is small, and of five competitions, two had virtually identical approval rates. Finally, Sandstrom and Hallsten (34) analyzed more recent data from the Swedish MRC and found that the gender bias reported by Wennerås and Wold (29) had reversed itself, so that there was a small but significant effect in favor of funding women's grants compared to men's with the same score. They analyzed 280 grant applications in 2004, 118 from female principal investigators, and found no evidence of gender bias: “Surprisingly, none of the productivity measures interact with gender: Male and female PIs are judged similarly with reference to productivity. When we control for all productivity measures and interactions…It appears that female PIs receive a bonus compared to male PIs” (34, p. 186). Perhaps this lack of sex difference is due to Wennerås and Wold's 1997 paper's impact, but this possibility does not explain why even larger, more encompassing studies preceeding theirs found no sex differences. Thus, a decade after Wennerås and Wold's report (29), the Cochrane Methodology Review Group concluded that other than Wennerås and Wold's study, “a number of other studies carried out in similar contexts found no evidence of (sex discrimination)” (35, p. 2). However, perhaps studies with samples big enough to use the most sensitive measurement framework might unearth sex differences. It is especially useful, therefore, to examine studies meeting this standard. Six large-scale analyses have been published, on net providing compelling counterevidence to sex discrimination claims. The first large-scale analysis (36) assessed gender bias at the National Science Foundation (NSF), the National Institutes of Health (NIH), and the US Department of Agriculture. This study concluded there was no gender bias in awarding of grants at these three federal agencies (SI Text, S5). At all three agencies, which fund tens of thousands of US scientists, men's and women's grants were approved at the same rate. [Relatedly, Leboy's (37) much smaller report of success rates for first-time RO1 grants at the National Institutes of Health for men and women revealed identical success rates for new submissions between 1998–2004 and very similar continuation grants by 2004.] Clearly, female PIs did not have to be 2.5 times better than males to be approved. The second large-scale analysis is based on the Australian Research Council, which processes >3,000 applications annually in all areas of science. Marsh and his colleagues published several analyses of these data, using sophisticated measurement frameworks (38–40). In a multilevel analysis of 10,023 reviews by 6,233 reviewers of 2,331 proposals (38, 39), they found that although only 15.3% of applicants for grants were female PIs, their success was almost perfectly proportional (15.2%). When sex of only first-named investigator was considered, the success rate was identical: 21% both for men and women. Detailed analyses of second- and third-named researchers also indicated an absence of sex differences in success as did analyses based on mean external ratings and final panel committee ratings (38). No gender effect was found in any of the nine disciplines, and there was no gender bias as a function of reviewer or applicant sex or their interaction. [Subsequently, Marsh et al. (39) extended these results, again reporting no sex differences in approval rates that again generalized across disciplines, as well as to reviewers nominated by PIs vs. chosen by the agency, and to the country of the reviewer.] The third large-scale analysis provides an exception to the consistent failure to find sex differences. Bornmann and Daniel (41) examined 1,022 applications for predoctoral fellowships and 134 for postdoctoral fellowships to a German Foundation between 1985 and 1990. They found no evidence for gender bias in approving postdoc fellowships, but evidence for bias in approving pre-PhD fellowships, with males more likely to be approved (SI Text, S6). A follow-up study by Bornmann and his colleagues (42, 43) used a sophisticated multilevel approach to a metaanalysis, based on their comprehensive collection of studies of peer reviews for grants. This time Bornmann found a difference in favor of men, albeit extremely small—an effect size of <0.04 (an odds ratio of only 1.07:1.00). Only 1 of 66 sex-difference effect sizes was significant. Once again, no bias was found for postdocs, the group studied by Wennerås and Wold (29). The fourth large-scale study was based on all grant proposals submitted to the Economics Program at NSF during the years 1987–1990. Broder (44) analyzed 6,764 reviews. Consistent with the dearth of women economists in the late 1980s, only 9.3% of the PIs and 7.6% of the reviewers were women. However, Broder found female PIs fared well when rated by male reviewers at NSF, but less well when rated by female reviewers, a finding she suggested may have worked against increased representation of women. The fifth large-scale analysis attempted to reconcile contradictory findings by Marsh et al. vs. Bornmann et al. These teams joined forces and conducted a reanalysis of Bornmann and Daniel's (41) data to resolve their differences. Marsh, Bornmann et al. (45) applied the most powerful analytic approach to date, leading both camps to agree that there was no evidence of sex differences favoring men in any category. In fact, they found evidence favoring women, after controlling for discipline and country. These results were robust, with little study-to-study variation and a lack of interactions: “This noneffect of gender generalized across discipline, the different countries (and funding agencies) considered here, and the publication year” (45, p. 1311). Regarding sex differences in approval of fellowship applications, there was a small but statistically significant difference in favor of men. This finding is the closest any of the analyses have come to replicating Wennerås and Wold (29) (SI Text, S7), although the magnitude of this finding was not nearly as pronounced. The joint team interpreted this single finding in favor of men as an aberration from an otherwise unambiguous pattern of no sex advantages or even slight female advantage, and the lack of sex differences generalized over country and discipline (45). Finally, the sixth large-scale analysis of funding was conducted on >100,000 NIH submissions in six biomedical categories between 1996 and 2007 (46). The percentages of submissions funded were largely equivalent, with men favored slightly in some categories and women favored in others, leading the authors to conclude: “Men and women have near-equal NIH funding success at all stages of their careers, which makes it very unlikely that female attrition is due to negative selection from NIH grant-funding decisions” (p. 1473). To recap, the weight of evidence overwhelmingly points to a gender-fair grant review process. There are occasional small aberrations, sometimes favoring men and sometimes favoring women; all of the smaller-scale studies failed to replicate Wennerås and Wold's provocative findings, and all but one of the large-scale studies did as well—however, this one study was reversed after a more ambitious joint reanalysis (45). Despite this overwhelming counterevidence, numerous organizations continue to suggest grant review is discriminatory (47), thus diverting attention from legitimate factors limiting women's participation in math-based careers. The pattern of null sex effects reviewed above is based on funding decisions since the mid-1980s. This period may differ from that >25 y ago. Perhaps sexism was more common at agencies then and women's grants had to be superior to men's to be funded. Such sexism would be unsurprising given other evidence of sexism from this earlier era. Still, sexist reviews cannot be the source of today's dearth of women entering assistant professorships in math-intensive fields. In contrast to claims of anti-female bias among funding agencies quoted in the Introduction, this review indicates a level playing field over the last two decades.
Discrimination Against Women in Hiring If the underrepresentation of women in math-intensive fields is not due to biased journal or grant reviews, perhaps it results from biased interviewing and hiring decisions? A study of mock-search-committee recommendations for hiring of psychology professors (15) is often invoked for suspecting it does. In this study, 238 psychologists reviewed fictitious assistant professor candidates and more advanced job seekers. The authors used the same CV, varying applicant sex, and found that both female and male reviewers favored CVs with male assistant professor names, although they did not favor men for the more advanced post. Similarly, women on business teams receive less credit than men for identical work. For stereotypically male tasks, if there is ambiguity about the quality of a woman's contribution to a joint task, it is downplayed (48). Both male and female judges rated a hypothetical worker's performance worse when they thought the worker was female. These results, coupled with findings that nonblind auditions for positions in orchestras discriminated against women (12) and that 18-y-old college males favored resumes with male names for summer jobs when they were similar, although not identical to, those with female names (14), suggest comparable discrimination may be responsible for the dearth of women entering math-intensive fields. Although none of this evidence involved discrimination in math-intensive fields, it would be unlikely for sex discrimination to occur in all fields except math-intensive ones. A Government Accounting Office (GAO) report notes that women in math-intensive fields express feelings of isolation, dissatisfaction, and discrimination, “assertions that we also heard during many of our site visits to selected campuses” (ref. 49, p. 4).‡ This report touches on several factors supported by various analyses as being relevant to women's underrepresentation (50). These factors include women being more likely to prefer working fewer hours and at part-time positions to achieve work-family balance. Although 77% of female and 81% of male graduate students believed a full-time career is “important” or “extremely important” (51), sex differences emerged after additional questioning, with 31% of women (vs. only 9% of men) feeling that working part time for a period is “important” or “extremely important”. For having a permanent part-time career, the respective proportions were 19% for women and 9% for men (51). Similarly, in the United Kingdom for 2006–2007, female academics were significantly more likely than males to work part-time, 41.8% vs. 26.8% (25). Such sex differences reflect preferences and choices, whether freely made or constrained by gendered expectations, and result in more women in teaching-intensive, part-time posts where research resources are scarce. Relatedly, the GAO report mentions studies of pay differentials, demonstrating that nearly all current salary differences can be accounted for by factors other than discrimination, such as women being disproportionately employed at teaching-intensive institutions paying less and providing less time for research. Historically, however, this was not true; women, particularly senior women, lagged behind men in pay and promotion (52, 53) (SI Text, S8). Ginther and Kahn (54) analyzed promotion and pay data, noting that historic asymmetries favoring males largely disappeared by the early 2000s, with current asymmetries due to nongender factors. Others have also found that after controlling for structural variables such as status of university, discipline, and presence of young children (which affects women disproportionately), there is no evidence of discriminatory treatment, because women and men in the same circumstances (e.g., same type of institution, discipline, and amount of experience) fare equivalently. Again, although these variables affect men and women similarly, they disadvantage women more in practice, because more women work at teaching-intensive jobs. A National Center for Education Statistics study found that among full-time faculty, women were more likely to work in 2-y institutions (33% vs. 23%), and men in research universities (20% vs. 14%). Whether this is a consequence of choices freely made, or constrained by gendered expectations related to work-family balance coupled with inflexibility in tenure-track timetables and employment options, is worthy of study. Finally, an in-depth analysis of academic interviewing, hiring, institutional resources, and climate at R1 universities in six areas of natural science by an NRC task force (55) found that, among PhDs applying for tenure-track jobs, women were slightly more likely than men to be invited to interview and offered jobs: “If women applied for positions at R1 institutions, they had a better chance of being interviewed and receiving offers than male job candidates” (ref. 55, p. 5). These results are inconsistent with initiatives promoting gender sensitivity training for search committees and grant panels, which assume bias in funding and hiring of women (ref. 47, also see refs. 11, 56, and 57). Such initiatives target historical rather than current problems facing women scientists.
Conclusion: Redirecting Energies Toward Today's Causes of Underrepresentation Despite frequent assertions that women's current underrepresentation in math-intensive fields is caused by sex discrimination by grant agencies, journal reviewers, and search committees, the evidence shows women fare as well as men in hiring, funding, and publishing (given comparable resources). That women tend to occupy positions offering fewer resources is not due to women being bypassed in interviewing and hiring or being denied grants and journal publications because of their sex. It is due primarily to factors surrounding family formation and childrearing, gendered expectations, lifestyle choices, and career preferences—some originating before or during adolescence (3, 50, 54, 58) (SI Text, S9)—and secondarily to sex differences at the extreme right tail of mathematics performance on tests used as gateways to graduate school admission (SI Text, S10). As noted, women in math-intensive fields are interviewed and hired slightly in excess of their representation among PhDs applying for tenure-track positions. The primary factors in women's underrepresentation are preferences and choices—both freely made and constrained: “Women choose at a young age not to pursue math-intensive careers, with few adolescent girls expressing desires to be engineers or physicists, preferring instead to be medical doctors, veterinarians, biologists, psychologists, and lawyers. Females make this choice despite earning higher math and science grades than males throughout schooling” (3). Although women earn a large portion of undergraduate degrees in all science and math fields, disproportionately fewer matriculate in math-intensive graduate fields, preferring biology, medicine, and nonscience fields (law, humanities)—even when math ability is held constant. Of women who matriculate in math-intensive graduate fields, more drop out or change majors. Even among those who complete doctorates in math fields, fewer apply for tenure-track posts than do male counterparts. And the leakage of women continues even after starting careers as assistant professors—especially in math and physical sciences, and this trend continues as women advance through the ranks: “Although the reasons for this attrition are not well understood, it appears to have less to do with discrimination or ability than with fertility decisions and lifestyle choices, both freely made and constrained. The tenure structure in academe demands that women having children make their greatest intellectual contributions contemporaneously with their greatest physical and emotional achievements, a feat not expected of men. When women opt out of full-time careers to have and rear children, this is a choice—constrained by biology—that men are not required to make” (3, p. 4). To the extent that women's choices are freely made and women are satisfied with the outcomes, then we have no problem. However, to the extent that these choices are constrained by biology and/or society, and women are dissatisfied with the outcomes, or women's talent is not actualized, then we most emphatically have a problem. With a redirection of resources, this problem might be addressed by education and outreach to young women and girls and to academic administrators. Past strategies to remediate women's underrepresentation can be viewed as a success story; however, continuing to advocate strategies successful in the past to combat shortages of women in math-based fields today mistakes the current causes of women's underrepresentation. If not discrimination, what is the cause of women's underrepresentation? Today, the dearth of women in math-based fields is related to three factors, one of which (fertility/lifestyle choices) hinders women in all fields, not just mathematical ones, whereas the others (career preferences and ability differences) impact women in math-based fields. Regarding the role of math-related career preferences, adolescent girls often prefer careers focusing on people as opposed to things, and this preference accounts for their burgeoning numbers in such fields as medicine and biology, and their smaller presence in math-intensive fields such as computer science, physics, engineering, chemistry, and mathematics, even when math ability is equated. In a recent metaanalysis of >500,000 participants, the male-female effect size for preferring people vs. things overall was d > 0.90, and for engineering, 1.1, both substantial differences (59). One strategy to broaden girls’ interests and aspirations involves providing them with realistic information about career opportunities and exposing them to role models in math-based fields. This intervention is not meant to dissuade girls from aspiring to be physicians, veterinarians, and biologists, fields in which women are becoming a majority, but rather to ensure they do not opt out of inorganic fields because of misinformation or stereotypes. Regarding the role of math-ability differences, potentially influenced by both socialization and biology, twice as many men as women are found in the top 1% of the math score distribution (e.g., SAT-M, GRE-Q). A 30-y study of 1.6 million talent search participants revealed the male-female ratio of SAT-M scores in the top 0.01% has remained relatively stable since the mid-1990s at roughly 4:1 (60). This upper-tail difference is more pronounced for spatial ability (61) due partly to sex differences in variances in cognitive abilities (4). However, ability differences are a secondary explanation for the dearth of women in math-intensive fields because, even given these differences, we would still expect more women in these fields (e.g., a 4:1 ratio would engender 20% female professors in, say, engineering, and a 2:1 ratio would lead to 33%, whereas actual percentages of women are lower (62; SI Text, S10). The third factor influencing underrepresentation affects women in all fields: fertility choices and work-home balance issues. However, this challenge is exacerbated in math-intensive fields because the number of women is smaller to begin with. Attrition at each stage (from undergraduate to graduate school to tenure track) further reduces an already small number. There are significant sex differences in hours worked and lifestyle preferences (58), and having children early in one's career exerts more downward pressure on pretenure women than men (4, 52, 53). The tenure system has strong disincentives for women to have children; these disincentives are why more women in the academy are childless than men, and even women on tenure track with children are twice as likely as men to say they had fewer children than desired (50). Not only is it more common for male academic scientists to have children than for female scientists, but males with children are more likely to be tenured than females with children. Compared with males, new female PhDs are less likely to apply for tenure-track posts; and among those who do apply, females are more likely to terminate for family reasons (55). The GAO report (49) noted that many women PhD students stated during compliance visits that they would not seek tenure-track positions (SI Text, S11). In sum, the most salient reasons for women's underrepresentation today are career preferences and fertility/lifestyle choices, both free and constrained. The GAO report lists strategies, such as stopping tenure clocks for family formation and tenure-track positions seguing from part-time to full-time. Gender Equity Committees have suggested adjusting the length of time to work on grants to accommodate child-rearing, no-cost grant extensions, supplements to hire postdocs to maintain momentum during family leave, reduction in teaching responsibilities for women with newborns, grants for retooling after leaves of absence, couples-hiring, and childcare to attend professional meetings (47, 50, 63). The UC-Berkeley's “Family Edge” provides high-quality childcare and emergency backup care, summer camps and school break care, and reentry postdocs and instructs committees to ignore family-related gaps in CVs. Research into these strategies is needed to identify which are promising. Federal agencies and universities could play an important role by funding studies on the differing lifecourses of women's and men's careers to determine whether the traditional timing of hiring, tenure, and promotion may deny society and science the contributions of talented women. Perhaps women in scientific fields generally have greater impact later in their careers when family needs are less intense, even if they were less productive earlier because of family-balancing conflicts, as research has shown in biology (64). If this finding can be generalized to today's cohort of women in math-intensive fields, universities might explore options for offering women part-time tenure-track jobs (with concomitantly longer periods of time in which to amass a tenure portfolio), posts that could segue to full-time once women were ready. However, implementing such flexible options will require motivation and commitment of resources, and raises important questions that research will need to resolve (e.g., the impact on graduate students and postdocs working with part-time faculty; ways to “game” the part-time option for tenure). The linear career path of the modal male scientist of the past may not be the only route to success, and departments and universities should be encouraged and funded to experiment with alternate lifecourse options. A partnership between the academy and federal funding agencies could be instrumental in researching such alternatives.
Acknowledgments We acknowledge critical feedback from David Dunning, Kevin Clermont, Emily Sherwin, Ronald Ehrenberg, Valerie Reyna, Michael Macy, and anonymous reviewers. This work was funded by National Institutes of Health Grant R01 NS069792-01.
Footnotes 1 To whom correspondence may be addressed. E-mail: stevececi{at}cornell.edu or wendywilliams{at}cornell.edu.
To whom correspondence may be addressed. E-mail: or. Author contributions: S.J.C. and W.M.W. designed research, performed research, and wrote the paper.
The authors declare no conflict of interest.
This article is a PNAS Direct Submission.
This article contains supporting information online at www.pnas.org/lookup/suppl/doi:10.1073/pnas.1014871108/-/DCSupplemental.
Freely available online through the PNAS open access option.The Rolleidoscop was made from 1926 to 1939 in Germany, alongside the Heidoscop, the same camera but with a sheet film or glass plate back. It was actually the very first camera that renowned manufacturer Rollei made. Rumor has it that many photographers used these as a regular camera because the quality of lenses were so good for the era. They would cover one of the lenses and take a photo and cover the other lens for the next photo without advancing the film, making two different images as opposed to one stereograph. This became so prevalent that Rollei decided to remove one of the lenses and put the viewing lens above, resulting in their famed TLR cameras.
The Rolleidoscop is extremely solid and well made, as is typical of German cameras. It takes two photos on 120 film, roughly 6cm x 6.5cm each. The format is know as 6x13cm, perhaps the most common format for this era of stereo camera. Despite the large format, over twice that of a 6x6 medium format, the Rolleidoscop is surprisingly compact. This is partly due to the waist level finder and the relatively small aperture of the lenses(more on that later), and partially the result of a simple and well devised layout that minimizes the space surrounding the format dimensions. As can be seen in the photo, the back of the camera is virtually entirely taken up by the exposure space. Thin and precisely milled metal covered in leatherette also makes for a surprisingly light camera; my Yashica-mat 6x6 TLR is definitively heftier(and in very poor - but functional - condition). I feel I need to emphasize that the Rollei’s image area is over double the Yashica’s.
The shooting experience is in ways similar to that of a TLR. The waist level finder and the dual leaf shutters combine to make for a very discrete shooting experience. This camera is not at all out of place shooting street photography, although when people do notice the camera it draws a lot of interest due to looking like a very strange device indeed. The camera feels very nice in hand; two handed shooting is a must however, as the camera is wider than most and the focus dial is on the opposite side from the shutter button. The entire front can slide upwards roughly a centimeter to give the camera a rise movement that many large format cameras have. This can be used to keep lines straight on tall buildings, and although I rarely use this I find it an interesting and thoughtful addition.
The taking lenses are 75mm f4.5 Zeiss Tessars, and the viewing lens in the middle is an f4.2 triplet. This can make the viewfinder dim and difficult to use in situations with limited light. The taking lenses are very sharp and offer a ‘normal’ angle of view. The quality is especially apparent using slide film in a back-lit stereo viewer, an incredibly vivid experience. I’ve shot color negative and B&W negative film as well, scanned and viewed using the cross eye method on a screen. This technique in no way compares to the magnified view straight off the film that a stereoviewer with slides provides. Another option is to scan and print out stereo cards and use them with an old style Holmes Viewer. I’ve yet to try this method but the experience should fall in between the aforementioned options.
The process of taking a photo involves a couple steps more than even the mostly mechanical film cameras from the 1960′s. There is a dial to select shutter speed(1 to 1/300sec) on the left side, an identical dial on the right to focus, and a small thumb wheel on the top to the right the controls aperture (f4,5 to f25). The shutter must be cocked via a lever to the left of the aperture, and the film wound by dial to the back left. A small flap on the back reveals a red tinted window with two groups of numbers etched inside the flap showing proper alignment for each stereo pair. You get 5 stereo photos per roll, and you can squeak a frame on to the end of the roll resulting in a regular old photo. The 120 film has numbered arrow indicators on the outside paper that are to be lined up corresponding the same number on the back flap. This sounds complicated but is much simpler visually to understand and not a problem in the field. I do end up looking for shade and hunched over the camera every time I need to advance the film, as lifting the flap on a sunny day results in light leaks. The shutter button doesn’t get locked out after an exposure, so if you forget to advance in between shots you can get some crazy 3d double exposures.
A lesser known trait of all stereo cameras is that they like to be shot at small apertures. Stereo photographs need a large depth of field to be successful, likely for two related reasons. When we experience the perception of depth, our natural reaction is to look around the scene for objects at different distances. We want to fully experience the phenomenon. If a photo is taken wide open, there is a shallow depth-of-field; only objects from one depth are in focus. This invariably ruins the experience, as there is a diminished perception of three dimensions. The photo can be an amazing image, but it would look just as amazing if it were a two dimensional print. The second and lesser reason is that when looking through a stereo-viewer the image is magnified very large, encouraging the person to look around throughout the photo. If most of the image is out of focus bokeh, it doesn’t seem so all-encompassing.
*To free-view the following images in stereo, you can focus on the photo and then cross your eyes until the two frames overlap. This does not work for everyone, but with practice I can do it readily*
Conversely, images that would look bad or muddled as a regular photograph can work as a stereograph. A large part of photographic composition involves placing objects in the frame so they overlap in harmonious fashion; light on dark, dark on light, complex objects against simple, avoiding overlapping objects of similar colours. Due to the perception of depth in a stereograph, these faux pas aren’t nearly as tragic. Shooting someone in all black against a black background rarely works with photography; the person’s clothes blend with the background and the subject doesn’t stand out. In a stereo photo, they get separated from the background because they were and appear 10 feet in front of it. One of my passions in photography is in finding opportunities in the seemingly limited technology and processes of the past. In this respect the 6x13 stereo camera is a gold mine. Half of the “rules” are completely different, the photographic ‘opposite day’.
The camera therefore has a thirst to be stopped down, and as such you need a LOT of light for moving subjects. For street photography with the sun out and high, I try to shoot around 1/300sec at f12.5 with ISO100 film pushed a stop. If it’s cloudy the shutter speed usually goes down before the aperture; it’s that important for stereo photography. Shooting un-moving non-people you can just bring a tripod, but where’s the fun in that?!
I recently got some studio lights and had some ideas for stereo portraiture and studio conceptual images, but unfortunately the Rolleidoscop didn’t come with a flash sync. That meant that I had to make one, which was surprisingly easy. Don’t worry, I didn’t make any modifications to the body itself! I took the front plate off, glued a click sensor from an old computer mouse under the shutter lever inside, stripped one end of a PC sync cable and fed it down the shutter release cable hole. Then I saudered the cable ends to the click sensor contacts and voila! I plug the cable into any flash or pocketwizard-esqe remote, and it fires. I shoot at 1/50 usually to make sure the shutter is open for the flash. It works really well, if you have some decent strobes you can shoot at f16 or higher which is ideal. Recommending shooing f16 for portraits sounds ridiculous, but that’s part of the charm.
This is my favorite camera to use. It can be a bit finicky and needs very specific circumstances to shine, but under the right conditions the results are unparalleled. I often see 3D tech viewed as a gimmick, and it is often used as such. Photographic style is often used as a tool to draw the viewer in to see what we have to say as photographers. Lighting, composition, angle and focus are all tools in grabbing the viewer’s attention, and stereoscopic images can serve the same purpose. Done right, it can be highly immersive and tends to invite a prolonged interaction with the subject matter. Stereo photography hasn’t been popular for nearly a century now, with equipment being rare and difficult to use. For me, it’s well worth the effort.On Sunday, the Charlotte Hornets and Miami Heat begin a series that could be one of the closest first-round matchups in the NBA playoffs.
The sixth-seeded Hornets finished the season tied with the third-seeded Heat at 48-34, and the teams split their four-game season series.
Charlotte finished with the fifth-best record in franchise history; only the Warriors and Spurs had a better record than the Hornets (25-9) since Feb. 1.
“In the summer when all the predictions were coming out, a lot of (the players) said to me, |
. It's one of the great complex problems of the future. Neo-Darwinian evolution isn't fixated at one level. It's being applied at different levels – but in a given study, only at one level. There's been arguments: Dawkins argues that it happens at the gene, others at the level of individuals, and others at the level of species – but there's now more of a growing consensus that it happens at all these different levels, and we don't understand how that comes about. When you get into the notion of different levels, you deal with problem of selection at different time scales – for instance, when you talk about a particular individual, it's about what happens during their lifetime. They either make or don't make children. When you talk about human populations and human dynamics... what's the time scale over which selection is happening there? It's not individual anymore. It's a longer scale altogether.... What time scales are relevant? It seems you end up with lots of different possible time scales. How do you unify all these different mechanisms taking place? And why are there all these different levels? That's the fundamental thing that makes life complex. And those points aren't accounted for by Darwinian evolution. In any complex system, what happens at the larger scale can affect what happens at the smaller scale. It's not just that everything goes up from genes to individuals to groups of individuals to ecosystems and species. You also have feedback going back the other way, all the way down. That's part of the whole selection mechanism, and we don't really understand that. These kind of questions are absolutely the most fantastic questions you can ask nowadays.
I then asked Paczuski about non-linearity and emergence – the dynamics underlying the sort of sudden, radical jumps of complexity seen in (to pick a particularly vivid example) honeybee colonies.
You can't get anything new from linear systems. Linear systems don't have property of emergence. What are the rules for the jumps of complexity? The best answer is that these are just things that just appear from the dynamics of the system itself. It's not predictable what they're going to be. You can't describe life by describing where the atoms are of everything on earth.
It wouldn't give you the relevant information you're interested in. What are the right levels to study the jumps? The levels where you can make the most compact description of things that you're interested in.
It's a subjective thing. You look at the system, see things going on, and figure out what's interesting to you, and those are the levels. You do have cells, which have boundaries, eukaryotes and so on – they really are distinct structures. When you talk about individuals, it's pretty obvious that these cells get together and move around and reproduce together. You can still make good decisions about what a species is. Then it gets a little more complicated, because then you have to talk about, what's a community? What's a society? Definitions rely on information at the lowest level. On boundaries – the notion of a self-replicating unit. But at the higher level, it's not really so clear anymore really what they are relying on. At least it isn't to me. I suppose if you talked to some other people, they'll come up with some highfaluting theory, some absolute definition for the relevant emergent structures, but we really don't know all that well. If you have a complex system, you should expect that there's going to be many different levels at which selection acts. The whole landscape of selection is getting more integrated, more complicated, and that's why you can't say that selection acts on one particular level. And once you admit that, there's no end to the emergent forms, the ones where we haven't yet realized that selection is acting. Biologists have success showing selection in defined domains – but none of those domains give a well-defined picture of how you can get all this complexity.... What are the real mechanisms over which selection acts at the level of species? At the level of families? At the levels in the tree of life? You've had episodes in geological time where whole phyla went extinct – those were much higher levels. It's not just random how extinction events happen. They happen in bursts.
That suggests many different levels of selection. I have to say that I really don't know what drives the jumps in complexity. Now we're talking about a fundamental problem in physics:
we cannot, as physicists, explain how something new happens. Something that didn't exist before. We know that in evolution, this is a very structured process. This problem of emergence is very much related to the problem of selection, the levels at which selection happens, and how that creates space or niches for new species to emerge in the biosphere. Those two things are very much related to each other. Its' a fascinating problem, but a frustrating one. I haven't seen a promising way forward at the moment. But the most important thing as a scientist is to know the difference between something you don't understand and something you do. The first step is that we don't have a conceptual understanding of many-level selection. This whole notion of emergence, of many levels – that you cannot describe life at any given level at all in particular, which is the notion that came out of complexity theory – it's a pretty new field.
There was very little work in complexity until the advent of the personal computer, where you could actually do the simulations. Now you have people out there, students and people who work with research institutes, and people trying things on there own who can make their own little world with rules and see what happens. We still don't have a very good grasp of it, but it's a necessary field to develop as part of understanding biology, life, and the organization of human societies and how signaling communication networks evolve.
Phew! There's a lot going on there. But if it caught your interest, be sure to check out the story.
Image: Domenico Nardone
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WiSci 2.0: Brandon Keim's Twitter and Del.icio.us feeds; Wired Science on Facebook.Comcast and Disney are staying focused on the prospect of bidding for key 21st Century Fox assets despite the concern about the climate for media mergers raised by the Justice Department’s decision to fight the $85 billion union of AT&T and Time Warner.
Sources say Fox is continuing to engage in very preliminary discussions with Comcast, Disney, and other potential suitors about a sale process of the 20th Century Fox film and TV studio, the FX Networks and National Geographic cable group, Fox’s 30% stake in Hulu, and international TV platforms including Star India and its 39% interest in Euro satcaster Sky. A source said executives at Comcast and NBCUniversal are “being very serious” in studying the Fox assets and trying crunch the numbers with publicly available information. Fox is not believed to have progressed to the point of sending out briefing books or asking potential bidders to sign non-disclosure agreements.
Reps for Fox and Comcast declined to comment. A rep for Disney did not respond to a request for comment.
As the M&A spotlight stays on Fox, media analyst Michael Nathanson of MoffettNathanson did some number crunching of his own to come up with estimated enterprise values for the Fox assets that might be sold and those that would stay behind with the Murdoch clan that controls 21st Century Fox.
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According to Nathanson’s Nov. 20 report, the combined value of the assets believed to be on the block is estimated at around $48.5 billion, with the 20th Century Fox film and TV production operation and library valued highest at around $15 billion. Of the assets that would remain in the Fox or News Corp. fold — Fox Broadcasting Co. network, its TV stations, the Fox News cabler and Fox Sports national and regional cable operations — are estimated to have an enterprise value of about $45.1 billion, with cable networks providing the lion’s share of the value at about $40.6 billion.
Nathanson observes that the streamlined Fox without the studio and entertainment cable networks would still have clout with traditional and digital MVPDs thanks to the NFL and other sports rights held by Fox Broadcasting and the prominence of Fox News.
“With many pressures hitting the media industry Fox’s potential moves make immense sense,” Nathanson wrote. “Paring down their asset base would not change this hand and would underscore the massive relative value here.”
The Justice Department’s lawsuit seeking to block AT&T and Time Warner is a wild card that would have to be considered in any serious M&A effort involving Fox. AT&T chief Randall Stephenson warned earlier this week of the chilling effect the government’s stance would have on business transactions in the absence of clear “guideposts” for merger agreements. But at this early stage, the hunt for a few big pieces of Fox only appears to be heating up.CLOSE Ferguson Mayor James Knowles announced the resignation of Tom Jackson, the city's police chief, in what he hopes will be a big step in helping the community move forward. VPC
Ferguson Police Chief Thomas Jackson on Aug. 15, 2014. (Photo: Scott Olson, Getty Images)
Embattled Ferguson, Mo., Police Chief Thomas Jackson, whose department received scathing criticism from the Justice Department for racially biased policing, will resign March 19, city officials said Wednesday.
Jackson, 57, becomes the third top city official to leave following the Justice Department's investigation that found systemic racial bias by police and court officials. Judge Ronald Brockmeyer and City Manager John Shaw resigned earlier this week.
Lt. Col. Al Eickhoff will serve ask acting chief until the city completes a nationwide search for a new police chief, the city said in a press release. Jackson will receive a severance payment of approximately $100,000 and health insurance for one year.
That Justice Department's review found the Ferguson Police Department engaged in a broad pattern of racially biased enforcement that permeated the city's justice system, including the use of unreasonable force against African American suspects. The report also criticized the city's municipal court system.
Brittany Packnett, 30, executive director of Teach For America St. Louis, who helped organize protests in Ferguson after a white police officer shot Michael Brown, 18, an unarmed black man, said she's encouraged to see months of demands for accountability met with personnel changes. But Ferguson and other cities must take more substantial steps to address systemic problems and show they are "serious about justice and fairness," she said.
Ferguson should "comb through the recommendations" from the Justice Department until it has met every requirement and recommendation, she said.
Ferguson Mayor James Knowles said the police chief made the decision to leave.
"He felt this was the best way forward," Knowles said. "He is and has been committed to making sure Ferguson keeps the police department."
Knowles described Jackson's severance as being in line with what private industries would offer executives. Jackson will stay on the force until March 19 to help the department transition.
Knowles added that he and city officials believe they can keep the Ferguson Police Department intact despite calls from some to dismantle it. The mayor said Ferguson looks to become an example of how a community moves forward in the face of adversity.
He also said that he is committed to keeping his role and that along with city council members he will work to implement recommendations by the Justice Department.
"Somebody is going to have to be here to run the show," Knowles said in response to a question about whether he would step down as mayor. "We cannot have everybody just up and leave."
Missouri Sen. Maria Chappelle-Nadal, who represents the city in the state legislature, welcomed the resignation.
"I'm elated," she said. "We have been waiting for him to go for months and he was so hardheaded about leaving. He put his personal interests before Ferguson and the region."
Read or Share this story: http://usat.ly/1GsJig1The Barcelona midfielder opens up about the time, before the 2010 World Cup, when he stopped feeling like a footballer and had to seek professional help
Andrés Iniesta says he heard the silence and knew that all he had to do was wait for Isaac Newton. The ball sat up; gravity would bring it down again and, when it did, he would score. It was the 116th minute in Johannesburg and he did score, running to the corner and pulling off his shirt to reveal the message underneath, written in blue marker by Hugo the kit man: “Dani Jarque, always with us”. Ten thousand miles away Spain erupted and Jessica cried. Through the tears she saw it: Dani, her Dani.
The 2010 World Cup final was the first game Jessica had watched since her husband had died 11 months earlier, aged 26. She watched on television with her mother, María, and daughter, Martina, 10 months, as the ball sat up. What followed was more than just a goal, Iniesta reveals – for all of them. It is sunny in Sant Joan Despí as, six years on, he explains how that moment pulled him from “a dark place”.
Iniesta might not have been there then and without that goal he does not know where he would be now. Perhaps not here at Barcelona’s training ground, one of the world’s most celebrated footballers. Late on the night before the final, with everyone asleep, he quietly opened the door and, without leaving the hotel, set off for a run. Down the corridors he sprinted until he believed he could do this. All tournament the physios, working past 4am, had promised he would be OK even when they thought he would not be. Now, he was – vulnerable but ready.
This was more than Iniesta’s muscles, though; it was his mind. The security of waiting for Newton masked the insecurity and suffering of the months before. In 2009 he won the European Cup and the following summer the World Cup. It should have been the best year of his life; instead it was the hardest. Between the two titles he suffered. “Not depression exactly, not illness either, not really, but an unease,” he says in his book, The Artist, published today. “It was like nothing was right.”
Facebook Twitter Pinterest André Iniesta celebrates scoring the winning goal in the 2010 World Cup final against Holland. Photograph: Jamie McDonald/Getty Images
Iniesta had played the 2009 final injured, warned not to shoot. In pre-season, still not fit, Carles Puyol delivered news: his friend Jarque, captain of Espanyol, had died. The impact was profound, body and mind suffering together. Tests showed nothing specific physically but Iniesta could not complete sessions, Pep Guardiola telling him to walk whenever he needed, which he did often. They would wait, Guardiola said, and the wait went on. When Iniesta played he was not the same and April brought another injury. The World Cup, the light he sought, risked being extinguished.
Iniesta says he had felt as if he was in “freefall”. Unable to go on, he turned to the club’s doctors, seeking professional psychological treatment. If doing so can carry a stigma, especially in sport, he says: “When you need help, you have to look for it: at times it’s necessary. People are specialists; that’s what they’re there for. You have to use them.”
I understood that I was enduring a delicate moment but I took refuge in my people and, above all, in football
So Iniesta did – quietly, privately. He needed help; he talks about being “on edge”, “vulnerable”, “victim of something that terrified me”. Team-mates did not know. Nor had he said anything publicly. There is a kind of catharsis, or perhaps a closure, in doing so now. He had talked about Newton before but not what lay beneath, how significant that moment was. What would have become of him without it? What if Spain had not won the World Cup? It is not a glib question.
Despite his reluctance to define what he suffered as “depression”, there is a passage in his book where Iniesta writes that he can “understand” how people end up committing a “locura”: how they can end up doing something “crazy”, an act of “madness”. What does he mean? In the context it is a powerful word, frightening and uncomfortable: mental health can be delicate, the desperation debilitating and the consequences dreadful.
“When you’re not right, you experience moments that impact upon you, that worry you,” Iniesta says. His words – te imponen respeto – defy simplistic translation but imply fear, a sense of the situation being bigger than you, beyond you, not entirely under control. “Those are difficult, uncomfortable moments [but] to go from there to certain extremes,” he says, “… well, every case has its peculiarities…”
“There are moments when your mind is very vulnerable. You feel a lot of doubts. Every person is different, every case. What I’m trying to explain is that you can go from being in good shape to being in a bad way very quickly.
“I never reached the point of saying: ‘I’m giving up.’ I understood that I was enduring a delicate moment but I took refuge in my people and, above all, in football. I never felt I didn’t want to continue playing. I knew one day I’d take a step forward, maybe the next it would be three, then five … it’s a process and that’s how you overcome it.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Andrés Iniesta celebrates after Barcelona’s 2-0 triumph against Manchester United in the 2009 Champions League final. Photograph: Claudio Villa/Getty Images
“People see footballers as different beings, as if we’re untouchable, as if nothing ever happens to us, but we’re people. Of course we’re privileged but in the tangibles we’re the same.”
The same? Or perhaps even worse off? Does the exposure, the pressure, the competition and need to perform, the public profile, make it harder? And few jobs expose people so young. The response is swift: “We’re not martyrs,” Iniesta says. “Lots of people would swap with us. Every job has its difficulties. Every time my dad, a builder, went up on the scaffolding, he could have fallen. But he accepts that risk; he had to. Or the lorry driver, or any job… the footballer knows; he grows up with pressure, criticism, having to be strong. I’m convinced there are many who wouldn’t make it.”
Iniesta left home to join Barcelona as a 12-year-old, crying alone in a corner daily. He says the worst night of his life was the first he spent at La Masia while his parents drove back to Fuentealbilla, Albacete in a Ford Orion that kept breaking down.
“We’re lucky to be footballers; my intention in explaining that bad moment is not to make people say ‘poor thing’, far from it. Just that elements of [a footballer’s] life, the feelings, the difficulties, are like anyone else’s. This is how people’s lives are. I don’t think I’m an exception. It costs una barbariedad – a colossal amount – to get to the first team and even more to stay there. I spent my whole life at Barcelona, living with the pressure from the age of 12. But you’re born a footballer, wanting to be one, so it doesn’t matter how old you are.”
For almost a year it was as if he was not one, his identity lost. South Africa brought him through and brought him here; Iniesta admits that it allowed him to “feel like a footballer again”.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Andrés Iniesta strikes the winning goal against Holland to secure a first ever World Cup title for Spain. Photograph: Matthew Ashton/Corbis via Getty Images
Some footballer: captain of Barcelona, universally admired, the man of whom Lionel Messi says that, when there is a problem on the pitch, the thing he wants most is to have Andrés close. Winner of over 30 titles; two trebles; every trophy there is; a European Cup winner in 2006 (although he admits that Frank Rijkaard’s handling of the final, which he began on the bench, “doesn’t sit well at all”), 2009, 2011 and 2015; a European champion in 2008 and 2012; World champion in 2010, scorer of that goal.
And he is not about to stop. At 32, no longer playing alongside Xavi Hernández and with Barcelona embarking on a stylistic shift, more direct, it might have been natural for Iniesta’s career to draw towards a close. He might have appeared the natural victim; instead he is enjoying this as never before. He became more central in every sense, a kind of Iniesta and Xavi.
The qualities that define him have not diminished; his game is, he says, “intuitive”. Recognisably his: summed up in that photo surrounded by opponents, bigger and more numerous than him. Almost as if it is deliberate, drawing them in, even if he protests: “I prefer one than five!” He explains: “I’ve never seen being small as a disadvantage; everyone has his qualities. Don’t ask me to beat a guy who’s 1.80m in the air: ask me to do other things I’m better than him at.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Andrés Iniesta finds himself outnumbered five to one against Italy at Euro 2012. Photograph: Markus Ulmer/Motivio/Cleva Media
“Most things come from inside, they’re intuitive; that’s the way I am. There’s tactics, strategy but I understand football as something unpredictable, because you have to decide in a thousandth of a second. If the ball is coming and there’s someone behind you, I’m not thinking: ‘I’m going left or should it be right?’ I just go and it comes off … well, sometimes it doesn’t.”
From across the room a friend is listening. “It always does,” he shouts, laughing. Iniesta squirms a bit and heads in another direction.
“Things have changed a bit but the essence will always be the same,” he says. “Everything evolves and changes need time: we didn’t play as well in September [2014] as in [the final] in the 2015 final in Berlin. The style is a product of the players; you have to use [Messi, Neymar, and Suárez] and maybe the midfielders have more pitch to cover, but I’m not someone who can only play a certain style or system. Last year was one of the seasons I most enjoyed. I broke my kilometre record, for sure, but that’s not incompatible with my style.”
The balance under Luis Enrique bears that out: a treble and a double. Now as they begin another season, a familiar face stands before them in the Champions League: one that looked out from posters by Iniesta’s bunk. The coach who changed the club and changed his career – and whose career Iniesta changed too. Barcelona versus Manchester City: it is not the draw they wanted but better now than a knock-out. And the reunion will be a fond one.
Pep Guardiola is a radical who will perfect his ideas at Manchester City | Xavi Hernández Read more
After two games under Guardiola in 2008 Barcelona had not won and the pressure was huge. Why they had chosen this novice over José Mourinho? One day there was a knock on Guardiola’s door. It was Iniesta. “Keep going, mister. We’re training bloody brilliantly,” he said.
“Things hadn’t started well but I believed in [Guardiola],” Iniesta says. “I felt a connection. When things come from inside, you know they’re real. I felt that way, like I had to tell him, support him.
“We came back from Euro 2008 and went to St Andrews and you could already see that this was different: the training, the communication, how the manager was. Until then there hadn’t been such a defined style and I identified with it. It changed everything and we needed that.
“Since then, if you watch, there are things other coaches have taken on that weren’t done until then: the central defenders coming out to play, or the full-backs. Pulling the pivot further back to begin [moves]. In sessions, instead of the two interiores coming back to receive, he pushed us further forward for the next wave, supporting players higher, offering passing options. You could only come so far; you can’t go past this line,” Iniesta says, signalling the limits with his hand. “And they’d watch to make sure, or there’d be cones marking out [that limit].
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Pep Guardiola and Andrés Iniesta will be reunited when Barcelona face Manchester City in the Champions League. Photograph: Alvaro Barrientos/AP
“All those ideas were expressed early in sessions. Or, the pressure on the ball after losing possession… There’d be drills where, if the opposition plays six passes without you getting it off them, they get a point.” Or the goalkeeper? “Yes, he’s always been important for us, another player: when the ball comes out from deep, depending on whether your opponents have one or two [forwards], the goalkeeper plays. He allows you to have numerical superiority.”
The Artist: Being Iniesta is published by Headline on 8 September 2016.
Joe Hart has found that out already. But will Guardiola’s philosophy work in Manchester? “Pep knows how to adapt and I’m sure he’ll do so in England,” Iniesta says. “He’s also got staff like Mikel Arteta who’ll help that process, who know the league.
“City have signed well and have a very competitive squad. I know Nolito well because he was a team-mate here at Barcelona and with Spain. He’s had a great start and hopefully can continue. I’ve admired David Silva for years: I think he’s exceptional. Players learn day to day, from experience, team-mates and managers. I learnt a lot with Pep; he helped me to improve and he’ll do the same at City.”
Above all, though, Guardiola wanted Iniesta to be Iniesta, not least during those months when he was not. Because when Iniesta is himself, he is unique. Fuentealbilla with his friends is not the same as the Camp Nou with 98,000 fans – “If only,” he says – but while the stage marks you, the pressure too, some things remain. “What I do in the stadium, I did on the school playground,” Barcelona’s captain says. “What I did at 12, I still do now.”
• In the UK, the Samaritans can be contacted on 116 123. In the US, the National Suicide Prevention Hotline is 1-800-273-8255. In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is on 13 11 14. Hotlines in other countries can be found here
• The Artist: Being Iniesta by Andres Iniesta (Headline, £9.99). To order a copy for £8.19, go to bookshop.theguardian.com or call 0330 333 6846. Free UK p&p over £10, online orders only. Phone orders min. p&p of £1.99.Pep Guardiola praises Aaron Mooy, Socceroos midfielder could play for Man City next season
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Pep Guardiola has lavished praised on Aaron Mooy, declaring the Australian could be recalled to Manchester City for the 2017-18 English Premier League season.
Mooy will be forced to watch from the sidelines when his loan club Huddersfield Town takes on City in an FA Cup clash on Sunday morning (AEDT).
City manager Guardiola has been watching Mooy keenly after signing him from Melbourne City last year.
Under the terms of Mooy's loan, he is ineligible to take on City, who sit second on the Premier League ladder.
The Socceroos midfielder has starred for Huddersfield in this season's Championship.
Guardiola praised the 26-year-old's efforts and said he would consider recalling him to City at the conclusion of the season in May.
"So, Aaron Mooy is playing amazing this season and we are glad at that," Guardiola said.
"It is not easy coming from Australia and going to the Championship and play as good as he is.
"We are going to consider what will happen at the end of the season but it's good.
"Huddersfield right now is in a big moment, playing really well, big results in the last minutes, a lot of confidence."
AAP
Topics: english-premier, soccer, sport, englandAlbert Jacka, VC, MC & Bar (10 January 1893 – 17 January 1932) was an Australian recipient of the Victoria Cross, the highest decoration for gallantry "in the face of the enemy" that can be awarded to members of the British and Commonwealth armed forces. Jacka was the first Australian to be decorated with the VC during the First World War, receiving the medal for his actions during the Gallipoli Campaign. He later served on the Western Front and was twice further decorated for his bravery.
Upon the conclusion of the war, Jacka returned to Australia and entered business; establishing the electrical goods importing and exporting business Roxburgh, Jacka & Co. Pty Ltd. He was later elected to the local council, where he became the mayor of the City of St Kilda. Jacka never fully recovered from the multiple wounds he sustained during his war service, and died at the age of 39.
Early life [ edit ]
Albert Jacka was born on a dairy farm near Winchelsea, Victoria, on 10 January 1893, the fourth of seven children to Nathaniel Jacka and his English-born wife Elizabeth (née Kettle).[1] His family moved to Wedderburn, Victoria, when he was five years old, where he attended the local school before working with his father as a haulage contractor. He was working for the Victorian State Forests Department at Heathcote when the First World War broke out.[2] His career over three years took him along the southern side of the Murray River to Wedderburn, Cohuna, Koondrook, Lake Charm and Heathcote. His work included fencing, fire break clearing and tree planting.[3] Jacka is one of twenty employees shown on the Forests Department Roll of Honour.[4]
First World War [ edit ]
Enlistment and training [ edit ]
Jacka enlisted in the Australian Imperial Force on 18 September 1914, with the rank of private. He was assigned to the 14th Battalion,[5] 4th Brigade, 1st Division and finished his training at Broadmeadows Camp.[6]
After Turkey became a German ally, the 1st Division was sent to Egypt to defend the Suez Canal. Jacka and his battalion arrived at Alexandria on 31 January 1915. During ten weeks of training south of Cairo the 4th Brigade was merged with two New Zealand brigades and merged with the 1st Light Horse Brigade to form the New Zealand and Australian Division (NZ&A) under Major General Alexander Godley.[6]
Gallipoli [ edit ]
Corporal Albert Jacka on Mudros, 1915
Jacka fought in the Gallipoli Campaign that started on 25 April 1915, when his new division landed at Anzac Cove on the 26th in the Dardanelles, fighting against Turkish defenders on a narrow beach. The NZ&A-held position, a series of trenches which became known as Courtney's Post, was where Jacka won the Victoria Cross.[6]
On 19 May 1915, the Turks launched an assault against the Anzac Line, capturing a section of the trench at Courtney's Post; one end of which was guarded by Jacka.[7] For several minutes he fired warning shots into the trench wall until reinforcements arrived, after which he attempted to enter the trench with three others; all but Jacka were either wounded or pinned.[7] It was then decided that while a feint attack was made from the same end, Jacka would attack from the rear. The party then proceeded to engage the Turks with rifle fire, throwing in two bombs as Jacka skirted around to attack from the flank. He climbed out onto "no man's land", entering the trench via the parapet. In the resulting conflict, Jacka shot five Turkish soldiers and bayoneted two others, forcing the remainder to flee the trench;[8] he then held the trench alone for the remainder of the night. Jacka's platoon commander, Lieutenant Crabbe, informed him the following morning that he would be recommended for his bravery.[9]
The full citation for the Victoria Cross appeared in a supplement to The London Gazette on 23 July 1915:[10]
War Office, 24th July, 1915 His Majesty the King has been graciously pleased to award the Victoria Cross to the undermentioned Officers and Non-commissioned Officers:- No. 465 Lance-Corporal Albert Jacka, 14th Battalion, Australian Imperial Forces. For most conspicuous bravery on the night of the 19th–20th May, 1915 at "Courtney's Post", Gallipoli Peninsula. Lance-Corporal Jacka, while holding a portion of our trench with four other men, was heavily attacked. When all except himself were killed or wounded, the trench was rushed and occupied by seven Turks. Lance-Corporal Jacka at once most gallantly attacked them single-handed, and killed the whole party, five by rifle fire and two with the bayonet.
Following his VC action, Jacka instantly became a national hero; he received the £500 and gold watch that the prominent Melbourne business and sporting identity, John Wren, had promised to the first Australian of the war to receive the VC, his image was used on recruiting posters and magazine covers,[11] and he received rapid promotions; first to corporal on 28 August, to sergeant two weeks later on 12 September, and then to company sergeant major on 14 November.[12] He became company sergeant major of C Company, and saw much fighting at Gallipoli where, during August at Chunuk Bair, Hill 971, and Hill 60, his battalion took part in an Allied offensive aimed at trying to break the deadlock around the beachhead.[6] After nine months of fighting and 26,111 Australian casualties, the Allied forces began to evacuate the peninsula in December 1915, after which Jacka's battalion was withdrawn to Egypt.[6]
In Egypt, he passed through officer training school with high marks, and on 29 April 1916 was commissioned as a second lieutenant.[7] During this time, the AIF expanded and was reorganised; the 14th Battalion was split and provided experienced soldiers for the 46th Battalion, and the 4th Brigade was combined with the 12th and 13th Brigades to form the 4th Australian Division.[13]
Western Front [ edit ]
Jacka with fellow VC recipient Martin O'Meara, 1916. Both were recuperating from wounds in England.
The division was sent to France, and the Western Front, in June 1916,[6] where Jacka and his unit were assigned to the Allied trenches near Armentières, participating in several raids against the German trenches.[14] Following the heavy casualties on the Somme, the 14th Battalion was transferred to the Pozières sector of the Somme offensive. Jacka's division, on 23 July 1916, was involved in the attack of Pozières planned by Major General Harold Bridgwood Walker. The Australian division suffered 5,285 casualties after three days of fighting. The Australian force captured Pozières,[15] but the fight was so bloody that the Australians could only identify their trenches by the bodies of their comrades showing their red-and-white shoulder patches.[citation needed]
On the morning of 7 August 1916, after a night of heavy shelling, the Germans began to overrun a portion of the line which included Jacka's dug-out. Jacka had just completed a reconnaissance, and had gone to his dug-out when two Germans appeared at its entrance and rolled a bomb down the doorway, killing two of his men.[7] Emerging from the dug-out, Jacka came upon a large number of Germans rounding up some forty Australians as prisoners. Only seven men from his platoon had recovered from the blast; rallying these few, he charged at the enemy.[16] Heavy hand-to-hand fighting ensued, as the Australian prisoners turned on their captors. Every member of the platoon was wounded, including Jacka who was wounded seven times; including an injury from a bullet that passed through his body under his right shoulder, and two head wounds.[17] Fifty Germans were captured and the line was retaken;[7] Jacka was personally credited with killing between twelve and twenty Germans during the engagement.[17]
Captain A Jacka, VC, MC and Bar (1919) by (1919) by Colin Gill (Art. IWM ART 1915)
Jacka was awarded the Military Cross for his actions at Pozières,[18] although he was originally recommended for the Distinguished Service Order.[19] Many present at the time, as well as many historians since, have voiced the opinion that Jacka deserved a second Victoria Cross for the Pozières action.[20] One of only two bars (second award) to the Victoria Cross awarded during the war was earned the following day by Captain Noel Godfrey Chavasse of the Royal Army Medical Corps. Chavasse subsequently died of wounds sustained during this second VC action. The other bar to the VC was earnt by Arthur Martin-Leake during the period 29 October to 8 November 1914 near Zonnebeke, Belgium, when, according to his award citation, Martin-Leake showed most conspicuous bravery and devotion to duty in rescuing, while exposed to constant fire, a large number of the wounded who were lying close to the enemy's trenches. Martin-Leake was the first of only three men to be awarded a bar to his VC.[citation needed]
Although traditionally the reason Jacka was not awarded a bar to his VC has been ascribed to British snobbery towards a "rough colonial", this view has been challenged. Gordon Corrigan, in Blood Mud and Poppycock, points out that it was Jacka's Australian superiors who chose not to recommend him for the award, and he argues that this may have been due to the fact that the Germans easily infiltrated Jacka's platoon position in broad daylight without being challenged. The sentries were most likely asleep or absent and Jacka should have ensured that they were not; as such it may have been perceived that while Jacka should be commended for his robust action in responding to the |
]
DIE! When Pyramus's lover re-enters to find him dead, one of the audience comments "I hope she will be brief". (Yes, Shakespeare also did riffing.)
Fellowship! The Musical had a great example: Boromir, defending the hobbits, gets shot with an arrow, falls, gets back up, stumbles off stage, gets shot with a couple more arrows, stumbles back on stage...repeat several more times. The last time he stumbles off stage, different arrow-hitting-flesh sounds (getting increasingly ridiculous) are played for over a minute, before he stumbles back on stage one final time, looking like a pincushion.
Cyber-Dive Connection: As part of their mission in the digital world, the characters each have to pick a genre of video game and try to win it - fighting, puzzle, rhythm, Dating Sim, etc.... and Kai chooses a fishing game. So, after some of the others' more action-oriented mini-scenes, Kai walks out with a fishing rod, and sits at the front of the stage, and waits... and waits... and waits......... and waits... and then catches a fish and walks off.
Gilbert and Sullivan loved this trope. Every one of their patter songs, especially 'It really doesn't matter', which lampshades this trope: the lyrics continually state that the song isn't important and could really afford to end here... but it doesn't. The prize, however, goes to the TV performance of 'Never Mind the Why and Wherefore', in which several sections are encored, and the song continues for fifteen (or more (!)) minutes, even though the characters are clearly exhausted a and they actually exit several times... only to play it true to the theatrical tradition of returning to the stage for a reprise as long as the audience applauds and the music continues.
The Broadway adaptation of Peter and the Starcatchers uses this when one of the characters cuts his hand off by slamming a treasure chest on it. He then spends the next few minutes saying "Oh my God!" Funnier than it sounds.
In Urinetown, Officer Barrel tells Officer Lockstock, out of nowhere, that he is in love with him, in the middle of a song. The orchestra then vamps the same measure over and over again for anywhere from ten seconds to infinity depending on the production until Lockstock responds with a very awkward "I see." and running away. Barrel is then immediately murdered by the rebellion.
Theme Parks
The beginning of Universal's Horror Make-Up Show has one of the hosts coming on stage "dying" from being impaled in the heart. Their "death" goes on for a while, with them dying a slow death as they constantly scream to the point of sounding bored and spend a large portion of time specifically asking one person in the audience for help.
Video Games
Visual Novels
Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney: Damon Gant bursts out into manic laughter when you out him as trying to frame Ema Skye for murder. And prove he killed a prosecutor. And a detective. Even better is his stare, which he does quite often. It lasts for so long, one would think their game had frozen if it wasn't for his occasional blinking. Trials and Tribulations has Furio Tigre's scream of rage when you first meet him at the park: [GWAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA] [AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA] (for about seven boxes of text) [AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA] [AR!]
Web Animation
Web Comics
Web Original
Western Animation
Meta
Real LifeResponding to media outlets and critics eager to report that iPhone X's tentpole Face ID feature failed during Tuesday's keynote presentation, Apple on Wednesday issued a statement saying the handset, and more importantly the biometric feature, worked as intended.
During Apple's iPhone X unveiling on Tuesday, executive Craig Federighi at the start of a live demonstration was forced to move to a backup model after a first unit seemingly failed to unlock as planned. Media glommed onto the story, in some cases touting the mishap as proof of Face ID's first — spectacular — failure.Seen in the video below, Federighi picks up iPhone X and attempts to unlock it with Face ID, a process that requires the user to look at the TrueDepth camera and swipe up on the screen. When a first try fails, he puts the device to sleep and goes through the process again. That second attempt was also unsuccessful.On iPhone's display a prompt showed up, saying, "Your passcode is required to enable Face ID." The alert sparked speculation that Face ID had failed.
Tonight, I was able to contact Apple. After examining the logs of the demo iPhone X, they now know exactly what went down. Turns out my first theory in this story was wrong—but my first UPDATE theory above was correct: "People were handling the device for stage demo ahead of time," says a rep, "and didn't realize Face ID was trying to authenticate their face. After failing a number of times, because they weren't Craig, the iPhone did what it was designed to do, which was to require his passcode." In other words, "Face ID worked as it was designed to."
In a statement to Yahoo's David Pogue, Apple maintains the demo iPhone X was functional and Face ID did its job. It seems the iPhone in question attempted to authenticate one or more employees tasked to set up the demo area prior to the big reveal. When it failed to recognize their face or faces, it defaulted to passcode, as per Apple's security protocol.To protect against spoofing and hardware hacks, Apple's biometric systems are automatically disabled after a predetermined number of unsuccessful attempts. Touch ID, for example, gives users five attempts to authenticate with their finger before requiring a passcode. Apple documentation shows Face ID allows only two tries before being disabled.How the second device made it onstage without attempting to authenticate random Apple employees is unknown.Apple is known for its highly polished product demonstrations, having transformed the traditionally dry onstage presentations into a type of art form. Under late cofounder Steve Jobs, product unveilings evolved into hotly anticipated spectacle. Indeed, Jobs' own keynote presentations became known as "Jobsnotes."Apple keynote presenters rehearse each scripted segment, prepare minute details and, as seen in Federighi's demo, plan for potential hiccups.Protests have erupted in Paris ahead of presidential hopeful Marine Le Pen’s campaign rally in the city. Smoke grenades have been thrown at riot police, with tear gas being fired in return. An RT correspondent was caught in the middle of the scuffles while covering the standoff.
Dozens of anti-National Front protesters have gathered at the Zenith concert hall in north-east Paris on Monday.
Protesters were initially seen on a Ruptly video standing next to the concert hall and chanting slogans surrounded by police trying to keep the crowd back.
Police fired tear gas, while the crowd responded by throwing chunks of wood.
RT's correspondent at the scene, Charlotte Dubenskij, reports that the protest has turned violent with journalists being attacked with tears gas and bricks.
Police put water between them and #Antifa protestors outside #LePen rally pic.twitter.com/NSNxUBZT6i — Charlotte Dubenskij (@CDubenskij_RT) April 17, 2017
“We have been caught in tear gas, we have had bricks thrown in the direction of us, one member of the press had his camera taken off of him and thrown on the floor,” Dubenskij, adding that fires erupted as well.
There is a massive security presence at the site of Le Pen's rally, with officers trying to prevent scuffles.
Glasses and rocks have been thrown at the police as well, with protesters being seen gesticulating in their faces. However, the officers have been acting with some restraint so far, Dubenskij said.
Yet, police have been firing tear gas grenades at various points, she added.
The first round of presidential elections in France are scheduled for Sunday. Far-right candidate Marine Le Pen and and centrist Emmanuel Macron are expected to qualify for the May 7 run-off, according to the polls. However, conservative Francois Fillon and far-leftist Jean-Luc Melenchon have been narrowing the gap as well.FLOWERY BRANCH, Ga. -- Atlanta rookie receiver Julio Jones will miss the Falcons' game Sunday against Carolina because of a hamstring injury.
Jones pulled up in the fourth quarter of a 25-14 loss to Green Bay while running a deep route down the sideline. He's been able to do some light running with the training staff, but coach Mike Smith said Wednesday there's no chance of the first-round pick playing against the Panthers.
Harry Douglas will start in place of Jones, who has 25 catches for 358 yards. Kerry Meier and Eric Weems should get more playing time out of the three-receiver sets.
"One man's misfortune," Smith said, "is another guy's opportunity.
Six other players also missed practice Wednesday, including defensive end John Abraham (groin) and center Todd McClure (knee). Both continued to be hobbled by injuries that kept them out of the last game. Cornerback Christopher Owens (concussion), safety William Moore (shoulder), offensive guard Garrett Reynolds (ankle) and tight end Tony Gonzalez (elbow) sustained their injuries against the Packers.
Owens and Moore didn't return after leaving the game, and Reynolds was in and out of the lineup trying to deal with his injury.
"This time of the year, you come to expect that you're going to have guys that are not going to be 100 percent healthy," Smith said. "We have to prepare during the week and make sure we have the right workload. We've got to have contingency plans in terms of it this guy can play and how we are going to put our 46-man roster together."
Abraham was initially listed as having a hip injury, but Smith clarified that it's actually a groin problem. That's more problematic for the Falcons, since he's been bothered by similar injuries in the past.
Owens, who works out of the nickel back spot, is another concern. Smith said he's still in the first stage of recovery under the league's tougher rules governing head injuries.
"There's really a number of steps you have to go through... and it can't happen in the same day," the coach said. "It has got to happen on a different day, and it depends on when we get through that first step. Right now, he's in step one of the protocol."The lawyer for a California man sentenced to one year in jail for making threats towards the Council on American-Islamic Relations said Tuesday that his client was provoked by alcohol and a week of binge-watching Fox News, local TV station KFMB reported.
La Mesa resident John David Weissinger pled guilty last year to making email and telephone threats to CAIR’s San Diego and Washington, D.C. offices. His lawyer, Michael Malowney, attributed his behavior to alcohol abuse and to having spent a week watching Fox News coverage of the 2015 terrorist attacks at the Paris headquarters of satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, which left 11 dead.
“He barks when he’s drunk,” Malowney told a judge during the Tuesday sentencing hearing, as quoted by KFMB. “He was reeling from depression and anxiety.”
Weissinger had pled guilty to hate crime allegations, making a criminal threat, and possession of an illegal assault rifle. He wept while his sentence was read, in video taken by KFMB.
A female employee at CAIR’s Kearny Mesa office had testified during the trial that Weissinger left a voicemail in January 2015 threatening to shoot her and other employees, according to the report. She said that he she had seen him hanging around the office in the weeks before the voicemail was left, and gave police his name after seeing it on the caller ID.
KFMB reported that Weissinger also admitted to sending CAIR’s Washington, D.C. office an email saying that he was going to come there with enough firepower to “kill all of you.”
CAIR has faced a number of other threats in recent months, many of them in the immediate aftermath of terrorist attacks. In early December, a man left voicemails at the organization’s St. Louis, Missouri office threatening to cut off Muslims’ heads. Just a few days later, the group’s DC offices were evacuated after the group received a letter with a powdery substance that suggested its recipients would die a “painful death.”A recent Press Trust of India report on Shivraj Puri, the alleged mastermind of the ₹ 400 crore Citibank scam, makes an interesting point: in India fraudsters do not disappear; they only lie low for some time before resurfacing on a different turf with a different modus operandi.
An FIR has been registered against Puri and his parents for allegedly duping a Mumbai businessman and his wife of ₹ 13.15 crore while he was out on bail. He defrauded the couple on the pretext of saving them from being arrested in a court case that never was.
The FIR, filed with the economic offences wing of Delhi Police by Sunil Alagh of Mumbai on 26 August under various sections of Indian Penal Code, says that on 30 June Alagh got a call from Puri’s phone (the caller was his father Raghuraj). Alagh was told that the property dealer he had contacted for selling a residential plot at DLF, Gurgaon, had fraudulently sold the plot to five different people and had also manipulated the stamp duty. As a result, certain criminal cases had been registered against Alagh and his wife, joint owner of the property, at Gurgaon district court for cheating and fraud, and that they could be arrested. I have reviewed the FIR.
The Puri duo offered to get the Alagh couple out of the mess at a price, ₹ 8.5 crore, to be deposited at the Gurgaon court towards stamp duty, including penalty equivalent to five times being levied by the court, and ₹ 2 crore for anticipatory bail. Alagh transferred the money to Puri’s account at ING Vysya Bank Ltd at Karol Bagh, New Delhi. Then, the Puris informed the Alaghs that the criminal case has got transferred from Gurgaon court to Tis Hazari court in New Delhi, as the Enforcement Directorate (ED) has got involved, and demanded ₹ 2 crore each to arrange for the bail to avoid their impending arrests. Overall, the Alaghs could arrange ₹ 13.15 crore while the junior Puri volunteered to organise the rest. The Puris even introduced the Alaghs to an ED official and a police inspector at a hotel opposite the Gurgaon court. The ED official shook hands with Alagh and told him not to worry. Alagh also met the deputy director of ED who was “glad to see him".
By the time the Alaghs found out that there was no criminal case against them, it was too late. Without his knowledge, the Alaghs recorded Shivraj saying the entire money was paid in the court and he would get the money back shortly as the cases were closed. The father-son duo even issued several cheques to the Alaghs, but all of them bounced.
Puri, a former relationship manager at Citibank’s Gurgaon branch, had been involved in a ₹ 400 crore fraud case. He was suspended after the bank lodged a police complaint about suspicious transactions, forgery and criminal activities on 5 December 2010. Puri took about 30 investors for a ride and channelled the money to the stock market. Between 5 December, when the police complaint was filed, and 27 December, when Puri was arrested, the bank appointed one of the big four audit firms to conduct a forensic audit of all transactions related to wealth management, hired law firm Amarchand Mangaldas for legal counsel, and even made Puri sign agreements with some clients who had lost money, promising to return their wealth.
A seven-year veteran at the Gurgaon branch that was opened in 2002, Puri, in his early 30s then, started siphoning off money in the second half of 2009, but the flow became bigger from September 2010 when the stock market started rising. He channelled money into the market devising a couple of ways. First, he enticed customers with a fake circular purported to have been sent by the capital markets regulator, promising 2-3% returns per month.
The forged circular also mentioned a custodian account run by one Premnath (his grandfather) that was passed off as an approved channel to route investor funds. Once the money was deposited in Premnath’s account, it flowed immediately out of it into three other accounts kept with Citibank—in the names of Sheila Premnath, Deeksha Puri and Shivraj Puri himself. Deeksha is Shivraj’s mother and Sheila his grandmother. Deeksha and Shivraj’s father Raghuraj were involved this time, too.
Finally, the funds moved out of these accounts to accounts Puri kept with a few brokerages. Puri also made about half-a-dozen customers of Citibank sign blank cheques and drafts and other financial instruments, and used these to transfer money out of their accounts directly to the brokerages to be invested in the market.
On 27 December 2010, the police registered an FIR following a complaint filed by Citibank; Puri was arrested on 29 December and released on bail by the Punjab and Haryana high court on 28 May 2012.
On 9 November 2011, the trial court formally charged Puri and after the hearings were concluded on 10 February this year, on 25 February the court pronounced Puri guilty under various sections of the IPC and sentenced him to two years and six months in prison and a fine of ₹ 10,000. Yet, in another case, filed by a defrauded investor Sanjeev Aggarwal, Puri was convicted and sentenced to two years and six months in jail, taking the overall imprisonment to five years. It seems that he filed an appeal in a higher court and got back to his vocation of defrauding people.
Indeed, old habits die hard, but I wonder how could Shivraj have introduced the Alaghs to senior police and even ED officials to convince them about the genuineness of the case. Aren’t they also a party to the fraud? Unless we set up fast-track courts to deal with financial frauds, people of Puri’s ilk will continue to play havoc with the system.
Tamal Bandyopadhyay, consulting editor of Mint, is advisor to Bandhan Financial Services Pvt. Ltd, India’s newest bank in the making. He is also the author of Sahara: The Untold Story and A Bank for the Buck. Email your comments to
bankerstrust@livemint.comHoly Fire ceremony, Church of the Holy Sepulchre, Jerusalem
“[T]heir hatred of Christianity is the real thing, which sometimes bursts to surface.”
—–Yossi Gurvitz
When Benjamin Netanyahu condemned the graffiti sprayed on walls of The Church of the Dormition in Jerusalem over the weekend my ears pricked up, not for what he said, but for what he didn’t. The Israeli government has been curiously silent over a much more offensive action — the attack on Palestinian Christian worshipers trying to reach The Holy Fire ceremony at The Church of the Holy Sepulcher, Jesus’s Tomb, in the Old City of Jerusalem during one of the most sacred days on the Christian calendar.
This is not going away anytime soon.
The Reverend Gradye Parsons, the Stated Clerk of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) has sent a letter ”expressing concern over the recent violations of the rights and the physical abuse of Orthodox and other Christian worshippers in Jerusalem” to the United States Ambassador-at-Large for International Religious Freedom, the Reverend Dr. Suzan Johnson Cook:
“The Holy Fire ceremony is one of the most important religious occasions in the life of Orthodox Christians. The ceremony takes place on the eve of the Orthodox celebration of Easter when a lamp in the tomb of Jesus at the Church of the Holy Sepulcher is kindled. The flame is immediately passed by candles to thousands of worshippers. At this time an olive lamp is also lit and quickly transferred to the West Bank town of Bethlehem. The flame is then passed to other Orthodox Christian communities throughout the world. In recent years access to this ceremony and other religious events taking place in the Old City of Jerusalem has become increasingly difficult for Christians living in the area. West Bank and Gaza Palestinians have extremely limited access to these sites and Jerusalem Palestinians are finding it harder to gain entry to places of worship even on the holiest days in their calendar. Access is controlled by a permit system administered by the Israeli government, a system which has been described as arbitrary and unduly restrictive of freedom of worship. This year thousands of Israeli police officers were deployed on the eve of Orthodox Easter to provide security for the massive celebration. The security, however, became increasingly aggressive and a number of worshippers and clergy were beaten as they tried to make their way closer to the Church of the Holy Sepulcher. ………………… This year’s actions are part of a pattern of increasingly aggressive actions by Israeli security forces dating back a decade or more. The US State Department International Religious Freedom Report, found ‘[p]referential treatment [was given] to Jews celebrating Passover and to international visitors making pilgrimages when the authorities enacted restrictions that impeded the activities of local Christians celebrating Easter. Jerusalem Christians had to pass through four police checkpoints before reaching the Church of the Holy Sepulcher; according to Christian advocates, pepper spray was used indiscriminately at the various checkpoints.’ The Patriarchs and Heads of Churches in Jerusalem have called for an end to such restrictive practices, demanding full access to the Holy sites during the Holy Weeks in both Christian calendars. Members of the local Palestinian community were even more passionate in their demands, with a Facebook group identified as Palestinian Christians calling on church leaders to ‘[s]ay a word of truth to the Israeli authorities. Let Christians reach freely their Church on the day of their feast.’”
Videos surfaced of Christian worshipers being brutally beaten. My curiosity has not dissipated. What policy, what audacity prompted the brutal efforts to prevent Palestinians from reaching The Church of the Holy Sepulcher on Holy Saturday? And the press has been curiously silent about an investigation that is allegedly taking place as a result of the violence which prompted Israel to issue an apology to Egypt. Quite curiously the Jerusalem police feigned clueless. But can one simply disappear the presence of thousands of security officers manning barriers blocking all entrances to the Old City?
After several attempts to elicit on the record accounts from Palestinian Christians or be interviewed about what came down that day it became apparent a chill had set in, albeit off the record I have emails testifying worshipers were treated like “animals”.
Hence I wrote a followup email to Yusef Daher from the Jerusalem Inter-Church Centre, to find out if there had, thus far, been any explanation forthcoming from this investigation. No, there has not. Then I speculated perhaps there was a media blackout surrounding the violence of the day. He wrote me back, on the record:
You are absolutely right
Israel and Israeli media just blacked on this
Now they are giving Christians permits for 3 months to shut them up. Christians who never had permits are getting. Imagine Bethlehem Parish applied for 1700 permits..they received 2000!! and the story goes on
Wow, 2000 permits. Is somebody is trying to make this go away quietly?
Why did Netanyahu make a public apology about graffiti sprayed on The Church of the Dormition in Jerusalem and an apology to Egypt, while no apology for thousands of Palestinian Christian worshipers been forthcoming?
This is not over. I’m looking forward to a response from the United States Ambassador-at-Large for International Religious Freedom to the letter sent by the Stated Clerk of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.). Maybe we can finally start getting some answers.
More from the letter:Law enforcement officials across California will no longer be able to share in the proceeds of most cash and property seizures unless there is a criminal conviction resulting from the case, under a bill signed Thursday by Gov. Jerry Brown.
The legislation, authored by Sen. Holly Mitchell, D-Los Angeles, represents a significant win for civil-right advocates, who have complained for years that the law gives police and sheriff agencies a financial incentive to seize cash and other assets.
“Why should private property be forfeited to the police agency which confiscated it when no conviction has shown any connection to a crime?” Mitchell asked, when urging Brown to sign her bill. “Innocent until proven guilty is the law of the land.”
Brown, who is signing and rejecting hundreds of bills in the hours before the Friday deadline, did not issue a signing statement explaining his decision.
The American Civil Liberties Union, which has made the so-called asset forfeiture rules a top priority this year, applauded Brown’s decision Thursday.
“For years, asset forfeiture abuse has wreaked havoc on innocent people throughout the country, especially people of color, immigrants, and low-income people who cannot afford to fight the government in court,” said Mica Doctoroff of ACLU of California Center for Advocacy and Policy.
The ACLU issued a report earlier this year that found what it called widespread abuse of federal civil-asset forfeiture rules.
According to the study, 85 percent of the proceeds of federally seized assets in California went to agencies in jurisdictions where a majority of residents are people of color. It also said half of U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration seizures in California involved people with Latino surnames.
“SB 443 will not only rein in the abuse in California, but also offers a blueprint for workable solutions to other states seeking reform,” Doctoroff said.
San Diego County law enforcement agencies collect millions of dollars a year under the federal civil-asset forfeiture program, money they can spend in a variety of ways.
San Diego police used some of their funds to pay for helicopter insurance. The sheriff’s department spent part of its seized assets on overtime and new construction. The District Attorney’s Office spent some of its revenue on travel, training and a banquet honoring courageous citizens, The San Diego Union-Tribune reported earlier this year.
State law already required an underlying conviction for law enforcement to retain any seized assets.
But local police ad sheriff’s departments regularly partner with federal agencies like the DEA and take property from criminal suspects under U.S. law, which does not require the suspect to be criminally convicted.
Under the new law, state and local police agencies can only receive a portion of the seized cash or property in federal cases if there is an underlying conviction or if the forfeited property is $40,000 or more in cash.
In state cases, cash amounts of less than $40,000 can only be forfeited with an accompanying conviction. The $40,000 threshold was raised from $25,000.
The $40,000 threshold is important because numerous studies have shown police regularly used the forfeiture rules to seize relatively small amounts of cash from people on their way to rent an apartment or buy a used car.
Joseph Villela of the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles, said the new law will help ease tensions between law enforcement agencies and minority communities.
“In addition to providing due process to all Californians, the enactment of this bill would further restore trust between law enforcement and immigrant communities,” he said.
The legislation is scheduled to take effect Jan. 1, 2017.All of this means we really don’t know how far unemployment could fall without prompting inflation. Get ready for a debate premised on artificial precision about whether the economy can sustain unemployment of 5 or 5.5 percent. That’s the consensus range. But the best research on this question suggests that the lowest sustainable rate could easily differ from our best estimates by a full percentage point or more. Indeed, the Clinton-era boom pushed unemployment below 4 percent without setting off an inflationary surge.
■ Will the Federal Reserve treat its target for 2 percent inflation as a goal or a ceiling?
Officially, the Fed says it is as willing to tolerate the risk that inflation may rise above this level as it has been about inflation undershooting its goal over the last few years. Yet its actions suggest otherwise. Plans to normalize policy — a euphemism for raising interest rates — are already underway, even as the Fed’s own projections suggest that inflation will not breach 2 percent in the next few years.
Image Credit Minh Uong/The New York Times
Higher interest rates could slow the economy. That leads to my third question:
■ How fast does the economy need to grow to stay healthy?
Many commentators assume that a healthy economy grows at an annual rate of at least 3 percent. Yet economic growth in the United States has averaged only 1.9 percent since 2000, and average growth of 2.3 percent during the current expansion has been enough to yield large drops in unemployment. To an important extent, this lower rate has been caused by demographic factors: slower population growth, the end of the transition of women into the work force, and baby boomers retiring.
All told, the work force is growing nearly a full percentage point slower than it was in the 1990s, and this is why 2 percent growth is the new 3 percent. Likewise, much as the economy once needed to generate 150,000 jobs a month just to keep up with new entrants to the labor force, that “break-even” number may now be as low as 50,000.
■ Can the American economy keep motoring without help from the rest of the world?
Among the world’s major economies, the United States had the strongest economic growth in 2014. The picture elsewhere is grim. Japan has lurched from optimism about Abenomics — Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s program to kick-start the economy — to pessimism as the economy has shrunk over the last two quarters. And Europe hovers on the edge of a double- or triple-dip recession, depending on your definition. China has slowed, with economic growth moving below 8 percent a year from an extraordinary 10 percent. And the Russian economy is on the cusp of a full-fledged crisis. It’s not just that foreign buyers have less money to spend; their weakness has become the dollar’s strength, which also makes our exports more expensive. These global headwinds could easily knock a fragile recovery off course.Highlights of the Sky Bet Championship match between Reading and Aston Villa Highlights of the Sky Bet Championship match between Reading and Aston Villa
Aston Villa won for the first time under new manager Steve Bruce - and the first time since August - as a late penalty from Jordan Ayew gave them a 2-1 victory at Reading.
Villa took the lead towards the end of the first half through Jonathan Kodjia's deflected effort but Reading equalised early in the second half when Yann Kermorgant headed in the rebound after Danny Williams' penalty had been saved by Pierluigi Gollini.
But substitute Ayew was fouled by Liam Moore in the penalty area in the 90th minute and then slotted in the spot kick to end Villa's run of 10 Sky Bet Championship matches without a win.
Bruce's first game in charge, after he replaced the sacked Roberto Di Matteo, saw his side scrape a 1-1 home draw with Wolves on Saturday.
Jonathan Kodjia of Aston Villa is congratulated by team mate Gary Gardner after scoring against Reading
And the former Hull manager headed to Berkshire without injured defenders Micah Richards and Tommy Elphick while winger Jack Grealish started a three-match ban.
Villa gradually grew in confidence but failed to seriously test Ali Al-Habsi in the home goal. Kodjia saw an ambitious shot blocked and Al-Habsi saved comfortably from Gary Gardner's long-range effort.
Villa's travelling army of 4,000 fans tried to inspire their team with raucous vocal support and they were rewarded in the 38th minute. Albert Adomah crossed from the left and Kodjia's well-struck effort might have been saved by Al-Habsi had it not taken a deflection off Royals defender Tyler Blackett.
Villa pressed hard at the start of the second half, working tirelessly to deny Reading possession, and it worked for a while.
But the home side drew level in the 54th minute after Aly Cissokho had fouled McCleary in the Villa area.
Gollini made a fine save to keep out Williams' spot kick but Kermorgant was on hand to nod in the rebound.
Both sides had chances as the game opened up but Ayew's late intervention sealed a dramatic and much-needed win for Villa.
Gareth McCleary of Reading in action against Aston Villa
Reading manager Jaap Stam:
"Which team tried to play football?" Only one team was trying to play football and that was us. Villa were just sitting in front of their box and just waiting for the moment to get out. That can make it difficult for you.
"We didn't create many chances in the first half but that was because Villa were just sitting and waiting. They were just waiting for us to lose the ball and then counter-attack. You need to be patient in how you play."
Aston Villa manager Steve Bruce:
"You have to make a special mention of the supporters. They've travelled down here in their thousands, they've got behind their team in the last 10 minutes and breathed life into the lads.
"The players have had a tough time so you've just got to try to restore a little bit of belief. We haven't done a lot but we'll get stuck into them over the next few weeks and months.
"I've got to try to get a bit of belief back into the whole club. They've had it tough but it shows you the magnitude of the club when they bring 4,000 fans to Reading on a Tuesday night."
You can watch Premier League footballl, plus England's tour of Bangladesh and the US Grand Prix on Sky Sports. Upgrade now and enjoy six months at half price!On Thursday’s broadcast of the Fox News Channel’s “Special Report,” columnist Charles Krauthammer stated that there could end up being a crisis if the president, Congress, and the judiciary end up at an impasse over Special Counsel Robert Mueller.
Krauthammer stated that two Senate bills designed to protect Mueller are why “Tonight’s news is not just a threat to Trump and his entourage, but it is to, I think, constitutional stability. The president has said that he’s got a red line. If they want to go on a fishing expedition that is unrelated, essentially, to the Russia probe, that’s where he draws the line. Now, he didn’t say what he would do, but you know what he would have in mind. When you get members of his own party in the Senate trying to pass laws, probably unconstitutional, to restrict his ability to fire Mueller, you know that we are possibly headed to a cliff. ”
He added, “Look, the problem with special prosecutors is, you assemble of…the best of the best in search of a crime. Normally, you have a crime, and then the prosecutors go out and try to prove it. With a special prosecutor, you start with whitewater, you end up with a blue dress. That’s a long journey. Here, the Russia thing obviously is the pretext, and it’s going to be a subject of the investigation. But it appears to be going into the territory that Trump has wanted to protect, namely his business. And at some point, we could come to a crisis. And I worry for the country because this is not good that the presidency, the judiciary, and it would be the Congress would be at loggerheads, when you really don’t have anybody that ultimately would adjudicate. It would be the Supreme Court, but we know that can cause real reverberations for decades.”
Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett21 April 2016, 14:30
The bodies of three Armenian military men were found beheaded during the April combat actions in Nagorno-Karabakh, reports the Armenian Ministry of Defence (MoD). According to human rights defender Larisa Alaverdyan, those incidents contain signs of a war crime and genocide.
The "Caucasian Knot" has reported that on April 14, the Investigating Committee of Armenia reported on the institution of criminal proceedings on the fact of violation of international humanitarian law during the combat actions in Nagorno-Karabakh.
Three military men of the Nagorno-Karabakh Defence Army, including 31-year-old Major Hayk Toroyan, 69-year-old contract soldier Grant Garibyan, and 20-year-old regular soldier Karam Sloyan, were beheaded during the combat actions of April 2-5, reports the Armenian MoD.
As of April 21, Azerbaijan returned to the Armenian side the head of only one soldier Karam Sloyan. This was reported by Larisa Alaverdyan, the first Ombudsman of Armenia and the leader of the "Against Legal Arbitrariness" Foundation.
Larisa Alaverdyan has also added that Armenia is going to inform the international agencies on the facts of the beheading of Armenian soldiers and officer.
According to advocate Aram Orbelyan, who used to hold the post of the Armenian Deputy Minister of Justice, Azerbaijan must bring to justice the persons who have committed the crime.
On April 3, Baku officials accused their counterparts in Yerevan in spreading the provocative information about the abuse of the bodies.
Full text of the article is available on the Russian page of 24/7 Internet agency ‘Caucasian Knot’.New York City, New York – James Todd Smith a.k.a. LL Cool J has made a career of winning at being unpredictable.
In 1995, when he was enjoying one of his many career peaks, he successfully launched a career on television, which would go on to boost his status in Hollywood from cameo maker to leading star. And as of 2009, he has starred on CBS red-hot series NCIS: Los Angeles, which hasn’t exactly given him all the time in the world to continue to make music.
At the turn of last weekend however, that unpredictability reared its lovely head as the two-time Grammy winner and five-time Grammy host made a splash on Facebook when he stopped by Dr. Dre’s Beats 1 Pharmacy show and blessed the booth with his presence. Its 4.5 million views as of press time speak volumes for how much the people still love the man who ladies still love, especially when he’s delving into the aggressive compartment of his rapping repertoire.
HipHopDX caught up with LL as he was putting in work during yet another studio session to get the scoop on his recent Dr. Dre session, a reinvigorated verse he says only took fifteen minutes to write.
“Basically my man DJ Pooh had called me up and said Dre was trying to link, you know, just have me come by the [Beats 1] show and say what up, etcetera, etceter |
error-prone he used to be called “Mike Foul” by his coach, was over the board on his fourth. Lewis sat on the edge of the back of the runway to watch from behind.
“I saw [Lewis],” Powell said. “I looked at Carl like, I’m getting you today.”
Lewis then surpassed Beamon’s hallowed record by one centimeter on his fourth jump, but again with too much tailwind, 2.9 meters per second. Lewis’ eyes popped when the distance flashed on the scoreboard.
“If this man gets a legal wind, he might just break Beamon’s record,” Stones said in astonishment on the broadcast.
Lewis had just posted the greatest back-to-back long jumps in history. He put on his sweats and sat on the grass to watch Powell’s fifth.
Powell puffed his cheeks, waved his arms like a pro wrestler on a ring walk, attacked the runway and propelled off the board with room to spare. He panged as his body arched back in the air with Beamon-esque height. He gave in to gravity and dug into the dirt with a thud that caused screams from a crowd of some 60,000.
“That explosion,” Stones called it. “That bomb.”
Powell immediately rose from the pit, raising his arms, pointing his fingers and roaring with focused intensity. The wind reading flashed in yellow numbers. A legal 0.3 meters per second.
Powell clapped as he awaited the distance reading. Lewis, in the same sitting position as when Powell embarked on the runway not 30 seconds earlier, stood up.
Then Powell saw it — 8.95 — a new world record. Powell cleared Beamon by two inches with a 29-foot, 4 1/2-inch jump close to sea level, and with very little wind at his back.
“Everything I did during my whole life until that point was encapsulated in that jump,” Powell says now. “Everything in my life that I had not achieved. Every girl that turned me down for a date. Every time I didn’t learn something. That was my moment to show the world.”
Powell heard another sea of screams and jaunted on the track, past advertising boards for Coca-Cola, Philips and Fujifilm.
It didn’t take long to realize it wasn’t a victory lap, though. Lewis, who by then had disrobed his navy blue sweatshirt, had two jumps left.
“[Lewis] was the guy who could sink a full-court shot at a buzzer to win a game,” said longtime track and field writer Dick Patrick, who covered the Tokyo meet for USA Today. “He was like Michael Jordan. Carl was like Tiger Woods, even five shots behind in the last round of the U.S. Open, you still think he could have a chance to win.”
Lewis thought the same. He planned to leap farther than Powell, finally take the world record and retire from the long jump with that 10-year unbeaten streak.
“Zero doubt,” Lewis says now.
Powell agreed.
“I fully expected Carl to come back and jump 29-6, 29-7,” he said.
He almost did. Lewis’ fifth jump was the longest legal jump of his career — 29 feet, 1 1/4 inches — but still behind Powell and Beamon.
Powell — the stat geek and time freak — measured the wait for Lewis’ sixth and final jump on a watch (5 minutes, 31 seconds, reports said). “Please,” he pleaded before Lewis’ finale, bowing his head and folding his fingers in prayer.
Lewis’ last attempt fell short, 29 feet even. Second place for King Carl.
Powell vanquished Lewis, dethroned Beamon and celebrated like NC State coach Jim Valvano after the 1983 NCAA Championship Game.
Powell ran wildly and bear hugged the first stranger he came in contact with — the foul judge.
“You’re going to need a crowbar to get this smile off my face,” Powell said while on the infield.
***
Bob Beamon’s phone rang around 7 a.m. on Aug. 30, 1991, with the news he had feared for years. Ron Freeman, his 1968 Olympic teammate, delivered it.
“For a moment, I thought Ron had an apple in his throat,” Beamon said then. “Obviously, there was something he wanted to tell me, but he didn’t quite know how to begin.”
Beamon felt confused, not by the record falling, but by who broke it. He had always thought it would be Lewis. (Even though the story goes that Powell’s coach introduced himself to Beamon years earlier by saying, “I’m the guy who’s going to coach the guy who’s going to break your world record.”)
“They said my record would never be broken,” Beamon says now. “I’ve always looked at it as records will always be broken.”
Powell’s whirlwind of voicemails, media and insomnia lasted through that weekend. He broke the record on a Friday night. On Monday, he was back home in California and awake before dawn for a CBS morning show appearance with Beamon.
The pair shared meaningful conversation for the first time. Beamon says he has no recollection of it today, which is interesting, given Powell said at the time that Beamon broke into tears and told Powell that he loved him.
They barely talked about jumping or track and field. Rather, they shared passions for music and basketball.
“I think [Beamon] carried around a tremendous burden for 23 years, and that day was like having a weight lifted from his shoulders,” Powell told SI in 1991. “It felt like he was passing the torch on to me.”
***
Powell went into the 1992 Olympic year thinking a 30-foot jump might be possible, especially with Lewis there to push him. But neither Powell nor Lewis jumped farther than 28 feet, 7 inches, the rest of their careers.
Powell suffered a back injury in his first serious outdoor meet of 1992. Then it was a hamstring. Then a heel.
Lewis won the 1992 Olympic long jump on his first jump, 28 feet, 5 inches. Powell took silver, again, an inch behind.
Powell defended his World Championship in 1993, without Lewis in the competition.
Then came July 29, 1995. Powell woke to a phone call, not unlike the one Beamon received four years earlier.
Cuba’s Ivan Pedroso had jumped a new world record, he was told, 8.96 meters in the Italian Alpine village of Sestriere. Pedroso was a solid jumper, fourth as a 19-year-old at the 1992 Olympics, but that was nearly a foot past his previous best.
Powell said Sestriere is the best place to jump in the world. It’s in thin air nearly a mile high, with a fast runway and often heavy tailwinds. (Powell’s farthest ever jump was in Sestriere in 1992, 29 feet, 6 inches, with 4.4 meters per second of wind, more than twice the legal limit.)
Italian media quickly questioned Pedroso’s jump, reporting a man standing in front of the wind gauge on the Cuban’s attempts.
There were 60 long jumps and triple jumps at the meet, and 56 exceeded the maximum allowable wind for record purposes. Three of the four legal jumps were Pedroso’s, including the “record” jump at 1.2 meters per second, according to 1995 reports.
Italy’s track and field federation didn’t even bother submitting the jump to the sport’s international governing body for world record ratification, given the circumstances.
Powell kept the record despite that brief scare. His grip on it has only strengthened the last two decades. No man has jumped with seven inches of Powell in the last 23 years.
In 2012, Great Britain’s Greg Rutherford won the Olympic long jump with an 8.31-meter leap (27 feet, 3 inches), the shortest jump to win Olympic gold since 1972.
That regression is an anomaly in a sport where most standing world records don’t last more than a decade or were set by dubious Soviet, Chinese or East German athletes in the late 1980s and early 1990s.
“I have the oldest record in the books, as far as I’m concerned,” Powell said.
Jesse Owens’ career-best from 1935 would have won the 2012 Olympic bronze medal.
“We’re not progressing,” Lewis said. “In what other event could someone who competed 80 years ago still be competitive?”
Of the greatest all-time long jumpers, and analysts such as Stones, it’s Lewis who is most adamant about why the long jump is not what it used to be. He listed several reasons. The best young athletes are gravitating to sprints. There’s nobody in the event setting a standard for others to chase, like Lewis throughout the 1980s.
In the simplest terms, the long jump is hard and everyone has settled into a comfort zone.
“Think about running 25 miles per hour and taking your body in the air and then the ground,” Lewis said. “It is torture. A lot of people can’t take the physical demands, and they can’t take the technical part of it. If you can get through those two aspects, you get to the third stage — the fear factor. To jump far, you have to leave the board in a way that you feel like you could land on your face.”
Many wonder how Usain Bolt would perform with a decent amount of training in the long jump. For years, Powell has thought the Jamaican has all the tools to become the first man to jump nine meters — with the right coaching.
“He could easily do it in a year if I was working with him,” Powell said. “The main thing for him is just getting him to learn how to land. … The long jump is about turning speed into vertical lift — speed times height equals distance. He’s the tallest guy back there [6 feet, 5 inches], the fastest guy ever, and he can jump [search “Bolt dunking” on YouTube]. The only reason he shouldn’t do it is because he could get hurt.”
It is very doubtful Bolt would consider the long jump.
A more curious case is that of German Markus Rehm, who jumped a personal best 7.35m in 2012 and improved to 8.24m this year.
Rehm, 26, jumps off a prosthetic right leg. He won Paralympic gold in 2012 and the able-bodied German National Championships this year. But Germany’s track and field federation left him off its roster for the European Championships, citing a possible competitive advantage.
“It wouldn’t be fair,” if Rehm breaks the world record, Powell said. “But it would be sweet to see.”
***
Another matter up for debate is this question: Who is the greatest long jumper of all time?
Is it Powell, who had the single greatest jump in history?
Is it Lewis, who had the greatest series of jumps in history, and the longest stretch of dominance, with four Olympic gold medals?
Is it Beamon, the man who set the standard by taking the event into uncharted territory?
Is it Owens, who held the world record for 25 years?
“Who do I think is the greatest of all time? That’s for other people to say,” Lewis said, adding, “If I hadn’t come along, I don’t think the event would have changed.”
Powell said it’s Lewis.
“He was kicking everybody’s butt for almost 10, 12, 15 years,” Powell said. “Carl was the reason why the record got broken because he was the segue between Bob and me.
“But I’m second.”
Beamon said it’s Powell.
“What do you mean by the greatest? What are the ingredients that go into it?” Beamon said. “To me, it’s Mike.”
Lewis and Powell must both live with holes in their careers, thanks to each other.
Lewis is the second-most decorated Olympic track and field athlete ever with 10 medals, including nine golds and four in the long jump.
He doesn’t regret missing the long jump world record as much as he does being left off the U.S. Olympic 4x100m relay team at Atlanta 1996. Lewis hoped to shoot for a record-breaking 10th Olympic track and field gold medal, despite finishing eighth in the 100m at the Olympic Trials.
The U.S. won silver without him,.36 behind Canada, a margin so great that Lewis’ presence wouldn’t have made a difference.
Powell is one of the greatest track and field athletes never to win an Olympic gold medal. His silver medal-winning distance behind Lewis in 1992 would have won every subsequent Olympic long jump competition.
Powell said he wouldn’t trade his world record for three of Lewis’ gold medals. Four? Maybe.
“I’m always going to be upset because I didn’t win the gold medal, and that was my goal,” Powell said.
Lewis feels “horrible” for Powell. Beamon does too.
“When I see Mike, I say to myself, you know, as great as an athlete he was and having the greatest distance of all of us, including the great Carl Lewis, I was wishing that he would have had that opportunity to win a gold medal in the Olympic Games,” Beamon said. “That’s the ultimate. I’m wondering how Mike really feels about that, if he felt like that was the only thing missing from him being recognized as being the great one.”
***
In two years, Powell will likely pass Owens for owning the long jump world record for the longest stretch of time.
Also in two years, Beamon hopes a documentary in production about his life, “Behind the 8.9,” will come out. It would celebrate Beamon’s longest-standing Olympic track and field record in advance of the Rio 2016 Games. After his competitive career, he did some TV work and became a director of an Olympians museum in Florida.
“I guess I never really retired,” Beamon said. “I am an ambassador to adidas. I have a contract with the IOC. I stay busy.”
Lewis and Powell are still chasing the long jump record – as coaches.
Lewis is an assistant under Leroy Burrell at the University of Houston, his alma mater. Remember, Lewis beat Burrell in the 1991 World Championships 100m, taking back the 100m world record from Burrell.
“My legacy as a long jumper will not be how far I jumped,” Lewis said. “My legacy will be how far the people I coached jumped. I’m putting that pressure on myself.”
Powell teaches at the Academy of Speed in Rancho Cucamonga, Calif.
“I want to see the record broken because I’m a fan of the sport,” Powell said. “If I’m coaching him [the man to break the world record], I’m going to be really happy. My goal is to get somebody.”
***
Powell and Lewis returned to Japan for a sports summit in March 2013. There, a TV station asked Powell to long jump in an exhibition against “some in-shape, 37-year-old dude,” Powell said.
The request surprised Powell, but he took part anyway, jumped 18 feet and almost hurt himself. Powell was 247 pounds and motivated by the embarrassment.
He’s lost 55 pounds in the last 18 months and dunked off two feet on his 50th birthday last November.
Powell is feeling so fit that he’s training again with an eye on breaking the long jump world record — the Masters world record for age 50 and over. That’s 6.84 meters, or 22 feet, 5 1/4 inches. He’ll go after it in New Zealand early next year.
“I’m going to obliterate it,” Powell said.Law Enforcement Agencies Scramble For Pricey Cell Tower Spoofer Upgrades As Older Networks Are Shut Down
from the losing-the-tech-arms-race-to-slow-moving-service-providers dept
Documents released last week by the City of Oakland reveal that it is one of a handful of American jurisdictions attempting to upgrade an existing cellular surveillance system, commonly known as a stingray.
The Oakland Police Department, the nearby Fremont Police Department, and the Alameda County District Attorney jointly applied for a grant from the Department of Homeland Security to "obtain a state-of-the-art cell phone tracking system," the records show.
2G networks are notoriously insecure. Handsets operating on 2G will readily accept communication from another device purporting to be a valid cell tower, like a stingray. So the stingray takes advantage of this feature by jamming the 3G and 4G signals, forcing the phone to use a 2G signal.
"We do not comment on solutions we may or may not provide to classified Department of Defense or law enforcement agencies," Jim Burke, a spokesman for Harris, told Ars.
terrorists
"Once that's disclosed then the targets of the technology will know how to avoid it," [Alameda County Assistant DA Michael] O’Connor, the assistant district attorney, told Ars. "Once the bad guys understand how to beat it then they will."
"It can't easily be resolved—the public's right to know, the Fourth Amendment rights of people who might be subject to this kind of analysis and the needs of law enforcement to keep sources confidential especially in a day and age when the bad guys have acquired considerable technology that is turned against good guys."
The surveillance device that dare not speak its name ( thanks, FBI! ) is on its last legs… or at least one version is. Cyrus Farivar at Ars Technica reports that law enforcement agencies are moving quickly to avoid being locked out of the cell tower spoofing racket The Stingray is Harris Corporation's most infamous product. But the original version has its limitations. While the nation's cell phone carriers have largely moved on to 3G/4G networks, Stingray devices without optional upgrades haven't. All they can access is 2G, the default connection when nothing better is available. Those looking to capture cell activity on 3G and 4G networks will need to purchase Harris' "Hailstorm" upgrade… which also means they'll need to start generating paperwork and asking federal and local governments for funds. The problem with these actions is that they have the tendency to expose those in need of new capabilities.FOIA requests have turned up some information, but much of it is redacted and many more requests have been refused or ignored. With the federal government itself instructing local law enforcement to cover up its acquisition and use of tower spoofers, the FOIA process becomes even more of an uphill battle Law enforcement can't be happy to see 2G networks being switched off. When you're in the untargeted dragnet business, 2G is a willing supplier of "business records."What's considered a criminal act when performed by a civilian is just SOP for law enforcement. The same can be said for the fake sworn documents (warrant requests, subpoenas) obtained to cover the use of these devices. The manufacturer with the most devices in use is no better than the agencies it sells to. When approached about this scramble for upgrades, Harris Corporation borrowed the NSA's Glomar The timeline for 2G shutoff is still vague. Verizon says "by the end of the decade." AT&T says 2017. So there's still some time for law enforcement agencies to avoid being bypassed by the slow rollout of network upgrades. But between now and then, these agencies need to put together nearly $500,000 just to stay current. And as usual, as much as possible about the process will be obscured, because otherwise thecriminals win.It seems like all the bad guys would need to know is that the technology exists and is being used and just stay off their cell phones. But in this day and age, being completely unconnected while away from home is untenable, if not nearly impossible. Communication is key in criminal enterprises, and the steady disappearance of pay phones doesn't leave them with many options. O'Connor completely overstates the "exposure" danger and follows it up with this:One: if it can't "easily be resolved," why not err on the Fourth Amendment/public knowledge side, rather than on the cop side? Two: the bad guys' "considerable technology" isn't lapping law enforcement's. This ridiculous claim has been used as justification for warrantless cell phone searches, and it failed to move the Supreme Court justices. Pushing this narrative now just makes the pusher look like the sort of credulous rube who would put together a Powerpoint presentation on food-trucks-as-terrorist-vehicles.The bright side here is that more paperwork is being generated… which eventually means more of the public will know their local law enforcement is scooping up their location/connection info (most likely without a warrant) at any given time and is not above killing their network to do it.
Filed Under: 2g, 3g, hailstorm, law enforcement, non-disclosure agreements, police, privacy, spoofing, stingray, tower spoofing
Companies: harris corp.We’re working on getting everything operational and would like to thank everyone who’s reached out offering assistance.
If you haven’t heard back from us, you should in the next week or so.
Current needs:
Build Slaves Must be able to finish (and upload) make clean && make dist within an hour, and be capable of running docker.
Build Mirrors Minimum 1gbit network connectivity. Minimum 500GB storage space. As a note, we’d prefer non-capped connections with static IPs, and they must be in some sort of professional hosting company (ie, datacenter, colocation facility, ISP, university, etc). While we appreciate the offers from people with gigabit at home, it’s slightly too hard to manage.
Please contact infra@lineageos.org if you are willing to provide either build slaves or build mirrors.
As a reminder: we have not started doing official builds yet. One of the benefits of this being an open source project is that anyone can build it, but please be careful flashing builds you’ve downloaded from other sources. We will have some more information on when weeklies (or possibly nightlies) will be starting soon.
Thanks!
LineageOS TeamAntónio de Oliveira Salazar GCTE GCSE GColIH GCIC (; Portuguese: [ɐ̃ˈtɔniu dɨ oliˈvɐjɾɐ sɐlɐˈzaɾ]; 28 April 1889 – 27 July 1970) was a Portuguese statesman who served as Prime Minister of Portugal from 1932 to 1968. He was responsible for the Estado Novo ("New State"), the corporatist authoritarian government that ruled Portugal until 1974.
A trained economist, Salazar entered public life with the support of President Óscar Carmona after the Portuguese coup d'état of 28 May 1926, initially as finance minister and later as prime minister. Opposed to democracy, communism, socialism, anarchism and liberalism, Salazar's rule was conservative and nationalist in nature. Salazar distanced himself from fascist dictatorships, which he considered a pagan Caesarist political system that recognised neither legal nor moral limits. Salazar viewed German Nazism as espousing pagan elements that he considered repugnant. Salazar also promoted Catholicism, but argued that the role of the Church was social, not political, and negotiated the Concordat of 1940. One of the mottos of the Salazar regime was "Deus, Pátria e Familia" (meaning "God, Fatherland, and Family").
With the Estado Novo enabling him to exercise vast political powers, Salazar used censorship and a secret police to quell opposition, especially that related to the Communist movement. He supported Francisco Franco in the Spanish Civil War, and played a key role in keeping Portugal and Spain neutral during World War II. During his rule, despite the authoritarian regime, Portugal took part in the founding of important international organizations. Portugal was one of the 12 founding members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) in 1949, joined the European Payments Union in 1950, and was one of the founding members of the European Free Trade Association (EFTA) in 1960, and a founding member of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development in 1961. Under his rule Portugal also joined the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade in 1962, and began the Portuguese Colonial War. The doctrine of Pluricontinentalism was the basis of his territorial policy, a conception of the Portuguese Empire as a unified state that spanned multiple continents.
The Estado Novo collapsed during the Carnation Revolution of 1974, four years after Salazar's death. Evaluations of his regime have varied, with supporters praising its outcomes and critics denouncing its methods. However, there is a general consensus that Salazar was one of the most influential figures in Portuguese history. In recent decades, "new sources and methods are being employed by Portuguese historians in an attempt to come to grips with the dictatorship which lasted 48 years."[3]
Background [ edit ]
Family [ edit ]
Salazar was born in Vimieiro, near Santa Comba Dão (Viseu District), to a family of modest income on April 28, 1889. His father, a small landowner, had started as an agricultural labourer and became the manager for the Perestrelos, a family of rural landowners of the region of Santa Comba Dão who possessed lands and other assets scattered between Viseu and Coimbra. He was the only male child of two fifth cousins, António de Oliveira (1839–1932) and his wife Maria do Resgate Salazar (1845–1926). His four older sisters were Maria do Resgate Salazar de Oliveira, an elementary school teacher; Elisa Salazar de Oliveira; Maria Leopoldina Salazar de Oliveira; and Laura Salazar de Oliveira, who in 1887 married Abel Pais de Sousa, brother of Mário Pais de Sousa, who served as Salazar's Interior Minister.
Education [ edit ]
Salazar attended the primary school in his small village and later went to another primary school in Viseu. At age 11, he won a free place at Viseu's seminary, where he studied for eight years, from 1900 to 1908. Salazar considered becoming a priest, but like many who entered the seminary very young, he decided not to proceed to the priesthood after receiving holy orders. He went to Coimbra in 1910 during the first years of the Portuguese First Republic to study law at the University of Coimbra. During these student years in Coimbra, he developed a particular interest in finance and graduated in law with distinction, specialising in finance and economic policy. He graduated in 1914, with 19 points out of 20, a rare achievement which earned him instant fame, and in the meantime, became an assistant professor of economic policy at the Law School. In 1917, he became the regent of economic policy and finance by appointment of the professor José Alberto dos Reis. In the following year, Salazar was awarded his doctorate.
Politics and Estado Novo [ edit ]
Background [ edit ]
Salazar was twenty-one years old at the time of the revolution of 5 October 1910, which overthrew the Portuguese monarchy and instituted the First Portuguese Republic. The political institutions of the First Republic lasted until 1926, when it was replaced by a military dictatorship. This was first known as the "Ditadura Militar" (Military Dictatorship) and then, from 1928, as the "Ditadura Nacional" (National Dictatorship).
The era of the First Republic has been described as one of "continual anarchy, government corruption, rioting and pillage, assassinations, arbitrary imprisonment and religious persecution". It witnessed the inauguration of eight presidents, 44 cabinet re-organisations and 21 revolutions. The first government of the Republic lasted less than 10 weeks and the longest-ruling government lasted little over a year. Revolution in Portugal became a byword in Europe. The cost of living increased twenty-fivefold, while the currency fell to a 1⁄ 33 part of its gold value. Portugal's public finances and the economy in general entered a critical phase, having been under imminent threat of default since at least the 1890s.[12] The gaps between the rich and the poor continued to widen. The regime led Portugal to enter World War I in 1916, a move that only aggravated the perilous state of affairs in the country. Concurrently, the Catholic Church was hounded by the anti-clerical Freemasons of the Republic and political assassination and terrorism became commonplace. Between 1920 and 1925, according to official police figures, 325 bombs burst in the streets of Lisbon. The British diplomat Sir George Rendel said that he could not describe the "political background as anything but deplorable... very different from the orderly, prosperous and well-managed country that it later became under the government of Senhor Salazar". Salazar would keep in mind the political chaos of this time when he later ruled Portugal.
The public discontent led to the 28 May 1926 coup d'état, which was welcomed by most civilian classes. At the time, the prevailing view in Portugal was that political parties were elements of division and that parliamentarianism was in crisis. This led to general support, or at least tolerance, of an authoritarian regime. The new Portuguese anti-parliamentarism was a reaction to previous experience with the system. Liberalism and Parliamentarism may have worked in Great Britain and the United States, but the Portuguese argued that liberalism was inappropriate in their nation and culture.
Early path [ edit ]
As a young man, Salazar's involvement in politics stemmed from his Catholic views, which were aroused by the new anti-clerical stance of the First Republic. He became a member of the non-politically affiliated Catholic movement Centro Académico de Democracia Cristã (Academic Centre for Christian Democracy). Salazar rejected the monarchists because he felt that they were opposed to the social doctrines espoused by Pope Leo XIII to which he was very sympathetic. He was a frequent contributor to journals concerned with social studies, especially the weekly O Imparcial, which was directed by his friend (and later Cardinal Patriarch of Lisbon) Manuel Gonçalves Cerejeira. Local press described him as "one of the most powerful minds of the new generation."
In 1921, Salazar was persuaded to stand as a candidate for election to parliament, though he did so reluctantly. He appeared once in the chamber and never returned, struck by the disorder he witnessed and a feeling of futility. Salazar was convinced that liberal individualism had led to fragmentation of society and a perversion of the democratic process.
coup d'état. Military procession of General Gomes da Costa and his troops after the 28 May 1926
After the coup d'état of 28 May 1926, Salazar briefly joined the government of José Mendes Cabeçadas as Minister of Finance. On 11 June, a small group of officers drove from Lisbon to Santa Comba Dão to persuade him to be Minister of Finance. Salazar spent five days in Lisbon. The conditions he proposed to control spending were refused, he quickly resigned, and in two hours he was on a train back to Coimbra University, explaining that because of the frequent disputes and general disorder in the government, he could not do his work properly.
Portugal's overriding problem in 1926 was its enormous public debt. Several times between 1926 and 1928, Salazar turned down appointment to the finance ministry. He pleaded ill-health, devotion to his aged parents and a preference for the academic cloisters. In 1927, under the ministry of Sinel de Cordes, the public deficit kept on growing. The government tried to obtain loans from Baring Brothers under the auspices of the League of Nations, but the conditions were considered unacceptable. With Portugal under the threat of an imminent financial collapse, Salazar finally agreed to become its 81st Finance Minister on 26 April 1928 after the republican and Freemason Óscar Carmona was elected president. However, before accepting the position, he personally secured from Carmona a categorical assurance that as finance minister he would have a free hand to veto expenditure in all government departments, not just his own. Salazar was the financial czar virtually from the day he took office.
Within one year, armed with special powers, Salazar balanced the budget and stabilised Portugal's currency. Restoring order to the national accounts, enforcing austerity and red-penciling waste, Salazar produced the first of many budgetary surpluses, an unparalleled novelty in Portugal.
In July 1929, Salazar again presented his resignation. His friend Mário de Figueiredo, Minister of Justice, passed new legislation that facilitated the organisation of religious processions. The new law outraged the republicans, triggered a cabinet crisis, and Figueiredo threatened to resign. Salazar advised Figueiredo against resigning, but told his friend he would join him in his decision. Figueiredo did resign, and Salazar – at that time hospitalised due to a broken leg – followed suit on 3 July. Carmona went personally to the hospital on the 4th and asked Salazar to change his mind. Prime Minister José Vicente de Freitas, who took issue with Carmona's policies, left the cabinet. Salazar remained in the cabinet as Minister of Finance, but with additional powers.
Salazar stayed on as finance minister while military prime ministers came and went. From his first successful year in office, he gradually came to embody the financial and political solution to the turmoil of the military dictatorship, which had not produced a clear leader. Finally, on 5 July 1932, President Carmona appointed Salazar as the 100th prime minister of Portugal, after which he began to operate closer to the mainstream of political sentiment in his country. The authoritarian government consisted of a right-wing coalition, and he was able to co-opt the moderates of each political current with the aid of censorship and repression directed against those outside of it. Those perceived to be genuine fascists were jailed or exiled. Conservative Catholics were Salazar's earliest and most loyal supporters, whereas conservative republicans who could not be co-opted became his most dangerous opponents during the early period. They attempted several coups, but never presented a united front, consequently these attempts were easily repressed. Never a true monarchist, Salazar nevertheless gained most of the monarchists' support, as Manuel II of Portugal, the exiled and deposed last king of Portugal, always endorsed Salazar. Later, in 1932, it was due to Salazar's actions that the deposed king was given a state funeral. The National Syndicalists were torn between supporting the regime and denouncing it as bourgeois. They were granted enough symbolic concessions for Salazar to win over the moderates, but the rest were repressed by the political police. They were silenced shortly after 1933 as Salazar attempted to prevent the rise of National Socialism in Portugal.
Salazar's rise to power was facilitated by the public image he cultivated as an honest and effective finance minister, the strong support of President Carmona and shrewd political positioning. In July 1940, the American Life magazine featured an article on Portugal, and, referring to its recent chaotic history, asserted that "anyone who saw Portugal 15 years ago might well have said it deserved to die. It was atrociously governed, bankrupt, squalid, ridden with disease and poverty. It was such a mess that the League of Nations coined a word to describe the absolute low in national welfare: "Portuguesé". Then the Army overthrew the Republic which had brought the country to this sorry pass". Life added that ruling Portugal was difficult and explained how Salazar "found a country in chaos and poverty" and then reformed it.[12][a]
Formation of the Estado Novo [ edit ]
Salazar based his political philosophy around a close interpretation of the Catholic social doctrine, much like the contemporary regime of Engelbert Dollfuss in Austria. The economic system, known as corporatism, was based on similar interpretations of the papal encyclicals Rerum novarum (Leo XIII, 1891) and Quadragesimo anno (Pius XI, 1931), which were meant to prevent class struggle and transform economic concerns secondary to social values. Rerum novarum argued that labor associations were part of the natural order, like the family. The right of men to organise into trade unions and to engage in labor activities was thus inherent and could not be denied by employers or the state. Quadragesimo anno provided the blue print for the erection of the corporatist system.
A new constitution was drafted by a group of lawyers, businessmen, clerics and university professors, with Salazar the leading spirit and Marcelo Caetano also playing a major role. The constitution created the Estado Novo ("New State"), in theory a corporatist state representing interest groups rather than individuals. He wanted a system in which the people would be represented through corporations, rather than through divisive parties, and where national interest was given priority over sectional claims. Salazar thought that the party system had failed irrevocably in Portugal. The legislature, called the National Assembly, was restricted to members of the National Union, a single party. It could initiate legislation, but only concerning matters that did not require government expenditures. The parallel Corporative Chamber included representatives of municipalities, religious, cultural and professional groups and of the official workers' syndicates that replaced free trade unions.
According to Howard Wiarda, "the men who came to power in the Estado Novo were genuinely concerned with the poverty and backwardness of their nation, divorcing themselves from Anglo-American political influences while developing a new indigenous political model and alleviating the miserable living conditions of both rural and urban poor.
The new constitution introduced by Salazar established an anti-parliamentarian and authoritarian government that would last until 1974. The president was to be elected by popular vote for a period of seven years. On paper, the new document vested sweeping, almost dictatorial powers in the hands of the president, including the power to appoint and dismiss the prime minister. The president was elevated to a position of preeminence as the "balance wheel", the defender and ultimate arbiter of national politics. [b] President Carmona, however, had allowed Salazar more or less a free hand since appointing him prime minister and continued to do so; Carmona and his successors would largely be figureheads as he wielded the true power. Wiarda argues that Salazar achieved his position of power not just because of constitutional stipulations, but also because of his character: domineering, absolutist, ambitious, hardworking and intellectually brilliant.
The corporatist constitution was approved in the national Portuguese constitutional referendum of 19 March 1933. A draft had been published |
, but Hall came out of retirement to play 18 games in 1969–70 season. He was in goal when the Boston Bruins' Bobby Orr scored the Stanley Cup-clinching goal in game 4 of the 1970 Finals after only 40 seconds of overtime.
Hall's career ended after the 1970–71 season when he announced his retirement at the age of 40. In 1975 he was elected to the Hockey Hall of Fame. Hall won his third Stanley Cup as the goaltender coach with Calgary Flames in 1989.
Legacy [ edit ]
Hall ended his career with 407 wins, 84 shutouts, a career GAA of 2.49, and was voted to eleven All-Star Games. Hall is widely regarded as one of the first NHL goalies to master the butterfly style of goaltending. He is thought of by many as one of the best goalies to ever play the game. Hall still holds the record for the most First Team All-Star selections (7) which he achieved while playing the same era as other greats, Sawchuk and Plante—as well as other Hall of Famers, such as Johnny Bower and Gump Worsley.
In 1998, he was ranked number 16 on The Hockey News' list of the 100 Greatest Hockey Players, currently the highest rank for a living former goaltender (No. 13-ranked Jacques Plante died in 1986, and No. 9 Terry Sawchuk in 1970).
In 2005, the City of Humboldt, Saskatchewan erected a permanent monument to Hall's career in Glenn Hall Park on Highway #5 (Glenn Hall Drive). The tribute included highlights of his career from his junior days in Humboldt until his retirement from the NHL.
Awards and achievements [ edit ]
Career statistics [ edit ]
Regular season and playoffs [ edit ]
Regular season Playoffs Season Team League GP W L T MIN GA SO GAA SV% GP W L MIN GA SO GAA SV% 1947–48 Humboldt Indians N-SJHL 5 5 0 0 300 17 0 3.40 — 2 0 2 120 15 0 7.50 — 1948–49 Humboldt Indians N-SJHL 24 13 9 2 1420 86 1 3.63 — 7 3 4 420 36 0 5.14 — 1949–50 Windsor Spitfires OHA-Jr. 43 31 11 1 2580 152 0 3.53 — 11 6 5 660 37 0 3.36 — 1950–51 Windsor Spitfires OHA-Jr. 54 32 18 4 3240 167 6 3.09 — 8 — — 480 30 0 3.75 — 1951–52 Indianapolis Capitals AHL 68 22 40 6 4190 272 0 3.89 — — — — — — — — — 1952–53 Edmonton Flyers WHL 63 27 27 9 3780 207 2 3.29 — 15 10 5 905 53 0 3.51 — 1952–53 Detroit Red Wings NHL 6 4 1 1 360 10 1 1.67.931 — — — — — — — — 1953–54 Edmonton Flyers WHL 70 29 30 11 4200 259 0 3.70 — 13 7 6 783 44 2 3.37 — 1954–55 Edmonton Flyers WHL 66 38 18 10 3960 187 5 2.83 — 16 11 5 1000 43 1 2.58 — 1954–55 Detroit Red Wings NHL 2 2 0 0 120 2 0 1.00.967 — — — — — — — — 1955–56 Detroit Red Wings NHL 70 30 24 16 4200 147 12 2.10.921 10 5 5 604 28 0 2.78.908 1956–57 Detroit Red Wings NHL 70 38 20 12 4200 156 4 2.23.926 5 1 4 300 15 0 3.00.884 1957–58 Chicago Black Hawks NHL 70 24 39 7 4200 200 7 2.86.908 — — — — — — — — 1958–59 Chicago Black Hawks NHL 70 28 29 13 4200 208 1 2.97.897 6 2 4 360 21 0 3.50.909 1959–60 Chicago Black Hawks NHL 70 28 29 13 4200 180 6 2.57.917 4 0 4 249 14 0 3.37.892 1960–61 Chicago Black Hawks NHL 70 29 24 17 4200 176 6 2.51.920 12 8 4 772 26 2 2.02.936 1961–62 Chicago Black Hawks NHL 70 31 26 13 4200 185 9 2.64.913 12 6 6 720 31 2 2.58.924 1962–63 Chicago Black Hawks NHL 66 30 20 15 3910 166 5 2.55.916 6 2 4 360 25 0 4.17.896 1963–64 Chicago Black Hawks NHL 65 34 19 11 3860 148 7 2.30.930 7 3 4 408 22 0 3.24.889 1964–65 Chicago Black Hawks NHL 41 18 17 5 2440 99 4 2.43.920 13 7 6 760 28 1 2.21.925 1965–66 Chicago Black Hawks NHL 64 31 24 7 3747 164 4 2.63.914 6 2 4 347 22 0 3.80.874 1966–67 Chicago Black Hawks NHL 32 19 5 5 1664 66 2 2.38.920 3 1 2 176 8 0 2.73.923 1967–68 St. Louis Blues NHL 49 19 21 9 2858 118 5 2.48.912 18 8 10 1111 45 1 2.43.916 1968–69 St. Louis Blues NHL 41 19 12 8 2354 85 8 2.17.928 3 0 2 131 5 0 2.29.931 1969–70 St. Louis Blues NHL 18 7 8 3 1010 49 1 2.91.904 7 4 3 421 21 0 2.99.907 1970–71 St. Louis Blues NHL 31 13 11 8 1761 71 2 2.42.917 3 0 3 180 9 0 3.00.864 NHL totals 906 407 326 162 53,544 2230 84 2.49.917 115 49 65 6899 320 6 2.78.911
"Hall's stats". The Goaltender Home Page.
See also [ edit ]By Chet Kennedy
We’ve all had or heard the MVP debate. I personally have said horrific things to friends, family and loved ones defending our beloved Prairie King’s claim to the trophy. When you hear insane, ignorant things like “Harden should be MVP”, the anger is rightfully justified. As Mother Teresa probably once said, “Respect the Brodie, or I’ll cut you”. It’s easy to forgive the emotional rhetoric, this is a big deal after all, but as talks of Co-MVP’s are being thrown around more and more, it’s not just the player being disrespected but also the legacy, history, and magnitude of what’s being accomplished. Even the casual NBA fan understands the significance of a triple-double, much less averaging one for the season. Make no mistake, James Harden has had an MVP-worthy season, just not the most worthy. Even if hypothetically they were tied at this point, which they aren’t, all you need is a handful of statistics to break the tie. For some reason, no one mentions these ignored “clutch time” stats. What is a clutch time stat you ask? Simple, clutch time refers to gameplay during the 4th quarter or overtime, with less than 5 minutes to go, with neither team ahead by more than 5 points. Hmm, sounds like a pretty important stat, especially when talking about the Most Valuable Player. Not sure how or why analysts like Chris Webber miss that, even when he’s in between taking power dumps on OKC. So how do the numbers stack up?
Clutch Time Total Points Scored
Russ-211, Beard-132
Now the counter argument to this is “Russ gets more opportunities in clutch time”, but that’s exactly the point. It’s not so much Harden has way better players around him, it’s that the Rockets have had multiple seasons to build around Harden with players that suit his game. OKC has basically had to duct tape a complimentary roster on the fly after Front Runner left in the offseason. Harden carries a lesser team load than Russ because he has more players that can cover his weaknesses and highlight his strengths.
Clutch Time FG% and 3-pt %
Russ- 43% FG (28% 3-pt), Beard- 37% FG (27% 3-pt)
Getting even more interesting. Diving deeper into the FG % just solidifies the Westbrook case, the guy has taken more than twice the amount of clutch time FG’s as Harden (162 to 80) and still has a substantial lead in percentage. Harden can’t even catch a break with 3-point percentage, which is honestly kind of shocking. Shall we continue?
Clutch Time FT%
Russ-85%, Beard 77%
Russ is pretty much where he is normally during the season (84%), this stat is more about Harden or lack thereof. Harden, also sits at 84% on the year and dropping significantly when the game is on the line is not what you want from an MVP, especially when both candidates get to the line more than anyone else in the league.
Clutch Time (under 1 minute to play) FG %
Russ-34%, Beard-22%
In case you still don’t f****** get it, there it is. Forgetting what we know and have seen from Harden (cough 2012 Finals cough), there shouldn’t be any debate on who the better player is when it matters most. Besides, there’s nothing clutch about banging the ugly Kardashian.
So please, take a step back and examine, there’s only one choice and it isn’t close. Russ has better stats, is breaking legendary records, doing things only one other man in history has done, and also dominates in crunch time. Case closed. I can’t wait to hear the King’s speech.
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1. The fear #1
Oh, the fear. Vapers live with the constant, unwavering threat of some part of our apparatus letting us down.
It's not like if you smoke. Chances are somewhere nearby will always sell you some kind of cigs. Or you can just steal one off someone.
With vaping it's different. What if you run out of juice? What if the bit at the end burns out and nowhere sells them? What if you run out of battery?
The running-out-of-battery panic means many of us have an automatic rotation system: one is always there fuelling up in the corner, quietly easing your mind. Possibly a third in your bag. One friend keeps one behind each ear just to be on the safe side.
If you're like me, you have evolved an irrational fear of ever being too far from a USB socket. The best pub seat is the now one near the plug.
2. Stealth vaping
Again this is where vaping is a major departure from cigarettes.
Someone might just notice if you lit up in the cinema, for example.
Not so with e-cigs. I have craftily enjoyed a vape in any number of locations previously out of bounds: buses, coffee shops, public meetings.
Then there's planes. As a panicky flyer I always assumed they tell you not to because it makes the plane fall out of the sky, so I held off.
But I'll let you into a secret. It doesn't. Following some stealthy experimentation - by others, I stress - I can report vapes on a plane do not lead to air disasters.
(Caveat: if you get thrown off the plane for doing it anyway, I am not liable.)
3. Vaping in the car. In the warm.
This is obviously unique to those of us who drive, but it's another unexpected bonus of the e-cig revolution.
No longer do you have to wind the window down on a freezing cold morning to get your fix.
No longer do you have to turn up the radio when you get onto the motorway to drown the roaring of the wind, just so you can finish your disgusting habit.
It's a remarkably simple pleasure.
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4. The fear #2
When I first decided to write this I asked a friend, a veteran vaper, for her ideas.
Panic seems to run through all of her suggestions.
Here are some of them.
The blind panic of losing one. The blind panic of the battery flashing low unexpectedly. The blind panic of accidentally leaving it plugged in overnight and thinking it's going to blow up in your face. The blind panic of trying to find one abroad (see below).
Considering it's something people do to calm themselves down, vaping is surprisingly fraught with uncertainty and terror.
5. Ecigs and water: not friends
This is perhaps unsurprising, but the creepy thing that happens when the stick-type e-cigs (the ones that look like actual cigarettes) do come into contact with water is hard to describe.
They kind of start glowing repeatedly and slowly, a bit like watching an alien slowly die.
More than once I've dropped one in the sink, fished it out and thrown it in my bag on the off chance it might start working again.
Months later I've found it there in a side pocket, still very quietly glowing on and off like it's breathing, still silently dying.
6. The fear #3
Holiday vaping.
Ultimately what's behind e-cig related panic is the terror that after two years on the wagon you'll be in a scenario where you can't access e-cigs – and end off falling back into the all-too-welcoming arms of Malboro.
Never is this more the case than on holiday.
Last year I went on a long-haul break for the first time since I'd started vaping – and the time most people would have spent choosing a bikini was spent meticulously planning my requirements.
What if they don't do e-cigs there? (They didn't.) Exactly how many different chargers and bits and pieces am I going to need to pack? WILL I GET THEM THROUGH SECURITY WITHOUT BEING ARRESTED?
The friend above once took me on a particularly stressful trek across Majorca when she ran out of disposable ecigs, just to find a specific shop that sold them.
The ride there was pretty tense. The ride back, less so.
7. Weird flavours. I mean really weird
This one is a revelation.
Vapers are not tied to the choice between that disgusting tobacco taste or that disgusting tobacco taste with a bit of menthol added in.
Among the unlikely flavours genuinely available are Jaegerbomb ('a mistake', according to one colleague), donut, Fruit Salad (as in those chewy sweets from when you were a kid), Malibu and absinthe.
If that all sounds a bit sweet/alcoholic, then you could go with pizza, smoky bacon ('the worst thing ever', according to the internet), roast beef and chicken tikka massala.
The world's your oyster. I haven't found oyster flavour yet, admittedly, but it's probably in development.The Chicago Blackhawks came into the offseason faced with the likelihood that they would have to move proven performer Patrick Sharp, in order to get under the salary cap, and they finally made a move, sending Sharp to Dallas.
Numbers Game breaks down a deal that looks very favourable for a Stars team that is poised to be a contender next season.
2014-2015 PLAYER TEAM POS. GP G A PTS SAT% SAT%Rel SPSV% OZS% ATOI Patrick Sharp CHI LW 68 16 27 43 55.5 +2.5 98.0 65.9 16:49 Ryan Garbutt DAL LW 67 8 17 25 49.7 -2.4 97.1 41.0 13:34 Trevor Daley DAL D 68 16 22 38 45.9 -9.2 100.3 52.7 22:53
2014-2015 (AHL) PLAYER TEAM POS. GP G A PTS +/- Stephen Johns Rockford D 51 4 17 21 +30
The Stars Get: LW Patrick Sharp and D Stephen Johns
Sharp, 33, is coming off something of a down season, with 16 goals in 68 games, but he's a four-time 30-goal scorer who continues to excel when it comes to generating shots on goal. Sharp scored on just 7.0% of his shots last season, and that contributed to his relatively low goal total but, even at his age, that should make him a prime candidate for a bounceback scoring season.
There ought to be a good opportunity awaiting Sharp in Dallas too. Last season, his ice time was cut - 16:49 per game was his lowest since 2005-2006 - and he spent a fair amount of time on Chicago's third line (his second most-common linemates were Bryan Bickell and Andrew Shaw). In Dallas, Sharp is surely going to play on one of the top two lines, which means having either Tyler Seguin or Jason Spezza as his centre; all the more reason to suspect that Sharp should be productive in 2015-2016.
That Sharp has been a better-than-56% possession player over the past four seasons is in part a credit to the talent with which he played in Chicago, but also an indication that he should be a positive possession player with the Stars.
With two years left on his contract, and a $5.9-million annual cap hit, Sharp was widely assumed to be the prime candidate for the Blackhawks to move in order to get under the salary cap. Perhaps the bigger surprise is that Chicago hasn't been able to gain as much financial flexibility as they might have hoped.
Johns is an NHL-ready defence prospect. The 23-year-old was a second-round pick in 2010 and played four years at Notre Dame. The 6-foot-4, 233-pounder plays a physical game and has 33 points (8 G, 25 A) in 67 (regular season plus playoff) AHL games.
In Dallas, Johns will compete for playing time with the likes of Patrik Nemeth, Jyrki Jokipakka, Jamie Oleksiak and Jordie Benn. Given that there are so many relatively inexperienced defencemen contending for playing time in Dallas, it would come as no surprise if they managed to get involved in the free agent market to add a veteran like Cody Franson, Christian Ehrhoff, Jan Hejda or, to stick with the current Chicago theme, Johnny Oduya.
The Blackhawks Get: RW Ryan Garbutt and D Trevor Daley
29-year-old Garbutt is an agitating winger, who scored a career-high 17 goals and 32 points in 2013-2014 before falling off a bit last season. Garbutt is a tremendous shot generator. Over the past two seasons, his shot attempts per minute ranked just ahead of Jamie Benn, who obviously played a more prominent offensive role in Dallas.
Signed for two more seasons, Garbutt could squeeze into Chicago's top nine forwards. The Stars are retaining half of his salary, which means that he's a veritable bargain at a $900,000 cap hit for the next two seasons.
Daley, 31, was woefully overmatched in his role as a top pair defenceman for Dallas last season, posting the worst relative possession stats among 128 defencemen to play at least 1000 5-on-5 minutes.
He did score a career-high 16 goals and 38 points as well, with a shooting percentage (14.2%) that was miles above his previous best - to say nothing of unsustainable for a defenceman.
Signed for two more seasons, at a cap hit of $3.3-million, Daley figures to play a top-four role for Chicago. Can Daley get better results in Chicago, say filling the role that Oduya previously held, alongside Niklas Hjalmarsson? The Blackhawks had better hope so.
Verdict: This is a great haul for the Stars. It's not that the players they sent to Chicago aren't useful, because they are, but Sharp is the best player in the deal and Johns offers long-term potential. Dallas had the financial flexibility to make this deal work so, given the tight marketplace, it was relatively easy for them to secure good value.
The more puzzling part of this is how the Blackhawks have already traded away Sharp and Brandon Saad this offseason and are still bumping up against the salary cap. To really get clear, another deal will likely have to be made.
Enhanced stats via www.war-on-ice.com.
(SAT% - shot attempt percentage; SAT%Rel - shot attempt percentage, relative to team when off the ice; SPSV% - combined on-ice shooting and save percentage; OZS% - percentage of faceoffs to start shift in the offensive zone vs. defensive zone)
Scott Cullen can be reached at scott.cullen@bellmedia.caThe Witcher 3: Wild Hunt is nearly upon us and if you’ve been paying attention to Conan O’ Brien, the man himself had a chance to review the game. Interestingly, the Xbox One copy was showcased in the intro of the video, leading many to believe that the gameplay footage was from the X1 version.
Senior Games Designer at CD Projekt RED Damien Monnier clarified on Twitter that the footage was, “PC but an old build (this was recorded a while ago).” No, we don’t get it either but that’s what it was.
Some other details for The Witcher 3 have been revealed, including whether there would be a flying mount of some sort. Community and website coordinator Marcin Momot stated that, “No flying. Sorry.” Level designer Miles Tost also dispelled any notion as to the Xbox One version not looking as good as the other versions. “No, of course not. It looks and runs as great as the other platforms do.”
By the way, that ability that Ciri showcased in the Rage and Steel trailer? CD Projekt RED’s Michal Janczewski says on the forums that, “Yes, it’s one of her skills,” indicating that players will be able to use it.
Thoughts on all this? Let us know in the comments. The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt is out on May 19th for Xbox One, PS4 and PC.Image copyright AFP
Police departments in the United States are reported to have bought a foul-smelling liquid developed in Israel to repel protesters. What is "skunk" and how is it used, asks Yolande Knell.
It is a truly putrid stench. Palestinians who have been sprayed describe it as "worse than raw sewage" and "like a mixture of excrement, noxious gas and a decomposing donkey".
Invented by Israeli firm Odortec, skunk water was first used by the Israeli military against demonstrators in the occupied West Bank in 2008. Since then armoured vehicles equipped with water cannon spraying jets of the stinky liquid have become a regular sight.
Although it may induce a gagging reflex, the company says skunk is made from "100% food-grade ingredients" and is "100% eco-friendly - harmless to both nature and people".
The secret recipe includes yeast, baking powder and water, which sounds innocent enough. But the scent can linger on skin and in the environment for days, sometimes longer.
Image copyright ALAMY
"Once I was trapped against a wall and covered head to toe in skunk," a Palestinian photographer says.
"Afterwards my car stank and my wife made me undress outside the house. One of my cameras was destroyed and the rest of my kit still smells."
A spokesman for the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) told the BBC that skunk is "an effective, non-lethal, riot dispersal means" that can reduce the risk of casualties. The police, too, describe it as a "humane" option.
Tear gas and rubber bullets are regularly used against angry crowds, and sometimes even live ammunition.
Image copyright AFP Image caption Tear gas canisters in use near Ramallah in 2008, during a protest against Israel's security barrier
"The police deal with an important ethical question: is there a need to hurt a fiery crowd in order to disperse it?" says spokeswoman, Luba Samri.
The problem is the way skunk is used - very often it is a form of collective punishment for a whole area Sarit Michaeli, B'Tselem
"By choosing to use this tool, the answer is clear and the ethical problem is solved as there's no need to hurt the protesters even if they act violently."
Israeli security forces have been accused of misusing the stinking liquid.
Last year police sprayed large quantities of it in East Jerusalem neighbourhoods, at a time of widespread unrest.
The Association for Civil Rights in Israel complained that this was "disproportionate", affecting the lives of tens of thousands of Palestinians.
It documented cases where homes, shops and schools were hit with the foul liquid long after rioters had left the area.
In the West Bank village of Kafr Qaddum, skunk has been used to break up weekly rallies against Israel's closure of a nearby road. The protest organiser claims his home has also been singled out.
Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Skunk is sprayed on a house in Nabi Saleh in this 2012 video from human rights group B'Tselem
"Several times they purposefully targeted my house," says Murad Ishtewe. "Once the high pressure of the jet broke the window so the water came inside. All my furniture was ruined."
The IDF said it was not aware of such an incident.
"For us it's a complex picture," says Sarit Michaeli of the Israeli human rights group, B'Tselem.
"The authorities ought to find non-lethal ways of maintaining law and order. The problem is the way skunk is used. Very often it is a form of collective punishment for a whole area."
Many Palestinians view the offensive smell as a humiliation, as skunk is used almost exclusively against them. Exceptions are rare. One came in April this year, when it was sprayed (possibly diluted) at Ethiopian-Israelis protesting against what they saw as racially motivated police violence.
The American firm, Mistral Security, which supplies skunk in the US, recommends it for use at "border crossings, correctional facilities, demonstrations and sit-ins".
It offers canister rounds and grenades as well as a special soap to counter the effects.
Several US police departments, including the St Louis Metropolitan Police, are reported to have bought it.
But some American commentators have warned that the use of a faecal-smelling substance in recent US riots would only have intensified anger against the police, and deepened racial and social divisions.
If officers are accidentally sprayed with their own skunk, they can neutralise the smell with the special soap.
Members of the public do not have this option. However, one photographer says tomato ketchup serves as an antidote. If you rub a surface that has been exposed to skunk with ketchup, and then wash it off, the smell will apparently become fainter.
Subscribe to the BBC News Magazine's email newsletter to get articles sent to your inbox.If only those First Amendment people could do something about Donald Trump. His latest attack on their sacred cow is the assertion that "It is not 'freedom of the press' when newspapers and others are allowed to say and write whatever they want even if it is completely false!"
That's wrong as a matter of constitutional law. But it's not crazy. In fact, the U.S. Supreme Court has recently accorded a high degree of protection to falsehoods. And the kinds of justices that the Republican presidential nominee might appoint could well reverse it.
The landmark case for the constitutional protection of lies and the lying liars who tell them was decided in 2012. It involved a prosecution under the Stolen Valor Act, a federal statute that made it a crime to say you have military medals you never earned — and bigger crime to claim falsely to have received the Medal of Honor.
The protagonist of the colorful case was Xavier Alvarez, who among other things falsely claimed to have played hockey for the Detroit Red Wings and to have married a Mexican starlet. Alvarez got in trouble after being elected to the Three Valleys Water District Board in Claremont, Calif. At his first meeting, Alvarez introduced himself by saying, "I'm a retired Marine of 25 years. I retired in the year 2001. Back in 1987, I was awarded the congressional Medal of Honor. I got wounded many times by the same guy."
Alvarez hadn't received the medal. He hadn't even been a Marine. The federal government prosecuted him under the Stolen Valor Act, seeking the enhanced penalty of one year in prison that the law provides for his Medal of Honor claim.
In a 6-3 decision, the Supreme Court reversed Alvarez's conviction and struck down the Stolen Valor Act as unconstitutional.
The plurality opinion was written by Justice Anthony Kennedy, who was joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and liberal justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor.
In it, Kennedy asserted straightforwardly that the First Amendment requires the highest degree of scrutiny for laws that punish speech based on its content — no matter whether that content is true or false. That means such laws can only be upheld if the government has a compelling interest in them and they are narrowly tailored to achieving that interest — a standard that almost no law can meet.
The only exceptions to this general ban on content-based regulation, Kennedy said, were the traditional areas of obscenity, fighting words, true threats and defamation. And even in those areas, falsehood can sometimes be constitutionally protected. The most famous example is defamation of a public figure: false, defamatory statements are protected unless they're made maliciously, with knowledge of their falsity or reckless disregard of it. This is why the National Enquirer can say what it will about Trump's personal life.
Kennedy went on to explain that if the government could punish lies, it could extend its reach to "whispered conversations within a home."
And he recited the mantra of the free-speech diehards: "The remedy for speech that is false is speech that is true."
In a separate concurrence, Justice Stephen Breyer, joined by Justice Elena Kagan, took a more moderate position. He said that prohibitions of factually false speech deserved only intermediate scrutiny, meaning that such laws need only serve an important government interest and be proportionate to the purpose in question. But Breyer agreed with the plurality that the Stolen Valor Act was unconstitutional. He also gave a long list of situations where he considered lies to be useful, ranging from privacy to preserving a child's innocence to Socratic examination.
That left it to Justice Samuel Alito, joined by Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas, to voice the Trump position. Alito stated, with more or less accuracy, that according to traditional Supreme Court doctrine, "false factual statements possess no intrinsic First Amendment value." It's a crime to lie to government officials and a crime to pretend to speak on behalf of the government, he noted. The Stolen Valor Act was necessary, he said — and the court's holding was "radical."
Alito was right — there's something radical about protecting falsehood as closely as truth. But that radicalism lies at the heart of the First Amendment: enabling truth to emerge through the free exchange of ideas. Falsehoods are part of the process whereby the truth comes to be defined and understood.
Free speech has been very good to Donald Trump, enabling him to appeal to Russian hackers and "Second Amendment people" and generally to say whatever is on his mind. It would be nice if he reciprocated the favors the First Amendment has done for him.
Bloomberg View
Columnist Noah Feldman is a professor of constitutional and international law at Harvard University.With the approval of Britain's Supreme Court you can now be married in England by the Church of Scientology, the cult founded by the science-fiction writer L. Ron Hubbard. What next, Jedi or Doctor Who-themed marriages? Well, actually, you can already have a Jedi-themed marriage, so long as you don't claim it is religious. That's because of a rather bizarre divide in British law that says you can have a secular marriage (themed however you like) so long as there is no religious content; or you can have a religious marriage, for which you need to go to a place of religious worship on the approved list.
Prior to 1837 there was only the religious option, with a choice of Church of England, Quaker or Jewish (Catholics and the non-religious had to pick one). When the rules were extended to allow a secular alternative the churches flexed their muscles and insisted on the "no religious content" rule in order to preserve their monopoly over religious matters. Thus, when the new-fangled cult of Scientology came along, the High Court judges turned up their noses and said, no, it couldn't get its churches onto the approved list because there was insufficient "reverence for God or a deity" going on in them.
That was 1970. The difference between a "cult" and a "religion" is that the latter have been around longer, and we're now in 2014. Thus the Court has ruled (after some rather tortured theological analysis) that Scientology is now a religion and can indeed perform marriages.
Should secularists welcome this? Yes indeed. It is no part of a state's business to get involved in theology or to pronounce on what is or is not a religion. Nor should the state say that you can't have religious content in your wedding unless you go to one of the approved religions. It should set some minimum standards for wedding locations and celebrants and leave it at that. We've accepted that the Established Church no longer has a veto on gay marriage, so why should it have a veto on your wish to include a hymn in your otherwise-secular wedding?
"As to religion, I hold it to be the indispensable duty of every government, to protect all conscientious professors thereof, and I know of no other business which government hath to do therewith", wrote Thomas Paine back in 1776. One business that the state should certainly stay out of is certifying approved religions and declaiming on religious doctrine. The only reasons for it doing either are to penalise someone for being religious, or to grant them extra rights and privileges. No-one today would argue for the former, but too many think that the latter is a right, and that being religious entitles you to extra freedoms. That blatantly contradicts the fundamental secular principle of equality under the law. "Religious freedom" doesn't grant you extra rights, it just means you can't lose freedoms owing to someone else's dislike of your religious views.
Thus the Scientology ruling is in essence a victory for religious freedom, the principle that your religion cannot be judged as inferior by the High Court judges of an Established Church who complain that you don't venerate the deity sufficiently. Of course Scientology is still a nasty and dangerous cult, nothing in this ruling changes that, but being benign and peaceful has never been a qualification for being a religion.
Government minister Brandon Lewis was not impressed, saying that he was "very concerned about this ruling, and its implications for business rates", and that "hard-pressed taxpayers will wonder why Scientology premises should now be given tax cuts when local firms have to pay their fair share".
Some of us, Mr Lewis, feel the same way about the other religions. The answer is obvious, isn't it? Being religious should not get you tax breaks! A church can fairly ask for tax exemption on any actual charitable activity that helps those outside the church, but otherwise it should be treated as any other life-style choice. Haven't we got beyond the presumption that religions are an automatic public good? Scientology most certainly is not. If we're all in society together as equals, shouldn't the same taxes apply to all?
If there were no tax implications and no automatic privileges for the religious then there would be no reason for the state to opine on religious matters. Let's hope that the labelling of Scientology as a religion helps to discredit the idea of religious privilege, but attitudes across the world are currently inconsistent. Scientology gets tax breaks in Australia, New Zealand, Spain, Sweden and the United States, but not in Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France or Germany. The way forward is not to aim for better consistency about which religions qualify, but to realise that religious status should be irrelevant and make no difference.
In another recent High Court case the judges corrected an earlier ruling, which had held that resting on the Sabbath was not a requirement for a Christian — sorry, that is for the individual Christian to decide — but then rightly concluded that it didn't matter, and that the religious preferences of the plaintiff were secondary to the need of the employer to have work done on a Sunday. A desire to take Sunday off for religious reasons should count for no more — and no less — than a desire to take Sunday off to watch your kids play football. Once the principle of religious freedom and equality is both accepted and properly understood there will be no more need for courts to make rulings on religious matters. They should leave that to the priests and theologians.
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chain of command from Guantánamo to Washington is illustrated by a request sent by Miller's predecessor Dunlavey in 2002 which, according to a Senate investigation, asked for authorisation to use harsher interrogation techniques.
It went first to General James Hill, the commander of US Southern Command, the recipient of the detainee reports. Hill forwarded it to General Richard Myers, who was chairman of the joint chiefs of staff. The chairman of the joint chiefs is the highest-ranking military officer in the US and advises both the president and defence secretary.
There was some resistance to such requests in Washington, from figures such as Powell and, to a lesser extent, Rice. But the dominant mood was in favour of harsh methods. Cheney is unrepentant: in a rare public foray he made a speech in 2008 in Washington denying that waterboarding constituted torture and insisting that the information obtained from interrogations saved lives. That line is repeated by Rumsfeld in his autobiography published this year, and Bush in his in November.
"No doubt the procedure was tough but medical experts assured the CIA that it did no lasting harm," Bush wrote.Republican Ted Cruz is back in New Hampshire for a two-day campaign visit. It’s the first time in months the Texas Senator has brought his presidential campaign back to the state. But Cruz is confident voters here will like what they see.
NHPR's Brady Carlson reports on Sen. Ted Cruz's campaign visit to New Hampshire.
At a town hall meeting Sunday afternoon Cruz told a crowd at New Boston Central School he’d be a different kind of Republican president if elected. By way of example, here’s how he described the to-do list for his first day in office, vowing to “rescind every single illegal and unconstitutional executive action," "open an investigation into Planned Parenthood and these horrible videos" and "rip to shreds this catastrophic Iranian nuclear deal." He added he would tell federal agencies “the persecution of religious liberty ends today!”
And, Cruz says, that would be just day one of an administration that would stand for conservative principles without compromise, and one that wouldn’t shy away from controversy.
It was perhaps telling that the man who introduced Cruz at the town hall meeting was himself no stranger to this approach: former New Hampshire House Speaker Bill O’Brien, who pushed hard for fiscally and socially conservative measures while Speaker, and earned a reputation for using tough tactics to move that agenda forward. O’Brien noted with a laugh a recent report about Cruz’s somewhat contentious relationship with the Speaker of the US House. “You know," O'Brien said, "we have a man here today that John Boehner called a jackass."
O’Brien went on to describe Cruz as a truth-teller who wouldn’t be cowed even by the leaders of his own party. “Nearly alone," he said, "he stood in a Senate debate for almost a day, 21 hours, on our behalf, so that the nation would know about and have an opportunity to avoid the failure of Obamacare. In Congress, he has led or been among the conservatives who have led on the great issues of our day.”
Cruz returned to this point himself when an audience member asked he would distinguish himself from the rest of GOP field. Cruz said if voters looked back at the big debates of the last few years, they’d find only he had been involved in every single one - and that, in each, he'd invariably aligned himself with what he considered the true conservative position. He asked voters to consider these questions in relation to the candidates: “Where have you been in the fight to stop Common Core, and did you used to support Common Core and only discovered you opposed it the day you announced for president? If you say you support marriage, what did you do when the Supreme Court issued a fundamentally illegitimate, unconstitutional and lawless decision? If you say you support life, what are you doing right now to urge Congressional leadership – no showboats, no empty votes – [to] actually defund Planned Parenthood now?”
Responses like these repeatedly brought the crowd of roughly 200 people to its feet. But there were a number of empty seats in the school gym as well. Cruz has campaigned more heavily in more socially conservative states such as Iowa and South Carolina; this was his first New Hampshire visit since late May.
Cruz says going forward his campaign will be “all in” when it comes to New Hampshire. On Monday he’ll open a field office in Manchester. A bigger presence in the state might help win over voters like Kevin Gagnon of Salem. The electrician and father of two said he’s not ready to choose a candidate yet, but liked what he heard from Cruz. “He seems like he could be the real deal," Gagnon said, "like a genuine person that’s willing to go to bat for the American people, not just the Republican establishment but for all people.”
People looking to see Cruz for themselves in New Hampshire will have several more opportunities today, as the Texas Senator holds a town hall meeting in Milford and takes part in a business roundtable in Concord.On Monday, Minnesota state Rep. Mary Franson (R) told the local Fox affiliate in Alexandria that she had refused to meet with a local high school group, the Alexandria Area High School (AAHS) Democrats, because she doesn't "meet with partisan organizations," adding, "this has absolutely nothing to do with me not wanting to meet with Democrats — it has everything to do with the fact that we all have to be careful in today's world." Franson elaborated on a private Facebook post, ThinkProgress reports, suggesting the high schoolers might accuse her of sexual misconduct.
"A man's life was destroyed in AL," Franson wrote, pointing to failed Alabama Senate candidate Roy Moore. "40 years ago he met with minors alone and they recently accused him of horrendous actions. In the world of we must believe every sexual harassment claim, I would think my approach is beyond reasonable. All it takes is one perceived action and my life is destroyed. The life of my family is destroyed. That is a risk I will not take."
AAHS Democrats founder Jack Ballou, 17, found her reply perplexing when ThinkProgress read it to him (Franson has apparently blocked him on Facebook). "If any of what she said was true, she could have just told us initially that she doesn't meet with minors," he said. "I'm also so confused how she started defending Roy Moore... last year I met with Mary through the student page program, one on one at her office. She had no issue then."
Ballou's group said it had requested to meet with its local representative to discuss issues of concern to high schoolers, like climate change and college affordability. He told Fox 9 that regarding Franson's refusal to meet, "I think it's really a microcosm of what's happening at our national stage — people just aren't talking to each other." Peter Weber© Dominic Lipinski / PA Wire / Press Association WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange
WASHINGTON — For an online dating site, toddandclare.com seems really good at cloak-and-dagger stuff. Disconnected phones. Mystery websites. Actions that ricochet around the globe.
But the attention grabber is the Houston-based company’s target: Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, whose steady dumps of leaked emails from Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign have given supporters of Donald Trump the only cheering news of the last few weeks.
In some ways, toddandclare.com’s campaign against Assange is as revelatory as the leaked emails themselves, illustrating the powerful, sometimes unseen, forces that oppose WikiLeaks.
Whoever is behind the dating site has marshaled significant resources to target Assange, enough to gain entry into a United Nations body, operate in countries in Europe, North America and the Caribbean, conduct surveillance on Assange’s lawyer in London, obtain the fax number of Canada’s prime minister and seek to prod a police inquiry in the Bahamas.
And they’ve done it at a time when WikiLeaks has become a routine target of Democratic politicians who portray Assange as a stooge of Russian President Vladimir Putin and his reported efforts to disrupt the U.S. election.
One part of toddandclare’s two-pronged campaign put a megaphone to unproven allegations that Assange made contact with a young Canadian girl in the Bahamas through the internet with the intention of molesting her. The second part sought to entangle him in a plan to receive $1 million from the Russian government.
WikiLeaks claims the dating site is “a highly suspicious and likely fabricated” company. In turn, the company lashed out at Assange on Thursday and “his despicable activities against American national security,” and warned journalists to “check with your libel lawyers first before printing anything that could impact or endanger innocent people’s lives.”
So why are the parties to the melee coming out with both barrels blazing? That remains a mystery of the kind that might take a WikiLeaks-style document dump to suss out.
What is beyond dispute, though, is that the attacks on WikiLeaks rose as the group released a first batch of leaked Democratic National Committee emails in July, days before the party’s national convention, and again this month, as WikiLeaks began releasing thousands of emails from the account of John Podesta, Clinton’s campaign chairman.
The online company paints itself as all-American. Online material says its founders, Todd and Clare Hammond, “are an average American couple from Michigan, who met in the eighth grade.” In 2011, the company says, the Christian couple started an email dating service, and “have married 3,000 couples to date.” Their online network began in 2015, and a statement it filed to a U.N. body says it has “100,000+ female singles” in six countries.
The company’s operating address is a warehouse loading dock in Houston. Its mail goes to a Houston drop box. Its phone numbers no longer work. WikiLeaks says Texas officials tell it the entity is not registered there either under toddandclare.com or a parent company, T&C Network Solutions.
The person who responds to email sent to the company declined to identify himself or herself or answer further questions.
“We are not required to confirm the information you are requesting to anyone other than our government and tax authorities. So many people (and companies) have now been unfairly libeled by the wikileaks troll machine, we are being advised not to comment,” an unsigned email from the company to a McClatchy reporter said Thursday morning.
The people behind toddandclare.com persuaded a U.N. body known as the Global Compact to give it status as a participant in May, and it submitted an eight-page report to the U.N. group Oct. 4 carefully laying out its allegations against Assange. The firm was delisted by the U.N. body eight days later amid controversy over its claims.
An Australian lawyer, Melinda Taylor, said the report’s precise language raised additional suspicions at WikiLeaks, where she assists Assange in human rights litigation.
“This is not a report that’s been drafted by a dating agency. It’s highly legalistic and very structured. It’s the language of someone who has drafted complex legal submissions,” she said.
Under Todd Hammond’s name, the report alleged that Assange’s Swedish lawyer had reached out in June to offer Assange’s services on a campaign against rape in exchange for an undisclosed amount of bitcoin. It said the two sides held two videoconferences.
Then came the bombshell: It said the company had ended ties with Assange following “pedophile crimes” he had committed in the Bahamas in late September. It said that the victim was the 8-year-old daughter of a Canadian couple on a monthlong yachting vacation. The father went to police in Nassau on Sept. 28, the report claimed, saying that his family held video and chat logs showing Assange “internet grooming” the child and “propositioning the 8-year-old juvenile ‘to perform oral and anal sex acts.’”
It said Assange, who has been in refuge in Ecuador’s Embassy in London since 2012, made a connection to the child’s 22-year-old sister, who was a client of the online dating site, gaining access to the young girl.
An assistant commissioner for the Royal Bahamas Police Force, Stephen Dean, said “there is no investigation” into any such incident and that the police have received no evidence that such an incident occurred.
“We got a phone call of someone giving us some information. But we never had a face-to-face. It could have been a hoax,” Dean said. “We don’t know.”
If someone were in possession of video or chat logs about a pedophile crime, he or she did not provide them to Bahamian police, Dean said, which he said would be odd: “If you have something so significant, I think you’d want to leave a report.”
Assange’s Swedish lawyer, Per Samuelson, wrote to the U.N. body on Oct. 10 alleging that Hammond’s report against Assange was “entirely false” in all its facets and that he had had no contact with the dating site or Hammond.
Even as authorities in the Bahamas dismissed the report, the dating site sent a fax Oct. 17 to Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau saying the Canadian family had fled the Bahamas due to “anti-white, racist abuse by Bahamian police.”
“Julian Assange … has started a smear campaign to claim our dating company is behind an elaborate scam. It is fully to be expected. Pedophiles are devious and cunning,” the fax said.
The company said it would “continue to protect the family’s identity, until either the (Royal Bahamas Police Force) conduct a proper investigation, or hell freezes over. Whichever comes first.”
The fax was signed, “The Todd and Clare Team,” and left no way to contact the firm.
While the founders of toddandclare.com say they’ve been in the matchmaking business since 2011, their internet presence dates only to September 2015 and really got going only early this year. Those who have done work for the company say they were kept at arm’s length.
A Los Angeles actress, Lexi Graboski, told McClatchy that another company, Fiverr.com, had contacted her in January to appear in a video to explain how to use the toddandclare.com dating website. She said she knew only her contact’s username: NYCPrincess.
By summer, in the run-up to what many expected to be an “October surprise” from WikiLeaks to make an impact on the U.S. election, toddandclare.com began moving against Assange in multiple countries simultaneously. The DNC and a cyberthreat intelligence firm it had hired, CrowdStrike, were already fingering Russia as behind the hacks that would provide the fodder for WikiLeaks. They’d said in June that Russian hackers had access to DNC servers for about a year.
A company representative, identifying herself as Hannah Hammond, emailed Assange’s Swedish and British legal agents offering $1 million for him to appear in a five-minute tongue-in-cheek television advertisement. In a subsequent exchange Sept. 19, the representative wrote that “the source of the $1,000,000 is the Russian government.”
In a curious twist, she offered what she said were three facts about Assange’s London attorney that are “unknown to the public,” including details inside her home and an event in her son’s life, suggesting a capability to conduct surveillance.
Taylor, the Assange lawyer, said the details appeared “to create the impression that the members of his team were under close surveillance and/or to bolster the bona fides of the claim that the offer was linked to a State. Its inclusion does appear quite menacing.”
A lawyer identifying himself only as “James” responded the next day, slamming the offer as an “elaborate scam designed to entrap” Assange and embarrass him for ties to Russia.
The dating site representative sought to pull the veil off “James.”
“Julian: We know it’s you writing. The offer expires at midnight, October 31st 2016,” she wrote back on Sept. 21, according to copies of the emails posted by WikiLeaks on its website.
By early October, toddandclare.com went on the offensive. It filed a civil complaint in a British court against Assange, seeking 295 pounds sterling — about $359 — in damages because it said it could no longer use his services due to the “child sex offenses in Nassau.”
The suit, said Taylor, Assange’s lawyer, “seems to be designed to evade defamation law in the U.K. They’ve put highly noxious information knowing that it would be made public.”
The global tussle between the online dating company and WikiLeaks went public in mid-October when the anti-secrecy group voiced public doubt on whether toddandclare.com actually existed, or served only as a vehicle to attack Assange.
The announcement opened the gates for a disparate crew of internet sleuths — some motivated by hatred of Clinton and others impelled by support for WikiLeaks — to probe into the history of toddandclare.com, suspicious that the dating site might be an undercover operation with links to the Clinton campaign.
Posting their findings on the discussion websites 8chan (8ch.net) and Reddit.com, they unearthed some curious coincidences. A perusal into the archives of the internet revealed that the Hammonds had once occupied a San Francisco building later rented to a company, Premise Data, whose co-founder has ties to Clinton and her top supporters.
Moreover, a telephone number once registered to a Todd Hammond later was registered to a former Premise employee, Aaron Dunn, although with a different area code.
Premise co-founder David Soloff said such findings could only be coincidences.
“I want reiterate that Premise has no connection with this case. And beyond confirming that Aaron Dunn worked at Premise until 2014, I don’t know the answer to any of your questions,” Soloff wrote in an email.
Whoever is behind the toddandclare.com website came out slashing Thursday, accusing WikiLeaks of “vicious slurs” and saying they were “law-abiding citizens” subject to the “sinister and unlawful behavior of Wikileaks reddit users, calling for people to be harassed and physically hurt.” It acknowledged “disconnecting our phones for the time being.”
“Stay strong everyone,” the message concluded. “Dissent is so important. God bless America, we are truly the greatest nation on Earth. Todd and Clare.”Here, Spacey has changed the narrative of him allegedly assaulting a 14-year-old boy, put on Jamie Foxx’s “Blame it on the Alcohol,” and ended it with, “oh, by the way, I’m gay!” There’s never truly a wrong time to come out and I’d never begrudge anyone for accepting their sexuality. But the seediness of using your coming out to deflect from a sexual assault allegation is something else entirely. Already, headlines have ignored Rapp’s allegations for claptrap like ABC News’ since-edited story that at first read: “Kevin Spacey comes out in emotional tweet.” Several other outlets also led with the fact that Spacey has come out of the closet, rather than the fact that he came out in response to Rapp’s disturbing allegation. Beyond altering the narrative, Spacey’s statement grossly conflates pedophilia and homosexuality.
For Spacey to say, “if I did behave then as he describes, I owe him the sincerest apology for what would have been deeply inappropriate drunken behavior,” implies that when most gay men get drunk, it’s second nature for them to prey on a 14-year-old boy. It calls to mind hateful rhetoric like Anita Bryant’s 1977 Save Our Children campaign, which sought to associate gay men and child predators. Of gay men, Bryant infamously said, “Some of the stories I could tell you of child recruitment and child abuse by homosexuals would turn your stomach.”Ready to fight back? Sign up for Take Action Now and get three actions in your inbox every week. You will receive occasional promotional offers for programs that support The Nation’s journalism. You can read our Privacy Policy here. Sign up for Take Action Now and get three actions in your inbox every week.
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These are ripe times to read Baldwin. Not just the essays on racist policing; those are, in a way, too easy. “A Report From Occupied Territory,” which appeared in The Nation, burns hot a half-century after it was published. That its depiction of black vulnerability and police volatility could describe the contemporary scene; that its central metaphor of occupation is not too hyperbolic to have been echoed by Eric Holder last year, nor its concern with personal disintegration too dated to anticipate Ismaaiyl Brinsley; that even its particulars (“If one is carried back and forth from the precinct to the hospital long enough, one is likely to confess anything”) feel gruesomely fresh in light of known CIA torture regimens—all of these, enraging as they are, only confirm what we already tell ourselves in weaker words. Ad Policy
The police are brutal, the government is brutal, the populace is aroused (taking to the streets) or accommodating (switching from CNN to Homeland to football), brutalized or brutal too. America, cauldron of damaged life.
Baldwin wrote “Report” in 1966, about Harlem, not Staten Island; during the war in Vietnam, not the “global war on terror”; amid the dim promises of the Great Society and a Top 40 soundtrack playing “The Ballad of the Green Berets.” We may study that past, track today’s news and shout the louder, but that is not why Baldwin is the most important American writer of the twentieth century, or why we should read him now.
A passage from a famous essay called “Everyone’s Favorite Protest Novel,” written in 1949, suggests a better reason:
What constriction or failure of perception forced her to so depend on the description of brutality—unmotivated, senseless—and to leave unanswered and unnoticed the only important question: what it was, after all, that moved her people to such deeds?
The “her” refers to Harriet Beecher Stowe, the “protest novel” is Uncle Tom’s Cabin (and secondarily Native Son), and Baldwin ventures the question that he would plumb his whole life: Who are we, as individuals and Americans, and what are our responsibilities? That “who” for Baldwin was no flimsy thing. It involved spirit and flesh, history and what we do with it, both in our intimate relations and in social, common life.
Uncle Tom’s Cabin fails, in his reading, the way so much well-meaning protest does. It is so busy crying “This is horrible!” that it does not trouble to inquire into what makes those who have executed that horror, and who maintained, benefited from and accommodated to it, do the things they do. A protest novel closer to him, Native Son, disappoints because Richard Wright, its author, has so constricted the frame of social life to fit white categories, so reduced Bigger Thomas to his fears and hatreds, that Bigger “admits the possibility of being sub-human and feels constrained to battle for his humanity” in the only available arena, violence. In either case, what the protest writer offers is a victim, maybe a saint (Tom) or a sinner (Bigger), plenty of villains but no demand on thought as to the roots of villainy or the effort required of us to live in defiance of it.
What any of this has to do with the present is superficially plain. Stowe’s catalog of cruelties evokes the Senate’s partial catalog of CIA tortures and any itemization of police killings. The latest fashion for martyrs and monsters is on display in the bulletins from Paris, absent the record of horrors visited on the Arab world by the United States, its allies and creatures every day for decades. We might trace the roots of official violence to imperialism, capitalism, oligarchy, white supremacy. The words are not incorrect, but they are insufficient. And here is where Baldwin is hard.
Money, he writes elsewhere, is not sufficient to explain the deeds of white people in the time of slavery, or in the dehumanizing system that “Jim Crow” doesn’t begin to define—just as, in our time, profit and empire were never sufficient to explain why multihued majorities of Americans backed the organized killing of strangers after September 11, 2001, and the designation of a worldwide class of people as subhuman. They do not explain why Americans adapted to the prison state or why, to take a banal example, Sony and everyone involved in The Interview figured it was a good bet that Americans would find assassination funny. White supremacy cannot fully explain the culture of police departments, or the decision by some cops to behave like robots toward New York’s mayor, or President Obama’s penchant for murder-by-drone in the darker nations, or any routine instance of white entitlement. Oligarchy cannot explain people’s apparent contentment with only a pantomime of democracy: free expression as the freedom to insult.
Baldwin does not say that systems of power are unimportant. He insists that liberation is also a mandate on individuality: how one separates oneself from the “habits of thought [that] reinforce and sustain the habits of power”—in essence, how one comes into his or her humanity.
Baldwin came into his, or began to, as a black child given the charge of successive black children. As a poor child introduced to the world of the arts while mortally aware of the world of privation. As a man-child when a 38-year-old Spanish-Irish racketeer fell in love with him. It was a dangerous love in 1940; it would be today. It made him feel beautiful for the first time, and, though not without anguish—a word that appears frequently in Baldwin’s explorations of human relations—this love shattered “all of the American categories of male and female, straight or not, black or white” that work to define the totality of a person and so to thwart self-definition. “I will be grateful to that man,” he wrote, “until the day I die.”
The culture has not ceased trying to reinforce those categories, to which we may also add “poor or not, American or not, Judeo-Christian or not.” It was always bent on categorizing Baldwin: a black writer, a homosexual writer, a black writer who wrote a homosexual novel, a writer with a “juvenile” obsession with sex (as Langston Hughes put it), a melodramatic “Harriet Beecher Stowe in blackface,” as Henry Louis Gates Jr. said in a splashy, rather pitiful attempt to demolish the young Baldwin’s essay fifty-seven years after the fact.
Gates’s flirtation with gay-baiting would not be worth mentioning (it was in 2006, after all) if his critique did not so precisely mirror mass culture’s shallow conception of sex, as opposed to Baldwin’s capacious view of sexuality’s role in the creation of the self and society. The young Baldwin had written that in Stowe’s treatment, Uncle Tom had been “robbed of his humanity and divested of his sex.” He did not mean, as Gates damply inferred, that Tom was sexually impotent, not a “real man,” who presumably shtups and flexes and shtups again. “Sex,” as anyone who has seriously read him knows, meant far more to Baldwin than the act—though perhaps no one has written so well and so frankly about lovemaking and the body’s ability to express what words cannot or dare not. “Carnal knowledge” in the old sense—knowing another, and so perhaps oneself, nakedly—gives a better sense of his concerns. Tom was deprived of such knowledge because he was a cardboard saint. Stowe could not but deprive him because she could not see him. Because she could not see him, as a figure of complexity, of ethics and desires and the jumble of sometimes competing qualities that make up human personality—in other words, as a man—she could not really see his tormentors either, “her people,” white people, or begin to fathom the sources of their inhumanity and complacence.
Baldwin’s writing hardly settles the question of why America developed its particular habits of power, or why those persist; why it’s so easy still for race to blind us, class to confuse us, sex and gender to trap us; why as a nation we are staggeringly cruel yet stubborn about our innocence; why love is so hard. His essays and novels do, however, prod us to assess our habits of thought.
It is not simple, this assessment. If so many of his fictional characters seem incomplete, alienated from one another, from their own deepest desires, uneasy in their skin or too easy until events disrupt their cozy assumptions, it is because they are ordinary people, prone like us to self-deception, scarred like us by history and scratching toward something authentic. As the story ends, they may have failed to get there; they may be left in midstream. If they’re left alive, chances are they have fought their way out of cliché, which, while not the same as having succeeded, is a necessary beginning—cliché being another name for capitulation to what is.
We should read Baldwin because what is—the world of power in its many forms—is barbaric but inventively adept at enlisting our consent. No other American writer dissected the problem of the color line with such intimate and ferocious grace, and no other so embodied the convergence of liberationist energies that saved the culture from utter rot. The problem of the twentieth century continues into the twenty-first; the promise of liberation—full-fledged humanity—still calls to us; rot hurries near. We need all the help we can get.UN security council urged to pass resolution drafted by US and China that would target bank accounts of senior regime figures
The UN security council is considering imposing some of the toughest sanctions yet conceived against North Korea as senior diplomats from the 15 council member nations began discussions on a draft resolution framed by the US and China that would seek to deflect Pyongyang from its belligerent nuclear path.
Susan Rice, the US ambassador to the UN, said the draft sanctions resolution that she circulated to the security council was exceptional in its "breadth and scope". It would hit senior figures within the North Korean regime where it hurts them most – their pockets – by targeting for the first time illicit banking activities and movements of capital, she said.
In a statement delivered to the security council, Rice said the sanctions would target the "illicit activities of North Korean diplomatic personnel, North Korean banking relationships, illicit transfers of bulk cash and new travel restrictions". She said the sanctions would "significantly impede North Korea's ability to develop further its illicit nuclear and ballistic missile programs … and demonstrate clearly to North Korea the continued costs of its provocations."
Should the resolution be agreed, it would impose the fourth round of sanctions on the North Korean regime. It will now go before diplomatic and technical experts from the relevant security council member countries for detailed fine tuning, before being rushed to a vote as early as the end of this week.
Rice said the proposals would ensure that "North Korea will be subject to some of the toughest sanctions imposed by the United Nations".
Western diplomats are relatively confident about the passage of the sanctions through the security council because of Beijing's willingness to support it. China is the traditional ally and major trading partner of North Korea's, but it joined the US and other western powers in expressing its alarm and displeasure after the regime carried out its third test of a nuclear device on 12 February.
The underground test was said by Pyongyang to be focused on the development of a "miniaturized" nuclear weapon that could be attached to missiles able to reach the US. Nuclear weapons experts, however, remain skeptical that North Korea has succeeded in achieving that capability.
The leadership of Kim Jong-un has responded with trademark bluster to the threats of tightened sanctions. Hours before the UN security council convened, the regime threatened to nullify the armistice that has held between North and South Korea since 1953. The three-year Korean war has never technically ended, only suspended, and the threat to stop the truce has been a much-deployed – though not as yet followed-through – intimidation.
On Tuesday, the supreme command of the Korean People's Army said it would carry out "surgical strikes" to reunify the peninsula, and made reference to a "precision nuclear striking tool".
The regime's anger has been piqued not just by the impending sanctions but by the latest US military exercises with South Korea. The drills happen every year, prompting an annual ritual of recriminations and counter-recriminations.
The new US secretary of state, John Kerry, delivered a direct message to Kim from Qatar. He emphasized that Washington's preference was "not to brandish threats to each other; it's to get to the table".
He said it was "very easy for Kim Jong-un to prove his good intent here. Just don't fire the next missile, don't have the next test. Just say you're ready to talk."
The hope within the security council is that by affecting the personal finances of senior members of the Kim regime, sanctions might dissuade them from pursuing the nuclear tests."When I was young, I lacked empathy. I wanted things done my way. I probably had that issue some leaders have where they set a high standard for themselves and get frustrated by people that don't. I didn't have the experience to understand that other people see things differently, do things differently." He was once completing a sudoku puzzle on a plane next to a physiotherapist who was laughing at a Ricky Gervais podcast. Mitchell asked what was so funny, and when told what it was is said to have replied, "I don't find comedy funny." While Mitchell has no memory of this, he squirms at the thought and admits his comedy preference is more slapstick. Former teammate Brad Sewell said of Mitchell's humour: "He's the kind of guy who finds it hilarious to drill a ball into the back of someone's head." At this, Mitchell laughed out loud. Mitchell in action on the field. Credit:Michael Willson/AFL Media
Even before he was a rising star in 2003, Mitchell carried crossword books on bus trips, and at one point was seen taking notes from The Alchemist, a novel by Paulo Coelho. When I saw him on Friday, Mitchell had just finished an audiobook called Predictably Irrational, a psychological dive into why smart people make irrational decisions. "When I was 20 I wanted to be an engineer," Mitchell said. "When I was 23 I wanted to be entrepreneur. When I was 26 I wanted to be a CEO. You go through these phases but basically I always wanted to be ready to take whatever opportunity came to me." Today he is finishing an MBA, and has already completed coaching courses in preparation for his future at West Coast. He is a man who has functioned at the edge of his capabilities for more than 15 years, and it's hard to know exactly what this does to a person. Certainly it makes him a formidable worker, and he's a person unlikely to stop pushing when it's time to stop playing. "Maybe in my mid-twenties I thought there's more to the world than football," he said. "I thought I'd go into business, live in a different country, see the world. But since I met my wife, had children, and got to know myself better through family, I realised that not everyone has a passion in their life. Mine's obvious, so why get away from it?" Boyle demonstrates the art of pizza making. Credit:Pam Morris
"I was driven by fear of failure early in my career. Not so much in the later part. The old man was always one of those hard-on-you types. You needed to play better, no matter how you played. When I was young, I lacked empathy. I wanted things done my way. Sam Mitchell "I grew up in football like that, where you're forever looking for a pat on the back that's never coming. I suppose that's where it starts, but it became a self-motivated thing. I'm my own harshest critic now." Head of fitness at Hawthorn, Andrew Russell, who spent 12 years observing Mitchell, describes his demeanour before games as "completely calm". "In his later years at Hawthorn," said Russell, "Mitch compartmentalised his life. He realised he could perform at a high level regardless of how he felt."
Mtchell shows he is pretty handy with the dough as well. Credit:Pam Morris Russell, considered by many to be the game's authority on high performance, was in awe of Mitchell's consistency. "Mitch would be in [the] top three mentally resilient athletes I've ever seen. He does not accept being sore, being tired. He accepts the hits, absorbs them, and just moves forward." A limited athlete by nature, Mitchell forged his playing legacy by focusing on training that was specific to his strengths, largely dismissing his weaknesses as being things outside of his control. "Quite often I'd train really hard at the start of a session, and hold no ego about my running ability," Mitchell explained. "I'd come 20th in a run at the end of a skills session. Internally, I knew I'd done the work, so on a confidence level it made no difference to me."
In training, Mitchell engages a practice that in football has only recently been isolated as a specific talent. When he gets the ball he initiates movements designed to upset defenders, a style that has perhaps evolved from a goose step into what the modern sports world describes with words like kinetics. "I do short, lateral movements," explained Mitchell. "In American sport they call it 'quickness'. They have speed, which is straight-line, and clearly I'm poor at that. But they also have 'quickness', which has nothing to do with speed. "I always worked really hard on quickness. If you set up cones and ran us one to the other I'd be one of the last. But if we were to move in and out of them I'd be first, or nearly first. It's my point of difference, so it's what I've always worked the hardest on." Hawthorn's David Rath, whose job title is head of football strategy and innovation, says one of Mitchell's talents is to "destabilise the environment" with an initial, confusing movement |
1. Group situations can be very emotionally challenging for them. Having extra people around means having to share your time and compete for the attention of friends. Emotions of jealousy and rivalry are very difficult to process at this age. The adult’s job is to help them get these emotions under control and help them learn to self regulate. 5 year olds need to learn to understand that the consequences of not managing/controlling their feelings can result in losing friendships. They are able to learn this.
The problem with starting academic education too early (and defining education too narrowly).
5 years old is also the age that children in New Zealand start their formal academic education. That’s the age when we start to teach them to read and write and count. That’s the age we start to define them by a set of narrowly defined National Standards. Can you see the problem here? When children have just reached a formative age in terms of emotion and socialisation, we set them off on their academic journey. Before any appropriate pro-social learning has been started, let alone achieved. By starting them off on their academic journey so soon, we haven’t given them enough opportunities to develop emotionally or cognitively.
It’s naive to assume that meaningful learning is actually happening in high-pressure, worksheet-laden classrooms…
Many children are not developmentally ready to complete structured academic learning when they arrive at school. Nor should they be. Many children are still developing emotionally. That is where the teaching and learning needs to be focussed. The adoption of National Standards has made things worse by requiring the setting of unrealistic academic goals. This is turn, leads to teachers employing inappropriate classroom practice to achieve these goals.
5 year olds are being expected to learn through rigorous instruction. As Erika Christakis says, “it’s naive to assume that meaningful learning is actually happening in high-pressure, worksheet-laden classrooms where teachers tightly control the content and pacing of instruction.” She says, “we also suffer from confirmation bias — we look for evidence to support what we already believe.” Teachers are encouraged to ignore the human element of education. So while National Standards are touted as a solution, they are in fact, a distraction from focussing on real solutions. That is, equal learning opportunities for all children.
There’s a well-established scientific consensus that young humans learn best through playful, relationship-based experiences.
Today’s children have got it tough. Our academic expectations of them are increasing. Our misplaced anxieties are demanding greater academic achievement at even earlier ages. This is compounded by the reality that children are also losing their free play time outside of school hours. Children have busy schedules. They have organised sports events, culture activities and playdates to attend. Parents are busy. Children are required to fit into their parents’ schedules. Or they are being supervised by technology. Tragically, it is not so unusual to have 5 year olds in the classroom who need support to be able to engage meaningfully when given free play.
So, what’s the alternative?
There’s a well-established scientific consensus that young humans learn best through playful, relationship-based experiences. That’s academic and social learning. They learn through playful, hands on experiences with materials, and with the support of engaging, caring adults.
Nor does ‘play’ mean an unstructured free-for-all. Active, play-based experiences can incorporate language rich environments to help children develop ideas about literacy. Experience tells me that in the right environment, children will ‘miraculously’ develop an understanding and strong desire to read and write.
Yes, a daunting proposition. But also a wonderful opportunity – a chance to set up a child to be successful in life.
Update: Since publishing this post, I have discovered that the same issues are being discussed in the media in Australia. A teacher quit teaching and petitioned the government to address her concern that, “teachers are being forced to teach an age inappropriate and crowded curriculum which is pushing students too hard, too fast.” The petition asks parliament to “observe international evidence-based best practice and ensure children are six years of age or older to commence being formally taught an incremental age-appropriate national curriculum”, and “that all play for under 6-year-olds is play-based and data collection be minimised, as well as order an independent investigation into the true depth of child and teacher distress in primary schools related to the curriculum.”
Ease Education: Teaching at a human scale.
You can also find Ease Education on Facebook and Twitter.
From the experts: some resources that you may find useful, are linked on the following page.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/answer-sheet/wp/2015/11/24/how-twisted-early-childhood-education-has-become-from-a-child-development-expert/?tid=sm_tw
http://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/erika-christakis-children-playing-learning-article-1.2553345?cid=bitly
https://deyproject.files.wordpress.com/2015/01/readinginkindergarten_online-1.pdf
http://yle.fi/uutiset/professor_families_need_more_downtime_for_kids_to_learn_social_skills/8866344
https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2017/04/its-all-work-and-almost-no-play-in-kindergarten-but-does-it-matter?utm_content=bufferb77f6&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer1 Mike Trout (LAA - CF,DH) 1 1 1.0 0.0 1.0 ‐ As long as Mike Trout continues to put up 30+ homers, 20+ steals, 100+ runs and bat.300 every season, you can bet he will be worth the first overall pick. Chances are, we have another decade of this consistent dominance.
2 Mookie Betts (BOS - CF,RF) 2 2 2.0 0.0 2.0 ‐ It may be tempting to snag Betts with the first pick over Trout, after the ridiculous season he just put together, but remember that he is just one year removed from batting.264 with 24 homers. There is a chance Betts outproduces Trout, but that isn't a risk you should gamble on.
3 Jose Ramirez (CLE - 2B,3B) 3 10 4.6 1.9 3.0 ‐ Jose Ramirez may have been the best fantasy player in baseball last year, knocking 39 homers with 34 steals, 110 runs and 105 RBIs, but he is still 1-C behind both Trout and Mookie Betts because of their consistent production over the last three seasons.
4 Nolan Arenado (COL - 3B) 3 14 5.3 2.0 7.0 +3.0 Arenado might not feel like the sexiest pick at this stage because he isn't the hot new name, nor is he a five-category star, but there is nothing wrong with boring old reliability. He has averaged 40 homers, 125 RBIs and 100 runs while batting.297 over the last four seasons. Don't let him slip past this fifth pick in your drafts.
5 J.D. Martinez (BOS - LF,RF,DH) 3 20 5.8 2.9 5.0 ‐ It's funny how one healthy season can help you forget that a player missed 40+ games in three of the past four seasons. While Martinez has a legitimate shot at the Triple Crown, he is also a bit riskier than many of the other first round picks so proceed soberly.
6 Max Scherzer (WSH - SP) 4 16 7.2 2.4 6.0 ‐ Looking for 18 wins, 220 innings and nearly 300 strikeouts? You can virtually lock it in with Scherzer. Not only that, be he has a 0.975 WHIP over the past six seasons. That is downright unfair. Don't hesitate to grab him late in the first round this year.
7 Christian Yelich (MIL - LF,CF,RF) 5 31 8.7 2.6 8.0 +1.0 There is no denying that Yelich was a first round value in 2018 and perhaps even the #1 fantasy asset thanks to a.326 average with 36 homers, 22 steals and 110+ runs and RBIs. These numbers blew away his career marks, however, so projection models all have him regressing to a high-end second round value this year.
8 Ronald Acuna (ATL - LF,CF) 4 61 10.2 4.3 10.0 +2.0 Per plate apperance, Acuna was every bit as productive as consensus top-five pick, Francisco Lindor, last season. Granted, Acuna doesn't qualify at shortstop, but that should tell you that the hype somehow hasn't driven him far enough up draft boards yet.
9 Trea Turner (WSH - SS) 3 27 10.5 5.7 9.0 ‐ Fantasy owners may have been disappointed with Turner's performance last year, but he still averages 20 HR, 56 SB and 106 runs with a.289 average per 162 games. Only Rickey Henderson and Joe Morgan have matched those totals over a full season. Turner is an extraordinary fantasy baseball asset and well worth a top 15 pick.
10 Francisco Lindor (CLE - SS) 4 51 11.4 5.4 4.0 -6.0 Lindor kicked it up another notch in 2018, mashing 38 homers to go with 25 steals and his league leading 129 runs. We can't bank on a repeat performance in 2019, but with even 80% of those numbers at shortstop, he'd return easy first round value.
11 Chris Sale (BOS - SP) 5 27 12.5 5.1 12.0 +1.0 There are a handful of starting pitchers that stand out above the rest, but Sale and Scherzer may belong in a tier of their own at this point. Sale posted an unfathomable 0.861 WHIP last season and 13.5 K/9. As long as he returns to health, we could be looking at a 340 Ks.
12 Manny Machado (SD - 3B,SS) 4 45 13.5 4.6 11.0 -1.0 Regardless of what you think about Machado, he has been a reliable force of nature the last few years and likely hasn't even come into his prime yet. The landing spot in San Diego isn't quite what you would think, as it has actually been a top half of the league ballpark for right-handed hitters since they moved their fences in. So don't hesitate to snag him at the end of the first round, as he seems destined for another 35+ homer, 90+ RBI, 90+ run season.
13 Jose Altuve (HOU - 2B) 6 26 13.6 3.8 13.0 ‐ It can be easy to be discouraged by Altuve "only" batting.316 with limited power and steals, but the injury seemed to influence his performance much more than most realize. You can expect a return to his 20 homer, 30 steal, 110 runs season with a batting average north of.330.
14 Jacob deGrom (NYM - SP) 6 31 13.9 3.8 14.0 ‐ deGrom was magical in 2018 and while there is a chance that continues into this season, we have to remember that the two prior seasons, he carried a 3.32 ERA with just 382 Ks and 22 wins. While that makes for a useful pitcher, the risk of him returning to that leaves him below Sale and Scherzer's tier.
15 Alex Bregman (HOU - 3B,SS) 5 24 14.0 4.5 15.0 ‐ Bregman had 83 extra-base hits last season to go with 105 runs and 103 RBIs despite being just 24 years old. Chances are high that his fantasy value continues to trend north. With that said, he is currently recovering from elbow surgery so be sure to keep an eye on his progress before picking him up in the first round this spring.
16 Aaron Judge (NYY - RF,DH) 3 28 16.2 3.1 17.0 +1.0 Judge had a down year in 2018 which means his OPS was merely.919. If he can get back to playing 150 games this year, fantasy owners can bank on 45 homers, 110 runs and 100 RBIs. That may have you ready to grab him in the first round, but he comes with more injury risk than anyone else in the top 20.
17 Bryce Harper (CF,RF) FA 7 27 16.6 4.4 18.0 +1.0 Harper may have posted just a.249 batting average in 2018, but the rest of his fantasy production was tremendous, plus his underlying metrics indicate the average returning closer to the.270 mark in 2019. His fantasy value may see some movement depending on where he signs, but you can be sure it will end up somewhere in the second round this year.
18 Trevor Story (COL - SS) 9 34 18.1 5.0 23.0 +5.0 You can snag Story in the late second, or even third round despite the fact that he outproduced top-five pick, Francisco Lindor in BA, SB, RBI and was just one behind him in homers. There is more risk with Story, but his 2018 campaign was among the all-time greats for fantasy shortstops.
19 Freddie Freeman (ATL - 1B) 9 34 18.8 4.9 20.0 +1.0 First basemen isn't as deep as it once was so commodities like Freeman are well worth investing in toward the middle of the third round. He is a lock for 90 runs, 90 RBIs and a.300 batting average each year and that type of player doesn't grow on trees.
20 Giancarlo Stanton (NYY - LF,RF,DH) 6 37 19.2 4.2 22.0 +2.0 After obliterating pitchers in 2017, Stanton cooled off in a big way last year, striking out 211 times and hitting just.266 with 38 homers. There is upside for 60+ bombs this year, but believe it or not, he has only hit 40 or more once his entire career.
21 Paul Goldschmidt (STL - 1B) 14 29 19.4 3.0 19.0 -2.0 Goldschmidt was incredible over his last 100 games, posting a.334/.424/.608 line. You may think his stats will take a big hit moving out of Chase Field, but with the humidor in place, it was actually among the worst park for hitters last season. In St. Louis, he should continue his run of 30+ homers, 95+ runs and a.290+ batting average.
22 Javier Baez (CHC - 2B,3B,SS) 8 42 23.5 5.4 16.0 -6.0 Baez was excellent last year, hitting 34 homers with 21 steals, 101 runs and a league-leading 111 RBIs. While he is surely a star, every projection model sees those numbers regressing in 2019, especially his batting average which was propped up by a.347 BABIP.
23 Charlie Blackmon (COL - CF) 15 43 24.3 5.2 26.0 +3.0 While Blackmon wasn't the number one fantasy asset like in 2017, he still knocked 29 homers, led the league in runs and batted.291, and don't forget, that was a down year. If that is his floor, fantasy owners are getting a steal in the late second round.
24 Justin Verlander (HOU - SP) 13 46 24.7 4.3 24.0 ‐ Verlander may be turning 36 years old soon, but his velocity is still as impressive as ever and he 2018 was actually his best K% (34.8%, second best 28.1%) of his career while his BB% (4.4%) was his lowest. Don't avoid him because of his age. He is rocking better than ever before.
25 Corey Kluber (CLE - SP) 15 66 26.2 6.1 21.0 -4.0 Each of the past five years, Kluber has given fantasy owners 200 innings while compiling 1,228 strikeouts. In four of those five seasons, he has provided 18 or more wins. If you draft him in the second round, you can be certain to get a true ace.
26 Andrew Benintendi (BOS - LF,CF) 17 75 27.1 5.4 29.0 +3.0 Benintendi is a spectacular real life player, but in fantasy, he was extremely similar to Jean Segura who happens to be going five rounds later. The arrow is pointing up for Benintendi, but not enough to warrant a top 30 draft pick.
27 Kris Bryant (CHC - 3B,RF) 11 41 27.2 5.9 31.0 +4.0 Bryant missed 60 games last year and had his least efficient season of his career by quite a bit. There is some risk in drafting Bryant in the 3rd round, but he also comes with 40 homer upside, a batting average near.300 and both 100+ runs and RBIs.
28 Gerrit Cole (HOU - SP) 23 42 29.3 4.4 28.0 ‐ You can look at Cole's 3.50 second half ERA and assume he got worse over the season, but all the underlying numbers suggest he was actually better. Don't shy away from him because of a false fear of his risk. Rather, expect another 250+ strikeouts with plenty of wins and excellent ratios.
29 Anthony Rizzo (CHC - 1B) 18 46 29.7 5.2 34.0 +5.0 Rizzo took a major step backwards in the first half last year, but his final line of 25 homers, 101 RBIs and a.283 batting average ended up being about as good as his average season. We were drafting him in the 3rd round last year so don't hesitate to scoop him up for a discount this season.
30 Juan Soto (WSH - LF) 20 73 30.7 7.4 30.0 ‐ Soto was every bit as good as top-ten pick, Alex Bregman per plate appearance last season, but is going 20 picks later. Keep in mind, he accomplished that as a teenager. Don't hesitate to reach an entire round to grab him before he progresses even more.
31 Aaron Nola (PHI - SP) 19 53 31.2 7.5 25.0 -6.0 Nola took another major leap forward last year, and while he may never be a 300 or even 250 strikeout guy like the handful of pitchers being drafted above him, 220+ with a sub 1.00 WHIP and 2.50 ERA will certainly warrant a third round pick.
32 Luis Severino (NYY - SP) 25 59 34.0 4.2 33.0 +1.0 Over the past two seasons, only Scherzer, Sale, Verlander, deGrom and Kluber have a better ERA and more strikeouts than Severino, who is quickly becoming a true durable ace. He doesn't belong in that first tier, but may already lead the next group.
33 Blake Snell (TB - SP) 19 55 34.2 4.4 27.0 -6.0 Snell may have posted the single greatest second half of any pitcher in the last 50 years with a 1.17 ERA,.155 BAA and 12.7 K/9. There is a chance he finishes as the #1 fantasy pitcher this season, but both Scherzer and Sale are safer bets because of their sustained reliability.
34 Starling Marte (PIT - CF) 17 79 36.0 8.0 38.0 +4.0 Marte bounced back from his 2017 suspension season with another big year. He stolen 33 bases, knocked 20 homers and batted a quality.277. While he may not swipe 45 bags anymore, that power/speed combo makes him well worth a fourth round pick in standard leagues.
35 Anthony Rendon (WSH - 3B) 27 66 38.7 7.0 44.0 +9.0 Every single season, fantasy owners draft Rendon in the fourth or fifth round and every single year he outproduces that draft value. 2018 was no different, as he hit.308 with 24 homers, 92 RBIs and 88 runs scored in just 136 games. Don't make the mistake of letting him slip by you in the fourth again this season.
36 Khris Davis (OAK - LF,DH) 26 84 39.1 7.0 41.0 +5.0 Looking for 40 homers? Draft Davis and write it in ink. He has knocked 133 over the last three seasons with 335 RBIs in that time. The floor is as high as you'll find in the first five rounds but the batting average is almost certainly going to be around.250 again.
37 Rhys Hoskins (PHI - 1B,LF) 26 71 40.0 7.4 40.0 +3.0 Hoskins has plenty of power, as evidenced by his 52 homers in just 728 career at-bats, but his career batting average now sits at.249. There will surely be plenty or runs and RBIs once again, but there isn't much value in grabbing him during any of the first five rounds.
38 Carlos Correa (HOU - SS) 16 68 40.9 9.1 43.0 +5.0 Correa has missed a significant chunk of time in each of the past two seasons, and while he struggled in 2018, don't forget that he is still just 24 years old and one year removed from being the MVP front-runner prior to his injury. There is major upside here and he may prove to be a league winner.
39 Carlos Carrasco (CLE - SP) 30 59 41.0 7.3 39.0 ‐ Although Cleveland doesn't pay him like it, Carrasco has been a true ace for five straight years, posting a sparkling 3.27 ERA with 193 Ks per season in that time. There is more upside with a pitcher like Syndergaard or Strasburg, but Carrasco's floor makes him one of the top 15 pitchers in this year's fantasy drafts.
40 Trevor Bauer (CLE - SP) 11 76 41.7 9.1 36.0 -4.0 Prior to an injury in the second half, Bauer was among the top pitchers in baseball. He still struck out 221 batters in 175 innings, but with health, those numbers could easily climb to 270 in 215 innings.
41 Whit Merrifield (KC - 1B,2B,CF,RF,DH) 27 112 41.9 11.7 32.0 -9.0 With the Royals not expected to compete in 2019, there is little doubt that Merrifield will surpass 40 stolen bases again. He doesn't have much in the way of power, nor will he score a load of runs in this offense, but the batting average should end up around.300 once again.
42 Cody Bellinger (LAD - 1B,CF) 26 62 42.0 6.3 45.0 +3.0 Last year was a major disappointment for Bellinger owners after he hit 39 homers in just 132 rookie games in 2017. He still managed to hit 25 bombs with 14 steals, however, so the floor is plenty high. At just 23 years old, we clearly haven't seen the best of Bellinger so don't be surprised if he breaks out for 50 bombs this year or next.
43 Xander Bogaerts (BOS - SS) 25 85 44.5 7.8 47.0 +4.0 Xander has been around for so long that it is easy to forget he is still just 26 years old. Although there have been periods of disappointment in the past, Bogaerts still has averaged 15 homers, 91 runs, 84 RBIs and a.295 BA over the last four seasons. Add in that 2018 was his best yet and we may be looking at another big step forward this season.
44 Noah Syndergaard (NYM - SP) 13 89 45.2 10.8 37.0 -7.0 Thor has elite stuff without a doubt, but the numbers haven't quite made it to the top tier of pitchers. Rather, he has just one season with 170 strikeouts and has yet to win 15 games. You may argue that a Cy Young is right around the corner, but we've been saying that for three years now and it is starting to look like we have another Strasburg on our hands.
45 George Springer (HOU - CF,RF,DH) 17 62 45.5 6.1 50.0 +5.0 Springer is one of a handful of stars who started off their season with a rough patch. He started to turn in around in the second half before his injury, but only enough to get his final line to 22 homers and a.265 batting average. If he can stay healthy, Springer might lead the AL in runs scored along with plenty of homers and RBIs, but the speed has essentially disappeared.
46 Walker Buehler (LAD - SP) 34 82 51.0 10.4 42.0 -4.0 After tearing through the minors, Buehler pitcher pretty well for the Dodgers in the first half. Then a flip switched and he proceeded to become one of the top pitchers in baseball over the second half, posting a 2.03 ERA with 92 Ks and just a.165 BA allowed in 80 innings. Draft him accordingly.
47 Joey Votto (CIN - 1B) 40 73 52.3 6.9 58.0 +11.0 Votto did not return second round value or even close to it last year, but his ADP should be around the fifth this year. You can expect his batting average to bounceback above.300, and don't forget that he had 94 HRs in the previous three years before his 12 in 2018.
48 Eugenio Suarez (CIN - 3B) 36 85 52.5 11.5 53.0 +5.0 In the first half last year, Suarez was sensational, hitting 19 homers with 71 RBIs while batting.312. The second half wasn't as pretty, so we may see him take a step back in 2019, but you can still bank on 30+ homers and around 100 RBIs with a decent batting average.
49 Clayton Kershaw (LAD - SP) 24 129 53.1 20.8 35.0 -14.0 For the first time in a decade, there is quite a bit of risk with drafting Kershaw. He hasn't pitched 180 innings since 2015 and saw his strikeout rate plummet from 10.4 to 8.6 per nine innings. You can bank on top-notch ratios, but because of the innings a low strikeout totals, he is now firmly in the second tier of pitchers.
50 Ozzie Albies (ATL - 2B) 38 84 53.3 12.2 51.0 +1.0 Albies is dripping with potential and there is no denying that after his 20 homer first half with 9 steals. With that said, his second half was dreadful, batting.226 with just 4 bombs. There is a chance he returns first round value, but the downside would torch your team if he returns to second half form.
51 Vladimir Guerrero Jr. (TOR - 3B) NRI 18 105 56.4 18.5 46.0 -5.0 The always conservative Steamer projection model sees Vlad Jr. as a similar player to Nolan Arenado from the get-go with a.300+ BA, 30 homers and both 100 RBIs and runs over a full season's at bats. This issue, however, will be whether he gets those at-bats. You can gamble on him as early as the 4th round, but it may not be early enough to beat others to the punch.
52 Jose Abreu (CWS - 1B,DH) 37 98 56.7 11.0 73.0 +21.0 Since Abreu joined the league, he is fifth in the majors with 288 RBIs and #1 among that group with a.295 batting average. As you know, he provides plenty of homers and runs as well. It may not feel interesting to draft Abreu, but with first base more shallow than years past, he is an excellent 6th round pick.
53 Marcell Ozuna (STL - LF) 32 92 57.4 12.9 68.0 +15.0 Ozuna may have taken a huge step back last year, but even so, he put up 23 homers, 88 RBIs and a.280 batting average while playing with a significant shoulder injury. We don't know yet whether or not he will be ready to go on opening day, but assuming health, we might be closer to the 37 HR, 124 RBIs, and.312 BA we got from Ozuna in 2017.
54 Lorenzo Cain (MIL - CF) 43 120 58.5 12.5 66.0 +12.0 In the past five years, Cain is one of only 15 players averaging a.300 batting average, and among them, he is 2nd behind only Jose Altuve with 126 steals. There isn't much in the way of power, but you can bank on him contributing in all five categories with plenty of durablity.
55 Corey Seager (LAD - SS) 37 113 60.0 12.2 70.0 +15.0 It can be easy to forget that as a rookie in 2016, Seager was not only the rookie of the year, but an MVP finalist. He was plenty useful in 2017 fantasy baseball too, but missed most of 2018 with Tommy John surgery and hip surgery. He should be ready to roll by opening day so while there is some risk, consider that he is still just 24 so we may not have seen his best yet.
56 James Paxton (NYY - SP) 41 91 61.5 9.7 52.0 -4.0 Paxton was excellent last year with a whopping 208 Ks in just 160 innings, but this is also the first time he ever pitched above 140 innings. While the ceiling is clearly exciting with Paxton, re-injury is a significant risk, but he is moving from one of the best pitching parks in Seattle to one of the worst at Yankee Stadium.
57 Jean Segura (PHI - SS) 41 127 62.5 11.6 65.0 +8.0 It might not feel sexy drafting Segura, but you can expect a.300+ batting average and 20+ steals for the fourth consecutive season from him. If he finally plays a full season, we may be looking at a 20/30 year with a.310 batting average which would make Segura a top 25 fantasy asset.
58 Raul Adalberto Mondesi (KC - 2B,SS) 17 145 62.9 26.2 63.0 +5.0 If you pro-rate Mondesi's 75 games to a full season, it comes out to 30 homers, 68 steals and 100 RBIs. I don't need to tell you that a season like that would put him above Mike Trout from a fantasy perspective. Granted, he is due for some regression, but don't hesitate to reach several rounds to get him on your roster.
59 Edwin Diaz (NYM - RP) 41 83 64.4 8.2 48.0 -11.0 There is a top tier of three or four closers, but among them, Diaz is likely the best. He racked up 124 Ks in 73 innings last year, and while you can't bank on 57 saves again, 40 is well within question for a surprisingly good Mets team this year. His ratios will surely be stellar, but even so, with only 70 innings, they won't help you enough to warrant using a fifth or even earlier pick on him or any other closer.
60 Tommy Pham (TB - LF,CF) 35 130 64.7 19.8 71.0 +11.0 Despite playing 34 fewer games than Andrew Benintendi over the last two seasons, Pham has outplayed him from a fantasy perspective. Pham is being drafted four rounds later and is coming off one of the best second-halfs in the MLB.
61 Nelson Cruz (MIN - DH) 38 119 64.8 14.2 93.0 +32.0 Cruz has seen his batting average fall from.302 slowly down to.256 over the last four seasons, but the homers and RBIs are still firmly among the top of the league even despite his advanced again. You can rely on his durability and power in 2019 so don't hesitate to grab him in the 6th or 7th round.
62 Patrick Corbin (WSH - SP) 45 111 65.7 11.9 49.0 -13.0 Corbin was an absolute monster last season, striking out 246 batters with a 1.05 WHIP and 3.15 ERA. Granted, those ratios are likely to jump, perhaps even half a run in ERA, but he should also add considerably to his 11 wins from 2018 now that he is in Washington.
63 Stephen Strasburg (WSH - SP) 40 103 67.0 13.0 56.0 -7.0 There is a lot of appeal in drafting an upside pitcher like Strasburg, but keep in mind that he averages just 145 innings over the last four years. Even with an excellent strikeout rate, that comes to just 174 Ks per season. The ratios will likely be golden again, but know that there is plenty of risk in spending a 5th or 6th round pick on him this year.
64 Daniel Murphy (COL - 1B,2B) 47 121 69.9 16.6 85.0 +21.0 Murphy's overall stat line wasn't all that impressive last year, but once he was healthy in the second half, he returned to hittin.315 with a 25 HR pace. Move that to Coors Field and we may be looking at the NL Batting Champion with plenty of homers, RBI and runs. Be mindful that he rarely plays a full season, but when he is on the field we are looking at a top 30 fantasy asset.
65 Gleyber Torres (NYY - 2B,SS) 42 107 70.8 15.9 55.0 -10.0 Torres isn't a big contributor in stolen bases, but he is plenty useful in each of the other four main categories. If you expand his rates out to a full season, Torres would have posted 32 homers, 101 RBIs and a.271 batting average. You would be thrilled to get that type of production out of your seventh round shortstop.
66 Matt Carpenter (STL - 1B,2B,3B) 41 156 70.9 21.0 64.0 -2.0 Over the last five years, Carpenter has a remarkable 468 walks, which obviously has contributed to his 483 runs. In that time, his power has steadily improved, all the way to 36 homers last year, and while that total may not be repeatable, 30 homers with 100 runs makes him well worth a sixth round pick in 2019 fantasy leagues.
67 Yasiel Puig (CIN - RF) 33 154 71.1 22.7 96.0 +29.0 Puig's career has been a bit of a disappointment, but even so, his last two seasons have been excellent. In that time, he has 30 homers and 18 SB per 162 games. If he is able to stay healthy, we could be looking at a further breakout to 35 and 20 thanks to a major ballpark upgrade in Cincy this year.
68 Justin Upton (LAA - LF,DH) 46 146 71.5 21.1 86.0 +18.0 Upton is one of the only players with at least 30 homers in each of the last three seasons. You can also bank on 80+ RBIs and runs, and while his stolen bases have come down over the years, 10 is a good bet once again. Upton's batting average won't help you, but it should be enough to warrant a sixth round pick in standard leagues.
69 Eddie Rosario (MIN - LF) 43 132 71.6 16.2 82.0 +13.0 Rosario has been remarkably consistent the past two years with a.290 and.288 batting average, 27 and 24 homers, 78 and 77 RBIs and 9 and 8 steals. Expect much of the same from him again this season, making him worthy of a 6th round pick in standard leagues.
70 Zack Greinke (ARI - |
22 Dead Island Soundtrack - [Track 3/29] - Damned Places 02:06
23 Deus Ex: Human Revolution [FULL SOUNDTRACK] - 09 - Home 02:19
24 24 - Blackout - The Last of Us Soundtrack 01:42
25 Equilibrium OST_02_Encounter 02:03
26 Dead Island Soundtrack - [Track 10/29] - They're Coming 01:59
27 Left 4 Dead Soundtrack- 'No Mercy' 01:20
28 Deus Ex: Human Revolution [FULL SOUNDTRACK] - 05 - Detroit City Ambient Part 1 02:04
29 Hans Zimmer - No Time For Caution (Interstellar Soundtrack)(Docking)(Interstellar OST) 04:01
30 The Last of Us Soundtrack 07 - The Hunters 02:00Apple has released a new video celebrating the 30th anniversary of Mac. The company says the below clip was shot entirely with iPhones over the course of a single day. 15 camera crews were sent out across the world on January 24th with the goal of documenting "people doing amazing things with Apple products." In all, Apple captured over 70 hours of footage during the various shoots. Video from each location was sent back in real time to a command post in Los Angeles, where the project's director could make requests and guide videographers over FaceTime. All of that content was then edited down and given an original score — with a Mac, naturally.
"Thanks to the power of the Mac and the innovations it has inspired, an effort that normally takes months was accomplished in a matter of days," Apple says. This isn't exactly something that regular users could pull off though; Apple admits that "some additional equipment was used" and an expensive looking rig is visible in one behind-the-scenes shot. It also had the benefit of proven talent; Jake Scott, son of famed Hollywood director Ridley Scott, oversaw the project with the help of 21 editors.
"From beginning to end, every facet of this production was made possible by innovations that trace their lineage back to the original Macintosh in 1984," Apple says. Notably, Apple chose not to release it as a Super Bowl ad Sunday night, opting instead to save millions in advertising dollars and launch the video on its own website the very next morning. More details on the major project can also be found there.
Update: Apple's posted a behind-the-scenes look at how the video was shot:GETTY The backing will be welcome news for Brexit campaigners
Tim Martin, chairman of the pub chain JD Wetherspoons, Carphone Warehouse founder David Ross and Martin Bellamy, chief executive of the Salamanca Group merchant bank were among the high-profile backers of the Vote Leave campaign group. A poll released by Vote Leave showed that twice as many bosses of small and medium-sized businesses believe the EU makes it harder to take on employees.
Related articles Freedom is music to their ears as Brexit beauties take pop at voters
And a third of the firms surveyed by pollsters YouGov said the EU hinders businesses.
Many firms struggle with relentless interference from the EU and rules that are stacked in the favour of a select number of businesses John Longworth Business Council Chairman
The support from business leaders was last night being seen as the latest sign that momentum is growing in the "leave" campaign for the in-or-out referendum on June 23. In another coup for the "out" camp, former British Chambers of Commerce chief John Longworth was yesterday unveiled as the chairman of Vote Leave's Business Council. He was engulfed in an extraordinary public row earlier this year after publicly backing a British exit from the EU.
GETTY Wetherspoons' chairman Tim Martin was among the backers
The pros and cons of Brexit Fri, February 26, 2016 The pros and cons of Brexit. Play slideshow Getty Images 1 of 12 Pros and cons of Brexit
The furore led to his resignation from the Chambers of Commerce post. Downing Street officials denied that any pressure from the Government was put on Mr Longworth or the business group after his declaration. Mr Longworth said yesterday: "I am delighted to be appointed the Chairman of Vote Leave's Business Council. "This is the most important political debate of a generation."Business is divided on the issue and it is vital the full breadth of business opinion is heard.
GETTY John Longworth has been appointed Chairman of the Vote Leave Business Council
"Many firms struggle with relentless interference from the EU and rules that are stacked in the favour of a select number of businesses. "If we Vote Leave, liberated from the shackles of EU membership, jobs will be safer, Britain will be able to spend our money on our priorities and we can look forward to faster growth and greater prosperity in the future." Matthew Elliott, chief executive of Vote Leave said: "We're delighted that John Longworth has agreed to chair Vote Leave's Business Council. "His strong business track record and his courageous decision to share his true beliefs with voters makes him an extremely powerful voice in the EU debate. "With our growing list of business supporters, Vote Leave will make that case that whilst the EU might be good for big multinationals, for smaller businesses it acts as a job destruction regulatory machine.
"Brussels hinders smaller businesses, particularly those firms who can't afford to lobby Brussels to curry favour. Jobs, wages and our economy will thrive when we take back control and Vote Leave." The YouGov poll of more than 1,000 bosses of small and medium-sized firms found that 31% felt the EU made it harder to employ staff. Just 14% said the EU made it easier. Thirty-two per cent of business leaders felt the EU hindered firms like their own while 25% felt the bloc was helpful.
GETTY In a YouGov poll thirty-two per cent of business leaders thought the EU hindered firmsAfter announcing a planned unveiling in September 2017 for Tesla Semi, Tesla’s all-electric semi truck, CEO Elon Musk released the first teaser image of the truck today.
Musk is currently giving a TED talk today about his projects and after releasing the concept for his new ‘Boring Company’, he talked briefly about Tesla Semi.
He confirmed that the prototype is already working and he even got a quick test drive around the parking lot. He added that the truck “feels like a sports car”.
The CEO also confirmed that the vehicle will be capable of long hauls, which was previously uncertain due to its expected all-electric powertrain which requires an incredibly large battery pack in order to travel hundreds of miles with a large payload.
A teaser released during the talk gives us our first glimpse at the vehicle:
It definitely seems to have the same size and form as a class 8 truck, albeit with a more modern look and also no side view mirrors. Autonomous driving sure seems to be built into the design?
Since Musk announced that Tesla plans to unveil the truck in September, analysts have warned truck makers not to laugh because they believe Tesla’s electric truck is going to be disruptive in the industry.
The driver and the fuel are the two most important costs of operating a heavy-duty truck and Tesla’s product is expected to eventually eliminate the role of the driver and significantly reduce the cost of fuel with an all-electric powertrain.
Tesla could leverage his expertise in solar to put a solar roof on these trucks which with the large area over hours on the road could add significant mileage.
During the talk, Musk also reiterated Tesla’s plan to demonstrate its self-driving technology with a coast-to-coast fully autonomous drive on the second generation Autopilot. The same technology is expected to be leveraged in Tesla’s semi truck.
The details about the truck are still scarce. We don’t know what Tesla has in mind for the charging infrastructure and if it integrates with Tesla’s current infrastructure for its passenger vehicles, but all should be revealed in September.Certain things in superhero comics are done specifically so they can later be undone. Death is one; new characters taking over older characters’ alter egos is another. Often these twists go hand in hand. Heroes die heroically, someone else picks up the cape/cowl/hammer, and the book in which it happens gets a theoretical sales bump and a credulous/patronizing mainstream-press write-up or two. But this is only half the story; in most cases the story isn’t really finished until the original guy (because in most cases it’s a guy, usually a white guy) returns to reclaim the identity his successor kept warm for him. And around and around goes the revolving door. It’s one of the most invariable properties of a medium that exists to sell loyal readers the “illusion of change” — an editorial dictum traditionally attributed to Marvel über-huckster Stan Lee — on a blanket marked All-New/All-Different. It allows Marvel and DC to use the language of disruption to hype temporary status-quo shifts and then use that same language to hype the inevitable reversion to form. This has been the case in superhero comics for so long that being cynical about it is like being cynical about autumn because it’s always undone by spring — which doesn’t stop comics fans from being cynical about it anyway.
The first issue of a Marvel comic called All-New Captain America went on sale yesterday. You can get it for $3.99, with a cover by series artist Stuart Immonen that features the new Captain America — Sam Wilson, known until recently as the Falcon — in a traditional heroic pose. Immonen’s cover looks like this. But if you’re so inclined, you can also purchase an edition of the same comic book with an “Incentive Custom Interscope Variant Cover” for the presumably collector-enticing list price of $170. That cover looks like this:
Marvel
That’s the titular new Captain in the center, with the goggles; the young men to his right and left are Slim Jimmy and Swae Lee of the Tupelo, Mississippi, rap duo Rae Sremmurd. The street sign is a reference to its first hit, the plaintively trap-chirpy summer mega-earworm “No Flex Zone,” produced by Mike Will Made It. Rae Sremmurd is signed to Mike Will’s EarDrummers Entertainment imprint, a subsidiary of Interscope, hence the phrase “Interscope Variant.” We’ll talk more about Rae Sremmurd in a second.
The protagonist of All-New Captain America no. 1 is Sam Wilson, created by Stan Lee and Gene Colan and first introduced — as the Falcon — in the pages of 1969’s Captain America no. 117. The Falcon was Marvel’s first African American superhero character. (The Black Panther, who preceded him by two years in the pages of The Fantastic Four, was African but not American.) A former inner-city social worker (and in some versions of the story, petty criminal) who developed the power to communicate with birds after an encounter with the Cosmic Cube, Wilson was written as a friend and ally to Captain America, rather than a sidekick. This was a more-or-less unprecedented relationship in superhero comics. For a while, during Jack Kirby’s ’70s run on the book, Captain America was even retitled Captain America & the Falcon. In current Marvel continuity, Steve Rogers — the first man to wield the shield — has become a 90-year-old man after being stripped of the super-soldier formula that made him invulnerable and kept him physically young. He’s now a tactical adviser to his old pal Sam Wilson, who’s assumed the Captain America identity. All-New Captain America is written by Rick Remender, a smart and talented guy who’s found himself at the center of more than one Internet flap around the racial politics of his work and has occasionally handled those controversies quite badly. As a comic, this will be a story about a black superhero written by a white guy with something to prove, which means it’ll either be great or kind of embarrassing. For the moment, it’s a thought experiment.
Marvel
Chris Evans has talked, albeit equivocally, about his tenure as the Marvel Movieverse’s Captain America coming to an end at some point; there’s speculation about the Sam-as-Cap plotline in the comics setting the stage for a future Marvel movie in which the Movieverse’s Falcon, played in Captain America: The Winter Soldier by Anthony Mackie, picks up the shield. This narrative — about Sam-Cap being merely a synergistic act of flag-planting — has legs because Captain America fans have been through all of this before. Steve Rogers was shot and apparently killed in a 2007 issue of Captain America. His former sidekick Bucky Barnes — the Winter Soldier — assumed the Cap identity and held on to it even after Rogers’s resurrection in 2009. It wasn’t a permanent passing of the torch, but replacing the steadfast (and historically pretty boring) Steve Rogers with a new guy even temporarily was good storytelling, in the sense that it opened doors; the comic became about a hero’s struggle to live up to an impossibly huge legacy and square his own values with the WWII-minted ideals that came with the Cap identity. Having the new new guy be Sam Wilson has even more obvious story potential; suddenly it’s a book about what it means for Wilson to almost literally wrap himself in a flag no African American can pretend has always stood exclusively for freedom. Suddenly the book is a conversation about the symbolic payload of that flag, which is what you’d hope but not necessarily expect a book called Captain America to be. (Robert Morales and Kyle Baker’s Truth: Red, White & Black, which told the story of a Tuskeegee-like super-soldier experiment in the Marvel Universe of the ’40s, came close, but that was a seven-issue limited series; this is Captain America.)
If you know anything about comics fans and their attachment to specific iterations of iconic characters, and about the kinds of emotional reactions for which Internet comment sections customarily serve as a pressure valve, I probably don’t have to explain that not everyone is psyched about Sam Wilson’s new role. If you’re on alert for examples of the theoretical encroachment upon our freedoms by something people are apparently still calling “political correctness” in 2014, the fact that there’s now a black Captain America — like the presence of a female God of Thunder in the pages of Thor, and a Pakistani American Ms. Marvel in Ms. Marvel, and a Spider-Man who’s half-black and half-Mexican in the alternate-universe title Ultimate Spider-Man, and the casting of Idris Elba as a Norse god in the Thor movies — is hell-in-a-handbasket stuff. And the fact that everybody knows these status quo changes are publicity-driven and temporary provides change-averse fans (and, let’s be honest, black-superhero-averse fans, too) with rhetorical cover. The notion that the person in the Captain America suit should be white because he’s always been white is a tautology with obvious racist underpinnings; it’s harder to refute the argument that introducing a nonwhite Cap is just a cynical publicity stunt, because it isn’t not that.
This Rae Sremmurd cover doesn’t help disprove that idea, either. Nothing says “calculated PR move” like slapping this summer’s hottest teenageish pop-rappers on the cover of a book they’re not actually in. On the other hand: It’s a picture of Rae Sremmurd! Patrolling the No Flex Zone with their cool new friend Captain America! With Slim Jimmy and Swae Lee drawn to look uncannily like the Yakuza-fighting orphans Black and White from the classic manga series Tekkonkinkreet! I’m as jaded as anybody about the motivations of corporations and of Marvel in particular (which, like Grantland, is owned by Disney.) Would it be a whole lot cooler if Marvel put 10 percent of the effort it currently puts into promoting gender/race-swapped versions of brand-name superheroes into creating new nonwhite/non-male characters and growing its roster of nonwhite/non-male creators? Sure. Is daring to posit a black character as the embodiment of patriotism and lawful-goodness in 2014 really an achievement worth taking a victory lap on? Because at the end of the day, what’s Sam Wilson? A ruggedly handsome adult with great references. He can wear the archetype without a lot of alterations. Slim Jimmy and Swae Lee are African-American men aged 19 and 20. This is not a demographic group with a heroic reputation in the popular consciousness; if anything, it’s one that many people learn to fear and distrust on general principles, sometimes with tragic results. Because their depictions of the fantastic depend on the establishment of a realistic context, comics are powerful ratifiers of what and who is normal, average, regular. This picture of Rae Sremmurd enforcing the one rule of the No Flex Zone with their new friend Captain America is important because it tells kids who look like Rae Sremmurd that Captain America stands with them, and that any Captain America would.CLOSE Hadley Malcolm hosts USA NOW on a new "game" that has teens trying to knock random passersby unconscious with a single punch. (USA TODAY, USA NOW)
Teens try to knock out random victims with one punch.
"Knockout game" footage (Photo11: CBS via LiveLeak) Story Highlights Knockout has been blamed for at least two deaths
The 'game' involves random attacks on the street
A violent game blamed for at least two deaths could be gaining popularity with urban teens as brutal videos go viral.
"Knockout," sometimes called "One-Hitter-Quitter," involves randomly selecting a pedestrian and punching them in the face or head with a goal of knocking them unconscious.
Knockout has caused deaths in New York and St. Louis, and attacks in Chicago, Washington and elsewhere, police say.
"This type of aggressive behavior is very troubling," said Catherine Bradshaw, a deputy director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Prevention of Youth Violence.
"They're clearly modeling this type of behavior," said Bradshaw, who cited violent YouTube clips, video games and movies as numbing young people to such aggressive acts. "You get that repeated exposure and you no longer have that empathy for the target."
Although viral videos are not a sole cause for this type of behavior, Bradshaw said, they can skew the worldview of individuals who are already attracted to violence.
One YouTube video that has drawn more than 560,000 views shows a teacher being punched and falling on his face. Later in the video, a young man explains that teens play Knockout "for the fun of it."
"Little kids run around and hit people and knock them out," he said. "Even though they shouldn't be doing it, people do it."
Contributing: Mola Lenghi, WUSA-TV
Read or Share this story: http://usat.ly/1bYtiU3The new Skyrim DLC: Hearthfire was released today and we have a review, as well as some tips for players getting started on the homefront.
As we did for Dawnguard, here we will discuss if the new Hearthfire DLC for Skyrim is worth the money and how it stacks up to some of the expectations for it.
Hearthfire was released today as a DLC for XBox at a whopping cost of 400MS Points or $5. That right there makes it hard to deny that it will be worth the cost, but will it be the right fit for every player? Not necessarily...
What does the add-on do for you?
It will allow you to purchse property in three of the holds (essentially the three holds where you didn't get to buy property in the standard game, excluding Winterhold - probably due to getting the arch-mage quarters). So, ignoring the "hold" names and giving you city names, your choices are: Dawnstar, Falkreath and Morthal. Or of course, all three if you desire.
Once you purchse the property and travel there, you will find a work area where you can begin planning and constucting your home. Though made up of many smaller stages, the main construction consists of five parts: First you build a small home and can simply use that if you wish. If you want something larger however, you will then be able to add onto that small home, turning it into essentially an entry hall for the main two story structure that is built. The final three steps will be wings on each side and rear of the house.
Your options on the wings are where you get a chance to customize your home a bit. Unfortunately, though there are enough options to fill your home full of all sorts of shelves, mannequins, weapons racks, etc; you will not be able to create entire wings to each specialty or 'theme' there is for characters; instead you will have to pick and choose. For example, options consist of armory, trophy room, storage room, enchanting tower, alchemy tower, library, kitchen, and green house - but you will only end up with three of those once your wings are added on. So if you play as a warrior, you will be able to create something grand with armories, trophy rooms and more. A mage can create a home with three tower wings for library, enchanting and alchemy. Someone after a more standard home can create wings with a kitchen, green house and storage. So unless you purchase all the homes and create different themes for each, you won't have it all in one home. Though, like I first said, you will be able to have enough storage and display options to still have access to everything a complete jack-of-all-trades adventurer will need in one home, you just won't get entire "theme" wings for everything.
The outside of the home can also be customized a bit with animal pens, stables, smelter, smithing areas and a few other options. You can also add farm animals, carraige drivers and more after you get your steward. The three different homes also have one unique outside options a piece: Falkreath gets a beehive if you desire, Morthal a fishery and Dawnstar a Mill. New animations have been added for working the mill, as well as working the Oven in the possible kitchen add-on.
A few tips for players diving into home-building:
Each property will come with enough supplies, sans Iron - you may want to stock up on Iron Ingots to make nails, hinges and more - to build the small home option. Once you decide to add onto that, you'll have to gather supplies. Sawed Logs can be purchased at the Half-Moon mill in Falkreath. If you speak to the woman there, she says she only serves Falkreath, but whatever logs you buy from her go into a "pile" that shows at any of the homes for use. Whether it was a bug or not for me on my playthrough, no other mill offered the option to buy logs, nor did cutting them myself add to my total.
You will also need large quantities of quarried stone and clay, both of these can be found on your property in unlimited quantities. Check the surrounding stone around your property, you'll find a section (usually with a pick-axe beside it) that has some slightly whitened veins through the grey rock and will give you the option to mine the rock. The clay is usually found resembling a dirt pile near the log stack in each area. For the rest of the materials you are on your own. Iron Ingots, you will need A LOT of them, especially if you get into buildling your own furniture as well. Other new materials like straw, glass, and goat horns you can buy from a general store (like Belethor's in Whiterun for example).
You have your new home, what now?
You have two options for decorating your home. One is to begin building all the pieces to go into your home yourself with the little mini-workbenches in each room. The other is to tell your steward to decorate the room for you. This works just like buying a home and decorations from a steward previously, in that you just leave and come back and it's all set up.
In some areas, you will have to put a little work into regardless though: your trophy room will need to have the trophies picked out and set up by you, your steward will only set the trophy bases up. And your garden/greenhouse areas will have to be planted with whatever sort of plant you wish to grow. Once done though, the house should work like any other in the vanilla game and allow you to decorate mannequins, fill bookshelves, and more.
How the heck do I get a steward?
The answer to this was easier than I made it. After checking around with Jarl's or the Bard's College about hiring a bard I finally just grabbed Lydia and took her with me. As soon as we arrived at the property the option to make her steward appeared.
Once she became the steward, additional dialogue options appeared and I was able to tell her to stock the stables and animal pens with horses, cows and chickens; hire a carriage driver and/or bard, and furnish any rooms I wanted.
Personally I went with having Lydia furnish my rooms after playing around with building furniture and finding out that you don't really get any customizing options other than choosing to not build one or two things. You don't get to choose where furniture or decorations go, they just appear there when you create them or a blank spot stays there.
What else can I do with a home?
Well, what good is creating a home without a family. You always had the spouse option before in Skyrim, but now you can visit the orphanage in Riften and adopt children. You may also find a couple orphan kids wandering cities now for adoption as well (like the little boy in Dawnstar always running food back and forth to the mines). I did not move my children to any of the new homes because I was still building at the time. I had already visited the steward in Whiterun and converted my alchemy lab there into a children's room so that was the only options of where to move them at the time.
These options will be about the only clue you get initially that you've added the DLC. A courier will show up if you are a homeowner and tell you the steward has new decoration options for you (the children's room) and he will also give you a note about adoption. Other than this, you'll have to visit the Jarl's (or primarily their stewards if you've already done favors for the Jarl) of the other holds and talk to them about buying property. If you haven't visited a hold before, you will have to do a few favors for the Jarl before they will sell you property. You don't necessarily have to be Thane (though you won't get a new housecarl/steward if you aren't), but usually you have to do enough things in the hold to fall a notch or two under earning the Thane title to be allowed to buy property.
New Achievements!
Of note: to earn "Master Architect" you don't just have to build three houses, you have to build three homes complete with main halls and the three wing options.
What came up short?
Well, doesn't everything come up short for all of our dreams and expectations? So let's put aside any flights of fancy we have and look at a few things that might have realistically been done better.
All three homes are exactly the same -- The exteriors of the homes are all identical with the exception of choosing a tower wing instead of room wing. Not that they aren't gorgeous, but I sort of expected the exteriors to be unique to tha particular area the way the previous home purchases each had a unique style to them. I do have to say, if having one style was the only option though, they did choose a good looking design.
Decoration options were disappointing -- I wasn't expecting to create something on par with a totally customized modded home, but I was hoping to be able to pick where a book shelf would end up, or where a plaque would hang on the wall. Even if it was just a choice between certain places, it would have been nice. But as it is, you get the same option as when you buy a home in the standard game and that is the docorations/furnishings just go to their assigned spots.
That is really all I thought should have been a little better realistically. I'm sure we can all come up with a million other things we'd love to see done, but those were two things I think wouldn't have increased what the add-on was, which was just a home building mod. The only other idea I want to mention, wasn't one I expected myself but did see players discussing on a couple skyrim forums and that is item manipulation. (Where you can pick up a plate or other object and move it around) Some were hoping for this to improve being able to decorate homes by making it easier to pick things up, rotate them and set them where you want them (and have them stay there) but it did not change with this DLC. So if you love to decorate your homes, you'll still have to do the same tricks you did before to get new things on shelves and tables.
Was the DLC worth the money?
I play Skyrim both on XBox and PC and there has been a lot of talk about how mods make this DLC irrelevant for PC users. That is true is some regards.
Let me talk XBox players first (I'm leaving PS3 out of this for now because of all the issues they've had with adding Dawnguard, we have no idea what the status will be for that console). If you are a casual gamer (hard to imagine casually playing Skyrim, but I suppose it's possible) you may not get much from this DLC if you have completed everything unless you plan on another playthrough. There really is nothing added other than the three home options and adoption and if you don't plan on adventuring anymore, then you probably don't need to build some homes to go back and forth from. However, with the many players that dive into role-playing builds for their skyrim characters, I believe they will get a lot out of this inexpensive DLC. The homes are all good quality in appearance - think the Solitude home interior and you will be able to create a home with everything you need in it: smelter, smithing, enchanting, alchemy, all the storage you could possibly need and more. This add-on is a great option for players still working through the game or starting a new character and will allow them to have, once completed, what is the best home in the game.
Now for PC players. I have two views on this: 1- It's been compared to other "build your home" mods and frankly, I've tried them. They are neat and I don't like to knock mods because they are free and community developed, so they are like a gift. But since I was not the first (or last) to make the comparison, I'll put my two cents in... the Hearthfire DLC homes are superior to the homes I've seen that allow similar "do-it-yourself" construction from mods. BUT this takes me to my number 2- Several other, already completed home mods are far superior to what the completed Hearthfire homes are. Granted, you'll still have all the options you need with a Hearthfire home, but if you find a home mod you love, chances are, you will not be able to best it with this DLC. The customization and decoration (if the creator put it together in a way you love) is far superior to the rather standard way the Hearthfire homes come together. Personally I can probably think of half a dozen home mods off the top of my head I would use for my PC player home over the hearthfire homes. The only additional thought here is perhaps if Heathfire comes to PC, it will give modders additional tools to improve their own build-your-own-home mods. This is of course, assuming it even comes to the PC as no official announcement has been made about it.
Official Bethesda Hearthfire info siteUnited we stand, divided we fall. In the past couple of years we've seen the deaths of Sandra Bland, Freddie Gray, Eric Garner and dozens of others as a result of police brutality. Celebrities worldwide have spoken out against the killings of so many African-America men and women in the United States, and Tip has just become the latest to show his support for the Black Lives Matter movement - with a twist.
Last night (Oct. 3) during TV One's Triumph Awards, T.I. took to the stage and surprised everyone with his spoken word poem, "United We Stand." "United we stand/ Because we created a hashtag for Sandra Bland / Jumped off the front of the ship and dove into the Internet waves / Swimming with DMs, likes, comments/ Not noticing how much it makes us slaves," Tip began, addressing those who only seem to be "taking action" on social media. "Chained by man-made device small enough to fit into the palm of our hand / I guess that's made it easy to swipe to the left and scroll to the next / And forget about Sandra Bland / United we stand."
Does Tip have a point? Let us know if you think social media has either helped or weakened the Black Lives Matter movement below.
T.I.'s "United We Stand"
"United we stand/ Because we created a hashtag for Sandra Bland
Jumped off the front of the ship and dove into the Internet waves
Swimming with DMs, likes, comments/ Not noticing how much it makes us slaves
Chained by man-made device small enough to fit into the palm of our hand
I guess that's made it easy to swipe to the left and scroll to the next
And forget about Sandra Bland
United we stand
Because we wore hoodies and t-shirts that read 'Black Lives Matter'
But, 'Quick homie take this flick
Gotta make sure all my followers see this fresh 'fit'
Are we really about the movement or more concerned with our follower count growing fatter?
Secondary to revolutionary does not exist
Our society's issues are deeper than social media posts, there's a long list
And if you think solely making them a trending topic will solve them
Well, then, you're a part of the problem
We are Trayvon Martin
We are Jordan Davis
We are Eric Garner
We are Tamir Rice
We are Walter Scott
We are Eric Harris
We are Freddie Gray
And We are Sandra Bland
United we stand.Waxangel Profile Blog Joined September 2002 United States 27026 Posts #1
*The rankings are based on total play time on PC bang computers included in Gametrics' sample.
According to Gametrics ( www.gametrics.com ), Korea's most cited PC bang usage resource, Overwatch came in third place in this week's rankings with a 7.71% share. FIFA Online 3 was the game to lose its spot, dropping to fourth place with a 6.92% share. League of Legends retained #1 for the 198th straight week with a 37.6% share, while Sudden Attack (Korea's most popular FPS) took second place with 15.51%. Administrator Hey HP can you redo everything youve ever done because i have a small complaint?
ZeromuS Profile Blog Joined October 2010 Canada 12804 Posts #2 Wow, a not sudden attack shooter did reasonably well in Korea? Interesting. I wonder if that will continue or if it was just the open beta hype.
Thanks for the info wax! Strategy Overwatch is awesome | Support is the best role | @TL_ZeromuS | www.twitch.tv/Zeromus_
JimmyJRaynor Profile Blog Joined April 2010 Canada 12532 Posts #4 in google trends Overwatch is well above LoL for South Korea. Ray Kassar To David Crane : "you're no more important to Atari than the factory workers assembling the cartridges"
Manit0u Profile Blog Joined August 2004 Poland 13901 Posts #5 How can Sudden Attack, which is practically a CS clone be so popular? Why not play CS instead? Time is precious. Waste it wisely.
Cyro Profile Blog Joined June 2011 United Kingdom 19162 Posts Last Edited: 2016-05-12 23:45:42 #6 On May 11 2016 05:35 ZeromuS wrote:
Wow, a not sudden attack shooter did reasonably well in Korea? Interesting. I wonder if that will continue or if it was just the open beta hype.
Thanks for the info wax!
Blizzard just announced that 9.7m people played open beta. A huge step up from some thousands in closed beta!
that's part of why i was surprised to see TL and others picking up their teams during the closed beta, though i didn't expect Overwatch to be quite that big. We will see when it comes to sales how well the game does.
Also kinda related.. Blizzard just announced that 9.7m people played open beta. A huge step up from some thousands in closed beta!that's part of why i was surprised to see TL and others picking up their teams during the closed beta, though i didn't expect Overwatch to be quite that big. We will see when it comes to sales how well the game does.Also kinda related.. http://i.imgur.com/dSIxZoN.png "oh my god my overclock... I got a single WHEA error on the 23rd hour, 9 minutes" -Belial88
JimmyJRaynor Profile Blog Joined April 2010 Canada 12532 Posts #7 i'm predicting 5 million units sold by the end of the first week. Ray Kassar To David Crane : "you're no more important to Atari than the factory workers assembling the cartridges"
NewSunshine Profile Joined July 2011 United States 3814 Posts #8 On May 13 2016 08:38 Cyro wrote:
Also kinda related.. Also kinda related.. http://i.imgur.com/dSIxZoN.png
I hope that means what I think it means... I hope that means what I think it means... "If you find yourself feeling lost, take pride in the accuracy of your feelings." - Night Vale
amazingxkcd Profile Blog Joined September 2010 GRAND OLD AMERICA 15736 Posts #9 On May 13 2016 08:28 Manit0u wrote:
How can Sudden Attack, which is practically a CS clone be so popular? Why not play CS instead?
sudden attack is free sudden attack is free The world is burning and you rather be on this terrible website discussing video games and your shallow feelings
Dodgin Profile Blog Joined July 2011 Canada 38849 Posts #10 On May 13 2016 12:24 amazingxkcd wrote:
Show nested quote +
On May 13 2016 08:28 Manit0u wrote:
How can Sudden Attack, which is practically a CS clone be so popular? Why not play CS instead?
sudden attack is free sudden attack is free
Is that relevant when you're at a PC bang? I thought they had paid games pre installed? Is that relevant when you're at a PC bang? I thought they had paid games pre installed?
deth2munkies Profile |
Japanese advance. Porter, having orders to stabilise the position, took command of Maroubra Force on 10 September. By this time, the 2/14th and 2/16th Battalion were so reduced in strength that they were formed into a combined force fielding a company strength from each. It was reinforced by the 3rd Battalion and by the 2/1st Pioneer Battalion, although the latter did not move forward. The 25th Brigade under Eather was being sent forward to relieve the situation. As he prepared to attack, Eather assumed command of Maroubra Force.[357][notes 39]
Porter had positioned the composite battalion astride the track on the Ioribaiwa ridgeline, running from the main range to the northwest. The track followed a spur-line falling north toward Ofi Creek. The 3rd Battalion was positioned on the ridge to its immediate right on the eastern side of the track. It was the major ridgeline before Imita Ridge and the head of the track. Eather planned to attack, advancing past Porters' flanks with two of his battalions—the 2/31st Battalion on the western flank and the 2/33rd Battalion on the eastern flank. The 2/25th Battalion was his reserve. It took up a position on the track behind Porter's force. On the night 13–14 September, the 25th Brigade bivouacked to the rear of Porter's force ready to advance. As Eather's battalions were deploying, the Japanese attacked. Eather immediately called off the attack and adopted a defensive posture. This had the effect of placing his advancing battalions on either flank and significantly increasing his frontage.[357]
From Brigade Hill, Kusonose had continued to pursue the Australians with the 2nd/144th and 3rd/144th Battalions. Horii had halted his main force awaiting permission to continue the advance. Kusonose's initial attack was made with half of the 3rd/144th Battalion advancing along the axis of the track, while the 2nd/144th Battalion was to make a flanking attack from the west. Kusonose was able to bring fire on the Australian positions from eight guns. Fighting continued through the day but both attacks had been held. An attack on 15 September was made by his reserve, the second half of the 3rd/144th Battalion against what he thought was the eastern flank of the Australian force. Unaware that Maroubra Force had been reinforced, this lodged in a gap between the Australian 3rd Battalion and the 2/33rd Battalion. Counter attacks by two companies of the 2/25th and two companies of the 2/33rd Battalion that day were unable to dislodge the Japanese from this foothold.[notes 40][357]
Fighting on 16 September continued much as it had on the previous day, although the Japanese lodged between the 3rd Battalion and the 2/33rd Battalion took to the high-ground—Sankaku Yama (Triangle Mountain). From there, they compromised Eather's communication with the 2/33rd Battalion. Feeling his position was vulnerable, he requested and received permission from Allen to withdraw back to Imita Ridge, with Allen stressing that there could be no further withdrawal. Eather commenced the withdrawal from 11:00 am, which Anderson describes as, "well-organised and orderly".[357]
Eather has been criticised, particularly by the author, Williams, for disengaging from battle too soon and ceding victory to Kusonose when the latter was at an impasse and frustrated. Having committed his reserve, Kusonose was still unable to break the Australian defence.[357]
Interlude – Imita Ridge [ edit ]
A 25-pounder gun of the 14th Field Regiment being pulled into position near Uberi. (AWM026855)
On 17 September, Eather was able to consolidate his position on Imita Ridge. The 2/33rd Battalion had been tasked to delay any further Japanese advance. A number of ambushes were set with mixed results. The Australian position, near the head of the track substantially resolved the difficulty of supply and the force was soon to be bolstered by the arrival of the 16th Brigade. Two 25-pounder guns of the 14th Field Regiment would at last be able to provide artillery support to Maroubra Force.[365]
As the Japanese had advanced from Brigade Hill, a programme of patrolling was instigated to secure the flank approaches to Port Moresby. This utilised the 2/6th Independent Company extensively to patrol from Laloki along the Goldie River toward Ioribaiwa and for other tasks. Jawforce was raised from rear details of the 21st Brigade to patrol the eastern flank and approach from Nauro to Jawarere. Honner Force was raised with orders to attack Japanese supply lines between Nauro and Menari. Though the conceived plan came to nought through supply difficulties, it patrolled the western flank to the limit of its supply without encounter. [notes 41]
Upon reaching Ioribaiwa, the lead Japanese elements began to celebrate—from their vantage point on the hills around Ioribaiwa, the Japanese soldiers could see the lights of Port Moresby and the Coral Sea beyond. They made no concerted attempt to advance on Eather's position at Imita Ridge.
In this interlude, Eather patrolled toward Ioribaiwa, both to harass the Japanese and to gather intelligence on their disposition. By 27 September, he issued orders to his battalion commanders for an "all-out" assault the following day. The attack found that Ioribaiwa had been abandoned and the artillery fired by the Australians had been without effect. Patrols followed up immediately, with one of the 2/25th Battalion finding that by 30 September, Nauro was unoccupied. Ordered to withdraw, the position at Ioribaiwa had been abandoned by the last Japanese troops during the night of 26 September.
Second phase – Australian counter-offensive [ edit ]
The Japanese withdrawal along the Kokoda Track
The 25th Brigade, to which the 3rd Battalion was attached, commenced its advance against the Japanese and the 16th Brigade followed to occupy the positions on Imita Ridge. Allen was conscious of the supply difficulties he would encounter and moderated his advance accordingly but was pressured by Blamey and MacArthur to pursue what they perceived to be a fleeing enemy. In fact though, Horii's force had made a clean break and withdrawn back to a series of four defensive positions prepared in advance. These were the responsibility of the Stanley Detachment, which was based on the 2/144th Battalion. The first two positions were forward near the northern ends of the two tracks north from Kagi—the main Myola track and the original track, also known as the Mount Bellamy Track. The third position overlooked Templeton's Crossing, where the two tracks rejoined. The fourth positiWhile certain reports claimed that Apple will only have one new iPad version in stores this year, a 9.7-inch redesigned iPad Air 2 model supposed to offer better specs than its predecessor, Japanese Apple blog Macotakara has learned that a Retina iPad Mini 2 is also coming this week.
FROM EARLIER: iPad Air 2 concept brings the iPhone 6’s beautiful design to tablets
Previous reports suggested that Apple’s third iPad mini model, and the second-generation to pack a Retina display, will only launch at some point in 2015, with well-known Apple insider Ming-Chi Kuo also casting doubts on a 2014 Retina iPad mini 2 launch.
Macotakara says the new iPad mini will also have a Touch ID fingerprint sensor and a Retina display, although not many other details about the device are offered. Recent component leaks have revealed the iPad Air 2 will have a faster A8X processor and 2GB of RAM, while resources discovered in iOS 8.1 beta suggest some of Apple’s upcoming tablets may offer users “Retina HD” displays, or higher-resolution screens than current models.
The iPad mini is likely to have a similar design to the iPad Air 2, which is expected to be slimmer than last year’s iPad Air, and feature other changes when it comes to speaker grille, microphone placements, and volume buttons. Interestingly, the iPad Air 2 is going to lose the mute/orientation button, assuming recent leaks are accurate, in which case the Retina iPad mini is also expected to lack a mute button.
Macotakara also says that Apple on Thursday will introduce new Smart Covers and Smart Cases for the upcoming tablets.Nicolas Roche: The last five days have been hell for me, I can't wait for rest day
After another long post-stage transfer, we arrived to our hotel so late last night that I was only finished massage at 11.30, which is the latest I've ever had massage on a race.
Usually you look forward to getting a rub after each stage, loosening out stiff muscles after a hard day in the saddle but after crashing twice on this race, I've sometimes been in more pain on the massage table than on the bike.
While the cuts and scrapes on my right knee, hip and elbow have healed up nicely, my knee and hip have really swollen up over the last few days and massage has become almost as torturous as a big mountain stage.
Despite our late arrival to last night's hotel, we were up early again this morning for another mammoth day in the mountains.
With seven categorised climbs on the menu today, and over half of the 185km stage uphill, we had to be careful not to burn ourselves out chasing moves or trying to get in the early breakaways this morning.
I think everyone else was scared of today's saw-tooth stage profile too, because when a group of five riders went clear as soon as the flag dropped at the bottom of the third-category Alto de Aristebano, the peloton had about as much interest as a cheap Credit Union loan.
When the gap grew to three minutes, a few more attacks came on the climb and by the top, after 14km, five more had joined the lead group.
With no team willing to take up the chase on the front of the peloton though, we rolled along, taking it quite easy over the two uncategorised climbs that followed as well as the second-category Alto de Piedtratecha after 45km.
Even though the 10 leaders opened a massive gap, which peaked at 23 minutes, with Franck Schleck of Trek factory Racing the best-placed rider in the move, over 40 minutes down on race leader Fabio Aru, there was no panic in the peloton.
Then, slowly but surely, the Katusha team of Spanish rider Joaquin Rodriguez, who had begun the day just one second behind race leader Aru, began to up the tempo and the lead was cut to around 15 minutes as we approached the second-category Alto del Cordal after 140km.
Even though there were two more climbs to come after that, the Tinkoff-Saxo team ramped up the pace for their third-placed Polish climber Rafal Majka and the sudden acceleration saw the fatigued peloton explode.
I went backwards almost immediately and found myself in a little group with team-mates Geraint Thomas and Salvatore Puccio, while Vasil Kyryienka, Ian Boswell and Sergio Henao clung onto the front group with our best-placed rider Mikel Nieve.
Usually when the peloton splits like that with 40km and three mountains still to get over, there are shouts of 'grupetto' and everyone gets together and forms a big group to share the work to the finish.
Today though, there were genuine fears that if we didn't continue to ride hard we might finish outside the daily time limit of 20 per cent of the winner's time, and be eliminated from the race.
Having begun the climb 14 minutes behind the leaders already, everyone kept riding at a steady tempo to the top.
squeezed
On the descent there was a crash on the first bend and our group, which had swelled to about 15, had to really slow down as we squeezed past the medical cars and motorbikes attending the two fallen riders.
After the back portion of the peloton merged on the 6km descent, it was time to go back up again, this time tackling the 10km long first-category Alto de la Cobertoria.
Soon there were riders all over the place and by the top, two big grupettos had formed with one more climb remaining.
The final 6km Alto Ermita de Alba ascent was nuts hard and was so steep that everyone just did their own thing to get to the top as the race for this Vuelta unfolded further up the slopes. I rode up the Especial Category climb in a tiny gearing of 39x32 but was still struggling to haul myself to the line in the last 3km, finishing somewhere in the middle of a bedraggled and well-spread-out group of 100 riders over 28 minutes down on stage winner Schleck, while the second grupetto finished a further four minutes back.
In the fight between the overall contenders, Mikel managed to distance his nearest rivals Alejandro Valverde of Movistar, Esteban Chaves of Orica GreenEdge and Daniel Moreno of Katusha to finish 13th on the stage and move up to fifth place overall, which is a fantastic result.
Thanks to Mikel, Sergio and Boz we held onto our lead in the team classification today but our overnight advantage of 11-and-a-half minutes over Movistar has been slashed to just two-and-a-half minutes now.
As he is in the top ten overall, Mikel got a helicopter ride to our rest day hotel in Burgos, courtesy of the race organisers, while the rest of us are now on the team bus.
The last five days have been hell for me, so I can't wait for tomorrow's rest day to come.
I just have to get this 300km transfer out of the way first.
Irish IndependentThe food crisis for wildlife in the North mirrors that of citizens of the reclusive state, with the World Food Programme reporting that 82 percent of households do not have acceptable consumption during the lean season.
The institute has tagged four of the Eurasian black vultures, which are also known as monk vultures, with GPS tracker units and monitored their annual migrations between the most southerly tip of South Korea in early April and their arrival in their breeding grounds in the far west of Mongolia in late May.
On the return journeys, the trackers show the vultures lingering for several weeks in China's Liaoning Province, which borders North Korea, before attempting the flight to the Jangdan Peninsula, on the Southern side of the heavily fortified border that divides the two nations.
Mr Lee told the newspaper that vultures fly by gliding, rather than flapping their winds, and require thermals to remain aloft. That means they are unable to travel for long distances over oceans and are forced to traverse North Korea on their migrations.
The experts have discovered that the vultures, which are listed by the South Korean government as natural monuments, are able to travel a maximum of 210 miles a day.Cyril Walker rose from obscurity to become U.S. Open champion in 1924 and then fell off the map of the golfing landscape. AP Photo
SPRINGFIELD, N.J. -- It was raining on the night of Aug. 5, 1948, when a diminutive, disheveled man shuffled into a Hackensack, New Jersey, police station. The man had nothing left, nowhere else to go. He asked the sergeant, Ralph Pinot, if he could sleep in a jail cell to have shelter for the night. The sergeant obliged.
The man's name was Cyril Walker. He was the 1924 U.S. Open champion. The next morning, he was found dead, slumped over on a chair in that jail cell.
The official cause of death was listed as pleural pneumonia. He was 55 years old.
Walker's remains are only 25 miles from Baltusrol Golf Club, site of this week's PGA Championship. Don't try looking for the gravesite. He was buried in a potter's field cemetery. There exists no headstone marking his name, no memorial of his greatest achievement.
The man he defeated in that U.S. Open, Bobby Jones, is routinely feted with flowers and golf balls, forming a shrine around his burial plot.
Walker's demise was contrastively unceremonious. His inglorious death closed the final chapter on a hard life, perhaps the most tragic of any major champion.
Born in Manchester, England, to parents William and Mary Jane, young Cyril began caddying at the age of 10. By his early 20s, he'd become a stout golfer himself, despite his small stature. Reports from the time list him at anywhere between 118 and 130 pounds. He emigrated to the United States, eventually finding a job as a golf professional at Shackamaxon Country Club in Scotch Plains, New Jersey., then at Englewood Golf Club in Englewood, New Jersey, a course which had hosted the 1909 U.S. Open. It was torn down a half-century later to build an approach ramp to the George Washington Bridge.
Walker found some moderate success as a player, winning the 1916 Indiana Open and 1921 Pennsylvania Open Championship. In the years 1921-23, he'd finished 13th, 40th and 23rd at the U.S. Open, but was never considered a serious contender for the title, even by his own standards.
He decided to enter the 1924 edition of the event at Oakland Hills Country Club in Bloomfield Township, Michigan, largely because he was on vacation nearby and wanted to make it more memorable.
Cyril Walker, far right, rose to the top of the golfing world with his 1924 U.S. Open victory over Bobby Jones. Then Walker's descent ended up with him dying in a jail cell in New Jersey. Kirby/Topical Press Agency/Getty Image
"If an outsider wins here, it will be a big fellow with the physical strength to stand the strain," the slight Walker told a reporter before the tournament. "Stamina and lucky breaks on the greens are what's going to win."
Apparently, he owned enough of each.
Walker opened the tournament with three matching scores of 74 for a 54-hole total of 222 that left him tied with defending champion Jones entering the final round. On that last day, Walker shocked the crowd and his opponent -- and maybe himself, too -- by posting a 75 that bested Jones by three and gave him the title.
For his victory, Walker earned $150,000 in fees and endorsements. The fortune would turn out to be a blessing and a curse.
Walker started playing more tournaments, growing increasingly unpopular with fellow players due to his slow play. How slow was he? Competitors in groups behind him were often issued a deck of cards by tournament officials, so they could play games of solitaire while waiting on him.
He was known to examine even the smallest pebbles anywhere around his ball. He would check the wind, then check it a few more times for good measure. He would take up to a dozen practice swings before every shot.
The greatest example of Walker's disregard for pace of play, though, came in the second round of the 1930 Los Angeles Open. According to multiple reports, marshals had tried to speed him along, to no avail. When a tournament official threatened disqualification on the sixth hole, Walker snarled, "You won't disqualify me. I'm Cyril Walker, a former U.S. Open champion. I've come 5,000 miles to play in your diddy-bump tournament, and I'll play as slow as I damned well please."
Three holes and more than an hour later, the same official informed Walker that he'd been disqualified for slow play. "The hell I am!" he responded, and continued to try and play. Two police officers were summoned to ask him to leave. When he balked, they physically removed him from the course, dumping him at the clubhouse doors.
In subsequent tournaments, Walker often played as a single, in the final tee time of the day.
It might not have been an excuse, but if there was a reason for his orneriness, it's that his U.S. Open fortune had already dried up.
One poor real estate investment led to another. He quickly squandered most of the money, then lost the rest of it in the stock market crash of 1929.
Walker made headlines again in 1933. Working as a pro at Saddle River Country Club in Paramus, New Jersey, he was arrested for pulling down signs erected by a neighboring club and was released on $500 bail. One year later, he posted scores of 88-85-81-80 to finish in last place in the 61-man field at what would become the first-ever Masters Tournament.
Bankrupt, retired, battling an alcohol addiction and estranged from his wife and son, Walker drifted from the professional golf scene just as abruptly as he'd once entered it. For years, his whereabouts weren't just unknown by the public; they were hardly even contemplated.
Editor's Picks Mickelson deferring pain of Open loss With no time to wallow in defeat after his loss at Royal Troon, Phil Mickelson hopes to put the recent past behind him and rekindle his winning ways at the PGA Championship.
Stenson soaking in Open win With no rest for the weary, Henrik Stenson aims to go two-for-two in majors at the PGA Championship. And if he doesn't win? The Swede has no qualms trying to figure it out as he goes.
Cowen never lost faith in Stenson Henrik Stenson and swing coach Pete Cowen stood together during the lofty highs and the lowly lows in the Swede's career. Now they are both reaping the benefits. 2 Related
In 1940, acting on a tip that the former U.S. Open champion was working as a caddie at a Miami Beach, Florida, municipal course, a reporter was dispatched to the scene. He found Walker, who corroborated the story.
He was living at a Salvation Army home, where lodging cost 25 cents each day. He was wearing a torn turtleneck maroon sweater, even on the hottest days, because that was the only shirt he owned. His prized possession was a wristwatch purchased for $1.50 -- vital to the punctuality of his caddying duties.
Walker told the reporter that he hadn't played golf in four years and doubted he could still break 80.
The news had been confirmed. His downward spiral had pulled him from the greatest heights of the golf world to a life of poverty.
At some point over the next eight years, he moved from Miami Beach caddie to part-time dishwasher in Hackensack, working at Madeline's Restaurant on Main Street, and living for a time at the YMCA next door.
There isn't much more information that exists about his final years.
We only know how the final chapter of this tragic life ended.
Cyril Walker, U.S. Open champion, a man who had once beaten the great Bobby Jones, died homeless and penniless, slumped over on a chair in that jail cell he'd requested for shelter.Quote TL;DR VERSION - READ BELOW TO SEE HOW I GOT THESE NUMBERS AND SOME IMPORTANT THINGS TO CONSIDER WHEN LOOKING AT THEM
UPDATED 6/15/2012
These numbers represent the average number of simultaneous concurrent logins over the past two weeks. This isn't the number of subscribers, or number of characters, it's an estimate of how many people are actually logged in at once. Transfer status is noted also (from xxx means the server is a destination server for server xxx, to xxx means that the server is an origin server that is being directed to the xxx server.)
Top 20 US Servers The Fatman (PvP US East) Population ≈ 2257.5 Destination for: Cho Mai, Firkrann Crystal, Hedarr Soongh, Kinrath Spider, Rwookrrorro, The Deadweight, Thendys Noori
Jedi Covenant (PvE US East) Population ≈ 1676.25 Destination for: Axial Park, Eidolon Security, Fort Garnik, Hanharr, Keetael, Keller's Void, Khoonda Militia, Ki-Ta Kren, Nathema, Sedyn Kyne, Telos Restoration Project, The Defenestrator
Drooga's Pleasure Barge (PvE US West) Population ≈ 1030 Destination for: Darth Xedrix, Fa'athra, Lord Praven, Mask of Nihilus, Master Gnost-Dural, Master Zhar Lestin, Perlemian Trade Route
The Harbinger (PvE US West) Population ≈ 800 Destination for: Empress Teta, Gauntlet of Kressh, Kaiburr Crystal, Krath, Namadii Corridor, Soresu, Wall of Light, Zaalbar
The Ebon Hawk (RP PvE US East) Population ≈ 660 Destination for: Kath Hound, Lord Adraas, Rubat Crystal, Sanctum of the Exalted, Shien
Canderous Ordo (PvE US East) Population ≈ 650 Destination for: Assassins of Sion, Juyo, Kaas City, Kathol Rift, Krayiss Obelisk, Master Dorak, The Constant, The Corsair, The Courageous, Whitebeam Run, Zez-Kai Ell
Jung Ma (RP PvP US East) Population ≈ 520 Destination for: Ajunta Pall, Ven Zallow
Lord Adraas (RP PvE US East) Population ≈ 460 To The Ebon Hawk
The Bastion (PvP US West) Population ≈ 420 Destination for: Black Vulkars, Daragon Trail, Dark Reaper, Infinite Empire, Mandalore the Indomitable, Nadd's Sarcophagus, Rakata Mind Prison, Shadowtown, The Crucible Pits, The Maw, Destination for: The Swiftsure, Warriors of the Shadow, Wound in the Force
Ajunta Pall (RP PvP US West) Population ≈ 370 To Jung Ma
The Swiftsure (PvP US West) Population ≈ 350 To The Bastion
Prophecy of the Five (PvP US East) Population ≈ 330 Destination for: Bondar Crystal, Davik's Estate, Death Wind Corridor, Gardens of Talla, Infinity Gate, Iron Citadel, Naddist Rebels, Saber of Exar Kun, Sword of Ajunta Pall, Terentatek, The Twin Spears, Veela, Anchorhead, Helm of Graush, Port Nowhere, Vulkar Highway
The Shadowlands (PvE US East) Population ≈ 310 Destination for: Dreshdae Cantina, Elysium, Giradda the Hutt, Grand Master Zym, Krayt Dragon, Sith Meditation Sphere, The Razor
Begeren Colony (RP PvE US West) Population ≈ 300 Destination for: Lord Ieldis, Vrook Lamar
Sanctum of the Exalted (RP PvE US East) Population ≈ 270 To The Ebon Hawk
Krayt Dragon (PvE US East) Population ≈ 260 To The Shadowlands
Lord Ieldis (RP PvE US West) Population ≈ 250 To Begeren Colony
Mind Trick (PvE US East) Population ≈ 250 Likely Canderous Ordo, Jedi Covenant, or The Shadowlands
Public Test (PvE US East) Population ≈ 250 Likely Canderous Ordo, Jedi Covenant, or The Shadowlands
Anchorhead (PvP US East) Population ≈ 247.5 To Prophecy of the Five
Top 20 Worldwide Servers The Fatman (PvP US East) Population ≈ 2257.5 Destination for: Cho Mai, Firkrann Crystal, Hedarr Soongh, Kinrath Spider, Rwookrrorro, The Deadweight, Thendys Noori
Jedi Covenant (PvE US East) Population ≈ 1676.25 Destination for: Axial Park, Eidolon Security, Fort Garnik, Hanharr, Keetael, Keller's Void, Khoonda Militia, Ki-Ta Kren, Nathema, Sedyn Kyne, Telos Restoration Project, The Defenestrator
Drooga's Pleasure Barge (PvE US West) Population ≈ 1030 Destination for: Darth Xedrix, Fa'athra, Lord Praven, Mask of Nihilus, Master Gnost-Dural, Master Zhar Lestin, Perlemian Trade Route
The Jedi Tower (PvE EUR German) Population ≈ 950 Destination for: Dreypa's Oubliette, Handmaidens of Atris, Murakami Orchid, Opila Crystal, Stereb Cities, The Cinzia
Tomb of Freedon Nadd (PvP EUR English) Population ≈ 920 Destination for: Ahto City, Chuundar, Hex Droid, Kai-kan, Niman,Scepter of Ragnos, Senator Contispex, Starstorm One, Tassaa Bareesh, The Exile's Crystal, The Kumumgah, The Ravager, The Shadow Runner, Tott Doneeta, Trayus Academy, Ula Vii, Uthar Wynn, Basilisk Droid, Bloodworthy, Legions of Lettow
The Harbinger (PvE US West) Population ≈ 800 Destination for: Empress Teta, Gauntlet of Kressh, Kaiburr Crystal, Krath, Namadii Corridor, Soresu, Wall of Light, Zaalbar
The Red Eclipse (PvE EUR English) Population ≈ 780 Destination for: Dxun Battle Circle, Eye of Ashlanae, Flames of the Crucible, Goluud Corridor, Kellian Jarro, Ludo Kressh, Rogue Moon, Sluis Shipyards, The Arkanian Legacy
Gav Daragon (RP PvE APAC) Population ≈ 680 Unknown
Dalborra (PvE APAC) Population ≈ 660 Unknown
The Ebon Hawk (RP PvE US East) Population ≈ 660 Destination for: Kath Hound, Lord Adraas, Rubat Crystal, Sanctum of the Exalted, Shien
Canderous Ordo (PvE US East) Population ≈ 650 Destination for: Assassins of Sion, Juyo, Kaas City, Kathol Rift, Krayiss Obelisk, Master Dorak, The Constant, The Corsair, The Courageous, Whitebeam Run, Zez-Kai Ell
Master Dar'Nala (PvP APAC) Population ≈ 580 Unknown
Dune Bantha (PvE EUR English) Population ≈ 560 Likely The Red Eclipse
Jung Ma (RP PvP US East) Population ≈ 520 Destination for: Ajunta Pall, Ven Zallow
Huntmaster (RP PvP EUR French) Population ≈ 480 Unknown
Lord Adraas (RP PvE US East) Population ≈ 460 To The Ebon Hawk
Vanjervalis Chain (RP PvE EUR German) Population ≈ 440 Destination for: Cassus Fett, Zayne Carrick
Mantle of the Force (PvE EUR French) Population ≈ 420 Destination for: Hssiss, Kissai Caste, Phateem Halls of Knowledge, Vodo-Siosk Baas,
The Bastion (PvP US West) Population ≈ 420 Destination for: Black Vulkars, Daragon Trail, Dark Reaper, Infinite Empire, Mandalore the Indomitable, Nadd's Sarcophagus, Rakata Mind Prison, Shadowtown, The Crucible Pits, The Maw, Destination for: The Swiftsure, Warriors of the Shadow, Wound in the Force
The Progenitor (RP PvE EUR English) Population ≈ 420 Destination for: Shaltin Tunnels, Trask Ulgo
HOW I GOT THOSE NUMBERS, WHY I DID THIS, THINGS TO CONSIDER, OTHER STATS:
Originally, this exercise was to try and predict the path of server transfer. Now, that process is mostly done and I'm monitoring the population out of simple observational curiousity.
As you may already know,
1 = Light
2 = Standard
3 = Heavy
4 = Very Heavy
5 = Full
It then checks server status on all the servers every hour and records that number. It calculates the average of all of those hourly recordings for the last 14 days and reports than number as "ø". (
This guy went and did a *lot* of work. Basically, he wrote a program to tell him when a server changed status, and then he went and /whoed the population of the server to see what actual population number is associated with what status.
http://inquisitive-myths.blogspot.co...er-status.html
He estimates, with plenty of variability in the data, that:
Light is up to about 500
Standard is up to about 1,500
Heavy is up to about 2,250-2,500(?) (Let's call this 2375 for now...)
Very Heavy is up to about 3,000
Full is greater than about 3,000
If you look at his data, you can see that sometimes a heavy server has 2000 people on it and sometimes it has 2500 people on it. Same kind of range (or more) for the other server statuses. Part of this is because people log on and log off while he's /who-ing the population, and part of this is because different servers might have different population levels and/or Bioware may alter those population levels. (So standard might be 1,500 on one server and 1,000 on a different server, or 1,500 today and 1,000 a month ago - we don't know.)
I think you can then use the two to estimate server population.
If ø is greater than 0, add the % ø is greater than 0 x 250 (where 250 is the average of 0 and the top end of the "light" status.)
So for Kaiburr Crystal, where the ø is 0.97, you'd have (0.97 x 250) and come up with a theoretical average population of 243.
The low phi servers are the ones that this analysis is most uncertain for, I think. I'm using 250 as my value for light. That could be, in all reality, 4 lost people or 499 people who are logged in all the time. So if my estimate is 250, the likely range is from 0.10x to 2x that. I can't detect a population less than a phi of 1, so if a server is really deserted, I can't tell. This is an uncertainty in the analysis that may lead to an overestimation or underestimation in the number of concurrent logins.
If ø is greater than 1, start with 250 plus the % ø is greater than 1 x 1000 (where 1000 is the average of the top end of light = 500, and the top end of standard = 1500).
So for my server, The Ebon Hawk, where the ø is 1.41, you'd add 250 plus (0.41 x 1000) and come up with a theoretical average number of concurrent logins of 660.
If ø is greater than 2, then add 250 + 1000 + the % ø is greater than 2 x 1937.5 (where 1937.5 is the average of the top end of standard = 1500, and the average top end of heavy 2375).
So for The Fatman, where the ø is 2.52, you'd add 250 + 1000 + plus (0.52 x 1937.5) and come up with a theoretical average number of concurrent logins of 2258.
Math is here - you're welcome to look at it yourself and see if you can find a better way to analyze this data. You'll also see tabs for previous analyses as well as summary tables for total and average populations by server type and region and a tab with transfer info.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/...WmdZUFE#gid=15
That means if you take the numbers from Torstatus representing the average population over the last two weeks for the top 20 US and worldwide servers you end up with the list above.
The catch here is realizing that this estimate is based on a 14 day average status, so that's dead slack times and peak times. The theoretical average population UNDERESTIMATES the peak population and OVERESTIMATES the off-peak population.
Keep in mind this is the average number of people logged in - it's probable that not every player is logged in all the time. If you think that 50% of the population is logged in all the time, double this number for the number of subscribers. If you think that 10% of the population is logged in all the time, then multiply this number by 10x for the number of subscribers. If you think that 5% of the population is likely to be concurrently logged in, then you end up with about 1.3 million subscribers, more or less.
For instance, if I say that there are 600 people, on average, logged into server X, in real life that might mean:
400 Stay at home parents login at noon and logout at 4.
600 School kids login at 4 and logout at 8.
800 Working people login at 8 and logout at 12 midnight.
800 College students login at 12 midnight and logout at 4.
600 Insomniacs login at 4 and logout at 8.
400 3rd shift workers login at 8 and logout at 12 noon.
So that's 600 AVERAGE LOGINS but it's 3,600 SUBSCRIBERS.
So here are some summary statistics:
Total estimated worldwide average number of simultaneous concurrent logins of all servers (24 hr average over the last 2 weeks as of 6/15/2012).
65,061
This is the 3rd time since I've been tracking numbers that there has been an increase, and this is the largest increase thus far (Wednesday was 62,923).
SERVERS BY AREA
APAC 3
EUR English 45
EUR French 16
EUR German 30
US East 82
US |
transmission with a dual-disc clutch, and a Hydra-matic six speed automatic with paddle-shift control. This is the first time the CTS-V will be offered in automatic transmission.
Chevrolet Tahoe Hybrid offers full size SUV functionality with lower emissions and 50 percent better fuel economy in city driving than its gasoline-only sibling. With 11.2 litres/100 km in city driving, the fuel efficiency of the world's first hybrid full-size SUV is similar to that of much smaller sedans.
The new Hummer H3T will be available with a Vortec 3.7 liter-in-line five cylinder engine with dual overhead cams and variable valve timing offers most os 255 horsepower at 5800 rpm, while torque at 327 Nm. The power to the wheels are transmitted via a five speed automatic gearbox.
Chevrolet Traverse, is an advance powertrain technologies featuring a new 3.6litre V6 engine with direct injection enables a satisfying balance of great performance and fuel efficiency enabling an output of 313 hp, it has excellent power and thrust. It even has the capability of towing 2400 kg. The 3.6 liter engine is mated to the Hydra-Matic 6T75 six speed automatic transmission, an advance transmission with clutch to clutch shift operation for front and all wheel drive vehicles.
The Cadillac Provoq fuel cell concept car 2009 is GM's vision for the future of luxury transportation: a hydrogen fuel cell crossover vehicle that continues the company's commitment to displace petrol through advance technology.It’s some consolation to think the soulless automata that will eventually replace you might also be cute enough to go viral. Just look at this video of orange package-sorting robots working in a warehouse operated by Chinese delivery giant Shentong. They’re capable of handling 200,000 items a day, a spokesperson for the company told the South China Morning Post, and can work 24/7 because they don’t have robot families or feelings of any sort! And just listen to that jangly music: this is basically Pixar!
The bot itself is actually called “Little Orange” and is one of a range of package-sorting devices made by Chinese company Hikvision. Human workers place packages on top of the seat cushion-sized Little Orange bots, with these items scanned and then ferried over to the correct chute. Each bot can carry parcels up to 8 kilograms in weight and travels at a maximum speed of 9.8 feet per second.
A spokesperson for Hikvision told the Mail Online: “It would take workers five hours to sort the same number of parcels the robots sort in three hours. In addition, workers might make mistakes, handle parcels violently or become stressed and tired under high pressure.”
Of course, there’s no denying these robots do look cute, but it’s interesting to see clips like this go viral. What exactly is the attraction? Is it that the bots look so busy and industrious? Or has pop culture just taught us to anthropomorphize machines of all shapes and sizes? And does it even matter if we enjoy watching clips like this when automation really is taking human jobs? Please, fight it out in the comment section below, before we get robo-debaters to do it for you.President Obama’s Department of Homeland Security caught then released 68,000 aliens who had previously been convicted of a crime, a new report from the Center for Immigration Studies shows.
The report, provided to Breitbart News ahead of its late Sunday evening release, reviews internal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) metrics to conclude that the Obama administration released 35 percent–or 68,000–convicted criminal aliens back into the U.S. general population when they could have been deported. “The criminal alien releases typically occur without formal notice to local law enforcement agencies and victims,” CIS’s Jessica Vaughan, the report’s author, added.
By “criminal,” ICE means people who have been convicted of a misdemeanor or felony that is not a traffic violation. For instance, traffic violations like Driving Under the Influence of Alcohol or even vehicular manslaughter do not count toward this description of “criminal alien.” As for the definition of “alien,” ICE mostly means illegal aliens, though some are legal aliens when they are considered deportable legal aliens–which is possible for legal immigrants who have committed a serious crime, like a felony.
The documents also show ICE only deported a small fraction of the aliens they encountered overall.
“In 2013, ICE targeted only 195,000, or 25 percent, out of 722,000 potentially deportable aliens they encountered,” CIS’s Vaughan wrote. “Most of these aliens came to ICE’s attention after incarceration for a local arrest.”
This report comes out on the heels of a report from the office of Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) last week which found that only.08 percent of the aliens deported in 2013 were not serial immigration law violators or convicted of serious crimes.
In response to these findings from CIS that follow up on his office’s report last week, Sessions said immigration law in America has essentially ceased to exist.
“The preponderance of the evidence demonstrates that immigration enforcement in America has collapsed,” Sessions said. “Even those with criminal convictions are being released. DHS is a department in crisis. Secretary [Jeh] Johnson must reject the President’s demands to weaken enforcement further and tell him that his duty, and his officers’ duty, is to enforce the law – not break it. As Homeland Secretary, Mr. Johnson is tasked with ensuring the public safety and the rule of law. But Secretary Johnson is not meeting these duties.”
The CIS report also contains a breakdown per city of percentages of criminal aliens who were released back into the population. San Antonio’s 79 percent is the highest, where ICE encountered 36,228 criminal aliens and released 28,680 back into the general population in 2013. New York City’s 71 percent is next, where ICE agents encountered 7,571 criminal aliens and released 5,391 of them. Washington, D.C. follows that, with ICE agents encountering 8,688 criminal aliens and releasing 64 percent, or 5,558, of them into the public. Other cities with high percentages include Salt Lake City, Houston, Phoenix, Los Angeles, Atlanta, Newark, and Buffalo. Notably, many of these cities are not in border states, which means visa overstays and illegal aliens who crossed the border but migrated further inward are as much a problem as the actual U.S.-Mexico border in terms of stopping the flow and enforcing the law.
“These findings raise further alarm over the Obama administration’s pending review of deportation practices, which reportedly may further expand the administration’s abuse of ‘prosecutorial discretion,'” CIS’s Vaughan wrote. “Interior enforcement activity has already declined 40 percent since the imposition of “prosecutorial discretion” policies in 2011. Rather than accelerating this decline, there is an urgent need to review and reverse the public safety and fiscal harm cause by the president’s policies.”
Sessions echoed Vaughan’s concerns, saying the lack of enforcement for immigration laws further hurts the ability of American citizens to obtain employment.
“American citizens have a legal and moral right to the protections our immigration laws afford – at the border, the interior and the workplace,” Sessions said. “The administration has stripped these protections and adopted a government policy that encourages new arrivals to enter illegally or overstay visas by advertising immunity from future enforcement. Comments from top Administration officials, such as Attorney General Holder’s claim that amnesty is a civil right, or Vice President Biden’s claim that those here illegally are all US citizens (apparently including someone whose visa expired yesterday), demonstrate the administration’s increasing belief in an open borders policy the American public has always rejected.”Election authorities have so far seized over Rs 11 crore 'illegal cash'. (Representational Image)
Election authorities in the five poll-bound states have so far seized over Rs 11 crore 'illegal cash', with the maximum of Rs 7.44 crore being recovered in Tamil Nadu.Tamil Nadu is followed by Kerala where Rs 2.97 crore cash has been recovered by the authorities so far.In West Bengal, the figure stands at Rs 53.10 lakh while Rs 22.55 lakh has been seized from Assam. In Puducherry, Rs 15,000 illegal cash has been seized, the Commission said in New Delhi.The model code of conduct came into force on March 4 when the Assembly polls were announced to the five states.Assembly elections in West Bengal, Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Assam and union territory of Puducherry will be held between April 4 and May 16, spread over 43 days.The Commission, as part of its measures to curb black money and illegal funds in the polls, has deployed 'expenditure observers' drawn from central revenue services like the Income Tax and Customs and Excise departments. The Election Commission, in order to keep a track of huge cash spent during the polls, has also asked the Central Board of Direct Taxes and the Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU), both agencies under the Union Finance Ministry, to keep a strict vigil on movement of unaccounted cash.Now with actual pics and effects and stuff.
Junk Breaker
EARTH Warrior/Effect
LV4 1800/1000
(1): During your Main Phase 1, if this card was Normal Summoned this turn: You can Tribute this card; negate the effects of all face-up monsters this turn.
Kaiser Sea Snake
WATER Sea Serpent/Effect
LV8 2500/1000
You can only use the (1) effect of “Kaiser Sea Snake” once per turn.
(1) If your opponent controls a monster while you do not, you can Special Summon this card (from your hand).
(2) When this card is Special Summoned by its (1) effect: You can Special Summon 1 Level 8 Sea Serpent-Type monster from your hand or Graveyard, but its ATK and DEF each become 0.
(3) If this card was Special Summoned, its Level becomes 4 and its original ATK becomes 0.
SourceIn Architecture, Europe / By Tom / 11 June 2013
(Image: Wales Online, reproduced with permission)
Many of us dream of having our own private swimming pool. But here’s a twist on that concept – a home converted from an abandoned Victorian pool and baths. Located in Penarth, Wales, the five-bedroom seafront home is an inspiring example of adaptive reuse, retaining many of the building’s grand features and decorative brickwork.
(Image: Wales Online, reproduced with permission)
The 19th century municipal baths fell into disuse after the newer Penarth Leisure Centre opened in the 1980s. Despite a brief lease of life as a bar and bistro – called In At The Deep End – the Victorian baths eventually became abandoned.
(Image: Wales Online, reproduced with permission)
The building was bought-up slowly over the years by businessman Paul Smith. By 2005 it had been converted into four separate properties, with the main house put on the market for £1.2 million in July 2012.
(Image: Wales Online, reproduced with permission)
Looking out over Penarth‘s iconic Art Deco pier, the 5000 square foot house features exposed brickwork in the upstairs kitchen and living room area. Above, the decorative Victorian roof supports are an unmistakable reminder of the building’s past.
(Image: Wales Online, reproduced with permission)
The photographs below show the abandoned Penarth Baths before restoration. For another example of a converted Victorian swimming pool, check out Edinburgh’s Infirmary Street Baths, now Dovecot Studios, and be sure to browse the thumbnails below.
(Images: Ben Salter (website: The Open Boat), cc-3.0)
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With the heat wave over and cooler temperatures moving in, forecasters say there’s a chance of some rain falling on the Southland Wednesday afternoon.
According to the National Weather Service, there’s about a 20 percent chance of precipitation in the area Wednesday afternoon into Wednesday evening, along with a slight chance of thunderstorms.
“Any thunderstorms should first develop in the mountains Wednesday afternoon then drift to the south and southeast to the adjacent valleys, including the Ventura County valleys, Santa Clarita Valley, San Fernando Valley and San Gabriel Valley, especially closer to the foothills,” according to the NWS.
Forecasters noted that if thunderstorms do develop from the low-pressure system, there will be a chance of “brief heavy rain, small hail and dangerous cloud-to-ground lighting,” along with the possibility of localized street flooding.
In general, Wednesday will be mostly cloudy, with highs expected in the upper-60s to mid-70s.
A slight warm-up is expected by Friday.
— City News Service
After record-breaking heat, rain now expected in L.A. area was last modified: by
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Follow us:Competition commissioner changes position after new evidence about impact on rivals of Google’s proposals to settle case
Google’s anti-trust row with the European commission could turn into a case bigger than the one that cost Microsoft more than €2.2bn (£1.7bn), the outgoing competition commissioner warned on Tuesday.
In a dramatic change of position, Joaquín Almunia, the EC’s competition commissioner, told the European parliament that unless Google altered its offer to settle complaints, it could face a “statement of objections”, the formal path towards a fine that could equate to 10% of the company’s global revenue, or about $6bn (£3.7bn).
“Microsoft was investigated [by the EC] for 16 years, which is four times as much as the Google investigation has taken, and there are more problems with Google than there were with Microsoft,” Almunia told MEPs.
His comments marked a reversal from his position before the summer, when he was poised to accept Google’s third set of proposals to settle the long-running dispute, which he opened formally in November 2010. Rivals including Microsoft, was one of the complainants, have been delighted by the change in outlook.
Google controls more than 90% of the online search market in Europe, substantially more than in the US where it was cleared by the US federal trade commission in January 2013 of favouring its own searches to the detriment of consumers. The FTC said that any such favouring helped users.
Almunia’s intention to accept Google’s proposals collapsed over the summer following outspoken opposition from French and German politicians, lobbying groups, and other commissioners.
However, he told MEPs his change of position was due to “new factual evidence” about the impact on rivals of the proposals.
He added that the EC competition group could also open an investigation into preferential positioning for Google in its Android operating system, which is the most widely used smartphone software in Europe and the rest of the world.
He said there could be another investigation of the US search firm for “the possible diversion of internet traffic towards Google services which are not search services” – a remark thought to refer to the positioning of the YouTube video site and Google+ social network in search results.
Al Verney, a spokesman for Google, said in response: “We continue to work with the European commission to resolve their concerns.”
Almunia leaves office in October, and will hand the task of completing any Google inquiries to his successor, Margrethe Vestager.
In June, Almuni said companies including European publishers, a telecoms firm, an association of picture industries and photo libraries, and an advertising platform, had complained about Google taking advantage of its dominance to promote YouTube and the Google+ network.
Last week it emerged that Robert Thomson, chief executive of News Corporation, had written to Almunia to complain about Google’s dominance of the market.At the age of 19, Murat Kurnaz vanished into America's shadow prison system in the war on terror. He was from Germany, traveling in Pakistan, and was picked up three months after 9/11. But there seemed to be ample evidence that Kurnaz was an innocent man with no connection to terrorism. The FBI thought so, U.S. intelligence thought so, and German intelligence agreed. But once he was picked up, Kurnaz found himself in a prison system that required no evidence and answered to no one.
The story Kurnaz told 60 Minutes correspondent Scott Pelley is a rare look inside that clandestine system of justice, where the government's own secret files reveal that an innocent man lost his liberty, his dignity, his identity, and ultimately five years of his life.
found Murat Kurnaz in Bremen, Germany, where he was born and raised. His parents emigrated there from Turkey. His father works in the Mercedes factory. Kurnaz wasn't particularly religious growing up, but in 2001 he was marrying a Turkish girl who was. And he decided to learn more about Islam.
"I didn't know how to pray. I didn't know anything," Kurnaz says. "So I had to study more about Islam so I could go to the mosque and pray."
In Bremen, he met Islamic missionaries who urged him to go to Pakistan for study. As he was planning the trip, 9/11 happened. He told 60 Minutes he was horrified by the attacks, and had never heard of al Qaeda. He decided to go ahead with his trip anyway.
"You went to Pakistan several weeks after 9/11," Pelley remarks. "Did you begin to think that that wasn't a great idea?"
"Today, I know it wasn't a great idea," Kurnaz says.
Kurnaz told 60 Minutes his story using the English that he learned from his American guards. If he seems a little distant, reserved, you'll understand why as his story unfolds. It begins in 2001, when he was at the end of that trip to Pakistan. He was headed to the airport to fly home to Germany when his bus was stopped at a routine checkpoint.
"They stopped the bus and because of my color, I'm much more different than Pakistani guys," says Kurnaz, who is lighter-skinned. "He looked into the bus and he knocked on my window."
"He" was a Pakistani cop who pulled Kurnaz off the bus. The reason Kurnaz was singled out may always be a mystery. But at the time, the U.S. was paying bounties for suspicious foreigners. Kurnaz, who'd been rambling across Pakistan with Islamic pilgrims, seemed to fit the bill. Kurnaz says that he was told that U.S. intelligence paid $3,000 for him. He ended up bound and shackled on an American military plane.
"I was sure soon as they would find out I'm not a terrorist, they will apologize for it and let me go back home," he says.
But the plane flew him out of Pakistan and to a U.S. base in Kandahar, Afghanistan, where he was mixed with prisoners fresh off the battlefield. His new identity was "number 53." He was kept in an outdoor pen, in sub-freezing weather and interrogated daily.
"They asked me, 'Where is Osama bin Laden,' and if I am from al Qaeda or from Taliban. Questions like that. I told them, 'I don't know where is Osama bin Laden, I never saw him and I don't know anything about al Qaeda. I don't know what it is.' And I spent all my time in Pakistan," he says.
Asked what happened next, Kurnaz says, "I told them just they can call Germany to ask who I am and they can ask anybody in Germany who I am."
Back in Germany, Bremen police were investigating, and what they were hearing made matters worse: Kurnaz's worried mother told them her son had recently become more religious, had grown a beard and was attending a new mosque; schoolmates said that Kurnaz might have been headed to Afghanistan.
"It was just guessing, just fear, no more. But the fear turns into a fact," says attorney Bernhard Docke, who was hired by Kurnaz's mother.
He says there was no reason to suspect Kurnaz knew anything about al Qaeda. But this was weeks after 9/11 and some of the hijackers had been living in Hamburg. "And so close after 9/11, and close after Germany realized that 9/11 started with the Hamburg cell in Germany, everybody in the secret services got crazy," Docke says.A new study reports that eating cured meat such as bacon increased the risk of developing a lung condition called chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD).
Is Bacon Bad for your Health?
By Dietitian, Juliette Kellow BSc RD
This month, red meat once again made headline news after a new study reported that eating cured meats such as bacon, sausages and luncheon meats, increased the risk of developing a lung condition called chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD).
The research, published in the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine, set out to see whether frequently eating cured meats increased the risk of COPD and impaired lung function.
The study included more than 7,000 adults over the age of 45. The researchers divided the participants into groups depending on their consumption of cured meat.
There were five groups:
Those who didn’t eat cured meats
Those who ate 1-2 servings a month
Those who ate 3-4 servings per month
Those who ate 5-13 servings per month
Those who ate more than 14 servings per month.
Compared to those subjects who ate no cured meats, those eating 14 or more servings a month were found to be almost twice as likely to develop COPD.
However, those people who ate the most cured meats were also more likely to smoke and to have lower intakes of fruit, veg, fish, vitamin and mineral supplements, vitamin C and beta-carotene.
The researchers suggest that nitrites added to cured meats as preservatives, antimicrobial agents or colour fixatives might be responsible for damaging the lungs.
WLR says:
This is an interesting study but it should be interpreted with caution.
It’s worth pointing out that COPD is typically a disease associated with smoking and this study found that those people who ate the most cured meats were also more likely to smoke. This makes it difficult to draw clear conclusions.
As is often the case in research, it’s incredibly difficult to isolate one particular aspect of a person’s diet and claim that it is responsible for causing a particular disease.
High consumers of cured meat were also more likely to have lower intakes of fruit and veg. This may also affect the conclusions as fruit and veg tend to help protect against COPD.
The British Nutrition Foundation sums up the findings of this study extremely well. It says,
“This large prospective study does seem to suggest an association between a very high cured meat consumption (more than 14 times per month) and an increase in the risk of COPD, but there is little previous research supporting this.
Most evidence suggests that high intakes of fruit and veg are protective. Despite attempts to control for other dietary differences, those consuming such high intakes of processed meat are likely to have many different dietary and lifestyle characteristics from those who don’t eat it at all. There is no evidence that a moderate consumption of cured meat is detrimental in relation to COPD and no evidence to suggest that red meat in general is a problem.”
Bottom line: small to moderate amounts of cured meat such as bacon as part of a balanced, healthy diet are unlikely to cause health problems.
When it comes to keeping your lungs healthy, avoiding smoking and eating five fruit and veg every day are two of the best things you can do.
For a healthy heart and to lose weight, remove any visible fat from any meat, including bacon, opt for lower-fat sausages and grill rather than fry products.Jordan Brand salutes its namesake’s love of golf with a new shoe for hitting the links.
Nike’s golf business once depended on Tiger Woods. Now the company is hoping the good run it has had with basketball legend Michael Jordan will translate to the greens.
This week, the company, which has battled an industrywide slump in golf sales and a publicity surge for Under Armour-sponsored player Jordan Spieth, debuted a golf shoe that’s a tribute to Michael Jordan’s love for the links.
The Beaverton, Ore.-based company launched the Air Jordan VI Retro Golf Shoe, selling for $225.
The shoes come in two colorways: a black-and-white combination, and one in white and infrared.
The new golf shoe displays the Jordan Brand logo on the heels. CREDIT: Courtesy of Nike.
According to the athletic giant, the limited-edition shoe was “inspired by Jordan’s competitive spirit” and “brings audacious style and energy to the course.”
The shoes feature a waterproof all-leather upper. The midsole is lightweight and the forefoot has a plate to stabilize the foot during swing rotation. The bottom of the midsole, also displays the Jumpman logo to “add an additional hit of brand DNA.”
Whether the new golf shoe inspires amateur players to be like Mike remains to be seen.
Figures continue to reflect waning interest in the sport. The millennial population, in particular, has been shying away from the expensive, time-consuming game, while boomers are starting to age out of the sport.Why Bitcoin Cash Will Dominate
Jonald Fyookball Blocked Unblock Follow Following Nov 28, 2017
First of all, congratulations to Bitcoin Core and all hodlers for reaching an epic milestone this week. (1 BTC > $10,000) Bitcoin Cash investors should be celebrating too, because BCH has actually been a better investment over the past 3 months, with a 400%+ ROI.
Nowadays you have these “Digital Cash” vs “Digital Gold” comparisons and discussions, but it’s a false dichotomy. The reason why Bitcoin Cash exists is that some people in Bitcoin Core convinced themselves and others that “Bitcoin can’t scale”… and that there has to be “trade offs”.
I think this is a HUGE mistake and ultimately will result in Bitcoin Cash being the more useful and valuable coin, as I will explain.
The Scaling Debate Has Become an Insane, Sad Joke
If you’re not familiar with the “Bitcoin Scaling Debate”, it has to do with the size of the “blocks”. In BTC, you get one 1MB block every 10 minutes, which allows 2–3 transactions per second.
This is not very much. So, it is no wonder that transaction fees have gotten huge while confirmation times have gotten long. The network is congested as users are all trying to compete to get their transactions in.
Paying large fees was never what Bitcoin was about, and certainly doesn’t make Bitcoin valuable. The dumbest part is that right now, blocks 1000 times bigger are being tested as safe.
But never mind 1000 times — the Core group fought tooth and nail to prevent even 2MB!
In addition to the gigablock testnet project that’s proving we can have 1GB blocks, I also noticed that home users have access to gigabit Internet speeds today.
Technology is Only Getting Better and Faster.
So, why does Core developer Greg Maxwell say that “There’s an inherent trade-off between scale and decentralization when you talk about transactions on the network”.
Maybe he’s right, but this so-called “trade-off” probably starts happening with blocks measured in the gigabytes, or 1000 times more transactions than we have today.
1000 times more.
The 1980s Are Calling. They Want Their 1MB Back.
1MB is a ridiculously tiny amount of data, and nothing less than absurd in 2018. Heck, the other day, I downloaded a 100 MB file in about 8 seconds.
In 1982, a 5.25 inch “floppy disk” was a common storage medium and even that held more than 1MB.
Certain core developers (and their supporters) use sophistry and try to intellectually belittle those who question them. “If you can’t dazzle them with brilliance, baffle them with bullshit” is the order of the day.
They’ve Convinced Themselves the Trade-off is Real.
A great many people have been bamboozled into believing that Bitcoin can’t be both a great payment system and a great store of value, when in fact, most earlier Bitcoiners understood it to be both. And this is the very reason why people were so excited about Bitcoin in the early days and why it got to where it is today.
For example, the first Bitcoin lead developer (after Satoshi), Gavin Andresen:
Having convinced themselves and others that Bitcoin is going to be slow and expensive to use with a limited transaction capacity, the next mental gymnastics maneuver is believing that Bitcoin was never really supposed to be a payment system in the first place.
“We already have instant transactions with credit cards”, they rationalize. “It’s digital gold! It’s a store of value! That’s the main use-case.”
Sour Grapes
This is like the famous Aesop’s fable “The Fox and the Grapes”. The Fox, unable to reach the grapes high on the vine, tells himself “I didn’t really want them. They were sour anyway.”
Can Bitcoin Be a Great Store of Value Even if Its Not a Great Payment System?
To be honest, not long ago I would have said “No. Without the underlying payment system its just a greater fool’s game.”
However, I realize that Bitcoin still has some utility as a payment system, even if it is poor. And the reality is that Bitcoin can be a great store of value (an appreciating asset) as long as people believe it and invest in it.
The more people that do so, the stronger the network effect. That’s what we’re seeing right now with $10K BTC.
Bitcoin Faces Huge Competition from Bitcoin Cash
After 4 years of stalling, lies, censorship, and other nonsense, the Bitcoin community who really understood that Bitcoin was meant to be a Peer to Peer Electronic Cash System decided they had enough, and created Bitcoin Cash.
Bitcoin Cash immediately raised the blocksize and re-aligned itself with Satoshi Nakamoto’s original roadmap and vision.
So here we are.
Perhaps Bitcoin will fill the niche of “store of value” while Bitcoin Cash fills the niche of “payment currency”. But here’s the problem for Bitcoin: While it has a huge network effect advantage right now, it’s potentially on unstable ground, fundamentally speaking.
A globally used currency and a globally used ‘digital asset investment’ are completely different things, and I believe that they have quite different network effects.
What is The Network Effect?
Network Effect is a principle that states that the value of a product or service increases according to the number of others using it.
An obvious example is Facebook. It’s one of the biggest and most successful companies in the world because it’s THE place to go to for social networking. Everyone’s on FB, and competitors have an incredibly hard time gaining the critical mass of users required to create something that has a similar experience.
Four Reasons Why a Global Currency Has a Stronger Network Effect Than a Global ‘Store of Value’
1. Currency is more essential than investing.
The first thing to ask when assessing the strength of a network effect is: “How essential is the main function?” Almost everyone has to use money, so a payment system/currency is one of the most essential functions possible.
Similarly, the network effect of language in society is extremely strong, since almost everyone has to speak and communicate.
By contrast, investing is non essential to much of the world. Large segments of the population do not have disposable income (or even a bank account), and others may choose not to actively invest at various times for various reasons.
2. Alternative investments are more accessible than alternative payment methods.
If you think about it, there’s not that many different ways we pay for things. Physical cash, check, money order, wire, Visa/Mastercard, and maybe a few others.
Yet there’s endless ways to invest money. From the thousands of stocks, mutual funds, bonds, to precious metals, real estate and cryptocurrency… it’s quite a long list.
Sure, you can say “there’s only 1 Bitcoin”, but there’s many, many other cryptocoins with substantial marketcaps. And, it is easy to trade one crypto asset for another and to re-balance one’s portfolio at any time.
Many investors have switched from Bitcoin to Ethereum, Dash, Litecoin, or Bitcoin Cash at various times, and will continue to do that.
Payment systems and currencies are a lot harder. Here in the USA, you pretty much pay with US dollars or go home. A ‘minority option’ is difficult to use. That’s the network effect here.
And if Bitcoin Cash is able to get enough traction as a widely accepted payment system, it is going to be incredibly strong.
3. Investment options have more competition than payment options.
Another related aspect (apart from the choice of consumers) is: how easy is it for competition to spring up? As I mentioned, a payment currency has a very strong network effect that is hard to unseat.
But investment vehicles are easy. Sure, there is still the network effect at work where Bitcoin is the largest and has momentum, but we see other coins pop up all the time, get some hype, and just take off out of nowhere.
4. An investment vehicle can ‘bleed’ users much more easily than an established currency.
Using the US dollar again as an example, its pretty hard for an American to just stop using it (even if you hate it). But its really easy to change what you invest in. Stated another way, Bitcoin might have a huge network effect that draws investors in, but its no problem to leave if you want.
To add to this, we should consider why Bitcoin has the network effect it does. It used to be because it was also a great payment system. But if you take that away and you’re just left with “well, because everyone believes it”, you’re on shaky ground.
What if everyone stops believing it? What if there’s a bear market? What if sentiment changes? What if the news cycles start putting out negative vibes? What if some really influential people stop backing it? What if the Core developers themselves stop promoting it?
If the network effect depends so much on faith and belief, it definitely seems a lot weaker than something based on commerce and business activity.
Don’t Worry, Bitcoin Isn’t Dead
I doubt Bitcoin is going anywhere, anytime soon. It will likely continue to appreciate as a digital asset, and may even appreciate greatly.
However, I believe that Bitcoin Cash offers a risk reward proposition that is far superior.UK Renewable Energy Investment And Generation Surges In 2014
May 15th, 2015 by Joshua S Hill
In fact, in 2014, not only did renewable energy investment hit a record of £10.7 billion, but renewable jobs increased by 9% as well.
Nevertheless, the authors of the report — PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) and Innovas, and commissioned by the UK’s Renewable Energy Association (REA) — are sure to warn that complacency will severely hurt the country’s renewable energy industry, especially in light of future decisions about Feed in Tariffs (FiT), the Renewable Heat Incentive (RHI), and transport.
The specifics of the report include a total electricity generation of 64,404GWh in 2014, up 20% from 53,667GWh in 2013. This news comes only a few weeks after the Renewable Energy Association announced that the UK’s renewable energy industry saw a 9% increase in jobs, with regions such as the East Midlands, North West, London and Scotland showing stronger than average employment growth. These are promising figures for the UK renewable energy industry, with the UK’s 2020 obligations quickly coming up.
“We are delighted that renewable energy sources are becoming an ever greater contributor to the UK’s energy mix,” said Dr Nina Skorupska, Chief Executive of the Renewable Energy Association. “Today’s figures show excellent progress in a number of sectors, both in terms of generation and installed capacity.
Electricity generation forecast investment by technology, 2015-20 (£bn)
However, according to the REA, the growth rate required to meet these 2020 obligations — 15% of the UK’s energy (including electricity, transport, and heat) from renewable sources by 2020 — currently sits at 16%, one of the highest rates in the European Union.
Subsequently, newly re-elected Prime Minister David Cameron has some serious decisions to make regarding the FiT review and whether or not to extend the RHI, which has only been allocated funding through to April 2016. And according to the REA, “renewable transport remains stagnant” ahead of the UK government needing to make a decision on the Renewable Transport Fuel Obligation.
“But we cannot be complacent,” Dr Skorupska continued. “Our analysis shows that where regulatory and financial support for renewable energy has been stable and sufficient, there has been considerable success, but where there has not, technologies have either stalled or gone backwards.
“In light of the growth rate for renewables needed for the UK to meet its 2020 targets, it is vital that the new government demonstrates the necessary leadership and ambition to enable our industry to thrive.”
The country’s investment figures also surged over 2014, though there are similar concerns over the future of the industry’s investments.
According to the report, 2014 saw investment of £10.7 billion, its highest levels, bringing the total investment into the UK renewables industry up to £50 billion forecast for the end of this year.
Historical and forecast investment in renewables (2010-20)
“2014 has been another strong year for investment in the renewable energy sector, bringing the total investment since 2010 to £40 billion,” said Ronan O’Regan, director, Renewables and Cleantech, PwC. “The majority of investment during 2014 was in renewable electricity generation, attracting almost £10 billion of capital, with solar the big winner representing £4.5 billion of investment.
“However, reaching the 2020 targets is estimated to require a further £50 billion of investment, The sector will be looking to the new Secretary of State to provide the investor certainty through to the end of the decade and beyond both in terms of funding and technology preferences.”A US official said insurgents attacked Bagram Air Base with "indirect fire", suggesting the soldiers were killed by mortars or rockets.
The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack. "Last night two big rockets were launched at Bagram (air base) which hit the target. Four soldiers are dead and six others are wounded. The rockets caused a major fire," Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said.
There were very few details of the attack, which threatens to impact on the US's first formal direct talks with the Taliban, due to start on Thursday. One key condition of the talks was the proviso that the Taliban renounces violence.
The first meeting will take place in Doha, the Qatari capital, after the Taliban opened their first official overseas office and Washington dropped its long-standing demand that the movement renounce ties with al-Qaeda as a |
ities to some acts to stay mindful of, and we have social norms and detentes of significant value, one cannot afford to take a reactive stance, to merely wait while fascists mobilize — drunk on their own perception of power — and hope for the best. There are dangers, slippery slopes, and corruptive human instincts to watch out for in our resistance, but such demand vigilance not total abstention or a bureaucratic shortsightedness.
On the other hand those who closely heed to pacifism or non-aggression in good faith must still ask themselves when an act or threat of violence despite being obscured or ‘unseen’ is still a pressing one, what proportionality and prioritization looks like, what preparations are called for before the seen “moment” of aggression, and generally what can still be done to counter fascist organizing efforts on all fronts. Even if you oppose punching a nazi leader, there’s still much that can be done. If nazis march through a town in a demonstration of force, show up with your own guns ready to fire back. When nazis organize online, systematically disrupt and expose their efforts. Yes, today’s alt-right is a mealymouthed lot, mixing self-aware authoritarianism with whiny pretenses of libertarianism, and much can be accomplished peeling off the small swamp of useful fools they depend upon, forcing into the light the audacity of their pretense to the accomplishments of liberty while fetishizing nationality and borders — a claim of collective ownership as absurd as any Soviet gosplan proclamation and inherently murderous and totalitarian in implementation. But we must recognize that claims to the legacy and aspirations of liberty are rarely made with any sincerity. The core of these people are not mistaken about means, their authoritarianism is not the idiotic quick-solution authoritarianism of most liberals and socialists; their draw is power itself. The boneheads and trolls slathering at the thought of genocide and apartheid are open enemies of discourse and rationality itself. They believe they can bypass debate, derail it, make a mockery of it, use it to hide the circuits of their violence, the shell game of their aggression. They believe that physical force is the only thing that matters. We cannot afford to ignore that language.Pope Francis is poised, within the next two or three months, to announce one of the signature documents of his papacy, an encyclical on climate change. And we can hope and pray that it will be "world-changing" in the very best sense of that expression.
If he sticks to the schedule he has publicly announced, he should, at this very moment, be putting the finishing touches on the final version. It will then be forwarded to translation teams that will prepare official texts in a number of different languages for publication in June or July.
The encyclical has yet to appear, but we can still surmise some of its main themes in light of Pope Francis' own statements on the environment. First, it seems that the Pope is not a newcomer to environmental concerns. He has said that events in Latin America years ago forced him to confront the catastrophe of environmental degradation. Bishops in Brazil, he has said, first explained to him the deforestation of the Amazonian rain forest. Deeply moved by this tragedy, Pope Francis now sees the rain forest as "one of the world's lungs." For a man who is missing part of a lung himself, this is a meaningful metaphor. He knows, more than most, how essential a lung is to life.
The Pope is surely right to warn the world about the on-going loss of the rain forest. National Geographic estimates that in the last forty years around 20 percent of the rain forest has been cut and the land cleared for other uses. This is a disaster both regionally and globally. Regionally, natural habitat for animals and plants is wiped out, causing a loss of biodiversity. But globally, the loss of forest canopy accelerates the process of climate change. The Pope knows this and means to do something about it.
But Pope Francis has hinted that his thoughts now go well beyond a concern with deforestation, as important as that is, and embraces something more profound. In a homily preached in February, he connected environmentalism with the Christian faith. God made the world and all that is in it out of an act of love. If creation is an act of love, the proper way for Christians to reciprocate is to tend to the world. "A Christian who does not protect Creation, who does not let it grow, is a Christian who does not care about the work of God, that work that was born from the love of God for us."
Taken seriously, what the Pope is saying is that environmentalism is not an option for the Christian, but a requirement of heart and mind and conscience. It is a primary demand of the Christian faith. The environment, Pope Francis emphasizes, is not an issue that belongs to a single party or faction. It is not something that can be neatly labeled "the greens." No, he has said, it belongs to the world and is the responsibility of every Christian.
Pope Francis has also made it clear that he takes seriously the science of human-induced climate change. To members of the scientific community, to the world's knowledge classes, this may not come as big news. They may be tempted to shrug and say, "well, everybody knows that."
Except that is not the case. In the United States, the dominant voices of one of two major political parties -- the Republicans -- are on record as expressing their doubts about human-caused climate change.
John Boehner, the Republican Speaker of the House and a professed Catholic, has publicly declared that he is agnostic on the subject of climate change, which he considers a debatable topic. Ted Cruz, the colorful Texas Senator running for President, has theatrically denounced climate change as deceitful and false and compared climate scientists to flat-earthers. In saying these things, Republican politicians are in lockstep with their fundamentalist Christian base, who reject the science of climate change out of hand.
It is significant, therefore, and of benefit to the health of the planet, that the leader of the world's largest Christian movement accepts human-induced climate change as scientifically established and will issue a call to action on that basis. And that summons to act will take into account, first of all, the threat climate change poses to humanity. The Pope has talked to farmers displaced from their fields by flood or drought, and he has visited typhoon victims in the Philippines and elsewhere. He knows first-hand -- he has toured the devastation -- the impact climate change is having on coastal communities. And he knows that human-induced climate change is an affront to God's loving gift of Creation.
The summons to act will likely have yet another dimension, and that is economic. For Pope Francis, most of the ailments of the contemporary human condition are traceable back to the inhumane uses of capital. We have become a throwaway society. We discard unwanted people, whether they be convicts in prison, or the elderly, or the poor, or the handicapped, or the infirm. Those who are unable for whatever reason to serve the interests of capital have no place in the modern dispensation.
My guess is that Pope Francis is prepared to extend this line of reasoning to the degradation of the planet. Runaway capital is not only destroying individual lives, but is jeopardizing the health and well-being of all of humanity.This coming Monday, May 23rd is the first day in business for Cem Salur's long-awaited and eagerly anticipated new cafe, Orson's Belly (1737 Balboa St.) We caught up with Salur to chat about the impending opening, his vision for the cafe, and how the space combines his interest in cafe culture with his passion for cinema.
"Before my idea for Orson's Belly, I was thinking of becoming an archivist or opening a repertory cinema in San Francisco," Salur said. Instead, "I decided to blend my two passions: cinema and hospitality. That was the inception of Orson's Belly."
The cafe, named for Orson Welles and decked out with vintage movie posters, is a chance for Salur to "create a safe and fun environment in the Richmond for artists and families," he said. "My idea is to form a place where ideas may run rampant, and film viewings and discussions may hark back to Henri Langois' Cinematheque Francaise."
Inside Orson's Belly. | Camden Avery/Hoodline
That includes film screenings. "I will be co-programming films with fellow Bay Area cineastes and archivists," Salur said. "Possibilities include themed nights, musical accompaniment with silent film, and a children's hour of cartoons for after school—I'm right next to Argonne Elementary." He'll also host some non-film events, like poetry readings or FIFA video game tournaments.
The menu, already available online, will be priced at $7-12 for breakfast items, bagel sandwiches, and salads, and $5-$15 for evening tapas, Salur said. He'll also offer De La Paz coffee and espresso drinks, beer, and a selection of 10 wines by the glass. Some of the items pay homage to his Turkish heritage, including a Turkish breakfast platter and Turkish coffee (served with a piece of Turkish delight candy).
Orson's Belly is still in the process of wrapping up hiring and training, Salur said, but might test out a few soft-opening dates this week before the big reveal on Monday.Officially there is no death penalty in Israel, unless of course you are a Palestinian. In these cases, the IDF acts as the Judge, Jury and executioner. No one is held accountable for these atrocities.
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Israeli forces kill 27 in West Bank in 2013, NGO says
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Israeli forces killed 27 Palestinians in the West Bank in 2013, a human rights watchdog has said, three times the figure recorded last year.
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It was also the first time in 10 years more Palestinians were killed in the West Bank than in the Gaza Strip, where Israeli forces killed nine Palestinians in 2013, Israeli human rights group B’Tselem said.
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Three Israeli security forces personnel were killed – two in the West Bank and one in Gaza, the group added in a statement on Monday.
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B’Tselem said that in many of the West Bank incidents, Israeli soldiers shot at Palestinians who were throwing stones, “one man was shot when he tried to enter Israel without a legal entry permit,” and “one woman passerby was shot by the military who argued that a Molotov cocktail had been lobbed in the area.”
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Two Israeli soldiers were killed in separate incidents in the West Bank in 2013 and an Israeli fixing the border fence with the Gaza Strip was shot dead by a sniper from inside the blockaded Palestinian territory.
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Riots in Jenin, January 2013 (Photo: AFP)
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B’Tselem spokesperson Sarit Michaeli slammed the Israeli army’s “lack of seriousness” in investigating the incidents where Palestinian civilians were killed by Israeli troops.
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The army has only once indicted and convicted a soldier in some 28 separate incidents that have killed 35 Palestinians in the last two-and-a-half years, B’Tselem said.
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“Investigations are now launched almost automatically,” B’Tselem director Jessica Montell said in the statement.
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“Yet the essence of the investigative mechanism remains unchanged… in which practically no one is held accountable for the killing of Palestinians.”
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SourceJan 30, 2009 Ξ Comments are off
Okay, who wants to wait for the Audi Superbowl commercial? Hmm… oh you don’t? If you want to see the new Audi Superbowl Commercial then you should NOT look below, you should wait until Superbowl Sunday! DO NOT scroll down and watch this video before Superbowl Sunday… if you do then your computer may explode!
The new Supercharged Audi A6 is showcased in the Audi Superbowl commercial. The actual slot for the commercial is supposed to be 60 seconds (1 minute) while this clip is only 30 seconds. Maybe we are missing something here.
Super Bowl Update:Full video included below from the Super Bowl XLIII.
Video below after the jump…
[source: carversation.com]
[source: YouTube]
Oh, so you decided to watch it? We were just kidding!One of the law school defendants' core arguments appears to be the bankrupt notion that prospective law students are "savvy sophisticated consumers who should know better than to take the law school's employment statistic puffery seriously."
Obviously, I completely reject that notion, especially for those people who enrolled in law school prior to 2009 when the law school scambuster blogs were just starting to become known. Even now they still have a relatively low profile compared to the readership of the overly optimistic pre-law forums.
Firstly, what difference does it make if a consumer is sophisticated? Does that justify outright fraud? Does having a sophisticated consumer base give a merchant a license to make false claims about his product? Should Madoff have been exonerated on the basis that most if not all of his clients were wealthy sophisticated consumers who should have known better than to fall for a Ponzi scheme? Should Enron have been found not guilty because many of its investors were, presumably, sophisticated mutual fund managers and other Wall Street investors?
Secondly, the misleading employment statistics are akin to a comprehensive conspiracy engaged in by numerous players in the legal education industry. Almost ALL of the law schools report similarly misleading, high employment statistics. For this reason, a particular school's wonderful placement stats do not stick out like a sore thumb, raising suspicion and skepticism in the mind of a pre-law undergraduate. Also, according to one worthwhile read, The National Association for Law Placement (NALP) reported similar statistics. Moreover, all of the accredited law schools have the implicit sanction of the ABA, and now it sounds like some of the law schools are planning to argue that they were just following the ABA's employment statistics reporting guidelines. It almost looks like a concerted conspiracy to defraud the students with the law schools pointing at the ABA and the U.S. News and World Report's law school rankings, the ABA pointing at the law schools and U.S. News, and with U.S. News pointing at the law schools and the ABA.
How the hell were these undergraduates supposed to learn that the employment stats were inaccurate to the point that they were laughable and fraudulently misleading?&nbps; They would have had to conduct first-hand surveys of a law school's graduates, directly contacting all graduates of a given year.&nbps; Furthermore, although the law schools may publish disclaimers, the prospective students still have little information to work with, and, collectively, the statistics suggest that even if you cannot obtain a six figure job in Big Law that you will at least be able to obtain an entry-level career-building job in Small Law that will provide you with a good chance of obtaining a return on your law school investment. In context, most law school brochure readers would probably interpret the statistics and the disclaimers as meaning that not everyone or even most of the graduates obtained high salaries, but when a number such as "93% of our graduates were employed nine months after graduation" is bandied about, even with disclaimers a reasonable and appropriately skeptical reader could not conclude that, in reality, it should be interpreted to mean that in actuality 65% of the graduates ended up unemployed or severely underemployed-and-involuntarily-out-of-field.
Thirdly, consider the pre-law undergraduates' state of mind and context of knowledge when they were making their decisions about whether to attend law school and how to interpret the published employment statistics and their disclaimers. Almost everyone who goes to college has been bombarded, since Kindergarten or even Nursery school, with the notion that higher education (the more the better) guarantees vocational and financial success. This notion was reinforced throughout grade school and high school. These twenty year-olds heard it from their parents and relatives. Their teachers taught them to believe it in school. They heard it all over the TV and the radio and from the mouths of intellectuals, news commentators, and politicians. "Studies show that college graduates earn $1 million more than mere high school graduates." "Everyone should go to college." "The solution to our nation's economic problems is more education." Many of these law students were probably even pressured by their parents and families to attend professional or graduate school.
Furthermore, Colleges and Universities are held in high esteem in our society. The general public does not regard them as being greedy self-interested for-profit businesses (which, in actuality, as it turns out, they pretty much are). Established institutions of higher learning, both public and private (as opposed to the fly-by-night for-profit schools that have oozed out from the slime recently), are not generally regarded as being untrustworthy like politicians or used car salesmen. Colleges and Universities are viewed as standing for progressive thought, justice, and the betterment of society. Also, many if not most of them are taxpayer-funded or supported by tax dollars in various ways (research grants, etc.). They are supposed to serve the best interests of the public. So, why would a twenty year old undergraduate suspect them of publishing fraudulently misleading employment statistics, especially venerable professional schools?
When you piece the big picture together, is it any wonder that prospective law students, most of whom are just twenty or twenty-one years old, would be easily misled by what may be fraudulently misleading employment statistics that have the implicit sanction of the American Bar Association and their parent institutions (often, in essence, a branch of the government in the case of public universities)? Even today, even after the media has aired numerous news reports about unemployed college graduates, the general public still holds institutions of higher learning in high esteem.
Thus, the "sophisticated consumer" argument is complete and utter horseshit.Evan’s and Dash’s scam story
Homero Blocked Unblock Follow Following Oct 16, 2016
Dash or formerly known as Xcoin and Darkcoin, was created during a crypto era, where coins with anonimity/privacy features were the hottest crypto. Dash launched without having any special features, but with a few basic tweaks like new algorithm that was created within a few days, by Dash’s creator Evan Duffield. To date, there have been no papers on the algorithm which might turn out to be problematic, bringing the entire network down. The launch of the coin was ‘problematic’ as during the first day way more coins were mined than it was planned. That might had been a mistake or just perfectly planned by Evan. It seems very odd to me that people would trust someone on creating a new hashing algorithm, when he didn’t even manage to launch his coin properly.
During the first day 2M coins were mined, and as of today, less than 3k are mined daily. Even if there were no features/community at the time, he didn’t relaunch and decided to keep his instamine, claiming that the community told him to do so. Having a fair launch is very trivial for the future of a coin, because a premined coin has only one future : to make the creator rich. The fact that Evan got to have that many coins, have made him implement things that would only increase the value of his coins. Dash has some special nodes call masternodes, for which you have to ‘lock’ 1000 coins in order to be a masternode operator. Masternodes do some ‘special stuff’, like Instant Transactions, Coin mixing and voting proposals that will get funding. That means that Evan potentially has a massive control over the network due to the fact that he could be operating many masternodes. Below there are some articles that will help you understand why dash’s instamine is bad.
Dash is a planned instamine, it wasn't an accident : CryptoCurrency
Why the darkcoin/dash instamine matters
When it comes to privacy, there is nothing Dash can offer. There is no such thing as little privacy. There is privacy and no privacy, and Dash has no privacy. Little privacy is like being in a room were someone can’t see what you are doing, but can hear everything you are doing. Just by hearing your movements and actions, he can imagine what you are doing, or in the case of LE, with the right tools, he can visualise exactly what you are doing. Coinjoin is a flawed and unreliable protocol. Dash’s implementation especially, where you have to trust random masternodes with your ‘secrets’ in order to ‘ensure’ your transactions are private, and there is no way you can tell if a masternode is spying on you or not. Again, there are many articles on why coinjoin and dash’s implementation offer no privacy. The worst part is that their community is promoting Dash as a way to transact privately, something that could put people’s money and lives at risk. Another good article on why dash’s privacy is non existent. https://steemit.com/bitcoin/@dnaleor/warning-dash-privacy-is-worse-than-bitcoin
Here come instant transactions. It is hard for me to believe that a group of some unknown developers managed to find a way to have instant transactions in just a few months, when all other cryptocurrencies have had this problem for years. There are many attacks someone could perform, that could potentially damage the chain beyond repair. As Dash is building on top of Bitcoin, there might be a Bitcoin upgrade that might be incompatible with InstantX. Sybil attacks, Finney attacks, Transaction lock race attack, Multiple consensus messages, Incomplete Locks are some attacks that are mentioned in the InstantX whitepaper which are meant to be solved, but that might not be the case. As if those are not enough, we don’t know what happens in the case of Malleability. Dash is still very small for someone to attack it, however as it is growing, its attack surface is growing. The recent attacks on Ethereum are just an example of what can happen to Dash in the future.
Here come the high masternode yields! At the time this article is being written, the ROI for each masternode is above 8% per year. Getting such high returns, for doing so little, is a massive red flag. Your dash isn’t collateralised and there is no risk of losing it. All that you are doing is lock your money and you can unlock it whenever you want! Initially the block reward was 80% for the miners and 20% for the masternodes. Then it was 45% for the miners, 45% for the masternodes and 10% for development. There was a time where the ROI was higher than 15%. That’s a classic way to get people to buy your scam. Offer high returns in order to lure your victim. If the network was mature, this move would have made more sense. But this was done at a point were Dash was a lot smaller, so masternode operators were being paid, for… doing nothing! At this moment there are 4000 masternodes and there are actually about 7 millions coins in existance. That means that more than half of the current supply is locked! http://178.254.23.111/~pub/masternode_count.png
https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/4r2gn9/amanda_b_johnson_im_a_car_salesman_dash_pumper/
In a scenario where the price of Dash was static and didn’t increase/decrease over time, the network would be less secure, as you are taking money away from the security of the chain and you are introducing a Proof of Work / Proof of Stake hybrid in the equation. Proof of Stake functions like an undercover ponzi and a ‘permissioned’ blockchain, hence I can’t see why a hybrid of this type is any better than pure PoW. Having many nodes is a good thing, but the main concern in a PoW system is the amount and distribution of the hashrate among the pool operators. At the moment Dash’s security is way lower than that of Bitcoin and there are very few pools operating.
Masternodes’ operators also get to vote proposals that will get part of the reward of a ‘superblock’ (it includes 10% of the block reward for one month and then distributes it to the proposals that got approved). This is the best way to keep the scam going or to keep earning more dash by having many masternodes. For example, let’s say that Evan doesn’t want to cash out his coins, as that would raise some red flags and it would be very obvious. What if instead, he gets paid by the network, by using his status and his masternodes, in order to earn more Dash and gain more time to increase value and the quantity of his coins. Another example, is Amanda, the host of Dash:Detailed. When someone gets invested in a scam or profits from a scam, it becomes increasingly hard for them to face reality. Amanda started the dailydecrypt show, on which she was talking about various developments on various altcoins. At some point she made a proposal to the dash network and got paid in order to make videos about dash. Then she ended up making another proposal in order to become the host of Dash’s ‘unique’ show. In an interview, at Bitcoin Uncensored, she was completely unable to answer basic, but trivial questions about Dash. Why and how could someone preach about a new technology, when she doesn’t even understand it? Why would the network pay a person like this, in order to promote it? The answer is clear. The less you know and the more that you are invested emotionally and financially in a scam, the more qualified you are in order to promote it.
https://steemit.com/dash/@rawlzsec/why-democracy-is-not-always-the-best-idea
To wrap this all up, I’d like to let people know that the Dash community claims that Dash is a DAO too. The DAO, Nubits and Bitshares are 3 so called DAOs that have failed. Therefore Dash fans should already know what Dash’s future is. A DAO can’t fix human stupidity, conflict of interest and flaws in the code and/or design. By getting people, who are not experts on coding/networking/finance etc to vote for things they are unrelated to, you’ll definitely end up with a clusterfuck…
Disclaimer : I don’t own any Monero, I am not a Monero/Zcash community member and I have profited by trading Dash before. Taking advantage of all the hype created by its community can be very profitable in the short term, as Evan is focusing on promoting and developing things that will increase the value of his coins.In Oklahoma, a law to bankrupt groups that organize political protests
On Wednesday, Oklahoma governor Mary Fallin signed HB1123, a new "trespass" law that declared an immediate "state of emergency" allowing prosecutors to charge protesters with felonies for "trespassing" on any property containing a "critical infrastructure facility," impose fines of up to $10,000 for acts that "damage, vandalize, deface, impede or inhibit operations of the facility", and fines of up to $100,000 or up to ten years in prison for "tampering" with the facility.
Groups that are "found to be a conspirator" in such acts face ten times the fines, up to $1M. Thus a protest in which someone spraypaints a slogan on a wall could result in a $100,000 fine for an organization that called the protest.
Oklahoma calls itself the "Pipeline Crossroads of the World."
A section of the law defining “critical infrastructure” includes various types of fossil fuel facilities. Oklahoma is a center of the oil and gas industry and home of the self-styled “Pipeline Crossroads of the World” in Cushing. The state has seen a dramatic increase in earthquakes since the nation’s fracking boom began, as companies began pumping wastewater produced from hydraulic fracturing underground. The Oklahoma Oil and Gas Association is a supporter of the legislation. A second bill, passed by the Oklahoma House of Representatives Thursday, would permit “vicarious liability” for groups that “compensate” protesters accused of trespassing. The bill’s author reportedly called it a response to the Dakota Access pipeline protests, aimed directly at organizers fighting to stop the Diamond pipeline, a project of Valero and All American Pipeline that would transport oil from Oklahoma to Tennessee. Protests against the pipeline have already begun and construction is scheduled for completion before the end of the year.
OKLAHOMA GOVERNOR SIGNS ANTI-PROTEST LAW IMPOSING HUGE FINES ON “CONSPIRATOR” ORGANIZATIONS
[Alleen Brown/The Intercept]
(Image: Uyvsdi, CC0)hippich
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Hero MemberActivity: 546Merit: 500 [WTB] Betco.in project - bounties for issues fixing August 22, 2011, 03:44:08 PM
Last edit: September 03, 2011, 04:32:42 AM by hippich #1
Current bounties:
1) 10 BTC - https://github.com/hippich/Bitcoin-Poker-Room/issues/28 - Implemented by dentldir
2) 5 BTC - https://github.com/hippich/Bitcoin-Poker-Room/issues/42 - Implemented by dentldir
3) 10 BTC - https://github.com/hippich/Bitcoin-Poker-Room/issues/27 - Implemented by megabytes
How it should work - if not already, open GitHub.com account, and fork project
You may want to contribute other code to the project and I will give back some coins for it as well - I just can't provide exact amount up-front. If you are looking to fix something outside of list above and want to know how much I am willing to pay for this - contact me at Here I plan to post links to particular issues of Open Source Poker Room project and bounty for fixing it. Remember - your code will become part of public domain and you will get paid for it! Full attribution to you will be kept as well!Current bounties:1)- Implemented by2)- Implemented by3)- Implemented byHow it should work - if not already, open GitHub.com account, and fork project https://github.com/hippich/Bitcoin-Poker-Room. Fix issue from the list above and issue pull request. Once your code applied - I will contact your for details of the payment. I doubt this will happen, but if two pull request submitted at the same project, I reserve right to select better one.You may want to contribute other code to the project and I will give back some coins for it as well - I just can't provide exact amount up-front. If you are looking to fix something outside of list above and want to know how much I am willing to pay for this - contact me at pavel@yepcorp.com E-Peso Initiative | Gov't-backed | Free Distribution | Test CaseIt was first seen just a month ago. A tiny blip of light was seen to be moving through the sky by the PanSTARRS1 telescope in Hawaii.
The number-crunching which followed was automatic. The results were unusual.
This object is in an odd position. It’s moving very fast. And it’s in what appears to be a somewhat extreme orbit. Extreme enough not to actually be an orbit, in fact.
TOP 25 CITIES FOR UFO SIGHTINGS IN THE US
Observations published by the by the International Astronomical Union’s Minor Planet Center (MPC) suggest it could have come from deep space.
Specifically, it could be a comet that has escaped another star.
“If further observations confirm the unusual nature of this orbit, this object may be the first clear case of an interstellar comet,” the MPC declares.
WHAT IS C/2017 U1?
The PanSTARRS telescope spotted the object only after it was flung back out towards the stars by our Sun.
It’s not likely to ever return. It flashed past Earth at 24 million kilometres on October 14.
Many eyes watched it closely, keen to determine exactly what it was. Their curiosity was piqued by where it had come from.
Most objects orbiting our Sun do so along a common plane: the planets, dwarf planets and asteroids mostly swing around in roughly the same way.
This one appears to have come down on the plane from 122 degrees, from the direction of the star Vega, in the constellation Lyra. And its path did not indicate the curved ellipse typical of clockwork-like returning comets.
Best guesstimates make it a comet of about 160m diameter, with a surface reflectivity (albedo) of about 10 percent.
ARE ALIENS REAL? ALL THE EVIDENCE, SIGHTINGS AND CONSPIRACY THEORIES ABOUT THEIR EXISTENCE
A WANDERER
The object has just been through a close call (in Solar System terms): it came within 38 million km of our star before its momentum and the Sun’s gravity hurled it back outward.
Normally such a close pass would be fatal. But C/2017U1 was travelling too fast for the Sun’s heat to consume it.
It was moving at 26km per second when first observed.
Astronomers are now attempting to refine their observations and data to pinpoint exactly where it came from. If it truly is of interstellar origin, the next task is to find which star it is likely to have come from.
At the moment, it appears to have been somewhere in the direction of the star Vega.
It’s also likely to have been wandering, alone, in deep space for a very, very long time.
Vega is a relatively close neighbour of our Sun at 25 light years distance. At the speed it’s travelling, it would take about 1.7 million years to cross the interstellar divide.
This story originally appeared in news.com.au.Way back in December of 2014, we took a little trip to Hawaii with Action Bronson.Action was a guest of RVCA at their house on the North Shore to witness the Pipeline Masters surfing competition, and he curated a little barbecue for a group of surfers as well as played a show in Honolulu. In between all the rapping, grilling, and surfing, we made it to Kahuku Superette, the finest purveyor of poke on Oahu. It was a life-changing moment for Action, and its effects are still felt nine months later. With a slight lull in touring for Mr. Wonderful, Action decided to whip up some poke of his own, as well as a vegan version with golden beets that's so good, everyone who eats it will want to proclaim you king for the day. We hope you find this video as entertaining and useful as our trip was for us. Enjoy.
Grab Action's album Mr. Wonderful here.
Season 2 Episode 1 of Fuck, That's Delicious. Watch more
This first appeared on MUNCHIES in August 2015.Larry Roberts angles his white Mercury Grand Marquis into the empty parking lot of a tiny café, G & J’s Gorillas Cage, and cruises into a space near the front door. The restaurant’s red and white metal trim is faded and rusted, and the lightbulb-lined roadside sign has been dark for years. Hand-painted placards in the windows advertise burger baskets, corn dogs, and a couple of untruths—”Last Place in Picher!” and “Yes, We’re Open!” When it closed in March, the Gorillas Cage was the only restaurant left in Picher, Oklahoma. Roberts is here to make sure the owners have cleared it out for demolition. Roberts, the operations manager of the Lead-Impacted Communities Relocation Assistance Trust, works about 10 miles away in the town of Miami. His job is to inspect contaminated buildings that the state of Oklahoma is going to buy and tear down. A retired state representative, he has a rosy face and sports a pressed plaid button-up. He rolled up his car windows before he hit the city limits. “There’s still dust in the air,” he says in a laid-back Midwestern drawl. “And I wouldn’t drink the water.”
Climbing out of the Mercury, Roberts notices an uprooted mailbox leaning against the side of the Gorillas Cage and a pickup truck loaded with restaurant equipment. Up and down the street, storefronts are boarded up, empty, dark. Mounds of fine white grit called chat—leftover minerals from mining operations—loom over the town, 200 feet high. Roberts grabs his clipboard. “Let’s get this over with,” he says.
The Gorillas Cage—named for Picher-Cardin High School’s mascot—has been gutted. The tables and chairs are all gone. In fact, there isn’t much of anything inside except for a walk-in refrigerator. “We didn’t have anyone left to sell food to,” co-owner Gary Cox, 69, tells Roberts as he follows him around the room. Roberts ticks a few notes on his clipboard as Cox’s sister and business partner, Joyce, 75, shakes her head and tears up. They both grew up here, she says, and have never been sick. Now they feel pushed out. “It’s an outrage,” Joyce says. “But we can’t change it, so we are moving on.”
Picher sprang up as a 20th-century boomtown—the “buckle” of the mining belt that ran through Oklahoma, Kansas, and Missouri. The earth underneath it produced most of the lead for US bullets in World Wars I and II and enough zinc to literally galvanize construction of the American suburbs. These raw materials were used to create stronger, water-resistant metal alloys, better batteries, and dietary supplements—the base materials of a modern society. Population peaked at 14,000 in 1926. When the lode ran dry in 1970, the mining companies moved out. Picher eventually became a Superfund site, and half a decade ago the state government offered residents an average of $55 per square foot to evacuate their homes. By September 2009, the police force had disbanded and the government dissolved. Picher was a dead city.
Except that a few people refused to leave. They call themselves chat rats, a loose and increasingly self-reliant colony armed with cell phones and Wi-Fi for communication and guns for driving off scrap-metal scavengers. It’s a life bordering on squalid—on the way out of the Gorillas Cage, Roberts spots shovel marks around the base of the burned-out signpost, the beginning of an attempt to steal it. Across the street, a former auction-house parking lot has become a dumping ground for tires. On the drive back out of town, he passes the abandoned high school and notices that the arts and crafts building has burned down. A man appears to be helping himself to bookshelves from an open classroom. Roberts can’t figure out why anyone would turn down the relocation money he’s offering. “Most people have bettered themselves through this process,” he says. “Now there are only radicals left.”
The apocalypse is already here; it’s just unevenly distributed. Urbanization has lured more people to bustling met |
no.
The county move comes on the heels of President Barack Obama's call in his State of the Union address this week for state and local government to boost minimum wages. Obama backs an increase in the federal minimum wage, but the measure faces congressional resistance. He reiterated his support for a higher minimum wage during an appearance Thursday in Waukesha.
The version that was endorsed by the county panel trimmed the wage figure from $12.45, the original level proposed. The $11.33 figure was based on the federal poverty level for a family of four.
An amendment to the wage requirement approved by the panel also exempted nonprofit institutions, cultural institutions and other units of government the county does business with from the living wage requirement.
Don Tyler, the county's administrative services director, cautioned supervisors about potential consequences of the ordinance and called for a delay.
He said the county remained financially fragile and the additional costs would be difficult to absorb. The county comptroller has warned that the original version of the wage increase could raise the county's tax levy by $2 million this year and $8.8 million by 2019.
Bowen, the lead author of the living wage ordinance, said the costs of the county minimum wage would be far less after revisions. He praised the finance panel for its action.
"This was not only a brave thing to do, it was the right thing to do," he said. The county should adopt its own wage minimum because state or congressional action is unlikely now, Bowen said.
Jennifer Epps-Addison, director of Wisconsin Jobs Now, called for fast action on the minimum wage boost.
"I've heard a lot of, 'We can't. We can't enforce it, we can't figure it out,'" Epps-Addison said. But Milwaukee County "is the county of 'we can,'" she said.
The higher minimum wage for county employees and contract workers would go into effect once it got final approval, though it would not apply to existing contracts the county has with outside firms.
Supporters of the $11.33 county minimum are expecting a veto from County Executive Chris Abele and working to round up a veto-proof majority of supervisors to back it.
Tyler said the living wage plan would be difficult to implement and enforce and create additional workload for the county and its contractors.
The wage requirement also would be "all but impossible to fold into a convoluted set of (existing) ordinances," Tyler said.
The county's economic development director has warned the plan could kill developer deals, such as the lakefront high-rise proposed for the county's Downtown Transit Center site.
The revision approved Thursday, however, would exempt sales of county land or other property from the wage requirement.
The City of Milwaukee has had a less comprehensive living wage ordinance since 1995, which applies to part-time city workers and service contractors. The city living wage is $9.95.
About 140 U.S. cities and counties have similar versions of the ordinance.
Twitter: twitter.com/SteveSchultzeJSWhy the procedurally generated world of Future Unfolding is hand designed
Andreas Zecher, Mattias Ljungström May 9 2016
Many games use procedural generation to dynamically create level geometry, creatures or missions. Game designers come up with rules that define how things should work. Then programmers implement these rules into code that generates playable levels from scratch. This allows games like No Man’s Sky to create a vast galaxy that would be impossible to create by hand.
Future Unfolding is an exploration game where nothing is ever explained explicitly. You have to find subtle hints in the world to solve puzzles that open up new areas, a setup somewhat comparable to The Witness. However, The Witness is set on a literally static island where every tree was placed manually and with accurate intention by its creators’ hands.
With Future Unfolding, we’re combining procedural generation with manual level design. We want everyone to experience a different world, but we also want to have control over the puzzles we put in your way.
To be able to do both, we developed a custom level editor in addition to our own graphics technology. We use it to define areas you can explore: Forest patches, clearings, lakes, paths from A to B, groups of animals, or artifacts that act as part of puzzles.
Detail from our custom level editor for Future Unfolding
For each scene we can specify many different parameters: The orientation of the scene, the density of how the trees are placed, the color scheme of the vegetation, which animals you encounter, which type of artifact to use for a puzzle, the width of a slope. These parameters are all defined in ranges or possibility sets.
For example – an opening has low-height vegetation which can be either flowers, small bushes or grass. A path has an enemy, it could be a wolf or a snake. Two areas are connected at a certain distance, the second area could be north or south of the first one.
To understand how this works, take a look at the screenshots below. They show three of the many different possible variations of a specific location in the game.
The same location in three different procedurally generated variations
All this variation adds up to a unique play experience where every world is different. Still, each level has the same conceptual structure so we can design interesting puzzles that are always solvable.
We take this even further by designing puzzle scenes with multiple solutions, depending on which objects are randomly chosen for you. Imagine a hard to reach location with a portal you want to get to. We can let the game either place deers close by, which can be tamed and then used to jump over cliffs. Or we can place a secret entrance at the base of the mountain with an exit at the top. In one instance you explore the game's mechanics, in another instance the game's world.
The layout of the world, how levels are connected with each other, is procedural as well. Each play-session has a different starting location, flow and pacing. You'll encounter animals and puzzles in a different order than your friends. With these efforts, we hope that you'll experience a non-linear, emergent and personal story when playing Future Unfolding.The No Fly Zone will look a little different in 2017.
The Broncos on Saturday released eighth-year safety T.J. Ward, saving the team $4.5 million in salary cap space and shifting its focus to the future.
“This was a difficult decision to part ways with T.J. after everything he’s done for our football team,” general manager John Elway said. “He was a respected teammate whose physical mindset played a big part in our success, especially during our Super Bowl run.
“We thank T.J. for his contributions as a Bronco and wish him nothing but the best in the future.”
Ward arrived in Denver in 2014 as the first piece of Elway’s revamped defense. He signed a four-year deal, awaited the arrival of cornerback Aqib Talib and outside linebacker DeMarcus Ware, then quickly morphed into a force in the defensive backfield. A hard-hitting safety who split his time at weakside linebacker in subpackages, Ward was a tone-setter, on the field and off.
His release comes on the heels of what he described as his best season yet, with 87 tackles (second-most on the team), a sack, an interception, eight pass-breakups, three forced fumbles and two recoveries. During the offseason Ward said he hoped to stay in Denver.
“You know what, if I do the things that I have to do and do them the right way, everything will handle itself,” he said in April. Related Articles February 26, 2019 O’Halloran: Broncos’ priority at the NFL combine? Looking for free agents.
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February 22, 2019 O’Halloran: Road to the NFL for Northern Colorado’s Alex Wesley started vs. CU Buffs in 2017
But Ward is soon to be 31, was in the final year of his contract and coming off a hamstring injury, which kept him from playing in any preseason games. Over the years he’s watched Peyton Manning take a pay cut, DeMarcus Ware restructure his deal and defensive starters Chris Harris and Derek Wolfe both accept significantly less money to stay in Denver. Elway has always drawn a hard line and has made it clear he will make roster decisions with the singular goal of trying to win another Super Bowl title.
Although there were discussions with Ward’s agent, a pay cut was never broached. The Broncos will eat about $1.3 million in “dead money” from Ward’s prorated signing bonus, but the team had a long-held plan to move on. It was “a football decision,” coach Vance Joseph said, based not on money, but on the team’s depth and youth.
And the Broncos have plenty of both in their secondary.
In 2016, the Broncos drafted Boston College safety Justin Simmons in the third round and Arizona safety Will Parks in the sixth. Both were viewed as key pieces of the team’s future.
The “Baby” No Fly, they called themselves.
Simmons, the Broncos believe, is ready for the true No Fly.
The 6-foot-2, 202-pounder posted a 40-inch vertical at the 2016 NFL combine, besting all in his position that year. He put it to use with his extra-point block at New Orleans last year and he’s continued to grow more comfortable in the Broncos’ scheme that has since been tweaked by defensive coordinator Joe Woods and Joseph.
“That’s the biggest thing, is that year one to year two, making that big leap and those big strides and going into that, so really looking forward to it,” Simmons said. “You are what you put on tape, and so it doesn’t really matter what I say. What matters is that I put on Week 1, Week 2, Week 3, you know, moving into the season. I’m excited for it. I’m excited for the challenge.”
News that the Broncos were considering trading or releasing Ward left the locker room in disbelief last week, with many players still hoping it was untrue even as reality set in.
“It was shocking just to come out of nowhere toward the end of camp,” Parks said. “But at the end of the day it’s a business. He’s been through it once already, so I’m pretty sure he knows how to handle it.”
Von Miller argued for Ward to stay:
“I don’t think he should be going,” he said. “That’s a cornerstone of the No Fly Zone.”
Safety Darian Stewart did, too:
“I don’t know if they are going to listen to us, but I think it is going to impact a lot,” he said. “He is the key leader and a good teammate.”
Elway understood how the players felt, and he knew the decision wouldn’t be fully embraced, at least initially.
“It’s always hard. I will tell you I was in that locker room and I didn’t agree with every move that management made,” Elway said. “You create those relationships in that locker room and it’s important. T.J. was a big part of that, but I can tell you how many friends and people I had cut over my career and didn’t agree with all of them but that’s part of it. I think that they understand, at least I hope they understand, we had to do what we believe is best for the Denver Broncos. … When you make tough ones like this, they’re not always going to be popular. But I think the young guys will step up and play well and fill those shoes very well.”
Ward posted a Thank You to fans on Twitter Saturday evening, saying he’s “looking forward to my next chapter.” As a vested veteran, he is free to sign with another team immediately.
Denver is moving on, but the team’s — and especially Elway’s — insatiable quest for another title has them feeling optimistic about their decision and their future.
“It’s a combination of everything,” Elway said. “Anytime you have a guy like T.J. that was such a big part of the championship year we had and the last three years that he’s been here — he’s led that defense and plays with an attitude and a chip on his shoulder. We give him a lot of credit for how we’ve played defensively the last few years. But it always comes down to football decisions. The young guys, they were playing well. It really wasn’t anything to do with T.J. It was just the fact that the young guys played well and we thought that was the best football move for us.”The inFORM displaying a 3D model car. InFORM works by making use of a projector, an Xbox Kinect sensor, 900 pins, linkages and actuators, and a computer. Each pin — which can move up and down about 100 millimetres — is about 9.535 millimetres x 9.535 millimetres and acts as a real-life pixel. The pins are spaced 3.175 millimetres apart and controlled by microcontrollers (small computers) that talk to each other on a very fast network. A projector is used to display colour on top of each pin and a Kinect is used for mid-air gestures and to track objects and touches on the table. Speaking with Fairfax Media, Follmer said that as computing devices such as smartphones attempted to become Swiss army knives that could do everything, they began to lose a lot of "affordances" - physical features that allow you to better interact with digital information. He described how MIT's Tangible Media Group had been been working on trying to reverse this by making interacting with digital information more physical and more material for users. "So [we've been moving away] from having physical buttons that are number pads that made it very easy for [us] to interact with a phone and to be able to dial... and, as we put more and more features into these [mobile] phones, it's [become] harder and harder to have these physical affordances for each of these different cases because a phone is now not only a telephone: it's a camera, a compass, a map, a web browser - all these different things," he said.
From another view: a person digitally manipulates a physical object at a remote location. "And the only way to make all of this work is to have virtual representations. But that loses the tactile feeling. And what we want to do is bring that tactile feedback and tactile interaction back into digital interfaces and still allow for this flexibility and the multiplicity of types of interaction." According to Follmer, the inFORM was built as a research platform to explore what the researchers thought the future of interacting with "shape-changing" interfaces would be. The inFORM can be used for maths education. "The traditional sort of interaction design and device design sort of assumes for a very static way of interacting and this [inFORM] device can change its physical form very quickly and that means that we need to come up with new ways that we interact with technology," Follmer said.
He suggested that thinking that humans would stick with keyboards and mouses as the mainstream input devices for computers was "something that we need to move away from". MIT PhD researchers Sean Follmer, left, and Daniel Leithinger, right, along with Professor Hiroshi Ishii of MIT's Tangible Media Group, centre. Just as a sculptor used many tools, such as chisels and hacksaws, to make a sculpture, researchers needed to think of what different types of tools needed to be created for PC users to sculpt or interact with their computer. "It's really important to have this multiplicity of ways that we interact with digital information and choosing sort of the best tool for the task at hand," Follmer said. A person remotely manipulates an object using the inFORM.
He said the inFORM paved the way for a world in which we could reconfigure physical objects in different ways and it was as easy to change physical material as it is pixels on a screen. The inFORM was "quite expensive" to create in the lab, Follmer said, with each of the 900 actuators — the small motors controlling each pin — costing between $US20 and $US30. How the inFORM works. "As time goes on the cost of these types of interfaces could decrease. [But] I don't think we necessarily see this as something everyone... will have, but maybe a derivative [of it]." One thing the inFORM enabled was the ability to collaborate with other people at a distance. In one example, Follmer's team showed that it could have a 3D model on its table, in this case a car model, and a remote collaborator could physically [touch] the virtual model and the person who was co-located with the inFORM system could also touch it and interact with it directly.Blizzard recently announced that Hearthstone will adopt the traditional CCG mechanic of banning older cards and sets in order to more easily maintain game balance. Though the Wild format allows use of every card (and is essentially the same game you’ve been playing for years), Standard will become the “official” format (used in tournaments), and will ban cards older than a couple of years. If it eats at your soul that cards you’ve worked hard to collect will no longer be viable in the “official” format and you’re looking for a Hearthstone alternative, Counterplay Games’ Duelyst might be your way out of Blizzard’s grasp.
Duelyst, which doubled its Kickstarter funding goal back in April of 2014, has a design team filled with industry pedigree, which includes former lead producer of Diablo III Keith Lee and Rogue Legacy lead artist Glauber Kotaki, among others. So far, only in open beta and a little over halfway to version number 1.0, both Duelyst’s industry pedigree and Hearthstone influence is quite apparent.
Like most CCGs, the game is easy enough to explain: two players duke it out using a range of units and spells, except unlike Hearthstone or Magic: the Gathering, the units are summoned onto a grid and unit spacing and movement come into play. The game draws a lot of inspiration from Hearthstone, and certain aspects are so similar that “inspiration” might be too soft a word. Thanks to the gorgeous pixel art and grid movement, Duelyst both looks and plays differently from Hearthstone, but if you dig a little deeper, you’ll find that the game replicates much of what makes Blizzard’s CCG so easily accessible and successful.
The card collection interface (seen above), for instance, is strikingly similar to Hearthstone‘s, as is the way Duelyst allows you to craft cards using Spirit, the game’s crafting material and Hearthstone’s Dust analog. The game approaches win conditions the way Blizzard does, too — by using General units (Hearthstone’s heroes), rather than the Magic route of using a disembodied pool of health, and each General has its own set of class-specific cards. Even the booster pack pricing structure and draft mode entry fee are the same as Blizzard’s juggernaut.
The game’s meta (for the uninitiated, a term used to describe the game’s balance of power) is even abstractly similar to Hearthstone’s, as the cards’ powers and stats are all pretty similar, though adapted for Duelyst’s grid movement and spacing system. If you overheard two players discussing the game aloud and were half-paying attention, it’d be difficult to tell which game they were talking about: “a two-two for two that draws on card on death.”
Despite the games’ similarities, Duelyst doesn’t really feel like Hearthstone unless you think about it. Like, check this out:
The detailed, gorgeous pixel art and animations juxtaposed on the slick game board goes a long way to setting the game apart from competitors, and the SRPG-like gameplay makes your brain work in different ways when you’re playing — even if you’re summoning a five-five for five with provoke (Duelyst’s version of Hearthstone’s Taunt).
All of the digital CCG staples are there: a draft mode (called Gauntlet), a ranked and unranked (coming soon) ladder, earning in-game currency without spending money in order to grab some free packs, and so on. Duelyst does implement puzzles, though, something that Hearthstone players only get in the form of player-created scenarios that pop up on out-of-game communities like the subreddit. So far, each puzzle involves a pre-made unit, deck, and hand configuration and tasks players with defeating the enemy in a single turn. They’re all pretty fun, and you earn a bit of in-game currency for completing each puzzle, which is a great way to get some packs to start your collection.
Perhaps this is because it’s currently a beta, but Duelyst is far more generous doling out in-game currency and crafting materials (and it either takes less materials to craft or you get more back when you disenchant), and it sure has better card rarity rates within packs. You have the standard “one pack will have at least one rare or better” promise, but those “at least” and “or better” delineations trigger pretty frequently. Right now, a legendary seems to drop every four or five packs, compared to Hearthstone’s one-in-20. This doesn’t mean you’ll complete the collection and have nothing to strive toward, though, as Duelyst currently allows three instances of any card in a 40-card deck. That means you can load a deck with three of the same legendaries, and so far, it seems pretty balanced.
After playing for a few weeks, matchmaking has never taken more than a few seconds (even though the matchmaking screen consistently and incorrectly estimates it to take over a minute) in any format, so the community seems pretty active. You can also pour over detailed charts of your personal stats:
At the time of writing, Duelyst is sitting at version 0.57.4, and there’s much more the developers have said is just over the horizon, such as expansions and a potential mobile port. There’s also a “secret” client that runs in a Chrome tab, which makes it pretty easy to sneak some matches in while you’re at work.
So far, the game is shaping up nicely, and totally scratches that CCG itch. Its similarities to Hearthstone are by no means a detraction, but rather will help you feel comfortable with what is new — namely, the movement and spacing system, and getting distracted by staring and the gorgeously animated units and spells.
Give Duelyst a try. It’s free, and the best Hearthstone alternative on the market.Thirty years since the PATCO strike
Part one
By Tom Mackaman
3 August 2011
PART ONE | PART TWO | PART THREE | PART FOUR | PART FIVE
On Augus t 3, 1981, 15,000 members of the union of air traffic controllers in the US—the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization (PATCO)—went out on strike against their employer, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). For years, employment levels and safety measures had failed to keep up with increasing commercial air traffic. Extreme stress forced a majority of controllers into early retirement. PATCO workers demanded a shorter workweek, increased wages and increased staffing.
Solidarity Day, Washington DC, September 19, 1981
Hours after they walked out, President Ronald Reagan, speaking from the White House Rose Garden, invoked the anti-strike Taft-Hartley Act to fire the strikers if they did not return to work within two days. The Reagan administration’s terms were simple: the ending of the strike and the total submission of the union to all White House demands. There would be no negotiations.
Air traffic controllers defied the back-to-work order en masse, with 12,000 to 13,000 remaining on strike. Yet in spite of their militancy and solidarity and deep support within the working class as a whole—expressed in the 500,000-strong Solidarity Day demonstration on September 19 in Washington DC—the struggle was isolated and betrayed by the AFL-CIO bureaucracy, which ordered members of other airline unions to cross the PATCO picket lines.
By the end of the year, it was clear that the air traffic controllers had been defeated. The Reagan administration and the courts outlawed the union, and all of the striking air traffic controllers were blacklisted from their profession for life.
The ferocity of the ruling class stunned workers. But Reagan’s ruthlessness—which included dozens of arrests and the jailing of four militant controllers in Texas—was enabled by the AFL-CIO bureaucracy. Though the threat posed by Reagan’s attack on the controllers to the entire labor movement was clear, the AFL-CIO steadfastly refused to authorize a broader working class mobilization, in spite of persistent calls for a general strike from workers. The unions instead sought to channel working class anger into support for the Democratic Party.
In reality, the union-busting operation was a bipartisan operation, carried out with the tacit support of the Democrats. The plan Reagan implemented for smashing PATCO, including the military scabbing operation known as the Management Strike Contingency Force, had been drawn up under Democratic President Jimmy Carter in 1980.
The AFL-CIO gave the Reagan administration assurances that it would do nothing in response to government strike-breaking and union-busting. In the face of pressure from workers calling for broader strike action in support of PATCO, AFL-CIO President Lane Kirkland said early in the struggle that he opposed “anything that would represent punishing, injuring or inconveniencing the public at large for the sins or transgression of the Reagan administration.” So confident was Reagan in the acquiescence of the labor bureaucrats, he delivered his August 3 back-to-work ultimatum even as the AFL-CIO Executive Council was meeting in New York City.
The government-organized destruction of PATCO was a signal to big business to launch a massive assault on the entire labor movement. Over the next decade, strike-breaking and union-busting operations were carried out in virtually every sector of the economy—air and ground transport, auto, steel, the mines, retail. Methods not seen since the 1930s were revived to crush the bitter resistance of workers to wage cuts and other concessions. The 1980s saw the reemergence of company goons, armed private police, labor frame-ups and violent attacks on picket lines. Every major strike battle was deliberately isolated and betrayed by the union leadership. The United Auto Workers, the AFL-CIO and virtually every other union adopted the policy of corporatism—the complete subordination of the working class to the corporations and the establishment of joint union-management structures to suppress the class struggle.
Thus, the betrayal of PATCO marked the collapse of the trade unions and their rapid transformation into agencies of the corporations and the state.
The Workers League, predecessor of the Socialist Equality Party, played a prominent role in the PATCO strike. Its defense of arrested workers earned the Workers League the support of many PATCO members. Reporters for the Bulletin, the newspaper of the Workers League and a forerunner of the World Socialist Web Site, interviewed dozens of strikers and their families in cities across the country.
The Workers League persistently called for widening the struggle to encompass the entire working class. It insisted that the conditions for expanding the strike could be achieved only through a political struggle against the union bureaucracy and the Democratic Party. The Workers League raised the demand for an emergency Congress of Labor to bring together unionized workers and unorganized sections of the working population for the purpose of establishing a Labor Party based on the unions to fight for a workers’ government and socialist policies. Without the initiation of such a struggle, the party declared, the PATCO strike could not be won. If the PATCO strike were allowed to be isolated and defeated, the Workers League warned, this would set the stage for an assault on the entire working class.
Detroit PATCO strikers at the 1981 Labor Day rally
While a strong sense of solidarity prevailed among workers—along with a desire for a showdown with the Reagan administration—the need for socialist political conceptions to guide the struggle was not broadly understood. This was itself a product of long historical processes. By the 1980s, decades of anti-communism promoted by the AFL-CIO had blocked many workers from knowledge of key historical experiences, including the decisive role socialists had played in building the industrial union movement in the 1930s.
The PATCO defeat sets off two distinct periods in US history. From the 1930s through the 1970s, the trade union movement in the US commanded significant authority in the working class. The victories of the industrial unions in the 1930s, the mass upsurge of the working class at the end of World War II, the persistence of large-scale strike activity through the 1950s and the 1960s, and the strike wave of the late 1960s through the mid-1970s—these had managed to wrest significant concessions from the American ruling class, which feared the emergence of working class revolution led by socialists, as had taken place in Russia in 1917. The epoch saw major improvements in living standards, the expansion of democratic rights to black workers in the South, and the creation of a limited welfare state.
The PATCO defeat established a pattern for every strike that followed in the 1980s and through the early 1990s. At Phelps Dodge, Greyhound, United Airlines, AT Massey, Hormel, Caterpillar, etc., workers carried on militant and bitter struggles. It was not for lack of fight that these and other strikes in the period went down to defeat. Rather, in each case the union bureaucracy consciously worked to isolate, demoralize and defeat the strikers.
Troops at the Phelps Dodge mines, Morenci, Arizona, July, 1984
Since the crushing defeats of the 1980s and 1990s, strikes have virtually disappeared in the US. The lack of organized resistance by the working class has whetted the appetite of the bourgeoisie, reflected in the staggering concentration of wealth in the US that has taken place since the 1970s. Steadily, the gains of the 20th century have been reversed, a process that has accelerated since the financial crisis of 2008 and the coming to power of the Obama administration.
The erosion of the membership rolls of the trade unions—down to their lowest share of the private sector workforce in more than a century—and the ongoing decline in the wages and wealth of working class Americans has not been reflected in a decline in the income and wealth of the union bureaucrats, thousands of whom award themselves salaries of more than $100,000 per year, and hundreds of whom take home upwards of $200,000. The unions have only deepened their integration into the Democratic Party, each election cycle funneling tens of millions of dollars to “friends of labor” who at every turn side with the corporations and the banks.
Thirty years on, it is clear that PATCO was one of a series of international events that signaled a global ruling class offensive against the working class. It presaged not only the collapse of the American trade unions, but of all the labor bureaucracies and political parties internationally that based themselves on nationalism and class compromise. The process that has culminated in the conversion of the American labor unions into business enterprises akin to labor syndicates was mirrored in the decision of the Stalinist bureaucracy in the Soviet Union at the end of the 1980s to complete its counterrevolutionary mission by liquidating the property relations established by the 1917 October revolution.
The far-reaching implications of the smashing of PATCO were well understood by the American ruling class at the time. Writing only days after the beginning of the strike, the Wall Street Journal editorialized that Reagan had to prevail over the air traffic controllers “for all sorts of far-reaching reasons that have absolutely nothing to do with relations between the Federal Aviation Administration and PATCO.” The more important issues, the editorial declared, were “commitments to rebuild military strength, to restore the dollar to soundness, to cut taxes and regulations, to resist Soviet imperialism, and to curb the wild ascent of federal spending.”
The Bulletin commented on August 11, 1981: “In short, the ruling class considers the destruction of PATCO as inseparable from its overall capitalist policy of defending the profit system with a program of unrestrained militarism internationally and savage austerity for the working class within the United States.”
Rosa Luxemburg said of the working class that “historical experience is its only school mistress.” She continued: “Its thorny way to self-emancipation is paved not only with immeasurable suffering but also with countless errors. The aim of its journey—its emancipation depends on this—is whether the proletariat can learn from its own errors.”
Drawing out the lessons of past defeats is a life-and-death matter for workers today. With PATCO, history exposed as unviable and bankrupt a labor movement that based itself on anti-communism, defense of the profit system, and nationalism. The aim of this review of the PATCO struggle is to extract the central political lessons of that experience in order to arm workers with the socialist perspective needed to insure victory in the mass struggles into which they are entering today.
To be continuedSquare Enix announced several new smartphone titles poised for a 2015 launch at a media gathering in Japan. The first of which is a new Final Fantasy Legends game (known as Final Fantasy Dimensions overseas). Titled Final Fantasy Legends: The Space-Time Crystal, you’ll play as a boy (Tomo) and girl (Emo) from two different time periods that will travel though history in order to save the world. Character design and artwork is being handled by CyDesignation.
Click here to view the Final Fantasy Legends: The Space-Time Crystal teaser website.
Co-developed by alim, makers of a freemium smartphone RPG in Japan called Brave Frontier, Final Fantasy Brave Exvius will be a “fully-fledged” RPG that its producer hopes evokes Final Fantasy feeling without being a Final Fantasy-themed clone of Brave Frontier. You’ll be able to unlock Final Fantasy characters to fight with you in battle as seen in the screenshots below. Brave Exvius will also be free to play “freemium” game.
Click here to view the Final Fantasy Brave Exvius teaser website.
Lastly, Square Enix revealed a Portal App companion to keep fans updated with Final Fantasy updates and merchandise. What’s actually of interest in this app is the ability to play Triple Triad minigame featuring artwork from throughout the series. Triple Triad is a card game that was introduced in Final Fantasy VIII, and will also be playable in Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn when the Gold Saucer is expected to go live early next year. The Portal App, including Triple Triad, is free.
Click here to view the Final Fantasy Portal App teaser website.
About Tony Garsow
Tags: Images, News1. Your clothing
Unless you show up to a The Dark Knight-style ballroom gala in a penguin costume covered in maggots, I am not going to notice or judge what you’re wearing. No one is scrutinizing your clothing choices as much as you are, I promise you.
The amount of times I’ve spent 12,000 years figuring out the perfect outfit and then was late to the party and missed something awesome were not worth it. Stop having anxiety over wearing the “right” thing. Wear whatever you’re comfortable in and get out your door and into life. If people like what you’re wearing, cool bonus, but it won’t make you more interesting, or funnier, or smarter.
That being said, if you love fashion, go for it. By all means, enjoy dressing nicely or in a certain way. But otherwise, I promise you no one is stressing your clothing as much as you are stressing your clothing.
2. Your pimple
No one cares that you have a pimple. I have never once in my life been like, “Oh shoot. I REALLY liked that person, but now they have a common skin condition that almost everyone on Earth has experienced so I guess I hate them.” If you have thought that, you are a sociopath.
Everyone can empathize with a nasty pimple. It’s not your fault and it’s out of your control. Yeah, it sucks. But the most anyone is doing is going, “Oh, they have a pimple. That’s shitty,” and then carrying on with life. Zits don’t shut down the world. The person doing the most noticing of your pimple is you. Just forget about it. When I have nasty acne, I tell myself that the people that love me would rather have me around than not have me around because I’m hiding out over a pimple.
3. The hair you missed shaving
Did you miss a patch shaving your face or legs? No one cares. Sure, it feels strange and annoying. You probably can’t stop touching it or playing with it, obsessing anxiously about that one little spot. Forget about it. You’ll get it later, and it’s not a big deal.
For women, I have never once known a dude who was rubbing a girl’s legs in prep for sexy time, felt some stray hairs and did a full-stop. They are not noticing and they don’t care. If they do, they’re a jerk. Similarly, I have never known anyone to be like, “Well, that guy missed a spot shaving so I guess he is not smooching material.” No one is noticing your tiny hairs as much as you are. Stop touching them.
4. Pit stains or a small stain
Similarly to acne, pit stains are mostly just a source of empathy and pity. The only thing I think when I see someone has pit stains is “Oh, that must be uncomfortable. I hate when that happens to me.” Here’s the secret to all of these: we are all self-involved. That’s why it’s so easy for us to nit-pick and judge ourselves over things no one else is even taking a second to think about.
A small stain on your clothes post-lunch is the same. To you, it looks like the BIGGEST, GROSSEST outfit-ruining stain in the world, but sincerely, no one can see it unless you point it out. A human eye that doesn’t know about a stain won’t naturally zero in on it. They’re taking in the whole picture. You look fine.
5. Your growling stomach
A growling tummy is an embarrassing noise that sounds SUPER loud to us, so we assume it must be just as noticeable to those around us. Often, this isn’t the case. It sounds worse to you because it’s your own body.
Even if people can hear your stomach, it’s not that humiliating. Everyone gets hungry. No one is thinking you’ve got some weird demon in your digestive tract or that you’re going to blow up into a cloud of farts. People are probably just like, oh that’s funny. If they can even hear it at all.I’m actually semi-pleased with how this came out, Viktor was extremely difficult to draw, I had to study all his weird |
...By Saskatchewan Rush,
The Saskatchewan Rush will be hosting a Champions Cup Rally Party at Bessborough Gardens on Tuesday, June 7, 2016 to celebrate their 2016 Championship and honour the fans in this historic first season.
Mark Matthews, Robert Church and Nik Bilic will be in attendance along with the Champions Cup so fans can have a chance to take keepsake photos. Following the event, the trophy will be at the Rush office for fans to come by and get photos with for a few days before it heads out of town for a players tour with members of the Saskatchewan Rush.
Mayor Don Atchison will be on hand to bring greetings from the City of Saskatoon. Lee Genier will bring greetings from the Saskatchewan Rush. John Fraser will host the rally as the MC and DJ Anchor will be playing music and keeping the crowd pumped up.
WHEN: Tuesday, June 7
WHAT: Saskatchewan Rush Champions Cup Rally
TIME: 11:30am-1:00pm
WHERE: Delta Bessborough Gardens, followed by Saskatchewan Rush Office (Scotia Centre, 123 2nd Ave S)Share This Video Facebook Twitter EMAIL
The monumental success of Anthony Bourdain‘s food and travel program on CNN, Parts Unknown, means it was bound to attract plenty of send-ups. Enter Hidden America with Jonah Ray on Seeso, the faux food and travel show that sets out to explore the already-surveilled terrains of the North American continent (while Bourdain busies himself with the rest of the world). Led by stand-up comedian, Nerdist podcaster, and new MST3K host Jonah Ray, the comedy’s first season proved successful enough to warrant a second one — and a visit from Bourdain himself.
In the first trailer for Hidden America‘s new season, Ray’s caricature of himself makes pit stops in Miami, Cleveland, Honolulu, Washington D.C., Nashville, Minneapolis and Reno — as well as London, thereby taking the mockumentary international. Of course, all this success on Bourdain’s back couldn’t possibly go unnoticed by the prominent celebrity, so he guest stars as a rather mean-spirited version of himself. “Things stay unknown until I say they’re known,” he tells Ray after slamming him into a wall. “You got that?”
Parody notwithstanding, everyone knows the real Bourdain is actually a genuinely nice guy with an unfathomable amount of knowledge about the world’s culinary and cultural delights. Unless, of course, the conversation turns to Food Network celebrity pineapple Guy Fieri.SUNRISE, Fla. — Aaron Ekblad scored with 20.2 seconds left to give the Florida Panthers a 1-0 win over the Tampa Bay Lightning on Monday night.
Ekblad shot from the point and the puck bounced in off a defenceman over the shoulder of goalie Andrei Vasilevskiy into the net.
Roberto Luongo stopped 39 shots for his 69th career shutout. Luongo tied Glenn Hall for eighth all-time in wins with 407. The Panthers beat the Lightning for the second time in three nights and won for only the second time in nine home games against Tampa Bay.
Vasilevskiy made 18 saves for the Lightning, who have lost nine of their past 12.
The Panthers were sluggish on offence throughout and went 14:54 during the first period without a shot and recorded four.
The game was a marked contrast from Saturday’s 5-4 shootout won by Florida.
NOTES: Panthers C Aleksander Barkov returned after missing 10 games with a hand injury. … D Dmitry Kulikov missed the game with a lower-body injury. … Gerard Gallant coached his 100th game for the Panthers. … Lightning forwards Mike Blunden and Jonathan Marchessault, recalled from AHL Syracuse on Sunday, both played. … C Cedric Paquette was scratched with a lower-body injury.Press:
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Berlin — The largely unrecognized global pandemic of child pornography has once again been thrust into the glare of the public spotlight after a massive child porn network with over 87,000 members was dismantled by German police.
A web platform called “Elysium” was utilized by the pedophile network, which existed since the end of 2016 and was accessible only through the Darknet, a hidden part of the Internet uncatalogued by search engines. The site was used to facilitate the exchange of videos and images of children, as young as toddler age, being physically and sexually abused.
According to German international broadcaster Deutsche Welle:
“Investigators said the site had been in operation since the end of 2016 and that it was accessible only via the darknet, a part of the World Wide Web that cannot be found using conventional search engines but requires the use of encrypting software.”
According to the authorities in Frankfurt, there were also recordings of “the most serious sexual abuse of children”, such as violence against children and abuse of “the youngest.”. The platform was also used to schedule appointments to exploit and abuse children.
Most of the suspects were arrested in the countries of Germany and Austria.
A German police spokesman said that Dutch authorities were also involved in the case:
“We are certainly expecting things that are important to the Netherlands, but at the moment it is not yet possible to indicate to what extent.”
Surprisingly, the network of nearly 90,000 individuals is not the largest bust in history, as another online Darknet pedophile platform called Playpen was dismantled earlier this year, and 58-year-old American Steven Chase sentenced to 30-years in federal prison. Chase was held responsible for the existence of Playpen, a child pornography network established in 2014, which had 150,000 active pedophiles on the site.
The Playpen case was extremely controversial, as the U.S. Department of Justice acknowledged in court filings that the FBI actually operated the site, themselves, from Feb. 20 to March 4, 2015.
Moreover, in a move that left many in dismay, the Department of Justice filed a motion in Washington State federal court to dismiss an indictment against the child porn site.
According to a report in Wired:
It wasn’t for lack of evidence; it was because the FBI didn’t want to disclose details of a hacking tool to the defense as part of discovery. Evidence in United States v. Jay Michaud hinged at least in part on information federal investigators had gathered by exploiting a vulnerability in the Tor anonymity network. “Because the government remains unwilling to disclose certain discovery related to the FBI’s deployment of a ‘Network Investigative Technique’ (‘NIT’) as part of its investigation into the Playpen child pornography site, the government has no choice but to seek dismissal of the indictment,” federal prosecutor Annette Hayes wrote in the court filing on Friday.
The federal prosecutor pointed out that the DoJ’s work to resist disclosing the NIT was part of “an effort to balance the many competing interests that are at play when sensitive law enforcement technology becomes the subject of a request for criminal discovery.”
To make a long story short, the feds decided to let an alleged child pornographer go to keep secret, and illegal, the methods they use to catch criminals on the dark web.
In regard to the “Elysium” network, public prosecutor’s office in Frankfurt said that the suspected operator of the site, a 39-year-old man from the central German state of Hesse, had already been arrested on June 12.
The suspected operator of the platform was arrested after his apartment was searched and the server seized, according to DW. Numerous other suspects have also been arrested, according to police officials.
German and Austrian police said they will hold a press conference on Friday to provide further details about the investigation.many performance enhancements:
- reworked object rendering pipeline: much faster, a better lighting model, culling on all objects including static, LOD support
- optimizations in terrain rendering, mainly apparent on ATI cards (+20% on 4850, +10% 6850)
- reworked object rendering pipeline: much faster, a better lighting model, culling on all objects including static, LOD support - optimizations in terrain rendering, mainly apparent on ATI cards (+20% on 4850, +10% 6850) integrated importer and vehicle physic scripting
geotagged screenshots, can be also used to jump into the GPS embedded in photos
huge amount of fixes
about window shown on startup the first time, updated help about the controls
higher screen resolution enabled for Rift, helps with antialiasing
centered ui in stereo mode
extended stereo configuration, separate tab in menu, optional stereo config in eng.cfg
added emulated rift mode
smooth start/stop movement in ufo mode
fixed ufo speed lock
removed init aux events in vehicle
fixed smoke on Nvidia
vehicles back in the static obj list
fixed memory leak when flying very fast & far
support for Oculus Rift
fixed crash on exit after mod installation
fixed underwater rendering
more rocks in water
better water fresnel, reflected color
fixed sound buffers in vehicle
turret/aux axis handling moved to script
custom mipmap creation for water (was perf issue on 7000)
modified white balance computation
fixed bluish terrain after sunset in distance
added export for static objects
removed aircraft and vehicles from builder
working extra keys and turret in vehicle, updated wiki
added max_tire_speed to vehicle for tire contact speed (usable instead of vehicle speed for sounds)
rolling friction in T817
vehicle hud set to km/h, fixed units
even/odd wheels handling in wheel_xxx script methods (-2,-3)
fixed dirt road rendering (grass in the middle)
fixed pkg installation msg boxes
fixed inputs configuration issue with throttle
fixed turret axes, coefficients
fixed default FOV
added MIG 29 (model and FDM made by ddenn!)
added package exporter (package.nickname.otx) ¹
added package importer, can accept multiple cmdline arguments
thumbnails for models read from gif files in package directory ²
environment settings are persisted
added sound configuration to the menu
API for image generator control (to be documented...)
custom parameters from objdef forwarded to vehicle's init_chassis (see T817 flatbed objdef file and the script)
re-added flatbet T817
added engine stop sound to T817
added lateral slip coefficient to wheel setup, defaults to 0.5 (50% of the longitudinal slip coef) ³
added wheel rpm value to the runtime wheel_data ³
fixed reconstruction of camera position from JPG
added extra vehicle keys (not used yet) ³
fixed vehicle error handling and recovery
fixed "initializing world" hanging
fixed object modifications not being saved
fixed script editor layout
leveling pad initially hidden in builder
fixed imported obj preview not disappearing
workaround for AMD texture_buffer memory leak bug
new dirt textures by Kelvin
fixed controls ui tabs
better pos/rot extrapolation for aircraft
fixed fixed vehicle state when init_chassis fails
added water scattering rgb components
futuristic weapon firing in ufo and fps mode on mouse click, length of the button press determines the power and size of the resulting crater
FPS mode (key
OSM map (key M)
updated textures by Kelvin Richardson
camera returns back to vehicle after exiting menu
fixed cfg/cam file corruption on driver crash
fixed memory leak with forests
bloom enabled by default
importer fixes
updated libraries
random rocks
2048px terrain textures, added texture resolution slider in terrain cfg
lowered tree branches at forest borders
modified tree texture to give a curved trunk appearance
fixed video color range and contrast issue (full range to HDTV)
finer ufo speed stepping
smoother grass lighting
finer dirt patch borders
workaround for driver crash with Catalyst 13.2 beta drivers
added ability to set the center of mass for vehicles
added key ~ for resetting vehicles into position
stabilized vehicle forces when the suspension is hit from the side
vehicle/aircraft script can be reloaded directly from the script editor
fixed suspension length info for linear suspension in call to vehicle.wheel()
mouse wheel controls the speed multiplier in ufo
JSBSim updated to the latest version
adjusted snow - fractal broken snowline, concave curvature boost
automatic adjustment of exposure computed from sun position
fixed bloom flickering
fixed mipmaps in normal maps
fixed terrain and grass culling issues
fixed object deletion
fixed spherical/cylindrical projection
added warning for legacy AMD series
fixed outdated Nvidia driver detection
added bloom effect (has to be enabled in eng.cfg bloom_power = 0.05, bloom_threshold = 1.0)
added -allowext command line option enabling use of tools like fraps
fixed obj info library duplication if user/program path are the same
minor tuning of specular light on objects
added terrain normal textures
road paint has a thickness
uneven asphalt border
higher fractal detail for dirt patch borders
fixed video capture
filmic tone mapping
fixed JSBSim VRP point
fixed c172 control wheels rotation/movement
fixed crash when logger window tries to show while the window_manager is shutting down
dynamic & adjustable time flow, time multiplier
time of day and day of year preserved & persisted in UI
added rotation around x,y axes in builder ui (k and l keys)
fixed video recording producing empty files
handled CTD in creation of aircraft and vehicle
fixed demo mode not launching truck from the menu
fixed atmo bug on terrain with enforced anisotropic filtering
fixed water artifacts (might cause perf degradation on ATI 7k series with old drivers)
fixed shadow depth artifacts
added description field to objdef, shown in the object list instead of the objdef name, if available
terrain culling fixes
fixed terrain tile texturing on levels >22
adjusted min grass size
updated terrain textures
3D grass enabled in demo mode
added support for reflectance map, "tex_reflectance", example in c172 (TODO metal coloring in material shader)
fixed LOD curve definition lod_curve and lod_curve1 (lod_curve == LOD0 pixel size / 2, lod_curve1 == LOD1 pixel size / 2)
noupdate mode enabled by default when the executable name differs from outerra.exe
fixed reconstruction of pitch&roll angles from photos
better shadowmap performance
fixed MSAA modes (still does not work on ATI because of a driver bug, being currently fixed at AMD)
improved performance for pure MSAA mode
moved default road/obj data under cache\earth, updated packages
counterhack for 3rd party apps that tamper with rendering in order to display overlays
This new version comes with several enhancements in comparison to the old main branch 0.7.11:Also, 3D grass is now available also in the demo mode.: Because of a lower and fixed limit on available system memory for GPU transfers on 32-bit Windows XP you may encounter a not-enough memory problem. In this case please close all other apps, especially browsers and other apps that consume a lot of NP (non-paged) memory as shown in the Task Manager.The game will normally update automatically when you log in. The latest full installs can be found at demo.outerra.com Note: if you have edited the world (added roads and placed some buildings) in previous versions, you should move the content of your cache/object folder to cache/earth/object. You should avoid overwriting the files there (files containing pre-existing Outerra locations), as the new version comes with updated versions of those. If you overwrote them already, they can be restored unpacking this file into your data director, overwriting the old files.Changelog:Version 0.7.15.3700 (2 Jun 2013)Version 0.7.15.3690 (27 May 2013)Version 0.7.15.3673 (3 May 2013)Version 0.7.15.3666 (28 Apr 2013)Version 0.7.14.3624 (8 Apr 2013)Version 0.7.14.3614Version 0.7.13.3530Version 0.7.13.3519 (16 Feb 2013)Version 0.7.13.3516 (14 Feb 2013)Version 0.7.13.3490 (29 Jan 2013)Version 0.7.13.3487 (29 Jan 2013)Version 0.7.13.3475 (21 Jan 2013)Version 0.7.13.3456 (4 Jan 2013), changes from version 0.7.12.3431TAMPA, Fla. - An exciting week of action brought numerous standout moves and finishes across Week 15 of the USL season, with the league’s playmakers and finishers putting on a show. Now it’s your turn to select the best of the five selected for this week’s USL Fans’ Choice Goal of the Week award.
Voting will continue through 9 a.m. ET on Thursday, July 6
USL Fans’ Choice Goal of the Week – Week 15
Nansel Selbol - #LAvSPR, 6/30/17: Selbol’s first serious participation after coming on as a substitute saw him pick out the bottom-right corner after a good piece of play by Tyler Pasher for the Rangers.
Aaron Jones - #BSTvRIC, 7/1/17: Jones’ first professional goal was a beauty as he picked out the top-left corner with a free kick that leveled things for Steel FC against the Richmond Kickers.
Brian Ownby - #LOUvOTT, 7/1/17: Ownby’s fourth goal this season came via a perfect pass over the top by Louisville teammate Paolo DelPiccollo, and a composed piece of control and finishing from the winger.
Emrah Klimenta - #SACvSA, 7/1/17: Klimenta latched onto a slide-rule pass by Danny Barrera that opened up the San Antonio defense to allow the Montenegro international to finish cleanly.
Jordan Schweitzer - #ORLvCIN, 7/1/17: Schweitzer played a role in a good build-up down the right, and then finished perfectly into the left corner as OCB took an early lead against FC Cincinnati.A DIVER who fended off a frenzied two-metre bronze whaler shark with his underwater camera has described the close call as a "good buzz".
Former construction diver turned underwater cinematographer Johnny Debnam, 27, was filming mates spearfishing about 3km off Dampier earlier this month.
A bronze whaler materialised out of the depths and tore into a bluebone grouper Mr Debnam had on his float line.
``I was filming and the shark came in and stole my fish, then it came and had a closer look at me,'' he said.
``I had to push it away with the camera. It circled me at few more times, bumped the boat, had a look at the motor, circled a few more times and then took off.
``It was a good buzz. I had to focus and concentrate on making sure it didn't get past the camera.
``I knew it could be potentially dangerous. You take the risk into account. It was investigating more than anything, it was excited by the fish in the water.''
Mr Debnam said seeing sharks was common as he filmed up and down the west coast.
``You see plenty of them. Especially if we're spearfishing, they'll come in pretty close. I've had a couple of encounters like that one,'' he said.
The conservationist and ocean lover has teamed up with fellow divers to for the marine film company Terra Australis.
``We pretty much film everything to do with the ocean but we always seem to be filming sharks,'' he said.
Many sharks that approached boats - including the bronze whaler he encountered - had broken jaws, Mr Debnam said.
``We've noticed it a lot. I think they can end up with a broken jaw if they're caught on a fishing line. Once they're injured, maybe they can't hunt as well so they have to be a bit more aggressive and that means they come in and investigate boats or people spearfishing,'' he said.
The Terra Australis crew also try and tag any sharks they are able to.
``We've tagged quite a few tiger sharks off the North-West lately. We had a 430kg tiger recently which we tagged,'' he said. ``We've seem some big hammerheads, lemons sharks, groupers.''
See www.terraaustralis.tvLocation: body of water between 60 degrees south latitude and Antarctica
Geographic coordinates: 65 00 S, 0 00 E (nominally), but the Southern Ocean has the unique distinction of being a large circumpolar body of water totally encircling the continent of Antarctica; this ring of water lies between 60 degrees south latitude and the coast of Antarctica, and encompasses 360 degrees of longitude
Map references: Antarctic Region
Area: total: 20.327 million sq km
note: includes Amundsen Sea, Bellingshausen Sea, part of the Drake Passage, Ross Sea, a small part of the Scotia Sea, Weddell Sea, and other tributary water bodies
Area - comparative: slightly more than twice the size of the US
Coastline: 17,968 km
Climate: sea temperatures vary from about 10 degrees Celsius to -2 degrees Celsius; cyclonic storms travel eastward around the continent and frequently are intense because of the temperature contrast between ice and open ocean; the ocean area from about latitude 40 south to the Antarctic Circle has the strongest average winds found anywhere on Earth; in winter the ocean freezes outward to 65 degrees south latitude in the Pacific sector and 55 degrees south latitude in the Atlantic sector, lowering surface temperatures well below 0 degrees Celsius; at some coastal points intense persistent drainage winds from the interior keep the shoreline ice-free throughout the winter
Terrain: the Southern Ocean is deep, 4,000 to 5,000 meters over most of its extent with only limited areas of shallow water; the Antarctic continental shelf is generally narrow and unusually deep - its edge lying at depths of 400 to 800 meters (the global mean is 133 meters); the Antarctic icepack grows from an average minimum of 2.6 million square kilometers in March to about 18.8 million square kilometers in September, better than a sixfold increase in area; the Antarctic Circumpolar Current (21,000 km in length) moves perpetually eastward; it is the world's largest ocean current, transporting 130 million cubic meters of water per second - 100 times the flow of all the world's rivers
Elevation extremes: lowest point: -7,235 m at the southern end of the South Sandwich Trench
highest point: sea level 0 m
Natural resources: probable large and possible giant oil and gas fields on the continental margin, manganese nodules, possible placer deposits, sand and gravel, fresh water as icebergs, squid, whales, and seals - none exploited; krill, fishes
Natural hazards: huge icebergs with drafts up to several hundred meters; smaller bergs and iceberg fragments; sea ice (generally 0.5 to 1 meter thick) with sometimes dynamic short-term variations and with large annual and interannual variations; deep continental shelf floored by glacial deposits varying widely over short distances; high winds and large waves much of the year; ship icing, especially May-October; most of region is remote from sources of search and rescue
Environment - current issues: increased solar ultraviolet radiation resulting from the Antarctic ozone hole in recent years, reducing marine primary productivity (phytoplankton) by as much as 15% and damaging the DNA of some fish; illegal, unreported, and unregulated fishing in recent years, especially the landing of an estimated five to six times more Patagonian toothfish than the regulated fishery, which is likely to affect the sustainability of the stock; large amount of incidental mortality of seabirds resulting from long-line fishing for toothfish
note: the now-protected fur seal population is making a strong comeback after severe overexploitation in the 18th and 19th centuries
Environment - international agreements: the Southern Ocean is subject to all international agreements regarding the world's oceans; in addition, it is subject to these agreements specific to the Antarctic region: International Whaling Commission (prohibits commercial whaling south of 40 degrees south [south of 60 degrees south between 50 degrees and 130 degrees west]); Convention on the Conservation of Antarctic Seals (limits sealing); Convention on the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (regulates fishing)
note: many nations (including the US) prohibit mineral resource exploration and exploitation south of the fluctuating Polar Front (Antarctic Convergence) which is in the middle of the Antarctic Circumpolar Current and serves as the dividing line between the very cold polar surface waters to the south and the warmer waters to the northLast Monday, when Attorney General Eric Holder conceded that his dream of prosecuting, in federal court, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, and four other men accused of involvement in the 9/11 attacks, was officially over, derailed by Congressional opposition to the very notion of moving a single prisoner from Guantánamo to the US mainland to face a trial (and glossing over the failure of President Obama to defend Holder’s dream), he also unsealed an indictment (PDF) that charged Mohammed and the others with 10 counts relating to the 9/11 attacks, which a judge dismissed because the accused will no longer be tried in civilian court.
On CBS News, Evening News Producer Phil Hirschkorn stated that there was “little new information in the court documents themselves,” and pointed out that:
Between the extraordinarily detailed 9/11 Commission Report, commission staff reports and the extensive Guantánamo public record, including charging documents and transcripts (from the earlier “tribunals” and current “commissions”), the dismissed federal indictment reveals little that wasn’t already known or previously alleged elsewhere. That doesn’t mean the government’s case was weak, and an indictment is not evidence. There would have been plenty to convict.
Hirschkorn also pointed out that perhaps the most detailed account, generally overlooked, is a 58-page statement drawn from the interrogations of Khaid Sheih Mohammed (PDF), which was “introduced at the nation’s first and only 9/11 trial — of Zacarias Moussaoui in 2006 in Virginia federal court — and which “was offered by the defense as a substitute for KSM’s supposedly exculpatory testimony regarding Moussaoui.”
Nevertheless, to freeze in time this indictment and to make it available in HTML format, I’m cross-posting the ten counts below — but not the names of all the 2,976 people who died on Septermber 11, 2001, which make up the latter half of the indictment. This is not, I hasten to add, because I lack sympathy for them — in fact, I agree with Marcy Wheeler that it’s “the most impressive part of the indictment, seeing the list of names like that” — but because formatting the names would have taken more hours than I can spare right now and may also have resulted in a document that was too big too publish. Again, for the full list, please check the original here.
Speaking of Marcy, her post analyzing the indictment — and asking some interesting questions about what it does reveal, and what new questions it raises — is recommended, as are some of the comments from Marcy’s lively and very engaged audience, and I also recommend the New York Times‘ article on the indictment, published on April 10, in which Benjamin Weiser analyzed the indictment’s place in the wider history of terrorism trials in New York, based on its docket number, 93 Cr. 180, which, as he explained, was first used in connection with the 1993 attacks on the World Trade Center by Ramzi Yousef (whose uncle is Khalid Sheikh Mohammed), and was followed by 13 others, each adding more to the story, and culminating in the 9/11 indictment.
As the Times explained, “there appeared to have been legal, practical, and even symbolic reasons to charge Mr. Mohammed in the lineage that began with the 1993 trade center attack.” Karen J. Greenberg, executive director of the Center on Law and Security at New York University, said, “One big point of these trials is that they present to the public the narrative history that we otherwise wouldn’t have. Symbolically, it has everything to do with understanding the threat we’re under, and how it’s changed over time, and how significant KSM’s role has been.”
The Times also noted that the 9/11 case “had been assigned to Judge Duffy, who had already handled three trials in the 1993 attack and the Bojinka conspiracy [a 1995 plot, in which ‘the government said Mr. Yousef had an aborted plan … to blow up a dozen American airliners over the Pacific Ocean’]. In some ways, the indictments have evolved into a kind of terrorism genealogy that allows people, plots, and families to be traced.”
Noting also that “the 93 Cr. 180 series has yielded convictions of all eight defendants who were tried (Mr. Yousef twice), with their convictions upheld on appeal,” the Times concluded its article — whose sub-text was clearly a defense of federal court trials for KSM and his co-conspirators — with a comment made by a former prosecutor who “sounded almost wistful in speaking of the indictment’s dismissal,” and who stated, “It’s almost like an obituary. You don’t get the sense that it’s going to come back anytime soon.”
For my less challenging contribution to the discussions abut the indictment — a formatting exercise, essentially — see my cross-post of the indictment below, although I should reiterate that I did analyze the decision to drop the proposed federal court trial in an article entitled, Holder, Obama and the Cowardly Shame of Guantánamo and the 9/11 Trial.
INDICTMENT (S14) 93 Cr. 180(KTD) in the UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT SOUTHERN DISTRICT OF NEW YORK
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
– v. –
KHALID SHEIKH MOHAMMED, a/k/a “Mukhtar,” a/k/a “Mukhtar al-Baluchi,” a/k/a “Mukh,” a/k/a “Abdulrahman Abdullah al- Ghamdi,” a/k/a “Salem Ali,”
WALID BIN ATTASH, a/k/a “Khallad Bin Attash,” a/k/a “Saleh Saeed Mohammed Bin Yousaf,” a/k/a “Tawfiq Muhammad Salih Bin Rashid,” a/k/a “Silver,”
RAMZI BIN AL-SHIBH, a/k/a “Abu Ubaydah,” a/k/a “Ahad Abdollahi Sabet,”
ALI ABDUL AZIZ ALI, a/k/a “Aliosh,” a/k/a “Ali A,” a/k/a “Isam Mansur,” a/k/a “Ammar al-Baluchi,” a/k/a “Hani,”
MUSTAFA AL-HAWSAWI, a/k/a “Hashem Abdulrahman,” a/k/a “Hashem Abdollahi,” a/k/a “Mustafa Ahmed,” a/k/a “Zaher,” a/k/a “Khal,”
THE TERRORIST ATTACKS OF SEPTEMBER 11, 2001
(Counts One through Nine)
COUNT ONE
Conspiracy to Commit Acts of Terrorism Transcending National Boundaries
The Grand Jury charges:
Background: al Qaeda
1. From in or about 1989 until the date of the filing of this Indictment, an international terrorist group existed that was dedicated principally to opposing non-Islamic governments with force and violence. This organization grew out of the “mekhtab al khidernat” (the “Services Office”) organization that had maintained offices in various parts of the world, including Afghanistan, Pakistan, and the United States. The group was founded by Usama Bin Laden and others. The group called itself “al Qaeda” (“the Base”). Until in or about 1991, al Qaeda was headquartered in Afghanistan and Peshawar, Pakistan. In or about 1991, the leadership of al Qaeda, including its “emir” (leader or prince) Usama Bin Laden, relocated to the Sudan. Al Qaeda was headquartered in the Sudan from approximately 1991 until approximately 1996 but still maintained offices in various parts of the world. In 1996, Usama Bin Laden and other members of al Qaeda relocated to Afghanistan. Many loyalists demonstrated their commitment to al Qaeda by pledging an oath of allegiance (called a “bayat”) to Usama Bin Laden.
2. Usama Bin Laden and al Qaeda violently opposed the United States for several reasons. First, the United States was regarded as an “infidel” because it was not governed in a manner consistent with the group’s extremist interpretation of Islam. Second, the United States was viewed as providing essential support for other “infidel” governments and institutions, particularly the governments of Saudi Arabia and Egypt, the nation of Israel, and the United Nations, which were regarded as enemies of al Qaeda. Third, al Qaeda opposed the involvement of the United States armed forces in the Gulf War in 1991 and in Operation Restore Hope in Somalia in 1992 and 1993. In particular, al Qaeda opposed the continued presence of American military forces in Saudi Arabia (and elsewhere on the Saudi Arabian peninsula) following the Gulf War. Fourth, al Qaeda opposed the United States Government because of the arrest, conviction, and imprisonment of persons belonging to al Qaeda or its affiliated terrorist groups or those with whom it worked.
3. For these and other reasons, Usama Bin Laden declared a “jihad,” or holy war, against the United States, which he carried out through al Qaeda and its affiliated organizations. Usama Bin Laden issued public edicts calling for terrorist attacks against the United States and the murder of Americans. Members of al Qaeda issued “fatwahs” (rulings on Islamic law) indicating that such attacks were both proper and necessary.
4. Al Qaeda functioned both on its own and through some of the terrorist organizations that operated under its umbrella, including: Egyptian Islamic Jihad, which was led by Ayman al-Zawahiri; the Islamic Group (also known as “el Gamaa Islamia” or simply “Gamaa’t”); Jema’ah Islamiyah in Southeast Asia and Australia; and jihad groups in other countries, including the Sudan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Somalia, Eritrea, Djibouti, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Bosnia, Croatia, Albania, Algeria, Tunisia, Lebanon, the Philippines, Tajikistan, and Azerbaijan, as well as the Kashmir region of India and the Chechen region of Russia. Al Qaeda also maintained cells and personnel in a number of countries to facilitate its activities, including in Kenya, Tanzania, the United Kingdom, Germany, Spain, Canada, Malaysia, Thailand, and the United States.
Al Qaeda’s Organizational Structure
5. Al Qaeda had a command and control structure that included a majlis al shura (or consultation council), which discussed and approved major undertakings, including terrorist operations. Among those who sat on the majlis al shura of al Qaeda were Usama Bin Laden and Muhammad Atef, a/k/a “Abu Hafs el Masry,” until his death in mid-November 2001.
6. Under the majlis al shura, al Qaeda had a number of “committees,” including a “military committee” that considered and approved “military” matters. Muhammad Atef sat on the military committee and, until his death, was one of Usama Bin Laden’s principal military commanders. Atef was responsible for supervising the terrorist training of al Qaeda members and identifying targets for terrorist attacks that would be carried out, or sponsored, by al Qaeda.
7. In addition, al Qaeda had a “media committee,” which promoted al Qaeda by, among other things, preparing and distributing promotional materials to advertise al Qaeda’s terrorist agenda, intimidate its enemies, and attract recruits. KHALID SHEIKH MOHAMMED, WALID BIN ATTASH and MUSTAFA AL-HAWSAWI, the defendants |
20-of-47 in those games and although that’s a small sample size, there’s no denying he plays well under pressure. The move and contract should have little to no effect on the Panda and there is a solid chance he produces better numbers than he has in the past and could be a great pickup for your fantasy team at a position that has been fairly shallow.
Hanley Ramirez: His role for this Red Sox team is still a bit unclear. No one really knows if he’ll spend most of his time in left field, at third, or at short. But, what is very clear, is that this man can hit, and will be given protection in the order and runners on base to do so. Ramirez will also have shortstop eligibility all year, and likely will pick up 3B and OF eligibility as the season progresses, which would only add on to his value. Some may be a little down on him after last year, however, he suffered a career how HR/FB% of 10.5%, he was at 21% and 15% the previous two years, and is now in a much better hitters ballpark and will have many more opportunities to drive in runs. A 25 homer, 15 steal, 100 RBI, 80 run, and.300 AVG season is certainly in the realm of possibilities for Ramirez, but if you choose to draft him, make sure to grab a serviceable backup in the later rounds as he has played 150+ games once since 2009.
David Ortiz: Take the statistics from 2008-2014 for Ortiz and without looking at the year, you likely wouldn’t be able to tell which was which. That’s because David Ortiz is the model of consistency in fantasy baseball. What makes him such a good draft day option is that he is constantly severely underrated. His past 369 games, roughly two seasons, Ortiz has hit 88 home runs, knocked in 267 RBI, scored 208 runs, and did all this while batting.293. That averages to 39 HR, 117 RBI, 91 runs, and a.293 AVG over 162 games. The one caveat is that those stats were accumulated over the past three years, in which Ortiz totaled 90, 137, 142 games per season. But the point holds, do those seem like the numbers of a guy you can grab after the 5th round? Ortiz may be 39 years old, but he hasn’t stopped hitting yet, so there’s no reason to think he’ll suddenly stop now. He remains a great target who can put up numbers like a poor man’s Miguel Cabrera.
Players to Stay Away From:
Dustin Pedroia: Some may be pegging Pedroia for a bounce back campaign following a disastrous 2014 where he managed only 7 homers, 6 steals, 53 RBI, 72 runs, and a.278 batting average. Pedroia in his prime was a hitter who relied on stolen bases to buoy his five category fantasy value. However, since 2011 Pedroia has been running less and less with his age, and his fantasy value has been decreasing proportionately. His home runs have also been going down, as his strikeouts went up during the same four year time frame. Pedroia is someone who could be of value, especially considering how shallow this year’s pool of second basemen are. However, given how high he may be going in drafts, he’s someone you want to resist spending such a high draft pick on. It’s especially true when options like Neil Walker are available much later in drafts, and can provide very similar five category stats.
Joe Kelly: Kelly is not someone who should be owned in any sort of fantasy league. For someone who throws 95+ with his heater, he generates so few swing and misses. This brings his strikeout rate down to the point where it would be shocking to see his K/9 rise much above 6.17 where it was last year. Additionally, Kelly struggles with control, which attributes to opposing hitters swinging at such a low percentage of his pitches. With hitters not chasing, it’s no surprise his K/9 doesn’t rise much above 6, and his walk rate doesn’t fall much below 4. There are many other pitchers you can chase if you’re looking for upside, and if you’re looking for a safer pitching option then you certainly weren’t looking at Joe Kelly to begin with.
Sleepers:
Rusney Castillo: Not too long after signing his 7 year $72.5 million dollar contract, Castillo was already making a splash in the big leagues. In just 10 games, Castillo blasted 2 homers, stole 3 bases, and batted.333. Admittedly, this is a miniscule sample size to judge any player, especially one who had never faced MLB pitching before. However, it is encouraging to see him immediately see such success. Also, Castillo has continued to make a name for himself by batting.401 with a homer and 2 steals in the Puerto Rican Winter League over 10 games. Granted he is not facing MLB pitching in Puerto Rico, once again, it is encouraging to see him perform well. I’m not saying you’ll get Jose Abreu numbers from Castillo this year by any stretch. But could he go 25/25 with good RBI and run production in a solid Red Sox lineup and keep his average around.290? Absolutely. And that is exactly why you should take a gamble on Castillo, especially after the immense success Cubans have been having in MLB lately.
Allen Craig: “Why is Allen Craig on this list? He batted.215 with 8 homers last year, this guy sucks!” I’m sure that’s what a lot of you are thinking when coming across his name. Here’s why he’s a possible sleeper. Craig battled injuries all throughout last year. If he was ever playing at 100%, it wasn’t for very much of the season before old and new injuries started popping up all over the place. Similar to Mat Latos, Craig was a model of consistency ever since he reached the major leagues, until last year. As with with Latos, I would just pretend last year didn’t happen. Do that and what do you get? A 30-year-old hitter, in a great ballpark for offense, who can consistently spray line drives to all parts of the field and bat well above.300, while hitting around 15 home runs. I’m not suggesting you’re going to get another 2012 where he averages.307 and gets 22 home runs. Hitters do tend to struggle a bit at first against pitching when changing leagues. That being said, Craig can finish the year with a.310/.375/.460 triple slash. And that would be pretty great considering how late Craig may be drafted this year.
Prospects:
Henry Owens: Owens is perhaps the only Red Sox prospect who can truly impact the 2015 season, so I’ll lead off with him. So far, there has been nothing not to like about Owens. He’s piled on the strikeouts at every level he has ever pitched at. As you probably could have guessed, the walks have come with the strikeouts more often than not. However, Owens has progressed at each level, his control has actually gotten better, which speaks wonders for his development as a pitcher. It isn’t too often to find a minor leaguer with as good off speed pitches as Owens, and the control to go along with it. If the Red Sox fail to trade for, or sign another starter, look for Owens to be making noise in Fenway sooner than later.
Blake Swihart: Swihart managed a.293/.341/.469 triple slash with 13 homers and 8 stolen bases in 416 at-bats that were distributed between Double and Triple-A. Swihart is a rare athlete at the catcher’s position. He’s a guy who has a real chance to be special long term. He projects as a 20 homer,.280 average middle of the lineup hitter in his prime. However, with the Red Sox owning Vazquez and trading for Hanigan recently, Swihart probably won’t get his chance in Fenway until August of this year and therefore, expect his impact to be marginal at best.Director Norihiro Koizumi announced at the Sanuki Film Festival 2017 event in Kagawa on Sunday that the new sequel to the two live-action film adaptations of Yuki Suetsugu's Chihayafuru manga will take place two years after the first two films. The film will depict Chihaya, Taichi, and Arata in their third year of high school.
Koizumi also stated that the movie will start filming this spring. Koizumi added that since it has been two years since filming started on the first film, that in the new film as well, two years will have passed. He also stated that the film will portray the love triangle between Chihaya, Taichi, and Arata, and will settle the rivalry between Chihaya and Shinobu Wakamiya. Koizumi said that Suetsugu has approved the film's script.
The first film, Chihayafuru: Kami no Ku (Chihayafuru: Upper Phrase), opened in Japan on March 19. The second film, Chihayafuru: Shimo no Ku (Chihayafuru: Lower Phrase), opened in Japan on April 29. The staff announced the sequel film on the same day the second film opened in Japan.
The films star:
Suzu Hirose as Chihaya Ayase
Shūhei Nomura as Taichi Mashima
Mackenyu as Arata Wataya
Yūki Morinaga as Tsutomu Komano
Yūma Yamato as Yūsei Nishida
Mone Kamishiraishi as Kanade Ōe
Jun Kunimura as Harada
Mayu Matsuoka as Shinobu Wakamiya
Miyuki Matsuda as Taeko Miyauchi
Hiroya Shimizu as Akihito Sudō
Ryōtarō Sakaguchi as Hiro Kinashi
Norihiro Koizumi ( Midnight Sun, Kanojo wa Uso o Ai Shisugiteru ) directed both films.
Suetsugu launched the manga in Kodansha's Be-Love magazine in December 2007, and Kodansha will publish the manga's 34th compiled volume on March 13. The manga has more than 16 million copies in print in Japan. Kodansha Comics is releasing the manga digitally in English.
The manga inspired the first 25-episode television anime season from October 2011 to March 2012, and the second 25-episode season aired in Japan from January-June 2013. Additionally, the 22nd volume of the manga bundled an original anime DVD when it shipped in September 2013. Sentai Filmworks announced in September that it has licensed both seasons of the anime.
Source: Eiga.comNay, these are not Air Jordans. They do not make you fly. They help you when you’re already flying. This project is a footwear design made for NASA airmen flying around in zero gravity. What would they do with specialized footwear? Why, attach to things, of course! They’d have an extra appendage to pick things up (of course, if they had big toes like your humble narrator, they’d need no such thing,) and a sassy design across the whole!
Atop the foot there is padding since quite often a floating fellow holds himself in place with the top part, hooking the whole foot under a guide pole. The artificial opposable thumb could help offer a new way of hanging on to poles, but why not have protection for both?
The most interesting thing about this project (believe it or not) is the description provided by the designer. I am totally suspicious about it, since it lists things that aren’t supposed to be happening yet – is he a space traveler? My guess is yes! Check out this excerpt from the project description:
The revolutionary design, which began with consideration of an existing ergonomic and health problem in space travelers, results in reduced foot discomfort and injury, and will improve a spacefarer’s ability to compensate for the loss of gravity. They could be manufactured with many existing fabrics and materials, and can be shipped to orbit, to a growing population of space tourists and workers.
Totally futuristic!
Designer: Edward L Howell0 Shares
Depression. I’ve struggled with it for the better part of the past two years, maybe even longer. I will not go into the details as, I wish to keep most of that private and two, the main focus of this article is not on myself but the struggle of depression in general. Suffice to say, that my depression once warranted a trip to the hospital. I am now on the road to recovery though it is still filled with bumps. I consider writing this piece to be a part of the therapeutic process. Depression. I’ve struggled with it for the better part of the past two years, maybe even longer. I will not go into the details as, I wish to keep most of that private and two, the main focus of this article is not on myself but the struggle of depression in general. Suffice to say, that my depression once warranted a trip to the hospital. I am now on the road to recovery though it is still filled with bumps. I consider writing this piece to be a part of the therapeutic process.
I cannot stress the importance of speaking about depression. Whether it is divulging all of your personal stories or just letting it be known that you have depression, it is important to speak out. There is still a level of stigmatization surrounding depression. It is an illness, yet it is much more difficult to discuss a mental illness than a physical one. People understand what it means when you say you have a cold or flu, yet many are unsure of how to react to someone saying they are feeling depressed. They may have the best of intentions but are simply unable to help in any way because of a lack of understanding.
This goes into my next message: Reach out to others. It does not have to be your friends and family. I understand how difficult it can be to reach out to the people close to you. To tell them you are depressed is a challenging task. I’m sure it often feels as though you are a burden on those close to you. You do not want them to worry. You want them to be able to enjoy their lives and not bring them down because of how you are feeling. I do suggest that you do what you can to reach out to them, however, as they do want to help. Even if it’s the simple act of coming to your house for the day to spend time together to help keep your mood stable, friends and family should be included, not excluded from the recovery process. Still, if you find it difficult to reach out to friends and family, how about a stranger?
Reaching out to strangers is an option, especially in the age of the internet. I have made use of the Depression page on Reddit to communicate my feelings to like-minded people. Being told that a complete stranger cares can be a boost to get through the day and focus on getting better. I myself want anyone currently battling depression to know that I am here. You can find me on Facebook or look up my e-mail address. Get in touch with me. Let me know what’s going on. I’ll provide what help I can. I know how difficult this struggle can be and I want to help.
Finally, the atheist/secular community should come together as a group to assist each other with depression. Several of my friends who have been there for me when the depression takes hold, are from this wonderful community. Proving that we do care about our fellow humans. I want to work with those in this community to create support networks for those battling depression. I cannot even begin to overstate the value of support networks, especially when those networks are comprised of like-minded people.
I’ll end this piece first off, by saying “thank you” thank you to those who have been there. Whether it be for my own struggles or helping others with depression. You have made a difference in the world. Second, to those still fighting depression: Don’t give up. There are those who care. I care. We want to see you get better and we will help you get better.
Peace
This post originally appeared on the Atheists, Agnostics, and Freethinkers of Waterloo blog.
Find us on Facebook, learn more about Center for Inquiry On Campus, or see what resources are available to students.Photo: Eric Gay / Associated Press Image 1 of / 38 Caption Close
Image 2 of 38 After a three-year run at Tulane (1985-87) in which he went 11-23, Mack Brown posted a 69-46-1 record in his 10 seasons (1988-97) at North Carolina. After a three-year run at Tulane (1985-87) in which he went 11-23, Mack Brown posted a 69-46-1 record in his 10 seasons (1988-97) at North Carolina. Photo: Doug Pensinger / Getty Images
Image 3 of 38 Texas hired Mack Brown as its 28th head football coach in Dec. 1997. Texas hired Mack Brown as its 28th head football coach in Dec. 1997. Photo: Harry Cabluck / Associated Press
Image 4 of 38 1998 season Unlike predecessors David McWilliams and John Mackovic, Mack Brown hooked a victory in his first game at Texas. The Longhorns went 9-3 in Brown's first season and defeated Mississippi State in the Cotton Bowl. less 1998 season Unlike predecessors David McWilliams and John Mackovic, Mack Brown hooked a victory in his first game at Texas. The Longhorns went 9-3 in Brown's first season... more Photo: D. Fahleson / Houston Chronicle
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Image 6 of 38 1999 season Mack Brown couldn't bear to watch as Nebraska defeated the Longhorns in the Big 12 Championship Game at the Alamodome in San Antonio. Texas finished the season with a 9-3 record after losing to Arkansas in the Cotton Bowl. less 1999 season Mack Brown couldn't bear to watch as Nebraska defeated the Longhorns in the Big 12 Championship Game at the Alamodome in San Antonio. Texas finished the season... more Photo: Smiley N. Pool / Houston Chronicle
Image 7 of 38 <center><strong>2000 season</strong></center> The Longhorns posted a 9-3 record and lost to Oregon in the Holiday Bowl. <center><strong>2000 season</strong></center> The Longhorns posted a 9-3 record and lost to Oregon in the Holiday Bowl. Photo: Ron Heflin / Associated Press
Image 8 of 38 2001 season Mack Brown and the Longhorns began their impressive run of nine consecutive double-digit win seasons as they went 11-2 and defeated Washington in the Holiday Bowl. less 2001 season Mack Brown and the Longhorns began their impressive run of nine consecutive double-digit win seasons as they went 11-2 and defeated Washington in the Holiday... more Photo: Erich Schlegel / Dallas Morning News
Image 9 of 38 2002 season Mack Brown shares a laugh with quarterback Chris Simms, right, during an interview session at the Big 12 Conference Football Media Days. The Horns went 11-2 for the second straight season and defeated LSU in the Cotton Bowl. less 2002 season Mack Brown shares a laugh with quarterback Chris Simms, right, during an interview session at the Big 12 Conference Football Media Days. The Horns went 11-2 for... more Photo: Richard Carson / Associated Press
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Image 11 of 38 <center><strong>2003 season</strong></center> The Longhorns went 10-3 and lost to Washington State in the Holiday Bowl. <center><strong>2003 season</strong></center> The Longhorns went 10-3 and lost to Washington State in the Holiday Bowl. Photo: Charlie Neibergall / Associated Press
Image 12 of 38 <center><strong>2004 season</strong></center> Mack Brown and quarterback Vince Young celebrate after beating Michigan in the Rose Bowl Game which capped an 11-1 season. <center><strong>2004 season</strong></center> Mack Brown and quarterback Vince Young celebrate after beating Michigan in the Rose Bowl Game which capped an 11-1 season. Photo: Kevin Fujii / Houston Chronicle
Image 13 of 38 <center><strong>2005 season</strong></center> For the first time since 1999, Mack Brown, left, got the better of Bob Stoops in their annual showdown in Dallas. <center><strong>2005 season</strong></center> For the first time since 1999, Mack Brown, left, got the better of Bob Stoops in their annual showdown in Dallas. Photo: Brett Coomer / Houston Chronicle
Image 14 of 38 2005 season Mack Brown holds a bundle of roses after beating Colorado 70-3 in the Big 12 championship game at Reliant Stadium to advance to the national championship game in the Rose Bowl. less 2005 season Mack Brown holds a bundle of roses after beating Colorado 70-3 in the Big 12 championship game at Reliant Stadium to advance to the national championship game... more Photo: David J. Phillip / Associated Press
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Image 16 of 38 <center><strong>2005 season</strong></center> Mack Brown flashes a Mickey-Mouse-Glove-Hook-'Em-Horns sign in front of Sleeping Beauty's Castle at Disneyland. <center><strong>2005 season</strong></center> Mack Brown flashes a Mickey-Mouse-Glove-Hook-'Em-Horns sign in front of Sleeping Beauty's Castle at Disneyland. Photo: Kevin Fujii / Houston Chronicle
Image 17 of 38 <center><strong>2005 season</strong></center> Actor Matthew McConaughey poses with Mack Brown during a team photo at the Rose Bowl. <center><strong>2005 season</strong></center> Actor Matthew McConaughey poses with Mack Brown during a team photo at the Rose Bowl. Photo: Harry How / Getty Images
Image 18 of 38 2005 season Mack Brown and the Longhorns got the best of Pete Carroll and USC in the BCS National Championship. The victory capped a 13-0 season for the Longhorns. less 2005 season Mack Brown and the Longhorns got the best of Pete Carroll and USC in the BCS National Championship. The victory capped a 13-0 season for the... more Photo: Brett Coomer / Houston Chronicle
Image 19 of 38 2006 season Mack Brown, left, and Longhorn quarterback Colt McCoy celebrate the Longhorns' win over Iowa in the Alamo Bowl. Texas finished the season 10-3. less 2006 season Mack Brown, left, and Longhorn quarterback Colt McCoy celebrate the Longhorns' win over Iowa in the Alamo Bowl. Texas finished the season... more Photo: Brett Coomer / Houston Chronicle
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Image 21 of 38 2007 season Mack Brown and Texas A&M head coach Dennis Franchione talk before the Aggies' 38-30 win. For the second straight season the Longhorns finished 10-3. UT defeated Arizona State in the Holiday Bowl. less 2007 season Mack Brown and Texas A&M head coach Dennis Franchione talk before the Aggies' 38-30 win. For the second straight season the Longhorns finished 10-3. UT defeated... more Photo: Kevin Fujii / Houston Chronicle
Image 22 of 38 2008 season Mack Brown sends quarterback Colt McCoy back into the game in the Longhorns' 49-9 win over Texas A&M. UT finished the season with an 11-1 record. less 2008 season Mack Brown sends quarterback Colt McCoy back into the game in the Longhorns' 49-9 win over Texas A&M. UT finished the season with an 11-1... more Photo: Brian Bahr / Getty Images
Image 23 of 38 <center><strong>2008 season</strong></center> Mack Brown greets Ohio State coach Jim Tressel after the Longhorns defeated the Buckeyes in the Fiesta Bowl. <center><strong>2008 season</strong></center> Mack Brown greets Ohio State coach Jim Tressel after the Longhorns defeated the Buckeyes in the Fiesta Bowl. Photo: Doug Pensinger / Getty Images
Image 24 of 38 2009 season Mack Brown lifts the Big 12 championship trophy after his team's 10-6 victory over Nebraska. The Longhorns advanced to the BCS National Championship Game where they lost to Alabama to cap a 13-1 season. less 2009 season Mack Brown lifts the Big 12 championship trophy after his team's 10-6 victory over Nebraska. The Longhorns advanced to the BCS National Championship Game where... more Photo: Jamie Squire / Getty Images
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Image 26 of 38 2010 season Mack Brown suffered his worst campaign in Austin as the Horns went 5-7. Defensive coordinator and head coach in waiting Will Muschamp left for Florida after the season. less 2010 season Mack Brown suffered his worst campaign in Austin as the Horns went 5-7. Defensive coordinator and head coach in waiting Will Muschamp left for Florida after the... more Photo: Vernon Bryant / Dallas Morning News
Image 27 of 38 <center><strong>2011 season</strong></center> The Longhorns went 8-5 and defeated California in the Holiday Bowl. <center><strong>2011 season</strong></center> The Longhorns went 8-5 and defeated California in the Holiday Bowl. Photo: Erich Schlegel / Getty Images
Image 28 of 38 Mack Brown and Darrell K Royal attend a breakfast recognizing Coach Royal's fifty-five years of service to the University of Texas on May 9, 2012. Royal died on November 7, 2012 in Austin. Mack Brown and Darrell K Royal attend a breakfast recognizing Coach Royal's fifty-five years of service to the University of Texas on May 9, 2012. Royal died on November 7, 2012 in Austin. Photo: Gary Miller / FilmMagic
Image 29 of 38 2012 season Mack Brown and Kenny Vaccaro, right, hold the champion's trophy following the Longhorns' Alamo Bowl win agains against Oregon State. UT finished 9-4. less 2012 season Mack Brown and Kenny Vaccaro, right, hold the champion's trophy following the Longhorns' Alamo Bowl win agains against Oregon State. UT finished... more Photo: Stacy Revere / Getty Images
Image 30 of 38
Image 31 of 38 <center><strong>2013 season</strong></center> The Longhorns dropped to 8-4 after falling to Baylor in the season finale and missing out on a chance to win the Big 12. <center><strong>2013 season</strong></center> The Longhorns dropped to 8-4 after falling to Baylor in the season finale and missing out on a chance to win the Big 12. Photo: Tom Pennington / Getty Images
Image 32 of 38 Mack Brown announces his resignation as Texas head football coach on Dec. 15, 2013. Mack Brown announces his resignation as Texas head football coach on Dec. 15, 2013. Photo: Jack Plunkett / Associated
Image 33 of 38 Mack Brown lost his last game as Longhorns coach, falling to Oregon 30-7 in the Alamo Bowl on Dec. 28, 2013. Mack Brown lost his last game as Longhorns coach, falling to Oregon 30-7 in the Alamo Bowl on Dec. 28, 2013. Photo: Ricardo B. Brazziell / MCT
Image 34 of 38 UT mascot Bevo wears a halter with the name "Mack" in honor of the coach at the Alamo Bowl. UT mascot Bevo wears a halter with the name "Mack" in honor of the coach at the Alamo Bowl. Photo: Eric Gay / Associated Press
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Image 36 of 38 Fans show support for Mack Brown during the Alamo Bowl. Fans show support for Mack Brown during the Alamo Bowl. Photo: Ronald Martinez / Getty Images
Image 37 of 38 Mack Brown, left, and his wife Sally, right, give the Hook'em Horns sign to fans as they leave the field after the Alamo Bowl. Mack Brown, left, and his wife Sally, right, give the Hook'em Horns sign to fans as they leave the field after the Alamo Bowl. Photo: Eric Gay / Associated PressWe’ve teamed up with Chicago noise rock band No Men, which features ex-Ringo Deathstarr vocalist/drummer Pursley, to bring you the giallo-inspired music video for “Stay Dumb”. If you’re into the Italian 70’s films that exude that deliciously creepy kind of atmosphere, you’re bound to get a fresh taste of it here, all coupled in with the exciting and dangerous track.
Director Greg Stephen Reigh tells BD:
The video is a tongue-in-cheek homage to the Italian Giallo thrillers of the 70’s and a love letter to horror icons Dario Argento and Mario Bava, in all their colorful, trashy glory. Shot on a shoestring budget, the video was made possible by the generosity of Chicago’s DIY music scene, who donated their locations to the production.
You can buy the Deeper EP via Bandcamp.
Video Credits:
Catherine Woods – Makeup
Jeremy Freedberge – Co-Cinematographer, Gaffer
Michael Patrick Russell – Bartender
Abby Young – Lover
No Men online:
Official Website
Instagram
Facebook
Director’s Website
Tour dates:
9/15 Chicago, IL The Hideout[Note for TomDispatch Readers: The next post at this website will be on Tuesday, July 21st. Tom]
We’ve just passed the first “anniversary” -- if such a word can even be used with such a catastrophe -- of Operation Protective Edge, Israel’s third invasion of the Gaza Strip in recent years. That small bit of land has now suffered more devastation than just about any place on the planet. In the wake of the third war since 2008, more than 100,000 displaced Gazans remain homeless or crowded in with relatives. Whole neighborhoods, destroyed in the conflict, have yet to be rebuilt. A year later, there is still next to no electricity, the area’s sole power plant having been taken out by Israeli air strikes, and the situation when it comes to sewage and potable water, is disastrous. Blockaded and devastated by repeated wars, Gaza’s manufacturing sector has almost disappeared, while its economy is “on the verge of collapse,” according to the World Bank. In short, by any standard, Gaza is not a livable place and yet 1.8 million people (more than half of them under 18 years old, 43% under 15) are crammed into it with nowhere to go and in most cases nothing to do. After all, Gaza now has what may be the highest unemployment rate on the planet at 44%, with youth unemployment reaching 60%.
The great Israeli reporter Amira Hass, author of the classic book Drinking the Sea at Gaza: Days and Nights in a Land Under Siege, recently put the matter this way: “In practice, Gaza has become a huge, let me be blunt, concentration camp... This is not a novelty... This did not start, unlike what many people think, with the rise of Hamas... This policy of sealing off Gaza, of making Gazans into... defacto prisoners, started [in 1991]... So if I want to sum up the reality of Gaza: it is a huge prison... It is an Israel-meditated, pre-meditated, pre-planned, and planned project to separate Gaza from the West Bank.”
Max Blumenthal’s new book, The 51 Day War: Ruin and Resistance in Gaza, catches the nightmare of the third war in this tiny piece of land in the last six-and-a-half years in a uniquely gripping way. In its pages, you follow him directly into the devastation of the Israeli invasion. (He entered Gaza during the first extended truce of the war.) I doubt there could be a more vivid account of what it felt like, as a Palestinian civilian, to endure those weeks of horror, massive destruction, and killing. Today at TomDispatch, he looks back on that experience and forward to what he doesn’t doubt will be the fourth war of its kind. If he’s right, then sadly, in the years to come, some reporter will be writing yet another book on a Gaza war. Tom
Lieberman offered his prediction only four months after his government concluded Operation Protective Edge, the third war between Israel and the armed factions of the Gaza Strip, which had managed to reduce about 20% of besieged Gaza to an apocalyptic moonscape. Even before the assault was launched, Gaza was a warehouse for surplus humanity -- a 360-square-kilometer ghetto of Palestinian refugees expelled by and excluded from the self-proclaimed Jewish state. For this population, whose members are mostly under the age of 18, the violence has become a life ritual that repeats every year or two. As the first anniversary of Protective Edge passes, Lieberman’s unsettling prophecy appears increasingly likely to come true. Indeed, odds are that the months of relative “quiet” that followed his statement will prove nothing more than an interregnum between Israel’s ever more devastating military escalations.
"A fourth operation in the Gaza Strip is inevitable, just as a third Lebanon war is inevitable,” declared Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman in February. His ominous comments came just days after an anti-tank missile fired by the Lebanon-based guerrilla group Hezbollah killed two soldiers in an Israeli army convoy. It, in turn, was a response to an Israeli air strike that resulted in the assassination of several high-ranking Hezbollah figures.
Three years ago, the United Nations issued a report predicting that the Gaza Strip would be uninhabitable by 2020. Thanks to Israel’s recent attack, this warning appears to have arrived sooner than expected. Few of the 18,000 homes the Israeli military destroyed in Gaza have been rebuilt. Few of the more than 400 businesses and shops damaged or leveled during that war have been repaired. Thousands of government employees have not received a salary for more than a year and are working for free. Electricity remains desperately limited, sometimes to only four hours a day. The coastal enclave’s borders are consistently closed. Its population is trapped, traumatized, and descending ever deeper into despair, with suicide rates skyrocketing.
One of the few areas where Gaza’s youth can find structure is within the “Liberation Camps” established by Hamas, the Islamist political organization that controls Gaza. There, they undergo military training, ideological indoctrination, and are ultimately inducted into the Palestinian armed struggle. As I found while covering last summer’s war, there is no shortage of young orphans determined to take up arms after watching their parents and siblings be torn limb from limb by 2,000-pound Israeli fragmentation missiles, artillery shells, and other modes of destruction. Fifteen-year-old Waseem Shamaly, for instance, told me his life’s ambition was to join the Al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of Hamas. He had just finished recounting through tears what it was like to watch a YouTube clip of his brother, Salem, being executed by an Israeli sniper while he searched for the rest of his family in the rubble of their neighborhood last July.
Anger with Hamas’s political wing for accepting a ceasefire agreement with Israel in late August 2014 that offered nothing but a return to the slow death of siege and imprisonment is now palpable among Gaza’s civilian population. This is particularly true in border areas devastated by the Israelis last summer. However, support for the Al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of Hamas that carries the banner of the Palestinian armed struggle, remains almost unanimous.
Palestinians in Gaza need only look 80 kilometers east to the gilded Bantustans of the Palestinian Authority (PA) to see what they would get if they agreed to disarm. After years of fruitless negotiations, Israel has rewarded Palestinians living under the rule of PA President Mahmoud Abbas with the record growth of Jewish settlements, major new land annexations, nightly house raids, and the constant humiliation and dangers of daily interactions with Israeli soldiers and fanatical Jewish settlers. Rather than resist the occupation, Abbas’s Western-trained security forces coordinate directly with the occupying Israeli army, assisting Israel in the arrest and even torture of fellow Palestinians, including the leadership of rival political factions.
As punishing as life in Gaza might be, the West Bank model does not offer a terribly attractive alternative. Yet this is exactly the kind of “solution” the Israeli government seeks to impose on Gaza. As former Interior Minister Yuval Steinitz declared last year, “We want more than a ceasefire, we want the demilitarization of Gaza... Gaza will be exactly like [the West Bank city of] Ramallah.”
Keeping Gaza in Ruins
Behind the quasi-apocalyptic destruction exacted on Gaza by the Israeli military during Operation Protective Edge lies a sadistic strategy whose aim is to punish residents of the besieged coastal enclave into submission. The “Dahiya Doctrine,” named after a southern Beirut neighborhood the Israeli air force decimated in 2006, is focused on punishing the civilian populations of Gaza and southern Lebanon for supporting armed resistance movements like Hamas and Hezbollah. In “Disproportionate Force,” a 2008 paper published by the Institute for National Security Studies, a think tank closely linked to the Israeli military, Colonel Gabi Siboni spelled out its punitive, civilian-oriented logic clearly: “With an outbreak of hostilities, the [Israeli army] will need to act immediately, decisively, and with force that is disproportionate to the enemy’s actions and the threat it poses. Such a response aims at inflicting damage and meting out punishment to an extent that will demand long and expensive reconstruction processes.”
In the aftermath of Protective Edge’s massive destruction of civilian infrastructure in Gaza, the Israeli government set out to obstruct any reconstruction process and extend the suffering of Gaza’s civilian population. When diplomats including American Secretary of State John Kerry gathered in Cairo last October to discuss repairing and rebuilding some of the $7 billion in damage caused by Protective Edge, then-Israeli Transportation Minister Yisrael Katz assured them that their efforts were ultimately futile. “The Gazans must decide what they want to be: Singapore or Darfur,” Katz said, |
train reached a bridge across the canal to the north from Kursha-2, they found it already ablaze. The train was trapped and burnt with almost all passengers aboard including cargo while only a few managed to save themselves.[1]
As the result of the firestorm, 1200 died including woodcutters (some of which were hired from nearby villages), their families, railwaymen, military men, and only twenty escaped, saving themselves in the pond, wells, the channel, and the unforested hill.
The tragedy was intentionally poorly highlighted by Soviet media: only a few brief notes were made public; the only reminder of this event was a common grave near the ruins of the locomotive depot. The settlement was restored, but on a smaller scale. Soon after World War 2, it was depopulated, the Kursha-Charus railway was dismantled, and thereafter, only foresters lived in Kursha-2. Now the settlement lies in ruins, and the sole resident of the area, as of 2006, was one 90-year-old woman who survived by escaping from the burning train with the help of another man into flames. Her mother and sisters died the same day.
References [ edit ]President Trump announced in a public broadcast that he would be nominating 49-year-old judge Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court on Tuesday night -- a move conservative groups and Republican senators alike immediately praised.
Interest in Gorsuch quickly surged, and Twitter was set on fire Thursday morning after a Daily Mail report emerged linking the judge to a student group called "Fascism Forever Club" while in high school.
According to the report, which has not been fully verified, Gorsuch launched the right-winged anti-faculty club while he was a freshman at the elite Georgetown Preparatory School in Washington, D.C. in order to counter the "liberal" views of the school administration.
"In political circles, our tireless President Gorsuch's 'Fascism Forever Club' happily jerked its knees against the increasingly 'left-wing' tendencies of the faculty," the yearbook reportedly read.
Gorsuch served as president of the club until graduating from the elite school in 1985.
When the report emerged, some on Twitter seemed alarmed by the news:
@JoyToy312@atsamee@Cheryllynn512 Better startcalling your Senators and congressman to vote No on Fascist 4ever Gorsuch for SCOTUS! — Mary (@APGsMom) February 2, 2017
But many dismissed Gorsuch's reported club as a conservative teen's cheeky response to liberals:
Let's all at least consider that a 1980s "Fascism forever" club was a young conservative's cheeky response to liberals calling Reagan one. — Kyle Blaine (@kyletblaine) February 2, 2017
The left is more outraged about a joke name for a high school club - 'Fascism Forever' than actual fascists attacking innocent people. — Paul Joseph Watson (@PrisonPlanet) February 2, 2017
Gorsuch was half-joking with a Fascism Forever club, because real fascism did not seem possible to him in the 80s. Curious how he feels now. — John Levenstein (@johnlevenstein) February 2, 2017
See more reactions to the report:
20 PHOTOS Neil Grouch linked to questionable club in high school See Gallery Neil Grouch linked to questionable club in high school @POTUS So Gorsuch is founder & president of the Fascism Forever group! Big surprise? No. You & Bannon are staging a fascist coup d'etat. If Dems were better at branding, they would refer to him every time as "self proclaimed fascist Gorsuch" https://t.co/TUov3wX62r @EdWhelanEPPC as a rough contemporary of Gorsuch, I was called a fascist on the regular because I was, after all, a libertarian (1) @SenateMajLdr @POTUS Stop asking Americans to ignore fascism, Gorsuch is a fascist that founded the ‘Fascism Forever Club,' Gorsuch is at least an "honest" fascist! The worst I can say about Gorsuch is that he's a Scalia clone. I don't think he's a fascist. So what if young Gorsuch called himself a fascist? I mean, the Republicans wouldn't say a word if he'd called himself a communist. Lets see who becomes the Fascist of the year, Potus, Alt-Potus or Gorsuch - "Fascism Forever" Had there been text messaging when Neil Gorsuch was in school, would his notes have ended in #FFF? (Fascist Friends Forever) Neil Gorsuch a fascist-lifer. Awesome pick Trump. If you support this pick - you are by definition, Un-American. Fascist Forever @NRSC @stabenow Do not confirm fascist judge Gorsuch! Neil Gorsuch emerged from his hole today and saw his fascist shadow. #gorsuch #fascismforever #GroundhogDay Trump is trying to put an actual confirmed fascist on the Supreme Court. #gorsuch Note the fascist sneer. #gorsuch https://t.co/G6L1xooO3W @Sen_JoeManchin Gorsuch started a Fascist club. Is against LGBT rights. Is not a friend to democracy. You are there to fill YOUR pockets. @SenateGOP @SenateMajLdr @SenFeinstein Gorsuch is a fascist. Republicans are killing democracy! @JohnCornyn @tedcruz I also demand you vote "no" on Gorsuch. He's a fascist wannabe, just like Bannon and crew. We can't go down that road. @SenDonnelly Joe, grow a pair, VOTE NO ON THAT FASCIST GORSUCH https://t.co/b2YltBBFOH Neil Gorsuch needs a kick in the ass,because he's a fascist puto #rantmountain Funny - the christians have stopped harassing me on twitter - they must be busy praying for Schwarznegger & Fascist Forever Gorsuch Up Next See Gallery Discover More Like This HIDE CAPTION SHOW CAPTION of SEE ALL BACK TO SLIDE
The staunch conservative jurist reportedly listed other roles as well, including "President of the Yard, Student Government" and president of the "Committee to reform The Beast."
Gorsuch has been praised by well known right-leaning groups, such as the Faith and Freedom Coalition and the National Rifle Association.
See Trump's announcement of the Gorsuch nomination:
16 PHOTOS Judge Neil Gorsuch See Gallery Judge Neil Gorsuch Neil Gorsuch pauses as he speaks after taking the judicial oath during a ceremony in the Rose Garden of the White House April 10, 2017 in Washington, DC. / AFP PHOTO / Brendan Smialowski (Photo credit should read BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AFP/Getty Images) Judge Neil Gorsuch speaks, after US President Donald Trump nominated him for the Supreme Court, at the White House in Washington, DC, on January 31, 2017. President Donald Trump on nominated federal appellate judge Neil Gorsuch as his Supreme Court nominee, tilting the balance of the court back in the conservatives' favor. (NICHOLAS KAMM/AFP/Getty Images) WASHINGTON, DC - APRIL 10: President Donald Trump watches as Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch hugs his wife Marie Louise moments after Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy administered the judicial oath during a swearing-in ceremony in the Rose Garden of the White House in Washington, DC on Monday, April 10, 2017. (Photo by Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post via Getty Images) Judge Neil Gorsuch (C) and his wife Marie Louise look on, after US President Donald Trump nominated him for the Supreme Court, at the White House in Washington, DC, on January 31, 2017. President Donald Trump nominated federal appellate judge Neil Gorsuch as his Supreme Court nominee, tilting the balance of the court back in the conservatives' favor. (BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AFP/Getty Images) Swearing in of Coloradan Neil M. Gorsuch as the newest member of the, United States Court Of Appeals For The Tenth Circuit, with his wife Louise Gorsuch, holding the bible, and his two daughters, Belinda Gorsuch age 4, and Emma Gorsuch age 6. (Denver Post Photo By John Prieto) Judge Neil Gorsuch (L) and his wife Marie Louise look on, after US President Donald Trump nominated him for the Supreme Court, at the White House in Washington, DC, on January 31, 2017. Trump named Judge Neil Gorsuch as his Supreme Court nominee. (BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AFP/Getty Images) Neil Gorsuch stands with his wife Marie Louise as U.S. President Donald Trump announces his nomination of Gorsuch to be an associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court at the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., January 31, 2017. (REUTERS/Carlos Barria) Judge Neil Gorsuch speaks, after US President Donald Trump nominated him for the Supreme Court, at the White House in Washington, DC, on January 31, 2017. President Donald Trump on nominated federal appellate judge Neil Gorsuch as his Supreme Court nominee, tilting the balance of the court back in the conservatives' favor. (BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AFP/Getty Images) US President Donald Trump (L) and Louise Gorsuch (2R) watch as Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy administers a judicial oath to Neil Gorsuch during a ceremony in the Rose Garden of the White House April 10, 2017 in Washington, DC. / AFP PHOTO / Brendan Smialowski (Photo credit should read BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AFP/Getty Images) Swearing in of Coloradan Neil M. Gorsuch as the newest member of the, United States Court Of Appeals For The Tenth Circuit, with his wife Louise Gorsuch, holding the bible, and his two daughters, Belinda Gorsuch age 4, and Emma Gorsuch age 6. (Denver Post Photo By John Prieto) U.S. President Donald Trump steps back as Neil Gorsuch (L) approaches the podium after being nominated to be an associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court at the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., January 31, 2017. (REUTERS/Carlos Barria) U.S. President Donald Trump points to the audience after the swearing in of Judge Neil Gorsuch as an Associate Supreme Court Justice in the Rose Garden of the White House in Washington, U.S., April 10, 2017. REUTERS/Joshua Roberts Robert Hoyt, left, General Counsel of the Department of the Treasury, is congratulated by Secretary of the Treasury Henry Paulson as Judge Neil Gorsuch with the US Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit, looks on in the Cash room of the Treasury Building in Washington, D.C., Friday, January 5, 2007. (Photo by David Scull/Bloomberg via Getty Images) Neil Gorsuch speaks after U.S. President Donald Trump announces his nomination of Gorsuch to be an associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court at the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., January 31, 2017. (REUTERS/Carlos Barria) U.S. President Donald Trump announces his nomination of Neil Gorsuch to be an associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court as Gorsuch (R) stands with his wife Marie Louise at the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., January 31, 2017. (REUTERS/Carlos Barria) Judge Neil Gorsuch speaks, after US President Donald Trump nominated him for the Supreme Court, at the White House in Washington, DC, on January 31, 2017. President Donald Trump on nominated federal appellate judge Neil Gorsuch as his Supreme Court nominee, tilting the balance of the court back in the conservatives' favor. (BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AFP/Getty Images) Up Next See Gallery Discover More Like This HIDE CAPTION SHOW CAPTION of SEE ALL BACK TO SLIDE
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A lot of people are dreaming of having their own business or have ideas but often there is the financing issue that prevents ideas from becoming a reality.
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Disclaimer. This article is paid and provided by a third-party source and should not be viewed as an endorsement by CoinIdol. Readers should do their own research before investing funds in any company. CoinIdol shall not be responsible or liable, directly or indirectly, for any damage or loss caused or alleged to be caused by or in connection with the use of or reliance on any such content, goods or services mentioned in this article.The fall of Mycenaean power, the intervening Dark Ages, and the dawn of a new civilisation during the ‘Greek miracle’ of the Archaic period is one of the most fascinating stories in ancient history. After the collapse of the Mycenaean palace system around 1100 BCE, Greece experienced centuries of social and economic devastation. Pylos, Mycenae and Thebes were abandoned and burned to the ground. A dwindling population was attacked by invaders from the north and from the sea. What remained of Bronze Age culture was according to one historian ‘very little’, and ‘that little then dwindled away to almost nothing’. Writing at the end of the period, the 8th-century poet Hesiod described the degeneration of the human race, from glittering Bronze Age heroes, down to his own violent ‘Age of Iron’. He looked into the near future and saw children born grey, families at war with themselves, and society self-destructing. He concluded miserably: ‘I wish that I … had either died sooner or been born later.’
But it was at this moment that a new vision of society began to emerge. As the classical scholar Gilbert Murray put it in 1907 : ‘There is a far-off island of knowledge, or apparent knowledge; then darkness; then the beginnings of continuous history.’ The archaic period (800-480 BCE) represents the start of this history, when ‘darkness gives way to dawn’, according to the archaeologist J N Coldstream. And at its heart is the birthplace of the Western intellectual and political tradition: the polis or Greek city-state.
A polis was a self-governing city or town and its surrounding territory. In terms of size, it wasn’t necessarily big: Aristotle said that all the citizens of a polis (i.e, men) should be able to be assembled by the voice of a single herald. Plato gave an ideal citizenry of 5,040. Some poleis were smaller, but few were much larger. A typical city-state such as Plataea in Boeotia had a total population of fewer than 10,000. But from its modest beginnings, the idea of the polis soon spread. At the highpoint of Greek civilisation (c400 BCE), around 1,000 had migrated across the shores of the Mediterranean – as Plato put it: ‘like frogs around a pond’.
Given these geographic variations, many chose to define the polis anthropologically. ‘Not well-built walls, nor canals and dockyards make the polis: but men do,’ said Alcaeus of Lesbos. In Thucydides, the Athenian general Nikias states that: ‘It is men that make the polis, not walls or ships.’ Aristotle defined man as politikon zoon, a political animal: he ‘whose nature is to live in a polis’. At its heart was a conception of government for the people, by the people: of normative rules and collective decision-making. For the writers and philosophers of 5th-century Athens, this culminated in an ability to step back, not only from politics but from life itself, and subject it to something like objective scrutiny.
But the reasons for the success of the Greek city-state still remain unclear. Did it result from an expanding population or the group-think of the armoured hoplite phalanx? Were improvements in trade crucial, or was it the rise of sophisticated urban elites? Was it maintained by abstract ideals of democracy (demokratia), freedom (eleutheria) and free speech (parrhesia)? Or was the rise of the polis somehow the astonishing aftereffect of the simple act of drawing a line?
Literature can provide a useful source for understanding the polis. Homer composed around 750-700 BCE, at the same time as the polis was emerging. In the Odyssey, he describes the island of the ‘insolent and lawless’ Cyclopes – wild men living outside the polis and political life:
Neither assemblies for council have they, nor appointed laws, but they dwell on the peaks of mountains in hollow caves, and each one is lawgiver to his children and his wives, and they have no regard for one another.
They live individualistically; their laws govern only their own families. With their limited vision, they have little sense of a public sphere. But what makes the Cyclopes so lawless and monstrous, according to Homer, is not simply their lack of an eye, but their lack of an assembly or agora.
The agora was at the heart of the polis. It was an open square situated towards the centre of the city, and for many historians provides the hallmark of the Greek city-state: as the classicist Paul Cartledge at the University of Cambridge says, it was ‘one of the most basic distinguishing markers of ancient Greek culture and civilisation’. In later years, the agora gained market stalls and temples, council buildings and law courts, becoming, in the words of the historian John Ma at Columbia University, ‘the public space par excellence, owned and controlled by the community’.
What is important about the agora is that it is not simply a space, but a defined space, a bounded absence
At the heart of these conceptions is the idea of the agora as a place of ‘bringing together’, a ‘meeting place’. The archaeologist Malcolm Bell III at the University of Virginia calls it ‘a multivalent gathering place, not just a political centre’. The classicist John Camp at Randolph-Macon College in Virginia describes it as the city-state’s ‘heart and soul’. And into this empty space historians and political theorists have poured their own egalitarian ideals. It was a ‘democratic space’, a ‘communal space’, a ‘melting pot’.
Such depictions are uncontroversial, and capture much of the flavour of the agora in the later classical era (480-323 BCE) where public and private, politics and profit mingled. But whether they explain the beginnings of the agora in the first place seems less clear. For one might ask: why might a young community feel the need to create a space in which to meet? Certainly people need a place to meet – around a water hole, on a street corner; many African villages conduct their meetings under the shade of a tree. But that people need a space for meeting seems less obvious – and wasn’t there plenty of space around anyway? For what is important about the agora is that it is not simply a space, but rather a defined space, a bounded absence. An upright stone marking the edge of the agora from Epidaurus on the Peloponnese is inscribed: ‘boundary of the agora’. But what might this boundary mean?
In book 18 of the Iliad, Homer breaks off from the battle between the Greeks and the Trojans and seeks out a moment of calm before the impending storm: Achilles’ brutal revenge for the death of Patroclus, his slaughter of Hector and dishonouring of his body, and the mass killing of Trojans that will leave the river Skamandros brimming with blood.
Instead, Homer conducts us into the workshop of Hephaestus, the blacksmith to the Gods. There, Thetis petitions him to make a new suit of armour for her son Achilles. Hephaestus sets to work, building a shield five layers thick, decorating it with the sun and the sea and the moon and the stars, its boundary formed by the ocean. He depicts a city, ‘busy with the hum of men’, and a wedding party with flutes and lyres and dancers.
But then Homer’s vision darkens:
Men had gathered in the market-place where a quarrel was in progress, two men quarrelling over the blood-money for a man who had been killed: one claimed that he was making full compensation, and was showing it to the people, but the other refused to accept any payment: both were eager to take a decision from the arbiter. The people were taking sides, and shouting their support for either man, while the heralds tried to keep them in check. And the elders sat on the polished stone seats in the sacred circle, taking the rod in their hands as they received it from the loud-voiced heralds.
The shield of Achilles has sometimes been interpreted as a portrait of the good life, a reminder of all that the Greeks are fighting for. But this seems to be undermined by the image at its centre: of violence, vengeance and murder. Moreover, it looks like things could kick off at any moment – the crowd is shouting and taking sides, with the heralds struggling to hold them back. In contrast to our tendency to idealise the agora, Homer reminds us of a simple but important fact: the agora was not only a place for bringing people together, but also for keeping them apart.
In the essay ‘Deep Play: Notes on the Balinese Cockfight’ (1972), the American anthropologist Clifford Geertz reveals cockfighting to be more than a crude blood sport, but a manifestation of many of the deepest concerns of Balinese life. ‘As much as America surfaces in a ballpark, on a golf links, at a race track, or around a poker table, much of Bali surfaces in a cock ring. For it is only apparently cocks that are fighting there. Actually, it is men.’
Balinese men are inordinately fond of their cocks, and Geertz reminds us that the double entendre works ‘exactly the same way in Balinese as it does in English’. They preen and plump and arm their charges, rubbing pepper into their beaks and sharpening their spurs. They bet aggressively against the cocks of competing kinship groups, and stolidly back their own.
The cocks fight in a circle about 15m square. In pre-colonial times, Geertz notes, the ring, or wantilan, was situated at the heart of the community, beside the council building, the marketplace and the temple. But while now relegated to the corner of the village, the link between the collective life and bloodsport ‘remains intimate and intact’.
The cockfight helps to address the problem facing any growing egalitarian community: how to manage violence
For Geertz, cockfighting functions as ‘a simulation of the social matrix’ where prestige is vicariously contested, defended, lost and regained. It fulfils the function of great art, taking ‘death, masculinity, rage, pride … [and] presents them in such a way as to throw into relief a particular view of their essential nature’. It celebrates and sublimates violence. The owners seek out opponents in a quiet, almost ‘dissembling’ manner. In ‘near silence’, the crowd watches the ‘animal fury’ in the ring. And in everyday life, Geertz notes, Balinese men ‘are shy … of open conflict. Oblique, cautious, subdued, controlled.’
The cockfight thus helps to address the overwhelming problem facing any growing egalitarian community: how to manage violence. As population increases, sub-groups develop and faction ensues, what anthropologists call ‘scalar stress’. Research has shown that communities tend to ‘fissure’ when they reach figures in the late 100s. The Hutterite Anabaptist communities in the 19th-century US split at around 150; among the Yanomami, of South America, conflict arises nearer 200. Moreover, the evolutionary psychologist Robin Dunbar at the University of Oxford argues that such limitations are hard-wired. Scaling up from the size of primate brains, and primate groups sizes, he estimates that we can maintain meaningful relationships only with around 150 people – the average size of a village in the Doomsday book – with an upper limit of around 230. Tihingan, the village in which Geertz carried out his field work, had a population of 720.
Death, masculinity, rage, pride – these were sentiments familiar to the Greeks. The Iliad begins: ‘Rage – Goddess, sing the rage of Peleus’ son Achilles.’ Despite its later incarnations, the original function of the agora might therefore have been less of a meeting place, and more of a fighting place – an arena in which to stage, examine, resolve or postpone violence. In his Works and Days, Hesiod chastises his brother Perses for wasting his time ‘gawking at brawls’ in the agora. As Achilles squares up to Agamemnon in the agora at the beginning of the Iliad, he is stopped from killing him only by the goddess Athena grabbing his hair. Homer tells of Thoas, a man famed for ‘close fighting’ but who is equally combative in the agora, ‘whenever the young men competed in debate’.
For the Greeks, speaking and fighting were not necessarily opposed activities: defeating an opponent was not enough, you had to humiliate him, and they taunted and goaded him to that effect. In The World of Odysseus (1954), Moses Finley concludes that when an assembly (agora) is convened in the Iliad, it never results in ‘rational discussion’ but rather ‘quarrels’ won ‘by harangue and by warning’. In 4th-century Athens, a long-running feud exploded into violence when Conon set about Ariston in the agora, splitting his lip, beating him to the ground, and completing his humiliation by ‘crowing like a victorious fighting cock … flapping his arms like wings’.
And here the meaning of agora should be borne in mind. While often simplistically translated as ‘marketplace’, it can be linked to the word agon, meaning ‘contest’, or ‘combat’. (In Homer, agon can mean both combat and place of combat.) It is from agon that we get words such as antagonise, antagonist, protagonist, agony. Historians have argued that the early agora probably served as the location of sporting agones such as pankration, the early Greek form of wrestling, in which biting, kicking and breaking bones was allowed. When Homer’s Odysseus arrives at the agora in Phaeacia, he is quickly challenged by the young men to try his hand at a bout.
The agora served to not only discharge violence, but to quarantine it, shielding spectators from its contagious power
For a community experiencing ‘scalar stress’, the agora might have therefore offered something like a controlled explosion. It is this, rather than simply conviviality, that necessitates the laying out of a space. And key here were perhaps what Geertz calls ‘deep fights’ – fights between rival ‘big men’ where the stakes were high, and the result impacted the whole community. The agora ensured such violence was witnessed, recognising what anthropologists call the ‘triangle of violence’: of aggressor, victim and observer. An aggressor might seek an audience as a form of vindication; a victim in self-defence. But in witnessing violence, a community was also potentially judging the outcome, deciding on it, voting on it – the beginnings of something like a democratic process. One therefore wonders if the remains of older, smaller agoras – such as the 8th-century BCE, 23m x 40m agora at Dreros in Crete, with its seven rows of seats cut into the hillside – might have served such a purpose: too small for a marketplace, but big enough to stage a fight. One historian likens its layout to a ‘primitive theatre’.
But as with Geertz’s cockfight, it is what is happening outside the ring as inside it that’s important. As countless cowboy films celebrate, a single punch can soon turn into a bar-room brawl. In staging conflict, the agora served to not only discharge violence, but to quarantine it, and shield the spectators from its contagious power. Perhaps the greatest invention of Greek civilisation was not democracy, or philosophy, or the polis – although it might have ultimately led to such things – but simply a line.
A football referee attempting to keep a defensive wall back 10 yards before a free kick has various tools at his disposal. He can shout and blow his whistle. He can appeal to the players’ sense of gentlemanly conduct and fair play. But as many referees discovered during the 2014 World Cup, none are quite so effective as spraying a line on the grass with a can of foam.
Some time during the waning of the Greek Dark Ages, potters began to be obsessed by lines. Perhaps they saw the dawning of civility reflected in the interplay of dark and light, or the beginnings of philosophical thought in increasingly abstract designs. The revival of writing and the adoption of the Phoenician script probably played a role. But slowly the serpentine curves and arcs of earlier designs gave way to geometric art: perfect circles, zig-zags and meanders – the classic square wave that has come to represent ‘Greek’ to us all.
Attic Middle Geometric Pot c850 BCE/Staatliche Antikensammlungen, Munich. Courtesy Wikipedia.de
But this was only one dimension of a growing preoccupation with form – seen in the planned colonial poleis spreading across the Mediterranean, and a mathematical fascination with triangles, circles and squares. In Aristophanes’ The Birds, the geometer Meton maps out a city in the sky, complete with an agora, using ‘air rulers’ of protractors, compasses and straight edges.
The Greeks were also a practical people, and at some point during this period they drew a line between combatants and spectators, separating violence and audience, creating the stone circle at the centre of the shield of Achilles. A statue base from Athens (c510 BCE) almost shows this process in action, as two men are depicted beside a wrestling bout: one attempting to push the wrestlers back into the centre, another using a long stick to draw the ring.
Statue base, Dipylon Cemetery, Athens, c510 BCE, National Archaeological Museum, Athens, Greece. Courtesy Wikipedia
And this geometric instinct is perhaps seen in the blacksmith Hephaestus himself. Homer uses the verb etithei – to fix in place – as he distributes the elements around the shield with its concentric metal bands. Such fixity Homer found appealing. In the Odyssey, he describes admiringly the agora of the Phaeacians, with its boundary stones ‘bedded deeply in the ground’. It is on one of these that Odysseus sits as spectator to the games that are put on in his honour, and resists the taunts of the local youths (instead of wrestling, he shows off by throwing a discus).
Homer moulds and circumscribes human existence in order that it can be witnessed – life itself as an agora
For the Greeks, placing a boundary around the agora conferred a number of advantages. It stretched out the space between combatants, allowing violence to be more easily regulated. It separated fighters from their kinsmen, and rival kinsmen from each other, helping to stop the fight spreading to the community at large. When Aias and Idomeneus begin to quarrel during the chariot race at the end of the Iliad, Achilles instructs them to shut up and rejoin the spectators.
In standing outside rather than inside the circle, the spectators might also have experienced something like a democratic mentality. Now they had a voice, a numerical power, over the violent ‘big men’ slugging it out in the ring. During the funeral games for Patroclus in book 23 of the Iliad, the lethal fight between Aias and Diomedes is halted when the Achaians ‘terrified for Aias, shouted for them to stop and share the prize equally’. Dreros, the site of the early theatre-like agora, is also home to the first recorded law (c650 BCE). It states that the polis (the first time this word is used) decrees that no man may be kosmos (magistrate) more than once in 10 years – suggesting ‘the many’ beginning to curb the tyrannical ambitions of a powerful ‘few’.
But in creating an audience, the line around the agora also made spectating an essential part of the Greek mind. In the 5th century BCE, Cleon described the Athenians as ‘spectators of speeches’. Plato coined the word theatrokratia, ‘theatrocracy’ – of politics as spectator sport. The American philosopher John Dewey described Greek philosophy as offering a ‘spectator theory of knowledge’, in which one always stands as an ‘outside spectator’ to what is known. This spectating impulse is reflected in the birth of Greek theatre, whose early home was almost certainly the agora. It made agonistic argument – debate – central to political and philosophical life. And it informs Homer himself, who, like Hephaestus, moulds and circumscribes human existence in order that it can be witnessed – of life itself as an agora. But, most importantly, it gave birth to the idea that through a democratic process men could momentarily step outside the polis, observe it, and judge it, without stepping back across the boundary into violence itself. The ‘Greek miracle’ of the agora thus constituted a revolutionary suspension of belief: the belief that politics was necessarily held hostage to that Homeric obsession – rage.Welcome to autumn. Welcome to the weekend.
Everything Scatter
New York City FC will get David Villa back from the start this weekend, and that's obviously a good thing since he's David Freaking Villa. Even if he doesn't win his second straight MVP award (and that's an open question now thanks to the greatness of Diego Valeri and – yes – Josef Martinez) he's still having a remarkable season and he's obviously been missed.
I'd argue, though, that the guys in midfield have been missed just as much. Alex Ring and Yangel Herrera have both been out for the last three games (Ring should be back this weekend), and NYCFC have gone soft in the middle as a result. You can set up shop against them in Zone 14 at least a little bit, even if you're the attack-starved Rapids:
Yellow arrows are key passes (passes that lead to a shot), and that soccer ball with a green arrow is a goal. You can see where it was scored from in the 1-1 draw last week.
In NYCFC's 1-0 loss to Portland the week before... yeah, this is no bueno:
A lot of those touches are coming in transition, of course. It's not like teams are pinning NYCFC back from the start and just dominating games, but it's probably safe to say the Cityzens have mostly been outplayed for the last month, and a distinct lack of coverage in |
grown in more sustainable and environmentally friendly ways.
Coffee evolved in shaded environments, Jha says. It thrives in rain forests and under layers of trees patching together a blanket of shade from different heights.
“It’s amazing to walk through a shade-grown coffee farm and see that vertical structure and diversity,” says Jha, whose research has taken her to a coffee farm in Mexico that is also home to 150 species of birds. “It’s just so full of life.”
But across the globe, more and more farmers are using the intensive style of production rather than growing coffee under shade. Jha and her colleagues found in a recent study that the proportion of land used to cultivate shade-grown coffee has fallen nearly 20 percent since 1996.
“Even now, very little of the market is shade-grown coffee,” Jha says. “The amount of coffee produced in the world has increased, and a large fraction of that is sun coffee, not shade-grown coffee.”
This picture shows the difference between the types of coffee farms. On the left, an intensive style of farming is used to produce lower quality sun coffee. On the right, a shade-grown coffee farm not only produces higher-quality coffee but also preserve wildlife habitat and promotes sustainable agriculture. (Image courtesy of Shalene Jha.)
Jha’s study, published in the journal BioScience last April, shows that although global production of coffee has increased since 1996, the area of land used for non-shade-grown coffee is growing at a much faster rate than areas producing shade-grown coffee. That disparity caused shade-grown coffee to fall from 43 percent of total cultivated area in 1996 to 24 percent in 2014.
Shade-grown coffee usually tastes better and is of higher quality, but the production method also comes with five environmentally friendly advantages that can help make the coffee industry far more sustainable in the long run, benefitting both growers and coffee lovers for generations:
Provides habitat: Compared to empty pastures, wildlife thrives on shade-grown coffee farms. Thousands of migratory birds take shelter in the canopies that cover shade-grown coffee farms when they fly from the tropics to more temperate regions during seasonal shifts. (Bonus: The birds prey on insects, which means farms can use fewer pesticides.) “Shade-grown coffee became popular in the ’80s when people started thinking about coffee as an important corridor and refuge for migratory birds,” Jha says.
Increases pollination: Shade-grown coffee farms support the ecosystems needed to sustain a diverse range of pollinators, from bees to bats. These native pollinators help increase yields of other crops, from coffee to berries. Bees, for instance, pollinate more than $15 billion worth of fruits, nuts and vegetables in the U.S. each year. The number of managed honey bee colonies, however, has fallen from 6 million beehives in 1947 to 2.5 million in 2014, prompting President Barack Obama to launch a multiagency task force to help stop the rapidly diminishing populations of honey bees and other pollinators.”The greater the diversity you have in terms of flowering trees within the coffee farms, the greater the abundance and diversity of native pollinators,” Jha says.
Purifies water and air: The dense vegetation needed to produce shade-grown coffee helps purify air and filter water, improving the quality of both.”With shade management, there’s a lot of secondary benefits to the local water supply without a cost to the community,” Jha says.
Prevents landslides: The large and numerous trees at shade-grown coffee farms, which are often on mountainsides in hurricane-prone areas, help hold soil together, keeping chunks of farmland from eroding. Landslides caused by more intensive farming can claim lives and ruin infrastructure. “Having sustainable, shade-grown coffee reduces the landscape’s vulnerability to extreme climate events, and thus is a benefit to entire communities,” Jha says. “The production style of coffee really affects the quality of life for all organisms, including humans, around them.”
Replenishes the land: Intensive farming methods exhaust the soil after a couple of decades, which often leads to farmers cutting down forest for new fields. But shade-grown coffee farming techniques store carbon and replenish soil nutrients, letting the farms thrive for centuries. “Sun coffee systems largely focus on short-term inputs and extraction, while shade system can naturally provide the soil with organic matter and nitrogen,” Jha says. “Once the soil quality is depleted the landscape is more likely to be turned into pasture because it can’t really be used for much else.”
But despite the benefits shade-grown coffee offers, high demand for inexpensive and instant coffee causes some growers to move to the intensive style of farming, which has lower land and labor costs and higher short-term yields.
The solution for increasing the number of shade-grown farms, Jha says, is twofold.
First, governments and conservation groups should incentivize shade-grown coffee production and help farmers find better ways to handle the expensive, up-front costs of getting certified to sell specialty coffees, like shade-grown blends.
Second, she says, coffee drinkers should stick to shade-grown brews.
“With any ecological or social challenge, there are multiple ways to work on it,” Jha says. “This happens to be one issue that consumers can actually participate in. By purchasing shade-grown and organic coffee, you can make a difference by voting with your dollars to increase more responsible agriculture practices.”
But while Jha has immersed herself in the coffee world, don’t ask her for detailed flavor profiles of your next-favorite blend.
“I’m not a coffee connoisseur,” Jha admits. “I’m a biologist who happens to study coffee ecosystems because they’re great examples of how to produce a crop and do it in a way that’s sustainable, biodiversity friendly, supports farmer livelihood and is sustainable in the long term.”
[Learn more about Dr. Shalene Jha’s research on shade-grown coffee and how it is shrinking as a proportion of global coffee production.]What was measured? The researchers were interested in learning performance as well as many facets of behavior during the parent-child reading phase. Learning performance was measured by testing if children would be able to correctly identify unfamiliar animals that they had been exposed to through the book. In addition, a range of behavioral variables was observed during the reading phase such as how the child paid attention to the book, their availability for reading, positive emotions, participation in page turning, and production of content-related utterances. Furthermore, parent’s behavior during the reading phase was assessed, too, to check whether parents would behave differently while reading an e-book versus a print book.
Study findings
Before diving into the results, let’s quickly take a look at the authors’ predictions. Based on previous findings, they expected that children in the e-book condition would state fewer content-related comments and engage in less pointing behaviour than children in the print book condition. However, they predicted that children being read an e-book would display more attention, be more engaged, and show more positive emotions towards the medium. Finally, they expected children in the e-book condition to show lower performance in the animal identification test.
Parents and children behavior during the reading phase
Duration: It turned out that parents spent more time reading to their children from the e-book than from the printed book. Therefore, in all later analyses, the researchers later control for this factor, but it is something to keep in mind.
Parent behavior: Parents showed more pointing behavior and read more text in the print book condition than in the e-book condition. The latter finding is to be expected because the e-books featured automatic voiceover. Other than that, parents’ behavior did not differ between the two conditions.SINGAPORE: A man in his forties was injured and taken to hospital after being attacked by a wild boar near a bus stop at Hillview Road on Thursday morning (Oct 19).
Sales specialist Olga, 30, told Channel NewsAsia that she was walking to the MRT station with her husband at around 8.30am when she saw the attack.
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"I saw an animal - I thought it was just a big dog with owner - but in two to three seconds, (the) animal start(ed) to attack the man and he fell down and scream(ed), he was really in pain," she said.
She rushed over to help with her husband, and was joined by another man, who took a bamboo cane from his car and started to hit the boar. "It worked, and (the) boar made his escape down to the road," Ms Olga said.
The boar was then hit by a bus, she added. Channel NewsAsia understands the boar has died.
Another man then stopped his car and brought a first aid kit, which he and Olga's husband used to start bandaging the man's wounds.
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The Singapore Civil Defence Force (SCDF) said it was alerted to an incident outside 25, Hillview Avenue at 8.43am and dispatched an ambulance. The man had "cuts and lacerations" on both his legs, said SCDF, adding that the victim was taken conscious to Ng Teng Fong General Hospital.
IT consultant Dan Ranjith, 33, was on his way to work at 8.50am when he noticed the commotion on the other side of the road. "I was walking on the streets and noticed that the boar was lying down and surrounded by police," he told Channel NewsAsia.
"When I saw the boar (it) was still alive and moving," he added.
Photos circulating online showed the boar lying on its side on the pavement next to a bus stop. At least two police cars were at the scene and the area was cordoned off with police tape.
The boar appeared to still be on the pavement nearly two hours after the attack, with lawyer Maurice Oon, 54, telling Channel NewsAsia that he was in a taxi when he saw the "big, dead wild boar lying on the pavement" at around 10.15am.
Member of Parliament for Chua Chu Kang GRC (Bukit Gombak) and Mayor of South West District Low Yen Ling said in a Facebook post that the injured man was receiving "the medical care that he needs" in hospital.
She added that she has been in touch with the Agri-Food and Veterinary Authority (AVA), Land Transport Authority and the Animal Concerns Research and Education Society to ensure that "follow-up procedures are in place" regarding the boar and the safety of members of the public.
"Should you encounter any wild boars, please be advised to not approach or provoke the animal," she added.
WILD BOAR SIGHTINGS IN THE AREA NOT COMMON: AVA
The AVA said in a statement that wild boar sightings in the area are not common and the animal likely emerged from nearby forested areas.
The authority will be putting up signs and will educate residents on what to do when they encounter wild boars.
"AVA is monitoring the situation and is working with relevant agencies to put up signage," it said. "AVA is also working with the community to create awareness and educate residents on what to do when they encounter wild boars."
It is also working with various agencies, such as the National Parks Board and Wildlife Reserves Singapore, to implement measures to "mitigate encounters with wild boars and ensure public safety".
Some possible measures AVA is exploring include putting up signs about wildlife crossings at specific locations to warn motorists, and erecting barriers to prevent wildlife from encroaching onto roads.
This comes after a series of incidents involving wild boars in Singapore.
Two people were injured in September after a wild boar at the Ayer Rajah Expressway caused an accident. One day later, three others were injured in a car accident involving a wild boar at Lentor Avenue.
A woman was also attacked by a wild boar in July this year, and needed 60 stitches for a wound in her right leg after the incident at a park in the Upper Thomson area.
A large group of boars was also spotted near Tuas bus terminal earlier this year.
The AVA said it would like to remind members of the public not to approach, disturb or try to catch wild boars.
"The public should keep a safe distance from the wild boars and avoid confronting or cornering them. Do not interact with the wild boars and keep young children and pets away from them," the authority said.The LG G5 will indeed have a Magic Slot function that allows different accessories – or modules – to be inserted into the bottom of the device, as this photo leaked exclusively to Android Authority in advance of MWC 2016 reveals. While the image has had the background blocked out to protect the source, we can confirm this is a legitimate photograph of the LG G5.
The image shows the back of a gold-colored LG G5 with a rather large module attached. The upper edge of the G5 shows the same familiar dual-camera setup we’ve seen in multiple leaks already, complete with slightly raised fingerprint sensor and camera array bump. The lack of physical buttons on the visible right hand side of the device also matches up with other leaks that have the volume rocker positioned on the left.
But onto that module. The first question is – what is it? While at first it looks like an extended battery pack, certain details make me think it’s something else entirely. For instance, why would an extended battery module need a dial or so many other buttons? While it is feasible that it is just an extended battery with some cool new features going on, I have a different theory, so stick with me.
What if it’s actually a camera module instead? Previous leaks claimed the LG G5 Magic Slot would allow different kinds of cameras to be inserted, after all. While this module clearly has no camera lens, it’s possible it adds additional features to the G5’s existing camera lens, along with a bigger battery. That would mean the dial might be a control dial or zoom, the button to the right of the dial could be a power button and the larger button to the left of the dial definitely looks like a shutter button to me.
The actual function of this module may not be revealed fully until the LG press conference this coming weekend, but the image does show us other details we’ve been dying to see. Namely how the modules work with the larger G5 unit. Along the bottom edge of the mystery module we can see a join, below which we can see what looks to be a USB Type-C port, speaker grill and a possible headphone port. The question is: are these part of the G5 unit or part of the module?
Considering the images we’ve seen leaked and the reproductions from an eyewitness account, the entire bottom section of the G5 supposedly pulls away, revealing a battery slotted inside the main part of the phone. This means that if a large module like the one pictured here is inserted, with a large bulge on the back, the bottom part of the G5 that was taken out can’t slot back in.
This makes me think that the various LG G5 modules come with their own built-in bottom section that includes the bottom bezel below the display as well as the various ports along the bottom of the phone. This image supports the idea insofar as you can see a visible seam on the lower edge of the G5 on the left hand side of the image, which we’ve also seen in other leaked images. The bottom section of the G5 also appears to be a different color to the rest of the phone, which is again most visible at the seam on the side.
Of course, this is all just conjecture based on a blurry leaked photo of an upcoming device with scant factual details surrounding it. Your guesses are ultimately as good as mine, but no matter what you think this module is or does, we don’t have long to wait to find out though. Stay tuned to Android Authority this Sunday when LG will officially unveil the LG G5 and its various modules at MWC 2016.
What do you think this module does? Do you think the module idea will fly?
Don’t miss: New Galaxy S7 photos, details and video leaked!Hello, this is a feature that will run through the entire season and aims to recap the weekend’s events and boils those events down to one admittedly superficial fact or stupid opinion about each team. Feel free to complain about it.
You know when a player who really loves his team and city gets traded, and he gives an emotional speech about how sometimes you forget hockey is a business, and that sometimes makes it unpleasant?
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Let this lockout be a lesson that the same goes for fans.
During that 113-day ordeal, you were repeatedly condescended to, taken advantage of, and lied to, by both sides of the argument. But never forget that the contents of your wallet, like one of the podded-up humans in The Matrix, are nothing but fuel for a machine that cruelly exploits you.
As of this writing, I know of just a handful of NHL teams that actually took the time to come out and apologize to its hundreds of thousands of fans for the nearly four months of torture through which it just put them. Calgary Flames president Ken King issued a statement more or less as soon as the tentative deal was announced.
"We're sorry," King said. "We regret what we've put them through. It's just something that you would never, ever, want to put them through. It's difficult saying that it was unnecessary, but it's something you would never, ever want to do with your core constituents."
The Sharks and Blues both expressed their own regrets, while some teams, like the Capitals, Flyers, Canucks, Penguins, Coyotes, Wild, Kings, Bruins, and Stars issued statements or held pressers or conference calls about how great it is that the league is back — especially for the fans!!! — but not once mentioning how sorry they were about it (though the Oilers came close).
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Sorry, but this kind of apology should come standard-issue from all 30 teams, especially those like the Flames and Bruins, who certainly led the charge for a lockout despite having massive fanbases, popularity, and most importantly, war chests.
Never forget this was a lockout. Never forget this was put upon you and the players and the sport by the owners. Never forget the two biggest engines in all this weren't poor, put-upon teams in tough markets, but rather financial giants whose sole motivation was greed and the desire to squeeze just an extra dime or two out of every dollar spent. They certainly accomplished their goal.
The fact that as far as I can tell the majority of the league's 30 teams haven't so much as considered apologizing is beyond irrational. Obviously, not every team wanted this lockout to happen, but those that stood idly by, hands in their pockets, while Gary Bettman, Jeremy Jacobs, Murray Edwards, and the rest of their villainous cohorts did this are as guilty through their inaction as any actual negative actors in this process.
They should be down on their hands and knees, groveling for the fans to return to their arenas to buy seats and concessions and jerseys after all this. Everything should be half-price. Every purchase should come with the warmest "thank you" imaginable. But of course, they don't. Because the league doesn't give a rat's ass about its fans, no matter how much free Center Ice they throw at us.
Oh yeah, fans are excited to have the NHL back in their lives and, if you like hockey, you can't really blame them. I know many fans have already started buying tickets in a blind scramble to turn over more of their money to the oligarchs who just robbed them of their favorite sport for four months, and I know that all across the league, games will be played before packed houses sometime in the next few weeks. It disgusts me, obviously, but that's the way of the world. I'm sure the "Thank You (Again) Fans!" that's painted at both blue lines will more than make up for it. That's bridge-building for the NHL in 2013.
This league, which seems content to have itself reduced to a national sports punchline every seven or eight years (clock's ticking on that opt-out work stoppage!), has never cared about you, and will do so. Not really. Not as long as you're willing to throw wads of cash at it the second it gives you what it should have been giving you all along.
Everyone's giddy now. Many have lost any sense of reality they had throughout the process. I still can't believe I'm seeing legitimate hockey reporters — and not just the dummies in the owners' pockets — saying stuff about how the NHL gave the Players' Association concessions at the 12th hour.
Did it really? Almost everything the players once had still got rolled back, just not as much as the NHL would have liked. They didn't make concessions, they backed off absurd demands only when a federal mediator told them to stop being ridiculous, and even then, it took a pair of back-to-back days of 13 to 16 hours. That's near-indomitable malevolent will, eroded on a timeline not dissimilar what desert sands do to the pyramids.
This joyous celebration of hockey's return will only cause the owners to double down on their resolve next time around. They now know, absolutely and unequivocally, that they can treat you like garbage, not even think about apologizing for it, and you'll still cut them a blank check every single year.
That is, unless you remember how October, November and December felt. How mad it made you. How the vote to lock out the players for the second time since 2004-05 came unanimously. How the owners lied to you at every opportunity about Donald Fehr's intractability. How they used so-called "moderates" to defame him with absurd press releases. How they had the gall to compare him to a suicide bomber because he would not let the union be broken by their demands. How their steadfastness that the CBA needed to provide better protection for all 30 teams came without a meaningful improvement to revenue sharing. How they tried to move the goalposts the second the NHLPA's ability to file a disclaimer of interest expired. And especially how you swore you'd never give them another cent of your hard-earned dollars.
Or enjoy the 2020-21 lockout. It's really up to you.
What We Learned
Anaheim Ducks: Look, Teemu Selanne said this gets done by Monday. It's Monday. Is the lockout done? It is. Teemu forever.
Boston Bruins: Today is Day No. 35 since Steve Burton of WBZ in Boston said the lockout could be over in two days, and was only off by 32. Good job, buddy. Anyway, Andrew Ference, who was in the final negotiations for the new CBA, really feels bad about all this.
Buffalo Sabres: The Rochester Americans heading to Abbotsford gave the Vancouver media another chance to pick at Cody Hodgson less than a year after the Canucks traded him to Buffalo. For some weird reason, he didn't feel all that willing to answer their questions about his old team.
Calgary Flames: Sven Baertschi really cannot wait to play with American gold medalist and Flames prospect Johnny Gaudreau. Awesome quote: "During camp and stuff, when we had these scrimmages, I always played against him, and I hated it. He was just weaseling around out there. You try to find him sometimes, and it's just like, 'oh, where is he?' And then there he is. He scores."
Carolina Hurricanes: Tuomo Ruutu's recent hip injury will keep him out until May at least. The sad thing is, with this shortened schedule bringing chaos to the standings I can't even make the requisite, "Just in time to hit the golf course," jokes that you'd normally associate with the Hurricanes.
Chicago Blackhawks: I wonder what NHLPA ghostwriter wrote out the texts Jonathan Toews and Troy Brouwer sent to the Chicago Tribune. That's some real Don Fehr-inspired saying-nothing.
Colorado Avalanche: Looks like four months of carrying the water for the owners got the Denver Post's Adrian Dater the scoop the whole hockey world was waiting for.
Columbus Blue Jackets: Two players from the Columbus area were on the gold medal-winning U.S. World Junior team and played for the AAA Blue Jackets before going on to the OHL and NCAA hockey, but please tell me more about how expansion to non-traditional hockey markets has been bad for hockey in America.
Dallas Stars: The Stars are tied for 19th in the league when it comes to odds of their winning the Stanley Cup, and yeah that sounds just about right to me.
Detroit Red Wings presented by Amway: Oh god I just realized the amount of whining we'll have to hear from the Wings about how much travel they have to do in a truncated, compacted schedule. That's gonna be insufferable.
Edmonton Oilers: Even having all these good players and stuff, the Oilers still won't have anything like an easy time making the playoffs. I say go for 30th in the league one more time and get True American Hero Seth Jones first overall.
Florida Panthers: He scored the two biggest goals of his career in the gold medal game, but Rocco Grimaldi getting a B+ for his World Junior performance after being dropped from the first line, then benched, doesn't make a whole lot of sense.
Los Angeles Kings: Anze Kopitar went and injured his knee about 12 hours before the lockout ended and is now out two or three weeks. Total bummer.
Minnesota Wild: "Will the fans return to support the Minnesota Wild?" The answer is, "Yes, but they shouldn't." Leads me to wonder a little bit whether the Suter and Parise signings were in any way intended as a deterrent for fans to become disinterested in the team as a result of the lockout.
Montreal Canadiens: Wonder how many GMs are now circling P.K. Subban with offer sheets in hand. Should be, like, all of 'em.
Nashville Predators: The Preds say they're pretty excited to be coming back but boy do they have a lot of questions that need answering. First and foremost: Can Roman Josi even come close to taking Ryan Suter's place?
New Jersey Devils: Weirdly, Lou Lamoriello didn't hold any of the NHL Devils' players out of the Albany Devils' game yesterday, as Edmonton did with Taylor Hall, Justin Schultz and Jordan Eberle, and Minnesota did the night before with Mikael Granlund.
New York Islanders: Michael Grabner reportedly had a groin injury that kept him out of the lineup since late November, but the man himself says it's an abdominal tear. So there ya go.
New York Rangers: It kind of bewilders me how the Rangers have more than $5 million to work with under the cap and are still this good on paper. On the other hand, this summer they'll need to re-up Stepan, Hagelin, and McDonagh. That won't be easy.
Ottawa Senators: Erik Karlsson left his Finnish team in late December, but I didn't see until yesterday that he put 17 shots toward net in nearly 27 minutes of ice time in a five-point game. SEVENTEEN shot attempts. He also ended his 30-game season for Jokerit with 248 shot attempts. What is even going on?
Philadelphia Flyers: Let's not forget that the Flyers, despite trading for Luke Schenn, are about as deep as a kiddie pool on defense.
Phoenix Coyotes: Today is Day No. 150 since Jude LaCava of Fox 10 in Arizona said Greg Jamison would have the deal for the Coyotes sewn up within the next five days. Speaking of which, does the end of the lockout mean that Greg Jamison will actually be able to buy the team now?
Pittsburgh Penguins: Kris Letang is probably regretting that trip to Russia right about now.
San Jose Sharks: Turns out Brent Burns might not be available when the season starts due to the fact that he still hasn't recovered from a sports hernia and groin injury that he played through for most of last season.
St. Louis Blues: Big ups to Andy McDonald for saying he's "embarrassed" to tell people he's an NHL player. It's a pretty embarrassing league, for sure.
Tampa Bay Lightning: The Syracuse Crunch, whose roster won the Calder Cup last year as the Norfolk Admirals, made their first return to their old city, and swept the home team 3-0 and 4-3. Sucks for Norfolk fans.
Toronto Maple Leafs: Here's Kenny Ryan scoring on a ridiculous individual effort. Kenny Ryan, by the way? American as the day is long.
Vancouver Canucks: The CBA probably won't be fully signed until Wednesday, which gives the world ample time to gin up all kinds of new and more absurd Roberto Luongo trade rumors!
Washington Capitals: Nicklas Backstrom has a neck injury. Dmitry Orlov has been out with an upper body injury since early December, Michal Neuvirth and Roman Hamrlik trash-talked the union, and Alex Ovechkin is probably fat as hell now that he's engaged. Any other problems for the Capitals?
Winnipeg Jets: No pressure or anything but the Jets apparently need to make the playoffs this year. Hahaha.
Play of the Weekend
I could watch this goal all day long. Sea to shining sea, baby.
Gold Star Award
America. Gold. As it should be.
Minus of the Weekend
When you can't even win Canadian Gold in the bronze medal game, why even bother having a team?
Perfect HFBoards Trade Proposal of the Week
User "MISC" has all your Luongo-related issues sorted.
To Hawks:
Schneider
2nd To Canucks:
Sharp
Signoff
Today my life enters phase two: the GOOD years!
Ryan Lambert publishes hockey awesomeness almost never over at The Two-Line Pass. Check it out, why don’t you? Or you can e-mail him here and follow him on Twitter if you so desire.Peace was a once-familiar face, now long forgotten in our bleak world. Those who wage our wars fight to determine the lives and deaths of all below them. It's our ideals that shape us as people, and our leader's ideals that shape us as a nation, but those some ideals lead us down the path of conflict. The same path that drags humanity kicking and screaming back to the dark ages. The same path that very well could be the end of it all.
Weiss let out an annoyed sigh as she headed towards team RWBY's dorm from lunch, not enjoying the fact that there appeared to be two boys in there that did not belong, both voicing their opinions on some matter loudly. Pushing her through the doorway, she was able to more clearly hear what the pair was discussing. Both of them looked towards each other, Neptune appearing concerned and quite frankly frightened, while Sun appeared a little more expressive of anger.
"What do you mean they 'just took over Mistral', they can't just do that."
"Well they did, Sun. Every major city's under Atlas control."
"That's bull Neptune, they couldn- you. Do you know what your family an' Atlas just did?"
"What are you talking about?"
"Atlas just invaded, scratch that, took over Mistral. According to Nep here they did it because 'they couldn't stand to see Faunus treated just like people, instead of animals'."
"And what exactly do you mean by that?" Weiss's body displayed her high annoyance levels, with her arms crossed over her chest and face scrunched in defensiveness.
"Uhh,'scuse me princess, but whose family is one of the richest and most Faunus-hating in all of Atlas? Oh, right, yours." Sun took a step towards her, his fists clenched, though Weiss was sure he wouldn't hit her.
"Well it's not like they ever tell me anything anyways! How was I supposed to know? Just because my parents are friends with the leader doesn't mean they came to me like I had any say!"
"You know what? I'm out. Your family supplies the nation that attacks my people and my nation and you stand here and act like it's fine! Like everything's just peachy 'cause 'oh me Miss Little Racist didn't know nothin' about no invasion', just screw off." The blonde-haired boy stormed out of the room.
"I never said it was alright!" Weiss shouted after him, her voice echoing the hall. She spun and slammed the door to the room, going over to where her bed would be before realizing that Neptune was still standing there awkwardly.
"I-I'll just go, uhh, try to, umm, sorry.." Neptune headed out of the room, quietly shutting the door behind him with a slight click.
He comes in here accusing me, like I had anything to do with it. I don't like the Faunus but I wouldn't try to take over a kingdom about it… Weiss stormed over to her desk, shaking her head
Jaune whistled as he made his way through the threshold of the door and into JNPR's dorm, heading towards his bed that he'd set his Scroll on, before noticing Pyrrha on her bed, facing the wall. She was slouched over, her body language giving off the vibe that something was up. "Uhh, Pyrrha, is something wrong?"
"Jaune, I… The news…" It was all Pyrrha could get out. She was too worried about her family, about whether or not they were safe, to care about explaining the situation.
"News? What news?" Before Jaune could go on to speak, an announcement came on, Ozpin's voice filling the school.
"Attention students of Beacon Academy, there is an emergency assembly being held in the assembly room. Please attend if at all possible."
And with that announcement over, Jaune noticed Pyrrha slowly lift herself out of bed, and slip on her shoes. She hid her face as best as she could from Jaune, but he could see the how red and puffy her eyes were. As dense as he may sometimes be, he connected the dots. He figured that the emergency assembly would shed some more light onto the matter.
The headmaster of Beacon sat in his office, facing out the large window, accompanied by the ever-so-talkative Glynda Goodwitch who paced her way back and forth the room.
"I can't believe they did this. What are we supposed to tell the students?" Glynda, not one to get overwhelmed very often, was currently struggling to digest the news. Ozpin, on the other hand, looked as stone-faced as usual, processing what he had heard for himself.
"The truth. They're going to find out anyway, so why not tell them directly?"
"Ozpin you can't be serious-" The green-suited man ignored her, and began his announcement..
"Attention students of Beacon Academy, there is an emergency assembly being held in the assembly room. Please attend if at all possible." He pushed down on his cane as he lifted himself off of his chair, and headed towards the aforementioned room. Glynda followed suit, voicing her frustration with Atlas's decision rather vocally.
"I bet Ironwood did this. He's always wanted a war, something to make him look strong. What a pathetic man." She spat the words out of her mouth, appearing as though she had just brushed her teeth and downed some orange juice in one go.
"Now, Glynda, we do not know about General Ironwood's involvement in this, so I would prefer to hold off on judgement until we know more." Ozpin headed up the stage steps, students already filing in, anxious to hear the news if they hadn't already. Luckily, classes were not being held, so they were not interrupted. Kind of them to reserve war for an off day.
Ozpin glanced at the multitude of students before him, patiently waiting until he saw no signs of more entering the room. He began his speech, not happy to break the bad news to them all.
"As you may have heard, Atlas has occupied Mistral, for lack of a better word. We've been informed by the leaders of Mistral that all students will remain here at Beacon. As for our students from Atlas and Vacuo, you are to remain here in Vale until further notice. Classes may or may not resume as scheduled given the circumstances."
There was a low hum of noise coming from the mass of people in front of him from that admission, but Ozpin's expression remained resolutely nonplussed as he looked amongst each of the different faces of his students. Some displayed confusion; others anger; a few even expressed outright fear.
Still, there was little he could do.
He continued, barely letting the brief silence affect his confidence."That is all for now. I will make announcements when we are made more aware of the situation." Ozpin releases a sigh as he heads back towards his office, expecting the Council to contact him again soon.
I suppose I should clear things up. Atlas, Remnant's leading military power by quite a bit, offered all of us a solution to our increasing Grimm problems. Their security bots would roam our streets, as well as our villages, in case of Grimm threats. Of course, they would send human soldiers as well, but the deal mainly comprised of the machines.
Vale's council immediately declined, recognizing the threat it could pose, especially considering Atlas and Vale's rising tensions. Once close allies turned bitter enemies, each tried to outdo the other over and over. Leaders having a pissing contest, that's all that they were. Eventually, calmer heads prevailed on Vale's side, and patched up relations. This shattered when Atlas proposed the deal, taking it a sign of mistrust that Vale would not allow them to have military presence inside of it.
Mistral on the other hand, fully accepted. The country wasn't poor necessarily, but military-wise they certainly lacked. Their leaders figured that having less Grimm, while simultaneously not spending any money, was easily worth allowing their largest ally military access into their lands.
Vacuo, as neutral as always, opted for the middle-man route. They only allowed human soldiers, as well as keeping their numbers limited, and in areas that were very heavily-infested with the Grimm. They, like Vale, were wary of Atlas's large military presence, especially considering their leader's rather close-minded views on faunus rights would clash with the faunus population in Vacuo and Vale.Mondragone, a coastal Italian municipality 28 miles north of Naples, appears to have little in common with the granite city of Aberdeen.
But these two disparate regions were both bases for the Camorra, the infamous mafia-style crime syndicate which originated in southern Italy, during the 1990s.
For years, sensationalist headlines suggested sinister Mob bosses were running large-scale operations in Scotland’s third-largest city.
In 2014, an EU-funded report by Italian crime experts went so far as to state the Camorra was in control of “catering, public works, food retail and wholesale and property sectors” - |
comment on the Human Rights Watch report and would not say if the cases described in the report were included in their investigation.
Today the U.S. State Department also referred all questions on the report to the Justice Department.
In response to Human Rights Watch's criticism of the apparent close ties between the CIA and the Libyan regime's intelligence arm, the CIA said, "It can't come as a surprise that the Central Intelligence Agency works with foreign governments to help protect our country from terrorism and other deadly threats. That is exactly what we are expected to do."
In the report, Human Rights Watch acknowledges that most of the detainees they interviewed were self-identified former members of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group -- a group that has been designated as a terrorist organization by the U.S. State Department since December 2004.
US: LIFG Is a Terrorist Organization and 'Immediate Threat'
The LIFG carried out operations against the Libyan government, including at least four suspected assassination attempts against Gadhafi in the 1990s, and was also believed to be connected to a series of suicide bombings in Casablanca, Morocco, in 2003, the U.S. State Department reported. As relations between the U.S. and Gadhafi improved in the mid-2000s after Gadhafi agreed to dismantle the country's nuclear program and renounce terrorism, some LIFG leaders allegedly cultivated relationships with top al Qaeda leaders, including Osama bin Laden, and were suspected of funneling fighters to Iraq to carry out operations against U.S. soldiers.
The designation of the LIFG as a terror organization in 2004 was meant as a "gesture of solidarity" with the Libyan government to fight terrorism, according to a March 2011 congressional report. Last August, Libyan ambassador to the U.S. Ali Aujali told ABC News the LIFG was never connected to al Qaeda and did not carry out terrorist operations.
"They were only opposed to Gadhafi during his rule and paid the price for that by being oppressed by the regime," he said then.
The Human Rights Watch report claims the case of waterboarding took place around April 2004, months before the LIFG was declared a terrorist organization, but months after then-CIA director George Tenet told a congressional committee the extremist group had links to al Qaeda and was considered "an immediate threat" to the U.S.
'They Wouldn't Stop Until They Got Some Kind of Answer...'
The man who leveled the waterboarding accusation, Mohammed al-Shoroeiya, said he was subjected to it multiple times.
"While he was strapped to the board with his head lower than his feet, they would pour buckets of extremely cold water over his nose and mouth to the point that he felt he was going to suffocate," the report says. "When asked how many times this was done to him, [al-Shoroeiya] said 'a lot …a lot … it happened many times... They wouldn't stop until they got some kind of answer out of me.'"
Khalid al-Sharif, who was detained along with Al-Shoroeiya at the time in Afghanistan and described a similar experience but without the board, told Human Rights Watch it was "clear" they were in American custody and when he arrived at the facility, he was approached by a tall man "in uniform" who said he was American. The man said that they could kill al-Sharif there "no one will know," the report says.
A spokesperson for the Department of Defense told ABC News the description of the uniform provided by al-Sharif, which included a red beret, is "not consistent with any American military uniforms that I'm aware of." The spokesperson declined to comment further.
The controversial use of waterboarding and other so-called "harsh interrogation techniques" had been authorized under George W. Bush's administration but the methods were rejected by executive order by President Obama shortly after taking office in January 2009.Shortly after announcing guard Matt Slauson was lost for the year with a biceps injury on Monday, Head Coach Anthony Lynn revealed the team was evaluating their options on who would take his spot on the 53-man roster.
It turns out it’s a familiar face.
The Chargers signed veteran tackle Michael Ola on Tuesday for his second stint with the team. He previously spent time with the Bolts in 2015. The Chargers also announced that Slauson was officially placed on the reserve/injured list.
The 6-5, 312-pound Ola spent time in the Arena League and Canadian Football League before catching on with the Chicago Bears in 2014. He appeared in 13 games that year with 12 starts. Coincidentally, he got his first career start that year when Slauson was out with an injury for the Bears.
Chicago waived Ola right before the 2015 season, and the Chargers signed him to the practice squad. He was promoted to the active roster in Week 4’s win over the Cleveland Browns. The Bolts waived him after the game hoping to stash him back on the practice squad. However, the Detroit Lions claimed him, and he went on to play in nine games that year with seven starts.Earlier this week, we shared with you the story of Daniel Fleetwood. Fleetwood is suffering from a rare form of cancer and was told in July that he had just two months to live. Fleetwood beat those odds, but his condition is worsening, and, believing he wouldn't make it to December, he had just one very nerdy wish: to see Star Wars: The Force Awakens before he dies.
Fleetwood's family and friends started #ForceForDaniel as a way to get the word out about his wish, and after a Houston TV station shared his story it went viral in a hurry, reaching fans everywhere and Force Awakens stars like Mark Hamill and John Boyega. That people were aware and supporting Fleetwood was no longer in question, but what was in question was whether Disney would allow anyone, even a dying fan, to see the film amid all of the studio's efforts to prevent spoilers. Well, today we got the answer.
Fleetwood's wife Ashley shared on Facebook (which was later reposted to Twitter) that the family received a call this week from J.J. Abrams himself, and that Thursday Daniel got to see The Force Awakens.
YES! Thank you @Disney, @HamillHimself, @starwars and everyone who helped this man get a smile on his face! pic.twitter.com/mWrF1xqqbY — Chris Alexakos (@Calexak0s) November 5, 2015
We might hear more from Fleetwood about his experience seeing the film. We might not. Either way, this is a heartwarming reminder that weird stories about space wizards really mean something sometimes. May the Force be with you, Daniel Fleetwood.
(Via The Verge)Acting quickly to stanch the loss of methane could substantially cut warming in the short run, even as countries tackle the tougher challenge of cutting the dominant greenhouse emission, carbon dioxide, studies by researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology suggest.
Unlike carbon dioxide, which can remain in the atmosphere a century or more once released, methane persists in the air for about 10 years. So aggressively reining in emissions now would mean that far less of the gas would be warming the earth in a decade or so.
Methane is also a valuable target because while it is far rarer and more fleeting than carbon dioxide, ton for ton, it traps 25 times as much heat, researchers say.
Yet while federal and international programs have encouraged companies to seek and curb methane emissions from gas and oil wells, pipelines and tanks, aggressive efforts like EnCana’s are still far from the industry norm.
As a result, some three trillion cubic feet of methane leak into the air every year, with Russia and the United States the leading sources, according to the Environmental Protection Agency’s official estimate. (This amount has the warming power of emissions from over half the coal plants in the United States.) And government scientists and industry officials caution that the real figure is almost certainly higher.
Unless monitoring is greatly expanded, they say, such emissions could soar as global production of natural gas increases over the next few decades.
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The Energy Department projects that gas production could rise nearly 50 percent over the next 20 years as companies race to discover and tap new sources. In the United States, 4,000 miles of new pipeline was laid last year alone.
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But the industry has been largely resistant to an aggressive cleanup.
The Bush administration, which opposed mandatory limits on greenhouse gas emissions, expanded an existing voluntary domestic program for capturing methane emissions and began a related international program — with both aimed at promoting profitable ways for businesses to cut methane emissions as a relatively easy first step to combat climate change.
In April the Obama administration signaled that it could adopt rules requiring the biggest American companies to report all of their greenhouse gas emissions. Oil and gas industry groups countered that the cost and complexity of dealing with some 700,000 wells were too great.
In September the E.P.A. announced that the obligatory reporting would begin in 2011 but that it excluded oil and gas operations, at least for the time being. (Agency officials say they plan to issue rules for oil and gas by late next year.)
Some scientists reject the industry arguments. “Further delay on finding and stopping such releases would be irresponsible, given the financial and environmental benefits,” said F. Sherwood Rowland, a Nobel laureate in chemistry at the University of California, Irvine.
Internationally, the amount of methane escaping from gas and oil operations can be only crudely gauged. But in 2006 the E.P.A. estimated that Russia, the world’s largest gas producer, ranked highest, with 427 billion cubic feet of methane escaping annually, followed by the United States at 346 billion, Ukraine at 225 billion and Mexico at 191 billion.
Reflecting the uncertainty in such estimates, Gazprom, Russia’s giant state gas monopoly, estimated its annual emissions at half that figure last year.
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An E.P.A. review of methane emissions from gas wells in the United States strongly implies that all of these figures may be too low. In its analysis, the E.P.A. concluded that the amount emitted by routine operations at gas wells — not including leaks like those seen near Franklin — is 12 times the agency’s longtime estimate of nine billion cubic feet. In heat-trapping potential, that new estimate equals the carbon dioxide emitted annually by eight million cars.
In the routine operations, great yet invisible plumes of gas enter the atmosphere when new wells are activated, old wells are invigorated to boost gas flows and wells are purged of fluids by letting out cough-like bursts of gas.
In many gas fields, said Roger Fernandez, a senior methane expert at the E.P.A., fluid-clogged wells are still purged the old-fashioned way, by opening valves or using outdated equipment in ways that release a misty burst of gas directly into the air.
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For the E.P.A. and environmental scientists, the challenge is convincing gas and oil producers here and abroad that efforts to avoid such releases often more than pay for themselves.
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The use of infrared cameras is expanding as word spreads of the payoff in saved gas, said Ben Shepperd, executive vice president of the Permian Basin Petroleum Association, which represents 1,200 companies in the oil and gas business around West Texas.
“We would like to see more people doing it,” he said. “People are very surprised when they shoot their equipment with these cameras and they see that there are releases in places they wouldn’t have expected.”
The benefits are there not only for gas producers but also for companies handling oil. Thousands of oil storage tanks emit plumes of methane and other gases, said Larry S. Richards, the president of Hy-Bon Engineering in Midland, Tex., which is using infrared cameras to survey storage tanks in 29 countries and sells systems that capture the gas.
A clearer view of the worst methane emissions could come next year, when Japan plans to start releasing data from Gosat, a satellite that began orbiting the Earth in January. It may be able to identify the top hot spots within a few miles.
That may increase pressure on countries with particularly large leaks.
As the biggest methane emitter, Russia has begun seeking high-tech solutions. In April, for example, Gazprom, the Russian Defense Ministry and an Israeli aerospace company began discussing the potential use of miniature remotely piloted helicopters to monitor pipelines for leaks.
But gadgets alone will not halt the vast exhalation of methane from Russia, environmentalists say. There is some hope that a successor to the 1997 Kyoto climate change pact will include more incentives for money to flow to Russian methane-reduction projects.
Western companies that have captured methane point out the money that is often to be made by doing so.
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Starting around 2000, BP began introducing methane-catching techniques at 2,300 well sites in New Mexico. At well after well, gas that would have otherwise escaped now flows through meters that field crews affectionately call the “cash register.”
Among other actions, BP engineers have fine-tuned a system for purging fluids that can stop up wells. The process uses the pressure of gas in the well to periodically raise a plunger through the vertical well pipe. This removes the liquids but typically allows gas to escape.
The new computerized process, which BP calls smart automation, tracks well pressure and other conditions to more precisely time the plunger cycles in ways that avoid gas emissions. From 2000 to 2004, emissions from BP wells in the region dropped 50 percent, the company says. By 2007, they had essentially ended.
On average, installing the systems has cost about $11,000 per well, but they have returned three times that investment, said Reid Smith, an environmental adviser for BP working on the project.
“We spend a lot of money to get gas to the surface,” Mr. Smith said. “It makes a huge amount of sense to get all of it through the sales meter.”ADVERTISEMENT
Darwin's Dangerous Idea by Daniel C. Dennett (Simon & Schuster, $19).
I was like Kant reading Hume when I opened this book, because it woke me from small-minded slumber. Before Darwin's Dangerous Idea, I thought biology was basically just memorizing different parts of cells. Dennett opened my mind to the intricacies of evolutionary theory, and did so with wit and elegance.
Consilience by Edward O. Wilson (Vintage, $17).
The ultimate big-picture book. Wilson outlines how fields like history and the humanities can incorporate insights from biology and the study of human nature — to the benefit of both science and the arts. Consilience offers a bracing look at the future of human knowledge.
The Baroque Cycle by Neal Stephenson (HarperCollins, $20 as an e-book).
A 1,000-plus-page novel in three volumes about the origins of calculus might not sound promising, but Stephenson alchemizes science history into a gripping, swashbuckling, world-spanning adventure.
A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again by David Foster Wallace (Back Bay, $16).
The first book I read that made me say I want to do that; I want to write like that. No one ever mixed erudition and earnestness like DFW, and this book was my favorite of his. I still remember having to put it down, multiple times, because I was laughing so hard.
Childcraft: The How and Why Library (World Book, $150).
This was a set of children's reference books, divided by topic, that my mother bought at a grocery store. I got obsessed with them in the way that only kids can get obsessed with things: I read the volumes Myths & Legends and The Puzzle Book probably 20 times each. I still get excited when I visit my parents' home and see them.
The Book of Barely Imagined Beings: A 21st Century Bestiary by Caspar Henderson (Univ. of Chicago, $20).
Imagine a medieval bestiary of whimsical creatures, but with a twist — the animals here really exist. The book moves alphabetically from axolotl to zebra fish, with a new delight on every page. It's a perfect reminder of what biologist J.B.S. Haldane once said: that the universe is not only stranger than we imagine, it's stranger than we can imagine.
— Sam Kean's new book, Caesar's Last Breath, explains how the air we breathe tells the world's history.Prior to Fan Day today, Georgia Tech hosted several members of local media for a Q&A session with a number of returning Yellow Jackets, punctuated by a pre-season press conference with Coach Johnson himself. FTRS did not have anyone on-site, but the press conferences were made available online. Coach Johnson answered questions from the media (with varying levels of candidness) for around 35 minutes, and you can view the whole event here (with Coach Johnson’s responses beginning around the 1:25:00 mark).
One of the things that stands out from his comments is the revelation that Chris Griffin will not, in fact, return from his knee injury suffered over 18 months ago. Instead, Griffin will be granted a medical hardship by the NCAA, meaning his playing days are over. You may remember that Griffin, originally a member of Georgia Tech’s 2013 signing class, tore his ACL playing basketball in the wake of the 2014 season, and missed the 2015 season as a result. His recovery involved setbacks, which ultimately led to today’s announcement. Griffin becomes the second offensive lineman to be medically disqualified since fall camp began on Thursday, joining Jake Whitley, who was set to be a redshirt sophomore this fall.
The announcement is a big blow to the Yellow Jackets’ offensive line, where Griffin would’ve figured to be one of its starters at OT (as would have been the case in 2015). Instead, the starters figure to be redshirt sophomore Trey Klock and former-TCU transfer and redshirt juior Eason Fromayan, with redshirt sophomore Jake Sticker as the primary backup to that tandem. With Will Bryan, Freddie Burden, and Shamire Devine in between them, the tackles figure to be the shakiest group of the entire offensive line.
Griffin’s disqualification also counts as yet another blow against the 2013 recruiting class, which was arguably the recruiting low point of Paul Johnson’s tenure at Georgia Tech. For those unaware, here’s where things stand regarding that recruiting class:
Name Position Hometown Ht Wt Rivals 247Sports Composite Committed Status Paul Davis DB Cairo, GA 5'10" 200 2-star (5.2) 2-star (0.7811) 2/3/2013 Starter Ricky Jeune WR Montvale, NJ 6'3" 205 3-star (5.6) 3-star (0.8443) 1/13/2013 Starter Harrison Butker K Atlanta, GA 6'3" 170 3-star (5.5) 3-star (0.8354) 6/16/2012 Starter Shamire DeVine OL East Point, GA 6'6" 360 3-star (5.7) 4-star (0.9077) 5/17/2012 Starter Corey Griffin DB Tyrone, GA 6'2" 195 2-star (5.4) 2-star (0.7793) 2/6/2013 Potential Starter Antonio Messick WR Fayetteville, GA 6'3" 185 2-star (5.4) 3-star (0.8035) 7/15/2012 Reserve Chris Griffin OL Crawfordville, FL 6'6" 265 3-star (5.6) 3-star (0.8352) 6/13/2012 Medical Hardship Ty Griffin QB Kennesaw, GA 6'0" 190 2-star (5.4) 3-star (0.8056) 1/31/2013 Transferred Justin Akins DE Jackson, GA 6'5" 235 3-star (5.6) 3-star (0.8246) 6/29/2012 Transferred Kevin Robbins DE Forestville, MD 6'4" 235 3-star (5.6) 3-star (0.8528) 6/3/2012 Transferred Donovan Wilson RB Dublin, OH 6'0" 205 3-star (5.6) 3-star (0.8382) 5/16/2012 Transferred John Marvin DB Fort Walton Beach, FL 6'1" 188 3-star (5.5) 3-star (0.8197) 6/29/2012 Dismissed Darius Commissiong DT Forestville, MD 6'2" 285 3-star (5.5) 3-star (0.8435) 5/24/2012 Dismissed Travis Custis RB Hampton, GA 6'0" 205 3-star (5.7) 3-star (0.8585) 4/3/2012 Never enrolled
Yeah.
Georgia Tech’s fall camp resumes on Monday. The good news from here is that there are no other expected medical issues facing the team, so hopefully the 80 players who remain on scholarship can stay healthy through the remainder of camp and this season.Friday night's Bellator 163 Paul Daley vs. Derek Anderson fight has been canceled.
"After a difficult weight cut, we, along with Mike Mazzulli from the Mohegan Athletic Commission, made the decision to pull Paul Daley from tonight's event as a precautionary measure," Bellator president Scott Coker told MMAFighting.com via statement. "Fighter safety is of the utmost importance to us here at Bellator."
Worth noting that Daley, who has a history of weight-cutting issues, made weight Thursday night. He weighed in at 171 pounds.
The promotion is currently deciding which undercard fight will be promoted to tonight's four-bout Spike TV broadcast. (Update: Bellator chose Neiman Gracie vs. Rudy Bears to fill the main card slot.) On Thursday, the Marloes Coenen vs. Talita Nogueira fight was also canceled after Nogueira missed weight by 5.6 pounds.
Both Anderson and Coenen will be paid their show money, per Bellator.
Bellator 163, headlined by Liam McGeary vs. Phil Davis for the promotion's light heavyweight title, is set to take place Friday night at the Mohegan Sun Arena in Uncasville, CT.MINISTER Josh Frydenberg was told by the Australian Bureau of Meteorology on, or about, Wednesday 5th July 2017 that limits had been placed on how cold temperatures could be recorded across mainland Australia.
This winter we have experienced record low temperatures. But only the keenest weather observers have noticed, because the Bureau has been changing the actual values measured by the automatic weather stations.
In particular, the Minister was told that while the Goulburn weather station accurately measured the local temperature as minus 10.4 at 6.30 am on Sunday 2 July, a smart card reader prevented this value from being recorded as the daily minimum on the Daily Weather Observations page.
The smart card reader had been pre-programmed to round-up any value below minus 10 degrees Celsius. So, instead of entering minus 10.4 into the CDO dataset, the value of minus 10.0 was entered for 2nd July instead.
This wrong limit of minus 10.0 was confirmed in an email from the Bureau sent to journalist Graham Lloyd, and also Griffith businessman Paul Salvestrin, on 4th July.
No such limits are placed on how hot temperatures can be recorded.
While the Minister has had this advice – about the smart card readers and the limits on cold temperature recordings – for some weeks, he has claimed publicly that he has full confidence in the Bureau and has resisted calls for an independent inquiry. Further, the Minister has supported the Bureau’s faux solution of replacing the automatics weather station initially at Goulburn and Thredbo, and more recently at many more sites across Victoria and Tasmania.
All-the-while, the Minister has known that the problem is limited to the smart card readers.
To be clear, the problem is not with the equipment; all that needs to be done is for the smart card readers to be removed. So, after the automatic weather stations measure the correct temperature, this temperature can be brought forward firstly into the Daily Weather Observation sheet and subsequently into the CDO dataset.
David Jones is the Manager of Climate Monitoring and Prediction services at the Bureau and would probably have overseen the installation of the smart cards. Jones is also on-record stating that: “Truth be known, climate change here is now running so rampant that we don’t need meteorological data to see it.”Photo: Fox, Twentieth Century Fox, Pee Wee Pictures, Touchstone Pictures
This year’s Lincoln Center Festival launches with a concert featuring Danny Elfman’s Music From the Films of Tim Burton. Still, when I chatted with the composer to cover some of the most popular sounds of his career, he was afraid he wouldn’t remember specifics. “My historical sense of my own work is absolutely atrocious,” he warned me. “Once I’ve moved on from a film, I’ve never listened to those scores again, or even watched the movies I’ve scored. I’m almost allergic to the things I’ve worked on. If it’s playing on TV, I’ll usually change the channel.” Fortunately, he was selling himself a little short, as he was able to recall the inspiration for the music behind some the most classic scenes of the last 30 years. With Danny Elfman’s Music From the Films of Tim Burton opening tonight and running through July 12, Vulture spoke to Elfman about eight of those scenes.
Pee-wee’s Big Adventure: “The Breakfast Machine”
Pee-wee’s Big Adventure is the movie that marked the beginning of Elfman’s career as a film composer, as well as his work with Tim Burton, a collaboration that now spans 30 years. Pee-wee Herman, the main character, is an oddball who’s surrounded himself with wonders of his own making. His world is an enchanted, eccentric circus of curiosities. Most of these ideas are captured from the start, in a scene where Pee-wee’s breakfast is prepared by an elaborate mechanism. Elfman’s score acts like the clockwork driving this kooky technology.
“I really went heavily into a Nino Rota inspiration for Pee-wee’s Big Adventure, so if you heard something circuslike, I can only imagine that it came from that place.” Elfman said. “The first scene that I wrote, which to me established a lot of the tone of the movie, is the breakfast machine. That’s where I really dived in and tried to find the Pee-wee character in that piece of music. It then spread out to the rest of the score.”
The Nightmare Before Christmas: “Jack’s Lament”
If The Nightmare Before Christmas often comes up when naming Elfman scores, it could be because everything about creating this movie was different. The Kurt Weill–inspired Nightmare took two and a half years to complete, where most of Elfman’s film scores are done within 12 weeks, toward the tail-end of postproduction. That Elfman was cast as Jack Skellington’s singing voice was due in part to the fact that the pumpkin king’s identity crisis mirrored Elfman’s own at the time, particularly in the song “Jack’s Lament.”
“I really related very heavily to Jack and his relationship to Halloween,” Elfman recalled. “It was kind of my relationship with my band, Oingo Boingo, at that point. I was the singer and the songwriter, so in a way, I was the king of my own little kingdom. But I desperately wanted out. I wanted something else. So as I was creating songs for Jack and writing those parts, I was also kind of writing from my own heart and where I felt at that time. So it’s a real character to fall into. I wrote most of everything in about 30 days with Tim, but when I recorded the demos with him, I finally said, ‘Tim, I almost couldn’t bear it if someone else was singing these songs.’ And he said, ‘No, don’t worry. They’re you’re songs.’ I was relieved because, at that point, the thought of someone else stepping into Jack would have killed me.”
Batman Returns: The Penguin Dies
The theme Elfman composed for Batman and Batman Returns is certainly memorable, so much so that it was even used for the ensuing animated series. The overall score evokes a path paved in tragedy for the hero and villains of Gotham. Batman’s world functions within a maze of moral gray zones, but your sympathies might never baffle you more than when the Penguin dies. He’s unquestionably sadistic and homicidal, but his death is painful and pathetic, and the weighty, funereal music takes us to a place where we can actually feel mercy for the merciless man.
“I love the Penguin,” Elfman said. “He was a character that I really felt for. He’s a bad guy, but I still liked him, and I was really sad when he died. As silly as the scene is, when he dies and they carry his body, I found myself bizarrely touched by it.”
Edward Scissorhands: “Ice Dance”
It’s hard not to notice children’s choirs on several Elfman tracks. Normally that sound would be reassuring, but in Elfman’s hands, it’s otherworldly and unsettling. You never feel very grounded when the chorus chimes in, as if they’re singing a gorgeous warning. The children’s choir particularly characterizes Edward Scissorhands. Elfman can’t say exactly why he’s drawn to this type of vocal work, but he knows he likes it.
“I’ve always enjoyed using some kind of choir, or the boys’ soprano soloist; there’s just something about the sound of children that particularly gets me,” he explained. “There was nothing to indicate what music should be played for this movie. I had two themes for Edward Scissorhands but no themes for anybody else. That’s just the way it came together. Frequently, my process isn’t really a process. It’s what scenes form in front of me and trying to explain it. I don’t know what made me want to use children’s voices other than telling the story and telling the fairy tale. I think that probably opened the door to Tchaikovsky and using a choir in that way, I’m sure. But it’s all very unconscious … Edward was a really cool process of being left alone with Tim. Nobody was watching over our shoulders, nobody even seemed concerned that we were even writing a score or working on the music. We were just two weird guys working on our own, under the radar and everything. And the result was Edward.”
Mars Attacks: Destruction Scene
An instrument that keeps popping up in Mars Attacks is the theremin. It’s distinctly ghostly, and rampant in old horror and sci-fi movies. But for Elfman, the theremin is a reflection of the bonds that tie him to Burton.
“The goal was to invoke the ‘50s and that sci-fi sound that Tim and I both grew up on,” said Elfman. “When we met during Pee-wee’s Big Adventure, we realized that we both had the same background. We both grew up in Los Angeles and we both grew up watching horror, sci-fi, and fantasy films. It was an era where you got to see a lot of movies. So using the theremin was certainly no accident in Mars Attacks. The whole idea of a Martian attack goes right back to the ‘50s or ‘60s and the movies that we saw when we were little kids, and a theremin would have certainly been used.”
Good Will Hunting: Park Scene
Because Good Will Hunting’s score is mostly dominated by Elliott Smith tunes, it’s easy to forget that Elfman was also involved. Though his imprint may be subtle, it’s no less effective, especially in the park scene between Will Hunting (Matt Damon) and his psychologist Sean Maguire (Robin Williams), and later, when Sean keeps repeating, “It’s not your fault.” In both scenes the music comes right at the end, but what it conveys is a change in Will’s perspective, or a crucial shift in his relationship with Sean. Again, part of what makes this work so poignant comes down to the process.
“It was a rare case where I knew what songs were going to be where,” Elfman recounted. “Normally in a film, I’m just told, ‘We’re going to put a song here.’ In this case, from the very beginning, I was listening to Elliott Smith. Elliott and I would get together in this basement, pull out guitars, and play ideas of stuff. So I had a really good sense of what several scenes were, what the score was going to be, what the song was. I was grateful because I was able to make it much more transparent than usual, and make it feel more integrated. It’s something that I really haven’t had since. So that was really special. Not to mention the pleasure of meeting Elliott Smith.”
Hitchcock: In Editing
Hitchcock, the biopic starring Anthony Hopkins and Helen Mirren, was never a huge hit, but it had its moments, and Elfman carved most of them. Knowing that frequent Hitchcock collaborator Bernard Herrmann is one of Elfman’s most cited influences, I asked him if he channeled the composer to score this picture, especially in the scene where Hitchcock and his wife Alma edit Psycho.
“Very consciously. We didn’t want the score to be a Bernard Herrmann homage,” he admits. “On the other hand, there were moments when I just wanted to allow his spirit in the door. The heart of the score is a romantic theme, which plays over and over, so I still think of it as more of a romantic score than anything else. But there are still moments where I at least try to crack the door. We decided early on that we didn’t want it to be poorly done Bernard Herrmann. Since he was part of the story, it was just too on-the-money to do that.”
The Simpsons: Opening Theme
In the infrequent case where someone can’t place Elfman by name alone, just tell them he composed the theme for The Simpsons. It’s so recognizable that Elfman wouldn’t be surprised if, despite over 100 film credits to his name, his tombstone one day reads, “Wrote the Simpsons theme.” So how did he come up with this playful orchestral piece? The answer is in his childhood.
“It was the easiest thing I’ve ever done because it was immediate; there were no notes, no changes, no suggestions,” he says. “I got called into a meeting with Matt Groening. He showed me a pencil sketch of the opening of The Simpsons and it felt very retro and crazy, what I remember growing up on. I told him, ‘If you want something contemporary, I’m not the guy for that. But if you want something like a crazy Hanna-Barbera that never was, then I think I’m the right guy.’ I literally wrote the piece in the car on my way home from the meeting, in my head. I ran down to my studio and within a couple of hours, I wrote all the parts on a multi-track. Then I sent the cassette back to Matt, and I think I got a call the next day saying, ‘Yeah, that’s it’ … I didn’t know that I would actually be hitting a jackpot. I didn’t expect anybody to see The Simpsons. I didn’t think it would last more than one season, if it even lasted one season. So I did it purely for fun. That silly moment would become this major defining moment in my life. It’s amazing. It’s ironic.”With the consumption tax set to rise next April, the prospect of default on Japan's huge national debt, and the still-unresolved issue of radiation emanating from Fukushima, maybe it's time to get out of Japan. Increasing numbers of financially well-off Japanese, reports Nikkan Gendai (Oct 30), have been doing just that, heading for Singapore, Malaysia and other safe havens along with sufficient funds to support them in the manner in which they are accustomed.
But hold on a minute. According to a certain accounting office in Tokyo, more of these moneyed expatriates have tried living abroad and are now saying they want to return to Japan.
"A common pattern I've been seeing is that these people moved abroad so that their children could avoid paying Japan's high inheritance taxes," says the unnamed accountant. "According to Japan's current law, if the recipient of inheritance has lived abroad for five years or longer, or if he or she becomes a citizen of a foreign country, the highest rate they can be charged in inheritance taxes is 50%."
As opposed to Japan's highest income tax rate of 50% (including local resident's tax), the maximum tax in Singapore is 20%, with no additional taxes. So if large sums of money are involved, it might appear on the surface that moving abroad would make sense. But this is due to an incomplete understanding of global finance.
"The most intolerable thing about Japan's national taxes is the stringency with which assets are tracked," says Mr A, who previously worked as a securities trader in Singapore before returning home to Japan.
"If, for example, you remit more than 1 million yen abroad, the tax office must be notified. If you try sneaking the money out by less than fully legal means, there's a strong chance the tax office will go after you. Even if you open an account in some offshore tax haven, since it is ultimately subject to Japanese taxes, I don't get the feeling there are many merits to this kind of capital flight."
In addition, Singapore is hot all year around, and many Japanese, accustomed as they are to the changing weather patterns and variety of seasonal foods, will find it difficult to get used to.
Mr A also notes that after Tokyo won its bid to host the 2020 Olympics, more people's patriotic spirit have been rekindled and they're suddenly looking at their homeland in a different light.
Mr B, the former owner of an IT business, finds that life overseas offers no assurance of an escape from price increases.
"Apartment rents have been soaring in Singapore and Hong Kong, at the annual rate of |
hand, denounces the reaction as a “giant, collective hissy intake of breath”. Note that “hissy” is not a term employed against straight men.
Dolce and Gabbana’s response demonstrates that they have retreated to the last refuge of a bigot. “We firmly believe in democracy and the fundamental principle of freedom of expression that upholds it,” they’ve declared. Eh? What does this have to do with anything? They have used their public platform to make gross generalisations, and John has exercised his own right to freedom of expression in response. He has not called for their arrest or demanded any restrictions on their personal liberty. He has simply suggested that those who find Dolce and Gabbana’s views objectionable should consider not buying their products, as is their right. Gabbana has even called John a fascist– an absurd usage and an insult to the millions of people persecuted and exterminated by fascist regimes.
Dolce and Gabbana believe that we should just agree to disagree; their view is just as legitimate as anybody else’s. The likes of Elton John are supposed to say: “Ah, well, you don’t think I should be a parent, and you think my children are synthetic and the children of chemicals, but hey, you’re entitled to your views.”
The fact that Dolce and Gabbana are gay is neither here nor there: there is no shortage of examples of members of oppressed groups who have internalised the prejudice and discrimination directed against them. Their intervention helps to legitimise prejudice against gay people and their children. It helps to fuel bullying of children – whether because they are raised by same-sex parents, or because they have been conceived by IVF.
Elton John and leading LGBT groups call for Dolce & Gabbana boycott Read more
In any case, the evidence is clear. A study by the University of Melbourne has suggested that children raised by such parents actually have better health and wellbeing. On other measures, they were on a par with those raised by same-sex couples. This is hardly surprising: because it is harder for same-sex couples to have children, there is a positive selection for what are more likely to be doting parents.
This furore could be a watershed. Opposition to mixed-race relationships eventually came to be regarded as completely illegitimate: the alleged rights and wrongs of such partnerships are not an acceptable matter of debate. We are now reaching the same tipping point with same-sex parents. The backlash shows how far we have come.June 10: Veras has been released, tweets Mark Gonzales of the Chicago Tribune.
June 3: The Cubs have designated reliever Jose Veras for assignment, tweets Bruce Miles of the Daily Herald. The 33-year-old veteran was signed to serve as Chicago’s closer after the Tigers declined to pick up his club option.
Veras represents a fairly significant miss for the Cubs front office. He was given a $4MM guarantee, including this year’s salary and a $150K buyout for a 2015 club option at $5.5MM. In addition to putting a consistent presence at the back of the bullpen, the Cubs no doubt considered the possibility of dangling Veras at the trade deadline.
But that was not to be. Across 13 1/3 innings on the season, Veras has worked to a 8.10 ERA with 8.8 K/9 against 7.4 BB/9. Adding injury to insult, he then missed 17 games with an oblique strain. But Veras was actually much better upon his return from the DL. Since May 15, he has thrown 7 2/3 innings and allowed just two earned runs and a walk while setting down eight batters on strikes.Photo courtesy of Thomas McMahan
Drab Majesty mastermind Deb Demure looks like a cross-dresser from outer space who’s about to graduate from a UFO cult into something ten times more bizarre. Depending which night you catch her on, Deb’s makeup might be a cross between Ace Frehley and Aladdin Sane-era Bowie or—in Drab’s latest video for “The Foyer,” which was directed by Thomas McMahan—Alice Cooper and A Clockwork Orange. If you can ignore the three-day stubble and the fact that she’s 6’4”, Deb just might be a woman. If you can’t? Well, Deb is clearly a man. But her creator and masculine half, Andrew Clinco—who also plays drums in Marriages and Black Mare, both of whom have enjoyed premieres here on Noisey—would prefer it if you didn’t think of Deb as a woman or a man. As an apt pupil of the Genesis P. Orridge school of gender-bending, Clinco would rather you abandon genitalia-based expectations and train your ear-holes on Drab Majesty’s music—an icy, dreamy, occasionally dancey confection that blends classic ’80s new wave textures with a deliciously strange and futuristic elegance.
After winning his/her hometown of Los Angeles over with the 2012 cassette EP Unarian Dances, Deb is set to go global with Drab Majesty’s full-length debut, Careless, via Dais Records. Deb recently ventured to Noisey’s secret L.A. outpost to discuss his/her origins over vodka-sodas, a Death In June soundtrack, and a light dusting of rare ceremonial powders. In the interest of full disclosure, I should mention that I play in Black Mare with Andrew/Deb, but we did our best to keep this interview strictly professional.
When you started writing Drab Majesty material, did you know you’d be performing it in character?
Deb Demure: Absolutely not. The impetus was that I had songs that were continually accruing in my head, but I was playing drums in a band that didn’t sound like any of the songs. I didn’t even know why I wanted to write them. But these lyrics and this overall aesthetic just came to a boiling point. It was a complete catharsis in my bedroom at this time, which was 2011, just for the sake of recording my own music where I played all the instruments. I wrote about four or five songs, and then listening back I just didn’t feel like I was listening to myself. It was alarming in a way. It just didn’t sound like me at all. It sounded like someone else.
So Deb was born.
Yeah. Andrew was kind of alarmed at what was taking place with the drum machine and this new wave aesthetic that the songs had. At the same time, I was very much—and still am—into my occult studies, and I’m very into the idea that I’m not responsible for anything I create. Or we aren’t as people. We’re just vessels channeling these ideas and making sense of them. So I decided I had to put another face to the sound because I just couldn’t take ownership as Andrew, the drummer of another band who wanted to make some songs. So I figured, why not completely detour from who I am?
What was the first step, then?
[Marriages guitarist/vocalist] Emma [Ruth Rundle] and I made a video for that song “Pole Position,” and that was literally the first Drab Majesty song I wrote. It’s an analogue about doing cocaine and the Winter Olympics and luging and slalom skiing—a very basic cocaine reference. Hitting the slopes, pole position. So I decided I wanted to be this “ice goth”—white face, icy lips—but also counterbalance it with something kind of menacing and fucked up. So the character just kinda came out. This is the person who needs to be making this music. It’s very easy for me to get into character and feel confident that this is the sound that character produces.
Did it take a while to fully develop the character?
I knew right away what I wanted Deb to be. My grandmother is very much a reference for Deb’s world. A lot of the clothes are actually my grandmother’s. I got them after she passed away. Her home was definitely a big stylistic contributor as well, as far as textures and color palettes and things like that. She lived in a really old midcentury modern home in the foothills of Beverly Hills. It’s this old, dying part of L.A. that you’ll never see unless you’re second-generation like myself or up with some weird, high-society old-money shit. My grandpa—who I never met—was a superior court judge in Santa Monica, very well-respected, and he was able to hook her up with a sweet pad before he passed. He actually awarded [Frank] Zappa tons of money from Warner Brothers—millions in royalties they never paid him. But I don’t come from any kind of rich lineage. I grew up in a middle-class home.
Deb’s starchild look strikes me as more Aladdin Sane-era David Bowie than, say, KISS. Even though your music doesn’t sound like either one.
Aesthetically speaking, yes. But I wouldn’t point to Bowie as a musical influence at all. There’s very much a Genesis P. Orridge influence. She’s an extremely big hero for me. All of her projects are things I’ve really gotten into and strike me as some of the highest art out there. Her pandrogyne project is something that I wish I could actually have the balls to do—or not [laughs]—but I do love Genesis in that she’s had lots of looks over time. At one point, after the whole Lady Jaye merging, I really thought that was interesting—the crazy polarity or tension she creates between the masculine abrasiveness of some of the music she makes combined with the feminine touch of the reciting of lyrics and poetry. I love that. I’m not evaluating Genesis as a man or a woman. I’m seeing this genderless vessel delivering the sounds and the message. It’s really powerful.
So you don’t want people to focus on whether you’re a man or a woman because it’s not important.
No, it’s really not. It’s like listening to a sculpture recite a song, or something like that. Even if the sculpture is a man or a woman, it’s still inanimate.
The Deb character seems to be aesthetically at odds with Drab Majesty’s music, but that makes me like the whole thing more.
Oh, absolutely. The face and the tension between the masculine and feminine in a sloppy, gender-fuck kind of way, comes from just riding the bus in Los Angeles. There was a period of time in the early 2000s when I was only riding the bus, and there was an absolutely distinguishable network of transgender, transsexual transients on the bus. I’d see a lot of these recurring characters and many of them spoke to the old Hollywood, this flickering flame that hadn’t completely burned out.
The underbelly.
Totally. But there was something delicate and non-threatening about them. So the music is dreamy and friendly and easy on the ears. It’s not texturally or sonically challenging. There’s three levels: The sounds are dreamy and ethereal, the look is playful and kind of clown/harlequin/mime, but then I try to be more threatening with my facial gestures. Not like metal threatening, but more stern. So there’s a constant balance.
There’s a certain disembodied aspect to Deb as well. Is that on purpose, and does that allow you—in addition to being neither male nor female—to be not human as well?
Yes. 100 percent. I’m really into the idea of Deb as an orator. A lot of the more priestly garb I wear comes from going to church with my grandma on Sundays. There was always something fascinating about the lector, the orator, addressing a crowd. Also the space was extremely ambient and the reverb was amazing in this church.
Yeah, it seems like your reverb style is heavily influenced by church.
Absolutely. But the priest is interesting because what he’s saying is “the word of the Lord.” The priest really has no personality. Yes, he gives his sermon and maybe there’s some injection of humor or anecdotal stuff, but for the most part the orator is merely reciting the higher word. So that’s how I think of what I do: The word of the Drab, or the word of the Majesty. That’s what comes through. That’s why I personally don’t try to take too much ownership. If you look at the insert on the new LP, it says, “All songs were received by Deb Demure.”
The title of your first EP, Unarian Dances, was inspired by a UFO cult here in Southern California. What can you tell us about it?
I stumbled onto the Unarius Academy through this amazing time in public access television in Los Angeles. There was this group of artists called the Threee Geniuses—three e’s. Don Bolles [formerly of the Germs] did the audio, Dan Kapelovitz, who is now an entertainment lawyer for weird cases, was involved, and then there was Giddle Partridge, who was a collaborator with Boyd Rice, and they had this big cast of rotating characters. They’d go into the Hollywood public access studio and take over for two hours, doing the most psychedelic improvisational video art of all time. It was a crazy time in L.A. TV history. You could turn on the TV at three in the morning and see some of the most intoxicating visuals ever, and one of them was this woman who was in one of Unarius initiation videos called “The Arrival.” It’s the first installment of “The Arrival.” If you ever stumble across this on YouTube, it’s like striking gold. It’s the craziest, deepest repository of incredible videos that they would use for initiatory purposes within their cult.
What inspired the title of your new album, Careless?
Initially the record was gonna be Care Less, or maybe Careless with an extra “s” or “l,” like it was carelessly spelled. But I cut it back down to just the word itself because I think it’s a pretty loaded word. It can mean you’re not focused on things that are important, or it can mean you’re apathetic. For me, the title came from a transition from the former meaning to the latter. It’s about learning to embrace apathy as a way to mitigate harmful thought patterns that come from experiencing a lot of pain. But also experiencing a lot of pain through someone being careless, and then you caring less as a result. Every song was written more or less as a response to some painful event. Also, a dear friend of mine named Nathan Gammil recently let me move into his place when he moved to New York to become a nuclear physicist, and he bestowed upon me all these incredible songs he wrote. One of them was called “Careless,” and it’s one of the best songs I’ve ever heard. It affected me really deeply, so I wanted to make a record that was a nod to him.
It makes me think of My Bloody Valentine’s Loveless—not only because of the similarity of the title, but because MBV totally immerses you in atmosphere above all else.
Yes. I love that. Sonically, I want you to be immersed. I want to put you in a non-space. When I listen to shoegaze music and ethereal music, it’s emotional but it’s not “emo,” you know? It’s uplifting. It’s like cocaine, which is a very large factor in my work.
It’s funny you say that, because one of the only words I can make out in “Unknown To The I,” the first song you did a video for from Careless, is “cocaine.”
Oh, yeah. [Laughs] “Cocaine is a merry-go-round.” That song is absolutely about finding false epiphanies in drug-induced states, the cyclical nature of drug intake and the false deities that come with the experience. That’s why I chose the song to be in 6/8, too. It’s a very cyclical, round time signature. It’s very floaty.
You play all the instruments on the Drab records yourself, and your current live setup is just you and a drum machine. Do you see a future in which you play with a full band?
As a drummer, there’s maybe only one or two drummers I would trust to suit the songs well on an actual acoustic drum set. Dan Tracy from Deafheaven is one of them, because his time is so good—but he’d never do it because he’s so busy. At this point, if I incorporate any new members, it would be on bass or synth bass. That’s the position that’s potentially open right now.
You also play drums in Marriages and Black Mare. Do those bands fulfill other musical needs, or are they purely keeping you lubed up as a drummer?
It’s a hundred percent both. If I didn’t have Black Mare or Marriages, I probably wouldn’t even have a drum set. But they also fulfill my desire to use the instrument of drums to improve a sound and carry out a larger vision. I like that in Marriages I get to be completely responsible for what happens on the drums, and I really like that in Black Mare, I’m given some aesthetic direction that forces me to bridge the gap between someone else’s language and what I might naturally do on my own. It was a challenge at first but now that we’ve been playing together for about two years, I can help shape that, maybe, one snare hit at a time.
J. Bennett plays bass in Black Mare and wishes he could wear makeup like Deb’s.The Arlington Trolley Pub is set to roll out to the public on April 19, which is next Friday, owners confirmed.
Co-owner and managing partner of the Trolley Pub company Kai Kaapro confirmed the news via email. As Patch reported in March, the Trolley Pub is as it sounds—a mobile, pedal-powered pub that will tour through Arlington streets.
"The market is really good there and a perfect sort of place for what we do," Kaapro said back in March.
The trolley will be available for rent on two-hour long tours through the Clarendon area. Owners have not yet announced details on how to rent out the pub.
Onboard, the pub is bring-your-own beer or wine.
Find out more about how the trolley works in our previous profile:
Arlington Trolley Pub Coming to Clarendon StreetsIt’s unclear whether that episode is linked to the latest alteration to Pornhub’s Russia policy — forcing users to log in with their account on the social networking site Vkontakte.
The site found itself once again at the center of Russian political intrigue weeks later, when political opponents of Russian President Vladimir Putin used Pornhub to distribute a banned investigative documentary about Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, a longtime Putin ally.
Monday’s change is the latest chapter in an ongoing feud between Pornhub and the Russian government. The site was blocked in Russia last September for allegedly spreading information detrimental to the development of children, then reinstated in April after instituting a requirement that users specify their age. At the time, Pornhub asked the Russian state media regulation agency whether officials there would lift the ban if they were given free Pornhub Premium accounts.
Pornhub, the world’s biggest porn site, now requires users in Russia to log in using social media accounts linked to their passports and cell phones.
Read more
Pornhub, the world’s biggest porn site, now requires users in Russia to log in using social media accounts linked to their passports and cell phones.
Monday’s change is the latest chapter in an ongoing feud between Pornhub and the Russian government. The site was blocked in Russia last September for allegedly spreading information detrimental to the development of children, then reinstated in April after instituting a requirement that users specify their age. At the time, Pornhub asked the Russian state media regulation agency whether officials there would lift the ban if they were given free Pornhub Premium accounts.
The Russians replied that they would not.
The site found itself once again at the center of Russian political intrigue weeks later, when political opponents of Russian President Vladimir Putin used Pornhub to distribute a banned investigative documentary about Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, a longtime Putin ally.
It’s unclear whether that episode is linked to the latest alteration to Pornhub’s Russia policy — forcing users to log in with their account on the social networking site Vkontakte.
Pornhub announced the change on its own Vkontakte page page by saying “Now you can simply log in through your favorite social network” instead of filling in your date of birth. But the government policy that Pornhub says prompted the change presumably wasn’t aimed at making it easier for Russians to watch porn. Instead, it may be a means of surveillance; to open a Vkontakte account, users need to enter their cell phone numbers. And to legally purchase a SIM card in Russia, you need to disclose your passport information.
“While this exact method is not a condition [from the Russian government], we found this is the best solution for our users to comply with Russian access laws,” Pornhub Vice President Corey Price said. “Also to be clear, Pornhub does not log or store any of your personal information, this is just a check to see if users are over 18…. On [Vkontakte’s] end, all they will see is see the request from that user, they will not know what that user browsed on Pornhub.”
The Russian government has recently taken steps to limit anti-Putin activists’ access to the internet, which Putin once called a “CIA project,” in the wake of political protests organized online by anti-corruption activist and Putin opponent Alexei Navalny. In March, Russia blocked several websites promoting protests in Moscow.
Not long after, it was Navalny’s allies who used Pornhub to distribute the anti-Medvedev documentary. The film, narrated by Navalny, shows yachts, palatial compounds, and a 17th century Tuscan villa that are all allegedly controlled by Medvedev thanks to a complex web of cronies, charitable funds, and offshore companies.
In May, a Russian court ordered Navalny to stop distributing the film, and that’s when his allies posted it to Pornhub with the title “RUSSIAN CORRUPTED POLITICIAN FUCKED HARD.”
On May 31, Navalny thanked Pornhub on his Vkontakte page and suggested the porn site do a “remake” of the film “in the corresponding genre.”Vikings running back Adrian Peterson said he's getting close to being able to participate in the team's offseason conditioning program and that he fully understands and wasn't bothered when new head coach Mike Zimmer went on an Austin, Texas radio station and said that Peterson needed to prove himself as a leader on Zimmer's team.
Speaking to reporters via a conference call set up to promote Peterson's investment in a medical recovery device called Hyperice, Peterson said he's bouncing back well from the groin surgery he had in January. It's the third straight offseason in which Peterson has had surgery. He had major knee surgery before the 2012 season and hernia surgery before last season.
"I can't sit here and say I'm back right now," Peterson said. "But I am not far off at all."
As with most athletes, Peterson was more revealing about the timing and seriousness of his groin injury today than he was last season. Peterson said he originally hurt the groin on Nov. 3 at Dallas. He played in the next seven games before taking a seat early in the second half of the 15th game of the season at Cincinnati. To be fair, the team didn't hide the groin injury and there were times during the second half of the season when the whole football-watching world knew Peterson wasn't anywhere near 100 percent.
Here are a few highlights of Peterson's conversations with reporters:
On his groin surgery in January:
"To be honest with you, I didn't know what to expect. I was hoping I wouldn't have to have surgery. [The injury] happened Nov. 3 [at Dallas], and originally it felt like it might be a strained groin. Gradually, it continued to get worse and then we went to Baltimore [on Dec. 8] and I had the foot injury. It all came back to the previous groin injury. The foot injury was a reflection of the groin because I wasn't able to cut and I wasn't as elusive as I needed to be. But being the competitor that I am, I didn't come out and say that. I'm going to go out and try to do the job no matter what.
"I felt like I didn't really have the lateral movement, but I was still going to be able to get outside the tackle box and cut upfield.... It was a situation that put me possibly in a bad predicament. But now I'm feeling good. I'm training hard. My recovery is connected as well. So I'm using the Hyperice. Icing is the key. I've been sitting back, working out, recovering my body and getting ready for the season.
On Zimmer's comments about Peterson needing to prove he's a leader:
"Being around a new coach for the third time, yeah, I definitely understand where he's coming from when he says that. He doesn't know me that well. I met him. We talked. We chatted once or twice. I'm sure not only me, but everyone else has to prove that they are leaders of the team. That's something that I really take pride in as well. That's all a part of me taking care of my business when I'm away from the facility. It's normal. It's a normal routine for me. When I'm not in Minnesota, I'm taking care of my body. I'm working out extremely hard to be productive for my team. Coming off the groin surgery, I was slowed down a little bit, but I've been able to recover a lot faster. So, yeah, it is what it is. I respect what he has to say."
On participating in the team's offseason program, which began on Monday:
"I haven't been able to put a date on [when I'll be there], but, yeah, I do [plan to] as far as participating. Right now, the most important thing is being healthy. That's what I'm doing. I'm rehabbing. I'm working out still to get the body back to where it needs to be. Talking about the Hyperice, it's a big part of my recovery as far as being able to ice different parts of my body to speed up the recovery time, to get me back out on the training field to be able to be productive and work towards getting back to my normal self."
Peterson was introduced to Hyperice by NBA star and fellow Univeristy Oklahoma product Blake Griffin. According to the Hyperice company, the device provides the benefits of cryotherapy and compression, enabling the reduction of swelling and the healing of tissues. Considering that Peterson set the bar for all future ACL recoveries, he's quite the company spokesman.
"It's a game-changer for me," Peterson said of Hyperice.Breaking News Emails Get breaking news alerts and special reports. The news and stories that matter, delivered weekday mornings.
April 5, 2015, 2:28 PM GMT / Updated April 5, 2015, 3:14 PM GMT / Source: NBC News
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday continued to call for the rejection of the framework of a multi-country deal that with Iran that seeks to limit the country's nuclear capability.
"I'm not trying to kill any deal. I'm trying to kill a bad deal," Netanyahu said on "Meet the Press." He argued that the current plan "leaves the preeminent terrorist state of our time with a vast nuclear infrastructure."
The prime minister went on to say that "not one centrifuge is destroyed." However, according to the paramaters for the deal released by the U.S. State Department, Iran has agreed to reduce installed centrifuges by two-thirds and place the excess in internationally monitored storage.
Netanyahu also said he believes lifting some of the sanctions on Iran and leaving them with some nuclear capability could result in a nuclear arms race in the Middle East.
"It would spark an arms race among the Sunni states, a nuclear arms race in the Middle East," the Israeli leader warned. "And the Middle East crisscrossed with nuclear tripwires is a nightmare for the world. I think this deal is a dream deal for Iran and it's a nightmare deal for the world."
And the prime minister did not challenge the premise of a question about Israel's unconfirmed nuclear arsenal:
Chuck Todd: "There have been plenty of reports about Israel's nuclear deterrent strategy. Do you believe that in an ideal situation, no Middle eastern country would have nuclear weapons?"
Prime Minister Netanyahu: "In an ideal situation, you wouldn't have countries seeking to annihilate the state of Israel and openly saying that.... So I think the real problem in the Middle East is not the democracy of Israel that has shown restraint and responsibility, but it's countries like Iran that pursue nuclear weapons with the explicit goal first of annihilating us, but also ultimately of conquering the Middle East and threatening you."
But Netanyahu stressed that when it comes to Iran's nuclear capabilities, he prefers a "good" diplomatic solution to a military one.
He outlined such a solution as "one that rolls back Iran's nuclear infrastructure and one that ties the final lifting of restrictions on Iran's nuclear program with a change of Iran's behavior" and insists that Iran stops "calling for and working for the annihilation of Israel." He also called for further sanctions on Iran as a way to get the country to take a deal that contains no concessions.
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A young man allegedly brutally assaulted a young women 3am Monday outside a convenience store in Cheongju, North Chungcheong Province, while bystanders looked on.
An expat from Canada called the ambulance and police as he was filming the brutal battering but the bystanders, including four young Korean men and two women, did absolutely nothing even when the attacker kicked the victim’s head as hard as he could.
“When the ambulance came, the people at the back told ambulance workers that there’s nothing going on and left,” the Canadian expat told The Korea Observer on Tuesday.
“I’m not a fighter and going there to stop 5-6 guys from fighting would have resulted with me going to jail or hospital… Or deported.”
He said that the police couldn’t do anything about the situation as everyone, including the attacker and victim, left after the ambulance arrived and the victim appeared to have agreed not to press charges against him.
I still think there should be some media attention to the situation and guidelines as to how to react, as a foreigner, in such situation
In South Korea, law enforcement authorities usually do not prosecute an attacker unless the victim files a complaint.
The witness claims that the onlookers would have been punished for criminal negligence under Canadian laws.
“The people in the back would go to jail for not helping her and not calling the cops,” he said.
“There is a law in Canada which is the Good Samaritan law. I cannot be sued or charged for anything if I help in a situation, unlike in Korea.”
Another expat claims that the video should be shared online to open a dialogue with Koreans regarding helping women being attacked in public.
“First, no one helps this girl as she is cursed and kicked. This is a real problem I have seen again and again. No one wants to get involved here,” he said.
“We must protect victims when we see something like this.”RSS is an open XML standard for syndicating Web content. RSS stands for Rich Site Summary and Really Simple Syndication, and it's been a standard part of the Web for years. RSS benefits both publishers and readers by providing a simple open standard that makes it easy to create newsfeeds, and easy to subscribe to them. If you're not accustomed to using an RSS reader you might give it a try, because it delivers articles to your RSS newsreader so you won't miss important news.
Let's look at a simple example of how it works. Click the little orange RSS icon at the top right of the Linux.com home page, and this takes you to a page all full of RSS feeds: all content, and individual feeds for each category. To subscribe to any of these, just click on the icon. You can send your feed to your Google Reader account, Yahoo, an RSS client on your PC, or in the Bookmarks toolbar of Firefox.
Google Reader is an easy, flexible RSS client that allows you to stuff all your feeds into a page in your Google account. As Google says, "Reader is like a magazine you design." Which isn't quite accurate because you can't adjust the layout, but only the content. Still, it's easy and useful, and has become a daily staple for a whole lot of users. But Google has decided they don't want to support Reader anymore, and so Reader is going away on July 1.
It's a good lesson in the perils of relying on a service provider instead of your own local applications. There are plenty of good RSS clients for Linux users, so let's look at some good alternatives to the party-pooper Google Reader.
Exporting Feeds From Google Reader
Any RSS client should be able to import OPML (Outline Processor Markup Language) files, so you can save your Google Reader feeds by exporting them with the Google export tool. Log into your Google Reader account, click the gear icon, click Settings, and then click the Import/Export tab. From here you'll have to jump through another hoop and click "Download your data through Takeout". It will make you log in again, and then finally you'll be able to download your zipped OPML file. After downloading unzip it, and then use the import feature of your chosen RSS reader to import your Google Reader feeds. There will be several files in the export, but the one to import is subscriptions.xml.
Firefox
The Firefox Web browser has always had a built-in RSS client, and it's not going away. Your feeds become automatically-updated bookmarks, and you manage them just like any other bookmarks: name them whatever you want, organize them, and put them in the Bookmarks Toolbar for fast access (figure 2).
Fig. 2: RSS feeds in Firefox
The Opera Web browser includes an RSS client that's just as easy to use as Firefox's. Opera is closed-source, but they have a native Linux version, and it's an advanced, powerful Web browser with a lot of great features.
Akregator
Akgregator is part of KDE and is a very nice news client, but it does drag in a lot of KDE dependencies in non-KDE environments. But all they do is take up disk space, and fortunately it doesn't start a lot of daemons like Akonadi. Akregator has the classic, efficient three-pane organization (figure 3), which I prefer because it lets me see everything at a glance: which feeds have new articles, titles, and then the articles. It has the usual KDE wealth of keyboard shortcuts such as middle-click to open an article in a Web browser, ESC key cancels feed fetches, + key opens the next unread article, ALT+ opens the next unread feed, P opens the previous feed, and left-arrow key goes to the previous article. And, of course, all of these are easily customizable.
Fig. 3: Akregator
Liferea
Liferea is an excellent, lightweight, feature-ful Linux news reader that is almost as configurable as Akregator, but without all the KDE dependencies. It comes with a batch of default feeds that includes XKCD. Sure, it's easy enough to add it yourself, but it's a nice touch.
Canto
The Canto newsreader is a fast, slick little ncurses console newsreader (figure 4). Start it up by typing canto in any terminal.
Fig. 4: Canto
Canto operates from a configuration file, ~/.canto/conf.py. It creates a default configuration automatically when you don't have one, ~/.canto/conf.py.example :
# Auto-generated by canto because you don't have one. # Please copy to/create ~/.canto/conf.py add("http://rss.slashdot.org/slashdot/Slashdot") add("http://reddit.com/.rss") add("http://kerneltrap.org/node/feed") add("http://codezen.org/canto/feeds/latest")
So adding new feeds is as easy as copying their URLs into ~/.canto/conf.py. Use the arrow keys or PgUp/PgDn to navigate your feeds, press the space bar to read an article, and press the space bar again to return to the article list. Exit Canto by pressing the Q key.
Canto has internal commands that you run after it's open, and external commands to use when it's not running. Here are some useful external commands:
Refresh all feeds:
$ canto -a
Update all feeds, and then run Canto:
$ canto -u
List all feeds:
$ canto -l
Quick help:
$ canto -h
Complete help:
$ man canto
So there you have it, no reason to be sad at losing Google Reader because we have a wealth of better newsreaders in Linux, and they are not at the mercy of a giant company with different goals from us lowly end-lusers.MATT FARAH'S 1988 Ford Mustang LX
Online Now MATT FARAH'S 1988 Ford Mustang LX Follow this Build 1084 MOD SCORE 417 LIKES 165 FOLLOWERS 757525 VIEWS
Vehicle Summary
My Fox Body Mustang is a swap complete with Independent Rear Suspension (what did you think THE IRS meant?) It's a crazy canyon/track full chassis build.
Specs Horsepower 385 HP Torque 350 LB-FT Curb Weight 2900 LB Drivetrain RWD Engine Size 5.0 L Transmission Type 5MT Top Speed 140 MPH Zero to Sixty 4.5 Seconds MPG (City/Highway) 24 MPG
The Story
This Mustang LX is a rare SSP model originally sold to the California Highway Patrol as an unmarked pursuit vehicle.The SSP model is a favorite of enthusiasts because it is the lightest V8-powered Mustang ever built, at just under 3,000 lbs. There are no power windows, door locks, no sunroof or fog light, and no air conditioning. The engine is a Ford Racing 302/GT40R Crate Motor with aluminum heads, which had less than 500 miles on it at the time I bought the car. The transmission is a T5. The car is being built into a street/track toy with emphasis on handling by the kind people at Maximum Motorsports of San Luis Obispo, CA. The car features a fully independent rear suspension from a 2004 Mustang Cobra modified with a new differential and bushings, front K-member suspension from Maximum's American Iron race car, 13" Cobra Brakes, 295/35ZR18 tires on HRE wheels at all 4 corners, flared fenders, and an interior by BBI Motorsport. Full build sheet to come. Here's video of me testing the new suspension on 9/23 |
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